Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

Staring at her, he had not known what to think, because his heart still reached for her and he wanted to touch her, to stroke that rainbow skin.

‘Then I must love you,’ he had said in wonderment, and realized that all this while some part of him had believed Che’s claim that it was no more than a spell that made him act this way. Now he discovered it was him, nothing but his own heart.

‘Salma! Please wake up!’

He snapped from the reverie — and saw she was not here. Instead there was a man standing by his bed, and it took Salma rather too long to recognize his face.

‘Totho.?’

‘Yes, Salma, it’s me.’

‘What. what in the world are you wearing?’

Salma registered the tunic Totho now wore, black, and edged with strips of black and gold. It was crossed with two leather belts, one for his tools and the other serving as a baldric for his sword.

‘Listen to me, Salma, because we don’t have much time,’ said Totho. ‘You have to listen and understand what I’m saying. I’m getting you out.’

‘Out?’

‘Out of here. Because the girl might have saved your life, but you’re still not safe. In fact if you stay here you’ll certainly die. The Wasps are just waiting until you’re well enough to interrogate.’ Totho gave a brief bark of laughter in which the strain he was under emerged clear enough. ‘What a world! They’re waiting for your wound to heal so they can tear you apart. You know how much they hate your kinden. Half of their men here fought in your Twelve-Year War.’

‘So be it,’ said Salma tiredly.

‘No! Not so be it! Aren’t you listening, Salma? I’ve bought you out. There’s a man, an artificer here, and he wants my service, and he says he can get you out of here.’

‘You trust him?’

‘Enough for this, at least. You remember Nero? Nero’s going with you. He’ll look after you until you’re strong again.’

‘I can’t leave, Totho.’

Totho glowered at him. ‘It’s the girl? That dancing girl? Listen, Salma, they are going to kill you, as slowly as they can. Would she want that? Because she won’t be able to stop them. This nursing order of hers might get to choose whose wounds it heals, but it’s got no such say over the fit and well. I’ve paid the asking price, Salma. I’ve sold myself just to buy you life.’

‘No!’ The effort racked Salma with pain, and he knew that everyone down the length of the hospital tent would be staring. ‘Totho, no-’

‘This way you survive, and live free, and I. live too. It’s not so bad. I won’t be a slave, quite. And who knows what could happen?’ And it’s not as if I had much to go back to , Totho added to himself. And this way, Che won’t detest me any more than she already does, because at least I won’t have left you to die, Salma.

‘Totho, you can’t do this,’ Salma said urgently, feeling himself worn out just by the effort of this conversation. ‘I’m not worth your doing this-’

‘Shut up!’ Totho snapped, shocking him into silence. ‘Shut up, Salma, because I have already done this. I have put on their colours and apprenticed myself to these monsters, and I have done it for you, and if you tell me now that you’re not worth it, just what have I done all that for?’ His fists were tightly clenched and Salma saw him anew then: not the shy, awkward youth always tagging along behind Che, but the man that same youth had forged into.

It came for all of us , Salma thought. We are all grown now. Che, when the Wasps enslaved her and put her before their torture machines. Tynisa when she discovered her birthright. To me on the point of a sword. and to Totho here and now. We have put childish things behind us, and look at the world we have grown into.

There were streaks of moisture on Totho’s face but he was putting on an angry mask to hide the despair.

I have no right to play the martyr here, nor have I the strength.

‘I’m sorry, Totho,’ he said softly. ‘I hope you find that you have done the right thing.’

Totho had assumed that the Imperial Fourth Army would be splitting, some to be led west by General Alder and others staying to secure the half-ruined city of Tark. Garrison duty was beneath the Barbs, though, and a new force had come tramping out of the desert following its Scorpion guides. A garrison force, Totho understood, was different to a field army. It contained more auxillians, for one, usually around one man in two, and many of the Wasp-kinden included were veterans who had now earned an easier assignment than open battle. All this he learned from Kaszaat. The garrison was commanded by a governor who was usually also a colonel in the imperial army. Running a garrison was less prestigious than commanding a field army, but having a whole city at one’s disposal, she explained, was an unparalleled opportunity for acquiring both power and wealth. More than one general had willingly taken the demotion.

General Alder was not that kind of soldier, however. He was already busy organizing the Fourth to move westwards. Expecting no answer, Totho had enquired of Drephos, and was surprised when the artificer had told him that the plan was very simple.

‘The Fly-kinden settlements of Egel and Merro will be invited to avail themselves of imperial protection. There seems little doubt, given the timorous and pragmatic character of the race, that they will accept. Then the army will proceed on to the island city-state, Kes.’

Totho knew that the garrison force had resupplied the Fourth with more than just rations and ammunition. Two dozen battle heliopters had been assembled on the airfield by the camp, with four hulking carrier heliopters — monstrously clumsy machines that could each hold three hundred men in the open cage of its belly. ‘These are just to draw out Kes’s airpower,’ he guessed.

‘Quite,’ Drephos confirmed. ‘We have a few soldiers who could fly all the way from the mainland, but most of them would tire halfway and drop into the sea. So we will ship them over in droves, to die over Kes and to destroy its flying machines and its riding insects and whatever else shall come against them. Then the airships will drop incendiaries upon the Kessen navy, which I believe is formidable, and drop rockbreaker explosives on its sea-wall and its artillery. After that, the city itself will burn and we will begin landing our forces. I estimate that it will take General Alder three times as long to take Kes as it did to take Tark, partly because the city is naturally more defensible, and partly because I shall not be there with him.’

Totho nodded. That seemed only reasonable.

‘We shall shortly be embarking on our own journey, however,’ Drephos continued, ‘so we shall see none of it. I have faith that General Alder will prove his usual mixture of military efficiency and imaginative bankruptcy.’ He went striding with his uneven gait back towards his tent. ‘First, though, I have something I would like your opinion on, Totho.’

Totho hurried after him. He was forever surprised to find himself so free just to run around. It seemed the black and yellow that he wore was a shield against persecution, for all that he earned plenty of disparaging looks from the Wasps.

In his tent, Drephos had assembled a little workshop of the most delicate tools Totho had ever seen. There was a grinder for machining metal, a casting ladle and a set of wax moulds, and everything he needed to replace parts and help maintain his devices in the field. Turning, Drephos had something in his hands, long and wrapped in dark cloth, and for once he seemed almost hesitant.

‘You are a gifted artificer, Totho,’ he said. ‘That is, of course, why I plucked you from captivity.’