Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [228]
So, the ghost’s play had reached its endgame, and Che’s own had clearly failed. She was in no position to save Tynisa from anything, nor even herself.
She started as someone crouched down next to her, sitting back on his haunches. She recognized him as Isandter, the silver-haired Mantis-kinden. His eyes were wintry and cold, and Che knew well enough the sword-and-circle brooch he wore.
‘What do you want?’ she asked him.
He was studying her with a slight frown. ‘You are a noble of the Lowlands, a woman of importance?’
She almost laughed at that. ‘We don’t have an aristocracy. Bloodline won’t get you far on its own, where I come from. But my uncle Stenwold is a man of note, back in Collegium. I imagine he’ll take it personally if he hears that something bad has happened to me. Not that it’ll do me much good by then, of course.’
Isendter nodded soberly. ‘Maker Stenwold,’ he enunciated carefully. ‘That is the name of the Lowlander who spoke to the Monarch at Prince Felipe’s court.’
Che raised her eyebrows. ‘The very same, Master Whitehand. You’ve a good memory.’
‘It was much talked about, at the time. And you are important, then, so it’s a mistake to treat you thus.’
She waited, but the words were not a prelude to any attempt on his part to secure her freedom. Instead he surprised her by sitting down beside her, as though the two of them were simply exchanging pleasantries.
‘You know our ways a little. You learned that from your uncle, no doubt. You were right, in what you said: the girl is not in her right mind, not her own master. My lady has erred by setting herself on this course. No good will come of it.’ He spoke low, so that his voice would not carry further than Che’s ears. She had a sudden insight that he had come to speak to her because these words, prying their way out of him, were too dangerous to voice to any other.
‘If you’re looking for sympathy from your prisoner, you’ll find none here. She’s your mistress.’
‘Not by choice. I am the tithe paid by my people: the service of a Weaponsmaster in exchange for my kin to live untroubled in the deep places. I have served the Salmae most of my life.’
‘No doubt the prince was a better master, when he lived,’ Che suggested. For all her caveats about sympathy, she could not retain a stern face. The old man seemed oddly frail and vulnerable in thus confessing to her, for all that he was a Mantis-kinden killer and a master of the blade.
‘He was not.’ Isendter stared up at the stars. ‘He was thoroughly vainglorious, and he would not listen. He died in the war’s early years, leading a pointless charge against a superior foe, because he could not conceive of ever being wrong. He did not die alone.’ The Mantid’s expression was sour, hollow. ‘Others of the Salmae fell in similar ways, serving their Monarch, and yet giving precious little of value, until there was the princess and her son. Her sons. But, then you said you knew the boy, Dien.’
‘Very much so,’ Che agreed. ‘He was a good friend.’
Isendter let out a long breath. ‘Felipe Shah took him into his household, as kin obligate. It was a great honour, of course, but the Salmae would have refused it, if they dared. Prince Felipe thought he saw something in the boy worth saving, and took him to Suon Ren to raise as his own son. And he was right, it would seem.’
‘I take it Alain wasn’t of the same stamp?’
There was a long silence then, and Che assumed that the man’s unburdening had come to an end, but at last his voice emerged again, in barely more than a whisper. ‘Without honour, he was, and with no sense of a nobleman’s responsibility. Not one of the old nobility, like Felipe Shah or Lowre Cean, men who take their duty seriously. Instead, a boy who was denied nothing, who acknowledged no boundaries, around whom no woman was safe. Who bred vice instead of