Broadways had no convincing explanation for them, but the leader of the patrol looked sufficiently venal to Tynisa’s eyes. She virtually had to kick the Beetle-kinden before he took the hint and led the man aside, offering to make a contribution to the Emperor’s war chest. Thankfully, the goods he was carrying included machine-cut gems from Collegium’s workshops, which served to smooth the way well enough.
It was then that the inexplicable happened, for, looking at the leader of the Wasp patrol, she heard words inside her head. The voice that spoke them was not a voice as she recognized it. It was composed of whispering and rustling and the darkness between trees, all forced through the gaps of human words, and it said to her, Go with him.
She started so suddenly that the Wasp officer stared at her, perhaps thinking she was about to try something violent.
‘What?’ he asked of her. ‘She’s your crew is she, or a passenger?’
‘Crew. Guard,’ explained Broadways.
‘Excuse me, Sergeant,’ Tynisa said. ‘I was just wondering…’
‘Wondering what?’ He looked her up and down, but the expected smile did not come. He had a broad-jawed, solid face that did not show his feelings much.
‘What’s work like in the Empire?’
The sergeant looked from her to Broadways. ‘Fed up with this fellow’s company are you? Can’t say I blame you.’
‘I’m sick of working for clowns,’ she said. ‘You people always seem to have it worked out.’ She ignored Broadways’ squawk of protest. ‘Is there anyone I could speak to, back where you’re based, or is it a closed shop?’
At that he did smile, if only slightly. ‘You ever heard of the Auxillians? They come in all shapes and kinden.’ She could not tell his thoughts but guessed that he was considering the war with the Lowlands, the possibility of a useful spy or agent. So let him think that. ‘I can take you to the camp at Asta, if you want,’ he continued. ‘I’ll fit you up with someone, I’m sure, if they reckon you’re useful.’
‘That,’ she said, ‘would be very acceptable.’
She did not bid farewell to the scandalized Broadways, only watched his patchwork airship sail on towards Helleron. Helleron, where she too was supposed to be going – so why was she not? Because of a voice, just a voice in her head, which had said, ‘Go with him.’
She wondered if Felise Mienn heard voices in her head, or whether the Dragonfly woman’s madness was of a different sort.
Still, Tynisa was committed now. The Wasp patrol trekked north and east with their patient spider pack-beast, with the fixed-wing circling sometimes overhead. She tried to recall her memories of Asta: a midnight reconnaissance with Tisamon while in search of Che. It was little enough. She was alone now, living on her wits and on three words spoken to her by a voice she did not know.
She gave them two days before she broached the subject. In that time the Wasps had got used to her. They did not include her, their talk and occasional laughter being about people and rituals she did not recognize, but she proved that she could keep pace with them, and that went a little way towards being accepted.
‘Sergeant,’ she finally said, those two days in, ‘I don’t suppose you see much in the way of Mantis-kinden this far east.’
The look he gave her sent a thrill through her because, however flat his features, something moved there. Voice or no voice, she was not just casting herself into the void.
‘Strange question, that,’ he said.
‘There’s a particular man,’ she explained. ‘I’ve been tracking him for a while. Just asking out of interest, you understand.’
‘I understand your kinden and theirs don’t get on,’ he remarked. ‘Odd thing is, yes, we’ve got one at Asta right now.’
At Asta? What is he doing at Asta? But of course it need not be Tisamon. There was no reason at all for it to be Tisamon. No reason except the voice…
‘Maybe I’ll take a look at him when I’m there.’
‘You’re likely to enjoy it,’ he said, although he did not clarify.
Asta was larger than she remembered it, at least twice the size now. There were more and more of the same hastily constructed barracks and storehouses, and a field of tents bivouacked beyond. Tynisa’s party arrived around noon, and it seemed to her that not one of the Wasp-kinden she could see kept still. There were troops of soldiers marching or flying in, unpacking their kit, setting up tents or taking them down, packing up, moving out north or west or south. There were flying machines, automotives, pack animals. There were Auxillians of half a dozen kinden amidst the Wasps. Entire armies were on the move.
The patrol she was with did not slow for any of it, and so she was plunged into the hurly-burly of the Imperial Army like a stone thrown into unruly waters. For a moment they were shoulder to shoulder with other Wasps and their slaves, thronging back and forth, and she felt that she was drowning in the sheer scale of the Empire, of which this was just an outlying camp, just a small drop in their ocean.
The sergeant turned to her. ‘You stay here while I report. I’ll come out soon enough, or someone else will.’ The look he gave her was calculating, narrow-eyed, still weighing up her usefulness.
He left her then, pushing his way through the throng, and his men quickly dispersed, seeking food, drink, dice games and whores. With no option left to her, she waited. After a while of being jostled, she found a nearby automotive wagon and climbed up the side of it, gaining purchase on the smooth wood and metal by her Art, until she could sit aloft, gaining some illusion of being apart from it all. Even then, soldiers were constantly buzzing overhead, close enough for her to reach out and grab. The air was full of Wasps and Flies, and other kinden in the Empire’s colours.
It was more than an hour before someone came for her, and then it was not the same sergeant but a narrow-faced Wasp, middle-aged and with rank bars that she identified as a major’s, alighting atop the wagon and looking down on her. He put her in mind of the first Wasp she had spoken to, and deceived: Captain Halrad aboard the Sky Without, whom Totho had killed for her.
‘You want to make yourself useful, do you?’ he asked flatly. ‘What are you? Spiderlands spy, perhaps?’
She made herself smile at him easily. ‘Would I tell you if I was? Besides, since when was the Empire at war with the Spiderlands?’
‘I expect news of that hourly,’ he said, regarding her doubtfully. ‘So, what are you, precisely?’
‘A mercenary,’ she replied.
‘An honest one, then?’
‘Just so.’ She leant back. ‘So, Major, can you think of any use for me?’
‘Don’t play games,’ he told her, but she could see a glint there, which showed she had reached some vanity within him. ‘I could have you arrested.’
‘Yes, but what would you gain?’
‘You tell me. What’s your name, first off?’
‘Atryssa.’ She had not meant it, but the name came out without a thought: her mother’s name. Surely it would not have been begrudged, if permission could have been asked for. ‘Your sergeant told me you have a Mantis here.’
‘And he told me you’re looking for one. Some kind of vengeance, is it?’
She read his tone carefully. ‘Not that can’t be put off. Just a dangerous man I’d rather keep track of.’
‘Or he was hunting you, was he?’ he smiled then. ‘You don’t think much of us Wasp-kinden, I’ll wager. You Spiders, you look down on all sorts. When did you last catch a Mantis alive, though, in your webs?’
‘You have him prisoner?’ Her own anxiety bled through, even though she reminded herself, It need not be Tisamon, once again. He read her question as simple surprise, though.