Part 22 (1/2)

They landed in front of the two Wasps: two warriors in s.h.i.+mmering mail, and another man who was lean and grey, wearing what Thalric took to be fine clothes of the local cut. Whereas the warriors held swords and were watching the Wasps warily, their leader had eyes only for Che.

Something twitched in the Dragonfly's face, as he studied her, and he said, 'She must be taken before Prince Felipe.'

Thalric exchanged a glance with Varmen. 'Then we must go with her.'

The Dragonfly regarded him narrowly, but nodded agreement at last, and Thalric wondered whether the man simply felt it was too dangerous to leave two Wasp-kinden running loose. 'Send for a stretcher and bearers,' he ordered one of his fellows. 'She must be shown respect.'

At that moment Che awoke, wide-eyed, flinging an arm out as though to protect herself, crying out wordlessly. There were tears in her eyes.

Thalric looked at the Dragonflies to see if this display had diminished their 'respect', but to his surprise he saw that, if anything, they were eyeing Che with a measure of superst.i.tious awe.

Entering Suon Ren, Thalric caught Varmen's eye, and thought he saw a kindred look of recognition on the man's face. For both of them equally, this pure Commonweal architecture must provoke memories of once putting it to the torch.

Their escort took them to the exact centre of the town, a broad area of open s.p.a.ce that must serve as a meeting place or muster or market for the people of Suon Ren. All the locals were staring, perhaps wondering if this was some precursor to further Imperial aggression. The adults' faces were hostile, yet fearful, as though even just two Wasps posed a danger to their entire town. The children, however, pointed and whispered, and soon the oldest of them were exercising their Art wings, seeing who could swoop closest to the dreaded enemy. Some even mimed being seared by stingshot, spiralling from the air to collapse with great theatrics. To Thalric it all seemed in horribly bad taste, from these children who had surely lost relatives in the war.

'We will now take her to the prince,' explained the leader of the escort. 'You will stay here.'

'Now wait where she goes, I go,' Thalric insisted, but the man merely raised an eyebrow. He jerked his head slightly in the direction of the wooden-frame castle on the hill, and Thalric saw that another half-dozen soldiers had appeared from it, with bows in hand.

'You will wait here,' the Dragonfly repeated, as though instructing a slow student. The stretcher-bearers took up their burden once again, and they set off for the castle.

There was just a moment when Thalric thought of going after them, bows or not, but then his common sense rea.s.serted itself. He had no feeling to suggest that the Commonwealers actually meant Che any harm, and perhaps it was sensible for a prince to avoid private audiences with the Wasp-kinden.

Varmen himself sat down, and his pack-beetle drew close and nuzzled at him until he unwrapped a parcel of nuts for it to grind away at. After a while, Thalric joined him, as there seemed little else to do. The adult Commonwealers around them were studiously not paying the strangers too much attention, but at the same time were not dispersing either, each finding some reason to stay within sight of the two Wasps.

'Executions all round, you reckon?' Varmen asked eventually. 'Reckon this prince is one of the fierce ones who're still smarting from the war?'

Thalric shrugged. 'It would make sense. This is the man the Lowlanders approached, when they wanted Commonweal aid against us.'

Varmen grunted. 'Nice to have been told that before.'

'I didn't ask you to come.'

'That'll teach me to do the decent thing,' grumbled Varmen. Deftly, he drew open the beetle's pack and took out his breastplate. 'You up to doing a few buckles? It's a lot quicker with someone helping.'

They're going to shoot us any moment, Thalric suspected, but then reckoned that might be true whatever they did. With that in mind, he turned his back on the Dragonfly archers and helped Varmen on with his armour, finding a certain calming quality in the ritual of latching and tightening wherever the ex-Sentinel directed. Soon enough, Varmen had breast and back armour, pauldrons on his shoulders, ta.s.sets hanging from his belt, the gauntlets on and helm at the ready.

'That'll do,' he decided. 'Besides, they're coming this way.'

Thalric glanced up to see that the soldiers' leader had returned, and now the whole pack were approaching cautiously. He took his stand alongside Varmen, hoping that his copper-weave s.h.i.+rt would turn away a few arrows, if need be. For the first time in a long while, he found himself wis.h.i.+ng for some black and gold livery to match the other Wasp's armour.

The Commonwealers stopped short of the Wasps, and Thalric could practically see the ghosts of the Twelve-year War in their eyes. At last, though, their leader said, 'My prince wishes to speak with you,' uttered as though the words were bitter gall.

So it was that two Wasps, armoured and armed, came to visit the court of Felipe Shah.

