Salute the Dark

Twelve

She went by the name of Wen, and he called himself Jemeyn: both Solarnese of the Path of Jade faction and currently in hiding, but not so well that Nero had not been able to track them down.

Jemeyn fancied himself as a duellist. He was all for action, so long as it was the Satin Trail’s people he was leading into battle. The Path of Jade had suffered badly under the Wasp administration, ever since some of their members had set up a Corta-in-exile out of Porta Mavralis. A dozen of the Path’s high-rankers had since been arrested, and those arrested by the Wasps were usually never seen again. Popular rumour, which Nero guessed was well founded, said that such prisoners were sent north, past Toek, and into slavery.

Wen, on the other hand, was a long-term thinker. At first Nero had been worried that her ‘long-term’ would see them all dead of natural causes before the time seemed right to her to act. He then saw that she was exaggerating her stance simply to keep Jemeyn in check, and quite soon Nero and Wen were doing business. She was short for a Solarnese and darker than most, looking more like a Lowlander Beetle-kinden. When he explained that there was a move afoot, abroad, to liberate Solarno, and that she should start stockpiling arms and recruiting people to use them, she seemed confident enough that she could do it.

They had met in the back room of a singularly low dive in the alleys around the murkier end of the Solarno docks. After Wen and Jemeyn had left, Nero sat with his harsh wine half drunk and thought about his next move. He had made his contacts with Taki’s old employer Genissa and some others of the Satin Trail, who were at least paying lip-service to the Wasps and their Crystal Standard allies, and had avoided the worst of the persecution. Now he had the Jade under his belt, but Taki had given him more names to look out for: duelling circles, trade guilds, a half-dozen little unofficial collaborations that could be of use.

There was a clearing of someone’s throat and Nero jumped up sharply, ending with his feet on the table, ready to bolt. He saw a lean, russet-haired man leaning nonchalantly in the doorway, a baldric of throwing daggers slung across his belt. He was not of any particular kinden that Nero could name by sight, but Nero knew him nonetheless from one brief glimpse in the Venodor, and from Che’s detailed description.

He found that his hand had dropped to his knife-hilt. The man in the doorway smiled slightly, still lounging in his unconcerned way.

‘Do you think that you could?’ he asked.

‘I think that I’d try.’ Nero swallowed. ‘I know you. You’re Cesta the assassin.’

‘Full marks. Top of the class.’

‘You’re doing the Wasps’ work now, are you?’ Nero tensed, ready to put his Fly-kinden reflexes to the test against the flash of a thrown blade.

‘No, I am not,’ said Cesta. ‘You, however, should be more careful. You’ve been ringing bells all over the city, Sieur Nero.’

‘Is that right?’ Nero ostentatiously took his hand from his hilt, and dropped himself down to the floor. ‘And why should you care, Master Cesta? Che told me all she knew about you, and it makes no sense to me.’

He made to leave, and Cesta stood graciously aside for him, falling into step as they crossed the darkened taproom beyond.

‘I don’t like the Wasps, Sieur Nero,’ Cesta said. ‘I don’t ask much out of life, less than most in fact. I don’t ask for a happy home or a family, even a people to belong to, those things that most take for granted. All I ask is a certain freedom.’

Nero paused at the door. ‘Freedom to ply your trade,’ he suggested pointedly.

‘Yes, but also just freedom. Freedom to live, to go where I want, to live how I want. The Wasps would stop that, for the Wasps mean control and laws. I could be a killer for the Wasps, Sieur Nero, but I would be their man if I did so. Bella Cheerwell was right about that. I am nobody’s man. I am free.’

Nero pushed open the door and stopped sharp, his heart plunging. After a moment he swore.

There were three dead Solarnese there, all wearing the blue sashes of the Crystal Standard. Beyond them there lay half a dozen Wasp soldiers, just as dead. Nero glanced back at Cesta, who remained expressionless.

‘As I said, you should be more careful,’ the assassin told him. ‘Now, having presented my credentials, what else can I do for you and your allies?’

‘My allies…’ Nero scowled at him. ‘My allies don’t like you, assassin.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Cesta’s smile was sad and genuine. ‘And where is the delectable te Schola Taki-Amre?’ At Nero’s stubborn silence, his smile grew. ‘You don’t need to answer, Sieur Nero. I can guess it.’

