But this? It was impossible, and yet he knew it for sure. His instincts were certain, absolute. He had seen her before in the shape of a Beetle, in the shape of a Wasp-kinden officer, in the shape of a Mynan woman. She had even infiltrated Stenwold’s people in the form of one of his own students, and yet Maker had not known.
He leant back so that he could speak to the others without being overheard. They were all on edge from the moment the Shadow Box had been displayed.
‘This curiously carved casket,’ the Fly-kinden was saying, ‘of Mantis-kinden workmanship, very delicately done, and dating to around the time of the Pathic revolution, or very shortly thereafter, this item is believed to be of great ritual significance to the Inapt people of that period.’
‘It’s her,’ hissed Thalric. ‘The Fly is her, I swear.’
‘Her or not,’ Tisamon said, ‘it is time.’ His claw was already on his arm, without his having had any chance to buckle it on. It was a night of wild ideas and Thalric’s veins sang magic to him. Tonight he could believe in anything.
He turned back to the Fly – to Scyla – who was concluding her patter. They were all unarmed here aside from the Mantis, but he was a Wasp. He sensed Tisamon behind him, about to make his lunge.
Let the Mantis take the brunt, he decided, waiting for the man’s move.
It came, but not from Tisamon.
The Wasp-kinden woman, whose identity Thalric never discovered, suddenly shouted out a command and half a dozen men from various points across the room suddenly lurched forward. They had appeared to be there as independent buyers or their retinues, but abruptly they were as one and drawing knives, rushing for the stage.
Someone else wants to receive the prize without the price.
Thalric did not need to make a signal. Tisamon was already past him, knocking over a Beetle-kinden collector in his rush forward. His claw swept in and he caught the nearest knifeman in the back, without even slowing, vaulting the stricken man’s body. Another knife-wielder was wrestling with some other guard in the crowd, who had misinterpreted the move as an attack on his master. Three had gained the edge of the podium but one had already fallen, stabbed by one of Scyla’s hired locals.
The Fly-kinden, Scyla in poise but utterly otherwise in looks, surged forward as the first man, a Beetle-kinden, tried to jump on to the platform. Thalric only saw her hand go in, but there was a knife in it when it withdrew, and the man fell backwards. Then the Fly spotted Tisamon.
Thalric saw, actually saw, the shape of her face flicker, and he wondered whether she recognized who Tisamon was, or whether Spiders, for all their disdain, still had nightmares about the avenging Mantis warrior who might come for them one day.
Two of her Skaters tried to get in Tisamon’s way, with shortswords in hand and wearing cuirasses of metal scales, but he had killed the both of them swifter than Thalric could follow him. A third was struck down by Gaved’s sting as it lanced over the heads of the crowd, which was becoming more chaotic by the moment. The wiser collectors were making their exits, and others were trying to send their men against the stage itself, or against those who were trying to attack it. With hands and elbows, Tynisa was fighting her way through the crowd to take the box as soon as Scyla was brought down. Thalric used his wings to wrench him up from the throng, feeling a stab of pain for his efforts, but he needed a clear shot.
Abruptly the air itself was busy. He saw a dozen Wasp soldiers appear from over the lake, their crackling sting bolts already lancing the crowd. Some of these newcomers landed close to Tisamon on the stage, but he killed them even as they touched down and before they realized their error. Tynisa dispatched another one, lancing a borrowed knife between the armour plates covering the man’s back. Thalric felt his sting burning the palm of his hand in anticipation, but he held it back.
They are still my people, he thought, and besides he had other prey tonight.
Scyla had backed away, her outline shimmering slightly, until the wall that backed the auction house platform was at her shoulderblades. Trapped, thought Thalric, trapped by her own devices. A true Fly-kinden would not have left herself so helpless.
He watched Tisamon lunge for her. And she flew. Thalric almost fell out of the air himself, because she was most definitely Scyla, her Spider face shifting in and out amongst those Fly-kinden features, but she had stolen the Fly wings along with the face, darted over the startled Tisamon’s head and out into the night.
Thalric let out a shout of anger, at his own assumptions as much as at her escape, and Scyla turned to look round, despite herself. Their eyes met briefly with a shock of recognition.
