Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

‘I shouldn’t be like a prisoner in my own home!’ Stenwold grumbled. ‘Waiting for the Assembly’s response is bad enough, but now I’m kept under lock and key, virtually, by my own ward!’

‘And what else would you do?’ Tynisa asked him. ‘Where would you go?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d like the freedom to do it. Tynisa, I’m not such an old man. I’m capable of looking after myself.’

‘Listen to me, Sten.’ Tynisa suddenly gripped him by the shoulders. ‘Nobody is saying that you can’t hold a sword or use it, but nobody lives for ever. I’m worried about Tisamon, right now, and he’s as good as they come. But if he dies,’ he saw her lips tighten, ‘or if I die, or Balkus here, then it will still not matter so much as if you die because, if the Assembly ever does see sense, they will need you.’

‘Besides, if they don’t,’ Balkus added, ‘then there could be a squad of their fellows coming after you. You said how they were talking about putting the irons on you.’

Stenwold clenched his fists impotently, and Tynisa slowly released him. ‘Is this about. her?’ she asked gently.

‘No,’ he said, too quickly, and she gave him a sidelong look before moving away to speak quietly to Balkus.

Thwarted, Stenwold sat and stared at his hands. These have mended machines , he thought, and taken lives. They were strong hands still, but not young ones. Such a painful admission of something so obvious.

I was young at Myna, that first time . When had the change come? He had retreated to here, to Collegium, to spin his awkward webs of intrigue and to lecture at the College. Then, years on, the call had come for action. He had gone to that chest in which he stored his youth and found that, like some armour long unworn, it had rusted away.

He tried to tell himself that this was not like the grumbling of any other man who finds the prime of his life behind him. I need my youth and strength now, as never before. A shame that one could not husband time until one needed it. All his thoughts rang hollow. He was past his best and that was the thorn that would not be plucked from his side. He was no different from any tradesman or scholar who, during a life of indolence, pauses partway up the stairs to think, This was not so hard, yesterday .

The aches and the bruises of the last night’s action, when he had thrown his baggy body across the warehouse floor to escape Thalric’s men, would they not have faded by now, not so long ago? He still hurt and yet they had not actually laid a finger on him.

Not for want of trying! he tried to crow, but he knew it was false bravado. He had simply been staving off the inevitable until Tynisa arrived.

It was all the worse because Tisamon was his age, too, and yet time had done nothing but hone him where Stenwold had rusted. Still, Mantis-kinden lived longer, aged slower and died, almost inevitably, in violence. And besides, was he so sure that Tisamon did not pause on that same stair, once in a while? The other man would never admit it. He would take greater and greater risks to prove himself, until time caught him in the act.

Mantids did live longer, Stenwold reflected. But I will outlive him, I fear.

All this inward looking and brooding, it was because of her . Tisamon had emphasized the same word to talk of Atryssa, Tynisa’s mother, who he thought had betrayed him. Now Stenwold had found a genuine Spider-kinden traitress to apply it to. Like a man who walks blithely from a fight only to find blood on his clothes, he found she had cut him after all.

What an old fool am I.

But she had made him feel young just for a little while, and however false the intention behind it, it had been a great gift to him at the time.

And now Tisamon was going to kill her, as he had every right to do.

*

‘You did well there at the warehouse,’ Tynisa remarked.

Balkus gave her an odd look. ‘I’ve been in this business since you were a kid, I’d reckon,’ he pointed out.

‘But I’ve not known you for long, and I don’t know anything about you,’ she replied. ‘And since Helleron, and that spy, I’ve been slow to trust people.’

‘Fair,’ he said. He really was a big man, she realized, almost as tall as Tisamon and much broader across the shoulders, much larger than Ants normally grew.

‘So tell me about yourself,’ she said.

‘Are you doing that Spider-kinden flirting thing?’ he asked, apparently seriously.

‘No, I am not. I just want to know why I can trust you. Besides, I’m only a halfbreed. Hadn’t you heard?’

‘I heard you were the Mantis fellow’s get, yes, though I don’t quite see how that worked out. Besides, Mantids do flirting: this one I knew, when she was looking for a man, she’d kill an enemy of his, just to get his attention. She was mad.’ He used the last word as a sign of approbation.

‘Well take it from me, I’m not flirting with you,’ she said. He was grinning a little and she wondered whether he was actually trying to flirt with her. ‘Tell me why you’re here, Balkus. I need to know how far I can lean on you.’

‘Scuto and me, we go back years.’ He smiled suddenly, an oddly innocent expression. ‘I took my trade in just about every way a man with a sword and a nailbow could make a living, but it was always good to know that old Scuto was up north with a place to hide out, and some work like as not if times were hard.’

‘But you’re Sarnesh? That’s a long way from home.’

‘The further the better,’ he said, heartfelt.

‘But why did you leave? What did you do?’ she pressed.

His smile stayed on, unoffended. ‘Just in case I’m a mass-murderer or slept with the Queen’s daughter or something, right? The thing is, nobody understands my kinden. You think we’re all in and out of each other’s minds like everybody’s friends every hour of the day. It isn’t like that. It’s more like you’re a kid in a big gang, and if you don’t do what they say, then you’re no good and they all turn their backs on you. And don’t think that they can’t put silence into your head as good as putting words.’ The smile was fading now. ‘Only there are loads of us who just want to do something else, but loyalty is everything, to the city-state. You don’t have to do anything to get where I’m standing. You just have to not do what they say. Once you turn your back on them, you’re out, and there’s a world of trouble waiting if you ever go back. Even in Sarn, which is better than the rest by a long mile, they don’t take kindly to deserters.’

She nodded soberly. ‘I see.’

‘Oh, and running off with one of their nailbows isn’t going to make them any happier,’ he added, the smile returning. ‘You know what the really mad thing is, though?’

‘So tell me.’

‘Even when you’ve escaped, you find you’ve brought so much of that cursed business with you. You’re never free of it. That’s why Ant mercenaries are always the best. They’re loyal. Nobody ever got double-crossed by an Ant. Or precious few, and not without good reason. So when I got to know Scuto, I got loyal to him. And, now that I’m with your pack, I’m loyal to you. It’s just the way we are. So you don’t need to worry about trouble from my direction.’ He slipped the heavy nailbow off his shoulder and laid it on the table-edge, opening its casing and taking a swab of cloth from a belt-pouch. ‘You mind keeping your eyes about you while I clean her?’ he asked, and she nodded agreement, thinking about all he had said.

To Arianna they seemed so obviously on edge that she was amazed Thalric did not shoot them all on sight. Her blood and her profession had given her a very good eye to read people and she perceived the taut bonds of conspiracy between herself, Hofi and Scadran as though they were bright ribbons binding them together.