Empire in Black and Gold

Twenty-nine

He tried to tell the first soldiers he saw that there were slaves loose, prisoners freed. The men backed away from him, staring at his face and his bloody tunic, enough to make him wonder what rumours had been spread about him to anticipate his demise. They would not even stop to listen to him. Deeper in, there were guards who tried to bar his way, heedless of his warnings. He stared them down. He did not need to summon up the name of the Rekef, for te Berro’s agents had done their work well. He was known. It would be a loyal soldier that barred the Rekef’s path and it seemed that Ulther himself no longer inspired such loyalty. The barriers that the governor had put up parted before Thalric: the guards continued staring straight ahead as though he was not there. He hurried on towards the harem.

And it was a harem: the word used amongst the servants and soldiers was not just hyperbole. Ulther had adopted his design and intent from the decadent excesses of the Spiderlands: a large, many-alcoved room at the deep heart of the palace, windowless and lit only by the leaping flames of sconces. The alcoves and the outer edges of the room were strewn with cushions providing the only resting place for the score or so of women Ulther had summoned there. Among them were the slaves that Thalric had seen before, Hreya included, and there were others, of whatever kinden had taken the old man’s eye over the last few years: Spiders and Ant-kinden, Wasp and Grasshopper, even a sullen-looking Dragonfly maid, for Ulther had a roving and acquisitive taste.

He had made this place a Wasp place, even so. Here, amongst the shadows and the lounging women, against the pillared buttress looming dimly at the far wall, he had installed another carved throne as rich as the one in the great hall above. Enthroned, the governor of Myna reclined there and waited. He did not seem surprised when Thalric appeared at his arched doorway, rather than one of his assassins.

Thalric gazed across the assembled beauties, and then towards Ulther, whose reproachful gaze seemed to indicate that there was yet one beauty missing. There was an absence shaped like Grief in Chains, and it stood between them.

‘Captain Thalric,’ Ulther said, taking his time over the words, shaping the consonants with care. ‘You seem to have undergone some recent reversals. A difficult night, perhaps?’

‘I’ve had better.’ Thalric took a few steps in, looking only at Ulther, but sensing the women draw back at the sight of the blood and the bared sword.

‘What’s this about, old friend?’ Ulther inquired.

‘You tell me.’

‘Oh no, none of that. It’s a little late to get coy, isn’t it?’ The big old man shifted himself on the throne, and only then did Thalric see through the gloom that there was a blade laid across his knees, something narrow and wicked looking. ‘You dealt with Rauth and the others, I assume? All of them? A shoulder wound’s a light enough price, for so many dead men.’

‘They were amateurs.’

‘I suppose they were. And why, you ask, did I have to send them?’

‘Because your love of your appetites has become greater than your love of the Empire,’ said Thalric, stopping far enough from Ulther that he would have a chance to duck if the old man loosed his sting.

‘No, because you forced me to it. You made me gather them and give those orders. You know it, Thalric, so why? Not because you needed the Butterfly dancer. You wanted this, then? You’re tired of my friendship? Was I not a good friend to you?’

‘The Empire, Ulther. Always the Empire.’

‘Oh but nobody thinks like that!’ the old man snapped. ‘You think the generals think like that? You think the Emperor does? We drive the Empire like a plough over earth, Thalric, and we do it so we may reap the harvest. You will not find a man out there who serves the Empire simply for the Empire’s sake and no other.’

‘But you will find one here,’ said Thalric sadly.

Ulther’s lip curled as if dismissing the notion. ‘You may say so, Thalric, but I see your plan, nonetheless.’

‘What plan is that?’

‘What a show for the locals, eh? The governor and his old friend shed each other’s blood, and over a woman! I’m sure your Rekef friends will ensure the story is spread.’

Thalric just shook his head, but Ulther chuckled indulgently.

