Blood of the Mantis

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘My servant said you were asking for me,’ he said. His voice was wary and his eyes were suspicious, but they lingered on her. She felt her heartbeat pick up slightly, not at the close attention but the thrill of being able to wield influence at last, of whatever sort.

  ‘Your servant was correct,’ she replied. ‘It has been a long time since you were in Capitas, General, but I remember you. Will you not sit?’

  ‘You were but . . . a child then,’ he said, and she revelled in that slight catch in his voice. He approached cautiously, like a man suspecting a trap. ‘I have been away too long, it seems.’

  ‘Or perhaps you have returned just at the right time, General,’ she said. The words sounded awkward to her, but they stopped him, made him blink. He looked about the room swiftly.

  ‘We are not overheard, General, nor are we watched.’ A thin and whispery voice in her head made her start briefly, and then she repeated what it had told her: ‘save by your own followers.’

  ‘You are well informed,’ he noted.

  ‘You know where I grew into a woman, General, and under what restrictions. I am as well trained as any soldier in my own particular arts of survival.’

  ‘I’ll wager so,’ he agreed, and sat down on the couch across from her, watching her carefully.

  ‘You are worried I am merely bait for General Maxin?’ she said. She expected a harsh reaction to that name, but instead he smiled slightly, eyes still fixed on her.

  ‘I am not,’ he said. ‘I have always had my eyes here inside the palace, whatever he may have thought. I know you are no friend of his.’

  ‘Does that mean that you trust me, General?’

  ‘I would not be such a fool.’ But his voice was strangely hoarse.

  ‘General, my brother is always in Maxin’s company these days. Your eyes have witnessed that much, have they not?’

  ‘They have indeed.’

  She leant towards him, wondering if Uctebri was working in his mind also. To think that she might be flirting at the same time with the cadaverous Mosquito-kinden was worse than unsettling, but she kept her mask up, moistening her lips, looking into those remarkable eyes of his and hoping not to discern a tint of red within them.

  ‘It is your duty to detect treason, is it not?’ she asked.

  ‘As a general of the Rekef Inlander, it is.’

  ‘But treason against what, General?’

  ‘Against the Empire, Princess Seda.’

  Her heart was in her mouth, but for joy, only joy, at such a grand concession. It was not only the title he gave her, a Dragonfly honour she had no true right to, but that he had named the state, and not the man: the Empire not the Emperor. She knew that Uctebri must be within his mind even now, with his unsuspected magic, but the thoughts he was teasing out from General Brugan were only those already grown there, buried deep beneath the man’s sense of duty and honour. Uctebri was just bringing the hidden part of Brugan into the light, perhaps a Brugan hidden even from himself.

  ‘Treason against the Empire is a deadly foe for all of us,’ she said, leaning even closer, finding him leaning in too, until mere inches separated their faces. His heavy features did not seem so coarse now, not with those shimmering metallic eyes to illuminate them. ‘I imagine it can occur even at the highest levels.’

  ‘At the very highest,’ he confirmed, so entranced now that he seemed a decade younger, years of harsh duties, betrayals and caution falling away from him, and she knew, just as he said it, that he was now hers.

  The acting governor of Helleron was beyond the social pale. He held no dinners or dances, for nobody would have attended save under duress. He went to no entertainments, lest he darken the mood by his very presence. He was like the Empire’s bastard son, the Emperor’s favourite half-caste artificer-king and, save for his few apprentices, he had no intimates. Except for the demands he made of Helleron’s manufacturing power, he had no involvement with the city’s running.

  It was a storm through which blue skies could be detected, the magnates of the Council said cautiously. In the Consellar Chambers they met, as they always had before the conquest, and ordered the daily life of the city. Within those walls it was as if General Malkan had never come to visit them and, so long as they adjusted their plans to fuel Drephos’s constant needs for manpower and raw materials, they were left to run the city however they chose.

  It could be worse, was their hesitant thought, once their initial revulsion at the governor’s heritage had worked itself out. The Wasps might easily have installed a more interfering governor, a military dictator, some greedy grafter who taxed and robbed them: a man, in short, closer to their own nature. Drephos’s haughty isolation was aggravating, but it was not bad for business, and in their hearts the magnates could almost find forgiveness. At least he leaves us alone.

