They landed in front of the two Wasps: two warriors in shimmering mail, and another man who was lean and grey, wearing what Thalric took to be fine clothes of the local cut. Whereas the warriors held swords and were watching the Wasps warily, their leader had eyes only for Che.

Something twitched in the Dragonfly's face, as he studied her, and he said, 'She must be taken before Prince Felipe.'

Thalric exchanged a glance with Varmen. 'Then we must go with her.'

The Dragonfly regarded him narrowly, but nodded agreement at last, and Thalric wondered whether the man simply felt it was too dangerous to leave two Wasp-kinden running loose. 'Send for a stretcher and bearers,' he ordered one of his fellows. 'She must be shown respect.'

At that moment Che awoke, wide-eyed, flinging an arm out as though to protect herself, crying out wordlessly. There were tears in her eyes.

Thalric looked at the Dragonflies to see if this display had diminished their 'respect', but to his surprise he saw that, if anything, they were eyeing Che with a measure of superst.i.tious awe.

Entering Suon Ren, Thalric caught Varmen's eye, and thought he saw a kindred look of recognition on the man's face. For both of them equally, this pure Commonweal architecture must provoke memories of once putting it to the torch.

Their escort took them to the exact centre of the town, a broad area of open s.p.a.ce that must serve as a meeting place or muster or market for the people of Suon Ren. All the locals were staring, perhaps wondering if this was some precursor to further Imperial aggression. The adults' faces were hostile, yet fearful, as though even just two Wasps posed a danger to their entire town. The children, however, pointed and whispered, and soon the oldest of them were exercising their Art wings, seeing who could swoop closest to the dreaded enemy. Some even mimed being seared by stingshot, spiralling from the air to collapse with great theatrics. To Thalric it all seemed in horribly bad taste, from these children who had surely lost relatives in the war.

'We will now take her to the prince,' explained the leader of the escort. 'You will stay here.'

'Now wait where she goes, I go,' Thalric insisted, but the man merely raised an eyebrow. He jerked his head slightly in the direction of the wooden-frame castle on the hill, and Thalric saw that another half-dozen soldiers had appeared from it, with bows in hand.

'You will wait here,' the Dragonfly repeated, as though instructing a slow student. The stretcher-bearers took up their burden once again, and they set off for the castle.

There was just a moment when Thalric thought of going after them, bows or not, but then his common sense rea.s.serted itself. He had no feeling to suggest that the Commonwealers actually meant Che any harm, and perhaps it was sensible for a prince to avoid private audiences with the Wasp-kinden.

Varmen himself sat down, and his pack-beetle drew close and nuzzled at him until he unwrapped a parcel of nuts for it to grind away at. After a while, Thalric joined him, as there seemed little else to do. The adult Commonwealers around them were studiously not paying the strangers too much attention, but at the same time were not dispersing either, each finding some reason to stay within sight of the two Wasps.

'Executions all round, you reckon?' Varmen asked eventually. 'Reckon this prince is one of the fierce ones who're still smarting from the war?'

Thalric shrugged. 'It would make sense. This is the man the Lowlanders approached, when they wanted Commonweal aid against us.'

Varmen grunted. 'Nice to have been told that before.'

'I didn't ask you to come.'

'That'll teach me to do the decent thing,' grumbled Varmen. Deftly, he drew open the beetle's pack and took out his breastplate. 'You up to doing a few buckles? It's a lot quicker with someone helping.'

They're going to shoot us any moment, Thalric suspected, but then reckoned that might be true whatever they did. With that in mind, he turned his back on the Dragonfly archers and helped Varmen on with his armour, finding a certain calming quality in the ritual of latching and tightening wherever the ex-Sentinel directed. Soon enough, Varmen had breast and back armour, pauldrons on his shoulders, ta.s.sets hanging from his belt, the gauntlets on and helm at the ready.

'That'll do,' he decided. 'Besides, they're coming this way.'

