Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

‘What is this?’ Felise demanded, taking a better grip on her blade. ‘Fight me or stand away from me. I will have his blood. I will have the blood of any that stand in my way.’

It was a gesture that always seemed a good idea at the time but never quite worked out so. Stenwold stepped forward and walked towards her. Past the two guards he caught a glimpse of Thalric inside his room. Something had gone out of the man, some hope of a last chance.

‘Stenwold,’ the Wasp said, half warning, half imploring, ‘remember Cheerwell-’

Without warning the woman’s sword was at Stenwold’s neck. He looked into Felise’s eyes and saw madness gathering there like stormclouds.

This was not a good idea. ‘I am Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium. This man’ — his nerve almost failed — ‘is in my care. Why do you wish to kill him?’

The blade jumped, the edge cutting an inch of shallow blood. ‘Ask him,’ she hissed. ‘Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium. If it is not enough that his people have raped my homeland and slain my people in their thousands, ask him what it is that he has done against me.’

Remember Che , the thought came. Thalric might be his only chance of seeing the girl again. ‘Thalric?’ he asked faintly.

‘Stenwold, you need me.’

‘Only if I can trust you for the truth,’ Stenwold said flatly, and he saw something pass across Thalric’s face. Here was a man in a trap of his own making. The Wasp knew what would now happen even before he spoke, and in that fatal moment Stenwold finally recognized some virtue there, beyond all the principles the Empire had built in him, because despite what would follow he said, ‘I killed her children, Master Maker. The Empire wanted a certain noble Commonweal bloodline extinguished, and so I went into her castle and killed all her children. She had no sword then, when we surprised her. She was taken for a slave. I suppose she escaped.’ Thalric’s voice sounded flat, sick.

Stenwold pictured Che, either dead now or incarcerated in a Wasp cell, or at the mercies of their artificers, and he looked into Felise’s face and reassessed her. This was the face, he decided, of a mother who had loved her children and who now wanted solely to avenge them.

I have no right , he knew, and he gestured to the guards, who stepped back in evident relief. Felise spared him one more brief glance before passing through the doorway.

Her captors had found a little cluster of farm buildings nearby, stone-built and solid, with a big storage cellar that they had cleared out, throwing away everything not immediately edible or useful. Che hoped that the farming family who had once lived here had been given the chance to flee before the black and gold storm.

In the cellar their artificers had been busy even before the battle, and wooden beams from a dismantled house had been used as bars to mark out a pen that would hold a dozen prisoners at most. A few dried stains of reddish-brown suggested she was not the first.

She was the only one now, though — the only prisoner they had taken out of those that had failed and fallen in the Battle of the Rails.

When she had tumbled from the stalled automotive, she had her blade ready in her hand, certain that death was moments away. She had imagined herself then as a Tisamon or a Salma, ready to die striking a blow and enjoy a soldier’s honourable end.

But all around her the Wasps were swarming along the rails, blackening the sky above. These men, who had been fleeing so recently, were back, with a vengeance that could be sated only with blood. Everywhere, Wasp soldiers were stooping on the survivors to slaughter them. They hacked down the Sarnesh field surgeons whether or not they lifted blades against them. They killed the wounded, swiftly and brutally, just as their comrades were doing over all the battlefield.

She had felt the sword slip from her fingers, her mind filled with the horror of it, and she realized, then, that she had been lying to herself for a long time. This was the real face of war, and she could never be a true soldier.

Che had stood there motionless, unnoticed and unthreatened, with the Wasps massing back and forth all about her. It had been that total stillness that saved her, though her head had spun. The stillness, and her empty hands, until at last a Wasp had dropped before her, seeing a wide-eyed, unarmed Beetle girl, assuming her a slave, perhaps. He had called two of his comrades to wrestle her away, and she had not resisted them. A moment before, she had wanted to die as brave warriors died, but when she saw what that looked like, repeated over and over all around, she very much wanted to live.

She had not necessarily accomplished that, either. She had been confined in here more than a day, now, and they had given her water but no food. She could hear, from sounds above, that the Wasps were resetting their camp, and seemed in no hurry to chase the Sarnesh back to their city walls, but nobody had come to question her, or rescue her, or even to look at her.

Slavery , she told herself. Would it really be so bad? Perhaps some kind master would buy her. After all, she had a Collegium education. Perhaps she could teach Wasp children.

She knew that a life of slavery could be bad, and she knew equally that there were worse fates by far.

There was a rattle at the hatch above, chilling her heart, because her water bowl was still half-full.

There had been pitch-darkness in the cellar before, which would have been a terror to her if her Art had not penetrated it and allowed her to see. The sheet of sunlight that now splashed down the stone steps was a harsh glare at first, and she shaded her eyes. She heard sandalled feet descending and forced herself to look.

A Wasp soldier was peering doubtfully at her, by the bluish light of a mineral-fuel lantern.

‘This is her,’ he said, to someone standing above him, and then came all the way down to the cellar floor to make room.

The man following took the stairs awkwardly, limping and holding to the wall. He wore no Wasp uniform, being swathed instead in a hooded robe, and he seemed to need no lantern when he peered at her.

‘Just one prisoner,’ he said tiredly. ‘Well the intelligencers will suffer more than I. And she will be theirs, I suspect, unless I press my claim on Malkan. You say she had some tools on her?’

‘Only a few, sir,’ the soldier below him said, ‘not a full artificer’s set, but she is a Beetle, sir. They’re reckoned good with machines.’

‘Not without proper tools, they’re not,’ grumbled the hooded man. ‘She’s probably a worthless slave or something. Or did I hear that the Sarnesh keep no slaves?’ He glanced up at a third man who was standing higher on the steps, and obviously saw him shake his head. To Che this last imperial was just a slouching silhouette.

‘You don’t want her, then?’ the soldier pressed, and Che felt her throat go dry. She had little idea of what they were talking about, but she feared what any Wasp intelligencer might do with her.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ she got out. ‘I am a scholar of the College. I know history, politics, economics-’

‘Are you an artificer?’ asked the robed man sharply, as though speaking to an idiot child.

‘I have studied mechanics a little. ’ She was crippled with honesty even at this moment.

For a moment he studied her. ‘No. Let them rack her for answers. I won’t deprive General Malkan of her.’ With halting steps he turned round and made his way back up towards the sunlight.

It was only when they had gone, and taken most of her hope with them, that she realized that they had not all been strangers.

Why here? It seemed impossible. The sight of her echoed in his mind. Che, down below behind the timber bars.