Dragonfly Falling

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The camp was vast, and even at night there were plenty of lone figures moving about it. Many were soldiers, some were slaves of the Wasps or perhaps Auxillians. Basila’s little band moved in a series of stops and starts, far more quietly than Salma would have expected. Each tent shadow offered sanctuary, and the dim lights of the sleeping camp were enough for them to find their way. Even Totho seemed to be managing some kind of stealth.

  They were making their way gradually around the periphery of the tents, where the least nocturnal activity was. There were lamps glowing through the walls of some of the tents, and low voices talking inside. Salma heard the rattle of dice from one and someone humming an unfamiliar song inside another. These barracks-tents would be carpeted with Wasp soldiers, he guessed. Perhaps others would house the Ant-kinden the Empire had suborned or those giants who last night had carved through Tark’s city wall. It would be best, Salma thought, if none of those great creatures were met with tonight.

  Miraculously, they had not been spotted. By the ring of lights there were sentries staring outwards, just as their Spider-kinden decoy would now be staring outwards, but the lamps would blind them to what was going on in their own camp.

  There was a scuffle ahead but it was over before Salma had a chance to see. A Wasp-kinden had walked within arm’s reach of them and paused, casting a bemused glance into the shadows. Basila and another had grabbed him, stopped his mouth and stabbed him into silence. They stowed the body under the eaves of a tent and carried on.

  There were lights all over the airfield, so Salma could see the monstrously pale and bloated ghosts that were the airship balloons. They were floating high already, straining at their steel cables, ready to fly at the dawn, no doubt. Totho had tried to explain them to him, how they were not just hot air but some complicated-sounding alchemical air that was better, and which did not need to be hot before it could lift them. Salma had understood none of it.

  The Ant-kinden had explosives, he knew. The plan called for them to creep aboard each of the airships and plant them with decreasing fuse lengths, so that they would all explode more or less simultaneously and give the Wasps no warning of their intent. Again, Salma had to take all this on faith as it was beyond his understanding.

  They paused again, but this time the shadow they borrowed was cast by one of the heliopters, its squared-off side as high and broad as a poor man’s house in Helleron. There was movement and noise from just the other side, the rattle of metal on metal and the occasional curse as some Wasp-kinden artificer worked into the night to get the machine in his charge back into the air. Salma shuffled forwards until he was almost beside Basila, seeing now the broad, well-lit expanse of the field the Wasps had cleared for their flying machines. They had a dozen great lamps to enable the artificers to work, so there were precious few shadows from this point on, just an overlapping plain of harsh artificial light.

  The artificers were out in force, and other personnel, too. There were scattered soldiers, men checking the tension of the airship lines, and others counting off stacks of equipment piled beside the aircraft hulls.

  Salma realized there were too many people here for the plan to work: they would be spotted the moment they left the heliopter’s shadow.

  Basila was waiting motionless and he wondered if she was simply hoping for all those people to go away. If that did not happen, as it would not, would they be found here at dawn by the Wasps, still patiently waiting by this downed heliopter?

  Totho touched his shoulder and made a motion of counting on his fingers, then a gesture around at their companions.

  He tallied heads quickly and sure enough they were a man short.

  A moment later something went Whoomp! a distance away, but still within the camp, and there was a flash of flame. A second’s eerie silence and then the shouting started.

  Most of the soldiers took off immediately, running towards the disturbance, and a surprising number of the artificers too, just going to see what the fuss was about.

  Basila already had her crossbow in her hand, and Salma actually saw her counting off the seconds: two . . . three . . . four . . . and then she was off, running into the light and letting the bolt fly at the nearest man.

  Sixteen

  And Arianna ran. At first, she ran.

  But she knew that running, though it put distance between them, would leave a trail that Thalric could follow. Even at this late hour there were enough people who she jostled, or who stared after her: a young Spider-kinden woman pelting down the street, her pale robes spotted red.

  She ducked into a side street, tried to calm herself.

  He would be coming for her. She had left him no choice.

  She could not believe that Hofi was dead. Scadran she had not known so well, but Hofi . . . She could not say that she had liked him. It was not something that came up, in their business. She had known him for a year, seen him every few days. He was a part of her life and now Thalric had snuffed him out.

  She peered back around the corner, seeing only a dozen or so Beetles going about their late errands. Of course Thalric would not be on the street. He would be at roof level, winging his way towards her. She looked up, scanning the sky with wide eyes, but there was nothing.

  She had to get indoors. There must be a taverna near here. She moved off, trying to keep to a respectable walk, one hand folded demurely across her breast to cover the worst of the blood. She must have looked like a madwoman, for the locals started when they saw her and quickly got out of her way.

  Finally there was a taverna ahead. She could go inside, shield herself from the sky. If they had rooms to hire she could hide out, offering a little extra to keep her secret.

  She was almost at the door when she saw him. He was still a hundred yards down the street, but she recognized him instantly. Thalric, in his long coat, with the sword scabbarded beneath it. He began to walk towards her in a patient, purposeful way.

