The Air War

Two

Laszlo’s family had once performed a series of services for Stenwold Maker, ending in an arrangement which was continuing to this day and which had resulted in a number of technical advances in Collegium, including the feted New Clockwork. Having shared some remarkable adventures with Maker, and after his family hung up the trappings of their previous profession to become respectable merchants and members of Collegiate society, Laszlo had presented himself to Stenwold again, saying, Make use of me.

It was not patriotism that had driven him, for he had no strong attachments to anything aside from family. It was not a nose for profit either; his instincts in that direction had been telling him to run in the other direction. He and Stenwold Maker had gone through a great deal together, though: privation, fear and wonder that neither would forget. Laszlo was young, and a chancer by nature, not one to settle for the quiet life. Becoming an agent of Collegium when rumours of war were hanging heavy over every city in the Lowlands seemed a good way to keep his hand in, and Solarno a better place than most.

The early morning sun had set fire to the waters of the Exalsee, fierce as summer even on a spring day, so that the half-dozen ships out there were mere silhouettes, cruising in towards Solarno docks as they took in sail and prepared to weigh anchor. A few flying machines droned overhead: a decent-sized fixed-wing bringing in small-packet cargo, a smallish airship for heavier freight and a little spotter heliopter, off to pry into someone else’s business, no doubt.

As Laszlo watched, a new shape skittered across the sky, tracing a long arc out over the water and then banking into a ridiculously sharp turn that sent it scudding back over the city. The sun painted it a deep metallic red, even at this distance, its body resembling a hook balanced between two blurred wings. One of the famous Firebugs, Solarno’s new pride and joy.

Laszlo kicked off into the air himself, out of the window of his garret lodgings, down the tiered slope of the city towards the waterfront, lazily tacking to avoid other Fly-kinden or the occasional Dragonfly. It was a few hours after dawn, and the city was still sluggish, for sleeping late was a Solarnese tradition.

There was a cool breeze coming off the lake, and Laszlo leant into it, changing his course abruptly to hang out over the Exalsee and enjoy it, dipping almost low enough to reach down and trail his fingers in the water. Out further from the shoreline there were aquatic denizens that would have made him regret that, but they would never come so close to the city. The water was clear and inviting enough that he almost decided on an impromptu dip; only the reaction of the others, if he turned up drenched from head to foot, dissuaded him. Ridicule was a game they played constantly with one another here and he had no wish to hand out any free ammunition.

He changed bearings with a thought, angling back towards the land just as the Firebug had done. Even as he did so he spotted another three of the new fliers cutting across the sky, heading out over the lake in formation. Perhaps they were off pirate-hunting, or keeping an eye on one of the other city-states, but Laszlo suspected that it was all about nothing but showing off. That was another long-held Solarnese tradition.

He was still going at a fair rate as he nipped in through the open frontage of the Taverna te Remi, fast enough that he needed a tight circuit of the common room to burn off speed before he could drop down into his seat, as theatrical a piece of self-promotion as any native Solarnese could wish. The other three were already there, which was good because being the last to turn up was worth extra points. It showed that you didn’t need to work at the job; that you already had everything under control.

After the war, having taken advantage of the Empire’s commitments elsewhere to reclaim its pawned freedom, Solarno had been left in an odd position. For those very few families deeply involved in the city’s governance, this was mostly important because of the unbalancing effect it had on Solarno’s party system, with the formerly dominant Crystal Standard becoming almost an irrelevance, whilst the once-marginal Path of Jade — and several other minor parties — had gained a great deal of influence. To everyone else, and to anyone with a grain of common sense, the liberation of the city had set a clock in motion. How long now until the Empire took its revenge?

Solarno was unique in its position. The Exalsee was not the Lowlands, for those cities had been forced into an uneasy union by the war, and had come out the stronger for it, ready to lock shields the moment the Empire even glanced their way. Although fighters from several Exalsee cities had assisted in the liberation — in the air and on the ground — there was no such unity to be found here. Exalsee rivalries ran deep, and any brief alliances were affairs of convenience only. Solarno was one city standing alone, on the southern border of the most powerful Apt state the world had ever known.

