Heirs of the Blade Read online

  Or it did until the Wasp armies reached them, was Tynisa’s thought, but she left it unspoken.

  ‘Who can say what may be true, so far away from Collegium’s white walls?’ the old Beetle murmured softly, and in his voice there was a young man’s longing, for far vistas and lost secrets, and for the world to be something grander than it was.

  At the evening’s end, when Gramo had tidied away the supper bowls, he stopped her just as she was retiring to bed.

  ‘You’re not here on official business, are you?’ he said sadly.

  She shook her head. ‘I mean neither you nor any other here any harm, I swear, but I do need to speak to the prince.’ Because I have burned all my other bridges, and this tenuous link with Salma is the only thing I have left.

  ‘May I ask what has brought you here, perhaps?’

  She was at first not going to answer, but the shadows seemed to be building in the room around him as the fire guttered, and there were silhouettes there, clawing their way out of the grave of her mind. ‘Three dead men,’ she told Galltree shortly, then retreated to her hammock.

  Three

  By objective standards, her father Tisamon had failed at almost everything in his life.

  He had failed as a Mantis, giving his heart to one of the Spider-kinden they so despised. Later, he had failed his second lover, the Dragonfly Felise Mienn, by abandoning her. He had failed his oldest friend Stenwold Maker by leaving his side in his hour of greatest need.

  At the last, brought to bay in the Imperial arena, he had failed to kill the Wasp Emperor. It was his greatest deed, already immortalized in song and celebrated on stage: the Mantis that brought down an empire. Except that the Empire was already doing a good job of climbing right back up. Except that the Emperor had been dead even as Tisamon was at the centre of a knot of furious Wasp soldiers, shedding blood and being hacked at like an animal. The Emperor had been a victim of a Mosquito-kinden who had caught Tynisa, and had brought her to the arena so she could watch her father die.

  She remembered, though. The blow he had struck, as he had fought his bloody, tattered way clear of the Wasp throng, was not against the Empire’s overlord, but to slay the Mosquito-kinden who was tormenting her. She had come all that way to save her father but, instead, at the end he had done what remained in his power to rescue her.

  And he had died. The Emperor’s guard had made sure of that, cutting and slicing at the corpse long after life had made its exit. She had witnessed that, and felt her gorge rise, felt the horror and despair . . . but then all those feelings had burned away, for a moment. Her Mantis blood had risen within her, the half-heritage that Tisamon had bequeathed her. She had seen their butchery as the tribute it was, for he had shaken them so deeply, pride of the Empire as they were, that they could not risk even the slightest chance that he might yet live.

  In one part of his life only could dead Tisamon claim success. He had been a killer, a relentless, poised and deadly killer, bearing as his credentials the sword and circle badge of the Weaponsmasters. To his daughter, he had given the only gift he had, by passing to her all he knew of the ancient art of separating lives and bodies.

  She clung to it now. Here, alone and far from home, crippled by lost friends and by her own victims, she needed his guidance and his strength. All she had of him, though, was what she carried within her.

  So it was that Tynisa found herself abandoned in Suon Ren.

  That word would have been considered unkind by Gramo Galltree, who was doing everything in his power to make her stay a comfortable one: cooking and cleaning and making polite conversation about the weather, or trying to get her to talk about Collegium, his long-lost home. As a day passed, though, and then another, Tynisa became increasingly aware that Gramo’s power here was minuscule: he just did not matter to the locals, and neither did she. She could walk every one of the broad, almost unformed streets of the town, and it was as though she was invisible to all but the children, and even they kept clear of her – parental warnings no doubt ringing in their ears.

  Sometimes the castle seneschal, or some other functionary, would come to the embassy for a few brief words with Galltree, and each time it was plain that the question was the same: Is she still here? Sometimes they came to stare at her, as though she was some grotesque piece of artwork, but they would not answer her questions, or even recognize that she was capable of speech.

