The Air War

Nine

Stenwold had sent Laszlo to Solarno because he needed an agent there, also because it was a reward for Laszlo’s previous efforts, and because there was some logic to sending a man who had been on ships most of his life to a city on the shores of a vast lake. Arriving with Stenwold’s orders in his mind, and the white-walled vista of the city before him, Laszlo had expected many things.

He had not expected to start to care about it all. He had not expected the spying game to get so personal, friendships and rivalries and muddied allegiances. He had not expected to become infatuated with a girl who might be working for anyone or nobody at all.

She had said she would meet him. Solarno was drawn tight as a wire. The Cortas were ordering arrests, exiling random foreigners, searching ships. Nobody went to the Taverna te Remi any more. The place had closed down three days before and its owner had either disappeared or been disappeared. The casual detente between the Solarnese agents had broken at last, like ice at the end of winter. And, of course, it could not have lasted, but Laszlo had loved it while it had. There had been a feeling there that people of his newfound trade could deal with each other in a civilized manner.

Now they were at each other’s throats, and Solarno had become a dangerous place to stay. They remembered the Imperial boot there. Before the war they had been a big fish, and the Exalsee a small pond compared to the world beyond. Now the Empire and the Spiderlands and the Lowlander powers were moving out there in the darkness: great slabs of plans grinding into place, fit to crush little cities to dust. And Solarno was not even the biggest fish around the Exalsee any more.

It was time to get out.

She had said she would meet him, had te Liss. The night after the Taverna te Remi’s closing they had made their pact. To the pits with loyalties and whatever wretched, desperate espionage Solarno was still a stage for. They were getting out.

So he had chosen this place — a dockside dive that catered for sailors, and few of them native Solarnese. It was one of the first places he had made contacts, drawing on his past.

Dusk, they had agreed, but he had come early to avoid any surprises. He had thought she might do so as well. Now he sat hunched at a table with a pair of other Fly-kinden, setting down cards grimly, heedless of strategy, calling every bluff and playing every hand, and watching the door and windows always. He was winning, to the disgust and annoyance of his fellows.

He saw them immediately as they came in: not Liss, but he had been expecting them anyway. They were dressed in long coats and scarves, a grab-bag of kinden and halfbreeds, but they did not walk like sailors and too many of them looked his way straight off. Some small part of him realized he had been betrayed right then. Some other part of him knew she had been caught, and they had ripped it out of her. The rest of him was already moving. Quick exits were a common event here, and they kept all the shutters thrown back for that very reason. Why else would he frequent the place?

In a moment he was standing on the table, even as the newcomers made for him. He saw glints of metal: knives and a couple of the little crossbows that the Solarnese liked. They did not look like men with capture on their minds.

Stenwold Maker had been a grateful friend and a generous employer. Laszlo whipped out from within his own coat the parting gifts the Beetle spymaster had given him. The cut-down little snapbows had only recently made it to the markets, and at a ruinous price, but they were already starting to be known as ‘sleevebows’ by criminals and spies both, although they were still a little large for any Fly’s sleeves. Good models would hold their charge for hours without losing any power and, though they lacked the accuracy of a full-sized snapbow, Laszlo was unlikely to be more than five yards from anyone he intended to shoot. They were curved and elegant as spider fangs, and barely six inches long.

These men were not professionals, nor used to working together. Some of them leapt back immediately, seeking cover, a couple charged at him, and one loosed a crossbow bolt, in startled reflex, that went into the shoulder of a compatriot. Laszlo grinned and kicked off into the air, his Art wings humming about his shoulder in a flicker of light.

Someone grabbed for his ankle. He looked down at one of his fellow gamblers, already reaching towards his belt for… Laszlo never found out what for.

In Solarno he had played the quiet man, but his family had been pirates for generations, after all, and they would be so again. He felt a stab of reluctance, but none of it reached his reaction time as he shot the man through the chest, the harsh snap of his weapon barely registering in the commotion as the regular patrons rushed for the door or took off through the windows.

It was enough confusion. Free of the dead man’s grip Laszlo dodged through the nearest window himself, darting around another fleeing drinker, one weapon now discharged and the other hunting for targets.

Have they got her? Can I rescue her? If the first answer was yes, the second would likely be no — which didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. Stupid, stupid, but her face was clear in his mind, a beacon. He could not say he loved her — was there ever a more treacherous foundation to build love on? — but she had hooks in him that he could not tear out, and the thought of her in pain, in fear, or worse, tore at parts of him he had not known he possessed.

If she was free, where would she go? If, hypothetically, she was free and she wanted to keep to their pact, and knew the dockside place was compromised, then where?

