Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

Someone grabbed for him and the pair of them tumbled to the ground. Salma was up first, driving his sword down into his opponent then dragging it up in desperate parry as yet another soldier lunged at him. The force of the blow spun him round but, as he staggered back, he managed to get back on his feet. The soldier confronting him paused a moment, sword extended, and then went for him, and for a second they were duelling, just as though they were in the Prowess Forum.

Then another Wasp was close behind and Salma lashed back at him with the sword but only struck the man across the face with the guard. The soldier in front of him took his chance then, and Salma whipped his sword back into line to deflect the blow.

The force of the attack knocked something out of him, the great punching blow to his stomach. Salma gasped, and his world contracted until it contained only himself and the Wasp soldier. No sounds, only dead silence as his sword swept round and lanced the other man through the ribs. His opponent could not parry because his blade was buried deep in Salma’s body.

Salma fell forwards into the arms of his adversary, the two of them leaning on each other like drunkards. Then Salma’s knees gave way and they toppled sideways together. For a moment their fight was an embrace of brothers.

And darkness rose within Salma, accompanied by a strange cessation of pain.

He was aware again of pain, before he had any idea of where he was. The back of his head was thumping angrily, sending tremors through his skull and into his eyes. Totho shifted awkwardly only to discover that he was lying bound at a strange angle in some peculiar kind of chair.

Growing awareness swiftly furnished his last reliable memory: the night attack. Was it still night? His eyelids told him it was dark, yet he could hear the slightly muffled murmur of a waking world beyond. He was in a Wasp tent.

And tied. He remembered what Che had said, about the torture devices the Wasps had kept in Myna. And that would explain the uncomfortable contours of the chair he was lashed to, its cold metal.

As well as most securely bound, he was stripped to the waist, and when he flexed his body experimentally, he felt the tug and pull of bandages, over rows of surgeon’s stitches.

And from somewhere close above him, a female voice stated, ‘I think he is awake.’

Totho froze into immobility, but too late. There was no longer anything to be gained from shamming, so very carefully he opened his eyes.

Even the dim light within the tent sent a stab of pain coursing through his brain, but he could just make out a blurred shape looming above him.

Something cold touched his lips, and he twisted his head violently, ringing his skull with agony. The woman’s voice said sharply, ‘Stop that. It is water only.’

He cautiously turned back to press his mouth against the lip of a cup. The water it contained was so startlingly cold that he felt there must be ice in it. A moment later a damp cloth was put to his forehead.

He forced himself to look properly, to make the vague shapes resolve themselves. The woman who had spoken was young, he saw, and dark-skinned. At first he assumed she was a Beetle, but her face was too flat, her frame too compact. Then he recalled the slave-artificers and recognized her as of the same kinden.

‘Where am I?’ he finally rasped, and found the ache in his head was joined by another inside his cheek. His mouth tasted rusty with dried blood, so he must have bitten himself in the struggle.

He saw the woman turn and glance at someone behind her, who had not, in all this time, moved or spoken. Merely the thought sent a shiver through him, and then she had stepped aside, and someone else was now standing beside the strange chair. Totho turned his head as far as the pain would allow, and saw a metal-gauntleted hand, exquisitely worked.

The newcomer’s voice was quiet and sly, slightly mocking. ‘In your position, young man, I would not waste my time with unnecessary questions. What is your name, young one?’

He decided he was not going to answer, and then the gauntlet shifted with a slight scraping of metal and he said quickly, ‘Totho. They called me Totho.’

‘A Fly-kinden name.’ The man sounded amused. ‘You must have been brought up in. Collegium, I would guess? Well then, my own name is Dariandrephos, but the boorish Wasps call me Drephos. Or “the Colonel-Auxillian”, of course.’

‘Colonel.?’ Totho wrestled with the term.

‘In fact I am the only Colonel-Auxillian in the Empire. I know that because they invented the rank solely for my benefit. Perhaps one day they will have to make me General-Auxillian, and then perhaps, what? Emperor-Auxillian. That would be amusing. Where were you trained?’

Totho shut his eyes and said nothing.

‘Do you know why you are here — rather than with the other prisoners? Perhaps you do not. We captured three of you, and the other two will be questioned as the Wasps question, as far as their physical capabilities permit. This, as you should have surmised, is not questioning. This is merely a friendly conversation, Totho.’

Still Totho said nothing, and his interrogator clicked his tongue in annoyance. Totho waited for a blow, but instead there was a tugging at his wrists, and then his bonds were loosened. He opened his eyes to see the girl retreating from him again.

‘Of course, you require some token of my good will,’ said Drephos.

Finally Totho was able to twist around to look at him. He saw none of the man’s flesh. The robe and cowl made a tall spectre of him. Only that gauntlet emerged from the folds of black and yellow cloth.

‘What is going on?’ Totho demanded. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘You are here because of this.’ The gauntlet dipped into Drephos’s robe and came out again with a strangely hesitant precision that made Totho wonder whether the hand inside had been injured or burned. On its reappearance it was gripping a small mechanism that he knew only too well.

‘And this.’ Drephos’s other hand, dark-gloved but bare of metal, appeared briefly to hang a long strip of pocketed leather on the arm of the metal chair. It was Totho’s tool-strip, and the device brandished before his face was one of his air batteries, his little pet project he had never been able to finish.

‘It is remarkable how much one can learn from the contents of a man’s pack,’ Drephos continued. ‘You have clearly been trained as an artificer, but I could have told that from the calluses of your hands. You were trained in Collegium then? In the Great College?’

Numbly, Totho nodded.

‘I would have given a great deal for that privilege.’

‘You’re an artificer?’ Totho seized on that statement. It seemed to offer him some small chance of respite.

Drephos laughed hollowly. ‘I am perhaps, though I say it myself, the most skilled artificer you will ever meet. The only reason I qualify that with “perhaps” is your own tutelage. I am painfully aware that, myself excluded, the Empire is somewhat young in the game of artifice: three generations from barbarism whilst you Lowlanders have a tradition that goes back centuries. Still, one must work with the tools one has.’

‘But the Empire must have artificers. Wasp artificers?’ Totho said. ‘I can’t be so special.’

‘But you are, because I do not want to rely on Wasp artificers. They are either dull men who have learned their mechanics by rote, or they waste what intellect they have in politics and one-upmanship and care nothing for the science itself. No, my people, my journeymen, are chosen from other sources. Unless the man be an outcast, I will not have a Wasp in my workshops.’

‘You want me to-?’

‘I am interested in you , Totho. I have never had the honour of a Great College student working for me.’