Empire in Black and Gold (57 page)

He knew exactly where he was going. The cells. Cheerwell Maker and her Dragonfly friend. He had not even considered them at the time, when he had run into Kymene and her escapees. Those had just been locals and, more, he had been under the burden of what he had to do that night to Ulther. Now it was done, however, his perspective was coming back to him.

And he almost ran into them. He heard the footsteps in time, though, and ducked back into a doorway, flattening himself against the wood and freezing, as instinctive to him as breathing after all his years in the field.

They were a ragged crowd. Only one Mynan local and a grab-bag of others, even a Mantis-kinden with one of their ridiculous hingeing claws. And near the back was the Dragonfly-kinden male, and there, behind him, was Cheerwell Maker.

They were off down the corridor and he raised an arm after them, feeling the Art-force of his sting stir in his palm and fingers. Cheerwell Maker had a broad back, a good target even in this light.

It would be a shame not to continue his interrogation. A shame not to have one more conversation with her.

It had been a long night, and he had to act now if he was going to seize this chance. There was a babble of voices in his head, though. He could hear Kymene’s voice:
Perhaps one good deed to balance out all the bad ones?
and there was Cheerwell herself asking what harm the Empire would suffer if she were freed.

And he had told her that he would rather cut her throat there and then than stand the least chance of her impeding the Empire in any way. He remembered it clearly, after all of that weary night. He could hear his own flat words ringing in his ears.

He was not the master of his own mind in that moment, as Che’s back retreated further down the corridor. The gates were thrown wide and anything could enter.
Ulther’s last moments, both betrayer and betrayed. Aagen’s distaste with the torture implements . . .

The Dragonfly noblewoman screaming, screaming, as he killed her children for the Empire.

And then he told himself, he did not know whether he even had the strength in him to summon his Art. And he might yet recapture her, or even turn her, or find some use for her still alive. And a hundred other post-facto justifications.

He felt physically ill. He did not know whether it was because the shield of his loyalty had been chipped, or because of the lesson all those voices had been reciting in his head.

He reached for his Art, and felt his palm warm with it, and spark. It felt as though he were trying to lift a monstrous weight, to conjure the sting-fire into being, and all for the pittance reward of a dead Beetle girl. His breath caught with the strain of it.

It had been a long night. He was allowed one error of judgment.

He lowered his arm, and set off to find a bed to collapse into.

Every step and they expected the host of the Empire to descend on them. Even when they reached the storeroom the commotion above had not ceased, but was working its determined way down towards them. They dropped back into the sewers as fast as they could. Achaeos went first, descending gratefully into the dark, and flitting far ahead, beyond the lamp that Chyses had rekindled. Totho and Che were left to help the hobbling Salma, whose breath hissed with pain at every step, from the cramp that was still running up and down through his back and arms. Tynisa stared at Tisamon. She knew he expected her to go first, that he would play rearguard. She stepped down into the sewers but she was waiting for him when he followed, keeping pace with him, letting the others drift out of sight, out of earshot. Soon Tisamon lit his own lantern, a tiny low light that was enough to stop the dark defeating their eyes. It was as though the lamplight did not fall on her, though, for still Tisamon would not look at her, would not acknowledge her save that everything they did was linked, step for step, in a mutual understanding neither of them could deny.

Where else can I confront you, if not this dead and buried place?

It was time to force fate, to bring matters to a head.

She waited until they were long gone from beneath the palace. She gave him that leeway. Then she stopped and waited.

He had slowed even as she did so, that bond between them communicating, through her footsteps or her breathing, that something was wrong.

‘Tisamon,’ she began, and he had stopped, merely a grey shape and a black shadow.

‘We’ve put this off for too long,’ she told his back. ‘We have to talk, please, Tisamon, let’s talk.’

She almost held her breath then. The only sounds were the water of the sewers, the faint skitter of the roaches beyond the lantern’s stretch.

