Salute the Dark

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Wait here for me,’ he instructed his escort. It was not the first such order but, so close to the might of the Imperial Army, they finally took him at his word and stayed behind. It would still not save them if the Wasps decided that they should be cut down. Feeling ill and frightened, Stenwold passed the crossed pikes, passed the front ranks of the waiting Wasp army. Drawn up like this, their ranks seemed to go on forever. He saw the heavy infantry, the massed light airborne, the sentinels and artificers. He saw the Auxillians: Mole Crickets, Skaters, Ants, Grasshoppers. He saw the war engines primed to launch shot at his city, or grind forwards towards its walls. It seemed that there was not enough expanse of world to contain all the might of the Second Army, and he walked and walked further until one of the general’s aides collected him and brought him to Tynan’s tent.

  There were a dozen soldiers within, or perhaps they were officers, for Stenwold just saw armoured Wasps. General Tynan himself was seated behind a folding table, with a swathe of bandages about his neck and jaw. He looked pale and stern and unsympathetic. Shackled at his side by chains drawing her to her knees was Arianna.

  Stenwold could not help himself. He ran for her. He heard the clatter of drawn swords, and a single sting-shot crackled over his shoulder as he crouched down beside her. He heard Tynan ordering them all to hold, banging on the table to emphasize his point. He heard all this and did not care, enfolding the trembling prisoner in his arms.

  Oh my poor dear Arianna. He thought suddenly of Sperra, tortured by the Sarnesh. The Wasps had spared his Spider-kinden the questioning at least, and perhaps he could spare her the pikes. She was weeping uncontrollably, and he knew she must be cursing him for having put himself into the enemy’s hands, but he did not care.

  ‘General Maker,’ Tynan began in a wounded, raw voice, ‘your assassin was not successful.’

  Stenwold glared up at him. ‘She is not my assassin. She is mine, though.’

  ‘So I understand.’ The general’s face creased with pain, and he bared his teeth in annoyance. ‘She has spoken of you, and of your wretched city there, while my surgeons were bandaging the wound she dealt me. She has even tried to poison me with your doctrine.’

  Stenwold looked from him to Arianna. A child of Collegium after all. ‘What do you want, General?’

  ‘You know what I want.’

  ‘I cannot give you the city. I have no authority to do so, nor will I betray Collegium.’ Seeing Tynan nod resignedly he hurried on, ‘But I will take her place on the pikes, where all the city can see. Surely that will mean more to you?’

  Arianna cried out, tried to push him away from her, fighting desperately against the chains. He held her in, begging her to be quiet. Through it all, General Tynan stared stonily at him, saving his breath. When at last there was quiet, he merely said, ‘What’s to stop me putting up another pair of pikes?’

  Stenwold stared him in the eye. ‘Nothing, General. Nothing whatsoever. What else do I have that I can give you, though? Not my city. Only me.’

  Tynan stood up, wincing from his injuries. A Fly messenger had come to the tent’s flap, aviator’s goggles pushed up his forehead, and was signalling to the general urgently. ‘If this is your city sallying out, you shall both regret it,’ the general croaked, and pushed himself over to hear the message.

  ‘Oh, Sten, why did you come?’ Arianna demanded quietly.

  ‘And why did you go?’ he countered, raising the ghost of a smile.

  ‘I had to do something.’

  ‘And I see just how close you got.’

  ‘He’s going to kill us both.’

  ‘That seems likely.’ He held her tighter as General Tynan re-entered the tent. His expression was strange, twisted by more than the pain of his wound. Without even looking at Stenwold he beckoned the other Wasps towards him, giving them hurried orders and watching most of them depart. Only then did he glance back at his prisoners.

  Stenwold met his scrutiny, seeing a world of thought move behind it: this was the man who had crushed the Felyal and was well on his way to bringing Collegium to its knees. He was no fool.

  ‘The pikes, sir. It has to be now,’ urged one of the other Wasps. ‘We still have the time.’

  Tynan just stared at Stenwold and Arianna, on and on, while his officers grew impatient.

  ‘Unchain her,’ he rasped at last, and one of them pushed Stenwold roughly away and released Arianna’s bonds. Standing, shaking still, she clung to the Beetle.