Thalric glanced up to see that the soldiers' leader had returned, and now the whole pack were approaching cautiously. He took his stand alongside Varmen, hoping that his copper-weave shirt would turn away a few arrows, if need be. For the first time in a long while, he found himself wishing for some black and gold livery to match the other Wasp's armour.

The Commonwealers stopped short of the Wasps, and Thalric could practically see the ghosts of the Twelve-year War in their eyes. At last, though, their leader said, 'My prince wishes to speak with you,' uttered as though the words were bitter gall.

So it was that two Wasps, armoured and armed, came to visit the court of Felipe Shah.

Thalric had seen enough during the war for Felipe's garden serving as an audience chamber not to surprise him. There were a half-dozen Dragonflies scattered irregularly about it, kneeling in attendance, but it was clear who was the prince and who merely the hangers-on. Felipe Shah had dressed himself formally in robes that were stiff and elaborately embroidered, and edged with plates of gold. Their colours shimmered and changed with his slightest movement and at every shadow or change of the light.

The soldiers and their belligerent leader were obviously intending to stay as close as possible to the Wasps, to forestall any treachery, but the prince shook his head.

'Coren, no,' he said simply, and the archers backed away until they were loitering at the very furthest limit of the castle, a grey area where the open-sided design of the walls muddied who was inside and who was without. The man called Coren retreated to some nook behind his master's back.

For a long time, Prince Felipe Shah just stared at the two Wasps long enough for Thalric to become uncomfortable. He had plenty of history among the Commonwealers, but none of it on a social footing. He had no idea what to expect, or whether this scrutiny was simply considered good form for a Dragonfly-kinden.

At last the man spoke. 'What do you seek here?' His quiet voice sounded weary.

Every kind of grand response marched through Thalric's mind, but all he finally said was, 'Help.'

'The Empire seeks help?' It was said without rancour, indeed almost matter-of-factly.

'I seek help. We are neither of us good sons of the Empire not any more and we seek help for her, not for ourselves.'

'Why here?'

'Because here is where she was going, when . . . when it happened.' It appeared that candour must be the order of the day, but Felipe's reaction proved encouraging, a little of his reserve dropping away.

'Do you know what she is?'

'Cheerwell Maker, the niece of a previous guest of yours or so I'm told,' Thalric replied promptly. 'Your Highness, I don't know what's wrong with her, but . . .' The words would not come, perhaps because of Varmen's solid Apt presence beside him. Felipe Shah did not a.s.sist him either, merely waited. Thalric gritted his teeth, feeling acutely embarra.s.sed to even contemplate coming out with the words.

Khanaphes, he reminded himself. The tunnels, the Masters, all that inexplicable misadventure that we shared there. The Empress, for the world's sake! The Empress, who drinks the blood of slaves and is . . . He shuddered. The Empress, whom Che spoke of, just before it happened. I do not believe, I cannot believe, but even so . . . 'Something unnatural has happened to her,' he got out, the word 'magic' faltering on his tongue. 'She has been . . . attacked in some way.' His expression, if he could have seen it, was mutely appealing, begging the Dragonfly to fill in the gaps without him having to be too explicit.

The prince's eyebrows lifted in surprise. 'Yes, she has,' he admitted. 'My seers have examined her, and they are . . . disturbed.'

'Can you help? Or your . . . seers? Doctors . . . you must have doctors here, of any kind.' There was an edge of desperation in Thalric's voice that he could not prevent.

'They say she has departed her body, and that she is now a ghost,' Felipe Shah informed them.

Thalric felt Varmen shift beside him, his credulity strained to its limits. 'A ghost . . .' he managed. 'But ghosts . . . I've never heard a ghost story where the person wasn't . . . dead.'

'Her body lives for now. But her self has been cut from it, and cannot find its way back. Soon enough the body will die, and she will then be as you suggest.'

'Help her,' Thalric snapped. It sounded almost an order.

