The Air War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Straessa the Antspider had just finished a one-to-one with te Mosca regarding her progress in Inapt studies. The little Fly-kinden taught a measure of the histories of the Moth-kinden – or their myths, as the two were often inseparable – and Straessa was sharp enough that she could crib during the tenday before and produce accomplished essays as a result, especially if she could confer with Gerethwy, whose facility with the subject was as notable as his prowess with artifice. What Straessa could not master was the rest of the course, the curious hints and paradoxes and platitudes that were supposed to go some way towards explaining the Moths’ belief in magic. Gerethwy again could set it all down effortlessly, but this time Straessa could not follow him. Her Spider blood was mute on the subject.

  Now, crossing the crumbling quad that housed te Mosca’s rooms, along with some two or three other departments that nobody thought much of, she became aware of some shouting coming from the square beyond, the big Appellant’s Muster quadrangle that hosted most of the modern history departments.

  She was ready for anything, for there had been a great deal of shouting in parts of Collegium of late and, at the same time, a great deal of conspicuous quiet. There had been rallies protesting against the Empire, and the few Wasps in the city had been staying indoors – especially when the rumour surfaced that someone had murdered the Imperial ambassador after his speech and disposed of his body in the bay. Averic had turned up one day with a black eye and a cracked rib, yet not a dent in his fanatical self-control.

  But Straessa remembered what Eujen had reported of the Speaker’s words, representing the other side of the coin, and it was obvious to her now. Whilst they shouted, all the students and impoverished patriots and the immigrants who had given their loyalty wholehearted to their new home, there were plenty of the better-heeled quietly stepping back from the situation, withdrawing their support from those who spoke out, choosing their trading partners wisely. Those who had too much invested in Collegium just to run off and seek refuge in Sarn were quietly preparing for the worst.

  The disturbance at Appellant’s Muster quad was something else again, though. When she arrived there she saw a dozen Beetle-kinden, dressed in the buff coats and breastplates of the Merchant Companies, standing idle with snapbow and pike while their chief called out to a scattering of students.

  ‘Do not think the Assembly will sit idle now that the Empire has made war on our allies!’ he declared, a pale Tarkesh Ant-kinden no doubt long renegade from his original city-state. ‘We’ve seen this before, have we not? Did not Master Maker warn of this the last time – and wasn’t he right? The Wasps cannot stand up against all the powers of the Treaty of Gold, and so they make their excuses to divide us, as they always did. Do you think Sarn will sit idle? Or the Spiderlands? No! And when they march to relieve Myna, Collegium’s brave soldiers shall go with them. We fought at Malkan’s Folly and we fought them from our own very walls. We’ll show them that our reach is as great as theirs. We’ll fight them wherever they bring their armies.’ His grey sash and those of his followers showed an Ant-kinden helm in profile and the motto, In Our Enemies’ Robes.

  ‘Come, then,’ he was saying. ‘Now the Assembly has given the Companies the right to recruit once more, who’ll stand beside Collegium’s allies? Who’ll march to give the Empire a taste of its own fire? For if we don’t stop them in their tracks they’ll be at our walls again, and then everyone gets to fight. So who’ll sign here for the Coldstone Company?’

  Straessa watched the man’s audience with fascination, noticing Hallend there, who had been so vociferous about Averic at the Prowess Forum, and plenty of his fellows. Many here had been amongst the worst to victimize the Wasp student, to decry the evils of the Empire. Yet they were regarding the Ant as though he had the plague, and was trying to give it away for free. When the same man held out a snapbow for anyone to come and claim, she saw many of the most normally outspoken of them flinch away.

  She slipped up behind Hallend’s little knot of followers, then loudly declared, ‘Why, which proud duellist here would not jump at the chance finally to take action against the Wasps, eh?’ They jumped, indeed, and rounded on her, facing the cruelty of her smile. ‘Aren’t they incurable bigots and villains, each and every man of them?’ she went on. ‘Why, I hear they even dare send their sons to be students here, to soil our pristine educations with their filthy minds. Sign up! Sign up, I say. Now that the liberty of the world truly is at stake, what red-blooded Collegiate would not?’

