Heirs of the Blade (36 page)

‘I’m amazed your people bother with horses, when they have such creatures at their beck and call,’ Tynisa suggested.

Alain shrugged. ‘Horses are easier to rear, frankly, and cheaper to keep. Lycene will have to hunt half the morning, before we’re ready to fly again. Besides, she is the mount for a prince. We couldn’t have just anyone riding her, could we?’

The cold weather was returning, something else that Lycene was clearly not fond of, so Tynisa set up a fire close by the canes, where it might benefit the big insect as well as the humans. When she looked back, the work done as well as she could, she was startled to find Alain right by her shoulder.

‘I’ve known a couple of Spider-kinden,’ he said softly, ‘but not with decent woodcraft like yours.’ He knelt down beside her and made a few invisible adjustments to her efforts. ‘A Mercer always knows how to make a good fire,’ he explained. ‘It’s the first thing they teach you.’

She read his smile as self-mockery now. Abruptly she was completely taken aback by how
there
he seemed: how very close, elbow to elbow, hip to hip.

Salma . . .
That familiar face, ready to cock a grin at her, but his eyes were measuring, appraising. ‘My mother, now, she did not want me to become a Mercer. “You are a prince, Alain, and that should be enough.”’ His imitation of the Salmae matriarch recalled her tones perfectly. ‘Mercers might one day find themselves in the wilderness without a full retinue of servants, you see. They have to learn skills more fitting to a lowlier class of man.’ A wave of his hand signalled that her pyramid of wood had now reached his exacting standards, and she dispensed a final handful of wood shavings and scraps of paper for tinder, and then took out an ornate little metal firebox Lowre Cean had gifted to her, decanting some embers from it onto the tinder. Alain was leaning into her shoulder, with an expression suggesting that he was merely examining her efforts, but now almost cheek to cheek.

‘My father was a real Mercer, the Monarch’s own kind,’ he murmured in her ear, ‘although he wasn’t much interested in teaching his sons. I think it was an excuse to absent himself whenever he wanted.’

‘I’m surprised you were allowed to . . . Apprentice yourself?’ There was a heat building now, as she fed tinder to the embers.

‘Take the oath,’ he corrected. ‘I was all for running away to Shon Fhor, to swear myself to the Monarch. They had to bar the door and windows to hold me, some nights. So we compromised, as one does. Local Mercers are better than nothing, if you can’t quite make it to the Monarch’s court. And they still teach you how to make a decent fire.’

As the first flame glowed, uncertain and shy but gaining confidence, she risked a smile and found it answered.

‘You, though, you are clearly a great lady of the Lowlands, where they have no Mercers. Where did you learn such a skill?’

‘My father taught me what little I know,’ she replied, and the words came out without the hesitation attending any earlier mention of Tisamon since his death.
And why not, since I’m sharing a fire with Salma – or his very image? Why should I be troubled about raising the dead?
With Salma at her side, she felt she could face anything, and her fire was now taking very nicely indeed. As she leant forward to blow gently on the flames, it seemed entirely natural for him to brush her hair back out of their way. ‘My father, he was . . .’ she started, then found herself on the brink of an abyss. How could she describe what Tisamon had been, before the end?

‘Weaponsmaster?’ Alain said abruptly, starting back from her. For a moment she froze, expecting the bloodstained Mantis shade to manifest itself, but the prince’s eyes were now fixed on her neck, where she had strung the badge of her order. The sword-and-circle emblem swung free there, slipping from its hiding place beneath her tunic. There was a silent moment of re-evaluation between them in which certain possibilities demanded the correct distance, a blade’s length.

‘I never yet heard of a Spider Weaponsmaster,’ Alain admitted at last.

Tynisa had almost replied, automatically,
He wasn’t a Spider
, but from the way he had edged back from her after noticing the badge, how much further might he run if he discovered she was a halfbreed too?

‘He was a remarkable man,’ she stated, and he did not question further. The fire was going merrily by then, but it was just a fire, and they slept with it between them.

