Salute the Dark (22 page)

Otran’s machine pressed eastwards, and she went with it. His guards were suspicious of her, never letting her alone with the tax-money, though they cared not at all if she was left alone
with Otran.

In her mind she was trying to imagine what she could say to that bleak-faced killer from the arena that would recall her father to her. Mantis pride! It was something she had not inherited and
it was something she could not understand.

At night, when not closeted with Otran, she took out Tisamon’s brooch – the sword and the circle – and tried to find in it some clue to his present state of mind.

She went by the name of Wen, and he called himself Jemeyn: both Solarnese of the Path of Jade faction and currently in hiding, but not so well that Nero had not been able to
track them down.

Jemeyn fancied himself as a duellist. He was all for action, so long as it was the Satin Trail’s people he was leading into battle. The Path of Jade had suffered badly under the Wasp
administration, ever since some of their members had set up a Corta-in-exile out of Porta Mavralis. A dozen of the Path’s high-rankers had since been arrested, and those arrested by the Wasps
were usually never seen again. Popular rumour, which Nero guessed was well founded, said that such prisoners were sent north, past Toek, and into slavery.

Wen, on the other hand, was a long-term thinker. At first Nero had been worried that her ‘long-term’ would see them all dead of natural causes before the time seemed right to her to
act. He then saw that she was exaggerating her stance simply to keep Jemeyn in check, and quite soon Nero and Wen were doing business. She was short for a Solarnese and darker than most, looking
more like a Lowlander Beetle-kinden. When he explained that there was a move afoot, abroad, to liberate Solarno, and that she should start stockpiling arms and recruiting people to use them, she
seemed confident enough that she could do it.

They had met in the back room of a singularly low dive in the alleys around the murkier end of the Solarno docks. After Wen and Jemeyn had left, Nero sat with his harsh wine half drunk and
thought about his next move. He had made his contacts with Taki’s old employer Genissa and some others of the Satin Trail, who were at least paying lip-service to the Wasps and their Crystal
Standard allies, and had avoided the worst of the persecution. Now he had the Jade under his belt, but Taki had given him more names to look out for: duelling circles, trade guilds, a half-dozen
little unofficial collaborations that could be of use.

There was a clearing of someone’s throat and Nero jumped up sharply, ending with his feet on the table, ready to bolt. He saw a lean, russet-haired man leaning nonchalantly in the doorway,
a baldric of throwing daggers slung across his belt. He was not of any particular kinden that Nero could name by sight, but Nero knew him nonetheless from one brief glimpse in the Venodor, and from
Che’s detailed description.

He found that his hand had dropped to his knife-hilt. The man in the doorway smiled slightly, still lounging in his unconcerned way.

‘Do you think that you could?’ he asked.

‘I think that I’d try.’ Nero swallowed. ‘I know you. You’re Cesta the assassin.’

‘Full marks. Top of the class.’

‘You’re doing the Wasps’ work now, are you?’ Nero tensed, ready to put his Fly-kinden reflexes to the test against the flash of a thrown blade.

‘No, I am not,’ said Cesta. ‘You, however, should be more careful. You’ve been ringing bells all over the city, Sieur Nero.’

‘Is that right?’ Nero ostentatiously took his hand from his hilt, and dropped himself down to the floor. ‘And why should you care, Master Cesta? Che told me all she knew about
you, and it makes no sense to me.’

He made to leave, and Cesta stood graciously aside for him, falling into step as they crossed the darkened taproom beyond.

‘I don’t like the Wasps, Sieur Nero,’ Cesta said. ‘I don’t ask much out of life, less than most in fact. I don’t ask for a happy home or a family, even a
people to belong to, those things that most take for granted. All I ask is a certain freedom.’

Nero paused at the door. ‘Freedom to ply your trade,’ he suggested pointedly.

‘Yes, but also just freedom. Freedom to live, to go where I want, to live how I want. The Wasps would stop that, for the Wasps mean control and laws. I could be a killer for the Wasps,
Sieur Nero, but I would be their man if I did so. Bella Cheerwell was right about that. I am nobody’s man. I am
free
.’

Nero pushed open the door and stopped sharp, his heart plunging. After a moment he swore.