  She wanted a battle, a real slanging match, as though the exchange of hot words would break the tension within the city like a storm, but instead she found Hallend’s face naked and terrible. Guilt was there, and shame and fear, and she remembered then that he was not quite twenty and had never left the city, and there was a blot of horror and loss in his recent history which was the last Day the Empire Came.

  ‘But . . .’ he managed to get out, ‘Eujen said . . . Eujen’s always saying, peace at any cost . . .’

  Her sword had cleared its scabbard before anyone had seen her reach for it. ‘Wrong!’ she declared, aware that the Company snapbows were now drifting her way. ‘Make peace with me, Hallend. Go on, I dare you.’ Her rapier point danced before his eyes, ‘Can you?’ She backed him up three steps, unsure why she had not been stopped yet. ‘It’s not peace at any price; it’s a lasting peace. So it’s true, after all, that line of yours – not that they’re all evil, but that they need to be stopped. We can’t reach a lasting peace while we preach war against them, but we certainly can’t while they’re making war against us. They won’t ever start to change their ways until they respect us, and what they respect is strength. Come on, Hallend, you know I’m right.’ By the end her voice was tense and quiet, her eyes trying to hold Hallend’s, but his kept sliding away.

  And Hallend followed the route of his eyes, edging back from her as though she was mad, and in the end it was just her and the recruiting officer staring at one another.

  Which was why, when she arrived late for her lunch with Gerethwy and Eujen, the first thing the latter said was, ‘What is that you’re wearing?’

  She could only pluck at the grey sash with its device and words and shrug, ‘Somebody had to,’ she said.

  Thirteen

  That he was unfit to be a spy was proved to Laszlo when he almost went back to his own rooms to get a look at the Solarnese city hangars they overlooked, only darting away from his window at the last moment to swing about a few streets’ worth of space before finding another rooftop to perch on. Aside from the unhappy corpse of Breighl, who could know what welcome was awaiting him within those bloodied walls?

  Breighl dead. Te Riel dead. The dread was mounting higher inside his chest, threatening to choke him. Time to be gone. Time to be long gone. He could feel death approaching like a shadow in the water, vast and swift and inexorable.

  What’s a spy supposed to do in this position? He knew that hanging on in this suddenly murderous city would gain vital intelligence for Sten Maker, if Laszlo could only live long enough to pass it on. So many of the familiar faces had gone already, though, and some that had lingered now plainly regretted it. I should be gone. It was not spycraft that kept him here, and his loyalty to Maker only went so far, despite all they’d shared. Liss, te Liss, don’t be dead. We can get out together. It’s not too late.

  It hurt to think of her: each time like touching a broken tooth. He had never realized, as he drank with her or joked with her, even when he slept with her, that she had wormed her way into his heart so deeply. Only now, with no idea whether she was even still alive, did he recognize how far inside his defences she had pierced.

  Then shouting broke out at the hangars, and he skipped across two rooftops to look.

  There was a broad landing field before the hangar mouth, although all the Firebug orthopters were safely within caverns specially dug out of the rock by acid and engines. The lamps that gave onto this open space were harsh and uncompromising, the bright w
hite glare of some chemical reaction that burned flamelessly with a constant hiss and crackle; open fire was not something anybody wanted close to all that fuel-powered machinery.

  For some reason the great metal doors were already partly open, but there were more guards there than Laszlo had ever seen before, at least thirty of the city militia, so te Riel’s warning had plainly been one among many. They were under attack.

  Or not quite yet, but it looked as though the fighting would start off any moment, for a large band of Scorpion-kinden had just rolled on to the scene, a mismatched two score of hulking villains in a ragbag of armour, most of them armed with great-swords or long axes or halberds. They outnumbered the militia, though not by so very many, and they were likely the better warriors fighting one on one. As against that, the Solarnese had a fair stock of their little crossbows to hand. Alarmed challenges rang into the night.

  Scorpions could mean the Empire or the Spiderlands, or pretty much anyone else, for they were inveterate mercenaries. However, getting a mob like this into the city – in twos and threes perhaps – and then organizing them was a feat in itself.

