Heirs of the Blade Part 7

'And your friend?' Praeda asked her, but the woman shook her head, lips pressed together.

The friend never showed, and the master abandoned her hopes brusquely, as though it was nothing of any particular import. n.o.body mentioned the Empire, even though it was the prime culprit in the man's absence. Only as the little ship cast off, turning back for Porta Rabi, did Praeda see the Solarnese woman's shoulders slump and her ramrod posture collapse. Their last view of the woman, as her vessel tacked swiftly away, might have been of her weeping.

'Well,' Praeda said soberly. 'We're on your ground, so what now?'

Amnon considered slowly. 'We cannot travel the marshes, not so far from the city. The shipmaster's token will be no good to us now. We must reach the desert and then take the long road to the Jamail.'

'But surely the marsh-kinden will know you you were First Soldier. They're hardly going to sell you to the Ministers or the Empire, are they? Can't they help us?'

His smile was fond. 'Your people have such a belief that other kinden are just like you beneath the surface. Your logic is like bad wine, Praeda: it does not travel. You know a little of our histories?'

'I know what you tell yourselves about your histories, but I don't accept it as the truth. History never is,' she replied defensively.

'Then just this: the marsh people are pacted to us rather, to Khanaphes.' That self-correction was hasty and awkward. 'Sworn to send their people to serve us, but in return we leave them their ancient ways. Stray from the river, stray into the delta, and you enter their domain and they will hunt you. They are very skilled in the hunt.'

They followed the borderlands of the marsh, where the ground was still damp but firm enough to walk on, where the riot of ferns and cycads and arthrophytes gave way to long, lush gra.s.s and thornbushes. A day and a half of muggy heat it took them, resting up beneath what shelter they could find during the hottest hours, pressing on after dark to make up the time. They encountered the marsh-kinden just once, when they had camped past midnight in a stand of cypress trees. The Mantis-kinden came padding up, five of them, to investigate Amnon's fire, but they seemed to recognize that they were beyond their boundaries. Instead, they regarded the travellers solemnly, until Amnon offered them some of the fish he was cooking. Hesitantly they came forward, three women and two men, slight enough almost to be children. Those of their kin that Praeda had seen in Khanaphes went about as shaven-headed as the locals, but these had white hair, worn long and braided back, then twined and knotted in intricate patterns.

One of them reached out to touch Amnon's stubbled scalp. The rest kept stealing glances at Praeda's own head of long, dark hair. Such a small thing, but so important here. Shaving the head signified submission to the will of the mythical Masters of Khanaphes, the invisible lords of the city in whose ghostly name the Ministers governed. Praeda's professional academic opinion was that they were long extinct, merely a convenient rod with which to keep the people of the city in line.

Amnon spoke with the marsh-kinden, trying to coax some news from them, but they would admit to no knowledge of recent developments within the city itself. If the pickings of their hunts had been richer, with refugees fleeing from the Empire's advance falling into their hands, they made no mention of it.

How did the fight go? Praeda wondered. The magnificent army of the Khanaphir had been devastated by a Scorpion-kinden host armed only with obsolete Imperial cast-offs. How would they have coped when the Empire itself stood before their gates, rather than merely by proxy?

Towards the end of the next day the two of them had put the huge swathe of the delta behind them, and could now see the farmland lining the Jamail extending northwards along the river's course. Khanaphes itself appeared brilliant in the sunlight, its stones fairly glowing. Praeda could make out those walls that had served it so poorly in the fighting, and beyond them the greater edifices of the city government. Nothing seemed to be on fire or even smouldering.

'They'll have guards on the gates,' she said, recalling all she knew of the Empire. 'They'll be searching all the people coming in and going out. Anyone slightly suspicious will get thrown behind bars, interrogated, fined, made to disappear. In fact, a fair few people who aren't suspicious, too, just to spread fear. Fear keeps people in line, especially the fear of arbitrary punishment. n.o.body wants to be noticed, when that kind of regime's in place. n.o.body causes trouble when they don't know for sure where the lines are drawn. So no doubt there's some secret back way into the city, that only the First Soldiers know about?'

