Dragonfly Falling

Twenty-Five

Salma awoke because it was cold, the night cloudless above, and he fought to recall where he was, and then realized that he did not know.

Where is this place? The gloom of the tent of the Mercy’s Daughters had become the dark of night, the stars visible above him. He lay on sandy ground with only a thin blanket.

Where is she? Grief in Chains, or Aagen’s Joy, or. no, it was coming to him.

They had been moving him. Night, again, and it must have been earlier this same night — or last night, was it? But he had been taken from the Daughters’ huge tent.

She had been there. He recalled her face, her eyes, radiant. Moth eyes knew no darkness, but hers could stare straight into the sun. She had touched his hand as they took him out. She had said. what had she said?

He could not recall it. It was stripped from him along with his health and his strength. The bandages were still tight about his chest, the line of the wound, that she had sealed with her fingers, pulled tautly as he moved, now secured with compresses and surgical silk.

He looked around. There was a scrap of waxing moon up there, enough for his eyes, and there was a fire nearby. They were in a hollow but the warmth was fast leaching out from it, so the cold had sunk into his bones. He made an attempt to crawl closer to the fire, and found he could do that, just. He was capable of it.

He saw Nero, curled up like a child, and indeed looking very like a child bundled in his cloak. A bald child, yes, and to be frank an ugly one, but even his belligerent features attained a kind of innocence in sleep.

Beyond Nero’s sleeping form there were two Wasp soldiers in armour. Salma felt his world drop away from him, and he was instinctively groping for a sword that was not there. He sat up, too fast, and hissed in pain, and they looked over at him. One was young, perhaps even younger than he was. The other was greying, forty at least in age, a peer for Stenwold.

‘Easy there,’ the younger one said. ‘How much do you remember?’

‘Who are you?’ Salma demanded, although he knew he could make no demands that he could enforce.

‘My name is Adran,’ said the younger of the soldiers. ‘This is Kalder.’

‘Lieutenant Kalder,’ the older man rumbled in a particularly deep voice. ‘We’re still in the army, boy.’

‘You’re Salma, right?’ Adran nodded absently. ‘So what do you remember?’

Salma acknowledged the point. ‘Assume I remember nothing.’

‘Then you’re out,’ Adran told him. ‘They got you out.’

‘They?’

‘The halfbreed artificer did it,’ said Lieutenant Kalder. ‘Arranged for it, anyway. He’s got some pull, that one, for all that he’s just a piebald bastard.’

‘Halfbreed?’ Totho? And it came back to him then, what Totho had done for him, the price that had been paid for Salma’s life and liberty. So the artificer Kalder meant was the other one, the man who had wanted to keep Totho as his slave.

‘So why are you.? What are you going to do with us?’

‘You don’t need to worry,’ Adran said, but Salma shook his head.

‘What is going on? I see Wasp soldiers before me. Look at me, I’m in no position to cause you any trouble, so at least tell me the truth.’

Adran and Kalder exchanged looks.

‘You probably think we’re all monsters in the Empire,’ said the younger man.

Thinking of Aagen, Salma said, ‘Not necessarily, but until proved otherwise.’

‘Right.’ Adran poked at the fire. ‘Have you heard of the Broken Sword?’ Kalder started to speak, but Adran continued, ‘He might have done, if he was in the Twelve-Year War.’

‘He’s too young for that,’ Kalder objected.

‘I’ve never heard of any Broken Sword,’ Salma told them.

‘It’s. We’re a group within the Empire, who don’t altogether agree with what it’s doing. Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud to be Wasp-kinden. But things are changing, and never for the better. We’ve always fought. We’re a martial people, just like the Ant-kinden or the Soldier Beetles of Myna. Back before the unification and the Empire, though. we might have lived in hill-forts and stolen each other’s daughters and cattle, but it was different then. It was. natural, almost.’ His halting way of exploring what he was trying to say reminded Salma unbearably of Totho.

‘The Empire, though, it’s wrong. The way it works now, the way it has to keep expanding, further and further, just to stop everything collapsing. You might not realize it, but every Wasp-kinden freeman past thirteen is in the army, and has a rank, and can be sent hundreds of miles away from home because the Emperor wants to bring some foreign city under his control. Nobody gets to choose otherwise. And then there are all the Auxillians, who have it even worse.’

‘The people you go and fight don’t exactly have a good time of it either,’ Salma said weakly.

