seem paralysed. Nobody’s giving orders, and meanwhile the food supplies are running low because nobody in this city thought to lay in any surplus.’ He bared his teeth in frustration, and she shrank back. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’
‘Why not?’ she asked flatly. ‘The hangar…’ She coughed, then hissed at the pain. ‘Hurt me. At least I’d know where we stand. I’m used to that.’
Laszlo eyed her sadly for long enough that the haunted, hunted look came back to her features. ‘I killed Breighl,’ he said at last. ‘Didn’t want to, but I did.’ When she made no response he added, ‘I’m guessing you killed te Riel.’
‘Te Berro, his name was. He was ex-Imperial and he’d pretty much worked out who I was working for. He was going to stop me. He didn’t leave me much choice.’ Her tone was dull, and he wondered just how true that was. He hardly needed more evidence that Lissart was a very dangerous piece of work indeed.
‘And then we have the hangars,’ he continued. ‘And we’ll never know what might have happened if the Solarnese could have got those Firebugs into the air. I reckon the Imperial airships would have had a bad time of it certainly, maybe even the Spider ships as well.’
He expected her to look away, but instead she met his eyes with a little of her old spirit returning. ‘Do you expect me to say I’m sorry?’
He left that one to hang in the silence building between them, until she was moved to go on: ‘This is what I do, what I am. I’m a saboteur, a spy. I won’t claim it as a noble calling, but I do what I’m asked, for the craft of it. That’s something you never understood, though I’ll wager te Berro always did.’ Her words got fainter towards the end, as she had to pause to draw breath. ‘If I take back what I did at the hangars, I betray myself, and then what do I have left? But I’m sorry you were there and I’m sorry you… got hurt.’ That I burned you, hung on the air like smoke. ‘What are you going to do with me? Hand me over to your masters in Collegium?’
Chance’d be a fine thing, right now, but he could not muster any vitriol. That spark, that defiance, there was the Liss he remembered from the Taverna te Remi.
She was a killer, although that was probably the only commodity not in short supply in Solarno. Worse, he had the uneasy feeling that somewhere in her there was a beautiful and perfect little monster, a woman for whom the values of life and death were irrevocably skewed, or perhaps simply not given any reliable weight at all.
He reached out to take her hand and, to his surprise she did not draw it back. Of course, she was no more capable of being disarmed than was a Wasp-kinden, and her hands thronged with deadly Art. Despite all that, despite her condition, despite everything that was going on outside, holding her hand right then seemed the best thing that had happened to him in several days.
She was studying his face, and he wondered just what emotions he had allowed to roam over it, just then. ‘You utter fool,’ she said, but gently. ‘Is that it? I tried to kill you.’
He shrugged. ‘You said you were sorry. Besides, I’m a pirate. I’m used to that.’
‘A pirate?’ She did smile then. ‘Well then, what now, pirate? Steal me away on your sailing ship?’
‘I’m getting out of the city first chance,’ he told her. ‘Come with me — no obligations. Although if you promise not to try and kill me again that would be a good start.’
‘Go to your masters in the Lowlands?’
‘Just come with me.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘Please — or I won’t go at all.’
‘You are the emperor of the idiots,’ she whispered. ‘Let me take you away from all this? I never thought I’d fall for that one in a thousand years.’
Two days later and there was still no sign of anyone being allowed to leave the city. Operating on his own, Laszlo was confident he could have evaded the Wasps’ sentries and flying patrols, trusting to his wings to get him out of the city and away. Of course, Liss would not be able to go with him and, besides, he was out here on the Exalsee, with a long and complicated road to follow back to Collegium.
Then the great face-off between the Empire and the Spiderlands happened, which changed everything.
He had been out on the streets that day, not so much seeking food as information, because the uneasy peace between the two occupying forces had been sustained beyond reason and he wanted to know what was going on. There had been a few skirmishes between Wasp Light Airborne and Spider soldiers, it was true, but far fewer than he would have expected, given the temper of the former and the pride of the latter. Instead, it seemed that the strongest orders from above were holding both in check.
