Dragonfly Falling

Six

Tisamon and Tynisa were duelling, passing rapidly around the circle of one of the practice halls of the College. There were a dozen or so spectators, students garbed or half-garbed as Prowess contestants, sitting on one of the tiers of steps. There was none of the cheering and shouting of a public performance; instead, the watchers murmured to one another on technique as they compared notes.

Nor was it the formalized shortsword technique of Collegium’s duelling circle being practised here. The pair carried rapiers, live steel blades, and the air between them flickered and sang with the lightning clashes of the weapons. It struck Stenwold, as he entered, that he had never seen Tisamon with a rapier in his hand before: the folding blade of his clawed gauntlet had always been his first choice. Rapiers were a Mantis-kinden weapon nonetheless and he was showing his proficiency here. They dodged and lunged so abruptly, father and daughter, that Stenwold felt that they must have rehearsed this between them. Each move was matched by the other and he thought, at first, that the entire bout, starting however long before his entrance, must have continued entirely without contact.

Then he heard Tisamon’s voice coming in at irregular moments. ‘Strike,’ he would declare, and then after another furious pass with the weapons, ‘Strike.’ He was marking his touches, Stenwold realized. Unlike any sane or civilized duel the fight did not pause on a hit. There was no moment permitted for Tynisa to regain her composure or her balance. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, soaking her arming jacket, but Tisamon’s brow was pearled as well. Stenwold could not tell if it was the injury from Helleron or the pace of the current duel that strained him.

‘Strike,’ Tisamon noted again, and they fought on. Neither was cut: the blows had been delivered with the flat of the narrow blades only. Their faces had so much the same expression of intense concentration that in that moment Tynisa truly resembled her father. The features of her dead mother were momentarily banished.

Stenwold sat down a little way from the rapt students. Tisamon had promised to train his daughter — the one gift he could give — and he took that vow as seriously as the Mantis-kinden always did.

‘Strike,’ he said again. Stenwold expected Tynisa to become frustrated now, stirred to anger that would be fatal for a duellist. Instead she seemed calmer after each call, focusing more and more within herself.

Stenwold glanced around at the students. They had stopped murmuring now, were watching the action with almost as much concentration as the protagonists themselves. They were all young, in their first year, local Beetle-kinden mixed with a few visitors. No Tarkesh Ants, of course. They had been recalled, all of them, when the news broke of the threat to their city.

‘Strike,’ came Tisamon’s voice, and then, ‘Strike!’

The sound of swords stopped, and Stenwold struggled to disentangle what had happened. Only when he saw the line of her blade pressed against her opponent’s side did he realize that the last call had been Tynisa’s.

They were all watching Tisamon now for his reaction. It was a nod, just a small, sharp nod, but Stenwold read volumes of approval in it. The Mantis ran a sleeve over his forehead, fair hair flat and damp with sweat there, and then came over to sit by Stenwold. Close to, the strain was clearly visible, more lines about his eyes and an added pallor to his face.

‘You should perhaps take things easier for a while,’ Stenwold suggested, knowing the suggestion was futile.

‘I’m getting old.’ Tisamon smiled a little. ‘I used to heal faster than this.’

‘You’ve healed faster than anyone has a right to,’ Sten-wold told him. ‘You took quite a scorching there.’

‘It has been a while since someone put such a mark on me,’ the Mantis agreed.

Tynisa had meanwhile been accepting the congratulations of the students, who seemed to appreciate that fighting Tisamon was like fighting a force of nature, and that even one strike was equivalent to a victory.

‘Of course, you killed her a dozen times there,’ Stenwold remarked.

Tisamon shook his head. ‘Practice is always different to blood, even using a real sword.’

‘I notice she wasn’t using the sword you gave her.’

Tisamon seemed to find that amusing. ‘It is crafted for killing, Stenwold. It wouldn’t understand.’

‘What will you do, when she’s good enough?’

‘She is already good enough, or nearly.’ There was hard pride in the Mantis’s voice. ‘She was on the edge of good enough before I even met her. Blood will out, and all she needed was real blood on her hands to call to her heritage.’