‘No, they don’t,’ agreed Adran. He had a tremendous sincerity about him, and that in turn reminded Salma of Che, when she was on some moral mission or other. What Adran was saying really mattered to him.

‘The Empire imposes its will on dozens of other kinden, and it destroys them by making them behave like us. And that’s wrong. It’s evil, in fact, and by making us do its work, it makes all of us evil.’ He glanced at Kalder. ‘Or that’s what I think, anyway.’

The expression on the older man’s face said so clearly, These young soldiers today that Salma had to smile. ‘As for me,’ Kalder took over, ‘I just got sick of it. I fought your lot, right? And before that it was putting down insurrections amongst the Hornet tribes. And before that I was a sergeant fighting the Bees at Szar. And I did garrison duty at Jerez even before that. I had a family, once, but I haven’t seen them more than six months in twenty years. And now we’ve just taken Tark, and no sooner have the fires burned out than they’re marching us out again, the bastards, for some other forsaken place. It never ends. They just grind you down and abandon you when you drop. So what the Broken Sword is really about — rather than what it means to idealists like young Adran here — is men like me, soldiers who just want the fighting to stop. We want to go home to our wives, our farms. But even if we could, some of us, we wouldn’t, now, because by staying put we get to help others who think the same way, help them to get out and away. And it’s not just Wasp-kinden. Soldiers are soldiers, whether they’re imperial, Auxillian, or whichever poor bastards we might be fighting.’

‘But what if they find out?’

‘Then they take us apart an inch of skin at a time,’ Kalder said. ‘Because the Empire, the Rekef especially, hates none more than quitters like us.’

‘But we’re safe,’ Adran broke in. ‘We’re scouting, you see. Or that’s what they think. Drephos the artificer, he arranged for people to be looking the other way, but it was the Daughters’ Eldest, Norsa, who knew who we were and called us. The Daughters and the Broken Sword see eye to eye, and Norsa’s a favourite of the general.’

‘We can take you another day out from here,’ Kalder added. ‘After that you and your Fly friend are on your own. You’ll be far enough from the army to be as safe as anyone can be, but I don’t know where you can go next.’

‘If we were closer to home then we’d have safe-houses, Wayhouses and the like,’ Adran said. ‘We’re at the edge of the Empire, though. Just don’t head south and don’t head east.’

‘Or north,’ Kalder said slowly, ‘from what I hear. So I suppose you don’t have many options.’

The scout touched down virtually on the bonnet of the transport automotive, startling the driver, who cursed him. The scout made no reply but caught his balance quickly and saluted General Alder.

‘Report on the soldiers ahead, sir.’

Alder rose from a cramped conference he had been having with Major Grigan of the engineers and Colonel Carvoc, in the narrow space right behind the driver and ahead of the freight.

‘Tell me,’ he demanded. He had been informed earlier that an advance scout had spotted a force about two hundred strong encamped right in the path of the Fourth Army, and maybe it was about time someone told him what they intended. ‘It’s the Tarkesh fugitives, yes?’

‘No, sir. I’ve made contact with them, sir,’ the scout reported.

Alder’s one hand grasped a strut to keep him standing as the automotive lurched over some difficult ground. All around him, before and behind, the mighty strength of the Imperial Fourth Army was on the move. There were automotives and pack animals, horses, giant beetles and even desert scorpions, all moving in great columns that probably still stretched most of the way back to Tark. The infantry marched in shifting blocks, while the officers and artificers rode. Sometimes heliopters thundered overhead, sweeping the terrain to watch for ambushes, and a multitude of the light airborne performed the same function, squads of them jumping forwards half a mile and then waiting for the army to catch up.

‘Tell me what’s going on, soldier,’ Alder demanded. The scout saluted him again.

‘It’s an embassy, sir.’

‘You spoke with them?’

‘They hailed me as I passed over, sir, so it seemed reasonable.’

The man had a sergeant’s tabs on his shoulders, and presumably had been picked out from the crowd for some quality or other. Alder now hoped it was his sound judgement.

‘Imperial intelligence says the Kessen won’t meet us in the field,’ Alder said. ‘So what’s going on?’

‘It isn’t the Kessen, sir. There are Ant-kinden amongst them, but they’re mercenaries. It’s the Spider-kinden, sir. Or at least, some Spider-kinden and their retinue.’

