Part 33 (2/2)

And such foolishness, she considered. Still, Che is my sister, in fact if not in kinden. She called and I came, despite this waste of my time. n.o.body can ask more of me than that.

She stood up and leant over the circle, trying to fathom how people could imagine that such marks on the ground could have any power in the real world.

Tynisa . . .

The world seemed to lurch around her. Her name whispered, at the very edge of hearing. For a moment she felt a tide of fear rising up in her, primal and unreasoning, and tainted by memories that she had cast off or locked away. But no, I do not believe . . .

Tynisa . . . have I found you? It is so hard to tell.

Although the voice came from everywhere and nowhere, and within her, she conceived the feeling that someone stood behind her . . . someone familiar.

There is a door here half open, the voice whispered, still coming from just beside her, and yet far, far away. I see you only as in twilight, but it is you, is it not?

The room seemed darker than before, the fireflies no longer lighting anything but themselves, the incense smouldering into ash. The rain outside had blotted out the sun and covered the entire house in shadow.

She swallowed. If I speak, I will admit to hearing it. I must not answer it. But she knew that voice now, beyond all doubt, and she could not stop herself from saying, 'Salma.'

It is you, then, truly? But who else would venture so far to call on me?

'I'd have thought your cursed b.u.t.terfly woman, if she cared.' The vindictive words were out of Tynisa's mouth before she could stop them, and she did not know now whether she was more afraid that he would speak to her again, or that she might have driven him away. In her mind resonated the comforting mantra: All is not lost, I may simply be mad. I saw him at my elbow before, so why not hear his voice now? But that faint voice, barely audible over the rain, was still something vastly more real than any of her hallucinations had been.

Her kinden's magic is of light, not these shadows, came his response to her outburst. The voice sounded fondly amused, and that, more than anything else, broke her reserve.

'Salma . . .' And she turned, but he was not there. 'Salma, speak to me, tell me . . . Tell me how to help you.'

Help? Ah, I need no help now. Now that you have called me.

'But you weren't called. She called for Tisamon, then for Achaeos, and neither of them came.'

But you called me, Tynisa. Not the mystic. You.

His hand settled on her shoulder, a comforting and familiar pressure that scared her half to death. Again he was behind her, and she could feel his breath on the nape of her neck.

'You're dead,' she got out, her voice barely more substantial than his. 'You know you're dead.'

It seemed likely, he agreed wistfully. But you live, so we can't have done so badly.

'They . . .' She was helplessly reminded of her audience with Felipe Shah, when recounting Salma's history for her friend's mentor. 'They named a town after you. Your followers built it, after . . . Please let me see you, Salma.'

I cannot. Tynisa, I have to go. I've stayed so long, this shadow of me, just for this purpose only.

'For what? Why do this at all, if you just have to go again?' she hissed.

Because of you. Because we parted badly. Because I never did get to speak to you again, before . . . She came between us, I know, and I loved her, but do not think I did not love you also. In all the world, against the tide of death, this sc.r.a.p of me stays on to ask your forgiveness, and to say goodbye.

'That's cruel.' The words barely emerged. She could not stop herself reaching out for his hand, and when she touched it, invisible as it was, she felt a living warmth there. All she needed to do was turn around. She could practically see him now at the edge of her vision. 'Please, Salma.'

You've met my brother. The words sounded less fond now, and she could only nod, thinking, What now? Am I betraying you with Alain, is that what you mean?

She heard him sigh, the breath rippling her hair. Do not return to Leose, Tynisa, please. Leave there and never look back.

'Salma, I . . .' She could not have said this before any other listener. 'I've nothing left now. Too much blood on my hands, too little reason left to live. I've nothing else. If you have to go, show me how to come with you, please.'

Not yet, not soon either or so I hope. I do not know the country I shall be travelling to, but if it were pleasant, why would the wisest of us take such pains to stave it off. Do not wish that, Tynisa. Bid me a good journey, and let me go.

