‘A good artificer makes his plans carefully in advance,’ Drephos reproached him. ‘He does not need to come back and finish up, Totho.’
‘How . . . ?’
‘I watched. Perhaps you forget that for me it is never dark. I watched and saw quite clearly. You came out with the girl, you let her loose. I watched because I thought it likely you might do so. Kaszaat warned me that you were acting strangely, and she was right. And so I came to see what else you might have been up to down here.’ He raised an enquiring eyebrow and moved closer. ‘So, what else have you done?’
‘Nothing,’ Totho stammered. Drephos was still advancing on him, but he knew he himself was the stronger, and the master artificer was not even armed.
‘She . . . she was my past, and I found I could not cut it loose so easily.’
Drephos laid his gauntleted hand on Totho’s shoulder. ‘And what else have you done? How else have you betrayed me?’ His voice was very soft, not angry, not even sad.
‘I swear—’
Drephos gripped him by the shoulder and Totho cried out in pain as the narrow fingers dug like pincers into his flesh. His entire arm was instantly locked, so he grasped Drephos’s wrist with his other hand and tried to pry it free. To his horror there was no movement at all, only an inexorable tightening of Drephos’s grasp.
‘What else, Totho?’ Drephos asked, as he still struggled and tugged. ‘Is there an explosive, perhaps? An incendiary planted? Or were you to kill me? Kill the general? Tell me, Totho. I won’t be angry, I promise.’
Totho was now whimpering, feeling the bones of his shoulder grind. Unable to shift those imprisoning fingers he slammed his hand up against Drephos’s elbow as hard as he could.
He struck metal, as hard and solid as any armour. With ragged breath he dragged at the sleeve of the man’s robe, until the shoulder seam gave way and he bared Drephos’s entire arm.
It was metal, all of it, not just armoured but an arm entirely of metal, and he could only guess at the delicacy of the mechanisms within that gave it life. Even in the extremity of his pain, something stirred in him at the sight, the artificer’s instinct in him that could never quite be denied.
‘It was a savage accident,’ Drephos explained conversationally. ‘And worse was having to devise this replacement one-handed. But I see you like it. I’m glad.’
He pushed, and Totho, all strength gone from him, fell back against the wooden bars. ‘Tell me what you have done,’ Drephos said. ‘I am a Moth, at least partly, and I can read it from your face. What is it you have done?’
‘I gave her the plans,’ Totho gasped, all resistance ebbing out of him. ‘The plans for the snapbow.’
Drephos stared at him for a second. And he laughed. Laughed and laughed and let go his grip so that Totho slid down the bars to the floor. And still Drephos laughed and laughed as his apprentice looked up at him, bewildered.
‘Oh that’s good!’ Drephos got out. ‘That’s very good. And I suppose you thought it was young love that made you do it, or nostalgia, or any of those other things that we’ll soon breed out of you! My dear boy, you gave her the plans, did you? Why that’s excellent!’
‘What do you mean?’ Totho demanded. His shoulder was still agony, but at least he could move the arm. Nothing was broken.
‘Don’t you understand?’ Drephos crouched before him. ‘What will they do with the plans? Why, they’ll build snapbows of their own. Can you imagine the look on Malkan’s face when he finds out they have his new secret weapon?’
‘This is just to spite the generals?’ Totho asked, baffled.
‘But what will the generals do, Totho, when that comes to pass? Who will they come to, and what will they ask?’
‘They’ll come to you,’ said Totho slowly, ‘and they’ll ask you to . . .’
‘Build them something even better!’ Drephos crowed. ‘And the science advances one more step. Oh, you may have thought you had all kinds of airy motives, Totho, but in your heart you’re an artificer. You’re a man of progress just like I am. How hard would it have been for me, myself, to get that weapon into the hands of the enemy? Just think how much time you’ve saved me. The war goes on, Totho, back and forth, year to year, and how much better for us two that it does. If the Empire ever wins outright then will it continue to let us use its foundries and its workshops? Will it lend us further resources for our work?’ He then took Totho by the unhurt shoulder and hauled him to his feet. ‘Do you bind yourself to me, boy, truly? Once before I thought I’d read truth in your face, but I can be deceived.’