Alder’s expression did not change but inside he felt uneasy. The Empire’s stretching borderlands had only touched near the Spiderlands in the last year, and had no established relations. The Scorpion-kinden of the Dryclaw normally acted as go-betweens in any trade the Consortium conducted with the wealth of the Spiders. It was fabled, that wealth, though probably entirely fabulous. Certainly it was unsubstantiated at least. In fact, as he considered it, Alder realized that he knew almost nothing for certain about the Spider-kinden holdings situated south of the Lowlands. They were rich. They were clever. Their lands extended on beyond imperial maps. That was the imperial reservoir of knowledge on the subject.

‘This could get ugly,’ he murmured.

‘They want to speak with you, sir,’ the scout reported.

‘No doubt. You are dismissed, soldier.’ As the scout’s wings ignited into life and he kicked off from the automotive, Alder was already gesturing to a Fly-kinden messenger.

‘Get me Major Maan,’ he instructed, because he urgently needed to know imperial policy regarding the Spiders, and it was an ill-kept secret that Maan was Rekef Inlander. ‘And get me any Scorpion-kinden we’ve still got with us. I want to talk to them.’

After two hours in further conference he felt no wiser. Major Maan had simply emphasized that all travellers’ reports confirmed that the Spiderlands were very extensive, that they were varied in geography and peoples, and that the chief interest of their rulers seemed to be in conspiring against one another. The Lowlands had never presented a threat to the Spiders, as the Lowlanders were also notably self-involved and divided. There was a brisk trade along the Seldis road to Tark, Merro and Helleron, but beyond that it was remarkable how little reliable information could be found.

‘They’re subtle, sir,’ Maan had warned, as if that explained everything.

And so here he was now, General Alder of the Barbs, with his own retinue of two hundred Wasp soldiers and, nearby, another five hundred of the light airborne ready to move in on his signal if things got as ugly as he feared. He had Maan with him, for all the good it would do, while behind him the main army was setting up temporary camp under Carvoc’s command.

And ahead were the Spiders. The ground here was hilly, and patchily wooded, and the Spider commander or lord or whatever he might call himself had chosen a little dell to pitch his tent in. It was barely a tent, by Alder’s standards, just a peaked roof of silk held up on poles, tugged lightly in the wind. A small knot of people were gathered beneath its shade, and the rest of the retinue were at military attention, waiting for him in immaculate parade-ground fashion. It was, he admitted, a clever piece of theatre.

At least half of them were bronze-skinned Kessen Ants in gleaming chainmail and helms of like colour. Their shields bore a device of abstract flourishes that Maan loudly informed him was the crest of Seldis.

Some of the others were Flies, and most of those seemed to be nobles or wealthy citizens, as richly clad in felt and silks as many a magnate of the Consortium of the Honest. Others there were Beetle-kinden soldiers with heavy crossbows. An honour guard of a dozen hulking Scorpions, stripped to the waist, leant on swords almost as high as they were. Then there were the Spiders themselves.

There were almost a score of them, and they seemed all elegance and poise, each one regarding the approaching Wasps with a slight and individual smile. If the Flies had been dressed well, these were magnificent, and yet they trod a thin line between the ornate and the excessive. They were, Alder had to admit, the very soul of taste, wearing their fine silks and gold, their embroidered brocades and their jewels, as though the garments were simply casually thrown on for no special occasion. Himself an old soldier who had never cared for gaud and glitter, Alder found himself momentarily dowdy, travel-stained and awkward, but he thrust the thought away angrily.

It was clear to see who the leader was, and to Alder’s surprise it was a male: a further victory for Major Maan’s intelligence because Alder had been assured that they were always led by their womenfolk. This particular Spider-kinden lord reclined languidly in a solid-looking gilt chair, high-backed and fantastically carved. A couple of young women of his own race sat at his feet, and the others stood around him, not as a formal court, but in little groups and cliques. They were all beautiful, men and women alike. Even the oldest amongst them possessed an austere handsomeness, while the youngest glowed with the fruits of youth. Some were pale, others tanned, and their hair was fair or red or dark, more varied than most other kinden ever were, but all with the same ineffably delicate sophistication about them.

The soldiers arrayed behind the Spiders tensed slightly, waiting to see if the armed men coming towards them meant mischief. Alder turned to his troops and signalled for them to take their ease.

