Heirs of the Blade Part 2

'May I ask what has brought you here, perhaps?'

She was at first not going to answer, but the shadows seemed to be building in the room around him as the fire guttered, and there were silhouettes there, clawing their way out of the grave of her mind. 'Three dead men,' she told Galltree shortly, then retreated to her hammock.

Three.

By objective standards, her father Tisamon had failed at almost everything in his life.

He had failed as a Mantis, giving his heart to one of the Spider-kinden they so despised. Later, he had failed his second lover, the Dragonfly Felise Mienn, by abandoning her. He had failed his oldest friend Stenwold Maker by leaving his side in his hour of greatest need.

At the last, brought to bay in the Imperial arena, he had failed to kill the Wasp Emperor. It was his greatest deed, already immortalized in song and celebrated on stage: the Mantis that brought down an empire. Except that the Empire was already doing a good job of climbing right back up. Except that the Emperor had been dead even as Tisamon was at the centre of a knot of furious Wasp soldiers, shedding blood and being hacked at like an animal. The Emperor had been a victim of a Mosquito-kinden who had caught Tynisa, and had brought her to the arena so she could watch her father die.

She remembered, though. The blow he had struck, as he had fought his b.l.o.o.d.y, tattered way clear of the Wasp throng, was not against the Empire's overlord, but to slay the Mosquito-kinden who was tormenting her. She had come all that way to save her father but, instead, at the end he had done what remained in his power to rescue her.

And he had died. The Emperor's guard had made sure of that, cutting and slicing at the corpse long after life had made its exit. She had witnessed that, and felt her gorge rise, felt the horror and despair . . . but then all those feelings had burned away, for a moment. Her Mantis blood had risen within her, the half-heritage that Tisamon had bequeathed her. She had seen their butchery as the tribute it was, for he had shaken them so deeply, pride of the Empire as they were, that they could not risk even the slightest chance that he might yet live.

In one part of his life only could dead Tisamon claim success. He had been a killer, a relentless, poised and deadly killer, bearing as his credentials the sword and circle badge of the Weaponsmasters. To his daughter, he had given the only gift he had, by pa.s.sing to her all he knew of the ancient art of separating lives and bodies.

She clung to it now. Here, alone and far from home, crippled by lost friends and by her own victims, she needed his guidance and his strength. All she had of him, though, was what she carried within her.

So it was that Tynisa found herself abandoned in Suon Ren.

That word would have been considered unkind by Gramo Galltree, who was doing everything in his power to make her stay a comfortable one: cooking and cleaning and making polite conversation about the weather, or trying to get her to talk about Collegium, his long-lost home. As a day pa.s.sed, though, and then another, Tynisa became increasingly aware that Gramo's power here was minuscule: he just did not matter to the locals, and neither did she. She could walk every one of the broad, almost unformed streets of the town, and it was as though she was invisible to all but the children, and even they kept clear of her parental warnings no doubt ringing in their ears.

Sometimes the castle seneschal, or some other functionary, would come to the emba.s.sy for a few brief words with Galltree, and each time it was plain that the question was the same: Is she still here? Sometimes they came to stare at her, as though she was some grotesque piece of artwork, but they would not answer her questions, or even recognize that she was capable of speech.

With so little outside stimulus, she sank deeper into herself. Her days were spent hunting between the Commonwealer buildings, looking for she knew not what, but sensing others moving on parallel paths, always just out of sight, but constantly in her mind. When darkness fell they closed in, so that she would sit in her little room at the emba.s.sy and listen to the ghosts have their way with the place, moving just out of sight, the whisper of a robe's hem, the harsh sc.r.a.pe of Tisamon's boots. Sometimes she heard the distant echo of Salma, laughing gently at some remark made by who-knew-which shade, and she would hunch tight in her hammock, turning her back to the world and trying to blot it all out.

