Free Heirs of the Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page B

independence, thieves on the roads and in the forests, peasants deciding they’d rather be free, or lords taxing the shirts off their backs. The Monarch’s a long way away, and the Mercers do what they can – the proper ones and the provincial sort like we’ve got – but how many Mercers can there be?’
    ‘And yet you’re working for Salma’s family. I’d have thought you’d be on the other side,’ she said darkly.
    ‘Me? I’m making a living,’ Gaved declared, glancing back at her briefly. That she could stick a knife in his back at any moment was something he was apparently managing to deal with phlegmatically. ‘When I left Jerez and headed west, I only had one name to conjure with, and that was your friend’s.’
    ‘Salma? You got here through trading on his name?’ she demanded.
    ‘Once I heard his family mentioned, I made my way over and talked myself into a job. Maybe tomorrow Sef and I’ll move on, turn brigand even, but for today I’m on the side of the Monarch. It’s that kind of world. I keep my options open. Or I try to. There was no need for that bloodshed, last night.’ His voice was careful and measured, and he must have felt the flash of anger going through her.
    ‘They were going to kill you.’
    ‘I could have talked my way out of it, with them, or with Siriell if need be. It’s part of what I do. She was probably only going to make me an offer.’
    ‘Oh, and that would suit you well, wouldn’t it?’ she accused him. ‘Just waiting for the chance to jump flags to join the outlaws, after Salma’s people took you in.’
    ‘I like to keep my options open,’ Gaved repeated. ‘But killing people closes doors. Who knows when I might need to go back there, on whoever’s business? Now I don’t know if I can.’
    ‘I’m not going to be anyone’s prisoner,’ Tynisa hissed through gritted teeth. She was starting to see flickers at the edge of her vision, one or other of her imaginary companions keeping pace with her. Achaeos, was it? Had he come to reproach her now for the blood she had spilled?
    ‘It’s not so simple—’ Gaved began, but she hissed at him so fiercely that he stopped.
    ‘I have been a prisoner once,’ she snapped. ‘You have no idea what that cost me and what parts of me I left behind, when I got out.’
    The Wasp scowled at her over his shoulder. ‘Well, it’s done,’ was all he could manage. ‘But they’ll have people in the air, searching for us. Nobody kills that many of Siriell’s people without being hunted.’
    ‘So we’ll fight them again.’
    ‘No, we’ll lose them,’ Gaved decided. ‘We’ll keep riding as fast as the land permits and as long as the horse can keep the pace. We’ll head uphill, too. I know a good road for us to throw them off.’
    ‘There’s a forest?’ Tynisa asked, because tree cover was always the best way to hide from airborne spies.
    ‘Of sorts,’ Gaved confirmed, ‘but I doubt it’s what you’re expecting.’
    They settled into a steady pace, with the Wasp refusing to be drawn on where he was guiding them. The land about them was already looking more promising, their trail winding between stands of gnarled trees which grew only denser ahead of them.
    They kept up a pressing pace for hours, with Tynisa spotting the occasional dark shape high above that might have been a man or a hunting insect. Gaved was now angling them along the broad flank of a hill that was creased into a series of slopes and valleys still heavily hung with morning mist. The scrubby trees had given way now, left behind on the hill’s southern skirts. Here, down in the valleys, was a dense forest of another kind altogether. The mist contained a maze of tall, leafy canes, some as slender as a finger, some as thick as Tynisa’s thigh, as though a regiment of giant archers had loosed a thousand shafts at the hillside itself. This bristling cane forest seemed to preserve the mist even past midday, so that their progress deteriorated into