‘I don’t understand them, but I love them. All the little parts and pieces!’
Despite the lack of available space, the artificers had taken them aboard willingly. They were engaged in a high-risk venture, for there could be brigands or even militia in their way, but Felise Mienn was the woman who had killed a dozen Last-Chancers single-handed. When she had asked Destrachis why they were taking him too, he had told her it was for the same reason.
‘You’re a fighter?’ She had sounded sceptical. He was a man for the underhand knife, perhaps, but no warrior.
‘I’m a doctor,’ he had said, with some dignity. ‘Or at least that was my training. I’ve been a lot of things since. Anyway, it’s a risky trip we’re on now. Injuries are likely from the journey or the machine itself. They’ll be glad to have me patching them up.’
The nameless little automotive scorched across the miles, the fastest thing in the Lowlands, according to its crew. Even the Pride itself would not be able to do this journey so swiftly, they boasted, since the power of its ingenious engine would be hindered by the weight of its carriages.
Felise was amazed that she could even catch her breath, amazed that the constantly churning engine did not fly apart or the crewmen get caught in its works or burned at any minute. The rush of the engine, the sweep of the countryside as it was hustled past them, the occasional brief image of some small village or herder’s croft, it all seemed to sing in her heart.
Would this be such a bad life? Perhaps she could find these men again, when she was done, after-
After what? For surely there would be no after. The one task that had sustained her this far would take the world with it once it was done. As though peering from a brightly lit room into the clouded night skies, she could see no after.
But this thought, with so much else, was soon blown past her by the incessant wind, and Destrachis was still grinning at her, so she smiled back at him and allowed herself to enjoy.
Destrachis woke with the tip of a blade at his throat. For a second he twitched uncontrollably, instincts yelling at him to do something, anything. He suppressed them, lying calmly for a moment to gather himself. Then he opened his eyes. There was a little moonlight slanting across them, and his eyes — and hers, he knew — would pick out enough from it to see their way.
‘I’m awake,’ he said quietly. They were in a Wayhouse located not far from Collegium. She had paid the surprised Way Brothers for a private room, and let Destrachis take a place on the floor, but now she had apparently had second thoughts.
Felise Mienn studied him down the length of her sword, and he thought she was trembling slightly in the faded moonlight.
‘How do I know I can trust you?’ she demanded.
He allowed himself a slight smile. He knew from experience that, on his slightly lined face, it seemed an expression of infinite reassurance. ‘Felise-’
‘You are too convenient,’ she said. ‘I think. I think you may be working for him. For Thalric — or for his masters. You are here only to stop me. Or else to warn him.’
She was trembling, he saw, but for all that the sword was still. Its tip was close enough to dimple the skin of his neck, but it drew no blood.
‘Felise, please listen to me.’ It was long practice that allowed him to lie there, as calm as a cloudless sky, and speak in such reasoned and measured tones.
‘Why would you leave your work in Helleron?’ she asked.
‘I am a mercenary at best, I have no roots-’
‘And why come along with me, just like that?’
‘You have money, do you not?’
‘And why-?’
‘But most of all,’ he said, risking much to cut across her increasingly urgent questioning, ‘we have had this conversation before.’
Dead silence from her. He stared into that face, beautiful as it was, and, in that instant, he saw nothing whatsoever alive behind her eyes. He granted her a long moment, and then continued.
‘Three days ago, camping beside the automotive, we had this exact conversation. Remember, it scared the squits out of those smugglers we were with? You accused me of being a Wasp agent. You had me pinned like this, almost exactly the same. It was the middle of the night, just like now. And then we talked, and I explained to you that, no, I wasn’t a Wasp agent, and that if you wanted me to leave you, then I’d do it, but I’d rather not. I’m simply a travelling companion who is, for the moment, heading in the same direction as yourself. And I’m not overly fond of the Empire, either. And I have watched you fight, and I find you admirable.’
‘Admirable,’ she echoed. He was not entirely sure she had understood his words.
