Blood of the Mantis

We taught his kind well, to be afraid of our power, Achaeos reflected, but whilst he and the Skryre had both been distracted, someone else had taken advantage of the moment.

Scyla hunched forwards, as if moving against a gale, and plunged her knife into Palearchos’s ribs with all her strength. Before the old man had even begun to fall she had kicked the rear door open and was running out into the night, leaving the blade still embedded in her victim. Achaeos felt the old man’s hold leach from him, and then he was running after her, wings blossoming darkly from his back.

But she was gone. When he got into the night air, she was already gone. Scyla had evaded them yet again, and she was one whose trade was made for hiding. She was gone, and the box with her. He ran down street after street, searching frantically, but she was gone.

Thalric and Tynisa had arrived when he returned. They and Tisamon were gathered about the old Moth, and Achaeos saw that Palearchos was just clinging to life.

He knelt by the old man respectfully because, in spite of everything, they were kin, and furthermore Palearchos had been a Skryre. A renegade now, Achaeos guessed, but a Skryre once.

He took the old man’s hand, and the white eyes, narrowing into slits of pain, sought him out.

‘You, boy…’ came Palearchos’s faint voice. ‘You are of Tharn, you said…’

‘I was,’ said Achaeos softly. ‘I do not know whether I am still. That will depend on the circumstance of my return.’

‘I had hoped to see Tharn again,’ said the old Skryre. ‘Here on the edge of the world… I had thought that, if I could bring this thing to them, this prize, then perhaps they would forget what I had done, the path I had travelled. So it ends, boy. Understand this, if you travel the same road as I.’

Here was a magician of power, the strongest Achaeos had ever matched skills with, dying like a beggar on the floor of some filthy Jerez guesthouse. Is that my fate? The thought made something inside him squirm, as though it was a future he had already seen and hidden from himself.

‘They would not have taken you back,’ he whispered, whether to himself or Palearchos he did not know. ‘Not with the box, because it scared them. They want nothing to do with it. If you had come to them with it, they would have driven you away.’

Palearchos let out a long, slow sigh. ‘So,’ he said. His blank eyes found Achaeos’s. ‘And you will have the box, will you?’

‘If I can,’ the young Moth confirmed. ‘And if it will have me.’

The old man’s face twisted in what Achaeos took for pain, only recognizing it as rage when too late.

‘Unworthy!’ spat Palearchos, and his power seared its way into Achaeos’s mind, into all their minds, like red-hot metal.

Thalric dropped instantly. Without defences against the Moth’s assault, the blast knocked him instantly cold, and he fell to the floor in a clatter of armour. Tisamon had begun keening, hands clasped to his face, battering himself against the walls. Achaeos heard Tynisa scream in outrage and agony.

Palearchos was now dying, on the very threshold of that final all-consuming dawn, and he was doing his best to drag them all into the fire with him. Eyes bulging, teeth bared, his face was locked in a grimace of effort. Achaeos felt the man’s mental grip clawing at him frantically.

So much stronger than him, this man, but dying, his reserves drained. Achaeos mustered his will, fighting back in order to free himself. A moment’s liberty was all it would take. He caught a glimpse of Tynisa clutching at her arm, racked with agony. Tisamon was roaring, slashing the air around blindly with his spines, getting uncomfortably close.

I was never good at this.

In that moment Achaeos looked straight into the old man’s madly vindictive eyes and tried, not to oppose, but to twist. It was as simple as letting a stronger enemy’s sword fall askew by taking a side-step, where to simply block the stroke would be to have his own sword shattered. For a split second that crushing grasp slipped off him, and Achaeos lunged forward.

It was not his mind that he lunged with because, even dying, the old man’s defences would have swatted him down. He jabbed one hand forwards and struck the hilt of Scyla’s knife as hard as he could – driving it yet deeper into Palearchos’s body.

And the old man was no longer dying, but dead. A spasm of shock coursed through his body and then he was gone. Tisamon collapsed to his knees, one hand still to his head. Achaeos heard Tynisa’s ragged breathing behind him, saw Thalric begin groggily to stir.

We still live, but we have gained nothing but pain this night. He had wasted the chance the ghost had given him.

Outside, the bodies of Palearchos’s ghost warriors had been reclaimed by the shadows. Even the arrow that had decorated Thalric’s armour was gone. Nothing was now left of the old Moth exile but his corpse.