Blood of the Mantis

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘I believe you were warning us off,’ Tynisa prompted.

  ‘Actually, I wasn’t.’ Founder looked between her and the Mantis, as though weighing them on his merchant’s scales. ‘You see, it may surprise you to know that I recognize that badge there, that both of you are wearing. I’m a man of strange interests, which is of course why I’m here at all.’ The smile, the harder one, broadened. ‘I don’t know how much your little scholar is paying the two of you, but how would you like to work for me and earn yourselves a wage more worthy of your skills?’

  ‘We are not mercenaries for hire—’ Tisamon started. Tynisa cut him off. ‘Tell us what you mean, Master Bellowern.’

  He smiled at her. ‘As I said, I know what that badge of yours means. I’m a knowledgeable man. To be amongst the real collectors you have to be. I was a roving factor for the Consortium for twenty-five years before they finally let me into their higher ranks, and I went to places you’ve probably never even heard of. We Beetles can go places that the Wasps can’t, or won’t. I’ve learnt a great deal, and I’ve found that history fascinates me, especially when it survives into the present, as that badge has done.’

  ‘You cannot think we would simply betray our current . . . employer,’ Tynisa said.

  ‘I rather hope you wouldn’t, in fact,’ Bellowern confirmed. ‘I don’t know the details of your contract, though. You might be fee’d by the day or even the hour. I’m proposing two contracts, though, and I want you to consider them. I’ll even buy you out of your current obligations if your master agrees. The thing is, as I said, I know that mark you wear. I’ll ask your Mantis word of honour on any deal we strike.’

  ‘Even knowing what it is we seek?’ Tisamon said. ‘You would take us to it, guide us to it, even knowing that?’

  ‘With your word on it, Mantis, and your sworn oath, I think I would.’ Founder Bellowern smiled like a man who has leverage on his opponent. ‘But let’s deal with the first matter first, as is always best in business. For the next few days, until that other business comes to hand, I feel myself in need of a little additional protection. Nothing more than that. Your badges suggest a level of skill I’d be willing to pay handsomely for. After that, well . . . we’ll see how satisfactorily we work together, shall we?’

  ‘What are you worried about, Master Bellowern?’ Tynisa asked him.

  ‘Just the usual. My peers and competitors are not principled people, so a little insurance is called for.’

  You’re lying, Tynisa knew and, although his face was admirably bland, his eyes had flicked, just the once, to the mysterious Spider girl. This only confirmed Tynisa’s suspicions. Has the collector come into possession of some dangerous goods? It seemed certain.

  Tisamon was looking put out, but he was waiting for her to make her next move, trusting that she knew what she was doing. In this arena, where motive and feelings were the main weapons at hand, she was better equipped than he was.

  ‘Master Bellowern, what can you offer us?’

  ‘Fifty Imperials per day,’ he said smoothly. ‘But, as I perceive you are a Lowlander from your speech, that would mean about half as much in Helleron Centrals.’

  ‘Forty Centrals in Helleron coin, each. Double if we fight,’ she said, straight back.

  Founder Bellowern regarded her impassively, giving no clue as to whether she had just oversold or undersold herself. ‘Agreed,’ he said at last, letting her know that he would have agreed more. ‘But what of your current contract?’

  ‘We will have to speak to our patron,’ she told him. ‘However, I think he will be agreeable. As you guess, his purse is not large. Where shall we rejoin you?’

  ‘I am aware that you know where I have made my temporary residence,’ he said. ‘I shall expect you there.’ He stood, and she saw a thought come to him that got through his calm façade to twitch at his face. ‘Come before nightfall, if you come at all. That must be a term of the contract.’

  When he had gone, she looked towards Tisamon, who was frowning, not at her but after the Beetle and his retinue.

  ‘He does not understand all he thinks,’ Tynisa said. ‘For I am not bound by any “Mantis honour”. I hope that does not disappoint you.’

  He made no comment on it. Instead he said, ‘I confess I am intrigued. What is he scared of?’

