The Air War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  She faced up to Salthric, a slender, grey young woman against a strong-framed man whose very hands could kill. ‘Esmail,’ she said. ‘I’m here for him.’

  His expression told her that he had been expecting something of the sort. He took a deep breath, and said, ‘No.’

  ‘It was not a request.’

  ‘No, he is at peace here. He does not deserve to have it taken from him,’ Salthric replied, with surprising vehemence.

  ‘You have no understanding of what he is,’ she told him flatly.

  ‘I may only be one of the Apt, but I know,’ he hissed. ‘I understand. I know how much he has lost – to your people. I will not let you have him.’

  They were not alone now. Three other robed Wasps had heard their voices and drifted in: two were middle-aged, one old enough to have retired if he had still been with the army. They looked from her to Salthric warily, not sure what was going on.

  ‘You owe my people,’ Xaraea stated, staring Salthric in the eye. ‘Who brought you here? Who gave you this place? Who let you live unmolested in the mountains? Who taught you our ways so that you could survive?’

  ‘I know all this—’ he started, but she was not done.

  ‘And when the Empire came to Tharn with its machines and soldiers, who was it said nothing about our guests here in the phalanstery?’

  Silence fell, her eyes boring into his.

  ‘The politics of Tharn are very fluid at the moment, Salthric – especially where the Empire is concerned. Who would you want to be the next visitor knocking at your door?’

  In his face was not fear for himself, but fear for everything else there, for the other exiles, his precious order.

  She had no time for respect or pity. ‘Take me to Esmail, if you please.’

  She saw his hands twitch at his sides, fingers clawing as his stinging Art surged within him, and as he fought down generations of Wasp anger. He could kill her, without doubt, but then what? The Broken Sword’s existence here was precarious enough as it was. At last, he turned, storming off into the deeper halls, and she stepped lightly after him.

  There was a little light within, from shafts sunk into the rock, but mostly they relied on torches and lanterns fixed to the walls. She suspected that the older residents no longer needed them, finding their way through the buried rooms by touch and memory. That Salthric took a torch with him was, she suspected, a wretched attempt to warn her target that they were approaching.

  The faces she passed were almost universally Wasp men, but not quite all. Some were women; the luckiest escapees had managed to bring their families away with them. There were a few Ants as well, a Bee-kinden, the grey-blue of a Mynan Beetle. The Broken Sword was for broken soldiers, and they made no hard distinctions as to kinden.

  Esmail, the man she had come to see, was no Wasp, and – despite Salthric’s words – Xaraea was unconvinced that the Broken Sword truly knew what his heritage was.

  Salthric guided her to a doorway hung with a curtain, in the Moth style. For a moment he just glowered at her, then he stalked off, leaving her alone.

  Perhaps he hopes Esmail will kill me, she considered. It was certainly a possibility.

  She pushed aside the curtain and went in. There were two rooms beyond, square boxes of stone one after the other, and Esmail stood in the archway between them, ready to fight her if necessary.

  Xaraea smiled, for she saw her path clearly now. They taught cruelty early, in the Arcanum.

  He was a lean, poised man with a gaunt face and a high forehead, eyes deep as wells, dark enough to defeat even a Moth’s sight. His mouth was a narrow line. Not a Wasp, and yet most would find it hard to say quite what kinden he was. Some halfbreed, perhaps, save that he bore none of the signs of crossed heredity. His hair was the colour of iron, his skin a tan that could have been inherent or just the work of the sun. His hands were empty, no weapon in sight, but he was only a moment away from killing her. He would always, she suspected, be a moment from killing her, or anyone he met, for it was his blood and his nature. Right now he was ready to kill her because he was defending something. Esmail was not alone.

  There was a woman behind him, a Dragonfly-kinden from the Commonweal, and Xaraea wondered idly what her history must have been to bring her here and in this company. At their feet clustered the children. The eldest was a girl of perhaps five, and looking very like her mother. The younger two could have been two or three, surely born together and yet how different! One boy was as much a Dragonfly as his mother, but the other had his father’s features, his father’s entire kinden – as unlike his siblings as a total stranger.

