With her blade restored to her, she let them all draw their own weapons. That seemed only fair. Ten of them, and they tried to rush her, but she was already leaping forwards from the steps, descending on them with blade first.
They were not skilled but they were many. She made their numbers her ally, as they crashed into one another, fouling each other’s blows. Her blade moved among them like lightning, like sunlight. She sent them reeling back in bloody arcs, and moved — quicksilver past lead — to evade their clumsy thrusts and grasping hands. Behind them the Spider-kinden traitor had a long dagger out and was picking and choosing his targets, putting the point in with the care of a surgeon.
And suddenly there were none left. It was so sudden she could not quite work out where they had gone until she saw the bodies. She was used to that now: the jarring of cause and effect, the sudden returning to herself to discover blood on her blade and the fallen around her. There was some part of her, some innocent part, that had come loose inside her head, leaving only cold skill to hold the reins and whip her on.
She stalked over to the throne where Last-Chance Fray-well was now clambering to his feet, his broad face a-sheen with sweat.
‘Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it,’ he gasped, but they were paying her with the next chapter of Thalric’s story, and how could he double that?
‘I will not take up any more of your valuable time,’ she said, and ran him through. Only afterwards did she notice that he had been holding a sword. It had not done him much good, she supposed.
Then she turned, like a performer to her audience.
The Spider-kinden man clapped politely. ‘So much for the Last-Chancers. My employer will be over the moon. Serves them right for getting above themselves, say I.’ He was a man past middle years, hair long and greying very slightly, wearing clothes whose flamboyance had been cut down, she guessed, to suit his purse. His voice was cultured, though, and she could only wonder where he had fallen on hard times from.
‘Thalric?’ she said questioningly, the sword still very much ready in her hands.
‘Do you want it from my employer’s mouth, or mine?’ The Spider’s name was Destrachis, she recalled, although she could not exactly remember now who his employer was.
‘Tell me,’ she directed.
He nodded, taking a seat on a bench there. ‘Well our man Fraywell was here with a whole load of Wasp-kinden not so long back, and they got involved in something bad. Some people say they destroyed some big Beetle machine called the Pride, although that doesn’t make much sense to me. They were kicked out in a hurry, though, and your man along with them. They went to Asta, which is a Wasp-kinden-’
‘I know Asta,’ she said. ‘So he is there? Or at least that is where I travel next.’
Destrachis raised a hand. ‘We pay in good coin in this fief, lady. He’s not at Asta, we’re sure of that. There’s a fellow known to us, trades secrets all over, and to the Wasps as well. He’s heard of your man. Thalric’s a name that’s being talked about after the wheel he knocked loose here. You’re not the only one who’s keeping him fingered.’
She stared, waiting for more, and he smiled, suddenly.
‘Your man’s been posted way out west of here. Do you know a city called Collegium?’
She shook her head. ‘I shall find it, though.’
‘I don’t doubt it. You’ve got quite the way of asking questions.’
She merely nodded, and cleaned her blade on Fraywell’s tunic before returning it to its scabbard. ‘West. Collegium. Well I must go then,’ she announced, and was at the door of Fraywell’s hideout before his voice called her back.
‘You know. you’re a remarkable person,’ he said. She turned, frowning. One hand was close to her sword. She sensed a trap here. At her expression he put his own hand up to forestall her.
‘I’ve been all over the Lowlands,’ he explained. ‘I can do business in Collegium. If you wanted a guide, I could go with you.’
Her hostile expression remained. ‘Why?’
‘Because when I look at you, I recognize something. I see someone who’s lost everything, and yet lost nothing.’ He was not telling her why, she could see. It was just words.
She found her hand now on her sword’s hilt, her heart speeding all of a sudden, and something clamoured away at the back of her mind.
‘I used to be someone of consequence, down south,’ Destrachis continued, watching her face intently. ‘Not Aristoi, but not far off, but now look at me: some Beetle gangster’s errand boy and quacksalver, betraying one brute for another at the drop of a kerchief. I lost it all, you see. You, at least, have retained a purpose.’
She stared at him. She could not discern his meaning.
‘I can get you to Collegium the fastest way, and that way, you might actually catch this fellow of yours, instead of just walking his trail.’ His eyes flicked over hers, reading her carefully — or at least what was left of her that was legible.
‘What do you want from me?’ she asked him outright.
‘I don’t know,’ he told her, ‘but probably I’ll think of something. Perhaps there’s someone I want dead. Perhaps it’s just money.’
‘I will not give myself to you,’ she told him.
His eyebrows twitched. ‘Never entered my mind.’ He said it so smoothly that she knew it was a lie.
He claimed he could speed her progress, he could take her to Thalric. Then she could finish this hunt. The thought sent a shiver through her, oddly discomfiting, but the offer seemed too good to ignore.
And she could always kill him if she had to.
She nodded curtly, and the deal was done.
Doors had been opening recently to Stenwold that he had not guessed at. In all his years of lecturing at the College, of hand-picking some few students each year who might be able to serve his cause, he had never believed that he was being listened to.
Now he was a cause in his own right. His name had been passed from student to student, year to year. The more the Assembly and the other Masters looked down on him, the more he had become something like a folk hero.
These last few days he had found that he need not simply wait on the indulgence of the Assembly. If they would still not hear him he need not let his voice go rusty.
Arianna, of course, was the architect of it all. He had not imagined it possible, otherwise, that so many of those bored faces he recalled from his years of teaching could have actually paid so much attention.
In these last few days he had twice gone with Arianna to some low dive — a taverna’s back room once, and then an old warehouse near the docks — where he had met them. A dozen the first time, and then in the warehouse three score of them. They believed him because they had heard of the siege of Tark that was even then under way. They had heard disturbing news from Helleron. They had heard other rumours, news even to him. Some were Spider-kinden and had watched the imperial shadow encroach south-west towards their borders. Some even had some snippets of the Twelve-Year War the Wasps had waged against the Commonweal.
They watched with shining eyes as he told them the truth, the scale of the imperial threat: unity or slavery.
That became the slogan and they left with it on their lips. Yes, they were mere students, young men and women whose idealism had not yet been calloused by the everyday world. They were merchants’ sons and daughters, youngsters from the Ant city-states, Flies of good family from Merro, paupers on scholarships from Collegium’s orphanages and poorhouses. But they were not powerless: they could watch for him and spread word for him.
And they would fight for him, if worst came to worst. He knew he did not want them to do so, but many of them had held a blade before, the Ant-kinden certainly. Some were duellists of the Prowess Forum, some were artificers and all of them had volunteered to put what they had at his disposal.