Heirs of the Blade

Part Three
The Huntress
Twenty

Tynisa had been left to her own devices amid the strange bustle of Lowre Cean’s compound.

The old man himself seemed to drift between a dozen baffling pastimes, as though to actually commit wholly to any one occupation would be the death of him. Sometimes he was closeted with his little singers, the sight of which still made Tynisa’s flesh crawl. At other times he would go off travelling through the snows with one band of reprobates or another, abandoning his servants and guards and vanishing for days. Tynisa was given to understand that all those armed bands that visited his estate were not, after all, bandits, or not only bandits, but also war veterans whom Lowre Cean had either commanded or fought alongside. Why the old tactician took the whole thing so personally, and what the precise relationship of duty and obligation was, Tynisa was not sure. Nobody spoke about it.

At other times, Cean would retreat into his workroom, where he would whittle away at tiny figures of soldiers and peasants and nobles, all carved out of a wood that could be found nowhere within a hundred miles, and that he had shipped in by infrequent barge. He would cook sometimes, inventing new concoctions and feeding all comers. He would tend his kadith ponds, adding his own blends of herbs and grasses for the insect larvae to knit into their cocoons, or he would retreat to his library and read some dusty scroll of centuries-old poetry.

He did not practise with weapons, or take a bow down to the butts to shoot at targets, as many of his people did. He did not talk about the war. He did not even seem to directly give orders to his guards or servants. They just went about their business, using their own best judgement.

Amidst all of this, Tynisa was left to amuse herself and she found that, rather than this leading to frustration and despair, she was oddly liberated by it all. Certainly she was waiting for Salme Alain to call upon her, as she was sure he would. Certainly she still had her great purpose, of bringing word of Salma’s end to his mother, who did not seem to want to know. Still, until that part of her life interfered again, she was a free agent. The winter world seemed to have forgotten about her, and so had her own driving demons. Even the shadows grew infrequent, and sometimes whole days could go by without her glimpsing that hunched, accusing figure in grey robes, or her father’s flayed corpse.

One morning she awoke in a sudden panic, hearing voices outside. For long moments she could not understand why the very sound of them had abruptly recalled to her all the guilt and fear that she had been hiding from. Then at last she placed it: a Collegiate accent, clear as day.

Outside in the courtyard she saw a covered wagon drawn by a brown-shelled beetle, and sitting on the driver’s board was a Beetle-kinden, who was currently bawling at the top of her voice at some of Lowre’s retainers. She was a stranger, and yet Tynisa felt she knew the woman instantly. She had seen plenty of that type in Collegium: stocky, bluff, forceful women striding about the city streets or College halls. They were independent, resourceful and practical, constantly making and selling and disputing, and always being loud.

The sight of such a woman here, wrapped in two layers of woollen robes and a long cloak, was bewildering, and Tynisa approached her cautiously.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, but the woman was giving strident directions to someone about what to feed her beetle on, and so Tynisa had to repeat herself, even louder.

‘What is it?’ the woman snapped, obviously impatient with anything not immediately concerned with her current purpose.

‘I was wondering… what can you be doing here.’

The woman stared at her, and suddenly let out a bark of outsize laughter. ‘A voice from home, as I live and breathe!’ she declared. ‘A strange-looking Collegiate you make, too. I’d take you for a native, else. Sammi, come and look at this!’

From the round back of the wagon came an elderly Grasshopper-kinden with thinning grey hair and a frame that was all angles.

‘Sammi?’ queried Tynisa weakly.

‘Well, it’s – what is it? – Tse Mae, or something very like it,’ the woman admitted, fighting with the man’s name. ‘But Sammi works for me, and so I get to call him that. Fordwright, by the way. Hardy Fordwright, Master of the College.’

Tynisa shook the proffered hand uncertainly. ‘Tynisa, student of the same. But, Mistress Fordwright, how long have you been here in the Commonweal?’

‘What is it… seven years now?’ Fordwright asked her companion.

‘Nine since we met, Harde,’ Tse Mae replied, mangling her name equally as much as she had mangled his.

‘On my life, is it really?’ Fordwright looked genuinely surprised.

‘But what are you doing here?’ Tynisa pressed.

‘Oh, old man Lowre’s our patron, don’t you know,’ the Beetle woman explained. By now their animal was being unhitched and watered, and Tse Mae was arranging for the wagon to be put under cover. Fordwright beamed at him, then explained, ‘You see, Sammi and me are here about a piece of research – You’ve heard of the Alchemical Theorem?’ – and she went on as if Tynisa had, regardless. ‘I was a chemical artificer back home, and Sammi here has spent his days cooking up elixirs and potions for the credulous. So I can put a bunch of ingredients together for a particular effect, and Sammi can do the same. The thing is that I can tell you why mine works, and he can tell you why his works, and neither of us agree why it works, but we both agree that it does.’