There were three dead Solarnese there, all wearing the blue sashes of the Crystal Standard. Beyond them there lay half a dozen Wasp soldiers, just as dead. Nero glanced back at Cesta, who
remained expressionless.

‘As I said, you should be more careful,’ the assassin told him. ‘Now, having presented my credentials, what else can I do for you and your allies?’

‘My allies . . .’ Nero scowled at him. ‘My allies don’t like you, assassin.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Cesta’s smile was sad and genuine. ‘And where is the delectable te Schola Taki-Amre?’ At Nero’s stubborn silence, his smile grew. ‘You
don’t need to answer, Sieur Nero. I can guess it.’

Chasme was like a dark boil on the south coast of the Exalsee. It was a perpetual blight on the Solarnese, who often spoke of taking a fleet and putting an end to it. Spider
merchants from Porta Mavralis said the same, yet nobody did anything about it. The truth was there were plenty of Spider-kinden and Solarnese who had interests in the place. Chasme was all about
money.

It was not quite a city. For that it was too small. It was a stopping point for those heading around the Exalsee: a cluster of heavy, humpbacked buildings, some built on sunken pilings on the
land itself, and others on pontoons out to sea. Some of the buildings belonged to merchants and others to labourers, but Chasme was known primarily as a town of foundries. They churned out weapons
and armour, and machines most of all. Chasme was the engine that provided flying machines and pilots to the Inapt Dragonflies of Princep Exilla, and to pirates and air-brigands all over the
Exalsee. Chasme was the gateway for the wealth of the unexplored south, which arrived as slaves and carapaces and precious metals. Chasme was a rogue city, without law or morals, ruled by a handful
of fantastically wealthy renegades.

Chasme was also beyond Wasp reach, for now at least, and that was why Taki had chosen it. Chasme, despite so many decades of antipathy, suddenly found itself in common cause with Solarno. Nobody
wanted to see the Empire rooted on the Exalsee.

The people of Chasme were a baffling mongrel mixture. More than half of the citizens were halfbreeds drawn from a welter of Fly, Spider, Soldier Beetle, Dragonfly, Bee and a dozen other kinden.
Amidst all that confusion, in a bar dug underneath one of the automotive factories, Taki’s little assembly blended in perfectly.

Here were her pilots, her friends and her adversaries: all that she might consider her peers. She sat them around three tables hauled in close together, and waited until they all had received
drinks and had finished jockeying with each other for position and status.

Here then were the Solarnese: Niamedh, her expression made more stern by her shorn hair and eyepatch, also the bulky Scobraan in his gold-winged breastplate, together with a handful of other
free aviators. Here was te Frenna, the only other Fly-kinden present, her face still bandaged from the glancing heat of a Wasp sting. Here were the local Chasme mercenary pilots, all of them tough
and ruthless men and women: among them the taciturn half-breed known as the Creev and the infamous pirate Hawkmoth, an exiled Bee-kinden whose orthopter,
Bleakness
, was known across the
whole Exalsee. Here were a dozen beast-riders out of Princep, with the arrogant and painted Drevane Sae at their head, a gathering of barbaric splendour in wooden armour, beads and tattoos.

‘It’s no secret why we’re here,’ Taki announced, as soon as they were finally settled.

‘Solarno needs bailing out,’ said the man called Hawkmoth. He was a vicious-looking specimen, almost as small as a Fly-kinden, bald and leathery with a fierce forked beard.
‘But what do most of us owe Solarno?’

Taki grinned at him, matching fierce for fierce. ‘Oh, if you really thought that, Sieur Hawkmoth, you’d not be here. You and I know each other: we have crossed paths before. Still,
if you cannot see there is now an enemy greater than all of us, then there’s no point me staying longer.’

Some of the Dragonflies scoffed at that, and Scobraan stood up angrily, his big hands rocking the table. Taki had to shout at all of them to shut their mouths and just
listen
to her.

‘All right, you want me to shame you with the facts? I will then,’ she told them. ‘All right, Sieur Hawkmoth, let’s look at the freebooters of the Exalsee, shall we? Why
are you still free and living, Sieur?’

‘I’m a better pilot that any man or woman here, is why,’ Hawkmoth growled.

