Blood of the Mantis

Three

The war with Vek had made many names newly famous in Collegium, but none so comfortable with it as Teornis of the Aldanrael, Spider-kinden Aristos and Lord-Martial of Seldis, whose naval assault had broken the Vekken army, burning their ships and landing his mercenary soldiers along the beaches to drive the Ant-kinden from the city. He had been paraded through the streets in triumph and, though he had been in the company of a great many others, it had been Teornis that the men and women of Collegium had talked about afterwards, especially the women. He was young and handsome and always impeccably dressed.

And of course it had not been long before rumour had whispered of his other victory against the Wasp Empire that threatened them even now. Why, he had held off an entire Wasp army for whole tendays with only 200 men…

For accommodation he had been given the best rooms in the guest wing of the Amphiophos, and he had not let them suffer beneath their somewhat overblown Beetle style, but had lavished them with draped silks and cushions – or rather his servants had. What matter that he would be staying there only a few days?

When Stenwold entered, Teornis was lounging on a couch, with two brightly clad Fly-kinden servants dancing attendance on him. Servants or slaves? Stenwold wondered. Slavery was outlawed in Collegium but was the cornerstone of Spiderlands society, and nobody was inclined to pose that question for fear of the reply. It helped, all the same, that there was not a manacle to be seen, and Teornis’ staff were dressed as richly as Collegium’s merchant magnates.

‘Master Maker,’ the Spider greeted him in a pleasant, reassuring voice. Like the best of his kind he was the consummate socialite, all things to all audiences. ‘Thank you for accepting my invitation. Pray join me.’

Stenwold cautiously moved to the couch facing him, accepting a goblet of wine from one servant, a honeyed locust from the other. Behind Teornis, a sultry Spider maiden reclined on her side amidst the cushions and watched Stenwold curiously, but the Beetle found himself thinking, I have a sultry Spider maiden of my own, and he smiled at that.

‘War Master Maker, I should have said,’ Teornis added.

Stenwold swallowed the locust and held up a hand. ‘Please not that title, Lord-Martial. I have no stomach for it.’

‘Then I shall call you Stenwold, and you must call me Teornis.’

‘You are too kind.’

‘I am just kind enough,’ said the Spider. ‘You are now a hero to your people. I shall flatter you outrageously until you agree to my every demand.’ His smile was the whitest Stenwold had ever seen. ‘I always thought myself fond of titles, but even I find mine has begun to weigh on me. There seem to be ever more matters martial to deal with these days.’

Stenwold nodded. ‘Someone in a hurry addressed me just “War Maker” today.’

‘A hazard of a practical surname.’

‘It could be worse.’ Stenwold found himself smiling again. ‘When I was a student here, there was a fellow called Hiram Master who entered into the Assembly. Nobody had thought about it, but suddenly he was Master Master. He resigned a tenday later.’

Teornis laughed politely. ‘Stenwold, are you currently in the right frame of mind to discuss Spiderland politics?’

‘Is there ever a right frame of mind, for my people?’

‘Nonetheless, there are matters we must discuss. I have been called back home. My mother and my sisters and my aunts have decided that my military skills, such as they are, are now required at Seldis. The Wasps are liable to take the annihilation of their Fourth Army rather badly. We will, of course, say that we have no control over those reckless Mantis savages and never have had. We have even sent messages of condolence, though I would not want to be one of those messengers.’

‘You think the Wasp Empire will attack the Spider-lands.’

‘The Empire will have to do something about Seldis, at any rate. Whether they will simply keep troops on hand to deploy against us, or whether they will actually seek to take the city, I cannot say, but they will do something.’ Teornis drained his wine and let a Fly servant refill it. ‘It is a strange thing, how the borders of our lands are intentionally blurred. On our maps, Merro and Egel are ours, and all the land to the edge of the Felyal. Some overly ambitious cartographers even place Tark and Kes within our borders. We like owning things, we Spiders. And yet, at the same time, living in Seldis gives one a strange perspective on life. For the Spiderlands proper it is a backwater, a place for the disgraced and the clumsy, but, playing our games there, and looking with amusement at our northern neighbours who cannot – forgive me for saying it – ever match us in our dances… Well, we find that the borders are blurred both ways. That, strangely, we are Lowlanders even as you are. Lowlanders and Spiders both. This is why the Aldanrael, and several other families under our banner, have acted as they have. You must allow that our disposition and actions will be important, in the months to come. We are no mere onlookers.’

