man’s pudgy hands were shaking, rattling the Speaker’s seal and the reservoir pen.
‘Then let me,’ Stenwold decided. ‘I’m used to the city thinking ill of me. Now that everyone agrees with me, I don’t know where to put myself.’ He managed tp raise the ghost of a smile, but Jodry merely shook his head.
‘It must be me,’ the Speaker said, ‘because it must be obeyed. If we cannot have a full decision of the Assembly — and we can’t, I know — then I must put my hand to it.’
‘Then do it. And then I’ll sign it, too. All the authority we can provide, and the blame can be shared. I’ll say I forced you to it, if you want.’
‘What will I say to them, Stenwold? The relatives, the homeless. I never thought of this happening, when I put my name forward in the Lots. I never thought that I’d be responsible for… that I’d fail them and do so knowingly, eyes open. I thought it would all be trade disputes and paperwork.’
‘You’re doing well,’ Stenwold told him solemnly. ‘Better than I’d have thought. But I wouldn’t ask this of you, if it wasn’t needed.’
Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘Banjacs is ready?’
‘He will be by tomorrow night.’
The fat man looked up at him, horrified. ‘He says that? He’d better be ready. I’ve written him an open pass to the cursed Assembly Treasury to get his bloody machine working. If he pisses away the chance we’re buying him — at such cost! — I’ll strangle the old bastard myself!’ A deep breath. ‘And their agents?’
‘Those that I have identified have been passed the story, by the most indirect channels I could devise. Word should already be heading for the Second, regarding our problems, our weaknesses. And tonight will bear that word out.’
‘Will it? And we’re gambling on what you think they’ll think? Why not, given all the other things we’re throwing the dice on? Why not, indeed?’
Stenwold regarded at him without any words of comfort or consolation — and he sensed that Jodry did not want to be comforted, did not believe that he deserved it. They were about a terrible business, a betrayal of their own for reasons of brutal pragmatism, and both of them felt the brand of it burning their skin.
Jodry took the seal, clicked at the top until it welled with red wax, and then stamped it down hard. A shudder went through him, but he took up the pen and signed boldly, with hardly a quiver, before moving on to the next document. Stenwold took out his own pen and added his name to each in turn, the Speaker and the War Master — as much weight as they could give to their conspiracy.
The first order differed from the others, addressed to the Sarse Way airfield, and it read: By the order of the Assembly of Collegium under the emergency powers granted for the time being the Sarse Way contingent of the Collegiate Air Defence are ordered to: engage the enemy air forces when so prompted by the Great Ear; upon engagement fall back towards the city; upon reaching the skies above the city remain in contact with the enemy for no longer than ten minutes before seeking to land and take shelter; during the course of all contact with the enemy concentrate on preserving yourselves and your machines in priority to attacking the enemy. Further, you are not to return to the defence once you have quit the fight.
The pilots of Sarse Way would assume that this was some manoeuvre involving a counter-attack by the complements of the other airfields, and would obey dutifully, relieved perhaps to be out of the fighting early and trusting to men such as Jodry and Stenwold to know what was best.
The other missives were all identical and, under the same heading, gave the order: Do not take wing under any circumstances. You are expressly ordered to keep your machines under cover and out of sight. You are instructed not to participate in any action against the air forces of the Empire on this night, without exception.
Jodry and Stenwold stared at each other, and at last the fat man folded each order, sealing them one by one with more bloody wax, and reached out to summon Arvi.
‘No,’ Stenwold told him.
‘What? If Arvi’s a traitor then anyone is,’ Jodry snapped.
‘I will take them myself,’ Stenwold told him. ‘I will instruct the officers not to open them until dark. They will see me and know me. There will be no possibility that this might be an Imperial ploy. We are losing too much, by this, to risk any compromising of our plan.’
‘And after that?’ Jodry asked him.
‘I will go home,’ Stenwold explained. ‘And I will wait there, and listen, and live with the knowledge.’
The nearest Wasp soldier touched down only yards away from Laszlo’s hiding place, stalking through the gnarled, scrubby trees that were barely taller than the man himself: a knotty little grove of stunted olive trees sprouting where some fault in the earth gave them access to water. To a Wasp, only the trees would offer any cover at all, but the ground was loose and crumbling about the roots, and Laszlo had been able to excavate a hollow down beneath one of the trees, digging and digging frantically during the last two hours of the night, bitterly aware that their time was up. Beside him, Liss stirred, biting her lip, and Laszlo could not say whether her shivering was from fear or the fever of her wound.
They had made good time at first, and he thought now that had been their downfall: becoming overconfident, and without a clear idea of how far they would have to go, they had made a clipping pace down the coast, whilst the Second Army stayed back to bludgeon the Felyal into a final submission. They had kept within sight of the sea at first, to aid in navigation and in the hope of spying a ship. There were no sails or funnels to be seen, though. Everything east was black and gold, and no trader trusted the waters.
Lissart had seemed well, in that first rush, or at least she had pretended to be, and they had gone too fast too soon, pressing on into the dark hours so as to increase their lead. Then one night, as they made a sparse but sheltered camp, he had seen her dabbing at her side, and he realized that her wound had reopened. She had done her best to make light of it but, despite everything, he had seen she was terrified of being left behind. The next morning he set a slower pace, but she had not been equal to even that.
She had managed another few days’ progress, each slower than the last, and then she had negotiated with him, desperately manoeuvring around her own weakness until he himself suggested a day’s pause. Looking into her face, he saw how her cheeks were hollower, her skin almost translucent. She was beautiful still, though, illness giving her an ethereal quality that made her seem almost supernatural.
At first, they had steered clear of the refugees who had fled the ruin of the Felyal, and that had been another mistake. Liss had been suspicious of them, in her eyes every strange face hiding an Imperial agent, or perhaps just a murderer or a rapist. She hated being helpless and raged weakly at herself.
Later, when the last of the refugees had been overtaking them, Laszlo had tried to seek help, but those desperate stragglers had none to offer.
The Second Army had taken its time with the Felyal, but all too soon its work was done, and it began marching westwards at the speed of its laden automotives — faster than Laszlo and poor Liss could manage. The two Flies had covered what ground they could, desperate to stay just another day ahead. Behind them had appeared a distant dust cloud, yet less distant every day.
And, of course, the armies of the Empire did not travel blind. Yesterday Laszlo had seen flitting forms in the sky, as the Light Airborne screened the army’s advance. They were far ahead of their main force, a spread of eyes and burning hands searching for any sign of organized resistance, well tutored by the losses suffered by the Imperial forces in the last war, pitted against the bandits and renegades of the Landsarmy.
The soldier so close by shifted position, a few steps forwards, boots crunching on the dry earth. Laszlo guessed there were ten or a dozen that had dropped out of the sky moments ago, seeing the trees as good ground for an ambush and hoping to flush out any threats lurking there. The man was right on the edge of Laszlo’s window on the world, which was uncomfortably broad, for he had not been able to dig deep under the tree. There was barely room for the two of them to shelter from the sky. If we had run, would we still be ahead?
Could we even have run?
There was a painful stab in his heart that told him that all this effort might be for nothing. Lissart had suffered a terrible wound, and she had been flagging since they left Solarno. She was a fickle, treacherous creature, but Laszlo had gone to such lengths to save her — from the enemy, from herself — surely blind chance would not throw the dice so heavily against them now. We’ve come so far.
In all his days, as pirate, trader and agent, he had assumed at some level that the world was looking out for him. His luck had brought him plenty of good times, and that had always let him ride out the bad times with the understanding that he would still make it through. Now that they had come so far, at such effort, and only lost ground, Laszlo’s faith in himself was faltering.