Tynisa remained awake for a long time after Alain’s eyes had closed, watching his face in the dancing light.
Salma
, she could see only Salma there. Salma sleeping close enough to touch, as she had never seen him before. They had almost . . . hadn’t they? She had not imagined that closeness? Why should he not be startled, be cautious, when something as weighty as a Weaponsmaster’s brooch was abruptly dropped into the mix? But he would see past that, she knew, for the Commonweal had its share of them, after all, and it was no pariah’s mark. She felt a great, confused knot of emotions surging within her.

Overhead, Lycene’s great glittering eyes, which never closed, watched them both.

Castle Leose was in sight, poised on its buttress legs above the canal cutting through its valley. The snow had been descending in flurries for a while now, and Lycene’s flight suffered from it, the creature fighting against the wind, dipping lower and lower. But now Alain dug his heels in, and the dragonfly fought its way higher into the air, shooting in at a sharp angle to clear the wall. A moment later, Lycene was clinging to the wooden lattice that enclosed the courtyard, the purpose of which now became clear.

It was an easier dismount than out in the cane forest. Alain simply dropped through the lattice with a flick of his wings, and Tynisa followed after him, hanging on by her arms for a moment before letting herself fall.

He had already commandeered a groom, who climbed up to lead Lycene off to wherever such animals were kept. Other servants had rushed inside the castle to announce the heir’s arrival, for Leose’s seneschal was with them in barely more than a minute. The tall, gaunt Grasshopper-kinden named Lisan Dea came hurrying out to greet them, but stopped with a disapproving stare when she saw Tynisa.

‘I
see
,’ she said primly. ‘And what do you think your mother will say about this, my prince?’

‘She may say what she likes,’ Alain replied carelessly. ‘We are to have a celebration of my victories over the brigands? Then I may invite who I wish to be my guest. If I wished to bring two Wasp generals and a convicted murderer, then you would find them rooms and show them all due hospitality. Or are you not a steward?’

Tynisa reacted to the word ‘murderer’ more visibly than Lisan Dea did to any of Alain’s words, for not a single twitch or frown marred her long face.

‘And she will stand amongst your family’s other guests? She will eat and drink and dance with them, will she?’ the Grasshopper demanded. Her harsh tone caught Tynisa by surprise. Despite her mistress’s distant attitude, she had not guessed that this woman had taken such a dislike to her. Nothing of this had been evident at their last meeting.

‘Why not?’ was all Alain had to say, a study in boredom, practically rolling his eyes at this servant who dared to rise above herself.

‘Does she at least have something fitting to wear
?
’

‘This castle has stood since time began,’ Alain replied. ‘My family has lived here since the earliest days of the Commonweal. I am sure that there will be something hanging in some storeroom that will suit. Since
you
are the steward I leave that in your capable hands. Now, no doubt you will acquaint my mother with all that has passed between us two, then no doubt I’ll be called to her presence to be railed at about filial duty. Might I kindly remind you of your station sufficiently for you to show my guest to suitable chambers, before you run off tattling to your betters?’

A moment’s frozen silence was the only sign of Lisan Dea taking offence. ‘Of course, my Prince,’ she replied smoothly, and even bowed to Tynisa. ‘If you would follow me, I shall have your room prepared.’

Tynisa glanced back at him once, but he was already giving instructions to another servant and, a moment later, the confines of Castle Leose closed about her.

The first hall they entered was high-ceilinged and airy, the windows on three sides casting a latticework of sunbeams. The next chamber was lower and darker, and so followed the progression, until Tynisa was forced to ask, ‘Where are you leading me?’

Lisan Dea turned to face her and, to Tynisa’s surprise, her expression was not simple disdain, but something closer to pity.

‘What is your estate, child?’ the seneschal asked. ‘Are you a Spiderlands Arista? Are you some great lady of the Lowlands, whatever that might signify?’

‘The Lowlands doesn’t really have “great ladies” like that,’ Tynisa muttered defensively, ‘but I am the ward of an Assembler.’ As she spoke the words, she realized that they meant nothing to the woman.

Lisan Dea shook her head. ‘Yet he has brought you here, and asked me to house you and dress you, as if you were of noble blood. You do not understand, child.’

‘I understand only that Alain has chosen to invite me here. I understand what it means to be treated like a guest.’

