Blood of the Mantis

The Beetle magnate sat waiting for them behind the desk, and there were two guards already present in the room. Tynisa looked further, and sure enough found the Spider girl standing in the shadows of one corner, staring wide-eyed at the newcomers. There was no indication as to anyone here being Scyla.

‘You’ve taken your time,’ Founder complained. There was a broad-based decanter on the desk, but it was already mostly empty. ‘May I take it that your patron has released you?’

‘We’re all yours,’ Tynisa informed him. ‘Make what you will of us.’

He nodded. There was an edginess about his glance that she needed no great skill to notice. ‘You expect your enemies tonight,’ she observed.

Founder stood up reflexively, one hand reaching for something below the desk-top. ‘Don’t presume to know my business.’

‘You will at least tell us who we are to fight,’ suggested Tisamon. Around them the guards were shuffling uncertainly, and Tynisa realized that they did not know either. Whatever hornet’s nest Founder had kicked over, it was something he had not shared with anybody else. Anybody except the Spider, that was. Founder’s new slave knew, Tynisa could tell. She knew, and she was terrified. Still, there was a raw, fragile look to her that suggested that everything frightened her. It was not a normal Spider-kinden look, but perhaps it could be used.

If he won’t say, perhaps she will.

‘I will tell you nothing,’ Founder said to Tisamon. ‘If they… If we’re attacked, just fight. That’s all you need to know.’

‘Perhaps we could carry the fight to your competitors,’ the Mantis suggested.

Founder’s laughter in response was fierce and desperate. ‘Oh, don’t promise what you can’t deliver, Weapons-master, so just stay close and keep your blades ready. You want anything, ask Bradawl there, but no forays outside, no time off. We now have our agreement.’ In a smooth motion he threw two pouches on to the desktop, heavy with coin.

With a smile, Tynisa scooped them up. It was, she reflected, a very large sum of money, the kind of money she had never dreamt of in her days back at the College. Perhaps there was something to be said for this trade after all.

She now hoped nothing would happen overnight to change that thought.

‘Which is Bradawl?’ Tisamon enquired.

‘Here.’ It was a broad-shouldered Beetle with a breastplate over leather armour. ‘Lieutenant-Auxillian Pater Bradawl,’ he announced and clasped Tisamon’s hand, wrist-to-wrist. ‘Hear you’re s’posed to be good.’ His accent was not Empire but the homely, familiar tones of Helleron.

‘Good enough,’ Tisamon agreed. He gazed at Tynisa, who threw another glance towards the mysterious Spider girl. ‘Perhaps we can talk, Bradawl,’ he added.

Bradawl certainly concurred, drawing Tisamon out of earshot of his master.

Founder was writing in a ledger now, turning up a gas lamp for better light to read by. A single menial came to refill his decanter, and Tynisa belatedly noticed that, of the big retinue the man had travelled with earlier, only the guards now remained. Most of his servants must be either elsewhere or dismissed for the night.

So as not to get in the way. It was an unwelcome thought. The two guards in the room were conferring with a third now, who just had come in from… Tynisa tried to work out the geography of the place, but it was impossible from the little she had seen so far: perhaps from the roof-deck? She caught a few whispered words of the man’s conversation: something concerning lights, and the lake. Founder’s pen scratched audibly, abruptly, to a halt in a scar of ink. He cursed to himself and began writing anew.

She stepped a little closer to the Spider girl, doing her best to keep an eye on her and at the same time on the others in the study. The thought of the face-changing Scyla was close to her mind.

‘So what’s going on?’ she whispered, hoping that another Spider face would be reassuring at least. The girl just stared at her.

‘It’s all right.’ Tynisa tried her best smile. ‘I’m not involved in any of this. You want to talk to anyone, you can talk to me. Are you from the Spiderlands? The Empire?’

‘I am from nowhere you know,’ said the girl, but the words were unnecessary, and Tynisa felt a chill go through her on hearing that soft, strange voice. Just as she had known Bradawl was raised in Helleron, or that Bellowern himself was an imperial Beetle rather than a Lowlander, she realized that this girl’s lilting and strange accent was utterly alien to her, more so than any she had ever heard in cosmopolitan Collegium or occupied Myna.

‘Tell me, quickly,’ Tynisa said.

‘They will kill me tonight,’ was all the girl said, and Tynisa could see that she did not want to be here within these walls, but that whatever was outside was worse.

‘You, Weaponsmistress!’ Founder snapped. ‘Over here!’

Tynisa cursed inwardly, but went over to the man’s desk.