‘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?’
The betrayer betrayed. Her words silenced him. If you would truly seek atonement for your pride, Tisamon, you must let them take you. You must submit to the worst before you might hope for any redemption.
‘Take me? You mean…?’
Or have you pride, yet, that fears to be broken?
He was at the door now, pointing his blade at her. ‘You cannot ask me to become a slave. No Mantis has ever fallen so far.’
The shadow that was Laetrimae drifted closer, passing right through the cramped bed. I am a slave, Tisamon. I am a slave to the Shadow Box that you let slip. Now, as a result, I am a slave of our enemies. Believe me, I am all that is Mantis: all fragile pride and fear of failure. I do not ask this of you lightly. She was standing before him, still transparent, a mere smudge on the air. In this way you may erase the stain that you see on your soul.
‘Is it so bad?’ he said hoarsely.
No, she said simply, save in your own mind. But that is one judge that you can never escape from, nor hope to deceive.
A great weight settled on him, even as he heard the clump of feet at the foot of the stairs. That would be Rowen and whoever she had sold him to. Wasps, most likely.
He let the claw slip away, banishing it, and went to sit on the bed to await their arrival
Seven
Thalric straightened his armour, which felt strange on him now after even so short a time without it. Perhaps it’s because I no longer have a right to wear it, he thought wryly.
‘Right,’ he said. The curving-sided hold of the Cleaver was crowded with fuel barrels, save for a space near the pilot’s chair that had been fenced off for Achaeos’ sickbed. The Moth had propped himself up on his elbows, still ghastly pale, but watching Thalric with something that might, in a healthier man, be considered humour.
‘So, how is this going to work, Major?’ he asked, just loud enough to be heard over the engines.
Is it Major, or is it Captain? Thalric asked himself. Do I now go in as army or Rekef? Rekef would make more sense, but a Rekef major of his description might strike an unwelcome chord in the wrong quarters. It would be his wretched luck to encounter another man who both recognized him and had heard of his disgrace.
‘I can see the city now,’ Che called out to them from her seat, peering through a viewing slit past which driving rain was lashing. Fortunately the Cleaver was a solid, workmanlike flier, and Thalric wondered if a flimsier vessel could even have made it here through the foul weather of the last day or so. It was the last gasp of winter, he guessed, stomping up and down the east of the Lowlands and making its presence known.
He discovered himself as nervous as an actor about to go on stage. This is absurd. This is my profession. Or at least it had been, not so long ago.
‘Where do I bring us in?’ Che asked.
‘How am I supposed to know?’ Thalric snapped at her. ‘I don’t imagine the builders included an airfield, unless they were more prophetic even than legend gives them credit for.’
‘No, I see it now,’ Che said. ‘They’ve set aside some fields, I think, just some fields and some huts. There are some heliopters there, and a collapsed airship. I’ll bring us in beside it. Thalric, you’re ready with your speech, right?’
Thalric nodded, then realized that she could not see it, and said, ‘Yes, right,’ in a voice that, to him, lacked all conviction. Now came the testing moment.
The Cleaver jostled with the wind, was buffeted in return, and then the lurch in his stomach informed him that they were dropping in fast. He heard Achaeos groan at the change – for an airborne race such as the Moths it was remarkable how much mechanical flight distressed them. Then Che had touched the Cleaver down harder than was wise, and Thalric was bounced off his feet, sitting down hard up against the curving wall, hearing Achaeos’ pained gasp. They were instantly slewing sideways, and Thalric had a moment to think of their altitude, the narrow mountain platforms, a makeshift airstrip that was no more than a mud-slicked field. He clutched at the lashed-down barrels, wondering if he could get the hatch open before…
The Cleaver struck something solid and skidded back a few feet before coming, blessedly, to a stop.
‘There are some soldiers coming over here, in a hurry,’ Che said helpfully. Thalric straightened up and went across to the hatch, slipping back the catches that held it shut. As he pushed it open, the rain drove down hard, but he flashed his wings and pushed himself up on to the barrel-like hull of the Cleaver. There were indeed soldiers coming, a full dozen of them, some on the ground and some in the air, all brandishing spears. He waited patiently for them, feeling the rain soak into his hair, into the arming tunic beneath his mail. As soon as they saw that a Wasp had emerged from the unknown flier their headlong approach slowed a little, and then a sergeant alighted before him, with a salute.