Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

She allowed her senses to drift, listening out beyond the roof, the walls. For once there was no shroud of rain to drum on them.

But there had nevertheless been a sound from above…

Instantly she grabbed up her pack from the floor, and reached quickly for the box. Then there was a shape at the window, which came darting in. Her hand found her knife hilt and she had the weapon from its scabbard and flung across the room into the intruder in one smooth motion.

Even as they came within sight of the low-built guesthouse, they saw the figure fall back from the window. It was a Moth-kinden in a grey hooded tunic just like the one Achaeos wore, now clutching at a knife buried hilt-deep in his throat. The body became lost in the shadows even as it fell, seeming to vanish there entirely. Then Thalric shouted out a warning and smashed his shoulder into Tynisa, knocking her sprawling on to the muddy ground. Achaeos and Tisamon were both running back towards them, and Tynisa had her rapier out, turning on the Wasp furiously, but the flash from his hands almost blinded her. She felt the heat of it, but it swept above and past her, and she heard a cry of pain. Then there was a second Moth-kinden spiralling down to land on hands and knees. Tynisa made to go for the injured man, but Thalric’s second sting hurled him ten feet away and, as he landed, the darkness consumed him and he was gone.

She glared at Thalric and only then noticed the arrow that hung loosely at his shoulder, stopped from penetrating deeper by his armour. There was a clatter of blades at the doorway, and she saw that Tisamon was duelling.

The figure that had come down to fight him was dressed in Moth-kinden greys, an open robe fluttering over a leather cuirass. She was no Moth but a Mantis like Tisamon, her features oddly shadowy and blurred, and she had a claw on her hand to match his. Tynisa made to intervene as they circled, but Tisamon made a hissing sound to warn her that it was his fight alone. Then they were in motion again, their claws a shadowy blur in the darkness, and the Mantis woman had driven Tisamon all the way across the facade of the house before he could take the initiative from her and drive her back. Despite her keen eyes Tynisa could not even follow the dance of metal and, after two abortive dashes forward, she realized that she would not get in through either the front door or the narrow window until Tisamon was done. Achaeos, meanwhile, took to the air, vaulting over the combatants and hurtling in through another window.

The shack stood in a row along with its neighbours, wall adjoined to sloping wall, but there would be a back way in. She glanced at Thalric, who had obviously decided it was safer to stay with her, and then they were both running.

Achaeos was inside, but he had not arrived first. As soon as he pushed into the guesthouse’s common room a surge of power confronted him, halting him as effectively as if he had walked into a wall.

There was a robed figure standing in the middle of the floor: an old Moth-kinden man. Achaeos could just see the edge of the silver skullcap beneath his cowl.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘I?’ The old man smiled thinly. ‘I am Palearchos the Skryre, but who are you, boy, that this thing calls out to you? You are nothing. A pitiful magician, a lost cause, and yet it chooses you . Who are you, boy?’

‘I am Achaeos of Tharn.’

‘And who is that?’ Palearchos remarked dismissively. ‘A nothing. A nobody.’

Achaeos tried to reach for his knife but could not, his muscles now locked rigid. He had not even felt the spell fall on him.

‘Now,’ Palearchos said, and at that moment a Spider-kinden woman burst into the room, with a pack slung over her shoulder. Achaeos stared at her, seeing a middle-aged woman without either the cosmetics or the Art he expected from her kind, a woman worn by life, with deep lines on her face, caught in surprise by this unexpected scene.

That is Scyla , Achaeos realized. He had seen her face before in what he had thought to be a death-rictus, after he had put an arrow in her outside Helleron.

‘And you must be the thief,’ Palearchos told her. ‘You have hidden this thing well, but not well enough. Now you will bring it to me, and, shortly after that, you will both be rid of me.’

Achaeos saw the woman freeze and then her eyes and mouth tighten as she fought against the coercion of the old man’s magic. He thought that she would break away from it, at first, but then she took a heavy step towards Palearchos, and he realized that she had lost. He himself tried to shatter the old Skryre’s hold on him, but he could not. Palearchos held them both firm.

From outside there was a woman’s cry of pain, and a moment later Tisamon burst into the room with blood smeared on his metal claw and on the spines of his arms. Palearchos rounded on him furiously, teeth bared, and Achaeos saw the Mantis flinch away from the magician’s power, stumbling back out of the doorway.

We taught his kind well, to be afraid of our power , Achaeos reflected, but whilst he and the Skryre had both been distracted, someone else had taken advantage of the moment.

Scyla hunched forwards, as if moving against a gale, and plunged her knife into Palearchos’s ribs with all her strength. Before the old man had even begun to fall she had kicked the rear door open and was running out into the night, leaving the blade still embedded in her victim. Achaeos felt the old man’s hold leach from him, and then he was running after her, wings blossoming darkly from his back.

But she was gone. When he got into the night air, she was already gone. Scyla had evaded them yet again, and she was one whose trade was made for hiding. She was gone, and the box with her. He ran down street after street, searching frantically, but she was gone.

Thalric and Tynisa had arrived when he returned. They and Tisamon were gathered about the old Moth, and Achaeos saw that Palearchos was just clinging to life.

He knelt by the old man respectfully because, in spite of everything, they were kin, and furthermore Palearchos had been a Skryre. A renegade now, Achaeos guessed, but a Skryre once.

He took the old man’s hand, and the white eyes, narrowing into slits of pain, sought him out.

‘You, boy…’ came Palearchos’s faint voice. ‘You are of Tharn, you said…’

‘I was,’ said Achaeos softly. ‘I do not know whether I am still. That will depend on the circumstance of my return.’

‘I had hoped to see Tharn again,’ said the old Skryre. ‘Here on the edge of the world… I had thought that, if I could bring this thing to them, this prize, then perhaps they would forget what I had done, the path I had travelled. So it ends, boy. Understand this, if you travel the same road as I.’

Here was a magician of power, the strongest Achaeos had ever matched skills with, dying like a beggar on the floor of some filthy Jerez guesthouse. Is that my fate? The thought made something inside him squirm, as though it was a future he had already seen and hidden from himself.

‘They would not have taken you back,’ he whispered, whether to himself or Palearchos he did not know. ‘Not with the box, because it scared them. They want nothing to do with it. If you had come to them with it, they would have driven you away.’

Palearchos let out a long, slow sigh. ‘So,’ he said. His blank eyes found Achaeos’s. ‘And you will have the box, will you?’

‘If I can,’ the young Moth confirmed. ‘And if it will have me.’

The old man’s face twisted in what Achaeos took for pain, only recognizing it as rage when too late.

‘Unworthy!’ spat Palearchos, and his power seared its way into Achaeos’s mind, into all their minds, like red-hot metal.