There were a good eight Dragonfly-kinden there, reminding them how close they were to Princep Exilla, with its piracy and violence. They had long-hafted swords and recurved bows, and they wore loose clothes with cuirasses of leather and painted wood on top. Their faces were tattooed into scowls.
Beside them was a smaller knot of armoured men. They wore dark metal, with helms that hid their faces, and their shimmering tabards showed a dark hand prominent on a dark field. Iron Glove Cartel, Che remembered. There were only three of them, but their facelessness, their stillness, gave them a greater air of menace than the posturing Dragonflies. Che found her attention coming back to them over and over, as though their very presence was a secret she could not read.
The Spider slaver was helped down from her mount, giving both groups an impartial nod. Trallo flitted over to instruct his two hirelings where to pitch camp.
'Once we're all set up,' he said, 'we'll pitch torch-posts around everyone, get us a fence. We're about as far from home as you can get on this road, so I don't think anybody minds cosying up.'
'What are they here for?' Che asked him. The Dragonflies and the Iron Glove men had gone into one of the tents, leaving a single painted warrior standing watch outside.
'Not that they exactly told me,' the Fly said, 'but it's the weapons trade. I hear the Monarch of Princep doesn't like the Gloves and won't deal with them. They make the best kit, though, so all the little chiefs are falling over themselves to set up deals like this. No need to say, we've none of us seen any of this.'
Wake up!
Che did. She started awake in the tent, shocked out of a deep sleep to utter wakefulness by the urgent command. Her eyes were already penetrating the dark without her summoning the Art. She sat up.
The others lay crammed around her. Praeda Rakespear was a sloping, blanket-covered form to one side, and the Solarnese teamster was curled up on the other, knees drawn up almost to her chin.
Wake up!
'I-' She stopped the words, realizing the voice was inside her, not in her ears. She formed the name in her mind, as tentatively as touching a wound. Achaeos?
Get up! Now! The voice inside her was harsh, impatient. She stumbled to her feet, shaking off her blankets like a landslide, colliding with the tent pole. Her hand found her scabbarded sword by instinct.
The voice was urgent. Now!
I'm going mad. She slung her grey cloak over her nightshirt and blundered from the tent, hearing the Solarnese woman cursing sleepily behind her.
Outside, the world was immense. The sky reached cloudless, star-studded, from every horizon. For a moment she could only stare. Is this what he wanted to show me? She had not guessed at it, how vast the sky was, out at the desert's edge. It was well worth seeing.
Then: Hammer and tongs but it's cold!
'Bella?'
She jumped. The Solarnese, Trallo's hired man, stood nearby, frowning at her. The two of them stood in the middle of their triangle of tents, and beyond was the big marquee of the Spider slaver and the pitches of the Dragonflies and the Iron Glove. She stared about at it all, trying to read a secret that the scene did not possess.
There was a shimmer and a shadow in the air. The Solarnese man clearly could not see it. It was there nonetheless.
'Achaeos …?' she said, and she reached out, and who cared what anybody thought. 'Please …'
Draw your blade! the voice snapped, and the weapon was in her hands in the same instant. There was a startled shout from the Solarnese, a whisper of steel as his own curved sword leapt out. The shout further drew attention. A Dragonfly woman Che had not even noticed had abruptly stood up, drawing back her bow. One of the Spider's slave-guards appeared, running round the edge of her tent with a crossbow at the ready.
Everyone was staring at her.
'…' Her voice was dry. There were words inside her, but she was fighting to keep them down.
Say it.
'There's …' I don't know this. I can't say this. 'There's about to be an attack.'
They continued to stare at her. She saw that Trallo had put his head out of the tent he shared with Manny and Berjek, and that one of the Vekken was also looking out from their compact little billet.
'There's going to be an attack,' she said helplessly. 'An attack. Going to be an attack.'
