Blood of the Mantis sota-3

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  It could be worse, was their hesitant thought, once their initial revulsion at the governor’s heritage had worked itself out. The Wasps might easily have installed a more interfering governor, a military dictator, some greedy grafter who taxed and robbed them: a man, in short, closer to their own nature. Drephos’s haughty isolation was aggravating, but it was not bad for business, and in their hearts the magnates could almost find forgiveness. At least he leaves us alone.

  And behind even their love of money and profitable trade were the other thoughts, left unvoiced. He is a monster, but not the worst kind of monster. Certainly the Wasp soldiers on the streets were a touchy bunch, so there were deaths, though of nobody important. A few buildings burnt, a few small traders were executed, but this was just the result of the Wasp-kinden’s natural exuberance. With a tyrannical governor constantly goading them, things could be much worse, especially for those who had more to lose.

  Still, the very stand-offishness of the Colonel-Auxillian inevitably bred curiosity, so the city fought over any scrap of gossip he generated. The simple news that a messenger had come to him from the capital was seized on hungrily. Drephos was a self-contained man: he staved off paperwork and managed with no constant string of orders coming in or reports going out. It was as if the Empire had thrown up its hands in despair over him, leaving him to do what he did best. Nobody else understood his work enough to dictate to him.

  Until now.

  For now a panting Wasp-kinden had arrived at the Consellar chambers, waving a sealed scroll at a garrison sergeant whilst blurting out the halfbreed’s name. Orders for the Colonel-Auxillian, straight from Capitas, absolute priority, no excuses.

  He is in one of the snapbow factories, the messenger was told, and the man set off there straight away. Enough of the seals on the message were recognizable for the garrison sergeant to know the messenger had not been exaggerating his missive’s importance.

  *

  ‘I am informed,’ said Drephos, ‘that the balance of the Sixth Army will be with us in a matter of tendays, bound next for Sarn. How many snapbows can you give them?’ His clear tones cut through the constant clatter of the factory floor that rose up to them.

  ‘Perhaps another two thousand,’ said Totho, without even needing to think about it. ‘We did dispatch a rail shipment not long ago, although you know what happened to that. General Malkan has sent a messenger for more to be sent by automotive convoy.’

  Drephos made a dismissive noise. ‘I am unimpressed so far by the Seventh’s ability to hold on to whatever we give them. First the troop train and now, I hear, the last supply convoy was ambushed as well. Give whatever you have to the Sixth and let the generals squabble over it themselves.’

  Totho nodded, gazing down on his busy workers, the banks of engines that were cutting out his machine parts, rifling the barrels, casting the ammunition. He sensed, more than saw, as Drephos moved closer to him, one metal hand and one living one closing on the guard-rail.

  ‘I hear you have solved your discipline problems,’ the master artificer said.

  ‘I have, sir.’

  There was a pause, and Totho glanced sideways at the Colonel-Auxillian, to see him staring out across the factory floor in an oddly distracted way. This was the first time that Totho had seen him in several tendays, for the man’s own projects had kept Drephos entirely secluded. Behind them both, the massive form of Big Greyv the Mole Cricket-kinden made the gantry groan in protest. The man was huge, a ten-foot-tall obsidian block with fingernails like chisels, but he was Drephos’s artificer of choice to work with, possessing a patience and care as impressive as his bulk. He hardly ever spoke, and Totho guessed this was another reason Drephos had chosen him for the new project.

  Kaszaat, standing in the Mole Cricket’s shadow, seemed infinitely fragile.

  ‘And you have continued experimenting, of course?’ Drephos prompted.

  Totho had not realized that he knew. ‘I’ve been tinkering with the snapbows, sir. I’ve being trying to add a built-in magazine to improve the shot-rate.’ As always, he warmed to his topic once he had started. ‘The problem is that use of a nailbow’s spring-and-lever mechanism shakes the aim and therefore halves the useful range, while gravity-feeding jams too often, and clockwork-’

  ‘Is too expensive and takes too long to make,’ Drephos agreed, clearly pleased with his persistence.

  ‘How…?’ He had not been actually ordered not to speak of it, but the shroud of secrecy about Drephos’s recent researches had been so plain. ‘How does your own work go, sir?’ Totho asked.

