Che shivered at that suggestion. 'But that still doesn't explain-'

'It's not the actual requests I mind,' Maure spoke over her. 'Trawling for someone's dead husband, or someone's lost child, there's a science to that and I almost enjoy it. But all the rest of the time . . . all the rest of the time it's just hearing the whispers, the fragmentary voices, the odds and ends of memory, the wasted splinters of other people's lives. The world is full of the husks of the dead, and they all talk to me, and I can't blot them out.'

Che just watched her now, waiting to hear more.

'They went quiet when you woke up, though,' Maure whispered, trying to find her smile again. 'I can't hear a single one of the wretched, abandoned b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. A whole ghost, well, that's different. I reckon it wouldn't be so in awe of you. But the chaff, all that disintegrating chaff, you brush it away because of what they gave you what they gave to you and her.'

Che felt her hand rise to touch her forehead, without knowing why until she realized that Maure's gaze had led her there.

'What do you see?' she demanded, but the woman merely shook her head and would not say.

For a long while they sat in silence, during which Thalric turned over twice, threatening to wake again. Maure mustered a shamefaced grin, but it convinced neither of them. At last she said, 'Ask your question.'

'I was haunted,' Che told her. 'The ghost . . . I thought it was the ghost of my lover, but it wasn't. It was a Mantis-kinden I had once known, and the Masters of Khanaphes cut him from me and set him loose in the world. And now he's poisoning my sister, and I have to stop him, and . . .'

Maure nodded. 'Ask it,' she urged.

'My lover, he died . . .' Che said, realizing how she was stating the obvious, yet surprised to find the pain so raw and immediate, after so much time and distance. 'He . . . I was with him, in a way, but I never had the chance to speak to him, to say goodbye, to say . . .' She clenched her fists. 'Would you . . . could you . . .?'

Maure's grin failed, and she was now nodding grimly. 'I could hardly refuse a request from someone like you, now, could I? But let that wait until we reach Elas Mar, at least. Let me find some place there that I can fortify and protect. Let me . . . let me have this journey without ghosts, Cheerwell Maker.'

'Call me Che.' The Beetle reached out and put a hand on the necromancer's arm. Then Varmen's snoring ceased, and the Wasp was stretching, yawning. And Che backed off as Maure sat down again beside him.

Four nights later, they ran into the bandits.

It was so much a meeting of chance that it was almost embarra.s.sing. Varmen laid a small fire, as on each night previously, but by the time he had it going they had all spotted another fire through the trees, a hundred yards away or so, and the makers of that fire had by now surely spotted theirs. There followed a hasty discussion about the virtues of fleeing further into the woods at night, of awaiting whatever might befall them, or of confronting the other fire and its owners. In the end, Che was the only one amongst them advocating anything other than confrontation, so she gave in with bad grace.

After a little preparation, they set off in that direction, knowing that their opposite numbers had been given ample time to prepare.

Che, Maure and Thalric proceeded first, approaching the campfire as obviously as they could, finding just two men there, neither of them locals, and with three horses tied nearby. One was a squat Scorpion-kinden, and a loaded crossbow lay beside him as he ostentatiously burned a hunk of bread in the flames. The other was a solid-looking Wasp-kinden man with dark hair, who was watching their approach bright-eyed.

'I swear I'm meeting more Wasps here in the Commonweal than I ever did in the Empire,' Che murmured.

Thalric stopped within range of their firelight, having counted the horses, and Maure leant in to say to him, 'The third is in the trees to your right. He has a bow.'

He nodded, then announced, 'We seem to be neighbours for this night, so perhaps it would make sense if we shared the same fire.' They had already discussed this, and it seemed marginally safer to have their opposite numbers where they could see them, rather than out in the dark planning who-knew-what.

'There's logic to that,' the dark Wasp conceded. 'You have food?'

'Some,' Thalric returned. 'We're no danger to you, so perhaps your friend could come and join us.'

The two men exchanged glances, and the Scorpion shrugged his broad shoulders. 'Come on out, Soul,' he said. A moment later a tall, angular man glided out of the darkness, his face expressionless. He was Gra.s.shopper-kinden and, tall as he was, his bow was taller, an arrow fitted to the string, but pointing towards the ground.