‘No false modesty, old friend. If you’d just cut my throat they’d smell the infighting all across this city, the wretches. Have me removed by decree and it weakens the Empire’s colours here in Myna. The locals are desperate for any excuse to dig up their armour and wave their swords. But now. . now it’s personal. Is that what you wanted? Wave my head at the crowds to show that you won’t be crossed, even by old Ulther? Show them that we’re a bunch of hard lads even with our own kind? As if you and I would fall out over a woman, old friend.’ Ulther’s eyes pinned him. ‘When did they make you Rekef Inlander, anyway?’

‘I was Outlander, and I’ll be so again, as soon as I can — but for now. .’ Thalric managed a one-shouldered shrug. ‘I don’t need excuses, Ulther. You’re guilty of what they say you are. The reason I haven’t cut your throat while you slept is that I owe you this much. This much and no more.’

‘So. .’ The old man levered himself up out of the chair, and the women drew back again, sensing the blood of the near future like a taint in the air. ‘You’ll secure yourself a nice promotion, old friend. See, I always was good for your career. Back to the Rekef Outlander? Don’t fool yourself. Now they’ve taken you in, you won’t look back. They won’t let you. You’re one of them now.’

Thalric said nothing, waited. Ulther held his blade to the light, let the fluid firelight shift across its length. It was not the army’s short straight blade but a rapier, as much a Spider design as the room.

‘You look tired, Thalric. Perhaps you came for an execution. To put an old man out of his misery?’ Ulther mused. ‘If that’s so then I’ve a disappointment for you. I was an Arms-Brother myself. I remember the moves. Care to share a pass or two with me, for old time’s sake.’

‘If you kill me it will make no difference,’ Thalric said softly. ‘You’re finished here. You know that.’

Ulther’s gaze swept the harem’s contours, symbolizing all he had built. ‘So be it,’ he said, and dropped into a ready stance. Thalric did the same, feeling the pull of his wound, trying to calculate, in that uncertain light, for the extra length of Ulther’s blade.

He waited. He was in no hurry just then, so Ulther would have to come to him.

Ulther obliged. With surprising speed he came forward, and the point of his sword was flicking out, drawing a narrow line across Thalric’s chest, scraping on the copper-weave even as Thalric danced back. In an instant Ulther had brought the point up, feigning at Thalric’s face. His hand was quick, his footwork less so. When Thalric bounded past him and lunged, Ulther’s retreat was hurried, awkward. Thalric harried him across the harem floor, hoping to pin him against the far wall, where his shorter blade would finally tell. He took it too fast and his shoulder shot fire through him, pulling him back halfway across. Ulther got to his distance again, eyes narrow. All expression had left his face, making it a jowly, hanging mask.

He barked out something wordless and lunged, moving from Arms-Brother style to something more suited to a rapier, some Spider duellist business, arm straight out before him. Thalric gave ground fast, the rapier’s point dancing like a gnat before him, and Ulther matched his pace, his wrist dancing like a younger man’s, his body lumbering to catch up. Then Thalric sidestepped, let the sword’s point past him and stabbed.

He had made a clumsy job of it, signalled it too clearly to his opponent. Ulther had a chance to slip out of the way, but his momentum carried him close past the blade, a long gash tearing his fine clothes and bloodying the bulge of his flank. He gave an inarticulate yell and whipped the rapier across Thalric’s face.

It was only the flat of the blade in that wild move, but it was so unexpected, so far from any school of duelling, that it connected. Thalric found himself on the floor, half from his failed evasion and half from sheer pain. He blinked. He had both eyes still, but one was gumming with blood from a gash across his brow that must continue across his cheek. Ulther was barrelling down on him with blade extended, and he scrabbled aside, slashing the old man across the leg as he slid out of the way. Another shallow wound, and bloody. All skill and art between them had fallen aside. Ulther was old and angry. Thalric was devastatingly tired.