  The Scorpions were shouting back, generic insults about Solarnese manhood and their mothers. They were plainly not about to commit themselves just yet, and more militia would surely be on the way even now to reinforce the defenders. So what are they hoping to accomplish . . . and Laszlo swore to himself because he should have thought of watching out for whoever was using this as a distraction, and he had become too absorbed in the mummery itself.

  Too late now, surely – whoever it was, they must be inside. He looked anyway, though, his sharp eyes raking the darkness where the hissing lamps left off, and he was rewarded by the sight of a small figure slipping by and into the hangar, on foot and cloaked, but he knew her.

  But who’s she chasing? What’s the Empire’s plan?

  Blow it sky high, came the instant thought and, try as she might, Liss could not stop that. She was Inapt. The only thing she could do with a bomb would be to set it off inadvertently.

  I, however . . . and, with that thought, Laszlo was airborne, streaking down towards the hangars.

  Liss had crept in, of course, because the Solarnese were more than used to airborne subterfuge. Laszlo was spotted immediately. Some of the militia loosed their crossbows at him, and he lurched sideways in the air as they did, trusting to his instincts to keep him out of the path of their bolts. Others, because they had been keeping their weapons trained, their fingers on the triggers, loosed at the Scorpions by reflex, just one or two, but it was enough.

  Even as another dozen militia arrived, wondering what all the noise was about, the Scorpions charged. It was an ill-thought-out piece of theatre but one that Laszlo took full advantage of, by darting past the militia towards the hangar mouth.

  The first blast came just as he dipped down to enter, and the hot breath of it caught him and tried to throw him out into the night again. He fought it furiously, seeing a lazy wash of fire roll out of the opening. He might have been screaming Liss’s name.

  He fell to the ground, feeling his hair and clothes on the point of smouldering. Another explosion roared at the far end of the hangar, tongues of flame licking out, and a dozen separate fires inside illuminating the compact shapes of the fliers. He saw Solarnese mechanics running past, beating at themselves. Others were helplessly trying to drag one of the machines out, loyalty to their trade taken to the point of suicide. Laszlo dashed past them, the air about him gusting hot and hotter, searching in the dark and the leaping orange light of the place for Liss.

  He spotted her, for she was beyond hiding. She stood surrounded by fires, bright and alive in their glow. The picture would stay with him for all his days: Liss, the flames, the stacked barrels of mineral oil that was meant to fuel the Solarnese air force.

  She stretched out a hand almost playfully and it was wreathed in fire instantly. Laszlo screamed, because he had not taken it all in, and he could not. It was beyond his understanding.

  Like a hunting dragonfly flown from the wrist, the flames leapt from her to one of the Firebugs, and instantly the silk of its wings was ablaze, turning to cinders and setting the wood of its body alight. A moment later, Liss herself was engulfed, even as Laszlo tried to fight his way towards her, yelling her name until the fumes choked him.

  But when the flames dispersed, she was still there, her clothes burned away from her but her skin still perfect, rosy with energy. Naked and beautiful, she turned and saw him, and smiled as the world caught fire all around.

  He wanted her then, despite anything. The jolt that went through him as their eyes met was one of pure unfettered desire.

  She blew him a kiss, and he felt the distinct heat of it against his face, then the barrels blew.

  The force of the explosion caught up his small frame and threw him end over end out of the hangar.

  Elsewhere in Solarno, Major Garvan awaited the report of her key agent. From the open window of her miserable garret she had heard the great explosions rolling across the rooftops like thunder, and she knew that the plan she had painstakingly put together had finally paid off. Yet another triumph for careful, patient Army Intelligence, and no sign yet of the Rekef swanning in to steal the glory. Oh, surely, by the time the final word had been passed by General Brugan to the Empress, no doubt the Rekef Outlander would be the ones holding the reins, but Garvan’s own superiors, the army colonels who decided her future, would know the truth.

  She stood and checked her appearance in the mirror on the back of her door, cautious as always. Unlike so many of her peers, victory had never been an excuse for carelessness. Far too many operations went wrong just as everything seemed to be safely in hand.