‘You have proved that very ably, Teornis.’

‘Our army at Seldis grows, ready to repulse a Wasp invasion should matters become so dire, and we are seeking assistance from the cities south of us: Siennis and Everis-on-the-Isle. There is a complication, though, and this is where you can dabble in Spider politics, if you wish.’

‘I wish anything but,’ Stenwold told him, ‘but continue, please. What is your complication?’

‘It is that we have another point of contact with the Empire. Over the last few years the Wasps have expanded along the eastern edge of the Dryclaw, until they have reached our own sphere of influence. If they were to put pressure on us there, then there would indeed be a complication. Military attention would be divided but, more importantly, so would political attention. Those with interests in that area might call for peace, even collusion. Self-interest, you understand, is a significant force in our culture.’

‘In all cultures,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘Where are we on the maps exactly, Teornis? The eastern edge of the Dryclaw is not well known to us, and the Scorpion-kinden discourage exploration.’ As do your own people, but that was a thought best kept silent.

‘The desert is a triangle of sorts, broad at the northern edge, but narrow towards the Range of the Tail, as those unimaginative Scorpion fellows call it. South from there lies a large lake, and land that is my people’s and yet not my people’s, and a city named Solarno.’

Stenwold nodded. ‘I’ve heard it mentioned.’

‘The Aldanrael has no interests or agents in Solarno, Stenwold, but I have heard that the Wasps have been seen there, speaking much of peace and trade and sizing up the local militia. Solarno is a renegade city, founded by those who had failed in the Spiderlands. Exiles and outcasts mainly, and officially we have no traffic with them. Unofficially, however, it is a thriving market, a stopping point for eastern-bound travellers, an oubliette for those who have slipped in the dance. The Spiderlands maintain Solarno’s pretence of independence simply because it is useful, you understand?’

‘And now the Wasps are there.’

‘And the rulers of Solarno, I’ll wager, are not taking them seriously. They will instead play their games and try to use the Wasps against their local enemies. Solarno is the Spiderlands in miniature, if you will, for they are only one city but divided against themselves. If the Wasps catch them unawares, Solarno will turn from our plaything into the Wasps’ own gateway into our lands. At that point any chance of aid such as we have recently rendered to Collegium will cease, because we will have our own worries to keep us busy.’

‘You want me to send some of my people to this Solarno?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘Spider-kinden agents would only be caught up in the dance,’ Teornis confirmed, ‘and worse, they would have their own agendas. At this juncture I trust your agents more than my own. Someone polite and diplomatic is called for, Master Maker, not swift to take offence nor quick to be deceived. Most certainly – mother preserve us! – not that Mantis. But I trust your choice in this.’

Long journeys are soonest started was a Fly-kinden maxim. It seemed to Stenwold that his plans, for once, fell into place all too easily. A few days after his words with Teornis, and everyone seemed to be leaving except him.

There was only one Spider-kinden ship in Collegium’s harbour now, but it was Teornis’s personal vessel, the craft on which he had weathered out the sea battle, rather than on the great flagship that had been so prominent. Spiders always preferred guile and speed to strength. The sailors, too, were Spider-kinden mostly. Stenwold had never thought of them as a maritime breed but, then, the waters around Collegium were new to bloodshed. Eastwards were to be found the longships of Felyal and the Kessen navy, giving the Spiderlands plenty of reason to man their fighting ships and protect their trade routes. Stenwold watched as the great grey sails of spun silk were hoisted slowly, billowing in the wind, strong as iron and yet light as air.

It had been easy enough, in the end, to choose who he would send off to Teornis’ newly threatened land.

‘I’m grateful to you for doing this,’ he said. ‘I know you’re no agent, to be sent hither and thither as I choose.’