‘Capable of being admired,’ he explained lazily. ‘I have lived in a great many places, both inside and outside the Lowlands, Felise, and I have never met anyone quite like you.’
She was trembling again, and he knew that this was the point where the loose string in her head that was keeping her in check might snap, or not. He fought down his own anxiety and made himself wait.
‘I. ’ There was the look of a lost child on her face, and the ‘I’ she spoke of was someone else, someone surfacing from long ago to take brief possession of a body long vacated. ‘Where am I? What is this place?’
‘Just a Wayhouse on the road. We’ll go to Collegium tomorrow.’
‘What’s. Collegium?’ She seemed dazed.
He wondered what would happen if he led her deliberately astray now, invented some other purpose for her. How long would the deception last, and could it be that simple? But, no, here came her familiar expression once more, ice spreading across her face and making her cold and hard again.
Abruptly her sword was back in its scabbard. ‘He is there,’ she reminded herself.
‘Or has been there,’ he corrected, allowing himself to sit up, gingerly touching his throat but finding not a mark on it.
‘He is there,’ she repeated. ‘And I will fall on him, and all his allies, and leave not one alive.’
The worrying thing, for Destrachis, was how this thought seemed not to fire her up but to calm her down.
Lieutenant Graf perused the dispatch, keeping his expression carefully blank. Amidst the scars, his one eye flicked back and forth over the few words it contained, looking for a way out.
‘Major?’ he began at last, and Thalric saw that, like so many in his position, he was a man who had forgotten, until this moment, what really frightened him.
‘Never underestimate the cowardice of a subject race,’ Thalric said, and Graf studied him cautiously.
‘I had not thought. ’ Graf twisted in his chair. It was something Thalric had observed before, when underlings had sudden sight of the spectre of authority at his shoulder. Graf was a man who could, perhaps, have bested him, certainly a man who had no reason to believe he could not. Thalric was his superior, though. Most of all, Thalric was higher within the ranks of the Rekef. And, although it was Thalric’s plan as much as Graf’s, it was, here and now, the subordinate’s role to bear the blame.
‘We neither of us predicted it, because we are Wasps. This development is merely a result of the weakness of our enemies,’ said Thalric, growing tired, letting the other man off the hook. ‘Perhaps we should have foreseen, but the plan seemed sound enough to me when you first outlined it.’
Graf visibly relaxed into his seat as Thalric took the paper from him. It was advance word from a man he kept fee’d in the Amphiophos, where the Assembly met. This man was just a servant, but he saw everything that went on there.
‘Well, the endgame can be salvaged, even though we might look like fools for all the rest.’ It had seemed reasonable, for Stenwold was already no friend of the Assembly. He had dangerous ideas and he left his post too often to undertake private ventures. He associated with dangerous and unsavoury types, yet now he wanted to speak to the Assembly, and they wanted to make him wait, to consider the error of his ways. Graf and Thalric had wanted to drive a wedge between Stenwold and his peers, so tha
t the wait might become an eternity, so that his voice might never be heard.
‘So what happens?’ Thalric asked disgustedly. ‘He is constantly seen, agitating, rousing up the students of the College, going to dubious places to speak the very words that have so riled their precious Assembly in the past. And would you not think that this disgraceful behaviour would sour matters further, that they would cast him from their ranks and have done with it? If this were a place with any decent rule of law the man would have been crucified as a troublemaker before now.’ He crumpled the piece of paper and threw it across the room.
‘Yet now they want to speak to him,’ he spat. ‘All his rabble-rousing has them quaking in their sandals. They’re desperate, now, to have him where they can see him, and if that means they must allow him his hearing then so be it. They’re too feeble or too frightened to take the beetle by the horns and have the wretch arrested.’
‘But at least they won’t be well disposed to him, when they meet,’ Graf suggested.
