Salute the Dark (23 page)

‘Where is everyone else?’ Nero demanded. ‘What’s gone wrong?’

‘Mostly downstairs,’ Wen explained briefly, and added, ‘Nothing is wrong.’

‘
You
might say say nothing,’ Jemeyn snapped at her, ‘but three of my men were arrested only today. Clearly we’ve been compromised—’

‘They were arrested while agitating against the Wasps, what else do you expect?’ Wen shot back angrily.

‘Can they lead the Wasps to you if interrogated?’ Nero asked nervously.

‘I don’t think so. The only place they know, I’m not there any more,’ Jemeyn said, and would have said more had there not been footsteps coming up the stone stairs. Nero
shifted closer to the window just in case, but relaxed when he saw Taki enter. She spared a glance for the two resistance fighters, and then looked at Nero.

‘Not dead yet?’

He gave her a smile and it was returned. ‘If you want me to stop saving your city, you can ask any time.’

A Spider-kinden had slipped in with Taki, and Nero recognized her as Odyssa, Teornis’ agent. Alongside her was a heavily built halfbreed who presumably must be one of the free pilots of
the Exalsee.

‘We’re all here?’ Taki enquired.

‘Not quite,’ Nero said. ‘I was expecting someone from the reds at least.’

‘They’re lying low, trying to get the Wasps to like them,’ Jemeyn said disgustedly.

‘We can’t do this without them,’ Nero pointed out. ‘We just haven’t got the numbers.’

‘If it kicks off,’ Wen decided, ‘they’ll join in. They just won’t help us start it.’

‘That’s a shaky place to stand,’ he said, looking to Taki for support.

‘For what it’s worth, I’ll get a message to Domina Genissa. I think the Satin Trail will rise,’ she said.

‘We’re all on the wire if they don’t,’ Nero insisted.

Taki nodded, shrugged. He was right but what could they do?

‘In four days’ time the Wasps will stamp their image on this city,’ Wen explained. ‘They’re doing it in proper Solarnese style: a full ceremony right out in front
of everyone. They’re testing our boundaries. If they can perform their inauguration without trouble and get their governor installed, they’ll know we’ll stay beaten.’

‘So we strike later?’ Nero said. There was a silence; he looked from face to face. ‘What, now?’

‘You’re not Solarnese,’ Taki said.

He gave her an aggrieved look. ‘I’ve been risking my skin for Solarno, though.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’

‘Solarnese pride,’ said the big halfbreed. ‘That’s what she means. The Wasps know their business. Wait until it’s done, and no one will follow your flag.’

‘So . . .’ Nero took stock. ‘You’re saying now that the Wasps will be expecting trouble at the inauguration, and we should give it to them.’

It was indeed what they were saying. He shared a glance with Odyssa, and saw that she was as unhappy about this as he was.

‘There will be soldiers there, most of the garrison and—’ he started.

‘Precisely,’ interrupted Wen. ‘Which means that, if we can strike hard enough, we’ll finish them then and there.’

‘If,’ Nero echoed. ‘
If.
We’re going to need something pretty special to deal with that kind of opposition.’

‘I have pilots and machines,’ Taki said. ‘We have Spider troops and mercenaries ready to land at the docks. We have the resistance inside the city.’

‘Most of whom you
hope
will join you,’ Nero pointed out.

‘We can cut and cut at the Wasps forever, and that means they’ll just tighten their grip,’ Taki said, annoyed with him now. ‘The more time we give them, the deeper
they’ll dig in. Your Lowlands is fighting them
now
, but for how long? If Solarno is to free itself, we have to break the chains before they can add any new ones.’

They were all in agreement. Nero ground his teeth. ‘If that’s the way you want to play it,’ he said, reluctantly. ‘We’ll need a signal . . .’ Before he could
be pelted with their ideas on the subject, he raised a hand. ‘I’ll arrange the signal. Leave it to me.’

‘What will it be?’ Wen asked him.

‘Well, if I can’t arrange anything else, it’ll be me baring my buttocks and mooning the new governor. But let me work on it,’ he told them.

It got a smile out of Taki, and it was almost worthwhile, just for that.

When they had gone, he sat himself on the floor, as Fly-kinden from his part of the world were used to, and thought. After a while he said loudly, ‘You might as well come in now. I’m
sure you heard it all.’