  ‘You will return to your city,’ Tynan said, ‘and you will instruct your army to stay within its walls. If the least Fly-kinden emerges from Collegium in our sight, we will destroy it.’

  Stenwold frowned. ‘I don’t . . .’ he started but he was drowned out by the protests of Tynan’s own officers, demanding immediate death for both the prisoners. Tynan simply glared them into silence, and even struck one across the face when he would not be quiet.

  ‘Outside,’ he ordered, and led the way into the morning light. Stenwold emerged after him to see the Imperial Second Army stood down and already about the business of striking their tents with hurried efficiency.

  ‘What in the wastes is going on?’ Stenwold demanded.

  ‘If I did the decent thing and had you and your Spider whore properly excruciated, what would it profit me, save to make me worse enemies that I have not the time to crush?’ Tynan rasped. ‘Perhaps I could even take the city this day, but I can no longer spare the men to hold it. When we meet again, General Maker, you remember what I could have done.’ He blinked, staring at the white walls of Collegium, seeing where his army had blackened and scarred them. ‘Now get your men behind your city gates and take your woman with you.’

  Looking out from the wall now, it seemed impossible to believe that there had been a Wasp army camped here such a short time ago. Stenwold had to admit that the enemy were neat in their leaving.

  It was only days later that they had heard the news from the Empire: the bloody event that had savaged the imperial capital a tenday before Tynan arrived at the gates. The news which had summoned General Tynan, and every other senior Wasp officer, back home.

  He leant his elbows on the wall. ‘I have seen so many sieges and battles,’ he said, ‘and I’m not sorry to have this one cut short.’

  ‘Nor I,’ said the Spider-kinden man beside him.

  ‘But you’re Lord-Martial,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘Surely war is what you do?’

  Teornis chuckled. ‘Purely a ceremonial title, War Master. One I’m happy to be stripped of. I’m merely a man. They’ll put me back in my place when I go home.’

  ‘No hero’s welcome?’

  ‘You don’t know my people very well,’ the Spider pointed out. ‘I have defeated an army and won a war, and brought my people new allies, and if I’m very, very lucky they’ll post me somewhere so far away that nobody can even remember what that place is called. I took risks with my family’s wealth and station, Stenwold, and with the very sovereignty of the Spiderlands. Even though the Wasps have withdrawn from Seldis, my family won’t easily forget. No, I’ll be taking my time in going home to face the music.’

  * * *

  The Collegium airfield was still quite bare. Between the Vekken siege and the war with the Empire, the air trade had yet to regain its hold on the city. There was a chill wind gusting off the sea, and Stenwold wished that he had thought to bring a cloak. Getting old, he thought. Arianna would claim differently, and he would know she was lying and love her for it. She, at least, was one of the people determined to profit from the end of the war. It was a Spider-kinden’s natural instinct he supposed. She was somewhere in the city even now, probably trying to talk people into appointing her a member of the Assembly.

  The broad-shouldered Sarnesh man was waiting for his response. ‘Come on, Master Maker, what do you think?’ At least he was not still saying War Master. The title otherwise showed alarming longevity.

  ‘I don’t know if I can imagine it,’ Stenwold said. ‘A new city in
the Lowlands.’

  ‘I don’t need to imagine it,’ said the big Ant. ‘I’ve seen it already being laid out. All of Salma’s people that survived, and a whole load more from the Foreigners’ Quarter in Sarn. They’re all out digging the foundations right now. They want a free city. A city without a kinden.’ Balkus shook his head in wonder. ‘I’ve never heard of anything like it, but it’s happening. He made the Sarnesh promise, you see, and he made sure everyone else knew it.’ His hands squeezed the shoulders of the frail little Fly-kinden woman with her head nestling against his stomach.

  ‘Who’s running it?’ Stenwold asked.

  ‘Oh, you’d certainly approve. They got a kind of a council of people chosen by all the other people, like you got here. Some old boy, Sfayot, he’s Speaker there – or at least, they call him the steward or some such. Her steward. You know, that colourful girl.’