  She skittered backwards and took the next side-alley, aware that he was between her and the better parts of town. She was heading into that district where they had ambushed Stenwold, and it had been chosen because the locals cared little about any commotion. Certainly the death of a single Spider girl would excite no curiosity.

  She picked up her pace. Glancing behind her she could no longer see him but she had a sense of motion, of being tracked. He was in the air again, she guessed, and could follow her easily, tracing her hurried dashing from street to street as he glided silently over the rooftops.

  She stopped under the eaves of a run-down house. Her eyes were good in the dusk, but they seemed to have failed her now. They conspired with her ears and her mind, putting a hundred pursuers on her trail. Certainly she thought she heard the soft blur of wings above, so that he could even be on the very roof of this place, waiting for her next move. And yet surely was that not him, the shadow in the alley across the way? The whole city now seemed to be hunting her.

  There was a distinct scrape from up above, and such imaginings fell away. Someone was above her, and who else could it be?

  He might not know I’m here. He might not know I’m here. She hugged herself, trying to keep the panic in, but thinking only of Thalric’s careful, patient style. He would wait all night.

  He might not know I’m here.

  But then her nerve snapped and she bolted and, as she broke cover she heard the flash of his energy sting, felt the heat but not the hammering shock of it, as it scorched the muddy flags of the street over to her left. She was running blindly then, and knowing he could fly faster than she could run, but run she did, as fast as she could whip her legs to motion, until she could go no faster. Then she struck against something – something put hard in her path without warning – and she was thrown on the ground. Her head spun from the impact but she forced herself to look up and see.

  And she saw his face, and it was the face of Tisamon, cold and utterly without mercy. His claw was over his hand, raised idly to finish her.

  Arianna scr
eamed, she could not stop herself, and she covered her eyes.

  Tisamon was surprised at himself, because he had wished to see this, the traitress cowering at his feet, utterly defenceless, but now he had it, something drained away inside him.

  There had been no fight. He had been expecting a fight.

  As that thought came to him he looked up, and Thalric landed not ten yards away, sword drawn, and their eyes met. The shock of recognition was a physical thing, two-edged and cutting. Tisamon remembered the fire and pain, the injury he had still not entirely shaken free of. Thalric, for his part, remembered the wounds he had taken, the wounds he had given, and how Tisamon had simply refused to die.

  For a long moment, with Arianna whimpering at the Mantis’s feet, they stared at one another. Tisamon’s offhand, as though it had a life of its own, had plucked a dagger from his belt. He had sought them out particularly, those daggers, after the fight at Helleron, and paid a heavy purse for them.

  ‘She is mine,’ Tisamon said. ‘I claim her.’ As he was speaking a Beetle-kinden pair, a man and a woman, stepped out into the alley, glanced from him to Thalric, and retreated hurriedly back indoors.

  Thalric’s mind was at war with itself. This was the one confrontation he would normally have baulked at. He had come far too close to dying because of this man, and who knew whether his daughter was lurking nearby? He had a sense, as he was hunting Arianna down, that his were not the only feet on her trail. He had that sense again now, even with Tisamon before him. Who else is there and where are they?

  He feared. A bitter realization that, but he feared.

  Still, he was a soldier of the Empire. He took a step forward and spat a bolt from his palm at the Mantis.

  Tisamon hurled himself aside, though the fire scorched his shoulder. But just as Thalric had loosed the bolt the Mantis’s hand had flicked forwards and he now saw the Wasp stagger as the dagger struck. A glancing blow, for Thalric had seen the silver flicker coming, but it had been flying straight for his face and, as he dodged, it cut a line across his temple, above his ragged cheek where Arianna had clawed him. He made to launch another bolt, but Tisamon had a second knife in his hand even now, sending the edged darts spinning out one after another, driving Thalric back, back, then up to a rooftop, almost to the limit of his sting’s range. Tisamon had a hand full of knives, little hiltless throwing pieces, and there was no way to tell how many he still concealed.

  This confrontation could see both of us dead very easily. The thought was in Thalric’s mind, but he could see no acknowledgement of it in Tisamon’s expression. Thalric was more mobile, the Mantis’s eyes better in the darkness.

  Stalemate. And Thalric knew that he could not squander his life here, when he was badly needed to further the Rekef plans in Vek. Then let this Mantis see if he could stand against the fall of a whole city.

  Thalric’s wings blurred into life and he hurled himself into the sky, watching for that next knife at all times until he had put a building between them. Even then he could not have said whether his reason for flight was anything other than a way of disguising his fear.

  Arianna felt a brief moment of relief as Thalric departed, but it withered as she looked up into the Mantis’s face.

  ‘Please don’t kill me,’ she begged. Tisamon regarded her impassively. Now the moment was upon him he had expected his earlier passion to be urging him to do it. To his distant surprise it was the other way round. A fickle current of feeling was trying to stay his hand even though his reason insisted he had to kill her.

  He dragged her two streets further towards the river, to an empty, litter-strewn square where a body could have lain for a tenday without discovery, casting her down against a windowless wall. He knelt by her, and the flat of his blade was abruptly cold against her neck, a trick he had used often enough to put fear into others, not that this shivering Spider needed it. ‘Where are your friends?’ he growled at her.

