‘I – I do, sir. Yes.’
‘Progress, Lieutenant. Where are we, then, and why aren’t you already on your way home with your mission complete?’
‘This area has always been notorious for covert activities, sir.’
‘Excuses, Lieutenant?’
‘Only that it is never easy to find reliable sources of information.’ Brodan swallowed awkwardly. ‘The locals are a pack of lying wastrels, sir. They’re all engaged in something illegal. They’re loath to talk, and even more loath to tell the truth.’
‘I heard you had a man detained at the garrison. One of our own kinden.’
‘He denies all involvement, sir. He has produced references sending him here. I am waiting for authorization to properly interrogate him.’ A ray of hope. ‘I don’t suppose—’
‘I’m not here to do your job for you,’ Sarvad growled, his patience obviously fraying. ‘What else then? You must have more than that.’
Not so much more, Brodan considered. ‘I had contact with a Major Thalric, sir. He’s—
‘I know Major Thalric,’ said Sarvad, his eyes narrowing. ‘What did he want?’
‘I think he’s involved, sir. I have men out hunting for him even now.’
‘Hunting him?’ Sarvad leant over the desk towards him.
‘Yes, sir. He was on the latest list I received, sir. As a traitor . . .’
Sarvad’s expression gave him no encouragement, and for a moment Brodan wondered whether his lists were in fact accurate. Then Sarvad settled back, his expression becoming more reassuring.
‘I only meant to say, Lieutenant, that if you already had contact with him, I should think that no further hunting was necessary. He escaped you, it would seem.’
‘We will recapture him, sir, and then I’ll need no permission to interrogate him.’
‘I doubt that he knows much,’ Sarvad murmured, half to himself, and then continued, out loud, ‘If he happens to die resisting capture, Lieutenant, or indeed whilst being put to the question, there will be no tears shed. You understand?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
Sarvad left the dingy little guesthouse and, just a street away, found an excuse to duck into a narrow and shadow-cloaked alley, out of sight of any eyes. Then, although a big, old Wasp major had gone in, it was now a Beetle-kinden merchant who walked out and behind both faces lurked a Spider-kinden spy.
Always good to keep a close eye on the competition. Scyla nodded to herself. She had worked with Sarvad a few times, just a few years back. He had then stuck in her mind as a useful face to wear, for his political acumen meant that he could plausibly turn up anywhere, and was also unlikely to wind up at the sharp end of imperial displeasure.
Mention of Thalric was unwelcome, however. He knew too much about her, and she might have to hunt him down and kill him herself. Still, perhaps Brodan’s men could now save her the trouble.
‘You want Spiders? Over here for Spiders,’ announced Nivit’s girl, who was taking her turn as tour guide about Jerez. Her name was Skrit, apparently, and she was certainly very young, although Skaters were so odd-looking she could have been equally ten or sixteen. With her long-legged gait she moved fast enough that even Tisamon and Tynisa had to almost run to keep up with her.
A Mantis and a Spider keeping company within the Empire, and the remarkable thing was that nobody stared. In Jerez nobody’s secret was safe, and at the same time nobody really cared. The locals lived in such a welter of gossip and speculation that any peculiarity of their visitors was picked up, turned over and soon cast aside.
They had the names from Gaved’s list and were now taking a look at the new notables of Jerez. It seemed the best way to track down the box, or at least the auction of it, though everybody was being very close-mouthed about the details for that event. Even Nivit had been unable to find out where and when it would be happening. Whatever Scyla had arranged, she was making very sure that, of all the secrets in and around Lake Limnia, hers was the one that did not get out. Achaeos had guessed it was because she had not yet set the place: the potential buyers would be notified personally in due course.
‘And can’t you find it by magic?’ Tynisa had asked him. ‘You got us all the way here by magic. Why not just sniff the thing out and let’s all go home?’
Jons Allanbridge had snorted at the superstition of such thinking. He was a practical man, partway through repairs to the Buoyant Maiden, the gondola of which still remained their base of operations. It meant that he and Achaeos were sharing – though not enjoying – a lot of their time.
