Then he heard Tisamon’s voice coming in at irregular moments. ‘Strike,’ he would declare, and then after another furious pass with the weapons, ‘Strike.’ He was marking his touches, Stenwold realized. Unlike any sane or civilized duel the fight did not pause on a hit. There was no moment permitted for Tynisa to regain her composure or her balance. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, soaking her arming jacket, but Tisamon’s brow was pearled as well. Stenwold could not tell if it was the injury from Helleron or the pace of the current duel that strained him.
‘Strike,’ Tisamon noted again, and they fought on. Neither was cut: the blows had been delivered with the flat of the narrow blades only. Their faces had so much the same expression of intense concentration that in that moment Tynisa truly resembled her father. The features of her dead mother were momentarily banished.
Stenwold sat down a little way from the rapt students. Tisamon had promised to train his daughter — the one gift he could give — and he took that vow as seriously as the Mantis-kinden always did.
‘Strike,’ he said again. Stenwold expected Tynisa to become frustrated now, stirred to anger that would be fatal for a duellist. Instead she seemed calmer after each call, focusing more and more within herself.
Stenwold glanced around at the students. They had stopped murmuring now, were watching the action with almost as much concentration as the protagonists themselves. They were all young, in their first year, local Beetle-kinden mixed with a few visitors. No Tarkesh Ants, of course. They had been recalled, all of them, when the news broke of the threat to their city.
‘Strike,’ came Tisamon’s voice, and then, ‘Strike!’
The sound of swords stopped, and Stenwold struggled to disentangle what had happened. Only when he saw the line of her blade pressed against her opponent’s side did he realize that the last call had been Tynisa’s.
They were all watching Tisamon now for his reaction. It was a nod, just a small, sharp nod, but Stenwold read volumes of approval in it. The Mantis ran a sleeve over his forehead, fair hair flat and damp with sweat there, and then came over to sit by Stenwold. Close to, the strain was clearly visible, more lines about his eyes and an added pallor to his face.
‘You should perhaps take things easier for a while,’ Stenwold suggested, knowing the suggestion was futile.
‘I’m getting old.’ Tisamon smiled a little. ‘I used to heal faster than this.’
‘You’ve healed faster than anyone has a right to,’ Sten-wold told him. ‘You took quite a scorching there.’
‘It has been a while since someone put such a mark on me,’ the Mantis agreed.
Tynisa had meanwhile been accepting the congratulations of the students, who seemed to appreciate that fighting Tisamon was like fighting a force of nature, and that even one strike was equivalent to a victory.
‘Of course, you killed her a dozen times there,’ Stenwold remarked.
Tisamon shook his head. ‘Practice is always different to blood, even using a real sword.’
‘I notice she wasn’t using the sword you gave her.’
Tisamon seemed to find that amusing. ‘It is crafted for killing, Stenwold. It wouldn’t understand.’
‘What will you do, when she’s good enough?’
‘She is already good enough, or nearly.’ There was hard pride in the Mantis’s voice. ‘She was on the edge of good enough before I even met her. Blood will out, and all she needed was real blood on her hands to call to her heritage.’
Stenwold shifted uncomfortably. ‘So what will you do now?’
‘When this is done and when we can, I shall take her to Parosyal.’
‘I can’t even begin to imagine what that means for you, but surely your people.?’
‘They will hate her, and despise her,’ Tisamon said flatly. ‘Not one of them will look at her, or even at me. We will be pariahs in my people’s holy place. But they will not deny her, because she has the skill. If she can pass the trials they set, then in the end. in the end she will be one of us and then their hate must drain away, and they must accept her.’
‘“Must”.?’ Stenwold prodded.
Tisamon was silent.
‘Well, if Cheerwell can be accepted by the Moth-kinden, then anything is possible,’ Stenwold allowed, and rose to greet Tynisa as she approached.
It was late when they finally returned to Stenwold’s townhouse. Tisamon had cautioned him to reside elsewhere after the last attack on it, but Stenwold had a stubborn streak when it came to giving up what was his. He would not be harried out of his own home, his own city. Besides, with Tynisa and Tisamon under the same roof with him, he reckoned it would be a brave assassin that tried it.
After watching the duel he had gathered reports from some of his people within the city. They were not his agents as such, but he had slipped them a little coin to keep their eyes and ears open. He knew that the Assembly still kept its doors closed to him, out of pique more than anything else. Until that attitude changed, the Wasps had time and, while they had time, they would move carefully.
But there would come a moment, as there had in Helleron, where the metal met, as the saying went, and caution went out of the window. A night of knives, it would be. He was glad to have Tisamon and Tynisa with him, glad also to have sent his niece Cheerwell to the relative security of Sarn.
In the quiet of his own room he shrugged out of his robes, letting them pool on the floor. The night air was cool on his skin through the knee-length tunic, and the water he splashed on his face made him shiver. They were forecasting a cold winter for Collegium — for the Lowlands as a whole. Cold, of course, meaning a few cloudless and icy nights. Salma, hailing from north of the Barrier Ridge, had claimed that nobody in the Lowlands knew what winter really meant.
It was still warm enough to sleep in his bare skin, so he stripped off the tunic and cast it on the floor, then turned the flame of the lamp out. Finding his way in the moonlight to his bed he threw himself down on it. His mind was alive with stratagems, shreds of information, clues and counter-intelligence. The threat of the Wasps was bad for his sleep patterns.
And then he became aware that he was not alone in the room. Somewhere in the darkness someone moved.
All at once he went colder than the night could make him. At first he was going to call out for Tynisa or Tisamon, but if he did so then it would only mean a swift blade — a blade that might come at any time, but would surely come now, right now, if he called.
Why couldn’t I have listened to Tisamon?
He reached out. There was always a sword within reach of his bed, a judicious precaution that had borne fruit more than once. His fingers brushed the pommel, so he stretched a little further to grasp the hilt.
‘There is no need for that, Master Maker,’ said a woman’s voice, one he knew, he realized, although he could not immediately place it.
‘Who’s there?’ he asked, excruciatingly aware that whoever it was could obviously see better than he could in the dark.
‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you lit the lamp again?’
Yes. Yes I would. He crawled backwards off the bed, sword in one hand, still sheathed, and in the other a sheet clutched demurely to his chest. He thought he heard a snicker from the unseen woman which helped not at all. Then he realized that he would need both hands free to light the lamp.
Both hands. His sword-hand included. Or perhaps not. He let the sheet go, modesty playing second fiddle to mortality, and opened the lamp hatch single-handed. Thick fingers fumbled across the cabinet top until they located his steel lighter. He flicked at its catch until it caught, and then brought the fragile flame to the oil. It lit with a gentle, golden glow and, with his sword firmly presented, he turned to face the intruder.
She had a hand over her mouth, in hilarity or horror, and it was a moment before he recognized her. When he did, he swept the sheet back up so fast that he almost lost his sword in it.