Amnon regarded her quizzically. 'Why would anyone devise such a thing?'

'But you have a plan,' Praeda insisted. 'If we just walk in, well . . .' She swallowed, tilted her chin up. 'I'll shave my head. Then we'll be locals. Will that be enough?'

'Perhaps. As you say, I have a plan.'

Before dusk they had trekked through a mile of farmland, tracing an erratic path of roads and irrigation d.y.k.es to reach one specific farmhouse out of dozens. There were a few Khanaphir about, who watched them arrive, more of caution in their eyes than curiosity. At the door, a broad-shouldered old man met them, nodding at Amnon as though he was a tax collector.

'I'd expected it,' was all he said, and he plainly recognized the former First Soldier. 'Inside, then, you might as well. Food?'

'If you have spare,' Amnon said with careful deference. He had to stoop some way to get under the lintel, Praeda trailing after him.

Most of the house consisted of a single room, where a long table had already been set. A woman of the old man's years was bustling about it now, rearranging the places to find s.p.a.ce for two more. She glanced from Amnon to Praeda, her dark eyes unreadable. Praeda realized that she herself had never seen a peasant home belonging to the Khanaphir, what with living out of an emba.s.sy and being the honoured guest of the Ministers. She had a.s.sumed that the foundation on which Khanaphir rested must be crushed down by its weight, impoverished and sullen deprived as they were of anything like Collegium's enlightenment and standard of living. Instead, the inside of the farmhouse was surprisingly well furnished, chairs and table all finely carved and clearly ancient, and the walls liberally adorned with those baffling carvings. Even these Khanaphir peasants lived neck-deep in history, she saw, and they bore their servitude with stubborn pride.

The Beetle-kinden they had seen outside now trooped in to take their places, and Praeda found that she and Amnon were directed towards the table's head, sitting at the right hand of the old man. She guessed that it was the senior pair that owned and ran the farm, and the rest were hirelings and farmhands. The fare itself consisted of some kind of thick soup, flat bread, and some fish that had been pickled to within an inch of its life at some point in its distant past.

There was little conversation around the table, and even Amnon said nothing, just ate dutifully as though he was only a labourer himself. n.o.body commented that an ex-First Soldier had just turned up out of nowhere, with a foreign woman. Praeda suspected that they were all buzzing with questions, but that it was not in their nature to ask them, and the presence of strangers had killed off any other kind of talk.

At last, as the meal was drawing to a close, Amnon grunted, 'Need to get into the city. Going that way?'

'What sort of question is that?' The old man's expression was openly disparaging. 'Market, you well know. What of it?'

'Room on the cart for two more?' Amnon said, not even looking at the farmer.

This was greeted by an exasperated sigh. 'Then you'll work, load and unload, for I need all the hands I have, and you'll leave two men sitting idle here, if you have your way.' Both his tone and expression stated, clear as day, that Amnon had been personally sent by the Masters to inconvenience him.

Instead of rallying at this, Amnon's head sank even lower and he shrugged, not in any way the man that Praeda knew. She looked about the table, but n.o.body met her eyes.

'Excuse me,' she said at last, almost relishing the shocked silence that greeted her words, 'but you do know this is the First Soldier? That he saved Khanaphes from the Many of Nem?'

For a long while she thought that n.o.body would respond, that she had killed off all chance of anyone in this house ever saying anything again, but then the old man snorted with derision.

'Was First Soldier. And who ever heard of such a thing as a man who was First Soldier, hm? And not such a great one even when he was. Now Thamat, before him, he was a great First Soldier. He'd never have let the Many get close to the walls.' He shook his head, lamenting the youth of today, as any elderly College Master might or any old man anywhere.