'They've a friend also, a big man still out there in the dark,' said the Gra.s.shopper.

The Wasp raised an eyebrow. 'Is that so?' He reached down beside him, retrieving something from under a blanket. It took Che a moment to recognize that the object now resting across his knees was a nailbow, a weapon she would not have expected to find in the Commonweal.

Thalric nodded, recognizing this game of escalation when he saw it. He opened his mouth to call out, but Varmen was already responding to his cue and strode out of the darkness to back up his fellows. They had decked him out in all his armour, and for a moment the three strangers just stared at him. Probably the nailbow bolts could have pierced his mail, some of them at least, but it was clear that the dark-haired Wasp knew a Sentinel when he saw one, and he reacted in almost superst.i.tious awe.

'Well,' the man said at last. 'I reckon you won that round.' He set the nailbow back down, though still within easy reach. 'I've not seen one of your kind since the Twelve-year War.'

'Not since you deserted, you mean?' asked Thalric, sitting down by their fire as though he had just taken possession of it.

The Wasp's face showed that he was about to make a retort, but the Scorpion's sudden snicker took the wind out of him. 'I reckon we're none of us here with the Emperor's orders in our packs,' he stated.

Che had been watching the three carefully, and something tugged at her notice: nothing she could put a name to, but she was abruptly sure that there was a fourth one somewhere. It was hinted in the way that they sat, something implicit in their placement.

'Your other friend might as well come out,' she said pleasantly, 'now that we're all getting on so well.' She saw the Scorpion-kinden's eyes shift and she drew her sword smoothly, pointing it behind her in the direction he had glanced. 'Or is that not the case?'

For a moment everyone was very still, but then the Scorpion grunted, holding out a hand. A moment later, something surged from the undergrowth to let him run clawed fingers over its segmented carapace. It was a fine specimen, Che considered, perhaps two-thirds the bulk of its master, its claws looking well able to scissor a man's leg off at the knee, and the needle point of its sting was swaying suspiciously as if regarding the newcomers.

'Scutts,' the Scorpion gestured with one talon. 'Barad Ygor,' he added, pointing to himself. The Wasp was Mordrec, the Gra.s.shopper Soul Je.

Introductions made, the two groups of travellers settled down about the single campfire, watching each other very carefully. Varmen remained in his armour, a hulking presence weighing down the corners of everyone's attention.

Che busied herself with sorting out some food, readying a pot for boiling, reckoning that such signs of unconcerned activity would go some way to allaying suspicions. Soon enough, she saw Thalric and Varmen fall into cautious talk with the dark-haired Wasp-kinden, but before long they had broken off and retreated back to silence around the fire, to the other man's obvious chagrin. She shifted over to ask, out of the corner of her mouth, 'What is it? Something wrong?'

Thalric gave a derisive snort. 'Slave Corps,' he muttered, as if that explained everything.

'What, still?'

'He used to be.'

Che gave Thalric a level look. 'And you're in a position to care?' she demanded, still trying to keep her voice to a whisper, but failing somewhat.

'You wouldn't understand,' he told her, and he grimaced even as he said it, realizing how unwise the words were. Immediately, Che was storming over to the three travellers, aggressively enough for them to scrabble for their weapons.

'You,' she pointed at Mordrec. 'You enslave people much these days?'

'Not me.' He looked at her levelly. 'In fact my current troubles are more to do with too much pursuit of freedom.'

Che glanced back at Thalric and Varmen. 'Then stop being so stupid, the pair of you.' To make her point she sat down beside Mordrec, hooking her pot over the fire. 'Why did you leave the army, then?'

He blinked at the question, then shrugged. 'Killed a Rekef man. An officer.'

Thalric had the grace to smile slightly at that. 'There's a coincidence.'

'And the debts,' Ygor muttered. 'What he's not telling you is how he owed the man money. Don't go taking him for some kind of hero.'

'Well maybe we should get on to what you and Soul did,' Mordrec retaliated, whereupon Ygor held his hands up hurriedly.

'All right, you're a hero. The less said about us mere mortals the better, especially as that business could still come back and bite us.'

