Salute the Dark

Twenty

‘Don’t you worry that I might kill you?’ Tisamon asked. He stretched himself, flexed the metal claw of his gauntlet. The sand beneath his feet was newly spread. Across from him, Ult looked over a rack of weapons, finally choosing a pair of Commonwealer punch-swords, short blades that jutted from circular guards protecting his knuckles.

‘If you were a prisoner and I were your jailer, old Mantis, then I’d not be doing this without a few guards at hand, but we both know that ain’t so.’ Ult turned to him. This early, they had the little practice circle to themselves, for it was two hours before even the servants would wake. Beyond the guttering light of the torches Ult had distributed about this underground cell, it would be dark.

‘I might try to escape,’ Tisamon said, without conviction.

‘I might surprise you,’ replied Ult. ‘If you wanted out, though, probably you’d manage it. But you don’t.’ He stretched. Bare-chested, his hide was a lace of scars, some charting wounds which looked as though they should have killed him. His stance admitted nothing of his true age.

‘Do you think I want to be a performer in your circus?’ Tisamon growled.

They had already talked about the way that most fighters, those who survived at least, came to love the sport and the approbation of the crowd. It could turn a criminal, a deserter or even a slave into a brief hero of the Empire.

Ult advanced on him, carefully but not hesitantly. ‘You want to kill the Emperor,’ he said bluntly. In the beat of surprise following his words he lunged at Tisamon, getting in close, jabbing with both swords, then trying to bind aside the Mantis’ claw with one weapon. Tisamon gave ground, his blade cutting his opponent’s attacks out of the air as they came for him, then bringing Ult up short with a feint that gave him space to get sufficiently clear, out of the reach of the other man’s short blades.

‘And you yourself have no problem with that?’ Tisamon demanded. ‘A good imperial citizen?’

‘Only thing I’m good at is what I do,’ Ult said. ‘I don’t get myself involved in politics. You wouldn’t be the first who saw this business as a way to force an audience with an Emperor. It’s already been tried.’

‘Not by me, not yet.’ Tisamon started forwards, whipping out his claw at the Wasp, forcing him back. Ult parried calmly, hands just a blur, giving only as much ground as he needed to keep the blade away from him. He was better than Tisamon had thought, and with the advantage that the old Wasp had seen Tisamon fight a dozen times and measured his style.

‘I got no problem with putting you in that arena if I could, whoever you reckon you’re there to kill.’ Ult was breathing slightly fast as they disengaged. ‘I reckon if the man’s fool enough to let a pit-fighter get near to him, maybe it’s time for someone new.’

‘That’s treason, surely.’

‘So what would they do with me? Stick me in the ground with a bunch of animals and slaves?’ Ult changed his stance, blades out but held back, inviting attack. ‘You ain’t going to get him, ’cos it ain’t that easy. You think you’re good enough, but I reckon nobody’s that good.’

Abruptly, Tisamon stepped out of his own stance, claw lowered. ‘And I’d prove you wrong if you’d only give me the chance. Is that the other way the Emperor protects himself? By not letting the best of us fight in front of him?’

The old Wasp shook his head. ‘Most of those who ever had a go were Wasps. Politics, right? You foreigners don’t get involved in that so much.’

‘Your Empire’s mad.’

‘It ain’t my Empire.’ Ult replaced the Dragonfly blades on the rack. ‘Fine, so you’re very good. Maybe I’ve not had anyone better down here. Doesn’t mean you’re good enough to kill the Emperor. They’ll just end up seeing another foreigner put down. Why not? It’s what they go see the fights for.’

Tisamon regarded him doubtfully, his clawed glove now gone from his hand. ‘You are an unusual Wasp.’

‘Not so much.’ Ult shrugged. ‘We ain’t all like what you’ve been dealing with – Rekef spies or army officers. You find after a while that it’s what you do, not what you are, that matters. When I did my time in the army, I had more in common with the rank and file of the other side than I did with the officers above me. Now I keep fighters for the pit, and I got more in common with them – and with you – than I have with them people who put me here. That’s why you ain’t going to kill me.’

‘I could,’ Tisamon said firmly, but his voice sounded hollow to his own ears, as though he was trying to convince himself. ‘It would not be easy, perhaps, but I could.’

‘Sure you could,’ Ult told him, seeming unconcerned. ‘But I know people like you.’

‘Put me in front of the Emperor,’ Tisamon said quickly. It was pleading, he knew, begging. He forced the next words out before his pride could intervene. ‘I must have come here for a purpose.’

