The Air War

Twenty-Three

The second air attack on Collegium inflicted considerably more damage than the first. Logistics — which the Beetles had always counted themselves so skilled at — had failed them utterly. There were simply too many jobs to be done, too few pilots to do them.

It had become plain to all that the Wasps had somehow established an airfield within striking distance of the city. Even with the advantage of fixing their wings for additional range, they must still be within a certain radius of Collegium’s walls. Whilst the aviation faculty met to draw circles on maps and argue about flight times, Taki and the other pilots were set to searching an ever-increasing span of countryside. It was bare, sparse terrain, and what cover there was consisted of canyons, sunken streambeds, small stands of stubborn trees, nowhere to hide a field of orthopters or all the necessary clutter for keeping them in the air. And yet they found nothing.

At the same time, everyone knew the Imperial machines would be back tomorrow, the next day. The city held its breath, and kept holding it. The same logic that had surmised the hidden airfield knew without doubt those concealed fliers could take wing and attack the city within hours of landing and refuelling. While the Collegium aviators flew over the barren countryside, they also left people on standby at the city airfields, ready to leap to Collegium’s defence. At the same time, they were frantically training up the most promising of the student pilots, and they were in turn training the less gifted ones, whilst anyone who applied to the faculty was added to a list for beginner’s lessons, and the machine shops kept turning out the thousand pieces that made up a Stormreader, fitting them together with a desperate balance of speed and care.

After five days of this without an enemy flier to be seen, the entire system began to become unstuck. The certainty of immediate attack had driven everyone, planners and pilots alike, to ignore human frailties. Aviators remained in the air for hours, then back to rewind their engines for immediate take-off. Nobody was getting much sleep, either pilots or ground crew. There were accidents in the hangars, arguments, fights. One Mynan airman landed while asleep at the controls, nosing his craft into a grounded vessel hard enough to take both orthopters out of the fight. A young Beetle pilot was less lucky. His crashed Stormreader was found by some of the other airfield-hunters, reduced to a folded, splintered wreck where he had rammed it into a hill. There was much excitement, and the searchers redoubled their efforts, in the belief that he had been shot down, which only worsened the underlying problem of fatigue that had done for their fallen comrade.

On the seventh day the Imperials came back and nobody was ready for them. The majority of the Collegium pilots were on the ground by then, and most of them asleep. A mere skeleton flight of a half-dozen machines was actually in the air when a fresh score of enemy were spotted coursing towards the city at top speed.

Taki was shocked into sudden fighting wakefulness by a College functionary standing in the dormitory doorway and ringing a heavy bell over and over, just as though they were all late for class. She tried to kick into the air by instinct, became fouled in her blanket and crashed to the floor. From all around there were demands to know what was going on, loud enough to quite eclipse the answer.

Some of them heard, though. She saw young Pendry Goswell’s face turn abruptly ashen, then she was pushing past the bell-ringer, rushing from the room. Franticze, the Mynan’s Bee-kinden fanatic, was hot on her heels. Then the warning got through to everyone else at once, and they were all pushing for the door. Taki unlatched one of the high windows, bolting out into the open, her wings slinging her towards the neighbouring airfield, hoping that the news had reached the ground crews, and that they were already wheeling the Stormreaders out for take-off.

As she landed, dropping untidily into the open cockpit of the Esca Magni, she looked up and the sight was terrible, already advanced far beyond her fears. There was smoke rising, at least three separate columns of it, and that wheeling, glittering gnat spinning from the sky was surely a damaged Stormreader plummeting to earth. Over the centre of the city a vast airship, a big merchantman freighting supplies in from the Ant cities to the west, was beginning to fall, its airbag ripped open by persistent rotary volleys, a graceful tumble ever accelerating as it vented its gas, the earth reaching for it. It looked as though the doomed vessel would come down somewhere near the Amphiophos.

All around Taki there were pilots stumbling and struggling for their seats, the mechanics throwing themselves clear as the wings were freed to start beating. She dragged her cockpit closed and unleashed the engine, the New Clockwork spring instantly placing all of its power at her fingertips, so that the first tremendous clap of the Esca ’s wings got her clear of the ground, then she was arrowing away, circling upwards, clawing for height.

She spotted the first neat formation of the enemy, a dozen of their Farsphex cutting a lean curve away from a boiling cloud of smoke, obviously intending to arc back again as tightly as possible and continue work. Twelve to one were not the best odds, but Taki was already committing herself, trusting that her skill would have found refuge in some part of her mind that was not ragged with sleep deprivation.

