Blood of the Mantis (7 page)

‘She would lose control, and then start killing Wasps indiscriminately,’ Stenwold finished for him.

‘It seems likely,’ Tisamon agreed, in that instant burying everything that had been about to rise to the surface. ‘So you must find her a home here – and that Spider doctor of hers. He seems . . . able to help her.’

Stenwold frowned. ‘In turn you must promise to watch Thalric.’

‘I’ll consider it a wasted trip if I haven’t killed him,’ growled the Mantis, on firmer ground here and without a hint of humour.

Tynisa, next, did not embrace Stenwold as Che had done, just clasped his hand in the manner of her father.
She has grown up now. She is no longer my ward.
The sword-and-circle badge of the Weaponsmasters glinted on her breast, a twin to Tisamon’s own.

‘This is important, Master Maker,’ Achaeos told him as his turn came. ‘I know you cannot see it, but I thank you for your trust.’ Of them all he wore no special cold-weather clothing, born to the mountains as he was.

‘I learned a long time ago that there is more to this world than my eyes can see,’ Stenwold said. ‘Just you get the thing, whatever it is, and bring it back.’ Doctor Nicrephos had died for this box: another Moth who had been frantic about its importance. Stenwold noticed that Gaved had already gone aboard along with Allanbridge, gliding up onto the airship’s deck with a flick of his wings. That left one man only.

Stenwold turned to him, a thousand warnings on his lips, but all withering in the face of that slight, mocking smile.

‘What can you say to me, Master Maker?’ Thalric asked him. ‘Why not stop me now if you are so very concerned?’

‘I am only glad that my niece Che is not going with you,’ muttered Stenwold, at which Thalric smiled slightly.

‘You mistake me Stenwold. I would not hurt her. If fate gave me the Mantis’ life, well, that would be different, but in deeds done for my own sake, it would injure my honour to hurt such as her. I do not, however, expect you to believe me.’

Stenwold was not sure he did, despite this apparent candour. ‘If you hurt any of these – Achaeos most of all, but any of them – you will hurt her. So consider that.’

‘Farewell, Master Maker.’ Thalric’s own wings flared, taking him upwards.

After it had slipped its moorings, Stenwold stood and watched the receding bulk of Allanbridge’s airship. He could make out Tisamon at the stern, as a pale, green-clad figure staring back at him from the gondola

Be safe, old friend
, Stenwold thought.
Be safe, Achaeos. Che will not forgive me if something bad befalls you. Be safe, Tynisa, and do not follow so much in your father’s path that you cannot find the road back if you need to.

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.

Or was he? This fool’s treasure hunt the Moth had set them on hardly seemed a betrayal. A hunt for some trinket, some curio of a raided collection, and yet the Moth had decided it was the be-all of creation. But what did it matter, really, if some imperial courtier had decided to suborn the Rekef into acquiring for him a choice antique? Was that not the precise degree of rot that Thalric had uncovered at the heart of the Empire? Could he therefore not reinterpret this mission into something that was ostensibly even to the Empire’s benefit?
Of course I can. You always can.
The Empire would not appreciate his help, though, and he suspected the others did not realize just what danger he might land in by going back there. Gaved was right about Jerez, though: if he could hide himself anywhere, it would be there: that shifting town was the bane of imperial bureaucrats, governors and tax-collectors, a vast lawless pond of Skater-kinden who paid lip-service to the Empire and then ambushed its tax caravans. Just the sort of place Scylis would run to, if he now had something to sell.

Would Scylis be aware of Thalric’s disgrace? Having counted the days since, Thalric suspected not. It seemed mad that, on recognizing Thalric, Scylis might take him for the avenging hand of the Empire.

Or Scyl
a
. Achaeos swore that Thalric’s old agent had been a woman all this time. The Wasp did not know what to think about that.
Or perhaps I do not want to admit I didn’t know it.

Complications, complications. He shook his head. Allanbridge was shouting at Achaeos now, claiming that something or other was too dangerous.

‘You have me aboard,’ the Moth argued. ‘I shall shield you.’

‘And what if
his
lot are there?’ the artificer demanded, pointing at Thalric. ‘Who shields us then?’

‘Are they likely to be?’ Achaeos turned to the Wasp. ‘Had the Empire taken Tharn, when last you heard?’

‘Tharn?’ It took a moment for Thalric to recall the name of the Moth-kinden mountain retreat that was situated just north of Helleron. ‘There were no plans afoot when last I heard,’ he admitted. ‘It will happen, though. I take it you wish to bid your home farewell while you still can.’

