that was all angles.
‘Sammi?’ queried Tynisa weakly.
‘Well, it’s – what is it? – Tse Mae, or something very like it,’ the woman admitted, fighting with the man’s name. ‘But Sammi works for me, and so I get to call him that. Fordwright, by the way. Hardy Fordwright, Master of the College.’
Tynisa shook the proffered hand uncertainly. ‘Tynisa, student of the same. But, Mistress Fordwright, how long have you been here in the Commonweal?’
‘What is it… seven years now?’ Fordwright asked her companion.
‘Nine since we met, Harde,’ Tse Mae replied, mangling her name equally as much as she had mangled his.
‘On my life, is it really?’ Fordwright looked genuinely surprised.
‘But what are you doing here?’ Tynisa pressed.
‘Oh, old man Lowre’s our patron, don’t you know,’ the Beetle woman explained. By now their animal was being unhitched and watered, and Tse Mae was arranging for the wagon to be put under cover. Fordwright beamed at him, then explained, ‘You see, Sammi and me are here about a piece of research – You’ve heard of the Alchemical Theorem?’ – and she went on as if Tynisa had, regardless. ‘I was a chemical artificer back home, and Sammi here has spent his days cooking up elixirs and potions for the credulous. So I can put a bunch of ingredients together for a particular effect, and Sammi can do the same. The thing is that I can tell you why mine works, and he can tell you why his works, and neither of us agree why it works, but we both agree that it does.’
When Tynisa failed to react with immediate enthusiasm Fordwright pressed on impatiently. ‘But don’t you see? It’s a process and result that makes sense both to Apt and Inapt minds, even if my sense doesn’t work for him, and his doesn’t work for me. Give me another few years and I’ll stand before the College and tell them that I have found the exact field of study that Aptitude may have arisen from, and it’s still being practised here in the Commonweal.’
This last was thrown over her shoulder, as she was striding off towards Lowre Cean’s main hall, letting Tynisa and Tse Mae trail in her wake.
‘And Lowre Cean is an alchemist too, is he?’
Fordwright beamed back at Tynisa. ‘A little. He dabbles. Dabbles in just about everything, in fact. He’s a patron of just about every art you can name. Painters and poets, itinerant Roach-kinden balladeers, stargazers and hocus-pocus merchants, and people who’ll tell your future from your shadow. Lucky for Sammi and me that he’s up for supporting some serious inquiry, as well as all those quacksalvers. My guess?’ Even her colossal voice managed a crude sort of whisper. ‘The old boy is up for anything that’ll take his mind off the war.’
‘But he was a hero,’ Tynisa protested weakly.
Fordwright made a disrespectful sound that demonstrated precisely what she thought of war heroes. What she said made sense, Tynisa considered. Collegium’s great figures were noted for their intellect, their diplomacy, their discoveries and inventions, and they left the glorifying of war to other kinden. In Tynisa, though, the fighting urge was strong: that need to test herself and her blade. She found in herself an unchallengeable insistence that all true heroes were warriors living and dying by the sword.
Like Salma. Like my father. Thus conjured, they both hovered just out of sight.
The young man who had fetched her from Gaved’s home came to find her once again shortly afterwards. She had never even learned his name, about which he seemed to be unusually discreet. Her eventual conclusion was that the youth was some bastard by-blow of the old prince’s, and that the Commonwealers had quaint ideas about fidelity and paternity.
‘His Highness has ordered there to be a formal dinner tonight,’ the youth informed her. ‘Your presence would be welcomed.’
This would be the third such formal occasion since she had become Lowre Cean’s guest. The old man usually ate by himself, at odd times and wherever he happened to be pursuing his own interests, but sometimes the prince-major would surface in him, and suddenly all his servants and followers would be galvanized into a culinary orgy of preparation, whilst those wayfarers lucky enough to be passing through would find themselves made guests of honour. Tynisa assumed that this time it was Hardy Fordwright and Tse Mae who had prompted the festivities.
