Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [223]
‘They came looking for me on dragonfly-back,’ he murmured as he neared the Beetle girl. ‘Every tracker the Salmae can call in is here. I’ve not slept since then – they sent me right out after the runaways. Your sister, she finally did it then? She finally snapped.’
Che said nothing, but he read her expression well enough to add, ‘I’m sorry. It happens to the greatest. What can I say?’ And then he was hurrying off to add to the other scouts’ briefing.
Shortly after dawn, Che was sent for. The warband, hunting party, retinue, whatever it was, had not set off again, but scouts had been back and forth, flitting into and around the woods, and Che assumed that either the brigands and Tynisa were lying low or waiting in ambush, or they had disguised their trail so well that the princess did not know which way to follow.
Che’s bonds were cut before she was presented to Salme Elass, but she did not get the impression that she should feel encouraged by that. It was more of a ceremonial matter, as if some tradition prevented bound prisoners from being allowed in the royal presence. What manner of meeting will this be then? she wondered; a group inquisition or a private word? Even as she considered it, she saw that matters were going to be a good deal more public. Salme Elass was holding court.
The princess herself, clad in her mail of red, blue and gold, knelt on a woven mat, while all around her were other nobles, a dozen of them in their own uniquely patterned mails. Beside and behind the princess knelt lowlier specimens, presumably her followers and staff, and each of her tributary nobles had their own orbiting system of retainers, so that what appeared just a random assembly of kneeling men and women resolved itself into a precise map of station and status, comprehensible even to Che’s eyes. The hollow in the ground Elass had chosen had thus become her courtroom, as thoroughly as if her people had put up walls.
Che found herself standing at the far end of that notional space, on an invisible threshold that she could somehow sense and not argue with. Her escort let go of her arms, and she felt the gravity of that system of interlocking circles draw her forward almost against her will, each noble and his followers forming a wheel that moved her on towards the princess who was the centre of it all, and yet who at the same time seemed quite alone in the midst of it.
Che put on her bravest face, straightened her shoulders, and made the approach as proudly as she could, though feeling all around her the disparaging looks of the mustered aristocracy and their creatures. She knew what it was to be looked down on as lesser kinden, she had experienced quite enough of that when amongst Wasps, Moth-kinden and the Masters of Khanaphes. Halfway towards the princess, it seemed suddenly too much, too unfair, and she felt something slip within her, opening up a crack in the dam of her reserve. There had been a slight rustle of movement, a mutter of inaudible but barbed words. Che stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, and heard the background murmur die away abruptly. When she looked again, the expressions visible to her had changed. Mouths were shut, eyes were wide or wary. What had they seen? But she might as well ask what Maure had seen in her, for it was that same mark: the anointing of the Khanaphir Masters, the inexplicable coronation that the Wasp Empress Seda had inadvertently procured for both of them. It rested inside her like a stone, something she had not asked for and could not yet make any use of, but just for a moment then it had been visible. She suspected that none of them could quite know what had flickered momentarily about her, but all of them were silent, and none sneered at her or mocked her any more.
Only Elass’s face had not changed. The cold mask of her displeasure was unaltered.
‘So, you claim to be her sister,’ she pronounced,