You’ve met my brother. The words sounded less fond now, and she could only nod, thinking, What now? Am I betraying you with Alain, is that what you mean?
She heard him sigh, the breath rippling her hair. Do not return to Leose, Tynisa, please. Leave there and never look back.
‘Salma, I…’ She could not have said this before any other listener. ‘I’ve nothing left now. Too much blood on my hands, too little reason left to live. I’ve nothing else. If you have to go, show me how to come with you, please.’
Not yet, not soon either – or so I hope. I do not know the country I shall be travelling to, but if it were pleasant, why would the wisest of us take such pains to stave it off. Do not wish that, Tynisa. Bid me a good journey, and let me go.
A thousand protests came to her then, but she felt a clarity of mind that she had not known in a long time. And in a way it does not matter if I am mad or not.
‘I love you, Salma,’ she told him – or perhaps her memory of him. ‘But you know that. You cannot ask me to forgive you for having loved another woman, or for dying as you did. But, even so, because I love you, I forgive you it all. Go in peace.’ Her voice was shaking almost too much for her to form the words now. ‘Go with my love. And when you get where you’re going, wait for me. I’ll be following along. There’s no place so dark we can’t face it together, just like old times.’
She felt him lean closer, and then his lips brushed her cheek. The hand beneath her own was cooling rapidly, and she now realized that she held only a fold of cloth from her cloak there, and the only sound was the rain, and she stood alone in Gaved’s inner room, and the incense had stopped smouldering. Inside, she felt like a tower of glass that one knock could shatter into a thousand pieces.
The rain seemed to be passing. Indeed, as she listened, it pattered to a halt almost as suddenly as it had begun, leaving only a sporadic dripping from the eaves.
Avoid Leose? she wondered. But what, then? The answer came clearly for once: Go with Che, wherever she went, for her sister surely needed her help. Return to Stenwold in Collegium, for a reconciliation. Visit Princep Salmae even, for she had never gone there and felt strong enough to try, now.
She stepped out of the house, away from the incense and the painted signs, and abruptly something seemed to seize her in a grip of iron that made her gasp.
She could not walk away from Leose, it told her. She had unfinished business there. She had made a vow to win Alain, and such vows were inviolable, no matter how much blood was shed over them. That was the Mantis way. That was her way, too. There was no avoiding it.
She fought furiously for a moment, clutching for her free will, for any mastery of her own fate, but that rigid hand was still guiding her, steering an inexorable course. She had a role yet to play in the Tragic History of Tynisa Maker. The closing act was about to begin and her story would be as glorious and terrible as all Mantis-kinden stories were. Salme Alain was waiting for her.
She saw Che and Maure a short distance away, only now noticing her, and for a moment she reached out towards them despairingly, as though drowning.
Then she was marching away towards her tethered horse, heading for Leose and for her destiny.
Thirty-Seven
‘Pride of the Sixth,’ pronounced Lowre Cean carefully. ‘Oh, yes, I remember that.’
‘You were at Masaki, sir?’ Varmen asked him, sipping at the kadith the old man had poured. They were sitting, not in some formal audience hall, but in a little wood-carving workshop, with curls of sawdust underfoot and, on shelves to either side, ranks of miniature figures that the prince himself had whittled: peasants, craftsmen, dancers, all compact and stylized and yet bursting with frozen energy.
‘Some way from the front lines,’ Cean admitted. ‘My son led the charge.’ He was watching the Wasp-kinden carefully. ‘And you were not there?’
Varmen only nodded.
‘Of course you were not. The Imperial Sentinels never run. They fight to the last. Can’t run, in all that armour, I’d imagine. But Darien, my son, told me how the centre held, even when all the rest, all the Light Airborne and artificers and support and the like, had been blown aside. They stood and fought to the last man.’
The Wasp grunted. ‘They’d sent some of us off after some scouts that got holed up. We fought, as well. Pair of your nobles tried to flush us out, over and over. We heard from them that the Sixth had gone.’
‘I recall hearing about that,’ Cean acknowledged. ‘You must have been relieved by the Seventh, I think?’
‘The Second, sir – the Gears, General Tynan’s command. And wasn’t that just a joy for us, to be beholden to them? Almost as bad as fighting with the Seventh at Malkan’s Stand. That time, I didn’t miss the action. Most everyone else of the heavies died. I sometimes think
…’ Abruptly he decided that he had said too much. The old man’s mild voice had led him into letting his guard down, and now he stood up rebelliously, feeling tricked and trapped. ‘Why have you even let me in here? What if I killed you? We’re enemies, after all.’
‘Once,’ Cean admitted. He had not moved or reacted, save to look up. ‘But now, years later, we have more in common than you might think. We were both there, after all, and although your army won, perhaps you have more right to hate me, as a commander, than I do to hate you, being just a soldier. Would casting you out of my house bring back a single dead man or woman from the war? Would killing me with your sting redeem the fallen Sixth? We are united, Sergeant, by the memories of our dead. That is something we share. You ask me why I let you in, and I ask you why did you come here?’
‘Avoiding the crazy Spider-kinden girl,’ Varmen explained, but Cean was shaking his head.
‘I meant here to the Commonweal. Here to revisit your past and your losses?’
Varmen stared at him stubbornly, but sat back down. ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.’
Cean poured more kadith, watching him with slightly raised eyebrows, but saying nothing.
‘Should have died at Masaki, I reckon, sometimes,’ Varmen added unwillingly. ‘You know how that feels, that one blind bit of chance takes you out of the way of the axe?’ Seeing Cean nodding, he went on, ‘And at Malkan’s Stand, I nearly did. Got a snapbow bolt through me, armour and all. Should have died there, too. After that, the army had no use for me – the Sentinels were being recalled. No point in all that armour if it couldn’t stop the shot. They just cut me off, like I was an embarrassment for surviving. A freak. I kicked about in Helleron some, but I used to dream of the Commonweal, of the Sixth as it used to be, before that useless tinkerer Praeter got put in charge. I used to dream of being holed up with them scouts, and… there was a girl, can’t even remember her name now. One of your lot, nice voice. I ended up going one on one with her, because I had to buy time for my men. I dream of that a lot. Seemed like my life went downhill from there, really. Now doesn’t that sound stupid, eh?’
Cean regarded him solemnly. ‘To a Wasp, perhaps, but my own kinden would understand. Mantis-kinden, too. There is a time for all things, especially for people. You and I, our time was then – that year, that month, at the height of our powers. We have neither of us ever been quite who we were then, do you not think?’
Varmen regarded him bleakly, but at last he nodded tiredly. ‘Reckon you’ve got the right of it, sir.’
‘We lost our purpose, after that. No matter that the war still had a few years left to run, our great work was done, and all we had left was to preside over our decline in the face of progress. It is a terrible thing to outlive one’s destiny.’
‘I don’t believe in destiny,’ Varmen said automatically, and then, ‘but, yes.’
‘You won’t believe in guiding spirits, either,’ Lowre Cean decided, ‘but in the Commonweal it can happen that a man whose destiny has passed him by may yet find a way to make something of himself. He may find himself taking strange paths, in order to seek out that elusive sense of purpose. Such as a Wasp coming to the Commonweal, perhaps? Who knows?’