Dragonfly Falling (6 page)

‘Oh they’ve been quiet
enough.’ Scuto’s grotesque, thorn-pocked face wrinkled. ‘A decent shout in the
earhole’ll get ’em moving, don’t you worry.’

‘Then you’re to go shout
at them. I need you talking to the Royal Court at Sarn, or at least to someone
within it. Tell them about Tark. Tell them about Myna and Maynes. Tell them
about the Empire, most of all.’

‘They ain’t going to
want to see me,’ Scuto said. ‘Ain’t nobody wants to see me. I’ll get a
mouthpiece, though. I’ll get your message through.’

‘Good man. Take Balkus
and Sperra to help you.’

Balkus cleared his
throat. ‘Excuse me, Master Maker, but you might just notice my skin-shade
here.’

Stenwold looked at him
blankly, seeing only a Sarnesh Ant, larger than most, and wearing a glum
expression at that moment. Then he recalled another such: Marius, who had died
at Myna. They had both been considered renegades, and if an Ant turned from his
city there was no easy way of going back.

‘I suppose you won’t be
going back to Sarn any time soon,’ Stenwold admitted. Marius had left Sarn
because all those years ago his superiors would not listen when he warned them
about the Wasps. Yet he had left to better serve his city, while Balkus,
Stenwold was sure, had left for less noble motives. The outcome was the same.

‘I’ll be good just with
Sperra,’ Scuto said. ‘I ain’t no greenhouse flower, chief. You up for a trip,
Sperra?’

The little Fly-kinden
nodded wearily.

‘You up to go speak to a
Queen for me?’ Scuto pressed.

‘Not on your life,’ she
said.

‘Sure, you’ll come round
to it,’ Balkus told her. ‘Now for me, I’ll stay right here and look after the
chief. That sound like a good plan? I’m a handy fellow to have around.’

‘Might not be a bad
idea,’ Scuto agreed. Stenwold looked from him to Balkus and back again.

‘I’m going to have
Tisamon and Tynisa right here should I need them, but . . . fair enough.
Another pair of hands and eyes won’t go amiss.’ He looked over at his niece and
her lover. ‘Che and Achaeos, you’re going to Sarn as well, but for different
reasons.’

Che put on a stern
expression. ‘You wouldn’t be trying to keep me safe again, would you? Because
that didn’t work so well the last time you tried it.’

Stenwold’s smile was
bleak. ‘The Wasps are invading the Lowlands, niece, so there isn’t anywhere
that’s safe any more. Scuto and I operated out of Sarn for a while, way back,
and we had some unlikely misadventures that owed nothing to the Empire.
Specifically, we had a fairly heated run-in with a band of fellows called the
Arcanum.’

Achaeos hissed at the
word. ‘What kind of run-in?’ he demanded.

‘They fought with us at
Helleron, didn’t they?’ asked Che. ‘They’re the Moth army or something?’

‘A secret society of
sorts,’ Stenwold explained. ‘But mostly they’re spies and agents for Achaeos’s
people. All a misunderstanding, the trouble we had then, but it’s left us
knowing a little about them that should be useful. Between what Scuto can
furnish you with and the fact of having Achaeos on our side, I think we can
hope to make contact.’

‘You want
us
to convince the Arcanum to fight on our side?’ Achaeos
asked, in a tone of voice that suggested it could not be done.

‘I want you to do
whatever you can. Your people in Dorax have been left alone more than those in
your own city, and that makes them, I think, less leery of outsiders,’ Stenwold
said. ‘We still get a steady trickle of them at the College, at least, and they
send the odd ambassador to Sarn. I’m hoping that they will at least consider
lending us some aid. I know we can’t expect armies from them, but even a little
information would be useful. Will you do it?’

Achaeos looked to Che.
‘And you?’

‘I’ll do whatever I have
to,’ she said. ‘I’ve met with your people before. These Arcanum can’t be worse
than the Skryres at Tharn.’

His face wrinkled at
that reference, but he turned back to Stenwold. ‘I cannot promise anything, but
what can be done will be done.’