Thalric had seen enough during the war for Felipe's garden serving as an audience chamber not to surprise him. There were a half-dozen Dragonflies scattered irregularly about it, kneeling in attendance, but it was clear who was the prince and who merely the hangers-on. Felipe Shah had dressed himself formally in robes that were stiff and elaborately embroidered, and edged with plates of gold. Their colours s.h.i.+mmered and changed with his slightest movement and at every shadow or change of the light.

The soldiers and their belligerent leader were obviously intending to stay as close as possible to the Wasps, to forestall any treachery, but the prince shook his head.

'Coren, no,' he said simply, and the archers backed away until they were loitering at the very furthest limit of the castle, a grey area where the open-sided design of the walls muddied who was inside and who was without. The man called Coren retreated to some nook behind his master's back.

For a long time, Prince Felipe Shah just stared at the two Wasps long enough for Thalric to become uncomfortable. He had plenty of history among the Commonwealers, but none of it on a social footing. He had no idea what to expect, or whether this scrutiny was simply considered good form for a Dragonfly-kinden.

At last the man spoke. 'What do you seek here?' His quiet voice sounded weary.

Every kind of grand response marched through Thalric's mind, but all he finally said was, 'Help.'

'The Empire seeks help?' It was said without rancour, indeed almost matter-of-factly.

'I seek help. We are neither of us good sons of the Empire not any more and we seek help for her, not for ourselves.'

'Why here?'

'Because here is where she was going, when . . . when it happened.' It appeared that candour must be the order of the day, but Felipe's reaction proved encouraging, a little of his reserve dropping away.

'Do you know what she is?'

'Cheerwell Maker, the niece of a previous guest of yours or so I'm told,' Thalric replied promptly. 'Your Highness, I don't know what's wrong with her, but . . .' The words would not come, perhaps because of Varmen's solid Apt presence beside him. Felipe Shah did not a.s.sist him either, merely waited. Thalric gritted his teeth, feeling acutely embarra.s.sed to even contemplate coming out with the words.

Khanaphes, he reminded himself. The tunnels, the Masters, all that inexplicable misadventure that we shared there. The Empress, for the world's sake! The Empress, who drinks the blood of slaves and is . . . He shuddered. The Empress, whom Che spoke of, just before it happened. I do not believe, I cannot believe, but even so . . . 'Something unnatural has happened to her,' he got out, the word 'magic' faltering on his tongue. 'She has been . . . attacked in some way.' His expression, if he could have seen it, was mutely appealing, begging the Dragonfly to fill in the gaps without him having to be too explicit.

The prince's eyebrows lifted in surprise. 'Yes, she has,' he admitted. 'My seers have examined her, and they are . . . disturbed.'

'Can you help? Or your . . . seers? Doctors . . . you must have doctors here, of any kind.' There was an edge of desperation in Thalric's voice that he could not prevent.

'They say she has departed her body, and that she is now a ghost,' Felipe Shah informed them.

Thalric felt Varmen s.h.i.+ft beside him, his credulity strained to its limits. 'A ghost . . .' he managed. 'But ghosts . . . I've never heard a ghost story where the person wasn't . . . dead.'

'Her body lives for now. But her self has been cut from it, and cannot find its way back. Soon enough the body will die, and she will then be as you suggest.'

'Help her,' Thalric snapped. It sounded almost an order.

Instead of taking offence, Felipe lowered his gaze, considering. He gave a great sigh, as his shoulders sagged slightly. From behind him, the man Coren stepped forward.

'My Prince, no. You know what the seers said, how this girl could pave the way for terrible things. Perhaps it would be best to let matters take their course.'

'And if she is so terrible, will her ghost not be more terrible still?' Felipe murmured. 'There are enough ghosts clinging to me already, Coren, without adding one more. And she is Maker Stenwold's niece, and there is a debt there.' Abruptly he looked up again, meeting Thalric's gaze. 'My seers can do nothing, because they fear her, and their skills are of a different nature. To call her self back, you must find someone skilled in speaking to the ghosts of the fallen, for that is what she has become, whether her body still breathes or not.'

'You are saying that you cannot help her, then,' Thalric stated flatly.

'I keep none about my court gifted at speaking with the dead,' Felipe said softly. 'I have no wish to hear such a clamour of voices, for there are too many I would recognize.' His penetrating gaze fixed on the two Wasps, and Varmen shuffled uncomfortably. 'Those who come to my door offering such services are turned away. Perhaps they do not go far. Coren,' and his seneschal was at his elbow, ready for orders.

'You know the woman I mean,' Felipe instructed him. 'Some tendays ago she came, and was refused entry. Unless you have grown slack, you will have a good idea of where she has gone.'

'Peddling her trade about your villages, I think,' Coren replied. 'I was not sure . . . but you had never forbidden it.'