'Woman …?'Trallo said hoarsely. The Dragonfly woman let loose a shout, and abruptly their tent started moving as her kinsfolk began to rouse themselves. Everyone else was still staring at Che, but the Dragonflies were moving. They're Inapt. They're Inapt and so they …
No. They can see better in the dark.
She turned, using her Art to penetrate the night, seeing the dust they were throwing, no matter how carefully they approached.
'There!' she shouted, a real shout now, born of true knowledge. 'There! There! There!'
The camp seemed to explode with life. It seemed that Che was now the only still point in it, the hub of a spinning wheel. The two Vekken were kneeling before their tent, each buckling the mail hauberk of the other with absolute concentration. There were half-dressed Dragonflies spilling from their painted tent with spears and bows. The Spider-kinden woman stepped fully out, wearing a nightdress of silk and with a rapier in her hand. She snapped out single words, and her guards were hurrying past her. To safeguard her slaves, Che realized. Her slaves were the most valuable thing at the oasis.
The first of the Iron Glove men was out now, half-armoured, helmed. There was a slender weapon in his hands that Che barely registered at the time.
The raiders arrived, breaking into a run as they neared the camp. There was something monstrous in front, a shape that Che's eyes could not piece together, rushing across the ground in a sudden scuttle, with something high above it. Behind it were men, huge men. She saw their blades first, great bludgeoning swords and massive axes that they held in hands jutting with claws. They wore patches of dark armour: hide and metal. Their skins were white.
Scorpion-kinden. For a moment she could only think of old Hokiak in Myna, but these were the wild version, the real thing, Scorpion raiders from the desert.
There was a rattle of crossbows as the Spider's guards loosed their shots. Che saw at least one of the attackers go down, then the tide was on them. The vanguard thing was revealed as a scorpion longer than a man, its sting poised like a fencer's blade.
Trallo knelt beside her, loosing a bolt from one small crossbow, then taking up a second. 'Someone load for me!' he snapped, and to Che's surprise it was old Berjek who took the slack weapon and wound the string back.
The huge scorpion lunged forward, and the Spider's guards scattered out of its way. Arrows seemed to spring off its carapace as the Dragonflies loosed, but it just shook itself once and lunged forward again. This time it caught a man in its claws. Che heard bones snap and then the sting darted in delicately, and stopped his heart.
A huge man loomed in front of her, drawing back his axe for a swing. The weapon was as long as she was tall and she stalled, sword loose in her hand, unable to strike. A crossbow bolt flowered in the giant's side, slowed by his armour, and he turned on Trallo instead, bringing the axe down. The Flykinden abandoned his bow and darted up and away, the axe-head following him with surprising deftness. Che lunged.
She had not meant to. Her blade skidded and then dug in and she looked up into that furious white face, with its monstrous, tusked underbite. Another shortsword raked shallowly across the man's ribs and he roared, turning with axe raised high. As it went up, the second Vekken rammed his own blade into the Scorpion's armpit all the way to the hilt with effortless strength, and then the two of them were moving on, wordless in their teamwork.
The great scorpion had torn a gash in the Spider's tent, and her guards had taken up spears to keep it back. Abruptly there was a series of harsh snapping sounds and the monster recoiled, claws raised high in threat. Che turned to see the three Iron Glove men calmly reloading, slipping finger-length bolts into the chambers of their snapbows.
Snapbows?
There was no time to wonder. Another Scorpion-kinden thundered past, another giant. They were all at least seven feet tall for sure. She stumbled back, seeing the huge man take a sweep with his greatsword, catching one of the Dragonflies and almost cutting the woman in half. The Scorpion roared in defiance, and then his head snapped back, the fletchings of an arrow jutting from between his eyes.
Abruptly there was nothing to fight, and Che was wandering amid a trampled camp with her sword in her hands. The Scorpions and their monster had fallen back into the desert. She spotted them regrouping, assuming themselves unseen, two hills away.
A lot of people were looking at her, with expressions she lacked the strength to analyse. She sat down heavily, feeling drained.
