Dragonfly Falling

Four

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.

The two soldiers then stood back, clearly satisfied with their work. They could have been brothers to each other, and, equally, to the men who had captured him: short, solidly built types with flat, pallid faces and dark hair, dressed in hauberks of dark chainmail.

There was a single door to this room, and Salma eyed it as he waited for the interrogator to arrive, as he must. This position was intended to be painful, he guessed, but he could have stood on his toes for hours. His race owned a poise and balance that the Ants had never known. Salma allowed himself to relax into it, recovering from the knocks and scrapes of the last few minutes.

Lovely fellows, these Tarkesh. Remind me why we’re on their side again?

Of course that was the point. Nobody ever claimed the Lowlands were populated by paragons of virtue, only that the Lowlands free were of more service to the world than the Lowlands under imperial rule. This was doubly the case from Salma’s perspective, for if the Lowlands fell it would open to attack the entire southern border of his own nation, the Dragonfly Commonweal.

The door opened, at last, and a woman came in, a sister to the soldiers’ fraternity. She might have been some higher official than they but she wore chainmail just as they did, and carried no badge of rank. He supposed that they sorted all that kind of thing out in their heads, communicating it between their minds. Creeping in behind her was a Fly-kinden girl, no more than fourteen, who sat down by the door with scroll and poised pen. A scribe slave, Salma guessed.

‘Name,’ the interrogator said. Her tone gave the word no hint of questioning, just a flat statement.

Salma decided to be fancy. ‘Prince Minor Salme Dien of the Dragonfly Commonweal.’ The pen of the scribe scratched the words down without hesitation.

The Ant woman, however, looked unamused. ‘Do not play games with me. You must know that you are under order of execution.’

‘Because you think I’m a spy.’

‘You are a spy,’ she told him. ‘There can be no other reason for your skulking about to the north of our city where you were found. Tell us about your masters, then, their weapons and their military capacity, their tactics and weaknesses, and you might be allowed to serve Tark as a slave.’

‘I’m not with the Wasps,’ he insisted.

She pursed her lips and slipped something from her belt. It was a glove, he saw, with metal rivets studded across the knuckles, and she drew it on without ceremony.

‘I am indeed a spy, however,’ he said hurriedly and she raised an eyebrow, ‘but not for the Wasp Empire. But I do know something about them, and I’m more than willing to reveal to you all I know. They’re my enemies, too, and my people have fought them — I’ve fought them myself, been their prisoner, even.’

She seemed not to have registered most of what he said. ‘If not for the army currently beyond our gates, then which other city are you spying for? Kes would seem most logical.’

Salma had to think a moment before he recalled that Kes was yet another Ant city-state and the one closest to Tark.

‘I’m not spying for any of the Ant-kinden,’ he told her.

‘I fail to see any other option. Who else would profit from this situation?’

He looked into her bland, uninterested gaze. ‘I was sent here by Stenwold Maker: a Beetle-kinden, a Master of the Great College. He has been working against the Wasps for years, and he sent me and my companions just to observe and report back to him. His only interest — our only interest, is in stopping the Empire.’

‘We will stop this Empire,’ she replied, with a curl of contempt. ‘Why should some Beetle academic care?’

Salma knew that his next words might not help him, would in fact hurt him, so he tried to find another way of putting it, but he could not paint Stenwold as a Tarkesh sympathizer any believable way.

‘Stenwold Maker firmly believes that the Wasps will not be halted at the walls of Tark,’ he said quietly, and waited.

One of the soldiers actually strode forward to strike him for his insolence, but some unheard command of the interrogator turned him back.

‘Explain yourself,’ she said, still expressionless.

Salma took a deep breath. ‘The Empire has been expanding rapidly for two generations,’ he said. ‘They have met Ant-kinden before, and triumphed over them. You have proof of this, if you’ve even looked over your walls at the enemy. We ourselves saw Ant-kinden amongst them before your scouts took us. Not as mercenaries or allies, mind, but as slave-soldiers.’

She remained quiet for a moment, and he wondered what was now passing between her and her kin. ‘They have fought Ants, yes,’ she agreed at last. ‘They have not fought Tark.’

Salma tried to shrug, but couldn’t. ‘Whatever. Perhaps. Maybe you’ll just kick the dung out of them and they’ll go limping back east dragging their dead with them. If that happens, no one will be happier than I. But Stenwold fears otherwise. What else can I say?’

He knew that there was now a mental debate going on. The soldiers were in on it too, for he could see the interrogator’s eyes flicking between them. Perhaps in time the whole city would be arguing the merits.

Then the interrogator turned and left him without warning, her slave scribe hurriedly following. The soldiers hoisted him off the hook, and it was downwards all the way from there, back to the pitch-darkness of his cell.

