Salute the Dark sota-4

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Once you have been marked by my kinden,’ continued the thin voice, ‘we can always sense you.’

  ‘Show yourself,’ she hissed.

  She was abruptly no longer alone. There was a dark-robed shape in the room’s corner that she had somehow missed. She rounded on it with her blade drawn back to strike, but then darkness rose about her on every side, clawing at her and dragging her down. She felt the rapier fall helplessly from her grip, and then she too was falling, dropping further and futher and away.

  Tynisa awoke.

  There was a pain in her head, but not suggesting she had been struck, unless it was possible to sustain a blow from within the skull.

  She opened her eyes. She saw only black and yellow.

  She cursed, kicking herself to her feet from the cold stone floor, but there were chains clasped about her ankles and she stumbled back against the wall of… of a cell. She was in a cell with a single barred window high up, one so small that a Fly-kinden child would have difficulty squeezing through it even without the bars.

  ‘Well now,’ said a dry voice.

  There were two Wasp-kinden guards in full armour, motionless and faceless behind the full helms of the Slave Corps. Between them stood a slight, robed figure, face hidden within a cowl. Pale, long-nailed hands were folded demurely before it.

  Tynisa said nothing. Even to ask, Who are you? or What happened to me? would be to show weakness. She forced herself to remain calm. Her mind held no memory at all of what had befallen her.

  ‘We meet formally at last,’ said the robed figure. ‘I have previously had only my subordinates’ reports about you, and they have not done you justice. Tynisa Maker, I suppose they call you amongst the Beetle-kinden, but it’s clear to me that the name is only borrowed.’

  ‘You have me at quite an advantage,’ she replied, finally, and her voice was at least steady. She had no idea who this thin creature was, but there was no reason she could not win it over.

  The fragile-looking man approached her, and she could now make out some of his pale face beneath the cowl. ‘You have shown yourself remarkably gifted in reaching Capitas still a free woman,’ he said. ‘Aside from a little push, initially, I have not needed to assist you in your journey at all.’

  She felt something uneasy twist inside her. ‘A… push?’

  ‘Oh now, who do you think brought you here? Who gave you the idea? None but my servant, working according to my plan. Still, you have proved remarkably able. After this is done, perhaps I can find a use for you, if you survive.’

  ‘And for what possible purpose could you want me here?’ she asked, but her voice was less steady now that he was so close. There was something about him that frightened her, for no reason she could have named.

  ‘Insurance,’ he explained simply. ‘You see, your father is due to die for me tomorrow, and I thought that he might need motivating.’

  She went for him then, clawing for his face, but the chains that restrained her brought her up short. As he caught one of her wrists in his thin-looking hand, she found his grip was far stronger than it had any right to be.

  ‘As it happens, our dear Tisamon seems more than happy to cast his life away. He considers it his destiny, and perhaps it is.’ The half-seen lips, bluish in that white face, twitched. ‘It is such a shame that my people never discovered the Mantis-kinden in the way our enemies did. They were the Moths’ private army of fanatics for centuries: superstitious, malleable, easily led for all their pride. And you, my dear Tynisa, have inherited all that from your poor doomed father. I barely had to extend myself to bring you here. You practically locked your own shackles.’

  ‘You’re going to kill Tisamon.’

  ‘No, no, he can see to that himself, being the expert after all. It seems likely though, that after all your travels you may not be needed after all.’ His eyes were red, she noticed. She could see them bloody and glistening under the shadow of his hood. He smiled at her, avuncular. ‘But still, why leave even that to chance? I shall keep you close to me, tomorrow, the slave of a slave, and if his heart turns before he steps on to the sand, then his daughter’s blood shall provide sufficient leverage to change his mind.’ He smiled. ‘It seems you will get to watch him die, after all.’

  They set him against scorpions.

  It was the anniversary of the coronation of his Imperial Majesty Alvdan the Second. There were public games being held throughout the Empire and the populace was encouraged to celebrate. On the whole the people did so willingly.

