Blood of the Mantis

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Cesta’s smile was cold. ‘I’m sorry, Bella te Schola Taki-Amre,’ he said smoothly. ‘Is this your island? Am I not welcome on it?’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned you’re welcome nowhere near me,’ Taki told him. He might have been almost twice her height, and a feared assassin as well, but she muscled up to him as though she was going to lay him flat. ‘You leave Che alone, you hear me?’

  ‘Have I done her harm?’ Cesta pointed out.

  ‘Nothing you do turns out any good. Perhaps you forget that,’ the Fly replied hotly.

  Che glanced between them nervously. ‘He hasn’t done anything to me,’ she said. ‘We were just talking—’

  ‘This isn’t about you,’ Taki said sharply. ‘Just you remember that there are no depths that this bastard won’t stoop to. None. He has no morality, nothing in him to make him care about others.’

  In answer to Che’s uncertain glance, Cesta said, ‘True. All of it entirely true. The curse of our blood.’ She was not sure whether he was being genuinely flippant or hiding a deeper hurt.

  ‘Are you coming or what?’ bellowed Scobraan, his cockpit now open. He was looking up at the skies nervously. ‘Don’t want to get caught on the water if they come back!’

  Taki nodded. ‘Are you expecting a lift?’ she asked Cesta drily.

  ‘I have my own boat,’ he said. ‘No doubt I shall see you in the city, one of these days.’

  ‘Don’t try to frighten me,’ Taki told him.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ shouted Scobraan, and Taki nodded, turning away from Cesta and visibly dismissing him from her mind.

  ‘You’ll travel on the Mayfly Prolonged,’ she said to Che, who recalled this as the name of Scobraan’s craft. ‘Sieur Nero’s there as well, he’s got some bad news.’

  ‘Why do you hate Cesta so much?’ Che whispered. ‘He’s a murderer.’

  ‘That’s not it.’

  ‘Then whatever it is, it isn’t your business,’ Taki told her. ‘I’m just glad to find you safe, Che.’

  ‘Did he kill . . . what was it, Amre? Your lover?’

  That stopped Taki short, halfway into her seat on the Esca. ‘He was my half-brother, Amre, and the Wasps killed him with their own hands. No, Cesta killed his own lover, for money. She happened to be a friend of mine, too, but that’s not really the point.’

  The Mayfly Prolonged had hold-space that just fitted Nero and Che crouching, comfortably enough for him but exceedingly cramped for her.

  ‘So what’s the bad news?’ she asked.

  ‘You know that Empire airship you had all the problems with,’ he began.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well we reckon it was dropping off,’ said Nero. ‘Because there’s a whole load more Wasp soldiers in Solarno now, enough to get everyone worried. I think it’s starting.’

  Sixteen

  She had walked into the garrison at Jerez without a word, picking up a guard to escort her as she did so. She looked like any stooped old woman in a dark robe, some emaciated grandmother hobbling with her cane, save that her eyes were red and glistening.

  The guard from the gates then passed her on to a watch sergeant, who passed her to a duty sergeant, and she made no introductions or explanations, just latched onto each man in turn like a leech. Eventually they brought her to the man she sought, the man she had already sniffed out through the sloping corridors of the fort.

  ‘Lieutenant Brodan,’ the duty sergeant began.

  ‘What is it?’ Brodan was at his desk, sifting reports dictated by his Skater agents. The sheer volume of fabrication had been wearing on him.

  ‘Lieutenant Brodan . . .’ The sergeant’s face went slack. ‘I . . .’

  ‘A message? A visitor?’

  ‘A . . . visitor, yes. A visitor.’ The sergeant blinked, made a vague gesture at the robed woman. ‘This is . . . is . . .’

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Sergeant?’ Brodan snapped. ‘Nothing sir, I . . .’ The man reeled slightly. ‘Excuse me, sir, I feel . . .’

  Brodan looked from him to the gaunt face of the old woman he escorted and a cold shiver went through him. ‘Excused, Sergeant,’ he said quietly, and let the man get out of earshot before he inquired, ‘And what was that all in aid of?’

  ‘Why, in aid of you, Lieutenant Brodan,’ she said, sitting down. Her voice was little more than a whisper.

  ‘And who decided that sending me a hag was the best way to help me?’