The next morning the old man had some of his fieldhands load up a wagon and hitch it to a tired-looking draught beetle, all without Amnon actually making any further request that Praeda could see, or anybody suggesting a plan. On to the bed of the st.u.r.dy wagon went sacks of flour that Praeda guessed must be hand milled and some dried fruit, and a surprising number of jars of some kind of liquor.

By that time the old woman had plucked up the courage to approach Praeda, though still saying nothing, but offering her the curved copper strip of a razor.

For a moment she closed her eyes against the thought, reluctant because her long hair was such a part of the way she imagined herself, but reluctant even beyond that, for some obscure reason she could not name. If she was to creep into occupied Khanaphes, however, she would have to pa.s.s as a local, and if the Wasps looked closely then a mere headscarf would not serve.

'Will you do it?' she asked. The woman nodded, and in her eyes was a fair measure of sympathy and perhaps a little awe at ever seeing an adult Beetle-kinden with a full head of hair.

Most of an hour later, and it was done. Amnon's reaction was the worst, trying to adjust to her transition from the exotic to the familiar. I am still the same woman, she told herself, but she did not feel like it with her bare head cold and itching.

Then they were on the wagon, and the old man flicked at the beetle with his crop until it began its weary plodding towards the city.

There were indeed Wasp soldiers stationed at the gate, but Khanaphes was large, and not even occupation by a hostile military could keep its doors closed, not if the occupiers themselves wanted to eat. There was a steady stream of locals going in and out, the oil on the wheels of commerce. When their wagon reached the gates, there was a cursory search, the confiscation of a few jars of homebrew, a narrow-eyed squint at each of the pa.s.sengers, especially the large figure of Amnon, but they were all Beetles in a city and a nation of Beetles, so the Wasps waved their wagon on without hindrance. That one of the sacks also contained all of Praeda and Amnon's possessions, the Wasps never knew.

Those few foreigners trying to enter or leave, they saw stopped and searched far more diligently, and most of them were turned back, either trapped inside or kept out.

After that, they were within the walls. The old man just nodded once at Amnon, again with no need for a word between them, then the big man slipped off the wagon, pulling Praeda with him.

'Where now?' she whispered, resisting her hand's natural inclination to drift up to her scalp.

'I know places,' he murmured. 'Near the docks first, maybe. We'll see how the Wasps are dealing with the river trade.' He cast a single glance back at the old man and the wagon, before heading off.

It was only three streets later that Praeda enquired, 'Amnon, have I just met your parents?' The thought had been absurdly slow in coming, and even then she was not at all sure until she saw his face. 'Did you . . . did you not think to introduce me?'

'I did. After you slept,' he mumbled, looking awkward for a moment. 'They liked you, I think.'

'What . . . did you tell them?' she demanded, but just then he pretended to spot a Wasp patrol and picked up the pace, leaving her glaring at his broad back.

Then the city had encompa.s.sed them, and she was abruptly wrestling with memories of how she had seen the place last, before her return to Collegium. The western half had been occupied by the Scorpion-kinden then, as the Many of Nem ravaged the farmland up and down the riverbank seeking for a way across, while she and Amnon and the mercenary artificer Totho fortified the bridge against them. Beyond that, she remembered the still dignity enveloping the city before the Scorpions came: the austere calm of its ministers, the solid and elegant lines of its architecture, the noiseless bustle of its shaven-headed citizens.

She remembered her colleagues who had died when the Wasps, and their Scorpion tools, had made their move. Seeing the black and gold now at every street corner made her clench her fists, wanting to lash out at them with all her tiny might. She remembered waiting after the battle, to learn if Amnon had lived or died.

