Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Two of her Skaters tried to get in Tisamon’s way, with shortswords in hand and wearing cuirasses of metal scales, but he had killed the both of them swifter than Thalric could follow him. A third was struck down by Gaved’s sting as it lanced over the heads of the crowd, which was becoming more chaotic by the moment. The wiser collectors were making their exits, and others were trying to send their men against the stage itself, or against those who were trying to attack it. With hands and elbows, Tynisa was fighting her way through the crowd to take the box as soon as Scyla was brought down. Thalric used his wings to wrench him up from the throng, feeling a stab of pain for his efforts, but he needed a clear shot.

Abruptly the air itself was busy. He saw a dozen Wasp soldiers appear from over the lake, their crackling sting bolts already lancing the crowd. Some of these newcomers landed close to Tisamon on the stage, but he killed them even as they touched down and before they realized their error. Tynisa dispatched another one, lancing a borrowed knife between the armour plates covering the man’s back. Thalric felt his sting burning the palm of his hand in anticipation, but he held it back.

They are still my people , he thought, and besides he had other prey tonight.

Scyla had backed away, her outline shimmering slightly, until the wall that backed the auction house platform was at her shoulderblades. Trapped , thought Thalric, trapped by her own devices . A true Fly-kinden would not have left herself so helpless.

He watched Tisamon lunge for her. And she flew. Thalric almost fell out of the air himself, because she was most definitely Scyla, her Spider face shifting in and out amongst those Fly-kinden features, but she had stolen the Fly wings along with the face, darted over the startled Tisamon’s head and out into the night.

Thalric let out a shout of anger, at his own assumptions as much as at her escape, and Scyla turned to look round, despite herself. Their eyes met briefly with a shock of recognition.

He felt the blast of his sting searing his palm as it departed, saw it strike the Fly-kinden body, that became abruptly a Spider-kinden body, and send it spinning, unfit for the air, doubled over about the charred hole he had torn in her. The box dropped out of her fingers, and he was instantly rushing for it, aware that Gaved was on the wing too, the pair of them converging and yet too slow, both of them already too late.

The impact of his shot had knocked her past the rear wall of the auction place, beyond the edge of the raft. Thalric saw Gaved pass in front of him, watched Scyla’s body tumble from the borrowed air into the water, to vanish into the darkness.

And the box went too and, although it was wood, it was gone in seconds, as though whatever it contained was as heavy as stones.

For a second, Thalric was tempted to dive after it, into the chill of Lake Limnia, but he and Gaved both pulled themselves up before breaking the surface.

Thalric swore to himself. He did not care about the box itself, but failure cut deeply. He circled back over the auction raft, which was rapidly emptying, and saw Tisamon and Tynisa finish off a handful of patrons who had decided that the pair were to blame for whatever had happened.

He was just returning back over the wall when he heard Gaved cry out in astonishment. Looking back, he saw something emerging from the water – something that was slender and pale.

It was an arm. Out of context, it took him far too long to realize that. It was an arm and hand, and the hand was clutching the Shadow Box. It was Sef, reaching out from the water as one born to it, her hand, her arm, then her head sliding out into the air till she was exposed up to her waist in a shock of spray. She cried something wordless – or a word the Wasps did not know – and Gaved dipped in the air towards her.

There was something beneath her, Gaved saw. Although it was dark, he saw a great pale bulk rising beneath her. He had no way of knowing how huge, how far away, but it seemed to have scythe-like jaws, and it loomed larger and larger as it rushed upwards to pluck her from the water’s surface.

Gaved dived down without a second thought, and she held out the box to him, her eyes wide with terror.

‘Yours!’ she cried to him, and he pitched lower, almost skimming the surface, and caught at her arm near the elbow. She was slippery with lake water, but he locked his fingers into her flesh and wrenched her upwards, his wings powering as hard as they could. He was a good flier, Gaved, since his profession demanded it, chasing fugitives for miles at a time, but he was not so good as to be able to drag her entire from the water. Still, he fought to do so, hauling her up and up, fighting against her weight, as she cried out from the ferocity of his grip. The Shadow Box teetered in her hand.

She was now out past her hips, then her knees, and he felt his lungs straining, the constant beating of his wings sapping his strength. Then she was clear, toes leaving the water’s meniscus, and he strove for height – enough height to escape the monstrous thing that was coming behind.

Abruptly she felt lighter and he was climbing rapidly. For a mad second Gaved feared that the thing in the water had scissored her in half, but then he saw that someone else had caught at her other arm. To his lasting surprise he saw Thalric, face white with the effort but flying upwards and upwards, staring fixedly ahead as if at some goal.

Gaved followed his line of sight and saw the most beautiful thing he could have wished for: Jons Allanbridge’s Buoyant Maiden bobbing over the lake like a second moon, with a rope ladder already unreeling towards them. He saw Achaeos at the rail, a drawn bow in his hands, the arrow leaping past him to dart down at the surface of the lake – only to be intercepted by one of the Wasp soldiers who had been swooping in behind. The man howled, not badly hurt but knocked aside by the impact, dropping in a moment of shock towards the broken water.

Looking back, Gaved saw the giant thing from the lake break the surface briefly, beside the auction raft, and he would never know whether it was some colossal insect or perhaps – just perhaps – some device of the lake-dwellers below. The question would remain to haunt his nightmares.

Then they were at the ladder, and Sef grasped for it with her free hand and scrambled up it as swiftly as she could. Gaved cast himself up, too, and over the rail, falling to his knee, utterly drained. Thalric dropped down beside him, clutching at his side and grimacing in agony.

‘Thank you,’ Gaved said to him.

‘She had the box,’ Thalric replied flatly, through pain-gritted teeth.

Down at the auction raft, Tisamon and Tynisa had made bloody work of Brodan’s soldiers, and anyone else who tried to challenge them. Most of the buyers had now fled, by boat or by air, so when the Buoyant Maiden steered herself ponderously over the raft, with ladder unfurled, there was none to contest their exit.

Coming home was the sweetest thing he had ever done: Stenwold, sitting in the train carriage with Arianna huddled against him, her head resting on his rounded shoulder; and poor bandaged Sperra sleeping fitfully, sprawled across a whole seat. On the other side of the carriage, Parops sat with his head tilted back, his eyes closed: whether asleep or awake, Stenwold could not tell.

But it was Collegium the rail automotive was pulling into, with the white spires of the College visible over the rooftops, with the dome of the Amphiophos right before them. Collegium, that jewel of civilization, which planned no invasions nor tortures.

He had given the new weapon of the age into every hand that wished it. He would now be responsible for the world that such an act created. It was easy for the great and mighty to sign their scraps of parchment, easier still at the time to convince themselves that they intended to keep their word. Expedience was the great eroder of moral stances.