‘A farewell of sorts,’ Achaeos replied.

‘If the Empire is there, you will see flying machines aplenty as we near the mountain,’ Thalric suggested.

‘If we catch any sight of them, we’ll instantly steer clear,’ Achaeos promised Allanbridge, who grumbled for a moment but acquiesced.

By the time they were in sight of the Tornos Range they were starting to make very heavy going, Allanbridge was wrestling with the engines to combat the force of the crosswind and the airship was slipping northwards, so what had seemed a leisurely course towards a distant skyline became a battering progress that soon could see them dashed against the mountain peaks.

‘I’m taking her lower!’ Allanbridge announced with a shout. The airship’s bag was filled with a gas he had called distillate of sphenotic, which could carry the ship’s weight but would take them higher when it was heated. Now he was stifling the burner, that served as a stove on better days, and the airship began to descend through the layers of cloud even as it gusted towards the mountains.

The first they knew of company was an arrow that sang across the gondola’s bows and lanced into the balloon.

Achaeos began waving his arms, a flick of his wings took him up onto the rail, then either the wind or his own volition whisked him off, and he was airborne. The shimmer of his wings ghosting from his back, he circled the gasbag, gesturing and shouting, while the rest clung to whatever they could find, waiting for their flying machine to begin its plummet to the ground.

Allanbridge laughed at them. ‘One arrow?’ he called. ‘Even your worst ship can take a dozen before it falters, and Collegium kitted me with Spider-silk! See, arrows just stick in her!’

‘But will they stick so happily in you?’ Thalric yelled in return.

Then Achaeos was back, clinging to the rail doggedly until Tynisa helped him on board. Looking pale and exhausted even from that brief flight, he pointed towards the mountains.

‘Mount Tornos,’ he announced. ‘Take us there.’

‘Your fellows going to shoot any more arrows at us?’ Allanbridge asked. Beside him Gaved shrugged his sleeves back a little, freeing his hands for his stinging Art.

‘I convinced them not to cut your machine open,’ Achaeos said. ‘No more than that for now. Bring us in, and I can talk to them further.’

In the wind-whipped air they saw glimpses of several hooded grey figures, strung bows raised at the ready. It was impossible to say how many there were in all. Ahead, an entire mountainside seemed to have gone ragged. What had seemed sheer rockface at a distance was now revealed as intricately worked and carved, hundreds of hands over centuries cutting the face of the stone with statues and carvings, scripture and frescoes, story-sequences of a thousand images telling the minutiae of the Moth-kinden mythology. Even Thalric, who had seen so much, took a moment to appreciate the vast scale and to realize how the carvings went on deeper into the mountain itself, leading to darkness that only the blank eyes of the carvers could penetrate. He wondered if he was the first Wasp ever to set eyes on these wonders.

He would not be the last, he knew. The Empire’s hand had not yet risen against these carved rockfaces and these stepped slopes, but there were imperial armies in nearby Helleron, so this visit might prove his only chance to see Tharn as its makers had intended it.

It took a surprising time for Allanbridge to find a mooring he felt happy with, one that would not see his ship dashed against the mountainside by high winds. The city’s makers had not foreseen such a need, of course.

When they were lashed securely, and had disembarked onto the perilous narrow walkways that were all the stone offered them, they finally met the Moth-kinden. The natives’ greeting was delivered from the air, and comprised of pure hostility: a dozen grey-clad forms with arrows set to their bows, white eyes narrowed in anger. Achaeos took off into the air again, winging over towards them. Allan-bridge and the others just waited, clinging precariously to the mountainside. If the Moths decided to make this intrusion a fatal one, then only the Wasps would have much chance of survival.

Still, Allanbridge began chuckling slightly, and when Gaved raised an eyebrow at him he said, ‘Waste me if I’m not the first Beetle aviator ever to tie up here. There’s a story to earn me a drink or two.’

‘Not at all,’ Thalric snapped. ‘Beetles being what they are, I’ll wager a dozen have already tried this trip. It’s just that none of them were given the chance to return home and brag about it.’

Allanbridge shot him a dark look, but then Achaeos was back with then, dropping into their midst and stumbling on his landing. Tynisa held him up, as he took a moment to catch his breath.

‘They will let us in,’ he got out. ‘I can’t vouch for the warmth of your welcome, but they say they will not kill you.’