She was there, like a writhing dark shadow in the corner of his cell. Laetrimae shuddered and hung there as though suspended on hooks: woman and mantis and savage thorns all intertwined. He glanced quickly at Felise, then at Ult, realizing that neither of them could see her. Laetrimae was present for his nightmares only and, when he looked back at her, she nodded once.
‘No!’ he exclaimed, suddenly rebellious, startling Ult, who put his hand to the cell’s door. Is this it? The final turn of the knife?
‘You came here to fight me?’ he insisted.
Felise was still gazing at him with an expression that spoke in equal parts of love and hate. ‘I did not come here for you. You know what I came here seeking. However, since you are here, perhaps you can help me find it.’ Her smile was pitiless. ‘Perhaps we can find it together.’
We are being used like pieces of a machine. He felt her hand touch his as he clung to the bars. He half-expected her claw to lash out and to sever a finger or strike at his face, but her hand was warm, and when she covered his own it was a lover’s gesture.
If we are pieces of a machine, we are broken pieces. He knew how she must feel. He had come here without hope, and then Ult had given him a purpose by mentioning the Emperor.
Kill the Emperor. Would that make sense of it all?
‘Enough,’ grunted Ult, behind him. ‘Enough time.’ A glance at the Wasp showed the old man was not devoid of sympathy, shuffling a little in embarrassment. ‘You need to go back now, old Mantis. Your time’s up.’
He felt her sudden presence in his dreams, Tisamon thrashing in brief nightmare before he leapt, kicking and fighting, into wakefulness.
‘Felise?’ he got out, but he knew, even before he opened his eyes, that it was not Felise Mienn who had come to visit.
She coalesced out of the darkness, there beneath the arena, where a few smoky torches were shared across the whole labyrinth of bars and cages. She was strangely lit by light from elsewhere, so that he could see her more clearly than he wanted to.
‘Are you happy now?’ he asked softly, wishing he could strike at her, but there was nothing to strike at and, besides, it would be blasphemy.
She stared down on him, nothing but that taut knot of pain and hurt that was left when the mortal woman Laetrimae had been ripped from the world of the living. Happy, Tisamon? The words came to him unspoken. Have I cause to rejoice?
‘Your plan has its hooks in me,’ he accused. ‘I had thought these bars would be the worst of it, but there is always something worse – and you have found it.’
She shimmered and blurred for a moment, as the thorny vines continued to crawl their bloody tracks across her skin. It is not my plan, nor your place to complain.
‘You brought me here,’ he argued weakly.
I was brought here against my will. You guided yourself here.
He became aware that some of the neighbouring prisoners were now listening, and wondered what they could make of this one-sided conversation. Perhaps such muttered ravings were not uncommon down here.
‘So you are just a piece, then? Just another broken piece?’ he suggested.
Just another broken piece. There is always something worse, as you say, and I have found it.
For a moment the voice in his mind had sounded like that of a real woman, one alone and in great pain, and he glanced up at her.
‘So I must fight poor Felise Mienn, spill her blood to open the way to the Emperor, if I can manage it.’
There came a noise that chilled him all the way through and made his skin crawl. It was, he realized then, Laetrimae laughing.
Is that what you think your purpose is? Your pride is not yet sated then?
Tisamon stared at her blankly.
You cannot kill the Emperor, Tisamon. You are not as invincible as you believe. Try it, and you shall fail – as you have always failed in those things most important to you. You must set your sights at more realistic targets.
He was on his feet abruptly, his clawed gauntlet already covering his hand. She shimmered and glowed in the darkness and he wanted to drive his blade into her heart. Except that he knew she was not truly there and had no heart left to her.
The look she gave him, before she vanished away, was sheer contempt.
Twenty-One
The cards were slapped down on the wooden board, and Balkus cursed, not for the first time. Plius chuckled and scooped them up, adding them to his already considerable hoard.
‘Must have taken years of practice for you to get that bad, Sarnesh.’
Balkus glowered at him. He had been losing steadily throughout the evening, and mostly to this fat Ant with the bluish skin. ‘Just deal again,’ he grunted.
Plius laid out the next three centre-cards, and the players retreated to study their hands and decide what to play. The problem with the game of Lords was that the winner tended to keep on winning. It was a Fly-kinden import to Sarn, and Balkus didn’t think much of it. Being a poor player, he preferred games with a greater element of luck.
The third player, Parops, had already placed his cards down, not to be drawn further into the bickering of the two men. He had not come across card games before, for, alone of the three, he had lived close to a normal Ant-kinden life, before the Wasps had come to his city. Ants did not play card games with each other, for when they were amongst their own kind it was against their very nature to bluff. Amongst those from other Ant cities, they fought.
Except not here, not now, and it was one of those little pieces of history so easily trampled over and lost after the fact. The great bulk of the army camped about them was Sarnesh, of course, but here on this flank were the exceptions. Here, Balkus had his mob of Collegium volunteers, who were were audible across the entire camp with their drinking and singing and talking out loud – unthinkable! Parops had with him his pale Tarkesh, the exiles who had been left with nothing to do but spill imperial blood. Their chances of ever seeing home again were brittle and slim: they were renegades now in all but name, forced out of a conquered home and into mercenary life. Some Ants chose that willingly, even whole detachments of them, but Parops and his men would have preferred a settled existence back home had they been allowed.
Then there were the Tseni that had come, at Plius’ call, from their faraway city. They kept their distance from the others here in a land normally identified as hostile on all their maps. They were Ant-kinden, too, but foreign, wearing scale armour rather than chainmail, carrying oval shields and swords with a back-hook jutting from the blade. They might have seemed primitive, except that they came with superior crossbows: heavy pieces equipped with a long-handled winch to recock them at a single turn. They’re just different, Balkus had decided and, anyway, Tsen was far enough away from the other Ant cities not to have to fight them regularly. They had not followed the Lowlands’ curve of history but kept themselves well apart out on the Atoll Coast.
Those three Ant-kinden officers had become, not friends exactly, but enforced allies against the great sameness of the Sarnesh: two outsiders and one insider trying to remain outside. They kept to each other’s company and played the games that Plius had learnt from his days spent in the Sarnesh Foreigners’ Quarter. Ant-kinden needed peers and, from their positions of unwilling command, they had only each other as equals.
It had been hard enough, going on the journey east. They had not known if they would run into the Wasps before schedule, with nothing more than some panting Fly-kinden to warn them of it. Instead they had covered more distance than anticipated, the Wasp advance running well behind time. This suited the Sarnesh, who were thinking about what would happen if the coming clash became another Battle of the Rails. They wanted proper time to prepare their city’s defences.