They told her that Taxus had not come back from his last flight over the city, that the Wasps had caught and killed him in spite of all his idiosyncrasies. It was in a more sober mood that she finally passed on her revelation to Stenwold Maker.
Twenty-Four
‘Te Pelle? I didn’t know her much,’ Pingge said. ‘That’s two of us dead.’
Kiin nodded. She looked worn out, and had only slept for a handful of hours since her return from the second mission over Collegium. The flight had been a mixed squad, half of them Aarmon’s originals, half from the new trainees, but Kiin reported that all the pilots had worked together with the same effortless coordination as before.
Pingge and Gizmer had stolen away from the main body of the bombardiers, now holing up in a store cupboard for a serious discussion of what had happened. It had taken some persuasion for Gizmer to accept Sergeant Kiin into their counsels. Since her promotion he had kept a suspicious eye on her, as though expecting her to metamorphose into a Wasp at any moment. Still, the fact that she actually had first-hand knowledge of what had happened was enough to twist his arm. Gossip was always better for a little fresh information.
‘The pilot was . . . Bresner, I think. One of the newer ones.’
They considered this information. Te Pelle had been a somewhat haughty girl, not a factory-line worker but an overseer, and of decent family, who had not taken well to being drafted simply for her artificer’s skills. Still, the woman had been one of them, and that should be enough.
‘Aarmon said something odd,’ Kiin added uncertainly.
‘He actually spoke?’ Pingge asked her. ‘Other than to give an order?’
‘He said she had done well – no, not like that. He said that Bresner had said that te Pelle had done well. Even when they were getting shot up, she got the bombs away, blew up the fuel store, right on the mark.’
‘He said that Bresner said?’ Pingge frowned.
Kiin nodded, wide-eyed. ‘His last message, somehow.’
Gizmer looked from one to the other and grinned, unexpectedly. ‘You surprise me, the pair of you. You hadn’t worked that out?’ He cackled at their expressions. ‘Come on, now, look at our lords and masters, eh? Pride of the Air Corps, only not one of them’s a pilot by training save for our Captain Aarmon. The rest are just Light Airborne or artificers, Consortium men, all sorts. By basic inclination we’re more fit for the job than they are. So didn’t you ever wonder why?’
‘I assumed they’d had some test, some latent gift for it, or . . .’ Pingge scowled at him. ‘So tell us, big mouth.’
‘They have an Art,’ Kiin put in, spoiling Gizmer’s moment.
He nodded grudgingly. ‘Worked it out, then?’
‘I’d thought . . . I wasn’t sure until you put it that way. They have a mindlink.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Pingge said, straight away.
‘What else then, eh?’ Gizmer pressed.
‘But the Rekef . . . the generals . . . Who knows?’ Pingge’s voice had descended to a whisper. Everyone knew that the Wasp-kinden sometimes manifested the same Art that enabled Ants to speak mind to mind, but it was rare. More than that, it was dangerous. Back in the reign of Alvric, First Emperor of the Wasps, there had been troubles, perhaps an attempted coup. The Rekef, then led by the same man who had given the service his name, had flexed its muscles for the first time. Anyone suspected of the mindlink had been hunted down, except for those wretched traitors who had thrown their lot in with the hunters. The Rekef Inlander had chosen its first battlefield: it could not countenance a hidden, unified fifth column within the Empire: the danger to the Emperor’s rule was too great to ignore. Hundreds were arrested, tortured for the names of any others they knew, then strung on the crossed pikes. It had been a forging time in the Empire’s history. A great many traditions had been born.
After that, anyone who developed the Art kept quiet about it, and tried never to use it in case some fellow pariah betrayed them. Yet it continued to manifest itself, that part of the Wasps’ collective soul refusing to be ignored.
‘They all know,’ Gizmer stated. ‘It’s a secret but not a conspiracy. Times change. There’s a book out there that I snuck a look at – top-secret air tactics and everything. Colonel Varsec’s work, all of it. He sets out the Farsphex design in it, but he also sets out the new pilots too. He said they used mindlinked troops to coordinate the taking of Solarno, apparently. So people have been thinking for a while, only it took Varsec to shift the idea over to pilots. No bloody wonder our lot have become the wonders of the air, eh, if they’re all inside each other’s minds. No wonder we get such a ragbag of recruits, too – women and all. They must have mindlinkers scouting every city in the Empire for more of the same.’