She was the only person who knew where he lodged, that place near the hangars that Maker had secured for him somehow. He was not supposed to know where she lodged, but some very determined shadowing had uncovered it — and he had always thought, wished, hoped, that he had done so only because she secretly wished him to know. He had confessed the spying to her later, and she had been mock-outraged yet plainly delighted, her real motivation layered into unreadability.

But, if they were hunting her, she would hardly stay home and wait for a boot to kick her door in.

He was cornering across the city even as he thought about it, heading for his own room, hoping against hope that he would find her waiting for him there. And let her be a dozen times an enemy of Collegium if only she’s still alive!

He kept the shutters of his lodgings barred from the inside — too much of an invitation, otherwise, in a city filled with his own kinden — but there was a trick to them, one loose bar that could be prised open enough to flick the bar off its rests. He could have installed a lock, but he had worked out early on that Liss was Inapt, a rare thing in a Solarnese Fly-kinden, so he had been planning ahead in a vague and opportunistic way. He had considered that, when the game turned sour, she might come here and seek sanctuary.

He flurried down out of the darkening sky and came to sudden rest beside the window, clinging to the wall with his Art.

The bar was undisturbed, and she could not have picked the door lock. She had not been here. He almost turned away then, but the thought came that she could have left a message for him, detailing some other rendezvous, and so he hopped the bar himself and swung in, heading for the door, looking for that slip of folded paper that might give him hope.

There was nothing, but when he turned back for the window, there was a man there, a shortsword in his hand.

He was bigger than Laszlo by a foot or so, but small by most people’s standards. He wore a long coat; beneath it was a white cuirass plated with steel, Solarnese militia issue. His face was bleak and hostile, and it was that, rather than the dusk, that gave Laszlo a moment’s blinking pause before recognizing him.

‘Breighl?’ he said uncertainly. ‘ Painful? What are you doing here.’

‘The game’s up, Laszlo, or whoever you are.’ There was nothing left in the halfbreed of the man that Laszlo had drunk with, gambled with and mocked. The hand not directing a sword at him was at belt-level, half inside his coat, and Laszlo guessed at one of the little local crossbows there, already tensioned and loaded.

‘What’s going on, Painful?’ Laszlo let himself relax, wings vanishing from his back but ready to be called at a moment’s notice. He had not reloaded the spent sleevebow, but its companion was still charged, and he reckoned his reactions were better than Breighl’s at a pinch. ‘How did you find this place?’

Breighl gave him a disdainful smile. ‘You were followed here tendays ago. You’re nowhere near as good as you think you are.’

‘Where’s te Liss?’ Laszlo demanded, because he had assumed they had got his address from the girl, but now hope flared in him again.

‘So you are working with her, then,’ Breighl noted, with infinite regret. ‘We’ll pick her up, don’t you mind about that. You’re under arrest, Laszlo. You’re a foreign national working against the Cortas. The order to bring you in doesn’t specify that you have to still be breathing but, for old times’ sake, I’ll give you a chance.’

‘I’m not working against the Cortas.’

‘Laszlo, you’re working for the Spiderlands Aristoi, we know that. Don’t piss me about.’

All this time and he really believed that? Laszlo felt almost hurt. ‘Look, if you must know, I’m working out of Collegium, and you surely see that they, of all people, don’t want the Empire in here-’

‘The Empire?’ Breighl abruptly had the crossbow out and aimed at him, and Laszlo re-evaluated just who likely had the quicker reflexes. ‘You think we’re worried about the Empire now? So they have some troops up north, past Toek? So what? They’re worried about what we’re worried about, Laszlo. We know there’s a fleet of ships on the Exalsee even now, out of Mavralis. We know that a dozen Aristoi families have finally decided they can’t let Solarno remain independent any more. Don’t take us for idiots. We know your employers think this is all a game, but to us it isn’t!’ Abruptly he was shouting, the crossbow shaking wildly, making Laszlo flinch.

‘Believe me, Breighl, I have some really poor history with the Spiderlands. I’m not with them!’ Laszlo insisted. To his astonishment — almost his embarrassment — there were tears in the halfbreed’s eyes.

‘Oh, I know, the Spiders think everyone else is a fool, and so do their agents. Nobody’s as smart as them. Even the Solarnese Aristoi think it’s all so pissing clever, but we Solarnese don’t want to end up as the toys of the Spiderlands, just another cursed satrapy city, a pawn in their games. This is my city, Laszlo! I’m going to do anything I can to stop your filthy scheming mistresses get their hands on it, and if the first move in that is to put a bolt through your brain, then so be it!’

