Heirs of the Blade

Twenty-Seven

Che…

Behind her, the river Jamail flowed steady on its course, heedless of time or the deeds of mayfly humanity. The current chaos disturbing its slow waters, namely Amnon’s fish hunt, was a mere nothing, gone before the river could notice. It was just as irrelevant to Che.

Somewhere ahead of her, amid the moss-hung tangle of the trees, was the grey smudge that she told herself was Achaeos’s ghost, which had dragged her from her fellows to set off like a madwoman into the swamp. She had never been able to refuse him anything.

Some part of her knew she would discover, in time, that the apparition was not Achaeos at all. Instead, the parasite clinging to her mind was some fragment of Tynisa’s father, Tisamon, who had died destroying the Shadow Box. Somehow, the Mantis’s ghost had crawled from the very clutches of oblivion and into her head, then had lacked the strength to get out again.

So that was why she was here, as it led her a merry chase through the channels and mudflats and twisted greenery of the Jamail delta, impatient and demanding, and she followed gladly, because she thought it was Achaeos. Even though she knew that she was wrong, living through this a second time, she could not force herself to do anything different. There was a comfort in keeping her hand off the tiller and knowing the outcome, however painful it would be.

At last she had burst into the open, and found the little Mantis village: the reed-and-thatch circle of huts surrounding their sacred place of sacrifice. Even as she broke in upon them, the stunted Mantis-kinden of the delta were herding their latest two victims towards the wicker idol in the centre, its outstretched arms forever reaching for more blood.

Che had stepped forward, as she remembered, but realized there was now someone keeping pace with her. She glanced sideways, annoyed that the sanctity of her memories was being invaded, and saw a complete stranger, some halfbreed woman who looked as though she had Mantis blood herself. The intruder did not return her glance, but continued staring ahead at the two Wasp prisoners the swamp-dwellers had captured.

‘It is him, isn’t it?’ the other woman remarked, apropos of nothing. ‘I don’t know the sickly one, but your other man, that’s definitely… oh, what’s his name?’ And finally she glanced at Che, as if looking for help.

And Che had always been helpful. ‘Thalric,’ she supplied automatically, and found that mentioning the name opened up a whole world of other memories, unwelcome because she should now have been safe from them. But none of that has happened yet, and, as she thought that, she felt the world around her unravelling, unable to retain its integrity in the face of her returning knowledge.

No – it’s Achaeos! But instantly she felt embarrassed, caught pretending ignorance, when all the time she knew it was not her dead lover. She could not live this over again. It was false- A solid catapulted stone thundered down nearby, indicating that the Wasp artillerists positioned on the roof of the governor’s palace had finished moving the piece into place. Their angle of attack was awkward, but it still showered the nearest Mynans with sharp chips of masonry. Che shrank back, throwing an arm up, even though none of the fragments came anywhere near her.

Kymene stalked past just then, a retinue of self-appointed junior officers trailing after her. The night was dragging on, and the Wasps occupying the palace remained stubborn in their resistance. Everyone knew that Imperial reinforcements were on their way, and if there were still Wasp soldiers within the city when they arrived then the revolution that everyone had fought so hard for would be caught between the two, and most likely crushed.

Another detachment of Mynans was forming up, getting ready to rush the gates. The great doors to the palace were already gone, but the Wasps had put up a makeshift barricade, and were holding there with crossbow, spear and sting. The Mynans massively outnumbered them, but the Imperial defensive position was formidable. A dozen similar assaults had already been thrown back. Che stared at the citizens readying themselves for the push: men and women of all ages from mere youths to white-haired veterans, and most of them wearing either captured Wasp armour or the old black-and-red Mynan breastplates and peaked helms. The front half held triangular shields, the rear had a motley collection of crossbows. They were not trained soldiers, but then Myna had been occupied and enslaved for almost twenty years. These men and women were tough, bitter street fighters who had cut their teeth during the resistance, but this now was a soldier’s job, and they were not trained for it. And even professional soldiers might have balked at the task that awaited them.

One of them stepped out of the line: not a Mynan, this one, but some kind of muddied halfbreed woman not much older than Che herself.

‘At first I thought this was before the war, but you’re too young for that,’ she observed, approaching Che with her hands behind her back, as if the scene about her was intended merely for her personal amusement. ‘I suppose the Empire has been fighting all manner of people elsewhere, but in the Commonweal it’s almost impossible to get any news of it.’