It was strange that she remembered Che most of all, for there was no reason that Stenwold Maker's niece should serve as a linchpin in her memories of this city. The girl had been a dismal failure as an amba.s.sador, going missing half the time and seeming almost deranged, fixated on strange parts of the city's history even when the walls themselves were tumbling. She had even been absent during the fighting, had not contributed to it at all, instead had gone off with the Imperial amba.s.sador, who seemed to have gone rogue in the interim. Oh, Praeda had quite liked Che as a person but, still, the woman had hardly been an influential figure in the disaster that had been Praeda's original visit to Khanaphes.

And yet somehow she had been. Praeda could not account for it, or explain her feelings on the matter, but Cheerwell Maker had been the hub of the wheel, standing at the heart of all things. This fact was inexplicable and yet undeniable.

Praeda suddenly stopped dead, so that Amnon went on another five yards before sensing her absence, and turning with a quizzical look. Praeda met his eyes but was not equal to the task of explaining, hiding her sudden shock by rushing to catch up with him.

I did not just see Cheerwell Maker, she reproached herself. That face in the crowd, it could have been anyone's. Except no Khanaphir woman had hair like that. I did not just see the crowd part, and Cheerwell Maker, in that inexplicably open s.p.a.ce, staring at me and then gone the next instant. It's the heat. It's the stress. My mind plays tricks.

They were almost at the docks by the time Praeda's heart had stopped hammering.

Ten.

She awoke to darkness and a moment's utter panic because the man who had awoken her, by slipping out of the bed and pacing across the room, was not Achaeos.

Cheerwell Maker's mind remained blank. Her dream, something wild and horrible, was now gone from her head, and nothing came to replace it just the sound of someone, some unfamiliar body, confined within the same four walls.

The thought returning to her first was that darkness was optional, given the Art that she had been blessed with, and so she banished it. The Mynan boarding-house room came into sharp relief, picked out in a whole other spectrum of greys, and with it came a fuller recollection of where she was and why.

Over by the window, Thalric was peering out through the shutters, wearing only his breeches. She stared at his broad back, picking out each scar in turn to read his history there, whose gaps she filled in as he turned back to her.

'You're awake,' he observed. 'Your breathing changes when you're awake.'

She made a noncommittal noise. Here was the vertical line that Tynisa had drawn down his abdomen, that Che knew continued even to his thigh. There was one of the narrow jabs he had received from a former governor of Myna, in a fight he had told her about when they returned to this city and he got maudlin drunk on the memory, a curious lapse for Thalric.

That, of course, was the near-fatal wound another Rekef man had dealt him, after the Empire had decided he was expendable, and close by it was the curious, puckered mark where a snapbow bolt had penetrated, after chewing its way through layers of metal and silk.

Whatever else he had been, and all the different colours he had worn, Thalric was undoubtedly a survivor.

'Can't sleep?' she asked him. 'Conscience troubling you?'

He smiled a little sourly. 'It's nearly dawn.'

That surprised her, but she would have realized it herself after allowing her eyes to adjust. Her Art-sight, which cut through the dark, robbed her of the visual cues she had grown up with. 'Today's when Hokiak said to come back to him,' she recalled. 'I don't imagine the old man gets up this early, though.'

Thalric shrugged. 'I get twitchy in this place. Too many bad memories. I keep thinking that one of the locals is going to creep in here and cut my throat.'

Che and Thalric both had a curious relationship with the city-state of Myna. She had first come here as his prisoner, and while her uncle had been orchestrating her rescue, Thalric had been killing the aforementioned governor on Rekef orders. Later still, they had come back here together to try and foment revolution, and she had narrowly avoided being executed by the very resistance fighters who had helped rescue her in the first place; whilst Thalric had ended up as a prisoner of the new governor. Whom, she could hardly forget, he had also killed an act that lit the flames of rebellion in the city, as a result of which Myna was currently free of Imperial rule.

They had been in the city now for two hard days and the first half-day had been spent in separate cells.

I had not considered we were fugitives, after all. Oh, being on the run from the Empire had become almost standard practice, and there had been no whiff of the black and gold here, but they should have entered Myna like war heroes. Instead they had been arrested: he for being a Wasp, she for being with him.

