Part 51 (2/2)

'I remember,' she said slowly. Thalric saw something surface then in her eyes, and she looked at him anew. 'I remember you now. You are the man who slew my children.'

He could not nod, would not speak, but something in his face confirmed it.

'I remember,' she said again. 'What have I done?' She took her hands away abruptly, looking back at the bisected table, at the upright sword, as though they were quite strange to her.

Thalric, s.h.i.+fted, sagging an inch, and faster than Stenwold could follow she whirled back to him, thumb jabbing at his face. It raked a line of blood down his cheek, but that was all.

'Why can I not kill you?' she screamed at him. Her clawed hands hovered right before his face, twitching and shaking, but still she could not strike. In the echo of that cry her onlookers were silent. Stenwold saw, in sidelong glances, the same stricken expression appear on the faces of both Tisamon and Destrachis.

Thalric let out a long, slow breath. 'Because I'm all you've got,' he replied between gritted teeth. 'I wondered that, when you had me before. How many chances do you need? I'm right here now, so why not just do it? If you want me, what better chance can you possibly look for?'

In a voice almost lost, in the utter silence that followed, she whispered, 'Help me.'

Destrachis moved forwards solicitously, but it was Tisamon who pushed past to clasp her by the shoulders. Her claws twitched at him but never reached him, although he made no move to stop her.

'Come,' he said. 'I shall find you some food and drink, then a bed.' He looked back at Thalric. 'This man shall die at your command, I swear it.'

He led her from the room, pausing only to look Destrachis straight in the face. The Mantis made no threats, though, and after a moment looked away.

They did not come for Che the day after that, either, and she was even provided with a scant meal of soup and broken biscuit. The Wasp army camp become slowly a more permanent affair. She heard the sounds of rough carpentry overhead and guessed that the farmhouse was being extended and fortified. She kept her ears open because, if she could somehow later speak to her friends, she wanted to have something to report to them.

General Malkan, she overheard from the guards, was not moving the army onwards. Though hot-blooded, he was no fool. The casualties the Seventh had sustained meant that they would stand little enough chance before the walls of Sarn, even if Sarn stood alone. What she learned hardly raised the spirits, but it did give some small sliver of satisfaction.

And Sarn was unlikely to be standing alone. Malkan and his officers must be concerned enough about that for the news to filter down to the lowest and the most luckless in their army and, through their bitter gossip, to Che.

Collegium was free of the Vekken, she also learned, and could therefore lend aid to Sarn if needed. Moreover there were fearful whispers of the Ant-kinden's newest allies. Word was out about the Ancient League and the soldiers were rife with rumours of some age-old secret society binding all the Inapt of the west together, which the Empire's presence had now brought into the light. Like all Apt races the Wasps had their dark past, when the old kinden had terrorized them with wizardry and nightmares, and some vestige of that remained even now. There was a current of fear running through the Seventh at the thought of having to confront such a thing as the Ancient League.

The more level-headed, however, put the problem as Malkan would see it: if, even with an army at full strength, he pitched against the walls of Sarn, the warriors of Ether-yon and Nethyon could simply swarm down from the north, catching him in a pincer movement. If he attacked them first, the Sarnesh would sally forth from their city. It was not the individual elements, but their combination, that concerned him.

I did this, Che thought to herself. Though she would meet her fate soon enough at the hands of the Empire's minions, she would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that she had accomplished so much. Faced with the resistance she had helped to build, the Seventh was now going nowhere, merely waiting for another army to be freed to aid it and the Fourth in the conquest of the Lowlands.

Yet she had heard more recently that some problem had arisen with the Fourth and that messengers were not arriving as expected.

In lieu of better information or opportunity, the Wasps were knuckling down and waiting, and their energies were now invested in making their camp defensible. For this entire day they had therefore not been able to spare an artificer interrogator to rack poor Cheerwell, or perhaps they were waiting for the right torture machinery to be sent down the rail from h.e.l.leron.

On one occasion a short, dark woman of a kinden Che did not recognize came down and stared at her with hostile eyes for some time, before returning up to the sunlight without uttering a word.

Then the bustle of the camp quieted at last and the conversation she could make out from above was that of sentries only, so she knew it must be night again and she had survived another day.