‘That’s . . .’ Pingge shivered. ‘So they could be talking to each other all the time, and we’d never know.’
Gizmer gave her a patronizing look. ‘They’re Wasps, so what does it matter? It’s not as though they’d be running everything by us otherwise, eh?’
The door to the store cupboard was abruptly thrown open, and the three of them jumped guiltily, expecting the stern, pale face of Aarmon. Instead it was just one of the newer Fly recruits.
‘Sergeant, been looking all over for you!’ the girl squeaked. ‘Everyone’s to assemble. New orders come in.’
The three of them exchanged looks.
‘Don’t like the sound of that,’ Gizmer muttered, and then they set off, half-running, half-flying, to join their fellows.
They met in the barracks common room that Gizmer had dubbed ‘the wasteland’ because, aside from formal times such as this, neither Fly-kinden nor Wasps spent any time there. A quick head count suggested that just about everyone was there from both camps. Pingge pushed her way into a mob of other Flies, not wanting to be at the back, nor to end up where she might be picked out by Aarmon, who was standing on a table to look them all over. It really was everyone here, she realized, including the trainees, because she could spot the female Wasp recruits interspersed amongst the men. That had been an arrangement that everyone had thought would go badly wrong, and in fact there had been one incident, when an engineer – an outsider serving as ground crew – had tried to rape one of the Wasp girls. What happened next only really made sense to Pingge now with the benefit of what Gizmer had told her. The assaulted woman had not even cried out, but Aarmon and another two pilots had appeared almost immediately. They had stung the rapist to death without sparing a moment for his panicky denials.
‘Listen up,’ Aarmon stated flatly. ‘New orders. We’re to step up the attacks.’
Everyone waited, but Pingge could sense a stir amongst the Wasps, some additional information passing between them.
‘From now on, returning crews get one day of turnaround and then they’re out again. The engineers reckon the Farsphex can be repaired and refuelled in time. We’ll be rolling missions so, even before one’s back, the next shift will be in the air. Collegium’s had it too easy, they tell me.’
Collegium’s too cursed good at defending itself, Pingge added, thinking of te Pelle. One of the Wasps must have had the same idea, because Aarmon was nodding.
‘Yes, the Collegiates are good in the air, better than anyone thought. Yes, we’re going to take losses. It’s war.’ His voice was hard, flat, bleak. ‘Do you think that when the land battle starts, none of our soldiers will die? We have a duty to perform. We will look after our own as much as is humanly possible,’ and his gaze made no distinction between Wasp or Fly, man or woman, ‘but we will do our duty nonetheless. We will make the Empire proud of us.’
There was something behind his words, and Pingge knew enough to understand now: They culled the mindlinkers once and they can do it again, especially now they’re all here and out in the open. If we get it wrong, if we give them cause, then this whole experiment could end up in the Rekef cells. She shivered. And it’ll be us along with them, sure enough. I know how the Rekef think.
‘
We’ve authority to increase the Chneuma dosing,’ Aarmon added. ‘Double for pilots, and a single for the bombardiers now.’ Seeing the looks on some of the Fly-kinden faces, he added, ‘It’s something the Engineering Corps alchemists cooked up. We use it to stay awake for the days of the flight. You’ll all need it too, now. Sergeant Kiin, see me after, and I’ll sort out a supply.’
None of the Flies dared ask what other effects this Chneuma might produce, but it was evident in most expressions there, and no doubt some of the Wasps were posing that silent question, but Aarmon was not being drawn.
‘There’s one other thing,’ he added, ‘a change to the operation. We’ll be bringing some more of your training into the war.’ This time he was looking straight at the Flies and, as he told them what he meant, the idea was both terrifying and strangely attractive.
Yes, Pingge found herself thinking, with a curiously detached feeling of professionalism, The Collegiates won’t know what hit them.
