The Air War

Thirty-Two

This time, when Averic returned to his meagre lodgings, after a day’s drilling with the Student Company and still wearing his purple sash, the lock on his door had simply been smashed.

Thieves, he thought first, but in his heart of hearts he knew otherwise. He had been trying to forget the Wasp woman who had come with her brown-dyed face, and told him he was a traitor, and he had been all along. She had marched away with the army, after all, and the episode had taken on a dreamlike quality, for of course he was not a traitor, not to anyone.

Yet he had spent his day drilling with Collegiates who fully intended to kill as many Wasp-kinden as they could, should the fight draw this close and, if he were to subject his position to the philosophical rigour beloved of the academics, he would have to confess that he was surely betraying someone. It was just that, so long as he attached his loyalties to the nearest available target, he could pretend that he was unshakably honourable and honest. These were qualities he had always assumed that he possessed, but now he was forcibly reminded that apparently it had all been an act.

Not the woman waiting for him, this time, of course, but a man: a Beetle with burn-scarring about his face. He sat on Averic’s bed, wearing the hardwearing patchwork canvas of a tramp artificer, cleaning his nails with a knife and grinning at the Wasp youth standing in the doorway.

‘Come on in, why don’t you,’ he suggested.

Averic directed a palm towards him wordlessly, but his lack of resolution must have shown very plainly in his face, for the man’s grin never faltered.

‘Very nice, always the posing. Now get over here and take your orders, boy. Stop pissing about.’

By accent, the stranger could have passed for a Collegiate.

‘You’re Army Intelligence?’ Averic asked, in a small voice.

‘Right in one. Expecting some sly Rekef bastard, I’ll bet. We’re ahead of them on this one, and you should be grateful. Rather deal with us than with them, I’ll bet. Sit down here beside me, youngster.’ He patted the bed with his free hand.

Averic shuddered, unable even to identify the emotions fighting within him, and then he slouched forward and sat down, feeling obscenely like a prostitute before a client. When the man put a heavy arm about his shoulders, he yelped and tried to spring up. The Beetle was strong, though, and the knife was close.

‘I hear you’re deep cover,’ the Beetle gave a smirk that gave onto a world of insinuation. ‘Listen, boy, it’s all going to come down any day now. We all do our part, the city gets its Imperial governor, and it’s commendations all round. This is Intelligence’s big chance, before the Rekef boys try to foul things for us. We all pull together, we Imperials.’

‘You’re no Imperial,’ Averic whispered. It was the accent: it was simply too genuine.

‘Clever lad. I was in the Empire for almost ten years before coming back here. You Wasps, you know how to run things, and how to look after your own. Flap-mouthed gutbags that run this place — would you trust any one of them? Do you really think they know the first thing about how to make a city go? Piss on them. Sick of this place when I left, I was, and twice as sick of it now I’m back. But that’s fine, because it’s going to be my sort of place any day now. And yours, too. I’ve my eyes on a lieutenancy, and I reckon you could scrape sergeant out of this. Could even stay in the College, if there’s still enough of it left, and if we let them teach still.’ Horribly, inappropriately, he hugged Averic to him. ‘Now, boy, our work is all about targets, foci of resistance. The people here will fight — surprised me with that, they have — but we cut off a few heads and they’ll fall apart. No chain of command, see.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ Averic asked dully.

‘Cut throats, boy. Burn them. Stick them with a sword. Dead leaders make poor tacticians, as we say. And, as you’re here on the inside, you’re going to be perfectly placed to catch them off guard. Sure, the Big Men around here, they’re out of your range, but you’re well placed for some College Masters who won’t be suspicious about a student turning up for a little extracurricular, eh?’ The Beetle chuckled throatily. ‘See here, here’s your homework, boy.’ He thrust a tattered scroll at Averic.

