'There are those who might use my services here? The lady of the house, perhaps?' Maure enquired, as though simply having turned up there as a solitary vagabond.

'Not the lady, I think,' Lisan Dea replied, 'but there are others, nonetheless.' She had clearly somehow recognized the services that Maure could provide, and there was a hint of some small tragedy written in her features, some impenetrable loss that Che would never dare ask about, and that Maure would never report. The Gra.s.shopper nodded suddenly, gathering her composure about her like a cloak. 'You are welcome here, Maure, for the gifts you bring. You are welcome, Cheerwell Maker, as the sister of our guest. Your companions are not so welcome, however.'

Che opened her mouth to protest, but the Gra.s.shopper held up one lean finger. 'They will be lodged with other servants of the Salmae.'

'Go,' Thalric suggested. 'Do what you've come to do and then we'll be well rid of this place.'

Stepping into the shadow of the Commonwealer castle caused an almost physical shock, so that Che was forced to clutch at Maure's arm, feeling disoriented by the shift between what she saw and what she felt. That it was daylight outside, channelled in by the high windows, seemed to be denied by every part of her but her eyes. That the high-vaulted ceilings made the halls beneath airy and s.p.a.cious, her senses insisted was false, a mere gloss. She felt as though she was entombed underground. She felt as though those lofty arches were not for the convenience of a flying kinden, but simply to accommodate ponderous forms of much greater stature than herself, and that these Commonwealers were merely living in their discarded sh.e.l.ls.

In short, although the design was as different as several hundred miles of distance, and perhaps several centuries of time, could account for, she felt that she already knew the builders of this place. Their presence, even the last decaying sc.r.a.ps of it, oppressed her. Of all the kinden of the world, and of all the secrets of history, she'd had enough of them.

She glanced at Maure, but it was impossible to tell whether the necromancer recognized her disquiet. In front of Lisan Dea, the mystic was all business.

'Your sister came to us at the start of winter, from Suon Ren,' the Gra.s.shopper was saying. She had deliberately slowed her long-legged pace to let Che keep up, but because of that she seemed to be watching always from the corner of her eye, reading every least twitch of Che's features. The Beetle girl made a dutiful show of listening.

'It seemed she was not in favour, and had little to offer us, nor did she know our ways or how to behave. It seemed that would be the end of it, and that the spring would see her dispatched back to the Lowlands.' Lisan Dea recited the words neutrally, taking no side.

'This has changed, then?' Che put in, because she felt it was expected of her.

'After winter she demonstrated talents that fit the times,' the seneschal replied. 'So she is in favour, so long as those times last.'

Talents that fit the times. Under Tisamon's tutelage Tynisa had devoted herself to one particular talent and, now that the man's ghost was guiding her through this time of conflict, the seneschal's words were not difficult to understand. 'She was always skilled,' she managed. The presence of Tynisa, through walls of stone, seemed palpably closer, and Che was wondering what manner of reception she might receive. What would the ghost drive her sister to do?

Then the Gra.s.shopper made an abrupt turn, leading her guests through an arched door flanked by tapestries of red and gold and there was Tynisa.

The room she stood in was lit by oblique shafts of light descending from windows cut high into one wall, a light so crisp and clear that Che wondered whether guests were only received in this chamber at this one particular time. The rush matting on the floor, left mostly in shadow, spoke of martial practice. At the far end of the room stood Tynisa herself, where the floor stepped up to a raised platform from which instructors had no doubt guided their charges through their paces.

She was not alone, though. A Dragonfly-kinden man was speaking softly in her ear, and Che had the impression that Tynisa must have just completed some fencing pa.s.ses on the floor. He seemed young to be a mentor, though, and stood too close, so for a moment Che hovered awkwardly in the doorway, realizing that she was intruding, hesitant to press on and yet even less willing to lose this opportunity.

Then Lisan Dea was stalking across the room, and the Dragonfly looked up and took a step away. The Gra.s.shopper seneschal practically radiated an icy disapproval directed, in so far as Che could tell, solely at the man.

There was something curiously familiar about him, now that Che saw his face: some pa.s.sing likeness that she felt she should recognize. Then the Gra.s.shopper had drawn him aside and hissed something in his ear, and his crooked grin transformed into incredulity as he stared down the length of the room towards Che.

