Blood of the Mantis

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Capture Solarno and you can have a fleet at Porta Mavralis before they even know what’s going on,’ te Frenna agreed.

  The halfbreed known as The Creev cleared his throat. ‘How are they getting in?’ It was the first thing he had yet said. Che now saw that what she had taken for an armlet was in fact the iron band of a slave, ostentatiously loose enough to be pulled off his wrist and over his hand at any time.

  ‘In?’ Scobraan asked, bewildered.

  ‘How many in Solarno?’ the Creev asked, and then answered the question himself with, ‘Two hundred soldiers? Four hundred, perhaps? But who has seen five hundred soldiers cross the peaks? Even one by one, there would be talk. I fly often to the Toek Station, trade with the Scorpion-kinden there. No word do I hear of Wasps coming through in great numbers – and the Scorpions are good door-keepers. So how do they get in? And how many more?’

  He left them all in an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘The Wasps in Solarno have already tried to kill Che once,’ Taki said, for she had not doubted the hand behind the attack at the Venodor for one moment. ‘Now we know what the Empire means, how great a threat they really are, the knowledge that they killed Amre for. We have to let people know. We all have ears who will readily listen to us – in Solarno, in Princep and Chasme. We can let people know the Wasps are coming.’

  ‘And what?’ Scobraan asked her. ‘A thousand thousand Wasps? Whole armies of them! You heard her. What are we supposed to do?’

  ‘I heard her,’ Taki said forcefully. ‘Better than you did, I think. Where are these Wasps fighting? Here? Yes, soon enough. And already in the Spiderlands. And also in these Lowlands where Che comes from. And she said north even of there as well – in the Crommonwheel . . .’

  ‘Commonweal,’ Drevane Sae corrected her, in a tone that suggested his people had not forgotten.

  ‘So how much can they now spare for us? And if we make it expensive for them, if we make them pay dearly, they will lose their taste for it and weaken. What Bella Cheerwell is proposing is an alliance.’

  They stared at Taki, even Che.

  ‘Well,’ Che said. ‘I suppose it would be. In a way.’

  ‘So if Solarno stands firm, if all the Exalsee stands, then the Lowlands and all the others will surely stand,’ Taki said. ‘Are we totally without influence? No, we are the pilots of the Exalsee. We are the best of the best. My Domina will listen to me. So make yours listen to you.’ She stood up. ‘Or do you think the Wasps will still give us free rein to fly and to fight, after their armies are camped about Solarno?’

  One by one they stood up in agreement, Niamedh first – and Scobraan, wearily, last.

  Che and Taki were the last to leave the piers, because Che knew she would need as much clear water as possible to get the Stormcry into the air. It was worth it, though, to see the others taking off. Scobraan’s twin-engined fixed-wing, as barrel-bodied and bulky as he himself was, and armour-plated to boot, growled its way into the waters of the Exalsee, rising from them magnificently, impossibly, like a rock miraculously taking flight. Niamedh’s Executrix was a sleek orthopter, its prow crooked forwards and then hooked back under like the arms of a mantis, the wings seeming too narrow to take her into the sky until the machine leapt forward with a single clap, wingtips tearing the waves, and then away. As te Frenna’s heliopter spiralled upwards from the water, Drevane Sae sounded a mournful, far-carrying note on the horn strung about his neck, and his glittering mount, all of thirty feet from antennae to tail-tip, roared out of the jungle to perch beside him. It had a jewelled saddle with a holstered longbow to one side and a sheath of lances to the other. Finally, the Creev climbed into his own orthopter, Mordant Fire, a blunt-faced, ugly-looking machine whose bows were lumpy with half-hidden weaponry. He paused for a second, looking back at the two women, and then his funnels began smoking and his engine choked into life, and he was sweeping his way across the water, before battling into the air.

  Taki had already hopped into the Esca Volenti, and Che managed to get herself seated within the Stormcry, despite the rocking waves. She started the engines and let their pull take her away from the pier, building and building momentum until she could put the flaps down and let the thrumming power of them rip her from the water and cast her into the air.