Chasme was like a dark boil on the south coast of the Exalsee. It was a perpetual blight on the Solarnese, who often spoke of taking a fleet and putting an end to it. Spider merchants from Porta Mavralis said the same, yet nobody did anything about it. The truth was there were plenty of Spider-kinden and Solarnese who had interests in the place. Chasme was all about money.

It was not quite a city. For that it was too small. It was a stopping point for those heading around the Exalsee: a cluster of heavy, humpbacked buildings, some built on sunken pilings on the land itself, and others on pontoons out to sea. Some of the buildings belonged to merchants and others to labourers, but Chasme was known primarily as a town of foundries. They churned out weapons and armour, and machines most of all. Chasme was the engine that provided flying machines and pilots to the Inapt Dragonflies of Princep Exilla, and to pirates and air-brigands all over the Exalsee. Chasme was the gateway for the wealth of the unexplored south, which arrived as slaves and carapaces and precious metals. Chasme was a rogue city, without law or morals, ruled by a handful of fantastically wealthy renegades.

Chasme was also beyond Wasp reach, for now at least, and that was why Taki had chosen it. Chasme, despite so many decades of antipathy, suddenly found itself in common cause with Solarno. Nobody wanted to see the Empire rooted on the Exalsee.

The people of Chasme were a baffling mongrel mixture. More than half of the citizens were halfbreeds drawn from a welter of Fly, Spider, Soldier Beetle, Dragonfly, Bee and a dozen other kinden. Amidst all that confusion, in a bar dug underneath one of the automotive factories, Taki’s little assembly blended in perfectly.

Here were her pilots, her friends and her adversaries: all that she might consider her peers. She sat them around three tables hauled in close together, and waited until they all had received drinks and had finished jockeying with each other for position and status.

Here then were the Solarnese: Niamedh, her expression made more stern by her shorn hair and eyepatch, also the bulky Scobraan in his gold-winged breastplate, together with a handful of other free aviators. Here was te Frenna, the only other Fly-kinden present, her face still bandaged from the glancing heat of a Wasp sting. Here were the local Chasme mercenary pilots, all of them tough and ruthless men and women: among them the taciturn half-breed known as the Creev and the infamous pirate Hawkmoth, an exiled Bee-kinden whose orthopter, Bleakness, was known across the whole Exalsee. Here were a dozen beast-riders out of Princep, with the arrogant and painted Drevane Sae at their head, a gathering of barbaric splendour in wooden armour, beads and tattoos.

‘It’s no secret why we’re here,’ Taki announced, as soon as they were finally settled.

‘Solarno needs bailing out,’ said the man called Hawkmoth. He was a vicious-looking specimen, almost as small as a Fly-kinden, bald and leathery with a fierce forked beard. ‘But what do most of us owe Solarno?’

Taki grinned at him, matching fierce for fierce. ‘Oh, if you really thought that, Sieur Hawkmoth, you’d not be here. You and I know each other: we have crossed paths before. Still, if you cannot see there is now an enemy greater than all of us, then there’s no point me staying longer.’

Some of the Dragonflies scoffed at that, and Scobraan stood up angrily, his big hands rocking the table. Taki had to shout at all of them to shut their mouths and just listen to her.

‘All right, you want me to shame you with the facts? I will then,’ she told them. ‘All right, Sieur Hawkmoth, let’s look at the freebooters of the Exalsee, shall we? Why are you still free and living, Sieur?’

‘I’m a better pilot that any man or woman here, is why,’ Hawkmoth growled.

‘And you never sleep? And your flier never needs to land? No, you’re free because the Exalsee is so big, and those who would hunt you down can never quite net you in. Do you think the Wasps would seriously want for men and flying machines, Sieur? Attack one of their ships or fliers and they’d search every island in the Exalsee until they had rooted you out of every possible hiding place – and once they’re established there will be no ship or flier that is not flying their flag! And you know it, and that’s why you’re here.’

Hawkmoth glowered at her for a moment, and then nodded slowly.

‘And you warriors of Princep Exilla,’ Taki went on, ‘you must see that your sovereignty’s days are numbered. What do you think the Wasps will do, on finding a city of Dragonfly-kinden on their southern doorstep? The Lowlander Cheerwell Maker once told me something, she told me about the Twelve-Year War – a conflict between the Wasps and your kinden.’

