Dragonfly Falling

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  They brought the lady Seda in within two bells, as Capitas told time, dragged without warning from her own more sumptuous prison. She tried to fight free when she saw the emaciated, robed figure awaiting her, but the guard forced her in without difficulty, bound her to a chair easily, and now stood behind her, always a shadow in the edge of her vision. The Mosquito-kinden squinted at her, long fingers touching at one another, then parting.

  ‘Light and darkness,’ said Uctebri the Sarcad. He moved about the room almost hesitantly. ‘That is what life is about: all existence strung between those two poles. Or that is the way that we all used to see it.’ Eventually he made his mind up. ‘Shutter the lanterns,’ he said, and the guard looked at him curiously.

  ‘Sir?’ Uctebri was a slave still, with no rank as yet, but he was a man who had spoken to the Emperor and so the guard felt it wise to address him thus.

  ‘I cannot do it,’ the Mosquito said irritably. ‘Draw the shutters almost all the way. It is too bright in here for what I plan. I trust this will not discomfort you overmuch, Your Highness.’

  It was already gloomy in there and, from her vantage point, Seda could see Uctebri as a dark-robed shape that grew less and less distinct as the guard tugged on the cords that controlled the lamps’ shutters.

  ‘You needn’t call me that,’ she remarked drily. ‘Nobody else does.’

  The last shutter was now drawn nearly closed. She heard the guard carefully finding his way back behind her chair, felt his hand brush her shoulder as he checked her presence.

  ‘And yet I do,’ the Mosquito’s voice came. When he moved she could just make him out. When he stopped he disappeared in the dark. ‘It is the correct form of address for a lady of your rank, I believe?’

  She heard a scratching sound from his approximate direction. ‘What are you doing, Mosquito-kinden?’

  ‘Drawing. Marking my notes,’ emerged his voice. ‘Light and darkness, great lady, our whole world is built between them. There are things that can be accomplished in the dark of the moon which are quite impossible at noontime. But it is not the hour that matters, only the light. If I can make it midnight within your mind, then there is nothing I cannot do, but if you have the will to keep the sun burning, then you are quite proof against me. But that art is long lost amongst your people.’

  She heard the soft shuffle of his feet, her ears sharpening as she abandoned any reliance on her eyes. When she had come here, she had expected further taunts and jibes from her brother, but he had not been present. Instead there had been this chair, which she recognized from visits elsewhere. They kept chairs like this in prisons, for questioning. There had been none of the other apparatus she associated with the interrogator’s art, but she sensed that the Mosquito’s desires needed none.

  He was very close when he spoke again. ‘It escapes the attention of your own kinden – as of other upstart races – that all the great powers of the Days of Lore could see in darkness, to a greater or lesser degree. The Mantids, the Spiders, and of course, best of all, the Moth-kinden and my own people. To know the dark, and not to fear it, was to control the world.’

  He was now right at her elbow.

  ‘And then, of course, the great old night ended, and another kind of sun dawned. A revolutionary sun of machines and artifice that burned us all back into our hollows.’

  ‘How bitter you must feel,’ she said without sympathy.

  ‘Bitter?’ A croaky little laugh. ‘My people had already lost our chance for greatness. We were never many, but we had power and a yearning to use it. We had secrets that the Skryres of the Moths have never learned, and some that they might have, but that they deemed us evil, and made war on us to wipe us out, along with everything we knew.’

  She gave a little squeak of panic as his pale, cold fingers brushed her cheek, his nails unexpectedly sharp.

  ‘And we are few now, so very few,’ he continued. ‘And yet they did not completely succeed, for that knowledge is still with us – and your brother is very, very interested in it.’

  She had the sense of his eyes fixed on her. They had brought her here unprepared from her chamber, and she wore only a silken gown to keep the night out, and now the night was irresistible. She felt the touch of his fingertips drifting idly down her neck.

  ‘You . . .’ From somewhere she marshalled a little courage. ‘This is an elaborate scheme of yours, Sarcad, simply to inflict yourself on a woman. Are your own kind so very few, after all?’

