The Air War

Sixteen

Laszlo slipped into the backroom of the naval surgeon’s house, after leaving a bag of bread, dried fruit and a little jerky on the old Bee-kinden’s table — all that he had managed to scrape together in a day’s foraging. At first he had paid the man in silver, but the city had been locked in stalemate for five days now, with no traffic coming in by land or sea. Food was worth more than coin. The Spiders held the docks and those streets nearest the water. The Wasps held the high ground, the mansions of the wealthy. Both sides seemed to be waiting for the other to make a move.

Lissart drew back as he entered, clutching the blanket close to her, on her face the same expression as every other time he had come in to see her, after she recovered consciousness. It was the tense, desperate look of a woman under a death sentence.

‘Don’t,’ he said weakly. His day had been sufficiently frustrating, scuffling and shoving and stealing to put bread on the table. He didn’t need this. ‘You’re looking stronger.’

Again that flinch, and he saw guilt there. He supposed she was probably looking at matters in a saner and more logical way than he was. He had left her alone so far, so as not to put more strain on her wound, which the surgeon had confirmed had come close to killing her. The old man knew his trade, though, and, even if she would not be running or flying anywhere in the immediate future, she was at least on the right side of the grave.

‘Let’s talk,’ he said, and that was something more like she was expecting.

She almost relaxed at the prospect of a good old interrogation. Probably she expected him to get his knife out, right about now.

‘Lissart, is it?’ he pressed.

She nodded.

‘I’m Laszlo. Well, all right, you knew that, but I really am. I didn’t think I needed a joke name for this business. Nobody told me. Please smile at that. I’m not expecting a belly laugh, for obvious reasons.’

‘What do you want?’ Her voice was like a faint echo of the tones he remembered.

‘Good question. You work for the Empire?’

‘I think I’m freelance just now.’ The smile, when it came, was infinitesimal, but he returned it in strength.

‘I was for the Lowlands,’ he said. ‘Probably still am, assuming I can get out of this mess.’

‘What’s going on out there?’ She struggled to prop herself on her elbows.

‘Everyone’s waiting for the Spiders and the Empire to tear each other’s throats out, but nothing of the sort’s happening.’

‘The Solarnese aren’t fighting?’

‘Fighting which? If it’d been just the Empire, sure, but with the Spider navy clogging the bay, and Satrapy soldiers on every street corner from here to the Venodor? Oh, a bunch of Solarnese pilots had a crack at the airships, but they weren’t working together, and the Empire shot them down, after a bit of a dance. The Cortas seem paralysed. Nobody’s giving orders, and meanwhile the food supplies are running low because nobody in this city thought to lay in any surplus.’ He bared his teeth in frustration, and she shrank back. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Why not?’ she asked flatly. ‘The hangar…’ She coughed, then hissed at the pain. ‘Hurt me. At least I’d know where we stand. I’m used to that.’

Laszlo eyed her sadly for long enough that the haunted, hunted look came back to her features. ‘I killed Breighl,’ he said at last. ‘Didn’t want to, but I did.’ When she made no response he added, ‘I’m guessing you killed te Riel.’

‘Te Berro, his name was. He was ex-Imperial and he’d pretty much worked out who I was working for. He was going to stop me. He didn’t leave me much choice.’ Her tone was dull, and he wondered just how true that was. He hardly needed more evidence that Lissart was a very dangerous piece of work indeed.

‘And then we have the hangars,’ he continued. ‘And we’ll never know what might have happened if the Solarnese could have got those Firebugs into the air. I reckon the Imperial airships would have had a bad time of it certainly, maybe even the Spider ships as well.’

He expected her to look away, but instead she met his eyes with a little of her old spirit returning. ‘Do you expect me to say I’m sorry?’

He left that one to hang in the silence building between them, until she was moved to go on: ‘This is what I do, what I am. I’m a saboteur, a spy. I won’t claim it as a noble calling, but I do what I’m asked, for the craft of it. That’s something you never understood, though I’ll wager te Berro always did.’ Her words got fainter towards the end, as she had to pause to draw breath. ‘If I take back what I did at the hangars, I betray myself, and then what do I have left? But I’m sorry you were there and I’m sorry you… got hurt.’ That I burned you, hung on the air like smoke. ‘What are you going to do with me? Hand me over to your masters in Collegium?’

