side as high and broad as a poor man’s house in Helleron. There was movement and noise from just the other side, the rattle of metal on metal and the occasional curse as some Wasp-kinden artificer worked into the night to get the machine in his charge back into the air. Salma shuffled forwards until he was almost beside Basila, seeing now the broad, well-lit expanse of the field the Wasps had cleared for their flying machines. They had a dozen great lamps to enable the artificers to work, so there were precious few shadows from this point on, just an overlapping plain of harsh artificial light.
The artificers were out in force, and other personnel, too. There were scattered soldiers, men checking the tension of the airship lines, and others counting off stacks of equipment piled beside the aircraft hulls.
Salma realized there were too many people here for the plan to work: they would be spotted the moment they left the heliopter’s shadow.
Basila was waiting motionless and he wondered if she was simply hoping for all those people to go away. If that did not happen, as it would not, would they be found here at dawn by the Wasps, still patiently waiting by this downed heliopter?
Totho touched his shoulder and made a motion of counting on his fingers, then a gesture around at their companions.
He tallied heads quickly and sure enough they were a man short.
A moment later something went
Most of the soldiers took off immediately, running towards the disturbance, and a surprising number of the artificers too, just going to see what the fuss was about.
Basila already had her crossbow in her hand, and Salma actually saw her counting off the seconds:
Sixteen
And Arianna ran. At first, she ran.
But she knew that running, though it put distance between them, would leave a trail that Thalric could follow. Even at this late hour there were enough people who she jostled, or who stared after her: a young Spider-kinden woman pelting down the street, her pale robes spotted red.
She ducked into a side street, tried to calm herself.
He would be coming for her. She had left him no choice.
She could not believe that Hofi was dead. Scadran she had not known so well, but Hofi. She could not say that she had liked him. It was not something that came up, in their business. She had known him for a year, seen him every few days. He was a part of her life and now Thalric had snuffed him out.
She peered back around the corner, seeing only a dozen or so Beetles going about their late errands. Of course Thalric would not be on the street. He would be at roof level, winging his way towards her. She looked up, scanning the sky with wide eyes, but there was nothing.
She had to get indoors. There must be a taverna near here. She moved off, trying to keep to a respectable walk, one hand folded demurely across her breast to cover the worst of the blood. She must have looked like a madwoman, for the locals started when they saw her and quickly got out of her way.
Finally there was a taverna ahead. She could go inside, shield herself from the sky. If they had rooms to hire she could hide out, offering a little extra to keep her secret.
She was almost at the door when she saw him. He was still a hundred yards down the street, but she recognized him instantly. Thalric, in his long coat, with the sword scabbarded beneath it. He began to walk towards her in a patient, purposeful way.
She skittered backwards and took the next side-alley, aware that he was between her and the better parts of town. She was heading into that district where they had ambushed Stenwold, and it had been chosen because the locals cared little about any commotion. Certainly the death of a single Spider girl would excite no curiosity.
She picked up her pace. Glancing behind her she could no longer see him but she had a sense of motion, of being tracked. He was in the air again, she guessed, and could follow her easily, tracing her hurried dashing from street to street as he glided silently over the rooftops.
She stopped under the eaves of a run-down house. Her eyes were good in the dusk, but they seemed to have failed her now. They conspired with her ears and her mind, putting a hundred pursuers on her trail. Certainly she thought she heard the soft blur of wings above, so that he could even be on the very roof of this place, waiting for her next move. And yet surely was that not him, the shadow in the alley across the way? The whole city now seemed to be hunting her.
There was a distinct scrape from up above, and such imaginings fell away. Someone was above her, and who else could it be?
But then her nerve snapped and she bolted and, as she broke cover she heard the flash of his energy sting, felt the heat but not the hammering shock of it, as it scorched the muddy flags of the street over to her left. She was running blindly then, and knowing he could fly faster than she could run, but run she did, as fast as she could whip her legs to motion, until she could go no faster. Then she struck against something — something put hard in her path without warning — and she was thrown on the ground. Her head spun from the impact but she forced herself to look up and see.
And she saw his face, and it was the face of Tisamon, cold and utterly without mercy. His claw was over his hand, raised idly to finish her.
Arianna screamed, she could not stop herself, and she covered her eyes.
Tisamon was surprised at himself, because he had wished to see this, the traitress cowering at his feet, utterly defenceless, but now he had it, something drained away inside him.
There had been no fight. He had been expecting a fight.
As that thought came to him he looked up, and Thalric landed not ten yards away, sword drawn, and their eyes met. The shock of recognition was a physical thing, two-edged and cutting. Tisamon remembered the fire and pain, the injury he had still not entirely shaken free of. Thalric, for his part, remembered the wounds he had taken, the wounds he had given, and how Tisamon had simply refused to die.
For a long moment, with Arianna whimpering at the Mantis’s feet, they stared at one another. Tisamon’s offhand, as though it had a life of its own, had plucked a dagger from his belt. He had sought them out particularly, those daggers, after the fight at Helleron, and paid a heavy purse for them.
‘She is mine,’ Tisamon said. ‘I claim her.’ As he was speaking a Beetle-kinden pair, a man and a woman, stepped out into the alley, glanced from him to Thalric, and retreated hurriedly back indoors.
Thalric’s mind was at war with itself. This was the one confrontation he would normally have baulked at. He had come far too close to dying because of this man, and who knew whether his daughter was lurking nearby? He had a sense, as he was hunting Arianna down, that his were not the only feet on her trail. He had that sense again now, even with Tisamon before him.
He feared. A bitter realization that, but he feared.
Still, he was a soldier of the Empire. He took a step forward and spat a bolt from his palm at the Mantis.
Tisamon hurled himself aside, though the fire scorched his shoulder. But just as Thalric had loosed the bolt the Mantis’s hand had flicked forwards and he now saw the Wasp stagger as the dagger struck. A glancing blow, for Thalric had seen the silver flicker coming, but it had been flying straight for his face and, as he dodged, it cut a line across his temple, above his ragged cheek where Arianna had clawed him. He made to launch another bolt, but Tisamon had a second knife in his hand even now, sending the edged darts spinning out one after another, driving Thalric back, back, then up to a rooftop, almost to the limit of his sting’s range. Tisamon had a hand full of knives, little hiltless throwing pieces, and there was no way to tell how many he still concealed.
