Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [30]
‘Turncoat!’ the woman snapped. ‘Where is my son?’
Gaved was down on one knee, but Tynisa hesitated for a moment, pride battling with propriety, before grudgingly doing the same.
‘He had set out on his Lycene for Leose before me,’ Gaved reported, staring down.
‘Feckless boy,’ the woman exclaimed, obviously not caring who heard her. ‘Probably having the run of every bandit camp and village from here to Tela Nocte. Idiot child.’
Tynisa stole a glance at her, seeing her regarding Gaved with distaste. By now her retinue had caught up with her, somewhat raggedly. There were a dozen or so finely dressed Dragonflies, either privileged servants or attendant lords, but Tynisa’s eye was drawn away from them towards one particular figure. For a moment, as his presence impinged upon her, Tynisa took him for yet another hallucination, mimicking her father’s intensely focused poise at the noblewoman’s shoulder. Then Tynisa’s gaze lifted further, and she realized that this was a different man, a living man. It is getting hard to tell, she recognized unhappily. First Salme Alain and now this newcomer. There would come a time when she would no longer be able to trust her eyes, and then where would she be?
The man was dressed in an arming jacket and breeches of pale grey leather, obviously far from new, and his boots were of a similar vintage, well crafted and just as well worn. Looking up furtively from her low vantage point, what caught her attention first was his utter stillness, for she had seen that particular brand of motionless calm before and she felt that this man was like a bow drawn back and ready to strike at any moment. She had known him for Mantis-kinden from the first glance. He was paler than the Dragonflies, and older than Tisamon had been when he died. This Mantis had hair gone completely white, and a hook-nosed face creased with lines of bitter experience. For all his years, Tynisa shivered when she saw him. A moment later her eyes picked out the brooch over his breast. The style of it was different, but she recognized the sword and the circle and knew him for one of the same order that she herself had been initiated into, and that Tisamon had been a master of.
‘My Princess, I have important news of the bandit communities to the south,’ Gaved added hopefully.
The woman, Salma’s mother, dismissed that comment with a wave of her hand. ‘Tell it to my seneschal and my champion,’ she told him. ‘If you’ve no more news of my son, I am done with you.’
‘Alas, no, Princess,’ Gaved replied, but the woman had already turned and was about to walk away.
Tynisa found herself on her feet so abruptly that the Mantis took a step in, to put himself between her and the princess.
‘My lady. Princess.’
The Dragonfly woman turned and regarding Tynisa blankly. ‘What is this?’
Gaved grimaced, and took a moment too long in deciding how to answer, and Tynisa declared. ‘My lady, I am come from the Lowlands.’
From the Dragonfly’s expression, she might never have heard of such a place. ‘On what business?’
‘I was a friend of Prince Salme Dien,’ Tynisa declared, pronouncing his full name carefully.
Salma’s mother stared at her for a long moment. ‘You are seeking employment – like this one?’ She threw Gaved the smallest nod imaginable.
‘No, my lady, I only wished . . .’ For some reason, though her mission to Felipe Shah had seemed utterly natural, before the cold gaze of this woman she faltered. ‘I aided your son Salme Alain at Siriell’s Town, and had hoped to meet him here. And I would speak with you of your elder son, if I could.’
The princess’s expression, already cold, froze entirely. ‘As you have heard, Prince Alain is not here. As for Dien, no doubt there were many Lowlanders he was . . . familiar with.’ Then she had turned