That was it, she suddenly realized: he looked a little like Salma, or at least more than most young Dragonfly men did. Given where they all were, he must be some manner of relative.

Then, without ceremony, Lisan Dea was shepherding him out of the room. Che could not see his expression as he gazed back briefly at Tynisa, but his parting look at the Beetle herself was nothing short of contemptuous, making plain his surprise that this woman could claim a sisterhood with that one.

Maure had hung back no, Maure had ducked out of sight entirely and was now gone from her side. Unexpectedly, after the varied escorts Che had enjoyed since leaving Khanaphes, she was left alone with Tynisa.

She approached, skirting the edge of the fighting mat as if it was the ground of the Prowess Forum in Collegium. From her elevated position, Tynisa watched her closely, and there was nothing in her face or stance that recognized Che at all. Her expression was bleak as winter, and her hand hovered near her sword. Che was no great warrior, scarcely a warrior at all, but as she drew near she became acutely aware of an invisible circle about Tynisa dictated by the broad reach of her blade, and that to cross into it uninvited would be fatal.

In that stance, in that arch expression, it was Tisamon who stood before her, or part of him at least. That segment of the Mantis-kinden which had been so devoted to Che's uncle Stenwold was repressed or excised, along with those few times he had smiled or laughed, or shown himself something like human. Instead this was a sharp-edged and brittle creature of skill and bloodl.u.s.t that was poised to strike at her, the same despairing figure of tragedy that had dashed itself to death against its love for the Dragonfly Felise Mienn, as Mantis heroes were traditionally wont to do.

Then something flickered in the girl's eyes that owed nothing to that thousand years of dark and b.l.o.o.d.y heritage, and she said, 'Che?'

'No other,' the Beetle replied, edging closer and feeling that circle around Tynisa flex as she touched it, like a tripwire, and then vanish, the danger gone as if it had never been. Feeling as though she had been given permission, Che stepped forward and embraced her near-sister.

'What are you doing here?' Tynisa asked of her, not annoyed as Che had antic.i.p.ated, only wondering.

'Looking for you,' she explained. 'You disappeared, remember?'

'Yes, yes, I did,' Tynisa agreed. 'And if you'd found me just a few months ago, I'd not have been grateful for it, I think. Still, things have changed since then. Life's better than it was.'

Che regarded her cautiously. 'Is that so?'

The smile that met her gaze was unfamiliar. The Spider-kinden girl Che had grown up with had possessed a grand stock of smiles, knowing, subtle, gleeful, suggestive, a veritable a.r.s.enal that had brought about the ruin of many a young man. Tisamon, in contrast, had smiled rarely: his killing grin when shedding blood, and a more human expression reserved for his conversations with Stenwold. This smile belonged neither to the dead father nor to the daughter, as she had faced the world back then, but Che had a feeling that, had Tynisa ever let anyone into her heart, without masks and mirrors, this is what they might have seen.

'You saw him, saw Alain?' Tynisa asked her eagerly.

Che frowned for a second before connecting the name to the man. 'I did,' she conceded.

'Well?'

There was obviously some immediate comment she should be ready to make, but Che could not find it.

Tynisa shook her head impatiently. 'How like his brother he is. The very image, yes?'

Che looked her in the eyes, reading a lot there. Oh, Salme Dien had mocked Che, in his time, but fondly, always fondly. He would never have a.s.sumed that expression of condescension that Che had seen on the face of Salme Alain as he departed. But she said, 'Yes, very,' nevertheless, because this was not the time, nor the challenge she had come here to deliver. 'Tynisa, you must know . . . You say things have changed for you?'

'I have a purpose now,' Tynisa agreed. 'I have Alain.'

'And was there a moment, when that change occurred?' Che pressed.

Tynisa looked at her oddly. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Your father, Tynisa?' Because to barrel on, at this point, seemed the only way whilst keeping a weather eye open for some murderous reprisal from the man's ghost. Yet Tynisa's expression seemed honestly baffled. 'Tynisa, I know. I saw him for myself. I know that the ghost of your father has sought you out, and I'm here to help you.'

