Blood of the Mantis sota-3

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  She had been in the fixed-wing, she recalled… the Wasps had been attacking her. She remembered the steam engine exploding behind her, the wood of the flier catching alight, the poor Stormcry burning. A piece of the fragmenting engine casing had struck the back of her head, after it spent most of its force on the panel it had burst through.

  The machine had been dying fast, falling towards the island below. In a mad access of energy, half-dazed and working on automatic, she had torn off her harness and thrust herself out of the cockpit, flaring her wings into being to catch the air.

  She had not considered the speed the flier was going, so she had been caught by the wind instantly, buffeted along the entire length of the Stormcry’s anguished hull, seared by the erupting flames and choking in smoke, and then she had been falling end-over-end towards the island, her wings still flickering in and out of sight, catching her for a moment each time and then vanishing, unable to bear the strain. She had fallen thus in fits and starts.

  She now opened her eyes.

  She was caught in a tree. That was what struck her most. She was wedged in the crook of a tree, which probably accounted for much of the pain. There was smoke in the air, and she was afraid that she knew what that meant. As a Beetle girl properly brought up, what she felt about that was guilt. She had gone and broken their fixed-wing and she hoped that Taki and the Destiavels would not be too angry with her, but there hadn’t seemed much option at the time.

  Around the tree that she was snagged in were several others similar, and beyond those, even more trees and the faint suggestion of a grey stone edifice uphill from her. She recalled her view of the island from the air as forested, quite densely. Ideally she should now get herself either to the wreck of the Stormcry or somewhere else where a rescuer might spot her from the air. The ruin that she had seen capping the island would be the most obvious place to head for.

  Of course the Wasps might also be looking for her. They could already be searching the island, so she would have to be careful. First, though, she would have to get herself out of this tree.

  As she shifted, the branch supporting her gave way almost immediately, which solved that particular problem. Her wings caught her this time, and she landed heavily on the forest floor, but without any further apparent damage.

  She stood up, wincing, and began trudging towards the sight of stone through the trees. It was her only landmark, everything else being quite foreign to her. The trees were of a type she had never seen before and she had no idea what else might exist here. It was not an island large enough to support some huge monster, she decided – then she decided that the huge monster might like to go off and swim and eat fish, and therefore could be very big indeed.

  She tried to creep forward silently but the forest betrayed her at every step. She was just not physically built for such furtiveness. In the end, between the shifting carpet of leaves and the increasing gradient, she had to barge forward as best she could, and who cared about the noise she made? Then she found herself facing grey stonework.

  A building, indeed, but now most definitely a ruin. Catching her breath, one hand on the tumbled stone of a wall, the scholar rose within her. Old, very old, she realized, for there was probably as much of it hidden beneath moss and drifted leaves and soil as there was still exposed. It put her in mind of a fallen tower she had seen some ten miles north of Collegium, beside the Sarnesh rail-line. The architectural style was subtly different, but the age-born devastation very similar. That other tower had been a ruin before the revolution, six centuries ago and more. This building could be just as old, long undisturbed and decaying on this island.

  She moved on, trying to get an idea of the original scale. This had been a single building, not a community, and quite expansive, but with a curious outline that only made sense when she matched it with the contours of the hilltop. The stones were large and she thought she detected carving on some of them, but now blurred out of all meaning. Of course she knew nothing of the history of this part of the world, though this did not look like Spider-kinden work, either current or past. More like the style of the Moth architects who had first planned the city that later became Collegium, or built that ancient tower lying to the north of it. Not the work of Moth-kinden hands, exactly, but of a people who had once shared some skills and thoughts with them, before coming to this far-flung place to build, and then to die.

  That thought rang a stangely familiar chord in her. Something Achaeos had once said…

  She perched on a stone, looking around her. It was certainly a melancholy place. Without evidence, she was convinced that these stones had not succumbed to time alone. If she closed her eyes she could almost feel the ghost of the building as it had once been, invisible now but somehow tangible. One symbol had been repeated often enough on these scattered stones that even the legions of time had not quite defaced it, and it spoke to her from ancient pages and from dissenting histories of how the world had been.

