Tisamon was staring at his feet again. It was a sight so familiar that for a second it was twenty years ago, Tisamon unable to answer some cutting observation one of the others had made.
‘I have no life, here,’ the Mantis whispered. ‘Seventeen years, Sten — You know what I mean.’
They had made arrangements to meet that evening, Stenwold and Tisamon. They had almost spoken the name of the place together, their old haunt from the old, old days. The moment of coincidence had brought a brief wash of nostalgia to Stenwold, but the emotion had only driven in the jagged-glass thought of what was to come that much more deeply.
He had set off for Scuto’s slum den, resolutely keeping his mind on the task to come. Beetles were a practical folk, he told himself. They did not spend their lives worrying about things they could not be sure of.
Scuto’s neighbours spotted him way off, but he had no worries about that. Many of them would even recognize him as the Thorn Bug’s friend. Here, of all places in Helleron, he did not fear assault.
Which thought turned sour very fast when Scuto’s door was kicked open just in front of him, revealing the spiky grotesque levelling a crossbow at him.
Stenwold froze, thinking,
‘What was I doing when you first met me?’ Scuto asked, squinting suspiciously.
Stenwold stared at him. ‘What?’
‘What was I doing when you first met me?’ the Thorn Bug demanded, jabbing the crossbow towards him forcefully enough to make the bolts in its magazine rattle.
Stenwold goggled at him. ‘I don’t think I can remember precisely. I do remember that you had a sideline in truly awful poetry, if that’s any help. I could even recite some for you.’
‘No need,’ said the Thorn Bug hastily. ‘Come on in. We’ve had mixed news.’
He backed into the shack, setting the crossbow down, and Stenwold followed.
‘I’ve had news too,’ he said, ‘mostly bad-’ before he was almost knocked off his feet by Tynisa.
‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’ She was hugging him as hard as she could. ‘We thought you were walking right into a trap.’
‘Oh I was,’ he confirmed, and when she gave him a startled look he added, ‘What, you think old Stenwold can’t look after himself?’ He held her at arm’s length, seeing beneath her skin the shadow of the last few days. ‘It’s good to see that you can survive a little, too,’ he said gently.
Beyond her, amidst the clutter of Scuto’s artifice, he spotted Totho lurking. ‘You made it too, then? Good lad.’
‘Yes, Master Maker,’ replied Totho dutifully, at once as though he was still back at the College.
‘Good pair of hands, this one,’ Scuto put in. ‘If you was thinkin’ of posting him here, I could use him.’
‘Who stays and who goes,’ said Stenwold soberly, ‘well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Cheerwell and Salma haven’t been so lucky, it seems. They’ve been handed over to the Wasps.’
‘We know,’ Tynisa said. ‘A Wasp slave convoy has already left the city, heading east, and it sounds as if they were both in it.’
Stenwold let out a long breath. ‘You’ve been using your time well. East, is it?’
‘The Empire,’ Scuto put in helpfully.
‘Oh, I know that. It’s been a while, though, since I was out that way.’
‘That’s good, ’cos I certainly ain’t going,’ Scuto said with finality. ‘They don’t like most anyone in the Empire, but they really don’t like my kind.’
‘And I need you here anyway,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘Totho, you can stay here, if you wish. Scuto would be a good teacher.’
‘I. . would rather come with you.’ Totho gave Scuto an apologetic look. ‘Sorry, but. . they’re my friends.’
‘If things go badly for us. . well, in the Empire they’re harsh on those of mixed blood,’ Stenwold warned him.
Totho shrugged, as though to say it was not so different even beyond the Empire’s borders.
Stenwold gathered himself. ‘Tynisa. .’
‘Of course,’ she said firmly. ‘Of course I’m with you. You don’t even need to say it,’ but when she saw him nod, and fake a smile, she thought that perhaps he had been going to say something else.
‘Scuto, you find us what we need for our journey. I’ll meet the pair of you by the old Draywain spoil foundry just east of the city. I have a reinforcement to fetch.’
Seventeen
It was not at all as she had envisaged, but in retrospect she supposed that her beliefs about her own importance had been misplaced.
She had fully expected to be rushed into Helleron, thrown into some dungeon, questioned, even tortured. She had been ready, in her defiance, to spit in their faces.
The sun shone bright on her and the air was full of dust. No secluded oubliette was set aside for her or Salma — at least she still had Salma. When she glanced at him now he was still able to muster a smile for her benefit.
There were a dozen of them now as prisoners. Thalric’s soldiers had joined up with another squad guarding a single line of roped-together captives, and they had promptly set out across the scrublands east of Helleron. There was to be no talking between the prisoners, a rule enforced by the fists of the guards where necessary, but Che was not sure that they would have had much to say. They were Ants of some unfamiliar city, Beetles who did not look Helleron-born, a couple of Fly-kinden, a lanky, sallow creature with a distinctive high forehead that she could not place. Most were men, only a couple were women, and uniformly they looked even more dispirited than Che herself felt. They bore their captivity with a sense of inevitability.
The first evening, the soldiers built a staked palisade about them, as crude a piece of handiwork as Che had ever seen. The prisoners were kept roped together, and watched over at all hours. Some of the Wasps carried crossbows, but she knew that none of them was without a means to punish their prisoners at range. Thalric kept himself separate from his men, having found a flat rock to perch on some distance away, and was intent on reading from a scroll whilst he ate.
She had thought that she would be somehow special after they had gone to such lengths to take her and Salma into their custody. Now it seemed she was considered just another slave.
She was woken past midnight by the approach of another group, but it turned out to be more of the same. Her eyes settled first on the string of listless captives and only then shifted to their captors. These latter were Wasps of a different stripe to Thalric’s soldiers: a half-dozen men in open-sided tabards, lean and muscled and bestial. They seemed almost faceless in full helms, T-shaped slots showing narrow slices of hard faces, and they had clubs and whips fastened at their belts. Slavers’ weapons, Che quickly realized: enough to keep the livestock in order, yet nothing too dangerous should it fall into the wrong hands.
There was a shifting among the Wasp soldiers as they arrived, and she saw that these newcomers were not exactly well loved. Her fellow prisoners plainly recognized them, and a tremor ran through them at the sight.
Thalric came pacing over. ‘Someone light a lantern,’ he directed, and a soldier obediently struck the flint on an oil-lamp. The glow it cast across the rough ground was anything but cosy.