Before she got in range of them, she was no longer alone. To one side she recognized Franticze, because the mad Bee flew with a fierce attacking fury like nobody else, disdaining all suggestion of formation or order. The Collegiate Stormreader on Taki’s left was probably Elser Hardwick, a middle-aged clockwork-maker who had shown a surprising aptitude for flight; and beyond and behind her was surely Taxus, the Tarkesh halfbreed and supposed renegade. Taki was less happy about that, as she had deliberately been keeping the man off any important duties because she didn’t entirely trust him. But that meant he was far more fit for active duty than anyone else, and it seemed he had decided to prove himself, whether she wanted him to or not.

All this passed through her mind, in the few fleeting seconds before her rotary piercers opened up. The Imperials had already spotted them — they were seemingly impossible to surprise — and their precise formation broke and parted, individual Farsphex seeming to dart off to solitary freedom before all coming back together, aiming to combine again against the attacking Collegiate craft.

The Wasps were less successful this time, but the reason was hardly to the defenders’ credit. A simple failure of cohesion proved to be the Stormreaders’ greatest asset. Taki and Hardwick followed the pattern they had drilled with, picking out one enemy and following, with Hardwick hanging back a little to watch for the return of the other Farsphex. Franticze, however, had ideas of her own: bolting through the expanding ring of enemy across the city, skimming the rooftops and off after some other target altogether. Taxus, meanwhile, very nearly got himself shot down by Taki herself, throwing his vessel in front of her, within a hand’s span of fouling her attack run. She was close enough to catch a glimpse of the halfbreed gesticulating at her angrily as though she was the one doing it wrong.

Her piercers hammered, the stick juddering in her hands with the transmitted force of it. The Farsphex under her sights twisted and turned, shrugging off the shot, odd sparks and flashes showing where she had hit. She was almost there, though. She had the sense again, and very strongly, that the enemy were simply not quite so skilled as pilots, that their larger machines were less nimble in the air. This should not be so difficult…

She caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye: Hardwick signalling frantically. The others were on her already. A moment later the Beetle pilot peeled off to engage, her weapons glittering the air with bolts.

Just a second more… but the Farsphex she was trying to bring down was throwing itself all over the sky, the pilot seeming to have eyes in the back of his head as she tried to predict him, to trick him into cutting across the stream of her bolts. The first enemy shot holed her wing, another striking the engine casing, making her Esca shudder. She had already lost sight of Hardwick.

Taxus came back then, trying to draw the enemy away from her, his status as ally changing instantly from dubious to invaluable. Her own target was flying low, almost below the rooftops, taking a straight line down the Pathian Way at an unwise speed, heading straight for the …

Refining vats.

The Farsphex had fixed its wings, less agile but faster, outpacing her, and the shots from the however-many enemy still on her were starting to fall like sleet all around her. This single-minded pursuit was making her a target in turn. To her left, two craft spiralled away: Taxus forcing a Wasp from the pack by physically blocking him, matching the Imperial’s twists and turns, neither of them getting a shot in. In that glimpse she saw more fliers coming in, without any notion of whose they were.

She had the triggers down still, at an unconscionable cost of ammunition, but she had only this chance to bring the enemy down. She almost felt, rather than saw, her shots impact about the enemy tail, tattering and shredding it, but all without denting the Farsphex’s handling. A bolt impacted somewhere behind her, piercing the Esca ’s casing, canting her entire world to the left as something gave way in one wing.

Too late, too late.

She actually saw the bombs fall, and then her world was smoke and flame, the fuel vats going up like bonfires, gouting thirty feet up as she frantically clawed for height, praying that the silk of her wings would not catch, because that would And then she was amongst the enemy. Gaining height had lost her forward momentum, and the Farsphex were all about her without warning, one pulling sharply right to avoid a collision. She had a view of the gaping hatch in its underbelly — was that someone she saw there, crouching at a machine and staring back? Then she had fought her way high enough to find herself in the thick of it.

The Farsphex had regrouped, at least a score of them, and she counted fewer Collegiate pilots than that. The city was pillared with smoke, and she had the sense that the Imperials had already accomplished most of what they had come for.

Again Taxus almost clipped her nose and, though she swore at him, she realized that he somehow thought she would follow him, as though he had signalled her beforehand and she had not noticed, save that he was the slowest heliograph student she had ever seen.

