Dragonfly Falling

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Rely on her,’ Graf told him. ‘She’s a good agent.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Thalric nodded again. ‘What about your duties, Lieutenant?’

  ‘I have men for you,’ Graf confirmed. ‘This city’s never brimming with fighting men, but I have a dozen confirmed reliables so far.’

  ‘Let’s hope they’re better than those last two you sent at him,’ Thalric said.

  ‘They’re as good as I can get without compromising our position here, Major. And I have one special treat – one with a particular grudge against Stenwold’s girl.’

  ‘Against Cheerwell?’ Thalric frowned. He could hardly imagine it.

  ‘Not her, sir. The Spider girl. I’ve hired us a Mantis duellist.’

  Thalric felt his heart skip despite himself. No of course he hasn’t hired that Mantis-kinden. But the reaction was automatic. He had taken that man down, he had burned him and yet, after the Mantis’s wretched daughter put her sword through Thalric’s leg, he had seen the same man get up and fight like a monster.

  He forced himself to stay calm. They would meet again, he assured himself, and the Empire would triumph over the backwoods belligerence of the Mantids.

  But secretly he hoped they never met again.

  ‘Our man’s name is Piraeus. Apparently the daughter, or whatever she is, gave him a public whipping at one of their little fencing games, and for once we’ve found a Mantis who doesn’t care just how he gets even. He’s more than happy to stick her from the shadows. Or her old man, come to that. He’s not particular.’

  ‘Thalric,’ she said, ‘a Wasp-kinden. That is who I’m looking for.’

  The paunchy Beetle-kinden looked down on her from his throne. It was meant to be a throne, anyway. A built-up chair atop some steps with gold and stones hammered into it. Perhaps he had been aiming for barbaric splendour.

  ‘Name rings a bell,’ he allowed. This seated dignitary was known as Last-Chance Fraywell. Felise understood this name came from his final words to those who crossed him. ‘I’m going to give you one last chance,’ he would say to them, and then proceed to kill them in whatever way appealed to him. So she was led to understand, anyway.

  Fraywell leant down from his throne, peering at her suspiciously. She was standing a fair way back and she had come without her sword but, even so, there were a dozen of Fraywell’s bullies carefully watching her. She looked from face to face: Beetle-kinden, Ants, halfbreeds . . . there he was, the man she was told to watch out for: a tall Spider-kinden, the only one here of his kind. His was the face she knew.

  She moved in worlds far from home these days, always amongst the faces of strangers. It was better that way, for she could not have guaranteed recognizing faces from the Commonweal any more.

  ‘Why do you want him?’ Fraywell asked her. ‘I’ve got no brief for Wasp-kinden, but this doesn’t ring true.’

  ‘Why I want him is my own business,’ she replied flatly.

  ‘Well then maybe where he’s gone is mine.’ Fraywell sat back, looking pleased with himself. He was one of the smaller gangsters in Helleron, and his fief, as they called a criminal’s holdings, was pitiful, but it had been expanding recently. The word was that he had done well out of the recent visit by imperial troops, peddling all kinds of muck to them: drink, drugs, women. Certainly he had the clout to jostle for elbow room now.

  ‘I must know,’ she said. ‘I will know. I have followed Thalric a long way and I will not give up now.’

  ‘Well maybe your business can stay your business if only you’ve got the wherewithal,’ said Fraywell, sounding bored all of a sudden. ‘Come on, let’s wrap this up. You’re taking up my valuable time, woman. Show me the stamp of your coin.’

  She found that she was smiling, and it was disconcerting Fraywell and his men. ‘I am not here to buy,’ she explained. It was such a simple concept and yet the Beetle had still not grasped it. ‘I am here to make payment.’

  Fraywell glanced at his men, baffled, and she now was advancing on his seat smoothly, so smoothly that two of his people barely got in her way in time. Her hands flashed out, the razor edges of her thumb-claws folding forwards, and she cut them down with swift economy.