Instead of taking offence, Felipe lowered his gaze, considering. He gave a great sigh, as his shoulders sagged slightly. From behind him, the man Coren stepped forward.

'My Prince, no. You know what the seers said, how this girl could pave the way for terrible things. Perhaps it would be best to let matters take their course.'

'And if she is so terrible, will her ghost not be more terrible still?' Felipe murmured. 'There are enough ghosts clinging to me already, Coren, without adding one more. And she is Maker Stenwold's niece, and there is a debt there.' Abruptly he looked up again, meeting Thalric's gaze. 'My seers can do nothing, because they fear her, and their skills are of a different nature. To call her self back, you must find someone skilled in speaking to the ghosts of the fallen, for that is what she has become, whether her body still breathes or not.'

'You are saying that you cannot help her, then,' Thalric stated flatly.

'I keep none about my court gifted at speaking with the dead,' Felipe said softly. 'I have no wish to hear such a clamour of voices, for there are too many I would recognize.' His penetrating gaze fixed on the two Wasps, and Varmen shuffled uncomfortably. 'Those who come to my door offering such services are turned away. Perhaps they do not go far. Coren,' and his seneschal was at his elbow, ready for orders.

'You know the woman I mean,' Felipe instructed him. 'Some tendays ago she came, and was refused entry. Unless you have grown slack, you will have a good idea of where she has gone.'

'Peddling her trade about your villages, I think,' Coren replied. 'I was not sure . . . but you had never forbidden it.'

'I would not deny to others whatever comfort the words of ghosts can bring,' the prince told him philosophically. 'Find the woman and bring her here.'

They had placed Che in another garden chamber, open to the sky, and also to the horizon on two sides. Seeing her laid out there, surrounded by spring flowers, Thalric felt a lurch of emotion inside of him. And they have sent for some kind of mystic undertaker. Is she . . .? He could see her breast rise and fall with shallow breathing, but death seemed to hang about her, as though only waiting for the right moment.

The idea of placing her fate and my fate! into the hands of some raddled old hag, some morbid chanting charlatan, disgusted him. Have they no doctors? Part of him railed at it, but experiencing the inexplicable had made inroads enough into his mind that he did not truly believe mere medicine would carry the day: not the herbs and poultices of Commonwealer healers, nor good Imperial surgery.

Varmen joined him later. The big Wasp looked sober and thoughtful as he stripped his armour off again.

'Not under threat any more? Or are the odds so bad that the armour wouldn't help?' Thalric needled him, needing something to take his mind off other things.

Varmen just shrugged. 'I reckon your woman's on her way the ghost-talking one, I mean.'

Thalric nodded morosely. 'If this doesn't work . . .'

'What, waving her arms around and talking to spirits and magic, not work? What are the odds on that?' Varmen's smile was weak. 'Curse me, but I remember the last year of the war, you know? 'Wealer armies bunching up to defend Shon Fhor, and leaving all their civilians behind them, villages and towns full of them ripe for the Slave Corps . . . We were first in, a couple of times. You'd find them on their knees around some sage or seer or magic-maker, begging their spirits to do something, to protect them from us. You'd find tens of them, hundreds even, singing and dancing and chanting, and then we'd walk in, us heavy-armour lads, and they'd go quiet one by one, then all of 'em. If we could see who their wizard-type was, orders were to shoot 'em dead. The rest would cave in soon enough after that. You could see it in their faces, like you'd just come and tilted their world on its side. And now nothing worked like they thought it should, poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.'

'And now we seem to need to tilt it back again,' Thalric said wryly, just as Coren came marching in with a couple of his glittering soldiers, and also a woman.

In that moment, it was clear to Thalric that n.o.body had explained to the necromancer what she was being brought to Suon Ren for, and that the seneschal had not only copied but actually intensified his prince's dislike of the breed. The expression on the woman's face was that of a prisoner on her way to an execution, and seeing a pair of Wasp-kinden there did not change it.