One last chance, Totho realized, for him to stand against the bloody flood, to reject the metal and choose the meat – to do something Che would be proud of.
‘I am yours,’ he said soberly. ‘I bind myself to you.’
Che had set off walking away from the camp and not stopped until dawn began to colour the eastern sky. She discovered she had been heading a little east of south. It occurred to her that she had no idea where she was, and that the food and water Totho had scavenged for her would not last for very long. The one building she came across was a barren shack that was possibly once some rich man’s hunting lodge, but it had been picked bare already.
She now had a problem, and realized that she should have fled the camp westwards along the rail line, which would have led her infallibly to the gates of Sarn and to safety. Instead, she would have to work her way northwards as best she could, and hope to encounter the rails again. Northwards and westwards, then, so that she did not simply walk straight back into the Wasp camp. And, even so, they would have scouts out, so she would camp out during the height of the day, and then walk all night, trusting to her Art to keep her eyes sharp.
For now, she simply trudged on until the sun became too hot, and then she rested, and in the evening she trudged on again, looking always for a sign of the rails ahead of her, like the cut or rise of the railside bankings. But the rugged, scrubby terrain went on endlessly, punctuated only by knots of trees wherever water had gathered beneath the earth, or the ravaged plots of ploughed farmland when the ground became fertile enough. She found no buildings that had not been systematically sacked and burned, which told her she was still too near to the Wasp camp, wherever it was, for comfort.
Towards dusk, she found a stream that had cut a channel through the land, capable of hiding her from enemy eyes. It was cooler, too, and edged with green that was a welcome change from the drylands that extended between Helleron and the woods of Etheryon. Its course ran too straight to be natural, and the land either side was flat and had obviously once known the plough, but she could not tell how long ago, or whose hands had refashioned the soil here.
She was still heading along the channel when she heard something buzz overhead like a very fast-moving insect. There had been a knife amongst Totho’s gifts and she seized it in her hand, trying to crouch into some kind of martial position, but she could see no one, certainly nobody in black and gold armour.
She was just thinking that perhaps it was an insect after all, when something struck the side of her head in a blaze of pain and she dropped face-first into the stream.
When Che recovered, she found her wrists and ankles bound with strips of cloth torn from her own clothing – not the uniform tunic she still wore, but her real clothes that had been in the sack, and were now spread out with the rest of its contents around an almost smokeless fire. A low, wide tent had been pitched beside a pool that the stream flowed into, and then out of, on its artificial course.
Some bandit or wanderer, she guessed. I can promise a reward. I can probably make them be reasonable.
And then she heard a footstep and turned, and almost cried out in dismay, for he was a Wasp – not in uniform, but a Wasp with a scarred face, in a long leather coat, coming with a string of fish in one hand and eyeing her speculatively.
It had been something as commonplace as a slingshot that had brought her down, a stone aimed at her from the undergrowth.
His n
ame was Gaved and he was obviously no ordinary Wasp as Che was used to them. No uniform and no rank, and he had all the marks of a loner about him. When she eventually questioned him about what he did, he told her he hunted men and women for a living.
‘And now I’ve caught you,’ he said, ‘a nice, plump deserter. Well, it’s about time my luck changed. I was robbed by a bastard Spider-kinden and I’m still on his trail, but I reckon I can now make some pocket money by returning you to your masters.’
‘If it’s money you want, if you get me to Collegium . . .’
‘Girl, I’ve just come from Collegium. I’m not even sure it’s still standing by now.’
‘It is, the . . .’
‘And anyway,’ he said, speaking over her, ‘I’ve got no wish to retrace my steps, not with my Spider friend still out there hoping to claim my share of the loot. So, if it’s all right with you I’ll just hand you in and go about my business.’