After two days, she took to her practising again, because that was the only part of the woman she had been that she cared to revive, and because it was a gift from her father. While Gramo pottered about in his garden, she used his large room as her Prowess Forum, rapier tasting the air, darting and stepping through all the intricate pa.s.ses and guards of the Mantis styles, each coming unbidden and unrusted to her mind, a smooth-running sequence of steel. For two hours she strung her body through them all, and back again, fighting imaginary duels in her mind: against one, against many, against overwhelming odds; rehearsing that final dance that all Mantis warriors hoped for.

She completed her pa.s.s, blade glittering in the air, and found the rapier's point falling into line with the chest of a Dragonfly man now standing in the doorway. He looked to be another of the seneschal's stamp, wearing clothes of the same green, gold and blue colours, but more practically made and harder-wearing. His hair was a little longer than the fas.h.i.+on in Suon Ren, and bound back, and she guessed he was older than the seneschal as well.

'I hope I do not interrupt,' he said mildly. 'I am sent from the castle.'

The surprise of actually being spoken to dried her throat, and it was a moment before she could speak. 'The amba.s.sador is not here . . .' Abruptly a thought came to her, a certainty: 'The prince is returned.'

'As you say,' the Dragonfly confirmed. 'Seneschal Coren has reported a pet.i.tion that disturbs him, a Lowlander demanding an audience.'

'You are sent for me?'

'I am sent here to find out what it is you want with the prince,' he corrected her. There was a straightness in his bearing that was almost reminiscent of Tisamon, a pride rooted in ancient places. She wondered if the man was a Dragonfly Weaponsmaster come to kill her, if her answers did not suit.

Her rapier found its home in her scabbard, and she let out a long breath. 'What do you want me to say?' she asked him, finding the locals' elaborate politeness too standoffish.

'When Stenwold Maker came here, he spoke of war. Are you sent on the same mission?'

She sensed that this was the question that could see her turned away, although she could not quite grasp the significance the man was putting into his words. 'I have come to talk to the prince about Salma about Prince Salme Dien.' She stumbled over the formal Commonweal name, because he had always just been 'Salma' to her. 'Did you know him? The prince became his guardian after Salma's father died.' Uncertainty was evident in her voice, and the Dragonfly shook his head slightly.

'He was kin-obligate to the prince.' It was another polite correction. The Commonweal tradition that saw children find surrogate homes with those of other castes and trades was something alien to the Lowlands. 'It is true that Prince-Minor Salme Dien had the honour of being chosen by Prince Felipe as such. It is a rare thing indeed for a prince to so bless the children of another n.o.ble family. We all remember him fondly. To my prince, he was as a son.' Something was softening in the man, his cold manner melting away, and she felt a connection with him, tenuous but present the first time she had found any echo of humanity in this reserved people since Salma had died.

Tynisa realized how she was clenching her fists, nails digging painfully into her palms, as if in readiness for her next words. 'You know that he is dead?'

There was no surprise. 'Your Master Stenwold Maker brought a letter from Salme Dien: a farewell to the prince. Clearly Dien knew that he would die, or guessed at it. You were his friend, I see. His death has marked you.'

More than his friend, Tynisa thought, but she just nodded. Somewhere in Gramo's house that irresistible smile of his winked and wounded, the echo of the man she had known and loved. 'I just thought . . . he did so much for the Lowlands. Perhaps in the end n.o.body did more to stop the Wasps. I just thought that someone should come and speak of him to Prince Felipe, and about what he did. I don't know . . .' Her voice began to crack and she scowled, reaching for her Weaponsmaster's core of self-control, and finding it slippery in her hands. 'I don't know if there has been a messenger, or if Stenwold sent a letter, or . . .' She finished lamely. 'And that's why I've come.' Laid out like that, it seemed a pitiful excuse for such a journey.

The Dragonfly was staring at her so intensely that she thought she must have delivered a mortal insult somehow. His casual manner had evaporated entirely. 'No one has come,' he said softly. 'The prince has waited, but no word has arrived from your Lowlands, for this duty of duties. No doubt your great men of the Lowlands have much to occupy them.' He took a deep breath. 'Tell me of him.'

