She could catch not a word of Alain's conversation, either, for Hardy Fordwright was stridently holding forth about some matter of her own. In a bid to derail the woman's braying monopoly of the conversation, Tynisa leant over to her and, just as the Beetle paused for a draught, asked her, 'When did you last see our amba.s.sador, Mistress Fordwright?'

'Our what?' the Beetle demanded, baffled.

'Gramo Galltree, at Suon Ren,' Tynisa explained. 'I was staying with him not so long ago. He did not mention any other Collegiates in the Commonweal.'

'I've never heard of the fellow,' Fordwright stated flatly. 'An amba.s.sador?'

'Well, yes,' Tynisa said, now somewhat thrown. 'He said he was, anyway. He's a College man.'

Hardy frowned, quietened beyond Tynisa's wildest hopes. At last she said, 'Well, then, I suppose I should take a trip to Suon Ren. That's . . . Prince Vas Nares?'

'Felipe Shah.'

'Oh, the Prince-Major's stamping ground. Well, perhaps Sammi and I will go south from here. Be good to hear another Collegiate voice.' Her tone so clearly equated 'Collegiate' with 'civilized'.

For a moment Tynisa felt guilty about dumping this brash, loud woman on poor old Gramo, but then she recalled the amba.s.sador's lament on how he missed the familiar talk of his former home. Well, then, Hardy Fordwright would sate that need of his or cure him of it for ever.

The meal was lengthy, the flavours of the food subtle and elusive, the wine tart and dry where a Collegium vintage would have been sweet. Tynisa, who had been happy, for months now, to drift along at Lowre Cean's aimless pace, was suddenly impatient with it all. Alain's arrival was like a stone cast into the clear waters of a pond.

Something is about to change. The world has been sleeping until now.

And, once the meal was done, he approached her with that smile which he shared with his dead brother.

'We are to celebrate, at Leose,' he announced. 'We have scored a great victory over the bandits and the dissenters.' He spoke loudly, deliberately including Lowre Cean, who was nearby. 'My mother wished you to know that she has not been idle, Your Highness.'

Again, Cean's look was coolly distant. 'I thank your mother for her kindness. I am too old, alas, to enjoy such festivities. I trust you will bear my apologies.'

'I will bear more than that, if I may.' Alain grinned at him. 'I would bear one of your guests away.' His glance at Tynisa was clear.

'But . . . when is this celebration?' she asked him.

'Oh, over several nights, but the greatest share of it will be as soon as I return,' Alain said carelessly. 'And it would be impolite to keep them waiting.'

'But Leose is . . .'

'Oh, I am here with Lycene, who will carry us both.' His smile flashed again, like a blade. 'You'll come, won't you?'

'Your mother didn't seem too fond of me, when we last met,' Tynisa said weakly.

'I am her heir, and she may not therefore turn away my guests,' Alain declared, with a rebellious spark.

She found herself glancing at Lowre Cean, which was ridiculous. He was not her guardian, and she needed no one's permission. Still, she had hoped to see some manner of approval on the old man's lean face. He was quite unreadable, though, save that he had evidently no warmth to spare for Salme Alain, nor apparently for the young man's mother.

Strange, she considered, for Cean seemed to be guesting within Elas Mar province at the Salmae's invitation, and yet the fallen prince-major was obviously anything but grateful. Is it merely that, then? Does he resent being beholden to them? But that conclusion would go against all she had gathered of the old man's character. Or is it his losses in the war? She could understand that he might not wish to be reminded, by seeing those still in possession of what he himself had been stripped of. Not lands, not castle, but . . . She racked her memory, then decided, Yes, there was a son of the house of Lowre. Someone has mentioned that to me. Perhaps that alone is enough to make him a bitter neighbour. He certainly goes to some lengths to put aside the trappings of a prince, and loses himself in trivial matters instead.

The thought still did not quite sit right, but she had no better option, nor could she readily enquire of either Lowre or Alain. Gaved, she felt sure, would know, and would tell her, but the Wasp was not here to ask.

'I shall go,' she told Alain. 'I would be honoured.'

Twenty-One.