Stenwold shifted uncomfortably. ‘So what will you do now?’

‘When this is done and when we can, I shall take her to Parosyal.’

‘I can’t even begin to imagine what that means for you, but surely your people.?’

‘They will hate her, and despise her,’ Tisamon said flatly. ‘Not one of them will look at her, or even at me. We will be pariahs in my people’s holy place. But they will not deny her, because she has the skill. If she can pass the trials they set, then in the end. in the end she will be one of us and then their hate must drain away, and they must accept her.’

‘“Must”.?’ Stenwold prodded.

Tisamon was silent.

‘Well, if Cheerwell can be accepted by the Moth-kinden, then anything is possible,’ Stenwold allowed, and rose to greet Tynisa as she approached.

It was late when they finally returned to Stenwold’s townhouse. Tisamon had cautioned him to reside elsewhere after the last attack on it, but Stenwold had a stubborn streak when it came to giving up what was his. He would not be harried out of his own home, his own city. Besides, with Tynisa and Tisamon under the same roof with him, he reckoned it would be a brave assassin that tried it.

After watching the duel he had gathered reports from some of his people within the city. They were not his agents as such, but he had slipped them a little coin to keep their eyes and ears open. He knew that the Assembly still kept its doors closed to him, out of pique more than anything else. Until that attitude changed, the Wasps had time and, while they had time, they would move carefully.

But there would come a moment, as there had in Helleron, where the metal met, as the saying went, and caution went out of the window. A night of knives, it would be. He was glad to have Tisamon and Tynisa with him, glad also to have sent his niece Cheerwell to the relative security of Sarn.

In the quiet of his own room he shrugged out of his robes, letting them pool on the floor. The night air was cool on his skin through the knee-length tunic, and the water he splashed on his face made him shiver. They were forecasting a cold winter for Collegium — for the Lowlands as a whole. Cold, of course, meaning a few cloudless and icy nights. Salma, hailing from north of the Barrier Ridge, had claimed that nobody in the Lowlands knew what winter really meant.

It was still warm enough to sleep in his bare skin, so he stripped off the tunic and cast it on the floor, then turned the flame of the lamp out. Finding his way in the moonlight to his bed he threw himself down on it. His mind was alive with stratagems, shreds of information, clues and counter-intelligence. The threat of the Wasps was bad for his sleep patterns.

And then he became aware that he was not alone in the room. Somewhere in the darkness someone moved.

All at once he went colder than the night could make him. At first he was going to call out for Tynisa or Tisamon, but if he did so then it would only mean a swift blade — a blade that might come at any time, but would surely come now, right now, if he called.

Why couldn’t I have listened to Tisamon?

He reached out. There was always a sword within reach of his bed, a judicious precaution that had borne fruit more than once. His fingers brushed the pommel, so he stretched a little further to grasp the hilt.

‘There is no need for that, Master Maker,’ said a woman’s voice, one he knew, he realized, although he could not immediately place it.

‘Who’s there?’ he asked, excruciatingly aware that whoever it was could obviously see better than he could in the dark.

‘Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you lit the lamp again?’

Yes. Yes I would. He crawled backwards off the bed, sword in one hand, still sheathed, and in the other a sheet clutched demurely to his chest. He thought he heard a snicker from the unseen woman which helped not at all. Then he realized that he would need both hands free to light the lamp.

Both hands. His sword-hand included. Or perhaps not. He let the sheet go, modesty playing second fiddle to mortality, and opened the lamp hatch single-handed. Thick fingers fumbled across the cabinet top until they located his steel lighter. He flicked at its catch until it caught, and then brought the fragile flame to the oil. It lit with a gentle, golden glow and, with his sword firmly presented, he turned to face the intruder.

She had a hand over her mouth, in hilarity or horror, and it was a moment before he recognized her. When he did, he swept the sheet back up so fast that he almost lost his sword in it.

‘Arianna?’ he gasped. ‘What are you. what are you doing — in my house?’

She was desperately trying to hide a smile. It was hilarity then, which was the worse of the two reactions. ‘You do not bar your windows, Master Maker.’