  ‘Ah, look,’ Xaraea said sweetly. ‘One has bred true. Another generation secure, hm?’

  Esmail’s eyes looked loathing at her, but he was scared. Not scared of her but of what she represented, the same threat that had cowed Salthric. Esmail had lived in peace here because Xaraea’s people had arranged and permitted it: not the Moths, not Tharn, nor even the Arcanum, but that small section of it that she served. Skryres loved their secrets, and some of those secrets were men.

  It was a strange quirk of Esmail’s kinden that their offspring were always true-bred, following one parent or the other. If not for that, they would have died out centuries ago, for they had been near-exterminated and the few survivors scattered across the world. The chances of a suitable pair of them meeting and raising children was tiny, and yet the kinden itself clung on through a precarious chain of mixed-kinden matings like Esmail’s.

  ‘We call on you,’ Xaraea told him. ‘The time has come for you to go out into the world once more, Assassin Bug.’

  Oh, there had been a war: one of the bad old wars the Mantis bards sang of, full of blood and dark magic. Hundreds of years before the Apt arose, the Assassin Bug-kinden had launched their campaign to rule the known world by stealth and murder, and the Moths had met them and cast them down. How ironic now that this man would serve the destroyers of his own people.

  And he would serve. He would serve because he had too much to lose if he disobeyed.

  ‘Terms?’ Esmail’s voice was accentless, precise. Of course, his voice could be anything he wanted it to be. He was no ordinary killer. Even amongst his rare and deadly kind, he was special.

  Xaraea herself did not know, of course. She drew the sealed scroll from within her robe, orders intended for Esmail’s eyes only. Her masters did not want to risk some scrying enemy finding that knowledge inside her mind later. All that she did know, she explained to Esmail: ‘You are to go into the Empire. An identity will be arranged for you. From there on, do whatever you are instructed to do.’ Preparing his way had been her own hard work and that of her agents within the Imperial borders. Her masters might be the greater magicians, but she was a modern intelligencer, and she had been successful amongst the Apt, where more sorcerously gifted spies had failed.

  She saw his hands twitch on the scroll. Killing hands, of course. All of his kind possessed Art that killed. On this mission, though, it would be his other talents – his arcane training – that would count. Back in the mists of history, when his kind had been common, men of his particular skills had formed a secret elite amongst his kinden, just as the Skryres were to the Moths. She suspected that he was now unique.

  He did not break the seal. He did not want to expose his wife or his children to whatever task was required of him. He knew also that it would make no difference. Xaraea was not giving him a choice.

  ‘Look after my family while I’m gone,’ he told her.

  Xaraea saw the Dragonfly woman’s face go very still, her hand tightening on his arm. Even the children were silent, staring up at their parents, or wide-eyed at the Moth.

  We all know that you might be ‘gone’ for good, the Moth thought. Such was the taint of his heritage that she could not think of that as a bad thing, for all that he was now her instrument.

  ‘Now go,’ Esmail told her flatly. ‘If I’m to leave here, I’ll make the most of what time I have.’
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  She took a breath, preparing to remind him of his place, of who served whom, but his eyes flashed with sudden danger.

  He will do what he is told, she assured herself, but it was more than she was capable of to stay there with that threat hanging over her.

  There was precious little welcome for Xaraea anywhere within the phalanstery, but she had accomplished what she had come to do, and so she took her leave of Salthric and the other deserters swiftly. If there were sorcerous eyes searching for her, then it was best they did not pinpoint her presence there.

  It was a long walk to Tharn, and the wind was showing no sign of dropping. She might try to fly high, to rise above it all, but there was no guarantee she would not simply be swept miles off course and dropped somewhere hostile once she was too tired to keep to the air. Instead she took the high paths on foot again, putting her shoulder to the wind and pressing on.

