Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

‘Because it needs to be done, Che, and no one else will do it,’ he told her. ‘And because a prince cannot abandon his people.’

‘Tell me one thing.’ Tynisa’s voice cut across their words, and parted them neatly.

Salma met her gaze fearlessly. ‘Speak.’

‘Does she make you happy?’ Tynisa’s voice barely shook, but the effort needed to keep it steady was plain on her face. Her hand rested on her sword-hilt as Stenwold looked from her to Salma nervously, and Che seemed equally surprised. He recalled that Tynisa and Salma had always been each other’s confidants, but he had not supposed that they were… Or perhaps it was because they had never come so close to one another, but that Tynisa had always hoped they would be, one day.

Stenwold risked a glance at Salma’s people, a few of whom seemed to have picked up a scent of danger. The Butterfly-kinden woman’s face remained serene.

‘Yes,’ admitted Salma. ‘Yes she does.’

A muscle twitched on Tynisa’s face as her eyes sought the glowing face of the other woman. For a moment Tynisa’s emotions were writ so plainly on her face that Stenwold had to look away: For this? she was obviously thinking, weighing her sword skill and her Weaponsmaster’s badge and proud heritage. You turn from me for this?

‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Tynisa said to him flatly and turned away, her hand still clenching on the rapier’s hilt.

Only Stenwold saw the faint glitter of tears.

‘I’m making it up, a day at a time,’ Salma said, eyeing her back, ‘but who isn’t?’ His attention shifted. ‘Stenwold, I have something else for you.’ Then he beckoned. ‘Phalmes, let’s have the prisoner.’

A burly Mynan Soldier Beetle hauled up into view someone who had been hidden up until now behind Salma’s warriors. It was a Wasp-kinden in a long coat, with his hands tied behind his back, palm-to-palm.

‘His name’s Gaved, he says. He caught Che as she fled the Wasp army, but we were in time to turn that around. We’ve questioned him and he claims he’s not in their army, just some kind of freelancer.’ Salma tailed off, looking past Stenwold’s shoulder to Balkus, who was pointing at the prisoner, jogging Stenwold’s elbow. ‘What is it, Ant-kinden?’

‘He was in that museum place,’ Balkus stated. ‘Doing the robbery.’

Stenwold stared at the captive, unable to decide whether he recognized him or not. ‘If that’s true, we have more to talk to him about than you might think,’ he advised Salma. ‘You’re happy to hand him over to us?’

‘One more mouth to feed is no good to us, and besides, he doesn’t seem to know much about the Wasp Seventh that’s camped north-east of here. He’s all yours.’

When they were ready to depart, Tynisa was the last to climb into the automotive. Even after Salma and his followers had returned to a camp already being packed up ready to move on, she stared after him, holding her face expresionless with all the craft and Art she had ever possessed.

‘Yes,’ said Achaeos, ‘it was here.’ He looked about the room, once the centre of a rich man’s pleasure, now dusty and untended with just empty cases and stands. The owner’s family had taken everything of value, so only the house itself remained. Collegium’s economy had not yet revived enough for buildings to be changing hands.

‘We caught them in the act, really,’ Arianna explained, watching as the Moth himself, grey-robed and like a dusty shadow, drifted from table to table, his free hand touching everything he encountered. ‘We came in from over there… then there was a Wasp that took a shot at us. Then we were fighting. It was all over very quickly.’ Behind her, at the door, Tisamon remained very still, but she sensed him like a nail in the back of her head. He was here purely to watch her, and she was sure he was just waiting for some perfidy – any excuse to do away with her. Oh, he would wait for the excuse, anything else he would call ‘dishonour’, but there would be no turning back after that.

‘Here.’ The Moth had settled by a small, delicate, wooden table. ‘Right here.’ He leant heavily on his cane, and she saw strain on his grey face that could be due to his injuries or something else. ‘Souls preserve us, how long was it sitting here?’

‘What?’ Tisamon demanded, stepping into the museum room. ‘ What was here?’

‘Don’t you feel it? Tisamon?’ Achaeos demanded. Arianna glanced back at the Mantis, and saw a disturbed expression on his face.

‘Yes,’ Achaeos said, ‘you feel something at least, as well you should. In the last of the Days of Lore, Tisamon, when the world was being turned upside-down, there was a ritual performed, a desperate, depraved spell of all spells, and when it went wrong, when it twisted from its makers’ grip, it caused such anguish to the world as you and I and any of us here cannot imagine. Your people and mine, Tisamon, gone rogue from wiser counsel, determined to fight the tide of history by even the foulest means. And they failed, they failed so very badly, so that the unleashed tide of it destroyed the entire hold of Darakyon and bound the twisted souls of its people into the very trees. A taint five centuries old and still not shrinking.’

Tisamon’s jaw was now set, with a certain look in his eyes that Arianna realized was fear. ‘And this… thing?’ he rasped harshly.

‘The heart of the ritual. The very core of the Darakyon. And now it has been stolen,’ Achaeos confirmed.

‘And the Darakyon wishes it…?’

‘Unclaimed. The Darakyon was happiest when it lay here, unknown and unsuspected, unused, surrounded by indomitable walls of disbelief, but now it is out in the world again.’ He looked from the Mantis to Arianna. ‘I do not need to dissemble or blur my words with you. You both know the power that magic can wield. This thing, and I cannot think otherwise, is the most potent relic to survive the Days of Lore, the greatest magic left in the world – and it is dark . You have seen the Darakyon, Tisamon, so you know what I speak of. In the hands of any who knew how to awaken it, its potential for harm would be unthinkable.’

‘Truly?’ Arianna asked. ‘I’ve encountered magicians, and… they aren’t the people our legends tell of: I’ve seen Manipuli turning people’s opinions, tricks with dice, an image you think you see, that isn’t there when next you look. And then some Beetle comes along and tells you it’s all mass hysteria and done with mirrors. And now you’re saying… well, in this day and age, I’m not sure I can see any great magic come to return us to the Days of Lore.’

‘The Days of Lore are gone,’ Achaeos agreed. ‘But to unleash the power contained within this – a box just so big, slightly too large to grip easily with one hand – would change the world. Your Beetles and the rest would not know it for magic, but it would touch and taint them: it would spread darkness in minds and hearts, breed madness, sour friendships and poison loves. And whoever made use of it would be, I’d wager, no more able to control it than its original creators.’

‘And some Spider-kinden now has it,’ Tisamon added, ‘who could be anywhere.’

‘Do you have so little faith in a seer’s powers?’ Achaeos asked him mildly. ‘I know who has it, because I have met with her before. I feel her echo here in this room.’

‘ I saw a man,’ Arianna said.

‘Yet she was a woman, nonetheless,’ Achaeos corrected, ‘the same that spied among us in Helleron, taking the face of that halfbreed artificer.’

‘But you killed her!’ Tisamon objected.

‘I thought I had,’ Achaeos said. The rush of magic, in this city of all places, seemed to shake him. Standing in the shadow of the missing box, it was as though all the artifice and craft of the Beetles had never been. ‘I see now I was wrong, for she was here, in whatever guise, and she left with the Shadow Box of the Darakyon.’