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. 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 a.s.sembly was crawling now with men boasting of their exploits in the war, but Stenwold could not remember seeing any any of them defending the walls at the time. 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 a.s.sembly?" 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 Sh.e.l.l Crack"d The Sh.e.l.l 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." 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 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.
"d.a.m.n 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. I"ll be as fat as Drillen, one of these days. "Che, I"ve had a thought about ... something for you." "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 know, I know it won"t st.i.tch 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 amba.s.sador. An official amba.s.sador representing Collegium, bearing the seal of the a.s.sembly 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-"
"And it would give me something to do," she finished sourly. "And where, pray?" A thought struck her. "The Commonweal?"
"Not the Commonweal," he said. "We"re being ... very careful there. They"re a strange lot, up north. They don"t really seem to understand yet why amba.s.sadors are necessary. We may even have to buy into their "kin-obligate" business, not that we really understand it." He waved his hand impatiently. "No, it"s a place called Khanaphes."
She stared at him, which he interpreted, incorrectly, as ignorance.
"The Solarnese know a path to reach it. It"s east of the Exalsee, a long way off any Collegiate trade route." He left the appropriate pause before revealing, "A Beetle-kinden city, Che."
Since her return from Tharn she had been deep in the old tomes of the Moth-kinden. She had been immersing herself in the world that the revolution had shattered, in an attempt to find some cure for her own affliction. In the very oldest of the books and scrolls remaining to the College, amid the most impenetrable shreds of ancient history, there had been a city of that name. It was a relic of the forgotten world that the Beetles had shrugged off in order to become what they were now.
"Think about it, please." Stenwold took her silence for reluctance. He wanted to tell her that it was a golden opportunity, that she should look to her own future, capitalize on the respect she had won in the war. He wanted to tell her, in short, that no mourning could be for ever. He knew better than to say it. "Just think about it. You are a student of the College after all, and the possibilities for scholarship alone are-"
"I"ll think about it," she said, a little harshly, and he nodded, standing up to go. "Another thing," she began, her voice sounding strained. "You ..." She paused, gathered her courage together. "Please tell the new man about the doors again. He forgets."
Stenwold stared at her, a welter of different emotions momentarily at war across his broad face.
"It"s not just me ... it"s ... I"m thinking about Arianna as well." Che"s voice shook under the sheer humiliation of having to say it.
"Of course I will," he said. "Of course. I"ll have a word with him when I go back downstairs."
The expedition was approved by the a.s.sembly, despite anything that Broiler and his supporters could say against it. The Town vote, comprising the merchants and magnates, scoffed at the expense, but the Gown vote of the College masters was mostly for it, and Drillen"s promise to secure funding without troubling either College or a.s.sembly coffers sealed the matter neatly. There was no suggestion that the proposal had been stage-managed from the start.
The very night of the a.s.sembly meeting, however, found a clerk working late. Drillen was a rigorous employer who demanded results from the least of his underlings, so candlelight in the late evenings was nothing unusual. This clerk, a young man who had hoped to make more of himself, and had lived beyond his means, was just finishing his last missive. The letters seemed nonsense, strings of meaningless babble, but an informed eye would have deciphered them as: Urgent. Codeword: "Yellowjacket". You told me to keep an eye on all dealings of Stenwold Maker, so this should interest you: the expedition being launched to Canafes (sp?) is not as it seems. JD and SM met twice beforehand re: this matter. Unusual secrecy. Believe JD and SM have their own purposes aside from those stated. Thought you would appreciate knowing.
He folded the note over, and went over to his rack of couriers. Drillen used these various insects as missivecarriers across the city. They rattled and buzzed in their tubes, each tube with its label to show what place the creature was imprinted on. The clerk, whose responsibility these carrier-creatures were, selected one carefully: a fat, furry-bodied moth. It b.u.mbled out of its tube and crouched on his desk, cleaning its antennae irritably as he secured the message to its abdomen. He had no idea where it went, or to whom, save that it would not be the man who had originally recruited him into this double-dealing. He only knew that the insect would be returned safe, along with a purse of money, to his house. This told him two things: that his shadowy benefactors were wealthy, and that they knew where he lived.
The insect whirred angrily off into the night, swooping low over the streetlamps but impelled by an inescapable instinct to return home. Before morning the Rekef operatives in Collegium, placed there with exquisite care after the close of the war, had something new to think about, and other, grander, messengers were soon winging their way east.
Four.
She was dreaming, and she knew she was dreaming. The problem was that it was his his dream. Worse still, she knew that the things that she was witnessing through his eyes were real. dream. Worse still, she knew that the things that she was witnessing through his eyes were real.
