She saw now, in her mind, that gaunt shadow appearing in this room as she slept peacefully; his closed face, looking from Stenwold to her. He might have had his metal claw on his wrist. He could have killed her. She would not have known and she had not even woken. Instead, he had withdrawn. Stenwold’s misplaced respect had kept him from ending her, but he did not trust her. He had removed her blade.
Arianna felt a strange feeling of relief. This was not over Tisamon’s forbearance, she realized, but because she would not now stand over Stenwold’s sleeping form with that blade in her hand, having to make that choice. The emotion took her by surprise. Surely she would not hesitate, but. how the man spoke! He had been to so many places, seen so many things. Now he had come to what he considered was home but he was wrong. She could hear the words he left unsaid almost more clearly than those he actually spoke. He was an outsider in his own city. He had made himself someone apart. He was struggling to save something that had already shunned and snubbed him. Yet Collegium had such a broad palette of colours to it that he had never quite noticed how he was not a native any longer.
Not so different, after all, she thought. She had told the truth when she had said that the Spiderlands offered no home for her any more. She had fallen in the dance, as her whole family had, and with nobody to help them back up.
She examined her hands and then clenched them into fists, watching the needles of bone slide from her knuckles. The knife was better, but Mantids were not the only kinden that the Ancestor Art could arm.
Stenwold would die just as easily.
She stood over him and watched the rise and fall of his stomach, the total relaxation of expression. It struck her that she had never seen him before without a look of vague worry. Except last night, when he had drunk so much and she had taken her robe off her shoulder and let it fall in careful stages to the floor.
If she had the dagger, things might be different. With her hands, with her Art-drawn claws. She felt abruptly crippled by something, some hindering and atavistic feeling. If she had the dagger, or the orders, but just now she had neither.
Perhaps Thalric would prefer him captured and talking. The rationalization — and she knew it for one — calmed her. Thalric had a plan and she was sure this moment of reticence on her part would make no difference, in the end.
She carefully tucked herself under the sheet again, her back to him, feeling him shift slightly. After the cool of the air she let her back and feet rest against him, stealing his warmth. When he moved again she turned automatically, her hand moving across his chest. There were scars there. She had seen them. It was a strange life, that had made this man scholar and warrior both.
When he put his arm around her she felt, for one instant, trapped, and in the next, safe, before she recalled herself to her role. Whether it was her role or herself that reached out for him she could not have said.
Nine
General Alder woke as soon as the tent-flap was pushed aside. By long practice his one hand found the hilt of his sword.
‘General,’ came the hushed voice of one of his junior officers. ‘General?’
It was ridiculous. ‘Either you want me awake, soldier, in which case speak louder, or you don’t, in which case what in the Emperor’s name are you doing here?’
‘I’m sorry, General, it’s the Colonel-Auxillian.’
Drephos. There was only one Colonel-Auxillian in the army. ‘What does that motherless bastard want?’ Alder growled. It was pitch-dark within the tent, too dark for him to even see the man a few paces away. ‘What’s the hour?’
‘Two hours before midnight, General.’
‘And he wants to speak to me now? Can’t he sleep?’
‘I don’t know, General-’
‘Get out!’ Alder told the man. He sat up on his bed, a folding, metal-sprung thing they had made especially for him in the foundries of Corta. Drephos was a menace, he decided. The twisted little monster was taking his privileges too far.
Still, the man had a reputation, and it was a reputation for being right. Alder spat, and then dragged a tunic one-handed over his head and slung a cloak over his shoulders. Barefoot, he stepped out of his tent.
The camp had enough lights for him to see the cowled and robed form of Drephos standing some yards away. The agonized junior officer was hesitating nearby and, when Alder raised a hand to dismiss the man, Drephos’s voice floated towards him.
‘Don’t send him away just yet, General. I think you will have orders to issue before long.’
Alder stalked over to him. ‘What is it now?’ he demanded. ‘Your precious plan failed a day and a night ago.’
‘Did I admit its failure?’ Drephos enquired.
‘You didn’t have to.’
‘I did not, General, nor do I. Have your men gather for an attack. The moment is at hand.’
Alder stared at him, at the featureless shadow within the cowl. ‘Then-’
‘Tark’s walls are thicker to be sure, and of a stronger construction than I had thought, but the reagent has permeated the stone.’
‘And you know this?’
‘By the simplest expedient, General. I went and looked.’
Alder shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Darkness is a cloak to me, General, but a blindfold to my enemies. I simply walked up to the enemy’s walls and knew what I was looking for. In three hours, perhaps less, you will have your breach. I would therefore have your response standing by.’
‘A night assault?’ Which would be messy, Alder thought.
‘They’re bound to notice their walls coming down, General. Wait till morning and they’ll have barricades up. We must force the issue now. And while they’re busy fighting it out over the breach, in the darkness which will whittle away at their crossbows’ effectiveness, we can try to put a few more holes in them. I’ve not been idle these last few days, and one of the leadshotters is now converted into a ram.’
‘Major Grigan mentioned as much. He was not pleased.’
A derisive noise emerged from within the cowl. ‘Major Grigan, of your precious engineers, is a dull-minded fool.’
‘Major Grigan is an imperial officer-’ Alder felt his temper rise.
‘He is a fool,’ Drephos repeated. ‘He should be over on their side of the walls, hampering them. I am ten times the artificer he would ever be even if he opened his eyes to the world mechanical. A fool, General, and you would best give me what I ask for if you wish this war won.’
At this late hour it was too much. Alder’s one hand clutched Drephos by the collar again, drawing the man up onto his toes. ‘You forget your place, Auxillian.’
The general felt Drephos’s left hand, gauntleted in steel, take his wrist and, with an appalling strength, remove it from its owner’s person. Still maintaining that grip, which was gentleness backed with the threat of crushing force, Drephos’s unseen face looked straight into his.
‘Judge me on this, General,’ he said. ‘Prepare for your assault. If the walls still stand, then do what you wish.’
Not half an hour had passed before Alder had his command staff woken and rushed to his tent: Colonel Carvoc for the camp; Colonel Edric for the assault; the majors, including the sullen Grigan; the Auxillian chiefs and other unit leaders.
‘We are going to attack,’ he informed them, seeing blank incomprehension on all sides. ‘Drephos assures me that the wall will be down shortly and I want to be ready for it.’
He saw Grigan’s lip curl at the name, but when he fixed the man with his gaze, the major dropped his eyes.
‘Colonel Edric.’