He made covert enquiries about the provenance of both forces but received no intelligence that he was happy with. The Wasps had brought in their Second Army, known as the Gears, which had previously rolled all the way to the gates of Collegium during the war. The Spider force was not such a united piece of business, of course, being a collusion of various different families, interests and mercenary units, but the name at its head was Aldanrael, the very family that had given Laszlo and Stenwold such a hard time not so long ago.
Then word came that they were tearing down some buildings at the heart of the Venodor, and the next day Laszlo went to take a look. By the time he arrived, an entire block in the centre of the street market had been razed by Mole Cricket slaves, levelling a grand uneven space in what had previously always been a cluttered and claustrophobic bazaar. Shortly after Laszlo arrived and began asking questions, the delegations turned up. First came soldiers with drawn blades, Wasps from the north, Spiders from the south, who prodded and pushed until the citizens had evacuated the new space, forming an anxious, milling crowd on all sides of it. Whatever’s going on, it’s meant to be as public as possible, Laszlo decided. He felt uncomfortable about shoving his way to the front, as though the words ‘Low-lander agent’ were somehow visible above his head, and he had to contend with sufficient elbowing at the back that in the end he found a roost on a rooftop overlooking the new square, as dozens of other Fly-kinden had already done. Looking around he realized that there were an awful lot of people here: anxious Solarnese and Flies and the local Spiders and foreign merchants, and all of them wanting to know what was going to happen. The prolonged and silent occupation had drawn their nerves tight, as was no doubt the intention.
There were also plenty of soldiers, for neither side was taking chances. Other rooftops played host to the Light Airborne, and Laszlo could spot a fair few groups in the crowd that were surely taking Spider-kinden pay, most notably several bands of huge Scorpions who would have no trouble shouldering their way forward if necessary.
After that, the leaders arrived. He saw the Imperial delegation coming first: a squad of armoured infantry with a handful of officers in their midst, but striding ahead of the soldiers was an old man bald enough to need a broad-brimmed hat against the Solarnese sun. He stood as straight as a spear and walked with a soldier’s confidence. If he feared Spider treachery, he did not show it.
One of the other Fly-kinden hissed between his teeth, muttering to his fellows. Laszlo inched over and parted with a few coins for the knowledge that this was reckoned to be none other than General Tynan, the master of the Gears.
Someone else was pointing back towards the docks, and Laszlo scuttled across the rooftop just in time to see Tynan’s opponents make their entrance. The escort here were all Spider-kinden: lean, beautiful men and women in light armour, bows over their shoulders, rapiers at their hips. As they reached the cleared square, a woman emerged from their midst, standing there regarding the assembled crowds as archly as any empress. She wore a cuirass of silver scales, and beneath that a copperweave hauberk, the mesh as fine as cloth, stronger than steel. For all that, Laszlo would bet she needed no better protection than her own invulnerable self-assurance. Even at this distance he could feel the faint touch of her Art, making her an object both of attraction and fear. Her hair was bright silver, richer than the jewelled torc at her neck or the glittering gilded wreath about her brow, and age had brought her only authority.
Seeing her there, and recalling descriptions given by Stenwold Maker, Laszlo was willing to wager she was the Lady Mycella of the Aldanrael, who had led an armada against Collegium only the year before.
The soldiers on either side were tense, expecting a fight or a riot. The Solarnese themselves were frightened, angry, ready for violence. There would be daggers and swords aplenty for the crowds to lay hands on. They had only cast off the Empire a couple of years ago, and now here the Wasps were again.
Laszlo was depressed to see that many were plainly looking to the Aldanrael to defend them. Solarno had been a sort of appendix to the Spiderlands for a long time, but a backwater beyond the rigours of intrigue and backstabbing that dominated the Spider-kinden cities proper.
Tynan strode forward, startling his own men. His face was professionally blank as he regarded his opposite number, who matched him, pace for pace.
He put his hand out, and they clasped.