Her mind was full of chanting voices, overlapping and blurring together. She heard no distinct words, just the ebb and flow of the sounds interfering with each other until it was like a great tide, rolling in towards her endlessly.
And she saw robed shapes ...
She saw robed shapes. They were atop a mountain, and the air around them was bending and fragmenting under the strain of what they were doing. She could not tell which one of them was Achaeos. Because it was also her her dream she rushed from one to another, to find him. She never could. Their pale, grey Moth faces, their blank white eyes, were all transfigured, so that each face looked the same. The ritual had gripped them with an identical hand. She shouted at them and tried to shake them. She warned them that he would die, if they kept tearing at the world like this. Because it was his dream, and she had not been present, they ignored her. dream she rushed from one to another, to find him. She never could. Their pale, grey Moth faces, their blank white eyes, were all transfigured, so that each face looked the same. The ritual had gripped them with an identical hand. She shouted at them and tried to shake them. She warned them that he would die, if they kept tearing at the world like this. Because it was his dream, and she had not been present, they ignored her.
She knew that she was running out of time. It was not his his time, not the time remaining until the barbed peak of the ritual, when the power they invoked would come thundering down through the city of Tharn, and his fragile body would be unable to take the strain. Instead it was the time until the time, not the time remaining until the barbed peak of the ritual, when the power they invoked would come thundering down through the city of Tharn, and his fragile body would be unable to take the strain. Instead it was the time until the other other arrived. arrived.
It had always been there beside them, although she had been blind to it for so long. From the very first moment their minds had touched, he venturing among the ghost-infested trees, she imprisoned in the hold of a Wasp heliopter, it had been with them. Now she felt it rising from beneath them, through the warrened rock of the mountain, through the very weave of the world. It was surging upwards at a fierce, relentless pace, but it was still a good distance off because it was pursuing from five hundred years ago.
She thought of flying over the Exalsee and seeing the lake monster rushing for the surface, the great pale body of it forming from the depths.
The chanting grew even less and less coherent as the voices of the Moth-kinden fell into the echo of that older, greater ritual. Around them the rock of the mountain itself began to crack. Th.o.r.n.y vines thrust themselves violently into the air, then arced round to penetrate the stone once more, to pierce the flesh of the ritualists, yet they did not seem to notice. Transformations were being wreaked on them. Che would run faster and faster from one to another, trying to find Achaeos before the things of the Darakyon did. There were shadows all around now, the shadows of great twisted trees, of Mantis-kinden writhing, bristling with barbs, gleaming with chitin. The shadows were closing in, encompa.s.sing the ritual. The robed figures were being consumed.
She felt it again, as she had felt it in life. She felt the sudden silence, that utter silence as though she had been struck deaf. It was a silence so profound it left an echo in the mind. It was the moment when the wrenching strain of the ritual, the fierce attention of the Darakyon, had become too much for him, the moment when his wound had ripped open and he had died.
Had died, and yet not left her.
Behind the Tharen mountain top and the shadow-trees of the Darakyon lay the streets of Myna, the ziggurat of the governor"s palace, her own dream evolving in the shadow of his. She saw a tiny figure break from the barricades, and then charge towards the soldiers cl.u.s.tered around the broken palace gates. She saw, as she had not seen at the time, the great clawed tide of the Darakyon hurtling forward, spewing uncontrollably out of that lone running figure, thrashing about her like a headless, dying thing. The last dregs of the Darakyon, now poisoning the minds of the soldiers ahead of her, making her into a vessel of terror.
She woke to find the shutters still dark, no piercing slants of sunlight. She, who had once slept late by choice, now woke regularly in darkness and saw every dawn arrive, tugged awake by shreds of a nocturnal life that had not been hers.
He was with her.
There, in the darkness that was no darkness to her, she could see him as a grey smear hanging in the air, formless and faceless. It moved and changed shape, and she received the impression of a dreadful urgency. He was trying to tell her something, desperately trying to make her aware of something, and yet he could not form words or even pictures for her.
"Help me to understand you," she told him. "Achaeos, please. I can"t ... I"m not strong enough to make you real. Just tell me what I have to do."
He grew more agitated, and she thought of him trapped between life and death, a knot in the weave, shouting and screaming at her to help him. But she could not. None of the books she had trawled from the Collegium library had helped her. She was too dull a scholar, their old language too intricate, too occult.
He was fading now. It was only just after she woke each day that she could see him clearly. He would always be there, though, a half-sensed presence hovering over her shoulder.
Mourning was difficult, for Achaeos"s death had left her with an indelible legacy. The sorrow of losing him still had its hooks into her, but the horror of having him still in this horrible, half-formed way was worse.