A thousand protests came to her then, but she felt a clarity of mind that she had not known in a long time. And in a way it does not matter if I am mad or not.

'I love you, Salma,' she told him or perhaps her memory of him. 'But you know that. You cannot ask me to forgive you for having loved another woman, or for dying as you did. But, even so, because I love you, I forgive you it all. Go in peace.' Her voice was shaking almost too much for her to form the words now. 'Go with my love. And when you get where you're going, wait for me. I'll be following along. There's no place so dark we can't face it together, just like old times.'

She felt him lean closer, and then his lips brushed her cheek. The hand beneath her own was cooling rapidly, and she now realized that she held only a fold of cloth from her cloak there, and the only sound was the rain, and she stood alone in Gaved's inner room, and the incense had stopped smouldering. Inside, she felt like a tower of gla.s.s that one knock could shatter into a thousand pieces.

The rain seemed to be pa.s.sing. Indeed, as she listened, it pattered to a halt almost as suddenly as it had begun, leaving only a sporadic dripping from the eaves.

Avoid Leose? she wondered. But what, then? The answer came clearly for once: Go with Che, wherever she went, for her sister surely needed her help. Return to Stenwold in Collegium, for a reconciliation. Visit Princep Salmae even, for she had never gone there and felt strong enough to try, now.

She stepped out of the house, away from the incense and the painted signs, and abruptly something seemed to seize her in a grip of iron that made her gasp.

She could not walk away from Leose, it told her. She had unfinished business there. She had made a vow to win Alain, and such vows were inviolable, no matter how much blood was shed over them. That was the Mantis way. That was her way, too. There was no avoiding it.

She fought furiously for a moment, clutching for her free will, for any mastery of her own fate, but that rigid hand was still guiding her, steering an inexorable course. She had a role yet to play in the Tragic History of Tynisa Maker. The closing act was about to begin and her story would be as glorious and terrible as all Mantis-kinden stories were. Salme Alain was waiting for her.

She saw Che and Maure a short distance away, only now noticing her, and for a moment she reached out towards them despairingly, as though drowning.

Then she was marching away towards her tethered horse, heading for Leose and for her destiny.

Thirty-Seven.

'Pride of the Sixth,' p.r.o.nounced Lowre Cean carefully. 'Oh, yes, I remember that.'

'You were at Masaki, sir?' Varmen asked him, sipping at the kadith the old man had poured. They were sitting, not in some formal audience hall, but in a little wood-carving workshop, with curls of sawdust underfoot and, on shelves to either side, ranks of miniature figures that the prince himself had whittled: peasants, craftsmen, dancers, all compact and stylized and yet bursting with frozen energy.

'Some way from the front lines,' Cean admitted. 'My son led the charge.' He was watching the Wasp-kinden carefully. 'And you were not there?'

Varmen only nodded.

'Of course you were not. The Imperial Sentinels never run. They fight to the last. Can't run, in all that armour, I'd imagine. But Darien, my son, told me how the centre held, even when all the rest, all the Light Airborne and artificers and support and the like, had been blown aside. They stood and fought to the last man.'

The Wasp grunted. 'They'd sent some of us off after some scouts that got holed up. We fought, as well. Pair of your n.o.bles tried to flush us out, over and over. We heard from them that the Sixth had gone.'

'I recall hearing about that,' Cean acknowledged. 'You must have been relieved by the Seventh, I think?'

'The Second, sir the Gears, General Tynan's command. And wasn't that just a joy for us, to be beholden to them? Almost as bad as fighting with the Seventh at Malkan's Stand. That time, I didn't miss the action. Most everyone else of the heavies died. I sometimes think . . .' Abruptly he decided that he had said too much. The old man's mild voice had led him into letting his guard down, and now he stood up rebelliously, feeling tricked and trapped. 'Why have you even let me in here? What if I killed you? We're enemies, after all.'

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