Heirs of the Blade

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘I’ve called. It won’t answer. It’s staying where it wants to be,’ Maure explained. ‘It doesn’t need to talk to anyone else.’

  ‘Che, this is ridiculous,’ Tynisa said. ‘What money has this woman had from you?’

  ‘Listen to me!’ Che stood up, ignoring Maure’s attempt to hush her. ‘I know you’re here, Tisamon. I know you’re with Tynisa right now. I can practically see you riding her shoulders. Is this what you wanted? Is this what you’re reduced to? Come out and face me, will you?’

  Only the rain answered her words. No spectre made itself known.

  ‘Che, this isn’t funny,’ Tynisa remarked after a suitable pause. ‘I don’t appreciate my father’s name being abused like this. If I thought this halfbreed put you up to it, I’d kill her right now, but it seems that you’re driving all this nonsense yourself. I know you got hurt in the war, Che, but to resort to this . . .?’

  Che stared at her, seeing the embodiment of calm reason in Tynisa’s face, whilst the invisible shade of Tisamon lurked secure behind her eyes. She had assumed that Maure would haul the ghost out by main magical force. She had thought this must be what the necromancer’s work entailed. But now it seemed that the shade could continue simply to squat within Tynisa’s mind, like a creeping poison, and they could not touch it.

  She looked helplessly about the room until she met Maure’s cautious gaze. ‘Well then,’ she said sickly. ‘If not that, then I must find some way myself. Whatever mantle I’ve been given must be good for something. I’m not done with this.’

  ‘Che—’ Tynisa started again, but the Beetle girl made a slashing motion in her direction, prompting an astonished silence.

  ‘Another,’ Che instructed Maure. ‘Call up another.’

  ‘I need some link, at least. I can’t just—’

  ‘His name was Achaeos, a Moth-kinden of Tharn. He was my lover, and he was dealt a wound by Tynisa, before his death,’ Che spat it out harshly, ignoring the way her sister flinched from the words. ‘Tell me that’s not enough.’

  ‘It will do.’ Maure grimaced again. ‘Achaeos of Tharn, then . . . Achaeos, beloved of Cheerwell Maker.’ She closed her eyes again. ‘Wherever your spirit resides, whatever still remains of it, come forth. Here stands your lover, Achaeos. Surely you must desire some words with her?’

  Che sought within her mind, trying to piece together a complete picture of the man she had known. But it was like stepping out over a yawning chasm, because she now found that she was barely able to. For so long after his death she had borne her grief, had been tormented by dreams, had even thought that his angry ghost was haunting her. The actual man himself, the sum of the feelings she had invested in him, had receded under the weight of those mostly self-imposed torments. So now that she came to find him again, the surviving impressions were distant and cold.

  But it must be enough. It will be enough. Achaeos!

  Maure kept shaking her head, though. ‘There is nothing.’

  ‘Call him again.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Che. There is nothing.’ When it was plain to her that Che genuinely did not understand, she elaborated, ‘When I called on the Mantis, I felt the tug, a connection, even though he would not come forth. With this Achaeos, there is nothing. No touch, no contact . . . no ghost.’

  Che stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked tightly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Che. No ghost. Whatever happened to him, he’s left nothing behind. Either some greater force has claimed him, or he has passed beyond, without so much as a scrap of him remaining. That’s rare, in fact, very rare, but it can happen.’

  Che felt her hands begin to shake. ‘Some greater force . . .’ she managed to get out. As he had died, Achaeos had been in communion with the cursed Mantis spirits of the Darakyon, channelling their power into a grand ritual taking place in Tharn. Che had been helping him, lending what strength she could. She had felt the cold death sent by the Darakyon surge down the link, and she had known at once when Achaeos had died, the connection between them severed as if by a knife.

  And they got him, and then the Shadow Box was sundered, and they ceased to be – and whatever was left of Achaeos went with them, scattered to the four winds.

  No last reconciliation. No apologies. No parting words. No closing of the wound. No final blessing that would let her live her life again without all the grief.

  Only then did Che realize how she had staked far more on that, emotionally, than on trying to draw the poisoned dart of Tisamon out of Tynisa’s mind. Her intentions had become hopelessly tangled and self-involved.