'Will your prince not hear me?' she asked, frustrated all of a sudden. She imagined briefly an infinite sequence of servants, each one demanding every detail of her tale before pa.s.sing her into the hands of the next one, until her words grew stale and hard as month-old bread. The next words escaped before she could stop them: 'Please, I've come so far . . .'

He sighed. 'Forgive our poor hospitality. When our seneschal brought word of your arrival, perhaps it was natural to a.s.sume that Stenwold Maker was attempting to further his campaign against the Empire by some other means. We have not treated you as befits a guest, and certainly not as befits one on such a gracious and solemn errand. Please, tell me of Salme Dien.'

She stared at him, trying to recast him as something other than simply a Dragonfly man, not young and yet ageless, wearing clothes that were surely less fine than Lioste's had been, but then, of course, he had been travelling, and these were clothes meant for the road.

'Master my lord Your Majesty,' she stammered, making him a College magnate and a Spider Aristos and finally an emperor.

'Prince Felipe,' he said quietly, 'or "My Prince", if you were a retainer. Or Shah, if you prefer. But please' and his voice shook just a little despite his iron control of it 'tell me of my kin, of my boy. Tell me of Salme Dien.'

And so she did. As he sat on the floor like a child, she told him how Salma had formed his own army, his own nomadic princ.i.p.ality of the lost and the fugitive. She spoke of how the errant prince had won the respect of the Sarnesh Ants, and how he had led the a.s.sault on the Imperial Seventh Army, breaking their lines and destroying their siege engines, so that the Ant-kinden could make their a.s.sault.

She told him how Salma had died in that battle, but sensed that those were not the details he wished to hear. Instead she pa.s.sed on to the city that Salma's followers were building west of Sarn, to which they had given the name Princep Salma in his memory.

Of the b.u.t.terfly-kinden woman who had been Salma's lover, she said nothing.

Felipe Shah listened in silence to every word, nothing of his thoughts showing in his expression, and his gaze remained clear when she had finished. 'He met his destiny well. Would that we were all so lucky. My Salme Dien became a true prince of the Commonweal before he died, and that is something that many of us who bear the empty t.i.tle never achieve. What would you have of me, Tynisa?'

The question caught her unprepared. 'I'm not here to ask for anything.'

'Nonetheless, I am in your debt. If you will not barter for my favour now, then return to seek it, or send word. You have done me a courtesy fit for princes, one that I would not have expected to come from the Lowlands, where such things are not understood. You have brought Salme Dien back to me.'

She felt embarra.s.sed at the praise, not knowing what to do with it.

'Prince Felipe, I seek nothing . . .' I have nothing. She now realized that she had come to the end of her road. And what now? Walk on to Capitas and attack the Empress? Is all my life shrunk to this moment? She thought of asking to stay in Suon Ren, but the idea of living as a recluse in the midst of all of these elegant, alien people, with n.o.body but Gramo and perhaps the prince to talk to . . . She would become a shadow, a nothing, waning and dwindling in the vacuum of their turned backs. 'I . . .' she began, but there were no more words.

'I am a prince-major of the Commonweal, whose only master is the Monarch,' Felipe Shah told her. 'And I am in your debt, so you have but to ask.' He stood up to go, and she tried to speak, tried to beg him for . . . but there was nothing, a void where the future had been.

He bowed, and took his leave.

That same evening found the seneschal, Lioste Coren, back at the emba.s.sy door, brus.h.i.+ng aside Gramo Galltree and seeking out Tynisa.

'The prince has spoken,' he declared. 'He advises you to leave.'

Tynisa stared at him open-mouthed, even though she herself had decided she could not stay. 'He said he owed a debt . . . He wants me to go?'