Hold on Then she had it — rejoining the pack was a Farsphex that limped a little in the air, a touch blackened and handling badly. That’s mine. The part of her mind that made such calculations effortlessly told her that its approach was perfect to make it the same bomber that she had lost sight of amidst the smoke. A bloodymindedness came to her, familiar from the old days over Solarno.

You, you bastard, are going down.

She flashed frantically, the brief pattern for My target! over and over, hoping that someone was watching and able to follow her lead. Then she was committing herself to a long, shallow dive towards the wounded craft.

It saw her far too soon, and abruptly its wheeling formation was adjusting to take her into account, along with the various Stormreaders that were trying their luck, as detachments of Wasp pilots began changing course to cover each other, opening the jaws of a trap that would snap down exactly where she was headed, while her target sought safety beyond.

She asked the Esca for all the speed it could give her, unleashing everything the spring had left, exploiting a design flaw and abusing its engine mercilessly, picking up speed as the entire craft whined and screeched all around her. At the same time, a flurry of Stormreader pilots threw themselves against the Farsphex formation from above and to her right, with Edmon at their head, forcing the enemy to regroup in order to ward them off. Taki bared her teeth: the Collegiate orthopter to Edmon’s left had been cut from the air almost instantly, wings freezing to drop it down onto the city. Then she was blurring through the centre of the enemy, too fast for them to catch her, although bolts pattered across the Esca ’s fuselage, and the unhappy buzz of her right wing was abruptly more pronounced, sounding as if something was working its way loose.

The damaged Farsphex turned across the city, and if it had simply flown straight she might have fallen behind, her motor already flagging, but it was turning back towards its allies, for a moment a slave to its own tactics. Taki opened up.

For the third time she nearly killed Taxus, but this time he held himself back from her line of shot, and then the two of them enjoyed a few seconds of filling the sky around the wounded craft with bolts.

She saw their target lurch and shudder, and suddenly there was a thin line of smoke coming from somewhere around the midsection. Then Taxus peeled off abruptly, again plainly assuming she would simply follow him, and putting himself maddeningly in the wrong place because of it.

Because it’s what he’s used to The sensation was like being punched repeatedly in the back. Three — four — five solid strikes into her Esca by the avenging enemy, then her target, though smoking, was getting away From the sun, from nowhere, Franticze fell on it, a dive so steep that it was doubtful whether she could even pull out of it before making yet another hole in the city she was supposed to be defending. Taki had a brief sense of her swift descent, and then the damaged Farsphex was at last beyond any help its comrades could give it, virtually breaking in half in the air, with the rear segment exploding savagely before it could reach the ground.

Then the Esca ’s own engine stuttered, and abruptly she had to focus merely on staying in the air, a task that was increasingly difficult. Taki dragged on the stick again for height, and this time the orthopter could not oblige her, dropping her to street level unexpectedly, so that her left wing clipped some magnate’s roof garden and the far half of it disintegrated. Then the cobbles themselves were coming right at her, and she could only back with what wings she had left, and release the landing gear, and hope.

Stenwold stared around the table a little blearily. Nobody had got much sleep since yesterday’s attack, and the Collegium War Assembly was looking more like exhumed corpses than the great and the good, just then. To his left was Corog Breaker, ready to report on their aviators. He was pushing them too hard, Stenwold knew, but it was hard to tell him that because Corog was pushing himself hardest of all. He looked ten years more than his real age: a man whose job had been teaching fencing to children, now trying to rise to the challenge of coordinating Collegium’s air defence.

Jodry Drillen sat at the table’s far end, out of bed with the dawn after a late night with the paperwork. Although the war dominated, the business of the Assembly was more important than ever. Even with everyone nominally pulling in the same direction the paperwork proliferated. He had at least thought ahead about this meeting, if only for his own comfort. He had dragged most of his household staff along to this close, high-windowed room at the Amphiophos, where they circulated with honeybread and spiced tea.

There was a scattering of other Assemblers there, a piecemeal selection of those who were responsible for the logistics of the war: merchants, clerks, academics. No doubt all the questions of the day would be answerable only by those who had not made it to the meeting. Two of the War Assembly were dead, killed in the bombing, and neither had left adequate notes.

