The Wasp took another few steps, shifting fully into the Fly’s view now, his back towards the hiding place as he scanned the trees with a snapbow cradled in his arms. His head turned, receiving some gestured signal from a comrade, and he settled down on one knee, watching.
What have they seen? Either the Imperials were setting an ambush themselves, or they were suspicious of encountering one. Did we leave a trail? Is it us they’re looking for? He had been so hurried, last night. He had done his best to cover their tracks, but still…
His hand inched into his tunic, a finger at a time. His one remaining sleevebow was in there, the other little snapbow fallen out unnoticed somewhere along the trail. With excruciating care he began to extract it. Seeing him do so, Liss went tense all over.
The Wasp remained still, weapon held low, merely cautious as yet, and facing the wrong way. Laszlo worked the snapbow free of his clothes, not daring to take his eyes off the man, letting his fingers walk over its chamber, to check that there was a bolt loaded. Then he had the wheel of the air-lock to charge, breathing shallowly, hunching about himself, slowly winding the battery up to strength, his wrists cramping from the awkward angle.
A second soldier crossed into his line of sight, more distant than the first. His wings shimmered briefly, as though he was about to take flight, but something stayed him, and he put his shoulder to a tree, to hide or for cover, and watched keenly. The first man remained motionless, the dusty black and gold of his cuirass blending with the earth tones of the soil and bark and dull leaves.
There came a shout from further off and both men tensed, the closer one fitting his snapbow to his shoulder but not sighting along the barrel, clearly still without a target. The further soldier peered out, half-crouching as he searched for the enemy, then he glanced at his companion to say something, to give a signal, who could know?
His eyes touched Laszlo.
Laszlo tried to jump up but their hollow was too cramped. He kicked forwards into the open air, even as the warning came, bringing his little snapbow to bear not on the man who had seen him, but on the closer soldier, clenching hard on the trigger.
He felt the weapon buck lopsidedly in his hand, jamming with the charge not yet released. Frantically he shook it, his wings taking him left.
A bolt of fire streaked past from behind him — almost directly through the space he had occupied a moment before — and caught the closer Wasp right in the eyes, sending him backwards, screaming and clawing at his face. A snapbow bolt zipped past Laszlo like an angry insect, and he let his wings spring him high over the trees for a little cover, before coming down close enough for his weapon to do any good, if it would only work.
He loosed, and something struck him on the temple, something else carving a bloody line across his hand and almost up to his elbow. He found himself flat on his back, the world spinning about him. They got me! Was that a grenade?
He was being shaken. ‘Get up!’ Liss was hissing, dragging at his shoulder. ‘Get moving!’ She held her other arm about her, as though trying to keep her guts in.
Laszlo stumbled to his feet, seeing the soldier lying dead before him, armour holed where the snapbow bolt had gone in. He still clutched the grip of the little weapon, but precious little more of it. Its air battery had exploded, he realized, and there was his luck back again because that could have taken his arm off.
Then more Wasps came pelting through the trees, three at least: two on the ground and one in flight. Pushing Liss ahead of him, Laszlo tried to run, dagger clearing his belt. She made a game try of it but she was slowing already, her breaths coming in gasps of pain. Cheers, luck, nice knowing you.
Laszlo brandished his little blade and tried to put fire in his expression, anything to buy Lissart a moment’s time. The airborne Wasp was almost on them, snapbow slung and hand extended.
Piss on my luck!
Fine last words for a pirate.
Then there was a flicker and the soldier was down, rolling on the ground with the spine of an arrow standing proud in him. The other Wasps suddenly had more to think about, whipping their snapbows around, but the trees were already echoing to the harsh snap! snap! of bolts clipping between the trees too fast to see. The two Wasps were on the ground in moments, and more fighting erupted all around. Laszlo had no eyes for it.
Liss was sitting with her back to a tree, breasts rising and falling as she fought for air, but she gripped his hand when he went to her, her palm still warm from her Art.
The skirmish went on for less than a minute and when a shadow fell over the two of them it was no Wasp but a long-faced Dragonfly-kinden woman wearing the buff coat of the Merchant Companies, a bow as tall as she was in one hand.
Laszlo identified the sash emblem, an Ant-kinden helm in profile.
‘Coldstone Company,’ he named it. ‘Collegium.’
The Dragonfly nodded suspiciously. Others were joining her now, a couple of Beetles, a handful more — Flies, a Moth with a shortbow in a holster at her waist.
‘Castre Gorenn, Commonweal Retaliatory Army, currently serving with the Coldstone,’ said the Dragonfly archer. ‘And what are you?’
‘Working for Ma- Stenwold Maker,’ Laszlo said, stumbling over the name in his hurry to present his credentials. ‘Please — your army’s close by?’
‘Not so very close,’ Castre Gorenn replied, still not trusting either of them an inch. ‘We’ll get you there sure enough, though. Collegium agents, Imperial agents — don’t really care — works either way for me.’
‘She’s hurt,’ Laszlo met Liss’s eyes. ‘Can you…’
Gorenn knelt to study Liss, and for a moment the Dragonfly’s easy expression turned grim at the sight of her, making something twist almost to breaking in Laszlo’s chest, but then the woman nodded.
‘I can fly with her, certainly. Nobody flies like me.’ With surprising delicacy the Dragonfly reached for Liss, who flinched and whimpered, but nevertheless held still as she was picked up like a child. ‘You’ve your own wings, to keep up?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course, is it? Well, Master “Of Course”, there’ll be a couple of these newfangled snappers held on you the whole time, so you better keep your mind on what you’re doing.’
Thirty-Three
Eujen Leadswell lodged over a bookbinder’s in a well-appointed room that just about scraped a view of the College rooftops, and which he tended to forget was paid for by the stipend he received each moon from his parents, merchants in the beer trade. He was back late tonight, having spent the last hour wrangling with a Master of the social history faculty who had taken issue over his Student Company. Their meeting had not gone well. She had ordered him to dissolve the force, and he had outright refused, and now the matter would apparently go before the head of faculty, or possibly the administrator. Eujen rather suspected that the promised reprimand would arrive some time after the war finished, and at that late point he would be glad to receive it.
He stomped up the stairs to his room — he had his own outside door, more for the convenience of the bookbinder than Eujen’s — and shouldered his way in, feeling disgruntled and angry. A moment’s fiddling with the gaslamps turned up a rosy glow — and Averic.
Eujen started back with a choked-off cry of alarm, finding his friend standing in the darkness of his own room, unbidden and unlooked for. His first thought, and he was ashamed by it, was Wasp assassin.
And Averic’s manner, quite aside from this trespass, was not reassuring. The Wasp stared at Eujen as though he had never quite seen him before. The intruder’s hands were empty, open, hanging by his side, but Eujen was suddenly aware of the danger that Averic represented, simply by virtue of his kinden. Killing hands. No wonder, his traitor imagination informed him, they were feared so, having taken the advantage of their Art and become…
‘Averic?’ he asked, his voice creditably calm. For a moment, a silence stretched between them, and then the Great Ear began its monotonous wail outside, and they both looked to the window.
‘Here we go again,’ Eujen’s words came out automatically, disassociated from any part of the awkward space