  With so little outside stimulus, she sank deeper into herself. Her days were spent hunting between the Commonwealer buildings, looking for she knew not what, but sensing others moving on parallel paths, always just out of sight, but constantly in her mind. When darkness fell they closed in, so that she would sit in her little room at the embassy and listen to the ghosts have their way with the place, moving just out of sight, the whisper of a robe’s hem, the harsh scrape of Tisamon’s boots. Sometimes she heard the distant echo of Salma, laughing gently at some remark made by who-knew-which shade, and she would hunch tight in her hammock, turning her back to the world and trying to blot it all out.

  After two days, she took to her practising again, because that was the only part of the woman she had been that she cared to revive, and because it was a gift from her father. While Gramo pottered about in his garden, she used his large room as her Prowess Forum, rapier tasting the air, darting and stepping through all the intricate passes and guards of the Mantis styles, each coming unbidden and unrusted to her mind, a smooth-running sequence of steel. For two hours she strung her body through them all, and back again, fighting imaginary duels in her mind: against one, against many, against overwhelming odds; rehearsing that final dance that all Mantis warriors hoped for.

  She completed her pass, blade glittering in the air, and found the rapier’s point falling into line with the chest of a Dragonfly man now standing in the doorway. He looked to be another of the seneschal’s stamp, wearing clothes of the same green, gold and blue colours, but more practically made and harder-wearing. His hair was a little longer than the fashion in Suon Ren, and bound back, and she guessed he was older than the seneschal as well.

  ‘I hope I do not interrupt,’ he said mildly. ‘I am sent from the castle.’

  The surprise of actually being spoken to dried her throat, and it was a moment before she could speak. ‘The ambassador is not here . . .’ Abruptly a thought came to her, a certainty: ‘The prince is returned.’

  ‘As you say,’ the Dragonfly confirmed. ‘Seneschal Coren has reported a petition that disturbs him, a Lowlander demanding an audience.’

  ‘You are sent for me?’

  ‘I am sent here to find out what it is you want with the prince,’ he corrected her. There was a straightness in his bearing that was almost reminiscent of Tisamon, a pride rooted in ancient places. She wondered if the man was a Dragonfly Weaponsmaster come to kill her, if her answers did not suit.

  Her rapier found its home in her scabbard, and she let out a long breath. ‘What do you want me to say?’ she asked him, finding the locals’ elaborate politeness too standoffish.

  ‘When Stenwold Maker came here, he spoke of war. Are you sent on the same mission?’

  She sensed that this was the question that could see her turned away, although she could not quite grasp the significance the man was putting into his words. ‘I have come to talk to the prince about Salma – about Prince Salme Dien.’ She stumbled over the formal Commonweal name, because he had always just been ‘Salma’ to her. ‘Did you know him? The prince became his guardian after Salma’s father died.’ Uncertainty was evident in her voice, and the Dragonfly shook his head slightly.

  ‘He was kin-obligate to the prince.’ It was another polite correction. The Commonweal tradition that saw children find surrogate homes with those of other castes and trades was something alien to the Lowlands. ‘It is true that Prince-Minor Salme Dien had the honour of being chosen by Prince Felipe as such. It is a rare thing indeed for a prince to so bless the children of another noble family. We all remember him fondly. To
my prince, he was as a son.’ Something was softening in the man, his cold manner melting away, and she felt a connection with him, tenuous but present – the first time she had found any echo of humanity in this reserved people since Salma had died.

  Tynisa realized how she was clenching her fists, nails digging painfully into her palms, as if in readiness for her next words. ‘You know that he is dead?’

  There was no surprise. ‘Your Master Stenwold Maker brought a letter from Salme Dien: a farewell to the prince. Clearly Dien knew that he would die, or guessed at it. You were his friend, I see. His death has marked you.’

  More than his friend, Tynisa thought, but she just nodded. Somewhere in Gramo’s house that irresistible smile of his winked and wounded, the echo of the man she had known and loved. ‘I just thought . . . he did so much for the Lowlands. Perhaps in the end nobody did more to stop the Wasps. I just thought that someone should come and speak of him to Prince Felipe, and about what he did. I don’t know . . .’ Her voice began to crack and she scowled, reaching for her Weaponsmaster’s core of self-control, and finding it slippery in her hands. ‘I don’t know if there has been a messenger, or if Stenwold sent a letter, or . . .’ She finished lamely. ‘And that’s why I’ve come.’ Laid out like that, it seemed a pitiful excuse for such a journey.