  And behind even their love of money and profitable trade were the other thoughts, left unvoiced. He is a monster, but not the worst kind of monster. Certainly the Wasp soldiers on the streets were a touchy bunch, so there were deaths, though of nobody important. A few buildings burnt, a few small traders were executed, but this was just the result of the Wasp-kinden’s natural exuberance. With a tyrannical governor constantly goading them, things could be much worse, especially for those who had more to lose.

  Still, the very stand-offishness of the Colonel-Auxillian inevitably bred curiosity, so the city fought over any scrap of gossip he generated. The simple news that a messenger had come to him from the capital was seized on hungrily. Drephos was a self-contained man: he staved off paperwork and managed with no constant string of orders coming in or reports going out. It was as if the Empire had thrown up its hands in despair over him, leaving him to do what he did best. Nobody else understood his work enough to dictate to him.

  Until now.

  For now a panting Wasp-kinden had arrived at the Consellar chambers, waving a sealed scroll at a garrison sergeant whilst blurting out the halfbreed’s name. Orders for the Colonel-Auxillian, straight from Capitas, absolute priority, no excuses.

  He is in one of the snapbow factories, the messenger was told, and the man set off there straight away. Enough of the seals on the message were recognizable for the garrison sergeant to know the messenger had not been exaggerating his missive’s importance.

  *

  ‘I am informed,’ said Drephos, ‘that the balance of the Sixth Army will be with us in a matter of tendays, bound next for Sarn. How many snapbows can you give them?’ His clear tones cut through the constant clatter of the factory floor that rose up to them.

  ‘Perhaps another two thousand,’ said Totho, without even needing to think about it. ‘We did dispatch a rail shipment not long ago, although you know what happened to that. General Malkan has sent a messenger for more to be sent by automotive convoy.’

  Drephos made a dismissive noise. ‘I am unimpressed so far by the Seventh’s ability to hold on to whatever we give them. First the troop train and now, I hear, the last supply convoy was ambushed as well. Give whatever you have to the Sixth and let the generals squabble over it themselves.’

  Totho nodded, gazing down on his busy workers, the banks of engines that were cutting out his machine parts, rifling the barrels, casting the ammunition. He sensed, more than saw, as Drephos moved closer to him, one metal hand and one living one closing on the guard-rail.

  ‘I hear you have solved your discipline problems,’ the master artificer said.

  ‘I have, sir.’

  There was a pause, and Totho glanced sideways at the Colonel-Auxillian, to see him staring out across the factory floor in an oddly distracted way. This was the first time that Totho had seen him in several tendays, for the man’s own projects had kept Drephos entirely secluded. Behind them both, the massive form of Big Greyv the Mole Cricket-kinden made the gantry groan in protest. The man was huge, a ten-foot-tall obsidian block with fingernails like chisels, but he was Drephos’s artificer of choice to work with, possessing a patience and care as impressiv
e as his bulk. He hardly ever spoke, and Totho guessed this was another reason Drephos had chosen him for the new project.

  Kaszaat, standing in the Mole Cricket’s shadow, seemed infinitely fragile.

  ‘And you have continued experimenting, of course?’ Drephos prompted.

  Totho had not realized that he knew. ‘I’ve been tinkering with the snapbows, sir. I’ve being trying to add a built-in magazine to improve the shot-rate.’ As always, he warmed to his topic once he had started. ‘The problem is that use of a nailbow’s spring-and-lever mechanism shakes the aim and therefore halves the useful range, while gravity-feeding jams too often, and clockwork—’

  ‘Is too expensive and takes too long to make,’ Drephos agreed, clearly pleased with his persistence.

  ‘How . . . ?’ He had not been actually ordered not to speak of it, but the shroud of secrecy about Drephos’s recent researches had been so plain. ‘How does your own work go, sir?’ Totho asked.

  ‘How indeed,’ said Drephos vaguely, not being evasive but genuinely considering. ‘The coming war with Sarn shall be remembered, Totho. There shall be names immortalized in the histories.’