A battle fought its way briefly across Lioste's face. 'Do not . . .' he started, and then his dislike of her finally gave way before his duty to defend his prince. 'He does not banish you. He does not cast you off. My prince has some small talent with the future, however. He sees only grief for you here. We are well aware that the Lowlander merchant is at Siriell's Town. My prince advises you to leave his domain to leave the Commonweal, to return home. He says you will be happier there. It is because he owes you a debt that he gives you this advice.' The effort of being civil to her was plainly stretching him. 'Please.'

'What shall you do?' Galltree asked her later, after she had listlessly picked at the late supper he had prepared.

'Would you let me stay here even if the prince wanted me gone?'

Galltree twisted the silk of his robe wretchedly, and she held a hand up to forestall his crisis of conscience. 'It doesn't matter.' She took a deep breath. 'This Siriell's Town, it's a rough place?'

'Lawless.' Galltree nodded emphatically. 'Rhael Province the family that ruled there under Felipe's, they're all gone, long gone, I think. In such places, others creep in, fugitives from the order of the Commonweal. These days, there are many such provinces, especially since the war.'

Her hand was on her sword hilt again, and she could sense the ghosts gathering close, waiting to hear her decision. 'I'll go,' she said. Home or die, and how convenient that both are to be found in the same direction. I don't even have to choose right now. She found that she had no intention of rejoining Allanbridge, if indeed he was not already on his way back to Collegium. Home held nothing but sharp edges for her now. She could not look Stenwold or Che in the face without seeing dead Achaeos reflected in their eyes and how she felt him close and gloating with that admission and she was being forced out of Suon Ren so very politely. How good of the world to provide a sink like Siriell's Town to drown herself in.

She took out Allanbridge's rough map, and looked Galltree straight in the eye. 'Anything to add to this?' she asked.

The road to Siriell's Town was a matter of heading north-east as best she could: bridging the ca.n.a.ls, and then heading over increasingly hilly country until she had made the subtle transition from land that still knew the hoe today all the way down through a gradient of neglect, to land that had not been sowed in a decade or more. She saw a few villages on the way, and avoided them by choice. There were no other travellers, no merchants or messengers, no flying machines overhead. The sense of the land was one of quiet desolation. She knew she would feel different if the Commonweal had accepted her in any way, but aside from Felipe Shah's brief moment of openness, she felt more a stranger here than she had done when she arrived and even the prince thought it would be best if she left.

Each morning, and sporadically throughout the day, she checked her bearings as best she could by Allanbridge's landmarks, thinking, So I can't miss the place can I, Jons? As if I believe that.

But when she came within sight of Siriell's Town having veered west some distance from her intended course she found that Allanbridge had been telling nothing but the truth. It was indeed a town, or something resembling one, but at its heart was a castle upon a hill, and Tynisa saw instantly that it looked something like the exemplar of Felipe's own. Complete, it had const.i.tuted a six- or seven-floored hexagonal tower, narrowing towards a point at the top. The walls were lanced with arrowslit windows, so that no attacker on the ground or in the air would have been safe from the defenders' missiles. Tynisa, having observed the st.u.r.dy walls of Collegium and the Sarnesh fortifications, could see only absences here: nowhere to place artillery, not that the Dragonfly-kinden would know what to do with it; no reinforcing of the walls, so that catapult or leadshotter a.s.sault would hammer them down all the sooner. This was a castle that had been designed to hold off men from another age.

It would not even serve for that purpose, any more. One whole side of it had sloughed off and tumbled down the hill years before, leaving a teetering rotten tooth of a place latticed with the shorn-off stubs of internal walls. The hollow sh.e.l.l of the interior had been colonized haphazardly by its new masters, for there were tents and shacks and wood-frame structures not only about the walls and within the castle's hollow footprint, but straggling up the walls themselves, as though growing there like mushrooms. A further shambles of makes.h.i.+ft dwellings had spread out from the castle's collapsed side in a jumble of huts packed far closer than the homes at Suon Ren. The entire place looked foul and squalid to Tynisa.

