‘Some deal they were brokering with the Mantids?’ Tynisa suggested.
He shrugged. ‘Maybe. Not a currency that’s any good around here though, certainly not at the time this boat must have come down. Your plan, Tynisa — it’s a fool’s plan.’
‘We’re all fools anyway, so that works out well,’ she retorted, ‘but I’ll make Che the stakes of the wager.’ Her eyes shifted over to the hatch, past Amnon’s shoulder. The sky was darkening already. ‘Mantis honour. Let’s hope that currency’s still good around here.’
She made as if to go, but Thalric caught her arm. For a moment he held her, just looking into her eyes, words rising in him and being thrust back down again. In the end, he could not bring himself to thank her for what she was about to try, although it was a debt that weighed on him heavily. After all, it doesn’t matter that we don’t like each other, so long as we both love Che.
She nodded, and in that brief motion he saw that she understood. Then she was stepping carefully over to Amnon, the only one of them who did not know what the Commonweal gambit actually entailed.
He knew Mantis-kinden, though, and after a few brief words she had him nodding agreement. ‘I will go, though,’ he put in.
Tynisa jabbed a thumb at the sword-and-circle brooch she wore. ‘This badge says I go.’ She stepped past him and hauled herself out into the square stretch of greying sky that the hatch delineated, holding her sword high.
One arrow, right now, and the Commonweal trick hits the dirt, thought Thalric. But perhaps that raised weapon signalled Tynisa’s intent, for no shaft feathered from the trees to seek her out.
And the problem with the Commonweal trick is that it isn’t a trick at all. And surely those Mantids out there will have a few of those badges between them.
And, of course, you couldn’t solve all the world’s problems just by fighting a duel of champions. Not even the Mantis-kinden world worked like that. So Tynisa could buy Che a slightly longer life, but they were all still intruders in the Mantis heartland. There was only so much some Mantis swordsman’s death could buy for them.
Or Tynisa’s life. And Thalric was surprised to find that the prospect of Tisamon’s daughter getting her surely justified comeuppance did not delight him the way it once had. I am running out of peers. I shouldn’t squander the few I have left.
‘Hear me!’ Tynisa called out. ‘Know me by the badge I wear. Are any of you bold enough to meet me?’
Thalric waited, still half-expecting that arrow, but then Amnon grunted, ‘Someone comes.’
A lone, lean figure stepped out into the clearing, and Thalric wondered if that same wariness — of a sudden and treacherous shot — had affected their enemy as well. Even Mantis-kinden must fear a bad death. The woman who stepped forwards had a bow in one hand, but no arrow to it, and she looked up at Che curiously.
‘For entering our forests, you will die,’ the Nethyon declared, her voice clear and sharp. ‘And for being of our enemy’s kinden, you must die. For being of that kinden, and worse, death is better than you deserve.’ She looked up at Tynisa fiercely. ‘And yet you bear the badge. . I see Parosyal on you, halfbreed.’
‘I earned this on the island,’ Tynisa agreed. ‘I was accepted there. No words of yours can strip me of my right to bear the sword and circle.’
Thalric expected an angry response, but the Mantis woman’s shoulders sagged, and he could almost put the words into her mouth: What is the world coming to? For a long time she just stood there, looking up at Tynisa, at the unforgivable adulteration of Mantis ways that she represented, and at the badge she also bore.
She would rather we had just shot her, Thalric guessed.
‘Let it be at dawn,’ Tynisa declared, when it was plain that the woman was not going to say anything. ‘And I claim as trophy the Beetle woman your people have taken, she is the victor’s prize. Not one drop of her blood must be shed, until we have fought.’ She said the words boldly, but Thalric was already trying to plan for her failure: How can I get Che out of this mess? And, furthermore, he knew that Tynisa was fully aware he would be thinking just that. So Mantis honour is a blade that only cuts one way, is it?
‘You speak of the great magician?’ the Mantis woman asked.
Tynisa hesitated, but Maure spoke up: ‘Yes! That is who we mean!’
‘We don’t have her,’ the Nethyen said slowly. ‘We are hunting her, and she may be killed, once she is found. If she is taken alive, we will kill her after we have killed you, but I cannot guarantee that she is not already dead — or that she will not die soon. We know better than to take risks when hunting a magician.’
Tynisa remained very still, but Thalric could see the fingers of her off-hand clawing at the rotting wood of the hatch’s edge.
‘Let it be dawn, though,’ the Mantis woman finished. ‘Why not?’
Terastos let his attention flow out between the trees, trying to project all his senses, into hunting out his enemies. Night was drawing in — his advantage, for his eyes were better than any Mantis-kinden’s — and he neither could see nor hear any suggestion that the Nethyen were close by. Nor did his paltry magic suggest it
‘Gone,’ he whispered for Helma Bartrer’s benefit. ‘Gone off after the Maker girl and the others.’
The Beetle woman shifted, in a single motion making a remarkable amount of noise. They were almost completely buried amid a stand of bracken, its fronds curling almost to man-height above them, but every time Bartrer moved their entire hiding place shuddered as if the wind was at it.
‘Oh, they clearly know who’s important,’ the woman said acidly. ‘The Maker girl and her newfound heritage, yes. Not us.’
‘Thankfully,’ Terastos added. ‘Come full night, I’ll see what trail I can find. We can catch up with them. . if they got away, that is.’
‘I have a feeling that Che Maker is quite safe. There was a purpose in her coming here. Not necessarily the purpose she assumed,’ Bartrer put in.
The Moth turned to her. ‘You’re well read, for a Collegiate.’
‘I’ve been studying the old ways since before you were born,’ Bartrer boasted. ‘And I might not understand what the Maker girl is now, or how she does it, but I can read between the lines.’
‘And what is your scholarly conclusion?’ Terastos enquired somewhat archly.
‘Argastos wants her here.’
He turned to her, wide-eyed. ‘You think?’
‘I told you, I’ve read enough to know some scraps of history about this place. I only wish I’d got to visit here when there wasn’t a war going on to complicate things. History books, yes, but a scholar can’t live off books forever. There was an Argastos once, and I believe that there is an Argastos still, somehow, some shadow of him.’
‘You’re a remarkable Beetle,’ he conceded.
‘Not as remarkable as Che Maker, it’s true,’ she allowed bitterly, ‘but I do my best.’ She rammed her dagger up under his ribcage with all the force she could muster, right up to the hilt, so that what emerged from his lips was not a cry but only blood.
She struck two, three more times, and made a sorry mess of the task, too. She was, after all, an academic and not a habitual killer.
Then she wanted to retch, to cast aside the knife and retreat from her horrible handiwork, but she knew that time was of the essence.
‘Argastos,’ she said, for even though she possessed no power, she had still learned that names were power among the Inapt. If I go through the motions well enough. .? ‘Argastos, this is yours, this blood. I have no altar, no icon. Take his life, though. It is my gift to you. Argastos, I am weak. I am the last of my line, the dregs of a once proud lineage. In times long past my family were loyal followers of your kinden. We were your servants and your slaves, Argastos, and that was our purpose and our place in the world. But we have lost our meaning, generation on generation, and now I know I am just a weak and empty vessel, but please, there must be enough — some last spark of the old ways in me — that you can hear my words. Argastos, I shed his blood, a magician’s blood, for you. Please, please, please let me in.’