By the logic of her people, she was simply deranged. If she had gone to see a Beetle-kinden doctor, he would have told her that she was suffering from these hallucinations as a way of dealing with her loss. Alas, she could no longer subscribe to the logic of her people. The books she had pillaged from the library were written in the crabbed hands of Moth-kinden or the elegant loops of Spiders. The one thing she had learned from them was that, by their their logic, she was not mad. There were precedents for her situation, though she was not sure that this was any rea.s.surance. Being haunted was surely worse than mere madness. Especially being haunted in a city where n.o.body, not even her open-minded uncle, believed in ghosts. logic, she was not mad. There were precedents for her situation, though she was not sure that this was any rea.s.surance. Being haunted was surely worse than mere madness. Especially being haunted in a city where n.o.body, not even her open-minded uncle, believed in ghosts.
During the ritual atop Tharn, Achaeos had called out to her, and she had lent him as much strength as she could, and possibly contributed thereby to his death. Her mind and his had been touching when the mouldering evil of the Darakyon had stirred itself to answer his call for power. When he had died, therefore, something of him had stayed with her. The logic since all insanities have their own internal logic was faultless. The books were silent on remedy, however.
And there was more than that: she was not whole, any more, after the war.
She stretched herself and shook her head. The ghost of Achaeos was gone: still there in the back of her mind but no longer apparent to her eyes. As she dressed, she saw the first pearl-grey of dawn glimmer through her shutters. She approached the door carefully, as though it might suddenly become a monster, a jailer. It was ajar, though, and she went out on to the landing.
Stenwold"s door stood open, which meant he had not come back last night. She smiled at that. She knew that she was a burden on him that he could not shift, so it was good that he still had Arianna.
Che and Arianna had not got on well, not at all, and the real problem had been Stenwold himself, who simply did not know how to deal with them both at the same time: on the one hand his young niece, his daughter in all but name; on the other his lover, scarcely older than her, with whom he was a different man entirely. The confusion it threw him into had obviously amused Arianna at first, but then it had become inconvenient and, in her smooth Spider-kinden way, she had secured a first-floor residence across town. Stenwold was abruptly released from the pressure of having to be two men at the same time, while Che and Arianna did their best not to meet. Life was easier that way.
Che pulled her grey cloak on over her mourning reds, taking only a moment to look in the mirror. With the hood raised high her reflection always surprised her: her skin appearing too dark, her eyes disfigured by iris and pupil rather than blank white. Seeing any face framed in grey cloth, she expected to see his face and not her own.
"Achaeos," she said softly. He must be able to hear her, from his vantage point at the back of her mind. "Help me." Sometimes she saw him flicker in the background of mirrors, but not now. She lifted the bar on the front door. There was no lock, only the simplest latch.
Collegium was a city of the day, but good business came the way of early risers. By the time she ventured out, the sky was already flecked by Fly-kinden messengers, and a big dirigible was making its way in slowly from the north towards the airfield, bearing goods and news from Sarn, no doubt. There was currently a law about running automotives through the city streets before a civilized hour of the morning, but handcarts and animal carts were already rattling across the cobbles, and she could hear the slow shunting of the trains almost all the way across the city, in the still dawn air.
Stenwold lived in a good part of town, not far from the College, and the short walk took her through what was now called War Harvest Square, because of the mummery that was enacted here every tenday. Collegium looked after its own. Collegium was wealthy enough, despite the costs of the recent war, to do that. She spotted the queues ahead of her, and knew it must be the day when the War Harvest was doled out.
It could have been worse. Collegium medicine was some of the best in the world, and modern weapons were efficient enough to kill more often than they maimed. There were enough, though, who had fallen between the extremes of kill and cure, and every tenday they made their arduous way here. These veterans, the men and women of Collegium who had fought for their city against the Empire or the Vekken, or else gone out to fight for the Sarnesh, and whose injuries meant they now had no trade left to them. Men and women missing legs, missing arms, missing eyes, they came and queued here every tenday, and the a.s.sembly ensured that they were given enough to live on. There had been a bitter dispute over it at the time but, in the flush of peace, the a.s.semblers of Collegium were not going to turn their soldiers out to beg or starve. It had made Che proud of her kinden, and the veterans who gathered here for the handout had been left a little pride, a little self-respect. Pa.s.sers-by saluted them, cheered them, and acknowledged their sacrifice, while the two tavernas nearby did a good trade from citizens buying them drinks.
The problem came with those whose wounds were less visible. She knew there were many: those who had not been able to bear the blood and destruction, the loss of loved ones; those who had retreated into themselves; those who could not hear a shout or a loud noise without being flung back into the fighting. Victims of the war without a mark on them, they were not provided for. Instead the doctors prodded them, frowned at them, and shrugged their shoulders.
She herself had not gone to see a doctor. They would not understand.
