Milus the tactician, however, was surely not going to be quite so accepting.
As he approached, Tynisa and Thalric drew closer together without intending to, making the space between them a barrier for the Ant. The threat was a weak one: the Tactician had a dozen men at his back, and there were hundreds of Ant-kinden just a thought away.
Still, as the Ants closed, Tynisa took another step forward, right into his path. The movement was awkward and stiff, thanks to the wound that had come close to finishing her, in that same fight which had mauled her face. In truth, Apt surgeons would probably have given up on her, or at the least confined her to a bed for months to come, but the Commonweal held other ideas about medicine, and those who wore the Weaponsmasters’ badge could draw on unusual sources of strength. Tynisa’s hand was closed about her rapier hilt, and she could feel the steel all the way down her spine, supporting her.
To his credit, Milus stopped deliberately before them, dispersing the threatened confrontation by pointed diplomacy. His eyes narrowed, fixing on Che and Maure inside their circle. ‘What’s she doing?’ he asked.
Tynisa allowed herself to exchange a glance with Thalric. She had a choice, to obfuscate, or to simply baffle the man. She chose the latter.
‘Magic.’
Tactician Milus nodded. ‘She is Inapt, I’d guess. She must believe so.’
Tynisa blinked, trying to reassess him, but unable to quite pin him down.
‘Do you think I’d come to treat with the Ancient League without some understanding of the Inapt?’ Milus declared. ‘I have a devious little adviser on such matters, who tells me all manner of lies about the business, but even so I cannot deny that many kinden believe in such things,’ Milus frowned further. ‘What’s she hoping to achieve?’
‘Divination,’ Tynisa explained. ‘Far-seeing.’
‘She wants to spy on the enemy? Good, I need to talk to her.’
‘She’s busy,’ Tynisa objected. Thalric was keeping his peace, she noted, and that was just as well. Even the most conciliatory words were unlikely to be received well from a Wasp.
Milus let two seconds’ silence pass. ‘I need to talk to her,’ he repeated, slightly more forcefully. ‘There is a Wasp army at hand. There is fighting in the Etheryon. I cannot afford to wait on her pleasure.’
There was iron in his glance, a seamless transition from friend to threat that nearly had Tynisa’s rapier in her hand.
She opened her mouth to defy him, feeling a fighting calmness settle on her shoulders, all her thoughts and worries falling into the moment.
‘Tynisa, it’s all right.’ Che’s voice.
Tynisa did not look away from Milus. ‘You’re happy to talk?’
‘I think I’d better,’ Che confirmed. She started to get up, but the tactician strode between Tynisa and Thalric, near enough to touch either, and crouched down at her level.
‘Tell me what’s going on,’ he said, back to being friendly and reassuring.
Tynisa saw Che take a deep breath. ‘The Empress is here, with the Eighth,’ she declared.
Milus gave a grunt of surprise. That was plainly not what he had expected to hear. Before he could question her, she added, ‘Don’t ask me how I know. I couldn’t tell you in any way you’d understand. And I don’t really expect you to believe me – but you did ask.’
After a moment of introspection, perhaps summing up the reactions and opinions of his advisers, or his whole army, he nodded. ‘It seems unlikely,’ was all he said.
‘There is something in the forest she wants; that is all I am sure of. Maure and I have been trying to find out what it is, but . . . the magical landscape is much as you see the physical – tangled and knotted and dark, layer on layer. That there is something there at the heart of the wood, between the two holds, is plain. What it is . . . Tactician, permit me to suggest that you’re taking this very well.’
Milus nodded. ‘Some of what you say matches recent intelligence from my own sources, and from the Roach girl from Princep, who’s been in and out of the green a few times. There’s fighting going on in there, and the Etheryen think that there are Wasps under the trees already, helping out the Nethyen. The Empress? Who knows, but something has gone badly wrong. We’ve lost key allies, and if the forest is lost then we’ve lost our flank as well, and the next battlefield will probably be at the gates of Sarn. And still I don’t know what’s going on, which is the worst thing in the world for a tactician. The Mantis-kinden won’t talk to me, so that’s where you come in.’
