A

Twenty-Nine

Parosyal had white beaches, a sand that gleamed as brightly in the sun as the sun itself. Nothing on the mainland could match it, nor any other isle along the coast. A hundred Beetle scholars had written theories to explain it.

There was only one safe harbour at Parosyal, Tisamon had explained, and she had understood that by ‘safe’ he was not referring to anchorage or the elements.

Parosyal was a mystery, and one that history had ignored: the sacred isle of the Mantis-kinden. The slow march of years had seen Collegium scholars baffled by it, Kessen fleets avoid it, and opportunistic smugglers or relic-hunters disappear there, never to be seen again.

‘Every one of my kinden seeks to come here, once at least in a lifetime,’ Tisamon explained, and she knew he was confirming that she, too, was his kinden. ‘They come from Felyal, from Etheryon and Nethyon. From across the sea, even. From the Commonweal.’

‘That’s a long haul,’ she said.

He nodded. ‘This is our heart.’

‘But why?’ she asked. ‘Surely not… gods?’ She knew that, long ago, some ancient peoples had tried to make sense of the world by giving faces to the lightning and the sea. Perhaps some savages still did, in lands beyond known maps, but in these days nobody halfway civilized held that they were subject to the will of squabbling and fickle divinities. Achaeos had told her that the Moth-kinden believed in spirits, but ones that could be commanded, not ones that must be obeyed. And then of course there were the avatars of the kinden, the philosophical concepts that were the source of the Ancestor Art, but they were just ideas, aids to concentration. Nobody thought that they actually existed somewhere.

‘An ancient and inviolate communion,’ whispered Tisamon, and a shiver went through her. It was not the words themselves, but because she heard quite clearly some other voice saying that exact phrase to him, when he was younger even than she, and as some previous boat was approaching this same harbour.

She felt sand scrape at the boat’s shallow draft. The vessel’s master, an old Beetle-kinden, called for any to disembark that were intending to.

She took up her single canvas bag, slung her swordbelt over her shoulder, and splashed down into thigh-deep water.

The bay of Parosyal held a single fishing village that was huddled between the water and the treeline, facing south across the endless roll of the ocean as though it had turned its back on the Lowlands and the march of history. The houses were constructed of wood and reeds, and built on stilts to clear the high tides. The villagers were a strange mixture that Tynisa had not been expecting.

There were only half a dozen Mantids there, and they seemed mostly old, their hair silvered, and with lines on their faces. The other villagers comprised a whole gamut of the Lowlands population: quite a few Beetles, including one in the robes of a College scholar, some Fly-kinden, a few Kessen Ants. There were a surprising number of Moths passing back and forth between the huts and the boats, or conferring in small groups.

No Spider-kinden, though, she had expected that.

She set foot now on the sand of the beach, shaking a little water from her bare feet, and she was aware that many of them were staring at her. Staring at her, especially, in company with Tisamon. Her blood was mixed, but her face was her mother’s. In fathering her, Tisamon had dealt his own race the worst blow, having committed the ultimate sin against their age-old grievances.

But she had expected worse than she received. Looks, yes, and a few glares even, but nothing more. Tisamon was standing in the centre of the little village now, watching a pair of young Moths put a small dinghy out onto the water. He was waiting for something, she could see.

Where is it all? she asked herself, because surely this collection of hovels could not be it. This was not what all the fuss was about. And then she looked past the huts towards the wall of green that was the forest that covered most of Parosyal and she knew that was it.

Tisamon’s stance changed, just slightly, alerting her to the approach of an ageless, white-eyed Moth-kinden man. His blank gaze flicked to Tynisa, but her appearance drew no change of expression to his face.

‘Your approach is known,’ he said softly to Tisamon. ‘Your purpose also.’ He looked to her again. ‘It is not for me to judge, but…’

‘The Isle will judge,’ Tisamon said firmly, but his glance at his daughter was suddenly undermined by uncertainty.

‘Indeed it will,’ said the Moth. ‘It always does. The Isle has never seen one such as her. We can none of us know what may be born, or what may die… even if she has made the proper preparations.’

Tisamon’s look was to the dark between the trees. ‘It must be tonight. We have no time.’

‘Are you sure she is ready? She is very young.’

‘I was her age, when I came here to be judged.’

The Moth shrugged. ‘The Isle will judge,’ he echoed, and then, ‘Tonight, as you wish.’

*

She had expected some grand ceremony: drums and torches and invocations. They had meanwhile taken up residence in one of the shacks, many of which seemed to be empty. Tisamon had set to sharpening his claw, over and over, and she knew it was because he was merely keeping his mind off what would happen.

He could not tell her, she knew, for it was forbidden. Mantis-kinden seemed to live their lives in cages of air, held back at every turn by their own traditions. Tisamon had broken free from that cage once, but he would bend no more bars of it now, not here.

He was worried about her, she realized. He had tested her as fiercely as he could, killed her a hundred times in practice duel, measured her skill and her will to fight against his own. He believed in her, but she was his daughter and he worried. She, in her turn, could not ask him for reassurance, could not even speak to him lest he hear her voice shake. That was pride, she realized, a refusal to bend to the common demands of being human. It was Mantis pride.

Out there, in the village’s centre, they were brewing something in a small iron pot hung over a beach fire. The Moth that Tisamon had spoken to and an older Moth woman were talking to one another in soft voices. Are they casting spells? Is this magic? But Tynisa did not believe in magic, for all that it seemed to turn the wheels of Tisamon’s life. Che, poor credulous Che, believed in more magic than Tynisa could ever allow into her world.

Tisamon looked up. The sky above the island had now graded into dusk, into darkness. Tynisa had barely noticed.

‘It is time,’ the Mantis said. He looked her over, noting her rapier, her dagger, her arming jacket. He had told her to be ready for war.

When the time came to drink, she baulked at first. Whatever they had boiled up over the beach fire was thick and rotten-smelling. They waited patiently. They would not force her. If she did not drink, she would fall at the first challenge.

She took the warm clay cup from them, suppressing a revulsion that seemed more than rational, some deep abhorrence that she could not account for or place.

As quick as she could, she drank it. The liquid was shockingly sweet, both cloying and choking, and she fought herself to swallow by sheer willpower. The reaction in her gut doubled her over and she reached for Tisamon for his support, but he was out of arm’s length already. You are on your own from here.

Tynisa regained her balance, wiped her mouth. Her stomach twisted sourly, and the two Moth-kinden seemed to shift and blur in her vision.