Che looked into Bartrer’s face again, and her eyes flicked to Amnon, who would presumably go where the academic went. Perhaps it was the thought of his able help that decided her.
‘Then I need all the help I can get,’ she admitted. Maure plucked at her sleeve, but she shook the halfbreed magician off.
By then the Sarnesh were moving again, some false alarm now dealt with. Squads were constantly moving off, to be rapidly lost in the darkness, guided only by the best-guess mental map they shared between them. Sentius reappeared with his repeating crossbow over his shoulder, and a Fly-kinden padding along almost under his armpit. This was Zerro, his chief of scouts, a gaunt and taciturn man who moved as silently in the forest as any Mantis.
‘Bartrer’s with me,’ Che told him, pre-empting any argument.
Sentius nodded glumly. ‘Fine. You get to tell your people when something happens to her. She’s not my concern from this moment. And I gather that you’ll all be out of my hair soon enough? Off on a jaunt into the depths?’
Che nodded.
‘Zerro here will be with the vanguard. You break off from him at your discretion. ‘I’ve been in here more than most. There’s some bastard things in this wood that I only ever heard about from the locals. There are places the Mantids won’t go. Wandering around with your mouth open’s a fool’s errand. But, like I say, we’re up to our eyeballs in experts, and I reckon you’ve got your own, now.’
‘Is that your way of wishing me good luck, Commander?’ Che asked him drily, but he just shrugged.
Tynisa fell in alongside Maure. ‘What is it?’
The magician glanced at her — obviously still a little uneasy in the Weaponsmaster’s company after their jagged history in the Commonweal. ‘The Beetle woman, Bartrer.’
‘What about her?’
‘I don’t like her. There’s something wrong with her: a ghost. . or something like a ghost.’
Tynisa waved that away. ‘You don’t trust her, I don’t trust her.’ Thalric, the third member of their forced clique, had drifted in to eavesdrop, and she added, ‘And you don’t trust anyone, so that makes three of us.’
Thalric nodded curtly. ‘Except Che, but yes, there’s something eating that woman for sure.’
‘The others?’ Tynisa pressed.
‘Amnon’s straight up, from what I remember,’ Thalric admitted. ‘Moths are always trouble. For the rest, we’ll all just keep our eyes a bit wider open.’
In his mind, Tynisa knew, everyone was an enemy, Sarnesh and Etheryen Mantids included. She found that she had begun to value his paranoia.
The Sarnesh camp at the edge of the forest was breaking up, its work accomplished. Those detachments chosen by Tactician Milus had entered the forest with the Etheryen blessing that Che Maker had negotiated. The balance, along with Milus himself, was readying itself to head for home.
Somewhat controversially, of course, both the Collegiate and Princep ambassadors had gone into Mantis territory. Balkus had already departed to report to his Monarch on the war’s most recent twists. The Collegiate orthopter still stood, one of the last machines on the impromptu airfield. Its Beetle pilot was in her seat and ready to go, but the side-hatch was still open, with a small and lonely figure sitting there, staring out at the disintegrating camp. Laszlo was still waiting, and had been waiting since before dusk. Now the moon was high, the bulk of the Ants had left, with their trademark efficiency, and he refused to give up.
‘Seriously.’ The pilot’s voice came from within. ‘I don’t know whether you noticed, but it’s about an hour short of midnight by the clock. Can we go now?’
‘She’ll be here,’ Laszlo declared, not for the first time.
‘Well, then at least tell me who-’
‘An agent. One with vital information for Collegium,’ the Fly snapped back. That was his story, he had decided. Perhaps it was even true.
‘She’s stood you up,’ the pilot’s voice told him unhelpfully. ‘Look-’
‘Just — hold on.’ For a moment, just a moment, hope flared inside him, but even he could not fool himself for more than a second. Yes, someone was approaching the orthopter, but it was not Lissart. This was an Ant and, as the figure neared, Laszlo with a sinking heart recognized Milus.
‘Collegium is surely waiting for your word!’ the tactician called out as he drew near. ‘And yet here you are.’ He must have had good night vision for an Ant, Laszlo considered, because he was able to look the Fly straight in the eye at that distance. His crisp little smile said a great deal. ‘You’re Laszlo, of course.’
Having his name known to the Sarnesh court was not a thing of joy to Laszlo. ‘What of it?’ he asked cautiously.
‘She’s not coming. I’d have let you exhaust your patience, but it’s inefficient. Go home.’
For a moment Laszlo was frozen motionless, not a thought or quip or plan in his mind. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming?’ was all he could come up with in the end.
Milus’s mind was unreadable from his face but, unlike with most Ants, it was not for want of an expression, just that the mild humour he posted up there was feigned entirely for Laszlo’s benefit. ‘My adviser, Alisse — or te Liss, as she called herself in Solarno — will not be joining you. You should go now.’
Laszlo had a knife, and he had a little cut-down snapbow known as a sleevebow, which could poke some nice holes in the Ant’s mail, but there were a lot of Ants left about the place, and he was suddenly convinced, by his instincts and his Art, that there would be Ant marksmen with their weapons trained on him right now. ‘What have you done?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Taken her in for questioning,’ Milus said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘She was a Wasp agent, you know. Well, of course, you know.’ That false smile broadened by the requisite amount.
‘I. .’ Laszlo had always prided himself on his quick wits and ready tongue, but Milus was changing his ground faster than the Fly could keep up. ‘What do you mean, I would know?’
‘I read your report in Collegium, Laszlo.’ The use of his name was pointed and deliberate.
‘You’ve been spying on Collegium?’
A polite laugh. ‘Collegium has been sharing its intelligence with its allies, the Sarnesh. Your report included.’
But I never. . ‘I didn’t say anything in my report about-’
‘A Wasp agent?’ Milus’s pale eyes flicked across his face as though Laszlo was a specimen in a jar. ‘It was all there for an adequate intelligencer to read, in between the things you actually wrote. Without that one thing, none of your story really makes much sense. Her treachery completes the picture nicely. Although I am grateful to the look on your face for confirmation.’
Laszlo failed to say two or three separate things because his heart was hammering and he could not quite catch enough breath for them. He remembered Lissart telling him what a poor spy he was, over and over, and he had never realized how right she was, or that his failings would prove her undoing. His expression, whatever was left of it, prompted another careful widening of the tactician’s smile.
‘I know,’ Milus admitted. ‘We are Ants. We are terribly traditional. We make good soldiers and not much else. We do not understand you other kinden with your free-thinking minds: how very confusing and lonely you must all be, we think. We do not know how you think, and we cannot read your faces because we are ourselves so inscrutable. How our linked minds must cripple us, hm? How unfair, then, to discover at this late date that we can play the same games you can.’
What Laszlo finally got out, at that juncture, was, ‘You can’t take her.’
‘She is taken. She is gone,’ Milus assured him. ‘You should also go.’
Piss on me, Laszlo found himself thinking. And he’s on our side! ‘I’ll go to Mar’Maker about this.’