Heirs of the Blade (24 page)

And here the three of them were at Lans Stowe, where Thalric had expected anything but this. A Commonweal shanty town of their little stick buildings, perhaps. A deserted ruin, certainly. But this . . .

In the centre of the town there rose a ziggurat in the Wasp-kinden fashion. It was, in its own way, a triumph of design. The lower two tiers were formed from blocks of broken stone mashed together, caged in wire and wood and then mortared in place. Had the upper reaches been of the same construction, then the whole edifice would have crumbled under its own weight, but they had presumably run out of suitable stone around that point, so had continued their work in cane and wood, the Commonweal’s traditional building materials. The shape, however, was wholly Imperial.

Of the rest of the town, perhaps half the buildings followed the local pattern: the slanting roofs and, presumably, twin-walled interior. The rest of it, which Thalric guessed was put up to replace structures Drephos had beaten down, was devised to the Imperial pattern: solid, low buildings, often with a second floor smaller than the first; flat roofs and little walled compounds. A surprising amount was constructed of the same salvaged stone, the rest of wood.

There were plenty of soldiers out on the streets, and Thalric felt instinctively at home. It had the feeling of any occupied town in the Empire, with a good garrison on hand in case of trouble. The soldiers wore black and gold, in varying degrees, through most of them were Dragonfly-kinden. Perhaps one in five was a Wasp, with a scattering of other Imperials, mostly Beetle-kinden and Flies.

There was clearly a stratification at work here amongst the townsfolk, and again one that was innately familiar to Thalric. There was a definite ruling class composed of Dragonflies and Wasps, well dressed and armed, often with retinues of followers. Then there were the Grasshopper-kinden making up the majority of the town’s populace who, by contrast, were poorly clad, and they worked. Some were chained.

Their masters, especially the Dragonflies, made a point of naming their home Landstower, as the occupying Imperial forces had done before the Empire’s borders had retreated so violently – after the death of the Emperor and the liberation of the Alliance cities. Thalric and Varmen were nodded to on the street, as though they had become people of consequence here purely because of their kinden.

‘This is insane,’ murmured Che. ‘It’s like they’re putting on a play, or we’re in . . . some kind of hallucination. A warped reflection.’

‘What are we doing here, Varmen?’ Thalric asked of their guide.

‘Taking another sounding,’ the big Wasp explained. ‘Believe it or not, the Principalities aren’t exactly the most stable of places. If there’s fighting westwards of here, I want to know about it. Also, we need supplies, and personally I could use a proper bed for just one night.’

Che caught Thalric’s gaze and her expression said clearly,
I don’t want to stay here
, but she voiced no actual objection.

‘So there’s an inn?’

‘Wayhouse,’ Varmen explained. ‘I like Wayhouses. Best thing the Lowlands ever exported.’

‘What on earth are the Way Brothers doing out
here
?’ demanded Che, still staring about them at this Empire in miniature.

‘Keeping a Wayhouse,’ Varmen replied, and then grinned at her exasperated expression. ‘I’m not saying the Empire was ever full of the little fellows, but they were always there. Beetles mostly, but a few of them were offshoots of decent family, enough clout to stop the places getting burned down. And the soldiers liked them ’cos, when you got to stop at a Wayhouse, you knew they wouldn’t rob you blind. ’Course, some of them got burned, all the same. You know how the army always is with cults and the like.’

Thalric nodded, remembering.

‘But they were like the Daughters – you know, those healer bints that always went trailing the pike. The men liked them and so the high-ups tended not to notice them so much, you see?’

The Wayhouse itself was one of the flimsy-looking Commonweal structures, to their surprise, and quite a sprawling one, clearly having been extended recently. The four Beetle-kinden men running the place wore the comfortingly familiar brown habits of the Way Brothers. That they had a staff of a dozen slaves was jarring to Che, but she decided, unhappily, that being a slave to the Way Brothers was probably doing relatively well, as a slave’s lot went.