  She had been around Achaeos too long.

  When she opened her eyes again, she was not alone.

  A lean, russet-haired man in a tunic of metal scales, crossed with baldrics loaded with throwing knives, was now leaning against a man-high section of broken wall. His features were so kinless, without reference, that it was the knives she recognised first.

  ‘I know who you are. You’re Cesta,’ Che declared, because Taki had told her all about this man, or at least those scattered and damning facts that Taki really knew. There was a strange dread within Che now, because she had more sources to draw on than just Taki’s hostile recollections. Knowledge was now coming to her, piece after piece falling neatly into place. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I suppose it would be grand to say that I was waiting for you, all along,’ he replied in his colourless voice. ‘In fact I happened to be on Old Scol, three islands down the chain, when I saw the smoke. A meeting as fortuitous as our last, perhaps?’

  ‘And it won’t do me any good to ask who’s so interested in me that they employed you that time, either?’ Che said. If she had been feeling less battered, less lost, then she would have left her next words unsaid. ‘I’m told you’re only good for one thing – killing.’

  ‘More than that. I am not a killer. I am an assassin,’ he said with bleak pride, and the final piece fell, click, into place, and she knew. Not a halfbreed at all, this one, nothing so commonplace.

  I must be wrong. But she was not wrong. The sudden knowledge was as certain as it was mysterious. It was as though the stones themselves had told her, whispering it in her ear. Oh, Achaeos, you taught me too much. Yet it was some instinct of her own that had made the connection, knitting the tangled snarls of Moth-kinden history to give a name to his unplaceable features in this fallen stronghold.

  ‘More than that,’ she echoed, ‘what if I said that I know what you are, and whose hands originally raised these stones?’

  She had expected some arrogant sneering, but his entire face fell as slack as if she had stabbed him. He seemed utterly confounded.

  ‘And how,’ he asked, ‘do you know that?’

  ‘I am a scholar, a historian,’ she said. ‘And what my own people do not teach me, the Moth-kinden do.’ It had been a fraught time for them, setting her own histories against Achaeos’s, until they had hammered out some view of the world they could both live with. Learning had been part of her life for so long she could not have stood by and let him dismiss it all, whilst his kinden were all scholars, with their own secret lore and traditions that were not used to competition. It had not been the prejudice nor the physical differences, but the sheer clash of knowledges that had been the hardest thing to resolve. His rotes of ancient wars and grievances that her kinden had known nothing of, the lists of his people’s enemies, and a certain symbol – that jagged, angry mark – recorded for bitter posterity in Achaeos’s people’s archives.

  ‘Moth-kinden?’ he said tiredly. ‘So what tale do they tell?’

  ‘That long, long ago t
here existed a clever, bloody-handed people skilled in stealth and deception, disguise and death.’ She recounted the story as Achaeos had told it to her. ‘That this people pitted themselves against the Moth-kinden’s rule of the Lowlands, and turned their knives on the Skryres, who were the Moths’ leaders. But they failed, and they were smashed, their entire people driven away and scattered, hunted down and wiped out, save for some few who fled into the Spiderlands and were never seen again. Or is this not the true story?’

  ‘It will do.’ His earlier manner, that of the calm and inscrutable killer, had not recovered. ‘I may be the last of them for, aside from my father, I have seen no others of my kin. They did a fine job of dispersing us.’

  ‘Then you are a halfbreed?’

  ‘If we tended towards halfbreeds, we would have become diluted beyond all measure, gone beyond even history’s ken, but we breed true, the children born into the kinden of one parent or the other. We dwindle from generation to generation, but we cling on. Or perhaps only I, now. The last dregs of the Assassin Bug-kinden standing in the ruins of their last hall.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Our monastery once. But your story is incomplete, for the Spider-kinden could still not tolerate us – we who were violent and sly beyond even their ways – and so they came here to the last stronghold of my race, and slaughtered all they found with the help of their slave-soldiers. But some few must have escaped, as I myself am proof of. We are a stubborn stain on the world, one that will not wash out just yet.’