Che’s gaze remained level. ‘What do you think I am, Tactician?’ There was a keen tension between them, and Tynisa felt her instincts twitch and tighten as they sized each other up.
‘I don’t care what you are,’ was Milus’s answer. ‘All I know is that I’ve never seen Mantids back down like they did when you confronted them. So: you’re important. They will listen to you. You can find out what in the pits is going on. Possibly you can even put it right.’
‘I need to go into the forest,’ declared Che, and Tynisa frowned, trying to work out whether the Beetle girl was wrenching the conversation off on a new path, or whether it had always been heading there.
‘That would seem sensible,’ Milus agreed. ‘You’re Maker’s niece, they say. You share his ideals, regarding the Empire?’ If his eyes flicked towards Thalric it was only for a moment.
‘These days I find myself opposed to the Empress most of all, and that of necessity,’ Che murmured. ‘For your purposes, though, the answer is yes.’
‘Then I will give you whatever you might need, whether it’s provisions or people.’ He stood smoothly, for all that he was a man in middle years and wearing full armour. ‘If there are Wasps in the forest, then I want to move my men in to counter them, and to aid our allies, but I need the Etheryen’s nod for that. Too risky, otherwise. Before you go, see if you can secure their cooperation.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ Che agreed.
When the tactician had gone, Tynisa and Thalric both rounded on her.
‘Are you mad? We’re headed to Collegium,’ the Wasp pointed out. ‘Nobody goes into a Mantis forest – not without an army.’
‘You don’t have to come.’
He looked insulted. ‘You know I do, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a mad plan. You’re not doing it.’
Che glanced over at Maure, who was looking sorry for herself. ‘You heard what I said: there is something in there that the Empress wants. We could feel that naked desire very plainly. You know the Empress, Thalric. Do you really think she would go to such lengths for no reason? And do you want her to secure what she’s after? Whatever it is, whatever is at the heart of the wood, we need to get to it first.’
‘Another Darakyon,’ Tynisa found herself saying. The old dead forest west of Myna had once been a place avoided even by the most rational of the Apt. The histories of the Bad Old Days before the revolution were long and dark and bloody, and there was room for far more than one nest of atrocity there.
‘Not quite,’ Che said, after a moment’s thought. ‘Whatever is there has its own sense of . . . bitterness, pride . . . betrayal even, but power, too. Some knot of ancient power, the fulcrum between Etheryon and Nethyon. I must talk to the Moth, Terastos. There will be legends, even if they are not spoken of openly. I will make him tell me.’
‘Che.’ Thalric’s face had become closed. ‘When you say the Empress is here, and there’s something in the wood that she wants . . . do you mean she’s going in after it? In person?’
‘Given what she is become, I do not think that whatever she seeks could just be retrieved by a squad of the Light Airborne,’ Che agreed.
‘Then she’s mad, too,’ Thalric decided, but his tone had changed. He did not add, and we can kill her in there, but Tynisa caught the thought from him like a disease. Yes, the Empress Seda would have soldiers and bodyguards but who could say what might happen in the heart of a Mantis forest?
It seemed irresistible to compare kil
ling the Empress with Tynisa’s father’s fight before the previous Emperor. It would be as though she was continuing Tisamon’s work.
She broke off from her thoughts to find Che already striding off towards the dark wall of the forest. ‘Wait, you’re going now?’
‘I need to speak to the Etheryen, if I can find them, just as the tactician wanted.’
Tynisa hissed in frustration, limping awkwardly after her, pushing herself hard to catch up.
Close to the forest’s edge, Laszlo waited. A single tree stood here, split by lightning years ago and long dead, yet retaining some faint ghost of menace for all that. The Sarnesh logging concerns had been operating here as part of their cautious and constantly renegotiated agreements with the Etheryen over the years, but this tree they had left, so Laszlo guessed it had some significance to the locals.
