‘Good work.’ The Spider upended the jug, heedless of the steaming heat of it, and then wiped his mouth on the back of a gauntlet. He was plainly not the kind of mannered Aristos that his counterpart Jadis was, but then the mercenaries obviously appreciated a plain-speaking man as their liaison. The next group with a grievance was approaching him even now: a quartet of hulking Scorpions.
‘Watch and learn,’ Morkaris remarked, because Laszlo knew how to make himself likeable, and the adjutant had taken a shine to him. The next ten minutes provided a masterclass in Spider- Scorpion relations, and ended with the adjutant sinking an axe into the company leader’s skull.
The other three Scorpions had regarded this action with little emotion.
‘Fine,’ Morkaris had told them. ‘You’re mine for now, until I say otherwise. Or does someone else want to try their luck?’ Nobody had felt that lucky.
Now Laszlo skimmed back over the camp, aiming for home — meaning the wagon that he and Lissart slept in. Running errands for Morkaris had meant a long and busy day, and he would still be hard put to report to Stenwold that he had found any fatal vulnerability in the way the Spider-kinden soldiers operated. The only logical advice would be, Kill their leaders, and that would hardly be something Stenwold had not thought of.
He ducked in, and, had he not ducked out again immediately, Lissart would have stabbed him. Hanging in the air outside, his mind was full of the flash of steel, her abrupt, savage movement.
Some part of him found that he was not surprised in the least.
‘Laszlo…?’ came her quiet voice from under the cloth awning. She sounded shaken, although he felt that he deserved that particular privilege.
A moment later she peered out, and the knife was nowhere to be seen. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.’
He descended warily, keeping out of arm’s reach, but remembering that she had more weapons than the blade, anyway. She could simply blast him with that fire Art of hers, if she so wished. He reckoned she was certainly strong enough to use it by now.
‘Who were you intending to stab?’ he asked her, trying to adopt a light tone.
‘Laszlo, she’s here,’ Lissart told him flatly. ‘Get under cover, quickly.’
She was frightened, he realized, or at least feigning it, but he made a snap decision, hoping his instincts were being trustworthy, and ducked under the wagon’s cover to nestle in beside her. She pressed herself against him and he found she was trembling slightly. The rush of gratitude he felt to the world, that she did not appear to want to kill him just yet, was stronger than he had expected.
Still under her spell, he thought wryly, putting his arms around her. ‘Who’s here?’
‘Garvan,’ she said, and he allowed a pause for explanation, but none came.
‘Should I know what that means?’
‘Garvan, or whatever her real name is,’ she persisted, ‘the Wasp woman who stabbed me. The Rekef one.’
He went quite still, thinking hard. The urge to say, Are you sure? was very strong, but she would not have thanked him for doubting her. ‘When, where?’
‘She must have come in with the supplies. I saw her just walking through the camp, mid-afternoon.’
‘Looking for you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she snapped, but she was trembling even more now. ‘She’ll know me, though, and she’ll kill me.’
‘We can’t stay here, then. Can you fly?’
‘I don’t know.’
There was something in her response that did not quite ring true. ‘Are you trying to tell me,’ Laszlo pressed gently, ‘that you’ve not experimented while I’ve been out and about?’
‘A short hop, maybe, nothing more,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll leave tonight.’ He made a doubting sound, and she twisted her neck to glare at him. ‘What?’
‘Ever since we got within spit of the Felyal, camp security’s right up, especially at night. They have a lot of sharp eyes doing sentry duty now. If you could fly, then I’d say risk it, but…’
‘But what? ’ she demanded.
‘But let me think about it. Stay under cover meanwhile. This Garvan of yours is a Wasp, so no reason for her to poke about the Spider-kinden camp. She won’t know me, so I can keep an eye out. Maybe we can stir trouble up against her, especially if she’s Rekef. Just.. wait. Don’t do anything we’ll regret. Just let me think of something.’
She lay in his arms, facing away from him. In her mind, no doubt, she was reliving the blade going in. She’s crazy, he told himself. She’s a killer, an enemy agent, the most dangerous woman you’ve ever got hold of. Just go. Leave her and just go. But he knew he would not depart without her, even so.
‘Think of something quickly,’ she said softly. ‘I can’t hold out forever.’
‘Our lack of progress is causing a lot of friction,’ Mycella observed. Tynan watched her with grudging admiration, because she was examining her appearance in a mirror while her elaborate tent was raised around her, the one still point in a whirl of carefully orchestrated chaos. Her servants, Spiders and Fly-kinden both, were practically dancing to a common rhythm that allowed them to coordinate with one another to set up poles and guys and embroidered canvas without so much as obstructing their mistress’s light, until she stood in a reddening beam of sunset in the midst of an eight-chambered portable palace, with furniture being moved into position as nimbly as though her staff were scene-shifters at the theatre.
‘Join me?’ she asked him, meeting his eyes in the mirror. A Fly-kinden was already at her elbow with a bottle of dark glass.
‘I see your kind’s reputation for vanity isn’t misplaced,’ he observed, although without vitriol.
She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You never feel the need to see your own face, General?’
‘Not since I stopped needing a comb,’ he told her. It was true, too. Even without his own slaves, he could have shaved himself by touch these days.
‘I envy you. Mine holds a grim fascination for me, but it isn’t vanity.’ She turned towards him at last and collapsed back onto a couch that had not been there a moment before, even as the mirror was spirited away. ‘Time, General Tynan… I watch it advance on my position, and each day all my armies lose a little ground. I’m older than you, you realize?’
He shrugged, although inwardly he was surprised and then annoyed at letting anything these Spiders did surprise him. ‘I’ve seen less friction than I’d expected.’ He found a camp stool placed neatly beside him, standard army issue, and lowered himself into it, accepting a glass of what turned out to be Imperial brandy.
‘It’s in my camp, mostly, the discontent,’ she admitted. ‘The mercenaries get paid more for fighting, so they want to start besieging Collegium yesterday, and even our regular soldiers are… impatient. Jadis and Morkaris are keeping discipline, but perhaps your scouts have some news that might settle matters a little.’
He gave her an amused look. ‘And yours?’
She matched his expression. ‘Very well, then. As we skirt the Felyal, it looks increasingly as though there’s a fair-sized body of people moving ahead of us — soldiers, not refugees. Much sign of Mantis-kinden, by my trackers’ expert opinion, but others as well in fair numbers, certainly hundreds. If they were simply going to join up with the Collegiates, they’d have outpaced us easily, but they’re hanging about ahead of our advance, and some of my scouts haven’t come back. Some of yours, too, I’d wager? And one of your little airships is late as well, unless you sent it somewhere especially far.’