It had come upon her as she went by airship to Tharn, to try to visit Achaeos"s ashes. Before then the shock of his death, the whirl of events at the end of the war, had kept her off balance. It had only been on that return journey that she had realized.
She remembered the waves of nausea first, losing her balance at the slight sway of the wind. She had crouched on the deck, feeling her stomach churn in sudden spasms. The movement of the vessel beneath her had seemed as unnatural as water on fire.
This is what he felt, she had reflected at the time, remembering how Achaeos had always been so uncomfortable with modern transport. She had a.s.sumed that was just because he was new to it, then.
She remembered staggering towards the stern, clinging to the rail, where the concerned expression of Jons Allanbridge had wavered through her view, a meaningless image. She had stared at the engine, the blur of the propeller, and felt a chasm gape beneath her. It was wrong wrong worse, it was meaningless. She had stared at all that pointless metal, its inexorable convolutions, its parts and pipes and moving things, and she had felt as though she was falling. worse, it was meaningless. She had stared at all that pointless metal, its inexorable convolutions, its parts and pipes and moving things, and she had felt as though she was falling.
The white elegance of the College was straight ahead of her now. The library"s great gates were still closed and barred, this early, so she went to the side door and knocked and knocked, until a peevish voice responded from within, announcing, "It"s not locked."
Che drew a deep breath and knocked again. "It"s not locked!" called out the librarian, thoroughly irritated now. "Either come in or go away."
She stared at the handle, feeling tears p.r.i.c.kle at the corners of her eyes. Her memory told her that this was simple but her body had no path for it, her mind no connection. She rattled with the metal ring, but the door would not move. She could not understand the process. It made no sense to her. In her final moments, while touching Achaeos"s mind as a channel for the Darakyon, something fundamental had been ripped out of her.
At last someone came to the door and yanked it open. The librarian was a stern old woman, her face devoid of sympathy. "What do you want?" she demanded.
"I want to come in," Che replied in a tiny voice, fighting the urge to weep in frustration.
It would have been worse if there had never been Tynisa. Che had grown up with her as though they were sisters: Stenwold"s clumsy niece and Tisamon"s halfbreed b.a.s.t.a.r.d although neither had known Tynisa"s heritage at the time: Tynisa, who was graceful and beautiful and accomplished in every field save one. So it was that Stenwold had made alterations to his house, and given his servant special instructions about the doors and the locks. That servant had died in the Imperial siege, though, and the new man was taking a while to learn. It was not surprising, for the instructions were baffling to him and Che could hardly blame the man for forgetting. At least Stenwold was used to the idea; he could pretend he understood.
Walking through the streets of Collegium, she was nevertheless a cripple. She looked up at the slowly manoeuvring airship and felt that it should fall on her. It was too great; it could not stay up. The sounds of the trains, which had lulled her to sleep ever since she first came to Collegium, were now like the cries of strange and frightening beasts.
Yet she had spent years learning mechanics, basic artificing, forces and levers, power and pressure. Now it was as if she had spent all that time learning how to walk through walls or turn lead into gold. She could clearly remember being able to do it once, but not how. The logic had deserted her and she had become like him him. She had lost her birthright, the basic tools that made the modern world comprehensible. She had become Inapt, unable to use to even comprehend all the machines and the mechanisms that her people loved so much. She was crippled in her mind and n.o.body would ever understand. There was a division between the races of her world: those who could, those who could not. Che had fallen on the wrong side of it and she could not get back.
It was worse now because of Tynisa. Of all the people in the world, Che could have spoken to Tynisa about it. Tynisa would have understood, would have helped her. Tynisa was gone, though, to Stenwold"s fury. Che had not understood, at first, why Stenwold had reacted so angrily.
I drove her away.
And it was true. Not anything Che had done but the simple fact of her. In the end Tynisa had not been able to look at the sight of mourning Che without recalling whose blade had lanced Achaeos, whose hand had inflicted the wound that eventually killed him. Che did not blame her. Of course, Che did not blame her, but that did not matter. Tynisa had lived through the violent death of her father and come home to find herself a murderess. She had stayed as long as she could bear it, growing less and less at home in this city she had dwelt in all her life, unable to talk to Che, grieving a dead father, nursing a killer"s conscience for all that Che tried to reach out to her. At the last she had fled Collegium. She had gone, and not one of Stenwold"s agents could discover where.
Stenwold"s rage, Che finally understood, had been over the undoing of twenty years of civilized education, over all the care and time he had spent in making Tynisa the product of Collegium"s morality. In the end she had shown herself her true father"s daughter. She had gone off, Stenwold felt sure, to lose herself in fighting and blood chasing her own death just as Tisamon always had done.