‘You know, I’m really rather looking forward to this,’ Nero told him. ‘I have been in every Lowlands city east of Collegium, and three or four in the Empire, too, but there’s always somewhere new. Solarno is somewhere I always meant to pay a visit.’ He grinned broadly. ‘The world just goes on and on, doesn’t it?’

‘Just be careful,’ Stenwold warned him.

It was true, though, that Nero was the best-travelled of any of them, and he had done his time in the Spiderlands too, been flavour of the month in Siennis one season, his daubs hung on everyone’s walls. Stenwold glanced back in time to see Che hugging Achaeos tight. She, too, was attired for travelling: an artificer’s leather coat and hard-wearing canvas breeches, and a big pack slung over her shoulder. She had insisted that she could not sit at home while Achaeos was off working for Collegium. Looking at her now, Stenwold still saw her as so very vulnerable, in a way that Salma and Tynisa were not. Was that just his wish to protect his own kin, or something truly powerless within her? Still, he forced himself to think. Look at what she has come through. Look at what she has accomplished. To deny her this chance and send some other simply because they were not blood-kin would be hypocrisy on his part.

‘You look after her well,’ he told Nero sternly.

‘Sten, you couldn’t have chosen a better unless you called up another Fly-kinden,’ Nero assured him, knowing that Sperra – Stenwold’s other Fly agent – had adamantly refused to go anywhere near the Spiderlands. ‘Look at it this way,’ the Fly continued. ‘Me and a Beetle-kinden, it’s perfect – you could go anywhere, two people like that. You could go into the Empire, even. I’d worry instead about the Moth-boy and his crew. They’ll stand out just about anywhere they go.’

‘True enough.’ Stenwold sighed. ‘You know your route? You’re sure enough of it?’

Nero nodded. ‘Ship to Seldis, overland south on the trade route to Siennis, Mavralis, and then by ship across the Sea of Exiles apparently, to Solarno. Fires your blood, doesn’t it, hearing all those names?’

‘Travel in the Spiderlands…’

‘Isn’t new to me, remember? And we’ll have letters of introduction from your man the Lord-Martial there.’

‘Nero, he’s not my man,’ Stenwold corrected. ‘He’s nobody’s but his family’s and his own. Don’t relax, and don’t rely on him either. Cut loose from him as soon as possible and make your own decisions.’

‘Right,’ Nero confirmed, and grinned again. ‘I love the Spider-kinden. Never a dull moment.’

One of the sailors called them, just then. They were ready to cast off, and the wind and tide were with them.

‘Che,’ Stenwold called out.

‘I know. Be careful. Look after Nero.’

‘That isn’t quite -’

She came over and hugged him briefly. ‘We’ll be all right, Uncle Sten.’

‘Just do whatever you can,’ he said, ‘but don’t take risks.’

His wings a blur, Nero was already touching down on deck. Che reached out to Achaeos, brushing fingers, and then she dashed after the Fly, thumping up the gangplank to turn briefly at the rail and wave down at them.

For Achaeos the route was harder still: across the whole of the Lowlands, all the way to the borders of the Empire, and then further still. No ship, no rail could take him there, nor even a road untramped by imperial boots. This was where Jons Allanbridge entered the story.

Jons Allanbridge was an adventurer, a fortune-hunter but, despite this, a good son of Collegium. He had fought in the air when the Vekken attacked, piloting his airship over their fleet to drop boxfuls of grenades – until the wind swept him too low and a catapult put a man’s weight of metal scrap through the balloon.

Now, in return for a purse of gold and repairs to his craft, he would provide transportation for Achaeos and his companions. His airship, the Buoyant Maiden, would feel cramped with six aboard but she was a fleet little thing and Allanbridge had been flying her unnoticed over borders for years. Even a months-long jaunt like this was all part of the life of a merchant adventurer.

Like most Beetles, Allanbridge was squat and broad, a decade younger than Stenwold, with the hair already receding from his dark brow. He wore artificer’s canvas, and a woollen robe over that, a long scarf bundled about his neck.

‘These all of your lads, are they, Maker?’ he asked. He was not one for titles, and Stenwold was grateful for that.