Filling out the table were all three commanders of the Merchant Companies: Marteus the Ant sat pale and still as a statue. Elder Padstock sipped at her tea left-handed, her right still bandaged from the burns she had sustained trying to get people out of the wreckage of their homes. Janos Outwright, a plump, moustached Beetle who had never looked this far ahead when setting himself up as a chief officer, gripped the table just to stop his hands trembling. On Outwright’s left there was a stocky Beetle College Master named Bola Stormall, one of the two to donate a name to the Collegiate orthopter model, and a leading aviation engineer; next to her was a newcomer, a dun-skinned Ant who had arrived with messages from their allies in Sarn.

Stenwold realized that they had all been sitting here staring dully at one another for far too long, each one willing someone else to speak. ‘Corog, tell us about yesterday,’ he managed to intervene.

Breaker grunted. ‘We lost seven orthopters, four pilots. The chutes are lifesavers, literally, given that most of ours have no Art for flying. If the Empire comes tomorrow, then we’re that many craft down. If they leave the same sort of gap then we can repair and replace in order to keep our numbers high — we can have another five or ten maybe, over and above yesterday’s numbers, if we call up the next class of pilots — and we’ve more being trained.’ Untried machines, untried aviators, were the words he did not say.

‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ Jodry murmured.

‘Because of them and their tactics,’ Corog Breaker spat bitterly. ‘Jodry, they’re not trying to shoot us down. Given the number of armed orthopters up there, it’s nothing more than a slapping war for our pilots so far. The enemy… their priority is keeping themselves alive. They organize in the air, but it’s to defend each other, rallying against any attack so that our people have to break off or else commit suicide. All of our losses have been people caught by surprise or people pushing their luck. The Wasps are prioritizing targets on the ground, and they’re being cursed successful with it, too, but they’re playing very safe against our fliers. It won’t last.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jodry himself probably understood, Stenwold reckoned, but he asked the question so that everyone was clear.

‘They’re on the defensive so far. If they turn that discipline into an attack, they’ll cut a bloody swathe through us. We’ll take more of them than we have so far, for certain, but, if they come three or four days on the trot with the idea of smashing us in the air, they could strip us of every orthopter we’ve got, for a loss of perhaps half as many of their own, maybe less. They’ll do it, too, because if it makes sense to me, it makes sense to them.’

‘Assuming they hold their own lives so cheap,’ Outwright put in, desperately. Nobody could be bothered to answer him.

‘What about Taki?’ Stenwold asked softly.

‘Conscious now,’ Corog said curtly. ‘Possibly concussed. Confined to bed under protest while our engineers patch up her machine.’

‘Ah, well, then,’ Jodry said, with false heartiness. ‘To happier matters: what about our prize? Stormall?’

Bola Stormall started on hearing her name. ‘Still on fire,’ she got out, and took a swallow of tea. ‘Willem had it brought to the workshop, but he’s letting it burn.’

‘A little, ah, wasteful?’ Jodry pressed.

‘We put most of it out, and I’ve got a lot of broken pieces to pick over — but Willem has a pack of artificers and chemists who reckon they can get something out of the rest, so we’ve left it to burn,’ Stormall visibly sagged even as she spoke. ‘We already know their big trick, the fixed-to-mobile-wing business, from that Taki woman. Which, of course, gives them enough range that we’ve still not found their airfield, I understand.’

‘We’re still looking,’ Corog growled. ‘We think they must move it around.’

‘Nobody’s criticizing you, Corog,’ Jodry said, raising his hands placatingly. ‘Next?’

‘My men are still holding Banjacs Gripshod under house arrest, which is starting to get tiresome,’ Janos Outwright thrust in, before Jodry could continue. ‘He says he wants to fight the Wasps, too. Why not let him, rather that than waste people keeping him indoors, especially given the death machine or whatever that takes up half his house?’

Jodry made placating gestures. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to him myself. Whatever. Now, next on the agenda — by which I mean the list I have inside my head — news from Sarn.’

Nobody had been given the opportunity to sound out the Sarnesh messenger before the meeting. The young Ant had turned up at the gate only moments before and been ushered into this august company without introductions. It was a misstep that Jodry would not have made under normal circumstances.

The Ant-kinden looked as weary as they all felt, but he stood up stiffly to deliver his report. ‘Sarn sends to its allies in Collegium the news that the fortress at Malkan’s Folly has fallen to the Imperial Eighth Army, which has now continued its advance towards Sarn. The Empire has deployed various new weapons, the nature of which are not wholly understood. Sarn is not in a position to tender any substantial aid to Collegium in its time of trouble.’

The Collegiates absorbed this.

