Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [24]
That was enough for the survivors, who went flying, running and leaping away into the night, leaving a litter of bodies behind them. At least one more dropped, with an arrow in his back.
So whose arrows are those then?
Even as she thought it, the archer was approaching, stepping into the firelight while Gaved was brushing down his cloak and looking about him at the bodies. Tynisa turned to the newcomer – and her world stopped dead.
Her hallucinations had always been corner-of-the-eye things, melting before her direct stare as if unable to bear the weight of her attention. But here he was in plain view, the bow in his hand, as though he had never been killed by the Wasps after all. As though it had simply been some raconteur’s exaggeration to say that Salme Dien was dead.
She couldn’t breathe. She felt that her heart had ceased to beat. Her fingers twitched nervelessly, though her sword still clung within her grip.
‘Salma?’ she managed.
And the man before her, the Dragonfly-kinden with that oh-so-familiar, cocky smile, said, ‘Yes?’
Five
Heedless of her expression Salma walked over to the dead men and studied them. ‘So, this is what lurks in Siriell’s Town,’ he remarked. ‘Ugly characters, certainly.’ He glanced up suddenly. ‘Turncoat?’
Tynisa jumped at the word, but it was Gaved who stepped forward.
‘My Prince?’ The Wasp was now studiously ignoring her.
‘Losing your touch with the vermin?’ Salma eyed him. ‘You’re lucky I was coming to meet you.’
Gaved’s face remained studiously neutral. ‘You’re here alone, my Prince?’
‘A little reconnoitring for Mother,’ Salma said, self-mocking, and still everything about him was maddeningly as she remembered it: his expression, his tone. When he flashed a smile her way, she felt her heart would break. She was not sure, standing there in the moonlight, whether she had simply gone mad behind her own back, her mind snapped and flying free. The impossible situation refused to resolve itself. Salma? It was Salma.
The Dragonfly prince had taken hold of an arrow, setting one foot on a corpse’s head to yank at it, but the shaft remained securely embedded. ‘I’m too skilled a shot for my own good, it seems,’ he murmured philosophically.
‘Salma . . .’ Tynisa said involuntarily.
The Dragonfly glanced up, and his smile was painful. ‘Another one of yours, Turncoat? You’re collecting Spider-kinden?’ He was grinning through it, though, and sketched her an elegant bow with much flourishing of hands. She had seen him do just the same once, at the College, to impress a magnate’s daughter.
‘Don’t you . . .?’ Don’t you know me? was the plaintive cry within her, but of course he could not know her. He was Salma: he was Salma to the very last detail as she had known him at College, three years ago. But this was a man who had never come south to learn the ways of the Lowlanders, never signed on with Stenwold Maker, never come too close to death while fighting the Wasps at Tark. This was a man who had never been enchanted and seduced by a stray Butterfly-kinden, or given his life in a desperate, heroic bid to defeat the Empire.
‘She’s none of mine,’ said Gaved forcefully.
‘Too clean by far to be Siriell’s get,’ Salma finished for him. ‘And she fights. You’ve hired yourself a bodyguard, Turncoat?’
‘An old acquaintance,’ the Wasp got out between gritted teeth, and sudden panic overtook Tynisa, the forgotten weight of Gaved’s knowledge slumping back on her like a landslide. One word now from Gaved and this miraculous dream would shatter. She’s a murderer, was all the Wasp needed to say.
But she caught Gaved’s eye, and saw her own thoughts reflected in his face: a tightly contained panic that at any moment she might give him away. He was a rogue and a thief, she knew, but what lies had he told to find himself a place here in the Commonweal? One word from me . . .
In that moment, within their conjoined silence,