They circled. Thalric had one eye sealed shut now. Ulther limped, but his narrow eyes were blazing with the fury of a trapped animal. The thought came to Thalric that he might lose this one, but it was a distant cold thought that barely touched him.

Ulther slashed twice to drive him back, and Thalric caught the second blow on his sword, turned it, though the old man was stronger than he had thought, and made another lunge. It was a leaden move and Ulther got his offhand in the way, trying for a palm-parry but taking the blade’s keen edge across his forearm instead. At the same time he had drawn his rapier back to strike, but Thalric was within the point’s reach, and instead the ornate guard punched into his ribs, pushing the two of them apart again.

Thalric knew it could not be long. Neither of them had the fight left in them. He was ceasing to care who won now. He just wanted it over.

Ulther’s face was no longer the face of the man Thalric had known. He lunged, making his enemy stumble back, and then followed up the advance by making mad, random slashes, the narrow blade slicing the air before Thalric’s face, nicking his leg, the point dancing across his copper-weave with a ripping rattle. Thalric tried to capture the rapier with his own sword, to bind it aside and close, but the fury that was driving Ulther kept the slim blade darting and passing, never still. Thalric sensed rather than felt the wall behind him, made a clumsy dive aside and just remained on his feet, the rapier whacking across his armoured back like a whip. He could feel the blood flowing beneath the bandage on his shoulder. His breathing was raw and ragged.

This is it. I’ve reached the end of it. I’ve no more left.

He lunged. An offensive was now his only choice because his defence was killing him. He caught Ulther unprepared. The rapier speared over his shoulder and he rammed home with the shortsword, but he had misjudged the distance, had come too close. The crosspiece of the hilt dug into Ulther’s paunch, and the man roared and slammed his offhand, open-palmed, into Thalric’s chin.

The world went dark for a second, spinning and wheeling about him, and he crashed to the floor. The sword bounced from his grip and, though stunned, he lunged for it, but Ulther tried to stamp on his hand, barely missed it, and then kicked the sword away. The old man’s breathing was thunderous as an engine, Thalric himself wheezed like an invalid. He was completely done and he lay at Ulther’s feet without the strength even to twist aside when the blow came.

Ulther drew the rapier back to skewer him, and then stopped, staring down.

‘Oh Thalric, this is too bad,’ he said softly. ‘It should not end like this between us. It should not.’ He seemed sincere in his unhappiness, even in his victory. Then his face hardened and he drew the rapier back again. ‘But so it ends.’

There was a flash that was so white it was dazzling to Thalric’s one good eye. He cringed away from it, covering his face. He should, he realized, be dead by now, yet no blade had found him.

He opened the one eye that he could to a narrow slit. There was a murmur amongst the women but no sound of combat. With infinite reluctance he sat up, clutching his head. Then he saw Ulther. The great bulk of the governor of Myna lay face down within arm’s reach, and there was a charred hole burned into his back.

Then there were hands on him. Thalric fought them off at first but then found them helping him to his feet.

‘I thought you were dead,’ a woman’s voice was saying.

‘Me too.’ He focused on her at last. Hreya? It was Hreya. The look on her face was more caution than concern, as in a woman uncertain what she has gained or lost. His eyes again found the body of the governor, the charred star across the small of his back. He glanced at her and she nodded. Thalric found that he was leaning on her more than he wanted to, but could not quite muster the ability to stand on his own.

‘What now, Captain Thalric?’ she asked.

He finally summoned his strength to him, all of it, all those reserves he almost never tapped, and stood alone, gently stepping away from her. The mound of Ulther’s body drew him inexorably and he was bitterly glad he had not been the man to strike the death-blow.

‘I have work yet to do,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Prisoners. .’ The thought came to him then of his own prisoners. He could see so much more clearly with Ulther dead and gone. ‘Prisoners,’ he said again, and with Hreya watching, with all the women watching, he made his halting way out of the harem.

Che’s hands were raw by now. She had thought that this would be so much easier. She had an education, after all.

