Part 38 (1/2)

He saw Lorica threading her way through the Vekken towards him, unconsciously falling in with their mechanical rhythm, getting in no one's way and finding her path without having to seek it. She too looked out of sorts, though, and was frowning.

'Something wrong?' he asked her.

'Possibly.' She rubbed the back of her neck, her eyes still heavy with lost sleep. 'You should know, Major. There's been a visitor to the camp.'

'Speak.'

'A Fly-kinden messenger came in, for Major Daklan's ears only.'

Thalric let his breath out in a long sigh. 'That could mean many things.'

'He was from the Empire, I'm sure of it,' Lorica told him. 'Imperial Fly-kinden have a kind of a look, and they hold themselves a different way. They know they're onto a good thing.'

Thalric nodded. Outside his tent he could now hear the louder pieces of Vekken artillery launching at the walls of Collegium. The actual fighting was just a distant murmur beyond.

'You've cast your lot,' he told the halfbreed. 'I don't know if you'll regret it, but I hope not.'

'I respect you, Major Thalric,' she said candidly. 'And I hope you value me, since Major Daklan certainly doesn't. Do you know what's going on, sir?'

'For certain? No.'

'But you suspect.'

'I have seen this before, and too many times,' said Thalric, wearily thinking, And most of the time I have been on the other side of it. And most of the time I have been on the other side of it. Secret messages from the Empire, and for Daklan's ears only. 'Perhaps it's nothing significant.' Secret messages from the Empire, and for Daklan's ears only. 'Perhaps it's nothing significant.'

'You don't believe that, sir.'

'No, I don't, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.' He stood, shaking his head. 'How do you think the siege is going, Lorica?'

She had stood watching with him, now she frowned. 'I'm no strategist.'

'If you'd asked me yesterday I would have said well. Now something's changed, and this message doesn't make me any happier. I'm going to talk to Daklan.'

'Is that wise, Major?'

He managed a smile. 'Lorica, I am a simple man. n.o.body ever believes me when I say that, but it's true. I like my life simple. I am for the Empire, and I should therefore stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone else who is, and face with a drawn sword all those who are not. That is simple. you see, but someone is trying to complicate my life. I'm going to talk to Daklan, to discover precisely what he's not telling me.'

He found Major Daklan out by the artillery positions, with Lieutenant Haroc nearby as his constant shadow.

'Major, how goes the war?'

Daklan's face was so devoid of guile that it was evidence of guilt in itself. 'Well enough, Major Thalric.'

'The Vekken seemed slow off the mark this morning, I thought,' Thalric said. Daklan gave a glance over at Haroc and then nodded.

'I cannot explain it. I heard some talk of disturbed sleep, no more.'

'You don't think they're losing their stomach for the campaign?'

'Not at all.' Daklan shook his head. 'Tactician Akalia seems satisfied with their progress. Every day they are closer to breaking the wall, or taking it by storm.'

'She's a cold woman,' Thalric observed. 'I've heard some of the casualty figures.'

'That's Ants for you,' said Daklan dismissively. 'The s.h.i.+ps, the artillery, the men she's only looking for the victory. Whatever has unsettled her men clearly hasn't reached her yet. Perhaps the Collegiates have developed some kind of mind-affecting gas that has drifted over here. Ant-kinden are strong of body, but they lack our strength of will. They would be more easily swayed than we.'

Thalric nodded carefully, and then said, as offhandedly as he could make it, 'I hear there was a messenger from command.'

Perhaps there was a moment's flicker in Daklan's eyes. 'Nothing to worry youself with, Major. h.e.l.leron has fallen to our troops, or rather, has capitulated. The Winged Furies now threaten Sarn and so the siege here will not be relieved.'

'Good,' Thalric decided. 'Then all we have to do is wait.' He turned and walked back towards the camp, knowing coldly that Daklan had been lying, and that his days of cherished simplicity were gone.

They had been shadowing the Vekken army since it first came in sight, and had been given an unexpectedly good view of the first day's festivities. All that time, he had kept his head low, which was a skill he had acquired over many years of doubtful company, while Felise Mienn had gone about her business as freely as she pleased.

Living off the land, Destrachis considered, was a game for fools and peasants. And, inexplicably, for Dragonfly n.o.bles.

He had watched her. With the cloak blunting the sound and s.h.i.+ne of her armour she could freeze to near-invisibility while standing amongst trees or crouched against the scrub. She moved as though she was part of the landscape, and she would always come back with food. He himself was, he suspected, eating better than he had in the fiefs of h.e.l.leron.

When she came back this time he had to put the question to her. For all that questioning Felise was a dangerous game, it was time to air some facts.

'You were a Mercer, were you not?'

She looked at him as though she didn't know who he was, which was always a possibility.

'What do you know of the Mercers, Spider?'

He smiled. She scared him badly a lot of the time, but he knew he must never show it. 'I have done my stint in the Commonweal. That was what attracted me to your cause in the first place. I therefore know the skills a Mercer needs in going about her business. There's a lot of open country in the Commonweal: woods and farmland and marshland and hill country. Lots of villages but lots of s.p.a.ce between them, and the roads not so good, and half the Wayhouses lie empty and rotted. Keeping the peace, tracking bandits, carrying the Monarch's word: it means spending a lot of time in the wild, doesn't it?'

'It does that,' she agreed, then she sat and dumped a bagful of roots beside the fire, together with some grain biscuits she must have taken from a farmhouse. He took out his smallest knife and began to peel, aware that she was looking at him with more curiosity than usual.

'Destrachis,' she said at last, and he allowed himself to relax, because when she could actually remember his name she was least likely to threaten him. 'What was a Spider-kinden doing in the Commonweal?'

'My question first,' he pressed, carefully not looking at her.

'Yes, I was a Mercer, when I was very young. I wanted to . . . but it changed when . . .'

He sensed a s.h.i.+ft in her and said hurriedly. 'I drifted north of h.e.l.leron years ago. Ended up in Myal Ren and then travelled a little, plying my trade, st.i.tching and quack-salving.'

'I saw him today again,' she said, without warning.

His knife stopped for a second and then went on. Looking down onto the Vekken encampment, he had caught a glimpse of a couple of men in black and yellow armour, but her eyes were better than his and she now swore she had seen Thalric.

Her patience impressed and appalled him. She had been stalking this entire army for almost a tenday now.

'So when are you going to make your move? Are you going in there after him?'

He had missed the change, but she had s.n.a.t.c.hed her sword out. 'So many questions,' she said. 'Why? What are you hiding, Spider? Who are you working for?'