He jabbed the crossbow towards Laszlo for emphasis, and it went off.

Laszlo was already lurching to one side, an Art-sense unique to Fly-kinden warning him of it even before the string slipped. The bolt ploughed into the wall behind him, then he was going for the other man, not with the sleevebow, that would take a moment to aim in which Breighl’s sword could bat it aside, but with a dagger. Laszlo was the veteran of countless dockside brawls, skirmishes between pirates and the contested boardings of a score of ships, and in close quarters there was no weapon greater than a simple six-inch blade.

Breighl’s sword gave him reach but it was an advantage that Laszlo countered instantly, a rush of speed from his wings getting him within knife range, in the hope that a single blow might take the man down and clear the way to the window. The halfbreed was no stranger to this sort of fight either, and he was already lunging for Laszlo’s dagger wrist, his crossbow spinning away. For a moment he had a grip, sword drawn back outside the Fly’s reach, ready to stab, but Laszlo’s wings threw him into a backwards somersault so that he could kick Breighl in the face, the man’s grip loosening before he could dislocate Laszlo’s shoulder. The Fly came down at the far end of the room, for all the little space that gave him, and was already launching back at his opponent, his wings just a flickering blur.

Breighl stumbled back against the window, sword outstretched to let Laszlo run himself through, but the Fly slipped past the blade, the point shearing through his coat, his shoulder striking the man in the chest in an attempt to send him toppling out of the window. He got the back of Breighl’s other hand about the head for his trouble, before the halfbreed managed to steady himself with a flurry of his wings. The sword drove down for Laszlo again, the Fly earthbound for a moment and down on one knee with the force of the punch.

Breighl was bigger and stronger and almost as fast, and there was really no other way to do it. Laszlo slammed into the man’s legs, not to knock him off balance but because Breighl could not stab straight down the line of his own body with much force. Laszlo’s upflung arm got in the way of the strike, the blade slicing open the tough canvas of his coat sleeve and raking a line of red, but Laszlo was too close for proper sword work. Even as Breighl kicked at him, he rammed the dagger into the halfbreed’s groin.

The first stroke cut shallowly, deflected by the cuirass’s armour plates, and Breighl jerked away desperately, forcing himself half out of the window. Laszlo was beyond regrets then — they were not a currency a pirate could spend too often — and he followed, clawing his way up the halfbreed’s chest and slamming the bloodied dagger into the man’s throat.

Breighl died without a cry, hanging half out over the street, his blood an explosive mist that showered down below. Laszlo hauled him in with all his strength, letting the man’s last convulsive shudder tilt his body into the room.

Didn’t want that. Didn’t want to do that. He had been a factor for the Bloodfly crew, after all, their friendly merchant face at each port they traded with. He was seldom called on to kill people he knew. Oh, waste it, Breighl, couldn’t you be slow enough to let me out of the window?

He hauled his coat off. It was torn and cut, and there was a swathe of Breighl’s blood across it. The cut on his arm was, in contrast, inconsequential.

Her lodgings, and if she’s not there… He found he was still reeling, his heart refusing to slow, his head seeming to ring to the echo of some vast, unheard sound. Numbly, his hands recharged the spent sleevebow, slipping another bolt into the breech. His shock at killing Breighl had become a crawling dread for Liss’s fate. If things had gone this wrong this fast, then the list of bad things that might happen to her was endless. His only consolation was that Breighl’s people had plainly not tracked her down yet.

He kicked off from the windowsill, coursing over the city for te Liss’s little place out by the Venador street market, hope and fear fighting over him.

She drew on her bedroom wall. It had seemed endearing, but at the same time he knew the sketches must hold hidden meanings for her shadowy contacts. The entire bare expanse of plaster over her bed was strewn with overlapping scrawls of trees, flowers, veined wings in scholarly detail, childlike abstracts of people standing, running, fighting.

When she had finally let him in there, after his confession that he had tailed her, she had pointed out one little corner, a blank space just above her pillow. ‘That’s for you, just you,’ she had told him. Nothing more had needed to be said. Even then they had both known how they lived in an uncertain world.

Now he hung by her window, feeling the rough wood where the shutters had been wrenched off. The room itself had been turned over, furniture broken, her mattress ripped open so that twists of rag carpeted the floor like an early crop of dying mayflies.

That small space had now been filled, a rough, hasty image: a tall building with jagged rays. He stared at it blankly for a moment before matching it to a landmark. The Solarnese coast was gentle, but to the immediate west of the city there were rocks, a jagged out-thrusting of them that was probably man-made, from distant ages past, some forgotten seawall or ancient pier.