‘All present,’ Stenwold agreed. About them the wind was up, tugging at the flags of the airfield, striking up a constant clatter of lines against the metal of scaffolds and flying machines. Stenwold turned to Tisamon and clasped hands with him, wrist to wrist.

‘Sten, I must ask…’ the Mantis began awkwardly.

Stenwold, who had noticed what company his friend had kept in the city, volunteered, ‘This is about the Dragonfly, Felise?’

‘You must watch her,’ the Mantis warned.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t suggest taking her with you,’ Stenwold remarked, thinking of Felise’s skills and the advantages of having a capable Dragonfly’s sharp eyes and nimble wings.

‘No.’ Tisamon’s expression became opaque. ‘She is not ready yet. She would not… I do not think she would always remember our objectives.’ But then there was something more in his face, a sudden tug at its composure.

‘Tisamon, what is it?’

‘Nothing.’ Too quick an answer.

‘Tisamon…?’

The Mantis checked him with a look, eyes filled with an emotion outside Stenwold’s experience. ‘I will go and she must stay. Do not ask me to take her – not yet. I will return to her. Remind her… I cannot… She…’ The Mantis’s breath caught. Uncomfortable truths were crawling just beneath the surface of his face.

‘She would lose control, and then start killing Wasps indiscriminately,’ Stenwold finished for him.

‘It seems likely,’ Tisamon agreed, in that instant burying everything that had been about to rise to the surface. ‘So you must find her a home here – and that Spider doctor of hers. He seems… able to help her.’

Stenwold frowned. ‘In turn you must promise to watch Thalric.’

‘I’ll consider it a wasted trip if I haven’t killed him,’ growled the Mantis, on firmer ground here and without a hint of humour.

Tynisa, next, did not embrace Stenwold as Che had done, just clasped his hand in the manner of her father. She has grown up now. She is no longer my ward. The sword-and-circle badge of the Weaponsmasters glinted on her breast, a twin to Tisamon’s own.

‘This is important, Master Maker,’ Achaeos told him as his turn came. ‘I know you cannot see it, but I thank you for your trust.’ Of them all he wore no special cold-weather clothing, born to the mountains as he was.

‘I learned a long time ago that there is more to this world than my eyes can see,’ Stenwold said. ‘Just you get the thing, whatever it is, and bring it back.’ Doctor Nicrephos had died for this box: another Moth who had been frantic about its importance. Stenwold noticed that Gaved had already gone aboard along with Allanbridge, gliding up onto the airship’s deck with a flick of his wings. That left one man only.

Stenwold turned to him, a thousand warnings on his lips, but all withering in the face of that slight, mocking smile.

‘What can you say to me, Master Maker?’ Thalric asked him. ‘Why not stop me now if you are so very concerned?’

‘I am only glad that my niece Che is not going with you,’ muttered Stenwold, at which Thalric smiled slightly.

‘You mistake me Stenwold. I would not hurt her. If fate gave me the Mantis’ life, well, that would be different, but in deeds done for my own sake, it would injure my honour to hurt such as her. I do not, however, expect you to believe me.’

Stenwold was not sure he did, despite this apparent candour. ‘If you hurt any of these – Achaeos most of all, but any of them – you will hurt her. So consider that.’

‘Farewell, Master Maker.’ Thalric’s own wings flared, taking him upwards.

After it had slipped its moorings, Stenwold stood and watched the receding bulk of Allanbridge’s airship. He could make out Tisamon at the stern, as a pale, green-clad figure staring back at him from the gondola

Be safe, old friend, Stenwold thought. Be safe, Achaeos. Che will not forgive me if something bad befalls you. Be safe, Tynisa, and do not follow so much in your father’s path that you cannot find the road back if you need to.

On turning, he started, finding someone standing only a few paces behind him, up until now silent and unnoticed: Felise Mienn, unarmoured but with her sword gripped in both hands, point downwards. She ignored him, for her eyes, sharper by far than his, were still fixed on the diminishing dot of the Maiden.

