Part 2 (2/2)

A battle fought its way briefly across Lioste's face. 'Do not . . .' he started, and then his dislike of her finally gave way before his duty to defend his prince. 'He does not banish you. He does not cast you off. My prince has some small talent with the future, however. He sees only grief for you here. We are well aware that the Lowlander merchant is at Siriell's Town. My prince advises you to leave his domain to leave the Commonweal, to return home. He says you will be happier there. It is because he owes you a debt that he gives you this advice.' The effort of being civil to her was plainly stretching him. 'Please.'

'What shall you do?' Galltree asked her later, after she had listlessly picked at the late supper he had prepared.

'Would you let me stay here even if the prince wanted me gone?'

Galltree twisted the silk of his robe wretchedly, and she held a hand up to forestall his crisis of conscience. 'It doesn't matter.' She took a deep breath. 'This Siriell's Town, it's a rough place?'

'Lawless.' Galltree nodded emphatically. 'Rhael Province the family that ruled there under Felipe's, they're all gone, long gone, I think. In such places, others creep in, fugitives from the order of the Commonweal. These days, there are many such provinces, especially since the war.'

Her hand was on her sword hilt again, and she could sense the ghosts gathering close, waiting to hear her decision. 'I'll go,' she said. Home or die, and how convenient that both are to be found in the same direction. I don't even have to choose right now. She found that she had no intention of rejoining Allanbridge, if indeed he was not already on his way back to Collegium. Home held nothing but sharp edges for her now. She could not look Stenwold or Che in the face without seeing dead Achaeos reflected in their eyes and how she felt him close and gloating with that admission and she was being forced out of Suon Ren so very politely. How good of the world to provide a sink like Siriell's Town to drown herself in.

She took out Allanbridge's rough map, and looked Galltree straight in the eye. 'Anything to add to this?' she asked.

The road to Siriell's Town was a matter of heading north-east as best she could: bridging the ca.n.a.ls, and then heading over increasingly hilly country until she had made the subtle transition from land that still knew the hoe today all the way down through a gradient of neglect, to land that had not been sowed in a decade or more. She saw a few villages on the way, and avoided them by choice. There were no other travellers, no merchants or messengers, no flying machines overhead. The sense of the land was one of quiet desolation. She knew she would feel different if the Commonweal had accepted her in any way, but aside from Felipe Shah's brief moment of openness, she felt more a stranger here than she had done when she arrived and even the prince thought it would be best if she left.

Each morning, and sporadically throughout the day, she checked her bearings as best she could by Allanbridge's landmarks, thinking, So I can't miss the place can I, Jons? As if I believe that.

But when she came within sight of Siriell's Town having veered west some distance from her intended course she found that Allanbridge had been telling nothing but the truth. It was indeed a town, or something resembling one, but at its heart was a castle upon a hill, and Tynisa saw instantly that it looked something like the exemplar of Felipe's own. Complete, it had const.i.tuted a six- or seven-floored hexagonal tower, narrowing towards a point at the top. The walls were lanced with arrowslit windows, so that no attacker on the ground or in the air would have been safe from the defenders' missiles. Tynisa, having observed the st.u.r.dy walls of Collegium and the Sarnesh fortifications, could see only absences here: nowhere to place artillery, not that the Dragonfly-kinden would know what to do with it; no reinforcing of the walls, so that catapult or leadshotter a.s.sault would hammer them down all the sooner. This was a castle that had been designed to hold off men from another age.

It would not even serve for that purpose, any more. One whole side of it had sloughed off and tumbled down the hill years before, leaving a teetering rotten tooth of a place latticed with the shorn-off stubs of internal walls. The hollow sh.e.l.l of the interior had been colonized haphazardly by its new masters, for there were tents and shacks and wood-frame structures not only about the walls and within the castle's hollow footprint, but straggling up the walls themselves, as though growing there like mushrooms. A further shambles of makes.h.i.+ft dwellings had spread out from the castle's collapsed side in a jumble of huts packed far closer than the homes at Suon Ren. The entire place looked foul and squalid to Tynisa.