When Tynisa failed to react with immediate enthusiasm Fordwright pressed on impatiently. ‘But don’t you see? It’s a process and result that makes sense both to Apt and Inapt minds, even if my sense doesn’t work for him, and his doesn’t work for me. Give me another few years and I’ll stand before the College and tell them that I have found the exact field of study that Aptitude may have arisen from, and it’s still being practised here in the Commonweal.’

This last was thrown over her shoulder, as she was striding off towards Lowre Cean’s main hall, letting Tynisa and Tse Mae trail in her wake.

‘And Lowre Cean is an alchemist too, is he?’

Fordwright beamed back at Tynisa. ‘A little. He dabbles. Dabbles in just about everything, in fact. He’s a patron of just about every art you can name. Painters and poets, itinerant Roach-kinden balladeers, stargazers and hocus-pocus merchants, and people who’ll tell your future from your shadow. Lucky for Sammi and me that he’s up for supporting some serious inquiry, as well as all those quacksalvers. My guess?’ Even her colossal voice managed a crude sort of whisper. ‘The old boy is up for anything that’ll take his mind off the war.’

‘But he was a hero,’ Tynisa protested weakly.

Fordwright made a disrespectful sound that demonstrated precisely what she thought of war heroes. What she said made sense, Tynisa considered. Collegium’s great figures were noted for their intellect, their diplomacy, their discoveries and inventions, and they left the glorifying of war to other kinden. In Tynisa, though, the fighting urge was strong: that need to test herself and her blade. She found in herself an unchallengeable insistence that all true heroes were warriors living and dying by the sword.

Like Salma. Like my father. Thus conjured, they both hovered just out of sight.

The young man who had fetched her from Gaved’s home came to find her once again shortly afterwards. She had never even learned his name, about which he seemed to be unusually discreet. Her eventual conclusion was that the youth was some bastard by-blow of the old prince’s, and that the Commonwealers had quaint ideas about fidelity and paternity.

‘His Highness has ordered there to be a formal dinner tonight,’ the youth informed her. ‘Your presence would be welcomed.’

This would be the third such formal occasion since she had become Lowre Cean’s guest. The old man usually ate by himself, at odd times and wherever he happened to be pursuing his own interests, but sometimes the prince-major would surface in him, and suddenly all his servants and followers would be galvanized into a culinary orgy of preparation, whilst those wayfarers lucky enough to be passing through would find themselves made guests of honour. Tynisa assumed that this time it was Hardy Fordwright and Tse Mae who had prompted the festivities.

During warmer months, the nameless young man explained, such feasts were held outside, under the stars, with places set so that everyone, from the prince’s household down to the lowliest fieldhand, would take some part in the meal. During the winter, however, Lowre would ensure that some gift of food or drink reached each family that owed its livelihood to his presence, but he himself would feast within the doubled walls of his hall.

After sunset she made her way to the long hall, knowing that the meal would not commence for some time. She found Fordwright and her companion there already, plainly looking forward to the hospitality, among a handful of others who were guesting there too: a Dragonfly noblewoman, a Mercer out on business for the throne, and a Grasshopper woman in piecemeal armour who looked to Tynisa like a mercenary captain.

However, when Lowre Cean himself made his appearance, just as the servants were bringing through bowls of hot kadith, there was someone walking beside him that had Tynisa leaping up from her place.

‘Alain!’ she cried out, heedless of propriety. She had nearly cried ‘Salma!’ instead, just like before, which would have made her seem a complete fool.

Salme Alain grinned broadly at her. ‘And here she is,’ he declared. ‘You have taken some finding, Maker Tynise, though I place the blame for that at my mother’s door. Forgive me my absence, but I have been ensuring that our southern border is safe. The Turncoat tells me that he showed you exactly what we have to deal with there.’

It took her a moment before she remembered that ‘the Turncoat’ was Gaved, but then she nodded, recalling the wretched ruin that had been Siriell’s Town.

Lowre Cean lowered himself into his appointed seat. A formal Dragonfly meal was set out much like a Fly-kinden feast: long, low tables, and everyone sitting on cushions on the floor, with the prince’s place in the middle of one of the long sides. A moment later, servants began showing other people to their seats. Tynisa found herself at Lowre’s left-hand side, balancing the nameless messenger seated on his right. Alain, who had presumably displaced some previously planned guest, was at one end of the table, seemingly as far from Tynisa as he could get. That seemed odd to her, and she turned to Lowre to ask about it. She caught the old man gazing at Salme Alain with a strange expression. If the two of them had not been Dragonfly nobles, and if Lowre was not so beholden to the Salmae, Tynisa might have read hostility there.