'They are celebrating our demise even now, I'll wager,' said the broad-shouldered Gra.s.shopper. His lean, scarred face had struck fear into enough hearts in its time, but it looked worried now. During three years of relative peace he had been happy running protection rackets and ordering thugs here in Siriell's Town, but it was increasingly clear to all that those days were gone. His real name was Ang We, but during the war he had fallen in with foreigners who had dubbed him 'Angry'. For good reason, the name had stuck.

'Half the town has left already. The smallholders are scattered all across Rhael province, hoping to forage. Most of the merchants and the artisans have slunk off to look for better markets.' This complaint came from a young Dragonfly woman who called herself Pirett, and who had claimed to be like a daughter to Siriell, the bandit queen's natural heir. Now that Siriell was dead, the hollowness of that boast had become clear. Siriell had left no heir and, deprived of the fallen woman's authority and her indefinable ability to yoke warring factions together in a common cause, the town was fast falling apart.

'Let them go. What's to stay for? She's dead, and we're done here,' said another Dragonfly, this time a man of stockier build than most, with a touch of grey to his hair and a square face that had seen a great deal of good times and bad.

'Cold words coming from the man who shared her bed, Dal,' Angry noted.

The Dragonfly-kinden, Dal Arche, shrugged. 'And you and your lads are staying, are you?' The Gra.s.shopper did not reply.

The three of them, alone and without even their most immediate followers, had commandeered a room high up in the ruined face of the castle. Below them Siriell's Town was going about its business of falling apart, fighting with itself, lashing about in its death throes.

'I'm for the east,' Pirett declared. 'They say there's all manner of opportunity to be had at the border.'

'Then you'll be the first to know when the Empire comes knocking,' Dal told her. 'Or even when the Princ.i.p.ality folks decide to take a bite. I've seen enough war for a lifetime. If you must go, go west.'

She shook her head stubbornly. The words went unsaid, but anywhere further west the land was unfamiliar, and it was said the Monarch's writ ran stronger there. Whether the spectre of the Commonweal's ruler truly had any claws left, none of them could say, but Pirett was clearly not ready to put it to the test.

'Rhael has life in it yet. All those weaklings who run from here, they'll set up elsewhere, in villages and farms. My lads want to follow them, keep them honest.' Angry gave them a patchwork smile of missing teeth.

'Meagre pickings,' Dal observed.

'That's what the lads want.' It was a curious trait in the Gra.s.shopper brigand that he always hid his own desires behind the supposed will of his followers. 'The pickings'll be that much more meagre if someone else is trying to split the difference with me.'

'Have no fear. I've better to do than starve so hard that I take everyone nearby with me,' Dal Arche said sharply. For a moment the two men stared at each other, but it was Angry, the bigger and the louder, who looked away first.

'What, then?' Pirett asked him. 'You're going to throw yourself on Prince Felipe's mercy?'

He gave her a level stare. 'I would not go east, to the Empire and the creatures it has left behind. I have been a prisoner of the Black and Gold once, and never again.' He turned his regard on Angry. 'I have men and women to feed, who will demand full bellies, drink, action and prospects, or they will abandon me or else cut my throat. I'll not take them deeper into Rhael to plague those few poor beggars who've tried to turn the soil into a living.'

The Gra.s.shopper sneered. 'Soft,' was all he said.

Dal Arche's smile had murder in it. 'You know I'm not one to stint in taking what I want from any that has it, but even I can't take what they don't have. No, since Siriell's Town is become a rotting corpse as of now, there's only one direction that I know has provision enough for my band. We march north.'

'You're not serious?' Pirett breathed.

'No? If they had just come here and killed Siriell, then perhaps it could be mended. I'm not a sentimental man. She knew the life she led. But come here and burn our stores . . .' He gestured at the window, where the shutters kept out all but the smell of the smoke. The Mercers had been thorough, and while their leader himself had slain the town's self-made ruler, the others had fired every warehouse and stockpile they could find. The acc.u.mulated harvests of the farmers and brigands and vagabonds of Siriell's Town had burned.

