Adrian Tchaikovsky - Salute the Dark

Destrachis made to speak, and then again, but no words came.

Tisamon removed the blade from the Spider’s throat. ‘Go now. Do not presume to tell me this is wrong.’ A spasm of pain crossed his face, making Destrachis flinch back. ‘I know it is wrong. I am not master of myself. I am not… well. So go. This is no place for you any longer. I will kill you, if you do not go. I will kill you.’

Destrachis nodded tiredly, seeming for a moment so haggard that he must have looked close to his natural age. His eyes flicked once towards her door, but then he shook his head and walked away, padding off as quietly as Tisamon had arrived.

He is right . Tisamon clenched his fists. Perhaps he could yet salvage himself. He could step away now, force himself to go.

That perfect poise, the delicate balance of her blade. Not since her… Seventeen years was a long time to go without something that had once been his life and very breath. I hurt! He still had his clawed gauntlet buckled on, and the urge came upon him to drive it into his own flesh, to excise the hurt from himself like a surgeon.

And then her door opened, with Felise Mienn standing in shadow beyond, clad in her shift, staring out at him.

‘Tisamon.’ His name on her lips, in that softly accented voice. He lurched a step backwards, claw gone, staring. Unwillingly, as if tugged by wires, he approached her.

She reached out, but stopped just before her hand touched his chest. She, too, was shaking very slightly. ‘Tisamon,’ she said again, her voice unsteady.

She looked up into his face, and he wondered what she saw in his sharp features, his grey-flecked hair. He, who found his own face in the mirror both severe and haunted in turns, looked upon Felise and felt such fierce fire that he could barely keep his hands from her.

She is not so young, not so young as she looks. She was widow, after all, as he himself was widower. They neither of them had the fresh gloss of youth still on them. Yet the Dragonflies were a beautiful people, and none was more beautiful than Felise Mienn seen through the eyes of the Mantis Tisamon.

‘Please,’ he whispered, ‘send me away. One word from you and I will go. I cannot be here. I… betray…’

She was biting her lip, her hand still hovering an inch from his torn shirt.

‘I could not keep myself from this place, because I had not the will,’ he confessed. ‘But you can banish me. Send me away. Your word is strong, where I have failed. Please.’

‘For so many years I have woken up screaming.’ She spoke at last, so very quietly that he instinctively leant in to hear – and then closer still, to scent her dark hair. ‘Not out loud, but in my head,’ she continued. ‘What the Wasps did to me, I carried it like a picture to look at every day. Now the picture is gone and the scream is just an echo. But it was not having Thalric at my blade’s mercy that did this, for all I thought it might.’

‘I have no such powers,’ he said softly. ‘Do not make me into such a healer.’

‘What do you want here?’ she asked him. ‘Are you here to fight me? Then I shall take up my sword. Is that what you want?’

‘No. It is not.’ He swallowed. I want to feel your golden skin, to taste the sweat on it, to bury myself in your grace and poise. No matter how he tried, the thoughts would not stay away from him.

Abruptly his arms had swept her into his grasp and, with the same instinct that guided his blade faster than thought could take it, he had kissed her. For a moment she was stiff with shock, but then her arms gripped him, nails digging into his back, across pale skin sparsely signed with old scars and newer burns. Her thumb-claws inscribed fresh writing on him in shallow blood.

He pushed her into the room, the door swinging shut behind them. He lifted her shift over her head, and his breath ran ragged with the sight of the lithe economy of her body.

A hand abruptly closed on Che’s, startling her out of half-sleep. For a moment she could not work out what had happened, and then she looked at him – and Achaeos’ eyes were slightly open, a line of white showing beneath each lid. Her heart shook, for joy, for worry. Was he even conscious? Could he speak? ‘Achaeos?’ she whispered. Around her, the other casualties slept on, turned restlessly, some murmured to themselves.

She saw his lips move, moved her head closer to hear him, but there was no sound.

‘Achaeos, can you hear me?’

‘Che…’ Little more than a breath, but it was her name he spoke, her name on his breath. He still looked pale and hollow-cheeked, as though he should be dead. His featureless eyes might be focusing on her or staring into the abyss. He had said her name, though, and that was all that now mattered.

‘I’ll go and get a doctor…’ she started but his hand twitched on hers.

‘Che, wait,’ he breathed again. The interval before his next laboured words was agonizing. ‘I need… healers. No doctors. No physicians… I cannot stay here. I cannot heal here… This Apt city is killing me… This is not medicine.’ That much effort exhausted him and she clung to his hand as though he was drowning, being dragged into the dark water, and she was his only hope of rescue.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, and then, ‘This is… Your medicine is different. But that is because we are Apt here, and we do things differently. I remember…’ She recalled his own medicines of herbs and poultices at their first meeting, while she stitched his wound. How was it that he had such a habit of getting injured?

‘Che… the box… Is it…?’

She did not want to tell him. She did not know if he could stand the news. Still, if she lied now then she would always have lied to him, whatever her reasons for it. Besides, he would inevitably read it in her eyes. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

He shuddered. All that for nothing , he must surely be thinking. ‘Che,’ he said again, ‘help me.’

‘I love you, Achaeos. I’ll do anything for you. Just say it.’

A fragile smile touched his lips, and she bent closer to hear him speak.

Ten minutes later Cheerwell Maker paused on the man’s threshold, seeing a strip of lamplight beneath the door. A late night for him, then, and what would Major Thalric be doing up past midnight?

She knew she should knock straight away, but, standing here, she ran her mind through the road the pair of them had travelled together. Herself as his prisoner, under threat of rape, under threat of torture; a pawn in his political games. She owed him no courtesy, she decided.

She was about to throw open the door but changed her mind. She was here to beg, for all that it sickened her. She could not see any other way this could be done.

Che raised her hand to knock, and his voice came from within: ‘Whoever is out there, what do you want?’

She stood, frozen, feeling guilty and already hating him.

‘Open the door, clumsy assassin,’ suggested Thalric’s voice, and helplessly she did, pushing the heavy wooden door open and letting the lamplight stream out to narrow her eyes. Some had wanted him locked up still, but Stenwold had ruled against it. Perhaps , Che thought, my uncle hopes that he will overplay his hand, somehow, and reveal himself as a traitor . As a traitor yet again, she supposed, since he had already betrayed his own people.

Thalric was sitting at a desk as if interrupted in the act of writing. He had an open palm raised towards the door. After a thoughtful pause, he lowered it and sat regarding her without expression.

‘Mistress Maker,’ he said. ‘Not a visitor I’d expected.’

In the absence of either dismissal or invitation, she stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.