  Stenwold nodded. He had never really met Grief in Chains, the woman who had become Salma’s lover. ‘How is she taking it?’

  ‘She doesn’t see anyone,’ Balkus replied sombrely. ‘Anyone except her advisors, I mean. They love her even more than the Sarnesh loved their queen. They say they’re doing it all for her – and for him. He was a good man.’

  ‘Yes, yes he was.’

  ‘They’re calling the new place Princep Salmae.’

  Stenwold had to take a moment to fight down the lump in his throat. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t stay there. It sounds quite remarkable.’

  ‘Oh, I’m going back,’ Balkus said, with absolute conviction. ‘I just came to pick up Sperra, then we’re both heading back. After the fight with the Wasps, I reckon I can live that close to Sarn again without them wanting my head, or me wanting to go back, but I’ll never be properly Sarnesh, and . . .’ And Sperra would never go to Sarn again. He did not need to say it. ‘Only I thought, before I went there, I might go with Parops to see them retake Tark from the Wasps. They reckon now, with things being like they are in the Empire, that as soon as the Tarkesh get word that an army’s on the way to relieve them, they’ll rise up and throw the Wasps out. They know nobody’ll be coming to set fire to their city again any time soon.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘Some of them are saying Parops’ll be king, but that’s rubbish. The man’s a commander, no more, no less.’

  The airship that Stenwold had been watching for some time was now slowly descending onto the airfield. It could have been one of two, and he saw that it was the Buoyant Maiden, property of the ever-reliable Jons Allanbridge. The man was here on his last errand for Stenwold before he went off, he claimed, to seek his fortune in the Commonweal. Stenwold started forwards, even as the airfield crew caught the ship’s lines to secure her down.

  Jons himself was shinning down from the deck, but the one person Stenwold really wanted to see just stepped straight from the rails, her wings catching her awkwardly and carrying her down to the ground.

  He wanted to speak, but he had no words.

  Her face said it all in that moment, as he ran towards her. Cheerwell Maker, in the uniform of a Mynan fighter, her sword slung at her side so naturally that he hardly noticed it. Her face was not that of a triumphant warrior but the face of a widow.

  She had known, in that instant at Myna, what had happened. Stenwold would later hear how she had forced Allanbridge to take the Maiden to Tharn, how a Moth woman had flown out to them and curtly told her no more than she had already known: Achaeos the seer, pawn of the Darakyon, was dead. She had begged, she had pleaded with them until they had drawn back their bowstrings and threatened to shoot her, and Allanbridge had been forced to manhandle her back aboard the Maiden. They had not even let her see his body.

  For a moment Che seemed so changed, so stern, that Stenwold ground to a halt, just staring at her. And then she saw him, and she was suddenly his niece again, throwing herself into his arms.

  ‘Uncle Sten!’

  You’re safe. Hammer and Tongs, but you’re safe. He just held her close for as long as she would let him.

  Taki arrived the next day, coasting in over the sea on a fixed-wing that she had flown on a single-legged journey from Porta Mavralis. At the airfield, nobody knew who she was, and they assumed she had come from Egel or Merro, until they had the chance to examine her flier. After that, the mechanics and artificers had a great many questions to ask her. Eventually, by repeating the name enough, she got them to go find Cheerwell Maker.

  ‘They made me an ambassador,’ she explained, as Che studied her, shocked by the changes she found in the woman. The lively spark had gone, replaced by a listlessness. ‘It was the price of the machine. I’m now ambassador to all the Lowlands, because I was the one person that cared a curse about the place.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Che asked her. She had done her best to make herself Stenwold’s right hand, since her return. Her mind was thus kept busy, because it was the only way through the pain.

  Taki shrugged. ‘All I want to do is fly my Esca . . .’

  She had told Che all about the retaking of Solarno, and Che had felt a hollow pang when she heard that she would never see Nero again. Another name to add to the list of the fallen and the missing. It was clear where Taki’s heart had gone, though.

  Che had already spoken at length with one of the airfield artificers and with one of Stenwold’s colleagues at the College. She pursed her lips. ‘I have an idea, while you’re here.’

  Taki cocked an eyebrow at her.

