Empire in Black and Gold (28 page)

Now she went to the window and opened the shutters, looking out on an unsuspecting day. With a sense of drama, she waved her kerchief in the morning air, knowing it would be noted.

She then transferred her attention to the door and waited.

Within moments she heard shouting from downstairs and outside: the Gladhanders’ sudden shock as Akta Barik and a score of toughs from the Halfway House charged the building. She imagined the huge Scorpion-kinden kicking down the door, swinging in with his monstrous great sword that was as long as he was tall. Behind him would be swordsmen, spearmen, crossbowmen, whatever Sinon had chased up.

The door to the room was flung open by a panicked-looking Ant-kinden.

‘Chief! It’s the Halfways—’ he got out before she killed him.

In all she killed seven of them, one at a time, as they piled into the room seeking guidance. Hers was the highest headcount of the day. When one of Sinon’s men finally ascended the stairs, he stopped halfway because the sight of Tynisa and her mound of corpses was too much for him. He backed away quietly and decided to let her come down when she was ready.

When she did descend the stairs she felt like a battle-queen standing before her army. The footsoldiers of the Halfway House cheered her for a saviour. Only Barik was silent, favouring her with a respectful nod that, taken in context, meant much more.

A half-hour later it was all done, and those members of the Gladhanders still free and living were taking any shelter they could, or thinking very hard about changing their colours. Tynisa meanwhile sat in the same taverna before which Tisamon had performed his feats of carnage, only two streets away from the scene of her own bloodletting, and watched the ordinary people pass by.

‘You’ve a talent,’ Sinon told her, ‘and I like you. You’re an original.’

She watched his face cautiously.

‘If you want,’ he said, ‘you can stay on. You’ve more than earned your place here. I’ll make you the equal of Malia and Barik, and neither of them will mind. We’re expanding, so: room for another lieutenant.’

She opened her mouth to refuse straight away, then closed it, feeling a strange cold creep across her. She had been reborn in blood, this day. What would Che say if she knew what her not-sister had done? What would
Stenwold
say? And she was good at the work, certainly. Another few jobs and she would have worn her conscience entirely away, and then she might even start to enjoy it.

The thought roiled in her stomach, queasy and thrilling all at once. She thought of the Mantis, Tisamon. How much respect could one person gather? Lords and magnates would beggar themselves to possess that much awe and adulation.

She thought then of a life that was just fight after fight, betrayal after betrayal, and exactly how much that adulation would mean. And how long would they still cheer her, once the blade was dulled?

‘I can’t stay,’ she said. ‘Part of me wants to, it’s true, but I have obligations.’

‘Understood,’ said Sinon, without acrimony. He fished in his tunic, brought out a folded sheet of paper. ‘Go to this address, you’ll find your contact: Scuto. He’s a known man of your Stenwold’s, according to my spies. And he’s well protected, so best go openly and peaceably. It’s even possible he’s already found the rest of your company. Tell me, though,’ he eyed her with a faint smile, ‘are all your fellows as accomplished as you?’

‘No,’ she said, and it was not boasting but a fact.

‘Then trust to hope, for this Scuto’s a rough creature, his friends and his surroundings worse. If your friends went in there unwary, things may have gone the worse for them.’

Tynisa thought of poor Che, as unwary a victim as Helleron could ever claim.
But patient and politic
, she instructed herself. Che would not be here, in Tynisa’s shoes, because Che would not have attacked half the staff of the Halfway House in her flight. This was a Beetle city and Che would blend in, would stay safe and out of trouble.
I know she would. What else could she do?

They were both frozen in the moment. Che had her sword mostly unsheathed, eight inches of bared metal, and was now poised in the duellist’s bent-kneed stance into which she had dropped. The Moth had a long dagger in one hand, the other wrapped about his ribs. His face was pointed, grey-skinned, dark hair cut close in a widow’s peak. His eyes were slanted and blank white, like a blind man’s. After a moment Che decided he was only a little older than she was. If he had not been threatening her, if she had not been threatening him, he would have seemed handsome.