There was a clear effort to try and farm some of the land around Siriell's Town, with a hundred little plots scratched into the soil. Several of these had adults or children standing guard over them, as though protecting seams of precious metal. They stared at her suspiciously, as she pa.s.sed between them on her way to the town proper. Drawing closer, she saw that the narrow streets radiating out from the broken face of the castle were cluttered with people, many of whom seemed to be drunk or unconscious, and a couple of whom were clearly dead. The air was.h.i.+ng over Tynisa reeked of sweat and refuse, and resonated with arguments and shouting, the clatter of pots, singing, the odd scream and the roaring declamations of some kind of street entertainer.

Most of the resident sc.u.m were Dragonfly-kinden, she noticed, and it was plain that n.o.ble paragons such as Salma or Felipe Shah were only setting an example that many of their fellows failed to match. Most of the other outlaws were tall, lean Gra.s.shopper-kinden, but there was a fair quota of halfbreeds and other kinden, including some Mantids and even a few Wasps.

A middle-aged Dragonfly in a ragged robe reached out to tug at her sleeve. 'How much?' he slurred. 'How much for it?'

She slapped his hand away, and in that moment her rapier was a comforting presence, resting against the man's neck. He seemed too drunk to quite understand, so she kicked him in the parts for good measure, rousing a murmur of appreciation, or sympathy, from some of the degenerates nearby.

She had not thought to find Wasps in the Commonweal, but their pale faces kept leaping out at her as she pa.s.sed through this filthy town, and she could see that they were prospering here too. There were only a handful, but people got out of their way, and wherever they sat, each held court with a gang of local ruffians at his beck and call. Watching a few of them, and the craven way in which most of the locals bowed and sc.r.a.ped, she soon made the connection. The Empire had dealt the Commonweal the most savage beating in that nation's history.

At the end of the Twelve-year War three whole princ.i.p.alities perhaps a third of the Monarch's domain were under the black and gold flag, and the Imperial forces had only halted their advance because of an uprising in one of their subject cities back along the supply chain. Even though a treaty had been signed, pledging future peace, and even though the three captured princ.i.p.alities were now nominally free, following reversals suffered in the Empire's war with the Lowlands, everyone knew that the armies of black and gold could return at any time. Their repeated defeats had wormed their way into the consciousness of the Commonweal, and even people who had not taken up arms knew that the Wasp-kinden were to be feared.

After that, she was looking out for each renegade Imperial, her fingers constantly hovering near her sword hilt, some part of her mind plotting her own glorious fall. To rid the Commonweal of Wasps? To rid Felipe Shah's princ.i.p.ality of the vermin of Siriell's Town? What might she not set her blade to? To die in the pursuit of some grand and b.l.o.o.d.y ideal, was that not the Mantis way? There was no past she wished to face, no future she could conceive, but Siriell's Town offered her an eternal b.l.o.o.d.y present: fighting as Tisamon had fought, and losing herself here just as he had sought oblivion in h.e.l.leron after her mother had died.

For surely the world has no better use for me, she thought and, even as she did, her eyes lit on a face she recognized bold as the sun, a man she had never wanted to see again.

She had been fleeing Jerez, as much as Collegium, when she came to the Commonweal, but here was Jerez mocking her on the streets of Siriell's Town.

Jerez had been the idea of doomed Achaeos. There was some box, he said, just a little thing that a man could grip in one hand, but the Moth insisted it was of vital importance. Somehow, in the middle of a war, Achaeos had talked Stenwold into backing an expedition to retrieve it, and Tynisa had gone with him, to n.o.body's gain.

Tisamon had been with her, watching her back as she watched his; and Jons Allanbridge of course, to get them there. Then there had been the two Wasps. One, the arch-traitor Thalric, had subsequently escaped to become a big man away in the Empire yet another sack of blood she had never quite managed to cut open, for all he deserved it. And then there had been Gaved, who claimed to be independent of the dictates of the Empire. Tynisa had long decided that if he was genuinely something other than a servant of the Emperor, then he was something even worse: a freebooter, a mercenary, a thief and a kidnapper. Like Thalric, though, and unlike Achaeos, he had come out of the business untouched, and had been the only one to make any kind of profit from the whole wretched expedition. While others had bled and died, Gaved had left Jerez with a Spider-kinden girl on his arm, and an eyewitness familiarity with Tynisa's own crimes.