Laszlo darted between wagons and automotives, flicked up twenty feet for a brief look at the evolving layout of the camp around him, then dropped down again. There were plenty of flying troops in the Grand Army – as even the Imperials were calling it now – but this was still a good way to attract undue attention. The Wasps made it plain that they took full responsibility for the skies above the army, and they were inclined to ask questions.
Progress had slowed over the last few days, though not because of any active resistance. Instead, an order had come from General Tynan that each night everyone would dig in, forming the vehicles into a circle and deploying a remarkable number of ready-made barricades which the Wasps had brought with them. Laszlo understood that Tynan had employed far more complete fortifications the first time he led the Second this way, but the combined force was now simply too large and disunited to protect thoroughly. The Wasps did what they could with what they had, though, and, in addition, every night saw the raising of three skeletal towers within the camp, each with what looked to Laszlo like some enormous sort of lamp.
They had now definitely entered Mantis territory, he understood. The precautions started even as they moved off from the cliffs above Kes, but it was a bitter part of recent Imperial history that the Fourth Army had been destroyed even further out than that, the Mantis-kinden able to travel swiftly by land and water, night and day. Of course, everyone knew that the Second had driven the Mantids out last time, and whether there were any left in the forest was unknown to the Grand Army’s leadership, but it was plain that Tynan wasn’t taking chances.
Laszlo tried to remember what he knew about the local Mantis-kinden. In fact, he had few fond thoughts of them, because of the actions of one particular individual, but in general he recalled them idling all over Collegium, refugees from their forest domain after Tynan’s depredations. Surely those few who might have returned home to rebuild could not pose a threat to the army that was advancing.
He hopped up once again to locate his target, then dropped back quickly. Just now he was in the loose following of Morkaris, the Aldanrael’s mercenary adjutant. The lean Spider-kinden was a busy man, constantly meeting with the leaders of various sell-sword companies, settling disputes, disbursing coin and occasionally punching faces. For all his stringy build he seemed to possess a prodigious strength. The demands on his time meant that he could find a use for someone like Laszlo, and just now that meant fetching food from the latest shipment. The Grand Army could never have lived off the land, so there were airships – both Imperial black and gold and smaller many-coloured craft from the Spiderlands – constantly ferrying back and forth with the supplies they needed for the march. When a shipment arrived, the camp cooks descended on it to cook up or preserve everything in danger of going off, and so Laszlo descended on Morkaris with a covered bowl of spiced horsemeat and a jug of soup, which the man grabbed from him the moment he was within arm’s reach.
‘Good work.’ The Spider upended the jug, heedless of the steaming heat of it, and then wiped his mouth on the back of a gauntlet. He was plainly not the kind of mannered Aristos that his counterpart Jadis was, but then the mercenaries obviously appreciated a plain-speaking man as their liaison. The next group with a grievance was approaching him even now: a quartet of hulking Scorpions.
‘Watch and learn,’ Morkaris remarked, because Laszlo knew how to make himself likeable, and the adjutant had taken a shine to him. The next ten minutes provided a masterclass in Spider– Scorpion relations, and ended with the adjutant sinking an axe into the company leader’s skull.
The other three Scorpions had regarded this action with little emotion.
‘Fine,’ Morkaris had told them. ‘You’re mine for now, until I say otherwise. Or does someone else want to try their luck?’ Nobody had felt that lucky.
Now Laszlo skimmed back over the camp, aiming for home – meaning the wagon that he and Lissart slept in. Running errands for Morkaris had meant a long and busy day, and he would still be hard put to report to Stenwold that he had found any fatal vulnerability in the way the Spider-kinden soldiers operated. The only logical advice would be, Kill their leaders, and that would hardly be something Stenwold had not thought of.
He ducked in, and, had he not ducked out again immediately, Lissart would have stabbed him. Hanging in the air outside, his mind was full of the flash of steel, her abrupt, savage movement.
Some part of him found that he was not surprised in the least.
‘Laszlo . . . ?’ came her quiet voice from under the cloth awning. She sounded shaken, although he felt that he deserved that particular privilege.
