blade struck the metal plate over his breast and pierced straight through it, punching a diamond-shaped hole with a seamstress’s precision and lancing him through the chest. It drew from the wound without resistance, and the Wasp died halfway through the gap.
Below her, the soldiers of Scuto’s army gave off their round of shot, and Tynisa knew that Tisamon was out there exercising his skills and teaching the thugs of Helleron why the Mantis-kinden had been feared since before the revolution. She saw Scuto kick open the door and his people flood through it. There were Wasps inside now, entering from the other roof-hole, and three of Scuto’s men were down already. Tynisa saw a pair of imperial soldiers dive, blasting with their stings at the fleeing men and women. Then one was abruptly arching away, the Dragonfly woman having put an arrow through his ribs. Tynisa braced herself, and leapt for the other one.
She had hoped to put her sword into him first, but instead the point passed him by, so she struck him bodily, one hand dragging back his hair, knees locked about his waist. He shouted out, and then fell from the air, his wings unable to keep both of them up.
They separated as they hit the floor, and Tynisa took most of the impact. Even as she sat up, holding her head, he was standing over her with sword in hand.
But the rapier was still with her and, stunned as she was, it took his blade aside and ran him through the thigh. She stumbled to her feet as he fell, and finished him with another lunge.
Scuto was shouting at her: ‘Get out! Out out out!’
He was at one of his workbenches at the back. Her head still ringing, she could not work out why.
‘I’ll guard you!’ she said.
‘You bloody won’t!’
A hand grabbed for her arm and she nearly put her sword into Balkus, who backed off just in time.
‘We have to go!’ he shouted. Through the slot of the door she could see a savage melee as Scuto’s band tried to fight its way clear. Her sword twitched, and she felt it wanting to join in. Then she realized what Scuto was doing and she nodded sharply to Balkus and ran outside.
It was a bloody business out there and Tisamon was the vanguard. He had cut a swathe through them as they came. A dozen of Helleron’s street vandals and enforcers were already down, and he drove another dozen before him, desperate to stay out of his reach. His claw was never still, and any man who came close enough to try it had his own stroke caught and carried, and the Mantis blade passed his guard before he could dodge it. As she watched, a crossbow bolt flashed towards him and then exploded as he cut it from the air.
There were more than mere street thugs on the attack here. Wasp soldiers were shooting from overhead, or dropping on them from the sky. Tynisa ran one through even as he fell on her but there were now pitched skirmishes all about her. She saw two Fly-kinden rolling on the ground, knives out, and could not tell which side either was on. The Ant-kinden with the blank shield was fighting with brutal economy. His shield had three bolts embedded in it; one that had passed on through his arm. His sword trailed blood as he ripped it across the face of a Beetle bruiser. The Dragonfly had abandoned her bow and wielded a long, straight sword in both hands, spinning it about her head and lopping stray hands off. Tynisa went to aid her, but the blast of a Wasp sting suddenly scorched a circle on the woman’s back and she fell to her knees. She rammed her blade into the gut of the man she was fighting, even as he put his shortsword down past her collarbone. Beyond her the Mantis woman danced and stabbed with her rapiers, taking an Ant-kinden through the eye and then turning to cut a swooping Wasp from the air. Her face was all the while without expression.
Tynisa lunged forward, her rapier splitting chain-mail rings to kill a halfbreed man who was about to stab Totho in the back. Then three of them rushed her together, a Wasp and two of the hired help. The rapier danced. It was not actually tugging at her arm and yet, when she moved it, it seemed that it was by some mutual consent that it caught her opponents’ blades and cast them in all directions, tangling the Wasp with the man on his left so that she could parry and bind the third man and whip the red-gleaming rapier’s point across his throat. Then Scuto’s huge Scorpion had his hook in the Wasp’s back, dragging the man in to split him with a monstrous axe-blow, and abruptly the final one of the three was fleeing, dropping his sword. Tynisa had to fight the urge to go after him, for there was an exhilaration in her, a fierce, beating joy that sang in her ears, and she knew it was her Mantis blood, and that Tisamon must be feeling just the same.
