Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

There was a second door to the room, and it opened without warning. Another Sarnesh woman marched in, like a close sister to the writer, with two guards immediately behind her. Stenwold flinched back instantly. They had the grim air of a death-squad about them.

‘Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium,’ the woman said.

‘Yes, that is me.’

The woman approached, staring at him, and Stenwold realized she was looking at his nose. The guard behind suddenly grabbed him, pinning his arms with a disproportionate strength and yanking him to his feet, while the woman reached up and took hold of his nose and twisted it.

Stenwold blacked out for at least a second. He came back to find himself kneeling on the ground, still pinioned by his guard, with blood running down his face, and weeping with pain. He looked up at his tormentress, eyes streaming, and demanded, ‘Why?’

‘So that it will set correctly,’ she told him without sympathy. ‘For soldiers it is different, but I do not imagine that the dignity of a College Master is enhanced by a broken nose.’

Stenwold tried to answer but the blood and the pain were too much for him. He had to be hauled back to his feet, and even then it was the guard who, seemingly effortlessly, supported most of his weight.

The woman and her escort then passed out of the room, and the guard had obviously been instructed to follow, as he manhandled Stenwold’s bleeding bulk after them.

This time they were definitely moving through the palace at ground-floor level, but not in any part of it Stenwold had seen before. The room they paused in still had the barred windows, and benches about the walls which brought to mind a waiting room or antechamber. The Ants’ customary lack of ostentation made it difficult to guess the purpose of much of their city from the furnishings alone.

‘Sit,’ the woman said, and Stenwold was released without ceremony onto a creaking bench. He touched his nose gingerly but it was still too painful. At least the blood had now stopped, so he tenderly wiped at his face, trying to rid it of the worst of the gore.

He sensed another door was about to open, because the woman who had rebroken his nose now looked that way. When it did he forced himself to his feet, ignoring the reaction of the guard beside him, because it was Arianna who entered first.

They had not been kind to her, but neither had they been as cruel as they might. Her face was badly bruised down one side, and her left eye was swollen shut. Stenwold did not care, though, for she was alive! He shambled forwards towards her, till the guard jumped on him, bearing him to the floor.

Something snapped inside him, and Stenwold twisted round and smashed the man across the face with his elbow, and with all of his might, spinning the Ant off him. He scrambled to his feet with a roar, but the Ant woman’s soldier escorts had descended on him, and they held him firmly between them, and though he threw his weight on them, struggling with all his might, he could not shift their grip. The guard he had just struck put one hand on his shoulder, and immediately a searing pain burnt into him, accompanied by the smell of burning cloth and flesh. Stenwold screamed, dropping to his knees, and then suddenly, at the woman’s unheard order, he was let go. The Beetle collapsed forwards, feeling the raw, acid-burnt handprint where the Ant’s Art had blistered his skin.

Then Arianna was kneeling by him, clasping him in her own bruised arms, hugging him close, and if everything was not suddenly all right again, it was better, so much better.

He forced himself to look up at the Ant woman. ‘What now?’ he rasped.

‘Now? Now nothing,’ she said. ‘We have ascertained the truth. You and your confederate will not need to be questioned after all.’

‘The truth? Then -?’

But he was interrupted by the door opening again. Another Ant soldier came in, bearing a small figure in his arms. Stenwold gaped at them, feeling Arianna’s grip about him tighten.

The newcomer laid the figure down beside him, and Stenwold felt his stomach lurch.

She was twisted. There was no better term. It was an old, reliable mechanical torture, that had done this to her. They had racked her joints to make her talk and, as Fly-kinden had delicate joints and little tolerance for pain, he guessed they had gone on doing it until they were certain that what she said – what she must have screamed out over and over – was the truth. Stenwold felt his gorge rise, felt weak from sick horror at the thought. Arianna clung to him, even closer.

‘Sperra…’

The Fly opened one eye and slowly turned her face towards him. She was alive, at least, but there were bandages about her head and limbs, and she trembled uncontrollably, reaching out a hand for Stenwold to hold. As her lips moved, and he saw tears leak from her eyes.

‘Get me out of here, Sten,’ Sperra whispered. ‘Please.’

‘What have you done to her?’ Stenwold demanded, feeling anger, futile and self-destructive, rising within him.

‘We have questioned her. Thoroughly,’ said the Sarnesh woman. ‘We have also questioned Lyrus, who was attending on the Queen. We are satisfied that we know the full truth of the matter now. Lyrus had been suborned by the Wasp Empire. You and your associates were not involved in the attack.’

Stenwold exploded, ‘You tortured her! You…’ He wanted to say, animals, savages , but, no, this was the handiwork of the civilized, the darkness of a mechanistic people. ‘All she was trying to do was save your Queen! And what about your Queen? Could she herself not have told you what happened? Why this, curse you all!’

‘Sten,’ Arianna said warningly, and he saw all of the Sarnesh grow tense.

‘The Queen of Sarn is dead, Master Maker,’ the Ant woman said.

Stenwold found Sperra’s hand at last and closed his own, so much larger, gently around it. The world had caught up with him again, as it always did. If the Ants had revealed any sorrow, any raging grief, at the loss of their leader, then perhaps he could have better understood. Their faces were as bland as those of statues, their loss shared only in the space between their minds – and just then he hated them for it.

I want to go home.

Stenwold leant on his staff because, although his punctured leg did not hurt as much as earlier, it was stiff. He stared about the table.

I want to go home.

But he had this one last piece of duty left to accomplish. Then he would go. If Sarn did not finally agree then it could fight its own cursed war. In the foreign quarter, waiting for him, was Arianna. She had wanted to be here too, but he had been firm. If there was trouble now, it must fall on his head alone. He would not risk another’s safety.

Not after what had happened to Sperra – poor Sperra whose Fly-kinden Art had sprung her to the aid of the Ant Queen, and who had then paid for it at the hand of that Queen’s subjects, and all for nothing.

Stenwold Maker watched the other ambassadors arrive. The sickness he felt in his stomach, which had started when he saw Sperra, had not left him yet.

Undercut at every side. If the Wasps had corrupted a Sarnesh, then who else here could be in their pay? One obvious answer was Stenwold’s own agent. Plius was Ant-kinden from distant Tsen, and thus had no love for the Sarnesh. Plius also had secrets: Stenwold was spymaster enough to have seen that in his face. Plius evidently served two masters, two at least. The Empire had been in existence for only three generations but he had to admit it had learnt the trade very thoroughly.

Face to face, ranged about the table, these were not happy men and women. When the Queen had been killed they had all been hauled from their quarters and placed behind bars while the Sarnesh pieced together what had happened, extracted from the broken flesh of Sperra and the traitor Lyrus. Only the Spider Teornis had, by dint of Art and great persuasion, suffered merely a polite house arrest.