Dragonfly Falling

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘General Maxin wishes, I think, to be remembered to you.’

  He was adept at reading her. Now, seeing her lips tighten, he broadened his own smile. There was a name she was unlikely to forget. Three brothers and a sister that had separated the two of them in age had all fallen, if not to Maxin’s knife then to his orders.

  ‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘that I am grateful to the general for his concern.’

  He laughed politely. ‘Dear sister Seda, they are all so anxious that you find some direction in your life.’

  ‘I am touched.’ Seda took a minute bite of seedcake, her eyes never leaving his hands, watching for any signal to the guard hovering behind her. ‘Although I can guess at the direction they have in mind.’

  ‘They don’t understand how it is between us,’ Alvdan continued. A servant brought him more bread and buttered it for him.

  ‘I am not sure that I do, Alvdan.’ She sensed the guard shift behind her and added, ‘Your Imperial Majesty.’

  ‘They think I am so soft-hearted. They agonize over it, that the Emperor of the Wasps should have such a flaw in his character,’ he told her.

  ‘Then you are right that they clearly do not understand you.’

  ‘Insolence, sister Seda, does not become one of our line,’ he warned her.

  She lowered her head but her eyes stayed with his hands.

  ‘You and I understand each other, do we not?’ he pressed.

  ‘We do . . . Your Majesty.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. She glanced up at him, and he repeated, ‘Tell me. I love to hear the words from you.’

  For a second she looked rebellious, but it passed like the weather. ‘You hate and despise me, Majesty. Your joy is in my misery.’

  ‘And an Emperor deserves all joys in life, does he not,’ he agreed happily. ‘My advisers and their plans! They do not understand your potential. Last year they were plotting to marry you off, to make an honest wife of you. They do not realize that you are not like other women of our race. You are no mere adornment for some man. You are a weapon, and if your hilt were in a man’s hand he would turn your edge on me. I think General Maxin would marry you himself, if I was mad enough to let him.’

  She said something quietly, and he rapped his knife-hilt on the table impatiently.

  ‘I said I would rather die, Your Majesty,’ she answered him.

  He smiled broadly at that. ‘Well then perhaps I should hold the option open. I can always have Maxin slain on his nuptial night. That would be a fit wedding present, no?’

  ‘Your Majesty forgets who he most wishes to hurt,’ she said tiredly.

  ‘Perhaps. But now they are trying to parcel you off to some order, so as to make an ascetic of you. As though you could not be recalled from there, once my back was turned. And that is the crux. Alive, you will always threaten me. Yet dead . . . My throne will always require defending and, with your blood staining my hands, who can say from where the next threat might come? So, alive and close you must stay, little sister.’

  ‘You will keep me only until the succession is secured, Majesty, and then you will have me killed. Perhaps you will even wield the knife yourself, or break me in the interrogation rooms.’

  ‘Do you tire of life, Seda?’ he asked her.

  She reached out for him, then, but the cold steel of the guard’s sword touched her cheek before she could touch even his fingers. With a long sigh she drew back.

  ‘I have had no life since our father died. What I have had since then is nothing more than a long descent, and every tenday the ground is moved one tenday further off, so that I drop and drop. But one day the ground will stay where it is, and I shall be dashed to pieces.’

  ‘Beautifully said,’ he told her. ‘Your education has not been wasted after all. Seeing the good use you have made of it, I decide that I shall broaden it.’

  This was a change from the usual routine. ‘Your Imperial Majesty?’ she enquired cautiously.

  ‘A little trip to the dungeons, dear Seda,’ he said and, when she sighed, he added, ‘Not yet, dear sister. It is not your turn yet. Instead there is a most interesting prisoner that General Maxin has brought for me. I think you should see him. Furthermore, I think he is desirous of seeing you.’

  The Wasp Empire was all about imposing order. Alvdan the Second’s grandfather Alvric had forced it on his own people, who were a turbulent and savage lot by nature. The original Alvdan, first of that name, had then turned his need for order on the wider world and his namesake son had followed his lead. The imposition of order became all. The multiplicity of ranks and stations within the army, the precise status of the more powerful families, the honours and titles that were the gift of the throne, even the station and privileges of individual slaves – everyone had a place, and those above, and those below.

