‘Lies!’ Yraea shrieked, but the Mantids were ignoring her, and a moment later she was within the arc of those wooden limbs, and they were bringing forwards stakes and mallet to secure her.
‘No,’ she whispered. It had taken her that long for her to understand that the world had turned.
She looked round for the Loquae again, more than ready to beg, but the old Mantis herself had been seized by her own people.
‘I gave all that I had for your words,’ the Loquae stated flatly, without acrimony. ‘I told them that they must follow me, or cast me down. They have made their choice. I have sought the future, seer, and I have found none. None for me, none for any of us. Let me die now.’
Yraea opened her mouth to call out, but then the first stake was rammed home into her palm and she screamed.
‘The blood of a magician,’ Seda pronounced. ‘Not as valuable as the blood of an empress, but enough to open the door for me and mine.
Yraea barely heard her, as the world before her shuddered and swam. Seda’s polite smile passed before her eyes; Gjegevey shaking his head miserably; Ostrec-
She saw Ostrec, but in that same moment she also saw beyond him. Is that. .? Does Seda know what that is that wears her colours? Might I be avenged, still?
And then pain, only pain.
Seventeen
To his credit, what with a hundred other pressing matters tugging at his elbow, Stenwold sat for twenty minutes and listened to the impassioned Fly’s complaint. Laszlo told him everything, including many important facts about his Solarnese posting that Stenwold had only been able to infer from the Fly’s official report — as, apparently, had Milus.
Stenwold had never met this Lissart girl back then, for she had fled the Collegiate army before its clash with the Wasps. He did, however, vaguely recall a Fly woman who had accompanied Tactician Milus when the Ant had come to Collegium, but no more than that.
And now Laszlo had finished his account, right down to Milus’s parting words, and was waiting expectantly for Stenwold Maker, the War Master of Collegium, to jump into an orthopter and go and castigate the leader of the Sarnesh military. Because there was a girl that Laszlo was besotted with, who was now a Sarnesh prisoner.
The man’s a pirate. How can he be so naive? But Stenwold had met the Tidenfree crew, after all, and realized that piracy was a great refuge of the innocent, in a curious sort of way. It was a simple way of life made entirely from ignoring other peoples’ rules, and Laszlo’s only idea of authority was the avuncular hand of Tomasso and the necessity of a ship’s routines.
I should never have sent him to Solarno. But it had seemed harmless at the time — even a kind of reward. The proximity to the Spiderlands should have kept the Empire away. Yet another thing I didn’t see coming.
He found it surprisingly hard to say: ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Tell him to let her go,’ Laszlo replied earnestly.
‘I cannot tell the tactician anything. And he’s right — you know he’s right, and you’ve admitted it yourself. She’s an Imperial agent.’
‘Was.’ Laszlo scowled mutinously. ‘She left them.’
‘And then she left us and, again by your own admission, signed up with the Sarnesh under false pretences. And can you say with absolute certainty that the Empire did not send her there to inveigle her way into the Sarnesh councils?’
He could see that Laszlo wanted to swear to that, but the Fly could not quite look him in the eye.
‘Mar’Maker, please,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m. . afraid for her. That Milus, I don’t like him. He doesn’t care about anything except his own city.’
‘Nor should he,’ Stenwold stated shortly. ‘Just as I must have the same single-minded devotion to mine. This war has become a chain of terrible things, Laszlo, and some of them have been my doing, and there will be more to come.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The most I can do is sent him a message politely asking that this woman of yours be kept in once piece. If she’s sensible, and if she’s clever, she can keep herself off the rack until the war’s ended, and then the Sarnesh will have no more use for her, and probably they’ll hand her over. I can do no more.’
‘I’ll take the message myself,’ Laszlo declared.
‘You will not. I don’t need you stirring up trouble with our closest allies. I need the Sarnesh, and it doesn’t matter how unpleasant their leader may be. ‘ Stenwold stood up laboriously. ‘The war comes first, Laszlo, and what we ourselves want comes a distant second. You know that I’ve more cause to say it than most.’
The Fly nodded unhappily. ‘You’re for the docks now, are you?’
Stenwold mentally reviewed the many tasks that awaited him, and made exactly the sort of decision he had just advised against. But they will not wait forever, and what would I seem, if I did not say goodbye?
‘Coming with me?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know.’ But when Stenwold strode from his office, the Fly went tagging along behind, still sulking a little, addressing the back of Stenwold’s belt. ‘Tomasso will just find something for me to do.’
‘What if I found something for you to do?’ Stenwold offered. ‘If you’re interested, that is? I need a liaison with the Tseni, for when their ships arrive.’
‘Would it help?’ Laszlo demanded, meaning, shamelessly, Would it help me?
‘It might,’ Stenwold cast back. ‘If you’re part of the Collegium military in some way, doing your bit for the defence of the city, that’s likely to make you more of a consideration in Milus’s eyes, anyway.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
Oh, to be so young that you can make decisions just like that — with not a committee in sight. Stenwold sighed.
They made for the docks, near empty of ships, with only Tomasso’s Tidenfree and a couple of others rocking at anchor. The old pirate’s clinging on, then. The old wayhouse that had been Tomasso’s base of operations this last half-year had been pulled down within the last tenday, another page of Collegium’s history overwritten to deny the Empire cover for its artillery. Tomasso had taken it philosophically.
But he will not stay when the Empire gets closer, and I don’t blame him.
Tomasso and half his crew were meanwhile infesting the Port Authority, occupying a set of rooms given over to them partly because they had Stenwold’s favour and partly because the dock clerks were afraid of them. They had become considerably more respectable since Stenwold had first seen them, transforming themselves into citizens and merchants, yet never quite losing their piratical edge. Their new domain was cluttered with crates and sacks and boxes, the salvage from their clifftop retreat, and Tomasso was sitting on one pile as though it was a makeshift throne.
Fly-kinden, all of them there, save one.
She rose when Stenwold ducked into the room. He had spent as much time as he could with her, and she had stayed far longer than he had hoped, but now it seemed to him as though she had arrived only yesterday, and he had barely managed to spare her a moment.
‘Paladrya.’
She went to him and clasped his hands. The sun had burned her pale skin in some places, and her eyes were very red with drying out, and most of the food that land-kinden took for granted remained anathema to her, and yet she had dragged out her stay this long, and in the end he had been forced to set the date of her repatriation.