If she moved her head to look, it would be gone. If she stayed very still, though, and emptied her mind the way he had taught her, and waited… then sometimes there would be a greyness at the edge of her vision, a tremor in the air, a something.
Mourning was difficult for her because she knew that he was still there. He had been a magician, after all, which she now finally believed only after his death. He had been a magician, truly, and now he had become something else. She had been far away when he died, having left him to the failed mercies of his own people. Now, posthumously, he was close to her, and she could not bear it.
She stood up, feeling the non-presence recede away instantly, knowing that it was still there somewhere, beyond her notice. At the same time she heard the front door, the hurried feet of Stenwold's servant running to greet his master. She drifted out on to the landing in time to see her uncle down below, divesting himself of his cloak. He complained so often of being old and tired, and yet seemed to her to be possessed of boundless reserves of energy. He complained of being mired in politics and intrigue, yet he fed on it with a starving man's appetite.
He still wore his sword, one of the few Assemblers who did. Stenwold was still at war, they would joke, but their laughter had a nervous quality.
She drew back into her room, knowing he would come to speak with her soon enough. He did not understand, could not fathom, what she was going through, but he did his best, so she could not complain. He was perpetually a busy man. Downstairs, Stenwold stopped himself from turning his head as he heard the landing creak. Either she was still there or she had retreated and he did not know whether her absence or her presence was more disturbing: this ghostly, red-clad apparition that his niece had become.
I need help. But there was nobody to help him. The war had stripped him of both allies and friends. Above the fireplace, he had finally had framed and hung the old picture that Nero had done of Stenwold and the others when they had just been setting out. Dead faces now, only Stenwold Maker living on out of all of them.
How is it that I am still here, after all of this? He had a sudden sense, almost like vertigo, of all the people he had sent out to die or get hurt: Salma, Totho, Tynisa, Achaeos, Sperra, Scuto, Tisamon, Nero – even the madwoman Felise Mienn. There was no justice in a world that preserved Stenwold Maker after all that loss.
But it was worse when he considered the survivors. The Assembly was crawling now with men boasting of their exploits in the war, but Stenwold could not remember seeing any of them defending the walls at the time.
He glanced up, at last, to find no scarlet watcher above. The war had left so many casualties, with so many different wounds that he was powerless to cure.
'Lady Arianna sent word that she would be expecting you at her residence, sir,' his servant informed him. The thought stirred an ember of a smile, but he was so tired that it could be no more than that.
He began the slow clump up the staircase.
There were books all over Cheerwell's room, open, bookmarked or stacked, lying on the bed and at her desk. They looked old and valuable, and he knew she was trading on her family name to extract favours from the librarians. On the other hand, it was not as though the topics she was researching were required reading for College scholars. Most of these tomes had not been opened before during her lifetime, perhaps not even in Stenwold's. The sight of them reinforced his disquiet, reminded him of the scale of the plight they faced.
'How was the Assembly?' she asked him. She sat demurely on her bed but there was a brittle aura about her, as of some fragile thing delicately balanced.
'Tedious as usual.' He racked his mind for something amusing he could recount to her, was forced to accept that nothing amusing had occurred. 'I did my normal job of making friends, so I'm surprised they're not burning my effigy in the square before the Amphiophos.'
He saw her smirk at the quip, a reaction more than the words warranted. 'You have no idea,' Cheerwell told him. 'You should get her… get Arianna to go to the play with you.' She stumbled a little over the woman's name, but only a little. She was at least trying.
'Play?' he asked blankly.
'Haven't you heard? At the Rover on Sheldon Street?' Her smile was genuine, though a sadness shone through it. 'They call it The Shell Crack'd or something like that. It's about goings on in this city when the siege was under way. It's all people leaping into each other's beds and arguing.'
'There's a play about the war and it's a farce?' said Stenwold, quite thrown off course from what he was originally going to say.
'Yes, but you're in it too. You're the serious bit in the fourth act, like they always include,' Che told him. 'When you went out to confront the Wasp army and got them to surrender and go away-'
'It wasn't like that-'
'Tell that to the playwrights. Tell that to the audience. You're a hero, Uncle Sten.' Her shoulders shook briefly with mirth, for a moment like the Che he knew from before it all. Then another layer of solemnity enveloped her and she said, 'Your man from Paroxinal came back today.'
'Oh?' and he was serious at that news, too.
'He said he'd report fully to you, for what it was worth, but nothing.'
'He found nothing, or they'd tell him nothing?'
'Nothing either way. Nothing at all. He found no trace of her.'
For a moment they just looked at one another, chained together by an equal guilt, until Stenwold bared his teeth in annoyance and looked away.
'Damn the girl!' he said. 'Why-?'
'You know why,' Che interrupted him flatly.
'Oh, I know what sparked it, but why go off-?'
'You know why,' she repeated firmly, and he had no answer to that, because he did know.
Feeling weary to his bones he pulled the desk chair out and reversed it, sitting so he could rest his arms on the carved back. He heard it creak at the unaccustomed strain. I'll be as fat as Drillen, one of these days. 'Che, I've had a thought about… something for you.'
She sat very still, waiting warily. It was not the first time he had tried to find things for her to do. She knew he meant well, but he did not understand that her current problems could not simply be left behind.
'Che… you did some good diplomatic work during the war.'
That took her by surprise. 'When?'
'In Myna, for example.'
'Sten, they nearly killed me there as a traitor.'
He smiled slightly at that. 'Same here… and with death, it's all about the "nearly". The way I hear it, you finally got their rebellion inspired to the point where they could throw off the Empire.'
'It wasn't like that,' hearing in her voice an echo of his own words.
'Tell that to my agents. Tell that to the Mynans. Che…' Staring at his hands as he always did when he sought inspiration. 'You need something to do…' One hand rose, quickly, to cut off her objection. 'I know, I know it won't stitch the wound, and it won't make everything better, just to be doing something, but you need time to heal, and at the moment it's just you and the wound, and nothing else. I have a job I need doing, and you need something to do – and you're good at it.' When she just stared at him he continued, 'I need an ambassador. An official ambassador representing Collegium, bearing the seal of the Assembly and everything.'
For a moment she continued to stare, then she laughed at him incredulously. 'You can't be serious.'
'Why not? You've already proven your worth: in Myna, in Solarno, in Sarn. This isn't just Uncle Sten finding jobs for his family. You've shown you're more than equal to the task, and-'