‘They’ll kill me.’
‘They’ll whip you, certainly,’ he said unsympathetically. ‘Maybe they’ll kill you too, if they want to make an example, but probably you’ll just get a whipping, an Auxillian abandoning her post. Why not tell them you got lost?’
‘I’m not a deserter,’ she protested. ‘I’m not an Auxillian.’ She fell silent, knowing that whatever she said could only make her position worse. The same understanding was in his eyes, too.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, with a shrug. ‘A man’s got to make a living, and it’s not easy sometimes.’
He had taken her into his tent, come nightfall, with the fire left to burn itself out by the opening, and she had assumed he would take advantage of her. Instead he just made sure she was tied too tight to escape, and then lay down at whatever distance from her the tent would allow. She realized that in some perverse feeling of concern he had brought her inside to keep her warm.
‘Please,’ she addressed his back. ‘I promise you more money than the Wasps will pay. Just take me to Sarn. Sarn can’t be too far out of your way.’
‘Don’t make me gag you,’ was his only reply.
Gaved woke with the dawn, as he always did. It was good to be travelling alone and in the wilds. It had been fun going along with Phin for a time, but in the end other people tended to crowd him.
And yet here I am, so self-sufficient I’m doing the Empire’s work still. The cursed Spider, Scylis, had seen right through his vaunted independence, and he could do without some mercenary telling him things he already knew.
He remembered his last sight of Phin, sprawled dead with a nailbow shot straight through her. She had deserved better than that, but then so did most people who died.
The girl was awake and staring at him and obviously about to start pleading for her life again. That would only depress him. ‘I’m going out to water the place,’ he told her, ‘but I’ll be watching, and if you make a move it won’t be a stone this time, but a sting, you understand?’
She nodded, and he went outside into the growing sunlight, smiling to greet it, as he always did. Then the smile slipped and he growled, ‘Who in the wastes are all of you?’
Che watched the Wasp re-enter, with an odd expression on his face. He had a small knife in one hand, and she opened her mouth to scream, but he said, just above a whisper, ‘Now I’m going to cut you free. No sudden moves, all right?’
The knife sawed through the bonds at her ankles, and then at her wrists, and a moment later he backed out of the tent again, and she saw a flash of reflected sunlight as he cast the knife point-first into the ground.
She crawled cautiously out after him and saw that they were not alone, that there were at least a dozen other people crouching or standing around the tent. They had swords and bows and crossbows, and they came from all kinden, and they distinctly had the look of the bandit about them.
‘Well,’ Gaved said. ‘I suppose she’s yours now.’
‘Don’t move, Wasp. We’ve not done with you,’ said one of the bandits – and a moment later Che was running forward, throwing herself into his arms with a cry of joy, because under the grime and the tarnished cuirass and the rough clothing was none other than Prince Salme Dien, who she thought she would never see again.
‘Salma! How can you be here? How can it be you?’
‘I had some help in finding you,’ he replied, embracing her gently, and glanced back towards one of his own people who was muffled in a cloak. Then the hood was pushed back to reveal that the face beneath was bright and rainbow-hued.
‘You found her?’
‘And then she found me,’ Salma confirmed. He looked at Gaved the Wasp. ‘Did this man hurt you?’
Gaved visibly tensed, knowing that her answer would seal his fate.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing like that at all.’
‘Then pack up your tent, Master Wasp. You’re coming with us.’ He turned again to his followers. ‘Phalmes?’
A tough-looking Mynan stepped forwards. ‘Yes, chief?’
‘We’re heading back for camp, and then I want a messenger sent to Collegium.’
Che then thought about the plans that Totho had given her, the plans still concealed inside her tunic.
The war was far from over.
Table of Contents
Cover
Begin reading
Author biography
Title page
Copyright page
Table of Contents
Dedication page
Acknowledgements
Map
Prologue
Glossary
Dragonfly Falling Page 64