The Air War

Thirteen

That he was unfit to be a spy was proved to Laszlo when he almost went back to his own rooms to get a look at the Solarnese city hangars they overlooked, only darting away from his window at the last moment to swing about a few streets’ worth of space before finding another rooftop to perch on. Aside from the unhappy corpse of Breighl, who could know what welcome was awaiting him within those bloodied walls?

Breighl dead. Te Riel dead. The dread was mounting higher inside his chest, threatening to choke him. Time to be gone. Time to be long gone. He could feel death approaching like a shadow in the water, vast and swift and inexorable.

What’s a spy supposed to do in this position? He knew that hanging on in this suddenly murderous city would gain vital intelligence for Sten Maker, if Laszlo could only live long enough to pass it on. So many of the familiar faces had gone already, though, and some that had lingered now plainly regretted it. I should be gone. It was not spycraft that kept him here, and his loyalty to Maker only went so far, despite all they’d shared. Liss, te Liss, don’t be dead. We can get out together. It’s not too late.

It hurt to think of her: each time like touching a broken tooth. He had never realized, as he drank with her or joked with her, even when he slept with her, that she had wormed her way into his heart so deeply. Only now, with no idea whether she was even still alive, did he recognize how far inside his defences she had pierced.

Then shouting broke out at the hangars, and he skipped across two rooftops to look.

There was a broad landing field before the hangar mouth, although all the Firebug orthopters were safely within caverns specially dug out of the rock by acid and engines. The lamps that gave onto this open space were harsh and uncompromising, the bright white glare of some chemical reaction that burned flamelessly with a constant hiss and crackle; open fire was not something anybody wanted close to all that fuel-powered machinery.

For some reason the great metal doors were already partly open, but there were more guards there than Laszlo had ever seen before, at least thirty of the city militia, so te Riel’s warning had plainly been one among many. They were under attack.

Or not quite yet, but it looked as though the fighting would start off any moment, for a large band of Scorpion-kinden had just rolled on to the scene, a mismatched two score of hulking villains in a ragbag of armour, most of them armed with great-swords or long axes or halberds. They outnumbered the militia, though not by so very many, and they were likely the better warriors fighting one on one. As against that, the Solarnese had a fair stock of their little crossbows to hand. Alarmed challenges rang into the night.

Scorpions could mean the Empire or the Spiderlands, or pretty much anyone else, for they were inveterate mercenaries. However, getting a mob like this into the city — in twos and threes perhaps — and then organizing them was a feat in itself.

The Scorpions were shouting back, generic insults about Solarnese manhood and their mothers. They were plainly not about to commit themselves just yet, and more militia would surely be on the way even now to reinforce the defenders. So what are they hoping to accomplish

… and Laszlo swore to himself because he should have thought of watching out for whoever was using this as a distraction, and he had become too absorbed in the mummery itself.

Too late now, surely — whoever it was, they must be inside. He looked anyway, though, his sharp eyes raking the darkness where the hissing lamps left off, and he was rewarded by the sight of a small figure slipping by and into the hangar, on foot and cloaked, but he knew her.

But who’s she chasing? What’s the Empire’s plan?

Blow it sky high, came the instant thought and, try as she might, Liss could not stop that. She was Inapt. The only thing she could do with a bomb would be to set it off inadvertently.

I, however… and, with that thought, Laszlo was airborne, streaking down towards the hangars.

Liss had crept in, of course, because the Solarnese were more than used to airborne subterfuge. Laszlo was spotted immediately. Some of the militia loosed their crossbows at him, and he lurched sideways in the air as they did, trusting to his instincts to keep him out of the path of their bolts. Others, because they had been keeping their weapons trained, their fingers on the triggers, loosed at the Scorpions by reflex, just one or two, but it was enough.

Even as another dozen militia arrived, wondering what all the noise was about, the Scorpions charged. It was an ill-thought-out piece of theatre but one that Laszlo took full advantage of, by darting past the militia towards the hangar mouth.

The first blast came just as he dipped down to enter, and the hot breath of it caught him and tried to throw him out into the night again. He fought it furiously, seeing a lazy wash of fire roll out of the opening. He might have been screaming Liss’s name.