  If anyone survives to write them. Drephos’s current strange detachment worried Totho, for normally the man was inclined to be expansive, even boastful, about his work. Now, though, he had clearly chanced on something that seemed to have shaken even his customary composure.

  ‘Tell me, what do we work towards?’ the Colonel-Auxillian asked unexpectedly.

  ‘Sir?’ Totho glanced over his shoulder at Kaszaat and Big Greyv, but neither provided any answers.

  ‘Archetypes,’ Drephos said, almost too quietly to be heard. ‘Just as they say there is a Wasp archetype, a knowledge of which gives the Wasps their Art, and likewise with all the other kinden, so too there is a weapon archetype, Totho. Can you grasp that? A weapon of weapons where to simply grasp the hilt, to simply possess it, is to slay your enemies? No contest of skill needed, no inclement weather or defensive wall, but death, delivered pristine and precise.’

  ‘This . . . this is what you are working on?’ Totho asked.

  ‘We approach it, Totho. We do approach it,’ Drephos replied, then shook his head as though to clear it. What he might have said next was lost because just then a soldier pushed past Big Greyv and onto the gantry, with a scroll thrust out towards him. Drephos took it disdainfully and moved a little way off to read it. The reading took him a matter of seconds before he turned on the messenger with the word, ‘Impossible!’

  ‘Those are your orders, sir,’ insisted the messenger implacably.

  ‘I have work here,’ Drephos snapped at him, ‘and I am not finished. Go find someone else to do your dirty work.’

  ‘Not my work, sir. You see where this message comes from?’

  Drephos looked back down at the scroll. The messenger would have noticed nothing, but Totho had known the halfbreed artificer long enough to spot a slight widening of his pale eyes.

  ‘So . . .’ Some of the fight had now gone out of him. ‘This is absurd. What do I know of such a business? There is no option, then?’

  ‘You have been commanded personally, sir,’ the sergeant replied smugly, and Totho knew that he was enjoying being able to snub this half-blood of superior rank. ‘And, if you note, you are requested to take your work along with you.’

  The idea, however, did not seem to appeal. For a long time, whole minutes, Drephos stared down at the summons. His mind was elsewhere, charting webs of logistics, of numbers and calculations. Totho saw his lips twitch over and over, baring his teeth at whatever task was being forced on him. Kaszaat and Big Greyv looked as blank as he. Whatever had arrived from Capitas had come without a hint of warning.

  Drephos bared his teeth to emit a long hiss. ‘Totho, find me a deputy from the engineering corps to take over here.’

  ‘Sir?’ Totho stammered out. Is it about me? Am I named in that note?

  ‘You’re coming with me. I’m taking the whole team, the projects, the lot. We shall also take the big freight automotives. I shall continue to work even on the way there. My work is much too valuable to disrupt.’

  ‘But where are we going, sir?’ Totho asked him.

  ‘Inform the others, too,’ Drephos said. ‘We are sent to Szar.’

  Kaszaat’s face remained a mask. Totho could only guess at the turmoil beneath.

  Twenty-Four

  Lake Limnia at night, and the great expanse of moonlit water was chopped into a million pieces by the drizzle, blotched by swathes of reed, pockmarked by the shadows of Skater rafts and boats. It should have been nobody’s idea of a pleasant sight.

  Tisamon stood by the shores of Lake Limnia and stared across the rain-dappled waters. Every so often the clouds grew ragged enough that a despairing slice of moon could claw itself free of them, and then its clean, pure light appeared in the lake itself as only a pockmarked, ruined reflection, a face given over to disease and ruin.

  If I was a seer, what omens would I make from this?

  Around him the Skater-kinden padded on their stilting errands and left him be. Of course there might be other travellers about tonight. Any moment a patrol of Wasps could troop down between the leaning shacks, with arrest or execution on their minds. In truth, he had hoped for that, but for once the Empire was maddeningly absent and his claw remained unbloodied.