Other people's histories, thought Che, noticing significant looks pa.s.s between the men, and knowing that she would never find out. She lifted her eyes to the third member of their band, and found him staring at her.

'What?' she asked.

'I don't know,' the Gra.s.shopper replied softly. 'Something, though.'

Ygor and Mordrec would be Apt, of course. She wondered if Soul Je just had particularly good sight, or whether all the Inapt would end up staring at her like that, trying to work out what had marked her out in their eyes.

Later, she sought out Maure's company again, after Thalric and all three of the travellers had bedded down, leaving just Varmen and the scorpion Scutts staring at each other over the fire. The halfbreed woman was plainly about to seek sleep herself, but she sat up again as Che approached.

'These three,' the Beetle girl murmured. 'Any ghosts there?'

'Hah, it's strange,' Maure replied. 'They share one, but it's not a dead man's. You can be haunted by the living in a strange sort of way, as you yourself have cause to know. They'd rather be elsewhere, maybe even not in each other's company, but I can see the same hand rests on each of them. Loyalty to a living friend can haunt you as much as the ghost of a dead one.'

The next morning the two travelling parties parted company, and Che would not see any of the three again until much later, and in much-changed circ.u.mstances.

Thirty.

There was precious little cover out here, and Dal and his followers were lying low in a copse of twisted trees, an old orchard gone wild decades ago. Had the Mercers been scouring the sky above them, then this mob of brigands would have been discovered almost at once even under cover of night, for there were more than fifty of them, filling the s.p.a.ce between the trees to bursting. The Salmae's hunters were not here, however. They were further south, which could mean one of two things, depending on who was in control.

Either they've cut us off from our retreat into Rhael, Dal considered, or we've stolen a march on them. So far, the skirmishing between Dal's people and the Salmae had lasted over three ten-days, with a dozen vicious. .h.i.t-and-run engagements, ambushes and surprise attacks from the bandits punctuating a history in which the Salmae's Mercers chased all over the RhaelElas Mar border, trying to pin them down. Their conflict to date had been so mobile that Dal reckoned neither side could be sure who had the advantage in numbers. Dal's people were split into smaller groups, because it would have been impossible to feed them otherwise, and so, of necessity, the hunters had split up as well, to try and contain them. The only numbers that mattered at any given time were those who were in evidence here and now.

The Mercers were better equipped, Dal knew, even if their luckless levy of peasants was not. If Dal had met them toe to toe, fighting them with honour and dignity, then those iridescent suits of armour, their masterworked swords and man-length recurved bows would carry the day swiftly. Not only were his own followers just a rabble under arms, but they had no stomach for a hard fight either. They had not signed on to die for him, just to get rich and fill their bellies. The Mercers, on the other hand, were relentless, and their peasant troops were just as scared of Salmae retribution as they were of Dal's arrows.

And yet we're not losing. It was hard to claim whether they were actually winning, in this chaotic shifting battlefield, but the simple fact that the Salmae had been unable to tie them down or force them into a serious battle seemed a victory in itself. Dal had lived the last few years in and around Siriell's Town, jostling for power with the other bandit chiefs and sporadically wooing Siriell herself, playing his part in the chaotic running of that renegade province, which had depended wholly on the relative strengths of the major players there. Throughout this time, he had known that the people north of Rhael considered him their enemy.

A fair proportion of the population of seven villages had now turned out to swell the ranks of his followers. Several had burned their own homes. The mere appearance of Dal's people seemed to spark off a madness of new horizons, people who had known nothing but gruelling work and taxation suddenly seeing for the first time another way. For Dal, the experience was like being carried away by a river current, but carried towards a destination that had never been within reach before. He knew, from personal experience, that a peasant's life was hard, and that the privations of the war had only made it harder, but the people of Elas Mar had been living on the wrong side of poverty for years now as the Salmae settled their war debts through t.i.the and appropriation, without deigning to suffer privation themselves.

It would not be true to say that the people here wanted revenge, but they did want freedom. It took a desperate kind of squinting to mistake rule by brigands for that, but these were desperate times.

