Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

‘May I ask what has brought you here, perhaps?’

She was at first not going to answer, but the shadows seemed to be building in the room around him as the fire guttered, and there were silhouettes there, clawing their way out of the grave of her mind. ‘Three dead men,’ she told Galltree shortly, then retreated to her hammock.

By objective standards, her father Tisamon had failed at almost everything in his life.

He had failed as a Mantis, giving his heart to one of the Spider-kinden they so despised. Later, he had failed his second lover, the Dragonfly Felise Mienn, by abandoning her. He had failed his oldest friend Stenwold Maker by leaving his side in his hour of greatest need.

At the last, brought to bay in the Imperial arena, he had failed to kill the Wasp Emperor. It was his greatest deed, already immortalized in song and celebrated on stage: the Mantis that brought down an empire. Except that the Empire was already doing a good job of climbing right back up. Except that the Emperor had been dead even as Tisamon was at the centre of a knot of furious Wasp soldiers, shedding blood and being hacked at like an animal. The Emperor had been a victim of a Mosquito-kinden who had caught Tynisa, and had brought her to the arena so she could watch her father die.

She remembered, though. The blow he had struck, as he had fought his bloody, tattered way clear of the Wasp throng, was not against the Empire’s overlord, but to slay the Mosquito-kinden who was tormenting her. She had come all that way to save her father but, instead, at the end he had done what remained in his power to rescue her.

And he had died. The Emperor’s guard had made sure of that, cutting and slicing at the corpse long after life had made its exit. She had witnessed that, and felt her gorge rise, felt the horror and despair… but then all those feelings had burned away, for a moment. Her Mantis blood had risen within her, the half-heritage that Tisamon had bequeathed her. She had seen their butchery as the tribute it was, for he had shaken them so deeply, pride of the Empire as they were, that they could not risk even the slightest chance that he might yet live.

In one part of his life only could dead Tisamon claim success. He had been a killer, a relentless, poised and deadly killer, bearing as his credentials the sword and circle badge of the Weaponsmasters. To his daughter, he had given the only gift he had, by passing to her all he knew of the ancient art of separating lives and bodies.

She clung to it now. Here, alone and far from home, crippled by lost friends and by her own victims, she needed his guidance and his strength. All she had of him, though, was what she carried within her.

So it was that Tynisa found herself abandoned in Suon Ren.

That word would have been considered unkind by Gramo Galltree, who was doing everything in his power to make her stay a comfortable one: cooking and cleaning and making polite conversation about the weather, or trying to get her to talk about Collegium, his long-lost home. As a day passed, though, and then another, Tynisa became increasingly aware that Gramo’s power here was minuscule: he just did not matter to the locals, and neither did she. She could walk every one of the broad, almost unformed streets of the town, and it was as though she was invisible to all but the children, and even they kept clear of her – parental warnings no doubt ringing in their ears.

Sometimes the castle seneschal, or some other functionary, would come to the embassy for a few brief words with Galltree, and each time it was plain that the question was the same: Is she still here? Sometimes they came to stare at her, as though she was some grotesque piece of artwork, but they would not answer her questions, or even recognize that she was capable of speech.

With so little outside stimulus, she sank deeper into herself. Her days were spent hunting between the Commonwealer buildings, looking for she knew not what, but sensing others moving on parallel paths, always just out of sight, but constantly in her mind. When darkness fell they closed in, so that she would sit in her little room at the embassy and listen to the ghosts have their way with the place, moving just out of sight, the whisper of a robe’s hem, the harsh scrape of Tisamon’s boots. Sometimes she heard the distant echo of Salma, laughing gently at some remark made by who-knew-which shade, and she would hunch tight in her hammock, turning her back to the world and trying to blot it all out.

After two days, she took to her practising again, because that was the only part of the woman she had been that she cared to revive, and because it was a gift from her father. While Gramo pottered about in his garden, she used his large room as her Prowess Forum, rapier tasting the air, darting and stepping through all the intricate passes and guards of the Mantis styles, each coming unbidden and unrusted to her mind, a smooth-running sequence of steel. For two hours she strung her body through them all, and back again, fighting imaginary duels in her mind: against one, against many, against overwhelming odds; rehearsing that final dance that all Mantis warriors hoped for.

She completed her pass, blade glittering in the air, and found the rapier’s point falling into line with the chest of a Dragonfly man now standing in the doorway. He looked to be another of the seneschal’s stamp, wearing clothes of the same green, gold and blue colours, but more practically made and harder-wearing. His hair was a little longer than the fashion in Suon Ren, and bound back, and she guessed he was older than the seneschal as well.

‘I hope I do not interrupt,’ he said mildly. ‘I am sent from the castle.’

The surprise of actually being spoken to dried her throat, and it was a moment before she could speak. ‘The ambassador is not here.. .’ Abruptly a thought came to her, a certainty: ‘The prince is returned.’

‘As you say,’ the Dragonfly confirmed. ‘Seneschal Coren has reported a petition that disturbs him, a Lowlander demanding an audience.’

‘You are sent for me?’

‘I am sent here to find out what it is you want with the prince,’ he corrected her. There was a straightness in his bearing that was almost reminiscent of Tisamon, a pride rooted in ancient places. She wondered if the man was a Dragonfly Weaponsmaster come to kill her, if her answers did not suit.

Her rapier found its home in her scabbard, and she let out a long breath. ‘What do you want me to say?’ she asked him, finding the locals’ elaborate politeness too standoffish.

‘When Stenwold Maker came here, he spoke of war. Are you sent on the same mission?’

She sensed that this was the question that could see her turned away, although she could not quite grasp the significance the man was putting into his words. ‘I have come to talk to the prince about Salma – about Prince Salme Dien.’ She stumbled over the formal Commonweal name, because he had always just been ‘Salma’ to her. ‘Did you know him? The prince became his guardian after Salma’s father died.’ Uncertainty was evident in her voice, and the Dragonfly shook his head slightly.

‘He was kin-obligate to the prince.’ It was another polite correction. The Commonweal tradition that saw children find surrogate homes with those of other castes and trades was something alien to the Lowlands. ‘It is true that Prince-Minor Salme Dien had the honour of being chosen by Prince Felipe as such. It is a rare thing indeed for a prince to so bless the children of another noble family. We all remember him fondly. To my prince, he was as a son.’ Something was softening in the man, his cold manner melting away, and she felt a connection with him, tenuous but present – the first time she had found any echo of humanity in this reserved people since Salma had died.