Some time later, the extent of which he found impossible to judge, he heard them coming for him once more. On seeing there was light, Salma hid his eyes quickly behind his bound hands, in case they tried the same trick again.

‘Come out here!’ one of his guards barked roughly.

‘Not if you’re going to blind me again.’

He heard them coming into the cell and backed off, finally dropping his hands. The time had almost come for an escape attempt, he was thinking, however doomed to failure.

‘Now calm there! No need to turn this into a diplomatic incident!’ It was not an Ant voice, not even a Tarkesh accent. The leading soldier stepped to one side to reveal the ugliest Fly-kinden Salma had ever seen. Bald and broken-nosed, the little man looked him up and down critically.

‘I see our hosts here have been their usual warm-hearted selves,’ he said.

‘Are you a prisoner, too?’

‘I’m your ticket out of here, son.’

Salma’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re a slave-buyer?’

The Fly laughed loudly at that. ‘If I had that kind of money I wouldn’t be where I am now. No, I’m your secret guardian, boy, and I’m getting you free. Or at least as free as anyone around here is right now.’ Something glinted in his hands, and with a single twitch he had cut the bonds about Salma’s wrists. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’

He turned and left and, keeping a suspicious eye on the guard, Salma followed. The Fly might be small but he walked fast, so Salma had to jog to keep up with him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘I’ve never liked repeating myself, so just let me get us safely into this room up here and I’ll spill all.’

Without warning the Fly took a sharp left and pattered up a flight of stairs. Salma, following, found himself in an antechamber with two of the familiar high-up windows and, more importantly, with Totho and Skrill.

He almost knocked the Fly over in his haste to get over to them. Skrill looked decidedly weary, while Totho had a fistful of bruises about his face and a split lip.

‘What’s going on?’ Salma hissed.

Totho shook his head. ‘I think this fellow here is about to explain.’

Then Salma saw there was another Ant in the room, a man of middle years who was regarding the three of them dubiously.

The Fly jabbed a finger towards him. ‘First,’ he said, ‘this is Commander Parops, into whose custody you’re now being put.’

‘I thought you said we were free,’ said Salma.

‘You are but, just so you know, this is the man who gets it in the neck if you turn out to be something other than what you claim you are.’ As the Fly was explaining, the Ant officer gave him a wry look.

‘So who’s you then, little feller?’ Skrill interrupted.

The Fly gave her a crooked smile. ‘My folks called me Nero on that most auspicious day whereon I was born — and that’s all the name I’ve ever needed.’

‘I know that name. ’ Totho said, and paused, trying to bring it to mind. Then: ‘Are you an. do you draw pictures?’

‘No, I do not draw pictures, I am in fact a particularly talented artist,’ Nero said, somewhat sharply. ‘More than that, I’m an old drinking pal of Stenwold Maker, and when Parops told me that was a name being passed along the grapevine, I decided I had better spring you, if only to see what kind of kiddies ol’ Sten’s using these days.’

‘Well, Master Maker sent us here to witness what happened when the Wasps attacked Tark,’ Totho explained. ‘We need to get out of the city and find a decent vantage point.’

Nero and Parops exchanged glances. ‘Son,’ the Fly said, ‘you’ve got yourself the best vantage you’re ever likely to get. You’re inside the city, the siege’s already started and nobody’s getting in or out.’

‘Your man,’ the Dragonfly woman declared, ‘is late.’

The old Scorpion-kinden scratched his sunken chest with a thumb-claw. ‘First off, lady, he ain’t my man. He’s just this fellow what fitted your call. Second off, he ain’t late — not in this business anyway. We ain’t all got clocks and motors.’

She stalked up to him, her cloak swirling. The four of his heavies that he had stationed about the room went tense. He held up his hand, the one with the broken claw, to calm them.

‘Do you know what happens if you betray me, Hokiak?’ she asked.

Hokiak put on an easy smile that was a nightmare of jutting gums. ‘Don’t bandy threats, lady. I ain’t got this old by being scared of ’em.’ With measured unconcern he took up his walking stick and hobbled away from her, pointedly showing her his back if she wanted to take the opportunity. Inwardly, he waited for the blow and sighed raggedly when it did not come.

This one’s trouble, he decided. Hokiak had taken on a lifetime of trouble, from his half-forgotten youth as a Dry-claw raider to his current station as a black-marketeer in the occupied city of Myna. He had made a living out of trouble, more money than he could ever spend now. If this trouble-woman did kill him, it was not as though she would be cutting many years off his life.

But she was a mad one, no doubt about it. He could smile casually at her but he avoided her eyes. They burned, and there were fires there that would be raging when the world went cold.

Dragonfly-kinden. He didn’t know many of them. They had to go off the path of virtue early to become wicked enough to end up in his business. Otherwise they were all peace and light as far as he knew. So where’d this waste-blasted woman come from?

