Dragonfly Falling sota-2

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Their boat tacked closer and then further away, the Moth-kinden fisherman shading his eyes and watching the water carefully. At last he found a channel running into the wood, and guided the boat twenty yards along it before throwing a line out to loop over a branch.

  ‘This is as far as I can take her,’ he explained. Tisamon paid him a handful of coins, and then stepped out onto one of the arching roots, holding an arm back for Tynisa to clutch at.

  It was an awkward journey until they passed the high-tide mark, stepping half in muddy water and half on the projections of the trees, seeing the swirl of creatures moving in the murk, and slapping at mosquitoes that hung in the air as big as hands. They clambered and scrambled inland with best speed, walking from root to root, jumping channels that were thick with mud and motion. The air glittered with life. Dragonflies skimmed the waters for fish drawn in by the tide, and butterflies like ragged brown cloaks hunted through the canopy for the open blooms of flowers.

  They reached land, at last, and if it was not dry it was at least solid, past the furthest intrusions of the sea. The trees progressed from the stilted marsh-dwellers to broader and more familiar breeds. There was a weight to them, an ancient crookedness, that returned errant thoughts of the Darakyon to Tynisa, and she shook them off uncomfortably.

  ‘What lives here, besides your people?’ she asked.

  ‘Our namesakes,’ Tisamon said briefly. ‘Beyond those two, there is nothing to worry you.’

  ‘No ghosts?’ she asked. ‘Spirits?’

  Tisamon turned back to her. ‘The mystics teach us that there are ghosts and spirits everywhere,’ he said. ‘But no, this is not like that place.’

  She would have asked more, but then the Mantis-kinden found them. She only knew about it when Tisamon moved, the metal claw abruptly in place and at the ready. She had the sense of sudden flight, the sound of metal on metal.

  Everything stopped. She could see nothing, though her sword had leapt to her hand. Claw cocked back, Tisamon was standing before her, tense as a taut wire.

  There, by his feet, was a broken arrow. It had been meant for her.

  ‘Where is your honour?’ Tisamon shouted out, genuinely angry. ‘Come forth that I may see what my kinden have become!’

  There were five of them, three women and two men, all of them within a few years of her own age. They had bows, strings drawn back to the ear, and not the little bows of Flyor Moth-kinden, but bows as tall as they were, and they were all of them tall. They were fair too, as Tisamon was, and as she was also. Her features were Spider-kinden, though, while theirs were composed of the same angles as his: sharp-chinned, sharp-eared, narrow-eyed. A kind of austere grace, like a statue’s, was theirs, but without the warmth to make them seem human. They wore greens and greys, and one had a cuirass of black-enamelled metal scales.

  Their leader stared at Tisamon with eyes narrowed. ‘What filth is this? What do you want here?’ she asked, regarding Tisamon without any love. Then her gaze passed to Tynisa and she spat at her feet. ‘No Spiders in the Felyal,’ she said. ‘We had thought that decree would not be forgotten.’ The other four arrowheads were directed unwavering at Tynisa’s head, waiting only for the nod.

  ‘Look again at her,’ Tisamon urged quietly. The Mantis woman shot him a hostile glance, but her eyes twitched over Tynisa, and came to rest on the brooch.

  ‘What is this?’ she demanded.

  ‘We must speak to the elders of Felyal,’ Tisamon said calmly.

  ‘And if they will not speak to you?’ The woman’s comrades were slowly lowering their bows, relaxing the strain on their strings. They could see, from that one badge, that this situation was more than they themselves could decide on. There was a wildness to their eyes, though. That the mark of a Weaponsmaster could be borne by a Spider was hateful to them, Tynisa understood. She saw also that they did not even consider that she might have acquired it by forgery or theft, that badge. That she sported it meant that she had earned it, and she wondered just what might happen to any unwise thief who tried to claim such a symbol undeservedly.

  ‘If they will not see us, then that shall be what they choose,’ Tisamon said. ‘I myself know the way, but if you wish to escort us, so be it.’