  Fraywell screamed and kicked away from her so hard that he toppled his would-be throne backwards, leaving only his boots showing. She turned, looking over the room of stunned thugs and held a hand high.

  The Spider-kinden that she knew stepped back and took her sword from within his cloak, pitching it to her above the heads of his fellows in a smooth arc. She hardly had to move her hand at all to catch it.

  With her blade restored to her, she let them all draw their own weapons. That seemed only fair. Ten of them, and they tried to rush her, but she was already leaping forwards from the steps, descending on them with blade first.

  They were not skilled but they were many. She made their numbers her ally, as they crashed into one another, fouling each other’s blows. Her blade moved among them like lightning, like sunlight. She sent them reeling back in bloody arcs, and moved – quicksilver past lead – to evade their clumsy thrusts and grasping hands. Behind them the Spider-kinden traitor had a long dagger out and was picking and choosing his targets, putting the point in with the care of a surgeon.

  And suddenly there were none left. It was so sudden she could not quite work out where they had gone until she saw the bodies. She was used to that now: the jarring of cause and effect, the sudden returning to herself to discover blood on her blade and the fallen around her. There was some part of her, some innocent part, that had come loose inside her head, leaving only cold skill to hold the reins and whip her on.

  She stalked over to the throne where Last-Chance Fray-well was now clambering to his feet, his broad face a-sheen with sweat.

  ‘Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it,’ he gasped, but they were paying her with the next chapter of Thalric’s story, and how could he double that?

  ‘I will not take up any more of your valuable time,’ she said, and ran him through. Only afterwards did she notice that he had been holding a sword. It had not done him much good, she supposed.

  Then she turned, like a performer to her audience.

  The Spider-kinden man clapped politely. ‘So much for the Last-Chancers. My employer will be over the moon. Serves them right for getting above themselves, say I.’ He was a man past middle years, hair long and greying very slightly, wearing clothes whose flamboyance had been cut down, she guessed, to suit his purse. His voice was cultured, though, and she could only wonder where he had fallen on hard times from.

  ‘Thalric?’ she said questioningly, the sword still very much ready in her hands.

  ‘Do you want it from my employer’s mouth, or mine?’ The Spider’s name was Destrachis, she recalled, although she could not exactly remember now who his employer was.

  ‘Tell me,’ she directed.

  He nodded, taking a seat on a bench there. ‘Well our man Fraywell was here with a whole load of Wasp-kinden not so long back, and they got involved in something bad. Some people say they destroyed some big Beetle machine called the Pride, although that doesn’t make much sense to me. They were kicked out in a hurry, though, and your man along with them. They went to Asta, which is a Wasp-kinden—’

  ‘I know Asta,’ she said. ‘So he is there? Or at least that is where I travel next.’

  Destrachis raised a hand. ‘We pay in good coin in this fief, lady. He’s not at Asta, we’re sure of that. There’s a fellow known to us, trades secrets all over, and to the Wasps as well. He’s heard of your man. Thalric’s a name that’s being talked about after the wheel he knocked loose here. You’re not the only one who’s keeping him fingered.’

  She stared, waiting for more, and he smiled, suddenly.

  ‘Your man’s been posted way out west of here. Do you know a city called Collegium?’

  She shook her head. ‘I shall find it, though.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. You’ve got quite the way of asking question
s.’

  She merely nodded, and cleaned her blade on Fraywell’s tunic before returning it to its scabbard. ‘West. Collegium. Well I must go then,’ she announced, and was at the door of Fraywell’s hideout before his voice called her back.

  ‘You know . . . you’re a remarkable person,’ he said. She turned, frowning. One hand was close to her sword. She sensed a trap here. At her expression he put his own hand up to forestall her.

  ‘I’ve been all over the Lowlands,’ he explained. ‘I can do business in Collegium. If you wanted a guide, I could go with you.’