  ‘How indeed,’ said Drephos vaguely, not being evasive but genuinely considering. ‘The coming war with Sarn shall be remembered, Totho. There shall be names immortalized in the histories.’

  If anyone survives to write them. Drephos’s current strange detachment worried Totho, for normally the man was inclined to be expansive, even boastful, about his work. Now, though, he had clearly chanced on something that seemed to have shaken even his customary composure.

  ‘Tell me, what do we work towards?’ the Colonel-Auxillian asked unexpectedly.

  ‘Sir?’ Totho glanced over his shoulder at Kaszaat and Big Greyv, but neither provided any answers.

  ‘Archetypes,’ Drephos said, almost too quietly to be heard. ‘Just as they say there is a Wasp archetype, a knowledge of which gives the Wasps their Art, and likewise with all the other kinden, so too there is a weapon archetype, Totho. Can you grasp that? A weapon of weapons where to simply grasp the hilt, to simply possess it, is to slay your enemies? No contest of skill needed, no inclement weather or defensive wall, but death, delivered pristine and precise.’

  ‘This… this is what you are working on?’ Totho asked.

  ‘We approach it, Totho. We do approach it,’ Drephos replied, then shook his head as though to clear it. What he might have said next was lost because just then a soldier pushed past Big Greyv and onto the gantry, with a scroll thrust out towards him. Drephos took it disdainfully and moved a little way off to read it. The reading took him a matter of seconds before he turned on the messenger with the word, ‘Impossible!’

  ‘Those are your orders, sir,’ insisted the messenger implacably.

  ‘I have work here,’ Drephos snapped at him, ‘and I am not finished. Go find someone else to do your dirty work.’

  ‘Not my work, sir. You see where this message comes from?’

  Drephos looked back down at the scroll. The messenger would have noticed nothing, but Totho had known the halfbreed artificer long enough to spot a slight widening of his pale eyes.

  ‘So…’ Some of the fight had now gone out of him. ‘This is absurd. What do I know of such a business? There is no option, then?’

  ‘You have been commanded personally, sir,’ the sergeant replied smugly, and Totho knew that he was enjoying being able to snub this half-blood of superior rank. ‘And, if you note, you are requested to take your work along with you.’

  The idea, however, did not seem to appeal. For a long time, whole minutes, Drephos stared down at the summons. His mind was elsewhere, charting webs of logistics, of numbers and calculations. Totho saw his lips twitch over and over, baring his teeth at whatever task was being forced on him. Kaszaat and Big Greyv looked as blank as he. Whatever had arrived from Capitas had come without a hint of warning.

  Drephos bared his teeth to emit a long hiss. ‘Totho, find me a deputy from the engineering corps to take over here.’

  ‘Sir?’ Totho stammered out. Is it about me? Am I named in that note?

  ‘You’re coming with me. I’m taking the whole team, the projects, the lot. We shall also take the big freight automotives. I shall continue to work even on the way there. My work is much too valuable to disrupt.’

  ‘But where are we going, sir?’ Totho asked him.

  ‘Inform the others, too,’ Drephos said. ‘We are sent to Szar.’

  Kaszaat’s face remained a mask. Totho could only guess at the turmoil beneath.

>   Twenty-Four

  Lake Limnia at night, and the great expanse of moonlit water was chopped into a million pieces by the drizzle, blotched by swathes of reed, pockmarked by the shadows of Skater rafts and boats. It should have been nobody’s idea of a pleasant sight.

  Tisamon stood by the shores of Lake Limnia and stared across the rain-dappled waters. Every so often the clouds grew ragged enough that a despairing slice of moon could claw itself free of them, and then its clean, pure light appeared in the lake itself as only a pockmarked, ruined reflection, a face given over to disease and ruin.

  If I was a seer, what omens would I make from this?

  Around him the Skater-kinden padded on their stilting errands and left him be. Of course there might be other travellers about tonight. Any moment a patrol of Wasps could troop down between the leaning shacks, with arrest or execution on their minds. In truth, he had hoped for that, but for once the Empire was maddeningly absent and his claw remained unbloodied.