It impressed her most, in that moment, that he did not instantly discount her. After all, she was a young female Beetle-kinden, a little overweight, an expression of shock almost certainly on her face, caught halfway through unsheathing her sword. He must have been a warrior taking part in their raid and he could have the blood of her own kind all over his hands. Still, he watched her cautiously and, in his eyes, she was a fighter and something to be wary of.

He was small, she saw, as Moths often were, and slight of build. He held himself with a rigid concentration, and she decided he was going to be very fast when he moved. She saw his lips twitch, wondered if this was it.

His pale tunic was stained. His offhand was slick where it held his side. She understood, then, why he was here.

There was a heavy thump on the door behind her. In that moment she and the Moth very nearly killed each other as the tension snapped back like a cut cord. In that brief moment he was two paces closer to her, dagger held up. Her sword had meanwhile cleared its sheath. He locked eyes with her.

‘What?’ she called out. Her voice, to herself, sounded understandably strained.

‘We’re checking the whole place in case any of those bastards got in, miss,’ came the voice of one of the guards. The Moth’s eyes widened.

‘I . . .’ She started. He was staring at her, and abruptly she found it hard to answer. There was something in her head, plucking at her, trying to turn her mind. ‘I don’t . . .’

She stared into those white, depthless eyes and felt the pressure of his will upon her, desperately trying to stop her speaking. His teeth bared slowly as the strain told on him. It was an Art of the Moths, she realized, some Ancestor Art of theirs.

She summoned what resolution she could manage. She could feel his grip slipping. He was weakened by injury, or she was stronger than he thought, but she shook her head abruptly and she was free of his mind.

‘Miss?’ asked the guard doubtfully from outside, and she opened her mouth to answer. The Moth’s face was very composed and he settled onto his back foot, dagger held out. She realized that he was going to fight, and that she would see him die the moment the guards came in.

She thought of Salma.

‘Well, there’s certainly nobody in here,’ she said, sounding terribly false in her own ears. ‘Now let me wash, will you?’

The voice came back: ‘Right, miss,’ incredibly, and there was the scuff of their feet as the guards tracked off.

In all that time her eyes had not left those of her adversary. There was no gratitude there, but perhaps curiosity.

‘If you want to fight, fight me,’ she told him quietly. ‘Otherwise . . .’ And her words tailed off, because she could not think of one.

‘Otherwise what?’ he asked. His voice was soft, with precise consonants.

She stared at him. Her sword was beginning to weigh in her hand.

He took a deep breath, and she saw that it pained him. He tucked the dagger back in his belt. ‘It would seem that I am your prisoner.’ His look was challenging, uncompromising. ‘What do you intend to do, Beetle-girl?’

She disposed of her own blade, wondering what precisely she
was
supposed to do now. She found that she was more frightened of him now than when he had his knife out. He was something that had stepped in from another world, from some story of past times. ‘I . . . never really met a Moth before.’

His look was bleak. ‘Now you have.’

‘Do you want me to look at that for you?’ She uttered the words almost automatically, sprung from some reflexive humanitarianism that the College had taught her. He was instantly suspicious, hand reaching back for his knife, but she told him, ‘Look, if I wanted to hurt you, I’d have called the guards in.’ A stray thought gave her some justification, for herself or even for him. ‘A Moth doctor at Collegium once helped my uncle Stenwold. Let’s put it against that, shall we?’

He sat down heavily on a bale of straw, taking his left hand from his side. It came away glistening with strands of blood, and she swallowed hard. She had learned medicine at the College, at least a little. She took up her bucket, still half-full, and knelt beside him.

It was a crossbow bolt that had caught him, but he had been lucky. It had grazed his side close to the skin and the heavy missile, designed to ram through armour, had left two gashes that tracked the diagonal course of a missile shot from the ground up into the air. The wounds left were ragged with the path of the chitin flight. She felt him wince as she dabbed off the blood, seeming almost black against his grey skin.

‘I can . . .’ Her hands shook at the very thought. ‘I can try to stitch this . . . if you want. And I can get some alcohol to clean it.’

‘A fire. Hot water,’ he rasped. And then, ‘Please.’

He clasped his hand to the wound again and she stood.

I should not be doing this. Elias Monger would be so very angry
.