For a long moment Tynisa just stared at her, and Che tensed, waiting for that glint of steel in her eyes that would herald Tisamon clawing to the forefront of her mind. Then she laughed: a snort of amus.e.m.e.nt that emerged despite all of Tynisa's attempts to control it. 'Ghosts, Che? There's no such thing as ghosts. Don't tell me fifteen years of College education didn't teach you that.'

Che stared back at her, caught utterly off guard. 'But . . . you can't tell me you haven't felt him, seen him even . . .?'

Tynisa's expression sobered. 'Oh, I won't deny I've enjoyed some strange company when I've been on my own on my way here and during the winter. I won't say I didn't see him.' She held a hand up to forestall Che. 'Achaeos, too, and Salma. You can't imagine the fright it gave me to see Alain for the first time. I thought that I really was going out of my mind. But that was just me, Che, because I was all alone and I'd lost . . . everything, or so it seemed. I don't think anyone could blame me for indulging in a few fantasies. But that's done now, since I found Alain. I'm a new woman now.'

Gazing at her, Che could all but see the malignant form of Tisamon lurking at her shoulder. She could feel the dead Weaponsmaster's presence like a chill in the air, but Tynisa kept smiling slightly condescendingly.

'Ghosts, Che? Seriously? You'll find plenty of people here who believe in them. But we know better, surely?' Her smile was so brittle that Che could almost detect the cracks, but in Tynisa's eyes there was absolutely no recognition of that looming presence which Che felt like a physical pressure.

'We have to talk, Tynisa,' Che said at last, recognizing defeat in the first skirmish, and retreating to a prepared position. 'But I've come a long way, and I need to catch my breath. Tomorrow perhaps?'

'And where were you?' Che asked Maure, when she had tracked her down, after considerable searching.

'Looking after your best interests by absenting myself,' the mystic told her. 'The ghost knows me and knows me for its enemy. It wouldn't have helped, me being there. When I meet it again, I want it to be somewhere that I've warded. Besides, I've been asking questions on your behalf.'

'Oh?'

'That steward wanted my services, so I said I'd help her. We talked. She was close-mouthed, but I worked out what put the sour look on her face.'

'Tynisa?' Che suggested glumly. 'They don't think she should be a.s.sociating with their prince, I suppose.'

Maure gave her a curious look. 'Well, you've got it completely backwards but, other than that, you're right. Prince Alain has a reputation with women, and I get the impression that Lisan Dea was doing her best, as warden of the castle's hospitality, to keep the two of them apart. But that's all gone to the pits now, as you saw.'

Che closed her eyes briefly. 'That's a complication I don't think I can deal with just at the moment. Let me stay with my brief and free her from the ghost, if I can. She's never had any difficulties with relationships before.' Even as Che said that, she saw Tynisa's face again in her mind, all those layers of social accomplishment stripped away, leaving something as raw and vulnerable as her father ever was. Had not Tisamon himself made such unhappy personal relationships the very meat and drink of his downfall? 'If that's how this Lisan Dea feels, why hasn't she warned Tynisa?'

'And betray her mistress and the family? Unthinkable.'

'And yet she told you.'

Maure shrugged. 'There's a saying: no secrets from the dead. It generalizes to those of my profession. We do more than clutch at the memory of the departed. Sometimes those grieving simply need a sympathetic ear amongst the living rather than an audience with the dead. Our seneschal didn't want any spectres raised. She wanted . . . confession. Your sister is in danger from Alain, and she's being used as a weapon by the Salmae princess, as well. Only, the way I hear it, that weapon turned out to be sharper than anyone guessed. I think we both know why that is.'

'We need to act on the ghost fast, then. Advise me, Maure.'

'Bring your sister to a place of my choosing one that I have properly prepared. I will then throw open the doors, and see if he will emerge. If he does, I will fight him for her.'

Che regarded her doubtfully. 'And that will work, will it?'

'No guarantees.' Maure's mouth twisted. 'He may just sit there in her mind, like a grub in a tree and not be drawn. He may prove too strong for me, in which case I'll need your help.'

'Me?'

Maure shrugged. 'Your strength, the power you've been gifted with, the authority you've a.s.sumed, whatever you prefer to call it. With you beside me, I'm willing to venture it.'

