Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

In the air before her hung a shape pale and indistinct, a spiderweb of lines that resembled something like a man – but a man transfigured, his body writhing with briars, his skin rippling with chitin. Only the face remained untouched by the taint of the Darakyon.

Tisamon.

Tynisa was staring at this tattered spectre, and Che had no word for the expression on the girl’s face.

‘In Jerez, after Achaeos… I tried to throw my sword away.. .’ the Spider girl got out. Whatever emotion had hold of her was shaking her with all its force. ‘But you told me then that I had been the victim of magic, and that the sword did its best to stay my hand. You told me that, then, but I had forgotten.’

The ghost made some almost dismissive gesture, but Tynisa’s face was abruptly twisted into a snarl.

‘You told me that, then, and I didn’t believe you, and I thought I must have had some reason to do it, because in Collegium there is no magic and people do not stab their friends without purpose,’ she spat out. ‘But here in the Commonweal, after you came to me, you had me believe that I stabbed him because he was an enemy – that he had earned his death, and that I should rejoice in his blood. All these things you whispered to me, telling me to feel no guilt but to be satisfied at the downfall of a foe. Where is the man who comforted me, and told me I was bewitched, and that even my blade had fought against the deed? Why not tell me that, and lead me away from…’ and her voice broke momentarily, ‘from doing it all again!’

Mantis-kinden know no guilt. Che heard the voice as if it was a whisper of leaves.

‘You did!’ Tynisa snapped. ‘It made you human, that regret, but where is it now? Where is the man who was Stenwold’s friend, and who loved my mother?’ Her jaw clenched, and Che thought she had finished, but then she shrieked out, loud enough for everyone among the ruins to hear, ‘ Where is my father? ’

The movements of the ghost tried to claim that title, but its voice was too faint to hear. Instead, it was Maure who answered her anguished cry.

‘This is but some part of him that has clung on,’ the magician explained sadly. ‘Some handful of shards of him, mere fragments of the man that once was. Ghosts are just broken pieces of us. The hard slivers of him stand before you, with nothing to sheathe their sharp edges. This is the Mantis, not the man.’

A fragile calm touched Tynisa and she let her hands fall to her sides, pointedly no longer resting one on her sword grip. ‘You made me kill Alain, and without you… perhaps I would not have been so hasty. I will not say he was a good man, and he was certainly not his brother, but I became a murderer in truth when I shed his blood.’

Tisamon’s shade made an angry gesture, and Che faintly heard, You are above their laws and morality.

‘Stenwold would disagree,’ Tynisa replied, and the mention of that name seemed to strike the ghost like a blow, making it ripple and shudder. And then she said, ‘I cast you out.’

There was an utter silence after those words, and the twisted and changing face of the ghost remained still for a moment, then it rushed forward, to within inches of Tynisa’s face. Che heard it cry out, You need me!

‘My true father would tell me I need nobody but myself.’

With my aid, you will never lose a battle, triumph in every fight!

‘You lie, spirit,’ Tynisa snapped. ‘I would triumph in every fight except the last, because you would drive me to some impossible conflict eventually, just to have me die as Mantis-kinden should. I cast you out. I cast you out. I deny you. You are not my father.’

Che held her breath, waiting and still waiting as the spectre shimmered and hung in the air. A disturbance was building up within it, and it writhed and twisted as though strung up on hooks. Her gaze sought out Maure, and found the magician pale and tense, as if awaiting an explosion.

Then, like an exhalation, it was gone, vanishing into infinite distance, yet without seeming to leave the walls of the decrepit hut they sat in, even as the very sunlight seemed to creep into the shade’s absence.

Maure let out a long, ragged breath. As the only one of them to know the risks intimately, she looked more relieved than Che cared to think about.

‘It’s done,’ she confirmed. ‘The shade is gone.’

‘Gone where?’ Tynisa asked, sounding shaky, but all Maure would say was, ‘Away.’

The Spider girl glanced at Che, tentatively probing her expression. ‘You saw it all? Tisamon? Achaeos?’

Che nodded tiredly. ‘I’ve never held Achaeos against you, Tynisa, nor has Stenwold, nor did Tisamon when he truly lived. The only one who ever did was you yourself. Do you at least accept that you’re not to blame for his death?’

Tynisa nodded. ‘I tried so hard not to believe in magic. I thought it was just a convenient excuse. You came a long way to tell me that, Che.’

‘Well of course I did,’ Che replied, almost offended. ‘We’re sisters, after all, despite everything. And you’ll be needed.’

Tynisa blinked. ‘I’ll… what?’

‘As we all will be needed.’

Tynisa and Maure were both staring at her now, but the words just fell from Che’s lips, her face slack and expressionless.

‘Falling leaves, red and brown and black and gold. A rain of burning machines over a city of the Apt. The darkness between trees. The Seal of the Worm is breaking.’

A beat of complete silence followed, as though the world outside their ruined hut had been utterly stilled. Then Che blinked at them and demanded, ‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’

‘Che, you said…’ Tynisa frowned. ‘I don’t understand what you just said.’

‘No?’ Maure asked. ‘The Moths call their magicians seers, and set them to sift the future for visions of what may come. Sometimes the visions arrive unasked. The Seal of the Worm, that’s what you said.’

‘Meaning what?’ Che asked, entirely thrown, but a man’s voice broke in, startling them all, Tynisa snatching for her sword.

‘The Seal of the Worm. That’s a bad old story.’ It was Soul Je, the Grasshopper-kinden brigand, crouching just outside the shattered doorway of their hut. Che guessed he had come to investigate the shouting of just a moment before.

‘Tell us,’ Che instructed him immediately, but the man shook his head.

‘Best not repeated. Old wars, old enemies banished to the depths, and let them long remain there. Besides, who knows the truth these days?’ He shrugged.

Che was frowning, her face screwed up in concentration. Something of the Moth lore… In trying to understand Achaeos she had read all that a Beetle might readily acquire, including mouldering histories that no other College hand had touched in centuries. ‘Worms

… some old war?’ And what had happened at the end of that war? But, of course, Moth histories were opaque, dense with allegory. The Moths had fought off so many challengers in the Inapt world of the Days of Lore: all of them defeated, hunted down, destroyed wherever they could be found, or else… banished?

Sealed away… came the uncomfortable recollection.

She opened her mouth to question Soul Je again, but he shook his head, discouraging it. A moment later the Wasp Mordrec bundled past him.

‘We’ve spotted their scouts! Time to move!’

Salme Elass’s tactical problem now was that her entire force, including all the peasant levy and footmen, could not reliably keep up with the fleeing brigands. A large force was always slower, trailing its supplies and its unwilling conscripts. If she mustered her strength in one place, she might never catch her enemies.

She had taken the only step she could, by sending her followers out in detachments at varying speeds, trusting to the fastest to bring her quarry to bay so that the rest of her strength could regroup and finish the business once and for all.