  The Dragonfly was staring at her so intensely that she thought she must have delivered a mortal insult somehow. His casual manner had evaporated entirely. ‘No one has come,’ he said softly. ‘The prince has waited, but no word has arrived from your Lowlands, for this duty of duties. No doubt your great men of the Lowlands have much to occupy them.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Tell me of him.’

  ‘Will your prince not hear me?’ she asked, frustrated all of a sudden. She imagined briefly an infinite sequence of servants, each one demanding every detail of her tale before passing her into the hands of the next one, until her words grew stale and hard as month-old bread. The next words escaped before she could stop them: ‘Please, I’ve come so far . . .’

  He sighed. ‘Forgive our poor hospitality. When our seneschal brought word of your arrival, perhaps it was natural to assume that Stenwold Maker was attempting to further his campaign against the Empire by some other means. We have not treated you as befits a guest, and certainly not as befits one on such a gracious and solemn errand. Please, tell me of Salme Dien.’

  She stared at him, trying to recast him as something other than simply a Dragonfly man, not young and yet ageless, wearing clothes that were surely less fine than Lioste’s had been, but then, of course, he had been travelling, and these were clothes meant for the road.

  ‘Master – my lord – Your Majesty,’ she stammered, making him a College magnate and a Spider Aristos and finally an emperor.

  ‘Prince Felipe,’ he said quietly, ‘or “My Prince”, if you were a retainer. Or Shah, if you prefer. But please’ – and his voice shook just a little despite his iron control of it – ‘tell me of my kin, of my boy. Tell me of Salme Dien.’

  And so she did. As he sat on the floor like a child, she told him how Salma had formed his own army, his own nomadic principality of the lost and the fugitive. She spoke of how the errant prince had won the respect of the Sarnesh Ants, and how he had led the assault on the Imperial Seventh Army, breaking their lines and destroying their siege engines, so that the Ant-kinden could make their assault.

  She told him how Salma had died in that battle, but sensed that those were not the details he wished to hear. Instead she passed on to the city that Salma’s followers were building west of Sarn, to which they had given the name Princep Salma in his memory.

  Of the Butterfly-kinden woman who had been Salma’s lover, she said nothing.

  Felipe Shah listened in silence to every word, nothing of his thoughts showing in his expression, and his gaze remained clear when she had finished. ‘He met his destiny well. Would that we were all so lucky. My Salme Dien became a true prince of the Commonweal before he died, and that is something that many of us who bear the empty title never achieve. What would you have of me, Tynisa?’

  The question caught her unprepared. ‘I’m not here to ask for anything.’

  ‘Nonetheless, I am in your debt. If you will not barter for my favour now, then return to seek it, or send word. You have done me a courtesy fit for princes, one that I would not have expected to come from the Lowlands, where such things are not understood. You have brought Salme Dien back to me.’

  She felt embarrassed at the praise, not knowing what to do with it.

  ‘Prince Felipe, I seek nothing . . .’ I have nothing. She now realized that she had come to the end of her road. And what now? Walk on to Capitas and attack the Empress? Is all my life shrunk to this moment? She thought of asking to stay in Suon Ren, but the idea of living as a recluse in the midst of all of these elegant, alien people, with nobody but Gramo and perhaps the prince to talk to . . . She would become a shadow, a nothing, waning and dwindling in the vacuum of their turned backs. ‘I . . .’ she began, but there were no more words.

  ‘I am a prince-major of the Commonweal, whose only master is the Monarch,’ Felipe Shah told her. ‘And I am in your debt, so you have but to ask.’ He stood up to go, and she tried to speak, tried to beg him for . . . but there was nothing, a void where the future had been.

  He bowed, and took his leave.

  That same evening found the seneschal, Lioste Coren, back at the embassy door, brushing aside Gramo Galltree and seeking out Tynisa.

  ‘The prince has spoken,’ he declared. ‘He advises you to leave.’

  Tynisa stared at him open-mouthed, even though she herself had decided she could not stay. ‘He said he owed a debt . . . He wants me to go?’