‘New weapons?’ Stenwold prompted. ‘You mean their orthopters? The artillery and the automotives we saw at Myna?’

‘No, Master Maker, we do not,’ the Sarnesh told him, and for a moment there was a slight uncertainty in the Ant’s level tone. ‘Some weapon was used to clear the survivors of the fortress garrison from the underground bunkers. Those that escaped make a… disturbing report. A new weapon, its nature unknown.’ The Ant spoke the words with his eyes fixed straight ahead, and Stenwold wondered what mental images he had inherited from those who had escaped the doomed fortress.

‘Well, the upshot of that is clear enough, anyway,’ Jodry rumbled. ‘We’re on our own. What else? Other business?’

‘Yes,’ Stenwold said flatly, as the Ant sat down. ‘Corog, may we take it that the ground damage from yesterday’s attack was similarly precise?’

‘They knew what they were doing,’ Breaker confirmed. ‘Several workshops were damaged, all of them contributing to our war preparations in some way. The packing plant on Stoner Street that was turning out rations is gutted entirely. Plus a number of private residences, probably simply bad luck, for the most part. The worst blow was the fuel depot. We’re lucky that our fliers are all clockwork, but we were relying on the fuel for our automotives, for when the Second get closer. Nobody knows if we can refine more in time.’

Stenwold nodded because all this was preamble, and he had already put plans in motion to deal with the problem. ‘I have sent to certain

… allies of mine who may be able to procure a supply,’ he said carefully, catching Jodry’s eye. ‘I’m not sure if it’s possible, but they have a sample of what we lack and, if they can produce it, they will.’ The Sea-kinden, his little secret, had some remarkable Art to produce both raw materials and finished goods, but mineral oil fuels might yet be beyond them.

There were plenty of questions about that, of course, but he waved them away. ‘Meanwhile we have a more pressing problem. It’s plain the Empire has spies aplenty in Collegium, despite all we’ve done in the past to thin their ranks. They’re feeding the Imperial air force information, telling them where to strike. So we need to take action.’

‘You’ve identified these spies?’ Stormall asked him hopefully.

Stenwold shook his head. ‘We are the victims of our own open society, and the industry that they prey on can hardly be kept a secret. We need to take a sterner line. I want every Wasp-kinden in the city under lock and key by tomorrow evening, first for questioning and then exile.’

There was a pause as the others considered this. Raking the table, Stenwold caught as many eyes as possible. You know I’m right, he thought, as though he was an Ant and could place the words in their minds.

‘Stenwold, you do know that most of their people will just be Beetle-kinden, or Flies — no shortage of either in the Empire,’ Jodry remarked mildly.

Stenwold shrugged. ‘The Wasps don’t trust “lesser races” as much as you think. Somewhere there will be a Wasp holding their leashes. We can cut the head off the Rekef operation in Collegium by this single step. We need to deny them every advantage we can.’

His gaze was fixed on Jodry now, but the Speaker for the Assembly was not discomfited.

‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ the fat Beetle replied, and then managed a wan smile. ‘That’s not the Collegiate way, Sten.’ He looked brightly about the table. ‘Any other business?’

‘I want a vote,’ Stenwold demanded flatly.

Jodry went quite still. ‘Now, come on, Sten.’

‘We are Collegium, and we are ruled by the vote, so let us vote, those of us here.’ Stenwold looked about the table, judging and measuring. ‘I say that our city will be safer if we rid it of Wasp-kinden. I say that questioning those same Wasps may even lead us to this cursed airfield. We can’t afford to ignore the opportunity. Put it to the vote.’

‘Stenwold, we cannot simply have people arrested — some of them citizens, even — without cause.’

‘We have cause,’ Stenwold retorted more sharply. ‘The Empire has given us that cause.’ He tried to make a sort of ghastly joke of it. ‘Are you worried this will cost you at the next Lots?’

‘No, Stenwold, I am not,’ Jodry snapped. Abruptly he heaved himself to his feet, jowls quivering. ‘I do, however, refuse to be the Speaker who opens that door.’

‘Then we can take it that you vote against.’ Stenwold was standing too, and the rest of the table just stared, seeing these two gears of state, which had run smoothly together for so long, abruptly clashing teeth. ‘I vote for.’ He turned to Corog Breaker. ‘You?’

‘For,’ Breaker said bluntly.

The merchant beside him looked from Stenwold to Jodry. ‘I abstain.’