And here, on the stinking streets of Siriell's Town, was Gaved himself, with his intolerable burden of knowledge practically shrieking out to her. She watched as he spoke to some halfbreed who seemed to be a taverner, pa.s.sing over several trinkets in return for some information or other then the Wasp was off down the street with that light and easy step only truly owned by the utterly guilty.

And the irresistible thought came to Tynisa: I can kill him. I can start by ridding the world of Gaved, right here, right now. Because, although killing Gaved would be a pitiful gift to the world, at least it would give the drift of her life some meaning before the end.

Four.

She had never been in Siriell's Town before, but instinct had taken over and she skulked along in Gaved's wake, without any suggestion that he was aware of her. He seemed a busy man, too, with plenty of people to talk to: darting from hovel to shack, exchanging words, paying his way with what looked like some little cut stones. Sometimes she caught him looking over his shoulder, and she guessed she was not the only person here who wished him ill, something that seemed entirely understandable to her.

Twice she thought he was going to get into a fight. The first time, he was accosted by another Wasp and she heard angry words exchanged, the man accusing Gaved of some disloyalty perhaps to the Empire that both had patently abandoned but Gaved smoothed matters over with some joke, fending off the man's anger. The aggressor looked more than a little drunk and Gaved was able to evade him quickly.

The second time a half-dozen or so Gra.s.shoppers tried to accost him, and although his hands threatened them with Wasp Art they only kept their distance but did not disperse. They were armed with spears and staves and knives, and they clearly wanted Gaved to go along with them to some local tyrant or other. Tynisa watched, interested to see if she would have to save the man's life in order to have the pleasure of killing him herself.

One of the Gra.s.shoppers became too bold, reaching for the Wasp's sleeve, even though his fellows were still holding back. A bitter expression crossed Gaved's face briefly and Tynisa saw his hand flash fire, knocking the grasping man off his feet, still alive but with one leg scorched. In the next instant the Wasp had taken to the sky, his wings lifting him back over the adjoining buildings. The Gra.s.shoppers cursed and gave chase, as their own Art sent them leaping and bounding along at rooftop level, determined not to let Gaved get away. The wounded man yelled after them, demanding aid that was not offered, and then he began to crawl away, weeping with pain.

Tynisa loped into action. She did not possess the Art to follow either the Gra.s.shoppers or their prey, but she could see the net of his pursuers as it spread. Hurriedly, she climbed up to the creaking roof of the largest shack, spying them out, seeing who gave up soonest, who continued following a trail. She took only moments to make her guess, and then she dropped back down to street level and went hunting.

It felt good and so little had felt good recently to be moving swiftly and silently through the shabby streets, rapier swaying at her side like a faithful companion beast. This was more a taste of life than the world had afforded her in a long time now, since the war.

Sometimes people got in her way, but they got right back out of it once they noticed her expression, Wasps as well as locals, for she was not someone to stop, just then.

She slowed as she neared the wretched district her instincts had led her towards, and began to quarter it more subtly, street by street, her eyes not actively searching so much as taking it all in letting the filthy sights and sounds wash over her while sifting them for familiarity. She encountered a few of the Gra.s.shoppers, angry and frustrated at their failed search, turning back now to make their excuses to whoever had hired them. She paid them no mind.

As she s.h.i.+fted sidelong into the shadows beneath a shed's sagging eaves she found a core of stillness, a Mantis's watchful invisibility before the strike, as though the shade of Tisamon stood beside her, hand on her shoulder, lending her his kinden's Art. The other ghosts had been left far behind.