This was where Lissart had said for them to meet, when he had managed to catch a moment with her. Even with his credentials as part of the Collegiate delegation, he had been pushing the tolerance of her Ant guards in getting that close.
He had not yet seen her alone here and, although Tactician Milus might just be solicitous for Lissart’s health, her position seemed to Laszlo more that of a prisoner than a trusted adviser. Of course, he knew better than most why that might be, since she had been working for the Wasps when he first met her. She had personally sabotaged Solarno’s defences so that it could be taken by the Empire and its Spider allies and, had she not had some falling out with her superiors there, she might even now be sitting in that other armed camp on the far side of the forest.
She was not trustworthy, therefore.
He had not felt sure that she would come to meet him, but here she was. Her manner was furtive, flying low to the ground, halting abruptly, a pattern of stop and go that made her invisible each time she froze. Laszlo had better eyes than any Ant, but even he had trouble following her. When she reached him, she fell into his arms without warning, dragging him down into a crouch amongst twisted, dead roots.
For a long moment they were both silent, and he could feel the rapid beating of her heart. Ever the opportunist, Laszlo tried for a kiss, and she pushed him away angrily. A moment later, her expression was almost desperate, like a plea for help.
And she’s unstable, he reminded himself, adding that thought to his earlier list of reasons for not being here. The only reason to be here, in fact, was currently holding herself at arm’s length, trying to read his face through the lens of her own fractured expression. I always did end up with the crazy ones.
‘Shall we skip the bit where you call me a fool for turning up, and talk about why you didn’t jump ship in Collegium?’
‘Why would I jump?’ And a small smile from her.
‘The Sarnesh seem like they’re clipping your wings.’
‘Am I not here?’
‘Should I shout that information out and see what they think of it?’ He was trying to be hard with her, but his voice caught on the last few words. ‘Let me help you.’
‘Why should I need help?’ She half turned away from him, her eyes on the neat ranks of Sarnesh tents. ‘It’s just a little change in our deal. Tactician Milus is better informed than I thought.’
‘You were trying to play him.’
‘I had valuable information to provide. We had a deal. We still do.’
‘Liss, who are you working for?’
‘Sarn,’ but she overplayed the innocence, a sign of her fraying confidence.
‘Is it the Empire?’
‘Is this your idea of an interrogation?’ Mock flirting, perhaps, but his expression got to her and she added. ‘I swear, not them. Not even after you killed Garvan for me, not them’
‘Then who? No, fine, don’t say.’ For a moment he wondered if she was actually working for Collegium, for Sten Maker even, and it was just that nobody had mentioned it. ‘Milus – he’s clever, dangerous.’
And he saw she was scared, but she said, ‘I’m on top of it. Like always.’
‘Like in Solarno?’ he tried.
‘Yes! I was in control, in Solarno. You were just some glorified skivvy.’
‘At least I was glorified.’ But she would not smile at that, either. ‘Tell me what’s going on, why don’t you’?’
‘Tell you . . .?’ Indignant at first, but then her gaze softened, and she continued, ‘You are a truly awful spy. You are a disgrace to our profession, really you are.’
‘Good enough to know you’re in trouble,’ he pointed out and, when she did not deny it, he added, ‘So fly.’
‘With you?’
‘Right now,’ he agreed, without hesitation.
Her expression seemed balanced on a knife edge. ‘And the Collegiates – you’d abandon them, would you?’
‘Bartrer and Amnon? Like a shot.’
‘And Stenwold Maker?’
He made to speak, failed twice, then forced out the word, ‘Yes.’
A flame kindled in the palm of her hand, her Art guttering and dancing there, lighting up her face so that his breath caught. He was choked with memories of their time together travelling with the Spider-kinden baggage train, or trying to run for Collegium ahead of the advancing Wasps. ‘You are a master’s piece of work,’ he murmured, even as he became aware she was sabotaging her own chances of escape, showing every Sarnesh sentry exactly where she was.