‘Those we left centuries ago,’ Drevane Sae said dismissively. ‘Those in the north. They are not our people any more.’

‘The Wasps won’t care,’ Taki insisted. ‘You are still their enemies. In fact, we’re all their enemies. And as for Chasme itself? You tell me, Creev.’

The Creev inclined his head. ‘They will either take us over or wipe us out.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’ Drevane Sae asked harshly.

‘Drive the Wasps from Solarno,’ Niamedh replied instantly, standing up.

‘So easily said? If it is so easy, then they are not a threat!’ Hawkmoth snapped. ‘If they are as you claim, it is like trying to hold back a tide. It cannot be done.’

‘Listen to me!’ Taki said again. ‘I have travelled a long way west – further than anyone present here, believe me. I have flown past Porta Mavralis to lands that half of you haven’t even heard of, but where they are also fighting the Wasps. I have come back in the company of a Spiderlands lord who, too, is looking to fight the Wasps. I even have a few hundred Spiderlands mercenaries stashed ready for my signal. The problem is that none of you, not one of you, has any sense of the world beyond the Exalsee. You don’t understand that the world – the whole wasting world – has been pulled into this war.’

She realized that, for the first time, they were absolutely, genuinely silent.

‘The Wasp invasion of Solarno is nothing, in the eyes of their Empire,’ she continued softly. ‘They reacted like a greedy child reaching out for something bright, for no other reason than because it is there. North and west of here, there are Wasp armies tens of thousands strong currently marching on other lands. The Wasps aim to conquer the whole world, a city at a time, so they are always fighting. And right now they are fighting a greater, stronger enemy than they have faced before, so their men, their machines and resources, are more and more being committed to this larger fight. If Solarno sits still under her shackles, then she shall remain a slave forever, and the Exalsee with her, but if she rises now, if we come to her aid now, then perhaps we shall throw the enemy off – because the Wasps have their swords primarily directed elsewhere. Otherwise we lose our chance, and the Exalsee shall become an imperial province, city by city, and every one of us will be lost even to the histories.’

‘I commit myself to nothing,’ said Drevane Sae, and then, ‘but what do you ask?’

‘I ask for every flier that can be spared,’ Taki said. ‘Even now I have insurrection being stirred up in Solarno, and I have Spiderlands troops ready to march. But I need orthopters, heliopters, fixed-wings, whatever you can give – all of you. From the Principality to the free corsairs of the Exalsee, I need you. I need you, every one.’

She realized that she was standing upright to her full minuscule height, and that they were all listening to her as though this was something entirely reasonable and necessary she was asking from them, and the responsibility of it scared her half to death.

It was raining in Solarno, a light, lukewarm drizzle coming in off the Exalsee and clouding the streets with mist. Late in the evening, the setting sun was striking rainbows far off over the water, and Nero was hurrying. The Wasp-kinden had imposed a curfew now, and for the next tenday. They were turning the screws of their power, constantly raising the pressure in the city as if to see what steam might escape.

We’ll show them steam. But Nero himself was not a fighter by choice, and this entire plan was looking more and more like a wild gamble.

He ducked past an imperial patrol, making himself just one more Fly-kinden in a city full of them, worse dressed than most and nothing remarkable. His path took him down an alley, and then he went straight up, flying along the vertical wall, into a second-storey window carelessly left unshuttered.

Jemeyn and Wen, the resistance fighters, were already there. Wen studied him, eyes hooded, from her seat in the corner. Jemeyn had been pacing the floor.

‘Where is everyone else?’ Nero demanded. ‘What’s gone wrong?’

‘Mostly downstairs,’ Wen explained briefly, and added, ‘Nothing is wrong.’

‘You might say say nothing,’ Jemeyn snapped at her, ‘but three of my men were arrested only today. Clearly we’ve been compromised-’

‘They were arrested while agitating against the Wasps, what else do you expect?’ Wen shot back angrily.

‘Can they lead the Wasps to you if interrogated?’ Nero asked nervously.

‘I don’t think so. The only place they know, I’m not there any more,’ Jemeyn said, and would have said more had there not been footsteps coming up the stone stairs. Nero shifted closer to the window just in case, but relaxed when he saw Taki enter. She spared a glance for the two resistance fighters, and then looked at Nero.

‘Not dead yet?’