  He was alone with his thoughts, and he was finding that uncomfortable, because it meant they strayed from the business in hand: the mysterious box and the forthcoming auction. When his mind was let free, to coast like a kite in the gusting wind, it asked the same question, What is she doing now? It had been a long time since Tisamon had been plagued with such imaginings: seeing pearlescent armour, a long, straight sword held perfectly poised, the curving talons of her thumbs, the elemental grace of her fighting stance. Is even this place, even the great distance I have placed between us, not enough? He had hoped that she would recede in his mind, along with the miles that separated them, but he might as well have brought Felise Mienn with him.

  She is so swift, so deadly! How close she came to killing me, when first we met. There had been no other, not for a long time, to challenge him so. There had only ever been one other who had set his blood racing in the clash of blades.

  Atryssa, forgive me.

  The spectre of Tynisa’s dead mother walked before him then, with accusing eyes. Mantids paired for life, it was well known, and many were those who then lived out long years as widow or widower. For life always, and he had bound himself to Atryssa, given her a child even, and now… this, her.

  He tried to banish the Dragonfly duellist from his mind, but he could no more do so than he could defeat her, blade to blade. She danced and dodged, and was before him still. He felt like weeping, and then he felt like killing.

  ‘Hoi, Mantis,’ came a voice, and he whirled about, his claw raised to strike. Nivit had hailed him from a safe distance, though, the bald, angular little man regarding him cautiously.

  ‘Is it time?’ Tisamon demanded.

  ‘They sent me to fetch you,’ the Skater told him, his expression carefully neutral. ‘Anyone else looking out over the lake like that, I’d say there’s a girl in it, but you, I reckon you’re just thinking about cutting throats, am I right?’

  ‘Nothing other,’ Tisamon agreed shortly, and stalked past the other man towards the looming hulk of the grounded Buoyant Maiden.

  Scyla had hidden her auction house the best way possible, by having it come into being only when she was ready to sell. Founder Bellowern and the other buyers had discovered only days before, through a succession of bewildered Skater messengers, where their prize could be won.

  Bellowern was not the only one to have fallen by the wayside. It seemed that collecting the exotic was a hazardous business within the Empire. Nivit guessed that almost half the wealthy and the powerful who had come to Jerez in response to Scyla’s invitation were no longer there. Some, like Palearchos and Founder Bellowern, were dead. Others had been arrested by the Wasps in the Empire’s own futile attempts to find the box. More had simply decided that the stakes were not worth the gain.

  Out on the lake, in the gathering dusk, Scyla’s gold now paid for a diligent team of Skater-kinden to piece together a great raft. They towed mats of reeds behind their row-boats or sailing dinghies, thus to haul the pieces of Scyla’s theatre into place. There were walls, too, a building as grand as any native home in Jerez taking shape entirely out on the water. Soon the buyers would congregate there, narrow-eyed in suspicion of each other. Soon Scyla would have to appear there too, from behind whatever mask she was wearing, and present them with the Shadow Box.

  Achaeos and the others sat in Nivit’s office and planned. Jons Allanbridge had already gone to stoke up the Buoyant Maiden, now repaired in readiness for the anticipated getaway.

  ‘Out on the lake,’ said Thalric.

  ‘Of course out on the lake,’ Nivit told him. ‘Business on the lake’s standard practice hereabouts. I’d have thought you’d known that.’

  Thalric sought out Sef, who was sitting close to Gaved. Despite rumours in town of strange hunters abroad at night, there had been no further attempt to take her. ‘The lake,’ Thalric said, ‘has become different to me now. What is the plan, then?’

  ‘Scyla will have guards,’ Tisamon said, ‘or lookouts, anyway. If nothing else, she has no guarantee that one of her genuine buyers will not try force. Water is not our element, not the best for employing stealth.’

  Nivit’s expression said Speak for yourself, but he glanced about at the others, waiting.

  ‘Also, we cannot rely on magic,’ Achaeos remarked. Thalric snorted at that, and even Tynisa looked doubtful, but the Moth shrugged. ‘It matters not. There are other magicians, even Scyla herself. Believe in it or not, we cannot hide ourselves with magic.’

  ‘Nivit, can you get a boat?’ Thalric asked.

