Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

‘At least you hope I am, sir,’ Totho said.

‘I do not recognize hope . Instead I calculate. I gather information,’ said Drephos. ‘You had on your person certain devices which I guessed were of your own invention, and schematics to incorporate them into a larger plan. A plan that you have never, I would guess, been able to undertake.’

Totho stared at the bundle in his arms and found himself abruptly short of breath. ‘Never. ’ he began, then his mouth was sand-dry, all of a sudden. ‘What have you done?’

‘While you were with your friend, yesterday, and while Kaszaat was making the arrangements for his liberation, I had time to myself, the first spare hour I have had since this siege began. Time weighs heavily on my hands and I hate to be idle, so I took out your plans and did what I could. The results are. imperfect. The facilities here are limited. However, I hope it meets with your approval.’

‘My.? My approval?’ Totho stared into the man’s blotched face. ‘But, Colonel-Auxillian.?’

‘No rank, please, not amongst my cadre at least,’ said Drephos. A hard look came into his eyes as they flicked towards the tent-flap. ‘Let those outside bandy such words about between themselves. Though we wear their colours we are none of theirs. Indeed, we are greater than them. We are artificers. Call me “Master” if you wish it, as you would your teachers at Collegium, but we are the elite here, and we are above their petty grades and distinctions. And I seek your approval, Totho, because it is your invention — therefore your triumph.’

His bare hand whipped the cloth away, and there lay Totho’s long-held dream. It was rough, as Drephos said. His air battery possessed a coarse grip now, and a long tube extended from it. Much of what he had planned was absent, because he had not included it on his drawings, but it was still there in his head, and the prototype could be improved.

‘Does it work?’ he asked, and Drephos nodded.

‘You’ll have the chance to test it, of course, and to improve on it. As I said, we have a journey to make. We are going to Helleron, Totho.’ He held the device out, and Totho took it, wonderingly.

‘Helleron, Master Drephos?’

Drephos was already striding past him. ‘Where else should an artificer go when he wishes to work?’

‘But Helleron is-’

‘Ours, Totho.’ Drephos was now outside, and Totho hurried to join him.

‘How?’

‘General Alder is about to move west along the coast, but I had word yesterday that General Malkan and the Seventh Army were moving on Helleron. They should be there by now. By the time we arrive the city shall fly the imperial flag. Imagine it, Totho! The industrial might of Helleron, all the forges, the foundries, the factories! What could we not do there?’ He stopped, abruptly rueful. ‘If I were pureblood Wasp-kinden I would have them make me governor. Perhaps I shall anyway. Perhaps Malkan can be prevailed upon. Still, we must do what we can with what we are given.’

And they stepped out again into sight of the airfield and found it had received a visitor, in that short space of time. The most beautiful flying machine Totho had ever seen was roosting in one corner, well away from the gross bulk of the heliopters. An open lattice of light wooden struts, with twin propellers and immaculately folded wings, it was such a work of light and shadow that it seemed hardly there at all, even in broad daylight, He saw Kaszaat inside it already, checking the clockwork engine that crouched aft. She was wearing heavy robes, he saw, despite the warmth of the day.

‘We’re going to fly to Helleron in that?’ he asked Drephos.

‘I want to waste as little time travelling as possible. Whatever I have here, I will have sent on. Helleron will have to provide in the meantime, and no doubt it shall do so splendidly.’ He reached the flier and ran his metal hand along the imaginary line that would define its flank. ‘My beautiful Cloudfarer , back at last from running the errands of others. She has been ill-treated, but that shall change, for none can fly her as I can.’ He was actually smiling, genuine gladness making his face seem something quite alien. Totho realized that all his other smiles had been just in mockery or pretence.

‘We shall be in Helleron in two days, three at the most.

Do you believe that?’

‘It hardly seems possible, Master Drephos.’

And the smiled broadened, and lost its warmth. ‘But we are artificers, Totho. We shall make it possible.’

In the chasm of silence throughout the stateroom Sperra clasped her hands together to stop herself fidgeting. They were all looking at her, and most of all the stern-faced woman who was enthroned in their centre, so that Sperra felt very small and frightened.

This was all Scuto’s fault and she should never have agreed to it. They had been waiting days now for an audience. Plius the milliner had been doing his best but the Queen and much of her court had left the city of Sarn on the very day that Scuto had met with him. Instead, he had secured a brief interview with some minor official at the Royal Court, and that was when the problem had occurred.

‘We’ve waited long enough,’ had been Scuto’s position. ‘I’ll go and see this fellow, whoever he is, and we’ll squeeze a better audience out of him and pull ourselves up the chain. By the time the Queen’s back, we’ll be camping out on her doorstep.’

‘Scuto,’ Plius had said, ‘you might want to rethink yourself.’ There had been an odd, slightly amused expression on his face.

‘What’s wrong with the plan?’ Scuto had challenged him.

‘The plan, nothing. The planner, on the other hand. ’

Scuto had folded his hook-studded arms. ‘What?’

‘Listen to me,’ Plius had said. ‘I’ve done my level best to get you this far, and you are not going to ruin it by going in there and being. well how can I put this, Scuto? By being all ugly and spiny.’

‘Now, you listen here. I know I ain’t any picture, but-’

‘Scuto, you’ve been working where? In the slums of Helleron? And why’s that? I know you’re a decent grade of artificer,’ Plius said. ‘So why not get in with the magnates, the propertied classes? No, you’re not that kind of fellow, Scuto. And this isn’t some Helleron mining baron here, this is the Queen of Sarn. And she won’t want to see you because, let’s face it, no sane person would. And she won’t want to see me either, because as an Ant late of Tseni stock I’m barely welcome even in the foreigners’ quarter, never mind how things’re supposed to have changed round here. So what’s your move, Scuto?’

And then he and Scuto had turned and looked at Sperra, but she had refused. She had flat-out refused, protested, complained and objected and, at the end of the day, she had found herself going to meet with a dismissive Ant officer who had sneered down at her because she was a Fly and a foreigner. The next day there had been a better officer who had been sympathetic, but unhelpful, and then there had been a commander who seemed to have something to do with the Royal Court, but very little time. Then there had been a smiling woman, who Sperra had later discovered was a commander involved in counterintelligence, and who had suspected her of being a spy, although spying for whom, Sperra never found out. In any event their conversation had been manipulated so carefully that Sperra realized that she had learned nothing new at all and told everything that she knew, just about.

And then the next day half a dozen soldiers had marched her to the Royal Court, which was where she had been trying to get to all along, but at that moment decided she would rather avoid. She had spent two hours waiting to talk to a serious-faced Ant-kinden who was one of the Queen’s tacticians, therefore the highest of the high amongst the city-states. She spoke to him for a full ten minutes, but he seemed not in the least interested in what she had to say. Instead, he quizzed her about the assassination attempt on the Queen.