'Well then,' Dal Arche declared, in the silence that followed, 'they could have left well alone, and in ten years, perhaps, this place would become so tame I'd need to go rob some prince or other just to keep me from going mad with boredom. I thank the Salmae that they spared me the wait. They have food, north of the province border, and I see no better option than to take it, and spill what blood needs shedding.'

The other two brigand chiefs eyed him suspiciously, as though he was spinning them some particularly self-serving lie, but at last Pirett said wonderingly, 'Well, I wish you luck. Give my regards to Mother Salme when she has you hanged.'

Angry said nothing, but he nodded grudgingly.

Outside, with the other chieftains heading off to mobilize their followers, Dal Arche sought out his own three lieutenants. There was more in his mind than he had let on to the others, for his profession was never one to breed trust. He needed to steal a march on his rivals.

They were waiting for him, his most valued followers, his brothers of the wilds: a Wasp, a Scorpion and a gaunt and spindly Gra.s.shopper pa.s.sing a jug of beer between them as they waited for his return.

'We're moving out,' he told them, after dropping down beside them. They were the only occupants of what had once been a popular drinking den. Even the proprietor had gathered up what he could and fled. All the villains and renegades who had been concentrated in Siriell's Town were dispersing across Rhael Province and beyond.

'What's the plan, Dala?' the Wasp-kinden asked.

'I'm taking most of our lot north, like we discussed. I'll be raiding the borders in a tenday, strike and flight, like the old days. Always one step ahead of the Mercers. You three, though . . .' He looked them over: Mordrec, Barad Ygor and Soul Je. The four of them had been through a lot together since the Wasp had sprung Dal Arche from a Mynan prison. 'I want you to make a circle south and east. Go play the recruiting sergeant. Pick up every malcontent you can get who has a will to carve a piece of something better. You'll need to dodge Pirett and Angry's mobs, though. She's just heading to the border, but Angry will be after the same pickings, maybe, so you're best to keep ahead of him. Round up a whole new mob, get them fired up, bring them to me. We're going to teach the honest folk of Elas Mar Province how to p.i.s.s themselves in fright.'

They stared at him, and he knew that these three, of all his followers, would not simply do what he said without question. They would be wondering how much of this plan was reason, how much rage. And how close had he been to Siriell, indeed, before she was killed?

'We've been a lot of things in our time,' he told them softly, 'but right now we're thieves, and there's only one direction we can go to find someone worth robbing.'

It seemed only minutes before she was seated astride Lycene, clinging to Alain's waist as the swift insect hurtled through the air. Tynisa could only huddle up against the prince's back and stare down, beyond the blurring wings, at the Commonweal countryside fleeting past. She thought she saw the lake, down there, that Gaved and Sef lived alongside, but then it was gone: her journey of several days to Lowre Cean's compound undone in hours only.

She had a.s.sumed that the dragonfly would bear them all the way to Leose before dark. Indeed, such was its speed that it seemed possible for the insect to take them anywhere, alighting in Collegium or in the Empire, or encircling the entire world. As night grew in the east, though, Lycene began to descend, either of her own volition or from some unseen signal given by Alain. There was a stand of reeds below them, that grew and grew larger as the insect drew closer, until Tynisa realized that she was looking at a dense stand of cane forest, with boles as thick as a man's body.

She had expected Lycene to make a demure landing on the open ground before the forest, but just as the dragonfly seemed about to alight, her wings gave a final flurry, casting her directly up towards the cane tops, so that she ended up clinging vertically, the tip of her tail just shy of the ground. Alain's own wings had caught him instantly, of course, feathering him down to the ground effortlessly, but perhaps he had forgotten how his pa.s.senger lacked that Art. Instead, Tynisa suffered a moment of utter fright, saved from a fall only by instinctively clenching her knees, left suspended head-down with her arms waving wildly. Then she recovered her balance, and clambered down the length of the hanging animal, thankful that her Art at least allowed her to climb.

Alain stood grinning at her, and she took the mockery as justified, thinking, I'll be ready for that next time. 'Perhaps I should have jumped into your arms?' she asked him acidly.