Achaeos? She said it in her head, but there was nothing but the echo of her own thoughts. Achaeos, thank you, but can you not give me more? Thank you for saving us all, but … But I love you and it is hard for me, with you dead and so close.
She found that she was crying, the tears streaking down her cheeks. Without warning the cold struck her, making her shiver uncontrollably. The sword fell from her hand. The two Vekken ambassadors were nearby, watching her doubtfully. She did not care. It was all too much. Her sobs escaped whether she tried to stifle them or not.
Trallo draped a blanket round her. It was hours from dawn but nobody would be getting any more sleep. There were five bodies to bury, and as many dead Scorpions to move from near the water. She heard the Fly give a businesslike sigh, steeling himself to his task.
There was no answer within her. Achaeos — or his ghost or her madness — had done his work and left without a word. Oh, you have grown cold, since you died. She felt like screaming for him to either stay and let her know he still loved her, or leave her for ever — and who cared if the Scorpions killed her? It was hard, it was so hard.
Eight
She was a prisoner in her own lodgings.
There were no guards. She was not bound. The door was not locked. Still, Petri Coggen felt her confinement as keenly as if the manacle was around her wrist. She had felt a sense of doom weighing on her since they had brought her back from the Marsh Alcaia.
They had given her servants, for the Khanaphir had been solicitous of her comfort to the point of patronizing her. The foreign lady must have everything. The servants cleaned her rooms and brought her food, and would have dressed and bathed her if she had let them. They ignored her when she told them to leave her alone. Shaven-headed Beetle men and women with fixed faces, they glided in and out of her life like tidy ghosts.
They made no attempt to stop her going out into the city. She had tried to escape their attention, to get her letter out, but the servants had followed at a respectful distance. She had tried running, but when she had stopped, wheezing for breath, they had been there still, or others like them, standing patiently by. There was no reproach in their faces, only polite concern for the stranger. She had run until heat and exhaustion had brought her to her knees, but they had been waiting there wherever she had run to, with slight smiles at her odd behaviour.
As her last resort, she had gone to the docks. Khanaphes traded all down the coast and across the sea, so there were always ships.
The first she had approached was a solid Khanaphir trawler. She had climbed halfway up the gangplank, already reaching for her money, before she saw the expression on the captain's face. He knew her. He had been told about her. Standing there at the rail, eyeing her with the polite disinterest of his city, he informed her, without needing words, that there was no way she was leaving the city on his ship.
So she had then looked for foreign ships. Surely the sinister influence of the Ministers could not be absolute. There would be ships out of distant ports, and at this point she would take a berth for anywhere. Even the dubious hospitality of the Spiderlands would be preferable.
She found a Spider-kinden trader, all elegant swept lines. She looked around for the captain, and saw her in conversation with a mild-looking Khanafir man. The Spider glanced at Petri and gave a faint shake of her head. Petri stumbled away, ran back down the quays. She did not care who stopped to watch the crazed foreigner make an exhibition of herself.
There was a broad-beamed cargo-hauler at the very end of the quays. Its crew was a mongrel mixture, halfbreeds, Mantis-kinden, lean and sallow Grasshoppers. They looked as disreputable as anyone Petri had ever seen. She rushed up to them, noticing their hands drift instinctively for hilts and hafts.
'Please, I need passage out,' she gasped. 'I have money.' She felt as though she was throwing herself from the jaws of one monster into the pincers of another.
One of the Grasshopper-kinden shouldered his way forward and crouched at the top of the gangplank, elbows crooked over his bony knees. 'Come up,' he said. He had a scar, jagged and twisted, down the side of his long face. In other circumstances she would have been terrified of him.
She made it up the gangplank, the villainous crew watching, narrow-eyed.
'You haven't been in Khanaphes long,' the Grasshopper captain observed.
'Long enough. Months now.'
He laughed quietly, shook his head. 'The blink of an eye. You have the city's interest, little helpless one. We have heard. There is no shipman who does not know.'
She felt a shudder go through her. 'Please … I must leave.'
