Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [241]
Che finally noticed Tynisa in the dead magician’s shadow, chained and bound like a plaything, nothing but a spectator to her father’s death. No thread touched her, though, and Tisamon’s ghost re-entered the world by a more tortuous route by far. But, of course, Che had already known that, for she herself had been linked to the Darakyon, and she saw now, in crystal detail, how Tisamon’s ghost had crept into her own mind: the spectre that had haunted her in Collegium and Khanaphes, and that she had wrongly believed to be Achaeos’s tortured, bitter spirit.
And in Khanaphes the Masters had rid her of her parasitic companion, and thus set Tisamon free to roam the world. And, naturally, he had sought out his daughter, fulfilling his unfinished task: to mould her in his own image, with all the doomed tragedy that must imply.
She could sense Tynisa alongside her, forced to witness again the death of her father and her own inability to save him. Maure was close too, and Che felt the necromancer’s frustration that this tableau had not drawn the ghost out into the open. Che understood it, though, as only a sister could. Despite her determination to be rid of Tisamon’s shade, Tynisa held tight to him still.
A further shock is needed, she firmly resolved, and knew what it should be. She smothered a brief stab of guilt as she reached for Tynisa’s memories once again. With her sister’s mind at her disposal, she knew that she must see one image, one moment, whether it would aid in their efforts against Tisamon or not. I have to know.
The interior of the shack was wretched, walls and ceiling leaning and bulging at odd angles as its slipshod construction surrendered, by degrees, to the constant damp. The room was crowded, some of its occupants on their feet, others strewn across the floor, struck senseless the moment the Shadow Box had been opened. The artefact’s dark, twisting influence was everywhere, like the smell of rotting meat. Che took a deep breath before identifying the players: on the floor lay Tisamon, Tynisa and the Spider girl Sef, while Achaeos, her lover, sat hunched over with the Shadow Box clutched in his hands. She saw now how he had tried to pry into its secrets, but instead it had drawn him into itself, along with all those around him.
Staring down at the bodies were two Wasp-kinden – Thalric and Gaved, both utterly bewildered by what had happened. Their Inapt minds had been ignored by the Shadow Box, leaving them unaffected, and at the same time they could not see the cloaked figure that walked between them. It was another Mosquito-kinden, a pale, cadaverous woman dressed in trailing robes, now stepping invisibly past the Wasps and taking the Shadow Box neatly from Achaeos’s unfeeling hands. Then the shadowy figure had touched Tynisa, and the Spider girl was waking up even as the thief retreated.
Awake but not herself: her face was blank, her eyes staring blindly. The two Wasps started and stared at her, as she stood over Achaeos with her sword in her hand.
Che sensed her sister’s mind kicking away from that moment, and understood that these were memories that Tynisa had never known she had. That moment had always been a blank for her, the Mosquito-kinden’s magic raising a barrier she had not been able to penetrate. Now she saw herself clear as day, in that filthy hut in Jerez, and she waited for the terrible stroke to descend, for the blade to lance Achaeos through.
Abruptly Che realized that she did not want to see this, after all. She knew what the outcome would be: Achaeos would receive a wound that would nearly kill him, and the strain of it would prove the death of him during the Moth-kinden ritual later on. Seeing him fragile and helpless, she tried to pull herself away, but the moment she felt doubt, her control of the vision escaped her, and she was held – as unwilling