‘That’s not an answer.’ But she was right of course. He still thought like a Beetle, having just one entrance to his home, on the ground floor.

‘I. I wanted to speak with you, privately.’

‘Well this is about as private as I get.’ He clutched the sheet close to him, tried to drape it about him like a robe, and found it would not stretch. In front of the young Spider-kinden’s unabashed gaze, he felt acutely aware of all the physical parts of him that had never been slim to begin with, and that time had only expanded.

‘I would have said something when you came in, only. ’ Her shoulders shook a little. ‘Only you started getting undressed so fast and. I didn’t know what to say.’

How old I feel, at this moment. ‘Would you mind. turning your back while I at least put a tunic on?’ he asked.

Then the door burst open and Tisamon was there.

The Mantis had his claw on ready and he saw the intruder at once, bounding across the room towards her. She shrieked, falling down beside the bed and tugging desperately at a dagger that was snagged in her belt.

‘Tisamon, wait!’ Stenwold yelled, and the Mantis froze, claw still poised to stab down. Arianna was now completely hidden behind the bed, but Stenwold could hear her ragged breathing.

‘What is this?’ the Mantis demanded.

‘She’s just a. student,’ Stenwold said, feeling the weight of providing some explanation descend on him. ‘You can. let her get up now.’

Tisamon backed off from her cautiously. ‘She’s Spider-kinden,’ he remarked.

‘I don’t think that’s an objection you can make any more,’ Stenwold pointed out, reasonably.

Arianna stood up slowly, one hand nursing the back of her head. The dagger was still caught in the folds of her robe.

‘She’s armed,’ Tisamon said, sounding less certain now.

‘She has a knife. I wouldn’t advise anyone over the age of ten to go about the city without a knife these days.’ Stenwold realized that Tisamon’s attention was focused on him now, rather than on Arianna.

‘I was. ’ Stenwold looked down at the rounded bulk of his own body, so inadequately hidden by the sheet. ‘I was just retiring. ’ he began lamely, acutely aware that the harsh lines of Tisamon’s customarily severe expression were trembling a little.

‘Retiring with.?’

‘No!’ More harshly than Stenwold had meant. ‘Or at least not knowingly.’

‘So,’ Tisamon’s mouth twisted. ‘What does she want?’

‘Good question.’ Stenwold looked at the girl.

‘I want to help,’ she stated.

‘Help how?’ He had his tunic on again, which felt like armour beyond steel plates under the gaze of this young woman. Here in his study, the desk between them, he could feel a little more like the College Master and less the clown. She sat demurely where he had placed her but there was merriment still dancing in her eyes.

‘Everyone knows how you’ve been to the east. Everyone knows there are enemies waiting there. I mean, the Empire, that you taught us about in history. Nobody else has ever dared point the finger. None of the other masters would even answer my questions. And yet it was always there, and those soldiers — the Wasp-kinden — had come from there for the games. And that’s when a few of us started to realize that you’d been telling the truth all this time. That those men weren’t here just for the sake of peace and trade.’

‘Some people believed me, anyway,’ Stenwold said heavily, ‘understood that they are the threat I made them out to be. But the Assembly? Perhaps not.’

‘I believe you,’ she said, without hesitation. She was staring at him so earnestly that he became acutely aware of how young she was, how old he was. She was an odd specimen for a Spider. Her coppery hair was cut short in a local style, and she had freckles that made her look even more desperately earnest. He found himself looking at her in a different light: how very slender she was, how pale the skin of her bare arms where the short sleeves of her robe ended.

He gave himself a mental shake. ‘Why?’ he asked, re-focusing.

‘Because for one, my people are good at reading truth and falsehood, and I believe that when you’re up before us students telling us all this, you are sincere, that you know what you’re talking about. Since you left for wherever you went, we’ve all had a chance to see the Wasp-kinden at large in Collegium. Oh, they’re on their best behaviour and they’ve always got gold ready to pay for breakages, but they’re. ugly, do you know what I mean? Not physically, but something inside them. And the way they brawl. A little drink and a harsh word, and they’ll fight to kill. I know one student of the College who was killed in a taverna, only the Wasp officers paid out gold to keep it quiet. And they’re all trained soldiers, which is just what you said, too. Every one of them, even the artificers, even the diplomats who speak to the Assembly.’