Averic stared numbly at the list, a meagre handful of Collegiate names, all they would trust him with, set against the grander tapestry of men and women the Empire wanted dead. Treachery seemed to be welling up inside him. So I was an agent all this time, he found himself thinking sadly. The Empress expected, apparently, and even at this distance her awful might seemed to weigh on him more than the Beetle’s arm. He tried to picture his parents, to review their parting words, parse them for some hint that this had been their plan all along.

He found that he could barely bring their likenesses to mind.

He saw the names of four lecturers who had taught him, three of whom had plainly resented doing so. Oh how I’ll make them twitch when they find out I’m no victim to be slighted. How I shall get even with them. But there was no fire in that thought. He could not muster the bitterness. Instead he foresaw the acts involved: saw himself stepping through a sequence of patient murders with the same focused attention he had applied to all of his College work. The burned man was right. For all their sneers and insults, they would never expect him to come after them.

He felt full of a venom that had corrupted him without him knowing. Reaching the end of the list, he closed his eyes.

‘Bold and swift and bloody,’ came the voice of the Beetle-kinden. ‘Say it.’

‘Bold and swift and bloody,’ Averic echoed. He was holding himself deliberately still, because otherwise he would be shaking. He had read to the end of the names, the last addition seeming almost like an afterthought.

The bed lurched as the man stood up suddenly. ‘When the army breaks the wall, surrender to the first soldiers you see, ask to be brought to Colonel Cherten for debriefing. They’ll spot you for one of their own. I’ll have a tougher job, believe me. We won’t meet again before then.’ He clapped Averic on the shoulder, startling the youth into opening his eyes, staring up into the man’s own gaze with a determination tempered like steel.

‘Good boy,’ the Beetle said, approving, and then he was at the doorway. ‘Good luck.’ And he was gone.

Still sitting in that dingy, wretched room, Averic stared after him, only now allowing himself to start to shake. Traitor, I’m a traitor after all this time. Any doubt had fled him, leaving only a terrible emptiness in its wake. He was going to betray them all.

Eujen Leadswell, was the last name on the list, surely only added after the Student Company had been formed.

In a small study, almost lost in the upper storeys of the Amphiophos, far from the main bustle of governance, Jodry Drillen stared at the desk before him.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Nothing’s changed,’ Stenwold told him. ‘If we agreed before, we agree now. It’s necessary.’

‘I didn’t have this in front of me before,’ Jodry whispered. The room was ill lit, neglected, more a storeroom for unwanted records than a place for scholars or Assemblers. ‘Stenwold… they’re never going to forgive me.’ The man’s pudgy hands were shaking, rattling the Speaker’s seal and the reservoir pen.

‘Then let me,’ Stenwold decided. ‘I’m used to the city thinking ill of me. Now that everyone agrees with me, I don’t know where to put myself.’ He managed tp raise the ghost of a smile, but Jodry merely shook his head.

‘It must be me,’ the Speaker said, ‘because it must be obeyed. If we cannot have a full decision of the Assembly — and we can’t, I know — then I must put my hand to it.’

‘Then do it. And then I’ll sign it, too. All the authority we can provide, and the blame can be shared. I’ll say I forced you to it, if you want.’

‘What will I say to them, Stenwold? The relatives, the homeless. I never thought of this happening, when I put my name forward in the Lots. I never thought that I’d be responsible for… that I’d fail them and do so knowingly, eyes open. I thought it would all be trade disputes and paperwork.’

‘You’re doing well,’ Stenwold told him solemnly. ‘Better than I’d have thought. But I wouldn’t ask this of you, if it wasn’t needed.’

Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘Banjacs is ready?’

‘He will be by tomorrow night.’

The fat man looked up at him, horrified. ‘He says that? He’d better be ready. I’ve written him an open pass to the cursed Assembly Treasury to get his bloody machine working. If he pisses away the chance we’re buying him — at such cost! — I’ll strangle the old bastard myself!’ A deep breath. ‘And their agents?’

‘Those that I have identified have been passed the story, by the most indirect channels I could devise. Word should already be heading for the Second, regarding our problems, our weaknesses. And tonight will bear that word out.’