The flicker of a frown at this familiar use of the prince’s name was almost lost in the curiously pained expression the Grasshopper woman assumed. ‘You understand nothing,’ she said grimly. ‘You have no means of protecting yourself from them at all.’

Tynisa felt a sudden surge of anger, almost as if it had sprung from elsewhere, and within a moment her sword point was hovering close to Lisan Dea’s breast. ‘I have no difficulty in protecting myself,’ she snapped.

But the seneschal simply looked back at her, without fear or even alarm. ‘Why did you come here at all?’

‘Because of Salma.’ The answer came unwillingly. And then, because that would make no sense to the woman, ‘I mean Salme Dien. I was his . . . his friend.’ Abruptly she felt ridiculous, and slid her sword back in its scabbard, now ashamed at being goaded so effortlessly.
I have never been so shorn of grace before.
She found her killing instinct could not stand against the utter indifference of the Grasshopper.

‘I remember Dien,’ Lisan remarked, and a fond look transformed her face briefly, before it reverted to her professional blandness. ‘But you should know that he has not dwelt in these halls for many years, not a trace of him.’ And, with that cryptic observation, she walked on hurriedly, forcing Tynisa to follow her or become lost amidst the stones of Leose.

In the end, the room she was shown into was not so very poorly appointed, but was clearly not intended for a guest of honour either. It had bare stone walls draped with faded tapestries, and a single narrow window looking out over the gorge. They brought her gowns, then: objects of silk and layers, shimmering with colour. She found she could not wear them: they pinched in the wrong places, she could not walk properly without treading on the hems. Tynisa was used to Collegium robes, which were shorter and heavier, or else the breeches and arming jacket in which she had spent so long travelling. At the last she found a servant and prevailed upon her to fetch something more practical: a pale half-cloak over a long tunic of grey and gold that reached to her knees, with a belt that went three times round her waist.

The Lowlanders were never great arbiters of fashion, she knew, and Collegium’s usual style was muted, borrowing any flair it possessed from seasons-old and mostly misunderstood Spider custom. The Beetle-kinden amongst whom she had grown up were a solid, pragmatic people to whom elegance did not come easily. Tall and slender and fair, she had walked amongst them wherever she wished, dressed how she wished, secure in the knowledge that they would deny her nothing. The other races that she had walked among were hardly different: blinkered Wasps, the rustic simplicity of the Mantis-kinden, the downtrodden grime of the Empire’s slave races. She had never been obliged to
try
before. Certainly she had never strained to meet the standards of others.

Standing there in her borrowed garments, in this unfamiliar castle, she felt her self-confidence tarnishing by the moment. She did not know what to
do
, nor how to act, and a lifetime in Collegium had not prepared her for the web of intricate etiquette that bound these people together. Abruptly her simple room seemed close and crowded, and she heard Achaeos’s spiteful reminder:
And you cannot even fly, which all these people take for granted. The Beetles have ruined you for polite company.
Tynisa shook her head, determined now to prove him wrong.

A dance, Alain had said. Well, it had indeed been a while since she had last trod a measure, but she knew that game. She knew the Beetle-kinden dances, which involved a great deal of romping back and forth in lines, changing places, turning round and, in the case of older, fatter or drunker dancers, falling over. She had skipped her way through enough of those, and even been admired for it. Then, again, there were the Spider dances, where the musicians set the measure and the dancers paired off and let their inspiration guide them, making grace and elegance their only standards. She felt she was ready for these Commonwealers.

The feast was disappointing. There were long, low tables seating a clear grading of guests, and she was placed at the end furthest from all the important people, meaning Alain and his mother and the more favoured of their noble invitees. She sensed Lisan Dea’s hostile influence, but there was little she could do about it. Aside from herself, this gathering plainly represented Dragonfly aristocracy, resplendent in a rainbow of silks, cloth of gold, silvered leather and enamelled chitin. There was very little conversation between them, and none at all directed at Tynisa. If this gathering was to celebrate Alain’s victories, nobody said anything about them, and his mother made no speeches. It was as though everyone had been thoroughly briefed beforehand, with only Tynisa left out. She ate in silence, finding the food too sharply and unexpectedly flavoured, and the portions small.