Thalric turned a hard gaze on him, ‘They won’t meet, Lieutenant. We’re going to see to that. Our final move is to happen now. Get word to Arianna straight away. Tonight would be best, and let’s hope that word of the Assembly’s decision won’t even have reached him. Then gather your men. I assume they’ve been briefed on who lives and who dies?’
‘Death for the Mantis and his daughter,’ confirmed Graf, ‘but Stenwold lives, if possible.’
‘And dies if not,’ Thalric completed. ‘And when he disappears or dies we’ll put the word around that the Assembly had him dealt with after all, and then see how badly his precious students take it.’
Arianna left Stenwold dozing on his back again, lulled asleep by her latest embrace. The house was quiet, and she washed and dressed swiftly, and left even as dawn was creeping up the skirts of the eastern sky.
The stalls of the markets were in place already, the earliest business of the day commencing. Arianna wandered through them casually until she was sure she was not being watched or followed.
Her feet then found the path into the richer district of the mercantile quarter, close to the white walls of the College itself. The shopfronts here were just being unshuttered, for the rich could afford to rise later and with more leisure. Most of those out on the street already would be servants, waiting for one place or the other to open its doors for business. She passed on.
On the next street she paused at the barber’s shop. The Fly-kinden who was giving the floor inside a final opening sweep was Hofi, of course, but he did not look at her, nor she at him. Her attention instead wandered over the placards he kept in his window. Anyone who wished could pay him a few coins to tell the world whatever they wanted announced. There were some goods reported for sale, goods similarly required. Rather more were personal valedictions, anonymous accolades for lovers, sly insults, even challenges. Her eyes skipped over them until she found her latest brief: a poem penned in a blocky hand, idolizing some woman named Marlia, but she recognized the key words in the first line and followed the stanzas down until she knew her new instructions.
So soon! Her heart lurched. She had been keeping the pot boiling so deftly. She could not think what had happened for Thalric to hasten the pace so violently. And tonight?
It just could not be done.
But of course it could be done. It would be easy enough. It would, in fact, pose no problems. Her instant reaction, though, was to kick away from it.
She had now been staring too long, and Hofi inside would note it. She turned and walked on, but stopped two shops down, peering through an iron grille at the jewellery behind it, yet seeing none of the gold or glitter. When she had been standing over Stenwold, her claws had been out ready to kill him, or at least she had told herself she was ready. Now her readiness would be put to the test, for now she had direct orders.
Direct orders and no luxury of choice. Of course she must do what she was told. She was Spider-kinden, so betrayal and double-dealing were in her blood. Stenwold Maker would not be the first to find her loyalty buckle beneath him just as he trusted his weight to it, nor the last either, no doubt. It was a game she once had played badly in Everis, but everyone was an expert out that way. In Collegium, amongst the plain and simple Beetle-kinden, she was superb at what she did.
She got back to Stenwold’s townhouse in good time. The smell of new bread was in the air, his servant making breakfast. Despite all that was on her mind, she felt hungry at once, passing straight through the hall and into the kitchen.
She stopped abruptly, for Tisamon was seated at the table, and before him lay her scabbarded dagger.
As his eyes met hers, a chill went through her. In Everis nobody had worried much about the Mantis-kinden. They were few, and across the water, and they were savages. Oh, dangerous enough out there in the wilds, but stout walls and civilized company, good wine and good conversation, could keep the threat of them at bay.
And here she was, and here he was, and although they were within Collegium’s walls it was as if he had brought the wilds inside with him.
Her eyes flicked down to her weapon, back up to his face. She, who was so skilled a reader of minds and faces, could see nothing past the shield of his dislike.
‘Good morning, Master Tisamon,’ she tried, her voice shaking a little.
He blinked, said nothing.
What did he know? And did it matter, for surely he would as easily kill her without a reason, or for such a reason as bedding his friend, as for the real one: the real reason that she was in the pay of the Empire, rather than the general cause that she was an ancient enemy of his blood.
The servant put down a plate of warm bread and a pot of the nut and honey mixture that Beetles seemed to favour. The man looked from her to the Mantis, and made a quick exit.