The thought kept occurring to Dal Arche now: What if we win? Would he set himself up as a local prince, put on the tyrant's shoes and simply continue the way of the world, armed with everything n.o.ble but a bloodline? And what would the Prince-Major do about that? Reports suggested he had refused to come to the Salmae's aid, and certainly none of his people had been seen yet, but that might change quickly if Dal started getting too many airs.

Well, I'm about to push my luck. There was another village right ahead of them, and on the far horizon the moon picked out the crooked silhouette of Castle Leose. After avoiding the most recent attempt by the Salmae to entrap him, Dal had decided against leading his people back south. Instead, while his enemies hunted for him at the border of Rhael, he had gathered this band of desperadoes and taken them north, to within sight of the Salmae's stronghold, albeit still the most distant sight possible.

'He's coming back,' someone muttered, and Dal saw a figure hurrying no, running from the village outskirts towards the copse. It was his unofficial amba.s.sador, a renegade Spider-kinden who called himself Avaris, and who had practised a variety of confidence tricks and crooked games up and down the Imperial border until he had alienated so many powerful people that he had been forced to flee into the Commonweal. He was a fast talker, though, and very protective of his own skin, which was why Dal had picked him.

'Speak,' he instructed as Avaris reached the cover of the trees.

'They're up in arms but not for us,' the Spider replied shortly. 'They'll have sent someone with news for the castle. I told you this was a bad idea.'

Dal did not reply, but took a moment to consider how he felt about this development. There was a plan for this sort of reception, of course, but recently the peasantry of Elas Mar had offered him a run of easy victories. His banditry had virtually been sleeping in its scabbard, but now he was put to draw it forth once again.

'What do they think?' he asked.

'That the Salmae will protect them,' Avaris reported. 'I told you that, this close to the castle . . .'

'I know,' Dal cut him off, because he had seen all this before. Closer to a castle, the peasants were less discontented, the headmen hailing from families that had served thus for generations. They had grown to love the boot on their neck. The headman of Dal's own village had been the same way, no doubt.

'Pull back?' Avaris prompted.

'They're well armed? Well defended?'

'Spears and staves.'

Dal turned to address the rest of his followers, who had been following this exchange intently. 'You may have had some illusions about what we're here for,' he told them, his voice just loud enough to be heard by them all. 'Some of you have been telling stories, from the old times, about peasant heroes, about good deeds and just causes.' He knew it was so. The conflict so far had sufficed to give their venture the illusion of righteousness. 'You all remember the war. Many of you fought in it. There's not a one of you that hasn't known friend or family that's ended up a corpse on some battlefield or other. Well, know this: the Wasp Empire killed off the old times. The Wasp Empire put paid to all that talk of heroes. Where were those heroes when the Wasps scythed us down in our hundreds?' He heard his voice shake slightly, and brought his emotions to heel. 'Our glorious n.o.bility will tell each other that they were heroes, dying to defend their people, but for each one of them that fell, there was a carpet of our dead to cushion them. We're no heroes but, for all that, they've shown us they've no right to lord it over us, and those that uphold their d.a.m.ned right to do so can burn.'

He watched their faces. He did not consider himself any great leader of men, but he was leader enough to keep hold of a group like this.

Without another word he turned away and strung his bow in one smooth motion. A moment later he was out of the trees, his wings flaring into being to coast him towards the village and soon his b.l.o.o.d.y-handed retinue was following.

They coursed uphill towards the village outskirts, and Dal knew that if the headman had made swift preparations, then they would meet a fence of spear points at the summit. But there were no defenders, no attempt to stop them. Maybe they're with us, after all?

Looking ahead towards the village's heart he saw a confused gaggle of men, women and children. They were Gra.s.shopper- and Dragonfly-kinden, most of them unarmed and many only partly dressed, blinking in the moonlight as their headman addressed them in moderate tones, not shouting or ordering. And Dal Arche saw the headman look across as the front-runners in the bandit charge pelted in amongst the houses, with torches and blades. The man's face fell apart, that was the only way Dal could think about it. He was an old Dragonfly whose whole life must have been spent in this same village. When the war came, Dal would put money on it, the Salmae had instructed him on who to send off to fight, and told him to stay here safe with his family. Here was a man who trusted implicitly the traditional order that set him over his fellows, and under his betters. He knew that Leose would protect him, and did not have it in him to credit Avaris. He had dismissed the garrulous Spider-kinden as a mere trickster.