  She glanced from Maure to Tynisa, as though looking for an escape.

  ‘Che, listen to me,’ her sister said patiently. ‘None of this is real. I understand why you’ve resorted to it, but you’ve got to face the real world.’ Confronting that bland scepticism, Che now almost believed her. After all, how much easier life would be if everything, from Khanaphes onwards, had been only a bad dream?

  But she knew it was real, and she knew that if Maure could not so much as detect a loose thread of Achaeos, then the Darakyon had got him, and that was that.

  And, with that revelation, she could not stay in the incense-heavy air of the claustrophobic room, so she fumbled a panel aside and dashed out into the rain, unable to face either of the other women any more.

  Maure was on her feet instantly, chasing after Che. It was not clear whether it was to comfort the Beetle girl or because, for all her words and wards, the mystic did not feel safe close to Tynisa’s rapier without Che there to protect her.

  Tynisa shook her head, listening to the rain. Che was out there getting wet, but experience had told her that running around after her sister, once the girl got upset, achieved nothing. Che was best left to herself to calm down, then come back embarrassed at whatever outburst she had been provoked into. And the best medicine after that would be to act as though nothing had happened, and thus spare the girl’s blushes. Still, Maure obviously had not known Che long enough to learn that lesson. Now that it seemed the mummery was over for the evening, Tynisa decided to wait out the worst of the rain under Gaved’s roof, and then set off on the long road back for Leose. She had unfinished business there, for certain.

  And such foolishness, she considered. Still, Che is my sister, in fact if not in kinden. She called and I came, despite this waste of my time. Nobody can ask more of me than that.

  She stood up and leant over the circle, trying to fathom how people could imagine that such marks on the ground could have any power in the real world.

  Tynisa . . .

  The world seemed to lurch around her. Her name whispered, at the very edge of hearing. For a moment she felt a tide of fear rising up in her, primal and unreasoning, and tainted by memories that she had cast off or locked away. But no, I do not believe . . .

  Tynisa . . . have I found you? It is so hard to tell.

  Although the voice came from everywhere and nowhere, and within her, she conceived the feeling that someone stood behind her . . . someone familiar.

  There is a door here half open, the voice whispered, still coming from just beside her, and yet far, far away. I see you only as in twilight, but it is you, is it not?

  The room seemed darker than before, the fireflies no longer lighting anything but themselves, the incense smouldering into ash. The rain outside had blotted out the sun and covered the entire house in shadow.

  She swallowed. If I speak, I will admit to hearing it. I must not answer it. But she knew that voice now, beyond all doubt, and she could not stop herself from saying, ‘Salma.’

  It is you, then, truly? But who else would venture so far to call on me?

  ‘I’d have thought your cursed Butterfly woman, if she cared.’ The vindictive words were out of Tynisa’s mouth before she could stop them, and she did not know now whether she was more afraid that he would speak to her again, or that she might have driven him away. In her mind resonated the comforting mantra: All is not lost, I ma
y simply be mad. I saw him at my elbow before, so why not hear his voice now? But that faint voice, barely audible over the rain, was still something vastly more real than any of her hallucinations had been.

  Her kinden’s magic is of light, not these shadows, came his response to her outburst. The voice sounded fondly amused, and that, more than anything else, broke her reserve.

  ‘Salma . . .’ And she turned, but he was not there. ‘Salma, speak to me, tell me . . . Tell me how to help you.’

  Help? Ah, I need no help now. Now that you have called me.

  ‘But you weren’t called. She called for Tisamon, then for Achaeos, and neither of them came.’

  But you called me, Tynisa. Not the mystic. You.

  His hand settled on her shoulder, a comforting and familiar pressure that scared her half to death. Again he was behind her, and she could feel his breath on the nape of her neck.

  ‘You’re dead,’ she got out, her voice barely more substantial than his. ‘You know you’re dead.’

  It seemed likely, he agreed wistfully. But you live, so we can’t have done so badly.

