Part 34 (2/2)

She considered simply killing them all, but suspected Alain might not take kindly to that and, besides, it seemed inelegant, like a prost.i.tution of her skills. Better that she stalked them, then took Alain from them without their noticing. That would satisfy her more. And if they gave chase, well . . .

At the back of her mind were pangs of doubt that she had to quell from time to time. What would Che think? What about the things Salma said? Surely this is not what I meant? But she was now in the grip of a fierce and borrowed certainty: qualms could not touch her.

Evening had drawn on, and her quarry obliged her by revealing its location with a campfire, which made everything so much easier. Of course, the Dragonfly-kinden could see well in the dark but, huddled close about their fire, they would be spoiling their own night-vision. There would be sentries, of course, in case some sc.r.a.ps of the brigand army remained, but they would not notice Tynisa.

Their camp was situated in a hollow excavated into a wooded hillside, deep enough to retain the heat and stave off the cold. No doubt this was a place maintained by the local farmers and herders for just such a purpose. She approached sideways on, slipping from tree to tree, eyes picking out the individual members of Alain's escort against the blaze.

She crept close, closer than was wise, but she might as well have already cut out all their eyes. The armoured Mercers sat with the warmth of the fire at their backs and stared bleakly out into the darkness, unhappily waiting out the chill of the night with their breath pluming. A half-dozen others were huddled up close to the flames, and she picked out faces, builds, trying to identify her man. At the last she was forced to steal all around the site and approach it from further up the hillside, where the trees were denser, away from the main gaze of the watchmen. Their lax vigilance eventually allowed her to come all the way into camp, to stand in silence amongst them and mark each face. I could kill them all right now, and for a moment it was all she could manage to simply stand there without doing so. They deserve it for such poor service. Alain merits better followers. But her sword kept to its scabbard, and she had another matter to occupy her mind. Alain himself was not there.

The firelight let her read the ground, and she saw a recent scuffed track heading up the hillside. No doubt Alain, too, was sick of his idle retinue and had taken himself away from them. Perhaps he was even waiting for her somewhere. She pictured him in the moonlight, standing tall between the trees, smiling a greeting. And they would leave this place and make their own life, and to the pits with the Salmae and the Makers both. His princely virtue, her mastery and skill: together they would hunt down bandits and kill the enemies of the Monarch, he shorn of the ambitions of his mother, herself rid of the concerns of her sister. It would be perfect.

She left the camp, following his trail, each step a study in quietness, until she heard him up ahead.

He seemed to be murmuring to himself, which surprised her. She could just make him out, a crouching form in the darkness, hardly touched by the moon. And, yet, was there not a dim radiance there, from beneath him, that picked out his form in silhouette?

She waited until she was almost on his heels before she spoke.

'Alain?'

He turned with a start. And she saw.

In that first moment she did not take in how the girl's clothes were torn, nor the look of despair on her face. She saw only that Alain had been crouched over one of the b.u.t.terfly-kinden dancers, his robes open down the front, his abruptly shrinking genitals exposed to the cold night air.

Thirty-Eight.

'Beheading, isn't it, in the Commonweal?' the Spider-kinden Avaris asked.

'Beheading is just for their own, nice and quick and dignified. They'll weight our heels and string us up,' said one of the Dragonfly-kinden, a hard-faced woman named Fea.s.s, dropping down from her ninth inspection of the grille. No flaw in its workmans.h.i.+p had turned up yet. The weights still pinned it down at each corner, and the brigands were still securely imprisoned in the dungeon pit of Leose.

'Just count yourself lucky you're on this side of the border,' Mordrec the Wasp growled. 'They'd use crossed pikes in the Empire, and in the Princ.i.p.alities, too.'

'I always wondered about that,' Fea.s.s said, frowning. 'I mean, do they just leave you to starve, after tying you to the pikes? What's to stop someone coming to cut you free?'

Mordrec gave her an odd look. 'They don't tie you to the pikes. They shove the p.i.s.sing things in under your ribs, so the point of the pike goes right through your body into your arm on the other side, like so.' He made a violent gesture for emphasis. 'If they know what they're doing and it's a valued skill, where I come from then you hang there dying slowly for hours.'

'Lovely relatives you have,' Avaris remarked drily.

'And things are better in the Spiderlands?' Mordrec challenged.

'Oh at least we have the benefit of variety. Hanging's customary, but the local magistrate has free rein, you see. Anything goes: flayed alive, dismembered by machines, tied between four beetles and pulled apart, fed to the ant-lion, eaten alive by maggots, you name it. I once heard of a woman who had a wasp sting her not your kind, just a little hand-sized one. Then, when they let her go, she thought she was the luckiest criminal in the Spiderlands. Of course a week later the grub starts eating her from the inside, and she's history. So don't you come your crossed pikes with me. We invented being cruel b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Your lot are just amateurs.'

