Blood of the Mantis

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Salma,’ Stenwold greeted him, and then, ‘Prince Salme Dien.’

  ‘Just Salma,’ replied the Dragonfly noble. As he stepped forwards, he clasped Stenwold’s hand confidently, and like an equal and not a student. ‘It’s been a while since Myna, Sten.’ His history since their parting was written on his face through bitter experience. His gaze passed on from Stenwold. ‘Tynisa,’ he said.

  She was staring at him uncertainly. ‘Look at you,’ she said, ‘all grown up.’ She went to him, one hand held out as though she was not sure he was really there. A moment later her eyes flicked to the woman who stood just behind him, robed and hooded in dun cloth, yet whose skin shone through, whose face glittered with rainbows. An indefinable expression passed over Tynisa’s face, and she looked away.

  ‘Ah well,’ Stenwold heard her say very quietly.

  Salma gazed at her for a moment, the silence dragging.

  Stenwold opened his mouth a little, then closed it again. There was tension here he could not account for. He glanced at the rough-looking band of men and women that were the Dragonfly’s followers. ‘Nero told me some of what you’ve been through,’ he managed eventually.

  ‘He doesn’t know the half of it,’ Salma told him. Something, some dark memory, caught in his voice as he said it.

  Are we not grave men of state now, Stenwold thought. As he was about to reply, a woman’s voice cried out in joy and Cheerwell was bundling between Salma’s people, rushing up to Stenwold and throwing her arms about him, sabotaging the dignity of the solemn situation utterly. When Stenwold had finally managed to peel her off him he saw that Salma was smiling. It was not the easy grin of his youth, but it was a start.

  ‘Uncle Sten, I’ve got something really, really important to show you,’ Che said excitedly.

  ‘Best save it for Collegium,’ Stenwold told her. ‘We’re close enough to the Wasp army here that I keep looking to the skies.’

  ‘You needn’t worry,’ Salma told him. ‘I have scouts watching for them, and my people know the land better than they do.’

  ‘Even so,’ Stenwold said. ‘When you get to my age, you try not to rely too much on anyone else’s information. Let’s get quickly back to Collegium and then we can take stock.’

  There was a shuffling amongst Salma’s followers and he said, ‘I won’t be going to Collegium with you, Sten.’

  ‘No?’ Stenwold watched him carefully.

  ‘I’m not your agent any more, or your student. I have other responsibilities.’

  ‘Towards . . . ?’

  ‘There is a nomad-town of almost twenty-five hundred, people out there that needs me,’ Salma told him. ‘Currently it’s pitched up against the walls of Sarn, and the Sarnesh Queen is waiting for me to explain to her precisely why that is so, and what we want from her. More than that, I have almost a thousand fighting men who are gathered together only because of me.’

  ‘A thousand?’ Stenwold frowned. ‘I hadn’t heard . . . Who are they? What is this?’

  ‘What it is, Sten, is an army,’ Salma said. ‘And who they are depends on who you ask. Deserters, brigands, farmhands, tinkers, lapsed Way Brothers, more and more all the time. The one thing they have in common is that the Wasp Empire is their enemy.’

  ‘Well, then, the Empire is all of our enemies,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘I don’t see . . .’

  ‘Many of them were slaves,’ Salma explained, leaving a moment’s pause for that statement to echo. ‘Many more are renegades. They trust me, and I am responsible for them. I have not gathered them just to hand them over to Sarn or Collegium as an expendable militia. They are my people, a people in their own right. I call them my New Mercers, but the name they see most often is the Lands-army. We will fight the Empire, Sten, but if the war is won, we will not just disband and return to burned-out farmhouses and servitude or punishment. That is what I will talk to the Queen of Sarn about, and what I will talk to you about, in due course, but . . . things are now different between us. No fault of yours, but events are in the way. I owe these people my service, just as a prince should.’

  ‘I understand,’ Stenwold said. ‘Perhaps I begin to, anyway. Your emissaries will always be welcome at Collegium.’ He glanced down at Che, who was looking suddenly unsure.

  ‘Salma . . .’ she began.

  ‘I’m sorry, Che. You’ve seen a little of my work here. You must appreciate my position.’

  ‘But you could die, if the Wasps catch you. And they’ll try, Salma.’