  ‘They . . .’ She was helplessly reminded of her audience with Felipe Shah, when recounting Salma’s history for her friend’s mentor. ‘They named a town after you. Your followers built it, after . . . Please let me see you, Salma.’

  I cannot. Tynisa, I have to go. I’ve stayed so long, this shadow of me, just for this purpose only.

  ‘For what? Why do this at all, if you just have to go again?’ she hissed.

  Because of you. Because we parted badly. Because I never did get to speak to you again, before . . . She came between us, I know, and I loved her, but do not think I did not love you also. In all the world, against the tide of death, this scrap of me stays on to ask your forgiveness, and to say goodbye.

  ‘That’s cruel.’ The words barely emerged. She could not stop herself reaching out for his hand, and when she touched it, invisible as it was, she felt a living warmth there. All she needed to do was turn around. She could practically see him now at the edge of her vision. ‘Please, Salma.’

  You’ve met my brother. The words sounded less fond now, and she could only nod, thinking, What now? Am I betraying you with Alain, is that what you mean?

  She heard him sigh, the breath rippling her hair. Do not return to Leose, Tynisa, please. Leave there and never look back.

  ‘Salma, I . . .’ She could not have said this before any other listener. ‘I’ve nothing left now. Too much blood on my hands, too little reason left to live. I’ve nothing else. If you have to go, show me how to come with you, please.’

  Not yet, not soon either – or so I hope. I do not know the country I shall be travelling to, but if it were pleasant, why would the wisest of us take such pains to stave it off. Do not wish that, Tynisa. Bid me a good journey, and let me go.

  A thousand protests came to her then, but she felt a clarity of mind that she had not known in a long time. And in a way it does not matter if I am mad or not.

  ‘I love you, Salma,’ she told him – or perhaps her memory of him. ‘But you know that. You cannot ask me to forgive you for having loved another woman, or for dying as you did. But, even so, because I love you, I forgive you it all. Go in peace.’ Her voice was shaking almost too much for her to form the words now. ‘Go with my love. And when you get where you’re going, wait for me. I’ll be following along. There’s no place so dark we can’t face it together, just like old times.’

  She felt him lean closer, and then his lips brushed her cheek. The hand beneath her own was cooling rapidly, and she now realized that she held only a fold of cloth from her cloak there, and the only sound was the rain, and she stood alone in Gaved’s inner room, and the incense had stopped smouldering. Inside, she felt like a tower of glass that one knock could shatter into a thousand pieces.

  The rain seemed to be passing. Indeed, as she listened, it pattered to a halt almost as suddenly as it had begun, leaving only a sporadic dripping from the eaves.

  Avoid Leose? she wondered. But what, then? The answer came clearly for once: Go with Che, wherever she went, for her sister surely needed her help. Return to Stenwold in Collegium, for a reconciliation. Visit Princep Salmae even, for she had never gone there and felt strong enough to try, now.

  She stepped out of the house, away from the incense and the painted signs, and abruptly something seemed to seize her in a grip of iron that made her gasp.

  She could not walk away from Leose, it told her. She had unfinished business there. She had made a vow to win Alain, and such vows were inviolable, no matter how much blood was shed over them. That was the Mantis way. That was her way, too. There was no avoiding it.

  She fought furiously for a moment, clutching for her free will, for any mastery of her own fate, but that rigid hand was still guiding her, steering an inexorable course. She had a role yet to play in the Tragic History of Tynisa Maker. The closing act was about to begin and her story would be as glorious and terrible as all Mantis-kinden stories were. Salme Alain was waiting for her.

  She saw Che and Maure a short distance away, only now noticing her, and for a moment she reached out towards them despairingly, as though drowning.

  Then she was marching away towards her tethered horse, heading for Leose and for her destiny.

  Thirty-Seven

  ‘Pride of the Sixth,’ pronounced Lowre Cean carefully. ‘Oh, yes, I remember that.’

  ‘You were at Masaki, sir?’ Varmen asked him, sipping at the kadith the old man had poured. They were sitting, not in some formal audience hall, but in a little wood-carving workshop, with curls of sawdust underfoot and, on shelves to either side, ranks of miniature figures that the prince himself had whittled: peasants, craftsmen, dancers, all compact and stylized and yet bursting with frozen energy.