But the Solarnese were proud, and they were inventive. Unlike many of the cities the Empire had preyed on, they were every bit as technically adept as the Wasps and the Lowlanders, and perhaps more so. Specifically, faced with the aerial predation of hostile Dragonfly-kinden neighbours, they had pushed the science of aeronautics much further than had either Capitas or Collegium.

The old system of a rabble of individual pilots — skilled but disorganized — that had served to defeat the Imperial air force in the liberation had been seen as insufficient, and in a rare moment of cooperation the two current leading parties and over half the local Spider-kinden Aristoi families had thrown a great deal of money at Solarno’s artificers, refining their techniques to produce a standing civic-defence force of flying machines. Three Crystal Standard leaders had been indicted for collaborating with the Wasps, and the grounds of their confiscated mansions — which just happened to neighbour one another — had been converted into the city’s first municipal hangar. Solarnese pilots were now vying for the privilege of serving their city — not just a family or faction — by flying a Firebug. Solarno had turned to face the Empire with open defiance: Touch us if you dare.

The Empire itself had reasserted control of its various rebel provinces now, and everyone could feel the eyes of the Empress roving the map, looking for her next meal. Solarno’s fierce little show was to demonstrate just how indigestible it had become.

The war was in abeyance, so the tools of statesmanship were the telescope, the bribe, the secret identity and the coded missive. Every key city near the Imperial borders was the rightful prey of the spymaster just now, and every nation scattered its agents there, putting out trembling feelers for the first move of the enemy. Helleron, Myna, Seldis — all of them hotbeds of espionage after their own fashion. And, of course, Solarno.

In Helleron the spies bribed magnates and hired criminals, and crept through slums. In Myna they played constant dodging games with the paranoia of the locals. Seldis had been a hotbed of Spider family politics since long before the war. Solarno, though, had gorgeous views of the lake, and a hundred eateries, theatres and fine wine. Spies must go where they were sent, but where they wanted to be posted was Solarno. Laszlo reckoned he had been well rewarded for saving the life of Stenwold Maker, Collegium’s greatest statesman.

Spies came to Solarno to keep an eye on the government infighting, or to wheedle secrets from its artificers, but most of all they came to spy on other spies and, soon enough, their solid tradecraft was corrupted by the slower pace and higher standard of life there. Confronted with a city in which a day spent creeping about the backstreets was a day wasted, a fragile detente had slowly formed. Hence the Taverna te Remi, which was where the spies went to watch the other spies, sitting across tables from one another, asking veiled questions, playing games of chance and skill, trading information and favours, making deals.

It was not as simple as that, of course, and there were certainly deep-cover agents in the city, especially from the Spider Aristoi houses, but if one of the te Remi regulars failed to show, it was a sure sign that they were up to something, and that in itself was valuable information. So it was that, this morning, Laszlo could cast his eyes across the taverna’s common room, note who was present, who absent, who was sitting with whom, and have material enough to compose a decent report for Stenwold Maker before being served his first drink.

He waved an airy hand towards the taverner and beamed across the table at his fellows, almost daily companions for the last couple of months. Agents all, enemies and rivals, but friends of the moment. As a former pirate, Laszlo was well used to making the most of acquaintances before chance should set them at daggers drawn again.

Taking up at least a third of the table was Breaghl the halfbreed, who claimed to be a freelancer willing to spy for anyone’s coin. He had Fly-kinden blood bulked out awkwardly by Solarnese Beetle heritage, and amongst themselves the others guessed that he was securely in the pay of the Chasme merchants, here to keep tabs on Solarnese innovation and steal any of it that was not securely nailed down. He had the locals’ sand-coloured skin but his features were lumpy and irregular, his hair receding without grace. He was half again the size of any of his companions — although still smaller than the average Solarnese — as well as a strong drinker, a weak gambler and a man who apparently made cowardice a matter of principle. He had let slip that the Fly in his parentage had been his mother and, reflecting on the eye-watering image of his birth, the others had taken to calling him ‘Painful’.