  His rattling laugh came again. ‘Forgive me, Highness. I am an old man, but appetites die slowly in my tribe and you Wasp-kinden are a comely enough people – for an Apt race. You, especially, are a remarkably pleasing specimen of Wasp-kinden womanhood.’

  ‘And this is what it is all about, is it?’ She tugged at the straps of the chair, which was a futile enough struggle. ‘Or is this just some chance gift to you?’

  ‘Fear not, Your Highness. Your chastity is quite safe from me. The appetites I refer to are not sexual.’

  ‘Blood? Your people really drink the blood of others?’

  ‘As our namesakes do,’ he said, ‘and I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Royal blood, especially. Although I understand it is in short supply. Your father died not young but not old, yes?’

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘And there was suspicion at that?’ He was moving around the back of the chair, she sensed.

  ‘I would not pursue that line of enquiry, Uctebri, lest the guard report your words.’

  ‘Ah yes, the guardsman. Perhaps you could call on him.’

  She frowned in the darkness. ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘As one ever calls on unknown powers, simply to see if they will come.’

  ‘You have . . . ?’

  ‘He hears nothing, my lady, because I have put a magic on him. He sees nothing, and he hears nothing. Light and darkness, and of these two, darkness has the power. Your brother feared your father was killed. He feared even more being blamed for that death, and therefore no investigation, no suggestion was ever allowed to be raised. Your people’s empire is young, its succession untried. Your brother decided that to secure his position he would take drastic measures. He was advised in this by Colonel Maxin – as he then was.’

  ‘Maxin killed my brothers and sisters,’ Seda confirmed. There was still no sound from the guard. She knew it was impossible but, in this darkness, with that scratchy voice behind her, she found she could believe Uctebri’s claim to magic entirely. ‘He only left me alive because, so long as I live, he knows exactly where the threat will come from. If I die, any number of others might rise to be his chief enemy – or all combine against him. My brother feels so secure on his throne that people say he ties himself to it sometimes, lest he slide off in a moment of weakness.’

  Uctebri chuckled. ‘And your brother has many concubines but, I understand, no children. Not even bastards. Remarkable.’

  ‘He has all of his issue killed at birth,’ she said, ‘or so I have heard. Bastards have no standing, but even so he will not take the risk of one growing up to be used against him.’

  ‘And no lawful mate. No legitimate issue. A man concerned about his own longevity, should any child grow to manhood. You are his prisoner, but no more than he is his own. Ah, the foolishness of it all.’ His voice seemed to be drifting further away. ‘Still, you must see why he has, in the end, come to consider my proposal.’

  ‘And what is that?’ she asked. ‘What is your proposal? You may as well tell me. What am I able to do about it?’

  ‘I have told your brother I can allow him to live far beyond the few years normally allowed to your kinden. Perhaps even for ever? An immortal Emperor of the Wasp-kinden, for ever wise and loved by his subjects. He rather likes the idea, however much he doubts its possibility. He likes it enough to have me try.’

  ‘And should he ever believe he is immortal, I will die that very day,’ admitted Seda.

  ‘Ah, alas, your demise would come some moments so
oner than his ascension.’ He was now speaking right in her ear. ‘My people understand blood, for blood is the darkness within our veins. Blood has power. Especially the blood of our kin. Sister and brother, close as close, Your Highness.’

  She stiffened as she felt something sharp at her neck, like the razor edge of a tiny blade. She closed her eyes, clenching her fists, and willed it over soon.

  There was the slightest arrow of pain, a tiny cut, and then the blade was gone, and for a short while Uctebri remained quiet. Then he said, ‘You have quite the sweetest blood I have tasted for some considerable time, great lady.’

  ‘My brother is mad to believe you,’ she spat at him. ‘You are mad to tempt him with it. After living in fear for eight years I am to be killed on this lunatic’s errand?’

  ‘Oh that is a shame, Your Highness, that you should believe it impossible.’ Uctebri whispered, still at her very shoulder. ‘You see, I have my own doubts about your brother’s patronage.’

