Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

‘Lovely relatives you have,’ Avaris remarked drily.

‘And things are better in the Spiderlands?’ Mordrec challenged.

‘Oh at least we have the benefit of variety. Hanging’s customary, but the local magistrate has free rein, you see. Anything goes: flayed alive, dismembered by machines, tied between four beetles and pulled apart, fed to the ant-lion, eaten alive by maggots, you name it. I once heard of a woman who had a wasp sting her – not your kind, just a little hand-sized one. Then, when they let her go, she thought she was the luckiest criminal in the Spiderlands. Of course a week later the grub starts eating her from the inside, and she’s history. So don’t you come your crossed pikes with me. We invented being cruel bastards. Your lot are just amateurs.’

‘You are so full of lies, you probably piss them,’ Mordrec retorted, but without much fire.

‘Have you not got some other topic of conversation?’ Dal complained, after that.

‘Of course, surely. So, what were you thinking of doing tomorrow, anyone? Because if the weather lasts I thought I’d go to the theatre ,’ Avaris said, slumping down tiredly. ‘Or maybe a brothel, if it rains. I know this lovely place in Helleron, the Veil. You should come along. They cater for all tastes.’

‘Shut up,’ Dal told him sharply.

‘Well you’re the one who wanted to talk-’

‘No, shut up. We’re not alone.’

That silenced them all, and they peered upward into the gloom. There was just a single torch up there, shedding precious little light.

‘Is it time?’ Mordrec asked softly.

‘It’s night,’ stammered Avaris. ‘They’ll make it public. Won’t kill us at night.’

‘ Quiet,’ hissed Dal Arche, and then, ‘So, come back to gloat some more, have you? Or is it remorse? An odd thing for someone like you to be losing sleep over.’

As he spoke, Tynisa’s pale face appeared above them, staring down. She said nothing, but would not quite meet the Dragonfly’s gaze.

‘Come on, out with it,’ Dal prompted. ‘What’s the bad news?’

She twitched unexpectedly. Perhaps only Dal’s eyes were good enough to spot it.

Tynisa backed away from the grille, out of direct view. A few grumbles of protest arose, but the bandit leader’s hiss silenced them. She put down her bundle and turned her attention to the nearest corner weight.

For a long while she just stared, even the simple mechanics of it evading her. The mechanism had been designed by the Inapt for the Inapt, though, and she had watched it in operation. Eventually something fell reluctantly into place in her mind, and she saw that if she moved this piece of wood here, it would free the counterweight to swing aside. She could not quite see how that would make this corner weight light enough to be heaved aside into the appropriate channel cut into the stone, freeing that quarter of the grille, but nevertheless that was what seemed to happen. Instead of trying to wrestle with cause and effect, she followed by rote what she had witnessed, as perhaps the jailers of Leose had done for generations, each in empty mimicry of his predecessor.

That done, she paused, and realized that she would have to repeat this performance for each of the corners in order to render the grille movable at all, after which she would then have to find some way of actually shifting it. She moved on, and now the bandits were watching her, wide-eyed and bewildered, but with a dawning sense that all was not as it should be, and that some opportunity might come their way. She glanced down at them, as she moved the second weight. The burly Scorpion-kinden was glowering at her still, murder burning in his deep-set eyes, but the rest had hope writ large on their faces, all save their leader, Dal Arche, who remained profoundly suspicious.

‘What are you doing, girl?’

‘You’re mine. I caught you, more than anyone did, and I had a purpose for you, at the time,’ she said tiredly, putting her back against the third weight, which grated heavily across wood and stone before it fell clear. ‘But now I’ve changed my mind. You’re mine, all of you, so that makes you mine to set free, if I want.’

She released the counterbalance for the final corner and, when she turned back, Dal was already crouching up against the grille, and others of his people were taking up position, too, using their wings or clinging to the walls, ready to jointly shoulder the confining bars out of the way.

‘That’s not it,’ Dal said patiently, as though he was not a prisoner, and she was not dangling his freedom in front of him. ‘What happened to all that truth and justice and the golden law of the Monarch? What happened to right and wrong? Or do you reckon we’re heroes, now?’

Tynisa paused and stared at him. ‘Oh, you’re murderers and robbers and bastards, the lot of you. But you know what? I realize now that I can’t judge you. The right and the wrong of it seem to have slipped away when I wasn’t looking, and I see clearly enough, now, to understand that I can’t see clearly enough to sit in judgement. And why should you suffer because of my blindness, and why should the Salmae benefit?’ She paused, staring down at their hungry faces. ‘I’m undoing it. I’m undoing it all – all my interfering. It’ll be as though I was never even here.’ Her voice trembled over the last few words, and she clenched her teeth.

‘Except for all the bodies,’ their Spider-kinden pointed out.

For a moment she went very still, fighting down a wave of nausea that rose up inside her, and she closed her eyes in case some spectre of her imagination should resurface, and plunge her back into that well of guilt she had only recently crawled out of. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘except for the bodies.’ When she looked up she wore a hard, bleak smile. ‘You and the Salmae can go tear each other apart straight away, for all I care.’

‘Not likely. It’s south for Rhael Province, for us,’ Dal decided.

‘Not staying to kill Princess Elass in her sleep?’ Tynisa enquired, shifting the last weight.

‘You’re a bloody-handed sort, aren’t you?’ At Dal’s signal, his people braced themselves to shunt the grille two feet aside. That gave enough room, and moments later they came crawling out into the dubious freedom of the prison chamber. Tynisa calmly picked up her bundle again.

Dal was staring up the ramp that led to the courtyard. ‘Trust the Salmae to want to keep their prisoners nicely out of the way of their spotless private chambers. If we can make the courtyard, we’re free.’

Tynisa knelt down and unfurled her burden, revealing a random collection of knives and swords, whatever she could take easily from the little armoury she had found. Dal knelt down and took up the shortbow she had found.

‘Just the one?’

‘Don’t complain,’ she snapped.

He shrugged, and she assumed he would keep the weapon for himself, but he passed it, along with the slender quiver, to one of his Grasshopper-kinden. ‘Soul, you’re the best shot. You take it.’

‘You didn’t happen to find a replacement nailbow on your travels, did you?’ asked the Wasp-kinden.

Tynisa gave him a narrow look. ‘You’ll just have to make do with shooting fire from your damned hands.’

The Scorpion-kinden reached down and took up a short-hafted spear. When he straightened up, his pose had subtly altered, and she took a swift step back, whisking her sword from its sheath.

‘You killed my wife,’ the man rumbled through his tusks.

The words threw Tynisa completely. ‘Your wife? I remember killing your nasty little pet.’

‘Where he comes from, you’re not considered a grown man unless you’ve a companion like that,’ murmured the Grasshopper, Soul. ‘They call them wives, because it’s a partnership for life.’