Heirs of the Blade (20 page)

Thalric returned shortly, with time only for a nod of reassurance before Varmen himself rejoined them.

‘We’ll be heading south of Maynes,’ their guide explained. ‘The Ant-kinden are worse than the Mynans – barely any time for their own allies, let alone strangers. Let alone Wasps, ’spe-cially.’

Che nodded. ‘And yet here you are posing as our guide, Varmen.’

He gave her a big, uncomplicated grin. ‘Trust me, you’ll be glad of my services.’

Heading west, they merged with a respectable number of travellers going between Szar and its Ant-kinden allies in Maynes, despite Varmen’s words. As soon as they turned off the Maynes road they were nearly alone, however, and making their own way across an unforgiving country, too uneven for agriculture and with patches of close-packed pine forest sending them miles out of their way. Once or twice, when stopping to camp, they saw the lights of other fires, but Varmen’s advice was to avoid them. Travellers heading west from the Three-city Alliance seldom welcomed company.

Each night, Che hung up her little ring of copper, but her dreams were intermittent. Often there was no spider, and finding one and trying to coax it into place yielded no results. When she did recall her dreams, though, they were always of Khanaphes: not the place of her memories, however, but a city that time and the Empire had caught up with.

She had wanted to broach the subject of her dreams with Thalric, but she was not sure how much he would understand. He had seen plenty of the old magic of Khanaphes during the time the two of them had spent among the tombs beneath the city, but what would he admit to now, months after? Aptitude divided them.

But tonight he turned to her even as she was stringing up the dream-catcher, and said, ‘What is it?’

She tried to look baffled, but the look he gave her in response was just exasperation. ‘Che, for a tenyear I ran agents for a living. You were twitchy when we were in Khanaphes, and you’ve been twitchy ever since, but since we left Myna something’s changed.’

Varmen cocked an uninterested eyebrow in their direction, then burrowed into his bedroll and turned over. He had already demonstrated a soldier’s ability to find sleep at a moment’s notice.

Che opened her mouth, but suddenly found the words hard to come by.
Dreams? Thalric will care nothing for dreams.
That was not what stopped her being candid with him, though. Some deeper prohibition was at work, one that she could not entirely identify. ‘I was thinking about the Empress,’ she said, hoping this half-truth would be enough for him.

Thalric’s face darkened, as well it might. Of course, he had been Imperial Regent for a brief space of time, an acceptable male face that Empress Seda had stood behind while she consolidated her power: someone to appease the traditionalists amongst her subjects who recoiled from the idea of being led by a woman. By the time Thalric had jumped ship yet again, however, the Empress Seda was firmly ensconced, combining charisma, ability and the support of the Rekef in an unshakeable combination.

On the back of that history, Thalric’s reluctant, ‘Why?’ was hardly surprising.

‘Because we are alike, she and I,’ Che reminded him.

‘You are
not
alike.’

‘You know what I mean,’ she pressed.

He glanced at Varmen, who appeared dead to the world, and then leant close to her, keeping his voice low. ‘So you have lost your Aptitude,’ he told her, as though she might any day now rediscover it on the road. ‘So the Empress has the same . . . condition. Believe me, you are not alike in any other way.’ He did not voice his reasons, because she already knew them, but perhaps also because to give voice to them would be to somehow invite Seda’s attention – for all that Thalric was Apt and did not believe in such things.

Because of the blood
, Che thought. He had told her, when they had been trapped in the tombs: how the Empress lived off the blood of others, mostly slaves. It was as if she had become, in her own body, a personification of the Empire’s own creed of rapacious conquest. By Thalric’s account, the Empress Seda drank and bathed in the spilt lives of others.

And draws power from them
, came the thought to Che then. It seemed perfectly obvious to her that it was so, that such behaviour was not simply the excess of an absolute ruler whose Empire overflowed with expendable human property. When Che tried to examine her certainty regarding this, she could find no train of logic in it, and yet she knew it to be true.
The blood itself is power. It is an old and evil magic.

‘The old fortress at Solamen, or whatever the ’Wealers used to call it,’ Thalric enquired, ‘is that back in use now?’