There was a clear effort to try and farm some of the land around Siriell's Town, with a hundred little plots scratched into the soil. Several of these had adults or children standing guard over them, as though protecting seams of precious metal. They stared at her suspiciously, as she pa.s.sed between them on her way to the town proper. Drawing closer, she saw that the narrow streets radiating out from the broken face of the castle were cluttered with people, many of whom seemed to be drunk or unconscious, and a couple of whom were clearly dead. The air was.h.i.+ng over Tynisa reeked of sweat and refuse, and resonated with arguments and shouting, the clatter of pots, singing, the odd scream and the roaring declamations of some kind of street entertainer.

Most of the resident sc.u.m were Dragonfly-kinden, she noticed, and it was plain that n.o.ble paragons such as Salma or Felipe Shah were only setting an example that many of their fellows failed to match. Most of the other outlaws were tall, lean Gra.s.shopper-kinden, but there was a fair quota of halfbreeds and other kinden, including some Mantids and even a few Wasps.

A middle-aged Dragonfly in a ragged robe reached out to tug at her sleeve. 'How much?' he slurred. 'How much for it?'

She slapped his hand away, and in that moment her rapier was a comforting presence, resting against the man's neck. He seemed too drunk to quite understand, so she kicked him in the parts for good measure, rousing a murmur of appreciation, or sympathy, from some of the degenerates nearby.

She had not thought to find Wasps in the Commonweal, but their pale faces kept leaping out at her as she pa.s.sed through this filthy town, and she could see that they were prospering here too. There were only a handful, but people got out of their way, and wherever they sat, each held court with a gang of local ruffians at his beck and call. Watching a few of them, and the craven way in which most of the locals bowed and sc.r.a.ped, she soon made the connection. The Empire had dealt the Commonweal the most savage beating in that nation's history.

At the end of the Twelve-year War three whole princ.i.p.alities perhaps a third of the Monarch's domain were under the black and gold flag, and the Imperial forces had only halted their advance because of an uprising in one of their subject cities back along the supply chain. Even though a treaty had been signed, pledging future peace, and even though the three captured princ.i.p.alities were now nominally free, following reversals suffered in the Empire's war with the Lowlands, everyone knew that the armies of black and gold could return at any time. Their repeated defeats had wormed their way into the consciousness of the Commonweal, and even people who had not taken up arms knew that the Wasp-kinden were to be feared.

After that, she was looking out for each renegade Imperial, her fingers constantly hovering near her sword hilt, some part of her mind plotting her own glorious fall. To rid the Commonweal of Wasps? To rid Felipe Shah's princ.i.p.ality of the vermin of Siriell's Town? What might she not set her blade to? To die in the pursuit of some grand and b.l.o.o.d.y ideal, was that not the Mantis way? There was no past she wished to face, no future she could conceive, but Siriell's Town offered her an eternal b.l.o.o.d.y present: fighting as Tisamon had fought, and losing herself here just as he had sought oblivion in h.e.l.leron after her mother had died.

For surely the world has no better use for me, she thought and, even as she did, her eyes lit on a face she recognized bold as the sun, a man she had never wanted to see again.

She had been fleeing Jerez, as much as Collegium, when she came to the Commonweal, but here was Jerez mocking her on the streets of Siriell's Town.

Jerez had been the idea of doomed Achaeos. There was some box, he said, just a little thing that a man could grip in one hand, but the Moth insisted it was of vital importance. Somehow, in the middle of a war, Achaeos had talked Stenwold into backing an expedition to retrieve it, and Tynisa had gone with him, to n.o.body's gain.

Tisamon had been with her, watching her back as she watched his; and Jons Allanbridge of course, to get them there. Then there had been the two Wasps. One, the arch-traitor Thalric, had subsequently escaped to become a big man away in the Empire yet another sack of blood she had never quite managed to cut open, for all he deserved it. And then there had been Gaved, who claimed to be independent of the dictates of the Empire. Tynisa had long decided that if he was genuinely something other than a servant of the Emperor, then he was something even worse: a freebooter, a mercenary, a thief and a kidnapper. Like Thalric, though, and unlike Achaeos, he had come out of the business untouched, and had been the only one to make any kind of profit from the whole wretched expedition. While others had bled and died, Gaved had left Jerez with a Spider-kinden girl on his arm, and an eyewitness familiarity with Tynisa's own crimes.