  The Esca soared overhead, leading the way, and Che corrected her course, keeping well clear of the water, and letting herself ride in the wake of Taki’s machine.

  Thirteen

  Even after a cup of the bitter root tea that Nivit’s girl had brewed up, Tynisa had seemed shaken, oddly cold and light-headed from her lost moment in the rain. Gaved had been concerned enough about her safety to escort Tynisa to where Achaeos was awaiting news, which had clearly surprised her.

  ‘Why?’ Tynisa had asked him.

  ‘What?’ he had said, ‘I was going this way anyway.’

  She had given him a wry smile, and he had thought, Spider-kinden women.

  Gaved had handed his copy of Nivit’s notes to the fretting Moth-kinden, to show that he was at least earning his keep, then he had trekked back through the rain to Nivit’s place, to make further plans.

  An hour later found him having planned what little he could, agreeing with Nivit about who should be looked into and who avoided, or who amongst the Skater’s old contacts might have heard a rumour or two about where and when. Beyond that they had settled into talking over old times.

  ‘I swear, I’m staying this time, once this job’s done,’ Gaved declared.

  ‘Depends whose back you get on to,’ the Skater replied. ‘This many big fellas about, even I might take a holiday away from Jerez.’

  ‘I never learn.’ Gaved shook his head. ‘Every time I strike off from here, it’s only the Empire that hires me. I am so sick of doing imperial errands.’

  The shrug Nivit gave him was eloquent. It said: Which of us can escape his heritage?

  There was a single knock at the door, soft and polite, but with a suggestion of more force available if necessary.

  They exchanged glances. After the thought just voiced, it seemed entirely possible that there were Wasp soldiers outside.

  ‘There in just a moment!’ Nivit shouted, and crept to the door quite silently, putting an eye to a strategic peephole. In a moment he looked back at Gaved and mouthed Customers. He quickly opened the door, and stepped back hurriedly as a large man entered.

  Gaved stood up as he did so, and wondered instantly if this was one of the rich buyers Nivit had mentioned or, more to the point, whether this was the rich buyer of unknown kinden.

  No, he realized as recognition came, Beetle-kinden. Beetle-kinden of a breed he had never seen before, though. Not Lowlander, not imperial either. The newcomer was very tall, stooping even once he was past the lintel, and broad-shouldered with it. Despite the rain outside, he wore no cloak, but was armoured head to foot – though it was armour that Gaved for one had never seen before. Much of it was iridescent, like Dragonfly plate, but instead of greens and golds and blues, it was pale and milky, sheened with oily rainbow hues that danced in the light of the candles Nivit’s girl had set out. The edges of the plates were gilded, with gold of a red richness that was also beyond Gaved’s experience. The man’s skin-tone, in the guttering light, was not the rich brown of a Beetle-kinden from anywhere Gaved knew but pale as an albino, though his hair was dark, cut short and plastered back around his rounded skull. His mouth was wide, his eyes small, and he bore a staff that ended in some device, some cunning piece of artificing. As he came in, Gaved caught a brief glimpse through the open door of men, large and small, waiting outside in the rain, in the darkness.

  He realized that he had never seen anyone like this before, despite the fact that here was a Beetle-kinden, a ubiquitous breed. This then was something entirely outside Gaved’s well-travelled experience.

  He glanced at Nivit. The Skater was standing very still. ‘What’s it we can do, chief?’ he asked his visitor, and his voice seemed a little fragile.
>
  ‘You find people? That is your job?’ the large Beetle said, and Gaved’s uneasiness increased, because the man had an accent that was also entirely foreign to him. ‘Escaped people. Troublesome people.’

  ‘That’s us, chief,’ Nivit agreed. The broad smile that now lit the big man’s face was entirely unpleasant.

  ‘Find her,’ he said, thrusting a square of paper out in one gauntleted hand. Nivit nipped forward to take it, and froze even as his fingers touched it. He barely glanced at it further before handing it to Gaved.

  It was not quite paper, but something waxy, something a bit like paper but slightly greasy to the touch. There was a portrait on it, a picture of a woman. Spider-kinden would be Gaved’s guess, although it was not quite so easy to tell. The picture was very exact, though, very detailed. Moreover, it was inscribed beneath the waxy layer.