  The maxim applied even to prisoners. There had developed a whole imperial art to the treatment of prisoners – how often they were fed; whether they had a cell a man could stand in, or even lie straight in; whether they were kept damp, kept cold; whether they were dragged out to lie on the artificer-interrogator’s mechanical tables for no other reason than it was their turn, their lowly contribution to the Empire’s sense of order.

  Such prisoners as had something to offer the Empire, they could do well for themselves. They could even make the leap, eventually, from prisoner to slave – just as the threat of becoming a prisoner kept the lowest slaves in line.

  Judging by such exacting standards, this man her brother had found must have a great deal of potential, for his cell lay on the airiest level of Capitas’s most accommodating prison. He had two rooms to himself, and an antechamber, and the guards even rattled the barred door in advance to announce that he had visitors. In the antechamber there sat three young pages, two boys and a girl, presumably to run errands for the prisoner’s needs. As she considered that, Princess Seda noticed how pale and drawn they all were, and that one was visibly trembling.

  She was not really a princess, of course. That was a Commonwealer title that one young officer, desperately gallant and politically naïve, had once given her. What fate had befallen him since she did not know, but he had been a brief ray of sun through the clouds that perpetually clogged her life.

  The prisoner’s reception chamber was lit by great windows, latticed with metal bars, that extended across almost an entire wall, and opened up part of the ceiling as well. There were no curtains, she saw. The sun flooded unopposed across the floor until it met the doorway into the sleeping chamber. That room was quite dark, muffled in drapes, and impenetrable to her gaze.

  ‘Your Emperor is here,’ one of the guards announced. ‘Present yourself!’

  For a moment it seemed that nothing would happen, and then Seda heard a shuffling from within the darkness, and at last a hooded figure in tattered robes came forward tentatively to the brink of the dazzling light. One hand, pale as death and thin as bone, was raised against the sun.

  ‘Come forward, we command it,’ Alvdan instructed, and Seda saw how he was enjoying himself, watching the wretch quail before the sunlight.

  The guard began uncoiling a whip from his belt and, with a shudder, the slender creature crept forwards, head turned away from the windows. She could see nothing of him yet but those two delicate hands, long-fingered and sharp-nailed.

  ‘We have brought our sister to you, since we thought that you might be of interest to each other,’ Alvdan sounded pleased with himself no end. The cowl shifted and sought her out, and she imagined watery eyes within were trying to focus on her.

  ‘Introduce yourself, creature,’ Alvdan said. ‘Have your kinden no manners?’

  The robed thing gave a long, tired hiss and crept closer, until it was almost within arm’s reach. There were blue veins prominent against the translucence of its arms, and something about the creature sent a deep shiver through Seda.

  ‘This is Seda, youngest of our father’s line, as we are oldest,’ Alvdan announced. ‘Name yourself.’r />
  The voice was hoarse and low. ‘Uctebri the Sarcad, Your Imperial Majesty and honoured lady.’ It was a man’s voice, as accentless as though he had been born here in Capitas city.

  ‘And is it good-mannered to conceal yourself behind a cowl?’ Alvdan demanded. ‘Surely my sister deserves better than that? Come, unmask yourself, creature.’

  The figure that called itself Uctebri shuddered again, one hand gesturing vaguely towards the windows. The voice murmured something that might have been a plea.

  The crack of the guard’s whip made Seda start. Uctebri flinched back from it, though it had not touched him. She feared that, had the lash struck his wrist, it might have snapped his hand off.

  Trembling, those hands now rose to draw back the cowl.

  The sight was not so bad, at first. An old man, or an ill one. A pale veiny head with a little lank hair still clinging behind it. A thin, arched neck bagged with wrinkles. The lips were withered, his nose pointed, and there was a florid bruise on his forehead.

  Shading them with both hands, he painfully opened his eyes to stare at her. They were protuberant, with irises of pure red, and they stared and stared at her face despite the glaring daylight. Seeing those, she saw also that the mark on his brow was not a bruise after all, but blood, a clot of blood constantly shifting beneath his waxy skin.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said to her brother. ‘Who is this old man?’

