‘Salma? You got here through trading on his name?’ she demanded.
‘Once I heard his family mentioned, I made my way over and talked myself into a job. Maybe tomorrow Sef and I’ll move on, turn brigand even, but for today I’m on the side of the Monarch. It’s that kind of world. I keep my options open. Or I try to. There was no need for that bloodshed, last night.’ His voice was careful and measured, and he must have felt the flash of anger going through her.
‘They were going to kill you.’
‘I could have talked my way out of it, with them, or with Siriell if need be. It’s part of what I do. She was probably only going to make me an offer.’
‘Oh, and that would suit you well, wouldn’t it?’ she accused him. ‘Just waiting for the chance to jump flags to join the outlaws, after Salma’s people took you in.’
‘I like to keep my options open,’ Gaved repeated. ‘But killing people closes doors. Who knows when I might need to go back there, on whoever’s business? Now I don’t know if I can.’
‘I’m not going to be anyone’s prisoner,’ Tynisa hissed through gritted teeth. She was starting to see flickers at the edge of her vision, one or other of her imaginary companions keeping pace with her. Achaeos, was it? Had he come to reproach her now for the blood she had spilled?
‘It’s not so simple-’ Gaved began, but she hissed at him so fiercely that he stopped.
‘I have been a prisoner once,’ she snapped. ‘You have no idea what that cost me and what parts of me I left behind, when I got out.’
The Wasp scowled at her over his shoulder. ‘Well, it’s done,’ was all he could manage. ‘But they’ll have people in the air, searching for us. Nobody kills that many of Siriell’s people without being hunted.’
‘So we’ll fight them again.’
‘No, we’ll lose them,’ Gaved decided. ‘We’ll keep riding as fast as the land permits and as long as the horse can keep the pace. We’ll head uphill, too. I know a good road for us to throw them off.’
‘There’s a forest?’ Tynisa asked, because tree cover was always the best way to hide from airborne spies.
‘Of sorts,’ Gaved confirmed, ‘but I doubt it’s what you’re expecting.’
They settled into a steady pace, with the Wasp refusing to be drawn on where he was guiding them. The land about them was already looking more promising, their trail winding between stands of gnarled trees which grew only denser ahead of them.
They kept up a pressing pace for hours, with Tynisa spotting the occasional dark shape high above that might have been a man or a hunting insect. Gaved was now angling them along the broad flank of a hill that was creased into a series of slopes and valleys still heavily hung with morning mist. The scrubby trees had given way now, left behind on the hill’s southern skirts. Here, down in the valleys, was a dense forest of another kind altogether. The mist contained a maze of tall, leafy canes, some as slender as a finger, some as thick as Tynisa’s thigh, as though a regiment of giant archers had loosed a thousand shafts at the hillside itself. This bristling cane forest seemed to preserve the mist even past midday, so that their progress deteriorated into a groping through a constantly shifting landscape of vertical shadows. Gaved led with apparent confidence, but Tynisa spotted him consulting a little aviator’s compass more than once. She was glad of that since, between the mist and the sameness of the landscape, she felt she would become lost almost instantly.
Some time later, Gaved let their weary mount plod to a halt, swinging from the saddle to feed and water it.
‘Won’t they catch us?’ Tynisa asked him, her eyes seeking their airborne pursuers. The mist about them was so heavy that even the sun was just a brighter smear.
‘They won’t come here,’ Gaved said. ‘We’ve lost them.’
‘Then what’s wrong?’ she pressed, because it was obvious that something was amiss.
‘Just imagine,’ Gaved said, ‘that you’re in the house of someone very polite, but very dangerous. Behave as a good guest and we’ll be fine.’
Tynisa glanced about, seeing only cane-striped mist. ‘What lives here?’
‘Oh, some fair-sized mantids, some spiders, centipedes,’ Gaved replied casually, ‘but people too, of a sort. I’ve come through here twice before, under similar circumstances, and I can’t say I’ve definitely seen any of them, but I’m told they’re here, and I believe it. The brigands don’t come raiding here and the nobles don’t hunt. This place is supposed to be Stick-kinden land.’