'That would have certainly put my wings to the test,' he agreed. 'We'd best make camp now. Lycene is tired and, though she can take to the air at night, she's not fond of it unless I insist.'

'I'm amazed your people bother with horses, when they have such creatures at their beck and call,' Tynisa suggested.

Alain shrugged. 'Horses are easier to rear, frankly, and cheaper to keep. Lycene will have to hunt half the morning, before we're ready to fly again. Besides, she is the mount for a prince. We couldn't have just anyone riding her, could we?'

The cold weather was returning, something else that Lycene was clearly not fond of, so Tynisa set up a fire close by the canes, where it might benefit the big insect as well as the humans. When she looked back, the work done as well as she could, she was startled to find Alain right by her shoulder.

'I've known a couple of Spider-kinden,' he said softly, 'but not with decent woodcraft like yours.' He knelt down beside her and made a few invisible adjustments to her efforts. 'A Mercer always knows how to make a good fire,' he explained. 'It's the first thing they teach you.'

She read his smile as self-mockery now. Abruptly she was completely taken aback by how there he seemed: how very close, elbow to elbow, hip to hip.

Salma . . . That familiar face, ready to c.o.c.k a grin at her, but his eyes were measuring, appraising. 'My mother, now, she did not want me to become a Mercer. "You are a prince, Alain, and that should be enough."' His imitation of the Salmae matriarch recalled her tones perfectly. 'Mercers might one day find themselves in the wilderness without a full retinue of servants, you see. They have to learn skills more fitting to a lowlier cla.s.s of man.' A wave of his hand signalled that her pyramid of wood had now reached his exacting standards, and she dispensed a final handful of wood shavings and sc.r.a.ps of paper for tinder, and then took out an ornate little metal firebox Lowre Cean had gifted to her, decanting some embers from it onto the tinder. Alain was leaning into her shoulder, with an expression suggesting that he was merely examining her efforts, but now almost cheek to cheek.

'My father was a real Mercer, the Monarch's own kind,' he murmured in her ear, 'although he wasn't much interested in teaching his sons. I think it was an excuse to absent himself whenever he wanted.'

'I'm surprised you were allowed to . . . Apprentice yourself?' There was a heat building now, as she fed tinder to the embers.

'Take the oath,' he corrected. 'I was all for running away to Shon Fhor, to swear myself to the Monarch. They had to bar the door and windows to hold me, some nights. So we compromised, as one does. Local Mercers are better than nothing, if you can't quite make it to the Monarch's court. And they still teach you how to make a decent fire.'

As the first flame glowed, uncertain and shy but gaining confidence, she risked a smile and found it answered.

'You, though, you are clearly a great lady of the Lowlands, where they have no Mercers. Where did you learn such a skill?'

'My father taught me what little I know,' she replied, and the words came out without the hesitation attending any earlier mention of Tisamon since his death. And why not, since I'm sharing a fire with Salma or his very image? Why should I be troubled about raising the dead? With Salma at her side, she felt she could face anything, and her fire was now taking very nicely indeed. As she leant forward to blow gently on the flames, it seemed entirely natural for him to brush her hair back out of their way. 'My father, he was . . .' she started, then found herself on the brink of an abyss. How could she describe what Tisamon had been, before the end?

'Weaponsmaster?' Alain said abruptly, starting back from her. For a moment she froze, expecting the bloodstained Mantis shade to manifest itself, but the prince's eyes were now fixed on her neck, where she had strung the badge of her order. The sword-and-circle emblem swung free there, slipping from its hiding place beneath her tunic. There was a silent moment of re-evaluation between them in which certain possibilities demanded the correct distance, a blade's length.

'I never yet heard of a Spider Weaponsmaster,' Alain admitted at last.

Tynisa had almost replied, automatically, He wasn't a Spider, but from the way he had edged back from her after noticing the badge, how much further might he run if he discovered she was a halfbreed too?

'He was a remarkable man,' she stated, and he did not question further. The fire was going merrily by then, but it was just a fire, and they slept with it between them.