  Her only stroke of luck was that she had put well over an hour’s progress between her and the phananstery before they found her. If they wanted to work out where she was travelling from, there were too many paths, too much of the mountain to cover. They would not be able to retrace her footsteps.

  ‘Xaraea!’

  She had not noticed them before their leader called her name. Names were power, of course, and by using hers, he was demonstrating his superiority. Needless to say, she could not have named him in return. He was a lean old Moth wrapped in the elaborate folds of his robe, the sunlight glinting on his metal skullcap. He must have been eighty years, if he was a day, but that was perhaps not so old amongst her people, and especially not for a great magician. She recognized him as a Skryre, but not one of her masters. She was willing to bet he was their fellow within the Arcanum, though. The knife at your back is always keener than the sword before you.

  He had not come alone. Flanking him was a younger pair: a man and a woman in tunics of the same drab hue, each with an arrow nocked to their showbows. Behind them, in armour of dark leather bands, was the pale-faced figure of a Mantis-kinden, a sharp-featured man whose gauntlet sported a metal talon folded back along his arm.

  ‘You have been missed in Tharn. I wonder where you have been in such inclement weather,’ the Skryre addressed her but, when she opened her mouth for a reply, simply held up a hand. ‘Save the lies. Let us assume they have been spoken and dispensed with. I will know where your masters sent you.’

  Strangely, what she felt was a rush of relief. He does not know. Her own masters must have shielded her from this man’s scrying, forcing him to quarter the mountains in search of her.

  Seeing her defiance, the Skryre smiled with a touch of weariness. ‘Listen to me, Xaraea. Your services to Tharn have not gone unnoticed. It is your misfortune to find yourself shackled to the wrong masters. They have cast you away. They care nothing for you save as a tool. I give you this chance to be something more. Come with us. Tell us what has been done. You shall be rewarded. You must know I would not make this offer lightly.’

  She took a step back, feeling the path’s edge at her heels, the yawning abyss of the mountainside beyond. The wind plucked at her clothes, as if sounding out how secure her footing was.

  If they took her, they would know it all. She could keep no secrets from a skilled magician. If she held out and defied him enough, he would simply bring his strength of will and magical craft to bear on her and crush her mind like an egg in order to get at what was within. She had witnessed it. She herself had held the victim down.

  There was no signal, but abruptly the two archers were airborne, the man casting his bow aside. The wind was her friend now, though, as it battled with them for control of the air, and so she stepped back and let her wings catch her.

  An arrow sung past her, and she had a glimpse of the Mantis rushing forward. They would catch her at any moment. She could not evade two of them in the air for long, and if the Mantis could fly . . .

  She had a moment of complete understanding, as if the wind stepped back to grant it to her. She felt bitterly ill-used, and grief for what must happen.

  She let her wings take her down, smashing through the wind that tried to slow her, faster and faster, as fast as falling and then faster still. The others were grasping out for her ankles, she knew. They were pushing themselves just as hard as she was. They knew she must pull up from her dive, and then they would have her, crashing into her at speed, wrestling her to a halt, willing to chance her dagger or her nails. They were as loyal and devoted as she.

  But not quite so determined, she guessed.

  Think well of me, masters. They had made it very clear to her indeed: The others must not know.

  They broke away, driven to the limits of their courage. Had they been less fierce in their pursuit, she might have salvaged something, though the effort of wrenching from her breakneck descent might have crippled her in any event. They had kept their nerve to the very last moment, however. She had no time.

  There was never enough time.

  The rocks met her like a lover.

  Elsewhere, Esmail packed what few possessions he had: a change of clothes folded with a care that made him smile painfully, dry rations, an Imperial-issue waterskin Salthric had gifted him. A bedroll likewise. Paper, ink and a few chitin pens. No weapons, but then he had little need of them.

  He stowed everything in his old canvas satchel, a calming ritual recalled from his youth when he had been a man with a dozen masters, going wherever the gold might lead him but taking the work for the love of it, the craft of it. The Arcanum had found its uses for him, but so had so many others.