Cesta came into the room, head first through the window. He must have been crouching outside in the shadow of the eaves. With a lazy grace he dropped to the floor.

‘They’re right, you know,’ he said, ‘about the timing. I know this city. Let the Wasps have their ceremony, and any resistance will drain away. They’re all about
fierce action and regret in this city.’

Nero gazed at him for a long time. Eventually he said, ‘I have no right to ask anything of you.’

Cesta nodded. ‘That’s true. So don’t.’ He wore a small smile. ‘What will you do if you win, Nero? What if the Empire is beaten back on all sides, and Solarno is
saved? Back to the Lowlands with you, then?’

‘I’m a traveller,’ Nero said. ‘There’s a whole world out there. I’ll find somewhere.’

Cesta shrugged. ‘Perhaps the Lowlands has need of another assassin.’ His smile twisted. ‘You’ll have your signal, Nero, so don’t you worry. It will be
unmistakable.’

It was a long road to Szar, travelling only at the dragging pace of the machine wagons. Drephos’ mobile workshops, his mechanisms and tools, pieces and parts, furnaces
and refineries, had all been carefully packed into a convoy of a dozen great hauling automotives. The master artificer himself spent the time cursing the lack of rails, and fitfully designing a
rail-laying automotive that would allow him to go anywhere, with his entire surroundings, as fast as he pleased.

His staff received less preferential treatment than his working materials. A single automotive was assigned to carry them, and the huge Mole Cricket, Big Greyv, took up most of that. The others
perched on top, or moved between the wagons, or dropped back and conversed with the soldiers who were escorting them.

Kaszaat had no talk, however. If not for Totho’s presence she would have passed the entire journey without one single word. For Kaszaat was going home.

At nights, Totho led her away from the others, to the camp’s fringes sometimes or into one of the wagons. She could not bear to be near Drephos, even to be anywhere he might turn his head
and see her.

‘He thinks I will betray him,’ she said.

‘No,’ Totho assured her, and it was no more than the truth. Drephos did not think of her at all.

‘But the others do. They know where we’re going, and why. We’re going now to kill my people. My own people.’

Totho regarded her carefully. Tonight they were in one of the machine wagons, nestled amongst the canvas-wrapped crates and boxes.

‘How did you come to leave your home?’ he asked, hoping that there was some bad blood to uncover, some injustice she could cling to.

‘I was conscripted, sold into the army, what did you think?’ she snapped at him. ‘I had training, so they put me with engineers. I was passed hand to hand. Then Drephos saw me,
took me. Now they will kill me.’

Though curled up in his arms, she was tense as a drawn bow. By ‘they’ he did not know whether she meant the Empire or her own people. Neither did he have any simple answers.
What
will she do, when we face her family?
He did not want to find out, but each morning, as the lumbering caravan set off again, it took them closer to that inexorable confrontation.

It was Totho’s first experience of travelling officially through the Empire, rather than as on that hurried and furtive expedition to Myna to rescue Che and Salma. He was not sure that he
preferred the change. The Empire was not so dissimilar to the Lowlands. Once they were past the Darakyon and the northern fringe of the Dryclaw, they passed into hilly farming country, with fields
being ploughed by hand or with the help of draught-beetles, and with little goat- or sheep-herding villages huddled between the rises. The difference was in their reaction to the convoy. As soon as
it was sighted, the locals, be they Soldier Beetles or Bee-kinden or Wasps, turned themselves more diligently to their work. They would not even look on the convoy or its escort, but Totho could
read the sense of fear in them. The Empire was a harsh master.

And I am now a part of the Empire.
Not a new thought either. If he let himself recall the despite he had suffered for his heritage, he could wash his guilt away easily. It was a constant
effort to stave the idea off.

For the first tenday of the journey, Drephos had kept to himself in icy anger, not speaking to anyone, glowering at the crew of the automotives or at the soldiers of the escort if they dared
approach him. He hunched over his drawings, scoring them through and making better copies, still smarting from being wrenched from the mechanical wealth of Helleron. After that, he recovered
something of his usual character, and then it became a daily business of conference with the Beetle twins and Big Greyv, whilst the other artificers were let loose to do whatever they wished. Aside
from sitting silently beside Kaszaat atop one or other of the automotives, watching the sparse countryside pass them by, Totho worked on his elaboration of the snapbow. He thought he had a design
now for a repeating model, although he doubted it would ever prove economic enough to furnish an army with it. Still, he had no other project to hand.

