Salute the Dark

They parted again, circling. Ult and his men might not even have been there. They now had their small and hermetic world entirely to themselves.

She was smiling – as he realized that he was, too. Their expressions must have seemed a perfect match.

She was at him then, striking down at his head, sideways at his neck, blows swift and hard enough to break bone if they landed. He skipped back, swayed aside, dragged the stave across the front of her body to slash her open as though it was a blade indeed, missing only by moments. Her own stick blurred overhead as he dropped down. She had struck one-handed, and her left hand came in, ripping a bloody line across his shoulder with her thumb-claw. He felt the pain only as a distant voice urging him on. His own arm-spines grazed her hip, and then cut at her stomach as she gave ground, and all the time his stave was moving, meeting hers again and again, as though they had practised the fight for months or even years. They were closer and closer together, well inside each other’s reach, the deadly work being done with the offhands, the useless staves only a distraction. She gouged his cheek, aiming for his eye. He raked three lines of red below her collar-bone, looking for her throat.

They broke apart, six feet of clear ground between them in an instant, poised in their perfect stances, waiting. Although she still gripped it like a sword, Felise’s stick had been sheared in half.

Ult made a small sound into the silence. The soldiers were on their feet in shocked silence, hands out and open ready to sting.

Tisamon looked at Felise, seeing the few lines he had managed to score on her, and feeling his own blood where she had drawn it. He met her eyes, took a step towards her. She cast the halved stick away, her thumb-claws flexing and out, while moving in towards him. Ult was saying his name, but he did not care.

Another step, and almost within reach of her hands. He knew now that, where his stick had been, his clawed glove was now buckled about his hand and forearm as though it had always been there, the short, deadly blade drawn back to strike. He had not even realized that he had called to it.

He looked into her face, golden and savage and beautiful, and, even as Ult called his name again, he said, ‘Forgive me.’

Even as she tensed to spring, her lips moved, and what she said was, ‘Of course.’

He let his arms fall to his sides, but she did not kill him. Instead, the soldiers had grabbed her, hauled her back, even as others were reaching for him, reaching to take away the weapon they had seen, but that was no longer there. He held her eyes, and felt at the same time a crippling joy and a wrenching bitterness that he should realize only now, at this waning end of their time together, that he loved her. It was only when they fought that he could see it clearly.

Ult was staring at him – indeed all the Wasps were staring at him, but Ult’s expression was different. He was the only one there not busy convincing himself that he had been mistaken. He signalled for some of his men to lead Felise away, and Tisamon watched her until she was gone. Only then did he turn to his keeper, expressionless.

‘If your badge got taken from you, I can get it back,’ Ult said, studying him. Tisamon raised his eyebrows, and the Wasp continued, ‘Oh, they had me in the Twelve-Year War, early on, so don’t think I don’t know your kind. We were fighting plenty of Mantis as well as Dragonfly back then, and I saw some pull tricks like you just pulled. Don’t assume I don’t know anything.’

‘I abandoned the symbol of my order by choice,’ Tisamon said. Because of her, and my own pride.

Ult nodded slowly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I reckon I was just quick enough to keep you alive until next time, Mantis. I just hope the Emperor will appreciate the pair of you as much as I do.’

* * *

It was the middle of the night, so far as he could judge, when they came for Thalric. Four guards opened up his cell, chained him up and hauled him off. He was conscious of Tisamon’s wry gaze on him as he left.

They took him to a windowless room, lit by a dim gas-lantern fixed on the wall. For all he could see of the sun it could just as easily be noon outside as night.

It was an interrogation room. Not a room with that trade’s machines and artificers but a little booth of an office that, in the great scheme of questioning through excruciation, preceded the main event. A big man was standing there behind a desk, an officer from his bearing, but Thalric noticed no badge of rank. Sitting at the desk itself was a woman.

He was surprised at that because, in Capitas, even the Rekef – which elsewhere used whatever tool best fit the hand – was intrinsically a conservative force. Women were considered servants or perhaps clerks at best, but not put in charge, as this one clearly was. Even the officer, who had authority enough to be at least a colonel, was deferring to her.