A moment later she peered out, and the knife was nowhere to be seen. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.’
He descended warily, keeping out of arm’s reach, but remembering that she had more weapons than the blade, anyway. She could simply blast him with that fire Art of hers, if she so wished. He reckoned she was certainly strong enough to use it by now.
‘Who were you intending to stab?’ he asked her, trying to adopt a light tone.
‘Laszlo, she’s here,’ Lissart told him flatly. ‘Get under cover, quickly.’
She was frightened, he realized, or at least feigning it, but he made a snap decision, hoping his instincts were being trustworthy, and ducked under the wagon’s cover to nestle in beside her. She pressed herself against him and he found she was trembling slightly. The rush of gratitude he felt to the world, that she did not appear to want to kill him just yet, was stronger than he had expected.
Still under her spell, he thought wryly, putting his arms around her. ‘Who’s here?’
‘Garvan,’ she said, and he allowed a pause for explanation, but none came.
‘Should I know what that means?’
‘Garvan, or whatever her real name is,’ she persisted, ‘the Wasp woman who stabbed me. The Rekef one.’
He went quite still, thinking hard. The urge to say, Are you sure? was very strong, but she would not have thanked him for doubting her. ‘When, where?’
‘She must have come in with the supplies. I saw her just walking through the camp, mid-afternoon.’
‘Looking for you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she snapped, but she was trembling even more now. ‘She’ll know me, though, and she’ll kill me.’
‘We can’t stay here, then. Can you fly?’
‘I don’t know.’
There was something in her response that did not quite ring true. ‘Are you trying to tell me,’ Laszlo pressed gently, ‘that you’ve not experimented while I’ve been out and about?’
‘A short hop, maybe, nothing more,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll leave tonight.’ He made a doubting sound, and she twisted her neck to glare at him. ‘What?’
‘Ever since we got within spit of the Felyal, camp security’s right up, especially at night. They have a lot of sharp eyes doing sentry duty now. If you could fly, then I’d say risk it, but . . .’
‘But what?’ she demanded.
‘But let
me think about it. Stay under cover meanwhile. This Garvan of yours is a Wasp, so no reason for her to poke about the Spider-kinden camp. She won’t know me, so I can keep an eye out. Maybe we can stir trouble up against her, especially if she’s Rekef. Just . . . wait. Don’t do anything we’ll regret. Just let me think of something.’
She lay in his arms, facing away from him. In her mind, no doubt, she was reliving the blade going in. She’s crazy, he told himself. She’s a killer, an enemy agent, the most dangerous woman you’ve ever got hold of. Just go. Leave her and just go. But he knew he would not depart without her, even so.
‘Think of something quickly,’ she said softly. ‘I can’t hold out forever.’
‘Our lack of progress is causing a lot of friction,’ Mycella observed. Tynan watched her with grudging admiration, because she was examining her appearance in a mirror while her elaborate tent was raised around her, the one still point in a whirl of carefully orchestrated chaos. Her servants, Spiders and Fly-kinden both, were practically dancing to a common rhythm that allowed them to coordinate with one another to set up poles and guys and embroidered canvas without so much as obstructing their mistress’s light, until she stood in a reddening beam of sunset in the midst of an eight-chambered portable palace, with furniture being moved into position as nimbly as though her staff were scene-shifters at the theatre.
‘Join me?’ she asked him, meeting his eyes in the mirror. A Fly-kinden was already at her elbow with a bottle of dark glass.
‘I see your kind’s reputation for vanity isn’t misplaced,’ he observed, although without vitriol.
She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You never feel the need to see your own face, General?’
‘Not since I stopped needing a comb,’ he told her. It was true, too. Even without his own slaves, he could have shaved himself by touch these days.
‘I envy you. Mine holds a grim fascination for me, but it isn’t vanity.’ She turned towards him at last and collapsed back onto a couch that had not been there a moment before, even as the mirror was spirited away. ‘Time, General Tynan . . . I watch it advance on my position, and each day all my armies lose a little ground. I’m older than you, you realize?’
The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8) Page 37