‘Arianna. you Spider-kinden have never cared much what wars have racked the Lowlands,’ Stenwold said. ‘So why-?’

‘You think I’m here on behalf of my people?’ she asked him incredulously. ‘You think I’m some agent of the Aristoi? That. that would be grand, Master Maker.’ Bitterness was rife in her tone now. ‘But I’m not Aristoi. I’m of no great family to help me get anywhere in the world. I’m the last daughter of a dead house, and all we had left went to pay my way into the College. This is my home, Master Maker. The College is all I have. And you, to me you are the College.’

In the face of all that solemn youth, he could only swallow and stare.

‘Most of the Masters just get lost in their own disciplines, Master Maker. Stenwold. May I.?’

He found that he had nodded.

‘They don’t care, you see, what happens elsewhere. And some others are worse, lots of the ones in the Assembly, they look only to their pockets and their social station, and little else. I’ve seen enough of that snobbery in Everis where I grew up. But everyone knows it’s you who has gone out there and seen the world. And you’ve come back with a warning, and nobody is listening to you. But a lot of us students do. Master. Stenwold. I want to help you.’

‘How?’ he asked. Suddenly the words were difficult to reach for. ‘What do you. how can you help me?’

She moistened her lips with her tongue, abruptly nervous. ‘I. I hear things, see things. I learned to stay out of the way, back home, so I’m good at not being seen. You. that was one reason I came through your window like that. So that you’d see. so you’d know.’

‘I understand,’ he said, thinking, One reason? And what are the others? He did not want to involve this young girl in what was about to happen and yet she was so desperate to help, and if he now said no? Why, she would surely go off and do something rash on her own, just to prove herself to him. Just as Cheerwell would have done, doubtless.

And he could use her, certainly.

She reached out and put a hand on his, a touch that dried his throat suddenly.

‘Please,’ she said, and he found that he could not refuse.

‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it!’ Cheerwell exclaimed. ‘I don’t often get the chance to travel by rails.’ She had taken the bench end closest to the open window, watching the dusty countryside pass by, feeling the wind blast at her face. The rumble of the automotive’s steam engine tremored through every fibre of her being. Out there, craning forward to peer along the carriage’s length, she could see the duns and sand-colours of the land turning into the green marshes that surrounded Lake Sideriti, whose eastern edge the rail line would skirt, posted up on pillars to keep it clear of the boggy ground.

Achaeos huddled beside her, wrapped in his cloak and looking ill. It was the smell of the automotive, or the motion, or all of it. This was not a way that Moths travelled comfortably, and he could not even fly alongside. The carriage had no ceiling, just an awning to cover the seats in case of rain, but the steam automotive made such pace that if Achaeos went aloft he would get swept away, left behind.

Beneath her feet, through the slatted floor, Che could see the ever-turning steel wheels strike occasional sparks along the rails, and the ground in between hurrying past in a constant blur. This truly was the travel of the future, she decided, and even though Achaeos disliked it so much, they would reach Sarn in two days. Even Fly messengers took the rail these days to retain their boasted speed of delivery.

On the bench in front of them Sperra slept fitfully, leaning against the carriage wall. Che had carefully shuttered that part of the window closest to her, in case the little Fly-kinden should stir in her sleep and just pitch straight out of it. She was still not entirely recovered from her injuries at Helleron, poor woman, but it had been her decision to join Scuto in his journey to Collegium. The Thorn Bug himself was off inspecting the engine, Che gathered. He might be an agent in Stenwold’s spy army but he remained an artificer first and foremost.

Of course that made her think of Totho, and she suddenly found no pleasure either in the journey or the machine that transported them.

