Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Tisamon waited until the Mosquito was clearly dead – until Gaved had finished twisting his blade and pulled it out – before he reached for the box. He twitched the dead woman’s voluminous sleeves aside. He had seen it there, the angular shape of it hidden in her grip. He had felt it there.

But it was gone. Her hands were crooked about its shape, but it was gone. He exchanged glances with Gaved, who could not understand. Swiftly the Wasp set to searching Sykore’s body from head to toe, but Tisamon just stepped back, knowing that, by her magic, she had defeated them in the end.

Nivit had sent for the best physician he knew, a grey-skinned creature named Doctor Mathonwy, who was seven foot tall, even with a pronounced hunchback, and had to bend double again just to get in through the door. He was now kneeling beside Achaeos, having just cut the Moth’s blood-slicked robe away. Arranged all about him were bunches of herbs, a tiny brazier, some delicate bronze tools. The medicine he was performing was some strange mix of old and new.

Tynisa sat in one corner of the room, as though trying to push herself backwards through the walls behind her. She stared at the prostrate Moth, biting her lip. Her sword lay discarded nearby. She did not want to touch it. She did not even look up as Tisamon returned.

He knelt down beside her, for a moment oddly awkward. ‘She is dead,’ he informed her, and when she made no response he continued, ‘The woman who enchanted you, she is dead.’

‘Does that help us?’ Tynisa whispered. ‘Does that heal him ?’

Tisamon grimaced. ‘You were not responsible. She had used her magic on you.’

‘I don’t believe in magic.’ she spoke almost too softly for him to hear.

‘Tynisa, you must. It is why we are here-’

‘I don’t believe it. I stabbed him. What will Che think? How could I do this to her?’

Tisamon shook his head, baffled. ‘But the magician herself is dead. I killed her.’

‘ That doesn’t help! ’ Tynisa almost spat at him. ‘Killing things… it’s not the answer to everything, Tisamon. Is that your only way around any problem? To kill something?’

She saw his hurt, confused expression, and only then did she remember how he had dealt with the betrayal, as he had believed it, of her mother, his lover. He had gone to Helleron and hired out his blade, and killed people, even people who had nothing whatsoever to do with his pain. He had quenched his hurt in blood on a daily basis.

‘Anyway, we’ve lost the cursed box,’ Gaved said tiredly. ‘I swear I searched everywhere, from here to where we found her, but there’s nothing. She must have handed it on to someone.’

‘She sent it with her magic,’ Tisamon said.

‘Whatever.’ The Wasp shrugged. ‘She might as well have done, since it’s gone, and we’ve got no leads. And the Moth over there was the only one who seemed to be able to locate it.’

Tynisa glared at him defensively but he was not accusing her, just thinking aloud.

‘We have to get Achaeos out of here,’ she said. ‘We must get him to the Maiden and… away to Collegium. They have many good doctors in Collegium.’

The spindly Doctor Mathonwy raised his hairless brows at that, but continued to tend to his patient.

‘We’ve also attracted far too much attention,’ said Thalric. He was seated on Nivit’s bed now, having tied some bandages about his freshly opened wound. The look he gave Tynisa was less than loving. ‘Up until now all the attention we merited was because we were also after this box. Now they’ll be coming for us , so the girl’s right: we should leave with the dawn.’

Tisamon stared down at Tynisa’s sword, and then bent forward to pick it up. Wordlessly he offered it to her.

‘I don’t want it,’ she said. Though he had cleaned it meticulously, in her eyes it was still reeking of Achaeos’s blood.

‘The sword is not to blame,’ Tisamon said softly.

‘I don’t care,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t want it,’ she said.

‘Consider this,’ he told her. ‘Achaeos could not move or defend himself when you struck. You are not so poor a swordswoman as to let such an open target live.’

At last she looked at him, red-eyed. ‘What are you saying?’

‘That the sword did not slay him. Remember the provenance of this blade. It is no mere steel: it is a weaponmaster’s blade. It knew that you were not truly guiding it, not with your heart. If you had truly meant their deaths, then you would have slain them all: Achaeos, Nivit, the two Wasps. I have trained you, and I know that none of them could have stood against you had your heart desired to kill them. So take the sword. It has served you well.’

‘All delightful native colour, I’m sure,’ Thalric harshly interrupted, ‘but we have to be ready to leave.’ He stood up awkwardly just as Tisamon rounded on him.

For a moment the Mantis glared silently, but then he nodded. ‘You are correct. I shall find the Beetle, Allan-bridge. We must get Achaeos back to Collegium or he will die.’

The look that Doctor Mathonwy gave him suggested that this was more than just a possibility in any event.

Brodan awoke in agony. Somehow he had fallen asleep, even here beside the dark lake. Now he was freezing, dew-drenched, and his wounds had stiffened so he could barely move. He groaned in pain, tried flexing his limbs, to be rewarded with pain shooting down his back and into his side.

There was something unfamiliar in his hand. His fingers were locked about it hard enough for the object’s irregular edges to dent his skin. He opened his eyes against the light of morning. It took some prying with the other hand to release his frozen grip.

It was the box. His breath caught as he saw it. He was holding the box. The very thing he had been so firmly instructed to recover.

That brief future composed of recrimination and punishment, which had been facing him like a looming wall, suddenly shattered, and behind it lay a sunny prospect of promotion and privilege, because he had the box.

With some effort, he rolled over onto his knees and then stood up unsteadily. He had to reach the garrison and secure transport immediately for the capital. Brodan was so invigorated by the discovery that he never paused to wonder what price others had paid, to bring the box to him.