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And still Tynisa stood there with sword out, and Gaved and Thalric were questioning her, demanding answers. Her hand was shaking.

She fights the geas imposed on her, Maure’s thought came. She could have killed them all by now.

Then, with a hopeless, graceless motion, Tynisa lashed out with her blade, lancing Achaeos through. But even Che could see that her stroke had gone awry, her blade and her arm conspiring to spoil her aim.

There was more then, Tynisa fighting with the two Wasps, but Che felt a great shudder, and the image was abruptly fragmenting. She became aware of her own body through the pain in her leg, which had been mounting up in her absence.

‘You told me,’ she heard Tynisa gasp, and then opened her eyes. The Spider girl was already on her feet, her blade drawn again, and for a horrible moment Che thought history might repeat itself. It was not Maure or Che that Tynisa was confronting, though.

In the air before her hung a shape pale and indistinct, a spiderweb of lines that resembled something like a man – but a man transfigured, his body writhing with briars, his skin rippling with chitin. Only the face remained untouched by the taint of the Darakyon.

Tisamon.

Tynisa was staring at this tattered spectre, and Che had no word for the expression on the girl’s face.

‘In Jerez, after Achaeos . . . I tried to throw my sword away . . .’ the Spider girl got out. Whatever emotion had hold of her was shaking her with all its force. ‘But you told me then that I had been the victim of magic, and that the sword did its best to stay my hand. You told me that, then, but I had forgotten.’

The ghost made some almost dismissive gesture, but Tynisa’s face was abruptly twisted into a snarl.

‘You told me that, then, and I didn’t believe you, and I thought I must have had some reason to do it, because in Collegium there is no magic and people do not stab their friends without purpose,’ she spat out. ‘But here in the Commonweal, after you came to me, you had me believe that I stabbed him because he was an enemy – that he had earned his death, and that I should rejoice in his blood. All these things you whispered to me, telling me to feel no guilt but to be satisfied at the downfall of a foe. Where is the man who comforted me, and told me I was bewitched, and that even my blade had fought against the deed? Why not tell me that, and lead me away from . . .’ and her voice broke momentarily, ‘from doing it all again!’

Mantis-kinden know no guilt. Che heard the voice as if it was a whisper of leaves.

‘You did!’ Tynisa snapped. ‘It made you human, that regret, but where is it now? Where is the man who was Stenwold’s friend, and who loved my mother?’ Her jaw clenched, and Che thought she had finished, but then she shrieked out, loud enough for everyone among the ruins to hear, ‘Where is my father?’

The movements of the ghost tried to claim that title, but its voice was too faint to hear. Instead, it was Maure who answered her anguished cry.

‘This is but some part of him that has clung on,’ the magician explained sadly. ‘Some handful of shards of him, mere fragments of the man that once was. Ghosts are just broken pieces of us. The hard slivers of him stand before you, with nothing to sheathe their sharp edges. This is the Mantis, not the man.’

A fragile calm touched Tynisa and she let her hands fall to her sides, pointedly no longer resting one on her sword grip. ‘You made me kill Alain, and without you . . . perhaps I would not have been so hasty. I will not say he was a good man, and he was certainly not his brother, but I became a murderer in truth when I shed his blood.’

Tisamon’s shade made an angry gesture, and Che faintly heard, You are above their laws and morality.

‘Stenwold would disagree,’ Tynisa replied, and the mention of that name seemed to strike the ghost like a blow, making it ripple and shudder. And then she said, ‘I cast you out.’

There was an utter silence after those words, and the twisted and changing face of the ghost remained