She thought she saw him shake his head, though she could not be sure. In the next moment he had started off again, as though she had said nothing.

‘Tisamon!’ she snapped. ‘Or Father. Would you prefer that?’

She had stopped him, but she was running out of things to throw at his feet. Again he had paused, but it was only a moment. She had to run after him to avoid being left in the dark.

She had just one missile left. She had saved it until the last because, once loosed, it could not be taken back.

‘Spite on you,’ she hissed, and the whisper that followed was her rapier clearing its scabbard. And yes, he knew that sound. It stopped and turned him far more sharply than any of her words had.

‘Look at me,’ she challenged, and he did. In the lantern’s uncertain light she could not name his expression, or even see if he had one. The claw buckled to his right hand and arm was now just a shadow amongst shadows.

‘Put that away,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘This is no time to play.’

She dropped into her duelling stance, sword levelled at him. ‘Oh, you’re right,’ she told him. ‘And I’ve done playing.’

He lifted the lantern slightly. His eyes held only a look of disdain, and he made to turn away.

‘If you turn your back on me now, I swear I’ll kill you. And believe me, I take my oaths every bit as seriously as you do.’

With unhurried movements he placed the lantern on the walkway and turned the light up a little, narrowing his eyes against it. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ was all he said.

‘Foolish, is it? We have unresolved business, you and I.’

‘Have we indeed?’

He would not even face it, nor did he look at her sword. Nothing in his stance suggested he believed in it as a threat. He would not fight her, would not even entertain the idea. He would not take her seriously.

‘I know what you’re afraid of,’ she told him.

‘Do you indeed?’

‘Oh, I know it’s not this sword,’ she said, inching closer. ‘I know it isn’t me. You’re the great Tisamon and you fear no fighter under the sky or beneath the earth.’ Even as she spoke she was in Collegium again, before it all started, baiting Piraeus into fighting her. Mantis pride, that was the key. They were all armour on the outside, but vulnerable, so vulnerable within.

And I myself am of them – half of them.

She made a sudden advance on him, but he contemptuously kept his distance. There was no fear in it, simply that he had no interest in fighting her. He would have taken the challenge of any wretch in the street, but not hers. She could chase him off into the darkness, but he would evade her and lose her.

She prepared her barbed dart. ‘You are afraid,’ she told him. ‘You’re afraid of this face.’

His stance changed, ever so slightly. Even now that same link worked between them, as though they were Ant-kinden of the same city, sharing thoughts.

‘You’re afraid of the past,’ she told him, ‘because you abandoned her. You wanted to believe she was a traitor, that she had seduced you and discarded you, rather than even go and find the truth. Much easier that way, wasn’t it? But you know now. You know that it was you who betrayed her. And that’s what you really can’t face!’

And she lunged at him, but this time he did not give.

She thought for a terrible moment that she was going to run him through, but she had forgotten who she had drawn sword on. The moment before the tip of her rapier pierced his arming jacket, his blade had swept it aside. She felt it scrape across the claw, across the armoured gauntlet.

Then the claw unfolded and he was at her.

She almost fell over her feet, turning her desperate lunge into a stumbling backstep. She nearly fell over the lantern in her next step, kicking it so that it was lying at the very edge of the walkway. She fell back ten paces without being able to stop herself, but he had pulled his advance up short, something catching in his face, and she got to the length of her rapier and drove in again.

She had never fought like this before. It was not the Prowess Forum’s formal style, nor the street brawling she had espoused since then. It took all of her skill in every stroke, blade flickering faster than eye could follow. It was every ounce of her youth and effort and instinct against a master.

Her thrust had been for his chest, but his blade was there before it. She bounded over it, driving forward, pressing on, keeping ahead of his circular guard, over and beside and under and always, always, pressing forward. The moment he took her blade aside she would be at his reach, and he within hers. His face, as he passed the lantern’s light, was set and deadly.

