He was a coward, she told herself. He was the great Mantis Weaponsmaster, of course. He could kill a hundred men just by sneezing. He was a coward, though. He had met something beyond his courage, and he was ignoring it.
They had followed the directions that Chyses had given. The sewers beneath Myna were ancient — ancient and huge. In places they had been more vast than some of the halls of the Great College, their monumental stones overgrown with algae, their sides slippery with grey moss. Sometimes from the broad walkway on one side to that on the other was a watery gap of ten feet. Myna was a city but by no means grand enough to warrant such extravagant plumbing. There had been carvings, too, but too effaced by time and the elements to be made out, no clue as to the builders of this fallen place that even the Mynans had mostly forgotten.
At one point they emerged into a square, as though these sewers had been a whole city in their own right once. There was a broken-off stump of a statue there, just worn feet and the jagged lower edge of robes, but time remained mute and kept its secrets.
Things moved in the water that she did not get a proper look at, and roaches half the size of a man scuttled away from the dim light of the hooded lantern Tisamon bore. It gave out barely a gleam, but they both had eyes able to take that gleam and use it to best effect.
The directions had been good and Tisamon’s recall of them perfect. The resistance movement had taken its time in plotting these sewers that had become its main thoroughfare. In less time than Tynisa had imagined they had found some more recent architecture. Before Governor Ulther had raised his great palace as a symbol of his supremacy there had stood here the Consensus where the senate and tribunes of Myna would meet to argue policy. Even a seat of government requires its sewers, and more than that. Though the structure above ground had been banished, the cellars remained, tucked down beneath the later cells and storerooms that the Wasps had excavated.
They had found the narrow stairs exactly where Chyses had indicated. Tisamon had padded up them first to reach the hatch there, which a sympathizer serving within the palace secretly kept unbarred. With no more fanfare than that they had slipped into the palace itself. Where they entered had been a mere grain cellar, but they now stepped where Wasp feet had recently trod, and the resistance’s plan was thus vindicated. Tynisa had wanted to press on then, to find Che and Salma on their own. But a single exchange of looks with Tisamon had dissuaded her. They needed more hands, and they had made a deal with Chyses. Tisamon took his word as seriously as his life; it was a Mantis thing, but she could grasp it if she reached far enough.
And then they were on their way back, to report that the plan was sound, that it could be accomplished, and she knew that as soon as they were done, their shroud of silence replaced with the need to speak, then she would be shut out by him again. It was like before, at Asta, or when they crept over the walls of Myna itself. He would take it back, take it all back, and then he would hate her again.
And she made up her mind then, When Che and Salma are free I will force you to recognize me, you bastard. I will force you on the blade’s point, or I shall make you kill me, because I cannot live with this indifference.
Twenty-seven
Thalric returned to his chambers and methodically ensured that everything essential he owned was ready to take on his person. He laid out his sword and swordbelt, his pack with writing kit and paper and all the imperial documents he carried. He then took out his most valuable possession, for a man who travelled light. It was a short-sleeved shirt of copper-steel mesh, made somewhere far beyond the Empire’s borders. They were highly sought after, far more in demand than could be satisfied by the thin trickle of supply that reached the imperial markets by the Silk Road. He had been lucky to find it, for copper-weave armour was normally a perquisite of generals and statesmen.
He stripped off his tunic and put the garment on. Its thin layer of cloth backing was cool against his chest. When he put another tunic on, with sleeves down to the elbow, no watcher would guess at the thin layer of metal next to his skin.
He then buckled his swordbelt, wondering how much time he still had. The thought that at the end Ulther might stay loyal did not occur to him. He had lived with treachery long enough to hear its tread on the stairs.
And such a simple net to catch a man who was governor of Myna: to take his toys away and wait for the tantrum. If Thalric had been sentimental he would have been bitterly disappointed. In fact, he now admitted, he was disappointed. He should not have had to do this, not to Ulther, who had once been his friend and patron.
But the story that Hreya had told him had been clear enough: Ulther was a man of appetites. The great warrior of two decades before had become today’s petty tyrant. Myna was his city and he ran it for his personal delectation and that of his cronies, his sycophants, as the woman Kymene had called them. For a man of Thalric’s trade it had not taken long to uncover the signs. The imperial tallies did not tally. There were goods and coin going missing, far more than the mechanical supplies that Aagen had come here to chase. The war that was being constructed in Asta was months behind schedule, stinted at every turn as Myna was made a chokehold in the imperial supply lines. What Ulther did not appropriate himself, his parasites soon made off with. The black market of Myna was growing fat on war supplies that the Empire could not afford to lose.
Ulther was grown drunk on power, and his henchmen were growing fat on the Empire’s tax money and war funds. Meanwhile the city itself had been on the brink of explosion for years. Ulther had done a good job of keeping it from boiling over, but it was still seething, and Thalric had seen enough damaging reports. Even incarcerating Kymene had not been a real blow to the resistance because Ulther had seen her as a trophy and not an opportunity. The good man Thalric once knew had become a liability, had become a burden on the imperial war machine, a cancer that must be operated upon immediately, if the Empire was to exercise its full strength against the Lowlands.
So Colonel Latvoc had been right, in the end. He had even been right, in all probability, to send Thalric. That did not mean that Thalric had to like it, however.
He drew his blade, examined its surface for rust. It did not see as much wear as it should, but then a good Rekef agent seldom needed to fight in person. This time it would be different, though.
He looked up. ‘You can come out now,’ he said. ‘You’re fooling no one.’
He could not, in fact, have said where the watcher was, although he knew he was being watched. The shadow that moved was outside the window, someone crouched on the sill beside that narrow aperture. With an impressive display of dexterity a small figure squeezed through an opening never intended as an entrance, and descended to the floor in a glitter of wings. It was te Berro, Latvoc’s man.
‘How am I doing?’ Thalric asked dryly.
‘Why don’t you tell me?’ Te Berro dusted himself off. He was wearing a shapeless white robe, like many of the local Fly-kinden, but Thalric saw a bulge that must indicate a dagger hilt.
‘The lines are drawn. They’ll move against me soon,’ Thalric said. ‘Ulther will go and wrestle with his conscience for a while, but his greed will pin it easily. Then he’ll send men after me.’
‘Do you require help?’ te Berro asked him. ‘The Rekef Inlander have a few hands in the city, low ranked mostly.’
That would be a blessed abrogation of responsibility, to step aside and let the Rekef deal with his old mentor.