Te Riel was neat, and looked weak and bookish when he wanted to, but Laszlo knew that inside his crisp and reserved clothes the man was solidly built enough. His manner was smooth and he was a Fly in early middle years, a seniority that he routinely tried to capitalize on. He insisted that he was an intelligencer for hire, but peculiarities of accent had led the others to conclude he was almost certainly Imperial. Laszlo considered him a prime rival, albeit not over anything so professional as espionage.

The woman, and object of their rivalry, called herself te Liss, or sometimes just Liss, and Laszlo thought that he was probably in love with her. At least, it stabbed him somewhere close to the heart whenever she smiled at te Riel. In truth, all three of them were a little besotted with her, professional agents or not. She had a heart-shaped face with sly eyes and a constant air of mockery, and her hair was an explosion of red curls that Laszlo had never seen on a Fly before. She wore dark colours that marked her out against the usual local white, and professed to be a mercenary out of the Spiderlands, but the three men were quite sure she was in the pocket of one of the local parties, if they could only agree on which one.

Laszlo himself had also claimed neutrality, but te Liss had told him, one stolen evening when he had her to himself, that they all knew he was an agent for the Aristoi, and that he should stop trying to hide it.

‘Beginning to wonder if your mistress had called you up,’ te Riel observed, apparently oblivious to Laszlo’s aerobatic entrance. ‘Hung over?’

‘Perhaps he was out all night watching over the Firebug hangars,’ Liss suggested. ‘One of us should be getting on with some work here, after all. For myself, I can’t be bothered, honestly.’ It was bad form, amongst the agents of the Exalsee, to be seen to be working.

‘As though that’s worth the effort,’ Breighl grunted. ‘After all, they’ll practically guide you around during the day, they’re so proud of the place.’ It was true. The Solarnese were not shy about showing off their new toys — after all, there was no point in having a deterrent if the other side remained ignorant of it.

Liss cocked her head to one side, eyes twinkling. ‘I did come into possession of a little roster: flights in, flights out, day and night. Cost me dear, too.’

‘Hardly, given that you work for them,’ Breighl remarked sourly.

‘Me? Why would you think such a thing?’ Her smile disarmed him, as it always did. Of the three of them, the halfbreed was the unhappiest, for he was as smitten with her as the rest and yet knew he had no chance with her.

‘Who do I owe, I wonder? Who do I want to owe me?’ te Liss’s eyes roved about the table. ‘Dice for it, perhaps? Or will the Empire stump up some coin to keep me off the streets?’ She raised her eyebrows at te Riel.

He controlled his momentary scowl. ‘What the Empire will do, I can only guess. I’m more than happy to keep you off the streets, Bella.’

‘Hover-fly. Your round, hover-fly,’ Laszlo told him.

‘Don’t call me that.’ Their needling him about the Empire was the only thing that got a rise out of te Riel, and the more he denied it, the more they believed it.

‘Brandy, was it?’ Laszlo kept on. ‘Pick a good year.’ Everyone knew the best brandy was Wasp-export.

Te Riel stood, turning the angry motion into a curt wave at one of the taverna staff. ‘If you truly thought I was Rekef you’d not be so free with me.’ He had said it before, and it was the unconscious stress he put on ‘Rekef’, that sudden passion, that had decided the others about his allegiance.

‘I see Lorchis isn’t in his seat by the corner yet,’ Breighl observed, changing the subject as naturally as he could. ‘And no sign of Raedhed either.’

A fresh bottle came, not brandy but local sweet wine, and they got to discussing their peers, presences and absences and speculation, trading gems of information that spies in other cities would have had to shadow and lurk and burgle for and still end up with nothing more reliable at the end of it.