He felt the blast of his sting searing his palm as it departed, saw it strike the Fly-kinden body, that became abruptly a Spider-kinden body, and send it spinning, unfit for the air, doubled over about the charred hole he had torn in her. The box dropped out of her fingers, and he was instantly rushing for it, aware that Gaved was on the wing too, the pair of them converging and yet too slow, both of them already too late.
The impact of his shot had knocked her past the rear wall of the auction place, beyond the edge of the raft. Thalric saw Gaved pass in front of him, watched Scyla’s body tumble from the borrowed air into the water, to vanish into the darkness.
And the box went too and, although it was wood, it was gone in seconds, as though whatever it contained was as heavy as stones.
For a second, Thalric was tempted to dive after it, into the chill of Lake Limnia, but he and Gaved both pulled themselves up before breaking the surface.
Thalric swore to himself. He did not care about the box itself, but failure cut deeply. He circled back over the auction raft, which was rapidly emptying, and saw Tisamon and Tynisa finish off a handful of patrons who had decided that the pair were to blame for whatever had happened.
He was just returning back over the wall when he heard Gaved cry out in astonishment. Looking back, he saw something emerging from the water – something that was slender and pale.
It was an arm. Out of context, it took him far too long to realize that. It was an arm and hand, and the hand was clutching the Shadow Box. It was Sef, reaching out from the water as one born to it, her hand, her arm, then her head sliding out into the air till she was exposed up to her waist in a shock of spray. She cried something wordless – or a word the Wasps did not know – and Gaved dipped in the air towards her.
There was something beneath her, Gaved saw. Although it was dark, he saw a great pale bulk rising beneath her. He had no way of knowing how huge, how far away, but it seemed to have scythe-like jaws, and it loomed larger and larger as it rushed upwards to pluck her from the water’s surface.
Gaved dived down without a second thought, and she held out the box to him, her eyes wide with terror.
‘Yours!’ she cried to him, and he pitched lower, almost skimming the surface, and caught at her arm near the elbow. She was slippery with lake water, but he locked his fingers into her flesh and wrenched her upwards, his wings powering as hard as they could. He was a good flier, Gaved, since his profession demanded it, chasing fugitives for miles at a time, but he was not so good as to be able to drag her entire from the water. Still, he fought to do so, hauling her up and up, fighting against her weight, as she cried out from the ferocity of his grip. The Shadow Box teetered in her hand.
She was now out past her hips, then her knees, and he felt his lungs straining, the constant beating of his wings sapping his strength. Then she was clear, toes leaving the water’s meniscus, and he strove for height – enough height to escape the monstrous thing that was coming behind.
Abruptly she felt lighter and he was climbing rapidly. For a mad second Gaved feared that the thing in the water had scissored her in half, but then he saw that someone else had caught at her other arm. To his lasting surprise he saw Thalric, face white with the effort but flying upwards and upwards, staring fixedly ahead as if at some goal.
Gaved followed his line of sight and saw the most beautiful thing he co
uld have wished for: Jons Allanbridge’s Buoyant Maiden bobbing over the lake like a second moon, with a rope ladder already unreeling towards them. He saw Achaeos at the rail, a drawn bow in his hands, the arrow leaping past him to dart down at the surface of the lake – only to be intercepted by one of the Wasp soldiers who had been swooping in behind. The man howled, not badly hurt but knocked aside by the impact, dropping in a moment of shock towards the broken water.
Looking back, Gaved saw the giant thing from the lake break the surface briefly, beside the auction raft, and he would never know whether it was some colossal insect or perhaps – just perhaps – some device of the lake-dwellers below. The question would remain to haunt his nightmares.
Then they were at the ladder, and Sef grasped for it with her free hand and scrambled up it as swiftly as she could. Gaved cast himself up, too, and over the rail, falling to his knee, utterly drained. Thalric dropped down beside him, clutching at his side and grimacing in agony.
‘Thank you,’ Gaved said to him.
‘She had the box,’ Thalric replied flatly, through pain-gritted teeth.