'You are so full of lies, you probably p.i.s.s them,' Mordrec retorted, but without much fire.

'Have you not got some other topic of conversation?' Dal complained, after that.

'Of course, surely. So, what were you thinking of doing tomorrow, anyone? Because if the weather lasts I thought I'd go to the theatre,' Avaris said, slumping down tiredly. 'Or maybe a brothel, if it rains. I know this lovely place in h.e.l.leron, the Veil. You should come along. They cater for all tastes.'

'Shut up,' Dal told him sharply.

'Well you're the one who wanted to talk-'

'No, shut up. We're not alone.'

That silenced them all, and they peered upward into the gloom. There was just a single torch up there, shedding precious little light.

'Is it time?' Mordrec asked softly.

'It's night,' stammered Avaris. 'They'll make it public. Won't kill us at night.'

'Quiet,' hissed Dal Arche, and then, 'So, come back to gloat some more, have you? Or is it remorse? An odd thing for someone like you to be losing sleep over.'

As he spoke, Tynisa's pale face appeared above them, staring down. She said nothing, but would not quite meet the Dragonfly's gaze.

'Come on, out with it,' Dal prompted. 'What's the bad news?'

She twitched unexpectedly. Perhaps only Dal's eyes were good enough to spot it.

Tynisa backed away from the grille, out of direct view. A few grumbles of protest arose, but the bandit leader's hiss silenced them. She put down her bundle and turned her attention to the nearest corner weight.

For a long while she just stared, even the simple mechanics of it evading her. The mechanism had been designed by the Inapt for the Inapt, though, and she had watched it in operation. Eventually something fell reluctantly into place in her mind, and she saw that if she moved this piece of wood here, it would free the counterweight to swing aside. She could not quite see how that would make this corner weight light enough to be heaved aside into the appropriate channel cut into the stone, freeing that quarter of the grille, but nevertheless that was what seemed to happen. Instead of trying to wrestle with cause and effect, she followed by rote what she had witnessed, as perhaps the jailers of Leose had done for generations, each in empty mimicry of his predecessor.

That done, she paused, and realized that she would have to repeat this performance for each of the corners in order to render the grille movable at all, after which she would then have to find some way of actually s.h.i.+fting it. She moved on, and now the bandits were watching her, wide-eyed and bewildered, but with a dawning sense that all was not as it should be, and that some opportunity might come their way. She glanced down at them, as she moved the second weight. The burly Scorpion-kinden was glowering at her still, murder burning in his deep-set eyes, but the rest had hope writ large on their faces, all save their leader, Dal Arche, who remained profoundly suspicious.

'What are you doing, girl?'

'You're mine. I caught you, more than anyone did, and I had a purpose for you, at the time,' she said tiredly, putting her back against the third weight, which grated heavily across wood and stone before it fell clear. 'But now I've changed my mind. You're mine, all of you, so that makes you mine to set free, if I want.'

She released the counterbalance for the final corner and, when she turned back, Dal was already crouching up against the grille, and others of his people were taking up position, too, using their wings or clinging to the walls, ready to jointly shoulder the confining bars out of the way.

'That's not it,' Dal said patiently, as though he was not a prisoner, and she was not dangling his freedom in front of him. 'What happened to all that truth and justice and the golden law of the Monarch? What happened to right and wrong? Or do you reckon we're heroes, now?'

Tynisa paused and stared at him. 'Oh, you're murderers and robbers and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, the lot of you. But you know what? I realize now that I can't judge you. The right and the wrong of it seem to have slipped away when I wasn't looking, and I see clearly enough, now, to understand that I can't see clearly enough to sit in judgement. And why should you suffer because of my blindness, and why should the Salmae benefit?' She paused, staring down at their hungry faces. 'I'm undoing it. I'm undoing it all all my interfering. It'll be as though I was never even here.' Her voice trembled over the last few words, and she clenched her teeth.

'Except for all the bodies,' their Spider-kinden pointed out.

For a moment she went very still, fighting down a wave of nausea that rose up inside her, and she closed her eyes in case some spectre of her imagination should resurface, and plunge her back into that well of guilt she had only recently crawled out of. 'Yes,' she whispered, 'except for the bodies.' When she looked up she wore a hard, bleak smile. 'You and the Salmae can go tear each other apart straight away, for all I care.'

'Not likely. It's south for Rhael Province, for us,' Dal decided.

'Not staying to kill Princess Ela.s.s in her sleep?' Tynisa enquired, s.h.i.+fting the last weight.

'You're a b.l.o.o.d.y-handed sort, aren't you?' At Dal's signal, his people braced themselves to shunt the grille two feet aside. That gave enough room, and moments later they came crawling out into the dubious freedom of the prison chamber. Tynisa calmly picked up her bundle again.

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