'Princess, you have lost two sons,' she stated.

The very words brought Ela.s.s up short, and there was a world of things to be read on her face for a moment, and none of them pleasant.

'I knew Salme Dien. He was a good friend of mine, and a hero of the Lowlander war with the Wasp-kinden. They named a city after him, back home. He was a good man, and he knew a great deal about justice and responsibility. I think Tynisa and I, coming here, therefore expected a land of law and justice.'

The gathering remained utterly silent, waiting for Ela.s.s's next words: likely a death sentence hanging in the air, and awaiting only her order to see it carried out. The princess just stared, though, as if struck dumb by the temerity of this short and ungainly foreigner.

'You have taken me prisoner. Am I a criminal? If so, what is my crime? I have done nothing against you, or against your people. I came here of my own free will to see what could be done to resolve matters concerning my sister. That is all. Imprison me, harm me, and you have no justice.'

'And how do you plan to resolve matters, as you put it?' Ela.s.s demanded.

Che met her venomous gaze without flinching, remembering another Dragonfly-kinden she had known: Felise Mienn, who had died alongside Tisamon. Stenwold had brought that woman back to the Commonweal, shortly beforehand, and Che recalled very well how Commonwealer justice had then treated Mienn, the kinslayer.

'My sister has killed your son,' she stated. 'She has freed your prisoners, all of them criminals. Why do you think she has done these things?'

'It hardly matters,' Ela.s.s snapped.

'She has done it because she is not in her right mind. Because madness has touched her.' And she felt a sudden freedom that she could say what she was about to say, and not one of them there would dismiss her as mad herself. 'The ghost of her father, who died in violence and fury, has come to haunt her, and leads her astray. She is not responsible for what she does, and I know that, in the Commonweal, that makes her something other than a criminal.'

And she had got it exactly right, not overstated, but her point clearly made and understood, and everyone there looked to Salme Ela.s.s, knowing that Che was correct, but they said nothing.

'It matters not,' said the princess, at long last. Her tone was very quiet, but the silence was its match, and everyone there heard her. 'It matters not whether she was mad or sane or haunted. She killed my son. I do not want justice. I do not want a trial. If she may go mad and murder who she will, so shall I. I will ransack the whole world in order to have my vengeance on that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Lowlands girl. You say I had two sons? Do you think I care what happened to that traitor boy who ran off to Felipe Shah's court and abandoned me? Alain was all that was left to me, and I will have your sister executed in front of me. If the justice of the Monarch or the Lowlands or the b.l.o.o.d.y-handed Empress herself stands in my way, I shall batter it down.' Her fierce glare cowed them all, her subjects and her followers, making them accomplices in all that she said. 'I shall have vengeance for my son's death, written in the blood of Tynisa Maker. And as for you . . .' Abruptly there were guards holding Che's arms once more. 'We shall see how mad she is that she will not give herself to me to save her sister.'

Forty.

The silence that had fallen around the fire was total: with the startled brigands-turned-fugitives staring at her in its guttering light. They had dug in to make camp, excavating a hollow between the roots of a great tree with practised skill and turfing out years' worth of dead leaf mulch until the arching ribs of its roots had become the vaults of their low ceiling, and thus their fire would be hidden from any nocturnal hunters the Salmae might have sent out.

Or no longer the Salmae, for Salme Ela.s.s was the last of them now.

'You killed the prince,' Dal Arche said slowly. 'I knew you'd make a play for my role sooner or later, but I think you might have overdone proving your qualifications, girl.'

'I have no wish to be an outlaw,' Tynisa snapped back.

'Whoever does?' remarked Avaris the Spider. 'It's more an honour that someone else pins to your chest, Bella Tynisa.'

'The road leading to where we sit now is the same for us all,' Dal stated, 'although some of us apparently choose to ride it at a gallop. We've all been where you've been, girl; it's just you've decided to achieve in grand style, and all at once, what most of us have made the work of a lifetime.'

'Next you'll be telling me that it's a n.o.ble calling, to be a brigand. Or are you claiming to be a revolutionary, set on casting down the n.o.bility?' She tried to sound disdainful, but there was a curious note of need in her voice, despite herself. Can that be it? Can these ragged wretches have been right all along? Because that would mean I could justify what I've done . . .

