Blood of the Mantis

Uncertainly she caught one arm and the Solarnese woman seized the other, and then they were lumping the bloody form out along a narrow pier that Che thought must be reserved for this purpose. It was a long strip of wood that extended further than the other jetties, and had no boats moored alongside. The duellist was coming behind them along with a couple of others who seemed to have some role in the ritualistic proceedings.

Someone passed her a ring of lead and a rope, which she accepted in a daze. She could not quite believe what was happening or understand what she had become involved in, but numbly she tied the rope about the dead man’s ankle. The other woman meanwhile was assiduously looting, first slitting the victim’s purse for a handful of silver coins, then taking a knife to pry a few opals from the man’s scabbard. She held out the booty to Che, saying, ‘Take your slice.’

Shaking her head, Che tried to back off, but the woman grabbed her hand and folded it over a few of the coins and a gem. ‘You want the sword?’ she asked, her words fast in the strong local accent. Che shook her head even harder and the woman seemed satisfied. Then they pitched the body into the water, and the lead sank it out of sight.

Once back on the dockside Che saw the duellist pay both the adjutant and the man who had provided the lead weight. Is that his entire livelihood? she wondered. Does he hang about in crowds with fistfuls of lead weights, waiting for people to die in formal brawl? Che looked at her own unwilling gains and saw, head swimming with the strangeness, that, alongside the fingernail-sized opal, the silver coins were all Standards, minted locally but recognizably copies of the Helleron-stamped currency she was used to seeing all over the Lowlands.

She saw Nero approach, a thoughtful look on his face. The whole experience had served her as a pointed object lesson, she decided: she was now a long way from anywhere she was used to or understood.

Taki found them shortly afterwards. When Che told her what had happened she merely shrugged, finding nothing remarkable in it.

‘Let me take you somewhere more civilized,’ she suggested. ‘Even you, Sieur Nero. My employers’ll put you up. They’ll be delighted with you.’

‘When the Spiders first came, you see, there was a war on,’ Taki explained. ‘The Solarnese were under attack from the ships of Princep Exilla, the Dragonflies. The Spiders were able to sort that all out – after they smoothed their way into the Prince’s court and then did for him, easy as you like. After that, everyone was glad enough to give them the run of the place. And to us, too – to my ancestors.’

The interior of the Destiavel Peace House was certainly Spider-kinden in style, a high-arched ceiling painted in blue and gold, decorated with delicate and intersecting arabesques, and the walls were scalloped with alcoves, each with its own casually displayed treasure. The ceiling was absurdly high, so that what Che had taken from outside for a four-storey building must have been only two, one rising behind the other in the ascending hillside.

‘You’re what, then? A servant, a slave?’ Nero asked.

‘What in the world do they teach you in your academies?’ Taki asked him incredulously. The lofty ceiling made strange play with the acoustics, amplifying whispers, muffling raised voices.

‘For a start, they don’t even teach us the name of your backwater city, Miss te Taki,’ Nero told her huffily.

She grinned delightedly at him. ‘When you get angry, Sieur Nero, your face is more of a picture than anyone could ever paint. Yes, I suppose we’re all too insignificant out here for you great foreign princes.’ Her gaze made a pointed contrast between their travel-stained clothing and the pristine surroundings. ‘When we first came here with our masters we were slaves, great Sieur, but we won out in the Day of the Three Concessions, as every child knows. Now I’m free to do whatever I feel like, but can you boast the same?’

‘The Day of the…?’ Che shook her head. She had spent a decade learning history and now none of it was remotely useful. ‘But you work for the Spiders. And the Spiders rule Solarno?’

‘Some of them do, some of the time. At the moment the Crystal Standard Party is in power, but that looks set to change even within the next few days.’

There had been banners, Che recalled, on their way to this palatial residence. They had passed groups of malcontents who stood waving flags and ribbons, some red, some blue, some green and gold, but none of it had made any sense to her. Taki had done her best to ignore all of them. The local situation was clearly extremely complex.

‘And where do the Wasps stand?’ Che asked.

‘Ah, well…’