  There was a flurry of wings and she went to sit behind her battered old desk, all business. Despite the pauper’s life she led, compared to their own profligacy and waste, she never let her agents forget who was in control. And especially this one, whose mercurial nature almost outweighed her considerable usefulness.

  Grinning from ear to ear, Lissart squeezed in through the narrow window wearing clothes made for a someone noticeably bigger. By looks just a Fly-kinden girl with unusual red hair, she was of course another kinden entirely, a vagrant visitor to the Empire from foreign lands. Intelligence work challenged her, and Garvan knew she worked for that incentive more than for pay, but she was a wild and whimsical creature, always at the fullest extent of her leash.

  ‘You’re out safely, then,’ Garvan remarked, a neutral opening. ‘Report.’

  ‘Nobody’s flying anything out of those hangars any time soon.’ Lissart set herself down on the ramshackle desk, which creaked under even her minimal weight. ‘I got a count of the machines. One missing, out on some errand or other, but your boys were making with the noisy outside, so I reckoned it was time.’

  ‘Not my boys,’ Garvan noted. She loathed joint operations, and this one had been more knife-edge than most, because coordinating with Intelligence’s current business partner in this part of the world had been a nightmare of conflicting standards – the Empire’s and Garvan’s own high ones contrasted with the apparently random ones she had been forced to work within. ‘How did the Scorpions get on, anyway?’

  ‘When everything went up, they all legged it.’ Lissart’s grin grew even wider, if that was possible, until Garvan wondered if the top of her head was going to fall off. ‘You should have got yourself over there. Was a beautiful sight, I can tell you. Phwoosh!’ Her arms described the majesty of the explosions. Lissart was a cracked enough creature at the best of times, but once things started catching fire, she became a regular madwoman. Garvan didn’t know whether that was a personal trait or one that applied to all of her pyromaniac kinden.

  ‘Some of us had other business to tie up.’ It was true: Garvan had not been short of visitors earlier that night, enough to strain her feigned identity here, but that was not an issue any more. ‘How’s your cover identity?’

  For just a moment,
Lissart was not smiling. ‘Burned,’ she said shortly, but without the usual relish.

  Garvan chose to ignore that. ‘Solarno is just about wrapped up, so I have orders for you.’ She recognized the look that came immediately to Lissart’s face. ‘New cover in the Spiderlands. We need agents there who can talk their talk enough to fit in, but can handle a little sabotage when the time comes – meaning your speciality.’ She had assumed the chance of setting something else alight would overcome that sullen, stubborn expression, but now the little woman was shaking her head.

  ‘Send me north, send me west, Major. Not the Spiderlands. Solarno’s as close as I go.’ The smile was back, but it was harder. ‘They’re too sharp there, and there’s a colony of my kinden over at Firewater. The Solarno Spiders are backward, and I didn’t have to deal with them much either, but the real thing . . . not me, Major.’

  Garvan nodded, all business. Inside she was unsurprised. She had not worked with Lissart before this Solarno operation, but the woman’s former handler had warned Garvan that the little Firefly tended to forget she was the Empire’s to command.

  ‘We’ve already prepared a cover for you,’ she explained patiently. ‘You won’t need to be hobnobbing with the Aristoi, just their servants, keeping an eye on other agents – nothing so different to here. Perhaps, in time, I can find you a place in the Lowlands. Believe me, that front will be moving fast. Maybe Collegium, when the Second takes up where it left off. For now, though, you’re just what we need down south.’

  ‘No chance.’ Lissart folded her arms, leaning back on nothing at all as though there was a chair behind her.

  ‘Lissart,’ said Garvan, in her Major Garvan voice that had brought into line tougher nuts than this small firestarter, ‘I have orders. I don’t argue with orders, neither do you.’

  ‘Major, let’s you and me make a deal,’ Lissart suggested. ‘Let’s put that “orders” business behind us for now. You get me a nice post in the Lowlands – somewhere there’s action but not an actual war front – and I’ll play coy about you.’