Blood of the Mantis

‘Jerez is paved with mud and I need no magic to follow footsteps. I thought you would be Scyla, but you are not. Who, then, are you?’

‘You do not wish to know,’ she told him. ‘Now leave me, Mantis. You do not dare test me.’

‘You have cast an enchantment over Tynisa,’ he told her flatly. She noticed that he was slowly inching closer. ‘Why do you care what happens to a Spider?’

‘She is my daughter,’ he replied. She saw his claw tilt back for the strike, and she thrust a sharp-nailed hand out towards him, seeing him flinch away automatically. She bared her teeth in a needled grin.

‘So now you are here, but what will you do? I know your kind, Mantis. The Moth-kinden bred you well to serve them. But I am a magician, and you fear magic, do you not? And all the things it can do to you. You must know that to slay a magician is to bring a curse on you and all of yours.’

‘I have heard it said,’ he replied. He had stopped edging forward now and she knew she was right. A superstitious and ignorant race, the Mantids, for all their skill.

‘Then leave here before I strike you down,’ she warned him. ‘Do you really think I shall stay my hand? Or will you dare to face me?’

‘You are right of course,’ he said. ‘I shall not.’

Her grin widened and just then a burning fist struck her in the small of the back, hammering her to the ground. She twisted round as she fell, still clutching the box to her, and saw a Wasp-kinden in a long coat landing to one side, a wisp of heat smoking from his hand.

They were coming for her. They were coming for the box.

Her strength was seeping away from her but she had one last trick, even though it was a mere apprentice’s sleight. Concentrating only on the box, she summoned her powers before they had drained into the earth with her blood.

Looking up, she saw both Wasp and Mantis looming above her, the Wasp’s sword poised about to stab. She spat at them defiantly, seeing the Mantis reel back. Then the blade drove into her.

Tisamon waited until the Mosquito was clearly dead – until Gaved had finished twisting his blade and pulled it out – before he reached for the box. He twitched the dead woman’s voluminous sleeves aside. He had seen it there, the angular shape of it hidden in her grip. He had felt it there.

But it was gone. Her hands were crooked about its shape, but it was gone. He exchanged glances with Gaved, who could not understand. Swiftly the Wasp set to searching Sykore’s body from head to toe, but Tisamon just stepped back, knowing that, by her magic, she had defeated them in the end.

Nivit had sent for the best physician he knew, a grey-skinned creature named Doctor Mathonwy, who was seven foot tall, even with a pronounced hunchback, and had to bend double again just to get in through the door. He was now kneeling beside Achaeos, having just cut the Moth’s blood-slicked robe away. Arranged all about him were bunches of herbs, a tiny brazier, some delicate bronze tools. The medicine he was performing was some strange mix of old and new.

Tynisa sat in one corner of the room, as though trying to push herself backwards through the walls behind her. She stared at the prostrate Moth, biting her lip. Her sword lay discarded nearby. She did not want to touch it. She did not even look up as Tisamon returned.

He knelt down beside her, for a moment oddly awkward. ‘She is dead,’ he informed her, and when she made no response he continued, ‘The woman who enchanted you, she is dead.’

‘Does that help us?’ Tynisa whispered. ‘Does that heal him?’

Tisamon grimaced. ‘You were not responsible. She had used her magic on you.’

‘I don’t believe in magic.’ she spoke almost too softly for him to hear.

‘Tynisa, you must. It is why we are here-’

‘I don’t believe it. I stabbed him. What will Che think? How could I do this to her?’

Tisamon shook his head, baffled. ‘But the magician herself is dead. I killed her.’

‘That doesn’t help!’ Tynisa almost spat at him. ‘Killing things… it’s not the answer to everything, Tisamon. Is that your only way around any problem? To kill something?’

She saw his hurt, confused expression, and only then did she remember how he had dealt with the betrayal, as he had believed it, of her mother, his lover. He had gone to Helleron and hired out his blade, and killed people, even people who had nothing whatsoever to do with his pain. He had quenched his hurt in blood on a daily basis.

‘Anyway, we’ve lost the cursed box,’ Gaved said tiredly. ‘I swear I searched everywhere, from here to where we found her, but there’s nothing. She must have handed it on to someone.’

‘She sent it with her magic,’ Tisamon said.

‘Whatever.’ The Wasp shrugged. ‘She might as well have done, since it’s gone, and we’ve got no leads. And the Moth over there was the only one who seemed to be able to locate it.’

Tynisa glared at him defensively but he was not accusing her, just thinking aloud.