And there she stopped him. ‘Tell me. .’ It was a question she could barely believe she was asking, but there was a hook lodged in her mind, and its barbs were troubling her. ‘How did you know? How did you know where we were going?’
Totho looked stubborn. ‘Tisamon and Tynisa went right into the Wasp camp there,’ he said, but he could not hide from his tone that there was rather more to it than that.
She just waited in silence, trusting him to tell her the truth, and confronted with that trust he could do nothing else.
‘The Moth, he. . just knew.’ Totho looked sullen. ‘I still don’t trust him. Either he’s been speaking to the Wasps or else he was just guessing.’
Che shook her head. Her mind swam with the details of that inexplicable half-dream. Inexplicable? That was the very wall she was battering against. There is no way he could have known. There is no way he could have called to me, or that I could have heard. Impossible. Inexplicable. If the sun had been above them she would have shaken it off and found some glib sleight of mind to wish it away, but faced with the immensity of a dark and moonless sky, in this strange and intimidating city, she felt shaken by it, as if on the brink of some great irrational abyss.
In the hold of the heliopter, in her dream, that had been more and less than any dream that had troubled her before, he had asked of her where she was bound, and she had said. She had told him.
She should ask Totho about the precise times. She could then count the days back to that night when Aagen had grounded the flier within sight of Myna’s walls in order to repair it. Surely that would dispel any coincidence.
Or strengthen it. She found now that she did not want to ask him. The possible answers lurked like childhood monsters in the shadows.
‘Totho, I. . need to think. Just a little time to myself.’
He had his stubborn look again. ‘You should go back and try to sleep, really.’
‘I’m as wide awake as I’ve ever been,’ she said, and it was true. ‘Please, Totho.’
Reluctantly he left her, but she heard him murmur to the beggarly sentry to watch over her.
After he had gone, she wondered about him. They had not been apart so very long, but Totho had changed. She supposed they all had. They had been young and naive when they stepped aboard the Sky Without, but they were growing up fast now. It had been a time of harsh lessons. Totho still had that awkwardness about him, that shyness born of a tainted heritage, but beneath it was developing a core of steel. She would never have guessed him for a fighter, but he had been there ready with crossbow in hand when she had needed him, as had they all.
‘Come on,’ she said abruptly. ‘No sense skulking. I know you’re there.’
There was an amused snort, and Achaeos fluttered down from the upper storeys on glimmering wings. Like the Ant- and Beetle-kinden they resembled, the people of Myna had never built for three dimensions. A deft, slight-framed man with Art-born wings had the run of the place.
She looked at him cautiously. He had come down out of arm’s reach, and was regarding her with his arms folded within his robe.
‘Why?’ she asked him.
‘Who can say?’ She imagined there might even be bitterness in his voice. ‘But here I am.’
‘I’m glad of it. You. .’ She could not say it. ‘I had a dream that. . gave me comfort. At that time there wasn’t much comfort for Salma and me.’
‘A dream?’ Noncommittally.
‘Yes. A dream.’ She was defensive about it.
He shrugged. ‘You Beetles,’ he remarked, but did not qualify it. ‘No matter. We’ll be back to Helleron soon enough, and then we two can be enemies again. I assume my debt to you is now paid?’
‘Debt?’ She took a step towards him. ‘The bandage? Those stitches? Your people need to fix a better rate of exchange, if this is all in return for that! You have done for me such. . things that you had no need to do. But you did, and I don’t want to be your enemy ever.’
She wanted to reach out to him, then. Through all his masks, he looked so baffled, so unsure of why he was there. In the cold night he just looked so alone.
‘We should not be enemies,’ she said. ‘If the Wasps come to Helleron, do you think they will not move against your people also? Believe me, their Empire makes no exceptions.’
He said nothing, but she could see he was thinking how his people might rejoice in the fall of Helleron, even if it meant their own homes burned.
‘Take my hand.’ She held it out beneath the moonless sky, her Art-sight, still so new to her, making a dark silver of her skin. ‘Take it now, while you can.’
His own hand seemed only a lighter shade of the same colour when it finally ventured from within his robes. As it hesitated, she reached forward impulsively to grasp it. She had expected to find it cool, but it was surprisingly warm.
‘I am Cheerwell Maker of Collegium. I do not speak for my family. I do not speak for my city or my kinden. I speak for myself, though, and I say that I owe you more than I can ever repay, for in my time of greatest need, you were there for me. I do not know why. I have no answers. Still, you were there, and you came into the place of our enemies and you shed their blood to free me.’ The words were just tumbling out, and she had a strange feeling that they were only partly hers.
Certainly Achaeos’s expression was stricken by them. ‘Do not say such things so lightly,’ he said, for a moment trying to pull away. ‘You do not know how strongly oaths can bind us!’
‘I say nothing lightly,’ she told him, and he ceased resisting, staring into her face.
‘You can see me,’ he said, and she realized that, save for a guttering torch across the square, there was no illumination here but starlight. His blood and kinden gave him the eyes to see her, and her Art the eyes to see him.
‘Yes, I see you,’ she confirmed. ‘I spent so long calling out to the Ancestor Art, but it was only your. . only the dream that woke it in me.’
He did not know what to do with her now she could see. All masks were gone within that moment. She scared him, drew him, shocked him. Realizing that, she became scared herself, acutely aware of the warmth of his hand in hers, of how close he suddenly was to her.
‘I-’ she started, feeling the line between them — the line that had played out its length all the way from Helleron to Myna — draw tight. A moment later she had released his hand and was stumbling back, hurrying inside before whatever words now arising within her could escape.
A few ragged hours of the night were all Thalric was given to sleep in. Once Che and her compatriots had made their escape, there had been order to restore in the palace, and only then had he sought out a field surgeon of the garrison to attend his wounds. He could have summoned a doctor from the city, but Thalric’s experience had led him to rate the hard-won skills of a field surgeon over the most educated physician in the world.
Now it was late after dawn, and the whole palace was up and about. Order, in a greater sense, was being restored to its pedestal. He knew that the Rekef would have things well in hand, that whispered voices would pass throughout the imperial staff in Myna informing them of the true state of things.
He had meanwhile sent for Aagen, and now met the man in a small anteroom set aside for waiting guests.
The artificer gave him a cautious nod. ‘Still alive then.’