  ‘Do you hear her, Uctebri?’ Alvdan smirked, as though he and the withered thing were sharing some joke at her expense. ‘Well even we were unsure when first we looked upon you. Even with General Maxin’s urgings, we were slow to believe – and yet here you are.’

  Uctebri’s head turned to squint at him, and then his crimson attention focused back to her. He would have been just some old man except for those eyes. They seemed to look through her. She could feel the force of that crimson stare as a queasiness in her stomach, an itch between her shoulder blades.

  ‘Touch her,’ Alvdan commanded. Seda drew back at once, but the guard, the man who had spent all morning at her shoulder, was now gripping her arms. Uctebri shuffled forwards, those unnatural eyes craning up at her, and she saw his tongue pierce between his lips, a sharp dart of red.

  Something terrible was about to happen. She could not account for the premonition but she began to struggle as hard as she could, twisting and writhing in the soldier’s grip as the old man approached her.

  And then he was before her and she saw his mouth open slightly, the teeth inside sharp and pointed like yellow needles. One of those slender hands reached out to pincer her wrist.

  He was not strong, but stronger than his frailty suggested nonetheless. She wrenched her hand from that cool touch, and Uctebri said, ‘I must feel the blood, your great Majesty,’ in that same calm, low voice.

  She heard the whisper of Alvdan unsheathing his dagger, and then the cold steel at her throat. The old man raised his hands urgently.

  ‘A point, the prick of a pin only, Lord Majesty. Just for the savour of it. No more, not yet. All in good time.’

  They had surely all gone mad. If there was any fraternal feeling in Alvdan’s heart she would have pleaded with him. Instead she closed her eyes and turned her head away as he seized her hand and cut across a finger.

  Uctebri grasped eagerly for the weapon, but Alvdan only presented the blade of it.

  ‘Have no ideas above your station, creature,’ the Emperor said. ‘You know what you are. Now act as you should.’

  The crabbed old man craned forwards, hands cupping beneath the stained blade to catch any drips, and then licked the steel, his sharp tongue cleaning her blood from it in scant moments. Even that small taste of her seemed to bring a new strength to him. His next glance at her was nothing other than hungry.

  ‘Will she serve?’ Alvdan demanded of him. ‘Or must we mount a hunt for more distant relations?’

  Uctebri smiled slyly. ‘She shall more than serve, your worshipful Majesty. She is . . . perfect. A most delicate savour.’

  ‘Brother—’ Seda’s voice shook but she did not care. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Some small diversion,’ he told her. ‘Merely an entertainment. Fear not, dear sister. You have your part to play, but need learn no lines or dance-steps. Come, bring her.’

  She was bundled after him back into the antechamber, where the pale servants waited.

  ‘What is he?’ she stammered.

  ‘Can you not guess, sweet sister?’ Alvdan’s smile was now broad indeed. ‘Think back as far back as childhood, when we sat by the fire together and listened to stories.’

  And it was worse that she knew what he meant, that he did not need to explain. ‘He cannot be . . .’

  ‘Quite a discovery by General Maxin’s Rekef, is it not?’

  They come at night for the blood of the living, the ancient sorcerers, the terrible night-dwellers, who steal bad children from their beds, never to be seen again . . .

  ‘But there are no Mosquito-kinden. There never were. They were just tales . . . surely?’

  But confronting that gleeful smile of his, she knew otherwise.

  Eight

  Collegium was a city of laws. The underhanded could not easily purchase respectability, nor were they of great service or use to the Assembly. Such businesses as Lieutenant Graf had been practising were therefore done by word of mouth and behind closed doors.

  Graf’s office sat behind a small-package exporter run by a copper-skinned Kessen Ant who had long been renegade from his native city. The exporter’s own work was on the shady side of the legal line and he asked no questions nor answered them. Behind his store was the back room where Graf bought and sold the talents of swordsmen to whoever required them. He was well known. He had a good reputation amongst buyers and sellers of blades.