  ‘There’s one obvious way to find out,’ she said. ‘Let’s tell Achaeos, and then we’ll present ourselves for Master Bellowern’s amusement. And perhaps, once he has us, he’ll find other uses for us, such as removing the competition. There are people out there who know what we want to know. Bellowern isn’t the only one, but he can lead us to the others.’

  Fourteen

  It was more than Stenwold had expected, and it gave him more hope than he had seen in a long time. In this hall within Sarn, all the Lowlands were gathered against the storm the coming year would bring. The Sarnesh had reworked a barracks, taking out its internal walls and installing seats and a grand table for the greatest war council the Lowlands had ever seen. The men and women standing about it now showed that this had not been a wasted effort.

  Stenwold himself represented Collegium. He watched the other ambassadors watching him. It seemed incredible to him, but his name was on all their lips. He was known across the entire Lowlands, as though he were some great hero of history.

  This is history, he reminded himself. We make it in this very room.

  The Queen of Sarn was there in person, a gesture which displayed the great faith and trust she placed in this council and in what it meant for the future. She had half a dozen of her Tacticians ranged behind her, for immediate advice, and even protection, if need be, and of course she had the whole of her city to call on if she needed more of either. Still, she had made a statement, taken a vital step. In refusing to delegate her presence, she had shown the world how much importance the Sarnesh placed on this.

  There were two Mantis warlords here too, one from Etheryon and one from Nethyon, standing pointedly separate without staff or assistants. From their stance it was clear to see that they did not like one another. They were both women, and so was the slender, aging Moth who stood between them. In a move unprecedented, Dorax had sent a Skryre to Sarn for this purpose.

  There was also a Tactician from Kes, with half a dozen soldier-diplomats behind him, and that was far more than Stenwold had hoped for. There had never been a Kessen ambassador in Sarn ever before. About a dozen blandly dressed Flies had come from Egel and Merro. They looked the sort to act irreverently but they were serious now. Their warrens were directly on the coastal invasion path. Beside them, Parops stood for the currently occupied city of Tark.

  No one from the Felyal. Nobody from Vek either, but then the Vekken were still licking their wounds. Nobody from Helleron, although the Moth Skryre claimed to speak for her kin in Tharn.

  A white-haired and bearded man, belonging to a kinden Stenwold did not immediately recognize, caught his eye. He was taking his place at the table, to the baffled looks of the other delegates. Stenwold caught at a passing Sarnesh servant and asked who this stranger was.

  ‘His name is Sfayot,’ the Ant reported, after a moment’s silent conference. ‘He speaks for the renegade prince.’

  ‘The . . . ?’ Then Stenwold suddenly realized. Salma! Salma has sent an ambassador? What does he think he’s doing? But, then, the fact that the Sarnesh Queen had allowed it spoke volumes. Just what exactly had Salma discussed with her?

  ‘Feeling proud?’ a sly voice asked in his ear. He looked about and found an elegantly dressed Spider lounging beside him, eyeing up the two Mantis-kinden.

  ‘Teornis.’

  ‘Of the Aldanrael, at your service, and apparently that of the whole Lowlands.’ The Spider Lord-Martial sketched a bow. ‘Well, Master Maker, this is an impressive piece of artifice, but will it run?’

  Stenwold looked about him at the faces, both familiar and strange, and then back at his own staff, consisting only of Sperra and Arianna. ‘All these people have
not come here for nothing,’ he declared, and knew that he was right.

  Two hours later, and he just managed to leave the room on his own feet, although, if Arianna and Sperra could physically have carried him, he might have requested it.

  They had not come there for nothing at least. So far so good. They had come there, it seemed, for the snapbow. How glad he was that he had been so honest with the Sarnesh on the subject, for it seemed that everyone, even the blasted Moth-kinden, knew that Collegium had engineered one. Instead of any serious debate on the Wasp Empire, everyone had come with their demands for it, regarding who should have it and who should not.

  The Sarnesh wanted it, and perhaps, as its first victims, they even had a right to it. He had known that. Of course, the Sarnesh did not want anyone else to have it. The Kessens, on the other hand, demanded that the Sarnesh should not be given access to the weapon unless they could have it too, and Stenwold could see their point. How long would Kes stand if the Sarnesh gained such a military advantage? He was so used to seeing Sarn as Collegium’s staunch ally that he must now learn to view them as an Ant-kinden city-state in their own right.