  There would be a half-dozen separate arenas shedding blood across the city of Capitas alone but the Emperor would be present at this one only, the grandest and the largest. It was a great open space of sand surrounded by high barriers, with tiers of seats beyond, entirely roofed over with silk rendered luminous by the sun. Ult and his fellows, the trainers and jailers, had devised an ever-mounting spectacle of contests: men against beasts, men against machines but, more than any other matching, men set against men. Slaves had killed each other with awkward desperation to the crowd’s amusement. Experienced pit-fighters had slaughtered deserters. Rebels and criminals had died at the hands of imperial soldiers. There were those who had never held a blade before being cast out on to the sand, but also there were veterans of a score of fights, their brief moments of celebrity written in the scars on their bodies.

  And then there was Tisamon. Few had ever seen a Mantis-kinden fight, for they did not submit themselves to capture and slavery often. Above all, none had seen a Mantis Weaponsmaster.

  They had given him first the animal: a great pale-shelled scorpion, old and cunning. It had lain with its belly close to the sand and waited for him to come to it. He had stalked it, wary of those heavy claws held so tight to its body, but it had struck with its sting only, the claws providing shields to ward him off. The crowd had known it well, and called it ‘Opalesce’ and expected it to win. They had called out its name frenziedly until the moment when Tisamon had vaulted over those protective claws to land on its back and, catching the lethal sting in one hand, had driven his claw down between its eyes.

  He was back now, having rested for the space of five contests, and a murmur went through the crowd when they saw him. He heard his own name on their lips.

  Ult sat close to the gladiators’ gate, and Tisamon caught his eye briefly. The old Wasp merely nodded, a neutral gesture, but Tisamon saw doubt in his face. This was to be the promised unarmed match and Ult was not entirely sure that Tisamon was up to it.

  Tisamon’s opponent was already waiting: Scorpion-kinden instead of scorpion animal. He was built on a massive scale, twice as broad across the shoulder as Tisamon himself, barrel-chested and with arms almost contorted with muscle. His hands formed claws, thumb and forefinger grown into long blades of bone. He was stripped to the waist and the physiology thus revealed looked something beyond human.

  Tisamon shrugged off his slave’s tunic, looking like a child or a toy before the Scorpion, but his own blades flexed in readiness from his forearms. He dropped into his fighting stance, perfectly balanced and waiting.

  The Scorpion moved faster than someone of his bulk had any right to, a sudden scuttle across the sand, claws driving for Tisamon’s face, trying to run him back against the wall. Tisamon swayed to one side, feeling the man’s finger-blade cut the air just an inch from his eye, while thrusting a leg out to trip the man in his charge. The Scorpion stumbled, but held his feet, delivering a murderously swift backhand blow as he passed. Tisamon disengaged, stepping out of range and back into his stance, watching to see how the other man had taken it.

  There was no anger in the Scorpion’s eyes: his savagery was entirely divorced from his emotions. Tisamon noted this, and reassessed his opponent.

  He spotted the slight flexing of muscles before the Scorpion’s next charge, and so was better ready for it. He moved in to meet the man, and hammer-blows from the Scorpion, which would have broken his arm if he blocked them, were turned away by precise circular gestu
res of Tisamon’s hands, until he stood calmly in the eye of the storm. The Scorpion had reach, though, and he kept Tisamon at the end of it, slightly too far to strike back. He kept methodically assaulting the Mantis’ defences, looking for any weakness, seeking a way in.

  Tisamon stepped out of reach three times without having struck a blow in return, and there was still no sign of fatigue or frustration at all in his opponent, just a dreadful patience. Tisamon watched carefully and waited.

  The crowd was getting restless, shouting for this fight to be finished one way or another. Tisamon did not care: they could go hang themselves for all it meant to him. The Scorpion was a professional, though. The crowd’s approval was his reward. It eventually made him take a chance.

  Tisamon saw the feint coming, at the last moment realized it was the offhand that would be the danger. The claws of the Scorpion’s right clipped his shoulder in a little dart of pain, but then Tisamon was inside the man’s reach, past the upward-driving left, and he brought his own spines down sharply on either side of the man’s neck. He drew blood, but not enough, for the man’s hide was Art-strong, durable as leather. Tisamon kicked upwards, getting a foot on the man’s thigh, then another on his shoulder, vaulting over him and turning to face him. The Scorpion backed off three steps, blood trickling its way down his chest.

