Free Heirs of the Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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, a guilty pact was made between them. Omission for omission, they would cover for one another and bury their pasts.
    ‘Tynisa Maker of Collegium,’ said Gaved wearily, ‘I present Prince-Minor Salme Alain of Elas Mar Province.’
    Tynisa stared, caught off guard, because somehow she had never even considered the idea that Salma would have had family here beyond his mentor Felipe Shah. And she had already thought that the Salma that this Alain resembled so much was more that youth who had first come to Collegium, not the later man she had last seen planning battles against the Empire. A younger brother, but such a likeness nonetheless.
    ‘Why, then, what chance has brought you to grace our lands, Tynise?’ The flowery words were all mischief, but then he had always been like that.
    There was a void in her heart where the answer to that question should have been and, as she opened her mouth to answer, she knew that she had no words. She had come here to the Commonweal because being anywhere else had become intolerable. She had come to Siriell’s Town because she wanted to find a Mantis death, and no amount of equivocation would hide that, now that she looked on her motives again. Looking into his face, though, and reaching for a response, the void was abruptly filled with one word: You. Salma had brought her here – and here he was, both in image and in manner. She felt the world was yawning open beneath her, the brink of a chasm at her very feet.
    ‘I . . . am travelling to your family,’ she finally got out, the words stopping and starting, and utterly beyond her ability to predict. ‘Salma . . . my Prince, I knew your brother. He was my friend. I bring word . . .’ She could say no more, but Salma was already looking towards Gaved.
    ‘Seems Dien made quite an impression,’ the Dragonfly said philosophically, but then the warmth of his smile was focused back on her, and she met