And, in so few steps, she found herself face to face with Seda.
In her mind the Empress of the Wasps had become a monster, ten feet tall and dripping with blood, inhuman and ravening, evil written in every feature of her. It was hard, then, to remember that here was the outward truth: this slender Wasp girl, younger even than Che, with her pale skin and golden hair. The power that stirred within her was the sibling to Che’s own and, when they met there — their first physical meeting, and in such a place — the world around them seemed to shudder for a moment, as at the tolling of a huge but silent bell.
Che heard Maure’s sucked-in breath, and she wondered if, all over the Lowlands, magicians were twitching awake with a start, or crying out in their dreams. But surely we are not so important, she and I? How much does the mark of Khanaphes count for?
‘Che!’
Then Thalric was there, coming close but stopping out of reach, his eyes flicking between Che and Seda. And Che began to go to him, to throw her arms about him for the simple joy of seeing him alive, but there was an abrupt crackling sense of chill from Seda, and she held back.
But of course. She had forgotten that Thalric had been Seda’s once. Che had pushed that knowledge right out of her mind. It hurt a great deal, she discovered, to be reminded.
And if I press matters now. . if I call Thalric and demand that he comes to me? Then, she guessed, her truce with Seda might be broken sooner than either of them was ready for, because she could sense it there — the tie between the Empress and her former consort — not a bond of love, she told herself, but one of presumed ownership.
‘Where is Tynisa?’ she asked, because she had to say something to kill the tension. Her eyes sought Thalric’s and found his gaze evasive. What were they doing together, before I arrived? How long. .? She repressed the thought.
‘With Tisamon,’ Seda declared.
Che’s stomach lurched. ‘Then-’
‘Yes. And I can stop him, but not her. Between us we must separate them. We may need them against Argastos and his minions.’
Tynisa fought, and the fight had no beginning and no end.
She fought in the sewers beneath Myna. She fought in the Prowess Forum of Collegium. She fought in the Commonweal. She fought in the forest of the Nethyen. One fight spread over the years, as she tried to escape from the shadow of her father.
He was faster than her, but not by so much as he once had been. Death had dulled him a little, whilst her life had only sharpened her. She had learned new tricks that he had not taught her: every fight that she had entered into since his death had honed her, whilst he had remained the same broken thing he had always been.
In this dim no-place they dodged and cut, rapier against claw, a constant negotiation of reach and distance. She danced with him, Weaponsmaster to Weaponsmaster. Part of her mind was roiling with the need to destroy him, for the abomination he was; to strike down the insult to the man he had been, but there was more than that. No matter what he had become, what manner of revenant the Empress had raised from his memory, her blade and the mystery of her order knew that the fight itself was pure. This was the fight her life had been leading up to — and the fact that she and Tisamon had been allies, before the man’s death, had been only a temporary diversion.
No matter that she hated what he was, part of her exulted in fighting him again at last.
And sometimes he struck the death blow, and sometimes, less frequently, she did, but those strikes never landed, and they found themselves apart again, blade-tip to blade-tip. . and then began again. Over and over, they began.
How long they had been fighting, Tynisa could not know. She was living in the eternal present, moment by moment ticking by and yet the clock standing still.
When something changed, and when the voice came, she resisted hearing it, so perfect was this instant she was living in. She stepped through her paces, her rapier a blur as it fended off Tisamon’s strikes and made its own inroads into his defence. But, at last, the demands became too insistent to ignore.
Tynisa! Che’s voice was an unwelcome reminder that there was more to life than this.
Stop this! You have to stop fighting!
The concept seemed utterly alien to her, and she shrugged it off, but Che was insistent.
Tynisa, Seda is going to rein in Tisamon, but only if you yourself stop. This is pointless. We have more important problems right now.
For a moment, Tynisa lost her rhythm, and a scything sweep of Tisamon’s claw nearly killed her, but she ceded three paces and repaired her defence.
Tynisa-
Go away, Che. And Tynisa applied herself utterly to the duel.
She sensed her foster-sister’s abrupt frustration with her, which might once have been a source only of amusement, but now there was a great power building behind it, a wave of influence that increased and increased until all that Tynisa represented, her badge, her sword, her whole being, was tiny in comparison.
‘No!’ she cried out, and heard, I’m sorry, in reply. And then the great fist of Che’s strength descended and clasped itself about her, locking her rigid, every limb frozen.
She had a moment of staring into Tisamon’s helm, that dark, half-seen face that was so familiar, and she tried to brace herself for the death strike. . but she could not even do that.
Then he had frozen as well, his blade already halfway towards her, and a moment later they were not alone: Che, Thalric, Maure. . and there too was Seda, whom Tynisa had seen in Capitas only the once, on the day that her father had died.
The grip left her, and she dropped to her knees with a curse.
‘I’m sorry,’ Che repeated, as Tisamon stalked stiffly over to Seda’s side.
Tynisa glowered up at Che. ‘If you ever do that to me again, I swear. .’ But she was not sure what she could swear to, considering the sheer strength of the girl, the utter reversal of their roles. For the first time in her life, Tynisa suddenly felt ignorant and useless compared to whatever it was that Che had access to. And is that the way that she had always felt, before?
She got to her feet, sword already home in its sheath. ‘What now?’
‘Now?’ And they all spun about at this unexpected intrusion. He stood there in his chitin scale mail, shoulders broad beneath his open grey robe, and his winged helm under his arm: Argastos the warlord, the Moth who went to war. ‘Now you shall come with me as my guests,’ his rich voice resonated. ‘We have much to talk about.’
Thirty-Three
That next morning, word had been sent to every Assembler remaining in Collegium. College Masters, merchant magnates, the great and the good who had not left the city or died in the fighting were all visited at the stroke of dawn. To avoid any unfortunate shooting of messengers, Helmess had used the Collegiate Guild to carry his instructions, demonstrating that business as usual, in some small way, was still the order of the day.
The message itself was simple. The Collegiate Assembly was still very much in existence, and a full gathering of its members would be held later that morning. Attendance was mandatory. Collegium had passed through a time of turmoil and needed the help of all of its leaders to regain its feet, and anyone who felt that they had better things to do would be noted in their absence.
Turnout was impressive, certainly more so than the last two emergency Assemblies presided over by the late Jodry Drillen.