If her Art had not been able to banish the darkness for her then it would have been impossible. Even so, she was having to teach herself the craft of lockpicking from first principles. It was not something she had ever been called upon to do before.

She had studied mechanics. She knew how a lock worked. This was not exactly a masterpiece, either, the shackles securing Salma’s arms. The Wasps always made solid, practical things.

She had been working at it for hours now. The sun had gone down on her as she scratched and fiddled with it. The medical probe she had stolen, its end bent to catch the tumblers, was awkward in fingers gone numb with the interminable fumbling. She was constantly dropping it and having to find it again.

She had three tumblers now where she reckoned they should be. There were only two left.

‘I think you had better hurry, if that’s possible,’ Salma murmured.

‘If you’re getting cramp again, you can sit down. I could use the break myself.’

‘I don’t think that’s an option.’

She had heard nothing of what was going on outside, as her concentration on the stubborn thing had been all-consuming, but now she listened. There was something happening beyond their door and it sounded fierce. She heard cries of pain and the sound of blade on metal.

‘Please, Che. Any time now would be useful,’ Salma urged her. The first thought that came to her had been rescue, but clearly Salma was not anticipating anything good.

She took up the pick and went at it again, fiddling and scratching, feeling out that fourth tumbler that was so stubborn. It was stiff: nothing a key could not turn, but her pick was a slim thing, scraping and sliding past the tumbler’s catch.

‘Che, hurry.’ Salma was as tense as a drawn bowstring. The sounds without were louder now, some voice roaring in rage and pain amid racing footsteps.

She twisted the pick and felt it bend against the tumbler. If she kept up the pressure, she would either succeed or the pick would break. She must gamble everything on the quality of Wasp steel.

There was a key in the door then, the hurried fumbling of a simple task done under great pressure. Concentrate! She wrenched at the pick, waiting for the dreaded snap. She pushed until her wrist ached.

The door opened, pulled so hard it slammed against the wall outside. She started in shock and that extra twitch put the fourth tumbler in place. No time for the fifth.

There was no fifth. She had miscounted at the start. The shackles fell from Salma in that instant, and his wings blazed to life before her startled face, the force of them knocking her back across the cell.

His arms would be bloodless and numb, good for nothing, but he hit the soldier in the doorway with one shoulder, bearing the startled man over with the force of his charge. There was another man behind, also knocked out of the way. He had a sword but could not use it for fear of stabbing his fellow. Che ran at him, no war cry and no warning, and before he could put his sword between them she had hold of his sword arm and yanked at it with all her weight and strength.

Tynisa tried to force her way past the sentinel, gripping the haft of the man’s glaive and pushing at him, but he shook her off contemptuously. Behind him the soldiers were opening one of the cell doors. She caught a brief glimpse of Totho coming closer with his crossbow raised, but he was not a great shot at the best of times, and the best of times were now long behind them. She thrust at the sentinel again with her rapier, scraping at his armour.

Then Achaeos was there. In truth she had forgotten about him. There had been no arrows for a while. He must have been gathering his courage.

He came in around ceiling height, his wings sparking from the stones, and he dropped onto the sentinel’s shoulders, trying to stab through the eyeslit. The sentinel went berserk, swinging about like a beast, his glaive slashing left and right, up and down while Achaeos was trying desperately to hang on with one arm, his wings flashing in and out, the force of them wrenching at the man’s neck.

And then he lost his grip, falling off, but he held on to the helm with one hand, dragging the sentinel’s head up and back. Tynisa darted forwards, with the glaive stabbing blindly out at her, but she vaulted it, one foot bending the haft as she used it for purchase, and the narrow tip of her sword punched up under his chin. The chain mail there stopped it for an instant, and then the rings gave way, and he cried out and fell backwards, as dead as she could make him.