  Regular business was now closed for the evening, though, and he set out five bowls, poured wine into only one. His true line of work was a more uncertain business. There was no telling which of the chairs would sit out the night empty.

  Thalric came first, unpinning his cloak and casting it off. ‘Concerns, Lieutenant?’ he asked, straight away.

  ‘All going like clockwork, Major,’ Graf confirmed. Thal-ric took the bowl of wine he was offered and swallowed deeply.

  ‘Local?’ he asked, and when Graf nodded, remarked, ‘They have good vineyards hereabouts.’

  Graf shrugged. ‘Never was much of a man for it myself.’ The lieutenant’s speech and accent told Thalric that here was someone who had risen through his own efforts, without any help from family or friends. A doubly useful man, then. Mind you, merit got you further in the Rekef than it did in the regular army.

  Scadran and Hofi, large and small, arrived together. At a gesture from Graf, the Fly-kinden barber hopped up onto a stool to pour two more bowls of wine.

  ‘We’ll start,’ Thalric decided. ‘Your report first, Scadran.’

  ‘Arianna’s not here, sir?’ the big man asked.

  ‘I’ve had word from her. She’s in place and the plan is working well enough, but she decided it was best not to arouse any suspicion by breaking cover. The hook is set and the fish looks to be gaping for it, so to speak.’ Thalric shook his head. He had only met Stenwold the once, and he had rather liked the man – as much as he could like any enemy of the Empire. Stenwold was a man who took his duties seriously, even when they might endanger those closest to him. Admirable, perhaps, but he was a tired old man, whereas Arianna was Spider-kinden, born to be devious, sly and cunning from her first breath.

  Poor old man, but who would not be flattered to have an innocent young girl like that hanging on his every word? Who would not be swayed?

  But it was for the good of the Empire, and that was the first rule of Thalric’s life. Stenwold was altogether too much of an obstacle to ignore.

  ‘So, Scadran, report,’ he said, slightly irked that he needed to ask twice.

  ‘Lot of news about Tark,’ the dockworker began. ‘Spider sh
ips are coming in saying the north road from Seldis is cut, impassable. They’re saying that they can sell to the . . . well, to us as well as they could to the Tarkesh. The slave trade and the silk trade haven’t been dented. That’s what they’re most bothered about.’

  ‘Anything more?’

  ‘Nothing but the usual trouble,’ Scadran continued, and then, as Thalric gestured for him to explain, ‘Mantis longboats from Felyal are on the rise. Spider shipping is being attacked. That happens every few years, then the Spiders get some mercenary navy in and everything quiets down.’

  ‘Could be to our advantage, Major,’ Graf remarked, and Thalric nodded.

  ‘The more little wars being fought in the Lowlands right now the better,’ he agreed. ‘Hofi, the news with you?’

  ‘All good as gold.’ The Fly-kinden barber grinned happily. ‘I snip a few grandees from the Assembly, in my place, and they love to boast about their doings. With a few words dropped, I can have them talking about anything I like. In this case, I got them – two or three of them waiting for the curl – talking on the subject of our dear friend Master Stenwold Maker.’

  ‘In your own time, Hofi,’ Thalric said, finding the little man long-winded.

  ‘Of course, Major, of course. He’s not a well-liked man, because they don’t appreciate troublemakers. They don’t think he takes the College seriously enough. There’s even a motion tabled to strip him of his Masterhood. That’s not the first time, but it could be passed.’

  ‘Are they going to give him a hearing?’ Thalric asked pointedly.

  ‘Oh, of course they’ll see him, in the fullness of time. For now, though, they’re still debating just when. That debate alone could last thirty days.’

  ‘Or?’

  Hofi blinked. ‘Or what sir?’

  ‘Or it could be decided tomorrow?’ Thalric suggested. ‘And then they’d see him in a day after that?’

  ‘Not likely, sir.’

  ‘It’s just as well I don’t deal in likelihoods, then, when I can avoid it. I’ll let Arianna know that the trap needs to be ready to spring at any time. Let’s hope she has had the chance to worm her way fully into Stenwold’s graces.’