Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

Thalric had lurched to his feet, and his hands spat fire again, but she turned, shielding her face with her pauldron and, although she had to brace herself against it, again the crackling blast just danced off her mail.

If Thalric had been whole and well, he might have stood a chance. He was a resourceful man, but his wounds hobbled him. Even this much exertion had a fresh spot of blood leaking through his tunic. When he raised his arm again the strange sword nearly took the hand from his wrist, instead laying open the skin along the back of it. Thalric hissed, and went for her, and in a moment of cool decision she reversed the sword and smashed him across the face with the pommel.

He fell back against the wall and slid to the floor, dazed, and she thrust the sword into one tilted half of the table, as sickle-claws folded out from her thumbs.

He had his uninjured hand extended at her defensively, but she lanced it through the palm with a lightning jab of one claw and he gasped in pain and withdrew it. For a second she regarded her talons, one bloody and one clean.

She placed them, very gently, so that they pricked him in the hollows beneath his jaw, and began to force him upright. For a moment he seemed about to resist, but then, as they drew blood, he was struggling to his feet, digging at the wall with his elbows for purchase until at last he was standing, face to face with her at last, and so close they might be lovers.

She showed no expression.

Stenwold stood at the doorway with Tisamon watching over his shoulder, but now someone was pushing in on the other side of him. It was Felise’s Spider-kinden companion.

‘Who are you, anyway?’ the Beetle asked him, as Felise held Thalric by the points of her thumbs, staring into his face.

‘Destrachis, doctor.’ The Spider was watching the woman intently, waiting for something.

Thalric studied the face of his antagonist, pushing his thoughts through the pain in his side, the pain of his hands. ‘Before you kill me,’ he said, and even that drew some fresh blood as his throat worked against her talons, ‘tell me one thing.’

Her face neither denied nor permitted his request.

‘What will you do next?’ His last gambit, his last chance, and once the words were out he closed his eyes and waited.

Destrachis leaned forward, but Felise made no move. There was no sign that she had even heard the words.

‘What is going on here?’ Stenwold demanded in a hoarse whisper.

‘This man Thalric has a good mind,’ Destrachis said. ‘He has got to the heart of it.’

‘Next?’ came the voice of Felise, uttering the word as though it was wholly unfamiliar to her.

‘We took him outside your city, you see,’ Destrachis went on. ‘But he was near-dead, and so instead of killing him she had me patch him up and send him on ahead. Because revenge on a dying man was not what she was looking for.’

‘This is hardly better,’ Tisamon observed from behind.

‘He fought back this time.’ Destrachis shrugged. ‘Now we must see if she can bring it to a close.’

‘Spider, I should have slain you before,’ said Felise, still holding Thalric up on his toes, holding her perfect pose without the slightest tremor. ‘What is this Wasp to you?’

‘Nothing,’ Destrachis said. ‘I have never been the Empire’s.’

‘But you are not mine either,’ she said. ‘Who is it that pays you, Spider?’

Destrachis pursed his lips. ‘Must there be someone?’

‘You are no gangster from Helleron, and it was no mere chance that we met. Do not take me for a fool.’

‘Or I will be “next”?’ Destrachis wondered aloud. His voice was casual, but Stenwold could see how tight his face had become with controlling his expression. ‘But you’re right, of course. I spun my way into the fiefdoms of Helleron. I engineered it so that I would travel with you.’

Stenwold could see Thalric watching with the utter concentration of a man whose life is being extended by every word spoken.

‘Mantis warrior,’ Felise said. ‘If I asked you to slay that Spider there, would you do it?’

‘Without hesitation,’ Tisamon said, and Destrachis went pale all of a sudden, feeling a subtle change of stance in the man beside him. The claw was abruptly raised to hover over Stenwold’s back, the point pricking the nape of the Spider’s neck. Stenwold himself had gone very still. He had been about to protest, to remind them that they were in Collegium, in the very Amphiophos — but they were not. At least Felise and Tisamon and Destrachis were not. The place they shared was infinitely older, where such things as this were done.

‘If he gives me no answer, you may slay him,’ Felise decided. She was still staring into Thalric’s face, had not once taken her eyes off him. ‘Who has hired you to plague me, Destrachis?’

‘Arante Destraii, your aunt,’ Destrachis said, still holding tenuously on to calm. ‘Ask me no more questions, Felise.’

‘I do not believe that,’ she said. ‘Shall I tell the Mantis to kill you? Tell me the truth. Tell it all.’

‘Please, Felise, you do not-’

Thalric hissed in pain as her claws dug into him a little, and Felise got out, ‘Mantis-’

‘Wait!’ Destrachis got out. ‘You will kill me if I tell you, and have me killed if I do not. Is that justice?’

‘Why is it that only the unjust cry for justice?’ Tisamon said. His claw twitched, drawing a spot of blood.

Stenwold felt himself trapped in a world he suddenly did not understand. ‘What is going on?’ he asked.

‘Precisely, Beetle-kinden. Explain all, Destrachis.’

‘I am hired by your family,’ he said quickly, ‘and that is no more than the truth. Not your husband’s noble line, for the Wasps made sure no drop of his bloodline remained. Your own family was not great enough to be extinguished, so you were taken alive. Do you remember being a prisoner of the Empire, Felise?’

‘I was never a prisoner.’

‘Of course you were, and you were to be a slave, but the Arantes rescued you and. ’ He stuttered to silence.

‘Speak!’ she commanded.

‘You were. broken.’ He waited to see if the words would kill him. ‘You were not well, in your mind. So your own family took you into their house and hired doctors to make you well, but we. they could not. They tried so many ways, until eventually one used an ancient craft to bring your mind back to the place where it had snapped, and stitch that broken end onto the present day — or thus I can best describe it. Shall I go on?’

She remained silent, but Tisamon shifted behind him, and so Destrachis continued. ‘It did not go well. It was not well done. better not to have meddled, would be my opinion now. But you remembered, at least, the name and face of the man who had done those atrocities to you, and you determined you would have your revenge, whatever the cost. Your family were concerned. They. ’ And he stopped again, and Stenwold was surprised to see the Spider’s eyes glitter with tears. ‘Felise. ’

‘I remember,’ she said slowly. Thalric saw something surface then in her eyes, and she looked at him anew. ‘I remember you now. You are the man who slew my children.’

He could not nod, would not speak, but something in his face confirmed it.

‘I remember,’ she said again. ‘What have I done?’ She took her hands away abruptly, looking back at the bisected table, at the upright sword, as though they were quite strange to her.

Thalric, shifted, sagging an inch, and faster than Stenwold could follow she whirled back to him, thumb jabbing at his face. It raked a line of blood down his cheek, but that was all.

‘Why can I not kill you?’ she screamed at him. Her clawed hands hovered right before his face, twitching and shaking, but still she could not strike. In the echo of that cry her onlookers were silent. Stenwold saw, in sidelong glances, the same stricken expression appear on the faces of both Tisamon and Destrachis.