‘I know that Spider-kinden live there,’ she had pointed out, for one of Stenwold’s companions, on his abortive mission there, had been such a man.
Allanbridge had shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said carelessly, as though her entire future did not depend on his answer. ‘What does old Sten Maker say?’
‘He doesn’t know. He must never know. I don’t want him coming after me.’ Her confession had come rushing out in a jumble of words.
She had known that he must surely refuse her. She had fumbled away her one best chance of accomplishing the end that she had set herself. Allanbridge was an old acquaintance of her foster-father’s, so he would hardly agree to such deception.
But Allanbridge had taken a long, deep breath, staring at her. ‘I hear your old man killed the Emperor, and paid for it,’ he had murmured at last. The truth was not entirely thus, but it was the story everyone was telling – even the Wasps themselves, it seemed – and Tynisa saw no reason to correct the historians. She had simply nodded, silently waiting out the long pauses the Beetle aviator had now fallen back on.
‘A shame,’ the man had grunted, ‘ only Mantis I ever got on with. But this is more than just him, right?’
Another small nod from her.
‘I remember Jerez,’ Allanbridge had said, unwillingly. ‘A lot of bad business there – lots of stuff I don’t even want to understand. But I hear the news, since. I know what’s happened to… to the Moth. So maybe I see level with you.’
She remembered that she had been holding her breath at this point.
‘Spit and sails, I don’t like dodging Sten Maker, but he wasn’t there,’ Allanbridge had continued sadly, a man finding an unwelcome duty at his door that he could not avoid. ‘I was there, though, so I can take you to the Commonweal and keep it quiet. That kind of shipping’s been my business for twenty years, after all. What you do to make ends meet after that is your own affair.’
Now she sheltered in the Windlass until Allanbridge sought her out again. In the hold he sat down with a sigh, frowning at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and sorry she was, not for the words spoken but because she had jeopardized her tenuous hold on his good will.
‘Commonweal hasn’t been open to men like me since forever,’ he pointed out gruffly, ‘so don’t you judge. Just so happens there’re people there who’ll trade with the likes of me now, only all right, it’s not the princes. There are no official channels open to a Lowlander, see? And it’s not as simple as you think. Ma Leyd keeps me informed. I need her.’
Tynisa nodded. ‘And what does she ask in return?’
‘Those from the Hitch that want it, I carry free, when I head back south. Princep Salma’s an attractive second chance to some. Plus there’s some trade I do for Ma, but that’s the main thing. For years there’s only been pissant places like this for those that want out of the Commonweal but don’t know where else to go. Princep’s a little slice of the north in the middle of the Lowlands, and word of it’s spread.’
She must have looked doubting, because he shook his head, standing up to go back above. ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll put you down close enough to Suon Ren for a brisk walk to get you there, and then you go off and
… well, from there you’re on your own. I’ve a feeling that you won’t find the Dragonflies quite what you’re expecting, girl, but that’s none of my business, and the best of luck to you.’
Two
Salma, Prince-Minor Salme Dien: the only Commonwealer student to attend at Collegium in living memory. He had been sent there because the Commonweal had lost its war with the Wasp-kinden, and Prince-Major Felipe Shah had foreseen that the Lowlanders might become allies against a common enemy. The boy had come to Collegium in his grand finery, with his exotic manners and his golden skin and his inimitably mocking smile.
That year at the College, he and Tynisa had danced around each other like two moths circling the same lantern, closer and closer and yet… always when she felt she could reach out and find his hand extended back towards her, he was away again. She wove her webs but never caught him. Always his dance took him away from her, until it was she who followed him, trying to match his steps.
But she would have had him eventually, she knew. Given time, shielded from distraction, he would have been hers. This was an article of faith with her.
But Salma had been distracted along the way by a Butterfly-kinden dancing girl who seemed to change her name every other day, but these days just called herself Grief, as though she had some kind of monopoly on that emotion. Tynisa had never believed in magic, but she found that she could readily concede that Salma had been enchanted by the glow-skinned Butterfly witch.
Even then, she had known in her deepest heart that it would not last. Salma was a fighter, a flier, a man who lived his life without chains. He would need more in the end. He would come back to Tynisa, who alone could match him in all things.
The Empire had not given him the chance, though. Salma, because of who he was and the society that had given birth to him, had become a rallying point for the dispossessed and the refugees. He had led his makeshift army against the Imperial advance, and there, crossing blades with a Wasp general, he had died. And thus the adamantine cord of their joint destiny, which she was sure had been on the very cusp of drawing them close again, had been parted for ever
She awoke with a start, baffled by the curving contours of the room about her, by the turbulent swaying of her surroundings. Most of all she awoke into the evaporating sense of Salma. Sometimes she dreamt of him rather than of the others, and those dreams were warm and bright. Waking from them cut as deep as any number of nightmares.
He was there as she woke. She did not see him, but his presence was unmistakable, sitting on the edge of her bed and watching her sleep. She even reached a hand out and, in the uncertainty of waking, fully believed that she would touch his golden skin.
The weakness came upon her which had oppressed her since everything had gone so fatally wrong. For a moment she could not move, could not stand, could not even bear to think. Some part of her tried its very hardest not to be.
But the world would not oblige, and she understood that she was still aboard the Windlass, of course, and it was aloft. Catching her balance against the constant shifting motion, she went aloft to find Allanbridge at the wheel. Normally she would have been woken by the Windlass ’s oil-drinking engine, but today the airship was moving under clockwork power alone, and using as little of that as Allanbridge needed to keep the craft steady. Instead, most of the work was being done by the burner hoisted up beneath the balloon. The aviator had tried to explain how it all worked, how there was some special gas in the canopy that pulled up, and how it pulled up more when it was heated, but none of it had made a great deal of sense to Tynisa.
Now, though, whatever the gas was, it was pulling like a team of draught beetles, and the Windlass was ascending with all the ponderous grace of a Collegium matron taking to the air. The cracked and riven wall of the Ridge coursed past them to port, and it seemed that at any moment the airship would be dashed against it, its balloon ruptured and hull smashed to splinters, but Allanbridge knew his trade, and so the Windlass maintained her steady climb.
‘Suon Ren’s just over the edge?’ Tynisa asked him.
‘A little further than that, but close enough,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll put you down in sight of it.’
Tynisa glanced up at the looming curve of the balloon above. ‘I thought you weren’t welcome there. If you’re in sight of the city, then they’ll be able to see that,’ pointing at the great swell of inflated silk above them.
Allanbridge shrugged, his expression closed. ‘Your man there, Felipe Shah, he’s progressive, so if he looks out of the window and sees an airship, he won’t think the sky’s falling on his head – not unless it’s black and yellow, anyway. As for the rest of them, you’d be surprised what they can make themselves not see.’
They cleared the crest of the Ridge shortly after, and suddenly the sky was whole again, the late autumn sun crisp and clear over them. Allanbridge made adjustments that sent the Windlass scudding over a rugged landscape of abrupt hills and heavy jutting outcrops of stone. It looked to Tynisa almost as if some great cresting wave of rock