Chance’d be a fine thing, right now, but he could not muster any vitriol. That spark, that defiance, there was the Liss he remembered from the Taverna te Remi.

She was a killer, although that was probably the only commodity not in short supply in Solarno. Worse, he had the uneasy feeling that somewhere in her there was a beautiful and perfect little monster, a woman for whom the values of life and death were irrevocably skewed, or perhaps simply not given any reliable weight at all.

He reached out to take her hand and, to his surprise she did not draw it back. Of course, she was no more capable of being disarmed than was a Wasp-kinden, and her hands thronged with deadly Art. Despite all that, despite her condition, despite everything that was going on outside, holding her hand right then seemed the best thing that had happened to him in several days.

She was studying his face, and he wondered just what emotions he had allowed to roam over it, just then. ‘You utter fool,’ she said, but gently. ‘Is that it? I tried to kill you.’

He shrugged. ‘You said you were sorry. Besides, I’m a pirate. I’m used to that.’

‘A pirate?’ She did smile then. ‘Well then, what now, pirate? Steal me away on your sailing ship?’

‘I’m getting out of the city first chance,’ he told her. ‘Come with me — no obligations. Although if you promise not to try and kill me again that would be a good start.’

‘Go to your masters in the Lowlands?’

‘Just come with me.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘Please — or I won’t go at all.’

‘You are the emperor of the idiots,’ she whispered. ‘Let me take you away from all this? I never thought I’d fall for that one in a thousand years.’

Two days later and there was still no sign of anyone being allowed to leave the city. Operating on his own, Laszlo was confident he could have evaded the Wasps’ sentries and flying patrols, trusting to his wings to get him out of the city and away. Of course, Liss would not be able to go with him and, besides, he was out here on the Exalsee, with a long and complicated road to follow back to Collegium.

Then the great face-off between the Empire and the Spiderlands happened, which changed everything.

He had been out on the streets that day, not so much seeking food as information, because the uneasy peace between the two occupying forces had been sustained beyond reason and he wanted to know what was going on. There had been a few skirmishes between Wasp Light Airborne and Spider soldiers, it was true, but far fewer than he would have expected, given the temper of the former and the pride of the latter. Instead, it seemed that the strongest orders from above were holding both in check.

He made covert enquiries about the provenance of both forces but received no intelligence that he was happy with. The Wasps had brought in their Second Army, known as the Gears, which had previously rolled all the way to the gates of Collegium during the war. The Spider force was not such a united piece of business, of course, being a collusion of various different families, interests and mercenary units, but the name at its head was Aldanrael, the very family that had given Laszlo and Stenwold such a hard time not so long ago.

Then word came that they were tearing down some buildings at the heart of the Venodor, and the next day Laszlo went to take a look. By the time he arrived, an entire block in the centre of the street market had been razed by Mole Cricket slaves, levelling a grand uneven space in what had previously always been a cluttered and claustrophobic bazaar. Shortly after Laszlo arrived and began asking questions, the delegations turned up. First came soldiers with drawn blades, Wasps from the north, Spiders from the south, who prodded and pushed until the citizens had evacuated the new space, forming an anxious, milling crowd on all sides of it. Whatever’s going on, it’s meant to be as public as possible, Laszlo decided. He felt uncomfortable about shoving his way to the front, as though the words ‘Low-lander agent’ were somehow visible above his head, and he had to contend with sufficient elbowing at the back that in the end he found a roost on a rooftop overlooking the new square, as dozens of other Fly-kinden had already done. Looking around he realized that there were an awful lot of people here: anxious Solarnese and Flies and the local Spiders and foreign merchants, and all of them wanting to know what was going to happen. The prolonged and silent occupation had drawn their nerves tight, as was no doubt the intention.

There were also plenty of soldiers, for neither side was taking chances. Other rooftops played host to the Light Airborne, and Laszlo could spot a fair few groups in the crowd that were surely taking Spider-kinden pay, most notably several bands of huge Scorpions who would have no trouble shouldering their way forward if necessary.