He fell to the ground, feeling his hair and clothes on the point of smouldering. Another explosion roared at the far end of the hangar, tongues of flame licking out, and a dozen separate fires inside illuminating the compact shapes of the fliers. He saw Solarnese mechanics running past, beating at themselves. Others were helplessly trying to drag one of the machines out, loyalty to their trade taken to the point of suicide. Laszlo dashed past them, the air about him gusting hot and hotter, searching in the dark and the leaping orange light of the place for Liss.

He spotted her, for she was beyond hiding. She stood surrounded by fires, bright and alive in their glow. The picture would stay with him for all his days: Liss, the flames, the stacked barrels of mineral oil that was meant to fuel the Solarnese air force.

She stretched out a hand almost playfully and it was wreathed in fire instantly. Laszlo screamed, because he had not taken it all in, and he could not. It was beyond his understanding.

Like a hunting dragonfly flown from the wrist, the flames leapt from her to one of the Firebugs, and instantly the silk of its wings was ablaze, turning to cinders and setting the wood of its body alight. A moment later, Liss herself was engulfed, even as Laszlo tried to fight his way towards her, yelling her name until the fumes choked him.

But when the flames dispersed, she was still there, her clothes burned away from her but her skin still perfect, rosy with energy. Naked and beautiful, she turned and saw him, and smiled as the world caught fire all around.

He wanted her then, despite anything. The jolt that went through him as their eyes met was one of pure unfettered desire.

She blew him a kiss, and he felt the distinct heat of it against his face, then the barrels blew.

The force of the explosion caught up his small frame and threw him end over end out of the hangar.

Elsewhere in Solarno, Major Garvan awaited the report of her key agent. From the open window of her miserable garret she had heard the great explosions rolling across the rooftops like thunder, and she knew that the plan she had painstakingly put together had finally paid off. Yet another triumph for careful, patient Army Intelligence, and no sign yet of the Rekef swanning in to steal the glory. Oh, surely, by the time the final word had been passed by General Brugan to the Empress, no doubt the Rekef Outlander would be the ones holding the reins, but Garvan’s own superiors, the army colonels who decided her future, would know the truth.

She stood and checked her appearance in the mirror on the back of her door, cautious as always. Unlike so many of her peers, victory had never been an excuse for carelessness. Far too many operations went wrong just as everything seemed to be safely in hand.

There was a flurry of wings and she went to sit behind her battered old desk, all business. Despite the pauper’s life she led, compared to their own profligacy and waste, she never let her agents forget who was in control. And especially this one, whose mercurial nature almost outweighed her considerable usefulness.

Grinning from ear to ear, Lissart squeezed in through the narrow window wearing clothes made for a someone noticeably bigger. By looks just a Fly-kinden girl with unusual red hair, she was of course another kinden entirely, a vagrant visitor to the Empire from foreign lands. Intelligence work challenged her, and Garvan knew she worked for that incentive more than for pay, but she was a wild and whimsical creature, always at the fullest extent of her leash.

‘You’re out safely, then,’ Garvan remarked, a neutral opening. ‘Report.’

‘Nobody’s flying anything out of those hangars any time soon.’ Lissart set herself down on the ramshackle desk, which creaked under even her minimal weight. ‘I got a count of the machines. One missing, out on some errand or other, but your boys were making with the noisy outside, so I reckoned it was time.’

‘Not my boys,’ Garvan noted. She loathed joint operations, and this one had been more knife-edge than most, because coordinating with Intelligence’s current business partner in this part of the world had been a nightmare of conflicting standards — the Empire’s and Garvan’s own high ones contrasted with the apparently random ones she had been forced to work within. ‘How did the Scorpions get on, anyway?’

‘When everything went up, they all legged it.’ Lissart’s grin grew even wider, if that was possible, until Garvan wondered if the top of her head was going to fall off. ‘You should have got yourself over there. Was a beautiful sight, I can tell you. Phwoosh! ’ Her arms described the majesty of the explosions. Lissart was a cracked enough creature at the best of times, but once things started catching fire, she became a regular madwoman. Garvan didn’t know whether that was a personal trait or one that applied to all of her pyromaniac kinden.