  ‘After the war with the Wasps, everyone is thinking about the future, and it’s clear to everyone that flying machines are part of that. A big part, too. The Wasps took Tark by air. We defended ourselves by air. There are artificers all over the Lowlands just waking up to the fact.’

  Taki nodded, showing finally at least a mote of interest.

  ‘Well then, you Solarnese have been fighting in the air in a way we never did. Maybe it’s because of your Dragonfly neighbours. Here in the Lowlands we’ve been dragging our feet, because fighting on the ground was always enough for the Ant-kinden. So you’re ahead of us, with your designs. Even that fixed-wing you brought here has people excited, and I know that it isn’t . . .’

  Taki nodded. ‘What are you trying to say, Che?’

  ‘What we’ve got here is a city full of very clever artificers,’ Che continued. ‘Any one of them would be more than happy to work with you – to design a new flier for you. That way you’d save them ten years of trial and error. We’re not a naturally airborne race, we Beetles. We badly need what you can teach us.’ An idea struck Che suddenly. ‘And you know what else we need? Pilots. There are people all over the Lowlands who’d come here just to learn.’

  The Fly-kinden was looking slightly alarmed by now. ‘Teaching? I don’t think I . . .’

  ‘Who better?’ Che insisted. ‘At least consider it. Uncle Sten could get you a place at the College. They’d create a whole new post for you, I’d bet on it. So at least think about it.’

  The other woman’s look was still cautious, but at least something had surfaced that hinted at the same Taki she had known in Solarno.

  ‘One other thing,’ Che said slowly. ‘If you’re now ambassador to the Lowlands, I think I already have an official appointment for you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We’re expecting a . . . special guest shortly. His airship’s on its way, due to be here any day now. If you’re here on behalf of Solarno, you should definitely be there to meet him.’

  The airship manoeuvred ponderously above the Collegium airfield. Looking up at it, Taki had to fight the urge to run for her flier, to take to the air and fight. Some quirk of supply had produced the exact same blimp carrier that she remembered so vividly, even down to the four stripe-painted orthopters that roosted beneath its pontoons. She supposed that an important Wasp envoy would inevitably travel well protected, but still . . .

  There were only a few of them waiting there on the field itself, comprising Stenwold’s personal retinue. The great and the good of Collegium, and of Sarn and S
eldis and the Ancient League, had taken their stand closer to the walls of the city, with guards of honour and flags and musicians. For now it was just Stenwold and those few who had walked his road with him, or done his work: namely Arianna, Che, Balkus and Sperra, Parops of Tark, Taki.

  Veterans, Che thought. Survivors. There were too many faces that should have still been there. She knew the same thought must be in everyone’s mind.

  The Wasp airship finally lowered itself to where the ground crew could secure it. The hatch above was already opening as they rushed to wheel the steps over. From this distance, the man who appeared could be any other Wasp-kinden, with his gold-edged black robes left open over his banded armour.

  About half a dozen of them came out, trying to maintain proper military order whilst coming down the steep steps. In the end their leader lost patience and just opened his wings to touch down the faster, so the descent of the others, too heavily armoured to follow suit, became an undignified scramble to catch up with him.

  Stenwold stepped forwards, aware he had wanted it this way, this moment at least, before the ponderous bulk of the Collegium bureaucracy could heave itself into motion.

  ‘Welcome to Collegium,’ he said. ‘Is it . . . Regent, I should call you, or General?’

  ‘Formally it’s Regent-General,’ the Wasp replied, ‘but you can call me Thalric, since I know that titles coming from your mouth wouldn’t mean much anyway.’ He turned to one of his followers. ‘Major Aagen, have the men stand down and our passenger sent for.’ Thalric looked older, Stenwold observed, and he wondered whether it was his visitor’s incarceration by his own people or his being the consort of an Empress that did it.

  ‘Aagen will be our imperial ambassador to Collegium, at least as long as we need one,’ Thalric explained. ‘I named him so for two reasons. He understands machines, so maybe he’ll understand you Beetle-kinden as well, and also he’s an honest man. I’m experimenting with good faith. I don’t know whether I’ll take to it, but we’ll see.’