The common room was already busy with travellers, and all of them sitting on the floor or on cushions – none of the tables and chairs that a Lowlander or a Wasp would have set out. Aside from a family of white-haired Roach-kinden bundled close together in one corner, the rest all seemed relatively well-to-do. There were several merchants – a Beetle, a Wasp and three Dragonfly-kinden – and one striking Dragonfly woman with a guard of four Mantis warriors. Then there were two important-looking Wasp-kinden with an entourage of a dozen men apiece, taking opposite ends of the room and pointedly keeping a no-man’s-land of strangers between their respective followers. In the Lowlands a Wayhouse catered to all travellers, down to the very poorest, but Che guessed that the truly poor in these parts did not get to travel very often.

‘Let me go and ask some questions,’ Varmen suggested. ‘Someone’s bound to have come from the west.’ He paused, considering. ‘Or else, you know, if nobody has, then we can probably guess it won’t be an easy road.’

Left to their own devices, Thalric and Che studied the varied throng.

‘We should do a little information-gathering of our own while we’re here,’ the former Rekef man decided. ‘No real news of this place was reaching Capitas when I was still there. The Principalities must be changing every day, and I want to know how this place has turned out like it has.’ Che could only nod.

He glanced from one to the other of the two influential-looking Wasps. The younger man looked like a merchant factor or quartermaster, the kind of Consortium type that Thalric had never much either liked or trusted. The older one still wore his Slave Corps tabard over his finery, as the badge of the Empire, no matter how debased, seemed to be a harder currency here than within the Wasps’ own lands.

In the end he chose the merchant, as the lesser of two evils. The thin-faced man looked to be about thirty, with a great deal of locally crafted gold about him. His retinue included a few Wasp guards, but they were outnumbered by the Commonwealer servants or slaves attending on him, including a pair of well-favoured Dragonfly women taking turns at feeding him sweetmeats.

‘May we join you, sir?’ Thalric asked. As he had guessed, the Imperial term of respect carried disproportionate weight here. The merchant, who would have been far from a ‘sir’ to Thalric back in the Empire, smiled as broadly as his narrow face would permit.

‘Well met, travellers on the road,’ he announced, indicating that Thalric should find a space of floor close by. ‘We have business together?’

‘We might, sir.’ Thalric was already fleshing out the details of his lie even as he spoke. ‘I’m but recently arrived here from Capitas, scouting for markets.’

The merchant raised his eyebrows. ‘A factor, then? Who for?’

‘Consortium,’ Thalric confirmed, but allowed the man’s sly smile to prompt an addition, ‘Horatio Malvern.’ The Malverns were well known as a powerful family in the Consortium, and Horatio as one of their aspiring sons. Thalric’s grasp of the intricate politics of the Imperial merchant clans did not run deep, but it was broad enough to fake a first meeting like this.

The Wasp merchant’s smile in response was knowing, and told Thalric a lot. ‘Well, the Malverns must know that we have all marked out our territories already, those of us Left Behind.’ He put a formal stress on the words. ‘If the Consortium wishes to run things here, then we may have difficulties . . .’

‘On the other hand, if my masters were simply looking for someone to deal with, for Commonweal goods . . .’ Thalric ventured. He was aware of Che, at his elbow, watching him with mixed amusement and fascination.

‘Then we will no doubt get on extraordinarily well,’ the merchant announced. ‘I am Merchant-Colonel Aarth, and we are clearly well met.’

Thalric was at pains to nod solemnly at the absurd rank. Clearly those ‘Left Behind’ by the Empire’s formal withdrawal from the Principalities had wasted no time in handing out the promotions. He guessed that, when the world around here had still been sane, Aarth had been no more than Thalric was currently pretending to be: a merchant family’s roaming factor, lacking in either power or respect.

‘Aulric, Consortium sergeant,’ Thalric replied humbly. For impromptu identities, best practice recommended a name close enough to the truth for him to respond to it without hesitation. ‘Tell me, Colonel . . . My masters told me that there were Wasps still in the conquered principalities, but I had expected to find . . .’

