‘And Tynisa?’ Salma asked. He handed the map to a Fly-kinden woman and turned round. As Stenwold recounted Tynisa’s burden and present mission, he re-evaluated the Dragonfly before him.
Salma looked every part the brigand chief. The armour had changed since Stenwold last saw him, presumably the pick of whatever equipment they had liberated from the Wasps. Now it was a cuirass of layered leather with bronze studs over a suit of silk, all of it meticulous Spider work. The sword at his belt was slender and long-hilted, not true Commonweal but of no manufacture Stenwold could identify. About his forehead he wore a gold-inlaid leather band, complete with cheek-guards.
‘You have arrived at a difficult time, Sten,’ Salma said at last, ‘and apparently travelling to see my people, no less.’
‘You think they won’t help?’
‘I cannot say, save that they will do whatever they do for their own reasons only.’ Salma tacked another blank sheet to his writing board and began to scribe on it. ‘Don’t assume they’ll sit like Beetles and listen to hours of argument. Just ask and then accept whatever answer they give.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ Stenwold flinched as something dragged at the side of the tent. A moment later daylight cut in, as the heavy fabric was rolled up around them, a gang of huge men taking the tent apart with care, without effort, even as he and Salma were still inside. He started back from them, for they towered over him, pitch-skinned giants, either with shaved heads or else mops of white hair.
‘Mole Crickets,’ he identified them.
‘Two score of them,’ Salma agreed. ‘Together with half a hundred Grasshopper-kinden from Sho El, which I understand is somewhere as far east as you can go without leaving the Empire. They are Auxillian deserters.’
‘I didn’t think the Imperial Army was that easy to desert from.’
‘Normally there are reprisals against their families, back home. Here, though, we make a practice of not leaving any enemy bodies if we can help it. Whole scouting parties have vanished completely, and the Auxillians along with them. The Wasps cannot then know who has died and who has deserted. And of course some Auxillians themselves realize the potential of this practice – and that here, of all places, there is someone who will take them in. Morleyr and his people came to me of their own will.’
One of the great Mole Cricket-kinden turned and nodded at that, regarding Stenwold suspiciously.
‘Go to Suon Ren,’ Salma said, as he unpinned the paper and passed it to Stenwold. ‘Prince Felipe Shah may yet be holding his winter court there. He will remember me still, I hope, so this shall serve as your introduction.’
‘Suon Ren,’ Stenwold repeated. In his head he conjured up what he had gleaned of the Commonweal, pinpointing the name as belonging somewhere north of the Moth hold of Dorax, towards the Commonweal’s southern border.
‘You should go right now, though,’ Salma informed him. The Mynan warrior had just run up to him, handing over what looked like a scribbled land-plan, with arrows and blocks sketched in. ‘The Wasp Sixth is advancing on our position,’ Salma explained. ‘We’re already blinding their approach, vanishing their scouts, but they’ve put a couple of flying machines in the air just now, and that could cause some problems with your departure.’
‘I’ll go now,’ Stenwold confirmed.
Salma held one hand up. ‘There is one name from the old times that we haven’t yet mentioned, Sten.’
‘I know.’
‘He is…?’
‘Totho is with the Wasps still, insofar as I know. He will most likely be with the army now marching on you.’
‘Ah.’ Salma looked down for a moment, then reached forward to clasp Stenwold’s arm, wrist to wrist. ‘Good luck, Sten – and fair winds.’
‘Good luck to you too,’ Stenwold said, already beginning to back towards the Buoyant Maiden, straining where the wind tugged at it. His last sight of Salma was as the single still point in a camp that was disintegrating into nothing all around him.
Five
‘It can’t really be just because of the girl, can it?’ Teornis asked. The Spider Aristos did not look at Nero as he asked the question, but purely because the artist was intent on a profile sketch of him just then. ‘After all, you didn’t exactly spend much time with her, before she set off on her own.’
‘She didn’t exactly spend much time on board ship,’ Nero pointed out.
Teornis spent a further moment in composition, the chitin-shard pen poised deftly between his fingers, then he scratched a few additional notes to a report he was sending on. He had already played host to two Fly-kinden couriers bringing document packets, and a third was anticipated soon. Their airship was passing over the isle of Kes even now, with the Ants’ metal-gleaming navies mustering below in preparation for war.
‘I had thought Fly courtship to be a fairly straightforward affair,’ the Spider said idly.
‘I’ve got no idea how they do things in Solarno – probably slap each other with fish or something. All mad in that city. Sure, in the hollows it’s simple enough,’ Nero remarked, meaning Egel and Merro. ‘That’s because it’s mostly arranged. Everything’s run by family there. That’s why I got out, and that’s why you find so many of my people away from home. Easier for us to live anywhere but directly under the noses of our own kind. Why, how’s it work with your people?’
‘I’ve no idea how they do things down in the gutter,’ Teornis said, with a dry imitation of the artist’s tone in his voice. ‘Amongst the Aristoi, however, it is a very delicate and intricate business. If a woman wishes a man’s companionship, he is allowed to discover it from some third party, but most often the woman merely waits for suitors, no mere man being considered important enough to attract her attention. Once his affections are engaged, the man is expected to approach the woman carefully, respectfully. There is a chain of social observances that he must perform: questions to be asked of her servants and friends, discreet giving of gifts through intermediaries, the scribing of poetry or the commissioning – as you must know – of artistic works for her.’
Nero nodded, making connections. ‘I didn’t realize I’d become part of some Spider fellow’s love games.’
‘A minor and preliminary part,’ Teornis said. ‘Then there comes the meeting with her closer court, perhaps a duel, a challenge made by some unimportant member of her cadre – the skill of that challenger varying, of course, in inverse proportion to her favour of the admirer’s suit. Then they will meet by her arrangement, on an occasion unknown in advance to him. She will evaluate him. If he has displayed sufficient wit, beauty, charm, whatever virtues she seeks in him, then he may gain further access to her household, to her chambers, finally to her body. If not, well, if he is lucky he will escape with his life and reputation, but that is not always the case. Wooing a Spider-kinden Arista is a perilous business for the unprepared.’
‘And if she’s made it known to him that she wants him, but he doesn’t want her?’ Nero asked, fascinated.
Teornis chuckled quietly. ‘Little man, his interests are of no importance in this ritual, save to explain why so many of the men of my people are also to be found living in the cities of others.’ In that revealing moment of frank humour, Nero almost liked him.
There was a respectful knock at the cabin door and, on Teornis’ invitation, one of the crew let a Fly-kinden messenger in. The woman was obviously used to serving Spiders, finding nothing unusual in seeing her target sitting for a portrait, and simply presented him with another wallet of documents. If she had flown herself ragged in meeting up with the airship her manner certainly did not show it.
‘Find her some victuals,’ Teornis ordered the crewman who had escorted her in. ‘I shall have returns for her to take away shortly.’