'A bandit, a man-hunter, a lawbreaker, a bow for hire,' Dal replied. 'I never wanted any grand cause. If it looks like I'm fighting tyrants, it's only because the world's so d.a.m.ned full of them that you can't draw a sword without crossing some of their laws.' He sighed, staring at the embers of the fire. 'Easy as easy, it is, to become an outlaw. Come the war, they drafted me for their levy emptied my village, and got pretty much everyone I knew from there killed. When the war was done, well, there was nothing to go back for, and nothing to eat. Twelve years of fighting and the farms had been turned into battlefields, or just left fallow because the labour was all off trailing the pike. And what food there was, half of it went to the Empire, can you believe? Terms of the Treaty of Pearl said that the food out of our mouths went to feed their soldiers. The other half went to the n.o.bles, and you can bet they didn't starve. Or maybe I'm too harsh. Maybe some of them stinted themselves and fed their people, but I never saw sign of it. They were our lords and masters after all, our betters, so there was hardly an incentive for them to help shoulder the burden.'

'And so you lowered yourself to their level, is that it?' she asked him.

His look was sharp. 'I learned how easy it is to abuse power, girl. When you're a soldier without a war, with a bow in your hand and nothing in your stomach, and you meet a man who has food and no bow, with no soldiering in him, it's easy. He might be a merchant or a tax gatherer or a barge master or some n.o.ble's prize messenger, but he has food, and you're hungry and you can kill him for it. That's all it takes. And next time maybe you don't have to be quite so hungry, and eventually it's become a way of life to take from others and, though you try to make a living at hunting fugitives or some such nonsense, the time will always come when someone has food and you don't, and you'll do it again. We've all been there, and now you've come to visit.'

There was a pause, and the Gra.s.shopper, Soul Je, carefully added some more wood to the fire. Beyond their scooped-out hollow, Tynisa knew the fickle light would be all but invisible amongst the trees.

'I don't want to be your leader, and I don't want to be a brigand,' she said, and had to fight down a part of her that did. The ugly, violent thing that had driven her this far would relish it: somehow it seemed that one could have the same honour in killing thieves for a prince as killing princes for the benefit of thieves so long as there was blood. She shuddered.

'Then you've no need to share our fate, win or lose,' Dal pointed out.

'I . . .' The world was out there, dark and harsh and unforgiving, and she had once again excised herself from it. If she left the company of these ragged creatures, then she would have nothing at all.

Perhaps Dal saw something of the truth from her face, for he did not press the issue.

There was a rustling above, and immediately all hands went to swords and knife hilts. It was Mordrec, though, squeezing in to take up all the available s.p.a.ce, and with a bundle in his arms.

'Just where we left it,' the Wasp confirmed, slightly out of breath. 'Glad we listened to you, now. Never thought we'd be coming back this way, myself.'

He unfurled the oilcloth, spilling out a meagre collection of knives, shortbows and an untidy stack of arrows. None of it looked like good workmanship, but the brigands helped themselves gladly, so that all of them save Mordrec now had a bow and at least a few shafts.

'Any sign of their scouts?' Soul asked.

'How the pits should I know?' Mordrec hissed back. 'They can see better than I can. I just concentrated on keeping my head down, all the way.'

Tynisa sighed. 'I'll go look.'

They regarded her doubtfully, and at last Dal Arche said, 'One of us, then?'

'And not your leader,' she insisted firmly. 'I need to get away. You need to get away. I'm willing to bet that they want me more than you.'

That had to be explained for Mordrec's benefit, and the Wasp goggled at her. 'Shame you didn't go report to the old woman before you sprang us,' he said. 'Could have wiped out the whole family. Make the Rekef proud.'

She glared at him, but the words. .h.i.t close to home.

'What's the plan, then?' asked Mordrec, settling down. 'I reckon we're a few points off the compa.s.s, but that's just runner's instinct. You got a plan now, Dala?'

The Dragonfly nodded slowly. 'I reckon the reason they've not caught us already is because most of their people headed south, thinking we'd just repeat our dash for Rhael. As you've noticed, we've made best time by going due east, instead. Now they've got airborne scouts and cavalry, so they'll catch our trail soon enough, and it's only a matter of time before they overhaul us. Not many options for us, then. Too few of us to make much of an impression if we stand and fight. We could scatter, each to his own, and some of us would likely remain free, and others would be hunted down like beasts. That has an appeal to it, if only because it puts our enemies to the most trouble. However, I've a third way, if you want to hear it.'