  ‘I know.’ He smiled, looking so much older than her. ‘When I was in Tark they killed me once, ran me straight through. If she had not come to me even as I hit the floor, that would have been the end of Salme Dien. After that experience, it’s all borrowed time. I cannot turn from the right thing just because it may send me back to where I have already been.’

  ‘You’re always doing this!’ Che snapped at him. ‘Why . . . Why can’t you just come back with us? Salma, I’ve only just found you again, after all we went through . . . Why does it have to be you that does this thing?’

  ‘Because it needs to be done, Che, and no one else will do it,’ he told her. ‘And because a prince cannot abandon his people.’

  ‘Tell me one thing.’ Tynisa’s voice cut across their words, and parted them neatly.

  Salma met her gaze fearlessly. ‘Speak.’

  ‘Does she make you happy?’ Tynisa’s voice barely shook, but the effort needed to keep it steady was plain on her face. Her hand rested on her sword-hilt as Stenwold looked from her to Salma nervously, and Che seemed equally surprised. He recalled that Tynisa and Salma had always been each other’s confidants, but he had not supposed that they were . . . Or perhaps it was because they had never come so close to one another, but that Tynisa had always hoped they would be, one day.

  Stenwold risked a glance at Salma’s people, a few of whom seemed to have picked up a scent of danger. The Butterfly-kinden woman’s face remained serene.

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Salma. ‘Yes she does.’

  A muscle twitched on Tynisa’s face as her eyes sought the glowing face of the other woman. For a moment Tynisa’s emotions were writ so plainly on her face that Stenwold had to look away: For this? she was obviously thinking, weighing her sword skill and her Weaponsmaster’s badge and proud heritage. You turn from me for this?

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Tynisa said to him flatly and turned away, her hand still clenching on the rapier’s hilt.

  Only Stenwold saw the faint glitter of tears.

  ‘I’m making it up, a day at a time,’ Salma said, eyeing her back, ‘but who isn’t?’ His attention shifted. ‘Stenwold, I have something else for you.’ Then he beckoned. ‘Phalmes, let’s have the prisoner.’

  A burly Mynan Soldier Beetle hauled up into view someone who had been hidden up until now behind Salma’s warriors. It was a Wasp-kinden in a long coat, with his hands tied behind his back, palm-to-palm.

  ‘His name’s Gaved, he says. He caught Che as she fled the Wasp army, but we were in time to turn that around. We’ve questioned him and he claims he’s not in their army, just some kind of freelancer.’ Salma tailed off, looking past Stenwold’s shoulder to Balkus, who was pointing at the prisoner, jogging Stenwold’s elbow. ‘What is it, Ant-kinden?’

  ‘He was in that museum place,’ Balkus stated. ‘Doing the robbery.’

  Stenwold stared at the captive, unable to decide whether he recognized him or not. ‘If that’s true, we have more to talk to him about than you might think,’ he advised Salma. ‘You’re happy to hand him over to us?’

  ‘One more mouth to feed is no good to us, and besides, he doesn’t seem to know much about the Wasp Seventh that’s camped north-east of here. He’s all yours.’

  When they were ready to depart, Tynisa was the last to climb into the automotive. Even after Salma and his followers had returned to a camp already being packed up ready to move on, she stared after him, holding her face expresionless with all the craft and Art
she had ever possessed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Achaeos, ‘it was here.’ He looked about the room, once the centre of a rich man’s pleasure, now dusty and untended with just empty cases and stands. The owner’s family had taken everything of value, so only the house itself remained. Collegium’s economy had not yet revived enough for buildings to be changing hands.

  ‘We caught them in the act, really,’ Arianna explained, watching as the Moth himself, grey-robed and like a dusty shadow, drifted from table to table, his free hand touching everything he encountered. ‘We came in from over there . . . then there was a Wasp that took a shot at us. Then we were fighting. It was all over very quickly.’ Behind her, at the door, Tisamon remained very still, but she sensed him like a nail in the back of her head. He was here purely to watch her, and she was sure he was just waiting for some perfidy – any excuse to do away with her. Oh, he would wait for the excuse, anything else he would call ‘dishonour’, but there would be no turning back after that.