‘Major,’ he said. Maan glanced from one Spider-kinden to the next, swallowing awkwardly.

‘Remarkable, General. One does hear-’

‘Just listen, Major. Only speak when I consult you.’ Alder went forward, with Maan dogging his heels, followed by two sentinels for bodyguards and a scribe to make records.

The Spider leader stood up as they approached. He looked younger than thirty years, and he wore a crimson shirt with ballooning sleeves beneath a green jerkin filigreed in gold thread, and loose-fitting dark breeches above knee-high boots that sported silver spurs. He made a flourishing gesture of welcome that was part wave and part bow, rings glittering on his fingers. His neat, dark beard made his smile flash all the more.

‘Do I have the honour of conversing with a general of the Wasps?’ he asked. ‘That is the title, is it not?’

‘General Alder of the Imperial Fourth Army, known as the Barbs,’ Alder replied, restraining an urge to salute.

‘The Barbs? Charming. I am the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael and I am delighted to make your acquaintance, General Alder.’

The second name meant, Alder recalled from his briefing, that this man was of the Aristoi — from one of their ever-feuding noble families. The name itself meant nothing to him though, and he had no clue as to how the Aldanrael might rank in the grander scheme of things.

A couple of the well-dressed Flies came forward at this point, and Alder turned to them to greet them formally, before seeing that they were bearing a flask of wine and a large platter of honeyed meat, shredded and laid out like unreadable script.

Servants? he wondered, noting their finery, and then, slaves? Major Maan had stressed how the Spiders had a thriving slave trade, but these little attendants were more richly dressed than most Wasps of good family at the imperial court.

He allowed a goblet to be pressed into his hand, with that, his thumb feeling idly at the small gems that encircled its stem.

‘You are here as an embassy from the Spiderlands?’ Alder enquired, determined to regain the initiative.

‘From Everis, Siennis and Seldis, certainly,’ Teornis said, ‘but it would be somewhat presumptuous of me to speak for the Spiderlands entire. Yes, General. We have been watching your Empire with some approbation recently. Our agents have reported on your conquest of Tark, and it seems you have done the impossible with embarrassing ease.’

Alder allowed himself to nod. ‘The Emperor commands and the Empire obeys, Lord. Martial,’ he said, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar title.

Teornis permitted himself a wry smile. ‘You are a military man, General. A direct man.’

‘I try to be. So I will ask again, what is the purpose of your embassy?’

‘We are concerned, General.’ Teornis signalled for a chair to be brought forwards for Alder and, with that politeness accomplished, slouched back into his own. Alder decided that standing would give him the advantage, but then changed his mind when he saw how Teornis took his ease, and found to his embarrassment that it was inexplicably too late to sit. He felt surrounded by an invisible net of unfamiliar manners.

‘We have no quarrel with your Empire,’ Teornis went on, regardless. ‘We wish you well, in fact, should you decide to sack any other Ant-kinden cities. We are certain, from our intelligence gathered, that you will make us better trading partners than the Tarkesh ever did. I only wish to make sure you understand our position.’

Alder nodded. Matters were falling at last into a recognizable pattern. ‘You want to be sure we’re not coming for you and yours.’

‘Precisely, General.’

‘Well then that’s simple,’ Alder said, now anxious to conclude the interview as quickly as possible. ‘The Empire wishes the Spiderlands nothing but peace. Our business is with the Lowlands only.’

‘Splendid.’ Teornis smiled dazzlingly. ‘I thought as much, but our women back home insisted I put together this expedition and talk to you about it directly.’

Alder allowed himself the smallest answering smile. ‘I had expected to be dealing with a female of your kind, Lord-Martial.’

‘They have better things to do,’ said Teornis, ‘than play soldier.’ It was only later, much later, that Alder recognized this as an insult. At the time Teornis’s tone and expression suggested only one man joking with another. Then the Spider continued, ‘So I anticipate Kes will be your next conquest.’ Alder glanced at the Ant soldiers behind him, but Teornis waved his concerns away. ‘Mercenaries, General, worry not. I am afraid we are a terrible influence on the young men and women of Kes. They see, you understand, that even a servant of ours lives better than a lord of theirs.’

It was hard to deny. ‘Then Kes it is,’ Alder admitted. ‘After we have secured Egel and Merro of course. There will be no forays further southwards, never fear.’