  ‘Find her,’ the stranger said.

  Even in the face of all this, Nivit had not forgotten his professional priorities. ‘There’s the matter of a fee, chief,’ he started.

  The man reached for his belt, and when his hand came out, it was to display three lozenges of metal. ‘You shall have one now. The rest when you have restored our property to us.’

  Nivit timidly plucked one piece from the man’s hand. Something in his expression, in his very bearing, told Gaved that this metal was gold.

  ‘Sold, chief,’ the Skater said hoarsely. ‘Where can we—?’

  ‘We will contact you, later. Meanwhile hold her for us.’ The man gave Gaved a level stare, and then turned, forcing his armoured bulk out through the doorway, and then heading out through the rain to his fellows. Some of those fellows, Gaved saw, were bigger even than their visitor, others as small as Fly-kinden.

  Nivit closed the door, and then simply sat down on the rain-puddled floor with his back to it. ‘Oh cursing wastes,’ he breathed. ‘This is bad.’

  ‘Who was he?’ Gaved asked. ‘Who were they?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t,’ Nivit said, and at the same time he was dissembling so badly that Gaved could tell it straight off.

  ‘Nivit . . . ?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. We don’t talk about it.’ The Skater’s frightened look was genuine enough not to provoke more questions. ‘I bet you, though,’ Nivit went on. ‘I bet there’s lights out on the lake tonight. I bet you any money you like.’

  He would not be drawn further. His hands, holding the bar of gold and the waxed portrait, were shaking.

  When Scyla opened her eyes it was there again: just a shadow, nothing but a shadow. She could have passed her hand through it, if she had dared: if she had not thought that to touch it, to fall under that shadow, would mean death.

  She had always been one for darkness, had Scyla, for dark rooms and night-work. Now she crept off the end of her bed and threw the shutters wide. That had worked, before. When the shadow had first stood there, the glare of daylight had banished it.

  She turned round. It was still beside the bed but it too had turned, craning over its shoulder, to look at her. The sunlight cut through, wherever it fell, but the dance of the dust motes kept its place where the darkness could not.

  She had thought that this shadow was just a figment of her imagination, and then that it was a mere representation of whatever was contained within the box. By now she was realizing that this was an individual, the leader of the box’s inmates, and that it was becoming more real each day.

  It was fading slowly now. She could not look on it for long but kept glancing back and back again to check that it was leaving.

  Or at least that it was ceasing to be visible.

  During the last two days she had begun to think that it went with her everywhere, even outside under the sun. She had begun to notice where the rain did not fall quite right, or where there were shadows reaching along the ground where nothing could cast them, ripples in the puddles to suggest a footless tread.

  Scyla was no great magician. Her talents and her training were only for deception. She was horribly aware that she was now out of her depth. She should have passed the cursed Shadow Box on to the Empire and then forgotten about it. Even the profit she stood to make from the auction was paling in significance as each day went by.

  The shape, the twisted, spine-ridged shape of it, was almost gone now. She felt that she wanted to weep, to scream at it. Whoever had made the box had been a poor craftsman, for it had been leaking steadily since her touch had reawoken it. It was infecting her waking hours. It had already poisoned her dreams.

  There were just a few days now until the auction. She must hold on to her mind until then. Then the box would become some rich magnate’s problem, and she would listen carefully for the rumours of a great man thrown down or made mad. Or perhaps whoever bought it would be some Apt collector aware only of value and not of meaning, like the man she had stolen the relic from in the first place. Perhaps, even awake as it was, it would not trouble such a man. It might not be able to penetrate his dull and mundane mind.

  It is in my mind, though. And what if she let the box go, sold it on, washed her hands of it . . . and the shadow still did not leave her?

  Do not think of it. She would have done things differently, had she known better. She was falling apart. The box was prying at her constantly and she was just enough of a magician to understand what was happening.

  Busy. I must keep busy. She would check with her factor here in Jerez to ensure the arrangements were properly made. Better still she would go abroad to spy on her potential purchasers. She would spy on her enemies, too. There were new Wasps in Jerez and she knew them for Rekef. Nobody could keep their secrets close in the Skater town, nobody except herself.

