‘She is Cheerwell Maker,’ a fresh voice boomed.
The officer rounded on the intruder to find himself face to face with the entire Collegiate delegation, and face to chest with the huge Beetle warrior who had just spoken.
‘This is not your concern.’ He was a dogged one, this officer. Balkus had to admire him for that.
‘I know her. She is Maker’s niece. I know the Wasp, too.’ And if the big man’s glance at Thalric was less fond, he was still plainly vouching for him.
‘Amnon?’ came Che’s voice, more hesitant now, and stripped of its unaccountable power of moments before. ‘What are you doing here?’
A change whipped through the Ants, all at once. Even Balkus felt the lash of it. Abruptly they had stepped away from Che’s party, no longer guarding four people who were, therefore, no longer prisoners. The collective mind was now focused elsewhere, for a burly Ant-kinden was approaching with a half-dozen others dragged along in his wake. Balkus had never seen him before, but he knew who this man must be. The Sarnesh tactician, Milus, had just arrived.
Report, he gave out, and a concise and ordered account from the officer must have been served directly to his mind and for his consideration only. The tactician’s iron-coloured eyes flicked across the newcomers — Che, Tynisa, Thalric and the halfbreed woman — then passed swiftly by Balkus to size up the Collegiates, Amnon in particular. With so much of their social interaction lived within the minds of their fellows, Ant-kinden seldom had the knack of impressing outsiders with the force of their personalities, but Milus had a weight to him, a tangible force of will. In Balkus’s experience those who became tacticians were frequently those who tested the limits of public approval, their differences turned into virtues only when they were set above their fellows. That this man had been chosen to oversee the war against the Wasps argued that he was someone to be wary of.
Whatever this is about, it will wait, his thoughts told the Ants flatly, Balkus included. Keep an eye on them, the Wasp especially, but I myself have seen Maker, and this girl does look a little like him. We have other concerns, though. We Apt must at least seem united. His gaze swept over them: Balkus from Princep, the Collegiate woman Bartrer, Che Maker and the other newcomers. When he spoke, really spoke, his voice sounded gravelly and rough. ‘The Nethyen ambassador is coming and we can get down to business.’
The Sarnesh, who had been quietly industrious ever since they had arrived, now abandoned their tasks, all at once and to a man, assembling instead in ruler-straight ranks facing the forest, wordless and vigilant with swords at their side and snapbows sloping against their shoulders. Their tactician wished to impress, that much was plain. To one side some Mantis-kinden — the locals, and yet less than a tenth of the Sarnesh’s number — had formed a loose-knit mob, and Che found her gaze drawn to them. She had known very few of their kind, and none of them well, not even Tynisa’s father. Beside the Ants’ gleaming perfection, they looked scruffy, old-fashioned, provincial. She knew that they would each make deadly combatants, but how much did that truly count for in the age of the snapbow and the automotive? She herself, who had been robbed of her understanding of those technological wonders, found that she had more than a little sympathy for them.
‘You’ll stand with our delegation?’ Helma Bartrer suggested to her. ‘This is a historic moment. The Nethyen don’t usually meet with strangers, Master. . tells me.’
The Moth had kept pace with them, not quite close, yet always in earshot. It was hard to say what his blind-looking eyes were watching, but whenever Che moved, he moved. He had the manner of a man who wanted to ask questions, but whose dignity was getting the better of him.
‘We’ve been on the road a long time,’ Tynisa declared. ‘And I’ll likely be fighting a duel soon enough, whatever Che says. Let’s leave politics to the statesmen.’
‘We’ll watch,’ Che decided, and then, relenting, added, ‘or I will. If you want to go and rest, then go and rest. I’m sure they can find a place for you here.’
Maure, the halfbreed magician they had brought from the Commonweal, was plainly about to do just that, but then Thalric spoke up: ‘Che, it’s clear that you’re the reason we’re still free right now. Let’s stay in your shadow, until we know the ground.’ His hand squeezed her shoulder, seeking reassurance under the pretence of providing it.
One of the Mantids was heading towards the forest now, a stern-looking woman with a green-brown cloak flowing behind her. Che’s party and the Collegiates added a small huddle to one corner of the great Ant formation, close to where Balkus stood alone. Looking from Balkus to Amnon to her own party, Che could only think, How we have all come up in the world.
From the forest verge emerged another Mantis-kinden woman, a lean creature in chitin armour that was chased with silver. She met with her opposite number, and the two stared at one another for a long, slow moment, as though they shared some private linking of minds that even Ants were not privy to. There were a few words exchanged, but too low to carry. The Etheryen woman nodded once, curtly, as if agreeing some single point of business.
The blades flashed and clashed almost instantly. Of all the watchers, perhaps only Che and her fellows would admit that neither had actually bothered with anything so prosaic as drawing a sword — the rapiers had been in their hands in the moment of lunging, and a swift patter of a dozen scraping blows passed before the Ants even understood what was going on. She could guess at their shared question: Is this a Mantis thing? And it was, of course it was, but it was not done for mere play.
The Moth understood too. He was abruptly running forwards, arms out. ‘No! Servants of the Green! I forbid it!’ His voice was surprisingly loud and clear for such a slight-framed man.
In that moment the newcomer, the Nethyen woman, had won. Che had not followed the interchange of strikes but suddenly the Etheryen delegate was falling back, her throat opened by the other woman’s rapier, and the Moth stumbled to a halt within inches of the sword’s bloodied point.
‘What have you done?’ he demanded, shaken out of his composure before so many witnesses.
The Nethyen woman simply stared at him, undaunted, her sword level with his breast as though giving him the chance to take up the gauntlet. Then she turned, the blade vanished from her hands, as though dismissing the entire martial assembly from her mind. She stepped back into the forest, and was gone.
Two
Two tendays before.
Overlooking Collegium, and overlooking the sea, stood the old house on the cliffs.
It had been built two generations before as a retreat by a clique of philosophers, but its isolated location and the windswept nature of the surrounds had led to its abandonment a decade or so later, since when it had become the haunt of odd recluses, fugitives and perhaps spies. For the space of a few years, it had served as a wayhouse catering to just those sorts, and a few from Collegium who simply wished to get away from the crowd.
Some months ago, the Assembly had gifted the place to a new trading franchise, the Tidenfree Cartel, and placed a lamp atop its single tower. If ships’ captains had complained that the new lighthouse served no useful purpose, well, they were seldom listened to in the Assembly. And those who muttered that sometimes the lamp blinked and flashed, as if sending out messages across the sea. . well, seafarers were always telling tales.