He opened his eyes very slowly. The first thing he saw was Tynisa before him, her face stricken, and for a moment he thought she must have stabbed him. Her arm was extended, and he followed its line as best as his current situation would allow. There was the hilt of her sword and the narrow blade. . and Tisamon’s hand was flat against it, and the rapier’s length caught between his palm and the spines of his forearm. Its point was frozen over Stenwold’s shoulder, trapped on its way directly towards Tisamon’s face.
Tisamon’s other arm, his right, was across Stenwold’s shoulders, the spines digging straight through the hardened leather and into his flesh. The folding blade of the Mantis’s claw was closed about Stenwold’s throat like a clasp-knife, and it was impossible for him to tell whether it had drawn blood or not. Beyond Tynisa he glimpsed Totho with a spanner in his hand, mouth hanging open; and there was Achaeos, somewhere further off, his dagger clear of its scabbard but pointedly not part of the conflict.
Stenwold heard his own ragged breath mixed up with that of the two duellists.
‘Let him go,’ said Tynisa, and Stenwold reckoned that making demands just then was not for the best.
‘You’re going to fight me?’ Tisamon asked her, and his tone, that clipped precision of speech Stenwold knew of old, indicated a man whose blood was up.
‘I’ve seen you fight and I know what this is about,’ she declared. ‘So I worked for the Halfway House. So what?’
‘For the Halfway. .?’ A frown passed over Tisamon’s face. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The fiefs, in Helleron. .’ Now Tynisa was looking uncertain. ‘You were fighting for the Gladhanders. We destroyed them after. . Isn’t that. .’ His baffled stare was getting to her. ‘What is this about?’
‘Yes, Stenwold, what is this about?’ asked Tisamon, and that dreadful coldness of diction was still there.
‘I will tell you everything, but only you,’ Stenwold finally got out. ‘Let’s go up the hill and I will spare nothing of the truth. You have my word.’
‘That would have been a golden thing, only a moment ago,’ said Tisamon sadly, but his arm uncoiled by degrees. Stenwold winced as the spines withdrew from his back.
‘Someone had better tell me what’s going on,’ Tynisa suggested.
Stenwold nodded. ‘Let me talk to Tisamon first. This is going to be difficult.’
He began to trudge back the way he had come, though this time Tisamon did not walk beside him as a comrade, but with the wary distance of an antagonist.
Tynisa watched them go. ‘What?’ she said, to the night air as much as to anyone. ‘What is it?’ Tisamon had looked at her as though she had killed his own brother and danced on his grave. She turned round for some kind of support, but Totho was edging himself underneath the automotive, and there was precious little warmth to be gained from the Moth’s slyly superior facade.
To the pits with the pair of them, she decided. In fact, to the pits with all of them. There was something going on, and it had led to a notable duellist drawing on her, and that meant she had a right to know what was going on.
As softly as she could, she began to follow in Stenwold’s path, letting darkness be her cloak.
On the other side of the hill, out of sight of the automotive, Stenwold suddenly stopped. It was a calculated risk, for if Tisamon’s temper broke again, he would be dead without the others even knowing. It showed a trust, though, and he so desperately needed to regain this man’s confidence. It also put them far enough from the camp that quiet voices would not carry, and harsh words might sound jumbled enough not to be understood.
Tisamon was watching him, blade still by his side, tucked back up the length of his arm.
‘Speak,’ he hissed.
‘I. .’ Stenwold grimaced. ‘It’s difficult for me. It really is. Give me a moment to put my words in order.’
Tisamon bared his teeth. ‘Let me help you. Let me prompt you. She’s her very image. Souls alive! She’s her very image!’ Again it was not anger but a ragged horror that twisted him. ‘How. . How. .’ His stark frame was shaking, and Stenwold wondered if there was even a name for the emotion that had taken hold of him. ‘She’s her daughter. She must be.’
‘Yes, Tisamon. Tynisa is Atryssa’s daughter,’ Stenwold admitted wearily. Now the moment was upon him, he wondered if he had the strength for it.
‘How did you come to. . No!’ Tisamon’s eyes narrowed. The blade of his claw flexed, hinging out and back in. ‘She betrayed us, Stenwold — at Myna. You know this. They knew your plans. They sabotaged your devices. She told them.’
‘Atryssa, Tisamon. At least speak her name.’
‘You think I can’t?’ Tisamon spat. ‘Atryssa betrayed us. Happier with that? She sold us to the Empire, and she left us to die there in Myna. And don’t forget that not all of us escaped alive.’
‘Oh, I remember Myna. I’ve never stopped thinking of it,’ Stenwold said. ‘But she didn’t betray us, Tisamon.’
‘She-’
‘Hear me out!’ Stenwold snapped. ‘Hammer and tongs, hear what I’ve got to say, and then if you still want to kill me, well, I’m all yours.’
Tisamon regarded him in silence.
‘You see, while you stayed in Helleron, I hunted her down. I wanted to confront her with what she had done. Only she wasn’t easy to find — no, let me finish — she was in hiding, yes, but not from us.’
He closed his eyes, calling back seventeen years in order to picture the scene.
‘Nero found her in the end. He was always a good man for the tracking. When we got there she was. . hurt.’
There was the merest twitch in Tisamon. It gave Stenwold hope.
‘She had been trying to get to us, to keep the rendezvous, but the Wasps intercepted her — or some of their agents did. She had to fight them.’
That was too much for Tisamon. ‘So she would fight them! She was a skilled duellist. A handful of Wasp agents would not have slowed her down!’
‘Listen!’ Stenwold realized that he himself was finding it difficult to stem the anger he felt. This was an injustice long gone unsettled, and he now had it in his hands to put history right. The knowledge gave him the strength to say it: ‘She beat them. She did beat them, but she was badly injured, because of her condition.’
‘Her. . condition?’
Stenwold actually mustered a smile, as hard-edged a piece of work as any he had known. ‘She was with child, Tisamon, when she fought them. It slowed her down.’
The Mantis stared at him blankly.
‘When Nero and I finally found her, she was near her time, but she was weak, very weak. She had been keeping low. The Wasps were still hunting her. She was in a Merro slum. There was no one else with her.’ He watched expressions fight to make themselves known on Tisamon’s face. ‘When she bore the child, she died, but the child lived.’
And he left it at that, let Tisamon’s unsatisfied questions fall into the pit of silence between them, then waited and waited.
‘What. .? But who. . was the father?’ A mere whisper.
‘I don’t know. Who might have shared her bed last, do you think?’
Tisamon stared at him. ‘No. . no.’
‘She spoke only of you, those few days we had. She had put aside her protections. It was her choice.’ Stenwold was aware that he was simply putting the knife in now, but it was a knife he had carried for a long time, which had weighed on him every day of it.
‘She’s. . that girl is. .’
Stenwold nodded.
‘But she looks. .’
‘Oh, the looks she gets from her mother. There’s no doubting that. What she gets from her father has yet to reveal itself.’
‘She’s a halfbreed?’
‘I suppose she’d have to be,’ said Stenwold. ‘That’s how it works.’