‘I don’t understand how Sentius can be ahead of us,’ Che insisted. ‘He sent Zerro and the rest forwards as scouts, and we’ve been making good time ever since.’
Syale’s glance at her was simple amusement. ‘Miss Maker, how far do you think you’ve come, exactly? And remember you let yourself follow the Ants’ lead. I had Commander Sentius following mine, and he was glad to have it. In this place, you’re better advised to walk round in circles than trust an Apt navigator.’
Che nodded, thinking, Poor Zerro. The Fly had done his best, but he had never been treading the right paths. Unlike Syale herself, who seemed to be able to go precisely where she wanted. .
‘We’ve had to fight to get this far,’ she told the Roach. ‘The Nethyen, then the Wasps. . if not for their current strife, I think I’d be fighting the Etheryen Mantids as well. This forest is full of thorns for outsiders. A Mantis forest is a proverbially bad place to visit, and yet you. . I’d give a great deal to learn that knack you have of walking free here.’
Syale flinched, disguising the moment with another smile, and Che realized that she had leant on the girl somehow — through some exercise of her power that she had not intended. She backed off a step, physically and symbolically, and sensed a degree of tension leach from the Roach-kinden.
‘You could not learn it,’ Syale declared simply. ‘I have — what would you Collegiates say? — diplomatic immunity. So long as I comport myself as a guest, they will not touch me. It’s a fragile thing, though. If I should lift a finger in this fight, my protection will evaporate like dew. I am like those little parasite animals that live in an ant’s nest or a wasp hive. There is a scent about me that says “I am of you” and so they overlook me, and leave me to go my own ways. But the moment I truly come to their notice by some misstep or misguided action, then, believe me, I shall become as mortal as you.’
‘And guiding the Sarnesh doesn’t count as that?’ Che pressed her.
The girl matched her gaze, or tried to. ‘It hasn’t yet. My city is Princep Salma, Miss Maker, and the Wasps will destroy it if they can, because it opposes everything in their ideology, and because it lies there in their path. So I do what I can for my home and my people.’
‘As do I,’ Che added, feeling herself deliberately steer the conversation along the precise path she wanted. ‘But I must do more than simply aid the Sarnesh. The Empress is in these woods: you have heard me say it. She seeks. . a power.’
‘I know,’ Syale said, her voice hushed. She was suddenly just a very young girl putting a brave face on for the adults all around her.
‘Then you know I must get there first, and keep it from her. So with your “diplomatic immunity”, can you guide me there?’
‘The heart of the wood?’ Syale whispered. ‘That is a place I cannot go and still remain beneath the Mantids’ notice.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it is not a place they go — or not willingly. None of them, Etheryen or Nethyen. It is the pit that divides them, the stain in their minds. They avoid that place, and yet still it takes some of them, one or two every few years. And yet others who would search for it cannot come to it, no matter how much they try.’ She shook her head. ‘You can walk from one end of these woods to the other and never find that centre. Or you can head outwards and outwards, and find nowhere else. And the moment I should step off the track and seek the heart, Miss Maker, I would become something alien to the Mantids, and they would deal with me in the same way they deal with all their problems.’ She regarded Che for a long moment, as they proceeded carefully at the head of the column. ‘Although you, whatever it is you have made yourself, maybe you’re the one problem the Mantids have no idea how to deal with.’
An hour of marching later, with the forest opening up somewhat around them — trees further spaced and undergrowth easier to trudge through — the Etheryen Mantids that Syale had brought along were abruptly accelerating, rushing ahead through the grey light that fought its way in from above, steel glinting in their hands. There was no mistaking that onrush: they were going into battle, without war cry or fanfare but no less determinedly for all that.
The handful of Sarnesh came to some group decision a second later, and then they were running ahead too, crossbows and swords out, but barely a rustle from their mail. And Che was keeping pace with them, her own blade to hand.
She could not have explained why. She had not quite formed the thought: I go to fight. Instead it was simply that those around her were speeding up, and some childish fear of being left behind whipped her on, hurrying her after those retreating backs.
Tynisa passed her on one side, rapier drawn and dashing in pursuit as easily as if she had never been wounded, and Che appreciated again how she borrowed strength from the blade, that Weaponsmaster’s bond as plain to see as if it were a glowing web between them.
Thalric was shouting after her, but Che kept running, and ahead she heard the clatter of blades, and then the shadows of the forest resolved themselves into warriors of the Nethyen.
There were nearly twenty — more than the Etheryen and the Sarnesh together — but nobody was holding back because of the odds. Arrows whispered through the leaves and she heard the clacking of Sarnesh crossbows. The fight fragmented almost immediately, individual Mantids breaking off to duel one on one, others plunging past to find their own opponents. The arena was evidently wider and more scattered than Che could take in, and yet some part of her was tracking it all, somehow, mapping out a battlefield in the clashes of steel and pinpoints of shed blood.
Thalric arrived by her shoulder, and her hand shoved him hard, sending him against a tree with a yell, just as an arrow cut the air between them, urgent as a messenger. She caught a glimpse of his expression: angry, unnerved, shocked. Then she was moving again — not to bloody her blade but to remain at the heart of it. She could not fathom her own impulses, but some inner magician had arisen there, some ancient instinct she must surely have borrowed from the trees themselves.
Ahead of her, two Mantis-kinden fought spear to spear, leaping and darting, still for a moment as they parted, then in again with their weapons spinning and lunging like living things, the wielders seeming almost an irrelevance. They looked interchangeable, but she could tell one for an Etheryen, the other for the enemy.
Amnon charged past behind them, putting on a burst of speed and taking an archer by surprise, gashing the woman’s leg even as her wings ripped her out of his reach. Then a crossbow quarrel rammed itself into the Mantis woman’s ribs and she fell at the Khanaphir’s feet. A swift lunge finished her off, and the big man straightened, blade already up to guard himself and looking round for another target.
Che just stood still and let her consciousness wash over, sensing them all distantly in some wholly new manner, never granted to her before. It was as though their very feet on the forest floor announced their presence, like the vibrations a spider feels from its victims in the web. The Mantids were bright, and she could see others, too — Terastos the Moth running between the trees, busy hands casting daggers at opportunistic targets, and Tynisa like oiled silk as she drove a Nethyen swordsman back. She could even find Maure clearly, for all the halfbreed woman was hanging far back along with Syale, keeping well away from the bloodshed. The Apt were far fainter, harder to read, harder even to see. The Sarnesh were simply an absence, but there was a certain aura to Amnon, a man who had dwelt close to old magic all his life without ever understanding it. Thalric, too, had a feel to him, as if touched by some hand. . touched by my hand? No — touched by mine and the Empress’s both. He had been Seda’s consort, after all, before he had abandoned the Empire forever.