There was a squat lighthouse there, to warn off midnight shipping.

Laszlo hurled himself back from the window, well aware that his arrival might have been noticed by any number of watchers. He led any followers a merry chase, and only a Dragonfly, or another of his own kinden, could have hoped to keep up, as he went looping about the mansions of the wealthy, darting through the warrens of the poor, circling in a far arc across the water and then inland again, and all the while with no sense of pursuit, before bolting at last for the lighthouse — and Liss.

The lamp was out. He could not guess why, but only because there were too many options, crosses and double-crosses, or even the Solarnese themselves trying to thwart the Spider fleet that Breighl had spoken of. Laszlo landed on the top rail, finding the glass of the great lamp smashed, the whole place reeking of oil. Not good, not good at all. He could not call out her name, however much he wanted to. Anyone might be here now and, if it was not her, then it would be nobody that wanted to see poor Laszlo.

He crouched on the very rail, the wooden gantry beneath him jagged with broken glass, listening into the quiet of the night, eyes closed so that he could make his ears his only world. The wash of the waters below, he heard, and sounds from the city close at hand: engines, shouting, the drone of an orthopter.

Someone moved, not out on the gantry itself but within the lighthouse. He heard a slow scrape, metal on wood, and a hiss of breath.

He had his dagger out again and, after a moment, he took one of the sleevebows in his other hand. Inching about the railing he found the door that would let the lighthouse custodian out to clean and refill the lamp — and found it standing open. The darkness hung heavy inside, but he trusted to his Fly eyes and let his wings glide him inside, touching down in silence at the head of the spiral stairs.

Again came that gasp of breath, ragged enough to bring back too many memories of fights gone sour, of shipmates lost despite all the surgeons could do, and now it was more than he had the willpower for not to call out, ‘Liss?’

Don’t be Liss. Don’t be Liss. There had been death in that sound, as sure as death ever was. The stairs wound about the hollow interior, simple wooden slats pegged into the stone, each bolted to the next with steel struts. There was no guard-rail, and the central well of the lighthouse tower was a yawning abyss. Laszlo called for his wings and stepped into the void without hesitation, sleevebow trained down as he descended, knowing how vulnerable he would be but unable simply to creep down like some ground-bound Beetle.

He spotted the body halfway down: small, Fly-kinden. No cascade of curls, nothing of Liss — a man, in fact. He was going to set down a dozen steps above, but then he recognized the casualty and ended up right beside him.

‘Te Riel,’

Someone had put a long knife into te Riel’s gut and left him. There were other wounds: a cut-open palm and a spread of blood across his shoulder, but the stomach blow had finished it. The man was shaking, curled about the weapon that was still buried in him, one hand on the hilt but without the strength of body or mind to pull it out and hasten his own end. The other arm was hooked about a step, keeping him from a final fall. Fly-kinden were masters of the air, but the wound had stripped all that off him at the last.

‘Laszlo.’ A voice so low that Laszlo had to stoop down, almost ear to mouth, to hear it. ‘Liss.’

Just for you, she said. It hurt a little, knowing that she had been saving that little space on her wall for te Riel as well, but not as much as it had hurt te Riel himself.

‘I don’t know where she is, if she’s not here.’ He put a hand on the dying man’s shoulder, feeling it already cold despite the man’s tenacious hold on life. ‘Help me. Tell me. I know you liked her too.’

The awful sound of te Riel laughing would stay with Laszlo for a long time, each bark of it echoed by an agonized indrawing of breath. ‘Gone. Gone,’ then something indistinct, and then, clear as day, ‘the hangars. Going to blow up the hangars. ’

‘The Empire?’ Laszlo remembered who he was speaking to. ‘Your lot?’

‘Not,’ te Riel wheezed out. ‘Not mine… trying to get out from under… Laszlo, the hangars! All the… Solarnese have… going up…’

‘I’m going, te Riel. I’m going-’ but the man snagged his arm with the blood-slick hand that had been holding on to the knife hilt.

‘Not… please…’ There was a shuddering moment when Laszlo thought he had died, but the bloody grip remained. ‘Die with my own name, please… not te Riel…’

There was more, but it was just a whisper, barely words, certainly not a name. Then the man was dead, taking his secrets with him.

The hangars. Even with that thought, Laszlo was soaring up the well, spitting himself out into the open air and casting back for the city. The hangars — within sight of his own lodgings! And the war was being started right there, while he was elsewhere.

And Liss, his Liss, was somewhere in the middle of it. Someone had her. Someone was about to strike at Solarno. It was all coming together.

He had never flown faster, the buildings of Solarno rushing past beneath him, but he knew he would be too late.