Salute the Dark

The thought of Tynisa sent a twinge running through him, even though he never saw her wield the sword against him. That led him on to thoughts of the other player in this drama: the Mosquito-kinden whose servant had, through Tynisa’s stolen arm, vicariously inflicted this wound he suffered. It was a matter he would have to discuss with the Skryres. Even if he could have travelled, he needed most of all to be here.

‘Go, then,’ he told her. ‘You’re right, you must go. Please, though, do not let Thalric guide your hand too much. Do not give him a chance to betray you. When you are in Myna, trust only Kymene and her people, even trust that old Scorpion more than you would trust Thalric. If the Empire should ever hold its hand out to him again, he is theirs.’

‘I know,’ she said.

He hunched forwards, and she hugged him gently but still felt him twitch in pain.

‘And don’t you trust your people more than you have to,’ she warned him. ‘If they genuinely liked you, that might last, but if they only need you then they’ll drop you as soon as that need is gone.’

‘Oh, I know it,’ he agreed. ‘Don’t think that I don’t.’

And yet, when she paused in the infirmary doorway before going, he was stabbed by the sudden thought, I will never see her again, and did not know if this was fear or prophecy.

After Che had gone, he sensed movement nearby, and it was not long before Xaraea stepped suspiciously into the room with narrowed eyes.

‘All overheard of course,’ said Achaeos tiredly. ‘I would have more privacy if I were an Ant.’

‘Aside from your perversions,’ she said, ‘you come close to betraying us.’

‘Only if you believe she would betray me.’

‘If she is to go now into the Empire, she is not safe bearing any knowledge that could harm us.’

Achaeos stared at her for a long time, until she broke and asked him, ‘What? What is it?’

‘I see why you need my differing viewpoint,’ he told her. ‘You have an imperial garrison. You have an imperial governor. What part of the Empire are we not inside?’

She scowled at him but had no answer to that, just saying, ‘Speaking of the governor, it is time for you to meet him. As it is not fit for him to come to your bedside, that means you will have to walk.’

In the end they had to help him along. He was not even capable of the length of journey that a few turned corners and passages would have made. He was healing fast, but the wound had been an inch off mortal. The chamber they took him to was one designed for meditation. Perhaps they hope to make the Empire think like them?

There was a Skryre, an old woman, seated there. Her glance towards Achaeos was bleak but not hostile. Achaeos thought he saw a touch of fear there, too, in the very depths of her white eyes. She nodded to his escorts and they took him over and lowered him until he sat beside her. A Mantis-kinden in robes knelt down beside and slightly behind him, ready to assist him if he needed it.

‘Say nothing,’ the Skryre instructed him. ‘Watch only.’

Xaraea had now taken up station beside the door, beyond which Achaeos could already hear the marching feet: the military approach of destiny.

Their visitor wore the uniform of a Wasp officer off duty: not armour but tunic and cloak in black and gold, fastened richly with jewelled pins. He entered with a female Wasp slave-girl and with half a dozen guards as his escort, as haughty and arrogant as any Wasp governor might wish to appear.

The old woman stood up as he entered, and even Achaeos was helped to his feet

‘My Lord Governor Tegrec,’ greeted Xaraea, who had been waiting at the door with every appearance of calm. Achaeos knew his own people, though: she was the centre point, the knot that was holding this fragile arrangement together, and she knew it. The weight of all her people was on her, and he could detect the minute signs of strain. Achaeos had found in himself a growing coldness for his people, for their isolationism, their hostility to the world and particularly to Che’s kin. In contrast he admired Xaraea. She had delivered herself into the very hands of the Empire in order to save the Moths.

Tegrec, this new governor, was not impressive for a Wasp: short and stout and garishly dressed, Still he put on a show, looking over the conquered people with the proper disdain before waving to his escort. ‘You may leave us.’ It was not recklessness in the face of danger that he displayed, but the confidence of a man who knows in his heart that the enemy is beaten.

The soldiers retreated, and Tegrec waited, as if listening while their footsteps receded, the light of their lanterns dimming and dying away. That left only the two torches the Mantis servant had lit to flare and gutter and cast shadows about the little room.