  With a start she felt the buckles over her wrists loosen, first one and then the other, and after that he was crouching at her ankles, still speaking. ‘I rather suspect that he would be a dangerous man to have around for ever. Or even for much longer. My concern, you see, is for my own kinden and their future, and I cannot say that it would be best served by the Emperor Alvdan. He strikes me as a man neither gracious nor grateful towards those who have helped him ascend to power.’

  She was free of the chair now, so at any moment she could leap from it, but she stayed there, transfixed by his words. ‘Just what are you saying?’

  ‘Treason,’ he explained, and she knew he was standing right before the chair, as if a supplicant. ‘Or it would be if I were actually a subject of His Imperial Majesty. You may quibble that I am his prisoner, but ask yourself how long that state of affairs might persist if I did not wish it. No, rather the crown is currently serving me, in requisitioning some piece of desiderata that I have long coveted. What I am proposing is that, whilst I am quite capable of delivering what I promise, the crown of immortality would find a fitter home on another brow than your brother’s.’

  She did not believe, for a moment, that he could do any such thing. He was a prisoner, and was bargaining for his life with these dreams of longevity. It could even be a trap set by her brother, save that he needed neither excuse nor pretext to have her killed. But possibly, just possibly, it meant that Uctebri the Sarcad represented both an ally and an opportunity.

  ‘I find your words favourable,’ she said, and extended her hand into the darkness. When he kissed it, she felt his sharp teeth scratch her skin.

  I cannot believe this.

  And yet her life had always been bound, not to her own world-view, but that of her brother. If his beliefs led him to the conclusion that she presented a threat, her life would be cut short on the instant. If his beliefs were that she was better off alive, then she would live another day, but only each day at a time. So why should what I believe matter, in this? When has it ever mattered?

  After Uctebri was done with her she had considered his madness very carefully, while she sat before the glass and repaired her face. This was a whole gaping abyss of madness, like nothing she had ever experienced. Like all the other madness that had so far dominated her wretched life she had to understand it, though. She needed to speak to someone, and that could be no Wasp-kinden. It was not merely a matter of trust, but because her own people could not have advised her, in this. She was beyond all maps.

  There was only one name, an old slave of her father’s, that she could call upon, so she did so.

  He came almost timorously to her room: a lean, grey-skinned man with a long-skulled bald head, his cheeks lined and his head banded with pale, slightly shiny stripes. He always wore such an attitude of melancholy, as though the woes of all the world had come to him. When she was a child he used to make her laugh, when once she had still laughed.

  ‘May I enter, madam?’ he asked, his voice quavering. Seda could not suppress a smile at his hesitancy.

  ‘I sent for you, Gjegevey,’ she acknowledged, ‘so please come in.’

  Her prison was a grand one. She had her own chambers decorated with whatever she could get, whatever she could cajole and plead for. There were threadbare tapestries blocking off the blank stone of the walls. She had some plants arranged before the narrow window, in Spider-kinden fashion. Two couches faced one another across a ragged rug of uncertain origin. She had two rooms, this one for receiving guests and, through a doorway guarded only by a hanging cloth, her bedroom. This was the extent of the Empire that Alvdan had left to his sister. His other siblings had fared worse.

  The old Woodlouse-kinden stooped to enter her room. He was hunchbacked and inclined forwards, but still he was perilously tall. She knew that his people hailed from the north of the Empire, and that beyond the imperial borders there were said to be whole tribes of them living in giant forests, amongst trees that decayed for ever and yet never fell. She could not imagine there being any other of his kinden than him. How could such stilting awkwardness produce warriors, farmers or anything but vague philosophers?

  ‘You are reckoned a wise man, Gjegevey,’ she told him. He waved the compliment off dismissively.

  ‘You are, mmn, kind to say it, madam.’

  ‘You play the doddering old man, Gjegevey, and yet you have been an adviser to emperors since my father’s days in power. No slave could survive so, without wisdom.’

