Heirs of the Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky

a groping through a constantly shifting landscape of vertical shadows. Gaved led with apparent confidence, but Tynisa spotted him consulting a little aviator’s compass more than once. She was glad of that since, between the mist and the sameness of the landscape, she felt she would become lost almost instantly.
    Some time later, Gaved let their weary mount plod to a halt, swinging from the saddle to feed and water it.
    ‘Won’t they catch us?’ Tynisa asked him, her eyes seeking their airborne pursuers. The mist about them was so heavy that even the sun was just a brighter smear.
    ‘They won’t come here,’ Gaved said. ‘We’ve lost them.’
    ‘Then what’s wrong?’ she pressed, because it was obvious that something was amiss.
    ‘Just imagine,’ Gaved said, ‘that you’re in the house of someone very polite, but very dangerous. Behave as a good guest and we’ll be fine.’
    Tynisa glanced about, seeing only cane-striped mist. ‘What lives here?’
    ‘Oh, some fair-sized mantids, some spiders, centipedes,’ Gaved replied casually, ‘but people too, of a sort. I’ve come through here twice before, under similar circumstances, and I can’t say I’ve definitely seen any of them, but I’m told they’re here, and I believe it. The brigands don’t come raiding here and the nobles don’t hunt. This place is supposed to be Stick-kinden land.’
    ‘There are Stick-kinden?’ Tynisa demanded incredulously.
    Gaved held up a hand to indicate that she should keep her voice down. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen one. But you don’t, apparently. I heard that a travelling noble decided to pass through here with his retainers, and killed the animals and had his people burn the cane back. He got a five-foot arrow in his chest, while he was taking his supper, and nobody ever saw the archer. I heard that one of Siriell’s predecessors tried to use this place for launching raids from, and he and those few that got out of here talked like the forest itself had come to kill them. So we won’t draw any weapons, and we won’t make too much noise, because they prefer the silence. And when we’re done camping I’m going to leave a few thank-yous about the place, just in case.’
    He was as good as his word, though Tynisa never found out exactly what was in the pouch he left beside the ashes of their campfire. The rising sun made inroads into the mist, but never quite dispelled it, and it was easy to see the tall, thin shadows looming on every side as something more sinister. And probably there are no Stick-kinden, Tynisa told herself , for whoever heard of stick insects having a kinden? But she was far from home now, and many unthinkable things might turn out to be true.
    Towards evening when they were, according to Gaved, nearing the cane forest’s edge, she thought she saw one of the shadows shift and fall back between its brethren, giving her a momentary impression of a fantastically tall and attenuated figure carrying a staff that might have been a bow, and trailing a grey cobweb cloak off into the mist. Later she was sure that she had imagined this, as she imagined so much else, but by then they were clear of the cane and crossing the border into the next province.
    Leose was the princely seat of the Salmae, Gaved explained. Unlike Felipe’s family, they had not lost their stronghold to the Empire. The war had come close, chewing at the edge of Felipe’s great domain and gnawing away odd provinces, but in the end the Treaty of Pearl had put the Wasp-kinden territorial ambitions on hold.
    The Wasp spoke of his own people with a studied detachment, neither condoning nor apologizing for them. He was working hard at being someone in no position to have an opinion on Imperial affairs.
    They had now passed a number of smallholdings, isolated stretches of farmland where the hillsides had been amenable to step agriculture, with clusters of low buildings with sloping roofs on the hilltop above. The land here was