I will resist. I will fight. I will fly. But she knew she would do none of these things. She had not that kind of strength. But she knew she would do none of these things. She had not that kind of strength.

I wish I could have seen Salma once more. Last time she had been behind bars, he had been there with her, providing her with a source of resilience to draw on, and she was not enough on her own, she realized. Last time she had been behind bars, he had been there with her, providing her with a source of resilience to draw on, and she was not enough on her own, she realized.

There was a rough sound as the hatch opened, but for a long while n.o.body entered. Then she caught the faintest gleam of a shuttered lantern and Totho, still in Wasp uniform, came stomping down the steps. As before, he simply stopped and stared at her.

'I'm still here,' she said unnecessarily.

'Do you want to talk?' he asked. A sharp reply came to her tongue, but she realized that, yes, she did. Another human voice, in whatever circ.u.mstances.

'Please,' she said.

'We've . . . grown up, at last, don't you think?' He seated himself on the lowest step, right across the room from her, but the stone walls carried his voice perfectly.

'Is that what this is?' They had hatched out of the College, with its protective walls, and into a harsher world than they had dreamed of. 'I'm not fond of it.'

'It's about making choices,' he said. 'Or . . . that's how I see it.'

'You've made your choice, clearly' she said, too quickly, and instantly regretted it. She saw a shadow pa.s.s across his face, and for a moment he seemed about to rise and go, but in the end it all washed past him, just as with the Totho she knew of old.

'Do you know where the others are now?' he asked.

'Is this some kind of interrogation?'

His lip curled. 'Do you think the Empire gives a bent cog where a few graduates of the College are?'

'They were all still in Collegium, when I left: I mean Stenwold and Tynisa, and Tisamon. Scuto must be back there by now, though he came to Sarn with us at first.' She was about to name Achaeos too, but decided better of it.

'I'd give a lot to be back there, with none of this having happened.' He frowned. 'But on the other hand . . .'

'What, Totho?' she demanded. 'What do you have here, amongst these monsters?'

'A purpose,' he said, and after a pause, 'Che, back then . . . did you ever . . . could you have, if I had been . . . bolder . . . could you have loved me, ever?'

'I always loved you,' she said simply. 'But not as you mean, not as you wanted. I'm sorry, Totho. I wish I could say something else. I wish I could lie to you about that, but . . . I owe you the truth. You were always my friend, and maybe I took you for granted, but . . . not that.'

He sat for a long time as the minutes of the night pa.s.sed them by, his hands clasped together, without any expression she could interpret, until at last, without a word, he turned and went back up.

She sagged away from the bars, wondering if a lie, even a forced and obvious one, might have bought her something more.

Then he was back, with something slung over his shoulder. He dumped it a sack, she now saw on the cellar floor, and went over to the bars. He looked only at the lock. The Wasps had made a hurried job of these cells, and the door was a section of heavy lattice that could be lifted out, secured by bars merely padlocked into place, nothing too complicated.

He opened the shutters on his lantern and took some rods from his toolstrip, crouching down by the first lock. It had been a matter of constant dismay to the College masters how many of their students learned to pick locks, until no Master's office, private chamber or strongbox was safe from the pranks of their young scholars. Totho had never been the prankish kind, but he made up for that with his understanding.

'The problem is, Master Drephos looks at people and sees meat,' he said, as if to himself. 'Something to test machines on. Life has no value for him, and I could come to appreciate that. See the world like that, and you don't get hurt all the time. I hurt all the time, you see, because I haven't let go. Let go of you.'

The first lock sprang open, and he stood to attend to the second.

'You see,' he went on, 'it doesn't matter what you feel about me. Because I can't seem to shake myself free of you. I don't think any Spider temptress, any cursed charlatan-magician or b.u.t.terfly dancer could have her hooks in as deep as yours are in me. Because I still love you, despite everything, and you came just at the right time to destroy my life one last time.'

And the second lock came free, and he lifted out the lattice with a grunt of effort. Not knowing what to say, she slipped out of her cage.

'Can you get yourself out of the camp?' he asked. 'I can't help you there but in the sack I've put food and water, and a uniform, too. Mostly they'll just see another Auxillian, but you'll have to creep past the sentries, and if they catch you . . . well.'

'I won't reveal who freed me,' she said hurriedly.

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