  ‘And… are you going to…?’ She clenched her fists. ‘Are you going to kill me?’

  His sardonic look returned. ‘Are you yet dead? Then you may take the answer as no, for now.’

  She put a hand out to him. ‘If I know you, you should know me. I’m Cheerwell Maker from Collegium.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’ He clasped her wrist in that same warrior’s affectation she had seen Tisamon use. ‘And you’re tougher than you look. And you’re here to fight the Wasps.’

  ‘To warn people about the Wasps.’

  ‘That may no longer be necessary,’ Cesta said.

  ‘Tell me, whose side are you on?’

  ‘That is one thing I can never tell you, because I have no side save my own and that of whoever pays me.’

  ‘And if the Wasps conquer Solarno?’

  He shrugged, as if blithely unconcerned. ‘And do the Wasps have no need for a killer? Or else those that oppose them? Or I shall go to Princep Exilla – and if that falls there are lands more southerly still. My kind has passed from this world, Bella Cheerwell Maker. With the exception of yourself, and of the Moth-kinden who forget nothing, the world has forgotten us. Besides, we were always good at passing unnoticed. Even within the Spiderlands, no finger shall point at me and cry out what I am.’

  ‘So you don’t care,’ she said, disappointed. ‘You’re just a killer after all.’

  ‘Perhaps not even that. I am a shadow that the sun has not, for some reason, dispelled yet. I have sired no children. If I am truly the last, let my kind die with me. I would not wish my cursed blood on any other.’

  ‘And with your gifts you will do nothing?’

  ‘Do you mean to recruit me, Bella Cheerwell Maker?’

  ‘And if I do?’ She knew she was over-bold and put a hand to her mouth, too late to stop the words.

  ‘You have not the gold to buy me,’ he said softly. ‘Besides, why should I take up arms in your cause? I am no idealist to jump to another’s drum.’

  ‘Then you must leave Solarno and the Exalsee,’ she warned him, without force, her tired conviction coming from bitter experience. ‘You must go south or east of here, and then keep running, Master Cesta. The Wasps have need of killers but they’ll bring their own, Rekef-branded. I had a word with a Wasp, not so long ago, who tried to make a living as a freelance within sight of the Empire’s borders, and he was not a happy man. The Empire beats a loud drum. You will have to run a long way not to hear it.’

  His lips twitched, but he offered no come-back, standing there in the wreckage of his inheritance. A moment later they heard the distant sound of a flier’s engine, far off over the Exalsee, and Che jumped up but then hesitated. Wasps? Or Taki come back for me?

  ‘Do you want me to find out who?’ Cesta asked her, reading her expression.

  ‘Why would you help me even in that?’

  ‘Nothing I have said means that I can’t like you,’ he told her. ‘I would kill you if I was hired for it, but it would still not mean that I cannot like you.’

  With that he was gone into the trees, leaving her to work his last words out.

  When it was clear that it was the Esca Volenti passing low over the island, Che expected Cesta to simply melt away into the forest, but he was content to stand out on the beach with her as she waved at the repassing orthopter. Taki threw the machine into a tight turn and brought it down for an impeccable water landing. Moments later Che heard the drone of another engine, and a much bulkier machine rumbled down to the water, still managing to touch its surface as gracefully as a falling leaf. She recognized it immediately as the big, armoured fixed-wing belonging to the Solarnese pilot called Scobraan.

  Taki put her head up out of the cockpit and was about to call over, when she spotted the assassin. For a second she had nothing to say but then she had hopped out and flitted from the Esca’s wing onto the beach.

  ‘What in the pits are you doing here?’ she asked the killer, sounding none too friendly.

  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?’