Blood of the Mantis

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.