  Her hostile expression remained. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because when I look at you, I recognize something. I see someone who’s lost everything, and yet lost nothing.’ He was not telling her why, she could see. It was just words.

  She found her hand now on her sword’s hilt, her heart speeding all of a sudden, and something clamoured away at the back of her mind.

  ‘I used to be someone of consequence, down south,’ Destrachis continued, watching her face intently. ‘Not Aristoi, but not far off, but now look at me: some Beetle gangster’s errand boy and quacksalver, betraying one brute for another at the drop of a kerchief. I lost it all, you see. You, at least, have retained a purpose.’

  She stared at him. She could not discern his meaning.

  ‘I can get you to Collegium the fastest way, and that way, you might actually catch this fellow of yours, instead of just walking his trail.’ His eyes flicked over hers, reading her carefully – or at least what was left of her that was legible.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she asked him outright.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he told her, ‘but probably I’ll think of something. Perhaps there’s someone I want dead. Perhaps it’s just money.’

  ‘I will not give myself to you,’ she told him.

  His eyebrows twitched. ‘Never entered my mind.’ He said it so smoothly that she knew it was a lie.

  He claimed he could speed her progress, he could take her to Thalric. Then she could finish this hunt. The thought sent a shiver through her, oddly discomfiting, but the offer seemed too good to ignore.

  And she could always kill him if she had to.

  She nodded curtly, and the deal was done.

  Doors had been opening recently to Stenwold that he had not guessed at. In all his years of lecturing at the College, of hand-picking some few students each year who might be able to serve his cause, he had never believed that he was being listened to.

  Now he was a cause in his own right. His name had been passed from student to student, year to year. The more the Assembly and the other Masters looked down on him, the more he had become something like a folk hero.

  These last few days he had found that he need not simply wait on the indulgence of the Assembly. If they would still not hear him he need not let his voice go rusty.

  Arianna, of course, was the architect of it all. He had not imagined it possible, otherwise, that so many of those bored faces he recalled from his years of teaching could have actually paid so much attention.

  In these last few days he had twice gone with Arianna to some low dive – a taverna’s back room once, and then an old warehouse near the docks – where he had met them. A dozen the first time, and then in the warehouse three score of them. They believed him because they had heard of the siege of Tark that was even then under way. They had heard disturbing news from Helleron. They had heard other rumours, news even to him. Some were Spider-kinden and had watched the imperial shadow encroach south-west towards their borders. Some even had some snippets of the Twelve-Year War the Wasps had waged against the Commonweal.

  They watched with shining eyes as he told them the truth, the scale of the imperial threat: unity or slavery.

  That became the slogan and they left with it on their lips. Yes, they were mere students, young men and women whose idealism had not yet been calloused by the everyday world. They were merchants’ sons and daughters, youngsters from the Ant city-states, Flies of good family from Merro, paupers on scholarships from Collegium’s orphanages and poorhouses. But they were not powerless: they could watch for him and spread word for him.

  And they would fight for him, if worst came to worst. He knew he did not want them to do so, but many of them had held a blade before, the Ant-kinden certainly. Some were duellists of the Prowess Forum, some were artificers and all of them had volunteered to put what they had at his disposal.

  Tisamon’s words of not so long ago came back to him. Stenwold had become what he hated, the Mantis had said. He had become a spymaster sending the young to die for him. Times had changed even since those words were spoken. The first blood had been shed by an imperial army in the Lowlands. Unity or slavery. These young men and women might be the first stones to precipitate an avalanche.

  In his dreams, he saw flames erupting in the Collegium streets he knew so well, young men and women with blades and crossbows. Stenwold awoke with the sound of clashing steel fading in his mind.

  The Wasps knew that Collegium must fall, for it was the key to the soul of the Lowlands. They had tried once. They would try again. Stenwold stared at the dark ceiling of his room, seeing through the slats in the shutters that dawn was still distant.

  They would try again soon. Sands in the hourglass had become a constant hissing and hissing of lost time. It was an hourglass in a dark room, though, so he could not see how much sand was left.