‘Some of us had other business to tie up.’ It was true: Garvan had not been short of visitors earlier that night, enough to strain her feigned identity here, but that was not an issue any more. ‘How’s your cover identity?’

For just a moment, Lissart was not smiling. ‘Burned,’ she said shortly, but without the usual relish.

Garvan chose to ignore that. ‘Solarno is just about wrapped up, so I have orders for you.’ She recognized the look that came immediately to Lissart’s face. ‘New cover in the Spiderlands. We need agents there who can talk their talk enough to fit in, but can handle a little sabotage when the time comes — meaning your speciality.’ She had assumed the chance of setting something else alight would overcome that sullen, stubborn expression, but now the little woman was shaking her head.

‘Send me north, send me west, Major. Not the Spiderlands. Solarno’s as close as I go.’ The smile was back, but it was harder. ‘They’re too sharp there, and there’s a colony of my kinden over at Firewater. The Solarno Spiders are backward, and I didn’t have to deal with them much either, but the real thing… not me, Major.’

Garvan nodded, all business. Inside she was unsurprised. She had not worked with Lissart before this Solarno operation, but the woman’s former handler had warned Garvan that the little Firefly tended to forget she was the Empire’s to command.

‘We’ve already prepared a cover for you,’ she explained patiently. ‘You won’t need to be hobnobbing with the Aristoi, just their servants, keeping an eye on other agents — nothing so different to here. Perhaps, in time, I can find you a place in the Lowlands. Believe me, that front will be moving fast. Maybe Collegium, when the Second takes up where it left off. For now, though, you’re just what we need down south.’

‘No chance.’ Lissart folded her arms, leaning back on nothing at all as though there was a chair behind her.

‘Lissart,’ said Garvan, in her Major Garvan voice that had brought into line tougher nuts than this small firestarter, ‘I have orders. I don’t argue with orders, neither do you.’

‘Major, let’s you and me make a deal,’ Lissart suggested. ‘Let’s put that “orders” business behind us for now. You get me a nice post in the Lowlands — somewhere there’s action but not an actual war front — and I’ll play coy about you.’

Nothing registered in Garvan immediately. ‘Lissart, orders are orders. There’s no more to it than that. I need you on the Shifting Gerontis before dawn.’

‘I’m serious, Major. See me right, and I can be discretion itself about just how you make your face up every morning, sister.’

For an instant, Garvan thought she would die, her heart jumped so hard. No, no, no, but the Fly-looking woman was grinning full-strength again, delighted with her own cleverness. ‘What?’ she continued, as though it was just a game and not the sum total of Garvan’s life she had just disembowelled. ‘Fool all the Wasps you want, but you didn’t think I wouldn’t be able to tell, did you?’

Garvan sat there like a statue for one second more, the shock charging back and forth in her head, looking for a way out, and then her left hand flew up, a bolt of golden fire lancing from the palm.

It caught Lissart across the chest, knocking her flat onto the desk but doing nothing more than scorch her stolen clothes. She propped herself up on one elbow, actually laughing, ‘You don’t think that’s any good against me?’

Garvan’s dagger tore into her side savagely, raising a gratifying scream from the other woman. Not a straight death blow, but perhaps a slow death anyway. Agent Lissart lost doing her duty at the Solarno hangars; some part of her mind was already composing the report.

Fire exploded across the desk, Garvan’s coded notes and reports catching light instantly. The major recoiled across the room, flipping the desk over to keep the flames away. She had a brief, smoke-blurred glimpse of Lissart’s small form lurching at the window, not flying out so much as just rolling over the sill for the two-storey drop to the ground. The room was on fire now, leaping orange flames licking about the floor and walls, dancing about the window frame. Garvan cursed and made for the door, battering it open and stumbling down the stairs, beating at the few embers that had landed on her tunic or in her hair. Kill Lissart, protect the secret. It was the only thing on her mind.