Several others followed his lead, with one for and one against before the matter came to Bola Stormall, the aviation artificer.

‘War Master, I have followed your lead for a long time,’ she said, although there was no warmth in her voice. ‘I flew against Vek. I crewed on the Triumph when the Wasps came here last. I’ve worked to your plan now and, between me and Willem and Taki, we’ve got our orthopters off the ground. I will not be part of this.’

‘Bola-’ Stenwold started, but she held him off with a single gesture.

‘Do not, Stenwold,’ she warned. ‘I have relatives in Helleron who told me what life was like there under the Empire, during the last war, the imprisonment and disappearances.’

‘Yes,’ retorted Stenwold. ‘The Wasps torture people and impale them on spears. I’m talking only about arrest and exile. You can’t compare-’

‘The rule of just law makes us who we are, and I am not the only one who has been wondering if we might have made more ground with the Wasps had we not painted them as irredeemable villains.’

Makerist, Stenwold heard the word, from his memories. ‘You’ve been listening to students too much,’ he told her.

‘Well, perhaps they’re actually learning something useful for a change,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, you’ve heard yourself that half the army marching along the coast is Spider-kinden. There are perhaps two dozen Wasps at most within the city, but there are hundreds of Spiders, entire generations of them. Will you round them up as well, adults and old women and children, when the spying doesn’t stop? And what then?’

Stenwold stared at her, feeling his will strike hers, hammer to hammer. ‘That’s not what I’m proposing-’

‘-today,’ she finished for him. ‘Against, Stenwold.’

He took a deep breath. It doesn’t matter, he told himself, because now there were the three Merchant Company officers. ‘Elder?’

‘For.’ Elder Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company, her vote never in question.

‘Janos?’

The squat little Assembler looked from Maker to Jodry, his moustache quivering. ‘I, in all conscience…’ He had taken on his current mantle as one of a line of stunts intended to garner the popularity of the masses, and to ensure his own continuing good fortune. Now he looked as though he bitterly regretted it. ‘Abstain, I abstain.’

Stenwold nodded equably, because that didn’t matter either. ‘Marteus?’ he asked, with finality.

‘There is a Wasp-kinden in my Company,’ the renegade Tarkesh said quietly.

Stenwold blinked at him.

‘He has lived here for more than ten years. He’s a mason,’ Marteus continued, ‘and he wants to fight the Empire more than anyone. Of course, I can understand that. If those sanctimonious turds from Tark were at the gates, well, I’d be first in line to throw them back, as you can imagine.’ He met Stenwold’s eyes readily. ‘Of course, by these lights, you’d have locked me up by that point. A man’s not his kinden, and a man’s not his city-state.’

A delicate span of silence held the room for a few seconds, before Jodry said, quietly and without acrimony, ‘Even for and against: the vote is not carried. Stenwold, I’m sure that you will continue to use all conventional measures to deal with the spies we undoubtedly have, spotting who’s being too nosy, working out how they’re exporting this intelligence of theirs. We have all faith in you. Any other business?’

Nobody had any more to say.

That night, Taki woke abruptly out of a dream in which she was being chased through the streets of Collegium by the Tarkesh halfbreed Taxus and, no matter where she flew, he always appeared ahead of her, as preternaturally knowledgeable as the Imperial pilots.

Waking, she gasped, clutching for the sudden understanding that had shocked her out of sleep. One of the medical orderlies, some Beetle-kinden student volunteer, was hurrying over, and she realized that she most have shouted aloud.

She swung her legs out of bed before the Beetle got to her, but a sudden wave of dizziness prevented her making a quick escape.

‘Back into bed, please, Mistress Taki,’ the young man insisted. ‘Not until Doctor Findwell gives you the nod.’

‘Get off me!’ she snapped. ‘I need to speak to Stenwold.’ She made to kick off and take to the air, but a moment later realized that she really wasn’t ready for that after all, as the world swam and shuddered before her eyes. ‘Get me the War Master,’ she insisted. ‘Or get a message to him. Get me pen and paper, anything. I’ve worked it out. I know how they’re doing it. I know the secret of the Empire’s pilots.’

She was already staggering determinedly away, ready to rouse the whole Assembly if need be. ‘And get me Taxus!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘I need to shake his cursed hand!’

They told her that Taxus had not come back from his last flight over the city, that the Wasps had caught and killed him in spite of all his idiosyncrasies. It was in a more sober mood that she finally passed on her revelation to Stenwold Maker.