But Teornis’s smile had evaporated and a whole sea-change had blown across the entire Spider embassy, as though sudden winter had rushed in off the coast. ‘Pardon my impudence, General,’ Teornis said, ‘but you contradict yourself.’

Alder resisted the urge to check that his men were still close behind. ‘How so?’ he asked.

‘Egel and Merro are not part of the Lowlands. They are ours.’

Alder stared at him. ‘Not on my maps,’ he said.

‘Your maps aside, General, both Egel and Merro have been holdings of the Spiderlands almost since they were settled. Our own histories are very clear on that point.’

Alder risked a glance at Major Maan, who interpreted that as a chance to speak. ‘I am afraid,’ he said firmly, ‘that you are quite mistaken. Our agents have been informed by the very occupants of those towns that they are Low-landers.’

And Teornis laughed at him, not scornfully but so politely as to cut to the bone. ‘I am afraid that your agents have fallen victim to one of the local Fly-kinden pastimes, which is to playfully misdirect strange travellers. Let us hope that they did not also purchase any priceless gems or talented slaves at bargain prices. I am afraid that the Fly-kinden of these two towns, if indeed they are not simply one town with two names, find it convenient to claim themselves as either Lowlanders or subjects of my own people, depending on the asker. They are a duplicitous and untrustworthy people, and no doubt we would best be rid of them, but nonetheless they are our subjects. Any attempt to impose your Empire’s rule over them would amount to a declaration of war. I am no great strategist, but such a development would I think weaken your Empire’s position.’

‘War, is it?’ Alder growled.

‘I hope it need not come to that. Perhaps you would provide us with your maps and we can then correct them,’ suggested Teornis innocently.

‘You have a mere two hundred men here, Lord-Martial. What do you think would happen if I decided I should send a definite message back to your people?’

Teornis shrugged, slinging a leg up over the arm of his chair. ‘Oh, you’d send them my head in a box, no doubt, which is another reason I’m doing this thankless job and not, say, my sister or my mother. And we would then have to muster our armies, which is a tiresome enough proposal to make me glad that I would be dead by that point. And then we would fight, I suppose.’

Alder narrowed his eyes. ‘Perhaps you should be more concerned, Lord-Martial. I have automotives here, flying machines, artillery. Your people are Inapt. Will you bring bows and arrows against us?’

Teornis’s smile broadened. ‘It’s true,’ he replied, ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with a crossbow, if someone should thrust such a distasteful object into my hands. We do not trouble ourselves with all that greasy machine-fondling that some kinden seem to find so irresistible. No, we have — how shall I put it? — people to do that for us. We have plenty of Ant-kinden and Beetle-kinden hired with us, and many more within our satrapies further south. The Empire is not the only one to have subject peoples. Do not think, General, that we cannot field all that clanking metal palaver if we need to.’

‘So your position is clear,’ Alder said grimly.

‘It is, and it is one of the open hand of friendship — or, as you are Wasps, the closed hand, I believe, is more appropriate. We wish nothing but peace and trade with your mighty and admirable Empire.’ Teornis sprang from his chair effortlessly to look Alder in the eye. ‘But if your hand comes against Egel or Merro or any of our holdings, then you and I, General, shall be at war, and nobody shall profit from that in any way.’

Back in his camp, Alder called his officers together and gave them the situation.

‘I think they’re bluffing,’ he explained, but he saw from their faces he had few takers.

‘A war on two fronts would be disastrous, sir,’ Carvoc said. ‘To take Kes we will need to concentrate all our efforts.’

‘Even if we bypass the Fly townships,’ one of his field majors remarked, ‘they could attack anyway, cut our supply lines.’

‘And we just do not know what they can field,’ Major Maan added. Teornis’ people seemed to have particularly impressed him. ‘The Spiderlands are, we know, very large, and they could bring in troops by sea-’

‘Yes, Major,’ Alder interrupted heavily. Just this morning his world had been so simple. Now his conversation with Teornis had struck it a severe blow and crazed it with far too many complications. He was a soldier, not a diplomat, and he did not want to be the man to go to war with an unmeasured enemy nation.

‘Send the fastest messenger we have back to Asta,’ he said. ‘I need to know imperial policy on this.’

And in the meantime the Fourth Army would sit idle.

The Cloudfarer had reached Helleron through clement weather, but it was not the same city that Totho remembered. Not that he remembered it fondly, but the city that came to his mind instead was Myna, with Wasp soldiers and Auxillians everywhere on the streets, and a hunted look in the eyes of the locals.

