Blood of the Mantis

Solarno was a city turned mad and thrashing. A hundred yards from the Destiavel house, another noble’s mansion was in flames, with fighting at its doorways so fierce that Che could not tell whether those inside were trying to escape or those outside only wanted to throw themselves into the fire. She saw no distinctive sashes on any of them, suggesting some private grudge meeting a settlement of opportunity. Everywhere the Solarnese were busy killing each other, and occasionally Wasps stood looking on, heedless of whether their supposed allies were winning or not.

All those factions, all that talk about their ruling councils, and in the end it was just a barrel of firepowder waiting for the spark. The parties of Solarno had finally been galvanized, after the initiative forced on the Crystal Standard by the Wasps had broken the fragile balance. Left to themselves, Che guessed, it would have been a simple night of violence, and then stability would follow the sunrise. But this time the Wasps would fan the flames and, in the morning, Solarno would have become an imperial city. The people at each other’s throats would blink in the dawn light and realise that they were no longer free.

Taki had been leading them swift and straight, sometimes running and sometimes flying, but without warning she stopped, staring ahead of her. In front of them was some taverna or other, which did not seem to Che in any way special, except that it was being looted. The front door was broken in, with young men and women tearing up the interior in search of valuables. Che noticed the sashes of at least two parties involved, and guessed that this was again a private venture and not the work of political partisans.

‘Taki?’ she asked. ‘What is it.’

‘Just… you can’t understand,’ the Fly said. ‘It’s not ever going to be the same, is it?’

‘You can fight the Wasps-’ Che started.

‘It isn’t the Wasps. You really don’t know. You’ve only been here a few days. I’m Solarnese, and this is my home. That… that was where we all used to meet: me and Niamedh and Amre and the rest. That was where he died.’

Her half-brother, Che recalled, killed by the Wasps. Now the very planks of her memories were being torn up.

‘Hey now, if we’re going to move we should move,’ said Nero edgily. He had a knife in his hand. ‘This is getting worse than at Tark.’

‘Look!’ Che gasped. A flight of Wasp soldiers was feathering down 200 yards ahead of them, blocking their path. They fell from the sky in eerie silence, glimmering wings outspread, and as the first few touched down, a handful of others ran from a side-street to join them. One seemed to be giving hurried orders, pointing down alleys and indicating precise sections of the street. Che recalled Nero’s suspicion about there being Wasps in Solarno with a mindlink. How else could such a tidy operation be controlled?

The Wasps were now advancing directly down the street, and as soon as they reached the looters they simply started blasting away with their stings, killing half a dozen and instantly scattering the rest. They were shouting something, and Che picked out the words, ‘Curfew!’ and then, ‘Everyone inside!’

‘We have to leave!’ she urged Taki, and saw with a shock the tears glinting on the Fly woman’s face. The expression itself remained resolute, though, and Taki glanced quickly about them and then chose a side-street that would lead them around and beyond the advancing Wasp squad.

Che glanced up, as the rattle of an approaching orthopter grew loud, seeing the flying machine skim the rooftops as if keeping a watch on progress below.

‘Taki, if we take off, they’ll see.’

‘That they will!’ the Fly called back.

‘But they’ll come to try and stop us,’ Che told her. ‘They’ll fight us.’

‘They’ll fight me,’ said Taki grimly. ‘And so let them!’

Further away, across the rooftops, a Solarnese fixed-wing, none that Che recognized, was making a tight circle, duelling with a Wasp orthopter in a complex tangle of loops that eventually took them both out over the Exalsee. The flying machine that had just passed overhead made a ponderous turn and set out to give its colleague aid, passing so low that it rattled the tiles of the roofs.

‘What about your mistress?’ Che suddenly realized. ‘What about Genissa? Shouldn’t you be looking after her?’

‘She’s off already,’ Taki replied. ‘She’s gone to rally the Satin Trail, and she’s got guards enough. You two are my responsibility.’

There was a slight hitch in her voice, though, which told Che that this responsibility was self-imposed.