Blood of the Mantis

He convulsed and fell forwards, leaving Nero abruptly hovering unsupported as the man jack-knifed to the ground, taking Che’s sword with him. She felt a jolt of horror – how much blood had she seen shed, how little of it her doing – and then Nero cursed and spun out of the air, a spatter of red suddenly staining the white of his clothes. He had twisted aside, by sheer Art and instinct, as the blade came in, so it had gashed across his arm rather than into his ribs. As her companion hit the ground, Che found herself facing a lean Dragonfly-kinden, deeply scarred on both cheeks. In his hands he wielded a long-hafted sword, as much hilt as blade. In her hands was nothing.

He took a moment to note her vulnerability, his expression set, and then he lunged for her. None of the local posturing for him, he was in for a quick kill. She retreated hurriedly, her calves striking the low wall of the courtyard, and then her world went toppling backwards. He turned his lunge into a charge, wings flaring for speed, and she saw that slender, lethal blade plunge straight towards her – and then jerk to one side.

It drove itself into the ground right beside her face, as its wielder ended up with one knee on her chest, his expression bewildered. She gaped at him and tried to work out why he was not moving. Only as he toppled sideways did she notice the pommel of the short, hiltless throwing blade almost buried in his neck.

Che leapt to her feet, scanning the crowd. The size of the brawl had shrunk to something the militia were now happy to deal with, and they began to wade in and club the remaining contenders apart. Behind them, the more opportunistic of the Fly-kinden were busy making hurried assays of the pockets of the fallen.

She noticed there was one man staring at her. He was not a local, nor of any kinden she recognized, perhaps some manner of half-breed. He was lean, russet-haired, neither tall nor short, dressed in a cuirass of bronzed scales and a shabby tan cloak. She could read absolutely nothing into his stare, as impersonal and distant as the stars, but he wore a bandolier of throwing blades and one of them – just one, mind you – was absent.

The thought made her stomach turn, but she went over to the dead Dragonfly and awkwardly withdrew the blade, a slippery and unexpectedly difficult task that had her hands slick with his blood. The stranger was still there, watching, when she straightened up. In the background Nero was swearing and wrapping cloth about his injured arm, demanding to know what she was doing.

She had expected the man to be gone, or to avoid her when she approached, but instead he stood his ground, and she saw that a couple of the militia had noticed him too, but were studiously pretending they had not. Someone who was known, then, and regarded with that particular brand of respect that had nothing to do with being liked.

Closer to, he was slighter of build than she had first thought: not much taller than Achaeos, though broader at the shoulder. His face was gaunt and weathered, impossible to put an age to, utterly unknowable.

She held the blood-washed blade out to him and asked merely, ‘Why?’

It was back in his hand in an instant, without her even seeing him reach for it. When he then smiled it was a window onto something truly alien to her – something ancient and sad and very dark. He reminded her, she found with a shock, of Tisamon. That same melancholy darkness was contained in both of them.

‘Why not, if it pleases me?’ His voice was nondescript, as undramatic as could ever have undone his air of mystery. Then he had turned, and was striding away without a backward glance.

Across the street, from one storey up, Captain Havel was watching the same chaos with Odyssa at his shoulder. He had started with a tight little smile, because if this came off he would be able to report a happy success to his masters, and not have to worry about the Rekef enquiring into his accounts. The streets of Solarno were deceptively dangerous places where brawls started all the time these days, what with control of the Corta Obscuri up for the taking. In such conditions a pair of witless foreigners might easily fall foul of all manner of local violence.

Seeing the fighting spill into the inn’s courtyard, he had become ecstatic, and careful to share such pleasure with his visitor, congratulating her on laying a good rumour trail.

The Spider woman’s hands had squeezed his shoulders, as she pressed in close behind him. ‘It’s easy enough to get these Solarnese to fight each other. Your agents are all in position?’

‘Agents?’ Havel had snorted. ‘That’s too grand a term, but in Solarno there’s no shortage of hired killers, either local or visiting. Princep Exilla practically turns them out as a national industry. But they’ll do their job,’ he had assured her, both as the man currently impressing the Spider maid and as the officer about to impress her distant Rekef superiors. He had been so cocky, just then.