Salute the Dark

He stared, feeling fear creep over him. Magic was something he had no defence against.

Tisamon, she said again. He could just make out Mantis features there, amidst the blur of leaves and the glitter of compound eyes.

‘What do you want with me?’ he asked.

I am here to judge you, she said. Are you not seeking judgment?

He realized that he had already fallen to his knees. ‘Judgment… for what?’

Her eyes, insubstantial as they were, held him tight. You know your own crimes. Are you not seeking atonement even now, in this spiritless city?

‘There can be no atonement,’ he choked out.

And so you must atone forever? That is a familiar concept of our kinden. We have so many laws and rules, and therefore we cannot avoid breaking them. We are always imperfect by the impossible standards that we set ourselves. Do we not therefore live our lives in an agony of thwarted desires, our laws pressing against our skin like sharp thorns?

‘Who are you?’ He stared at her. ‘What are you?’

I am a monument to Mantis pride and failure, Tisamon. They called me Laetrimae, before my fall. Five hundred years I have wept and atoned, and yet I still have not escaped the consequences of my actions. Nor shall you.

He had no words, no thoughts save that surely this must be the thing he had gone looking for when he fled Collegium. Surely this was the judgment he deserved.

What shall I judge you for, Tisamon? she asked him. You were false to your people in the lover you took. You were false to yourself, in the guilt you felt for it. You were false to your lover in your abandonment of her, and of your daughter as well. You have been false to your past lover in your new love, and now false to your new love in your turning away from her. Is there anything of worth you have not cast aside, Tisamon?

‘No.’

But there is. You may have thrown aside the badge, but you are a Weaponsmaster still. Are you not aware of the duties that role carries? You are yet the defender of your people, all your people – even those such as I who have fallen so far that your own disgrace now seems but a stumble.

‘What could you need defending from?’

Evil and rapacious men who would steal that which belongs to our kind – our legacy, our history.

‘I am unworthy-’

It is because you are unworthy that I reach out to you, she continued urgently. You have suffered, but there is a suffering and disgrace that no one of our kind should bear. Who else but a vessel already broken can be asked to withstand the strain?

‘What do you want of me?’ he demanded.

There are, even now, men coming to take you prisoner, Tisamon. You have attracted their notice. They wish to take you and enslave you. You have been sold by your own factor. She leads them to you even now.

He was on his feet on the instant, the blade of his claw opening. ‘Rowen has betrayed me?’