But Uncle Stenwold would approve.

‘You hide here,’ she told him. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

It was easier than Che had expected. The two house servants were overworked, and still jittery after last night’s events. She absconded with a needle, some gut thread, a bottle of Elias’s best brandy and an iron pot of hot water.

She thought he had fled when she first got back into the stables, then that he had been caught, but he reappeared, stepping out of the shadows when he was sure it was her. She considered the strange, fragile trust that they had built between them.

He sat down and she cleaned the needle and thread in the scalding water, then doused them in the brandy.

‘Why are you doing this for me?’ he asked suddenly. She started at the sound of his voice, so close.

‘I already told you—’

‘Don’t tell me about your uncle Stenwold,’ he said. ‘The truth.’

She hurriedly got on with the stitching then, to avoid his probing. She felt him stiffen as the needle first went in, his hand burning paler as it gripped.

‘I am a student at the Great College,’ she said, as she oh so carefully closed up his wound. ‘And at the College they teach us that words, not violent acts, are the best way to settle any dispute. To settle through swords is to settle only until tomorrow, but to settle through reasoned debate is forever. Or at least that’s what they tell us.’ She began tying off the thread at the first wound, not exactly a neat job but it would serve. ‘I’m not afraid of you.’ It was not entirely true. ‘You are not my enemy.’ She was quicker with the wound over his ribs, where he must have twisted as the bolt seared across him. She felt more practised now and he sat in silence as she worked, as she bandaged him inexpertly with strips torn from the sleeve of her own robe.
I’ll have to say I just snagged it on something.
Only when she finished did she realize he had been gazing down at her, his grey face expressionless.

‘I have never met a Beetle before,’ he began. Still kneeling by him, she suddenly felt very uncertain, awkward. ‘I hope they are not all like you.’

‘Why?’ she asked, but he had turned to the cooling water and dropped something into it, some sharp-smelling herbs. He had his dagger to hand, she noticed, and for a second her heart froze, but he was just using it to stir the pot.

He could have killed me at any time.
The moment she had finished, he could have thrust the knife into her neck. She felt furious with herself for not thinking of it, and pitifully relieved that he had not struck her.

‘Because I have fought your kind, I have killed your kind, but I would not wish to kill someone like you.’ His voice was level, emotionless. He tore a swatch of cloth from his already tattered tunic and dipped it in the pungent water before pressing it to his wound, saturating the bandages.

‘Killed my kind . . . ?’

He looked at her sharply. ‘Those who would have killed me,’ he said simply. ‘You must have guessed it.’ Whatever he had put in the water obviously stung his wound sharply and he winced as he removed the cloth. ‘Do you have a name, Beetlechild?’

‘Cheerwell,’ she said. ‘Cheerwell Maker.’ He arched an eyebrow at that. ‘It’s a perfectly good name,’ she continued, giving him a frown. ‘People call me Che.’

He paused a long moment, the reply slow in coming. ‘I am Achaeos and you have my thanks. The omens warned me that our work of last night would not end as I expected. I am grateful that you have found a way to fulfil that.’

‘Omens . . . ?’ she said helplessly. ‘You took part in that raid because of omens?’

‘No, despite them.’ He slung the cloth back into the water. ‘What will
you
do now?’

‘Go back into the house and try to forget this ever happened,’ she said firmly, though she knew that she would remember Achaeos for a very long time. She realized that she was on her knees, which were starting to hurt. She began to shift, and he put a hand out to help her up.

Standing, she held on to it for a second longer. It was calloused in strange places, and she guessed it was an archer’s hand.

‘I cannot fly, not until I have rested further. I will leave here tonight, I think, if I can.’

She nodded. ‘I . . . I think that would be best.’

As she left the stables she paused a moment to lean against the closed door. She felt strangely detached from the real world, as though it had all been some dream.
How could something so unusual happen to someone like me?
Still, the tingle of his hand in hers remained to vouch for it.

She could see a party of men from Helleron, either on their way to the house or the mines. More soldiers for tonight’s defence. She hoped that Elias would have finished his business here by then. She did not want another night of bloodshed on her conscience, not now she had met the enemy.