‘And you are a fool, and you’d be as lost as I, with Sarn and Collegium both hunting us. And who would we sell ourselves to then? Who’s left?’ When he tried to speak her hand fell on his lips, the flame gone and her skin startlingly cool. ‘I know what I’m doing. Milus isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, and he won’t pin me down. No ties, remember.’ She was all confidence until her eyes left his to glance into the darkness. ‘And I have work to do here, before I get clear. But I could use a lift, maybe, when you go to report to your man Maker about his niece. Just a lift, maybe. It’s really not that important.’
‘Why not now?’ he demanded.
‘Because I’m not ready to. Because Milus is almost where I want him, and then I’ll know him, know the heart of him. And I’ll have something to sell, then: something to put me back in the game. Because, as long as I can creep away like this, he hasn’t won. And because it would hurt you.’
It was Laszlo’s turn to be silent.
‘I read you so well. I know every page. How you ever thought you’d be an agent for anyone taxes the mind.’ But her tone was cautiously fond. ‘I don’t want you carrying the weight of betraying this Stenwold Maker of yours. I won’t be struck with the blame for that. You promise too much in return for too little. I want you free of guilt.’
‘And you’re breaking with the Sarnesh?’
‘If I do, your man Maker had better be able to protect me. Or I swear I’ll go back to the Wasps. Just be ready for me, when the time comes for you to fly back to Collegium. Watch out for me.’ She leant in to him abruptly, lips brushing his cheek light as air, and then she was off, with the same jerky, stop-start flight, for all that they must have detected her by now.
Tonight was one for farewells.
The Etheryen had not responded to Che’s request to enter their domain. According to the Roach, Syale, the Loquae who led them were debating it even now, but the Mantids had only the loosest organization within the wood, and a response could come either tonight or in a tenday.
I would prefer not to go in uninvited. That would be classed as suicide by more resilient survivors than she, and she would be entrusting her life, and the lives of her fellows, to the nebulous strength of her own magical authority, a branch she did not want to put her full weight on just yet.
She would be walking in with the dawn, though, if the Mantids had sent no message meanwhile. The Empress would not hesitate, after all.
And what is it, that’s in there? What is she after?
Che was uncomfortably aware that Empress Seda already knew of her presence. Each of them was like a needle in the mind of the other, impos
sible to ignore. Her best guess was that she had sensed the Empress first, or at worst they had recoiled from each other at the same moment. But, if Seda had become much more accomplished in her divinations, it was possible that she had set a trap for Che here.
In fact, it was possible that the entire business here was a trap. It sounded like hubris to think so, but Che remembered her last encounter with the woman, the unbridled hatred revealed just because Che found herself sharing in the woman’s strange legacy.
Sharing was not something that the Empress was well suited for, Che had discovered. In that linked moment, Seda had nearly destroyed her mind out of reflexive fury, and that rage was still alive and well. Che could feel the heat of it.
But she could not afford to believe this was just a trap, because if the Empress unlocked some great power here, the entire world would suffer.
Thalric had laid a fire, and they were camping up near the trees, waiting for any word at all. The Sarnesh were keeping clear, but Balkus and his Roach girl had come to join them. Che had expected more remonstrations about her uncle, but the Ant stayed silent on that point. He himself was departing in the morning to take word to Princep.
‘I remember you in Helleron,’ she observed. ‘You weren’t half as serious, back then.’
His expression was a little hurt, a little sad. ‘War does that,’ he said solemnly, and then spoiled it by failing to suppress a smile. ‘No, forget that. Finding somewhere you care enough to want to protect, that’s what does it. I mean, anywhere that’s mad enough to have me basically running its defence, that place deserves keeping around just for the laughs, doesn’t it?’ His sigh was wistful, a moment’s requiem for the older, more carefree days. ‘I’ll pass word to Sperra for you: she always liked you. And Syale . . .?’
‘I’m for the forest again,’ the Roach girl replied.
Balkus grimaced, but made no attempt to talk her out of it.
‘How?’ Tynisa said, abruptly. ‘I don’t understand. You’re . . . what are you, to the Mantids? Why don’t they just kill you?’ The words probably came out sounding more hostile than she intended.
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