Thirty-one
Dawn had come slowly to Myna, as the sun told it, but there had been a starlit dawn that had swept across the city like wildfire. It said: Kymene is free. It said: Ulther the Bloat is dead. In the minds of the people of that city, these two events were inextricably bound.
In the cellar where Chyses’ cell kept its headquarters there had been a steady influx of visitors, ambassadors arriving from other cells. Some were his old allies, others had opposed him, even fought against his people. Now they were here to see Kymene again because, of all the people in the city, she could unite them. Ulther had known it, too, but Ulther had been just as taken with her as her own people were, so had not done what he might to deprive Myna of its Maid.
Tynisa sat and watched the resistance come and go, or cluster in small groups to await their leader. Chyses went from one to another, shaking hands, clasping wrists like a soldier should. She could see he was working hard to bury old enmities, for the men he spoke most words of encouragement to were those who liked him least.
Che was taking a while to recover, or at least something was on her mind, and Salma was still sleeping despite the mounting fuss around him. He had been bound almost all the time he was imprisoned, Che had said. That must have stopped him getting much rest. She imagined him with arms dragged behind his back, sitting through the night and watching over Che. Idly she stood up and walked over to his pallet.
Tynisa had always prided herself on being independent, relying on no one. It was an easy thing to take pride in when she had never needed to do so. Her relationship with Salma had always been a joking, teasing one, underscored by an annoyance that her charms had never been quite enough to conquer him. Her relationship with Che had been, she admitted, a vain one. It had been a pleasant situation to have a plainer sister, one so earnest and good natured, and graceless.
Only when they were taken away from her had Tynisa realized how she loved them both, how they had become part of her. She knelt down beside Salma, seeing in sleep a face that he never usually presented to the world. Asleep, he looked five years younger, and it struck her that she had always assumed him older than her, and never known different. Absently she smoothed the dark hair from his forehead, and watched as his eyelids fluttered for a moment. Dream dreams of freedom, she urged him silently.
She heard no tread but suddenly felt Tisamon’s presence beside her. He wore his usual grave, melancholy expression, and she wondered whether he ever relaxed it, even when sleeping.
‘I have something to speak to you about,’ he said softly. ‘If you will.’
Where am I with him now? The fight in the sewers had broken down the wall surrounding him, but he was still exploring the new world that she presented for him. She sensed that he had now come to some decision.
She followed him over to the patch of floor that he had slept on, where his pack and few belongings lay.
‘You have something of mine,’ he said, and she did not understand.
Seeing her blank expression, he smiled bleakly. ‘Nothing I would wish on another, but it is within you. You have Atryssa’s face, her clever mind, I think, her skill, but you have something also of mine.’
Something of the Mantis, she realized. ‘I. . my Art shows nothing of your kinden, I think. .’ she said. ‘I cannot fly. I have no spines like yours.’
Mirth now, in that smile, of a wintry kind. ‘And is all Art worn so openly? Tell me what races in your veins when you fight, Tynisa. Tell me the lust in your heart when you scent blood. Tell me of your joy when blade meets blade.’
His words felt like a blow.
‘No-’
‘But yes,’ he said. ‘I have seen you fight. With a Spider’s poise, yes, but you have my people’s Art behind you, and it makes you deadly and it makes you alive.’
She recalled that moment in Stenwold’s house, standing over the slain assassin with her victory singing in her ears, and fighting the Wasps and the street thugs in Helleron, the men of the Gladhanders, the guards she cut through to get to Che and Salma. She could pin motives to all of those — to save herself, to save her friends, to pay her debts — and yet her heart had taken fire once the steel was out. Something had come to possess her then, that coursed through her like a fierce poison, that made her mad. It also made her brave and swift and fierce. She thrilled with the knowledge of her own skill even as she cut lives from bodies like a gambler shuffling cards.
‘I. .’ Her heritage, her Mantis heritage, was lurking behind this Spider face of hers, and with it all of its blood-greed, its oaths and promises, its ancient traditions and its long memory. All of this she was inheritrix to.
And it was terrible, to find that heritage inside her like a cancer, but when she met his eyes he looked as proud of her as nobody had ever been, and it was wonderful, then.
‘That sword does not fit you,’ he said. It was a Mynan shortsword she had borrowed, a heavy, inelegant thing.
‘It’s better than none,’ she suggested.
He knelt by his gear and gestured for her to do the same. She felt an odd shiver as she did so. She stood now on the far side of some barrier or threshold that he had long kept her from.
‘When we came to this city before, I had expected to meet your mother here, as you know,’ he said, not quite looking at her. ‘And I did not, and the truth of why that was so is recent for both of us. However. .’ He spread his hands, and she saw the spines on his forearms flex with this small motion. ‘I had meant. . I had thought, while we were apart. I wanted to make some gesture, to bind her to me, to bind me to her. Just something.’ A faded smile. ‘We could not wed. For my people it is a ceremony sacred, and they would slay me rather than see me united with her kind. For hers, however, their women may take many men, as they will. But I wanted to show what she meant to me. I am not good with words, as you can tell. So I found her a gift.’ One hand made a movement towards his rolled blankets and his pack, but he withdrew it. ‘And then she did not come. But I could not cast the gift away. It was. . important, valuable, to me. I have carried it ever since, wherever I went. I have put it above my bed and hoped that some rogue would steal it, and rid me of it, for it has always reminded me of her. And every night, when I came back to whatever low place I lodged in, there it still was. And now you are here, in this city, her daughter and her very image — and my own blood as well. And you have lost a sword.’
At last he looked her straight in the eye. ‘You don’t believe in fate,’ he stated.
‘I do not.’
‘You have a heritage. In truth you have two. You have been brought up by Beetles, surrounded by machines and ideas you cannot ever grasp. You try to think like them, but your blood says otherwise. My people believe in fate, and in many other things the Beetle-kinden do not teach, and your mother’s kinden likewise. I believe this is fate.’
And he lifted from behind him a rapier such as she had never seen. It was scabbarded in iridescent green that shifted and changed as the light touched it, bound with what she thought at first was brass, but then saw must be antique gold. It was shorter than her old blade, but when he put it into her ready hands she found it was heavier. The guard was crafted into interlocking shapes that might represent leaves or elytra, all in gold and dark steel and enamelled green. Her eyes seemed unable to stay still on it without turning to follow its twining lines.
She had taken it by the scabbard, which seemed to be finely worked chitin shell, and now she reached for the hilt but Tisamon stopped her.
‘There are formalities,’ he told her. His hand touched the sword’s tapered pommel, which ended in a curved claw. In an instant he had pressed his palm to it, drawing a raw red line beside the ball of his thumb. She saw a drop of his blood glisten on the gilt metal.