Che had told them a name, over and over: 'Kymene', and after the first hour or so she had begun to wonder whether there had not been some disastrous shift in Mynan politics, and that the woman who had led the city's liberation had somehow been displaced, even executed. After about six hours, in which various blue-grey-skinned Mynans had asked her unsympathetic, suspicious and occasionally meaningless questions, she had started to think she might have simply dreamt the woman.

Then had come Kymene, looking anything but pleased to see Che.

'So you're back.' They had been standing in that stonewalled, windowless cell lit by erratic gaslight, whose sporadic death and rebirth was more to do with the ongoing rebuilding effort than any attempt to disconcert the prisoner.

Kymene had looked older, and Che had wondered how much of the city's current governance fell directly on her shoulders, how much of her strength she expended in fighting other factions. Myna had been united by Imperial occupation for all of Che's life, and most of Kymene's. Freedom demanded difficult adjustments that were slow in coming. The city had been at war, on each street, in each citizen's heart, for too long.

'We're just pa.s.sing through,' Che had said urgently.

'You and your Wasp.'

'Thalric, Kymene,' Che had told her, searching the woman's hard face for any clues to his fate. For a moment there was nothing, and Che was abruptly sure that they had killed him. For that sliver of a second, the pain had been shocking, utterly unexpected.

'I recognized him,' Kymene had admitted reluctantly, and even that had provided no rea.s.surance. How it must grieve her, to be beholden to a Wasp-kinden. 'I've signed the orders to release both of you.' The words were virtually spat out. 'Cheerwell Maker, what do you want?'

There must have been some hurt and betrayal in Che's face that got past Kymene's armour, however, for the woman's expression had shifted, a little ashamed perhaps, and a little defensive. 'Maker, I've been all morning trying to keep this city together, to balance the warmongers and the cowards in the Consensus if our government deserves to call itself that! and then your name falls into my lap, you and your cursed Wasp both, and what am I to make of it? The last two times that man came here, he brought down the government. Is he going to make it a third?'

Che had almost laughed at that, save that Kymene was being so deadly serious. 'We're heading west.' She was conscious of the Mynan woman burning to be elsewhere, anywhere else perhaps. 'Heading into the Commonweal. I was hoping for your help in crossing the border.'

New suspicion had then clouded Kymene's face instantly, but it had drained away to leave an expression that Che had become tiresomely familiar with: someone's contempt at her naivety. 'The Commonweal? You're going west out of the Alliance?'

That name was new enough to feature only on the most recent maps. Three former slave-cities, Myna, Szar and Maynes, had broken together away from the Empire after two decades of subjugation, and were fighting to hold on to their independence even as the Empire regained its old strength and ambitions. Che had a.s.sumed the Mynans must have plenty in common with the Commonwealers, whose conquered princ.i.p.alities must also have rid themselves of Imperial rule: the Alliance's combined uprising had cut them off from direct contact with the Empire. Nothing in Kymene's face had suggested that was the case.

Do they fear that the Dragonfly-kinden will invade them, now? Do they trust n.o.body?

'The border?' she had repeated hesitantly.

'There's little can be done about that,' the Mynan woman had told her. 'Alliance relations with them are . . . strained. The border is patrolled on both sides, travellers are not being let through. If you wish to risk the crossing, I can give you papers to get past our troops, but as for the Princ.i.p.alities . . . I will not be able to a.s.sist you.' For a moment her face had remained nothing but stern: the Maid of Myna, the woman who had unified the resistance and freed her city. Then came the tiniest twitch, an acknowledgement of old times. 'But if you're asking about crossing borders with goods or people, you know where to ask as well as I do.'

