Blood of the Mantis

There was a long pause, in which Brodan stared at him, surely trying to place him. Thalric leant back, waiting, looking as natural, as unconcerned, as could be.

‘Major Thalric?’ Brodan said at last, not quite sure. ‘The same. But do sit down, Lieutenant.’

Brodan did, and about them his men slowly relaxed, though not without a few puzzled glances.

‘Well, it’s been a while, sir,’ Brodan said. ‘Fetch a drink for Major Thalric,’ he ordered one of his men, who jumped to his feet and ran off into the rear of the grimy little Skater drinking hole. ‘I didn’t realize you were in these parts, sir. I thought your work took you out west more.’

Thalric smiled. ‘You know how it is when you do the work we do,’ he said. ‘One day in the Commonweal and the next in Capitas.’ Brodan, he was guessing, had never been to the capital. It was a good name to drop to get the man thinking of him as a superior officer, and so not to be questioned.

‘Of course, sir,’ Brodan acknowledged. ‘Can we help you in any way in Jerez, sir? Or are you here with your own people?’

Thalric studied the man’s face: blunt and honest, under a mop of dark hair, the look of a simple soldier, with a soldier’s powerful build. But Brodan was Rekef, and therefore more than he seemed. ‘A little of both, perhaps. Tell me, Lieutenant, what are your orders?’

He had expected the man to be cagey about them, but Brodan sighed. ‘Retrieval – some piece of contraband. You know how difficult it is to find anything in this place, though. I’m of a mind to just start executing the locals until someone feels ready to tip us off.’

‘No great loss to the Empire if you do,’ Thalric agreed. It was almost unbearable, this moment of cutting nostalgia. Here he was again, a Rekef major talking with his underlings. He felt his exile – his death sentence – like a weight about his neck. How could he not belong here still? ‘You have leads, of course, or you’ve lost what craft I remember of you.’

‘Precious few,’ Brodan grumbled. ‘Oh, there’s something going on, and some odd faces turning up, but getting to the truth in Jerez, well… Before I made the Rekef I did a stint on the smuggler run here. Night after night out on the lake in little boats, getting eaten alive by the midges and watching the lights. We were out here a month, and they reckoned the trade just got worse while we were. These little bastards, sir, they knew just where we were sitting and what we were there for.’

Thalric nodded sympathetically, hearing the rain patter harder around them. They relocated, by unspoken consent, to beneath the roof of the taverna, huddled in an odd pattern to avoid the leaks through the perished thatch.

‘Of course,’ Brodan said, ‘eventually they reckoned someone in our company was on the take.’

Thalric let that hang there, still casual in his pose, every muscle taut as steel on the inside.

‘Unless it’s a secret, sir, may I know what you’re here for?’

‘Investigating a threat to the Empire, Lieutenant,’ Thalric replied. ‘As always.’

‘A threat to the Empire, sir, right.’ For a long time, Brodan and Thalric just stared at each other, and then Thalric smiled again, feeling a strange release of tension.

‘Your soldier’s not back with my drink, Lieutenant. That seems lax discipline. You shouldn’t stand for it.’

‘No, sir. I’ll have words with him.’

‘When he gets back from the garrison with the others, of course.’

Brodan’s smile was not entirely devoid of regret. ‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Well, I shouldn’t underestimate the speed with which bad news spreads, should I?’ Thalric was still slouching in his chair, quite obviously not the man for any sudden moves. The careless pose made them uncertain, and most of the soldiers obviously did not share Brodan’s up-to-date knowledge of recent Rekef reversals.

‘They made sure to get hold of anyone who used to know you, sir. They told us.’

‘I’m sure they did.’ Inside, he felt sick. So close! For just a minute he had been the man he used to be, and now… betrayal again. He seemed to be a magnet for it, either giving or receiving. He wondered what Brodan had actually been told.

Not that it mattered so much. Brodan was a good soldier and he would obey his orders. ‘They’ll probably make you captain for this, Lieutenant,’ Thalric remarked.

‘That would be nice, sir.’ Brodan’s face remained without expression. There was, Thalric understood, no second chance here for him. Brodan was not the kind of man to let old times get in the way of duty. Thalric could remember a certain Rekef major very close to him who had been just like that, too.

The whole front wall of the taverna was open, just a mess of straw propped up on poles. Without tensing, without any motion to warn them, Thalric kicked the table over, leaping back in his chair with his wings flashing about his shoulders to fling himself backwards, out from under the roof and into the rain-lashed air.