  Teornis, having lounged through most of the proceedings with an amused look on his face, had then taken the opportunity to say that, if Kes got it, then shouldn’t the Spiderlands have the thing as well, whatever it was and whatever it was supposed to do? On the other hand, if the Lowlands could not agree on how to deploy this wretched machine, and yet still needed it in order to defeat the Wasps, he had suggested, mockingly, that perhaps it would best be given into the sensible hands of his people alone.

  The Moth-kinden had, with a sharp word, restrained her Mantis allies from attacking Teornis across the tabletop. The Ancient League’s argument was that nobody should have the snapbow, that the Wasps, as its sole holders, should be immediately defeated, and then all plans and examples of the weapon must be destroyed. They were obviously considering what great effect the device might have, employed against their own forces afterwards. The Fly-kinden seemed divided on the subject, but one of them did have the initiative to ask whether a smaller version might be constructed. Only Parops and the white-bearded Sfayot had shown no great interest in the device, for the disposition of their forces was such that it barely mattered to them.

  Of actual diplomacy, of alliance, of the war itself, precious little had been discussed. Instead Stenwold had become the anvil for all the hammers of the Lowlands, and his head was still ringing.

  ‘They will change their tune when spring draws close,’ Arianna assured him, ‘Then they will realize.’

  ‘I am not sure this council will last until spring,’ Stenwold told her. ‘If I cannot solve this, then the snapbow may turn out to be the weapon that destroys the Lowlands after all, and before the Wasps even get a chance.’

  Elsewhere in Sarn, a servant waited in the Foreigner’s Quarter. He was waiting by the rail-line leading to Collegium, but not for a train. Instead, he glanced at the sky. He seemed, though was not, Sarnesh Ant-kinden, dressed in a simple servant’s tunic, therefore nobody paid him much heed.

  The messenger came without a word: a fat black fly the size of his fist, meandering over the bustling crowd of locals and visitors until it caught the scent the man had dabbed on himself. It dived for him, and he caught it in his hands, to scattered admiration amongst those standing nearest. He took it away to one side.

  He was no Sarnesh, or at least not quite. A half-breed, but one of the rare kind where the face was that of either one parent or the other. He could walk unsuspected amongst the Sarnesh. His given name, Lyrus, was an Ant name. He could even hear their mind-speech, but he was none of them. He was Rekef.

  He held the insect long enough to pluck the tiny rolled message tied between its legs. An uncertain way of communicating, this, but his handler was only a mile outside the city walls, a short enough sprint for a well-trained animal. He let it go, and the fly blundered aimlessly about the nearest wall for a moment, before buzzing away, understanding, in some crude fashion, that its task was done.

  Lyrus had been well schooled. It only took a moment to decode the message.

  Lowlander alliance must be stopped soonest. Destabilize Sarn as alliance centre. Sarnesh Queen must die. Approach Avt depot for details and wherewithal.

  He folded the note and went over to a Fly-kinden food vendor, feeding the paper to the charcoal flames even as he haggled over the price of a meal. He then set off for the city gates. The Avt depot was two miles south down the Collegium line, a brisk enough walk for any Ant-kinden, or even for one who just resembled them. There he would take a delivery from one of the station’s traders, and in that delivery would be included his further orders. As a servant attached to the palace, he had many duties that took him to many places. The beauty of his pretence was that no suspicion would attach to him. He was, even in the minds of his foes, a dutiful son of Sarn.

  It was evening by the time Lyrus paused at the gates of Sarn, just another Sarnesh Ant coming in with a basket on his back, just another Ant doing the everyday business of the city. There were plenty of soldiers about, but they were all for keeping their eyes on the new influx of foreigners and nobody spared a second thought for Lyrus. After all, he was one of them within his mind. They addressed him as brother and he hailed them in turn, smiling derisively at them in the hidden recesses of his head. They had no idea they were deceived, and most of them could not even conceive of it.