Freed from the cells, their first look at the streets of free Myna had not been inspiring. Life under the Imperial boot had taught harsh lessons to the Mynan people, which would not soon be unlearned. There were plenty of weapons on display, and soldiers drilling with sword and crossbow, and even a few of the new snapbows that had made such an impact during the war. The red and black flag of Myna was displayed everywhere, as though people were afraid it might be taken away from them again. Non-Mynans were regarded on a sliding scale of suspicion. The Ant-kinden of Maynes and the Bees of Szar were tolerated, as they represented Myna's neighbours in its Three-State Alliance. Others, like Che, were treated coldly, as though every one of them was suspected of being a Rekef infiltrator. Thalric had resorted to a hooded cloak, but was still stopped several times by guards, to be searched, questioned and insulted. The papers Kymene had provided were pored over, creased, frowned at. The Mynans would take a long time to grow easy with their new freedom, and Che only hoped that such time would be granted to them.

Since their release they had found their own lodgings in the city. Thalric's gold had sufficed to get them a room, but it was a dwindling resource that they needed to save for other tasks, and so this single chamber, this one bed, was all they felt able to afford.

Sleeping beside Thalric was a strange experience. Achaeos had slept quiet and still, breathing so softly she could hardly tell he was there. Thalric seemed to take up all available s.p.a.ce, and in the darkest pit of the night he would twitch and start, pursued by all the bad dreams that his varied career had gifted him with.

Sleeping beside him was all that had happened, so far. Twice now they had come close to something else but, like a ship's master suddenly seeing hidden rocks, she had steered away from it. She was a little scared of him, and feared what his effect on her would be. And then there was Achaeos, poor dead Achaeos, whose ghost she had been trying to exorcise ever since his death during the war. The revelation that the spectre that had formerly tormented her had not been his at all had not driven away that host of memories. The greater part of her felt that she was teetering over of an abyss of guilt, and that to give in to Thalric's wishes would be to fall.

And the rest of her, a minority vote, wanted to jump just so she could be rid of this burden of propriety that was tying her in knots. Would Achaeos truly have wanted me to be chained to his corpse for ever?

The obvious riposte to that was: Achaeos would not under any circ.u.mstances have ever wanted to see me with Thalric.

They hit the streets early, leaning into those ubiquitous hostile stares as though into inclement weather. They managed to get a street away from the boarding house before the first guard stopped them for their papers. Looking into the man's face, Che had a sudden revelation: not hatred, not loathing, not a l.u.s.t for vengeance, but fear. The man now staring at Kymene's signature was of Che's own age. He had never known his city be free, until the uprising a few years back. It must seem that the least breath of air could s.n.a.t.c.h it away from him.

The guard had turned away, his initial interest subsiding into mere dislike, and in that instant Che had stumbled, leaning for support against Thalric, conscious of a ripple pa.s.sing through the people around her, as they shrank away from her as though she had the plague.

'Che, what . . .?' Thalric had been asking, but she had only stared: bright sunlight, not Myna's overcast skies; a beating heat she recognized. And the stone walls inscribed with legion upon legion of tiny carvings, spilling a thousand years of history across every surface . . .

Khanaphes.

And for a moment there had been a Beetle woman staring at her from amid the Mynan crowd, clad in Khanaphir peasant dress but with a Collegiate face. Praeda . . .?

And Thalric was virtually shaking her, as the crowd ebbed back from them, and there were guards approaching, so they would be arrested again, or worse, if she did not . . .

'I'm fine.' She felt anything but fine, though. Each night she woke to find shards of her dreams scattered about her like broken gla.s.s. Ever since Khanaphes, where she had been changed. Ever since awaking into the presence of the Masters. She had gone to that city because the war and Achaeos's death had robbed her of her Apt.i.tude, stripped from her the mechanical inheritance of her people, and thrown her into a world of magic she had never entirely believed in. In Khanaphes she had begun to understand, however, and the ancient, callous Masters had taught her more. But more doors had been opened than she knew how to close: her mind was leaking visions every night, fleeting and unremembered, just bright but receding shards inside her mind as she awoke. But this . . . never before in daylight, not like this.