She was tall, almost as tall as he had been when he could still stand straight and without need for a cane. She kept herself cloaked but there was armour beneath it, and a blade that seemed always in one hidden hand. But she had money and, when she had talked to him, the money seemed to outweigh that drawn and hungry sword.

Now he wasn’t too sure. He was going to be in real trouble if his contact didn’t show, and equally so if the Empire had got wind of this deal and sent along more than he could handle. Either way he guessed that her first move would be to stick him for it, his fault or no.

Risk, risk, risk. He used to say he was getting too old for pranks like this, but then he had got too old for it, and still not given up the habit.

He hobbled back across his backroom’s width, cane bending under his weight at each step. Propping it against a table he took his clay pipe out and filled it, trusting that his age would excuse any shaking of his hands. He had dealt with murderers, fugitives, revolutionaries, professional traitors and imperial Rekef, but this woman, now, she gave him the shudders.

She called herself Felise Mienn and, apart from the name of her mark, that was all he knew.

At last a Fly-kinden boy dashed in, making everyone start.

‘He’s here, Master Hokiak,’ the boy blurted out.

‘How many’s he got, boy?’

‘Got three. Three and hisself.’

‘Then get out of here,’ Hokiak advised him. As the boy dashed off again he looked about him at his other lads. They were regulars of his and three were Soldier Beetle locals: blue-grey-skinned and tough, wearing breastplates that had the old pre-conquest red and black painted out. The fourth was an innocent-looking Fly-kinden who could puncture a man’s eyeball with a thrown blade at twenty paces. They all looked ready, relaxed. In contrast, Felise Mienn seemed to be shaking very slightly and very fast. Hokiak decided that discretion was a good trait in an old man, and poled himself behind the vacant bar counter.

The men who stepped in were also locals, less well armoured but with swords at their belts and one with a crossbow, its string drawn, hanging loose in his hand. They inspected the room suspiciously, and then stepped aside for their patron.

After all the tension he was an anticlimax: a plump Beetle-kinden with a harrowed expression who looked as soft as they made them. He wore a cloak but the clothes beneath it were of imperial cut and colour.

‘Draywain,’ Hokiak greeted him from behind the bar. In a moment’s inspiration he added, ‘Fancy a drink?’

‘Never mind the wretched drinks. Where’s the money?’ Draywain demanded. He was some manner of Imperial Consortium clerk, Hokiak gathered. He had been quite the big man under the previous governor but, since that man’s mysterious death, the former favourites, those who had survived him, had been having a hard time of it. Sometimes a fatal time.

‘She’s the money,’ Hokiak said, and Felise Mienn stepped forwards.

Draywain flinched from the sight of her. ‘A Common-wealer? You must be mad! Where could I spend her gold?’

‘She’s got good imperial gold. I seen it myself,’ Hokiak assured him, privately reckoning she had taken it off good imperials.

‘Do you have what I want?’ Felise asked impatiently.

Draywain narrowed his eyes. ‘Let me see the money.’

‘Do you have what I want?’ She asked it more slowly, emphasizing each word separately. ‘If you don’t know where Thalric has gone, nothing for you.’

‘Thalric of the Rekef? That bastard!’ Draywain barked. ‘Oh, I know where he went, don’t you worry. Now let me see the money.’

Without taking her eyes from him she unshipped a pouch, emptied it onto the table. A flurry of gold and silver spilled out, and Draywain and his men pulled closer to inspect it.

‘One hundred Imperials — our agreed price,’ she said. It was a decent sum of money, Hokiak decided, for just a piece of information. Not a fortune, certainly, but an awful lot.

Draywain looked up from the money, and he had obviously come to a slightly different conclusion. ‘It’s not enough,’ he said. ‘Not enough for imperial secrets that nobody else’ll sell you. My life’s hit the rocks recently, Dragonfly-lady. I need to relocate myself somewhere an honest man can do business, and that isn’t cheap.’

‘That is not the arrangement,’ Felise snapped.

‘Well then the deal’s changed places when you weren’t looking,’ Draywain replied. ‘Now you double what you’ve got there and I’ll start talking.’

‘That is not the arrangement.’ Again the words were slower, more pointed, as though she was clarifying some simple matter for a simple man.

‘I have what you want, Wealer,’ Draywain told her. ‘Cough up the goods or I’m taking it right back out with me.’

‘Draywain-’ Hokiak began, but the Beetle cut him off sharply.

‘Stay out of this, old man!’ he snapped. ‘I’m doing business here.’

That’s all I need to hear. Hokiak rubbed the two claws of his good hand together, seeing his men pick up the signal.

‘So let’s see the rest, Wealer,’ Draywain insisted.

