Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [176]
What am I doing? But, even as she asked herself the question, another voice was commanding, Kill her! And she tried, she really tried, but the forest seemed to trip and baffle her, even though it let the magician slip through untouched, and thorns plucked at Tynisa’s clothing as the trees around her twisted into that other place.
What am I doing now? What is my body doing now? What of Alain? Am I killing Alain?
Her blade still directed with a straight arm at the magician, she froze. ‘No,’ she whispered to herself. ‘No, no, not this. Please, not again . . .’
‘This is shameful,’ the woman chided. ‘Come now, there’s no need to hide. I’m right here. You want me dead, I can see that, and you’re not the first. Come try me, then. Perhaps you’ll succeed, for I understand you had a reputation in that field. But not through this girl. What courage does that show, Mantis-kinden?’
Tynisa stared at her wildly, not understanding what she meant. The woman suddenly seemed to really focus on her, although she had been looking her in the face all this time.
‘Tynisa Maker, I am sent by your sister. She is coming for you. She wants you to be strong, do you understand? Be strong, and do nothing unwise.’
‘My sister . . .?’ Cheerwell?
But then the magician was looking not-quite-at Tynisa again, giving out a mocking little laugh. ‘Oh, is this really all you’re cut down to? I thought they called you a hero over Collegium way? The man who killed the Emperor, and here he is hiding behind his daughter’s skirts?’
And she felt someone move behind her, rushing forward, and in that instant something had left her, surging out from her in raging fury. The magician was already dancing away between the trees, though, and she saw the indistinct form of Tisamon chasing after her, his metal claw drawn back to strike, but forever just too far away, receding and receding and . . .
She woke up, crying out, and leapt to her feet still clutching her blanket. There was a faint lightening through the trees to the east, and all around her the earliest risers were already about their business.
She stared at them blankly, the foot soldiers of the Salmae’s army, those glorious, exultant bringers of justice. They sat in their huddles, spears leaning haphazardly nearby: Grasshopper-kinden and Dragonflies in padded cuirasses that were dirty and torn. Many were wounded, and she saw at least two who must have died overnight.
They looked frightened, she realized. They were tired and abused, men and women who had no taste for this conflict, but had been brought to it anyway, sore and bloodied and unwilling. It struck her that some of them probably had family and friends in the village that had been burned, or in places like it, and they had not been able to defend them or get them away to safety. They none of them want to be here. The revelation, in the face of the frenzy she had felt before, was shocking.
And how many had she consigned to death by not warning Alain of the trap? Was that costly victory really worth it?
‘This has gone on long enough,’ she said, and went off to seek out Lowre Cean.
When she arrived at his tent she found him sitting up in his hammock, dressed in a crumpled white silk robe. There was a bowl in his hand, two jugs at his feet, one lying on its side, already empty.
‘Morning, Maker Tynise,’ he addressed her, with a slight and melancholy smile. There had been no guards nearby. If she had been an assassin, she could have slain him right there, and walked out leaving his followers none the wiser. She briefly wondered if that was his intent.
She sat down, cross-legged like a schoolchild, and gazed up at him. ‘Prince Lowre, there is a question I have to ask you – and then a request, after that.’
‘I thought as much. I’d expected you sooner, but you seemed to be so . . . so caught up in this . . .’ His hand made a vague gesture encompassing a world of skirmish and conflict beyond the cloth walls of his tent.
‘You are