Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Stenwold turned to see the crossbowman level his weapon at the Queen again. He wore the faint smile of a man who might not survive the moment, but who would still win the game.

Stenwold loosed just before the other did, seeing the bolt strike him not in the chest as he had aimed for, but in the shoulder, upsetting the man’s aim so that the crossbow quarrel went wide.

Someone grabbed Stenwold by the collar and hauled him roughly to his feet, racking him with pain. He looked up into the face of a Sarnesh soldier, and started to say that the crossbowman must be stopped.

He saw only a blur of movement as the man’s mailed fist struck him square on the nose, knocking him cold with professional ease.

Stenwold came to slowly and reluctantly. Each further part of his body he became aware of made him regret his recovery. His head hurt abominably, his nose especially, though the pain in his back he attributed to the bare wooden boards they had laid him on. The crossbow-wound in his leg was just a dull ache by comparison, though his ribs burnt from that seemingly trifling flesh wound.

On further discovery he found that the surface beneath him was a bed. It might simply have been the Ant-kinden idea of especial luxury, but this was more likely the kind of hospitality they extended to all of their prisoners. This room he was confined in was definitely a cell.

There was a wan light filtering in through a very high-up window, or a window that seemed high relative to himself. The cell was shaped like a circular shaft, and he had the uneasy feeling that the window was actually at ground level, and that his prison was sunk deep in the earth.

He sat up and groaned both at the pain and the sudden rush of memories. Following the assassination attempt, in the confusion, the soldiers had just struck out at all of them. His current residence suggested that confusion was ongoing.

Surely they can’t think that we had anything to do with it?

But what would the Ant soldiers have witnessed, after all? Their Queen badly injured, two of her guards slain, a rabble of foreigners running amok. The Sarnesh with the crossbow – the Sarnesh traitor! – could have subsequently told them anything.

And the Queen had been no great friend to him, over the snapbow business. Well, now they even possessed the prototype he had brought. Perhaps they had decided it best to lock him away somewhere safe where he could raise no fuss. The alliance could now be falling apart just above his head, and he would have no idea.

Noticing that they had dressed the wound in his leg, he lurched over to the low door of his cell and began hammering on it, shouting for attention as loud as he could. Only silence followed, no running feet. He looked down at his hands, trying to think past the pain that held court about his broken nose, that was the loudest voice in his mind. What did he have left to bargain with?

The Sarnesh needed Collegium, surely. A generation of history must have taught them that. So they could not simply discard him. Things could be a great deal worse.

He tried to relax, but then realized he had not thought matters through. It was worse. For him, it was worse.

He had no idea about Arianna and Sperra. He had no idea if either of them was even alive. He was the big College Master from Collegium, so maybe he was worth keeping, but they – a Spider agent with a chequered past and a grubby Fly woman?

He hammered on the door some more. ‘Hoi, I have to talk to someone! I need to talk to someone, please!’

Arianna… The thought made him weak. He had only recently gained her for himself, woven a relationship between them that almost anything could have broken apart: an old, fat Beetle spymaster and a Spider temptress, late of the Rekef. It could have ended in so many ways, but not like this, please.

‘Come on!’ he shouted at the featureless door, even as the light from the window dwindled. ‘You must want to question me, at least? Talk to me, please!’

He heard the bolt shoot back, and he stepped away hurriedly. The door swung open, revealing a gas-lit corridor, low-ceilinged enough that the man standing there had to stoop. The visitor was Sarnesh, and for a moment Stenwold thought he was the crossbowman, but then realized it was just the same features, revealing the family-close kinship all the Ant-kinden possessed. If Stenwold looked further, he could see big Balkus there in the man’s face – and even long-dead Marius, a friend from his student days.

The man regarded him doubtfully. He was dressed in the same chainmail as any other Ant-kinden soldier, purposefully just another anonymous guard.

‘Well?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘I’m sorry, but I thought you had something to say to us,’ said the guard, and began to shut the door.

‘Wait!’ Stenwold said. ‘Wait, you have to tell me – what is going on with the Alliance? How long are you going to keep me in here? What about my companions? What’s going to happen to us?’

The guard looked at him, expressionless, and Stenwold pressed on: ‘I am Stenwold Maker of Collegium. Look, there has been a mistake. A very terrible mistake. I was with the Queen, and-’

‘Yes, you are one of those who assaulted our Queen,’ interrupted the guard, now much more coldly.

‘I didn’t! I was there, but I was trying to save her! Please, my companions can-’

‘Questions are already being asked,’ the guard told him. ‘Your turn will come.’

His tone made Stenwold falter. ‘Questions…’ Oh, we ally ourselves with them and we think that they are above all that, our friends the Sarnesh… There would be special rooms, he knew, for questions. Rooms and machines . ‘Please, if I could just talk to someone-’

‘Your turn will come,’ the guard said implacably, and then a new thought came to him, a message from elsewhere. ‘In fact it is here. How convenient.’ He regarded Stenwold thoughtfully, and then drew his sword. ‘You cannot escape, and if you attempt to attack me I will make you suffer for it, and my kin shall know of it.’

‘Yes, I understand, and I have no intention of making this mess any worse than it is already,’ Stenwold said tiredly.

‘That is good.’ The guard’s smile was thin and perfunctory. ‘Now exit your cell.’

With a limping effort, Stenwold did so, moving slowly and carefully, keeping his hands always in plain sight. Beetle-kinden were physically tough, but a crossbow bolt through his leg would take more healing than simply a night in the cells.

He was guided through a series of turns of these low-ceilinged passageways, noticing constant side-tunnels that he guessed might lead to the insect nest beneath the city. Certainly there were scuttlings down there from creatures that needed no light, and a bitterly acrid scent was evident. They were meanwhile progressing upwards on a noticeable gradient and soon enough he saw windows again, small and barred and near the ceiling, and some of them able to be reached by steps, where a crossbowman could crouch to defend this subterranean undercity.

‘Where are we?’ he asked eventually.

‘The palace,’ his guard replied. ‘A part of it you foreigners do not often see. You should feel honoured.’

And then they were pushing through another door, and beyond it there was a room containing a desk. No sinister machines, though – not yet.

Sitting behind the desk there was a Sarnesh woman writing a report. She did not even glance up at Stenwold, but left him waiting for minute after minute.

He slumped to his knees, one hand pressed to his wounded leg. More time passed, then he cleared his throat loudly. She did not so much as pause in her writing. He began to wonder if in fact she were taking mental dictation from someone elsewhere in the building.