Run, thought Dal, even as he plucked back his bowstring, and some of the villagers were running. The mothers, the fathers, those who had the most immediate things to protect, they began breaking free of the headman's spell, even as the old man continued to urge them to stay where they were. But not all of them were running; some were turning to fight. Others just stood staring, mesmerized by the certainty in the old man's voice, as he kept croaking on at them despite the shock fragmenting his lined features.

Dal put his first arrow between the headman's wide eyes and counted it as a mercy to the village as a whole, as more people started fleeing.

Lycene banked over the smoke, and then cut a wide arc around the ruined village's perimeter. Astride the insect's back, Alain looked down, with Tynisa clinging to his waist.

She had risen in the ranks of the Salmae's soldiers since the fighting had started. The peasant levy now regarded her with almost superst.i.tious awe, for she never flinched from bloodshed, never feared, never retreated. The brigands had learned to recognize her, too, and her arrival would sometimes send them fleeing even before she drew steel. Those that were bold enough to go up against her, she slew, or her flickering rapier cut their arrows from the air as she sped closer and closer.

But she could be in only one place at a time, whilst the brigands always seemed to be everywhere, or elsewhere. When Salme Ela.s.s led her forces down en ma.s.se, the bandits would be gone, or some small pocket of them all that could be found. Meanwhile they would strike somewhere else, not defending any of their gains but making daring inroads into Elas Mar Province like this pillaging, burning and murdering even within sight of Leose Castle.

The Salmae kept a dozen dragonflies trained to carry a rider, and they were all of them deployed now, scouring the ground below for signs of the bandits. There had been some successes, and only a few days ago a mob of thirty ruffians were cut down to a man, after Alain had spotted them from above. Most of the time, however, the brigands were in and out of the trees, following shadowed and hidden roads to seek out their prey.

'There,' Tynisa snapped, squeezing Alain tighter with one arm as she pointed. He took a moment to read her direction, then nudged Lycene with his knees, propelling the insect across the speeding ground. In the first pa.s.s he missed them, but at Tynisa's insistence he swung back, before spotting a score of figures hurrying across between stands of trees. No doubt these were the very villains who had set the fires.

Alain gestured in the direction they had come from: We must fetch help.

She leant close and spoke in his ear. 'Set me down.'

He glanced back at her, so that for a moment they were almost kissing. Tynisa felt her blood race. Almost. I almost have him. Perhaps I shall win him with this deed. She had been bold in the fray, since finding her new purpose, and none bolder. She knew that Alain and his mother had both been impressed by her fury and her skill, the many lives she had taken in their names. Surely her success was working on Alain's mind, in this b.l.o.o.d.y wooing. He could not but acknowledge her as the perfect partner, predatory and loyal as any Mantis-kinden should be.

'You're sure?' he said.

Does he have to ask? 'Set me down,' she repeated. 'I shall trail them, track them. Bring on your n.o.bles and your levy as fast as you may, you shall find me there.'

His grin sent fire flashing through her, and then he was guiding Lycene down, far enough to avoid watching eyes but close enough for Tynisa to soon regain the enemy.

'Good hunting,' he said.

For a moment she wanted to tell him, For you, I do this for you, but he must know her by her actions, not by hollow words. Then she had slipped off the dragonfly's back, while the insect hovered just clear of the ground, and a second later Alain was darting back for the skies and she was alone.

She entered the woods, slipping from shadow to shadow with her sword eager in her hand, like some trained beast that she had often hunted alongside. Her feet did not falter: some additional sense told her just where her quarry was, as though a guiding hand led her this way and that to pick up their trail. Before long she could hear them: a score of men and women doing their best to be quiet, and she skulked silently closer, the woods they relied on now betraying them by hiding her from them.

They were laden with sacks, and she saw a few handcarts, the spoils from the latest ruined village being hauled southwards as fast as could be. If they were intercepted by the Salmae's forces, she knew they would abandon the loot without a second thought. They were still being called bandits by the angry n.o.bility, but such pillaging seemed to have become secondary to them, as if pride of place in their plans went to resisting their lawful masters.