The Children of the Sky

Vendacious percolated through the jumble. Two of him came out from under a large drawing easel. The rest reached the central area a second later. He suffered a moment of confusion as Chitiratifor shuffled himself out of the way, and then he got his first glimpse of the Great Tycoon:

The pack was an ill-assorted eightsome. Vendacious had to count him twice, since the smaller members were moving around so much. At the core were four middle-aged adults. They had no noble or martial aspect whatsoever. Two of them wore the kind of green-tinted visors affected by accountants everywhere. The other two had been turning the pages of a ledger. Pretty clearly he had been counting his money or cutting expenses, or whatever it was that businesscritters did.

Tycoon cast irritated looks at Vendacious and Chitiratifor. “You claim to know about the mantis monsters. This better be good. I know lots about the mantises, so I advise against lies.” He pointed a snout at Vendacious, waving him closer.

Treat him like royalty. Vendacious belly-crawled two of himself closer to Tycoon. Now he had the attention of all Tycoon’s members. The four small ones, puppies under two years old, had stopped their pell-mell orbiting of the accountancy four. Two hung back with the four, while two came within a couple feet of Vendacious. These pups were integrated parts of Tycoon’s personality—just barely, and when they felt like it. Their mindsounds were unseemly loud. Vendacious had to force himself not to shrink back.

After a moment or two of impolite poking, Tycoon said, “So, how would you know about the mantis monsters?”

“I witnessed their starship Oobii descend from the sky.” Vendacious used the human name of their ship. The sounds were flat and simple, alien. “I saw its lightning weapon bring down a great empire in a single afternoon.”

Tycoon was nodding. Most East Coast packs took this version of Woodcarver’s victory to be a fantasy. Evidently, Tycoon was not one of those. “You’re saying nothing new here, fellow—though few packs know the name of the flying ship.”

“I know far more than that, my lord. I speak the mantis language. I know their secrets and their plans.” And he had one of their datasets in his right third pannier, though he had no intention of revealing that advantage.

“Oh really?” Tycoon’s smile was sharp and incredulous, even unto his puppies. “Who then are you?”

An honest answer to that question had to come sooner or later, fatal though it might be. “My lord, my name is Vendacious. I was—”

Tycoon’s heads jerked up. “Remasritlfeer!”

“My lord!” The deadly little fivesome was clustered around the only exit.

“Cancel my appointments. No more visitors today, of any sort. Have Saliminophon take care of the shift change.”

“Yes, my lord!”

Tycoon’s older four set their ledger aside and all of him looked at Vendacious. “Be assured that this claim will be verified, sir. Discreetly but definitively verified.” But you could see Tycoon’s enthusiasm, the will to believe; for now, the puppies were in control. “You were Woodcarver’s spymaster, convicted of treason.”

Vendacious raised his heads. “All true, my lord. And I am proud of my ‘treason.’ Woodcarver has allied with the mantis queen and her maggots.”

“Maggots?” Tycoon’s eyes were wide.

“Yes, my lord. ‘Mantis’ and ‘maggot’ refer to different aspects of the same creatures, humans as they call themselves. ‘Mantis’ is the appropriate term for the adult. After all, it is a two-legged creature, sneaky and vicious, but also solitary.”

“Real mantises are insects, only about so tall.” One of the puppies yawned wide, indicating less than two inches.

“The mantises from the sky can be five feet at the shoulder.”

“I knew that,” said Tycoon. “But the maggots? They are the younglings of the grown monsters?”

“Indeed so.” Vendacious moved his two forward members confidingly close to the other pack. “And here is something you may not know. It makes the analogy nigh perfect. The actual invasion from the sky began almost a year before the Battle on Starship Hill.”

“Before Woodcarver marched north?”

“Yes. A much smaller craft landed secretly, thirty-five tendays earlier. And do you know what was aboard? My lord, that first lander was filled with maggot eggsacks!”

“So that will be the real invasion,” said Tycoon. “Just as insect maggots burst from their eggsacks and overrun the neighborhood, these humans will overrun the entire world—”

Chitiratifor popped in with, “They will devour us all!”

Vendacious gave his servant a stern look. “Chitiratifor takes the analogy too far. At present, the maggots are young. There is only one adult, the mantis queen, Ravna. But consider, in just the two years since Ravna and Oobii arrived, she has taken control of Woodcarver’s Domain and expanded it across all the realms of the Northwest.”