Poor Totho, who had left them for the war at Tark for one reason only. She herself had never fully told Stenwold the truth, although he had probably guessed most of it. Only Achaeos and she knew with utter certainty. Totho had left them because he could not bear to be with her without having her affection. For that reason he had come all the way from Collegium to Helleron with her. He had come to rescue her from the Wasps, travelled into the Empire itself, for no other cause, and she had never seen it because she had never looked. There had been Salma to worry about. There had been Achaeos, too, who had become bound to her by forces she could not explain, and who she loved.

Poor Totho had fallen between the slats of her life and only in his misplaced farewell letter had he been recalled to her guilty attention.

She had told him casually, You are like a brother, and she, who had experienced her share of rejections and even derision, knew just what that felt like. Yet how easily the words had slipped out from her.

There had been no word yet from Tark. That the siege had started seemed clear, but Totho and Salma should have kept a safe distance away, watching the moves of Ant and Wasp like a chess match. Yet they should have been able to send word somehow. Which meant that something had gone wrong, and poor clumsy Totho, who had never been able to look after himself, not really, was there in the middle of it.

She put her arm round Achaeos, and hugged him to her. His blank eyes peered at her from beneath his hood.

‘You’re thinking about him again,’ he noted.

‘I am, yes.’

‘No doubt we will find word from him when we return,’ he said weakly. Sickened by their method of travel, he was not in much of a position to offer comfort.

The first margin of Lake Sideriti was passing them by now. The water was stained a bright turquoise by the sun and the plants that lived in it, as though beneath the surface was a great blue jewel that caught and reflected the light. Even Achaeos perked up somewhat at that sight.

‘They don’t make ’em any more like this old girl!’ came Scuto’s voice as he rejoined them, pushing his way down the carriage’s length to the amazement and disgust of the other passengers. He had his cloak flung mostly back, so the full spiky grotesquerie of his face and hunched body was there for anyone jaded enough to want to peruse it. Even his garments only emphasized the lumpy form beneath them, torn in a hundred places by his hooked spines. ‘I ain’t never had a chance before to see one of these up close and working.’

‘Scuto,’ she said, but he had seen the radiance of the lake, dotted with reed islands, that stretched virtually from their window to the horizon.

‘Well if that don’t beat the lot of ’em,’ he murmured, sitting down beside Sperra. She shifted sleepily, jabbed herself on his spines and woke with a start.

‘Wretched spickly bastard,’ she muttered, stretching and thus pricking herself again with a curse. ‘Are we there yet?’

‘Look,’ Che gestured, and the Fly glanced over the lake without much interest.

‘Lovely. Can I go back to sleep now?’

‘You got no heart,’ Scuto told her.

‘You can tell that, can you?’ She rubbed her arm where he had pricked her. ‘You’re a wretched nail-studded menace, that’s what you are.’

Cheerwell knew very little about her, other than she had worked for Scuto for years now. She was no artificer, but she was Apt and a good hand with a crossbow. She had some doctoring skills as well and a bag of salves and bandages, and so she must have trained a little. Fly-kinden got everywhere in the Lowlands and did all manner of work, legal or not, but Che realized that she had never really got to know one well. They tended to keep to their own kind and stay out of the way of larger folk. Sperra was about typical of her race: standing a few inches under four feet in her sandals, with a lean, spare frame. She kept her hair quite long but tied behind her, and she wore dark, unassuming clothes without any finery or ornament. Everyone claimed that Flies liked valuables, preferably those belonging to others. Whether they wore them openly in their own communities of Egel or Merro to the east, she did not know, but she could never recall seeing a Fly-kinden flaunting any such treasures.

To the east. Of course, if Tark fell, then Egel and Merro, those two Fly-kinden warrens in the Merraian hills, would lie in the path of the encroaching army. Would they merely hide in their homes? Would they take up what they could carry and flee? They were no fighters, certainly not before an army of such magnitude. She wondered whether this thought was at the back of Sperra’s mind too.

We are all at risk here: Achaeos’s people, Sperra’s and mine. Even Tisamon’s precious Mantis-kinden cannot stay apart from this.

The sun was lowering in the sky and the gleam of Lake Sideriti grew duller, the beautiful allure of its waters dimming and dimming as the night loomed in the eastern sky.