‘Commonweal?’ Che eyed her blankly, but even as she said it there were new thoughts trickling into her mind. Yes, I will travel to the Commonweal, but that’s later, much later, and with that thought she was forced to accept that all of this, all the frenzy and bravery of the Mynan resistance, was history.

‘I charged the gates,’ Che murmured, recalling the moment in awe. She looked at the strange woman, who was holding a hand out to her.

There was pain, concealed in the palm of that hand, and Che wanted none of it. She turned away.

In Solarno, the angry crowd surged back and forth, the supporters of the Crystal Standard and Satin Trail parties shouting slogans, clashing messily with their slender, curved swords. Che had backed away as far as she could from them, waiting for the moment when this angry demonstration of Solarnese government-by-mob would flow over the low wall of the taverna and wash her away. But the fight flowed back and forth, prowling about the wall’s edge like a hungry animal, repeating the same round of violence over and over, and she knew she could wait for ever, the world trapped in amber, and be safe.

‘You Lowlanders live lives of such violence,’ the strange half-breed woman remarked. ‘Cheerwell Maker, come to me.’

The sight of her filled Che with a nameless fear and she turned away, searching for somewhere…

It was quiet here in the farmhouse cellar, and she could almost believe there was no army camped above. A few tens of thousands of Wasp-kinden and their Auxillians, but she would hardly have guessed at their presence had she not been their prisoner.

On the morrow no doubt they would question her, torture her most likely, but she had all night to think about that, and ‘all night’ could last as long as she wished, this little moment of shadowed calm stretching out indefinitely.

It was a strange place to find sanctuary, but she could not fault it.

This will do, she decided, and then the door above opened, and a solitary figure was stepping down into the dark. She thought it was Totho, at first, as it should have been, but instead it was- The jolt of recognition was physical this time. That same halfbreed, the woman Che had never met, and yet who seemed to be acquiring a grim inevitability.

‘Cheerwell Maker, listen to me,’ the woman started, but Che did not want to listen to her. There must be somewhere…

The Prowess Forum was well attended today – some favourites were listed to fight and the connoisseurs of the amateur game were looking forward to some interesting matches. None of which will involve me, Che reflected, and the thought was reassuring. I am nothing special here. Nobody will trouble me. Eventually they would call upon her to fight, of course, and she would match swords with the clumsy nephew of some Collegium magnate, and she would lose, of course, and be mortified at letting her friends down. The thought now brought nothing more than a wry smile to her face: back when the trivial had mattered.

I will hold time still here. In the Prowess Forum, with her friends about her, and the stern Ant-kinden Master Kymon just stepping out into the circle, many months before he would end his life transfixed by a Vekken crossbow bolt.

She smiled, and took a seat on the lowest step of the tiered stone benches. How little she knew, how young she was! Whatever joy the future held, the hours took more than they gave, in the end.

‘I have no idea where this is, now,’ said a woman sitting beside her. For a moment Che felt a surge of outrage and horror: her, here? But the sensation was gone almost as soon as it had arrived, for she was home, here, ignorant and safe.

The halfbreed woman had stood up, and was gazing over at Che’s fellow duellists. Her accent had been oddly familiar, Che decided.

‘Excuse me, but are you a Commonwealer?’ she asked timidly.

‘I have that honour,’ the woman replied. ‘My name is Maure and you are Cheerwell Maker.’

Che blinked, fighting down a queasy feeling of discontinuity. ‘Are you a friend of Salma’s?’ she asked. ‘Salme Dien, that is.’

Maure’s eyes flicked towards the elegant Dragonfly youth preparing to meet his opponent. ‘Ah, no – but I know of him.’ She seemed sad about that, and Che had to forcibly prevent herself from remembering why that might be.

She realized she was desperate to make the woman go away, but at the same time she was meek Cheerwell Maker, who was always polite and had never really been hurt. She clung to that. It was all that was left between her and the storm.

‘I am sent to be your guide, Cheerwell Maker,’ Maure stated.

Che flinched from her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, you do, you do. Ah, look, your friends are coming over to see you.’

Che cast desperate eyes over towards those familiar faces, and recoiled when she saw them. Somehow, while she had not been concentrating, something had slipped badly within the Prowess Forum. The audience had gone, and her friends… her friends…

Salma was dead, she saw, a sword wound splashing his front with red. Hard-faced Totho wore intricate armour of interlocking plates, overlaid by a grey surcoat showing an open gauntlet. Tynisa… Tynisa was gone.

