Heirs of the Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page A

fight. The first time, he was accosted by another Wasp and she heard angry words exchanged, the man accusing Gaved of some disloyalty – perhaps to the Empire that both had patently abandoned – but Gaved smoothed matters over with some joke, fending off the man’s anger. The aggressor looked more than a little drunk and Gaved was able to evade him quickly.
    The second time a half-dozen or so Grasshoppers tried to accost him, and although his hands threatened them with Wasp Art they only kept their distance but did not disperse. They were armed with spears and staves and knives, and they clearly wanted Gaved to go along with them to some local tyrant or other. Tynisa watched, interested to see if she would have to save the man’s life in order to have the pleasure of killing him herself.
    One of the Grasshoppers became too bold, reaching for the Wasp’s sleeve, even though his fellows were still holding back. A bitter expression crossed Gaved’s face briefly and Tynisa saw his hand flash fire, knocking the grasping man off his feet, still alive but with one leg scorched. In the next instant the Wasp had taken to the sky, his wings lifting him back over the adjoining buildings. The Grasshoppers cursed and gave chase, as their own Art sent them leaping and bounding along at rooftop level, determined not to let Gaved get away. The wounded man yelled after them, demanding aid that was not offered, and then he began to crawl away, weeping with pain.
    Tynisa loped into action. She did not possess the Art to follow either the Grasshoppers or their prey, but she could see the net of his pursuers as it spread. Hurriedly, she climbed up to the creaking roof of the largest shack, spying them out, seeing who gave up soonest, who continued following a trail. She took only moments to make her guess, and then she dropped back down to street level and went hunting.
    It felt good – and so little had felt good recently – to be moving swiftly and silently through the shabby streets, rapier swaying at her side like a faithful companion beast. This was more a taste of life than the world had afforded her in a long time now, since the war.
    Sometimes people got in her way, but they got right back out of it once they noticed her expression, Wasps as well as locals, for she was not someone to stop, just then.
    She slowed as she neared the wretched district her instincts had led her towards, and began to quarter it more subtly, street by street, her eyes not actively searching so much as taking it all in – letting the filthy sights and sounds wash over her while sifting them for familiarity. She encountered a few of the Grasshoppers, angry and frustrated at their failed search, turning back now to make their excuses to whoever had hired them. She paid them no mind.
    As she shifted sidelong into the shadows beneath a shed’s sagging eaves she found a core of stillness, a Mantis’s watchful invisibility before the strike, as though the shade of Tisamon stood beside her, hand on her shoulder, lending her his kinden’s Art. The other ghosts had been left far behind.
    There . She had him. The cloaked figure walking almost – not quite – like a Dragonfly, but a little too burly despite his best efforts. She watched as he slipped out from between two buildings, a little astray from where she had predicted, but close enough. There was a brief pale flash of Wasp skin as he glanced about, and then Gaved hurried off, not at the idle saunter of before, but like a man in a hurry to get somewhere.
    She flowed after him, like a ghost herself, keeping up with him at a distance, street for street. When she saw he was heading out of Siriell’s Town her satisfaction only increased. She would be able to kill him cleanly and without interruption, before returning to this festering pit to begin earning her atonement in blood.
    He made good time after that, but always on the ground, not wanting to take wing and be too visible. Shortly, he was at the