He gave her a smile and it was returned. ‘If you want me to stop saving your city, you can ask any time.’

A Spider-kinden had slipped in with Taki, and Nero recognized her as Odyssa, Teornis’ agent. Alongside her was a heavily built halfbreed who presumably must be one of the free pilots of the Exalsee.

‘We’re all here?’ Taki enquired.

‘Not quite,’ Nero said. ‘I was expecting someone from the reds at least.’

‘They’re lying low, trying to get the Wasps to like them,’ Jemeyn said disgustedly.

‘We can’t do this without them,’ Nero pointed out. ‘We just haven’t got the numbers.’

‘If it kicks off,’ Wen decided, ‘they’ll join in. They just won’t help us start it.’

‘That’s a shaky place to stand,’ he said, looking to Taki for support.

‘For what it’s worth, I’ll get a message to Domina Genissa. I think the Satin Trail will rise,’ she said.

‘We’re all on the wire if they don’t,’ Nero insisted.

Taki nodded, shrugged. He was right but what could they do?

‘In four days’ time the Wasps will stamp their image on this city,’ Wen explained. ‘They’re doing it in proper Solarnese style: a full ceremony right out in front of everyone. They’re testing our boundaries. If they can perform their inauguration without trouble and get their governor installed, they’ll know we’ll stay beaten.’

‘So we strike later?’ Nero said. There was a silence; he looked from face to face. ‘What, now?’

‘You’re not Solarnese,’ Taki said.

He gave her an aggrieved look. ‘I’ve been risking my skin for Solarno, though.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Solarnese pride,’ said the big halfbreed. ‘That’s what she means. The Wasps know their business. Wait until it’s done, and no one will follow your flag.’

‘So…’ Nero took stock. ‘You’re saying now that the Wasps will be expecting trouble at the inauguration, and we should give it to them.’

It was indeed what they were saying. He shared a glance with Odyssa, and saw that she was as unhappy about this as he was.

‘There will be soldiers there, most of the garrison and-’ he started.

‘Precisely,’ interrupted Wen. ‘Which means that, if we can strike hard enough, we’ll finish them then and there.’

‘If,’ Nero echoed. ‘If. We’re going to need something pretty special to deal with that kind of opposition.’

‘I have pilots and machines,’ Taki said. ‘We have Spider troops and mercenaries ready to land at the docks. We have the resistance inside the city.’

‘Most of whom you hope will join you,’ Nero pointed out.

‘We can cut and cut at the Wasps forever, and that means they’ll just tighten their grip,’ Taki said, annoyed with him now. ‘The more time we give them, the deeper they’ll dig in. Your Lowlands is fighting them now, but for how long? If Solarno is to free itself, we have to break the chains before they can add any new ones.’

They were all in agreement. Nero ground his teeth. ‘If that’s the way you want to play it,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘We’ll need a signal…’ Before he could be pelted with their ideas on the subject, he raised a hand. ‘I’ll arrange the signal. Leave it to me.’

‘What will it be?’ Wen asked him.

‘Well, if I can’t arrange anything else, it’ll be me baring my buttocks and mooning the new governor. But let me work on it,’ he told them.

It got a smile out of Taki, and it was almost worthwhile, just for that.

When they had gone, he sat himself on the floor, as Fly-kinden from his part of the world were used to, and thought. After a while he said loudly, ‘You might as well come in now. I’m sure you heard it all.’

Cesta came into the room, head first through the window. He must have been crouching outside in the shadow of the eaves. With a lazy grace he dropped to the floor.

‘They’re right, you know,’ he said, ‘about the timing. I know this city. Let the Wasps have their ceremony, and any resistance will drain away. They’re all about fierce action and regret in this city.’

Nero gazed at him for a long time. Eventually he said, ‘I have no right to ask anything of you.’

Cesta nodded. ‘That’s true. So don’t.’ He wore a small smile. ‘What will you do if you win, Nero? What if the Empire is beaten back on all sides, and Solarno is saved? Back to the Lowlands with you, then?’

‘I’m a traveller,’ Nero said. ‘There’s a whole world out there. I’ll find somewhere.’

Cesta shrugged. ‘Perhaps the Lowlands has need of another assassin.’ His smile twisted. ‘You’ll have your signal, Nero, so don’t you worry. It will be unmistakable.’