It was a long, cold trip for the passengers, and the routine aboard the airship quickly became one of silence and antipathy. They were such a mismatched crew that they had little to say to one another. Achaeos kept to himself, bundled in his thin robe and standing out in the open air in most weathers, staring at the horizon and fighting against the constant swell and sway of the gondola that unsettled his stomach. Tisamon watched the two Wasps suspiciously, always somewhere in sight of one or other of them, giving the impression that, had either of them tried to fly away, he would have leapt from the side to catch and kill them, for all that the fall would be his death too. Sheer fervent anticipation was writ large in his face for them to read. He spoke only with Tynisa, and they needed few enough words. Now they were underway on a venture once again they resumed a bond between them, a fighting bond. Wherever Tisamon did not watch, his daughter’s gaze was liable to be found.

Allanbridge and Gaved were both used to a loner’s life, each having had livelihoods that sent them off to many places in furtive solitude: the Wasp hunting and the Beetle shipping. By three days into the voyage Gaved had begun to regularly assist the aviator in small ways, with the ropes, with the mechanisms, even helping him cook on the airship’s burner-stove. An easy understanding had developed between the two of them – without need for speech since they thought alike. Save when Allanbridge brought the Maiden down for supplies or repairs, the company passed whole days in quiet routine.

Thalric leant on the rail, watching the Lowlands pass below him, wreathed in cloud, seeming so distant as to resemble nothing he had ever seen. He was a fair flier, for a Wasp, but he had never ventured so high, and it was so cold that he wore a greatcoat with two cloaks draped over it. Despite that, the odd freedom, the leisure of it here, in the upper reaches of the air, had all the appeal of the unfamiliar.

Earlier that day he had watched Jons Allanbridge rewind the Buoyant Maiden’s motor by releasing the great weight in the base of the gondola, the unreeling of its wire trace tensioning the spring of the airship’s clockwork heart. Then Thalric, Gaved and Tisamon together had, simply by muscle power, hauled the weight back in. Allanbridge boasted that he could do it on his own with a crank, if he needed to, and Thalric supposed that must be right, even though his own muscles were still burning with the strain of it. The whole business had become a regular daily ritual for them, over the tendays they had been aloft.

Mind you, he was no longer as strong as he had been. The wound that Daklan had inflicted on him, during the Empire’s attempt at executing him, still leached at him. Halfway through the winding process today he had seen spots before his eyes and had been forced to step away beneath Tisamon’s contemptuous stare.

The gondola was mostly open to the elements, with a low, flat hold beneath it where Allanbridge would normally stow whatever contraband he was currently smuggling. Some of the passengers were sheltering below even now, but Achaeos remained at the stern, talking in a hushed voice to their captain, who was obviously unhappy with whatever he was being told to do. The Moth was another invalid at the moment, still walking with a stick, but he wore nothing but his usual grey and darned robe, whilst Thalric and the rest were swathed in every piece of cloth they could get their hands on. Up here the sun was bright but the air was icy cold: the harsh winter everyone had predicted was coming with a vengeance. Some days back, passing over the hilly terrain between Sarn and Helleron, Thalric had even seen snow falling, snow that must be descending like dust down around the Seventh Army, which was currently encamped somewhere below. The Lowlands seldom saw snow and most of the Wasp Empire was likewise blessed, but Thalric had his own memories, bitter for many reasons, of winters endured during the Twelve-Year War in the Commonweal with snow lying a foot deep and unprepared soldiers freezing to death by guttering camp-fires.

Even thinking of those frozen days brought a great lump of loss into his throat, because all that was gone now. He was an outcast, a hunted man. First the Empire had betrayed him and now he was betraying it in return.

Or was he? This fool’s treasure hunt the Moth had set them on hardly seemed a betrayal. A hunt for some trinket, some curio of a raided collection, and yet the Moth had decided it was the be-all of creation. But what did it matter, really, if some imperial courtier had decided to suborn the Rekef into acquiring for him a choice antique? Was that not the precise degree of rot that Thalric had uncovered at the heart of the Empire? Could he therefore not reinterpret this mission into something that was ostensibly even to the Empire’s benefit? Of course I can. You always can. The Empire would not appreciate his help, though, and he suspected the others did not realize just what danger he might land in by going back there. Gaved was right about Jerez, though: if he could hide himself anywhere, it would be there: that shifting town was the bane of imperial bureaucrats, governors and tax-collectors, a vast lawless pond of Skater-kinden who paid lip-service to the Empire and then ambushed its tax caravans. Just the sort of place Scylis would run to, if he now had something to sell.

