Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

And the irresistible thought came to Tynisa: I can kill him. I can start by ridding the world of Gaved, right here, right now. Because, although killing Gaved would be a pitiful gift to the world, at least it would give the drift of her life some meaning before the end.

She had never been in Siriell’s Town before, but instinct had taken over and she skulked along in Gaved’s wake, without any suggestion that he was aware of her. He seemed a busy man, too, with plenty of people to talk to: darting from hovel to shack, exchanging words, paying his way with what looked like some little cut stones. Sometimes she caught him looking over his shoulder, and she guessed she was not the only person here who wished him ill, something that seemed entirely understandable to her.

Twice she thought he was going to get into a fight. The first time, he was accosted by another Wasp and she heard angry words exchanged, the man accusing Gaved of some disloyalty – perhaps to the Empire that both had patently abandoned – but Gaved smoothed matters over with some joke, fending off the man’s anger. The aggressor looked more than a little drunk and Gaved was able to evade him quickly.

The second time a half-dozen or so Grasshoppers tried to accost him, and although his hands threatened them with Wasp Art they only kept their distance but did not disperse. They were armed with spears and staves and knives, and they clearly wanted Gaved to go along with them to some local tyrant or other. Tynisa watched, interested to see if she would have to save the man’s life in order to have the pleasure of killing him herself.

One of the Grasshoppers became too bold, reaching for the Wasp’s sleeve, even though his fellows were still holding back. A bitter expression crossed Gaved’s face briefly and Tynisa saw his hand flash fire, knocking the grasping man off his feet, still alive but with one leg scorched. In the next instant the Wasp had taken to the sky, his wings lifting him back over the adjoining buildings. The Grasshoppers cursed and gave chase, as their own Art sent them leaping and bounding along at rooftop level, determined not to let Gaved get away. The wounded man yelled after them, demanding aid that was not offered, and then he began to crawl away, weeping with pain.

Tynisa loped into action. She did not possess the Art to follow either the Grasshoppers or their prey, but she could see the net of his pursuers as it spread. Hurriedly, she climbed up to the creaking roof of the largest shack, spying them out, seeing who gave up soonest, who continued following a trail. She took only moments to make her guess, and then she dropped back down to street level and went hunting.

It felt good – and so little had felt good recently – to be moving swiftly and silently through the shabby streets, rapier swaying at her side like a faithful companion beast. This was more a taste of life than the world had afforded her in a long time now, since the war.

Sometimes people got in her way, but they got right back out of it once they noticed her expression, Wasps as well as locals, for she was not someone to stop, just then.

She slowed as she neared the wretched district her instincts had led her towards, and began to quarter it more subtly, street by street, her eyes not actively searching so much as taking it all in – letting the filthy sights and sounds wash over her while sifting them for familiarity. She encountered a few of the Grasshoppers, angry and frustrated at their failed search, turning back now to make their excuses to whoever had hired them. She paid them no mind.

As she shifted sidelong into the shadows beneath a shed’s sagging eaves she found a core of stillness, a Mantis’s watchful invisibility before the strike, as though the shade of Tisamon stood beside her, hand on her shoulder, lending her his kinden’s Art. The other ghosts had been left far behind.

There. She had him. The cloaked figure walking almost – not quite – like a Dragonfly, but a little too burly despite his best efforts. She watched as he slipped out from between two buildings, a little astray from where she had predicted, but close enough. There was a brief pale flash of Wasp skin as he glanced about, and then Gaved hurried off, not at the idle saunter of before, but like a man in a hurry to get somewhere.

She flowed after him, like a ghost herself, keeping up with him at a distance, street for street. When she saw he was heading out of Siriell’s Town her satisfaction only increased. She would be able to kill him cleanly and without interruption, before returning to this festering pit to begin earning her atonement in blood.

He made good time after that, but always on the ground, not wanting to take wing and be too visible. Shortly, he was at the outskirts, where Siriell’s Town petered out into the most wretched of slums, amid the utter squalor of those too weak to fight for something better. Shacks and hovels had become just makeshift tents, cloaks propped up on sticks. The stink was vile, with flies rising in whirling clouds from makeshift latrines, and from bodies.

Gaved did not stop for any of this, and nor did Tynisa, although her stalking had become more careful as her cover diminished. She fell further back, changing her tactics from crowds and walls to using the curve and lurch of the land against him: creeping low, meandering left and right as the contours took her, but always managing to keep him in sight. His track took him through barren farmland in which some of the locals were trying to scratch a living, and she followed him field by field, crossing their boundaries, slinking along irrigation ditches and taking the occasional stand of stunted trees as a gift.

Dusk was on its way now, a bloated moon having already hauled itself clear of the horizon. Gaved had passed the last patch of farmland, too stony now for anything but a handful of scrawny sheep watched over by a Grasshopper youth, and his red and black beetle that circled the animals constantly in a vigilant trundle. One hill beyond, Gaved turned down into a sheltered defile, and there made camp.

Watching his quick, professional movements as he set a little fire beneath the overhang and hung a tiny pot over it, she almost forgot why she had followed him. Thinking himself alone out here, he had become an honest man, quietly competent and well able to brave the wilderness, seemingly more at home than he had been on the streets of Siriell’s Town. She watched for longer than she intended, out in the cold and the dark, as he cooked up something almost scentless to eat, over a fire that gave no smoke.

At the last, and shivering slightly from the chill, she drew her rapier in one smooth, silent motion. His wings and sting would give him all the advantages when at range, yet she could not bear to simply kill him from behind. This was not squeamishness: she wanted him to know the agent of justice before he died.

Even as she took her first step towards him, his voice called out, ‘About time. Now come out where I can see you.’ He was standing up, one hand out with palm open, but not quite looking at her – knowing that he was observed but unable to make her out in the darkness beyond his fire. She edged closer, in inches and steps, and he cast about, frowning and tense, but unwilling to flee from mere shadows. In her slow progress there was a fierce battle being fought, his eyes and the moon against her stealth, until she was almost within rapier’s reach. Then the firelight caught her, and he saw at last who she was.

His expression was almost all she could have wanted: utter shock at first, but swiftly replaced by an intense loathing that mirrored her own thoughts exactly. She had to kill him, because he was a reminder of all the things she was trying to forget. He, in that instant of recognition, had made a similar resolution – and quite possibly for similar reasons.