  ‘They . . .’ She swallowed, closed her eyes at the feel of the metal moving against her skin. ‘They’re dead, all of them.’

  ‘You lie.’ He twitched, just slightly, but she felt the tiny cut, a bead of blood blooming.

  ‘No, please! Thalric killed them. I’m all that’s left.’

  He considered this. It should have seemed impossible, but she had been fleeing and Thalric had been chasing her. This was becoming ever more complex.

  ‘Please – please let me talk to Stenwold . . .’ she started, and he hauled her up by her collar in sheer rage, slamming her back against the wall. His lethal claw was drawn back, and in that instant all his strength of will went into restraining it.

  ‘Do not even utter his name, traitress,’ he hissed. ‘You and I, we understand one another. We know the old ways and the old laws, but Stenwold doesn’t. He believes in things like conscience and forgiveness, but you and I know better. Some acts of betrayal have prices that must be paid.’

  He wanted her to scream at him, to fight him. That would have made his decision easy for him, and he liked simplicity. Instead she just hung in his grip, shaking. She was, he decided, a wretched specimen. Atryssa would have held her in contempt.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘I need to tell someone . . .’ And then her voice dried up, and he saw a reflection move in her eyes, which widened abruptly.

  ‘Watch out!’ she yelled, and he whirled around with claw raised high, and when the sword came down he caught it.

  It was not Thalric, but a cloaked woman, some complete stranger. She gave him no chance to see more than that, because that sword was coming at him again. Two strong overhead swings, and then a lunge that nearly gutted him as he leapt back and back, turning each blow aside. The sword flashed in her hands, turning through each attack and never still, now gripped two-handed, now passed to her left or right hand, springing at him from all angles.

  He had turned a dozen such blows before he gained the initiative, ducking under one swing and lashing at her midriff. She swayed aside, and the tip of his claw scraped against armour, then the pommel of the sword hammered down on him, and he caught it with the palm of his free hand, forced it aside and lashed out at her face with the spines of his arms.

  She fell back, not even scratched, allowing him a better look at her. She was some kinden he did not know well but he thought he knew her race, if not her face. The cloak was mostly blown aside, and he could see she was wearing a full suit of armour – but what armour! He had never seen anything like it. Delicate chainmail overlaid with plates of metal that glittered darkly with greens and blues and prismatic metal tones. He nearly lost himself in staring at it, and backed up a dozen steps as she attacked again. Her style was new to him but she was swift even encased in that metal, dancing both with her sword and with him. He met her blade another half-dozen times, taking each blow on his claw or its armoured gauntlet.

  The Spider traitress must have run by now, he realized. He would have to hunt her down again. He did not care. This was special.

  He turned his next parry into an attack, and he was backing her up once more, his claw tracing lines of swift silver in the air, now sparking off the straight blade of her sword, and sometimes drawing the faintest scratch off that glorious armour when she did not move quite soon enough.

  He sought out her face, golden-skinned, composed into perfect concentration, beautiful and fixed as a statue’s.

  He was under her guard for just a moment, lashing beneath her breastplate. He severed a handful of mail links, cut a tear into the arming jacket underneath. Then she struck him with the guard of her blade, almost catching him with the edge. The blow took him in the shoulder Thalric had already burned and he hissed in pain and fell back. He saw her move after him without a thought.

  He found he was grinning, because she was magnificent and he had not fought her like in many years.

  Another series of lightning exchanges. Her blade was double-edged and needle-pointed, moving like sunlight and mirrors in her hands, each attack different from the last,
without pattern or predictability. He shifted and spun with them, letting his reflexes take him where thinking could not keep up, divorcing his mind from the long-trained motions of his body, letting her advances exhaust themselves till he was driving her back in turn. Three times he struck and failed to penetrate her armour, and once he managed a shallow line of blood across her leg beneath the severed links of the mail.

  Her eyes locked his and he knew she would kill him if she could. He would have no choice but to kill her in exchange. It was as it should be and either he would die or he would remember this contest for ever.

  Tisamon found he was now breathing heavily, feeling the skin tight across his chest and side, the healing burn where Thalric had caught him at the fight over the Pride. His seared shoulder throbbed in agony yet it seemed distant and he could ignore it.

  They had reached the endgame. He still had no idea who she was but he would swear now that she was no Wasp agent, for if the Wasps could call on such as this they would rule the world already.

  He fell back ten paces, dropped into a new stance, claw held low but angled upwards. She fell into a stance of her own, with that sword gripped double-handed and high, the point aimed downwards. A perfect complement.

  He waited for her to come at him.

  Whole ages seemed to pass, with the two of them frozen in place, each waiting for the slightest move from the other to set them off. He became aware that the Spider girl had not moved after all, was still cowering back against the wall where he had left her. There was another voyeur, too, a man watching from a doorway. It was all immaterial.

  And then she stepped back out of her stance, as though they had simply been playing at a practice bout and she now had other things to do. Tisamon fought the immediate instinct to do the same, holding his pose, but she just stood there now, looking about her, and he could have killed her at his leisure.