Stenwold had chosen that
same taverna because it had possessed an underground exit leading to the river,
from way back when the temperance drive was running riot in the Assembly and
the wine-duty had been sky-high. He now watched Scuto and Che, Achaeos and
Sperra disappearing down it, to make their way to the rail station as swiftly
as possible. At the same time another man of his, dressed in a spiky wooden
harness and swathed in a cloak, would be poking about the automotive works
located along the Foundry West Way. Stenwold and Scuto had discovered a long
time ago that difference could provide a disguise in itself if, like Scuto, you
were so different that the difference was all people saw.

Tisamon and Tynisa would
be back at the College by now, unaware that the wheels of the plan were turning
already. He had lied to Che in the taverna’s back room. Sarn was by no means
safe, but he had a feeling it would be safer than Collegium over these next few
days. He would get to see the Assembly sooner or later, and put his case to
them, though the Wasps no doubt had men bribed there to speak against him. At
this late hour nobody could predict whether the old men and women of Collegium
might recover the wisdom of their predecessors. For this reason, he knew, the
Wasps would be looking to stop him making his speech.

With Balkus lumbering
behind him he set off back for the College. The big Ant was something of a
mystery to him, being Scuto’s man, not Stenwold’s own. He knew him for a
mercenary and yet the man had asked for no payment. That was either a happy
turn of events or a suspicious one.

‘Tell me, Balkus, what’s
in it for you?’ he asked boldly.

‘Don’t trust me, is it?’

Without even glancing
around, still presenting his broad back to the theoretical knife, Stenwold
shrugged. ‘It’s not a trusting business.’

‘That it’s not,’ the man
agreed. ‘Look, I’m no hero, right? I plied my trade from Helleron down to
Everis, and I must have signed on with everyone from crooks to Aristoi at one
time or another. It’s a fine stretch of land thataways, so between Helleron and
the Spiders there’s always work for a man like me. Wasps will change all that.
A man like me under their shadow is either a slave waiting for the chains or he
gets slapped with rank and papers and made to do their dirty work for them. If
I’d wanted that I’d have stayed in Sarn.’

‘There are always
frontiers,’ Stenwold pointed out. The white spires of the College were visible
ahead now. ‘You could have just moved on.’

‘You’re trying to get
rid of me?’

‘I’m curious, Balkus. If
I’m going to rely on you, I need to know you. I know Scuto trusts you. So
that’s a good start.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Stenwold
heard an awkwardness in the Ant’s voice. ‘Scutes and me go way back. We used to
take turns bailing each other out. This is . . . what, almost before
you
knew him. And some of the lads and lasses with him,
they were fellows of mine, and a lot of them are just ash and dirt now. And you
get to wondering how it’s going to be, you know.’

‘I do,’ Stenwold agreed.
‘Well don’t think you’re not appreciated. I saw you fight before the
Pride
. You did good work there.’

‘So did you, and your
niece and a whole lot of them,’ Balkus agreed. ‘And some that didn’t leave that
field alive either.’

They passed by the twin
statues of Logic and Reason that adorned the east gate of the College. Stenwold
paused a moment to rest a hand on Logic, carved as a female Beetle of mature
years wielding a metal rod marked with the gradations of an artificer’s rule.
The Great College was where learning was to be had here for the youth of all
kinden and, while the rich paid their way, there were scholarships for the poor
as well. The Moths might keep their secrets in the dark of their mountain
fastnesses, but here learning was light to be spread to all corners of the
world. There was nowhere else like it, and there never had been. And now the
Wasps wanted to destroy it.

At the gates he turned
to the Ant-kinden. ‘I have work for you. An opportunity.’

‘Name it,’ Balkus told
him, and Stenwold did. From the man’s expression the duties outlined did not
suit him, and it was a test, in a way, to see whether he would accept it. In the
end he nodded, perhaps just because Ant-kinden were bred to take orders. With a
final grimace and a shake of his head Balkus set off, heading away from the
College.

Stenwold saw knots of
students point him out as he entered. He was aware that, all unsought, he had a
reputation within these grounds. He was considered a freethinker, apparently:
he dared to teach that which the orthodox Masters of the College would not
touch. He had been warning of the Wasp Empire for a decade now, and this very
year they had finally come to the Lowlands. First they had competed at the
Great Games, taking a pointedly diplomatic second place in any contest they
chanced their hand at. Now the news was seeping in of armies on the move, the
drums of war sounding from the east. Stenwold the panic-monger had become
Stenwold the prophet.