  There was a tremble in his eyes that had not been there before. He had scars, but they were old scars, or small scars, evidence that nobody had recently come so close. The crowd held its breath.

  Tisamon attacked, moving from still to swift without a warning, but the Scorpion was still almost ready for him, blocking three blows before the fourth speared past his guard to cut a gash across his chest – not his throat as Tisamon had intended. The big man tried to carry the fight back at him, stabbing at Tisamon’s stomach, but the Mantis twisted sideways about the strike, lashed his spines across the other man’s face in passing and then dropped to one knee behind him. With clinical precision he sliced across the back of the man’s legs, stepping out of the way as his opponent fell.

  The crowd had gone silent as Tisamon stood beside his victim, hearing the man’s breath hissing, raw, amid his pain. He knew the custom now, as Ult had explained it to him. It would be for the Emperor alone to decide.

  Tisamon looked up at the Emperor for the first time since the man’s hurried visit to the cells, and his eyes began seeking for a way in.

  Below the first row of the crowd there was a ring of soldiers atop the high wall of the pit, men in full armour with spears. They would be the first barrier to overcome. The Emperor, of course, had his own private room facing the arena, a long enclosure constructed out of fabric that hid him from the crowd on both sides, so that only those sitting across from him could see him clearly, and then only from well outside of sting range. More soldiers were standing on guard directly before the Emperor and on either side of his box.

  Alvdan the Second sat staring down at the victor and, when their eyes met, Tisamon thought he saw the man flinch. He noticed an older man, balding and thickset, seated almost beside the Emperor, and behind him…

  For a moment Tisamon just stared, feeling something kick inside him. There was a darkness behind the Emperor that might be a robed man, a pale smear that must be a face half-hidden beneath a cowl, and to one side a younger Wasp woman whose face resembled the Emperor’s own, but on the other side of the cowled figure was…

  Atryssa.

  Atryssa, his long-dead lover, looked down on him, and she nodded. He saw it distinctly. She nodded her approval, her permission.

  The Emperor drew a dagger and held it high, and Tisamon, obedient to the signal, drove his spines down into the Scorpion-kinden’s throat, finishing him. The Mantis barely realized what he had done, though. He felt as though a monstrous weight had been suddenly lifted from him.

  She approves. She forgives. He almost stumbled as he left the arena.

  He never considered that she might be his daughter, not his lover. He was too far lost in the maze of his own honour for that thought. Instead he took her silent camaraderie for absolution, and he used it to cut free twenty years of guilt.

  I am ready now, he decided.

  Twenty-Nine

  There were four guards leading Kaszaat, clustered to either side and behind her as though uncertain what to do with her. She was not quite a prisoner, therefore, but far less than free. It was the Auxillian rank, of course, Totho realized. Kaszaat was a sergeant, after all, and it threw them a little to have been obliged to arrest her.

  Totho saw Big Greyv shift, leaning on the haft of his axe, though still lurking in the shadow of the engine. It was astonishing, he considered remotely, how very quiet the Mole Cricket could be, how easily overlooked.

  ‘Speak,’ Drephos commanded. Totho saw his superior purse his lips, but there was no surprise on his face, only a faint disappointment.

  ‘We caught her at one of the machines,’ called up a soldier.

  ‘She is an artificer, so how unexpected was that?’ Drephos asked. He did not raise his voice, but his tone was sharp enough to carry. The wind promised for the morning had yet to rise, and the air was very still.

  ‘One of our artificers reckoned she was breaking it,’ the soldier explained. The slight hint of stress showed what he thought of Drephos’ ragged crew. ‘Sabotage, he said. Said we should bring her to you or, if you wouldn’t deal with it, he’d take it up with the governor. After all, she’s one of them.’