‘I know the Shadow Box is somewhere here, within or very close to Jerez, but for more than that I am altogether too close, it is too great . . . It is like looking at the sun,’ Achaeos had explained. ‘And, besides, this Scyla, she has a little magic, a very little maybe, but she is used to hiding things.’ He had frowned then. ‘Tell me, Tynisa, have you observed anything . . . magical, whilst you were out on the streets?’
She had kept her face carefully blank at that point, thinking about the odd gap in her memory, the trance she seemed to have fallen into, the bleeding of her hand. She did not want to talk about it, she had decided. She would work that one out herself. She did not want Achaeos thinking that she was weak in any way.
Only when she departed with Tisamon and Skrit had she begun to wonder just where that decision had come from, whether it had been hers at all.
Since then, she and Tisamon had investigated four names on the list, and thus built up an interesting picture of life amongst the highest echelons of the collectors.
One had been a high-ranking Wasp officer who had been staying within the garrison but a few days before, or so the garrison servants had told Nivit. But the man had been arrested and imprisoned, and was even now under threat of interrogation; nobody knew why. Meanwhile, the wife of the Governor of Maynes, who had also been staying there, had gone to reside on a boat out on the lake.
‘What is going on within the Wasp camp?’ Tisamon asked, not expecting an answer, but it was something Tynisa felt better equipped to understand. She had Spider blood in her, after all, and so the puzzling out of politics should be second nature to her.
‘Whoever wanted the box originally and sent Scyla to steal it,’ she explained, ‘they’re here now. They still want it, but I’m sure they’re not going to want to pay for it. The other imperial buyers are getting out of the way fast, or getting caught.’
They had gone to look for a rogue Moth Skryre that Nivit had sworn was in town, with no success. The Dragonfly noble was also lying low. The Beetle-kinden Consortium factor that Founder Bellowern had been particularly interested in had since been found dead in a backstreet near the water, his throat slit and his guards nowhere to be seen. Clearly someone had seen a chance to rid the world of a little competition.
Now Skrit was taking them to see the two Spider-kinden who had journeyed so far north for the auction.
‘They must have started travelling within a tenday of Scyla getting here,’ Tynisa said. ‘How could they even have got word so soon? Unless Scyla herself sent out airship couriers or something.’
‘Magicians have always been able to talk at a distance,’ said Tisamon, in a tone suggesting that everyone would know this, and therefore she should have learnt it as a child, ‘and also know something of the future.’
Perhaps, if I had been brought up a Mantis, I would indeed have known that.
Tisamon’s attitude to magic confused her. He accepted it unconditionally, whilst she still found the whole idea strange and unlikely, despite any proofs that had been shown to her. Moreover, he was distinctly wary of it. Even Achaeos inspired his respect, and there seemed to be a fear in him beyond that, deeply incised in him by his heritage and his blood.
And now we’re in a town crammed full of magicians – or so I’m supposed to believe.
The two Spider-kinden were not hard to find, or shy of attention. They had taken over a guesthouse in its entirety, and had their servants
deck the place out in silks of bright colours, reds and golds and azure blues. The whole front of the building had been thrown open to the fickle sun that morning, and Tisamon and Tynisa were thus able to watch the two of them holding court, one reclining at either end.
‘They are good at hating each other,’ Skrit remarked enthusiastically. ‘Always hating, so they keep eyes on each other at all times.’
‘Very wise,’ Tisamon granted. Earlier he had named the two as ‘Manipuli’, using a word which to Tynisa meant an intelligencer or spymaster, but apparently also meant a magician of a particularly Spiderish kind.
‘We should have a watch set on these two,’ Tynisa suggested. ‘Still, I’m sure they’ll be able to vanish away when the time comes.’
‘You want to see big man who pay the boss? Living just over there now. Moved his house yesterday.’ Skrit was reaching for Tisamon’s sleeve, but he held it out of her reach, irritated.
‘That would be this Founder Bellowern,’ he noted.
‘What was wrong with his old house?’ Tynisa asked.