There was a far greater
murmur now as he crossed the College grounds, and all of a sudden he realized
what it must mean. Concrete report must have come to Collegium that Tark had
been attacked, that the invasion had actually started. He turned to look at all
those young faces, and he saw hope and fear, doubt and admiration, all mixed
in. Seeing him stop, many of them approached him, calling out questions.

‘Master Maker, where
will the Empire go when Tark throws them back?’

‘Master Maker, how do
they fight? Do they use auto-motives?’

‘What happens if they
smash down the walls of Tark?’

This last question
silenced them. It was something most of them had never considered, for a dozen
Ant-kinden expeditions had been turned back by that city’s defences. The
political balance of the Lowlands had been stagnant for generations. Change, on
such a scale, was unthinkable.

‘If they take the city
of Tark,’ Stenwold said, speaking quietly enough, but the silence hanging over
the students was eerie, ‘they will come west.’ He knew that his words would be
taken as truth by them, simply because he spoke them, but he knew that they
were indeed true and so did not care. The girl who had asked the question
pushed forward from her fellows.

‘But they can’t, surely?
What do they want?’

He tried to place her.
She had attended some of his history classes earlier that year. ‘Power.
Control. Their Empire is like a spinning top that must keep moving lest it
falls.’

‘But can’t we do
anything?’ she asked. She was a young Spider-kinden, pretty without the cutting
beauty that some of them possessed.

Achaeos’s words recurred
to him. ‘What can be done, will be done,’ he said, and in that moment he placed
her – placed her name, Arianna. A promising student, one with a lot of
potential.

The main difference
between Wasp hospitality and Ant hospitality, Salma decided, was that Wasps
could fly. When he had been locked up by the Wasps in Myna they had wrenched
his arms behind his back and tied his elbows together with Fly-manacles so that
he could not have manifested his Art-wings even if he had somewhere to go.

By contrast the Ants had
now bound his hands before him and then slung him into a windowless, pitch-dark
cell, and left him for what seemed like a day and a half.

The cell itself was too
small to lie down straight in, also too low to stand up. He ended up hunched in
one corner, trying to listen for any movement from without, but the cell was
dug into the earth, with stone walls and a solid wooden door. Not an echo got
through to enlighten him.

They gave him some
water, stale-tasting, in a bowl he nearly upset trying to find it with his
fingers. No food, though, which did not bode well. It suggested they were going
to keep him around for a little while, but not for long.

He had protested, of
course. The three prisoners had done their best to explain that they were not
spies and that the Wasps were their enemies. The soldiers who had captured them
had simply not been interested. They had a specific role and it did not include
talking to prisoners. Nothing Salma or the others could say would make a dent
in that.

He hoped that Totho and
Skrill were doing better than he was, although it seemed unlikely.

Then he heard the hatch
slide in the door, and he froze, wondering if there might be some opportunity
here, but even if they opened the cell for him and he could somehow, with hands
tied, overpower his jailers, then he would still be underground somewhere, and
likely to be killed on sight after that.

Light beyond, dim
lantern-light that seemed as bright as the sun to him, spilled across the
cramped little space to climb the far wall.

There was the clank of a
key in the lock and the heavy door was hauled open. Even as Salma got to his
feet the world exploded, searing into his brain. He found that he had fallen
onto his side, his hands up to shield his eyes. They had suddenly turned on
some kind of lamp, some artificer’s thing, just as he had been looking straight
at it. After so long in complete darkness his eyes burned and he felt tears
course down his cheeks as two men lifted him to his feet and hauled him out of
the cell.

By the time they found
another place for him he could see again through watering eyes. He was in a
starkly bare room, with a single slit window high up, illuminated by hissing
white lamps burning on two walls. He turned to question one of the soldiers and
the man punched him solidly below the ribs, doubling him over. As Salma
struggled to recover his breath, his wrists were hauled up and their bonds
hitched over a dangling hook. He heard the rattle of chains and his arms were
jerked abruptly over his head, yanking him onto his toes.