Would Scylis be aware of Thalric’s disgrace? Having counted the days since, Thalric suspected not. It seemed mad that, on recognizing Thalric, Scylis might take him for the avenging hand of the Empire.

Or Scyla. Achaeos swore that Thalric’s old agent had been a woman all this time. The Wasp did not know what to think about that. Or perhaps I do not want to admit I didn’t know it.

Complications, complications. He shook his head. Allanbridge was shouting at Achaeos now, claiming that something or other was too dangerous.

‘You have me aboard,’ the Moth argued. ‘I shall shield you.’

‘And what if his lot are there?’ the artificer demanded, pointing at Thalric. ‘Who shields us then?’

‘Are they likely to be?’ Achaeos turned to the Wasp. ‘Had the Empire taken Tharn, when last you heard?’

‘Tharn?’ It took a moment for Thalric to recall the name of the Moth-kinden mountain retreat that was situated just north of Helleron. ‘There were no plans afoot when last I heard,’ he admitted. ‘It will happen, though. I take it you wish to bid your home farewell while you still can.’

‘A farewell of sorts,’ Achaeos replied.

‘If the Empire is there, you will see flying machines aplenty as we near the mountain,’ Thalric suggested.

‘If we catch any sight of them, we’ll instantly steer clear,’ Achaeos promised Allanbridge, who grumbled for a moment but acquiesced.

By the time they were in sight of the Tornos Range they were starting to make very heavy going, Allanbridge was wrestling with the engines to combat the force of the crosswind and the airship was slipping northwards, so what had seemed a leisurely course towards a distant skyline became a battering progress that soon could see them dashed against the mountain peaks.

‘I’m taking her lower!’ Allanbridge announced with a shout. The airship’s bag was filled with a gas he had called distillate of sphenotic, which could carry the ship’s weight but would take them higher when it was heated. Now he was stifling the burner, that served as a stove on better days, and the airship began to descend through the layers of cloud even as it gusted towards the mountains.

The first they knew of company was an arrow that sang across the gondola’s bows and lanced into the balloon.

Achaeos began waving his arms, a flick of his wings took him up onto the rail, then either the wind or his own volition whisked him off, and he was airborne. The shimmer of his wings ghosting from his back, he circled the gasbag, gesturing and shouting, while the rest clung to whatever they could find, waiting for their flying machine to begin its plummet to the ground.

Allanbridge laughed at them. ‘One arrow?’ he called. ‘Even your worst ship can take a dozen before it falters, and Collegium kitted me with Spider-silk! See, arrows just stick in her!’

‘But will they stick so happily in you?’ Thalric yelled in return.

Then Achaeos was back, clinging to the rail doggedly until Tynisa helped him on board. Looking pale and exhausted even from that brief flight, he pointed towards the mountains.

‘Mount Tornos,’ he announced. ‘Take us there.’

‘Your fellows going to shoot any more arrows at us?’ Allanbridge asked. Beside him Gaved shrugged his sleeves back a little, freeing his hands for his stinging Art.

‘I convinced them not to cut your machine open,’ Achaeos said. ‘No more than that for now. Bring us in, and I can talk to them further.’

In the wind-whipped air they saw glimpses of several hooded grey figures, strung bows raised at the ready. It was impossible to say how many there were in all. Ahead, an entire mountainside seemed to have gone ragged. What had seemed sheer rockface at a distance was now revealed as intricately worked and carved, hundreds of hands over centuries cutting the face of the stone with statues and carvings, scripture and frescoes, story-sequences of a thousand images telling the minutiae of the Moth-kinden mythology. Even Thalric, who had seen so much, took a moment to appreciate the vast scale and to realize how the carvings went on deeper into the mountain itself, leading to darkness that only the blank eyes of the carvers could penetrate. He wondered if he was the first Wasp ever to set eyes on these wonders.