‘House was fine, he just not liked it where it was, had it moved,’ Skrit explained, in a jumble of words. There was nothing for it but to follow her until she had led them to a two-storey wooden construction that was nothing like the rest of the local architecture: square-based, but widening as it rose, so that the roof was the broadest part of it, dotted with round glass-paned windows, and edged in metal besides.
Tisamon stared at it blankly, and it took Tynisa a while to recognize it. ‘An airship gondola,’ she said. ‘Like ours, but a whole lot bigger.’
‘Had it out on the water,’ Skrit explained. ‘Now he wants it inland. Put up his big float and just move it over, then float comes down and pulled down into the roof. Lot of work, that, no one knows why.’
They digested this curiously, but neither could make any sense of it.
‘Who’s next on the list?’ Tynisa asked.
‘Not found yet. All hiding. You have all there are,’ said Skrit, sounding oddly proud of it.
‘Well, they’ll all know whatever there is to be known about the auction,’ Tynisa said. ‘We need to speak to one of them: who’s our best wager?’
Tisamon looked back over his shoulder towards the big guesthouse but she knew that matters would go very badly for all concerned if he tried cutting the information out of those Spiders, whether they were magicians or not.
‘This one,’ she decided. ‘Bellowern.’
‘Why?’
‘He was the man who hired Nivit, and that shows initiative and open-mindedness. He won’t be a magician, because he’s Beetle-kinden. He’s imperial but not army, not actually a Wasp.’ She shrugged. ‘And also I want to know what made him move his house.’
Tynisa had not seen a gondola quite so grand since the Sky Without. Founder Bellowern’s temporary home was now virtually the most sumptuous building in Jerez, larger in all dimensions than the genuine houses around it. It was also apparently impregnable. There was a hatch, but it was ten feet off the ground and looked firmly closed. The windows were too small for even a Fly to get through. Conceivably there must be hatches on the deck above, but she would have to wait until dark before climbing up there.
She realized she did not even know whether Tisamon possessed the Art to climb a sheer surface like this. It was always a social awkwardness, asking questions about another’s Art, but she already knew that he could not take to the air as some Mantids did. His Art seemed concentrated in the spines on his arms and in the honed skill gifted to the Mantis-kinden in the simple business of killing people.
After they had been scouting out Bellowern’s place for about ten minutes, a Skater-kinden child approached them. Tynisa stared at the creature without affection, for the locals’ children were even less appealing than they were. The starved-looking thing, who could equally have been a boy or a girl, began a brief conversation with Skrit and then handed over a scroll. It was only after a moment that Tynisa spotted the relevance: the locals never used paper.
‘It’s from the man in the house,’ Skrit announced, for all the world as though she had just performed some public service. She held the rolled document out to them and Tynisa took it, breaking the neat seal and reading.
‘To Master Mantis and Madam Spider: I shall be taking my ease shortly at the taverna delightfully known as the Bag of Leeches and you are cordially invited to join me in the open where we can both be assured of a minimum of surprises.’ Her mouth twisted wryly. ‘This is getting to be a habit,’ she noted.
‘Bellowern,’ Tisamon said, and she nodded.
‘We’re on Skater-kinden ground, Tisamon. He’s wise enough to have some local eyes minding his business. If we do meet him, is this going to get messy?’
Tisamon’s expression worried her. He did not understand what was going on, and that made him jumpy, therefore dangerous. ‘We’ll meet him,’ he decided. ‘If the Beetle does want a fight then I’ve no objections. But eat nothing, drink nothing while in his company.’
‘He’s not going to be impressed with that.’
‘Good.’
Skrit guided them to the place mentioned: there was a large leather bag hanging over the low doorway, but Tynisa was not going to prod it to test the claim. Like most of the Skater buildings, the front was composed just of poles, shutter panels taken away each morning to let the dank air in, with all the rot and fish smells of Lake Limnia riding on it. They chose a large, uneven-legged table with a good view of the street and sat waiting, but not for long.