  ‘Here.’ The Moth had settled by a small, delicate, wooden table. ‘Right here.’ He leant heavily on his cane, and she saw strain on his grey face that could be due to his injuries or something else. ‘Souls preserve us, how long was it sitting here?’

  ‘What?’ Tisamon demanded, stepping into the museum room. ‘What was here?’

  ‘Don’t you feel it? Tisamon?’ Achaeos demanded. Arianna glanced back at the Mantis, and saw a disturbed expression on his face.

  ‘Yes,’ Achaeos said, ‘you feel something at least, as well you should. In the last of the Days of Lore, Tisamon, when the world was being turned upside-down, there was a ritual performed, a desperate, depraved spell of all spells, and when it went wrong, when it twisted from its makers’ grip, it caused such anguish to the world as you and I and any of us here cannot imagine. Your people and mine, Tisamon, gone rogue from wiser counsel, determined to fight the tide of history by even the foulest means. And they failed, they failed so very badly, so that the unleashed tide of it destroyed the entire hold of Darakyon and bound the twisted souls of its people into the very trees. A taint five centuries old and still not shrinking.’

  Tisamon’s jaw was now set, with a certain look in his eyes that Arianna realized was fear. ‘And this . . . thing?’ he rasped harshly.

  ‘The heart of the ritual. The very core of the Darakyon. And now it has been stolen,’ Achaeos confirmed.

  ‘And the Darakyon wishes it . . . ?’

  ‘Unclaimed. The Darakyon was happiest when it lay here, unknown and unsuspected, unused, surrounded by indomitable walls of disbelief, but now it is out in the world again.’ He looked from the Mantis to Arianna. ‘I do not need to dissemble or blur my words with you. You both know the power that magic can wield. This thing, and I cannot think otherwise, is the most potent relic to survive the Days of Lore, the greatest magic left in the world – and it is dark. You have seen the Darakyon, Tisamon, so you know what I speak of. In the hands of any who knew how to awaken it, its potential for harm would be unthinkable.’

  ‘Truly?’ Arianna asked. ‘I’ve encountered magicians, and . . . they aren’t the people our legends tell of: I’ve seen Manipuli turning people’s opinions, tricks with dice, an image you think you see, that isn’t there when next you look. And then some Beetle comes along and tells you it’s all mass hysteria and done with mirrors. And now you’re saying . . . well, in this day and age, I’m not sure I can see any great magic come to return us to the Days of Lore.’

  ‘The Days of Lore are gone,’ Achaeos agreed. ‘But to unleash the power contained within this – a box just so big, slightly too large to grip easily with one hand – would change the world. Your Beetles and the rest would not know it for magic, but it would touch and taint them: it would spread darkness in minds and hearts, breed madness, sour friendships and poison loves. And whoever made use of it would be, I’d wager, no more able to control it than its original creators.’

  ‘And some Spider-kinden now has it,’ Tisamon added, ‘who could be anywhere.’

  ‘Do you have so little faith in a seer’s powers?’ Achaeos asked him mildly. ‘I know who has it, because I have met with her before. I feel her echo here in this room.’

  ‘I saw a man,’ Arianna said.

  ‘Yet she was a woman, nonetheless,’ Achaeos corrected, ‘the same that spied among us in Helleron, taking the face of that halfbreed artificer.’

  ‘But you killed her!’ Tisamon objected.

  ‘I thought I had,’ Achaeos said. The rush of magic, in this city of all places, seemed to shake him. Standing in the shadow of the missing box, it was as though all the artifice and craft of the Beetles had never been. ‘I see now I was wrong, for she was here, in whatever guise, and she left with the Shadow Box of the Darakyon.’

  ‘For where?’ Tisamon demanded. ‘For the Empire?’

  ‘I will know,’ Achaeos said. ‘Within a day, or perhaps two. I am pressing with all the power I possess and I think that, even at this distance, the things of the Darakyon lend me more strength. They are desperate that the box should not be used, for its possessor would then command them. Soon I will be able to look upon a map and see it there, as plain as writing. Tisamon, will you go with me?’

  ‘You’re not fit to go anywhere,’ Arianna pointed out. Tisamon gave her an angry glare and she spread her hands. ‘What? He’s injured. Stenwold would have a fit if he knew the Moth was even on his feet.’

