Salute the Dark

Tisamon’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you think it would pain me to kill you, Spider?’ He would do it, too, not from will but because of the fever that clenched him in its jaws. He could not control himself. He had let slip the reins and perhaps he would never hold them again.

‘I think you would rather enjoy it,’ replied Destrachis carefully. ‘However, here I am.’

‘Speak your piece.’

‘Turn back.’

Tisamon stared at him, hearing his own ragged breathing in his ears, almost like sobbing.

‘I know what you are about,’ Destrachis said. ‘I know also that she is waiting for you.’ His lips pressed together for a moment in thought. ‘I know of you, Mantis. There are people in this city who remember you from years back. Both of you are bringing chains to this meeting. That is unwise.’

‘I know,’ Tisamon said flatly.

‘Then turn back.’

‘Not at your word – not the word of a Spider-kinden. No games from you, no twists. If I think that you meddle in my life, Spider, I will kill you.’ I will kill you. I will kill you anyway. I cannot stop myself. And yet the Spider remained breathing, with that blade wavering at his throat.

‘Your life can end up on a stake or deep in the sea for all I care,’ Destrachis said. ‘I care about her.’

‘Do you?’

‘She is my patient, and I have sheltered her from the worst of the world as best I could.’ He sighed. ‘But I cannot shelter her from this. I can only ask-’

‘You have feelings, Spider? Your have feelings for her?’

‘I… am her doctor,’ Destrachis said. It was not clear whether the catch in his voice came from the sudden twitch in Tisamon’s blade or had some other cause.

‘If I came to believe you coveted her…’ Tisamon murmured. The threat went unsaid, nor did it need to be spoken.

Destrachis made to speak, and then again, but no words came.

Tisamon removed the blade from the Spider’s throat. ‘Go now. Do not presume to tell me this is wrong.’ A spasm of pain crossed his face, making Destrachis flinch back. ‘I know it is wrong. I am not master of myself. I am not… well. So go. This is no place for you any longer. I will kill you, if you do not go. I will kill you.’

Destrachis nodded tiredly, seeming for a moment so haggard that he must have looked close to his natural age. His eyes flicked once towards her door, but then he shook his head and walked away, padding off as quietly as Tisamon had arrived.

He is right. Tisamon clenched his fists. Perhaps he could yet salvage himself. He could step away now, force himself to go.

That perfect poise, the delicate balance of her blade. Not since her… Seventeen years was a long time to go without something that had once been his life and very breath. I hurt! He still had his clawed gauntlet buckled on, and the urge came upon him to drive it into his own flesh, to excise the hurt from himself like a surgeon.

And then her door opened, with Felise Mienn standing in shadow beyond, clad in her shift, staring out at him.

‘Tisamon.’ His name on her lips, in that softly accented voice. He lurched a step backwards, claw gone, staring. Unwillingly, as if tugged by wires, he approached her.

She reached out, but stopped just before her hand touched his chest. She, too, was shaking very slightly. ‘Tisamon,’ she said again, her voice unsteady.

She looked up into his face, and he wondered what she saw in his sharp features, his grey-flecked hair. He, who found his own face in the mirror both severe and haunted in turns, looked upon Felise and felt such fierce fire that he could barely keep his hands from her.

She is not so young, not so young as she looks. She was widow, after all, as he himself was widower. They neither of them had the fresh gloss of youth still on them. Yet the Dragonflies were a beautiful people, and none was more beautiful than Felise Mienn seen through the eyes of the Mantis Tisamon.

‘Please,’ he whispered, ‘send me away. One word from you and I will go. I cannot be here. I… betray…’

She was biting her lip, her hand still hovering an inch from his torn shirt.

‘I could not keep myself from this place, because I had not the will,’ he confessed. ‘But you can banish me. Send me away. Your word is strong, where I have failed. Please.’

‘For so many years I have woken up screaming.’ She spoke at last, so very quietly that he instinctively leant in to hear – and then closer still, to scent her dark hair. ‘Not out loud, but in my head,’ she continued. ‘What the Wasps did to me, I carried it like a picture to look at every day. Now the picture is gone and the scream is just an echo. But it was not having Thalric at my blade’s mercy that did this, for all I thought it might.’

‘I have no such powers,’ he said softly. ‘Do not make me into such a healer.’

‘What do you want here?’ she asked him. ‘Are you here to fight me? Then I shall take up my sword. Is that what you want?’