  A battle fought its way briefly across Lioste’s face. ‘Do not . . .’ he started, and then his dislike of her finally gave way before his duty to defend his prince. ‘He does not banish you. He does not cast you off. My prince has some small talent with the future, however. He sees only grief for you here. We are well aware that the Lowlander merchant is at Siriell’s Town. My prince advises you to leave his domain – to leave the Commonweal, to return home. He says you will be happier there. It is because he owes you a debt that he gives you this advice.’ The effort of being civil to her was plainly stretching him. ‘Please.’

  ‘What shall you do?’ Galltree asked her later, after she had listlessly picked at the late supper he had prepared.

  ‘Would you let me stay here even if the prince wanted me gone?’

  Galltree twisted the silk of his robe wretchedly, and she held a hand up to forestall his crisis of conscience. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She took a deep breath. ‘This Siriell’s Town, it’s a rough place?’

  ‘Lawless.’ Galltree nodded emphatically. ‘Rhael Province – the family that ruled there under Felipe’s, they’re all gone, long gone, I think. In such places, others creep in, fugitives from the order of the Commonweal. These days, there are many such provinces, especially since the war.’

  Her hand was on her sword hilt again, and she could sense the ghosts gathering close, waiting to hear her decision. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. Home or die, and how convenient that both are to be found in the same direction. I don’t even have to choose right now. She found that she had no intention of rejoining Allanbridge, if indeed he was not already on his way back to Collegium. Home held nothing but sharp edges for her now. She could not look Stenwold or Che in the face without seeing dead Achaeos reflected in their eyes – and how she felt him close and gloating with that admission – and she was being forced out of Suon Ren so very politely. How good of the world to provide a sink like Siriell’s Town to drown herself in.

  She took out Allanbridge’s rough map, and looked Galltree straight in the eye. ‘Anything to add to this?’ she asked.

  The road to Siriell’s Town was a matter of heading north-east as best she could: bridging the canals, and then heading over increasingly hilly country until she had made the subtle transition from l
and that still knew the hoe today all the way down through a gradient of neglect, to land that had not been sowed in a decade or more. She saw a few villages on the way, and avoided them by choice. There were no other travellers, no merchants or messengers, no flying machines overhead. The sense of the land was one of quiet desolation. She knew she would feel different if the Commonweal had accepted her in any way, but aside from Felipe Shah’s brief moment of openness, she felt more a stranger here than she had done when she arrived – and even the prince thought it would be best if she left.

  Each morning, and sporadically throughout the day, she checked her bearings as best she could by Allanbridge’s landmarks, thinking, So I can’t miss the place can I, Jons? As if I believe that.

  But when she came within sight of Siriell’s Town – having veered west some distance from her intended course – she found that Allanbridge had been telling nothing but the truth. It was indeed a town, or something resembling one, but at its heart was a castle upon a hill, and Tynisa saw instantly that it looked something like the exemplar of Felipe’s own. Complete, it had constituted a six- or seven-floored hexagonal tower, narrowing towards a point at the top. The walls were lanced with arrowslit windows, so that no attacker on the ground or in the air would have been safe from the defenders’ missiles. Tynisa, having observed the sturdy walls of Collegium and the Sarnesh fortifications, could see only absences here: nowhere to place artillery, not that the Dragonfly-kinden would know what to do with it; no reinforcing of the walls, so that catapult or leadshotter assault would hammer them down all the sooner. This was a castle that had been designed to hold off men from another age.

  It would not even serve for that purpose, any more. One whole side of it had sloughed off and tumbled down the hill years before, leaving a teetering rotten tooth of a place latticed with the shorn-off stubs of internal walls. The hollow shell of the interior had been colonized haphazardly by its new masters, for there were tents and shacks and wood-frame structures not only about the walls and within the castle’s hollow footprint, but straggling up the walls themselves, as though growing there like mushrooms. A further shambles of makeshift dwellings had spread out from the castle’s collapsed side in a jumble of huts packed far closer than the homes at Suon Ren. The entire place looked foul and squalid to Tynisa.