Salute the Dark

The Spider girl examined him, seeing no doubt the latticework of scars across his naked torso, some of which were older than she was, and all set within the colourful backdrop of the recent bruises that had yet to fade. In turn, he saw that she was wearing the clothing of a well-off Capitas woman, with the cut modified by just inches to turn demure into sensual. If he had encountered her as a stranger, on any Capitas street, he would have taken her for an adventuress or even a prostitute, and probably taken her home with him for that matter.

‘I see,’ he said, ‘that you’re making yourself at home here. Thrown in the fight, have you? Or has Stenwold become a little optimistic about where he can plant his agents?’

‘On my father’s business.’

Tisamon? Thalric could not imagine the Mantis stalking about the city dressed in Wasp clothing and pretending… No, of course, he had run away. ‘Tisamon’s here?’ He craned about, looking at all the other posts. There were plenty of fellow sufferers but no Mantids among them.

She stared levelly at him. ‘That looks painful, Major Thalric.’

‘Well spotted.’

‘I’m allowed to strike you, I believe?’

He closed his eyes. ‘That depends on who you’re supposed to be, Tynisa. Go on, try it. We’ve been at daggers drawn long enough and you’ve not laid a straight blow on me yet.’ That was not, of course, true. She had nearly killed him outside Helleron. Furthermore, it was a foolish thing to say because she took his provocation in the spirit it was meant and punched a fist into his abused ribs hard enough that he felt them creak. He made a short, choked sound of pain, hearing some of the spectators murmur appreciatively. Needless to say, the guards just watched.

She leant close to him. ‘You’ve earned that, and more,’ she murmured, ‘but right now we’re in a position to help each other.’

‘Your negotiating techniques leave something to be desired,’ he grated.

‘Do they?’ Before he could say anything to stop her, she had stepped back, and then the back of her hand cracked against his cheekbone and whipped his head round. My mouth is going to get me killed. This time when she leant close, he said nothing.

‘That was for the crowd, Thalric. And for me, a little – but mostly for them. Now, listen. I’ve made some friends here in Capitas. Well, maybe friends isn’t the word, but a chain of people who’ll do things for me if I ask them nicely. What they won’t do, though, is let me down to the cells beneath the palace.’

‘The pit cells,’ Thalric recalled. ‘And that’s where they’ve got Tisamon, is it? Right place for him.’

He felt her tense, but she did not strike him again. ‘I can get you down from your post here this afternoon, instead of tomorrow, seeing that my friend of the moment is an overseer of your Justice place here. If I ask him very nicely indeed, maybe he’ll have you sent to the pit cells, just like Tisamon.’

‘If you lead him on, you mean.’

‘Jealous?’ There was a edge to her voice. ‘I can’t fight an entire Empire with my sword, Thalric. There are just too many of your wretched people. I could stab at your kin all day and still not get anywhere. So I use other weapons. I got here, didn’t I? I’m not proud of my methods, but they work.’

‘And if I’m really good, your methods will now see me condemned to the pit cells. Thank you very much.’

‘Just to hold you there, until they decide what to do with you. You’d rather be sitting in a cell than hanging from a post, I assume.’

‘And in return…?’

‘Take a message to Tisamon.’ Her hand was in his hair, abruptly, dragging his head back, to the further appreciation of the spectators. ‘Tell him I’m here for him, that I will find some way to get him out.’

He thought about that slowly, long enough for her to yank at his hair again. ‘What,’ he asked, ‘if he doesn’t want to get out?’

She went very still. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Yes, you do. How do you capture Tisamon, the Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster? Either dead or not at all, surely, and yet you say he’s malingering in the cells beneath the palace-’

‘Shut up,’ she hissed at him. ‘Shut up or this crowd will see me put your eyes out, Thalric. That’s not your problem. That’s my problem and I… I’ll deal with it.’ She stepped back, and he braced himself for further injury.

‘Nod or shake, Major,’ she told him. ‘Do what I want now, or I’ll make sure you hang here for another three days before they work out where to send you.’

He let his head sag. It could be taken for a nod. Then she punched him in the kidneys, and this time he could not stop himself crying out.

* * *

‘You move too fast,’ cautioned one of the cowled shapes around him. Uctebri saw all his reflections in the polished walls nod and nod, out of time but in agreement. He bared his needle teeth at the speaker, stalking across the room and making the candles gutter, so that all that assembled host within the mirror-shiny walls momentarily bobbed and flickered.