Down at the auction raft, Tisamon and Tynisa had made bloody work of Brodan’s soldiers, and anyone else who tried to challenge them. Most of the buyers had now fled, by boat or by air, so when the Buoyant Maiden steered herself ponderously over the raft, with ladder unfurled, there was none to contest their exit.
Twenty-Five
Coming home was the sweetest thing he had ever done: Stenwold, sitting in the train carriage with Arianna huddled against him, her head resting on his rounded shoulder; and poor bandaged Sperra sleeping fitfully, sprawled across a whole seat. On the other side of the carriage, Parops sat with his head tilted back, his eyes closed: whether asleep or awake, Stenwold could not tell.
But it was Collegium the rail automotive was pulling into, with the white spires of the College visible over the rooftops, with the dome of the Amphiophos right before them. Collegium, that jewel of civilization, which planned no invasions nor tortures.
He had given the new weapon of the age into every hand that wished it. He would now be responsible for the world that such an act created. It was easy for the great and mighty to sign their scraps of parchment, easier still at the time to convince themselves that they intended to keep their word. Expedience was the great eroder of moral stances.
Arianna made a vague sound and pressed closer in against him, so he put a protective arm about her as he stared bleakly out of the unshuttered carriage window.
Collegium had not changed so much, but it had definitely changed. There were companies of militia drilling in what had been the Stockhowell Market: awkward-looking Beetle men and women, and various other kinden as well, some in heavy chainmail and others in breastplates worn over heavy buff jackets. He saw halberd heads weave and dip, and crossbows shouldered in mock threat.
He kept looking until he saw a company equipped with the slender, silvery snapbows, industriously going through the motions of loading them. He had operated one himself, of course, and he knew how effortless it was. The weapon seemed to have severed all connection between the hand that pulled the trigger and the man that fell dead twenty or fifty yards away.
But it is a Beetle weapon, he realized. Totho had wrought it well. The Wasps were still half-savage, without the iron discipline of the Ants or the broader understanding of his own people. The Wasp-kinden were well suited to skirmish and raid, to vicious assaults and angry reprisals. His own people were civilized and cool-headed and, because of that, they would take to this new weapon as nobody else. In time, he thought, we could conquer the world with our reason and our good intentions. Let us hope that our future shall not suffer from the Wasps teaching us how to make war.
The train shuddered to a slow stop, at which Parops reopened his eyes.
‘Returning to your men, Commander?’ Stenwold asked him.
‘I have spoken to them. They will march,’ Parops agreed. ‘We will go because, if Sarn falls, the entire Lowlands will tumble with it. It will be the first time, I think, that the Ants of our two cities have fought side by side.’
‘Long may it last,’ said Stenwold, though he knew that it would not.
He took Sperra straight to the College infirmary, where the most skilled of Collegium’s doctors would do what they could for her. She clutched at his sleeve briefly and he felt ill at having failed her.
*
The next morning he received visitors almost as soon as he was dressed. His drawing room was busy with a dozen functionaries, including two faces he knew: Lineo Thadspar, still Speaker for the Assembly of Collegium, and Teornis of the Aldanrael, who had returned to Collegium on the same train.
He studied their faces, the lined old Beetle and the smooth, agelessly handsome Spider-kinden, and he noted their expressions.
‘I take it the news is not good.’
‘No worse than expected,’ said Thadspar wryly. ‘We knew it would come to this.’
‘The Wasps are marching,’ Stenwold predicted.
‘They are, indeed. You have a source in Helleron, you will be surprised to discover, who has been sending missives by Fly-kinden messengers. He signs himself Wood-builder.’
Stenwold nodded. That would be the Helleron councillor Greenwise Artector, of course, who would be in a position to see a great deal of what went on in that occupied city. He did not speak the name, though, for his old habits as an intelligencer suggested it might be unwise. ‘What does this Woodbuilder have to say now?’
‘That a new army is marching from Helleron – the Sixth, known as the Hive. It marches to reinforce General Malkan’s Seventh, and from there on to Sarn.’
‘As you say, nothing unexpected.’
‘And he says also that he has given information to the Lord of the Wastes, so that that gentleman may impede the Wasps as best he may. I must confess I can make nothing of that message.’
