Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

Tisamon shook his head. ‘You cannot deny that symbol, and don’t make either of us prove it to you.’

The Mantis woman looked rebellious for a further moment, her jaw stuck out aggressively. Then she signalled, and one of her band ran off into the trees.

‘We are watching you,’ she hissed at Tynisa. ‘If you try to run, we shall kill you.’

‘Why would I need to run?’ asked Tynisa, trying to muster icy disdain and meanwhile hoping her nerves did not show. She had always known this, how Mantis-kinden hated the Spiders. Everyone knew it and nobody knew why, but the grievance went back deep into the Days of Lore, the enmity’s roots impossible to tug out and examine.

And now she was here and amongst them, and they hated her. She could feel all four of them hating her, just patiently waiting for the word. The brooch she wore seemed a feeble object to hold up as a shield.

She hoped Tisamon knew what he was doing and, glancing at him, saw that he was by no means as certain as she had previously thought. His anxiety was now as much for his own sake as for hers. She was the abomination that he had produced, and thus they were guilty side by side.

He strode ahead, though, forcing the other Mantids to keep up with his pace. He was coming home, but it had been twenty years, and how much did he really know about the current regime? Or perhaps nothing ever changed here, in this deep pocket of the past.

And she realized that they were already within the Mantis community, the Hold, and she had not noticed. All around them lay a village, but the Mantids had not cleared any ground to accommodate it. Instead their houses were scattered around and between the trees, light structures of wood that barely touched the ground, with rounded walls and sloping roofs that funnelled upwards into openings that were both chimneys and doors. She could not count them, half-hidden in and out of the trees, but it seemed everywhere she looked there was another, situated further out between the distant trunks and branches, until she wondered whether the entire wood was riddled with them. So this was the Mantis-kinden, their idea of a town.

But of course, they could not live one on top of another . Basic lessons of economics were coming back to her from the College. Where were the farms? Where was the cleared land? Of course there was none, for Mantis-kinden were not farmers. They must hunt and gather their way through the Felyal. They could never form great compact towns or cities, and how many of them could even this wide-stretching forest feed? And how scattered they must remain, just to support themselves.

It only struck her then that this was something from another time, another world. Here was where the claws of the past had dug in and held tight. The revolution had never happened here, where the Days of Lore still dragged their timeless way along.

And here were the Mantis-kinden themselves. The advance messenger had drawn a fair crowd of them, perhaps a hundred or more. There were suspiciously staring children, holding wooden stick-swords that were not toys but practice blades, and there were some silver-haired old men and women, and there was a host in between, for the Mantids lived long and aged late. They surprised her, and mostly because of the amount of metal they displayed. Many of them had donned armour, either the leaf-shaped scales or curving, fluted breastplates and helms: the much-coveted carapace style that no other kinden had been able to duplicate. Black and brown and green and gold, and old, the armour and the weapons were the work of generations, handed down and handed down, and always keeping the past alive. She almost felt the ancient blade at her own side shift in sympathy.

One of the older women was stepping forwards. She walked as though she were young, with the same grace as all of them, and she had a beautifully sleek rapier hanging from a cord loop at her belt.

‘What do you want here?’ she asked. ‘Why have you come?’

‘My name is Tisamon, Loquae, and I have come home.’

Tynisa glanced at him and realized with a shock that she had never thought him afraid before, but he seemed so now. Moreover, he was revelling in it, feeding off it. It stretched his mouth into a taut grin as tension twanged through his entire body. He was as alive and alert as he had ever been, and unmistakably thrilling with it.

‘There was a man called Tisamon once,’ said the Loquae, for Tynisa knew this word was a title, not a name. ‘He left many years ago, hearing the call of the world. Perhaps he might have sought to rejoin his people.’ Her eyes were slits as she stared at Tynisa. ‘But he would never have brought a Spider here with him. By what right does she bear that badge?’

‘By the only right that anyone can,’ Tisamon said, his voice all calm, his stance all readiness. ‘And she is not a Spider. She is my daughter.’

The words speared through them like steel, like a wind lashing at trees and bending them backwards. There were blades in hand instantly, rapiers and long knives, and claw-gauntlets being buckled on. Even the children hissed their disapproval at him, and the Loquae wailed, ‘What have you done? You have made an abomination! What have you become?’

Tisamon watched her, grinning still with pain and tension.

‘You cannot be one of us,’ the Loquae spat at him. ‘You are not one of us!’

‘Then I must be an intruder.’ He brought his hand up, and his gauntlet was on it now, though it had been bare a moment before, with the blade unfurling. ‘And you will have to kill me.’

Even as he said the words, three of the Mantis-kinden sprang forth to challenge him, and Tynisa assumed they would all set about him at once. By some signal or concord she did not catch, two of them stopped short and one just kept moving, her own clawed gauntlet slashing out at Tisamon’s face. He had no moment of confusion, for he was part of their world and had known instantly who his real opponent was. He was a step back before she had even completed her move, her blade passing uselessly between them.

There was no moment of breath, he was attacking instantly, and Tynisa saw what few outsiders had ever witnessed, the vicious, graceful dance of the mantis claws. Tisamon and his opponent shifted like dappled sunlight, moved like dancers, like insects skittering over the surface of a lake. Their claws were cocked back behind them, and then lashing forth in complex patterns, dancing and spinning, using every joint all the way to the fingers to make them pirouette and wait and stoop as though they were living things in their own right, like silver dragonflies hovering and darting, and their bearers nothing but an abstraction.

Tynisa kept her hand clutched tightly about the hilt of her rapier, and never realized that she did so. She had seen Tisamon fight so many times before, but until now she realized she had never seen him fight anyone so good . The Mantis woman moved with him and Tynisa could not tell who led and who followed. They fought as though they had rehearsed it, blades cutting air, striking against one another high and low, and their off-hands flashing too, the spines raised on their forearms, raking and cutting. They were far too close, not the distance of a rapier duel but almost chest to chest most of the time, constantly in one another’s shadow, and never touching, ducking and spinning past one another, and even when turned away each knew the other’s precise stance and position.

Then it was over. Tynisa blinked. She had barely seen it, had to review the last few moves in her mind to see that, yes, the reason that the woman’s arming jacket was now flooding with red across her stomach was precisely that move of Tisamon’s, not his last move, but one three moves before, and nobody, not even his opponent, had realized.