And here, on the stinking streets of Siriell's Town, was Gaved himself, with his intolerable burden of knowledge practically shrieking out to her. She watched as he spoke to some halfbreed who seemed to be a taverner, pa.s.sing over several trinkets in return for some information or other then the Wasp was off down the street with that light and easy step only truly owned by the utterly guilty.

And the irresistible thought came to Tynisa: I can kill him. I can start by ridding the world of Gaved, right here, right now. Because, although killing Gaved would be a pitiful gift to the world, at least it would give the drift of her life some meaning before the end.

Four.

She had never been in Siriell's Town before, but instinct had taken over and she skulked along in Gaved's wake, without any suggestion that he was aware of her. He seemed a busy man, too, with plenty of people to talk to: darting from hovel to shack, exchanging words, paying his way with what looked like some little cut stones. Sometimes she caught him looking over his shoulder, and she guessed she was not the only person here who wished him ill, something that seemed entirely understandable to her.

Twice she thought he was going to get into a fight. The first time, he was accosted by another Wasp and she heard angry words exchanged, the man accusing Gaved of some disloyalty perhaps to the Empire that both had patently abandoned but Gaved smoothed matters over with some joke, fending off the man's anger. The aggressor looked more than a little drunk and Gaved was able to evade him quickly.

The second time a half-dozen or so Gra.s.shoppers tried to accost him, and although his hands threatened them with Wasp Art they only kept their distance but did not disperse. They were armed with spears and staves and knives, and they clearly wanted Gaved to go along with them to some local tyrant or other. Tynisa watched, interested to see if she would have to save the man's life in order to have the pleasure of killing him herself.

One of the Gra.s.shoppers became too bold, reaching for the Wasp's sleeve, even though his fellows were still holding back. A bitter expression crossed Gaved's face briefly and Tynisa saw his hand flash fire, knocking the grasping man off his feet, still alive but with one leg scorched. In the next instant the Wasp had taken to the sky, his wings lifting him back over the adjoining buildings. The Gra.s.shoppers cursed and gave chase, as their own Art sent them leaping and bounding along at rooftop level, determined not to let Gaved get away. The wounded man yelled after them, demanding aid that was not offered, and then he began to crawl away, weeping with pain.

Tynisa loped into action. She did not possess the Art to follow either the Gra.s.shoppers or their prey, but she could see the net of his pursuers as it spread. Hurriedly, she climbed up to the creaking roof of the largest shack, spying them out, seeing who gave up soonest, who continued following a trail. She took only moments to make her guess, and then she dropped back down to street level and went hunting.

It felt good and so little had felt good recently to be moving swiftly and silently through the shabby streets, rapier swaying at her side like a faithful companion beast. This was more a taste of life than the world had afforded her in a long time now, since the war.

Sometimes people got in her way, but they got right back out of it once they noticed her expression, Wasps as well as locals, for she was not someone to stop, just then.

She slowed as she neared the wretched district her instincts had led her towards, and began to quarter it more subtly, street by street, her eyes not actively searching so much as taking it all in letting the filthy sights and sounds wash over her while sifting them for familiarity. She encountered a few of the Gra.s.shoppers, angry and frustrated at their failed search, turning back now to make their excuses to whoever had hired them. She paid them no mind.

As she s.h.i.+fted sidelong into the shadows beneath a shed's sagging eaves she found a core of stillness, a Mantis's watchful invisibility before the strike, as though the shade of Tisamon stood beside her, hand on her shoulder, lending her his kinden's Art. The other ghosts had been left far behind.