‘And you never sleep? And your flier never needs to land? No, you’re free because the Exalsee is so big, and those who would hunt you down can never quite net you in. Do you think
the Wasps would seriously want for men and flying machines, Sieur? Attack one of their ships or fliers and they’d search every island in the Exalsee until they had rooted you out of every
possible hiding place – and once they’re established there will
be
no ship or flier that is not flying their flag! And you know it, and that’s why you’re
here.’

Hawkmoth glowered at her for a moment, and then nodded slowly.

‘And you warriors of Princep Exilla,’ Taki went on, ‘you must see that your sovereignty’s days are numbered. What do you think the Wasps will do, on finding a city of
Dragonfly-kinden on their southern doorstep? The Lowlander Cheerwell Maker once told me something, she told me about the Twelve-Year War – a conflict between the Wasps and your
kinden.’

‘Those we left centuries ago,’ Drevane Sae said dismissively. ‘Those in the north. They are not our people any more.’

‘
The Wasps won’t care
,’ Taki insisted. ‘You are still their enemies. In fact, we’re
all
their enemies. And as for Chasme itself? You tell me,
Creev.’

The Creev inclined his head. ‘They will either take us over or wipe us out.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’ Drevane Sae asked harshly.

‘Drive the Wasps from Solarno,’ Niamedh replied instantly, standing up.

‘So easily said? If it is so easy, then they are not a threat!’ Hawkmoth snapped. ‘If they are as you claim, it is like trying to hold back a tide. It cannot be
done.’

‘Listen to me!’ Taki said again. ‘I have travelled a long way west – further than anyone present here, believe me. I have flown past Porta Mavralis to lands that half of
you haven’t even heard of, but where they are
also
fighting the Wasps. I have come back in the company of a Spiderlands lord who, too, is looking to fight the Wasps. I even have a few
hundred Spiderlands mercenaries stashed ready for my signal. The problem is that none of you, not one of you, has any sense of the world beyond the Exalsee. You don’t understand that the
world – the whole wasting world – has been pulled into this war.’

She realized that, for the first time, they were absolutely, genuinely silent.

‘The Wasp invasion of Solarno is nothing, in the eyes of their Empire,’ she continued softly. ‘They reacted like a greedy child reaching out for something bright, for no other
reason than because it is there. North and west of here, there are Wasp armies tens of thousands strong currently marching on other lands. The Wasps aim to conquer the whole world, a city at a
time, so they are always fighting. And right now they are fighting a greater, stronger enemy than they have faced before, so their men, their machines and resources, are more and more being
committed to this larger fight. If Solarno sits still under her shackles, then she shall remain a slave forever, and the Exalsee with her, but if she rises
now
, if we come to her aid
now
, then perhaps we shall throw the enemy off – because the Wasps have their swords primarily directed elsewhere. Otherwise we lose our chance, and the Exalsee shall become an
imperial province, city by city, and every one of us will be lost even to the histories.’

‘I commit myself to nothing,’ said Drevane Sae, and then, ‘but what do you ask?’

‘I ask for every flier that can be spared,’ Taki said. ‘Even now I have insurrection being stirred up in Solarno, and I have Spiderlands troops ready to march. But I need
orthopters, heliopters, fixed-wings, whatever you can give – all of you. From the Principality to the free corsairs of the Exalsee, I need you. I need you, every one.’

She realized that she was standing upright to her full minuscule height, and that they were all listening to her as though this was something entirely reasonable and necessary she was asking
from them, and the responsibility of it scared her half to death.

It was raining in Solarno, a light, lukewarm drizzle coming in off the Exalsee and clouding the streets with mist. Late in the evening, the setting sun was striking rainbows
far off over the water, and Nero was hurrying. The Wasp-kinden had imposed a curfew now, and for the next tenday. They were turning the screws of their power, constantly raising the pressure in the
city as if to see what steam might escape.

We’ll show them steam.
But Nero himself was not a fighter by choice, and this entire plan was looking more and more like a wild gamble.

He ducked past an imperial patrol, making himself just one more Fly-kinden in a city full of them, worse dressed than most and nothing remarkable. His path took him down an alley, and then he
went straight up, flying along the vertical wall, into a second-storey window carelessly left unshuttered.

Jemeyn and Wen, the resistance fighters, were already there. Wen studied him, eyes hooded, from her seat in the corner. Jemeyn had been pacing the floor.