  ‘No problem there. We’ve all kinds of boats here. What’re you doing with it? My people can see better in the dark than you think. You’ll never get a boat there without them spotting you.’

  ‘I don’t need to.’ The Wasp smiled drily. ‘This is old spycraft for you: when you can’t go round the back, just walk in the front door as though you were meant to be there. Why is everyone punting out to this place, anyway?’

  ‘Because they want the box,’ Tynisa said, seeing where he was leading.

  ‘Well then, why not us? Only Scyla herself will know who’s genuine. There will be other buyers coming out of the woodwork that nobody else has guessed at. So let’s just walk in.’

  ‘And then?’ Gaved asked dubiously.

  ‘And then we take it,’ Thalric said. ‘You people want this thing, whatever it is? Then we take it. We kill Scyla, and we kill anyone else who gets in the way.’ His smile broadened in the pause that followed. ‘Squeamish, after all? Then be thankful you have someone of my profession here. This is nothing new to me. I’ll wager your Stenwold Maker would agree, and I see Master Mantis there is nodding. This is just an operation like any other. We have arrived, made our plans, gathered our information, and now the operation must be wrapped up, the objective recovered, and then we’re gone into the night. The Rekef Outlander do it every day.’

  ‘You’re a cold one,’ Tynisa said. Thalric’s smile only acknowledged her statement.

  ‘He’s right,’ said Tisamon. ‘This is how it must be.’

  ‘And if they won’t let us in armed?’ Tynisa asked. ‘I wouldn’t, if I were Scyla.’

  Thalric displayed his open hands to her. ‘When am I unarmed?’

  ‘You’re assuming that we’ll trust you with this business,’ she told him. ‘You’re not one of us, Thalric. You’re only here because your own people want you dead.’

  His smile withered. ‘And be glad they do, because you need me. I’m hard where the rest of you are soft, with your Collegium-bred philosophy and humanity! Not to mention the mystic, and the renegade who won’t face up to his own birthright.’

  At that, Gaved had a slight smile, a fighting smile. His fingers flexed, but Thalric sneered at him.

  ‘Tisamon’s got steel, perhaps, but he won’t stab a man in the back like I will, and right now you need a bastard like me.’

  He looked from face to face, challenging them to gainsay him. ‘I know, you don’t trust me. Do you think that wounds me? I�
�m Rekef, so I’m used to being distrusted.’

  ‘How happy you must be,’ Tynisa told him.

  ‘I’m not seeing many smiles in this room tonight, and if you have another way of doing this, just tell me. Will you have your Beetle pilot coast his airship in, and hope they mistake it for the moon? Will you swim beneath the raft and bore a tunnel up through it with your knife? Mine is the only way that gets us in safely, and it must be by my own choice of men or none at all.’

  ‘Your choice?’ Tynisa demanded.

  ‘This is a high-risk enterprise,’ Thalric said. ‘If there is an assault from without, Scyla will instantly flee, and you will neither catch her nor even recognize her. But if we are present there amongst the buyers, what can she do? To achieve her aim she must stand before them, she must present the box. At my signal we will strike. Speed and surprise will win the day for us. I shall take the box and fly to shore, while the rest will cover my retreat, and then make the best escape they can.’

  ‘One change to your plan,’ Tynisa interupted, holding his gaze.

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Gaved takes the box. You fight your way out with us, Thalric.’

  ‘Agreed.’ He did not hesitate a moment. ‘You and the Mantis and Gaved are to be my cadre.’

  ‘I’m flattered,’ said Gaved acidly, and then Sef tugged at his collar.

  ‘Not on to the lake,’ she whispered. ‘You must not.’

  ‘It’s you they’re looking for, not us, these aquatics of yours,’ Thalric reminded her. She glared at him and, to Thalric’s obvious amusement, the other Wasp put a protective arm about her shoulders.

  ‘We won’t be away long,’ Gaved reassured her, ‘and he’s right. Just sit tight here.’

  ‘They are still searching for me,’ she said, biting her lip.

  ‘If you are so fearful of being caught, why have you not left already?’ Tisamon demanded harshly. He had never shown either interest or sympathy for the Spider girl.

  ‘Left?’ Sef breathed, as if there was a world of horror in that world.