That combination within her — the Spider heritage, the Mantis miscegenation, the Weaponsmaster’s badge that the Mantids put such store in — had surely earned her any number of challengers here, and she knew that Che could not hold them off forever. With her sister occupied, she had been expecting to be called out, but when Thalric dragged her back to the present moment, she recognized the approaching tread as being heavier than any Mantis: a man in armour, and in company.
It was the Ant tactician, the one who seemed to be in charge around here. Since the Mantis duel, the Ant camp had been in silent uproar as they tried to understand what was going on. Scouts and emissaries sent into the wood had been rebuffed: the Etheryen were not talking. Orthopters and Fly-kinden were already winging their way towards where the Imperial Eighth was camped to see what they were doing, and the usual Ant paranoia about outsiders was abruptly to the fore. The camp was a prickly place to be, all of a sudden; the delegations from Princep and Collegium were being carefully watched, and Che’s party was practically under full-scale surveillance.
‘He’s come to see Che,’ Thalric guessed.
Tynisa nodded without looking at him. The two of them made an uneasy pair of sentries. They had known each other for some years now, and had shared a variety of escapades, but they were not friends. Only their mutual care for Che kept them civil to each other.
Che herself was sitting closer to the trees than either of them would have liked, along with the halfbreed woman, Maure. The two of them had done precisely nothing for the past half hour, after Maure had scratched out some manner of circle in the ground and lit some candles to go around it, most of which had since blown out.
Magic — they’re doing magic. Tynisa tested the words carefully. She had grown up in Collegium, where magic was a joke they made about the stupid things the Inapt believed and which, though Inapt herself, she had not credited. There was no magic, she had once been sure.
Now she was returned from the Commonweal, where everyone believed in it implicitly, and Tynisa herself had witnessed such things. .
After that, Tynisa found that she could face the word magic and feel almost none of the old embarrassment. Instead, some deep-buried part of her, born of both her parents’ kinden, rose eagerly for it, too long denied its proper place in her thoughts.
The real surprise had been Thalric, for he was as Apt as any Wasp. But when Che had declared that she and Maure would be undertaking a ritual to investigate just what was going on in the forest, he had merely nodded, jaw clenched a little, and said nothing.
Milus the tactician, however, was surely not going to be quite so accepting.
As he approached, Tynisa and Thalric drew closer together without intending to, making the space between them a barrier for the Ant. The threat was a weak one: the Tactician had a dozen men at his back, and there were hundreds of Ant-kinden just a thought away.
Still, as the Ants closed, Tynisa took another step forward, right into his path. The movement was awkward and stiff, thanks to the wound that had come close to finishing her, in that same fight which had mauled her face. In truth, Apt surgeons would probably have given up on her, or at the least confined her to a bed for months to come, but the Commonweal held other ideas about medicine, and those who wore the Weaponsmasters’ badge could draw on unusual sources of strength. Tynisa’s hand was closed about her rapier hilt, and she could feel the steel all the way down her spine, supporting her.
To his credit, Milus stopped deliberately before them, dispersing the threatened confrontation by pointed diplomacy. His eyes narrowed, fixing on Che and Maure inside their circle. ‘What’s she doing?’ he asked.
Tynisa allowed herself to exchange a glance with Thalric. She had a choice, to obfuscate, or to simply baffle the man. She chose the latter.
‘Magic.’
Tactician Milus nodded. ‘She is Inapt, I’d guess. She must believe so.’
Tynisa blinked, trying to reassess him, but unable to quite pin him down.
‘Do you think I’d come to treat with the Ancient League without some understanding of the Inapt?’ Milus declared. ‘I have a devious little adviser on such matters, who tells me all manner of lies about the business, but even so I cannot deny that many kinden believe in such things,’ Milus frowned further. ‘What’s she hoping to achieve?’
‘Divination,’ Tynisa explained. ‘Far-seeing.’
‘She wants to spy on the enemy? Good, I need to talk to her.’
‘She’s busy,’ Tynisa objected. Thalric was keeping his peace, she noted, and that was just as well. Even the most conciliatory words were unlikely to be received well from a Wasp.
Milus let two seconds’ silence pass. ‘I need to talk to her,’ he repeated, slightly more forcefully. ‘There is a Wasp army at hand. There is fighting in the Etheryon. I cannot afford to wait on her pleasure.’
There was iron in his glance, a seamless transition from friend to threat that nearly had Tynisa’s rapier in her hand.
She opened her mouth to defy him, feeling a fighting calmness settle on her shoulders, all her thoughts and worries falling into the moment.
‘Tynisa, it’s all right.’ Che’s voice.
Tynisa did not look away from Milus. ‘You’re happy to talk?’
‘I think I’d better,’ Che confirmed. She started to get up, but the tactician strode between Tynisa and Thalric, near enough to touch either, and crouched down at her level.
‘Tell me what’s going on,’ he said, back to being friendly and reassuring.
Tynisa saw Che take a deep breath. ‘The Empress is here, with the Eighth,’ she declared.
Milus gave a grunt of surprise. That was plainly not what he had expected to hear. Before he could question her, she added, ‘Don’t ask me how I know. I couldn’t tell you in any way you’d understand. And I don’t really expect you to believe me — but you did ask.’
After a moment of introspection, perhaps summing up the reactions and opinions of his advisers, or his whole army, he nodded. ‘It seems unlikely,’ was all he said.
‘There is something in the forest she wants; that is all I am sure of. Maure and I have been trying to find out what it is, but. . the magical landscape is much as you see the physical — tangled and knotted and dark, layer on layer. That there is something there at the heart of the wood, between the two holds, is plain. What it is. . Tactician, permit me to suggest that you’re taking this very well.’
Milus nodded. ‘Some of what you say matches recent intelligence from my own sources, and from the Roach girl from Princep, who’s been in and out of the green a few times. There’s fighting going on in there, and the Etheryen think that there are Wasps under the trees already, helping out the Nethyen. The Empress? Who knows, but something has gone badly wrong. We’ve lost key allies, and if the forest is lost then we’ve lost our flank as well, and the next battlefield will probably be at the gates of Sarn. And still I don’t know what’s going on, which is the worst thing in the world for a tactician. The Mantis-kinden won’t talk to me, so that’s where you come in.’
Che’s gaze remained level. ‘What do you think I am, Tactician?’ There was a keen tension between them, and Tynisa felt her instincts twitch and tighten as they sized each other up.
‘I don’t care what you are,’ was Milus’s answer. ‘All I know is that I’ve never seen Mantids back down like they did when you confronted them. So: you’re important. They will listen to you. You can find out what in the pits is going on. Possibly you can even put it right.’