Beyond him. . Tynisa’s heart leapt when she saw all was not lost. Salma and Che were there, but they were still fighting. Even as she took the sight in, she saw Salma cast down by his opponent and the man’s sword drawing back. Totho was beside her by then with a clear shot, and he cranked the crossbow’s lever twice. One bolt was lost in the darkness beyond but the second found its mark in the man’s ribs, sending him to his knees. Salma wrenched his sword off him at that point, and turned it against its owner, putting his whole weight behind it.

By that point the other man was done as well. Che had been grappling with him, losing ground as she tried to hang on to his sword. Then there was a dagger in his side and Che finally got the sword off him, but held off from using it. The dagger whipped out and thrust in again, Achaeos’s white eyes and white teeth flashing in the gloom. Chyses was beside him at that point, reeling from the blow he had taken, but determined to do his part, and the two of them bore their enemy down and slew him.

Tynisa ran in and virtually caught Che as the girl staggered backwards. She looked utterly exhausted, bruised and battered, but completely overjoyed. She embraced her foster-sister hard enough to make her ribs creak.

‘You came! Hammer and tongs, look at you! You came!’ Che released her hold as she saw, past Tynisa’s shoulder, the narrow-framed figure of Achaeos carefully cleaning the much-used blade of his dagger.

‘You. .’ she said. There was a memory suddenly in the front of her mind: a dream she had swum through during the heliopter journey to Myna. There was a shock, a physical shock, as she met his featureless eyes — and she knew, outside reason, that he knew.

Then Totho was at her elbow, and she hugged him too for good measure, not noticing his surprise at the embrace. Behind her, Salma was telling Tynisa how every part of him above the waist had cramp.

‘We have to leave,’ Chyses insisted. ‘We have to go, now.’

They made their hurried way, the best pace that Che and Salma could keep up with, to the stairs leading up from the cells. There they found Tisamon.

Tynisa spotted him first and, although she had known to find him there, she scuffed to a halt at the sight. He was positioned halfway up the stairs, gazing back down at them. The stairs themselves were visible only in uneven patches, and those were all slick with blood.

The bodies of eleven Wasp soldiers lay there, perhaps more, and from the way they were laid out, most of them had arrived together as a squad. He must have leapt into the midst of them to deny them the use of their stings, and the few lying near the top of the stairs had taken wounds in their backs as they had scrabbled desperately to get away from their untouchable adversary.

Or not quite untouchable. There was a thin line of red across Tisamon’s cheek, almost a twin to the mark on Tynisa’s own face, which had been made by the pointed guard of her own blade.

‘We’re. . going now,’ Chyses told the Mantis, his voice catching a little at the sight of the carnage. Tisamon gave him a brief nod, and stood aside to let him lead the way.

The entire palace was in the throes of chaos. Thalric kept blundering into guards and demanding to know what was going on, but very few of them gave him a coherent response. To credit all of them there were a dozen separate attacks underway, all in different parts of the palace. Soldiers and Auxillian militia were running everywhere and getting in each other’s way. If the Mynan resistance truly knew what was going on, he thought, and mounted an attack right now, they might actually force the Empire out of its own headquarters. As he passed on through, it was clear that there was far more confusion than actual conflict going on. Someone had clearly laid a few false trails, and his own activities of the night had hardly helped.

He knew exactly where he was going. The cells. Cheerwell Maker and her Dragonfly friend. He had not even considered them at the time, when he had run into Kymene and her escapees. Those had just been locals and, more, he had been under the burden of what he had to do that night to Ulther. Now it was done, however, his perspective was coming back to him.

And he almost ran into them. He heard the footsteps in time, though, and ducked back into a doorway, flattening himself against the wood and freezing, as instinctive to him as breathing after all his years in the field.

They were a ragged crowd. Only one Mynan local and a grab-bag of others, even a Mantis-kinden with one of their ridiculous hingeing claws. And near the back was the Dragonfly-kinden male, and there, behind him, was Cheerwell Maker.

