Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

She now hoped nothing would happen overnight to change that thought.

‘Which is Bradawl?’ Tisamon enquired.

‘Here.’ It was a broad-shouldered Beetle with a breastplate over leather armour. ‘Lieutenant-Auxillian Pater Bradawl,’ he announced and clasped Tisamon’s hand, wrist-to-wrist. ‘Hear you’re s’posed to be good.’ His accent was not Empire but the homely, familiar tones of Helleron.

‘Good enough,’ Tisamon agreed. He gazed at Tynisa, who threw another glance towards the mysterious Spider girl. ‘Perhaps we can talk, Bradawl,’ he added.

Bradawl certainly concurred, drawing Tisamon out of earshot of his master.

Founder was writing in a ledger now, turning up a gas lamp for better light to read by. A single menial came to refill his decanter, and Tynisa belatedly noticed that, of the big retinue the man had travelled with earlier, only the guards now remained. Most of his servants must be either elsewhere or dismissed for the night.

So as not to get in the way. It was an unwelcome thought. The two guards in the room were conferring with a third now, who just had come in from… Tynisa tried to work out the geography of the place, but it was impossible from the little she had seen so far: perhaps from the roof-deck? She caught a few whispered words of the man’s conversation: something concerning lights, and the lake. Founder’s pen scratched audibly, abruptly, to a halt in a scar of ink. He cursed to himself and began writing anew.

She stepped a little closer to the Spider girl, doing her best to keep an eye on her and at the same time on the others in the study. The thought of the face-changing Scyla was close to her mind.

‘So what’s going on?’ she whispered, hoping that another Spider face would be reassuring at least. The girl just stared at her.

‘It’s all right.’ Tynisa tried her best smile. ‘I’m not involved in any of this. You want to talk to anyone, you can talk to me. Are you from the Spiderlands? The Empire?’

‘I am from nowhere you know,’ said the girl, but the words were unnecessary, and Tynisa felt a chill go through her on hearing that soft, strange voice. Just as she had known Bradawl was raised in Helleron, or that Bellowern himself was an imperial Beetle rather than a Lowlander, she realized that this girl’s lilting and strange accent was utterly alien to her, more so than any she had ever heard in cosmopolitan Collegium or occupied Myna.

‘Tell me, quickly,’ Tynisa said.

‘They will kill me tonight,’ was all the girl said, and Tynisa could see that she did not want to be here within these walls, but that whatever was outside was worse.

‘You, Weaponsmistress!’ Founder snapped. ‘Over here!’

Tynisa cursed inwardly, but went over to the man’s desk.

‘You don’t talk to her,’ Founder warned. ‘Nobody does.’ Tynisa expected him to add ‘Except me’, but those words never came. Apparently, nobody at all talked to the mystery girl. ‘Now you stay close by me,’ Bellowern added, and there was nothing flirtatious in his voice. He took another swallow of wine, but it seemed only to leave him more tense.

‘If we could-’ she started, but he cut her off immediately.

‘Just kill them,’ he said. ‘When they arrive, kill them.’

She nodded, looking over to where Tisamon was sharing quiet words with Pater Bradawl.

The Mantis had expected Bellowern’s guard captain to be hostile and resentful at these overpaid newcomers, but the man was a Beetle, as pragmatic as they came.

‘I’m just glad we’ve got some replacement hands,’ Bradawl was saying. The darkness under his eyes spoke of missing sleep. ‘We lost three today.’

‘Lost to whom? How were they killed?’ Tisamon asked.

‘Just lost. Vanished off the streets,’ the Beetle explained. ‘Nobody saw a thing, so they claim, but then these Skater-kinden know when to keep their mouths shut. I told the chief that we should just get out of here, but he’s set on waiting for this auction. The girl was just an extra, an impulse, and now we’re paying for it.’ He stopped, realising he had said too much, and then deciding it did not matter anyway. ‘You and your woman had better be good.’

‘You don’t know who the enemy is? Or who the girl is?’

Bradawl shook his head. ‘Just that we ran into her one night, and the chief must have seen something in her. She’s really strange… and she’s on the run, I know, nothing surer than that.’

Tisamon glanced about. Despite himself, he found that the gondola’s confines were beginning to oppress him. It was all too artificial in here, with the flickering lamps and the bolted-down furniture. ‘The locals…?’

‘Know what’s going on, or something of it, right enough,’ Bradawl said. ‘They won’t talk, though. Whatever it is, they live with it and they’re scared of it, and they’re in no hurry to get in the way. We’re alone against it, whatever it is. We should just push that girl out of the hatch and be done with it, but the chief is fixed on her, wants to add her to his collection.’

‘A slave,’ declared Tisamon flatly.

Bradawl shrugged. ‘Mantis-kinden, what are you going to do about it? You’re in the Empire, and everyone’s a slave or a slave-master.’

‘What was that?’ Founder asked suddenly, loud enough to carry to them. They stepped back into his study to see him staring at his decanter.

‘Sir?’ Bradawl asked him.

‘Someone go up to the roof and make sure our men are still there,’ Founder ordered. ‘And make sure they’re armed and ready to fight.’

Bradawl looked briefly exasperated. ‘There are two repeating ballistae mounted on the deck, sir, and four soldiers as well. Anyone who sends men against us will get knocked back hard, whether from ground or sky.’

‘You!’ Founder pointed to one of the guards. ‘Go up there, now!’

The guard rushed out immediately, and they heard the sound of his boots clumping up wooden stairs. In the ensuing pause Tynisa sensed something occur, just a quiver in the floor and the walls. She looked across at Tisamon, who nodded. Founder was staring at the glass decanter still, as though it held some great secret.

The guard returned, reporting that the men up on deck were all present and alert, though Founder barely seemed to hear him.

‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Look.’

Tynisa saw it, then. There were ripples in the surface of the wine in the decanter, constantly quivering out inward from the glass sides. She could feel it now for certain, a thrumming in the wooden floor. Tisamon had his claw-blade already on his hand, and she drew her rapier thoughtfully.

‘The men above have seen nothing,’ Bradawl murmured. ‘So what is going on?’

There was a colossal snapping, twisting sound from below them, and the entire gondola lurched.

‘From below!’ Founder cried. He had snatched up a crossbow from beneath his desk. Bradawl signalled to his guards, and the three of them set off for ‘below’, wherever that was. There was no need, though, for below was coming to meet them.

One guard had preceded Bradawl through the door, and headed halfway down some stairs before he came flying up again, knocking his two fellows flat. A monster emerged after him. At least that was what Tynisa saw.

In retrospect she realized it was just a man, but a man such as she had never seen before, seven feet tall, with a head and waist both too small and narrow for those huge shoulders and the massive arc of bared chest. His hands were huge too, each boasting a great hooked claw, while together they held a short, brutal-headed pike.

The man-beast bellowed something and Founder’s crossbow bolt struck it in the shoulder, barely causing it to flinch. Bradawl took this chance to get to his feet again and lunged forwards with his sword, the buckler shield in his other hand pressing in to ward off the pike-head. The huge creature smashed him with the weapon’s shaft, knocking him back down, and then Tisamon had stepped in and slashed a long line of red across its chest, sufficient to gain its attention.