The affluent-looking Beetle-kinden that arrived after them, only a minute away from being on their heels, was identified by Skrit as Bellowern. He had a retinue with him, and Tynisa felt Tisamon tense at the sight: a dozen Wasp soldiers out of uniform, but surely army men seconded to the Consortium, plus at least half a dozen servants. Tisamon’s hand gestured briefly upwards, and she saw a Fly-kinden keeping watch up there, between the roofs and the cloud-hung sky.
‘Trusting sort, isn’t he?’ the Mantis murmured, as Founder Bellowern passed beneath the suspect leather bag and spotted them at their table. He was lean for a Beetle, but his dark skin and the receding grey hair cropped close to his skull were oddly reminiscent of Stenwold. He wore clothes in drab colours – black breeches, grey tunic and a dun shirt – but the cloth was all of the finest. Tynisa guessed from the way the tunic hung that he had armour beneath it, at least a leather vest and possibly more. At his belt there was a dagger that was almost a shortsword, mostly hidden by a plate-sized buckler shield. As a result he looked less the merchant lord and more the successful mercenary captain.
He looked them over, clearly weighing them up, and then sat down opposite them as easily as if he had known them for years. At a gesture, his guards positioned themselves around the taproom while his servants stood respectfully a few paces back.
‘I give up,’ Founder Bellowern said. ‘Who in the wastes are you?’
‘A curious question,’ Tynisa said.
‘I’m a curious man. You breeze in on a little airship, along with a Moth-kinden nobody seems to know, but whose name, my people inform me, is Achaeos – a new name to me. You could just be some pack of mercenary adventurers, a type that Jerez seems to attract like a corpse pulls flies. But then you start asking all the right questions to make it sound as if you’re genuine players. So what gives?’
‘You seem to be working on the assumption that we somehow answer to you,’ Tisamon said, low-voiced. His eyes were passing from one guard to the next, and Tynisa sensed a slight uncertainty in him. It was, she knew, because the guards were not watching Tisamon. Instead they were looking elsewhere, looking outwards. Then Tisamon’s gaze passed on to the servants, where it halted once again.
Bellowern smiled. ‘If I was that interested, I could easily find out,’ he told them. ‘But let me tell you what I think: you’re here with some two-bit quack conjuror who’s got just enough talent to be aware that something’s happening. Maybe he wants in.
If so he’s going to be disappointed. I don’t say that to be unpleasant but the stakes are very high for this game. He simply can’t afford it, any of it.’
‘So you’re warning us off,’ Tynisa said. ‘You’ll forgive us if we don’t thank you for your wisdom and scurry away, right now.’
Bellowern grinned at her, unexpectedly boyish just for that brief moment. ‘Just what I expected to hear. Am I supposed to have my soldiers muscle over now and bend some iron bars to frighten you? Or perhaps I should just make veiled threats. Hmm, let me think . . .’
Tynisa had to fight an answering smile. It was very like her first meeting with Teornis, and she had not expected that here. The Beetle before her had been a man of influence in the Empire for decades, and a man whose influence was based on trade, not on the all-important military. She should have foreseen a certain deftness of manner.
‘Who is she?’ Tisamon said abruptly, and Founder’s entire bearing changed. All of a sudden his guards were watching, hands poised to unleash their stings. Caught off guard, Tynisa followed Tisamon’s gaze to one of Founder’s servants, a Spider-kinden girl, quite young . . . Or perhaps not wholly Spider? There was something odd about her, for certain.
‘Why do you ask?’ Founder said tightly, and Tynisa sensed that, for reasons beyond her, Tisamon’s next words could easily give them the fight he had been spoiling for.
‘I don’t know,’ the Mantis said slowly. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Nothing,’ said Founder, and the tension ebbed away invisibly, but sensed by everyone there. ‘Just a new acquisition of mine.’
‘A slave?’
Founder’s smile was harder this time. ‘I had forgotten how much your kinden dislikes that trade. Well, you are in the Empire now, so fight a man for owning slaves and you’ll have more work than you have years to do it in.’
Tisamon’s returning look was cold, but he said nothing.
Blood of the Mantis Page 21