  ‘You, perhaps, but she may not come. She may live this time, but send her back to the sea,’ the woman snarled.

  Tisamon shook his head. ‘You cannot deny that symbol, and don’t make either of us prove it to you.’

  The Mantis woman looked rebellious for a further moment, her jaw stuck out aggressively. Then she signalled, and one of her band ran off into the trees.

  ‘We are watching you,’ she hissed at Tynisa. ‘If you try to run, we shall kill you.’

  ‘Why would I need to run?’ asked Tynisa, trying to muster icy disdain and meanwhile hoping her nerves did not show. She had always known this, how Mantis-kinden hated the Spiders. Everyone knew it and nobody knew why, but the grievance went back deep into the Days of Lore, the enmity’s roots impossible to tug out and examine.

  And now she was here and amongst them, and they hated her. She could feel all four of them hating her, just patiently waiting for the word. The brooch she wore seemed a feeble object to hold up as a shield.

  She hoped Tisamon knew what he was doing and, glancing at him, saw that he was by no means as certain as she had previously thought. His anxiety was now as much for his own sake as for hers. She was the abomination that he had produced, and thus they were guilty side by side.

  He strode ahead, though, forcing the other Mantids to keep up with his pace. He was coming home, but it had been twenty years, and how much did he really know about the current regime? Or perhaps nothing ever changed here, in this deep pocket of the past.

  And she realized that they were already within the Mantis community, the Hold, and she had not noticed. All around them lay a village, but the Mantids had not cleared any ground to accommodate it. Instead their houses were scattered around and between the trees, light structures of wood that barely touched the ground, with rounded walls and sloping roofs that funnelled upwards into openings that were both chimneys and doors. She could not count them, half-hidden in and out of the trees, but it seemed everywhere she looked there was another, situated further out between the distant trunks and branches, until she wondered whether the entire wood was riddled with them. So this was the Mantis-kinden, their idea of a town.

  But of course, they could not live one on top of another. Basic lessons of economics were coming back to her from the College. Where were the farms? Where was the cleared land? Of course there was none, for Mantis-kinden were not farmers. They must hunt and gather their way through the Felyal. They could never form great compact towns or cities, and how many of them could even this wide-stretching forest feed? And how scattered they must remain, just to support themselves.

  It only struck her then that this was something from another time, another world. Here was where the claws of the past had dug in and held tight. The revolution had never happened here, where the Days of Lore still dragged their timeless way along.

  And here were the Mantis-kinden themselves. The advance messenger had drawn a fair crowd of them, perhaps a hundred or more. There were suspiciously staring children, holding wooden stick-swords that were not toys but practice blades, and there were some silver-haired old men and women, and there was a host in between, for the Mantids lived long and aged late. They surprised her, and mostly because of the amount of metal they displayed. Many of them had donned armour, either the leaf-shaped scales or curving, fluted breastplates and helms: the much-coveted carapace style that no other kinden had been able to duplicate. Black and brown and green and gold, and old, the armour and the weapons were the work of generations, handed down and handed down, and always keeping the past alive. She almost felt the ancient blade at her own side shift in sympathy.

  One of the older women was stepping forwards. She walked as though she were young, with the same grace as all of them, and she had a beaut
ifully sleek rapier hanging from a cord loop at her belt.

  ‘What do you want here?’ she asked. ‘Why have you come?’

  ‘My name is Tisamon, Loquae, and I have come home.’

  Tynisa glanced at him and realized with a shock that she had never thought him afraid before, but he seemed so now. Moreover, he was revelling in it, feeding off it. It stretched his mouth into a taut grin as tension twanged through his entire body. He was as alive and alert as he had ever been, and unmistakably thrilling with it.

  ‘There was a man called Tisamon once,’ said the Loquae, for Tynisa knew this word was a title, not a name. ‘He left many years ago, hearing the call of the world. Perhaps he might have sought to rejoin his people.’ Her eyes were slits as she stared at Tynisa. ‘But he would never have brought a Spider here with him. By what right does she bear that badge?’