‘World’s short on purpose, to my mind,’ said Ult, regarding the Mantis with sympathy. ‘I only get told what the Emperor wants to see. He doesn’t want to see any unbeatable Lowlander killing dozens of his men or hacking the legs off beasts. The anniversary fight is for him, for his pleasure, so if he don’t like it, it’s the end of me, far more than if one of the slaves takes a leap at him. What am I supposed to do, anyway – get you to fight yourself?’

Laetrimae, thought Tisamon. Since sending him here, that shadowy and tortured woman had not reappeared to him. Could she have abandoned him? It seemed entirely possible, for perhaps she had simply sought to punish him for his pride. Laetrimae, you brought me here, and it must have been for this purpose or none at all. If you wish me to accomplish anything, you must give me the means.

The thought echoed in silence.

I care not how. He felt, abruptly, the oppressive weight of stone above, the walls around them, the fact that he was a prisoner, of his own making. He had put himself in the hands of fate, and it had let him fall.

‘Take me back to my cell,’ he said quietly. Ult nodded, saying nothing. His old face was all understanding.

It was on the way back to his cell that Tisamon saw the key that fate had provided, but instead of triumph it plunged him into the depths of black despair. He was still reeling from the sight as Ult got him to the door of his cell, but there he stopped, unwilling to step inside.

‘Ult…’

‘What is it?’ The Wasp trainer’s eyes narrowed, aware that something was wrong.

‘Your new prisoner…’

‘Which one? We’ve all kinds of new faces here.’

‘The Dragonfly woman,’ said Tisamon, feeling something hollow in his chest.

‘Oh, the mad one,’ Ult replied dismissively. ‘What about her?’

‘Let me see her,’ Tisamon requested, and his voice shook.

Ult stared at him suspiciously. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘I… know her. Let me see her,’ Tisamon insisted.

‘You know her? I don’t like this,’ the Wasp said. ‘How can you know her? Unless this is some kind of trick?’

‘No trick,’ Tisamon said. ‘It may not even be coincidence. She may have tracked me here, followed me. She’s good at that. I must speak with her.’ Suddenly he felt himself genuinely a prisoner, being denied this one request. Up until then the bars, the guards, the tasks, none of it had really confined him, because he had no wish to be elsewhere or do otherwise. Now he had a desire that only Ult could grant, and he was a prisoner.

Ult let his breath out. ‘Not in the same cell, and not alone. I’ll be there too. You want to speak with her? You do it so I can hear. I’ll put you in the cell next to hers.’

‘That will suffice,’ stated Tisamon, as calmly as he could. Something was turning over in his stomach, though. I am being brought to trial, at last. It was his own doing, of course. He was the master of his fate, and his hand alone had piloted his life on to these rocks. Even now he could have ignored this grotesque turn of events, but he had already put his hand into the jaws of the machine, waiting for it to bite. Why spare himself now?

She did not look up as they reached the cell beside hers and Ult unlatched the door. The current occupant, a scarred Ant-kinden man, was taken out. He stood tensely, looking down, like a mount being readied for riding. Tisamon stepped into his place, holding to the bars that separated this small piece of captivity from hers.

They had taken her armour from her, and her blade, and instead they had dressed her in slave’s clothes just as they had with him. He wondered if she had submitted to it so readily. Why was she here?

‘Mienn,’ he began, and then again, ‘Felise Mienn.’

From beyond the bars, in that part of this underground realm that was nominally free, Ult watched them both. It was a long time before the seated figure looked round but, even when she glanced back over her shoulder, she said nothing. She did not need to. Her expression was wounding enough.

‘How did they catch you?’ Tisamon asked her softly. He forced himself to meet her gaze, and knew that her imprisonment had been by her choice just as it had with him. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked her. ‘Why did you let them take you?’

The slightest, bitterest smile touched her lips, and she said, ‘You think I came here after you?’

He had been so ready to now take responsibility for her that it was as though he had suddenly stepped into thin air. He held on to the bars to keep on his feet. ‘But… why? If not that, why?’

The smile was widening, like something tearing. ‘Why, Tisamon, because I had nowhere else to go. I cannot be with my own people. I have been told as much from the highest authority. I would have gone to the Lowlands, but… what have I left to me there?’ Her voice shook while uttering the last few words. Abruptly, she was on her feet and facing him. Her beauty, her grace of movement, stunned him as on the first time he saw her.

‘I know what I am,’ he said. ‘You cannot understand… I have betrayed so many…’

She cut him off silently with just the slightest movement that, for a moment, he could not identify. Then he realized that her thumb-claws had flicked out, ready to fight.