‘Will it? And we’re gambling on what you think they’ll think? Why not, given all the other things we’re throwing the dice on? Why not, indeed?’

Stenwold regarded at him without any words of comfort or consolation — and he sensed that Jodry did not want to be comforted, did not believe that he deserved it. They were about a terrible business, a betrayal of their own for reasons of brutal pragmatism, and both of them felt the brand of it burning their skin.

Jodry took the seal, clicked at the top until it welled with red wax, and then stamped it down hard. A shudder went through him, but he took up the pen and signed boldly, with hardly a quiver, before moving on to the next document. Stenwold took out his own pen and added his name to each in turn, the Speaker and the War Master — as much weight as they could give to their conspiracy.

The first order differed from the others, addressed to the Sarse Way airfield, and it read: By the order of the Assembly of Collegium under the emergency powers granted for the time being the Sarse Way contingent of the Collegiate Air Defence are ordered to: engage the enemy air forces when so prompted by the Great Ear; upon engagement fall back towards the city; upon reaching the skies above the city remain in contact with the enemy for no longer than ten minutes before seeking to land and take shelter; during the course of all contact with the enemy concentrate on preserving yourselves and your machines in priority to attacking the enemy. Further, you are not to return to the defence once you have quit the fight.

The pilots of Sarse Way would assume that this was some manoeuvre involving a counter-attack by the complements of the other airfields, and would obey dutifully, relieved perhaps to be out of the fighting early and trusting to men such as Jodry and Stenwold to know what was best.

The other missives were all identical and, under the same heading, gave the order: Do not take wing under any circumstances. You are expressly ordered to keep your machines under cover and out of sight. You are instructed not to participate in any action against the air forces of the Empire on this night, without exception.

Jodry and Stenwold stared at each other, and at last the fat man folded each order, sealing them one by one with more bloody wax, and reached out to summon Arvi.

‘No,’ Stenwold told him.

‘What? If Arvi’s a traitor then anyone is,’ Jodry snapped.

‘I will take them myself,’ Stenwold told him. ‘I will instruct the officers not to open them until dark. They will see me and know me. There will be no possibility that this might be an Imperial ploy. We are losing too much, by this, to risk any compromising of our plan.’

‘And after that?’ Jodry asked him.

‘I will go home,’ Stenwold explained. ‘And I will wait there, and listen, and live with the knowledge.’

The nearest Wasp soldier touched down only yards away from Laszlo’s hiding place, stalking through the gnarled, scrubby trees that were barely taller than the man himself: a knotty little grove of stunted olive trees sprouting where some fault in the earth gave them access to water. To a Wasp, only the trees would offer any cover at all, but the ground was loose and crumbling about the roots, and Laszlo had been able to excavate a hollow down beneath one of the trees, digging and digging frantically during the last two hours of the night, bitterly aware that their time was up. Beside him, Liss stirred, biting her lip, and Laszlo could not say whether her shivering was from fear or the fever of her wound.

They had made good time at first, and he thought now that had been their downfall: becoming overconfident, and without a clear idea of how far they would have to go, they had made a clipping pace down the coast, whilst the Second Army stayed back to bludgeon the Felyal into a final submission. They had kept within sight of the sea at first, to aid in navigation and in the hope of spying a ship. There were no sails or funnels to be seen, though. Everything east was black and gold, and no trader trusted the waters.

Lissart had seemed well, in that first rush, or at least she had pretended to be, and they had gone too fast too soon, pressing on into the dark hours so as to increase their lead. Then one night, as they made a sparse but sheltered camp, he had seen her dabbing at her side, and he realized that her wound had reopened. She had done her best to make light of it but, despite everything, he had seen she was terrified of being left behind. The next morning he set a slower pace, but she had not been equal to even that.

She had managed another few days’ progress, each slower than the last, and then she had negotiated with him, desperately manoeuvring around her own weakness until he himself suggested a day’s pause. Looking into her face, he saw how her cheeks were hollower, her skin almost translucent. She was beautiful still, though, illness giving her an ethereal quality that made her seem almost supernatural.