Che thought about that. 'When you say "open the doors", does that mean other ghosts might . . .?'

'Well, if I set my wards correctly, we should have an exclusive audience,' the mystic declared. She noticed Che's expression. 'But I can leave them open, just a little while, and if there is some other ghost, some echo of someone linked to you . . .?'

Che was silent for a while, reaching out for an empty s.p.a.ce within her. I have thought about it since I first met this woman. Would it do any harm? We had so many things we never said.

'They have the Wasps lodged in some retainer's hut outside the walls,' Maure informed her briskly, breaking the mood. 'I have the directions. I don't know about you, but I don't feel welcome enough to spend the night in Castle Leose, and besides, I find I miss Varmen more than I expected. Have your sister come to that hut, which is far enough from this castle for me not to have to deal with generations of Salmae ancestors battering at the door. Then I'll see what I can do.'

Thirty-Five.

Tynisa had wondered how a Commonwealer n.o.ble would be able to confine her enemies, in a castle of the Inapt, where there were no locks, and where those prisoners could most likely possess the Art to fly. It was an eventuality that the ancient builders of Leose had apparently antic.i.p.ated, however, for there were so many cellars underlying the castle that it seemed remarkable the structure was not undermined to the point of collapse. The largest and most central of these was reached by a narrow and easily defensible stair leading down from the guards' quarters on the floor above, and alternatively through a trapdoor set into the courtyard, wide enough for a horse to be lowered through it should the need arise. The lords of Leose clearly did not want to see their enemies dragged through the castle halls on their way to imprisonment. So, when the surviving chiefs of the brigands had been brought in, it was a simple matter to decant them straight into the bowels of the castle.

There was only one cell down there: a pit excavated into the floor, some fifteen foot deep, and walled in smooth, slick stone. Of course, that would prove no obstacle to most Commonwealers, but the grille that covered it was held down at each corner by a heavy block of stone. Tynisa had watched the captives installed there, seeing those same weights swung into position on ropes that were balanced by counterweights. It was as intricate a system as the Inapt had ever designed, and plainly dated from whatever ancient era the castle was first constructed in. Only the cane grille and the ropes themselves would have needed periodic replacement, and the masters of Leose had held their enemies here in such a manner since time immemorial.

She had now come back to view the prisoners her prisoners as she felt justified in considering them. For had she not led the charge? Had she not been the vanguard of the a.s.sault that had scattered their army and captured them? She looked upon them, almost fondly, with a proprietorial air. My gift to Alain.

As she approached, stepping lightly down the narrow, winding stair from above, she heard a hurried movement, the flurry of wings, and knew that one of the prisoners must have been crawling about the underside of the grille, testing it for weak points. The canes themselves were as thick in diameter as Tynisa's arm, and they were bound together with wire, as well as cord that had been soaked first and then dried tight. Even those prisoners whose Art had furnished them with blades would not be able to pry this prison apart.

As she stepped to the edge, they were all waiting with upturned faces, pale or sallow or the gold of Dragonfly-kinden. The only one bound was the Wasp-kinden, who had his arms twisted behind him and lashed together, that being a lesson the Commonwealers had learned well enough. She gave them time to recognize her, as she stood gazing down on them like an empress.

A mixed bag they were, too, about a score of them, looking more like tired, wretched vagabonds than dangerous brigands. They included a ragbag of Gra.s.shoppers and Dragonflies, the one brooding Scorpion, the Wasp, and a Spider-kinden who must have been very far from home. The Scorpion's glare was baleful but defeated, and only one seemed to retain a spark of defiance. She almost smiled at the sight of their leader: the Dragonfly known, she had since learned, as Dal Arche.

'Come to gloat?' he asked, and the walls of the pit took the soft words and conveyed them up to her easily.

'To see justice done,' she retorted, and he nodded philosophically.

'That time is it, then? Are you the executioner?'

'You have a few days more to brood on your defeat,' she declared, noting the shadows of anger and despair that pa.s.sed across their faces. In truth, Salme Ela.s.s was saving them for something suitably public. She had sent messengers to cordially invite Felipe Shah to witness the death of these enemies of the Monarch's peace, and Tynisa knew that the woman would then press for the retaking of Rhael, so as to finish off the extermination of all the sc.u.m that had gathered there in defiance of the rightful authority of the princes. Still, the brigand's suggestion had some merit in it. 'I shall ask to be appointed as your executioner, and why not? For who else has that right, more than I?'