  Her lipless mouth curved mirthlessly. ‘There are those in the capital very interested in your success. They feel sooner is better than later, Lieutenant. So they have sent me to you. If it will help you, my name is Sykore.’

  Rekef? he thought momentarily, but she was surely not Rekef. This was no Rekef approach or technique. She was something else entirely.

  ‘What help can you be?’ he asked reluctantly.

  ‘I can lead you to your enemies,’ she told him. ‘Do not think that I have been idle here in Jerez.’

  ‘I see no reason to trust you,’ Lieutenant Brodan said. Indeed, it was hard to see anything positive about his new acquaintance. She sent a distinct shudder through him, even though he was a Rekef officer, which was not a profession for the squeamish.

  ‘Then you must make your choice. I am only offering you, after all, what you are here for, and no more. How easy to turn that down?’ The creature’s hissing voice was getting on his nerves. Pallid and hollow-cheeked she was, and with red, staring eyes like something from a children’s story. ‘I shall take you to your enemies,’ she repeated. ‘I know exactly where they are.’

  ‘You mean where they were,’ Brodan scoffed. ‘And how long ago was that?’

  ‘Where they are. Where they will be,’ the creature insisted. Her bony hands twitched in her lap. ‘What can you comprehend? Nothing. So understand only that I know.’

  ‘And since when did I have enemies?’ Brodan asked. ‘Everyone likes me.’

  ‘They are here to take what you seek, and that makes them enemies,’ his visitor said patiently.

  ‘Collectors?’

  ‘Not collectors but thieves. Thieves from the Lowlands,’ she hissed. ‘Enemies of your Empire.’

  ‘I thought you said you were working for the Empire,’ Brodan said suspiciously.

  She curled her thin lips. ‘I am older than your Empire, so what should I care? Only that I am instructed to lead you by the nose until you have acquired this thing you seek, so here I am. If you turn aside my help, and then fail, it shall soon be known.’

  Brodan grimaced. It was true that the Rekef used some strange folk as agents, although this unidentifiable thing must be the strangest yet.

  ‘I shall be watching you,’ he warned.

  ‘Watch all you want. I shall even dance for you, if you wish.’

  He shivered again. Is this Maxin’s work then? Where did the general dredge this freak up from?

  ‘So take us,’ he said. ‘Show us these enemies that we’re supposed to have. Let’s sort them out.’

  She rose. ‘They must be stalked,’ she said, folding her hands primly before her. ‘Blood will be shed here tonight.’

  ‘This is Jerez, and blood is shed here every night,’ Brodan responded, wishing he felt as contemptuous as he sounded. Only ten minutes in a room with this monster, with the evening now drawing on, and he had begun to feel decidedly uneasy.

  ‘Gather up your soldiers,’ she told him, and then her hand went up, her head tilting back as though she had scented something. ‘Gather them quickly. The blood has begun to flow. We must go. We must go now!’

  *

  Achaeos had been suspicious, which Tynisa attributed mostly to his distrust of Beetle-kinden merchant-lords. His own magic had failed to trace the box, though, and so he had at last given in with bad grace.

  ‘If things go badly,’ he had advised, ‘find your way to Nivit’s home. Gaved is there, watching over Thalric, and I understand that Nivit has people he can call upon to fight for him, insofar as these wretched little crea
tures ever fight.’

  ‘What about you?’ she had asked, seeing they had found him alone. Jons Allanbridge, it seemed, was airborne somewhere, testing out the newly repaired Buoyant Maiden.

  ‘I can hide as well as any Skater,’ said Achaeos. ‘They will not find me.’ He frowned, studying her closely. ‘There is something more to this?’

  ‘Oh, no doubt,’ she said. ‘But there’s only one way to find out what exactly, and that’s to take up Master Bellowern’s invitation.’

  Now she was hurrying along behind Tisamon, heading for the grounded gondola that Founder lurked in, as evening slowly grew over the sky.

  ‘That Beetle is more frightened than he will admit even to himself. I wonder why,’ Tisamon remarked.

  ‘His rivals, no doubt,’ said Tynisa. ‘Perhaps they have joined forces against him.’

  The Mantis shook his head. ‘More than that. No man becomes that great unless he can deal with the envy of rivals. It must be the box itself.’

  ‘Then what about that Spider girl?’