There. She had him. The cloaked figure walking almost not quite like a Dragonfly, but a little too burly despite his best efforts. She watched as he slipped out from between two buildings, a little astray from where she had predicted, but close enough. There was a brief pale flash of Wasp skin as he glanced about, and then Gaved hurried off, not at the idle saunter of before, but like a man in a hurry to get somewhere.

She flowed after him, like a ghost herself, keeping up with him at a distance, street for street. When she saw he was heading out of Siriell's Town her satisfaction only increased. She would be able to kill him cleanly and without interruption, before returning to this festering pit to begin earning her atonement in blood.

He made good time after that, but always on the ground, not wanting to take wing and be too visible. Shortly, he was at the outskirts, where Siriell's Town petered out into the most wretched of slums, amid the utter squalor of those too weak to fight for something better. Shacks and hovels had become just makes.h.i.+ft tents, cloaks propped up on sticks. The stink was vile, with flies rising in whirling clouds from makes.h.i.+ft latrines, and from bodies.

Gaved did not stop for any of this, and nor did Tynisa, although her stalking had become more careful as her cover diminished. She fell further back, changing her tactics from crowds and walls to using the curve and lurch of the land against him: creeping low, meandering left and right as the contours took her, but always managing to keep him in sight. His track took him through barren farmland in which some of the locals were trying to scratch a living, and she followed him field by field, crossing their boundaries, slinking along irrigation ditches and taking the occasional stand of stunted trees as a gift.

Dusk was on its way now, a bloated moon having already hauled itself clear of the horizon. Gaved had pa.s.sed the last patch of farmland, too stony now for anything but a handful of scrawny sheep watched over by a Gra.s.shopper youth, and his red and black beetle that circled the animals constantly in a vigilant trundle. One hill beyond, Gaved turned down into a sheltered defile, and there made camp.

Watching his quick, professional movements as he set a little fire beneath the overhang and hung a tiny pot over it, she almost forgot why she had followed him. Thinking himself alone out here, he had become an honest man, quietly competent and well able to brave the wilderness, seemingly more at home than he had been on the streets of Siriell's Town. She watched for longer than she intended, out in the cold and the dark, as he cooked up something almost scentless to eat, over a fire that gave no smoke.

At the last, and s.h.i.+vering slightly from the chill, she drew her rapier in one smooth, silent motion. His wings and sting would give him all the advantages when at range, yet she could not bear to simply kill him from behind. This was not squeamishness: she wanted him to know the agent of justice before he died.

Even as she took her first step towards him, his voice called out, 'About time. Now come out where I can see you.' He was standing up, one hand out with palm open, but not quite looking at her knowing that he was observed but unable to make her out in the darkness beyond his fire. She edged closer, in inches and steps, and he cast about, frowning and tense, but unwilling to flee from mere shadows. In her slow progress there was a fierce battle being fought, his eyes and the moon against her stealth, until she was almost within rapier's reach. Then the firelight caught her, and he saw at last who she was.

His expression was almost all she could have wanted: utter shock at first, but swiftly replaced by an intense loathing that mirrored her own thoughts exactly. She had to kill him, because he was a reminder of all the things she was trying to forget. He, in that instant of recognition, had made a similar resolution and quite possibly for similar reasons.

'What are you doing here?' he demanded. 'You've got the whole of the cursed Lowlands! Why can't you keep there?' The immediate hostility was gratifying: no wheedling, no excuses, no feigned friends.h.i.+ps, nothing to tempt any uncertainty; just a man who very plainly did not want to see her.

'Perhaps I'm the new Collegiate amba.s.sador,' she said. 'Why are you fouling the Commonweal, Wasp?' And it was a release to be able to speak so frankly and viciously to someone, for a change. She was already calculating angles, distances. If he took wing, there would be a moment sufficient for her to rush forward and impale him. If he lashed out at her with his sting she would trust to her reflexes to read the motion, to be casting herself aside and in again even as he formed his intention to shoot. Poised on a knife-edge of reflex, his death within her gift, she could afford to talk, to make him understand, relis.h.i.+ng his hatred and casting it right back at him.