  ‘Yet I must go,’ Achaeos insisted, ‘and I would have you with me, Tisamon – and your daughter too. A swift strike, wherever the box has gone to, to bring it back, safe from harm.’

  ‘For this I will go as far as the world can take me,’ Tisamon assured her. ‘Tynisa must make her own decisions, but I am with you.’

  Achaeos’s blank eyes gave no clues. ‘Thank you, Servant of the Green,’ he said. ‘But we must arm ourselves in knowledge, first.’

  ‘What knowledge?’ Arianna asked him. ‘Who knows more, of this? Doctor Nicrephos did, but he’s dead. Surely he was the only one.’

  ‘There is one coming soon who also knows,’ Achaeos said. His words silenced them.

  ‘How . . . ?’ Arianna’s voice petered out. She had spent a long time amongst the rational Beetle-kinden, but her roots lay with an older tradition. The Spider-kinden had their seers too. ‘You’ve seen . . . ?’

  ‘Stenwold has snared a rare catch,’ Achaeos explained. ‘Fate’s weave favours us.’

  ‘Achaeos.’ Tisamon’s tone was flat, but Arianna detected the faint tremor there. ‘You were not . . . such a seer before, to have such gifted insights,’

  ‘Save me your tact,’ the Moth said harshly. ‘Oh, I am no great seer, to foresee all things. ‘“Little Neophyte”, they once called me. But now I am led by the nose. They see this. They feed me whatever is needed so that I will dance to their steps. You know who I mean.’

  Tisamon flinched, a quick shudder passing through him. Oh, he knows, Arianna realized, and: I want nothing to do with this. This is Mantis magic, and there is no place in it for me.

  ‘There is to be an interrogation,’ Achaeos continued. ‘I can all but hear the echoes of the questions. Tisamon, I would have you on hand. In case our man proves reluctant.’

  In any event it was a day’s waiting before Stenwold could make the arrangements. The locusts of Collegiate bureaucracy had descended on him almost as soon as he reentered the city walls. When the message came it was at very short notice, Stenwold grabbing a free hour and an unused room, and assembling as many as possible to hear what was hopefully to be revealed.

  They had Gaved seated at a table in what had once been some administrator’s office. This should be conducted in some place better than this, Stenwold thought. We should have oppressive interrogation rooms, perhaps. But of course the worst Collegium could offer were the cells used by the militia, and rooms here within the College were more convenient. He and Che were sitting at the same table with the prisoner and would have looked like just off-duty academics e
xcept for Tisamon’s brooding presence and Achaeos standing as chief prosecutor.

  Also except for the fourth man sitting at the table, whom Stenwold was trying not to think about right now.

  ‘You’re not denying you were part of this theft?’ Achaeos accused the prisoner.

  The Wasp shook his head. ‘Your man spotted me right off,’ he shrugged, ‘so what can I say?’

  ‘You can tell us exactly what you thought you were stealing.’

  ‘I have no idea what it was,’ Gaved replied. ‘I didn’t even get a good look at it before your mob came piling in.’

  Achaeos glanced at Stenwold, who spread his hands cluelessly.

  ‘Who wanted it?’ Tisamon asked. ‘You must know that.’

  The Wasp shrugged. ‘We weren’t told. You don’t ask that in my line of work.’ So far as Stenwold could tell, he was not genuinely holding anything back. Gaved was simply a mercenary, a hunter of fugitives by preference. Stenwold, looking at him, saw a man who knew he was in serious trouble, but without that desperation he would expect of a captured enemy agent with Tisamon at his back. There was, so Stenwold guessed, no great secret that Gaved was holding close.

  ‘I can tell you what we reckoned,’ the Wasp added, unexpectedly. ‘It makes no difference to me now. The Empire wanted this thing of yours for someone important. Someone really high up, like a general, perhaps, or someone in the Imperial Court. The fellow who gave us our marching orders said as much.’

  Achaeos bit his lip anxiously, leaning imperceptibly into Che, who sat very close to him. Their reunion had brought Stenwold more vicarious joy than almost anything else that had happened recently. It had been Che, too, who had unexpectedly spoken up for their captive, so that Gaved was sitting under guard but not bound.