They were off down the corridor and he raised an arm after them, feeling the Art-force of his sting stir in his palm and fingers. Cheerwell Maker had a broad back, a good target even in this light.

It would be a shame not to continue his interrogation. A shame not to have one more conversation with her.

It had been a long night, and he had to act now if he was going to seize this chance. There was a babble of voices in his head, though. He could hear Kymene’s voice: Perhaps one good deed to balance out all the bad ones? and there was Cheerwell herself asking what harm the Empire would suffer if she were freed.

And he had told her that he would rather cut her throat there and then than stand the least chance of her impeding the Empire in any way. He remembered it clearly, after all of that weary night. He could hear his own flat words ringing in his ears.

He was not the master of his own mind in that moment, as Che’s back retreated further down the corridor. The gates were thrown wide and anything could enter. Ulther’s last moments, both betrayer and betrayed. Aagen’s distaste with the torture implements. .

The Dragonfly noblewoman screaming, screaming, as he killed her children for the Empire.

And then he told himself, he did not know whether he even had the strength in him to summon his Art. And he might yet recapture her, or even turn her, or find some use for her still alive. And a hundred other post-facto justifications.

He felt physically ill. He did not know whether it was because the shield of his loyalty had been chipped, or because of the lesson all those voices had been reciting in his head.

He reached for his Art, and felt his palm warm with it, and spark. It felt as though he were trying to lift a monstrous weight, to conjure the sting-fire into being, and all for the pittance reward of a dead Beetle girl. His breath caught with the strain of it.

It had been a long night. He was allowed one error of judgment.

He lowered his arm, and set off to find a bed to collapse into.

Every step and they expected the host of the Empire to descend on them. Even when they reached the storeroom the commotion above had not ceased, but was working its determined way down towards them. They dropped back into the sewers as fast as they could. Achaeos went first, descending gratefully into the dark, and flitting far ahead, beyond the lamp that Chyses had rekindled. Totho and Che were left to help the hobbling Salma, whose breath hissed with pain at every step, from the cramp that was still running up and down through his back and arms. Tynisa stared at Tisamon. She knew he expected her to go first, that he would play rearguard. She stepped down into the sewers but she was waiting for him when he followed, keeping pace with him, letting the others drift out of sight, out of earshot. Soon Tisamon lit his own lantern, a tiny low light that was enough to stop the dark defeating their eyes. It was as though the lamplight did not fall on her, though, for still Tisamon would not look at her, would not acknowledge her save that everything they did was linked, step for step, in a mutual understanding neither of them could deny.

Where else can I confront you, if not this dead and buried place?

It was time to force fate, to bring matters to a head.

She waited until they were long gone from beneath the palace. She gave him that leeway. Then she stopped and waited.

He had slowed even as she did so, that bond between them communicating, through her footsteps or her breathing, that something was wrong.

‘Tisamon,’ she began, and he had stopped, merely a grey shape and a black shadow.

‘We’ve put this off for too long,’ she told his back. ‘We have to talk, please, Tisamon, let’s talk.’

She almost held her breath then. The only sounds were the water of the sewers, the faint skitter of the roaches beyond the lantern’s stretch.

She thought she saw him shake his head, though she could not be sure. In the next moment he had started off again, as though she had said nothing.

‘Tisamon!’ she snapped. ‘Or Father. Would you prefer that?’

She had stopped him, but she was running out of things to throw at his feet. Again he had paused, but it was only a moment. She had to run after him to avoid being left in the dark.

She had just one missile left. She had saved it until the last because, once loosed, it could not be taken back.

‘Spite on you,’ she hissed, and the whisper that followed was her rapier clearing its scabbard. And yes, he knew that sound. It stopped and turned him far more sharply than any of her words had.

‘Look at me,’ she challenged, and he did. In the lantern’s uncertain light she could not name his expression, or even see if he had one. The claw buckled to his right hand and arm was now just a shadow amongst shadows.