'Speak,' Soul Je prompted.

'We just hope to keep out of their reach, as we run east, and then we cross the border. It's not as far as you might think. Don't forget how half this Princ.i.p.ality ended up on the wrong side of the Imperial lines, at the end.'

Mordrec spat. 'You know what it's like in the Wasp Princ.i.p.alities? You think they're any easier on brigands there?'

'I reckon they're not already hunting us as brigands over there, nor as prince-killers either. So I think, right now, we're better off risking our freedom with the slave-takers than our lives with the Salmae.' As Mordrec was about to speak again, he added, 'You sprang me from a Slave Corps cell in Myna, Mord, so it's not something I'd suggest lightly. Still, by my reckoning we've just about outstayed our welcome here. Split off from us tomorrow, anyone that wants, but I'm for the border, and see how bold Salme Ela.s.s gets then.'

He met Tynisa's gaze, and she asked him, 'You've fought all this while against the Commonweal aristocracy? Don't you think the Empire will be worse?'

'Oh you're right,' Dal replied lazily. 'We might be enslaved and forced to work their farms and do their will. They might conscript us for their armies. They might execute us for turning our back on their laws. How different is that from the old Commonweal, eh?' He nodded to Tynisa. 'You go spotting for their scouts, girl. Put your eyes to good use.'

They kept Che constantly bound, travelling awkwardly on horseback before one of the Salmae's retainers, or dumped at night alongside the stores and provisions. She managed to pick up little detail, but their search was plainly not progressing well. The initial hopes the pursuers had of overhauling the fugitive band had been dashed and their second-guessing had been found wanting. After that the trackers, Gaved amongst them, had been sent out on winged errands to try and find some other sign of their quarry. A day later they were back, and it was plain that Salme Ela.s.s had been leading her avenging force in entirely the wrong direction. The cavalry set off as soon as the news was in, and Che bundled along with them. The miserable conscripted levy were left to follow on foot at their own best pace.

She wondered idly if this was how the Commonwealers had conducted the war, and whether that explained everything. From that reflection, her mind turned to Thalric and her other companions. They were close, she knew: she could feel Thalric's arrowhead of a mind out there, seeking ways to cut at the knot of her captors and set her free. She dared not let her mind wander too far, or exercise her little-understood powers too much. The Empress was still out there, and who could know how far her feelers might stretch from her nest in the heart of Capitas? Surely she had not forgotten Che, her unwished-for peer and sister. And if the Beetle girl's consciousness should brush against her, then who knew what new magical attack Seda might unleash? Che had no wish to be banished into the back of her own head once more.

This night, as the advance force camped, the scouts seemed to have more positive information. They had already made up a lot of the lost ground, Che came to understand from the snippets of talk she overheard. Another day, or even less, and they would catch up with the brigands, and Tynisa. And then Salme Ela.s.s would have her revenge.

There were perhaps forty or fifty in the cavalry party, and they were the cream of the Commonweal, n.o.bles and their retainers armoured in glittering sh.e.l.l and steel, skilled with bow and sword and lance. Che had glumly concluded that it didn't matter how much help Tisamon's ghost could lend to his daughter, Tynisa would not be able to triumph over her enemies this time, not even with a motley collection of brigands at her back. And she would not run for long, Che knew, for Tisamon would not have run. Perhaps Tynisa did not even think of her actions so far as escaping, rather than just escorting and guarding the villains she had freed. The moment she thought that she was running from something, then she would turn and fight. It was what Tisamon himself would have done, and the instinct had surely killed enough Mantis-kinden over the years. Che had a fairly strong conviction that Tisamon's ghost had only one aim in its damaged mind: that Tynisa would die as a Mantis should die: b.l.o.o.d.y-handed and in company.

So, the ghost's play had reached its endgame, and Che's own had clearly failed. She was in no position to save Tynisa from anything, nor even herself.

She started as someone crouched down next to her, sitting back on his haunches. She recognized him as Isandter, the silver-haired Mantis-kinden. His eyes were wintry and cold, and Che knew well enough the sword-and-circle brooch he wore.