  He was alone with his thoughts, and he was finding that uncomfortable, because it meant they strayed from the business in hand: the mysterious box and the forthcoming auction. When his mind was let free, to coast like a kite in the gusting wind, it asked the same question, What is she doing now? It had been a long time since Tisamon had been plagued with such imaginings: seeing pearlescent armour, a long, straight sword held perfectly poised, the curving talons of her thumbs, the elemental grace of her fighting stance. Is even this place, even the great distance I have placed between us, not enough? He had hoped that she would recede in his mind, along with the miles that separated them, but he might as well have brought Felise Mienn with him.

  She is so swift, so deadly! How close she came to killing me, when first we met. There had been no other, not for a long time, to challenge him so. There had only ever been one other who had set his blood racing in the clash of blades.

  Atryssa, forgive me.

  The spectre of Tynisa’s dead mother walked before him then, with accusing eyes. Mantids paired for life, it was well known, and many were those who then lived out long years as widow or widower. For life always, and he had bound himself to Atryssa, given her a child even, and now . . . this, her.

  He tried to banish the Dragonfly duellist from his mind, but he could no more do so than he could defeat her, blade to blade. She danced and dodged, and was before him still. He felt like weeping, and then he felt like killing.

  ‘Hoi, Mantis,’ came a voice, and he whirled about, his claw raised to strike. Nivit had hailed him from a safe distance, though, the bald, angular little man regarding him cautiously.

  ‘Is it time?’ Tisamon demanded.

  ‘They sent me to fetch you,’ the Skater told him, his expression carefully neutral. ‘Anyone else looking out over the lake like that, I’d say there’s a girl in it, but you, I reckon you’re just thinking about cutting throats, am I right?’

  ‘Nothing other,’ Tisamon agreed shortly, and stalked past the other man towards the looming hulk of the grounded Buoyant Maiden.

  Scyla had hidden her auction house the best way possible, by having it come into being only when she was ready to sell. Founder Bellowern and the other buyers had discovered only days before, through a succession of bewildered Skater messengers, where their prize could be won.

  Bellowern was not the only one to have fallen by the wayside. It seemed that collecting the exotic was a hazardous business within the Empire. Nivit guessed that almost half the wealthy and the powerful who had come to Jerez in response to Scyla’s invitation were no longer there. Some, like Palearchos and Founder Bellowern, were
dead. Others had been arrested by the Wasps in the Empire’s own futile attempts to find the box. More had simply decided that the stakes were not worth the gain.

  Out on the lake, in the gathering dusk, Scyla’s gold now paid for a diligent team of Skater-kinden to piece together a great raft. They towed mats of reeds behind their row-boats or sailing dinghies, thus to haul the pieces of Scyla’s theatre into place. There were walls, too, a building as grand as any native home in Jerez taking shape entirely out on the water. Soon the buyers would congregate there, narrow-eyed in suspicion of each other. Soon Scyla would have to appear there too, from behind whatever mask she was wearing, and present them with the Shadow Box.

  Achaeos and the others sat in Nivit’s office and planned. Jons Allanbridge had already gone to stoke up the Buoyant Maiden, now repaired in readiness for the anticipated getaway.

  ‘Out on the lake,’ said Thalric.

  ‘Of course out on the lake,’ Nivit told him. ‘Business on the lake’s standard practice hereabouts. I’d have thought you’d known that.’

  Thalric sought out Sef, who was sitting close to Gaved. Despite rumours in town of strange hunters abroad at night, there had been no further attempt to take her. ‘The lake,’ Thalric said, ‘has become different to me now. What is the plan, then?’

  ‘Scyla will have guards,’ Tisamon said, ‘or lookouts, anyway. If nothing else, she has no guarantee that one of her genuine buyers will not try force. Water is not our element, not the best for employing stealth.’

  Nivit’s expression said Speak for yourself, but he glanced about at the others, waiting.

  ‘Also, we cannot rely on magic,’ Achaeos remarked. Thalric snorted at that, and even Tynisa looked doubtful, but the Moth shrugged. ‘It matters not. There are other magicians, even Scyla herself. Believe in it or not, we cannot hide ourselves with magic.’

  ‘Nivit, can you get a boat?’ Thalric asked.

  ‘No problem there. We’ve all kinds of boats here. What’re you doing with it? My people can see better in the dark than you think. You’ll never get a boat there without them spotting you.’