There. She had him. The cloaked figure walking almost not quite like a Dragonfly, but a little too burly despite his best efforts. She watched as he slipped out from between two buildings, a little astray from where she had predicted, but close enough. There was a brief pale flash of Wasp skin as he glanced about, and then Gaved hurried off, not at the idle saunter of before, but like a man in a hurry to get somewhere.

She flowed after him, like a ghost herself, keeping up with him at a distance, street for street. When she saw he was heading out of Siriell's Town her satisfaction only increased. She would be able to kill him cleanly and without interruption, before returning to this festering pit to begin earning her atonement in blood.

He made good time after that, but always on the ground, not wanting to take wing and be too visible. Shortly, he was at the outskirts, where Siriell's Town petered out into the most wretched of slums, amid the utter squalor of those too weak to fight for something better. Shacks and hovels had become just makes.h.i.+ft tents, cloaks propped up on sticks. The stink was vile, with flies rising in whirling clouds from makes.h.i.+ft latrines, and from bodies.

Gaved did not stop for any of this, and nor did Tynisa, although her stalking had become more careful as her cover diminished. She fell further back, changing her tactics from crowds and walls to using the curve and lurch of the land against him: creeping low, meandering left and right as the contours took her, but always managing to keep him in sight. His track took him through barren farmland in which some of the locals were trying to scratch a living, and she followed him field by field, crossing their boundaries, slinking along irrigation ditches and taking the occasional stand of stunted trees as a gift.

Dusk was on its way now, a bloated moon having already hauled itself clear of the horizon. Gaved had pa.s.sed the last patch of farmland, too stony now for anything but a handful of scrawny sheep watched over by a Gra.s.shopper youth, and his red and black beetle that circled the animals constantly in a vigilant trundle. One hill beyond, Gaved turned down into a sheltered defile, and there made camp.

Watching his quick, professional movements as he set a little fire beneath the overhang and hung a tiny pot over it, she almost forgot why she had followed him. Thinking himself alone out here, he had become an honest man, quietly competent and well able to brave the wilderness, seemingly more at home than he had been on the streets of Siriell's Town. She watched for longer than she intended, out in the cold and the dark, as he cooked up something almost scentless to eat, over a fire that gave no smoke.

At the last, and s.h.i.+vering slightly from the chill, she drew her rapier in one smooth, silent motion. His wings and sting would give him all the advantages when at range, yet she could not bear to simply kill him from behind. This was not squeamishness: she wanted him to know the agent of justice before he died.

Even as she took her first step towards him, his voice called out, 'About time. Now come out where I can see you.' He was standing up, one hand out with palm open, but not quite looking at her knowing that he was observed but unable to make her out in the darkness beyond his fire. She edged closer, in inches and steps, and he cast about, frowning and tense, but unwilling to flee from mere shadows. In her slow progress there was a fierce battle being fought, his eyes and the moon against her stealth, until she was almost within rapier's reach. Then the firelight caught her, and he saw at last who she was.

His expression was almost all she could have wanted: utter shock at first, but swiftly replaced by an intense loathing that mirrored her own thoughts exactly. She had to kill him, because he was a reminder of all the things she was trying to forget. He, in that instant of recognition, had made a similar resolution and quite possibly for similar reasons.

'What are you doing here?' he demanded. 'You've got the whole of the cursed Lowlands! Why can't you keep there?' The immediate hostility was gratifying: no wheedling, no excuses, no feigned friends.h.i.+ps, nothing to tempt any uncertainty; just a man who very plainly did not want to see her.

'Perhaps I'm the new Collegiate amba.s.sador,' she said. 'Why are you fouling the Commonweal, Wasp?' And it was a release to be able to speak so frankly and viciously to someone, for a change. She was already calculating angles, distances. If he took wing, there would be a moment sufficient for her to rush forward and impale him. If he lashed out at her with his sting she would trust to her reflexes to read the motion, to be casting herself aside and in again even as he formed his intention to shoot. Poised on a knife-edge of reflex, his death within her gift, she could afford to talk, to make him understand, relis.h.i.+ng his hatred and casting it right back at him.

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