  ‘By the only right that anyone can,’ Tisamon said, his voice all calm, his stance all readiness. ‘And she is not a Spider. She is my daughter.’

  The words speared through them like steel, like a wind lashing at trees and bending them backwards. There were blades in hand instantly, rapiers and long knives, and claw-gauntlets being buckled on. Even the children hissed their disapproval at him, and the Loquae wailed, ‘What have you done? You have made an abomination! What have you become?’

  Tisamon watched her, grinning still with pain and tension.

  ‘You cannot be one of us,’ the Loquae spat at him. ‘You are not one of us!’

  ‘Then I must be an intruder.’ He brought his hand up, and his gauntlet was on it now, though it had been bare a moment before, with the blade unfurling. ‘And you will have to kill me.’

  Even as he said the words, three of the Mantis-kinden sprang forth to challenge him, and Tynisa assumed they would all set about him at once. By some signal or concord she did not catch, two of them stopped short and one just kept moving, her own clawed gauntlet slashing out at Tisamon’s face. He had no moment of confusion, for he was part of their world and had known instantly who his real opponent was. He was a step back before she had even completed her move, her blade passing uselessly between them.

  There was no moment of breath, he was attacking instantly, and Tynisa saw what few outsiders had ever witnessed, the vicious, graceful dance of the mantis claws. Tisamon and his opponent shifted like dappled sunlight, moved like dancers, like insects skittering over the surface of a lake. Their claws were cocked back behind them, and then lashing forth in complex patterns, dancing and spinning, using every joint all the way to the fingers to make them pirouette and wait and stoop as though they were living things in their own right, like silver dragonflies hovering and darting, and their bearers nothing but an abstraction.

  Tynisa kept her hand clutched tightly about the hilt of her rapier, and never realized that she did so. She had seen Tisamon fight so many times before, but until now she realized she had never seen him fight anyone so good. The Mantis woman moved with him and Tynisa could not tell who led and who followed. They fought as though they had rehearsed it, blades cutting air, striking against one another high and low, and their off-hands flashing too, the spines raised on their forearms, raking and cutting. They were far too close, not the distance of a rapier duel but almost chest to chest most of the time, constantly in one another’s shadow, and never touching, ducking and spinning past one another, and even when turned away each knew the other’s precise stance and position.

  Then it was over. Tynisa blinked. She had barely seen it, had to review the last few moves in her mind to see that, yes, the reason that the woman’s arming jacket was now flooding with red across her stomach was precisely that move of Tisamon’s, not his last move, but one three moves before, and nobody, not even his opponent, had realized.

  His victim made a shocked sound, and doubled over, striking the ground heavily, but Tisamon paid no heed to her because the second challenger was upon him. This was a man a little over Tynisa’s age, driving for Tisamon with a short-hafted spear. Tisamon was already moving, even before the luckless woman struck the earth, lashing out with his claw, trying to close.

  This fight was different again, a fight of space and distance, with the spearman trying always to keep Tisamon at the end of his reach, and Tisamon forever closing, forced to be the aggressor, sweeping the spearhead out of the way time and time again in his effort to step in, so that the whole contest seemed to happen backwards as the spearman retreated, step-perfect and never looking behind him, to keep away from the flashing edge of Tisamon’s claw. He never blocked, either, and Tisamon was the same. The two weapons seemed to exist in different worlds, meeting only when Tisamon struck at the spear itself. Always it was drawn back, the claw springing away from the head and not splitting the shaft.

  Tynisa risked a glance at the other Mantids, and saw no hatred there. They did not cheer the fighters on, or wager, or discuss. Their entire attention was fixed on the battle, with nothing short of reverence.

  And Tisamon caught the spear with his off-hand, just behind the head. The spearman had the chance for a moment’s surprise, started to drop the weapon and fall back, but Tisamon’s sweep cut the haft in two, and then he lunged forwards and the point of his claw caught the man outside the collarbone, driving deep into his shoulder so that the younger man’s already pale face went white with the pain and he fell back into the crowd.