She was not what Thalric had expected: not a crone, nor even a Dragonfly-kinden. She was considerably younger than he was, and her skin was a curious shade: pale underlain with lead-grey highlights, so that she herself looked half a corpse already. Her face was narrow, and her eyes held no irises at all, just pinpoint pupils amidst a pale field. She was a slender creature, dressed in a robe that had seen much darning, her dark hair streaked messily with white and hanging raggedly about her shoulders. There was an empty scabbard attached to her belt, for a short-bladed sword, and she clutched a travelling pack.

Thalric guessed that some conjoining of Moth, Roach and Mantis inheritance had led to this particular miscegenation. How many flavours of mystic nonsense am I getting, combined in this one woman? He awaited the inevitable outpouring of curses, benedictions and portentous threats that all these quacksalvers seemed to come out with.

Instead, the seneschal gave the woman a shove towards where Che was laid out, and she rounded on him as soon as she was out of arm's reach.

'What do you want, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d lackey? Selling me to the Empire, is it?'

'Make her well,' the Dragonfly ordered her. 'The prince demands it.'

The necromancer looked rebellious. 'The prince didn't want my skills a few days ago. How about I tell him he can go -'

Coren's hand went for his sword, but Thalric stepped forward pointedly, making them both flinch. 'I'll take it from here,' he announced. The Dragonfly seneschal stared at him, blankly hostile, then turned on his heel and left, his men following him.

The halfbreed woman hugged her satchel and eyed the Wasps doubtfully. 'So, what?' she asked, sneaking a glance at Che. 'She's not dead. What am I supposed to do with someone who's not dead?'

Thalric forbore to ask what she might have done with a corpse, had one been offered. 'Examine her,' he instructed. 'They said you could help.'

'They say a lot of things.' The woman was already retreating. 'This isn't anything to do with me. I'm not the woman for it.'

Bitterness rose inside Thalric and he advanced on her angrily. 'Is that what the mystics of the Commonweal have come to? You're not even going to make a few pa.s.ses in the air and then vomit out some ambiguous prediction? Come on, you might at least go through the motions, woman or what's a charlatan for?' After just a few steps, he had backed her into a corner, trampling over Felipe's flowers. 'Because they claimed you could help, and now I'm cursed if I have anyone else to turn to. They said her self had been cut loose, whatever that's supposed to mean, and all I know is that something struck her down, and I can't tell what's wrong, and it might as well be . . .' He realized that he had her by the shoulders, in a grip that must surely have hurt, and was staring her right in the face, and about to do who could know what.

Her expression had gone from alarm to calm acceptance, and now to curiosity. 'Magic?' she whispered.

Feeling suddenly defeated, Thalric let her go and stomped back over to Che. 'Why not?' he asked. 'What's left except lies like that? Why not magic?'

'My name is Maure, sir,' she told him. 'Will you pay me for my work?'

He turned back to her, frowning. 'What sort of magician are you?'

'One that has to eat,' she stated. 'And there's no payment promised by Prince Felipe, and living off the grat.i.tude of princes is like to leave me hungry, in any event.'

'Recover Che and I'll pay you,' he told her gruffly. 'And no "sirs". We're neither of us in the army any more. I'm Thalric, that's Varmen, she's Cheerwell Maker.'

Maure approached Che's body almost casually at first, but then she flinched back, eyebrows vanishing under her uneven fringe. 'Oh, now,' she murmured, 'what am I looking at? What did they do to her?'

'The consensus of the prince's seers was that she represents some kind of menace best destroyed, or so the steward said,' Thalric said acidly.

'Is that the truth?' Maure wondered. 'Well, then, I should do my best to bring her back to herself as quickly as possible, if only because it will annoy that man so. Now, you two, sirs, give me room and time to work, and don't expect too much too soon, sirs and, yes, I know you said not to call you that, sirs but, as a halfbreed and a woman and a Commonwealer to boot, I've not enjoyed the best experiences with any of your people, so you'll appreciate if I keep myself on the windy side of civil.'