‘Surely,’ Varmen replied. ‘Crammed full of Principality troops, more of ’em every month, seems like. Now, you said you had pass papers for the Three-city soldiers, that right?’

‘Signed by the head of the Consensus, no less,’ Che agreed.

‘Makes it easier not to have to dodge them,’ their guide allowed. ‘In that case, if you’re happy they’re good, let’s call in with the locals.’

An hour after that and they were being escorted through an armed camp amid Mynan soldiers in their black and red armour, and a small detachment of Szaren Bees who seemed to be engineers. Che caught the outlines of some manner of siege artillery but, in her present state of Inaptitude, she was unable to identify what kind.

‘They seem to be a little anxious about something,’ she remarked to her companions.

‘Oh, you’ll see the reason soon enough,’ Varmen assured her. ‘I reckon they’ve got cause. Don’t blame ’em at all, me.’

The Mynan in charge of the camp studied their papers lengthily enough for Che to begin wondering if Kymene had not betrayed them by some hidden message. Eventually the man reluctantly agreed that they could pass through, although he was clearly suspicious of anyone who might want to. He herded them out of his camp immediately afterwards, as if worried that they would be stealing secrets or counting the number of his soldiers.

‘Friendly folk around these parts,’ was all Varmen would say about that.

Solamen, which had been called Shol Amen before the war, held the only pass between the Barrier Ridge and this side of the mountains. For centuries it had marked the easternmost point of the Commonweal, denying the barbarous tribesmen the road to the wealthy and civilized lands beyond. Then, a few generations back, those same tribesmen had been united by a man who became their first Emperor, and proceeded to conquer a great many of their neighbours, absorb a great deal of artifice and military theory, and decide that the lands of the Dragonflies were ripe for conquest.

‘It was the Sixth that captured this place, wasn’t it?’ Thalric asked, as they gazed up at it.

‘None other,’ Varmen replied, with such fierce and automatic pride that Che knew he must have been present when it happened.

Solamen had then comprised a grand castle built high up the mountainside, with a good view of the road. Che could imagine defending troops sallying forth , in the air and on horseback, to chase down any strangers trying to breach the Commonweal’s veil of isolation.

Perhaps half of the original structure still stood, pocked by cracks and craters from the assault of the engines. Commonwealer architecture had never been intended to stand up against heavy siege, and such engines had not even existed when places such as Solamen were built, nor foreseen by even the greatest of sages.

There had been some new construction, to balance the damage: a stone-walled compound at the castle’s base, within which less magnificent but more durable buildings had been installed. The Empire had used the place as a way station for its troops, but it had not been considered a fortress by the Wasps. The initial Imperial advance of the Twelve-year War had taken the battle far enough west for Solamen to have served no useful defensive function.

Since the Empire’s hand had been lifted from these lands, however, it was clear that the old fortress had returned to its original purpose. Most particularly there were now dots circling the sky above, and as the three travellers drew near it was clear that Solamen’s current masters had sent out a welcome for them.

Thalric watched the soldiers get closer, wishing he had invested in a telescope. Varmen had already halted the horses and climbed down, instructing his employers to let him do the talking.

‘Is that . . .?’ Che was squinting up. ‘Do I see Imperial colours?’ Her Art let her see in utter darkness, as Thalric had cause to know, but he was aware that her eyes were less acute than his own in daylight. All the same, he realized that she was right. There was definitely a touch of the black and gold to their welcomers.

But that’s not right
, he thought, still trying to discern the details.
They’re Dragonflies – they must be. No Wasp flies like that.

There were half a dozen of them landing in a loose arc across their path, and Varmen need not have worried about his companions. Thalric and Che were too busy staring to have anything to say.

They were Dragonflies indeed, the same slender, golden-skinned breed that Thalric remembered well from the Twelve-year War, and that for Che presumably recalled her dead friend, the Commonwealer prince. Four men and two women, they held their bows at the ready, arrows nocked but not drawn back. All had armour of chitin and leather, except for one man who wore most of a full suit of proper Commonweal noble’s mail: iridescent plates of insect shell over fine chain.