She had forgotten his offhand. Even as she thought his blade was outmanoeuvred, he slapped her rapier out of line with his left palm, slinging her sword arm across her body, and the crescent of his blade was a bright line in the lamplight as it came to cut her throat.

She swayed back, so far as to almost overbalance. She heard the passing of his blade, just an inch away, yet she had not given up her advance. She dragged her rapier back, sending the razor edge across his stomach, under his guard. His offhand caught it, palm-to-flat, and he twisted away, pushing her blade aside but exposing his left side to her. She thought she had him then. She flicked her sword from his grasp, brought the pommel past her chin to put the length of the blade between them, and speared it at his flank. Her target was gone, though. He had turned about on the instant, and the scythe of his claw was sweeping for her head.

She kicked backwards, and this time she fell. The blade swept over her and she was scrambling to her feet as fast as she could. He feinted towards her, stopped. Or at least she had thought it was a feint. The lantern was between them now and she could see the catch again, something holding his blade back.

Her face. She should listen better to her own words. He had driven her back past the lamp so its light fell on her face. Each time it did there came that minute catch in his assault.

She reclaimed her feet. There was a slice of time in which he was poised, staring at her face – at dead Atryssa’s face.

Then he went for her, and she knew her luck was used up.

The claw spun and swept, moving with all the fluid grace his wrist and arm could lend it, spiralling past her guard. Even so she got her blade in the way, hearing the two metallic sounds as she warded it off. Then she had lunged back at him, and he turned the thrust, but not effortlessly. For a second they were locked together, face to face, and then she dodged away and back before he could get his spines into her. He was dancing towards her again, a man who had fought since he was a boy, a man of forty years, and all bar six or seven of them spent with a blade in his hands. He was just a shadow now, the lantern light behind him as he forced her to back up, step after step.

He was death.

She swept away a lunge, tried to riposte into him. Her thoughts had ceased and she had no time for them. Her feet, her body, her blade, everything depended on her instincts, her reflexes, faster and faster. She took his blows and turned them into her own attacks, over and over. He was always there with a parry that led, as though some natural law compelled it, into another series of blistering attacks. He was faster still. He was picking his pace up, and her breathing was ragged. She had almost stopped using her eyes, long since stopped using her mind. The blows came out of blackness, and she heard them as much as saw them. She fended them off and fended them off. She had stopped attacking. He left her no room for it. Then her rapier blade was abruptly caught between his forearm and his claw, and as she tried to draw it back he rushed forward. She felt the hilt twist in her hand and held on to it hard, and he turned his arm and dashed it against the sewer wall, and her blade, her beautiful blade that Stenwold had bought for her, snapped at the guard, leaving not even a sharp stub.

He was going to kill her.

She cried out then. The link between them was enough, still, to let her know that he would strike.

She was braced for it, with a dignity that surprised her in the face of death at her father’s hands. She felt the cold edge of his blade. It was at her throat, of course. He had his habits, as did any fighter. Her breath sobbed into and out of her lungs, and beyond it she heard his, too. She imagined him using all his control to hold back the killing stroke.

But it was not like that. He was now still as still, no struggle. Her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the light within the very grey periphery of their lantern. His face was merely a faint pale outline on which no expression could be discerned.

She did not trust herself to speak or make any sound at all, and he too was silent.

Then the blade moved, and she forced herself not to flinch. It did not slide away, though. Instead she felt the flat of it against her cheek, cupping her face more towards him, then this way and that, his eyes straining to see her.

And then it was gone from her, folding back along his arm. He turned, merely a silhouette, leaning against the sewer wall with one hand. She noticed the rise and fall of his breathing.

She could have killed him, though she realized this only later, so glad the idea had not then occurred to her.

‘You are my daughter,’ he said finally. ‘And by my damned soul, you are
hers.
’

The words struck her almost physically, as he never had. Something wrenched inside her, and she let her sword hilt fall from raw fingers. She approached him with faltering steps, feeling her breath catch.