Alain was already talking animatedly with the people on either side of him, clearly making some new friends. He glanced at Tynisa once or twice, but without raising his voice more than would have been polite, there was no way he could speak to her. For her part, Tynisa picked at her meal in silence. She was aware that she must be missing something important, some unspoken axiom of Dragonfly society. She was used to reading people at a glance, sketching an instant picture of their motives and intentions, and it was not that the Commonwealers were too subtle for her, who had dealt with Imperial bureaucrats and Spider-kinden Aristoi in her time. It was simply that their language of face and gesture was different, following a code that she was still learning. While she tried to accustom herself to their ways, there were realms of suggestion and implication that were nevertheless passing her by.

She could catch not a word of Alain’s conversation, either, for Hardy Fordwright was stridently holding forth about some matter of her own. In a bid to derail the woman’s braying monopoly of the conversation, Tynisa leant over to her and, just as the Beetle paused for a draught, asked her, ‘When did you last see our ambassador, Mistress Fordwright?’

‘Our what?’ the Beetle demanded, baffled.

‘Gramo Galltree, at Suon Ren,’ Tynisa explained. ‘I was staying with him not so long ago. He did not mention any other Collegiates in the Commonweal.’

‘I’ve never heard of the fellow,’ Fordwright stated flatly. ‘An ambassador? ’

‘Well, yes,’ Tynisa said, now somewhat thrown. ‘He said he was, anyway. He’s a College man.’

Hardy frowned, quietened beyond Tynisa’s wildest hopes. At last she said, ‘Well, then, I suppose I should take a trip to Suon Ren. That’s… Prince Vas Nares?’

‘Felipe Shah.’

‘Oh, the Prince- Major ’s stamping ground. Well, perhaps Sammi and I will go south from here. Be good to hear another Collegiate voice.’ Her tone so clearly equated ‘Collegiate’ with ‘civilized’.

For a moment Tynisa felt guilty about dumping this brash, loud woman on poor old Gramo, but then she recalled the ambassador’s lament on how he missed the familiar talk of his former home. Well, then, Hardy Fordwright would sate that need of his – or cure him of it for ever.

The meal was lengthy, the flavours of the food subtle and elusive, the wine tart and dry where a Collegium vintage would have been sweet. Tynisa, who had been happy, for months now, to drift along at Lowre Cean’s aimless pace, was suddenly impatient with it all. Alain’s arrival was like a stone cast into the clear waters of a pond.

Something is about to change. The world has been sleeping until now.

And, once the meal was done, he approached her with that smile which he shared with his dead brother.

‘We are to celebrate, at Leose,’ he announced. ‘We have scored a great victory over the bandits and the dissenters.’ He spoke loudly, deliberately including Lowre Cean, who was nearby. ‘My mother wished you to know that she has not been idle, Your Highness.’

Again, Cean’s look was coolly distant. ‘I thank your mother for her kindness. I am too old, alas, to enjoy such festivities. I trust you will bear my apologies.’

‘I will bear more than that, if I may.’ Alain grinned at him. ‘I would bear one of your guests away.’ His glance at Tynisa was clear.

‘But… when is this celebration?’ she asked him.

‘Oh, over several nights, but the greatest share of it will be as soon as I return,’ Alain said carelessly. ‘And it would be impolite to keep them waiting.’

‘But Leose is…’

‘Oh, I am here with Lycene, who will carry us both.’ His smile flashed again, like a blade. ‘You’ll come, won’t you?’

‘Your mother didn’t seem too fond of me, when we last met,’ Tynisa said weakly.

‘I am her heir, and she may not therefore turn away my guests,’ Alain declared, with a rebellious spark.

She found herself glancing at Lowre Cean, which was ridiculous. He was not her guardian, and she needed no one’s permission. Still, she had hoped to see some manner of approval on the old man’s lean face. He was quite unreadable, though, save that he had evidently no warmth to spare for Salme Alain, nor apparently for the young man’s mother.

Strange, she considered, for Cean seemed to be guesting within Elas Mar province at the Salmae’s invitation, and yet the fallen prince-major was obviously anything but grateful. Is it merely that, then? Does he resent being beholden to them? But that conclusion would go against all she had gathered of the old man’s character. Or is it his losses in the war? She could understand that he might not wish to be reminded, by seeing those still in possession of what he himself had been stripped of. Not lands, not castle, but… She racked her memory, then decided, Yes, there was a son of the house of Lowre. Someone has mentioned that to me. Perhaps that alone is enough to make him a bitter neighbour. He certainly goes to some lengths to put aside the trappings of a prince, and loses himself in trivial matters instead.

The thought still did not quite sit right, but she had no better option, nor could she readily enquire of either Lowre or Alain. Gaved, she felt sure, would know, and would tell her, but the Wasp was not here to ask.

‘I shall go,’ she told Alain. ‘I would be honoured.’