When they were only a tenday or so from Szar, by their best calculations, the twins disappeared. The vehicles had set off that morning, no different from the last, but then one of the other
artificers had remarked on their absence. Drephos had the convoy halted at once, sending the soldiers out in all directions to search for them. He was not overly concerned, and Totho could detect
no thought in him that the two Beetles might have come to harm. Instead, Drephos was inconvenienced. He merely wanted the two of them returned so that he could continue his work. All the while, Big
Greyv dogged his steps solemnly, carrying cases of scrolls and books without complaint.

It took the soldiers almost half a day to find the missing artificers, and they brought them back nervously for Drephos’ inspection. Both were dead, though unmarked. All thoughts instantly
turned to possible enemies in the villages around them. Perhaps the Bee-kinden had sent assassins out. Kaszaat found that idea ridiculous. Drephos himself conducted the examination of the bodies,
hunched over them as though they were malfunctioning machines that he could bring back to life with the right repairs.

He did not speak to Totho about his findings, but he must have told someone other than the habitually silent Big Greyv, because rumour leaked out. The twins had been poisoned. They had, by all
appearances, poisoned themselves.

From there it was a matter of remaining quiet and listening. Totho was good at that. The convoy meanwhile was rife with speculation. Drephos and Big Greyv seemed the only two not talking about
it. Totho had not known the two Beetle-kinden, but posthumously he discovered a great deal.

After that, one night on which the convoy had stopped close enough to Szar for Kaszaat to be staring off towards the north-easterly horizon anxiously, Totho crept about the haulage automotives
and inspected the contents, looking closely at form and function and drawing his conclusions.

It was something he should have been able to work out before, had he only thought of it. It was something, he suspected, that all of the other artificers had realized but were pretending
otherwise. It was Drephos’ new weapon.

That night, after these conclusions, he sought out Kaszaat and guided her away from the convoy, passing between lax sentries until they were on a hilltop overlooking the circle of machines, and
well out of earshot.

‘They’ll think we’ve gone the same way as the twins,’ she murmured, looking down at the cooking fire, the pole-mounted lanterns of the sentries.

‘Kaszaat,’ Totho said, ‘the twins . . . they weren’t actually machinists, were they?’

‘Of course they were, we all are,’ she said, and then, ‘but not just that. Not only.’

‘I’ve heard people talk about those two,’ he said. ‘They were alchemists as well. That was why Drephos recruited them.’

‘They worked the reagent that brought down the walls of Tark,’ Kaszaat agreed. From a certain reticence evident in her tone, Totho knew that she had already guessed at the suggestion
he was about to make. Out there was her home city, currently in arms against the Empire, while here came Drephos to reforge the chains and bonds of imperial servitude.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she did not ask,
For what?
but just leant into him. She was trembling slightly.

Why doesn’t she flee?
he wondered.
Why doesn’t she go back to her own people?
But he knew the answer to that. It was the same invisible leash that kept him here. They
had all of them severed their ties to their former homes when they joined Drephos’ cadre.

He was not sure what impulse had made him spare her a further revelation that most likely would reveal nothing she had not already grasped, but instead he held close to her and said nothing
more.

Certainty was closer than he thought.

They arrived in Szar itself soon afterwards. Smoke hung over its far side, smogging the city’s low, domed buildings. The only people abroad in the streets were Wasp-kinden soldiers and a
few Scorpion Auxillians with mottled, yellowish skin and long-hafted axes cocked back over their shoulders. The artificers’ convoy made a snaking circle around a resting marketplace, where
the rags and splinters of ruined stalls still crunched underfoot. Totho glanced at the nearby houses, expecting to see the faces of locals peering out suspiciously, but they seemed empty. The doors
were mostly broken in, and some had been burnt out.

Drephos half-climbed and half-flew down from the lead automotive, pausing halfway to look critically about him at the city. Totho could see what must be the governor’s palace, a heavy
ziggurat of Wasp architecture louring over the smaller native buildings. As the convoy approached it, a delegation of Wasp soldiers issued forth in a large enough number to make Totho suspect some
plot against Drephos. Their attention seemed locked towards the north, though, and the bulk of the city in that direction. There was a large Wasp of middle years nested within these soldiers, who
only stepped forth when his escort had merged with that of the convoy. His face was marked with a livid, painful weal that seemed almost in the shape of a small hand.