The Dragonfly looked up at her, almost smiling, with eyes narrowed like a man looking into the sun. 'Since you're in a talkative mood, what's all of this to you, girl? They paying you well, are they?'

'I'm no mercenary,' she told him. 'I just know what's right. You're lawbreakers and rebels against the Monarch.'

'Well, that makes us sound grand,' Dal Arche replied wryly. 'I hadn't realized you'd met the Monarch. I never saw her myself.'

'You know what I mean.'

He shrugged. 'I won't deny that the laws of princes don't sit happily on my shoulders. I travelled a long way to get out from under them but, wherever you go, it seems there's always someone trying to tell you what to do, whether they call themselves prince or emperor. I thought I might as well come home, in that case.'

Tynisa shook her head, crouching by the edge of the grille to see him better. 'Oh, that won't carry weight, brigand. I've seen the Empire, and you can't equate Imperial rule with the Commonweal.'

'Lived there, have you? And lived a life here, to compare?' Dal challenged her.

'His people killed my father,' she hissed, jabbing a finger at the Wasp, who flinched back, startled.

'Don't drag me into this. I quit,' he muttered, but Dal was already shaking his head.

'If you want to play that game, then one prince or another has killed pretty much everyone I ever knew,' he said. 'Oh, certainly it was the Wasps who held the sword, but it was my own kinden, my glorious betters, who threw the victims onto it. It's been some prince or other who's taxed my kin so that we could only live hand to mouth, and never build anything more on what we had. It's been your darling prince and his mother here who knocked us down when we tried to set ourselves up like decent folk in Siriell's Town.'

'I saw Siriell's Town,' Tynisa snapped. 'There was nothing "decent" there.'

'Well, I'm sorry we didn't all live in the castle,' Dal Arche retorted, a little more fire in his voice now. 'Perhaps then we'd have fitted your idea of how decent folk live? Tell me, who are you to judge us, living here without care as a guest of the Salmae?'

Tynisa leant closer, feeling obscurely gratified that she had made him angry at last. 'I've seen more of the world than you, old man. I've seen the Empire and I know what they value there: tyranny and slavery. I've seen h.e.l.leron and I know half the Lowlands is just greed running riot, or places like Collegium where good intentions are never quite enough. But I know . . . I know the Commonweal. The Commonweal makes good people, who fight for the right things: heroes. I know what the Monarch believes in. I recognize truth and honour and honesty when I see it. A friend taught me about the Commonweal, by the example of everything he ever did. He was the best man I ever knew, and he knew what was right and what was wrong. That's how I can judge you, thief and murderer that you are. You have rebelled against your rightful rulers, and for that you'll die.'

She waited for an explosion of wrath, of counter-accusation, even of pleading, but it did not come.

Instead Dal Arche leant back against the wall of the pit. 'Oh, that does sound grand. If you ever find this mythical place you're talking about, let me know, I'd like to see it. Until then, I suppose I'll have to live with the merely human n.o.bility who got so many of us killed in the war. At least I won't have to live with them very long.'

Something nagged at her briefly, some echo of Lowre Cean's words before the battle, but she shrugged it away. 'I can judge,' she repeated. 'And I can be the one to wield the blade, when your time comes. Better that than suffer the crossed pikes of the Empire, no?'

'And in your Lowlands?' he asked her.

'They were always too soft in Collegium,' she replied, getting up and turning to go. A thought struck her, and she gave voice to it: 'You can hardly deny that you've earned this, having robbed and pillaged your way across half of the province?'

'Oh, no, not at all,' was his reply. 'We took what we wanted and went wherever we would. But more joined us than fled from us, and for a while at least, we were free of princes. And I will maintain, to death and beyond, that those who condemn us are themselves murderers and thieves greater than we are, and no amount of law and heritage will change that.'

She opened her mouth for a scathing rebuke, but the words did not come to her. They are criminals going to their just punishment, she a.s.sured herself, but abruptly she had no stomach left for taunting them.