Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Perhaps he thought that she would be the first to flinch, but they shot at the same time, repeating ballista against rotary piercer, bolts flashing swiftly between them.

There were very few Fly-kinden amongst the fighting pilots, as the martial mindset did not sit well with their race. Those there were, though, were very good indeed. They were lighter than other pilots, so they could fly defter machines. Their reflexes were second to none.

A bolt ripped into the Esca ’s hull, ripping apart the canvas and narrowly missing the motor beyond. Another gashed the right wing, and a third shuddered to a halt somewhere amid the folded landing legs. She saw the impact of her piercer bolt even before the ensuing flash of flames, and knew that she had landed a successful strike in Axrad’s engine. Only then did she dart aside, pulling the Esca round in a steep turn to come back and check what she had done.

She spotted Axrad’s machine by the smoke, as she came back to it, saw it falter in the air, and held off her attack. Before she had flown past, she spotted the man as he climbed out of his cockpit and jumped, wings flaring to catch him, and she found that she was glad he had survived.

Another time , she told herself, and went to look for Che and Nero in the Cleaver .

They found land at Porta Mavralis, the sole outpost of the Spiderlands situated on the shores of the Exalsee. Here Taki called on favours and raised credit in the name of the Destiavel, and obtained barrels of mineral oil for the Cleaver and a winding engine that the Cleaver could carry to retension the Esca Volenti ’s clockwork engine.

‘We must fly to your home, you and I,’ Taki explained to them. ‘We have a common cause now.’

‘Ain’t you worried about what’s going on back home?’ Nero asked her.

‘I shall return to Solarno, but first I want to see your war. I want to understand what the Wasps are fighting. And perhaps I want to find help for us.’

While she was waiting for her fuel, the battered bulk of Scobraan’s Mayfly Prolonged dragged itself into port, listing dangerously. The burly Solarnese had only bad news: names of the pilots killed or fled, the well-known buildings burnt, the imperial flag of black and gold unfurled over the houses of the great and the good.

Taki asked him to come with them, but he declined. ‘I’m for Chasme,’ he told her. ‘That’s where we’re mustering and gathering allies. We will strike back when time gives us our chance. I hear Niamedh made it out, was heading to Princep Exilla even. The sea…’ He stopped for a moment, shuddering with fatigue and emotion. ‘The whole cursed Exalsee will run red with blood before those Wasp bastards get away with what they’ve just done.’

Taki nodded vigorously. ‘Hold out, then,’ she said. ‘Che and me, we’re going for help. Her people, who are fighting the Wasps already, they’ll see us right, I’m sure. It’s a long haul, but for a couple of fliers it’s not so very long. I’ll be back, Scobraan. So you just wait for me.’

Che’s return to Collegium was so much faster than the sea voyage of her departure. The Cleaver might have been slow for a fixed-wing but it danced effortlessly down the coast, and Nero had found a hatch in the underside to peer from, and call out landmarks for navigation.

‘There’s Kes,’ he said at one point. ‘Looks like a navy gathering there. Wonder how far away the Empire is right now.’

At last, and after many stops to refuel and rewind, they had sight of Collegium. Che was leading the way with the Esca following docilely behind, and Che wondered how Taki was taking it. She was so far from her home now, seeing more of the world in this frantic flight than she had witnessed in her whole life. The Exalsee and its independent cities lay far behind them now.

There were more lines on Stenwold’s face than she remembered, and his greeting was full of simple joy at seeing her so well when others were not.

‘Uncle Sten, this is…’ Che paused to get the complicated name right, ‘te Schola Taki-Amre, an aviatrix of Solarno. Taki, this is my uncle, Stenwold Maker.’

Taki squinted up at the bulky Beetle. ‘You’re the one who set her onto our city, are you?’

‘I am sorry for your loss, but you know we all fight the same enemy now,’ Stenwold told her. ‘The Wasps will acknowledge no borders or limits to their ambition.’

‘Yeah, well, I saw that all right,’ Taki said. She kept blinking about her at the buildings of the College, so very different from the red-roofed houses of Solarno. ‘Sieur Maker, I mean to return to my city soon, and I’d be glad of whatever you could spare me. Consider: the more trouble the Wasps get from Solarno, the more their attention is taken off you, right?’

In reply to that, Stenwold took her to see Teornis, and Che explained haltingly that their mission had failed. Instead of allies they had found only another Wasp conquest.

Teornis had merely nodded sympathetically.

‘It may not be so hopeless as you think,’ he said gently. ‘After all, Solarno is a Spider city – not Spiderlands, perhaps, but it has a sentimental place in the hearts of many of my people. If things get so very bad, they say to one another at home, there is always Solarno to retreat to. Solarno is a place where my people can play their games in miniature, for smaller stakes, so I rather think that there are some who might take its invasion poorly. Perhaps this will finally motivate some of the Aristoi families to take a stance on the issue of the Empire.’

Stenwold had been watching him closely as he spoke and, with those last words, something seemed to break through on Teornis’s face, some little window onto the mind that lay within. Stenwold was not sure whether he had been shown it deliberately, or caught that rarest of things, an unguarded thought from a Spider mind, but it seemed to him that Teornis was privately delighted with the news that Che had brought.

And then, five days later, while the Assembly was still collating news of Wasp military movements, the Buoyant Maiden was sighted drifting towards Collegium.

They were all there to greet it, even Sperra, who had found herself able to fly a little the day before, just a dozen yards before exhausting herself. Jons Allanbridge’s airship touched down with unusual solemnity aboard, though, and the faces of its passengers were dour.

Tynisa was first out, and it was to Che she went.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trembling, almost falling into her foster-sister’s arms. ‘Che, I’m so very sorry.’

Night brought no peace to the shores of Lake Limnia. The slap and ripple of the water was underscored by the chirr and buzz of a thousand insects that raised a racket enough to drown out anything that had happened further out on the water.

Every so often the water would take one of their chorus, either by the flier’s own clumsiness or through the predatory skills of some lake-dweller. There would be a deep plunk punctuating the nocturnal serenade, a few errant ripples not caused by wind or weather, then no more.

Then something more substantial struck the water near its edge, raising a great sheet of spray that battered against the reeds. For a second there was nothing but the waves washing back and forth, and then something was crawling out of the shallows, dragging itself through the mud, tearing at the lakeside vegetation for purchase. The insect choir was joined by the gasping and choking sound of a man fighting for life.

And then stillness, save for his ragged breath. His wings had failed him at the end, but close enough to shore that the water had not claimed him. He had stretched himself out there with his feet still in the lake, every muscle strained, his wounds burning with a slow fire.