before. The swordsman had reach, and kept himself half airborne, swarming about Fel trying to find an opening. The Onychoi warrior left him no gap, pivoting and spinning to keep his opponent in sight, hands raised in a high guard, with their spikes jutting forward. Those blows he could not dodge, he took on his mail or on his Art- armoured knuckles.
Stenwold drew his own blade, turning to aid Paladrya. A second Dragonfly was already crouching low before her, sword held vertically before him. Cynthaen had come to her rescue, balanced on her good leg, both hands resting on her stick.
The Dragonfly struck a cleaving downward blow that should have lopped the Mantis’s weapon in half. Cynthaen twisted it a little as she brought it up, though, pulling it apart to reveal a ribbon of steel between a wooden hilt and scabbard. Then she had the blade fully drawn, keeping the sheath in her offhand to block with. Paladrya cowered behind her.
‘Mar’Maker, look!’ Laszlo was pointing urgently. Up on the shack’s roof there was another man, standing tall with a bow in one hand, an arrow just being put to the nock. Cursing at his own stupidity, Stenwold fumbled for more snapbow bolts.
Cynthaen was keeping up a steady defence, but she could not move fast enough to take the initiative, and slowly the Dragonfly’s relentless assault was forcing her back, her wooden foot dragging. Stenwold crouched, reloading frantically, and then, in front of him, Fel’s opponent was suddenly doubled over. A murderous barbed fist snapped out faster than Stenwold’s eyes could follow, ramming four inches of piercing bone under the man’s ribs. The bowstring thrummed and Fel was already turning towards the sound, the arrow striking into his armoured chest with enough force to send him to one knee. The mail had taken the worst of it, though, and he was already lurching back to his feet. Stenwold rushed forward, pointing the snapbow wildly in the archer’s direction, and the man lifted off, wings flickering in the lamplight before they carried him back down the length of the pier.
The conflict had stilled behind them, and Stenwold turned to see Cynthaen and Paladrya at the pier’s very edge. Their opponent lay at Cynthaen’s feet, with two deep wounds driven into his back, while Laszlo was cleaning his dagger with an unaccustomedly grim look on his face.
‘We’ve seen these lads before, Mar’Maker,’ he pointed out.
Stenwold nodded, drawn unwillingly back to the fatal fight on the barge. Teornis’s men, they had to be, which meant that either some other Aldanrael agent was on his trail, or…
Or Teornis had got to shore before him. It would surprise Stenwold not at all if that was true. He was a capable man, Teornis, and he would have found some way to manipulate Claeon into freeing him. Abruptly Stenwold felt certain that the Dragonflies had not been sent as assassins, only as spies – that their true prize, the knowledge of where Aradocles might be found, was even now winging its way back to their Aldanrael liege.
‘Fel,’ he said. ‘You’re wounded?’
The sea-kinden was staring down at the arrow, looking slightly perplexed now the fighting was done. He tugged at it experimentally and winced, but Stenwold had the impression that the shell mail had done its job and that the wound must be only shallow.
‘Never saw that before,’ the Onychoi murmured, baffled, and Stenwold was reminded that the sea-people were not well known for archery.
‘We need to get to Princep Salmae as quickly as possible,’ Stenwold decided. ‘If Aradocles is there, we have to find him before they do.’
His last glimpse of Cynthaen was to see her staring down at the dead Dragonfly in a kind of helpless frustration, as though she had been robbed by him, as though she would rather have died as a Mantis-kinden should do, than live on as she was.
Varante finished his report, looking sour and vengeful about the death of his kin. They were a proud lot, the Dragonfly-kinden of Solorn, descendants of the retinue of an exiled prince before they became the subjects of the Spider Aristoi. Teornis was only glad that his vassal had retained the self-possession to deliver his report rather than drawing a blade and wading in himself.
Ah, well, there’s no such thing as a perfect slave, as they say. ‘Do you know,’ he remarked to Helmess Broiler, ‘I have never yet had cause to visit Princep Salmae. Have they even finished it?’
‘That place never much interested me.’ The Beetle shrugged. ‘Just some band of uprooted peasants and former slaves pitching a few tents in the wilderness. Still, I understand the Sarnesh are busy cultivating them, for whatever reason.’
‘Well, now it would seem that I must make the visit. Maker will have agents there, of course.’
‘Oh, probably. The fellow it’s named after was one of his students, after all.’ Helmess smiled unpleasantly. ‘You’ll have your work cut out for you, my lord Spider. Who would talk to you there, when they’ll love and revere Maker as a war hero, a saviour? Won’t you be at something of a disadvantage?’
‘You forget, I’m also a war hero.’ Teornis’s teeth flashed in a grin. ‘Moreover, a Spider-kinden Aristos is never at a disadvantage. Stenwold may simply have countered some of my natural superiority, that’s all. Secure me a flying machine – for me and Varante and his people.’
Helmess frowned. ‘Just like that?’
‘It’s what you Beetles are good at, isn’t it? Machines, logistics? I’ll take your man Sands as well. He’s nicely inconspicuous. There may be a few too many Commonwealers about for Varante’s people to pass unnoticed. What? Don’t look so sour, man. After all, we’re on the same side, aren’t we? We want the same thing,’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Helmess heavily. His eyes flicked towards Elytrya, and Teornis smiled.
‘While you’re making the arrangements, I’ll keep your lovely mistress company, shall I, just a little insurance for your good behaviour? After all, we wouldn’t want you getting any unprofitable ideas.’
Thirty-Seven
There were few things that might have roused this middle-aged Beetle willingly from his sleep, past midnight, after a late night spent tinkering with the innards of an airship engine. When the rapping had begun at his window, he had done his best to ignore it. The lodgings by the airfield were cheap, frequented by all manner of tramp aviators, small traders and cack-handed artificers. Drunken guests trying to break into the wrong room were not unknown. Yet the noise had continued, and then he had caught, through the pillow he had hauled over his head, the sound of his own name.
Cursing, he had arisen, draped awkwardly in a blanket. A tightness about his head informed him that he had gone to bed with his goggles still on. He took a heavy wrench in one hand and hauled the window shutters open, glaring balefully at the Fly-kinden youth clinging there.
‘I don’t know you,’ the Beetle said flatly. ‘Now you bugger off or I’ll brain you.’
‘Stenwold Maker needs you,’ the Fly told him.
For much of a minute the Beetle just stared at him, as though trying to unhear those words by sheer effort of will, but then he swore and threw the wrench into a corner. ‘At his place?’
‘He’s on his way here now,’ the Fly said. ‘Ten minutes away, maybe.’
‘Fine.’ The Beetle sighed deeply, then shook his head. ‘I’ll meet him out on the field, bastard nuisance that he is.’
The Fly dropped from the window ledge, his wings flurrying him away as though a strong wind had caught him. Feeling sour and tired, the Beetle-kinden man began to dress himself, hauling on the hard-wearing leathers of an artificer.
He stumped downstairs to the door of his lodgings. The woman that ran the place, a boot-faced Ant and Beetle halfbreed, was inexplicably waiting ready for him in the obvious belief that he intended shirking payment of the bill. He had stayed at this place on and off for seven years, and yet she still would not trust him an inch or advance him a clay bit’s worth of credit.
‘I’ll be going for a while,’ he told her, after settling up. ‘Hold the room for me.’
‘Where to this time?’ Her tone suggested that only the congenitally mad would contemplate a life of travel for themselves.
‘No idea,’ he replied, confirming her in her conviction. Then he was out of the door, into the night, stamping across to the airfield.
