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She could have told, two minutes in, all there was to know about Isendter’s martial history, just as he had laid her own similarly bare. She could sense which of his knees was slightly tender with age, where the past scars were that tugged at the fluidity of his movements – all those mementos of his long career. They knew each other like lovers, during the moves of that dance, and she realized that he was better than she was, made slower by years but made wiser by experience. And the fight and the dance were running to an inevitable conclusion, and . . .

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