‘Do you think I care about your history of self-indulgence?’ she asked him quietly. ‘Do you think anybody cares, apart from you? Do you expect me to understand? Yes, I know – you lay with some Spider-kinden, and then she died. How is that my burden to bear? How am I now the victim of your desires?’

‘I know what I am,’ he heard himself say, again.

‘You do not know what you are,’ she spat at him, approaching the bars that separated them. ‘You are beautiful, Tisamon, you are beautiful and deadly and bright, but you are cold and barbed like an arrow, that hurts most when it’s drawn out.’ She was so close that he could have touched her, had the bars suddenly lifted away.

Oh I have done this badly, he reflected, and for just one moment the mists of his own pride lifted and he saw how he could have been quite happy, just in staying by her side. Atryssa would not have understood, but of course Atryssa, being dead, would have made no comment.

‘You wish to fight with me again,’ he said, and it fitted so neatly into the plan that he looked around for that other woman who had entangled herself inextricably with his life.

She was there, like a writhing dark shadow in the corner of his cell. Laetrimae shuddered and hung there as though suspended on hooks: woman and mantis and savage thorns all intertwined. He glanced quickly at Felise, then at Ult, realizing that neither of them could see her. Laetrimae was present for his nightmares only and, when he looked back at her, she nodded once.

‘No!’ he exclaimed, suddenly rebellious, startling Ult, who put his hand to the cell’s door. Is this it? The final turn of the knife?

‘You came here to fight me?’ he insisted.

Felise was still gazing at him with an expression that spoke in equal parts of love and hate. ‘I did not come here for you. You know what I came here seeking. However, since you are here, perhaps you can help me find it.’ Her smile was pitiless. ‘Perhaps we can find it together.’

We are being used like pieces of a machine. He felt her hand touch his as he clung to the bars. He half-expected her claw to lash out and to sever a finger or strike at his face, but her hand was warm, and when she covered his own it was a lover’s gesture.

If we are pieces of a machine, we are broken pieces. He knew how she must feel. He had come here without hope, and then Ult had given him a purpose by mentioning the Emperor.

Kill the Emperor. Would that make sense of it all?

‘Enough,’ grunted Ult, behind him. ‘Enough time.’ A glance at the Wasp showed the old man was not devoid of sympathy, shuffling a little in embarrassment. ‘You need to go back now, old Mantis. Your time’s up.’

He felt her sudden presence in his dreams, Tisamon thrashing in brief nightmare before he leapt, kicking and fighting, into wakefulness.

‘Felise?’ he got out, but he knew, even before he opened his eyes, that it was not Felise Mienn who had come to visit.

She coalesced out of the darkness, there beneath the arena, where a few smoky torches were shared across the whole labyrinth of bars and cages. She was strangely lit by light from elsewhere, so that he could see her more clearly than he wanted to.

‘Are you happy now?’ he asked softly, wishing he could strike at her, but there was nothing to strike at and, besides, it would be blasphemy.

She stared down on him, nothing but that taut knot of pain and hurt that was left when the mortal woman Laetrimae had been ripped from the world of the living. Happy, Tisamon? The words came to him unspoken. Have I cause to rejoice?

‘Your plan has its hooks in me,’ he accused. ‘I had thought these bars would be the worst of it, but there is always something worse – and you have found it.’

She shimmered and blurred for a moment, as the thorny vines continued to crawl their bloody tracks across her skin. It is not my plan, nor your place to complain.

‘You brought me here,’ he argued weakly.

I was brought here against my will. You guided yourself here.

He became aware that some of the neighbouring prisoners were now listening, and wondered what they could make of this one-sided conversation. Perhaps such muttered ravings were not uncommon down here.

‘So you are just a piece, then? Just another broken piece?’ he suggested.

Just another broken piece. There is always something worse, as you say, and I have found it.

For a moment the voice in his mind had sounded like that of a real woman, one alone and in great pain, and he glanced up at her.

‘So I must fight poor Felise Mienn, spill her blood to open the way to the Emperor, if I can manage it.’

There came a noise that chilled him all the way through and made his skin crawl. It was, he realized then, Laetrimae laughing.

Is that what you think your purpose is? Your pride is not yet sated then?

Tisamon stared at her blankly.

You cannot kill the Emperor, Tisamon. You are not as invincible as you believe. Try it, and you shall fail – as you have always failed in those things most important to you. You must set your sights at more realistic targets.

He was on his feet abruptly, his clawed gauntlet already covering his hand. She shimmered and glowed in the darkness and he wanted to drive his blade into her heart. Except that he knew she was not truly there and had no heart left to her.

The look she gave him, before she vanished away, was sheer contempt.