Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

At last? But yes, of course Tisamon was looking forward to the Wasps’ next move. ‘You keep yourself informed?’

‘Helleron’s a hive of rumours, for those who will listen.’

‘And yet nobody will listen.’ Stenwold shook his head as he walked out of his dead cousin’s house, and had his sword immediately to hand. There was a man standing there, right outside the door: a Moth-kinden, Stenwold noted with surprise. No servant or creature of Elias’s then. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘Not an assassin, as I had first assumed,’ came Tisamon’s voice from behind him. ‘In fact, something of a benefactor. He was creeping up on you even as you went in the door. He’d seen the Wasps, you see, and wanted to warn you,’ Tisamon said, ‘but sadly I was creeping up on him.’

Stenwold glanced back at the Moth. ‘You didn’t kill him then?’

‘Moth-kinden,’ said Tisamon. ‘Old habits die hard.’ Like the rest of the past, the ancient fealties of his people ran deep. ‘Old loyalties, we have,’ and he was smiling at Stenwold again like a ghost from seventeen years ago.

Stenwold turned back to the waiting Moth, who had not moved or made a sound all this time. He noticed the stranger was wounded and bandaged messily. He could not make the connection. ‘So where do you come in? What are the Wasps to you?’

‘I care nothing for them. But I wanted to warn you.’

‘Warn me?’

‘I saw your niece being taken,’ said the Moth without much inflection, keeping his expression guarded.

‘You saw Cheerwell?’ Suddenly Stenwold came alive. The Moth backed off smoothly as he approached.

‘She. . helped me,’ he said.

Stenwold stopped before he forced the man out of the door. ‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ he said, and then: ‘I understand now. You must be from Tharn. A raider, are you?’

The Moth nodded cautiously. ‘My name. . is Achaeos.’

‘Well, right now Helleron doesn’t have much claim on my loyalty,’ announced Stenwold. ‘The master of this house, my cousin Elias Monger, lies dead in the next room, and I imagine your grand high potentates or whatever they’re called are going to be rubbing their hands over that.’

‘They will shed no tears,’ Achaeos agreed.

‘Tell me about Cheerwell. Where is she?’

Achaeos related all that he had witnessed without emotion. He had a trained eye for detail, Stenwold noted: here was a man used to spying out the enemy. The thought that he, Stenwold, might be one of that enemy was a strange one. With a very few exceptions the Moth-kinden were a race he had never had much to do with.

‘They took them where?’

‘South and east. I know the city has slave camps located at its edge,’ Achaeos reported. Stenwold had no idea whether Moths kept slaves these days, and nothing in the man’s tone enlightened him.

Stenwold rubbed at his chin, feeling the stubble grown there. ‘You have no idea how hard I pushed in order to make the time I did. If all this had happened in a month’s time I’d have had a completed railroad to carry me straight here from Collegium. As it is, this last tenday and more, I’ve hopped on at least five different forms of transport, and still I’m too late. Too late by a single day.’

‘You’ll go after her.’ For Tisamon it was a rhetorical question.

‘She’s my niece, and she’s with another of my students. I’ll go after them both.’ Stenwold bared his teeth in something like a smile. ‘I shall not lack for help, though. Do you remember Scuto the Thorn Bug?’

‘Remember him?’ said Tisamon. ‘I’ve turned down three contracts to kill him.’

Stenwold maintained the semblance of a smile. These histories we do not ask about. ‘I shall go to him now. He’s bored into this city like a grub. For information or material, I shall not lack for help.’

‘My blade is yours,’ Tisamon said, so simply that Stenwold stared at him.

‘I had not thought. .’

‘I told you.’ The Mantis looked down. ‘I have been marking time all these years. Did you think I would turn from you now?’

They had met perhaps three times, after the siege at Myna. Sometimes Tisamon had helped in Stenwold’s intelligencing, at the start. As the work changed, and watching and waiting became more important than a swift blade, there had been less need to call upon him. Meanwhile College work had claimed Stenwold more and more and they had gone their separate ways. It had been ten years since they had last seen each other.

‘I. . don’t know what to say,’ the Beetle stammered. A terrible feeling of doom hung over him: We will both regret this. ‘At least take time to think.’ Before burdening me with your promise. Mantis promises were harder than steel, and heavier to bear. ‘You have a life, here. .’

Tisamon was staring at his feet again. It was a sight so familiar that for a second it was twenty years ago, Tisamon unable to answer some cutting observation one of the others had made.

‘I have no life, here,’ the Mantis whispered. ‘Seventeen years, Sten — You know what I mean.’

Time has not passed for him. He knew that the Mantis-kinden were loath to let go of hurts, or wrongs, or old friends either. He had never quite appreciated how alien the feeling would be, to become involved with such a mind.

I am so sorry, my friend.

They had made arrangements to meet that evening, Stenwold and Tisamon. They had almost spoken the name of the place together, their old haunt from the old, old days. The moment of coincidence had brought a brief wash of nostalgia to Stenwold, but the emotion had only driven in the jagged-glass thought of what was to come that much more deeply.

He had set off for Scuto’s slum den, resolutely keeping his mind on the task to come. Beetles were a practical folk, he told himself. They did not spend their lives worrying about things they could not be sure of.

Scuto’s neighbours spotted him way off, but he had no worries about that. Many of them would even recognize him as the Thorn Bug’s friend. Here, of all places in Helleron, he did not fear assault.

Which thought turned sour very fast when Scuto’s door was kicked open just in front of him, revealing the spiky grotesque levelling a crossbow at him.

Stenwold froze, thinking, Ah no. Don’t say they’ve turned Scuto now as well. Not the man I sent them all to.

‘What was I doing when you first met me?’ Scuto asked, squinting suspiciously.

Stenwold stared at him. ‘What?’

‘What was I doing when you first met me?’ the Thorn Bug demanded, jabbing the crossbow towards him forcefully enough to make the bolts in its magazine rattle.

Stenwold goggled at him. ‘I don’t think I can remember precisely. I do remember that you had a sideline in truly awful poetry, if that’s any help. I could even recite some for you.’

‘No need,’ said the Thorn Bug hastily. ‘Come on in. We’ve had mixed news.’

He backed into the shack, setting the crossbow down, and Stenwold followed.

‘I’ve had news too,’ he said, ‘mostly bad-’ before he was almost knocked off his feet by Tynisa.

‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’ She was hugging him as hard as she could. ‘We thought you were walking right into a trap.’

‘Oh I was,’ he confirmed, and when she gave him a startled look he added, ‘What, you think old Stenwold can’t look after himself?’ He held her at arm’s length, seeing beneath her skin the shadow of the last few days. ‘It’s good to see that you can survive a little, too,’ he said gently.

Beyond her, amidst the clutter of Scuto’s artifice, he spotted Totho lurking. ‘You made it too, then? Good lad.’