Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

‘On the contrary, I was in the nick of time. I always am.’

‘They nearly got killed,’ she said.

‘Yes. Nearly. ’

‘Isn’t such drama counterproductive in your profession?’

He stared at her for a moment and Odyssa wondered if she had overstepped the mark.

‘Drama is all,’ he said softly. ‘Drama is the why of it. I would have thought a Spider-kinden would understand, you who live your lives just for show. I do not kill because I love killing. I do not kill because it makes me rich. I do not kill because I have some cause or ideology to propagate. I kill for the same reason an actor steps onto the stage, or a good athlete runs his race. Because, in the fleeting second of the execution, I am excellent. I am complete.’

She took her life in her hands with, ‘So why not become an actor, assassin?’

‘Because I am very bad at acting, and no other reason. I have only one talent in life. My heritage has left me just that, and no more.’

She dipped into her belt-pouch, seeing a minute buildup of tension in him that was instantly gone when all she came out with was a roll of coins.

‘You’re owed this, I believe, and I’m sure you’re a man who has few living debtors.’

‘Because of the insult,’ he said. ‘Not because of the money.’

‘Of course not.’ She slid the coins across the table top and without warning he pounced on her hand, pinning her to the wood with a pincer-like grip.

‘Do you think I live in a palace, Spider girl?’ he asked her. His voice was so soft she could barely hear it over the hammering of her own heart. ‘Do you think I eat off jewelled plates, or have a host of slaves to tend to me? Do you think that I, with who and what I am, could simply retire one day, to live like a Spider lord amid all the luxuries of the world?’

His grip was hurting her but she refused to show it, looking him directly in the eye.

‘I cannot risk sleeping in the same place two nights running,’ he said. ‘And, when I sleep, I keep one ear open for the footstep on the stair, the hand at the shutter. I eat when I can. I have no friends, nor any trust to spare for them. I have a thousand enemies who have good reason to want me dead, a thousand clients who would rather I was silenced. What I own, Spider girl, is what you see: the tools of my trade. I have no use for anything I cannot carry. I cannot be tied down, neither to people nor to property. I have these garments, these weapons, and my reputation. That, then, is the life of a great assassin.’

‘But you are a hero to the people,’ she got out.

‘To the people in general, perhaps, but I am an enemy to each individual one of them. Not one of them has so much as bought me a drink, and even if they did, I could not trust them far enough to drink it.’

‘But all that money – the amounts you ask?’

He smiled, and let go her hand, his fingers leaving stark white marks where they had gripped. ‘Perhaps I bury it. Perhaps I give it to beggars. Perhaps I invest in the spice trade. Perhaps I throw it into the Exalsee. When I am gone, no one will ever know.’ He regarded her doubtfully. ‘So much for me,’ he said, ‘but if I were an informed Solarnese, I would be more concerned about a Spider woman who is working with the Wasps, and yet attempting to preserve their enemies. What can be going on?’

‘Well that will have to be my secret,’ she told him, rising.

He made no move to stop her but, as she turned, he said, ‘I feel that Solarno may become a very crowded place in the near future. Why do I think that, I wonder?’

‘Perhaps you should take up travelling and spread that reputation of yours wider,’ she said.

‘Oh, I rather think that my skills will still be needed here,’ he said. His look at her, in that moment, was entirely predatory. ‘You are very elegant, Spider girl, very clever and complex. Do not slip in your web-making. I would not like to hear some other give me your name some day soon.’

Balkus leant back along the raked seats of the Prowess Forum, watching as the Dragonfly-woman danced through the air. The sunlight that broke from the chamber’s four doorways glittered on her armour so that she seemed to be clad in rainbows. The long-handled, short-bladed sword was a blur, passed from hand to hand, or sometimes held in both, but never still.

Felise Mienn was at her daily practice.

‘He set you on her, did he not?’

Balkus looked over at the Spider-kinden, Destrachis, seated a few rows further up. He was a mystery, and that was something Balkus had no time for.

‘He being who?’ the Ant asked.

‘He being Master Maker,’ Destrachis said. He was old, or at least looked it, for his long hair was greying. Instead of the easy grace his kinden usually moved with, he had retreated to a delicate, measured patience. Of course, as he was a Spider, it could all be an act, to put those around him off their guard.

When Balkus made no reply, the Spider-kinden continued, ‘Because he’s going away.’

‘It’s no secret Maker’s going north,’ Balkus said. ‘And someone’s got to watch over your woman there.’

‘ I watch her,’ Destrachis said reasonably. ‘But perhaps you mean someone you can trust.’

‘We don’t know you,’ Balkus agreed readily. ‘Furthermore, Maker’s Mantis friend has taken a shine to her, but I really don’t think he’s taken one to you.’

Destrachis’s long face grimaced at that. ‘In Seldis and Siennis they tend to laugh at the Mantis-kinden and their grudges,’ he said. ‘Of course, the Mantids don’t come there much. And, as for the rest, I’m perhaps the only Spider-kinden who’ll ever admit to you that I cannot be wholly relied on. I’ve failed before.’

‘Haven’t we all.’ Balkus turned back to Felise Mienn, still engaged in her exercise, watching in silence for a moment as she spun and glittered. She was beautiful, there was no doubt, but it was a beauty that would be dangerous to approach. Her very presence set him reaching instinctively for his sword-hilt, and he fought off this impulse because it could be so easily misconstrued by a madwoman like her.

‘It’s something of a mystery, really,’ continued the careful voice of Destrachis. ‘Before it happened, she was never reckoned so good. She was trained, of course. She was a Mercer, and they’re not exactly slack with sword or bow, but this… this mastery just seems to have fallen on her like a mantle, after her family was lost to her.’

Balkus nodded, still trying to follow the shimmering movements of the Dragonfly-kinden, and finding that his speed of eye was not quite up to the task.

‘Well it’s all very pretty,’ he said, as dismissively as he could muster, ‘but I prefer my own manner of fighting.’ He patted the heavy bulk of the nailbow resting on the stonework beside him.

‘Nobody’s keeping you here,’ Destrachis pointed out.

‘Like you said,’ said Balkus. ‘Sten Maker left me here with an armful of jobs, and keeping an eye on that one there was one of them – in case she goes mad.’

‘A waste of your time,’ the Spider observed.

‘Says you. I’ve seen her and I’ve seen mad, and she’s it.’

Destrachis smiled, but it was a tired smile. Felise had been in Collegium for more than a month now without any sudden explosion of her madness. She had not even shown any inclination to charge off after Thalric. Yes, she was making every show of being sane now, and yet he knew it was not so. He felt like a man living in a tottering house that one night will collapse and crush him. ‘Oh, I’ll not argue with that, friend,’ he said. ‘Only that, when it happens, you’ll not be able to stop it.’