Each of them was decked out in black and yellow, but instead of the Empire’s uniform stripes, the patterns varied wildly. Only the colouring was the same, dyed or painted on. Even the fletchings of their arrows followed the theme, and the man in fancy armour had half his face tattooed black.

As the Dragonflies inspected the three travellers, their look was not wholly that of suspicious border guards. There was a wariness there that Thalric could not immediately place.

‘Why do you seek to enter the Principalities?’ demanded their leader, he of the painted face.

‘Me?’ Varmen responded casually. ‘Just a guide, me. Don’t want any problems. Just paid to show these two the best roads.’

‘And what’s their business?’ the Dragonfly countered, pointing at Thalric with one end of his bow.

‘Oh, traders,’ was Varmen’s explanation. ‘Merchants, you know.’

Thalric winced, because traders would be travelling with a great deal more baggage than Varmen’s little pack-beetle could accommodate. The Dragonflies seemed to be of the same mind, for they closed in a little, and the arrowheads were wavering upwards along with the level of their suspicions.

‘Traders?’ their leader spat disbelievingly.

‘You know, fresh out of Capitas,’ Varmen continued, for all that Thalric was on the point of telling him to shut up. ‘Long way, you know, from Capitas, but they’re very keen to, you know,
trade
.’

It was as if there was some mindlink between Varmen and the people out of Solamen, because one by one they clearly leapt to some conclusion that his words alone could not account for. There was a nervous shuffling amongst them.

Fear?
Thalric wondered, but there was more than simple fear there.

‘Capitas, is it?’ the leader asked cautiously.

‘Oh, there are plenty of traders out of Capitas who want to know this part of the world better. News of your princes has reached them there, and they see a lot of, you know,
profit
in making deals over here, if you see what I mean.’

The Dragonflies apparently did see what he meant, for all that Thalric did not.

‘We should . . .’ one of them began, as their leader actually looked plaintively at Varmen for guidance.

‘Best not to trouble your chief. It’s all a little quiet, you know – trading
on the sly
, if you see?’ Varmen was studying his dirty fingernails with exaggerated unconcern.

‘I see,’ the Dragonfly chief confirmed. ‘You should pass through swiftly. I’m sure the Colonel would agree.’

At the mention of that Imperial title, Thalric almost choked, but he held it in and kept it there whilst the Dragonflies rose aloft and flew back towards Solamen.

‘Glad you’re with me now?’ Varmen asked them, grinning broadly.

‘What was that?’ Thalric demanded. ‘For that matter, why in the pits were they dressed like that? And a
colonel?
Has Solamen been taken over by madmen?’

‘Not just Solamen, the whole of the Principalities – all the land the Empire bit out of the Commonweal during the war,’ Varmen explained. ‘You’ve got to think – this was all Imperial until the Alliance cities kicked us out, and the Commonweal never actually took them back.’

‘But why?’ Che demanded. ‘Surely they’re free now?’

‘Oh,
free
,’ replied Varmen dismissively. ‘Free for what? Free to wait until the Empire comes back? Look, most of the noble families that were lording it over places like this got wiped out, right? Down to the last little snapper among them, is what I heard.’

Thalric nodded, lips pressed together, but Varmen failed to notice his reaction.

‘So who takes over? Some peasant farmer? Who else knows how to run things, ’cept us?’

‘And so they let us through because we were Wasps?’ Thalric demanded. ‘What was all that about merchants?’

‘Well, you know . . .
merchants
,’ Varmen echoed, with a peculiar emphasis.

‘Explain,’ Thalric insisted, but at his side Che was laughing. She was doing her best to contain it, but it was leaking out all over: her shoulders shaking, muffled snorting noises from behind her hand.

‘Well, come on,’ Varmen said, ‘what would you think: two people who really, honestly aren’t merchants come in, and they’d come from the capital, and they had, you know, secret business to attend to, all hush-hush, you know?’

‘Oh, you bastard, they thought we were Rekef,’ said Thalric, finding himself momentarily unable to know how he should feel about that.

Varmen shrugged. ‘They know about the Rekef here. They know how the Rekef killed off all their old nobles, and they know they don’t exactly want a new crop coming in from the Commonweal just yet, given how badly the old lot did. So, yeah, Rekef. Why not?’