During warmer months, the nameless young man explained, such feasts were held outside, under the stars, with places set so that everyone, from the prince’s household down to the lowliest fieldhand, would take some part in the meal. During the winter, however, Lowre would ensure that some gift of food or drink reached each family that owed its livelihood to his presence, but he himself would feast within the doubled walls of his hall.
After sunset she made her way to the long hall, knowing that the meal would not commence for some time. She found Fordwright and her companion there already, plainly looking forward to the hospitality, among a handful of others who were guesting there too: a Dragonfly noblewoman, a Mercer out on business for the throne, and a Grasshopper woman in piecemeal armour who looked to Tynisa like a mercenary captain.
However, when Lowre Cean himself made his appearance, just as the servants were bringing through bowls of hot kadith, there was someone walking beside him that had Tynisa leaping up from her place.
‘Alain!’ she cried out, heedless of propriety. She had nearly cried ‘Salma!’ instead, just like before, which would have made her seem a complete fool.
Salme Alain grinned broadly at her. ‘And here she is,’ he declared. ‘You have taken some finding, Maker Tynise, though I place the blame for that at my mother’s door. Forgive me my absence, but I have been ensuring that our southern border is safe. The Turncoat tells me that he showed you exactly what we have to deal with there.’
It took her a moment before she remembered that ‘the Turncoat’ was Gaved, but then she nodded, recalling the wretched ruin that had been Siriell’s Town.
Lowre Cean lowered himself into his appointed seat. A formal Dragonfly meal was set out much like a Fly- kinden feast: long, low tables, and everyone sitting on cushions on the floor, with the prince’s place in the middle of one of the long sides. A moment later, servants began showing other people to their seats. Tynisa found herself at Lowre’s left-hand side, balancing the nameless messenger seated on his right. Alain, who had presumably displaced some previously planned guest, was at one end of the table, seemingly as far from Tynisa as he could get. That seemed odd to her, and she turned to Lowre to ask about it. She caught the old man gazing at Salme Alain with a strange expression. If the two of them had not been Dragonfly nobles, and if Lowre was not so beholden to the Salmae, Tynisa might have read hostility there.
Alain was already talking animatedly with the people on either side of him, clearly making some new friends. He glanced at Tynisa once or twice, but without raising his voice more than would have been polite, there was no way he could speak to her. For her part, Tynisa picked at her meal in silence. She was aware that she must be missing something important, some unspoken axiom of Dragonfly society. She was used to reading people at a glance, sketching an instant picture of their motives and intentions, and it was not that the Commonwealers were too subtle for her, who had dealt with Imperial bureaucrats and Spider-kinden Aristoi in her time. It was simply that their language of face and gesture was different, following a code that she was still learning. While she tried to accustom herself to their ways, there were realms of suggestion and implication that were nevertheless passing her by.
She could catch not a word of Alain’s conversation, either, for Hardy Fordwright was stridently holding forth about some matter of her own. In a bid to derail the woman’s braying monopoly of the conversation, Tynisa leant over to her and, just as the Beetle paused for a draught, asked her, ‘When did you last see our ambassador, Mistress Fordwright?’
‘Our what?’ the Beetle demanded, baffled.
‘Gramo Galltree, at Suon Ren,’ Tynisa explained. ‘I was staying with him not so long ago. He did not mention any other Collegiates in the Commonweal.’
‘I’ve never heard of the fellow,’ Fordwright stated flatly. ‘An ambassador? ’
‘Well, yes,’ Tynisa said, now somewhat thrown. ‘He said he was, anyway. He’s a College man.’
Hardy frowned, quietened beyond Tynisa’s wildest hopes. At last she said, ‘Well, then, I suppose I should take a trip to Suon Ren. That’s… Prince Vas Nares?’
‘Felipe Shah.’
‘Oh, the Prince- Major ’s stamping ground. Well, perhaps Sammi and I will go south from here. Be good to
