It would not even serve for that purpose, any more. One whole side of it had sloughed off and tumbled down the hill years before, leaving a teetering rotten tooth of a place latticed with the shorn-off stubs of internal walls. The hollow shell of the interior had been colonized haphazardly by its new masters, for there were tents and shacks and wood-frame structures not only about the walls and within the castle’s hollow footprint, but straggling up the walls themselves, as though growing there like mushrooms. A further shambles of makeshift dwellings had spread out from the castle’s collapsed side in a jumble of huts packed far closer than the homes at Suon Ren. The entire place looked foul and squalid to Tynisa.
There was a clear effort to try and farm some of the land around Siriell’s Town, with a hundred little plots scratched into the soil. Several of these had adults or children standing guard over them, as though protecting seams of precious metal. They stared at her suspiciously, as she passed between them on her way to the town proper. Drawing closer, she saw that the narrow streets radiating out from the broken face of the castle were cluttered with people, many of whom seemed to be drunk or unconscious, and a couple of whom were clearly dead. The air washing over Tynisa reeked of sweat and refuse, and resonated with arguments and shouting, the clatter of pots, singing, the odd scream and the roaring declamations of some kind of street entertainer.
Most of the resident scum were Dragonfly-kinden, she noticed, and it was plain that noble paragons such as Salma or Felipe Shah were only setting an example that many of their fellows failed to match. Most of the other outlaws were tall, lean Grasshopper-kinden, but there was a fair quota of halfbreeds and other kinden, including some Mantids and even a few Wasps.
A middle-aged Dragonfly in a ragged robe reached out to tug at her sleeve. ‘How much?’ he slurred. ‘How much for it?’
She slapped his hand away, and in that moment her rapier was a comforting presence, resting against the man’s neck. He seemed too drunk to quite understand, so she kicked him in the parts for good measure, rousing a murmur of appreciation, or sympathy, from some of the degenerates nearby.
She had not thought to find Wasps in the Commonweal, but their pale faces kept leaping out at her as she passed through this filthy town, and she could see that they were prospering here too. There were only a handful, but people got out of their way, and wherever they sat, each held court with a gang of local ruffians at his beck and call. Watching a few of them, and the craven way in which most of the locals bowed and scraped, she soon made the connection. The Empire had dealt the Commonweal the most savage beating in that nation’s history.
At the end of the Twelve-year War three whole principalities – perhaps a third of the Monarch’s domain – were under the black and gold flag, and the Imperial forces had only halted their advance because of an uprising in one of their subject cities back along the supply chain. Even though a treaty had been signed, pledging future peace, and even though the three captured principalities were now nominally free, following reversals suffered in the Empire’s war with the Lowlands, everyone knew that the armies of black and gold could return at any time. Their repeated defeats had wormed their way into the consciousness of the Commonweal, and even people who had not taken up arms knew that the Wasp-kinden were to be feared.
After that, she was looking out for each renegade Imperial, her fingers constantly hovering near her sword hilt, some part of her mind plotting her own glorious fall. To rid the Commonweal of Wasps? To rid Felipe Shah’s principality of the vermin of Siriell’s Town? What might she not set her blade to? To die in the pursuit of some grand and bloody ideal, was that not the Mantis way? There was no past she wished to face, no future she could conceive, but Siriell’s Town offered her an eternal bloody present: fighting as Tisamon had fought, and losing herself here just as he had sought oblivion in Helleron after her mother had died.
For surely the world has no better use for me, she thought and, even as she did, her eyes lit on a face she recognized – bold as the sun, a man she had never wanted to see again.
She had been fleeing Jerez, as much as Collegium, when she came to the Commonweal, but here was Jerez mocking her on the streets of Siriell’s Town.
Jerez had been the idea of doomed Achaeos. There was some box, he said, just a little thing that a man could grip in one hand, but the Moth insisted it was of vital importance. Somehow, in the middle of a war, Achaeos had talked Stenwold into backing an expedition to retrieve it, and Tynisa had gone with him, to nobody’s gain.
Tisamon had been with her, watching her back as she watched his; and Jons Allanbridge of course, to get them there. Then there had been the two Wasps. One, the arch-traitor Thalric, had subsequently escaped to become a big man away in the Empire – yet another sack of blood she had never quite managed to cut open, for all he deserved it. And then there had been Gaved, who claimed to be independent of the dictates of the Empire. Tynisa had long decided that if he was genuinely something other than a servant of the Emperor, then he was something even worse: a freebooter, a mercenary, a thief and a kidnapper. Like Thalric, though, and unlike Achaeos, he had come out of the business untouched, and had been the only one to make any kind of profit from the whole wretched expedition. While others had bled and died, Gaved had left Jerez with a Spider-kinden girl on his arm, and an eyewitness familiarity with Tynisa’s own crimes.
And here, on the stinking streets of Siriell’s Town, was Gaved himself, with his intolerable burden of knowledge practically shrieking out to her. She watched as he spoke to some halfbreed who seemed to be a taverner, passing over several trinkets in return for some information or other – then the Wasp was off down the street with that light and easy step only truly owned by the utterly guilty.
And the irresistible thought came to Tynisa: I can kill him. I can start by ridding the world of Gaved, right here, right now. Because, although killing Gaved would be a pitiful gift to the world, at least it would give the drift of her life some meaning before the end.
Four
She had never been in Siriell’s Town before, but instinct had taken over and she skulked along in Gaved’s wake, without any suggestion that he was aware of her. He seemed a busy man, too, with plenty of people to talk to: darting from hovel to shack, exchanging words, paying his way with what looked like some little cut stones. Sometimes she caught him looking over his shoulder, and she guessed she was not the only person here who wished him ill, something that seemed entirely understandable to her.
Twice she thought he was going to get into a fight. The first time, he was accosted by another Wasp and she heard angry words exchanged, the man accusing Gaved of some disloyalty – perhaps to the Empire that both had patently abandoned – but Gaved smoothed matters over with some joke, fending off the man’s anger. The aggressor looked more than a little drunk and Gaved was able to evade him quickly.
The second time a half-dozen or so Grasshoppers tried to accost him, and although his hands threatened them with Wasp Art they only kept their distance but did not disperse. They were armed with spears and staves and knives, and they clearly wanted Gaved to go along with them to some local tyrant or other. Tynisa watched, interested to see if she would have to save the man’s life in order to have the pleasure of killing him herself.
One of the Grasshoppers became too bold, reaching for the Wasp’s sleeve, even though his fellows were still holding back. A bitter expression crossed Gaved’s face briefly and Tynisa saw his hand flash fire, knocking the grasping man off his feet, still alive but with one leg scorched. In the next instant the Wasp had taken to the sky, his wings lifting him back over the adjoining buildings. The Grasshoppers cursed and gave chase, as their own Art sent them leaping and bounding along at rooftop level, determined not to let Gaved get away. The wounded man yelled after them, demanding aid that was not offered, and then he began to crawl away, weeping with pain.