have you believe that without them the sun would fall from the sky – and they’ll convince you of it, too, if you let them. There is no story ever told that can be separated from the interests of the teller.’
‘You urge caution, then?’ Seda asked him.
‘My Empress, if to urge caution would help, then we would not be here. But… if they should stand before you in the majesty and grandeur of ten thousand years, do not forget, mn, all you are, and all you have achieved. There are many kinds of greatness in the world.’
For a long time she regarded him with a solemn scrutiny that would have made any other subject tremble and sweat, but he knew that a smile would appear eventually.
‘I shall not forget,’ she promised. ‘Now, we shall descend and then, if I have a destiny, I shall find it here in that darkness, or not at all.’
Che awoke, staring upwards into pitch darkness, her Art nevertheless picking out the spider in its circular web.
What was the ruler of the Wasp-kinden doing in that ancient city? And why did Che’s mind send her there every night that her dreams were lucid enough to remember?
And when I was there myself, walking beneath Khanaphes and seeing what I saw, was the Empress seeing me the same way as I see her now?
She had no control over this strange link with the Wasp Empress. It was part of the great magical world that she had been thrust into, vast and trackless and hostile, and yet it had become her new home.
The thought came to her, not for the first time, that there were magicians aplenty in the Commonweal. If anyone could help her understand this new life, then surely some Dragonfly mystic would spare her the time. Surely that was the reason for this lunatic journey in the first place?
No. I am here for Tynisa, to save her… Each day Che had to remind herself of that, at least once. Her concern for her foster-sister was steadily being eclipsed by her dreams, and by something else, too: this new world she was a native of concealed a wellspring of power, a power able to change the world in ways that the Apt could never conceive. If she learned just a little more, surely she could reach out and take a little of that power for herself? And then what might she not do? Even if it had fallen into decay, surely magic could still accomplish anything.
Tynisa, she reminded herself. Just think of Tynisa.
But her dreams were all of the Empress and her kindred quest to understand the ancient powers. However far Che travelled, Tynisa seemed ever more distant.
Sixteen
Praeda awoke because of someone shaking her. For the briefest of moments she was unsure where she was, but the very air said Khanaphes even before her eyes had opened to the ancient city’s distinctive architecture.
Or to see Amnon, already clad in his battered, piecemeal armour of dark, fluted metal, with a snapbow over his shoulder and his sword ready at his belt.
‘What’s happening?’ she demanded.
‘Trouble,’ he told her. ‘We have to move.’
‘Trouble?’
‘The Wasps have gone mad,’ he said shortly, thrusting the snapbow at her and slinging a pack about his shoulders.
She dressed hurriedly. The snapbow felt strange in her grip, like handling a dangerous animal. Of course she knew the principles of its air battery – could have given a lecture and drawn diagrams if needed – but she had never used one before.
Amnon had reverted to his roots, though: he was always best with a sword. It therefore seemed that she would have to uphold the honour of the Apt, in whatever engagement he had now dragged them into.
‘Amnon, what have you done?’
‘I? Nothing. There are Wasp soldiers out on the streets. They say the Ministers are arrested. They say all foreigners are being arrested, too. The Marsh Alcaia is being raided and the ships in dock searched.’
‘Searched for what?’ Praeda demanded, dressed and ready in less time than she would ever have thought possible.
‘They say the Empress is missing,’ he spat.
The Empress? ‘Amnon, you didn’t…?’
‘No, I did not,’ he said, frowning. ‘But they will arrest us, if they catch us. Then they will discover you are a Lowlander, and they will kill you. We must leave.’
‘How do you know all of this?’
‘One of the Royal Guard remembered me fondly enough to bring me the news,’ he explained, and then the two of them were out of the room and down the stairs.
Two dead Wasps lay at the foot of the steps. One of them had been struck so hard in the chest that the plates of his armour were split apart.
‘You said you’d done nothing,’ Praeda snapped.
‘Nothing much,’ Amnon replied, slightly shamefacedly. ‘I did not think it was the time for details. Nor is this.’
Well, he’s right there. ‘Where are we supposed to go? You have a plan?’
‘Out of the city,’ he told her. ‘If the Marsh Alcaia is already taken then I know of no place to hide for certain. But in the marshes themselves the Wasps shall not find us.’
‘And your marsh-people, the Mantis-kinden?’
‘I do not know.’ He grimaced. ‘I do not see any other choice than to risk the desert itself, and their winged soldiers would see us far easier on the sands than in the marsh.’
She shrugged, arranging her cloak so that the snapbow was well hidden beneath it. ‘I can’t fault your logic. Let’s go.’
Had Amnon not known the streets of his own city so well, they might have fallen foul of the Wasp-kinden much sooner. His role as First Soldier had been more than a purely military one, however, and he had often gone out into Khanaphes to enforce the city’s laws against those who would disregard them. He had, he claimed, brought light into the shadows, which meant that he knew the shadows better than any.
The Imperial soldiers were out in force. Small groups of them hurried through the streets or coasted overhead. Any they found on the streets were stopped and questioned. Praeda saw doors kicked in, and soldiers flurrying into an upper storey through an open window. What can they hope to achieve? But it seemed they had lost their Empress somehow, and they were going mad trying to find her.
From elsewhere in the city could be seen the red glow of fire. She heard screams and cries in the night, from adults and children both. The two of them progressed through the city in fits and starts, hiding under awnings or in doorways, crouching on steps leading down to cellars hugging the walls at all times, because the skies were busy with the Light Airborne buzzing back and forth in search of… who knew what?
Abruptly Amnon hauled her around a corner of a building, holding his sword low, ready to ram it up into an enemy the moment a target presented himself. A moment later, a mob of Khanaphir stumbled past – men and women, old and young, dressed and half-dressed – with Wasp-kinden herding them, shoving and pushing and jabbing them at sword point. There was no hint of where they were heading, or for what purpose, or even suggestion that the Wasps themselves knew. Praeda had a horrible feeling that these soldiers were just doing something so that they could later say to their superiors that they had not stood idle in the Empress’s sudden absence. And if that something should include slaughtering the Khanaphir, then no moral qualms would outweigh their fear of the Wasp chain of command.
She half expected Amnon to move, because these were his people and she knew his fierce sense of duty, but he remained still, terribly still, holding his own feelings down. It was then she realized just how strongly he felt about her, because her safety was now the sole reason he was restraining himself.
Oh, curse the lot of them. With that, she brought the snapbow up, sighting her target in the moonlight – a Wasp standing furthest away from the group – and pressed the trigger. The sound of it, that infamous ‘snap’, seemed laughable, the jolt of the weapon in her arms hardly worth mentioning. The Wasp dropped with a brief bark