He would not be the last, he knew. The Empire’s hand had not yet risen against these carved rockfaces and these stepped slopes, but there were imperial armies in nearby Helleron, so this visit might prove his only chance to see Tharn as its makers had intended it.

It took a surprising time for Allanbridge to find a mooring he felt happy with, one that would not see his ship dashed against the mountainside by high winds. The city’s makers had not foreseen such a need, of course.

When they were lashed securely, and had disembarked onto the perilous narrow walkways that were all the stone offered them, they finally met the Moth-kinden. The natives’ greeting was delivered from the air, and comprised of pure hostility: a dozen grey-clad forms with arrows set to their bows, white eyes narrowed in anger. Achaeos took off into the air again, winging over towards them. Allan-bridge and the others just waited, clinging precariously to the mountainside. If the Moths decided to make this intrusion a fatal one, then only the Wasps would have much chance of survival.

Still, Allanbridge began chuckling slightly, and when Gaved raised an eyebrow at him he said, ‘Waste me if I’m not the first Beetle aviator ever to tie up here. There’s a story to earn me a drink or two.’

‘Not at all,’ Thalric snapped. ‘Beetles being what they are, I’ll wager a dozen have already tried this trip. It’s just that none of them were given the chance to return home and brag about it.’

Allanbridge shot him a dark look, but then Achaeos was back with then, dropping into their midst and stumbling on his landing. Tynisa held him up, as he took a moment to catch his breath.

‘They will let us in,’ he got out. ‘I can’t vouch for the warmth of your welcome, but they say they will not kill you.’

‘Popular everywhere we go,’ Allanbridge muttered. ‘They realize, I hope, that I’m Collegium, not Helleron, right? I never went near a mineshaft in my life.’

‘Don’t think that would make a difference, even under normal circumstances,’ Achaeos told him. ‘Our coming was foreseen, though. At least, my coming was foreseen. The Skryres are expecting to speak to me.’

‘Foreseen, expected, whatever,’ the Beetle muttered. ‘You just get your business done with, so we can be gone from here. Those lads with the bows aren’t looking at me any nicer than before you went to speak with them.’

There were rooms set aside especially for foreigners in Tharn, providing one comfort that the natives did not require, which was light. Heating was not part of the Tharn hospitality, it seemed, or at least the stone hearth remained conspicuously empty. As the light was by way of a stone wall carved into an intricate fretwork that let directly onto the icy air outside, they remained bundled in their thick clothes. The room was rich in elaborate engraving, poor in furniture, so they sat huddled about the walls and waited.

Achaeos himself had been given no chance to attend to their comforts. The moment that they had stepped in from the outside air there had been a messenger waiting for him, a girl of no more than thirteen.

‘You are Achaeos,’ she stated flatly.

‘I am.’

Her blank stare was horrified yet fascinated. ‘The Skryres send for you, right away. You have to come with me, now.

‘You were ever a troublesome boy,’ the Skryre chided, as she drifted through her private study. Four carved stone lecterns supported open books and she paused at one to read a few idle words in the utter darkness. She turned her head sharply, catching Achaeos in the midst of shifting his footing. ‘By questioning what we did not wish, failing to question that which was given you to investigate, you always showed yourself a far from diligent student of the greater arts. Furthermore, clearly a man of poor judgment when it came to choosing his companions. Your tastes have changed, I see, and not for the better. For now, as well as the Hated Enemy, you bring us Wasps.’

‘Renegade Wasps,’ Achaeos explained.

Her expression remained disdainful. ‘The very kinden that you yourself warned us of, and now you bring them to spy out our halls. It must be some perversion of spirit that, every time you return home to us, you court banishment. Banishment at best is what you deserve.’

‘I require your aid,’ Achaeos persisted.

‘You have no claim on it,’ she reprimanded him. ‘Your last crusade left many fools amongst our people dead, merely to cripple some single mechanism of the Hated Enemy. Now the eastern Empire holds the city of our enemies, and raises a fleet of flying machines. Their soldiers are coming here, Achaeos.’