‘There are Stick-kinden?’ Tynisa demanded incredulously.
Gaved held up a hand to indicate that she should keep her voice down. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. But you don’t, apparently. I heard that a travelling noble decided to pass through here with his retainers, and killed the animals and had his people burn the cane back. He got a five-foot arrow in his chest, while he was taking his supper, and nobody ever saw the archer. I heard that one of Siriell’s predecessors tried to use this place for launching raids from, and he and those few that got out of here talked like the forest itself had come to kill them. So we won’t draw any weapons, and we won’t make too much noise, because they prefer the silence. And when we’re done camping I’m going to leave a few thank-yous about the place, just in case.’
He was as good as his word, though Tynisa never found out exactly what was in the pouch he left beside the ashes of their campfire. The rising sun made inroads into the mist, but never quite dispelled it, and it was easy to see the tall, thin shadows looming on every side as something more sinister. And probably there are no Stick- kinden, Tynisa told herself, for whoever heard of stick insects having a kinden? But she was far from home now, and many unthinkable things might turn out to be true.
Towards evening when they were, according to Gaved, nearing the cane forest’s edge, she thought she saw one of the shadows shift and fall back between its brethren, giving her a momentary impression of a fantastically tall and attenuated figure carrying a staff that might have been a bow, and trailing a grey cobweb cloak off into the mist. Later she was sure that she had imagined this, as she imagined so much else, but by then they were clear of the cane and crossing the border into the next province.
Leose was the princely seat of the Salmae, Gaved explained. Unlike Felipe’s family, they had not lost their stronghold to the Empire. The war had come close, chewing at the edge of Felipe’s great domain and gnawing away odd provinces, but in the end the Treaty of Pearl had put the Wasp-kinden territorial ambitions on hold.
The Wasp spoke of his own people with a studied detachment, neither condoning nor apologizing for them. He was working hard at being someone in no position to have an opinion on Imperial affairs.
They had now passed a number of smallholdings, isolated stretches of farmland where the hillsides had been amenable to step agriculture, with clusters of low buildings with sloping roofs on the hilltop above. The land here was both more rugged and more heavily forested than Prince Felipe’s southern holdings, and Gaved’s chosen path meandered wherever the clearest land went, avoiding the deep woodland. Those trees extended easily over the border of Leose province, he explained, and then into the lawless lands to the south which they had just escaped from. Those thick woods were known as ‘bandits’ roads’ by the local peasants. Sometimes, when the brigands were bold, they played deadly hide-and-seek games between the trees with the Salmae’s Mercers. At other times the woods were left for the peasants to herd their aphids through, or for the hunting excursions of nobles.
They were obviously nearing the province’s heart, but they had seen few others travelling, and none following the same route as they did. There was none of the traffic Tynisa would expect, when approaching a town. ‘So how far to this Leose?’ she pressed.
‘Depends what you mean by Leose,’ Gaved replied. ‘Every part of Elas Mar within a few miles of the castle is Leose. There’s no town as such, just villages dotted about the place. Remember, Suon Ren’s almost the closest to a proper city the Commonweal has – after the capital. Most of the Commonwealers live spread out like this, making the best use of the land. What you’re looking for is Leose castle, and we’ll see that by tomorrow. That’s where the Salmae live, but their people are spread all over.’
The castle, when they had sight of it, did not disappoint. They had been following the course of a canal for some hours before the edifice came into view, and Tynisa saw that it had been placed to command the watercourse where it had cut a deep valley between two hills. It was a broad, squat mass of stone surmounted by tapering battlements, held in place against the land by a half-dozen spidery buttresses, seeming as though it might at any moment pick itself up and walk away. Two of the arching buttresses spanned the river itself, forming narrow bridges leading from the far side to the castle’s very door.
‘So that’s where you live, is it? Very grand,’ Tynisa remarked.
‘Me?’ Gaved shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t let me past the door, believe me, but I’m useful enough that they