Laszlo dropped from the sky, diving steeply even as the small body plunged from the window, and there was nothing in his mind at all, no plan, no opinion. Only the necessity of action consumed him.

She had been stabbed, he saw, her hands weltering red as they clutched at the wound. He was not surgeon enough to know if anything could be done, but he had seen people die from less. The sound she was making was appalling, just a wordless sobbing whimper that yanked at him repeatedly, filling his ears.

She should not have been able to move, but she kicked away from the wall of the house, even as flames crackled above and embers ghosted down over them both. She was trying to get away, still. Whoever had knifed her must be coming.

Who it was, how many there were… Laszlo could not risk a fight, but the alternative almost seemed worse.

He grabbed her, too panicked to be gentle, one hand about her body, under her arm, the other clasped over her mouth. She writhed away when he touched her, not a human reaction but that of an animal in pain. She burned the hangars. She sold out Solarno, She tried to kill me. But all he wanted to do was get her somewhere safe.

He hauled her up, and she bucked in his arms, screaming against his palm, but her own hands still clasped tightly to her rent side.

Too heavy to fly, but he gave his wings their head anyway, kicking backwards too fast across the street and down a rubbish-strewn alley with the bleeding girl in his arms, always at the point of falling, his Art catching him from moment to moment.

He dropped and froze, clutching her to him, trying to stifle her weeping. Someone was there, and he could see them clearly — a lean Wasp with sword drawn and hand ready to sting, and when had he last seen just a single Wasp? There might be a dozen within easy shout.

‘Quiet, quiet,’ he whispered in Liss’s ear, and she whipped her head about to look at him, cracking him across the nose. The expression in her eyes was fractured, shards of everything in there: guilt, pain, fear of him, terror of dying, but he told himself he could read something else there that looked on him more kindly. If the Wasps want her dead, we need her alive. But that was a fiction for the report he would have to make some day. I want her alive was the whole truth.

‘Lissart!’ the Wasp yelled, voice surprisingly high, and then went off in the wrong direction, blind as all his kind at night. Laszlo took his chance and bundled Liss — Lissart? — up in his arms. He had to take his hand from her mouth to do it, but there was no screaming, only a gasping, retching sound that made him sick to the stomach.

She got out his name somewhere in there, he was sure of it.

He ran, wings flashing in and out as needed to keep himself on his feet. She was a dead weight in his arms, but he was pelting downhill for the docks and for an old deck surgeon whose acquaintance he had made. Halfway there, Lissart got an arm about his neck, strength enough still to hold on to him, however weakly. Her eyes were open, locked on his face.

He got into sight of the bay, and skidded to a painful halt in spite of himself. ‘Oh mother,’ he heard himself say.

The docks were a chaos of running and shouting — militia and Solarnese citizens dashing back and forth without plan. The waters of the Exalsee beyond held a host of sails, tall and pale in the moonlight. It was not the armada that had recently come against Collegium, but Laszlo knew a Spider-kinden fleet when he saw one.

Breighl was right; it’s not the Wasps…

Two of the ships were already moored, with Spider soldiers spilling unopposed onto the quays with bows and spears. Laszlo had no time for any of it. His feet took up again towards the surgeon’s door, even though the old Bee-kinden might already have fled. He had no other option just now. Lissart laughed then, a wrenched and strangled sound. She clutched him tight with one arm, but the other pointed up and past his shoulder. Even as she did, he registered the sound: distant engines coming closer, and that would awake Solarno far quicker than any panic at the docks.

He got to the surgeon’s door and kicked at it furiously, until the squat, dark old mariner threw it open, an axe in one hand to repel boarders, To his credit, despite the fleet, despite what else was surely coming, when he saw Lissart he took her from Laszlo with practised care and carried her inside.

Only then did Laszlo turn. The Wasp orthopters were hard to see as they scattered across the sky over Solarno, but they were escorting a handful of airships which caught the moonlight well enough. There were some Solarnese fliers up there too, the free pilots, but with the Firebugs burning there would be no unified civic response. The Solarnese government was no doubt already breaking into arguing factions even as their city was invaded from north and south. Solarno was about to become a battleground.