Tynisa remained awake for a long time after Alain's eyes had closed, watching his face in the dancing light. Salma, she could see only Salma there. Salma sleeping close enough to touch, as she had never seen him before. They had almost . . . hadn't they? She had not imagined that closeness? Why should he not be startled, be cautious, when something as weighty as a Weaponsmaster's brooch was abruptly dropped into the mix? But he would see past that, she knew, for the Commonweal had its share of them, after all, and it was no pariah's mark. She felt a great, confused knot of emotions surging within her.

Overhead, Lycene's great glittering eyes, which never closed, watched them both.

Castle Leose was in sight, poised on its b.u.t.tress legs above the ca.n.a.l cutting through its valley. The snow had been descending in flurries for a while now, and Lycene's flight suffered from it, the creature fighting against the wind, dipping lower and lower. But now Alain dug his heels in, and the dragonfly fought its way higher into the air, shooting in at a sharp angle to clear the wall. A moment later, Lycene was clinging to the wooden lattice that enclosed the courtyard, the purpose of which now became clear.

It was an easier dismount than out in the cane forest. Alain simply dropped through the lattice with a flick of his wings, and Tynisa followed after him, hanging on by her arms for a moment before letting herself fall.

He had already commandeered a groom, who climbed up to lead Lycene off to wherever such animals were kept. Other servants had rushed inside the castle to announce the heir's arrival, for Leose's seneschal was with them in barely more than a minute. The tall, gaunt Gra.s.shopper-kinden named Lisan Dea came hurrying out to greet them, but stopped with a disapproving stare when she saw Tynisa.

'I see,' she said primly. 'And what do you think your mother will say about this, my prince?'

'She may say what she likes,' Alain replied carelessly. 'We are to have a celebration of my victories over the brigands? Then I may invite who I wish to be my guest. If I wished to bring two Wasp generals and a convicted murderer, then you would find them rooms and show them all due hospitality. Or are you not a steward?'

Tynisa reacted to the word 'murderer' more visibly than Lisan Dea did to any of Alain's words, for not a single twitch or frown marred her long face.

'And she will stand amongst your family's other guests? She will eat and drink and dance with them, will she?' the Gra.s.shopper demanded. Her harsh tone caught Tynisa by surprise. Despite her mistress's distant att.i.tude, she had not guessed that this woman had taken such a dislike to her. Nothing of this had been evident at their last meeting.

'Why not?' was all Alain had to say, a study in boredom, practically rolling his eyes at this servant who dared to rise above herself.

'Does she at least have something fitting to wear?'

'This castle has stood since time began,' Alain replied. 'My family has lived here since the earliest days of the Commonweal. I am sure that there will be something hanging in some storeroom that will suit. Since you are the steward I leave that in your capable hands. Now, no doubt you will acquaint my mother with all that has pa.s.sed between us two, then no doubt I'll be called to her presence to be railed at about filial duty. Might I kindly remind you of your station sufficiently for you to show my guest to suitable chambers, before you run off tattling to your betters?'

A moment's frozen silence was the only sign of Lisan Dea taking offence. 'Of course, my Prince,' she replied smoothly, and even bowed to Tynisa. 'If you would follow me, I shall have your room prepared.'

Tynisa glanced back at him once, but he was already giving instructions to another servant and, a moment later, the confines of Castle Leose closed about her.

The first hall they entered was high-ceilinged and airy, the windows on three sides casting a latticework of sunbeams. The next chamber was lower and darker, and so followed the progression, until Tynisa was forced to ask, 'Where are you leading me?'

Lisan Dea turned to face her and, to Tynisa's surprise, her expression was not simple disdain, but something closer to pity.

'What is your estate, child?' the seneschal asked. 'Are you a Spiderlands Arista? Are you some great lady of the Lowlands, whatever that might signify?'

'The Lowlands doesn't really have "great ladies" like that,' Tynisa muttered defensively, 'but I am the ward of an a.s.sembler.' As she spoke the words, she realized that they meant nothing to the woman.

Lisan Dea shook her head. 'Yet he has brought you here, and asked me to house you and dress you, as if you were of n.o.ble blood. You do not understand, child.'

'I understand only that Alain has chosen to invite me here. I understand what it means to be treated like a guest.'