  He moved to turn over and realized that she was beside him. The last hours of the previous night fell back on him and he opened his eyes wide.

  There had been cheering for him, at the warehouse: all those bright-eyed faces. Unity or slavery! He had left for his own rooms feeling ten years younger, buoyed up in spite of himself. He was not alone now, and neither was Collegium.

  Back at his house there had been wine. Tisamon and Tynisa had not stayed long. They had been on their way elsewhere, some Mantis training session. He had found himself alone with Arianna, drinking wine and talking about old times. An old man’s failing, yes, although he still did not actually think of himself as old – though perhaps no longer young. An old man’s failing nonetheless, and yet she had listened. He had talked about his own College days, his travels; about Nero the artist, of whom she had heard; then, darkly, of the fall of Myna; the Wasp plans he had seen; his own personal experience of their ambitions.

  How she had listened, and it had seemed to him that her eyes had shone more brightly than any of the other students’, and at the last he had convinced himself that there was more than simple zeal behind their gleam.

  It had been a while since he had last slept with anyone – not that it was an excuse to say so. When he was a student himself there had been the usual ill-conceived liaisons, and after that a few tentative, short-lived ventures. Later there had been the occasional affection purchased on a commercial basis from a professional. His raising of Tynisa and Cheerwell and his crusade against the Empire had taken up all his time and his energy, until the latter endeavour had somehow led him to this place.

  Well, there goes my place at the College. Or perhaps not, because he would not be the first by any means. He had always reserved his greatest contempt for Masters who preyed on their students in such a way, and now a clear pane of glass through which he could shine his judgement had become a mirror for himself.

  But it wasn’t like that. But of course it was like that. He was a College Master and she a student. He had plied her with wine, until her judgement had been sufficiently afloat that a night with him had seemed irresistible, or at least grimly inevitable. True, that was not what his blurry memories of the previous evening were saying, but it must have been what happened, by any objective standard.

  She shifted slightly, the curve of her back pressing against him, moving her feet, surprisingly cold, to curl about his ankle. Despite all he had just thought, he felt himself stirring. Oh, it was the dream, though, wasn’t it? The dream all young Beetle lads had, when coming to the College. For th
ey were the sons of tradesmen and merchants and artificers, and they would go home to wed a respectable Beetle wife, most likely. It was ever the dream, to sleep with a Spider-kinden woman before you die.

  And I could die any day now, he told himself. Some part of Stenwold that was still the custodian of his schoolboy ego was crowing, distantly, for all the immorality of it.

  She moved again and then turned restlessly, as though she knew what he was thinking, throwing an arm across his broad chest, and hooking a smooth leg across his. He closed his eyes but the responses of his body were beyond his ability to master. He gently freed his arm and fed it around her shoulders, and she nestled closer to him. He was able to put off thinking about what her reaction might be when she fully woke.

  Waking past midnight, with the bulk of Stenwold sleeping beside her, her thoughts had been bittersweet. She had now done what the job required of her. He had moved and groaned on top of her, and she had considered him analytically, like a whore not yet wholly jaded.

  Beetle men! she had thought and, though he was strange for a Beetle, seeing further, thinking more, in this way he was just like the rest of them.

  Arianna, with the stillness of the night about her, considered her options, for her brief from Thalric had not taken her this far. His instructions had been limited to the student meetings she had lured Stenwold to. She knew her trade, though: she was Spider-kinden, after all. For Thalric to instruct her would have been as pointless as her giving an Ant counsel on going to war.

  And Thalric had not said to kill the man, but here was her chance, and there would never be a better one. Thalric might be planning Stenwold’s capture perhaps, his interrogation, but she knew with cold certainty that if she came to him with Stenwold’s blood on her hands Thalric would not turn her away.

  She slipped from beneath the sheets without disturbing him. He had drunk a lot, last night, but Beetle constitutions were sturdy. It had certainly not hindered his later performance.