Tynisa was gone, and was that not why Che was doing… whatever it was she had been doing when…

‘No,’ Che whispered. ‘I’m home. I’m safe here. Go away.’

The halfbreed woman sighed, looking out over the fighting ring where the Master Armsman, long-dead Kymon, still stood. ‘I understand this is a place of learning,’ she remarked.

Che blinked at her. ‘Yes, yes it is.’

‘I would like to visit here, some day. Most necromancers are ignorant fools making a living from the hopes and dreams of others. They paw at the dead, enticing fallen friends and dead relatives out to perform like trained crickets, and they have no understanding. They just know what works and what does not, and never mind the why.’

‘Magic?’ Che said slowly. ‘You’re talking about magic.’ The false Prowess Forum was falling away now, but the world seemed to be uncertain as to what to replace it with. ‘But I don’t… ‘

Believe in it… But before Maure’s sharp gaze, she could no longer deceive herself. ‘But you do not talk like a magician.’

‘Thank you,’ the halfbreed said drily. ‘I was trained in Tsolshevy, amongst the Woodlouse-kinden. Some experiment of theirs, I was. They treat their magicians like scientists and their artificers like mystics, there, and perhaps they know more about either than most do because of that. They taught me necromancy, and I understand it like nothing else.’ She patted the stone beside her companionably, the bank of seats that somehow had survived the dissolution going on around them. Lacking alternatives, Che sat.

Maure leant back, propping herself on her elbows. ‘Any quack will tell you about ghosts haunting battlefields,’ she continued, ‘old buildings, ruins, deathbeds; about ghosts that linger where their living selves were murdered; ghosts within the weapons that slew them, or that their hands had once wielded; ghosts in treasured objects, or attached to grieving relatives, or simply hanging in the ether like a goggling fish waiting for someone of my profession to cast down a hook. That is not all, however. Few enough know it, but a ghost may also end up haunting the insides of her own head, retreating into memories – driven away from the world and fearing to return. There are many kinds of haunting.’

‘But that’s not haunting,’ Che objected. ‘That’s madness.’

‘Perhaps that is why the Inapt kinden have, in my experience, a better understanding of what madness truly is,’ Maure murmured. ‘The time has come to move on, Che.’ She rose abruptly, catching hold of Che’s hand and pulling her up. Behind her there was a bright light eating away at the misty world.

‘No,’ Che said again.

‘What are you afraid of?’

I’m not afraid, I’m really not, I just want to go home – home where there’s nothing to fear…

‘ Her,’ She finally confessed. The word was wrenched out unwillingly.

Maure stared at her for a long moment. ‘A magician has practised on you, to make you fear her so,’ she understood at last. ‘She has stamped herself into your mind as a thing of terror. Cheerwell, if you hide for ever, then you will die. Your body will die and you will haunt your own corpse until it is food for worms and beyond. Come with me.’

‘No, don’t make me, please.’

‘Cheerwell-’

‘I don’t want to face her. I can’t.’ Che was shaking now as the memories began to slide back into place, like great weights of fragmented rock, and at the heart of them was her. ‘You don’t understand who she is.’

‘That I don’t,’ Maure admitted. ‘So let us face her together.’

She still clasped Che’s hand, but in that moment it did not seem to matter. The blazing radiance was half the world already. Maure had held her still long enough for time to catch up with her.

Go, said a voice in her ear, and she thought it might have been Salma, but with just the one word to work on, she would never know.

She held tight to Maure’s hand and walked into the light.

All at once, something stooped down on them, keening its rage. Che looked up to see Seda, wings afire, Wasp Art making her hands glow like coals.

‘I told you!’ the apparition screeched. ‘Back where you belong, Beetle! Back beneath your stone!’

A wave of flame washed over them, and Che heard Maure scream, her hand ripped abruptly from the woman’s grip. For a moment the fear of this thing – not even the Empress herself, but a mere phantasm she had left behind – was paralysing.

Then, from somewhere came the words that had been spoken by the Masters of Khanaphes. A final piece of memory shaken loose, which Seda had been at pains to conceal from her.

Whatever it was that you demanded from them, they gave it to me as well. We are sisters, in this, if in nothing else. And Che reached out, and swatted the screaming thing into dust, nothing but the echo of another woman’s voice fading inside her head.

Che awoke.

It was not a gentle waking, either. She jackknifed up, jerking sideways off the pallet she was lying on, her stomach cramping viciously. She was aware of a certain amount of shouting from nearby, but in those first few moments it was all she could do to suck breath into her lungs.

