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‘I will stand there,’ Tynisa declared flatly. She was no noblewoman, no member of the Commonweal hierarchy that Salme Elass was so devoted to, but nobody denied her a place here, and those nobles who had once looked askance at her when she danced or hunted now stayed out of her way. She had gained a reputation written in blood.

Lowre Cean winced but nodded, accepting the inevitable.

‘With your permission, my Princess?’

Tynisa looked around for the speaker, recognizing the voice of Isendter Whitehand, the Salmae’s champion. She caught Elass looking at the white-haired Mantis with concern, as though she wanted to refuse to let him go, but feared looking weak.

At last she nodded. ‘With my blessing,’ she said.

One by one the nobles spoke up, those who had been in the thick of the fighting already, those who had suffered burned villages or lessened revenues. Others pledged their servants, those who could ride swiftly enough to hold the pace. The pledges trickled in until Lowre Cean raised a thin hand.

‘Enough,’ he said. ‘That will be enough.’ He looked to Whitehand. ‘Isendter, I give you command over this business.’

Several of the nobles hovered on the brink of outrage that a mere servant should be given that honour. The calm, pale gaze of the Mantis-kinden soon silenced them. In that moment, Tynisa realized that Alain would not be coming, that she would make her stand without him there to admire her prowess. She glanced at him, and saw him frown at his mother. She will not let him fight, but how else will he grow strong? The thought crossed her mind that perhaps she would need to do something about Salme Elass, at some point – for Alain’s own good. How else could he become the man that Tynisa wished him to be?

As Lowre had decreed, they rode all through the night, and Whitehand set a punishing pace. Tynisa’s newfound skills were just sufficient to keep her on her mount, and at the back of the pack. The others, the nobles and their picked retinues, were better horsemen and women by far, but their skill had been learned over the years rather than dropped unearned on their shoulders.

Towards the dawn, she knew, Lowre would send a dragonfly rider, perhaps Alain himself, to scout out the whereabouts of the brigands. Their timing was tight. Too slow overnight and they might miss the bandit army entirely, or perhaps even run straight into them.

I would not mind if we did, Tynisa decided. It will save time. We will kill them all the sooner. That Whitehand’s little contingent would be outnumbered at least five to one was important only in giving her a greater opportunity to demonstrate her skill, and thus allow her to woo Alain on that much grander scale.

She had no idea of their progress, hanging on grimly at the rear, and the night passed in a series of swift rides across the countryside, interspersed with short breaks for the horses to be watered and fed. The Commonweal steeds had been bred for both speed and stamina, she could see: the Lowlands had nothing like them. Perhaps if Salma had used such beasts . . . but nothing was served by thinking of such things now.

When Whitehand called a halt, Tynisa did not realize that this was it, that they had already reached their goal, and were presumably ahead of the enemy. The sky was greying with pre-dawn towards the east, towards the Empire, and all around her the Commonwealers were dismounting, and tending their horses. They were a mixed band, and she had barely paid them any attention throughout the night’s journey. To her they were just ‘the nobles’, and she had dismissed them as such. Perhaps half of them were aristocracy in fact: graceful Dragonfly-kinden in glimmering armour of many colours, chitin and enamelled steel over mail and quilted cloth. They carried tall bows, long-hafted swords and short punch-blades, and Whitehand passed amongst them, singling out those whose steeds had lasted the journey best, setting them aside to fight on horseback in the morning. The balance of the force was made up of the retainers that had been promised,