‘But look, here he is now.’ The master artificer pointed, and Totho followed his finger to see a small figure being hustled in by a pair of Wasp soldiers. It was a Fly-kinden man, bald and lumpy-faced.
‘Nero!’ Totho exclaimed, noticing the Fly was not bound but neither was he free, for the soldiers were keeping a very close eye on him. He smiled grimly as he saw Totho, but there were mottled bruises across one side of his face and one eye was swollen almost shut.
‘Morning to you,’ he said. ‘And I’m glad to see you. Apparently you may be in a position to vouch for me.’
Drephos interrupted. ‘Who is this man, Totho?’
‘He’s a friend,’ Totho began, and then realized that this was imprecise. ‘He’s an old friend of… a College Master who was a good friend to me.’ Sudden inspiration struck. ‘He’s an artist, in fact, and I think he’s quite well known. We met in Tark,’ he added lamely.
‘You think he’s quite a well-known one?’ Drephos sounded amused. ‘How well known can he be, if you only think it?’
‘I don’t know about art,’ said Totho stubbornly. ‘And I don’t know why he’s here, either.’ He turned to the Fly-kinden. ‘Were you captured in the assault?’
‘Not exactly.’ Nero’s wan smile remained. ‘I came here to find out what had happened to you, as a matter of fact.’
‘Something which the soldiers who captured him did not quite understand,’ Drephos explained. ‘However, he kept repeating your name and eventually word came through to me.’
‘Since when the quality of hospitality around here has definitely improved,’ Nero put in, rubbing his wrists for emphasis. ‘Well, here’s a decent sight. You came through without a scratch, it seems.’
‘Without more than a lump,’ Totho confirmed. ‘But why did you come here? They could easily have killed you.’
Nero shrugged off the risks of it, but the gesture was unconvincing. He had not wanted to come, Totho could sense, yet he had been forced to, and by what other than his own conscience? ‘My old friend Sten, you see, we go way back,’ he said, sounding almost embarrassed about it. ‘We’ve been through a lot, him and me, what with the College and all.’ He glanced at Drephos. ‘Stop me if this is getting too sentimental or unmilitary for you.’
‘Say all you want, Master Nero. Knowledge is never wasted,’ said the Colonel-Auxillian.
‘Well then, there was a caper that Stenwold and the others went in for, a long time ago, pretty much the last – the second to last, really – that we did together back then. It’s history now, but it involved these fellows.’ He jerked a thumb back at the Wasp soldiers nearby. ‘And it was too hot for me. I bugged out of there quick enough, told him it wasn’t for me. I missed the fun, and then things went sour. Lost one good friend, and another died soon after. And I never forgot how I left them to it, because I didn’t like the odds. I know people think my kinden are a spineless bunch, and mostly they’re right, but it still didn’t sit well. Then, when you and the lad there turned up in Tark, I told myself I’d look after you, keep you on track. And a right job I made of that, too. So here I am still trying to put things right.’
‘You didn’t have to come,’ Totho reproved him. ‘I’m… holding out fine.’ He took a deep breath. ‘And Salma is… well, he didn’t make it.’
Nero looked up at Drephos. ‘Shall I say it, or is it going to get me shot?’
‘Say all you wish,’ Drephos told him. ‘I have only refrained from mentioning it because I assumed you would prefer to break the news yourself.’
Nero nodded, his mere expression making it plain he did not trust Drephos one inch.
‘The thing is, lad,’ he said, ‘Salma’s still here. He made it, all right – though only just. He’s alive and here in the camp.’
Salma was asleep when Totho came to see him. Nero and the others kept their distance, even Drephos, as he went to kneel at his friend’s bed.
Only a very slight rise and fall of Salma’s chest betrayed the life within him. His once-golden skin was now leaden pale, his cheeks sunken and his lips shrivelled like an old man’s. It was hard to see here the laughing, smiling fighter, the nobleman from a far foreign land, who had once brightened the austere halls of the Great College.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Totho murmured quietly, so as not to wake him. He was acutely aware of all the others nearby, two hundred laid out in this tent alone. All casualties of the war, in one way or another. Most were Wasps, but there were others too: Bee-kinden like Kaszaat, ruddy-skinned Ants, even a couple of Fly messengers who had not flown swiftly enough. Many there, he saw, carried terrible burns caused by the incendiaries, and the Wasp officers’ lack of concern for their own men.
Totho returned to Drephos and the others. There was a woman now standing there with them, a severe-looking Wasp-kinden who was scowling at the master artificer.
‘Totho,’ Drephos said, ‘this gentle lady is Norsa, the Eldest of Mercy’s Daughters in this camp. Norsa, this young man was a companion of the Commonwealer lying over there.’
Norsa turned a stern eye on Totho, who tried to face up to it. ‘He will live,’ she said flatly. ‘He will recover, now, although at first only she kept him with us at all.’ She pointed and Totho followed her extended finger to see a robed woman passing along the line of beds, bearing a basin of water. Her eyes were white, and her skin glowed through a rainbow of colours. Totho had never seen her before but, from Salma’s words, he knew who this must be.
‘So he found her, at last,’ he murmured. ‘Thank you for aiding him, lady. I realize he is your enemy.’
‘I have no enemies,’ Norsa replied sharply. ‘Mercy’s Daughters give aid to whoever they will, however the Empire may take issue with us. Suffice to say that the imperial army knows your friend is here.’
Totho’s stomach lurched with the thought and he turned to Drephos. ‘Then you must have known!’
Totho caught a sardonic smile from under the hood. ‘Norsa here holds me to blame for the injuries done to many of these men. I hear no news from her Daughters, and I heard none from any other quarter. Just be grateful that Master Nero himself thought to look here.’
‘But when he recovers,’ Totho said, ‘they’ll…’
Drephos finished for him grimly. ‘Take him? Question him? Torture him and then enslave or kill him? Yes, they will, for that is their way. A waste of healing, in my opinion.’
‘I do not even recognize that sentiment,’ Norsa snapped at him, ‘although if you were the patient I might make an exception, Colonel-Auxillian.’
Totho glanced from Drephos to Nero, and then back across the room to the unconscious Salma, and realized that some part of his mind had a plan and a decision already prepared for him.
‘Colonel Drephos,’ he said, although he had found his thought already. ‘I need to speak with you. I think you know what about.’
*
Salma drifted in and out of wakefulness. Sometimes he recalled who he was, where he was, and sometimes he did not, perhaps blessedly. He existed in a blurred greyness that was pulled taut between the light of Grief in Chains and the darkness of the void that was still hungry for him.
On one occasion he opened his eyes and found himself looking straight into the face of the man on the next bed. He was a Wasp-kinden with his head bandaged low so as to cover one eye, the wrappings crisp and clean, having just been changed. When he saw Salma looking at him, the other man grinned weakly.
‘You,’ he said, in a voice just loud enough for Salma to hear, ‘are so cursed lucky.’
Salma tried to make a sound, but nothing audible came out. In truth he did not feel so very lucky.