After that, the leaders arrived. He saw the Imperial delegation coming first: a squad of armoured infantry with a handful of officers in their midst, but striding ahead of the soldiers was an old man bald enough to need a broad-brimmed hat against the Solarnese sun. He stood as straight as a spear and walked with a soldier’s confidence. If he feared Spider treachery, he did not show it.

One of the other Fly-kinden hissed between his teeth, muttering to his fellows. Laszlo inched over and parted with a few coins for the knowledge that this was reckoned to be none other than General Tynan, the master of the Gears.

Someone else was pointing back towards the docks, and Laszlo scuttled across the rooftop just in time to see Tynan’s opponents make their entrance. The escort here were all Spider-kinden: lean, beautiful men and women in light armour, bows over their shoulders, rapiers at their hips. As they reached the cleared square, a woman emerged from their midst, standing there regarding the assembled crowds as archly as any empress. She wore a cuirass of silver scales, and beneath that a copperweave hauberk, the mesh as fine as cloth, stronger than steel. For all that, Laszlo would bet she needed no better protection than her own invulnerable self-assurance. Even at this distance he could feel the faint touch of her Art, making her an object both of attraction and fear. Her hair was bright silver, richer than the jewelled torc at her neck or the glittering gilded wreath about her brow, and age had brought her only authority.

Seeing her there, and recalling descriptions given by Stenwold Maker, Laszlo was willing to wager she was the Lady Mycella of the Aldanrael, who had led an armada against Collegium only the year before.

The soldiers on either side were tense, expecting a fight or a riot. The Solarnese themselves were frightened, angry, ready for violence. There would be daggers and swords aplenty for the crowds to lay hands on. They had only cast off the Empire a couple of years ago, and now here the Wasps were again.

Laszlo was depressed to see that many were plainly looking to the Aldanrael to defend them. Solarno had been a sort of appendix to the Spiderlands for a long time, but a backwater beyond the rigours of intrigue and backstabbing that dominated the Spider-kinden cities proper.

Tynan strode forward, startling his own men. His face was professionally blank as he regarded his opposite number, who matched him, pace for pace.

He put his hand out, and they clasped.

The crowd had gone completely still and quiet, waiting for the catch: for the orders that would set the soldiers on each other, or on the people of Solarno. What they saw was a clerk scurry forward out of the Spider retinue, setting down a table. A scroll was produced that nobody there bothered to read, the real business of diplomacy already disposed of elsewhere and long before.

They signed it, Tynan and Mycella, as though they were being wed.

There was an announcement after that, but the crowd had begun to murmur and argue, so Laszlo could not catch much of it. The news became the talk of every taverna and gaming house, though, so he soon pieced it all together, the Lowlander spy coming to the table for the scraps of others.

Stenwold needs to know, he realized, but he could no longer fool himself that he was nothing more than Maker’s agent. The import of what he now knew shook him through and through. His family had tied its fortunes to those of Collegium, after all.

There had been a treaty at the end of the last war, the Treaty of Gold. Collegium had been a signatory, as had the Empire, the Aldanrael and their allies, as well as the Three-city Alliance and various Lowlander cities.

Last year, conflict had flared between the Aldanrael and Collegium, arising out of Spider piracy that Stenwold had met with some steel of his own. A son and a daughter of the Aldanrael had lost their lives, and Laszlo knew that there was little that the Spider nobility took more seriously.

The Empire had signed a pact with the Spiderlands, in the face of Collegiate aggression and in the wake of Collegium’s tearing up the Treaty of Gold. For too long, they said, had the world been the plaything of little powers, self-important city-states such as the Lowlands was crammed with, belligerent neighbours. Myna was mentioned, also Sarn, Collegium, the Mantis-kinden. There would never be peace or prosperity while history was at the mercy of such small thinkers. The Treaty of Gold had failed. It was time to redraw the map and, as the two greatest powers of the age, the Empire and the Spiderlands would wield the pen.