‘I…’ Achaeos’ mouth was suddenly dry. ‘I had not realized, so soon…’

‘Oh, this is no great campaign for them,’ the Skryre said acidly. ‘This is a winter pastime for them, a mere diversion, to send a fleet of flying ships up here and install themselves as lords amongst the savage mountain people.’

‘But what will you do?’

‘What we have always done: husband our knowledge against the storm, pry our minds into the cracks and shelter in the darkness. Do not measure us by your crooked standards, Achaeos. The Arcanum has a long reach, and we have found our path to survival.’

‘What is it? Tell me!’

‘I tell you nothing,’ she snapped. ‘You have lost our trust, Achaeos – a son of Tharn and yet your allegiance hangs by a thread. When last you came here, you carried a taint; now you are utterly rotten with your embracing of the enemy.’

He swallowed, hoping that to be just a poor choice of words on her part, but knowing it was not.

‘Why have you come here, Achaeos?’ she demanded.

‘I must have your aid,’ he repeated. ‘No matter what you think of me, I must have it. You have to know that someone has found and freed the Shadow Box of Darakyon. Surely it cannot have escaped your notice.’

‘I have felt its passing,’ she admitted, seeming abruptly subdued, wrapping herself tighter in her robe.

‘I shall retrieve it,’ he said simply. ‘It was stolen for the Wasps, but now it is loose, and I shall find it. And then…’

‘And what?’ Her words hung in the air as, eyes blazing in the darkness, she stalked towards him. ‘Where will you bring such a thing, Achaeos? Have you even considered that? Will you give it to the Hated Enemy and bid them build their confounded machines around it? Will you let the Empire have it, so as to teach them a cruelty even they do not yet possess? Perhaps instead you will lend it to the Spider ladies and lords to become a pawn in their endless games. Perhaps you shall reunite it with the Mantis-kinden, and thus destroy them with weeping over their lost family.’ She was standing only inches from him, glaring. ‘Or would you bring it here?’

‘I… had thought…’

‘You had not.’ Her skinny hand clutched at his collar. ‘Should we lock it here in darkness, Achaeos? Should it be our secret alone, that none may lay hands on such a vile and corrupted thing?’ Her smile, when it came, cut him like ice. ‘And if you could track such a thing across the Lowlands, now that it is awake, which of our people would not hear it beating like a heart within the vaults of our mountain? Which neophyte or seer, or even Skryre, would not dream of the power that box contains, until they would have no free will or choice but they must seek it out. You would make us all into the very mad renegades that laid waste the Darakyon in the first place. You would infect us with their crazed ambition.’

‘But… it will fall into some hands.’

‘If the world is just, it will merely fall to some collector, like that man in Collegium, who will lock it away in some machine-haunted place where it may be lulled to sleep. Otherwise… at least, when the worst comes, it will not be of our doing again.’

She pointed to the doorway. ‘Leave me now, Achaeos. And leave Tharn as soon as you can. Do not return here unless you keep better company than your present. Perhaps it would be best if you did not return at all.’

The words left him feeling weak and sick inside. He had not realized how much strength Che had lent him, when they had last been here together. Through the malaise, something dark rose within him, something dark and barbed.

‘And if I keep the box?’

She fell still, and he thought he saw a glint of caution on her lean face.

‘You have assumed that I would pass it on to some other,’ he said, a little tremble in his voice. ‘What if I should open it myself?’

‘Silence, boy!’ she snapped at him. ‘You are rotted to the very heart. Best to slay you here and now, for who knows what doom you might call down upon your own people.’

‘I am at the bid of the Darakyon,’ he reminded her, ‘so slay the forest’s messenger and who knows what it may do? I would fear to sleep for what dreams might visit me, if I had done such a thing. Yes, even if I were a Skryre of Tharn.’

The Skryre bared her teeth. ‘You will be the end of us. May the Wasps destroy you and the wind scatter your dust! Go, Achaeos. Leave here, and if there is any kindness in fate then you will fail in your quest and be destroyed.’

He turned from her, shaking inwardly with loss and fear, but also with a new anger.

When I have the box, we shall see who commands whom, came the thought, and only later did he pause to wonder where it had come from, for it had not been his own.