The sequence of dream images remained with her, that thread of beads she had made of her life. A ghost, she told me? In that convulsive moment, Che wondered whether she really had come back from the dead.

Then there were arms about her, and at first she tried to fight them, but she heard a voice speaking her name over and over, and relaxed. She remembered everything just then, the real and the imagined and the far-seen, all in order and neatly labelled, memories like specimens stored in a College master’s cupboard.

‘Che, do you know where you are?’ It was Thalric, of course. ‘Do you know who I am?’

She forced out a little laugh, at that, her racked body already becoming easier. ‘Oh, yes, to be sure. I’m not likely to forget you, Thalric, for any number of reasons. And, of course, I know…’ She frowned, staring about her. ‘Come to think of it, where am I?’

She sensed a tension going out of him, one that had been held in check through iron discipline, but was no less great for all that. ‘You’re back.’

‘It looks that way.’

He still had not let her go, but she decided she could live with that for now, saying only, ‘Back where, precisely?’

‘Suon Ren, this,’ said another voice, and she only placed it as she looked upon its owner’s face. It was Varmen, their guide, and still with them as far as Suon Ren, apparently.

‘Then…’ For a moment she was going to ask about Tynisa, but then someone groaned – another woman – and Che stared round. ‘You.. .’

It was the halfbreed, her guide from the inner recesses of her own past, where Seda’s might had banished her. The woman was lying on her side on the floor, and perhaps had lost consciousness for a moment, but now she was shaking her head, clambering up on to hands and knees. ‘Ah,’ she began, to nobody in particular, and then, ‘You have a great line in enemies, Cheerwell Maker. The Empress of the Wasps, no less.’

Che felt Thalric instantly go still and tense, and Varmen’s eyes almost popped from his head at the unwelcome revelation. She decided that she herself would have to be the one to put a brave face on it. ‘Well, the Spider-kinden say always judge people by their enemies, so I must be doing well in life, don’t you think?’

The woman – Maure – gave a choked laugh, and looked up at her. The laugh died, and she flinched back from Che, as though she saw her own death revealed in the Beetle woman’s face… No, as though she sees something about my brow, or above my head.

This reaction was gone in an instant, covered up so well that Che would never have known, had she not seen. ‘What is it?’ she asked, knowing already that the other woman would simply shake her head and disown the whole thing.

‘Nothing, there’s nothing.’ Maure sat up straight, looking haggard and drawn. ‘It’s no easy road, that’s all, and I wasn’t expecting.. . her to be waiting at the end of it. Since when is the Empress of all the Wasps a magician? What’s the world coming to.’

Varmen looked faintly embarrassed at this suggestion, but Che glanced back and noticed Thalric’s expression was unhappy and thoughtful. He knows. Despite all the Aptitude in the world, he knows it, too.

‘You have my thanks,’ she said simply to the halfbreed woman. For a moment it seemed that Maure would not accept the gratitude, but then she acknowledged Che’s words with a twitch of one hand. Che remembered the wretched Grasshopper mystic in Myna. These pleasantries have power, amongst the Inapt.

‘Ah,’ Maure murmured again, stretching a hand out to Varmen and waiting until he shuffled over to pull her to her feet. She brushed herself down meticulously, flicking her uneven fringe back in place, tugging at her clothes in what was obviously a little ritual for her own mental wellbeing. ‘They’ll tell you, the Commonwealers, how talking to ghosts, speaking to the dead, is a natural thing: that it’s all part of a well-rounded life to honour your ancestors face to face, to bid a posthumous farewell to your peers and your relatives.’ The smile she directed at them was tight-lipped. ‘Mantis-kinden, they’re even worse, you know? They worship death, practically. Spend all their living days hoping to die, so long as they die well. The best necromancers are always the Mantis-kinden.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You know what, though? Prince Felipe has the right idea, even if it took losing a dozen battles and a hundred friends just to educate him. Death’s a miserable bloody business, and only a fool would go poking at it. Why else d’you think all the necromancers in those stories are after eternal life: they’ve seen just what death’s like.’

The silence following this remark was only broken when Varmen commented, ‘Why do it, then?’

‘I’m good at it, Wasp-kinden,’ she told him.

‘So I was good with wood, when I was young. Doesn’t mean I had to become a carpenter,’ the big Wasp grumbled.

Maure smiled at him, but Che saw how the expression only just covered over the cracks in this woman’s life. ‘That’s because, if you give up being a carpenter, the wood doesn’t come hunting you down, demanding that you hammer some nails in.’