Balkus’s nailbow exploded again. He was standing with his back to the workshop wall, tracking flying Wasp- kinden with his eyes narrowed, choosing his shots with care. A moment later he crouched in order to slot another of his wooden boxes into the top of the bow. Scuto appeared in the doorway beside him, loosing his crossbow over and over until it was empty.
‘Go!’ he shouted simply.
And they were going. Tisamon had done his work well and most of the hired rabble were dead or fled. Under the barrage of the Wasps, the survivors of Scuto’s people made their desperate escape. Some of the imperial soldiers had already darted inside the workshop and were busy ransacking it for Scuto’s papers when the device he had set exploded, incinerating everything less durable than metal within the shack’s walls.
It was Tynisa who intercepted Stenwold as he returned to the ruined workshop, and brought him instead to the low dive that Scuto had chosen as a fallback retreat. He was brimming with news but she gave him no time to explain it, simply leading him through the crooked streets of Helleron towards the blue lanterns of the Taverna Merro.
Inside, in the back room, were the survivors: Totho and Tisamon, the former with a long, shallow wound now bandaged on his arm; Balkus the nailbowman, and a slightly singed Scuto; Sperra the Fly-kinden, currently playing doctor to the worst wounded; the one-handed Scorpion, known as Rakka and apparently mute, grimly sharpening the blade of his axe. One of the Beetle artificers had survived, and the Mantis-kinden woman; both were badly injured, having been burned by the Wasp-kinden stings. They had been joined by some of Scuto’s other agents from elsewhere in the city, who, seeing the damage at his headquarters, had found their way to other safe-houses, and thence to the Merro. Many had not come home at all.
‘Hammer and tongs!’ said Stenwold. ‘What happened?’
‘What always happens. They rooted us out.’ Scuto hissed in pain as Sperra put a cold sponge to his burns. His armour still hung off him, the breastplate blackened where it had turned away a sting bolt. ‘I’ve had a half-dozen and more of my people dead in every quarter of the city. We’re bust, chief. We’re cooked. The operation’s over.’
There were perhaps a dozen of them, in total, with a similar number unaccounted for, but more than half of Scuto’s people were confirmed dead.
Stenwold sat heavily on the floor by a low table. ‘You know what this means?’
‘They’re going to do it, whatever it is,’ Scuto agreed.
‘And I know what. Or at least I can’t think of anything else, so-’
‘Hold it there, chief,’ Scuto told him quickly. ‘Totho, you remember what we talked about, about Bolwyn.’
The artificer nodded. ‘I do.’
‘We’re not secure, chief. You know why. They knew where a whole lot of my people would be, all over the city. There’s a spy here, and there’s no way of knowing just who.’
Stenwold looked at his hands. ‘This is all sounding far too familiar.’
‘Isn’t it just,’ said Tisamon. ‘Just like Myna, back before the conquest.’
‘We can’t ever leave it behind us, can we?’ Stenwold abruptly slammed a fist into the tabletop. ‘So what do you suggest?’
‘You’ve got a plan,’ Scuto told him. ‘I know you.’
‘Calling it a plan is an overstatement,’ said Stenwold. ‘However, consider merely that I’ve got one.’
Scuto managed a harsh smile. ‘Then you don’t tell
‘What about the Moths?’ Tynisa asked. ‘What about Che?’
‘Why?’ Stenwold looked round at her. ‘What about them?’
‘I sent my girl Marre to chase ’em up, ’cos your girl and that fellow had been such a long time. Balkus saw Marre dead with a Moth arrow in her.’
Stenwold felt as if a cold stone was sinking in his chest. When his agents were attacked, it was war. But when his flesh and blood were attacked. .
‘Can you spare anyone to go. .?’