At first, they had steered clear of the refugees who had fled the ruin of the Felyal, and that had been another mistake. Liss had been suspicious of them, in her eyes every strange face hiding an Imperial agent, or perhaps just a murderer or a rapist. She hated being helpless and raged weakly at herself.

Later, when the last of the refugees had been overtaking them, Laszlo had tried to seek help, but those desperate stragglers had none to offer.

The Second Army had taken its time with the Felyal, but all too soon its work was done, and it began marching westwards at the speed of its laden automotives — faster than Laszlo and poor Liss could manage. The two Flies had covered what ground they could, desperate to stay just another day ahead. Behind them had appeared a distant dust cloud, yet less distant every day.

And, of course, the armies of the Empire did not travel blind. Yesterday Laszlo had seen flitting forms in the sky, as the Light Airborne screened the army’s advance. They were far ahead of their main force, a spread of eyes and burning hands searching for any sign of organized resistance, well tutored by the losses suffered by the Imperial forces in the last war, pitted against the bandits and renegades of the Landsarmy.

The soldier so close by shifted position, a few steps forwards, boots crunching on the dry earth. Laszlo guessed there were ten or a dozen that had dropped out of the sky moments ago, seeing the trees as good ground for an ambush and hoping to flush out any threats lurking there. The man was right on the edge of Laszlo’s window on the world, which was uncomfortably broad, for he had not been able to dig deep under the tree. There was barely room for the two of them to shelter from the sky. If we had run, would we still be ahead?

Could we even have run?

There was a painful stab in his heart that told him that all this effort might be for nothing. Lissart had suffered a terrible wound, and she had been flagging since they left Solarno. She was a fickle, treacherous creature, but Laszlo had gone to such lengths to save her — from the enemy, from herself — surely blind chance would not throw the dice so heavily against them now. We’ve come so far.

In all his days, as pirate, trader and agent, he had assumed at some level that the world was looking out for him. His luck had brought him plenty of good times, and that had always let him ride out the bad times with the understanding that he would still make it through. Now that they had come so far, at such effort, and only lost ground, Laszlo’s faith in himself was faltering.

The Wasp took another few steps, shifting fully into the Fly’s view now, his back towards the hiding place as he scanned the trees with a snapbow cradled in his arms. His head turned, receiving some gestured signal from a comrade, and he settled down on one knee, watching.

What have they seen? Either the Imperials were setting an ambush themselves, or they were suspicious of encountering one. Did we leave a trail? Is it us they’re looking for? He had been so hurried, last night. He had done his best to cover their tracks, but still…

His hand inched into his tunic, a finger at a time. His one remaining sleevebow was in there, the other little snapbow fallen out unnoticed somewhere along the trail. With excruciating care he began to extract it. Seeing him do so, Liss went tense all over.

The Wasp remained still, weapon held low, merely cautious as yet, and facing the wrong way. Laszlo worked the snapbow free of his clothes, not daring to take his eyes off the man, letting his fingers walk over its chamber, to check that there was a bolt loaded. Then he had the wheel of the air-lock to charge, breathing shallowly, hunching about himself, slowly winding the battery up to strength, his wrists cramping from the awkward angle.

A second soldier crossed into his line of sight, more distant than the first. His wings shimmered briefly, as though he was about to take flight, but something stayed him, and he put his shoulder to a tree, to hide or for cover, and watched keenly. The first man remained motionless, the dusty black and gold of his cuirass blending with the earth tones of the soil and bark and dull leaves.

There came a shout from further off and both men tensed, the closer one fitting his snapbow to his shoulder but not sighting along the barrel, clearly still without a target. The further soldier peered out, half-crouching as he searched for the enemy, then he glanced at his companion to say something, to give a signal, who could know?

His eyes touched Laszlo.