‘You knew the terms I offered,’ she said. ‘I need that information.’

‘I’m a merchant and this is a seller’s market,’ he responded without sympathy.

And she smiled and Draywain took that for a good sign.

Then the sword came out from under her cloak, the whole gleaming length of it that had been held close down the line of her body. The cloth was flung back as she lunged into action, revealing armour beneath that was iridescent blue and green and mother-of-pearl.

She had the blade through the first bodyguard’s gut before he could react, drawing it smoothly out to smash the next man’s crossbow and the half-fired bolt on the back-swing. The crossbowman fell backwards, reaching for his blade, and the remaining bodyguard went for her.

He was not bad, that man. Clearly he had seen a few fights before. It was a waste, Hokiak decided, but that was the nature of this business.

Felise Mienn’s sword was four feet long, but half of that was the hatched and bound metal hilt. The blade itself was straight and double-edged, tapering only towards the very point. She swung it with both hands and in either hand, dancing it round and past and over his guard as the luckless man tried to defend his patron. In a single fluid move she had sidestepped his strike and put the blade across his neck with far more force than her slender arms looked able to muster, half taking his head from his body.

Draywain bolted then, and she flung the sword at him as if without thinking. It slammed into the wall right alongside his head, cutting a line across his cheek. He screamed and stopped there, tugging at the hilt. The point of it had pinned his ear to the wall. His ear? Hokiak had never seen such a throw, and it had been solid enough that the Beetle could not yank the sword free using both hands.

The crossbowman had his blade now and he went for the unarmed woman. She stepped back and back as he came, cloak swirling about her, and then blades flicked out from her thumbs. It was the first Hokiak knew of the weapons that their Ancestor Art gave to Commonwealers. They were two-inch curved razors and she now stood poised with them ready, fingers clenched inwards but thumbs ready to strike.

The last bodyguard paused, weighing up the odds.

‘Kill her!’ Draywain screamed weakly. ‘For blazes’ sake, just kill her.’

He was a professional man now torn between his reputation and safeguarding his health. In that moment Felise went for him, claws slashing across him three times before he could even get his sword between them. He stumbled back, blood trailing from his face. Lunging forwards, Felise caught his head with both hands, as though she was a lover about to kiss him. Then she gashed both claws across his throat and he fell at her feet.

She looked at Hokiak then, and if her eyes had been burning mad before there were whole fiery suns of demented rage there now.

He forced himself to lean peaceably on his cane and indicate, with a twitch of his chin, that not one of his men had moved to intervene. He was not sure that she would understand him, but then she was stalking across the bloody floor towards Draywain.

‘Keep away!’ he shrieked. ‘Someone help me!’ but Hokiak knew that his backroom had thick walls and people around this part of the city always minded their own business.

She put one hand up, stilling the quivering hilt of her sword.

‘Thalric,’ she said simply, conversationally.

‘Thalric, of course!’ he gasped. ‘They sent him away. They sent him west, to the new-found lands. The city Helleron, where the foundries are. He’s Rekef Outlander. You know what that means?’

‘Oh, I know exactly what that means,’ she said. Only Draywain could see her expression just then, and his voice dried up to a whimper.

‘Do you know where this Helleron is, Hokiak?’ she asked, without turning.

‘Sure I do,’ the old Scorpion said. Seems like every month I’m shipping people west.

‘Good,’ she said and pulled her sword out of the wall effortlessly. As Draywain gasped in relief she rammed the point of it double-handed through his chest and then whipped it out, all in one movement. He was dead instantaneously, without even realizing what was happening. Perhaps, Hokiak thought, that was her way of mercy. Or her thanks. Charming thought.

‘You will find me means to get to Helleron,’ she told him. ‘And supplies. A map that I can read.’ That last was because she was not Apt, of course, not one for machines or crossbows or technical drawing.

‘I got an old Grasshopper chart,’ Hokiak said. ‘Ain’t what you’d call recent but I don’t guess they moved the cities that much. Look, this all is going to cost. I earned my one-in-ten for bringing him here, no matter what he did.’

She turned then, smiling, and she was a lovely-looking woman, when she smiled — and more likely to kill a man than any Spider-kinden seductress.

‘But Master Draywain has just chosen not to collect his fee. What’s one-in-ten of nothing, Master Hokiak?’

The Scorpion gave out a sigh, and his men around the room tensed, ready. ‘Now that ain’t how we do business around here. You got what you came for.’

‘Do you think I care about gold?’ she asked him. ‘Do you think that I can’t find more? Do you think for me this is about money?’ She snarled at that last. ‘I would empty the coffers of the Empire and the treasuries of the Commonweal to find this man Thalric. You want money? Take it all.’ She gestured at the pile, the not-quite-a-fortune, that she had left on the table. ‘Just get me what I want.’