Solarno had been declared a free port, under the protection of both sides, retaining a notional independence. Already the gates had been opened, the wharves cleared for trade, the relief felt by the hungry citizens quickly blurring their memory of who had taken the bread from their mouths in the first place. Against that, the news that the Cortas would sit under the watchful gaze of Imperial and Spider-kinden advisers went almost uncontested. Having heard the rest of the news, the Solarnese reckoned that they might just have got themselves a good deal, after all. The first rumours were seeping in about Myna, and defiance was looking like an overrated quality.

The Second Army, swelled by Mycella’s own troops, would be moving west, and nobody had any doubt about their joint objective. Both General Tynan and the Aldanrael had unfinished business with Collegium.

When Laszlo got back to the surgeon’s house — flying at best speed all the way — and burst into Lissart’s room, he had one thought in mind.

She voiced it for him. ‘We have to leave.’

His thunder stolen, he gaped at her.

She misinterpreted his surprise as reluctance, sitting up in bed with a grimace, but doing her best to show that she was fit to be moving by now. ‘Listen to me — I don’t care if my legs fall off, we’re getting out of Solarno. I saw her.’

Laszlo blinked. ‘Her who?’

‘Garvan,’ she told him urgently, and hissed in frustration when he didn’t know who Garvan was. ‘The Wasp, Laszlo. The Wasp that stabbed me. Come on. ’

‘ Her? ’ he demanded, more shocked by this than almost anything else.

‘Yes, her. Why d’you think she stabbed me?’

‘Liss, this isn’t making any sense-’

With a sound more of annoyance than pain she levered herself out of the bed. The bandages across her abdomen, plainly visible beneath the cut away hem of her borrowed tunic, remained unspotted with fresh blood. The old surgeon knew his craft. ‘Listen, pirate, a Wasp here in Solarno will kill me if she sees me, and I am in no state to either escape or fight back. What part of “Let’s get out of Solarno” isn’t getting through to you?’

‘They have people on all the gates, and at the docks,’ Laszlo said. ‘Maybe after the armies leave, it’ll be easier.’

‘I’m serious; I saw her from the window, on this very street, along with soldiers…’ She trailed off. ‘Hold on: “armies leave ”?’

So he explained just why he himself wanted to leave the city too, which calmed her down quickly enough.

‘Right,’ she said, after a while. ‘Looks like I picked the wrong time to change sides.’ A spark came back with that thought. ‘And don’t think that means I’ve picked yours, Laszlo. When are the bastards moving out?’

‘Any day now, sounds like. Looks like their supplies and all that are already in place, for Wasps and Spiders both,’ Laszlo told her. ‘Whatever I witnessed today, the details were worked out a long time ago, and a long way from here. Solarno just happened to be a convenient place for Empire and Spiderlands to meet — and they got to slap down an ally of Collegium at the same time.’

But Lissart was only half-listening to him. ‘Fine. I’ve got a plan. You listening?’ and, when he nodded cautiously she told him, ‘We’ll march out with the army.’ That failed to draw any intelligible response from him, so she elaborated, ‘It’s perfect. Once we’re out of the city, we can… well, we could make a break for it when I get my wings again. But if you’re serious about spying for the Lowlands, where better to be?’

‘You’re mad. They’ll spot us in an instant.’

‘There’re always a load of non-fighters with an army. You’d be amazed how few questions people ask — everyone assumes you’re someone else’s slave. You’ve seriously never done that? Just tagged onto an army and turned parasite?’ Her enthusiasm for the idea was almost childlike. ‘We’ll hole up with the Spiderlands soldiers — less formal, far easier to blend in.’

‘But you’re running from a Wasp — and there’ll be more Wasps than you know what to do with, marching out west,’ Laszlo objected.

‘Oh, but they’ll be soldiers,’ she stressed. ‘Garvan’s Rekef or something and, from her little jaunt outside, I reckon she’s on counter-intelligence, rounding up troublemakers. She didn’t look as though she was marching out, anyway.’ Seeing his concerned expression she managed a rusty laugh. ‘You have me at an advantage, Laszlo dear, and that’s never a good start to any relationship. Nestling inside the army, we’ll balance your sound body with my understanding of how things work.’ Her smile, when she gave it, was as brilliant as ever, and made his breath catch in his throat.

