Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Taki had already hopped into the Esca Volenti , and Che managed to get herself seated within the Stormcry , despite the rocking waves. She started the engines and let their pull take her away from the pier, building and building momentum until she could put the flaps down and let the thrumming power of them rip her from the water and cast her into the air.

The Esca soared overhead, leading the way, and Che corrected her course, keeping well clear of the water, and letting herself ride in the wake of Taki’s machine.

Even after a cup of the bitter root tea that Nivit’s girl had brewed up, Tynisa had seemed shaken, oddly cold and light-headed from her lost moment in the rain. Gaved had been concerned enough about her safety to escort Tynisa to where Achaeos was awaiting news, which had clearly surprised her.

‘Why?’ Tynisa had asked him.

‘What?’ he had said, ‘I was going this way anyway.’

She had given him a wry smile, and he had thought, Spider-kinden women.

Gaved had handed his copy of Nivit’s notes to the fretting Moth-kinden, to show that he was at least earning his keep, then he had trekked back through the rain to Nivit’s place, to make further plans.

An hour later found him having planned what little he could, agreeing with Nivit about who should be looked into and who avoided, or who amongst the Skater’s old contacts might have heard a rumour or two about where and when. Beyond that they had settled into talking over old times.

‘I swear, I’m staying this time, once this job’s done,’ Gaved declared.

‘Depends whose back you get on to,’ the Skater replied. ‘This many big fellas about, even I might take a holiday away from Jerez.’

‘I never learn.’ Gaved shook his head. ‘Every time I strike off from here, it’s only the Empire that hires me. I am so sick of doing imperial errands.’

The shrug Nivit gave him was eloquent. It said: Which of us can escape his heritage?

There was a single knock at the door, soft and polite, but with a suggestion of more force available if necessary.

They exchanged glances. After the thought just voiced, it seemed entirely possible that there were Wasp soldiers outside.

‘There in just a moment!’ Nivit shouted, and crept to the door quite silently, putting an eye to a strategic peephole. In a moment he looked back at Gaved and mouthed Customers . He quickly opened the door, and stepped back hurriedly as a large man entered.

Gaved stood up as he did so, and wondered instantly if this was one of the rich buyers Nivit had mentioned or, more to the point, whether this was the rich buyer of unknown kinden.

No , he realized as recognition came, Beetle-kinden . Beetle-kinden of a breed he had never seen before, though. Not Lowlander, not imperial either. The newcomer was very tall, stooping even once he was past the lintel, and broad-shouldered with it. Despite the rain outside, he wore no cloak, but was armoured head to foot – though it was armour that Gaved for one had never seen before. Much of it was iridescent, like Dragonfly plate, but instead of greens and golds and blues, it was pale and milky, sheened with oily rainbow hues that danced in the light of the candles Nivit’s girl had set out. The edges of the plates were gilded, with gold of a red richness that was also beyond Gaved’s experience. The man’s skin-tone, in the guttering light, was not the rich brown of a Beetle-kinden from anywhere Gaved knew but pale as an albino, though his hair was dark, cut short and plastered back around his rounded skull. His mouth was wide, his eyes small, and he bore a staff that ended in some device, some cunning piece of artificing. As he came in, Gaved caught a brief glimpse through the open door of men, large and small, waiting outside in the rain, in the darkness.

He realized that he had never seen anyone like this before, despite the fact that here was a Beetle-kinden, a ubiquitous breed. This then was something entirely outside Gaved’s well-travelled experience.

He glanced at Nivit. The Skater was standing very still. ‘What’s it we can do, chief?’ he asked his visitor, and his voice seemed a little fragile.

‘You find people? That is your job?’ the large Beetle said, and Gaved’s uneasiness increased, because the man had an accent that was also entirely foreign to him. ‘Escaped people. Troublesome people.’

‘That’s us, chief,’ Nivit agreed. The broad smile that now lit the big man’s face was entirely unpleasant.

‘Find her,’ he said, thrusting a square of paper out in one gauntleted hand. Nivit nipped forward to take it, and froze even as his fingers touched it. He barely glanced at it further before handing it to Gaved.

It was not quite paper, but something waxy, something a bit like paper but slightly greasy to the touch. There was a portrait on it, a picture of a woman. Spider-kinden would be Gaved’s guess, although it was not quite so easy to tell. The picture was very exact, though, very detailed. Moreover, it was inscribed beneath the waxy layer.

‘Find her,’ the stranger said.

Even in the face of all this, Nivit had not forgotten his professional priorities. ‘There’s the matter of a fee, chief,’ he started.

The man reached for his belt, and when his hand came out, it was to display three lozenges of metal. ‘You shall have one now. The rest when you have restored our property to us.’

Nivit timidly plucked one piece from the man’s hand. Something in his expression, in his very bearing, told Gaved that this metal was gold.

‘Sold, chief,’ the Skater said hoarsely. ‘Where can we-?’

‘We will contact you, later. Meanwhile hold her for us.’ The man gave Gaved a level stare, and then turned, forcing his armoured bulk out through the doorway, and then heading out through the rain to his fellows. Some of those fellows, Gaved saw, were bigger even than their visitor, others as small as Fly-kinden.

Nivit closed the door, and then simply sat down on the rain-puddled floor with his back to it. ‘Oh cursing wastes,’ he breathed. ‘This is bad.’

‘Who was he?’ Gaved asked. ‘Who were they ?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t,’ Nivit said, and at the same time he was dissembling so badly that Gaved could tell it straight off.

‘Nivit…?’

‘Don’t ask me. We don’t talk about it.’ The Skater’s frightened look was genuine enough not to provoke more questions. ‘I bet you, though,’ Nivit went on. ‘I bet there’s lights out on the lake tonight. I bet you any money you like.’

He would not be drawn further. His hands, holding the bar of gold and the waxed portrait, were shaking.

When Scyla opened her eyes it was there again: just a shadow, nothing but a shadow. She could have passed her hand through it, if she had dared: if she had not thought that to touch it, to fall under that shadow, would mean death.

She had always been one for darkness, had Scyla, for dark rooms and night-work. Now she crept off the end of her bed and threw the shutters wide. That had worked, before. When the shadow had first stood there, the glare of daylight had banished it.

She turned round. It was still beside the bed but it too had turned, craning over its shoulder, to look at her. The sunlight cut through, wherever it fell, but the dance of the dust motes kept its place where the darkness could not.

She had thought that this shadow was just a figment of her imagination, and then that it was a mere representation of whatever was contained within the box. By now she was realizing that this was an individual, the leader of the box’s inmates, and that it was becoming more real each day.