  ‘Perhaps she knows where it is?’ Tisamon said. ‘Perhaps he means for us to guard her.’ He stopped abruptly. ‘Perhaps that girl was Scyla the spy.’

  Tynisa also paused, unsettled by this new thought. ‘We can’t rule it out,’ she admitted. ‘But, then, we can’t rule out that Founder himself is the spy. From what Achaeos said, she can look like anyone.’

  ‘So this is a trap?’

  ‘It could be a trap. Do you want to go back?’

  Tisamon raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Why?’

  She saw that he would rather that it was indeed a trap, something straightforward to turn his blade on. He was all anticipation.

  ‘The rooms inside that thing are going to be low and small,’ she warned him.

  ‘Let that worry them more than us. It negates their numbers,’ was all he thought of her concern. He set off again, faster, but Tynisa had felt a tickling sensation on her wrist. Inspecting it idly, she saw blood oozing there. Her mysterious scratch had opened up again, although she could have sworn that it was only shallow, a mere nothing.

  ‘What is it?’ Tisamon asked her. She shook her head, wiping her hand with a cloth, while keeping it from view. The scar seemed to have resealed itself rapidly. She had an uneasy moment, just a second of it, as though she was surrounded by a great chasm, yawning all about her, and she was about to topple into it.

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied hurriedly. ‘Nothing at all.’

  They were admitted without delay into the gondola, heading up along a gangplank that two of Founder’s men lowered for them. The interior had fewer rooms than Tynisa had guessed, with higher ceilings and more light and space. If not for a faint slant in the outside walls, she would have taken this place for a real house, even a regular house in Collegium. With the windows shuttered and gas lamps flickering on the walls, it could have been the sitting room of any College Master: rugs on the floor, bookshelves and paintings, even a little gilded automaton standing on Founder’s broad desk, wound down and caught motionless in mid-step.

  The Beetle magnate sat waiting for them behind the desk, and there were two guards already present in the room. Tynisa looked further, and sure enough found the Spider girl standing in the shadows of one corner, staring wide-eyed at the newcomers. There was no indication as to anyone here being Scyla.

  ‘You’ve taken your time,’ Founder complained. There was a broad-based decanter on the desk, but it was already mostly empty. ‘May I take it that your patron has released you?’

  ‘We’re all yours,’ Tynisa informed him. ‘Make what you will of us.’

  He nodded. There was an edginess about his glance that she needed no great skill to notice. ‘You expect your enemies tonight,’ she observed.

  Founder stood up reflexively, one hand reaching for something below the desk-top. ‘Don’t presume to know my business.’

  ‘You will at least tell us who we are to fight,’ suggested Tisamon. Around them the guards were shuffling uncertainly, and Tynisa realized that they did not know either. Whatever hornet’s nest Founder had kicked over, it was something he had not shared with anybody else. Anybody except the Spider, that was. Founder’s new slave knew, Tynisa could tell. She knew, and she was terrified. Still, there was a raw, fragile look to her that suggested that everything frightened her. It was not a normal Spider-kinden look, but perhaps it could be used.

  If he won’t say, perhaps she will.

  ‘I will tell you nothing,’ Founder said to Tisamon. ‘If they . . . If we’re attacked, just fight. That’s all you need to know.’

  ‘Perhaps we could carry the fight to your competitors,’ the Mantis suggested.

  Founder’s laughter in response was fierce and desperate. ‘Oh, don’t promise what you can’t deliver, Weapons-master, so just stay close and keep your blades ready. You want anything, ask Bradawl there, but no forays outside, no time off. We now have our agreement.’ In a smooth motion he threw two pouches on to the desktop, heavy with coin.

  With a smile, Tynisa scooped them up. It was, she reflected, a very large sum of money, the kind of money she had never dreamt of in her days back at the College. Perhaps there was something to be said for this trade after all.

  She now hoped nothing would happen overnight to change that thought.

  ‘Which is Bradawl?’ Tisamon enquired.

  ‘Here.’ It was a broad-shouldered Beetle with a breastplate over leather armour. ‘Lieutenant-Auxillian Pater Bradawl,’ he announced and clasped Tisamon’s hand, wrist-to-wrist. ‘Hear you’re s’posed to be good.’ His accent was not Empire but the homely, familiar tones of Helleron.