The Cortas of Solarno had been reconvened, heavily supervised by both Imperial and Spider-kinden deputies who had power of veto over any decision they did not like the sound of. The Satin Trail and Crystal Standard parties listlessly argued import duty and property tax, while most of the Path of Jade, which had come to prominence on the back of the liberation, had either gone into hiding or been arrested.

General Tynan had taken over a townhouse belonging to one such departed magnate, for his brief sojourn in the city. His replacement, some lucky colonel from Capitas, had already arrived and was taking the city in hand as liaison to the Spider-kinden, who would have the greater share of the governance, Solarno being more a Spider city than anything else. Whether this peculiar arrangement between the two great powers would stand the test of time, or even work at all, was something that he was entirely uncertain about. He would have to do his best to make it work, though, because, when the Second marched west, his troops would be accompanied by several thousand Spider-kinden and their sundry hangers-on and mercenaries.

This evening Tynan would have some intimation, he hoped, of how this business was likely to work.

The rap at the door came at dusk, and one of the house slaves rushed to attend to it. Tynan had located what had presumably been the former owner’s audience chamber, and had entertained the idea of receiving his guests there in full Imperial pomp, playing them at their own game. That seemed a good way to make a quick fool of himself, though, and in the end he had ordered his staff to set out a table with the logistical charts laid out neatly at one end, and a couple of couches at the other. He would have preferred chairs, but the Spider-kinden resident of the townhouse did not seem to have owned any.

He had two officers with him, who would be meeting their opposite numbers at the same time. Colonel Mittoc was one of a seemingly endless sequence of new promotions within the Engineering Corps, a lean, bony-faced man whose chief expertise in life was destroying things at a distance with great skill and enthusiasm. On Tynan’s other side was Major Cherten of the Army Intelligence, who was overseeing the logistics. Intelligence men were always a mixed bag, and a disappointing number turned out to be Rekef all along, which meant that they were not only spying on their superiors, but were also usually bad at the job they were pretending to do. Tynan had worked with short, amiable Cherten before, and felt that the man could be at least cautiously relied on.

The Fly-kinden slave — one of the previous owner’s fixtures that Tynan had kept on — backed into the room, bowing low. In his wake stalked the woman that Tynan had shaken hands and sealed treaties with earlier that day. She had done away with her armour and her martial persona, and stood before him now in a surprisingly plain white robe, save that a faint shimmer, as she moved, betrayed the myriad of gold threads shot through it, to complement the metal of her girdle and the torc about her neck. Her silver hair was held back by a comb of turquoise in the shape of intertwining centipedes: Beware, for I am venomous. She saw him notice it and smiled a little.

She should have filled the room with her presence, bringing awe and humility in her wake, but he felt that she was not trying to, but instead withholding her hand and her Art from their minds. Moreover, he had stood before the Empress Seda not so very long ago. There were no great prizes for being the second most powerful woman that Tynan had ever met and, for all that Mycella of the Aldanrael was beautiful and dangerous and cunning, the Empress had seemed something more than merely human.

The slave was bringing the wine in early, and yet the moment was right for it, and Tynan made a mental note to take the little man with him on campaign. Efficiency was something he prized, in servants and armies both.

‘Is the correct address “My lady”?’ he enquired. He was aware that Mittoc and Cherten were somewhat more struck by her, while his own cool civility in the face of the Arista was no doubt adding to his military legend.

‘In that case I must call you “General”, I suppose. How dull.’ The smile was an invitation at collusion. ‘These are your officers?’

Tynan introduced the two men, bringing them back to themselves by speaking their names, just like in the old stories of magic and charms. ‘It’s a change in structure from the old field and camp colonels, but the engineers are shouldering more of the war, these days, and Cherten will be overseeing our side of the march. Who’ve you got?’ He was keeping his tone businesslike, and did not intend to sprinkle his words with too many ‘My ladys’ either. From their formal meeting, he had gained no sense of the real Mycella behind the gilded front, and he had anticipated a woman gravid with her own self-importance. Instead, she matched him, practicality for practicality, adjusting to his manner effortlessly.

