Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [194]
By evening they could see the Salmae’s army by its campfires, and it was plain that they would overtake it the following morning. They had a brief, divided discussion about whether to make contact meanwhile, with Thalric and Varmen both arguing that the victorious troops might mistake them for stragglers from the defeated brigands, so contact would be better made once their army had reached its destination and disbanded. Che would hear none of it, though. Tynisa was accompanying that force, and that was all that mattered.
Varmen insisted on taking the first watch, and even spent the time getting into the bulk of his armour to do it. The big Wasp had been growing more distant as they travelled, and it was clear to Che that whatever burden he had carried within him from Suon Ren was only growing, whether through time or distance. Still, he looked such a forbidding figure in all that weight of steel that she found that she did not quite have the courage to broach the matter. After Thalric and Maure had gone to sleep, she found herself still awake, staring at his plated form looming in the darkness which her eyes could pierce so easily, the black and gold of his mail dimmed to black and grey in her Art-sight.
At last his helm turned towards her, and he spoke. ‘If you’re not going to sleep, you might as well come over and keep me company.’ His voice sounded hushed and hollow.
Into the surprised silence that followed he explained, ‘Your breathing. I could tell from your breathing. People don’t realize how, if you spend a lifetime wearing this stuff, just how much you can see and hear and sense.’
Blankets wrapped around her, Che shuffled over to him. ‘Did you want to talk?’
‘You’re Beetle-kinden, and yet you understand all this magic business the Commonwealers talk about, right?’
‘Some of it, some of the time,’ she admitted.
‘Fate and destiny, that sort of thing.’ he added vaguely. ‘It’s just . . . I remember the war, and how we came through here, won our battles, took over their places, set up governors. We killed a lot of their people. I did myself. Pride of the Sixth, you know. Even then, there were moments . . . there was a girl, a Dragonfly girl, one of their nobles. We fought . . .’
‘You killed her?’
‘I never did. I liked her. Nice voice, she had. I like a nice-sounding voice in a girl. So I let her go. But then the Second bastard Army rolled through. I tried to find her, later . . . Stupid thing to have regrets about, eh?’
Che waited, watching him. He was no longer looking at her, just staring off into the night. At last he said, ‘I never before and never after had any second thoughts about what we were doing, except then, after that fight . . . She was brave, you see, and I liked her. And then they re-formed the Sixth, under General Praeter, and we marched off into the Lowlands, and there’s Malkan’s Stand . . .’ One gauntleted hand touched the rough-edged hole in his breastplate. ‘After that I don’t have an army, and even if I went back, and they took me back, I wouldn’t be what I was. No more Sentinels, eh? They’ve no use for Sentinels any more, not with snapbows ready to drill a hole in the strongest plate. A lifetime of training and being special, then it’s all down the drain. And what was I left with? When I sobered up, when I stopped trying to die . . . I was left with her. Crazy Dragonfly girl with the nice voice. I came back, you see. Hovering about the Commonweal border, plying some sort of useless bastard escort business. After all that, after getting shot through my mail, after the defeat, after losing it all . . . just her. Some dead Dragonfly girl that I’ll never find. The only thing left in my head, after all that, was remembering her.’
‘You’re still looking for her?’ Che asked.
‘She’s dead.’
‘You don’t know—’
Varmen’s helm had twitched towards Maure’s sleeping form, so Che understood when he repeated, ‘She’s dead.’
Che could