General Malkan had come to meet them at the airfield in person, clasping Drephos’s gauntleted hand. Filled with enthusiasm, he seemed barely older than Totho himself.

‘Colonel Drephos, a pleasure,’ he said. ‘Since I heard you were expected here I have had clerks taking stock of every foundry and factory in the city.’

‘Most kind, General,’ Drephos said. ‘Have my people arrived yet?’

‘And your machinery. They all came in with the garrison force.’

‘Excellent.’ Drephos turned to Totho. ‘You have had a chance to consider the plans?’

‘I have, sir.’ In the freezing air that the Cloudfarer flew in, he had been hunched close by the windbreak of the clockwork engine, scribbling his alterations and additions. All for Salma he had reflected. I made this bargain, and now I must keep it. But beyond those sentiments his busy mind had been concerned only with the calculations, the mechanical principles.

‘Then let us unleash them on Helleron,’ Drephos said eagerly. ‘It’s not often I have a whole city to work for me. General Malkan, pray show me what you have for us.’

How long I have wished to see the factories of Helleron, was the ironic thought as Totho entered one. I had not thought it would be like this. He meant as an invader, an imperial artificer, but he also meant as a master rather than a menial. As he and Drephos, and Drephos’s ragbag of other picked artificers, came in, the factory work had been totally stilled. A great crowd of workers were gathered there, the staff of three factories waiting to receive their new orders. Malkan had been quick in providing Drephos with whatever he should need and Totho knew that the general was one of a new breed of Wasp officers. Malkan was not just a slave to maps and charts and the slow movements of troop formations. He actually liked artificers and the way they could win wars more efficiently, more quickly, than ever before. Drephos was the Empire’s most gifted artificer on the western front, and Malkan was keen to see that he was kept happy.

‘My name is Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos,’ the half-breed announced, his voice ringing from the gantry he stood on across the echoing factory floor. ‘You will refer to me as Master, or Sir. Most importantly, you will do what you are instructed without needless question, without debate, without retort. I want you to have no illusions about your situation here.’ He cast his narrow gaze over them, the working men and women of Helleron. He had his cowl thrown back leaving them no doubts about what he was.

‘These men and women with me,’ Drephos told the workers, ‘are my elite staff. You will address them as ‘sir’ and do exactly what they instruct you. In my absence, they are my voice.’

Totho could feel the resentment boiling up from these hard-working men and women whose lives had come under new management. It was not that this was a new factory owner telling them what to do, nor even that he was a foreigner. What rankled with them was that Drephos was a halfbreed and, worst of all, a Moth halfbreed, born partly from that superstitious, primitive tribe that raided their mine-workings north of the city. Here he was, claiming to be an artificer, and appalling chance had placed him as their superior.

‘I myself will have no illusions here. You hate and resent me,’ Drephos continued. ‘I, on the other hand, have no feelings whatsoever concerning you, collectively or individually. I wish you to think about precisely what that means. It means that if any one of you comes to my notice in a way that displeases me, or any of my people here, then that man or woman shall become my object lesson. Work hard and well and you shall escape my notice, which shall be best for all concerned.’

They still stirred rebelliously, and so he smiled at them lopsidedly. ‘You may have heard from your leaders that some amicable arrangement has been reached between your people and the Wasps of the Empire. It is not so. We own you. You work at our command. I invite any of you here to dispute it.’

He signalled, and a dozen Wasp soldiers came to attention. ‘Now get these people back to their work,’ he said. ‘Bring all the foremen up here, though. I have one final thing to say to them.’ He turned to Totho and the others, seeming very pleased with himself.

‘Your comments?’

‘They will not serve you willingly,’ Kaszaat said. ‘Not at first. Surly and angry, they are.’

‘It’s only natural,’ Drephos said, not a bit daunted. ‘They are a skilled workforce, though, and only in Helleron is such skill so taken for granted. Nowhere else could you lay hands on so many trained people. We must therefore ensure that their talents are put entirely at our disposal.’ He turned again as two men and one woman were brought up to the gantry. ‘Well now,’ he addressed them. ‘You are my foremen, are you?’

Two of them merely nodded but one of them was quicker on the uptake and said, ‘Yes, Master.’