'What do you want?' she asked him.

He was studying her with a slight frown. 'You are a n.o.ble of the Lowlands, a woman of importance?'

She almost laughed at that. 'We don't have an aristocracy. Bloodline won't get you far on its own, where I come from. But my uncle Stenwold is a man of note, back in Collegium. I imagine he'll take it personally if he hears that something bad has happened to me. Not that it'll do me much good by then, of course.'

Isendter nodded soberly. 'Maker Stenwold,' he enunciated carefully. 'That is the name of the Lowlander who spoke to the Monarch at Prince Felipe's court.'

Che raised her eyebrows. 'The very same, Master Whitehand. You've a good memory.'

'It was much talked about, at the time. And you are important, then, so it's a mistake to treat you thus.'

She waited, but the words were not a prelude to any attempt on his part to secure her freedom. Instead he surprised her by sitting down beside her, as though the two of them were simply exchanging pleasantries.

'You know our ways a little. You learned that from your uncle, no doubt. You were right, in what you said: the girl is not in her right mind, not her own master. My lady has erred by setting herself on this course. No good will come of it.' He spoke low, so that his voice would not carry further than Che's ears. She had a sudden insight that he had come to speak to her because these words, prying their way out of him, were too dangerous to voice to any other.

'If you're looking for sympathy from your prisoner, you'll find none here. She's your mistress.'

'Not by choice. I am the t.i.the paid by my people: the service of a Weaponsmaster in exchange for my kin to live untroubled in the deep places. I have served the Salmae most of my life.'

'No doubt the prince was a better master, when he lived,' Che suggested. For all her caveats about sympathy, she could not retain a stern face. The old man seemed oddly frail and vulnerable in thus confessing to her, for all that he was a Mantis-kinden killer and a master of the blade.

'He was not.' Isendter stared up at the stars. 'He was thoroughly vainglorious, and he would not listen. He died in the war's early years, leading a pointless charge against a superior foe, because he could not conceive of ever being wrong. He did not die alone.' The Mantid's expression was sour, hollow. 'Others of the Salmae fell in similar ways, serving their Monarch, and yet giving precious little of value, until there was the princess and her son. Her sons. But, then you said you knew the boy, Dien.'

'Very much so,' Che agreed. 'He was a good friend.'

Isendter let out a long breath. 'Felipe Shah took him into his household, as kin obligate. It was a great honour, of course, but the Salmae would have refused it, if they dared. Prince Felipe thought he saw something in the boy worth saving, and took him to Suon Ren to raise as his own son. And he was right, it would seem.'

'I take it Alain wasn't of the same stamp?'

There was a long silence then, and Che a.s.sumed that the man's unburdening had come to an end, but at last his voice emerged again, in barely more than a whisper. 'Without honour, he was, and with no sense of a n.o.bleman's responsibility. Not one of the old n.o.bility, like Felipe Shah or Lowre Cean, men who take their duty seriously. Instead, a boy who was denied nothing, who acknowledged no boundaries, around whom no woman was safe. Who bred vice instead of virtue, resentment instead of loyalty and I am bound to avenge him, or die trying.'

'Why are you telling me this?' Che asked him.

'Because you alone here might understand, and who else would? I would have warned your sister, save that she was under Alain's spell before I ever met her. I know Lisan Dea did her best to turn the girl away. This time, though, the boy took on more than he could manage. A Weaponsmaster, wounded in mind, unpredictable, fierce, a killer that is your sister. He thought he could keep her spinning about him like a moth about a candle but, this once, he mistook who was the flame.'

'She killed him,' Che said flatly, 'She killed your prince.'

'She is a fugitive, a murderess, she has robbed the family of its cherished son.' His brooding expression deepened. 'Still, I can feel no grief in me that the boy is dead.'

Forty-One.

First he donned his cap and arming jacket, their padded cloth now the worse for wear, still bearing all their old stains of blood and sweat like badges of honour. The hauberk came next, a long-sleeved coat of mail that fell to his knees. Not the heavy chain of an Ant-kinden line soldier but fine links that flowed like water, yet would bunch like solid metal under the impact of sword or arrow. The weight of it pressed on his shoulders, resting against the additional thickness of the arming jacket there, but it did not burden him. Instead, he felt lighter and freer with that comforting pressure about him. He donned his coif, a hood of the same delicate mail, shaking his head a little to centre it, tugging the collar straight.

