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By Root 1771 0

she would have been considered a terror to the world. She was crowned, though, as Che was crowned, and her ambitions could no longer restrict themselves to mere land and slaves, for there was a new hunger in her that would never be sated. But why now those dark Mantis forests, and a gateway of rotting wood? From whence came those twisting, devouring forms that writhed, shackled in the earth beneath? In that dislocated instant it seemed as if the whole world became merely the skin covering some darker place, locked away out of sight and yet never quite gone . . .

For a moment, Che saw it all, the entire map of it, a prescient dream such as any Moth-kinden skryre would have wept at, and experiencing the full horror of what might happen stole her breath away.

But when she woke, after midnight, it was only with fragments like shards of ice melting, the sheer enormity of the vision defeating her, and all it left her with was a sense of dread – and an aftertaste of the Empress’s hunger.

I am running out of time, she told herself, I am here for a reason. When she slept again, her mind was focused not on the grand tapestry but on the threads, and there she saw Tynisa.

She let the rapier carry her forward, its needle point penetrating the chest of the Grasshopper-kinden before her, then whipping out again at her command, before flashing behind her without her even having to turn and look. She felt the slightest resistance as it carved into another enemy, and she exulted briefly in the sheer purity of the sensation. A spear was heading her way, its wielder scarcely seeming relevant. Her blade caught the shaft, bound around it in a circular motion that put her within the spearman’s reach, her point darting inside his guard until it had lanced him under the armpit.

For a moment she seemed clear of it all, unthreatened and alone in the midst of the skirmish, although Telse Orian’s people were still hard-pressed on every side.

Aerial scouts had reported a band of brigands lurking in the woods here, perhaps a score of them. Orian had set out with half as many again, a handful of nobles and Mercers backed by an unruly levy of Grasshopper peasants. The bandits had anticipated them, though, and then had come the ambush. The Salmae forces were outnumbered two to one, and many of the brigands carried bows, whilst of Orian’s party only the nobles were archers. The latter were better shots than the brigands, for sure, but numbers still counted. About half the panicking peasant levy had been scythed down, and several of the horses killed, before the ambushers had finally broken cover and attacked.

Those who met Tynisa regretted it, albeit briefly.

She had seen the ambush for what it was straight away. She had heard her father’s voice in her ear, felt him guide her eyes: they would be concealed here and here, and the main body of them there. She had said nothing to the others, feeling a need for blood building up in her. Let them come.

She picked her next target, a raggedly armoured Dragonfly cocking back his spear, about to drive it into a Mercer’s back. Levelling her rapier, she let it carry her to its inevitable destination, running the man through the ribs and out again, with barely more resistance from the flesh than from the air. She caught another before he even saw her, virtually by accident as he walked through the deadly path of her blade, and then she was passing on again, passing through the conflict like a plague, instantly striking down all who came within her orbit.

The rage was upon her, but it was harnessed now, tamed to her will. Her sword, her body, her father’s memory, all of them were working in seamless harmony, so that she could ghost through a scrum of half a dozen enemy, their spearheads and blades passing on every side, and barely have to sway or parry, their blows falling wide as if by prior arrangement. Once or twice an arrow flashed towards her, but she caught it with her sword, each shaft slanting away, spent or broken.

There was something in the faces of those she killed, and it was adulation. It was her