‘Master,’ Drephos echoed. ‘Such a versatile word, is it not?’ They looked at him blankly, and he elaborated. ‘Amongst your kinden, of course, it is a great term of respect. Your College scholars, your magnates, the great among you, are called ‘Masters’. Among the Wasp-kinden it is any man who owns a slave, and therefore has rights of life or death over that slave.’ His smile was thin and hard-edged. ‘So it will now be the choice of you and your workers just what interpretation we shall apply to that word. Do I make myself understood?’

He had, and they nodded unhappily, and murmured the title for him.

‘I am anticipating troublemakers,’ he told them. ‘The lazy, the impertinent, the disobedient, the talentless.’

‘Oh no, Master,’ said the woman amongst them. ‘We’ll be sure of that. No slackers in our houses. No backtalk either.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ said Drephos. ‘I am anticipating them. There are such in any body of workers, perhaps a dozen in every factory.’

The foremen were exchanging glances, approaching the point of denying it and then drawing back.

‘I am anticipating,’ Drephos explained happily, ‘that they will be singled out by you there, and reported to my soldiers. I am anticipating that my guards will have some three dozen such malcontents brought to me within the first five days of work here. Choose those who contribute least, or stir up trouble, or whom you personally dislike, whatever you will, but I will be very unhappy if my anticipations are not borne out.’

The two men nodded slowly now, looking as miserable as Totho had seen anyone in a long time, but the woman said, ‘Excuse me, Master, but. what shall be done with them, once your guardsmen have them?’

‘They will be allowed to participate in other parts of the creative process,’ Drephos told her. She paled a little at that, and then the soldiers began ushering all three away.

‘Some promise there, I think,’ Drephos mused, glancing back at his cadre of artificers. Besides Kaszaat and Totho there were two Beetle-kinden that must surely be twin brother and sister, a halfbreed that looked to mingle Wasp and Beetle blood, and a hulking nine-foot Mole Cricket whose weight made the whole gantry creak.

‘Master Drephos. ’ Totho started, feeling deeply uneasy about it all.

‘Ah, Totho,’ Drephos said. He was clearly in a fine mood today. ‘You have seen the prototype?’

‘I have, Master Drephos, but. ’

‘What do you think?’ Drephos began descending the stairs to the factory floor where the workers were being given their new machining projects, designs and specifications for unfamiliar parts and pieces.

‘The new loading mechanism seems to work very smoothly,’ Totho said, drawn from his original intent by the need to discuss the finer aspects of the technical work. ‘It will need to be machined very exactly on the finished version, though. There will be little room for error, to avoid jamming.’

‘That would be a problem anywhere else,’ Drephos agreed, ‘but here in Helleron the skills and the equipment have come together in glad harmony. In the Empire we would have had to compromise, but the Emperor’s generals have made their plans as if they had my very wishes in mind, because Helleron is ours, and here we are.’

‘Aside from that, I think we may have to redesign the grooving within the barrel, or at least test variations of spacing and angle.’

‘Granted,’ Drephos said. ‘Test it then. Conclusions in two days. By then we should be ready for the spiralling lathe work on the first batch.’

‘First batch, Master?’ Totho enquired.

‘You weren’t thinking of making just one of them, surely?’ Drephos grinned at him, teeth flashing in his motley-coloured face. ‘Like a showpiece? A museum curiosity? What do you think these factories are for, Totho?’

‘All for. you can’t mean it, surely?’ Totho felt weak, stumbling on the stairs so that Kaszaat had to reach out and grab his arm to steady him.

‘Explain to Master Totho how we do things,’ Drephos flung the words over his shoulder.

Kaszaat was grinning, and most of the others smiled at least a little, their newest colleague still learning how things were done.

‘One project at a time is the rule,’ Kaszaat explained. ‘When we really get to work, when the war effort calls, all resources are devoted to one project. This time you’re the lucky one. It’s your project. Three factories, hundreds of workers, all of us, all concentrated on your devices.’

The thought made his head swim. It was all happening far too fast for him.

‘I had better start my testing,’ he said. The other artificers were already fanning out across the factory, each heading to his or her own task. Kaszaat was about to go as well, when Totho caught her arm.

‘Tonight I. Could I talk. come to talk to you, tonight? I need. I just need. ’

‘You just need someone,’ her smile was ambiguous, ‘and I can be that someone. Perhaps I need a someone also, sometimes.’