  Loyalty: it was ingrained into the Ant mind. There were always mavericks, rogues, those who could not live inside the tight lattice of orders and duty. They left or were cast out, but they never quite lost their loyalty totally. Even those who were hunted down across the Lowlands, to die in some seedy alley on the swords of their brothers, did not quite lose that tie. In the moment of their deaths, Lyrus had no doubt, they found themselves reunited with what they had given up.

  But he was different: Lyrus the halfbreed and son of a halfbreed sire on a Sarnesh mother. That part of him that was not Sarnesh was so mongrel that he had never bothered to untangle his antecedents. The one thing he had known, growing up in the Empire, was that the halfbreed side of him made him automatically a slave, but the Sarnesh side of him got him cursed and whipped.

  It had been easy enough, after that, to associate Sarn with all that was worst in the world. Then he had been found by the Rekef, and they had explained that he could yet serve the Empire and thus blot out the stain of his heritage. The younger Lyrus had been desperate for the chance.

  He had spent seven years in Sarn since then, just being one of the locals, becoming known. He had worked patiently and tirelessly, a true Ant indeed, but all for the Rekef cause. He loved the Rekef. It was not just that they had given him a purpose, but he also loved their ingenuity, their resourcefulness. He knew that, back in the Empire, it was the Rekef Inlander they feared more, but the Outlander branch had to be twice as clever and find its tools in the most unlikely places.

  He had met with his masters as instructed, outside the city. A few words had been exchanged, and a gift. As soon as he had hidden himself away in a storeroom at the palace, he took a closer look at it. It was a beautiful example of the weaponsmith’s art: dark wood bound with brass, possessing four arms of sprung steel. It was a double-strung repeating crossbow, and the finest example he had ever seen – a fit weapon for a regicide. It was Collegium-built, and that could hardly be accidental. He was to be dubbed a Collegiate assassin, then. He knew there were already tensions between Sarn and its old ally, and this was where a wedge was to be inserted.

  He knew that the Queen would want to meet with the fat man from Collegium soon. That would be his moment. He would have everything ready for then.

  For Lyrus, being as quick as they came, it had been easy enough to secure himself a position within the palace. Always so eager to put in extra hours, always diligent, always careful beyond even the exacting Ant-kinden standards. The overseers placed real value on him, until gradually he had the run of
the place. He had even attended the Queen herself before. Really, for someone with a devious brain, and the Ant-kinden Art to link minds, it was easy to achieve anything in this city.

  And, of course, he would not be alone. His masters were sending two men to assist him. Not Wasps, for no Wasp could walk the streets of Sarn undetected, but a pair of Fly-kinden killers. Lyrus knew not to rely on them. They would be merely a distraction for the guards. Here, in his own hands, was the machinery for the alliance’s destruction.

  He was aware that he was not expected to survive but perhaps he could surprise his masters in that. If the business was swift enough, he might be the only witness whose story would be believed.

  ‘How many soldiers do you have, back in Collegium?’ Stenwold asked.

  ‘Twelve-hundred and seventy-four.’ Parops did not need to waste a moment thinking about it. Following the Vekken siege of Collegium, word about a renegade Tarkesh army had passed across the Lowlands and, one-by-one and squad-by-squad, Tarkesh citizens had started to come out of the woodwork. Some had managed to flee after the death of the King, as the Wasps were finalizing their hold on the city. Others had been garrisoning villages or dispatched on other assignments beyond the city walls, and therefore had not been back in time to help defend their home. A few had even been Collegium residents or students at the Great College. Parops had thus become, without ever intending it, a rallying point. Some of his men were already, in their idle mental talk, promoting him to the rank of tactician.

  Twelve-hundred and seventy-four disciplined and motivated Tarkesh infantry, Stenwold considered. Of course, it would probably be more than that by now. That figure was the one that had come to Parops by the latest train from Collegium, therefore already a few days cold. It was an expensive proposition for Collegium to retain so many, but the Tarkesh were second to none as soldiers and Stenwold’s people were only now starting to levy a real army of their own. The Beetle-kinden’s numbers and equipment would be there, by spring, but not the discipline or the skill.