Maybe she thinks she owes me that much, Che thought. Or maybe she just wants to see me cut up with her own eyes.
‘I can help you, help the whole resistance,’ she insisted. ‘I came here to help.’
‘Of course you did, only not to help us.’ He crouched by her, the knife prominent. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have a talk, you and I. We’ll bare everything, every truth. Have no worries about that.’
She was about to appeal to him again, but she could not. This was a man short on trust. He had lived his life in an occupied city, fighting his own private war, and to him she was just another excuse to sharpen his hatred. She guessed that he even preferred killing traitors to killing the enemy. Probably he liked to take longer over it, too.
Then Kymene herself was stepping down into the cellar. The sight of her showed just how far the revolution in Myna had progressed. She wore a robe, but it was open down the front, exposing her black breastplate adorned with the two red arrows of the resistance: We have fallen, we shall rise again. She was armed, and she must have walked openly through the streets like that, along with her guards and unchallenged by the Wasps. Che guessed that areas of Myna like this must be virtually off-limits to the invaders now.
But Kymene herself, beyond the clothes, was the same woman Che recalled: young and fierce and proud, her hair cropped short, truly a warrior queen of Myna. In her expression there was no acknowledgement of the night that both women had been freed from the Empire’s cells, no common cause.
‘It is her, isn’t it,’ she declared.
Chyses nodded, stepping back. Che tried to speak but, in the face of Kymene’s piercing gaze, the words dried up.
‘Cheerwell Maker,’ she said, ‘they tell me you’re a Wasp agent these days.’
‘No,’ Che whispered. Kymene knelt beside her, scabbard-tip grating on the stone of the cellar floor.
‘I liked your uncle,’ the woman said. ‘As far as I’d trust an outsider, I’d trust him. You’re not him, though, for if he was here, like this, I’d take his word.’
‘Please,’ Che said, looking into her eyes. ‘I’m no traitor. I came with news, to help you. The Wasps never tortured me to make me their agent! They’re fighting my people even now.’
‘We have people in the palace – we had them there even then – and they know you were taken off to be interrogated. They heard the machines working, though sometimes all it takes is just the sight of them to break someone’s spirit.’ Kymene said it in a tone of dreadful reasonableness.
‘It… they didn’t really do it,’ Che insisted, aware of how wretched that must sound. ‘It was just a ploy… the man in charge was doing something complicated, political. He, please, he needed the noise as a cover to talk to one of his own agents…’
‘Did he. And who was this man?’
‘He was…’ The same man who fled from me at Hokiak’s. Kymene was eyeing her expectantly, though, so silence was not an option.
‘His name,’ Che said finally, ‘is Thalric. He went renegade later, for another reason. It’s complicated but, please, you have to…’
Kymene cut her off with just a gesture. A thoughtful expression came over her face. Chyses shuffled, sensing a new turn in the conversation which he was not happy about.
‘Thalric,’ the Mynan leader repeated.
‘Yes…’ It was obvious that Kymene knew that name, but for the life of her Che could not work out how.
‘Kymene, this is nonsense,’ Chyses grated. ‘Let me work on her now. I’ll have the true story in two minutes.’
‘Thalric,’ Kymene repeated. ‘Yes, that was his name.’
‘What?’ Chyses demanded.
Kymene stood up abruptly, and Che wondered if it was because she did not entirely trust Chyses behind her with a knife.
‘Thalric was indeed doing something political right then. I have cause to know it. So that much, at least, is true.’
‘Political? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Chyses snarled.
Kymene’s smile was brilliant and hard. ‘He was killing the Bloat, Chyses. He’s the one who killed our last governor for us, rid us of good old Ulther.’
To his credit, Chyses made no protest, merely stared.
‘Keep hold of her,’ Kymene ordered. ‘Untie her but keep her guarded. Find me this Thalric. Find me also people from Hokiak’s who’ll recognize him. I want to talk to him.’
Thalric had found himself a low taverna by the river by the name of Flaneme’s. Under the stern gaze of a woman of the same name, who was a broad-shouldered, massive-armed matron, he took a cup of wine and considered his options.
How madly optimistic he had been to think that his name would not have become common parlance in Myna! Seeing the facts inscribed on paper, uncovered during his idle investigations at Tharn, the idea had seemed clear to him. He had put himself seamlessly back into the spy game without recalling the pain that had sent him away from it.
No doubt that old rogue Hokiak had since heard all the Rekef news: who was in and who was out. He bared his teeth in frustration and glowered into the wine, seeing there a darkened glimpse of his own reflection. Hokiak had obviously pegged Che as a Rekef turncoat, this new allegiance twisted into her painfully in the torture rooms of the governor’s palace. The irony of that notion was not lost on Thalric, who had in the end never quite found the proper moment to put Che to the question. Now he could spare a thought to wonder whether the Scorpion would sell her either to the resistance or the Empire – and which of them, at this stage, would be kinder. Beyond that single speculation his own fate consumed his thoughts entirely.
He was being shadowed, he knew. Whoever it was, acting for whatever side in the little brawl that was brewing in Myna, they did not yet want to broach him openly. They were waiting for him to put himself neatly where they could descend on him with the minimum of public fuss. That might mean that it was Kymene’s people come to finish him off. Or it might mean that it was the Rekef, who preferred to have people disappear without even a ripple. He was definitely being watched, however. He had come into Flaneme’s place because it was near-full with rivermen and labourers, men and women whose politics were probably not hot enough to set them against him. Still, he had gathered some filthy looks on entering, so the intelligence he had perused in Tharn had been right. Uprising was hanging on the air like smoke.
Why in blazes did I come back to this wretched town? His past had crossed with Myna’s too many times: in the initial imperial conquest, when he had been a raw young officer under Ulther’s patronage; his betrayal of that same patron all those years later, on the orders of his Rekef masters; and now a third time with this debacle. He should have left it at just twice.
He had to leave Myna immediately. He caught himself wondering how he would break this news to Stenwold. Fool! But it was true that abandoning Che had left a foul taste in the mouth. In a life composed of so many dark deeds this one, he realized, would stay with him.
Just one more amongst the host, though, so he would live with it.
A shadow crossing him made him look up. Flaneme stood there, burly arms folded. ‘Time for you to leave, Master Wasp.’
He stared up at her, biting down his instinctive response. He knew this game well, for he had played it from across the table often enough.
‘Right then.’ He put the wine bowl down, still untouched, flexing his hands in readiness. Out there his persecutors would be waiting. They had passed their message on to Flaneme, who, like any good taverna-keeper, would try to keep each side of the fight happy. She was telling him that he was no longer protected here, and she would call on her other patrons to throw him out or beat him unconscious if she had to.
He stood up, throwing back his cloak to free his sword-hilt. The taverna door was already open, with a cold breeze ghosting in. With a slight smile he stepped out, seeing a full dozen cloaked men waiting for him, most standing on the ground, a few hovering on rooftops. It was the Rekef then.