  ‘I had always thought,’ Drephos said, probably too softly now for the soldiers to hear, ‘that she was one of mine.’ For a moment he paused, staring down, disparate hands resting on the railing. Kaszaat glared up at him defiantly, looking so much slighter than the guards behind her. Totho felt something twist inside him.

  ‘Sergeant-Auxillian Kaszaat, step forwards,’ Drephos ordered. She did so instinctively.

  ‘I placed faith in you,’ Drephos told her. ‘I had not thought I had done so badly by you as to merit this.’ His voice was carrying clearly again, finding her ears without effort. ‘I gave you station and position, drew you from the ranks of the slaves to be one of my chosen. How, therefore, has it come to this?’ Hearing him and his genuinely aggrieved tone, Totho believed that the man truly did not understand – the master of machines was stuck with a problem that his own invincible logic could not solve.

  Kaszaat was shaking her head slowly, and reflected in her eyes was the unnatural monster she was looking at, who could not himself see what was so plain to everyone else there.

  The guards understand more than he does, Totho thought, as Kaszaat cried out, ‘Drephos, they’re my kin!’ Her admission changed the attitude of the guards, and Totho saw their hands flex, and one man shift his grip on the snapbow he was carrying. He met Kaszaat’s eyes just briefly, and the loathing in them made him flinch. She had found him here with the enemy, and she could not know that he had come simply for the same purpose. The same purpose – but I have failed. Even before she came Drephos had talked me out of it.

  ‘But, Kaszaat,’ Drephos continued, and he was still so dreadfully hurt, so absurdly hurt by her turning from him, ‘how can you choose an accident of birth over our work?’ So spoke Drephos the halfbreed, even as Totho was a halfbreed: both men without kin and without homes.

  And Kaszaat let out a shriek of pure anger, bursting forwards suddenly, flinging her hand up towards Drephos as though in salute. Totho was shouting her name even as she did so, seeing the darkness shift as Big Greyv abruptly stirred into motion. She had caught them all by surprise, standing there guarded and unarmed but, like a good magician, there had been something up her sleeve.

  It was a slender silver rod and less than a foot long, the simplest iteration of the snapbow she could construct. It was in her hand instantly, and the trigger pressed, and Totho saw something flash past his face – no precise shape, just the impression of movement. Drephos rocked back, and Totho saw the quilled end of the dart buried at the point where his shoulder met
his chest.

  Kaszaat was still moving forwards, though he would never discover what she intended next. The first sting-blast struck her a glancing blow to her side, though the snapbow bolt passed by her, the guards caught unprepared by her sudden move. It was Big Greyv’s great axe, cleaving out of the darkness in a colossal double-handed swing, that buried itself in her chest, crushed her body entirely with the force of it, flinging her back into the guards and scattering them.

  Totho felt the impact like a physical shock to his own body and his own snapbow, his glorious repeating snap-bow, was now levelled in his hands and, without a moment’s hesitation, he pulled on the trigger, feeling the weapon rattle, its mechanism still slightly rough and needing adjustment.

  Three shots tore through Big Greyv, ripping into the massive Mole Cricket’s frame and driving the huge man to his knees. The rest sprayed the guards even as they were gaping at Kaszaat’s body, the weapon leaping wildly in his hands, but the bolts punching straight through armour and flesh without distinction. Only the last man to fall had some idea of what was happening, and he was able to look up and see his killer before the bolt found him.

  And there will be more guards, Totho thought desperately, automatically fitting a new magazine just as he had when he tested the weapon. Even as he thought it, he heard running footsteps from the tower’s other side. Two sentries who had heard the shouting were coming up, not seeing any bodies yet, hearing no massed attack and so suspecting little. They did not even hear the snapbow crack before Totho had shot both of them dead.

  More, surely? But no more came. The sentries from the other side of the line must have been the same men who came with Kaszaat. The Bee-kinden rebels of Szar were well dug in, and nobody was expecting an attack.

  A hand closed on the barrel of his snapbow and crushed the metal like foil, twisting it closed and useless. Totho jerked back and found himself at the rail with Drephos standing before him, the ruined weapon dangling from his metal hand. The master artificer looked at it sadly, recognizing the waste. He turned the same expression on Totho.