‘Jadis of the Melisandyr,’ she named the man to her left, broad-shouldered, fair-haired and square-jawed, a hero in waiting. ‘Think of him as my colonel of the camp. He captains my bodyguard, which means he also oversees the Satrapy forces and orders our march. He will need to speak with your Major Cherten, I imagine. I suggest we let them get on with it. I have no great love for counting biscuits, myself. This,’ and she indicated the cadaverous man on the other side of her, ‘is Morkaris, adjutant of our mercenaries.’ Some reaction must have shown on Tynan’s face, despite himself, for she flashed some teeth. ‘We have a great many mercenary troops, General, and someone must be given overall responsibility for them or they’ll run riot. Morkaris is here to keep them in line, and to answer to me if he fails. Believe me, I envy you your soldiers’ unity of purpose, but things are done differently in the Spiderlands.’ A moment later she was gliding past him towards the couches. ‘Shall we sit, and let our henchmen argue about rope and tents and pairs of boots, or whatever it is that makes an army go?’

‘I think that your understanding of such matters is greater than you pretend,’ Tynan rumbled. He gestured for Mittoc and Cherten to take up the arrangements with Mycella’s underlings, and cautiously followed after her, feeling as though he should be ready for the touch of silk, the sudden triggering of a trap.

For a moment he thought that she would recline on her side, as Spider Aristoi supposedly did, languorous and impossible to speak to in a civilized manner. Instead she simply sat, like any army officer might, leaning a little against the couch’s low back. ‘We’re doing something new, General, and therefore we set the rules. Let us do so in a way that will not have us at each other’s throats before we reach Tark.’

‘Fine,’ Tynan said shortly. Dropping down onto the other couch, he was aware that he was still studying her blatantly, but then he was a Wasp man, and women were set to be wives and mothers of soldiers, in his culture. Having travelled more than most — admittedly with an army at his back most of the time — he was aware that this belief was not shared by the rest of the world, but then the superiority of the Empire over the rest of the world was a subject beloved of Imperial philosophers. Here, before him, was the product of the exact opposite belief.

‘Colonel Cherten told me you’d be a man,’ Tynan observed. ‘He said men lead Spider armies because the women consider it beneath them.’

‘Then perhaps we are honouring you, for I know Wasps know of no higher office,’ she replied drily.

‘Was the last clash between you and Collegium so personal that you had to see the business ended yourself?’ he pressed.

She glanced from her wine over to their subordinates. Colonel Mittoc was explaining something to the others in his rough voice, some detail of how to transport his new artillery toys, no doubt, and the two Spiders were listening with some interest.

‘General, you were closer to the mark before,’ Mycella said softly.

Tynan raised an eyebrow, not committing himself, and she went on, ‘To lead an army is no honour in our culture. Yes, the duty would normally devolve on some son or nephew.’ When he made no comment she let her expression fragment a little, so that he could see behind it. ‘There was a trade dispute, nothing greater than that. Collegium killed a niece of mine, and then a son. I led an armada against it, more ships than have sailed from the Spiderlands in generations, the grandest venture of the modern age. We turned back. Can you imagine? We were not even defeated. The defences of the Beetles were such that we had no option but to turn back or lose everything. Even now, we will be marching the long coast with you, rather than taking to the waves. What does this suggest to you?’

‘That you were not well received when you returned home,’ Tynan suggested. ‘But you are the head of your family, are you not? Who could discipline you?’

‘I am the Lady of the Aldanrael,’ she confirmed, ‘but I am sure that your people are no more tolerant of public weakness and failure than are mine. So it is that my house is laid low, our holdings stolen, our name a jest on every lip. So it is that, to preserve my family’s very existence, I have chosen this path: the path of the Lady Martial. No great triumph amongst my kinden, no great standing, and yet honour enough, and that you will understand. There is honour in taking the sword by the blade when it is presented.’ At last she smiled, and he almost felt he had been holding his breath for it. ‘Beware me, General, for I am a desperate woman. I have so very little left to lose.’