  ‘Some way from the front lines,’ Cean admitted. ‘My son led the charge.’ He was watching the Wasp-kinden carefully. ‘And you were not there?’

  Varmen only nodded.

  ‘Of course you were not. The Imperial Sentinels never run. They fight to the last. Can’t run, in all that armour, I’d imagine. But Darien, my son, told me how the centre held, even when all the rest, all the Light Airborne and artificers and support and the like, had been blown aside. They stood and fought to the last man.’

  The Wasp grunted. ‘They’d sent some of us off after some scouts that got holed up. We fought, as well. Pair of your nobles tried to flush us out, over and over. We heard from them that the Sixth had gone.’

  ‘I recall hearing about that,’ Cean acknowledged. ‘You must have been relieved by the Seventh, I think?’

  ‘The Second, sir – the Gears, General Tynan’s command. And wasn’t that just a joy for us, to be beholden to them? Almost as bad as fighting with the Seventh at Malkan’s Stand. That time, I didn’t miss the action. Most everyone else of the heavies died. I sometimes think . . .’ Abruptly he decided that he had said too much. The old man’s mild voice had led him into letting his guard down, and now he stood up rebelliously, feeling tricked and trapped. ‘Why have you even let me in here? What if I killed you? We’re enemies, after all.’

  ‘Once,’ Cean admitted. He had not moved or reacted, save to look up. ‘But now, years later, we have more in common than you might think. We were both there, after all, and although your army won, perhaps you have more right to hate me, as a commander, than I do to hate you, being just a soldier. Would casting you out of my house bring back a single dead man or woman from the war? Would killing me with your sting redeem the fallen Sixth? We are united, Sergeant, by the memories of our dead. That is something we share. You ask me why I let you in, and I ask you why did you come here?’

  ‘Avoiding the crazy Spider-kinden girl,’ Varmen explained, but Cean was shaking his head.

  ‘I meant here to the Commonweal. Here to revisit your past and your losses?’

  Varmen stared at him stubbornly, but sat back down. ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.’


  Cean poured more kadith, watching him with slightly raised eyebrows, but saying nothing.

  ‘Should have died at Masaki, I reckon, sometimes,’ Varmen added unwillingly. ‘You know how that feels, that one blind bit of chance takes you out of the way of the axe?’ Seeing Cean nodding, he went on, ‘And at Malkan’s Stand, I nearly did. Got a snapbow bolt through me, armour and all. Should have died there, too. After that, the army had no use for me – the Sentinels were being recalled. No point in all that armour if it couldn’t stop the shot. They just cut me off, like I was an embarrassment for surviving. A freak. I kicked about in Helleron some, but I used to dream of the Commonweal, of the Sixth as it used to be, before that useless tinkerer Praeter got put in charge. I used to dream of being holed up with them scouts, and . . . there was a girl, can’t even remember her name now. One of your lot, nice voice. I ended up going one on one with her, because I had to buy time for my men. I dream of that a lot. Seemed like my life went downhill from there, really. Now doesn’t that sound stupid, eh?’

  Cean regarded him solemnly. ‘To a Wasp, perhaps, but my own kinden would understand. Mantis-kinden, too. There is a time for all things, especially for people. You and I, our time was then – that year, that month, at the height of our powers. We have neither of us ever been quite who we were then, do you not think?’

  Varmen regarded him bleakly, but at last he nodded tiredly. ‘Reckon you’ve got the right of it, sir.’

  ‘We lost our purpose, after that. No matter that the war still had a few years left to run, our great work was done, and all we had left was to preside over our decline in the face of progress. It is a terrible thing to outlive one’s destiny.’

  ‘I don’t believe in destiny,’ Varmen said automatically, and then, ‘but, yes.’

  ‘You won’t believe in guiding spirits, either,’ Lowre Cean decided, ‘but in the Commonweal it can happen that a man whose destiny has passed him by may yet find a way to make something of himself. He may find himself taking strange paths, in order to seek out that elusive sense of purpose. Such as a Wasp coming to the Commonweal, perhaps? Who knows?’