‘War?’ Aarth completed for him. ‘All of us holed up in castles and forts, surrounded by a besieging horde? Not at all. Oh, there were some that were worried. The top people, the magnates and generals and governors, they all got out as soon as the news came and left us to our fate. They’d been keeping well apart from the locals, see? They were expecting this to become another Myna.’ He smiled, not without a touch of self-mockery that made Thalric like him more. ‘I won’t deny that we were worried, but then we realized we weren’t the only ones. Everyone left alive here was looking at each other and seeing that the nobles are dead, the generals are gone . . . You might not credit it, but a lot of locals here were just as concerned about the Commonweal coming back and lumbering them with another pack of princes.’ A broad grin, from a man who plainly thought he had made the right choice back then. ‘So most of the enterprising Dragonfly-kinden, those who had been something better than dirt farmers, started to look for someone to lead them. Sometimes they chose locals, more often they picked us. We were used to leading them, see? The main thing they remember about us is that we
won
, that we’re stronger than they are. We’d won the battles and we still held most of the castles and defensible positions, even if we were short on men.’

For a moment he paused, as if to savour his petty victories. ‘Pretty soon everyone was taking on any locals who wanted in just to protect us from all the others. Then we started talking to each other – sorted out a new hierarchy based on how many swords, how much land, all the basics. Those Dragonflies willing to deal with us, we accepted them as our near-equals, gave them ranks like proper civilized people. The others got to go to the bottom of the pile and, with our new allies, we had strength enough to keep ’em there. For about half a year it was . . . well, you know the North-Empire at all? The hill tribes? It was like that, every village and town for itself. But you know how
we
are, Aulric: we’re better than that. We sorted it out. And those locals we’ve taken in and taught, they’re proving good students. One of the governor-generals is a reformed brigand chief of theirs. I’ve met him – he’s mad for all things Imperial, splendid fellow.’ A shadow crossed the merchant’s expression. ‘Of course we hear things have calmed down back home, with herself in charge at last.’

Thalric made a quick judgement. ‘I’ve seen no sign of armies pointed your way, Colonel. The Alliance cities are a problem, but . . .’ He glanced briefly at Che. ‘Seems to me the Lowlands are likely to be foremost in people’s minds.’

‘That’s fine, because we’d value good
relations
with the Empire,’ Aarth explained carefully, and Thalric understood him perfectly well. They wanted trade and the chance to visit home, but not to return to the bosom of the Empress. They were on to a good thing here, as lords of their own little backwoods empire.

After that, he and Aarth discussed matters mercantile, Thalric improvising well enough to keep the man happy. Shortly thereafter, Varmen was back with them.

‘It’s not what I’d call safe, west of here,’ their guide explained, after Thalric had bid Aarth farewell. ‘Still a few places holding out against the governor-general, which is what the local crook calls himself. We’ll have to go carefully, and be ready for a fight.’

When they left Lans Stowe, or Landstower, Varmen’s little pack-beetle had taken on a more sprightly gait entirely, and Varmen had transformed himself. He wore head-to-toe chain-mail, from the coif framing his face like a hood, to the long hauberk falling most of the way to his knees, to . . .

‘I’ve never seen mail trousers before,’ Che declared, staring. ‘I think that’s more armour than I’ve ever seen anyone wear ever, Varmen.’ She had kept her distance from him so far, but the sight of the man so heavily protected evidently struck her as almost comical.

‘This?’ Varmen just grinned. ‘This isn’t
armour
, mistress. This is just clothes you need to keep the rust off.’

As soon as they were beyond the farmland attached to Landstower, they travelled away from the roads, at Varmen’s suggestion. The terrain was surprisingly hilly, with irregular patches of dense forest, but there were plenty of goat tracks, and Varmen explained to them that the roads themselves dated only back to the occupation, and were little better, just hard-packed earth. ‘You see, the locals never did travel much,’ he explained.

Oh, I know
, Thalric recalled. All these lands were places where he had fought, undertaken Rekef missions and cut throats. Imperial policy had been strict concerning the longevity of noble families in all areas under conquest.

Also at Varmen’s suggestion, they travelled on after dusk each day despite the intermittent snow, making several hours’ careful progress along the animal tracks before camping for the night, so as to make better time despite the short winter days, and to make life more difficult for anyone hoping to catch them unawares.

That was why their enemies, instead of ambushing them at their camp, were eventually forced to descend on them raggedly as they progressed.

The three of them had been moving along a lightly wooded track between two hills, when Che called out the warning, her own eyes better in the dark than either of the Wasps’. A moment later, there were forms gliding down around them, half a dozen, and then more. Thalric had his sword out, his offhand extended to sting, and Che had a hand to the hilt of her own blade.