‘I hope Tynisa is well,’ she began conversationally, spreading some honey over a chunk of bread, while determinedly trying to keep her hands from trembling. Only when she had finished that did she reach out and reclaim the dagger, pushing it into the belt of her robe. ‘I had wondered where I left it,’ she said. ‘D-did you find it somewhere?’ Desperate attempts at normality in the face of that blank disdain.
At last he spoke. ‘You should be more careful.’ Was he warning her away from Stenwold? Was he acknowledging that her association had not harmed his friend? It was impossible to tell.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and looked away from him as she began to eat, aware all the time that his eyes were fixed on her.
Up above she heard the sound of Stenwold himself stirring. He would be down soon enough, adding one more layer of awkwardness to their little gathering. Then she would tell him how there were more students waiting to hear him speak, that they would be gathering tonight, and that he was eagerly expected.
She would announce it to him flawlessly. She would play her role without any catch in her voice or a single moment of doubt, even under the loathing stare of the Mantis. Whatever she might feel on the inside was quite irrelevant.
When Stenwold appeared, her story came out evenly, convincingly, over breakfast. He nodded at her animatedly, smiling widely at the prospect. He thinks he’s getting somewhere, she thought. But it was at her that he smiled most. It cut her more deeply than she would have thought, how much encouragement he took from the mere fact of her. Oh Stenwold, for all your learning, you are a fool.
‘Tonight then,’ he said. ‘And perhaps the Assembly will finally get the message. The longer they leave it, the more a meeting with them will become irrelevant. I’ll have the whole city up in arms soon enough, if they hold off.’ He grinned at Tisamon, who gave him a brief nod that contained all anyone could ever want of ready violence.
And you are right, Stenwold, Arianna thought, which is why we must do this to you. I’m sorry.
It was almost time to leave, with dusk stealing about the Collegium streets. Stenwold had his academic robes swathed about him, but wore his sword as well. The students liked to see him bearing it. It
showed he was serious — not just some typical all-talk-no-action Assembler. He paused to examine himself in his mirror, a full-length Spider glass that had cost a fortune, and had once adorned Tynisa’s room.
Every inch the hero? he thought, Or are there simply too many inches to me? There was a barely contained excitement in him, for he had been wrestling with the city’s inertia for a tenday and now he was winning. The word had come, during the day, that the Assembly would deign to see him after all. That meant his loyal students would truly have something to celebrate.
He then reminded himself of the grim realities. This was no game he was playing, and all those who listened to his words might be signing their own death warrants once the Wasps came. Still, Stenwold felt light-hearted, too much so to brood on things. A new lease of life, is what I have.
He came downstairs to find Tisamon waiting at his hall table, less than a metre from the spot where his daughter Tynisa had killed her first man — an assassin sent by the Wasp officer called Thalric.
‘Where’s Tynisa?’ Stenwold asked him.
‘She said she would meet us there,’ the Mantis confirmed. He was eyeing Stenwold slightly oddly, so the Beetle paused a moment to make sure his robe was hanging straight, the sword not caught in it. A growing feeling that he ought to explain something overtook him and eventually, after some moments of awkward silence, he did.
‘Ah. Tisamon. last night. it’s only that. ’ He was caught by that Mantis stare, not knowing what the man had seen, what he knew of the lines he had crossed with Arianna.
‘I was wondering whether you would mention it,’ said Tisamon. ‘I know, Sten.’
‘You do? Ah, well. ’ Stenwold could not decide whether to smile or not. ‘And do you. what do you think.?’
‘Whatever I think, it is not as it was with Atryssa and myself,’ the Mantis said, conjuring up his long-ago liaison with Tynisa’s Spider-kinden mother.
Meaning that this is not true love, just some old man’s foolishness. Stenwold’s heart sank at the implied judgement. But of course, he’s right. He opened his mouth for the admission, but a hand rose to stop him.
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