Shadows of the Apt 07 - Heirs of the Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author:Adrian Tchaikovsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Published: 2011-10-06T22:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

The barge brought them to within sight of Suon Ren and offloaded them – two Wasps and an unconscious Beetle girl – without comment. The vessel’s crew had spoken barely a word to them throughout the long journey, but had just as obviously been glad to have them aboard. They had treated the two renegade Imperials as though they were guard animals of proven ferocity. The horror of the Twelve-year War would resound in Commonweal minds for decades yet to come.

Che had not been comatose the whole way. She woke sporadically, clawing at the air, talking feverishly, staring about her. Thalric then made it his business to get some water into her, and sometimes even food. She would wander about the barge, bumping into things, flinching from objects invisible. She spoke to him, too, but it was seldom him she actually saw. Often she would explain something at great speed, something mystical that the two Wasps could not follow. Sometimes she was trying to flee from something, and had to be restrained from simply flying off the barge. Once . . .

Once she was being tortured, or under threat of it, and Thalric knew with a sick feeling that, this time of all of them, she saw him for who he was.

He wondered at what point he had changed, that he no longer considered just abandoning her.

Some nights, as Varmen slept, Thalric would sit and gaze down at her, as she trembled and twitched in the grip of whatever affliction had befallen her. His feelings of despair, during those lonely hours past midnight, were nothing he would ever admit to in the light of day.

The journey from the Commonweal’s borders to Suon Ren had proved steady and untroubled, and in Thalric’s mind was a simple thought, What now? They had come here at Che’s behest, for reasons to do with her foster-sister, yet it seemed unlikely to him that Tynisa was now within a thousand miles of them. Che seemed to have picked Suon Ren randomly from a map of all the places she had ever heard about and, now they were here, she was in no state to capitalize on it. Thalric himself did not know the plan. I don’t mind making my own way, I don’t mind receiving orders, but this in-between business is no use at all.

‘They have a prince at Suon Ren, don’t they?’ he asked, casting his mind back to the war. Isn’t this where Stenwold Maker was heading in search of Commonwealer allies?

‘A big one, I think,’ Varmen agreed. ‘Going to seek an audience, are you?’

‘I need help.’ Thalric glanced down at Che. ‘I need a doctor, or at least what passes for one in this place. Problem is, I can’t see how two war veterans like us will carry much weight when it comes to exacting favours from princes . . .’ A flicker of movement caught his eye, and now he saw a handful of Dragonflies approaching. Two of them were armoured

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