  A stupid life. A pointless life. Did he feel the thrill of it now, calling from his memories, the faint old clarion call to war?

  He did not. If he had died an old man, grandchildren at his bedside, he would have counted it a life well spent, his earlier escapades just an aberration best forgotten. But now they were calling him back to it, and could he honestly say he was surprised? The Moths would hardly have sheltered him here out of human kindness. They possessed no such thing, and certainly not towards him.

  Alone and unobserved, he took the Moth woman’s scroll up and cracked the seal. There was a brief summary of where he must go, who his contact would be, what passwords to use: the familiar information of any mundane spymaster. After that, however, came his orders, with a stern exhortation to memorize and then destroy them.

  Infiltrate the Rekef and the Imperial court.

  Investigate the nature of the Empress and her intentions.

  Kill her.

  Four

  The Antspider was stepping into the ring of the Prowess Forum, in her first showing at a formal contest, and a murmur of interest passed through the spectators.

  The Master Armsman officiating was a sour-natured Beetle-kinden named Corog Breaker, who had been souring still further throughout the proceedings. He held out the swords, wood sheathed in bronze, and she took one lightly and her opponent, a sturdy Beetle youth, took the other. Having second choice, he looked at her suspiciously, as though she had somehow tampered with the sword she had left him, but that was the price of having a reputation.

  She was a lean, compact woman with snow-pale skin whose tan mottling could, with a dash of cosmetics, be formed into striking darts at her brow and cheekbones. She presented a most martial image, her features fierce, pale hair cut short as a soldier’s, her stance making the blade in her hand a natural part of her, the point into which the rest of her was focused. In contrast, the Beetle opposite her held his sword first like a hammer and then, as she directed her weapon at him, like a shield.

  The Prowess Forum was more popular now than ever before. The College’s students had lived through war with Vek and the Empire, so that matters martial were on everyone’s mind. Four new departments had been created on the back of the war, and every student was expected to be able to acquit him- or herself with a sword. The Apt had a chance to learn the crossbow and the snapbow as well, training alongside Collegium’s Merchant Companies.r />
  ‘Salute the book!’ Corog Breaker growled, and the two of them duly raised their blades to the Forum’s emblem – a brass sword within the open pages of a wooden tome – which had become the city’s own martial symbol during the war.

  ‘Distance,’ the Armsman snapped. This instruction was new, born from a combination of the pastime’s popularity and peacetime’s renewed drive amongst the sponsoring magnates to count victories over sportsmanship. There had been, a half-year ago, a spate of unsatisfactory contests, with one duellist rushing the other in a frantic exchange of blows. The difficulty of adjudication had led to the introduction of a more formal start. The Antspider and her rival touched blade points, arms extended, each out of reach of the other, each theoretically just as ready.

  ‘Clock!’ called Breaker, and in that moment’s echo she struck, sword nipping past her enemy’s to poke him in the upper arm. The Beetle-kinden swore, then put his hand to his mouth and looked guiltily at the Master Armsman.

  Breaker’s eyes flicked suspiciously between them. ‘First strike to the halfbreed,’ he said, with heavy disgust on that last word. ‘Second pass. Distance! Clock!’

  And she was in again, a seemingly impossible lunge that caught the Beetle youth in his already bruised arm, making him drop his sword with a yelp. The commentary amongst the spectators was now running rife. The Antspider had not even moved her feet, only leant in a little, weight on the front foot ready for a quick retreat.

  She gave Breaker a silent count of twenty before suggesting, in a breach of manners beyond enduring, ‘If you wish, I’ll play the point again, Master Breaker.’ She needed to win, and her two team-mates needed to win as well, because the fourth of their number was inexplicably absent. It was just possible, at that point, that she could talk Breaker into simply declaring that bout a lost match, rather than ruling that their team had forfeited, whereupon they would win the contest three–one. The four of them had worked very hard indeed even to get as far as being allowed to compete.