Laszlo tried to jump up but their hollow was too cramped. He kicked forwards into the open air, even as the warning came, bringing his little snapbow to bear not on the man who had seen him, but on the closer soldier, clenching hard on the trigger.

He felt the weapon buck lopsidedly in his hand, jamming with the charge not yet released. Frantically he shook it, his wings taking him left.

A bolt of fire streaked past from behind him — almost directly through the space he had occupied a moment before — and caught the closer Wasp right in the eyes, sending him backwards, screaming and clawing at his face. A snapbow bolt zipped past Laszlo like an angry insect, and he let his wings spring him high over the trees for a little cover, before coming down close enough for his weapon to do any good, if it would only work.

He loosed, and something struck him on the temple, something else carving a bloody line across his hand and almost up to his elbow. He found himself flat on his back, the world spinning about him. They got me! Was that a grenade?

He was being shaken. ‘Get up!’ Liss was hissing, dragging at his shoulder. ‘Get moving!’ She held her other arm about her, as though trying to keep her guts in.

Laszlo stumbled to his feet, seeing the soldier lying dead before him, armour holed where the snapbow bolt had gone in. He still clutched the grip of the little weapon, but precious little more of it. Its air battery had exploded, he realized, and there was his luck back again because that could have taken his arm off.

Then more Wasps came pelting through the trees, three at least: two on the ground and one in flight. Pushing Liss ahead of him, Laszlo tried to run, dagger clearing his belt. She made a game try of it but she was slowing already, her breaths coming in gasps of pain. Cheers, luck, nice knowing you.

Laszlo brandished his little blade and tried to put fire in his expression, anything to buy Lissart a moment’s time. The airborne Wasp was almost on them, snapbow slung and hand extended.

Piss on my luck!

Fine last words for a pirate.

Then there was a flicker and the soldier was down, rolling on the ground with the spine of an arrow standing proud in him. The other Wasps suddenly had more to think about, whipping their snapbows around, but the trees were already echoing to the harsh snap! snap! of bolts clipping between the trees too fast to see. The two Wasps were on the ground in moments, and more fighting erupted all around. Laszlo had no eyes for it.

Liss was sitting with her back to a tree, breasts rising and falling as she fought for air, but she gripped his hand when he went to her, her palm still warm from her Art.

The skirmish went on for less than a minute and when a shadow fell over the two of them it was no Wasp but a long-faced Dragonfly-kinden woman wearing the buff coat of the Merchant Companies, a bow as tall as she was in one hand.

Laszlo identified the sash emblem, an Ant-kinden helm in profile.

‘Coldstone Company,’ he named it. ‘Collegium.’

The Dragonfly nodded suspiciously. Others were joining her now, a couple of Beetles, a handful more — Flies, a Moth with a shortbow in a holster at her waist.

‘Castre Gorenn, Commonweal Retaliatory Army, currently serving with the Coldstone,’ said the Dragonfly archer. ‘And what are you?’

‘Working for Ma- Stenwold Maker,’ Laszlo said, stumbling over the name in his hurry to present his credentials. ‘Please — your army’s close by?’

‘Not so very close,’ Castre Gorenn replied, still not trusting either of them an inch. ‘We’ll get you there sure enough, though. Collegium agents, Imperial agents — don’t really care — works either way for me.’

‘She’s hurt,’ Laszlo met Liss’s eyes. ‘Can you…’

Gorenn knelt to study Liss, and for a moment the Dragonfly’s easy expression turned grim at the sight of her, making something twist almost to breaking in Laszlo’s chest, but then the woman nodded.

‘I can fly with her, certainly. Nobody flies like me.’ With surprising delicacy the Dragonfly reached for Liss, who flinched and whimpered, but nevertheless held still as she was picked up like a child. ‘You’ve your own wings, to keep up?’

‘Of course.’

‘Of course, is it? Well, Master “Of Course”, there’ll be a couple of these newfangled snappers held on you the whole time, so you better keep your mind on what you’re doing.’