Twenty-Six.

The hall of Leose was busy now, far more so even than when the young n.o.bles had danced here. Salme Ela.s.s was holding her council of war.

She held pride of place, with Alain sitting to her left, and Isendter Whitehand to her right, whilst the seneschal, Lisan Dea, hovered in attendance behind. Around the room she had a.s.sembled many of those same aristocrats that had been hunting the stag, together with their own champions, their war leaders and headmen of their retinues.

Ela.s.s watched the Lowlander take her place. Telse Orian gave the new arrival a companionable nod, and young Chevre Velienn was scowling at her as an upstart, but Tynisa ignored them both. Partly that was because the girl's attention was directed instead at Ela.s.s's son, who was, after all, the hook that the princess had caught her on. There was more, though, for there was a casual arrogance about the girl suggesting that opinions of the a.s.sembled n.o.bility were now beneath her notice.

In truth, it is a shame that she is a Lowlander. Were she of our kinden, and of halfway decent blood, then perhaps she might make a good match for Alain after all. He could profit from being taught that kind of self-a.s.surance.

Almost directly across from Ela.s.s sat Lowre Cean, with some of his own people about him. Tynisa's chosen seat placed her on the periphery of his influence, which was fitting enough, for she was the thread by which Ela.s.s had hauled the old man in, after all.

She surveyed the mustered war leaders and let her wings shimmer a moment about her shoulders, her signal that she was about to speak. 'You all know why I have gathered you here,' she addressed them. 'Elas Mar has suffered grievous incursions from the lordless lands to our south. For a long time that wilderness has been a breeding ground for bandits and killers, and yet nothing has been done. For reasons I cannot guess at, our Prince-Major has not deigned to purge those lands of their lawless inhabitants. So now my villages are burned, my people killed, and I cannot sit idle. We have a force here that is superior to the brigands in discipline, and whose cause is just. We will drive them from Elas Mar, and then we will scour their own territory of them, so they shall find no rest and no home. I shall take back these lawless lands on behalf of the Monarch.'

'And the Monarch will recognize your efforts, Princess?' Lowre Cean asked sardonically. 'And what has Felipe Shah to say about this?'

'I have sent to him for aid,' Ela.s.s returned, quite calmly. 'Our prince has written to me: he declines to come. He will not support us, for all our cause is plainly a righteous one.'

'And does he give any reason?'

Ela.s.s considered the terse missive she had received back from her liege, the Prince-Major. 'None,' she said, which was both true and false. Suffice to say that half of Felipe Shah's reasons had been incomprehensible, the other half anathema.

There was a pause, into which Lowre was clearly being invited to add something more, but he held his peace.

Ela.s.s nodded. 'Our southern border is heavily wooded, and the brigands take advantage of this to more easily cross into and out of our lands. Already four villages have suffered their depredations. That is where we must meet them: we must scout them even as they venture forth to raid. We must follow them back to their dens. We must drive them from the trees and ever southwards. We must capture their leaders, kill any that follow them. We will deliver the Monarch's justice that these wretches believe is sleeping.' Again she glanced at Lowre Cean. 'Does our strategist have any wise counsel? Your victories against the Wasps are well remembered.'

'I am not your strategist,' Lowre said tiredly. 'Make your own plans.'

Ela.s.s's mouth tightened into a thin line. 'My son will fly for the border, taking with him a band of our best, to deliver a message to these criminals that they will clearly understand. He will make a severe example of whoever he can catch. By the time our main force has joined him, the bandits shall no doubt have lost their stomach for the fight. And I believe, Prince Cean, there is one amongst your household who wishes to accompany Alain.'

Lowre Cean's face was stony, but he said nothing.

'Maker Tynise,' Ela.s.s named the girl, 'you see here beside me my champion.' A nod towards Isendter, who had knelt motionless throughout. 'My son will lead the attack on these villains. Will you be his huntress, his champion, when he does so?'