The Empire was out there, a formless shadow on the northern horizon, a vast storm-front that could head south at any time. There were Aristoi families, just the far side of the Exalsee, that had designs on Solarno, and probably on the wider world. There were Ants whose only plan for defending their sovereignty was the systematic beating down of their neighbours. There was a Beetle spymaster who had readied himself so much for the next Wasp attack that he might just end up precipitating it. Laszlo knew it, and everyone in the Taverna te Remi knew it.

But Liss was sneaking him a grin, even though she was hanging on to te Riel’s arm. Her expression seemed to say that she was forced to pander to the Imperial, with his ready money and his arrogant manner, but they both knew who she would rather be touching.

The spring was warm, the promised summer hotter. The prospect of war, always alluded to but never spoken of outright, seemed a long way away just now.

She had left on te Riel’s arm that day, but two days later towards nightfall she dropped into Laszlo’s lodgings, where he was keeping a desultory eye on the civic hangars. Letters of introduction from some Fly aviatrix in Collegium had secured Laszlo a small third-storey room within sight of the city’s upper classes, and this place was more than most foreign agents could have boasted. Besides, small and high up only meant that it was perfect for a Fly-kinden.

‘I can’t stay,’ she warned him, even as she flitted in through his window. He was lying on his side, stripped to the waist in the evening’s muggy heat, trying to balance his telescope so that it would support itself while he looked through it.

‘Top-secret orders come through at last?’ he asked her drily.

‘Breighl wants me to go to the theatre with him.’

‘You’d rather have orders?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘And I’m not suggesting that Painful feels that way about you, but some orders, hm? From whoever you really work for?’

Laszlo shrugged. ‘Nice just to take stock, sometimes.’

She had been poised in the open window all this time, and now she darted over to the bed, landing demurely beside him. Laszlo was lean and strong, for a Fly, having spent much of his life wrestling with sails and lines, and she put a hand on his arm with a mischievous expression. ‘Stories, stories,’ she murmured, for it was his bad arm, the one he had broken, and the mottling of injury was still to be seen.

‘You’ve seen mine, do I get to see yours?’ he asked her gamely.

A snort was all that got him, and a change of subject. ‘Anything to drink? If I’m going to sit through three hours of Spider opera, I need a lining to my stomach. Brain, too, probably.’

He had a bucket of water in the lee of the window, where the sun never quite chased the shadows away, and the bottle he extracted from it was still cool. He was quite aware that this was not what Stenwold Maker had sent him here for, and that a proper spy would probably know all sorts of ways to seduce te Liss and get her talking. He could only imagine te Riel trying and — in his mind’s eye — abjectly failing. With Laszlo himself, however, she seemed more than willing to be seduced, and by unspoken accord neither of them asked awkward questions. Take good weather where you find it, as Laszlo’s old sailing master used to say.

They would talk often of te Riel and Breighl, or of other agents, the individual personalities of the Solarnese intelligencing crowd, but nothing of the causes, the nations and powers. We are living in the moment between one wave and the next. Long may it last.

She did not make the theatre that night.

Later, close to midnight, there was a crash from outside, a shattering of glass, and Laszlo leapt from the bed, whipping a knife from his discarded belt without thinking. A moment’s pause and he heard drunken laughter outside, and someone else cursing — just late revellers bound for home. He looked for Liss’s sleeping form and found her already halfway to the window. The blade in her hand was hiltless with a weighted pommel, perfect for throwing. For a moment they faced each other, armed and deadly, waiting to see if something had changed.

Liss breathed out a shuddering sigh, casting her weapon aside. She sat on the bed, looking abruptly tired and human, not the grinning little tease who kept three men on their toes at the Taverna te Remi. ‘Laszlo…’ she began.

He was beside her on the instant, and she leant into his embrace gratefully, even though he only remembered to drop his dagger a moment later.

‘It wasn’t-’ he started, but she just shook her head. War. It wasn’t war.