‘I think we can, Master Thadspar,’ said Teornis. ‘Stenwold, you have a protege, do you not, who is making a name for himself in Sarn and out in the wilderness.’
Stenwold nodded slowly. ‘Salma, yes.’
‘Apparently this Lord of the Wastes has been attacking Wasp supply convoys,’ Thadspar explained. ‘Presumably aided by your Woodbuilder’s intelligence. All very complex.’
‘It boils down to the same thing, though,’ said Stenwold. ‘Sarn must be defended, and the attack will come sooner rather than later. Do we have men we can send to Sarn’s aid, just as Sarn has aided us?’
‘I’m sure we do, although I have not had much involvement with the merchant companies…’ Thadspar started.
‘Perhaps you should not commit your soldiers so hastily,’ interrupted Teornis. ‘I fear you are not the only man with news, Master Thadspar.’
The two Beetles stared at him, waiting.
‘I am afraid there is another Wasp army, numbering I know not what, presently marching south from Asta to Tark. Word has come from the Dryclaw to my people, and was waiting here for me when I arrived. From Tark, I imagine that force will move on westwards down the coast, through Merro and Egel, through Kes and the Felyal, and then to here. The Wasps want Collegium, as you already know.’
‘And your people, what will they do?’ Stenwold asked him.
Teornis smiled. ‘Why, Master Maker, I have no idea. We are an independent, free-spirited lot. We might do anything.’ The smile hardened. ‘There are webs, though, of my own spinning, and we shall see what has been caught in them, by and by.’
The Esca Volenti’s clockwork motor started with a whir of cogs, and a handful of the mechanics began nervously to wheel the orthopter out past the Wasps, onto the field. Beyond it, Lieutenant Axrad’s own vessel was lazily powering up its wings with a deep grumble of its mineral-oil engine. The Wasp pilot threw Taki a salute before dropping into his cockpit and closing the hatch.
Back in the hangar, Che had already returned to the Cleaver, familiarizing herself with the controls. She heard Nero climb in beh
ind her.
‘We’re going as soon as Taki’s taken off,’ she told him.
‘Right you are.’ He stood behind her, holding on to the back of her seat. ‘Roomy, this, but you can’t see a thing,’ he decided, and she heard the hatch rattle again as he opened it for a better view.
Out on the field, the Esca’s two wings began working their way up to a blur, and then the flying machine’s legs left the ground and slowly folded in, taking off on the vertical. Axrad’s heavier machine prowled stubbornly along the airstrip before slowly lifting into the air with great beats of its own four-wing arrangement. Then they were both aloft, spiralling about one another, gaining height: for a moment the sole point of concentration for everyone watching below.
Even when the Cleaver’s engines started up, there was a moment before anyone could distinguish the new sound from the two fliers receding above. Then the barrel-bodied fixed-wing was already moving, dragged forwards by its propellers and advancing slowly on the open hangar mouth. It was an unlovely thing in motion but it was solidly built, shouldering aside a smaller vessel that obstructed it in its hunt for the sky. Che felt it lurch and kick as she wrestled with the controls. It was taking all her strength just to keep the craft on a straight line.
I hope it’s livelier than this when it gets into the air.
‘Che!’ Nero called down to her. ‘Trouble!’
The Wasps had noticed them, at last, or perhaps they had simply begun loosing their stings on the bystanding mechanics. Che saw several of the Solarnese go down. A moment later the Cleaver’s hull thrummed under scorching impacts.
This is a wooden flier, Che reflected, with an engine that burns combustible fuel. She needed to get into the air immediately, where the swift passage of the Cleaver would hopefully put out any burning on the exterior.
A moment later she was sprawling on the floor beside the pilot’s chair, rubbing at her eyes and coughing at the smoke, whilst the narrow view-slit had acquired a charred new edge. She smelt burning wood behind her, and heard Nero clattering down from the hatch to stamp out whatever smouldering had started. The Cleaver was listing noticeably to the left, as she flung herself back into the seat, hauling at the sticks. By now the Wasps were concentrating their attacks, and the whole front of the Cleaver shook alarmingly. She heard wood splinter with the force of the combined assault and knew that, however solid her vessel looked, it was just like a wooden eggshell if they could apply enough pressure.
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