  Tisamon was already turning, claw crooked back again, as the third challenger came for him. She was armed with a rapier, and Tynisa saw that it was a match in style for the weapon she herself bore, down to the leaden-coloured, slightly shortened blade. Tisamon rose to meet her with an expression that was madness and ecstasy combined, a bloodlust and a joy in the fight that chilled Tynisa and called to her equally.

  They were faster now, twice the speed of the first duel, as Tisamon changed pace to keep up with the flickering of the rapier’s narrow blade. The woman across from him was older than the previous two, but a good ten years his junior nonetheless, and she did not fence as Tynisa had learned, with careful feet and a rapid hand. Instead she flew, figuratively and literally. She made her sword into a lattice of steel about her, using the edge more than the point, letting its momentum lead her body where it would, and then the wings would explode from her back and carry her over Tisamon’s head, landing and thrusting or cutting even as he turned, and they were moving faster and faster, until Tynisa could not breathe.

  She never realized that her own face had slipped into the same almost religious expression worn by all of the others, or that she had released her rapier hilt to clasp her hands over the brooch of sword and circle.

  Tisamon ducked and drove in, trying to step inside the reach of his adversary’s blade, and she would not let him, and yet when he walked into the razoring steel of her guard, he stepped through it unscathed and she fell back as the spearman had, before driving him away again. Her eyes were almost closed. The patter of steel on steel was a constant staccato that had almost become music.

  She took flight again, and this time Tisamon leapt with her, lashing out with his full reach, and they came down together, frozen in a single slice of time.

  His claw was over her back, folded so that the point touched near her spine, but held just short, cutting her cuirass but not her skin. The spines of his right arm had drawn blood where her shoulder met her neck.

  Her blade was along the line of his throat, his head tilted back so that the flat was against his cheek, the point running through his hair. Her off-hand and his were locked together, spines meshed with spines, between their bodies. Only then did Tynisa notice that the woman wore the same badge that Tisamon did — that she herself did.

  The Mantis woman’s wings flickered and died, and they stood very still, both looking past her at the Loquae.

  An almost crippling sense of vertigo hit Tynisa, because she recognized that look, recognized the moment. It took her back to the Prowess Forum, duelling some other student with wooden swords, and at the end of the pa
ss they would look over at Kymon to see how they had done, to read his reaction.

  Just a game, she thought, but the woman he had fought first was dead, and the man badly injured, and now there was a razor edge to Tisamon’s throat, and yet he was looking calmly at the old woman to see how he had done.

  The Loquae closed her eyes for a moment. She was clearly not happy, but something had been resolved. ‘You are one of us,’ she said at last. ‘What you have done is a heinous thing, but there is no denying that you still have a place here. What would you ask of us, Tisamon of Felyal?’

  ‘That you give my daughter the same chance to prove herself,’ Tisamon said simply, as the blade of the rapier was withdrawn and he stepped away from his opponent.

  ‘You should not have come back,’ the Loquae reproached him. They were in her home, a hut cut into two rooms by a wall pierced by a common firepit. ‘Whatever you have proved, to us, to yourself, today, it would have been better if you had never returned.’

  Tisamon listened to the clatter and scrape of sword on sword, keeping a watchful eye through the doorway. ‘If it had just been myself, Loquae, you would not have seen me again. But I have a responsibility to her. She is mine.’

  The Loquae made a scornful noise. ‘None of her looks.’

  ‘Watch her,’ Tisamon urged: Tynisa was fighting, rapier to rapier, against a Mantis youth of her own age. It was her third bout: the other two had ended with blood, almost to the death. She had taken two shallow cuts, to her shoulder, to her side. She had not deigned to acknowledge them.

  ‘The Spider-kinden woman that broke you must have been remarkable,’ the Loquae said drily.

  ‘She was not like others of her kind.’

  ‘You mean she was able to fool you,’ the Loquae said. ‘Be careful not to presume too much on our acceptance, Tisamon. You were given a fair and balanced chance to prove yourself. If I had decided to draw my own blade against you, matters would have been different.’