Then came the breast- and backplates, fitted together and hinged shut to form the centre of his steel carapace. Both pieces bore a punched hole, the edges long since filed blunt, where a snapbow bolt had winged its way right through him, armour and all, and thereby ended the era of the battlefield sentinel.

The end of my world, thought Varmen, but then they did not have snapbows in the Commonweal.

All this he could do alone, from long practice, but it was easier with a companion to arm him. Back in the days when he had belonged to an army, he and his comrades had garbed each other, like a ceremony and a ritual before going into battle.

A belt strapped around the lower edges of the breast- and backplates to keep them closed, and then Thalric buckled on his leg armour, piece by piece: cuisses for the thighs, poleyns for the knee, armoured boots for the feet, and then greaves over them for the calves. The ex-Rekef man made a slow job of the work, having to be ordered and directed, segment by segment, but he grew more confident as he progressed. Had Varmen been on his own he would have had to start with the feet and work up; with the breastplate already on, he could not reach down that far.

A skirt of segmented ta.s.sets overlaid the cuisses to just above the knee, hooked to both breast- and backplates, and then Thalric had turned to the arms, fitting the same sequence of articulated, overlapping plates, defending from all angles and allowing only the bare minimum of gaps and those backed by the light mail and yet none of it enc.u.mbering, none of it slowing Varmen at all, not after a lifetime spent encased in armour such as this.

About his neck was fastened a crescent-shaped gorget, denying his enemies the gap between the breastplate rip and his helm. He drew on his own gauntlets, as a point of pride, while Thalric laced and buckled on his pauldrons, three curved plates on each shoulder, with a vertical crest r.i.m.m.i.n.g the innermost to protect the side of his neck. He buckled on his swordbelt then, fingers still finding their way surely despite the steel about them. The heavy blade was a comforting presence at his side.

'I'm ready,' he proclaimed, and Maure brought his helm forward, her expression solemn. Varmen nodded to Thalric, who made a wry face and stepped back, giving the two of them their privacy.

'You've seen the ghost about me, haven't you?' Varmen muttered.

Maure just nodded and the Wasp scowled.

'I don't believe in ghosts. No such thing.' He took the helm from her and stared into its faceless visage. 'A Dragonfly girl.'

'Even so,' Maure agreed.

'So tell me, is she real? Or just in my head? I fought the girl once, one on one. I was trying to save my men.' His face was blankly uncomprehending. 'It's stayed with me, all this time. She had a good voice, a beautiful voice: even when she was demanding our surrender and telling us we couldn't win out. It's odd what you remember.'

'It doesn't make a difference whether it's a ghost from her death, or a ghost from your mind. It's no less real,' Maure told him. 'Or no more real, seeing as you don't believe in them.'

'Not in the slightest,' Varmen agreed. 'You're going to stay back, you hear? No getting in the way.'

'I'm no warrior, me,' she agreed. 'I'd tell you all the ways in which I'll be helping you, but you wouldn't believe me in that, either.'

'Probably not.' He tried a smile, but it was a bleak and stillborn thing. 'Back in the b.l.o.o.d.y Commonweal. I feel like this place has been waiting for me ever since the war ended. He took a deep breath that set the plates of his armour rising and grating against one another. 'I should have died on the field with the Seventh, when their snapbows cut us down like wheat.' Balancing the helm in one hand he touched the entry hole with an armoured finger. 'But I'd rather have died fighting that girl here in the Commonweal. Then I'd not have had to see the end of us, the end of all of our ways.' He glanced off into the darkness. 'Just like all the old Commonweal magic, eh? They used to put such faith in us, and then one day . . . n.o.body believed in us any more.'

He reached up and placed the helm on his head, his world reducing to a slit, and yet he felt that he somehow saw more, sensed more, now that his armour was complete. He had regained a connection to the world, feeling all of its tricks and changes. He was something elemental.

'Pride of the Sixth,' he murmured, tugging the chinstrap tight. He swung the helm to find Maure, saw her expression. 'Such a long road just to come back here,' he said, his voice loud in his own ears.