The drum had stopped, and she tried to identify that final sound, that pulled her out of her trance. A familiar sound and a comforting one.
Steel on steel.
Her rapier was in her hand, as reassuring and impossible as dreams. Its blade crossed the metal claw jutting from the gauntlet that Isendter had not been wearing before, nor could have found the time to buckle on.
The dance was over, the room was silent, and the old Mantis nodded just once – but with a Weaponsmaster’s approval. Somewhere in the room she felt her father was watching her, adding his own satisfaction to Isendter’s curt approbation.
Then the applause came, not the rowdy cheering of a Collegium theatre crowd, but a pattering of fingers on palms as the nobility of Elas Mar Province allowed her into their world.
She looked across the room to meet Alain’s eyes squarely, and he was smiling.
Twenty-Two
There was to be a grand hunt to celebrate the approach of spring, she discovered the next morning. The stags would soon be locking antlers in the woods, and apparently and there was no better time to match one’s strength with them.
Nobody had specifically stated that she, Tynisa, would be accompanying the hunt, but after her performance the previous night, nobody forbade it either. She had often fought for her life, even been a prisoner of the Empire, and yet there at least she had understood the rules of the game. This bewildering society of the Dragonfly nobles was beyond her, until the Mantis-kinden had found a door into it and had shown her the way.
And Alain had smiled at her.
The thought had been growing in her that redemption came in many colours. She had failed to save Salma, and in losing him she had lost her rightful place in the world.
He was mine, she thought bitter daggers at the Butterfly woman who had stolen his affections.
She had lost Salma, yes, but here was his very image. If she won him, against his mother’s apparent scorn, his steward’s sneers and the airy sophistication of his peers… if she won him then surely it would be as though she had found her place in the world again? Surely that victory would go some way to repairing the damage she had done, to balance the scales?
She was just aware enough to know that she was clutching at straws, and that if she stood back and looked at her position she would find it untenable. That way, though, led to a greater madness, because then she would have to face up to the guilt that, day and night, prowled around the outworks of her mind, looking for a way in. If she unlocked that door, then the ghosts fabricated by her mind would have her for good. Go forward, though, and look neither left nor right, and she could leave them behind for just a little while. Forward because ahead of her was Salme Alain.
As soon as she understood that there would be hunting, Tynisa had found drab garments of hard-wearing cloth: Mantis-kinden fabric that was more robust than the Dragonfly clothing she had seen here. She took a cloak too, green-grey and mottled, to help her stalk the prey, whatever it was. In truth she had never gone hunting beasts before, but she had heard Tisamon describe it, and observed Mantis hunters in the Felyal, east of Collegium, so she reckoned she knew how it was done.
The Dragonfly-kinden clearly had their own ideas about the art of hunting, however. The party that set off from Leose numbered perhaps a dozen riders, with twice as many servants, and none of them seemed to care if their quarry spotted them coming from miles away. The mounted nobles were all clad in bright silks: reds and blues and greens that shimmered like metal in the morning sun. They carried lances and most had a quiver of arrows and a shortbow holstered at their saddle. They were mostly of an age with Alain and herself, only two being older, and Alain’s mother, the matriarch of the Salmae, was not present.
The hunting grounds were some days west of Leose, beyond Lowre Cean’s compound. Tynisa had anticipated being able to ride alongside Alain, to talk to him and let him see more of her than the fragmentary glimpses that were all he had seen till now. What she had not taken into account was her horsemanship, a skill that the Lowlanders had precious little use for. The Commonwealer nobles all rode elegantly, as natural in the saddle as in the air, and whilst Tynisa could outdistance the mass of walking servants, the nobles themselves were lost to her as soon as the party set out. They rode ahead, frequently out of sight entirely, and she could not catch them up. When she could see them, they were engaging in mock manoeuvres and cavalry actions that she could not have joined in with. Alain was always at the centre of these, constantly in demand. Assisted by a small number of servants who had mounts of their own, the entourage of nobles even made their own camp, ahead on the trail, leaving Tynisa and the other menials far behind.
As they passed close to Lowre Cean’s compound, and neared the hunting grounds themselves, she caught up. The pause had been occasioned by a pair of new riders joining the party, and she was surprised to see the prince himself and his young messenger, with no retainers of their own at all. The old man nodded gravely to her, as though they were the only two sane people in the whole ridiculous expedition.
They rode north and west for a few hours, following the contours of the land towards the dark line of a forest. The ground here was still patchy with snow, and the sky above slate-grey with clouds. Tynisa found herself shivering, because even the middle of a Collegium winter was considerably warmer than this, but none of her companions seemed to feel the cold, so she put the best face on it that she could.
There was another half-dozen of the Grasshoppers waiting for them at the forest’s edge, and with them two more riders: not nobles but simply more elevated servants. One was the perennially disapproving Lisan Dea, clad in sober black in stark contrast to the nobles. The other was the Weaponsmaster Isendter, who gave Tynisa a small nod of acknowledgement.
‘Well?’ Alain demanded of them.
‘We have tracked a suitable quarry, my lord,’ the sour-faced seneschal confirmed. ‘The family has several females and calves, and a few younger males. The prince stag is somewhat large, though. I was concerned-’
‘You’re always concerned,’ Alain dismissed her. ‘Come, let’s see this prodigy. It is time to hunt!’
They pushed into the woods, and now it was not the pace, but the simple business of guiding her mount through the trees, that taxed Tynisa.
‘The Lowlanders plainly hunt afoot,’ one girl remarked, on seeing her lamentable progress. ‘Well, there is honest work for the infantry, too, in this.’ Her tone was disdainful, plainly equating ‘honest’ with demeaning. Tynisa could not help but notice that the Dragonfly-kinden rode and that most of their unmounted servants were Grasshoppers. For a moment she felt herself on the edge of an uncomfortable comparison, thinking of the Wasp Empire and its slave-Auxillians of many subject races. This was the Commonweal after all, though, so it was not the same thing, not at all.
‘Perhaps the lady would honour me by riding behind me.’ The speaker was a smiling young man dressed in scintillating turquoise, his finery enhanced by a breastplate of silvered leather. His manner was shorn of mockery. ‘Lady, I am Telse Orian, and you are Maker Tynise, are you not?’
‘Close enough,’ she admitted. A study of Lowre Cean’s expression revealed no reason why she should not avail herself of Orian’s offer, so she took his arm and let him pull her from her saddle and up behind him. Most of the nobles had a saddle that was built up before and behind, but her new companion’s was something lighter and more recognizable. She was realizing how very little she knew about the whole business of horsemanship.
‘So tell me, Maker Tynise.’ The arch-looking Dragonfly girl guided her horse closer as the riders set off at a comfortable pace, their servants loping with long strides all around them. ‘Tell me of your Lowland accomplishments. We have already seen your dancing.’ She put a peculiar stress on that last word, clearly wanting to make it an insult, nevertheless not quite able to do so. ‘You are great archers, perhaps, in the Lowlands?’
‘Not that you’d notice,’ Tynisa replied, trying to match the woman’s tone. In truth she would have been hard pressed to even find a bow in Collegium, where the crossbow was the weapon of choice – but a weapon denied to her because of her Inaptitude. Tisamon had been a fair archer, but it was a skill he had never tried to teach her.
‘Skilled horsemen, then, surely?’ the girl needled.
