Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

‘Now wait a minute,’ Scuto started, rising.

‘We are all her associates,’ Che said. ‘What is going on, officer?’

The Ant had been staring at Scuto, more in horrified curiosity than anything else. ‘You are summoned to the Royal Court immediately. You must come with me.’

‘Why?’ Scuto demanded.

‘You do not question the commands of the Queen,’ the Ant snapped. ‘I don’t know what kinden you are, creature, but I will have your spikes filed blunt if you speak out of turn again.’

Scuto bared his snaggled yellow teeth at him, but said nothing. The officer stepped back, and one by one they filed past him. There was a squad of a dozen soldiers waiting just outside to escort them.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Che demanded in a hoarse whisper.

‘Nothing good,’ Achaeos said, before the officer again shouted for silence.

The Queen herself met them without any of her tacticians or staff. The belligerent officer had virtually pushed Scuto and the rest into her presence: just a single Ant-kinden woman standing at the end of a long table. Until Sperra whispered it, they took her for just another Ant in armour.

There was only one other there, a Fly-kinden man of middle years, wearing on his arm the badge of his guild, a figure-of-eight endlessly looping within a circle, which signified: Anywhere within the world.

The Queen of Sarn regarded them coolly, her gaze dwelling long enough on Scuto that he began to shuffle

Eventually he spoke up: ‘Listen, Your Highness-’

‘Your Majesty,’ Sperra hissed.

‘Your Majesty,’ he corrected himself. ‘What it is, I’m a Thorn Bug. No, you don’t normally get my kinden around these parts. Yes, there are others. No, it doesn’t hurt. Is that about it, Your Majesty, with all respect?’

The others held their breaths, but what would have seen Scuto dead by now if spoken to a Spider lady or Wasp officer passed without reproach here, for the Ant-kinden knew little of standing on ceremony.

‘Save the matter of how you fell in with a Beetle named Stenwold Maker,’ she said.

Scuto shrugged. ‘He got me set up in Helleron when there was no one else to turn to. He picked me out as being good for something, Your Majesty, and since then we’ve done a lot for each other. Is there news of him, if I might ask?’

‘Some of the last reports to come in from Collegium give his name as one of their. ’ there followed a pause, in which some unseen aide was obviously briefing her, ‘. War Masters, we believe the term is.’

‘Do you know if the fighting has started yet, Your Majesty?’ Che burst out.

‘It seems certain. You four are his agents, then, in my city. You are the delegation sent to win us over to join your fight against the Wasps?’

‘We are, Your Majesty,’ Che confirmed.

‘Then consider us won, but in no way that you will appreciate,’ the Queen declared with heavy irony. ‘You have heard that the Empire is already in possession of Helleron. We believe they are coming here next.’

‘Here, Your Majesty?’ Scuto goggled. ‘To Sarn?’

‘At the moment,’ she said, ‘there is a running conflict between my artificers and those of the Empire. Mine are destroying the tracks of the Iron Road while theirs are replacing them. There will inevitably be a battle. Our agents inform us the Empire’s armies are mustering for a march on my city even now.’

They stared at her. The whole room seemed unutterably still.

‘You must understand what this means,’ she continued.

But they did not. They could not understand. Too much was happening too fast.

‘I cannot therefore send my soldiers to Collegium,’ she said, almost gently. ‘I must defend my own city, my own people.’

Che gasped. ‘But — Collegium cannot stand against the Vekken. Our citizens aren’t proper warriors. Your Majesty, please-’

‘It pains me to make this decision,’ the Queen interrupted, in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘Collegium has been our ally, and it is an alliance we have profited by. If I could be sure that I could hold the Wasps with half my soldiers, I would send the other half to your city without delay. I would maintain that my forces are the best equipped and best trained in all the Lowlands, but now the Lowlands have changed. It is not just that Vek is at the gates of Collegium, or that Helleron is in the hands of the Empire. News comes from Tark, at last, and all word states that the city has fallen. An Ant-kinden city. A city-state like mine. I cannot afford to wait for the Empire to come right up to my walls, lest my city suffer the same fate as Tark. My soldiers are trained for open battle, battle on the field. We shall meet them in the open, and then see if we are still the soldiers to put the world in awe.’

‘But what about Collegium?’ Che cried. ‘What about Stenwold?’

‘Do you know what a Lorn detachment is?’ the Queen asked them. Surprisingly, it was Sperra who had the answer.

‘It’s a suicide detail, Your Majesty.’

The Queen’s lips twitched. ‘That is not exactly how my people would describe it — but a desperate assignment, certainly. I will send a Lorn detachment to Collegium. Solidarity should demand more, but no more can I afford to give. Three battle automotives with crew, though I can ill spare them.’ She turned to the Fly messenger. ‘Master Frezzo?’

He stood forward. ‘Your Majesty?’ He looked pale, and when he risked a glance at Che she saw her own distress mirrored in his face.

‘It was you brought me the news of the Vekken army from Collegium,’ the Queen told him. ‘Now you must take this reply back, though one that I am loath to make. The Vekken will almost certainly be at the walls by the time you arrive.’

‘It will present no difficulty, Your Majesty,’ Frezzo said firmly. Che knew that he had the honour of his guild to uphold.

‘Then go,’ the Queen ordered him, and he saluted her and ran from the room. The ruler of Sarn turned back to Che and her companions. ‘You may stay here or you may leave,’ she told them. ‘Save that there is no safe passage guaranteed to Collegium any more.’

‘Someone should go with the Lorn automotives,’ Scuto said.

‘It is your choice.’

‘Then it should be me,’ Che decided. ‘Stenwold is my uncle.’

‘You and Achaeos need to continue your work here,’ Scuto advised her. ‘It’s looking more important all the time. Stenwold’s going to need me , though. A War Master indeed? You know how he is, always forgetting himself and playing soldier.’

‘Scuto, no-’ started Sperra.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your Majesty, I’ll go. I’m an artificer and I never knew an automotive that couldn’t use another decent pair of hands.’

‘Scuto!’ Che reached for his arm but stopped just short of the spines.

‘Che, listen to me,’ Scuto insisted. ‘Stenwold is going to need to know what’s going on here, and I don’t just mean what that messenger can tell him. What’s going on with your work — stuff I wouldn’t trust to paper. I’m our best bet. I’ll be a good hand on the automotives, and I’m tough as a bastard. Remember the Pride , when it went up? Think you’d be standing here if my hide weren’t between you and that mess? And yet here I am, healthy as anything.’

‘You had better bloody be right about that,’ Sperra hissed. ‘Nobody as ugly as you was meant to be a hero.’

Salma opened his eyes to sunlight, and for a brief moment he thought it was her .

Then he recalled. The Broken Sword. Himself being smuggled out of the Wasp camp. He was about to sit up hurriedly, but remembered his wounds and eased himself up with care. The injuries tugged less than before, and he felt stronger. Looking around he saw Nero sitting close.