‘Put that away,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘This is no time to play.’

She dropped into her duelling stance, sword levelled at him. ‘Oh, you’re right,’ she told him. ‘And I’ve done playing.’

He lifted the lantern slightly. His eyes held only a look of disdain, and he made to turn away.

‘If you turn your back on me now, I swear I’ll kill you. And believe me, I take my oaths every bit as seriously as you do.’

With unhurried movements he placed the lantern on the walkway and turned the light up a little, narrowing his eyes against it. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ was all he said.

‘Foolish, is it? We have unresolved business, you and I.’

‘Have we indeed?’

He would not even face it, nor did he look at her sword. Nothing in his stance suggested he believed in it as a threat. He would not fight her, would not even entertain the idea. He would not take her seriously.

‘I know what you’re afraid of,’ she told him.

‘Do you indeed?’

‘Oh, I know it’s not this sword,’ she said, inching closer. ‘I know it isn’t me. You’re the great Tisamon and you fear no fighter under the sky or beneath the earth.’ Even as she spoke she was in Collegium again, before it all started, baiting Piraeus into fighting her. Mantis pride, that was the key. They were all armour on the outside, but vulnerable, so vulnerable within.

And I myself am of them — half of them.

She made a sudden advance on him, but he contemptuously kept his distance. There was no fear in it, simply that he had no interest in fighting her. He would have taken the challenge of any wretch in the street, but not hers. She could chase him off into the darkness, but he would evade her and lose her.

She prepared her barbed dart. ‘You are afraid,’ she told him. ‘You’re afraid of this face.’

His stance changed, ever so slightly. Even now that same link worked between them, as though they were Ant-kinden of the same city, sharing thoughts.

‘You’re afraid of the past,’ she told him, ‘because you abandoned her. You wanted to believe she was a traitor, that she had seduced you and discarded you, rather than even go and find the truth. Much easier that way, wasn’t it? But you know now. You know that it was you who betrayed her. And that’s what you really can’t face!’

And she lunged at him, but this time he did not give.

She thought for a terrible moment that she was going to run him through, but she had forgotten who she had drawn sword on. The moment before the tip of her rapier pierced his arming jacket, his blade had swept it aside. She felt it scrape across the claw, across the armoured gauntlet.

Then the claw unfolded and he was at her.

She almost fell over her feet, turning her desperate lunge into a stumbling backstep. She nearly fell over the lantern in her next step, kicking it so that it was lying at the very edge of the walkway. She fell back ten paces without being able to stop herself, but he had pulled his advance up short, something catching in his face, and she got to the length of her rapier and drove in again.

She had never fought like this before. It was not the Prowess Forum’s formal style, nor the street brawling she had espoused since then. It took all of her skill in every stroke, blade flickering faster than eye could follow. It was every ounce of her youth and effort and instinct against a master.

Her thrust had been for his chest, but his blade was there before it. She bounded over it, driving forward, pressing on, keeping ahead of his circular guard, over and beside and under and always, always, pressing forward. The moment he took her blade aside she would be at his reach, and he within hers. His face, as he passed the lantern’s light, was set and deadly.

She had forgotten his offhand. Even as she thought his blade was outmanoeuvred, he slapped her rapier out of line with his left palm, slinging her sword arm across her body, and the crescent of his blade was a bright line in the lamplight as it came to cut her throat.

She swayed back, so far as to almost overbalance. She heard the passing of his blade, just an inch away, yet she had not given up her advance. She dragged her rapier back, sending the razor edge across his stomach, under his guard. His offhand caught it, palm-to-flat, and he twisted away, pushing her blade aside but exposing his left side to her. She thought she had him then. She flicked her sword from his grasp, brought the pommel past her chin to put the length of the blade between them, and speared it at his flank. Her target was gone, though. He had turned about on the instant, and the scythe of his claw was sweeping for her head.