'Anyone who took you away from here, while you bear that mark, would never trade here again, or ever be welcome. They carve their memories in stone here. They never forget. I could pass my ship on three times, and neither she nor I could put in safely at this port again, nor my sons, nor theirs.'
With a wrenching despair she realized that the incongruous tone of this vicious-looking creature was only sympathy.
'They will kill me,' she whispered. 'Please …'
'They might,' he said. His shrug indicated that the incidence of death punctuated his life as regularly as meals and sleeping. 'Or they might vanish you. Or they might lose interest and let you go. But we cannot help you. You do not have the money to compensate us for what we would lose.'
She left his ship, with feet dragging. Her concerned retinue was already waiting.
At Porta Rabi, it felt like the edge of the world.
The desert petered out into a scrub of sawgrass and thorns, and then the land fell away completely in a tangle of vines. Stunted strees clung grimly to the cliff edge, leaning at mad angles over the rocks far below. The cliffs were relieved only the once, where the land slanted steeply down to a beach of broken stone. It was there the intrepid Solarnese had built Porta Rabi. They had used the pale grey stone of the cliffs, but the buildings were the same odd burlesque of Spider styles, all pointed arches, tapering columns, grillwork screens, but all looking slightly wrong. They had made a Solarno in miniature, a little stepped crescent of buildings gathered about two long piers that went far enough into the sea to allow big ships enough draught to moor there. Above, where the cliffs took over, there was a reaching scaffold of wooden floors and scaffolding, rooms and buildings suspended before the rockface, all of it looking open-plan and half-built. Che identified this as Dragonfly-kinden work. There was a sizeable presence of them here from Princep Exilla and, putting aside their normal rivalries, the two kinden worked together to keep the port open in this inhospitable corner of the world. Even so, Trallo warned them, the streets were not safe after nightfall. The merchants who ran Porta Rabi retired early to their well-guarded compounds, and everywhere else became lawless after dark.
They came in close to midday, but the cool air off the sea worked against the pounding sun. The port was seething: a dozen ships moored at the piers. Most had sails furled about their rigging-webbed masts, but one possessed the stout funnels of a steamer, and another was constructed of copper metal and had neither sails nor a visible engine. The largest of the ships had triple rows of holes along each side, and Trallo explained that if the wind dropped it had slaves to row it. Che recalled the human c
ommodity she had recently travelled alongside, and hoped they were bound for a better future than that.
While the others settled in a taverna under the watchful eyes of the two Solarnese, Che followed Trallo to the dockside to see about arranging passage. Standing there, with the grey sea stretching, windlashed, to the far horizon, she felt dizzy at the thought of how far she had come.
'What sea is this?' she asked, touching Trallo's shoulder. She was past the edge of all her maps. Was this the same sea that washed Collegium's wharves? 'Where does it go?'
He smiled up at her. 'This is the Sunroad Sea, and they say it goes all the way to where the sun comes from, if you could but sail that far.' He added, 'We'll have passage on that ship,' and pointed out a sleek Spiderlands felucca, two-masted and painted gold and blue. 'She's the Lord Janis out of Portoriens — that's the furthest east in the world that the Spider-kinden claim, the very eastern limit of their satrapies. And you know what?' He was grinning widely now. She shook her head slowly to show she did not know, and he finished it gleefully. 'You know what? That's west of here.'
Che felt weak at the knowledge. The Lowlanders tended to assume that the Spidlerlands just extended as far as they needed to go. She was standing at the shore of a whole new ocean, being jostled by sailors and traders of a dozen kinden out of who-knew-what distant ports. This was not Collegium's wilful ignorance of the Empire's ambitions, or the self-spun mystery of the Spiderlands, or the deliberate isolation of the Commonweal. This was far. She found herself searching the crowd suddenly for a familiar style of dress, a brooch or a sword-hilt whose style she recognized. There were Solarnese there, in their flowing white, but no more. She was the only representative of the Lowlands, at the docks of Porta Rabi. She was all the world she knew.
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