  ‘Good enough,’ Tisamon agreed. He gazed at Tynisa, who threw another glance towards the mysterious Spider girl. ‘Perhaps we can talk, Bradawl,’ he added.

  Bradawl certainly concurred, drawing Tisamon out of earshot of his master.

  Founder was writing in a ledger now, turning up a gas lamp for better light to read by. A single menial came to refill his decanter, and Tynisa belatedly noticed that, of the big retinue the man had travelled with earlier, only the guards now remained. Most of his servants must be either elsewhere or dismissed for the night.

  So as not to get in the way. It was an unwelcome thought. The two guards in the room were conferring with a third now, who just had come in from . . . Tynisa tried to work out the geography of the place, but it was impossible from the little she had seen so far: perhaps from the roof-deck? She caught a few whispered words of the man’s conversation: something concerning lights, and the lake. Founder’s pen scratched audibly, abruptly, to a halt in a scar of ink. He cursed to himself and began writing anew.

  She stepped a little closer to the Spider girl, doing her best to keep an eye on her and at the same time on the others in the study. The thought of the face-changing Scyla was close to her mind.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ she whispered, hoping that another Spider face would be reassuring at least. The girl just stared at her.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Tynisa tried her best smile. ‘I’m not involved in any of this. You want to talk to anyone, you can talk to me. Are you from the Spiderlands? The Empire?’

  ‘I am from nowhere you know,’ said the girl, but the words were unnecessary, and Tynisa felt a chill go through her on hearing that soft, strange voice. Just as she had known Bradawl was raised in Helleron, or that Bellowern himself was an imperial Beetle rather than a Lowlander, she realized that this girl’s lilting and strange accent was utterly alien to her, more so than any she had ever heard in cosmopolitan Collegium or occupied Myna.

  ‘Tell me, quickly,’ Tynisa said.

  ‘They will kill me tonight,’ was all the girl said, and Tynisa could see that she did not want to be here within these walls, but that whatever was outside was worse.

  ‘You, Weaponsmistress!’ Founder snapped. ‘Over here!’

  Tynisa cursed inwardly, but went over to the man’s desk.

  ‘You don’t talk to her,’
Founder warned. ‘Nobody does.’ Tynisa expected him to add ‘Except me’, but those words never came. Apparently, nobody at all talked to the mystery girl. ‘Now you stay close by me,’ Bellowern added, and there was nothing flirtatious in his voice. He took another swallow of wine, but it seemed only to leave him more tense.

  ‘If we could—’ she started, but he cut her off immediately.

  ‘Just kill them,’ he said. ‘When they arrive, kill them.’

  She nodded, looking over to where Tisamon was sharing quiet words with Pater Bradawl.

  The Mantis had expected Bellowern’s guard captain to be hostile and resentful at these overpaid newcomers, but the man was a Beetle, as pragmatic as they came.

  ‘I’m just glad we’ve got some replacement hands,’ Bradawl was saying. The darkness under his eyes spoke of missing sleep. ‘We lost three today.’

  ‘Lost to whom? How were they killed?’ Tisamon asked.

  ‘Just lost. Vanished off the streets,’ the Beetle explained. ‘Nobody saw a thing, so they claim, but then these Skater-kinden know when to keep their mouths shut. I told the chief that we should just get out of here, but he’s set on waiting for this auction. The girl was just an extra, an impulse, and now we’re paying for it.’ He stopped, realising he had said too much, and then deciding it did not matter anyway. ‘You and your woman had better be good.’

  ‘You don’t know who the enemy is? Or who the girl is?’

  Bradawl shook his head. ‘Just that we ran into her one night, and the chief must have seen something in her. She’s really strange . . . and she’s on the run, I know, nothing surer than that.’

  Tisamon glanced about. Despite himself, he found that the gondola’s confines were beginning to oppress him. It was all too artificial in here, with the flickering lamps and the bolted-down furniture. ‘The locals . . . ?’

  ‘Know what’s going on, or something of it, right enough,’ Bradawl said. ‘They won’t talk, though. Whatever it is, they live with it and they’re scared of it, and they’re in no hurry to get in the way. We’re alone against it, whatever it is. We should just push that girl out of the hatch and be done with it, but the chief is fixed on her, wants to add her to his collection.’