She kicked backwards, and this time she fell. The blade swept over her and she was scrambling to her feet as fast as she could. He feinted towards her, stopped. Or at least she had thought it was a feint. The lantern was between them now and she could see the catch again, something holding his blade back.

Her face. She should listen better to her own words. He had driven her back past the lamp so its light fell on her face. Each time it did there came that minute catch in his assault.

She reclaimed her feet. There was a slice of time in which he was poised, staring at her face — at dead Atryssa’s face.

Then he went for her, and she knew her luck was used up.

The claw spun and swept, moving with all the fluid grace his wrist and arm could lend it, spiralling past her guard. Even so she got her blade in the way, hearing the two metallic sounds as she warded it off. Then she had lunged back at him, and he turned the thrust, but not effortlessly. For a second they were locked together, face to face, and then she dodged away and back before he could get his spines into her. He was dancing towards her again, a man who had fought since he was a boy, a man of forty years, and all bar six or seven of them spent with a blade in his hands. He was just a shadow now, the lantern light behind him as he forced her to back up, step after step.

He was death.

She swept away a lunge, tried to riposte into him. Her thoughts had ceased and she had no time for them. Her feet, her body, her blade, everything depended on her instincts, her reflexes, faster and faster. She took his blows and turned them into her own attacks, over and over. He was always there with a parry that led, as though some natural law compelled it, into another series of blistering attacks. He was faster still. He was picking his pace up, and her breathing was ragged. She had almost stopped using her eyes, long since stopped using her mind. The blows came out of blackness, and she heard them as much as saw them. She fended them off and fended them off. She had stopped attacking. He left her no room for it. Then her rapier blade was abruptly caught between his forearm and his claw, and as she tried to draw it back he rushed forward. She felt the hilt twist in her hand and held on to it hard, and he turned his arm and dashed it against the sewer wall, and her blade, her beautiful blade that Stenwold had bought for her, snapped at the guard, leaving not even a sharp stub.

He was going to kill her.

She cried out then. The link between them was enough, still, to let her know that he would strike.

She was braced for it, with a dignity that surprised her in the face of death at her father’s hands. She felt the cold edge of his blade. It was at her throat, of course. He had his habits, as did any fighter. Her breath sobbed into and out of her lungs, and beyond it she heard his, too. She imagined him using all his control to hold back the killing stroke.

But it was not like that. He was now still as still, no struggle. Her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the light within the very grey periphery of their lantern. His face was merely a faint pale outline on which no expression could be discerned.

She did not trust herself to speak or make any sound at all, and he too was silent.

Then the blade moved, and she forced herself not to flinch. It did not slide away, though. Instead she felt the flat of it against her cheek, cupping her face more towards him, then this way and that, his eyes straining to see her.

And then it was gone from her, folding back along his arm. He turned, merely a silhouette, leaning against the sewer wall with one hand. She noticed the rise and fall of his breathing.

She could have killed him, though she realized this only later, so glad the idea had not then occurred to her.

‘You are my daughter,’ he said finally. ‘And by my damned soul, you are hers.’

The words struck her almost physically, as he never had. Something wrenched inside her, and she let her sword hilt fall from raw fingers. She approached him with faltering steps, feeling her breath catch.

‘Nothing you said was untrue,’ continued Tisamon. ‘I have lived with false betrayal for seventeen long years, and with the truth for only days.’

She wanted to say something to him then, some damning condemnation of him, or even some words of sympathy, but she could manage neither. Sobs began racking her so hard they hurt.

When he turned to her at last, she saw the kindred tracks of grief down his own face.

She thought he would not be able to bear to touch her. The wounds were freshly reopened, the blood still redly flowing. Still, when she approached him he put a hand on her shoulder, at first as tentative as a man reaching for a nettle, then stronger, as the man who grasps it.

Awkwardly he took her in his arms, his daughter, and she clung to him, her face pressed into his chest, with his golden brooch cold against her cheek.