  The Empire wanted its prize back. The joke was that at least two of her bidders would be imperial subjects, not averse to sneaking something special from beneath the noses of their peers. Self-interest was the universal rule of human nature, and the only rule she, too, had ever cared to obey.

  Now, in the guise of a middle-aged Beetle-kinden man, she slipped from the room she was renting, out onto the waterlogged streets of Jerez. Even as she did, she made sure not to look down at the puddles, in case she saw the ripples and splashes of another’s unseen feet.

  Lieutenant Brodan watched his informant pad out of the room: a lean, sinewy Skater-kinden with the same manner as the rest – all anxious-to-please on the surface, all hidden impudence. Brodan had long ago developed a pronounced dislike of the entire breed.

  He checked his notes, cataloguing who had arrived, and who had left, notables seen abroad on the streets, those who were well protected and those who were not. He knew an auction of some kind was taking place but he had no details. Nobody seemed to know much. Except there was a whole assembly of unusual characters in Jerez these days, and so they must know something. He would have to expand his researches to include one of them.

  Choosing a target was difficult, for some had connections he did not dare disturb, while some had proved impossible to reliably find or follow. Others, like the Spider-kinden, were simply unknown quantities, and he did not want to overplay his hand. If he scared off the vendor, if the transaction just decamped to start up again in some other haven of iniquity like the Dryclaw slave markets, or up north amongst the hill tribes . . . well, in that case Brodan’s career would be dead and buried.

  It was a time for Rekef men to show themselves loyal. He was well aware that there were changes going on back home, by which he meant Capitas, a place he had never seen. Still, the regular lists of the newly denounced traitors kept filtering down to him, with some names added, and others crossed through with grim finality. He had no wish to find his own name included there, one day. It was that thought that concerned him far more than any hopes of promotion. These days a good Rekef Inlander agent had to keep running at top speed just to stand still.

  He shuffled his papers once again, at a loss for a conclusion. The two Spider-kinden nobles had both invited him to drink with them, and each cautioned
him against the other in no uncertain terms. One of the Beetle factors was dead. The Dragonfly had fled Jerez, probably on hearing word that Brodan was asking after him – but he would undoubtedly be back. Brodan guessed he and his servants were hiding out somewhere around the lakeside, that they would then fly in at exactly the right time to take part in the bidding. Brodan had men, or at least Skaters, watching for such a return.

  One of his men came in, just then, ducking beneath the low ceiling of the little guesthouse room.

  ‘Sir, there’s an officer to see you.’

  ‘From the garrison?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Brodan stared at him, but the soldier was obviously not inclined to be any more informative, simply saluting abruptly and backing out of the room. Brodan hastily rearranged his papers in a face-down stack over to one side of the rickety little desk he had commandeered.

  When his visitor arrived he stood up immediately, saluting.

  ‘Easy, Lieutenant.’ He was a greying, slightly corpulent man, wearing a long overcoat half-concealing the imperial armour beneath it. No insignia of rank, but none were needed.

  ‘Major Sarvad,’ Brodan said. ‘I hadn’t expected—’

  ‘Oh, sit down, Lieutenant,’ Sarvad said mildly. Brodan knew him for a long-term Rekef Inlander, a cunning politician who skipped from camp to camp without ever binding himself to anyone. Small wonder he always seemed to survive the culling.

  A soldier brought a three-legged stool for him, all the landlord could spare, and Sarvad and Brodan sat down facing each other across the desk.

  ‘I’ve come from Capitas, Lieutenant,’ Sarvad explained. ‘They’re not encouraged by what they’re hearing from you.’

  ‘But I haven’t . . .’ sent a report yet. Brodan cut the words off short, but Sarvad smiled drily.

  ‘That’s just what concerns them, Lieutenant. Now, I told them, a man like Lieutenant Brodan, he’s a perfectionist. He takes his time but it’s worth it. So they told me, why not go and let him know just how important this matter is. You do know just how important it is, don’t you, Lieutenant.’