  He smiled, thin-lipped, never dispelling the eternal sadness that his grey face lent him. ‘But there are fools and, mnah, fools, madam.’ He pursed his lips appreciatively as she poured him a beaker of wine. ‘I know my place, and it is this: that when there is an, mmn, idea in the mind of all my peers, my fellow advisers, that none wish to say, then I speak it. It may then be, mmm, dismantled and matters proceeded with. If I were to ever voice an opinion that none could destroy then no doubt I would be, hrm, killed on the spot. It is a delicate path for a man to walk, but if one’s balance is accomplished, then one may tread for many years upon it.’

  ‘Many years,’ she agreed, passing him the beaker. He sipped and nodded, and she asked, ‘How old are you, old man?’

  ‘I stopped counting at the age of, mnn, one hundred and four, madam.’ The wistful smile came back at her wide-eyed expression. ‘We are a long-lived people – longer-lived, in any event, than your own. And I am not young, even for my kinden.’

  ‘I want to ask you something. I cannot think of anyone else who might even offer an opinion,’ Seda told him, inviting him to sit with a gesture. He perched precariously upon the couch across from her, still sipping at his wine. ‘A fair vintage this year,’ he murmured, but his eyes were watching her keenly from within their wrinkles.

  ‘On magic, Gjegevey,’ she said.

  ‘Mmn . . . Ah.’

  ‘An interesting response. Most would declare, without prompting, that there was no such thing, that it was a nonsense even to raise the matter.’

  ‘Is that what you wish me to say, madam?’

  ‘If I had wished such an opinion,’ she said, ‘I would not have called you over to speak to me. You are an educated man, and you were educated by your own folk before you ever fell into imperial hands. So tell me about magic.’

  ‘A curious matter, madam,’ he said. ‘I find myself, mmn, reluctant—’

  ‘Tell me nothing you would not wish repeated. But do not stay from telling me just because such a revelation might not be believed,’ she directed. ‘Magic, Gjegevey?’

  ‘Ah, well, my own people have uncommon views,’ he told her. ‘Most uncommon. I will, ahmn, share them with you, but I would not expect you to share them – if you understand – with me.’ At her impatient gesture he went on. ‘You did not know, I believe, that many of my kinden are Apt. We study, hrm, mechanics and the physical principles of the world, although in truth we build little, and that must be from wood in the main, metal being hard to come by in our homeland.’

  ‘I did no
t know that,’ she admitted. ‘And so, I would guess, that you cannot help me.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said, pedantic as a librarian. ‘Ah, but yet many of my kinden are not Apt and have no gift for machines, and yet follow, hrhm, other paths, the physical principles of the world and so forth and so on, that some might call magic. And so you see, we are in something of a unique position, my kinden. For we are not surging forwards into the, ahm, progress of the world of artifice, nor are we clinging grimly to the darkness of the Days of Lore. We are . . . in balance, I suppose one might say. And these two halves of our culture, they are not two halves at all, for each tries to share its insights with the other, and just occasionally, ahemhem, some gifted man or woman of our kind can understand the both. And so I can confirm to you, within the beliefs and the experiments of my kinden at least, that magic is very real.’

  ‘So why do we not believe in it?’ she asked. ‘If it is so real, prove it to me.’ Behind her challenging words, though, excitement was building.

  ‘Ah, but it is an interesting thing, that these things can so seldom be proved. If I were to perform some piece of, hrmf, magic for you, here in this room, you would claim a thousand ways it could have been done. Indeed, those ways might be exceedingly unlikely, but you would cling to them rather than accept the, mmn, the chance that magic, the eternal inexplicable, might be the true agent, and if you were strong enough in yourself, unafraid, unthreatened, here in your own chambers, well perhaps there would be no magic worked at all. It is a subjective force, you see, whereas the physical laws of the artificers are objective. A gear-train will turn without faith, but magic may not. And so, when your people demand, mmn, proof, there is none, but when you have forgotten and dismissed it, then magic creeps back into the gaps where you do not look for it.’

  She had a hundred more questions, a thousand, but she bit back on them. It would not do to trust this man too much. ‘Tell me, though, Gjegevey,’ she said, thinking hard. She must know no more than her brother would expect her to know, but her brother, if Maxin’s spies reported this conversation, would expect her to ask about Uctebri. ‘Are you aware that, as well as your magic, the Mosquito-kinden are real?’