Dragonfly Falling

days.’ Stenwold realized that Tisamon’s attention was focused on him now, rather than on Arianna.

‘I was. ’ Stenwold looked down at the rounded bulk of his own body, so inadequately hidden by the sheet. ‘I was just retiring. ’ he began lamely, acutely aware that the harsh lines of Tisamon’s customarily severe expression were trembling a little.

‘Retiring with.?’

‘No!’ More harshly than Stenwold had meant. ‘Or at least not knowingly.’

‘So,’ Tisamon’s mouth twisted. ‘What does she want?’

‘Good question.’ Stenwold looked at the girl.

‘I want to help,’ she stated.

‘Help how?’ He had his tunic on again, which felt like armour beyond steel plates under the gaze of this young woman. Here in his study, the desk between them, he could feel a little more like the College Master and less the clown. She sat demurely where he had placed her but there was merriment still dancing in her eyes.

‘Everyone knows how you’ve been to the east. Everyone knows there are enemies waiting there. I mean, the Empire, that you taught us about in history. Nobody else has ever dared point the finger. None of the other masters would even answer my questions. And yet it was always there, and those soldiers — the Wasp-kinden — had come from there for the games. And that’s when a few of us started to realize that you’d been telling the truth all this time. That those men weren’t here just for the sake of peace and trade.’

‘Some people believed me, anyway,’ Stenwold said heavily, ‘understood that they are the threat I made them out to be. But the Assembly? Perhaps not.’

‘I believe you,’ she said, without hesitation. She was staring at him so earnestly that he became acutely aware of how young she was, how old he was. She was an odd specimen for a Spider. Her coppery hair was cut short in a local style, and she had freckles that made her look even more desperately earnest. He found himself looking at her in a different light: how very slender she was, how pale the skin of her bare arms where the short sleeves of her robe ended.

He gave himself a mental shake. ‘Why?’ he asked, re-focusing.

‘Because for one, my people are good at reading truth and falsehood, and I believe that when you’re up before us students telling us all this, you are sincere, that you know what you’re talking about. Since you left for wherever you went, we’ve all had a chance to see the Wasp-kinden at large in Collegium. Oh, they’re on their best behaviour and they’ve always got gold ready to pay for breakages, but they’re. ugly, do you know what I mean? Not physically, but something inside them. And the way they brawl. A little drink and a harsh word, and they’ll fight to kill. I know one student of the College who was killed in a taverna, only the Wasp officers paid out gold to keep it quiet. And they’re all trained soldiers, which is just what you said, too. Every one of them, even the artificers, even the diplomats who speak to the Assembly.’

‘Arianna. you Spider-kinden have never cared much what wars have racked the Lowlands,’ Stenwold said. ‘So why-?’

‘You think I’m here on behalf of my people?’ she asked him incredulously. ‘You think I’m some agent of the Aristoi? That. that would be grand, Master Maker.’ Bitterness was rife in her tone now. ‘But I’m not Aristoi. I’m of no great family to help me get anywhere in the world. I’m the last daughter of a dead house, and all we had left went to pay my way into the College. This is my home, Master Maker. The College is all I have. And you, to me you are the College.’

In the face of all that solemn youth, he could only swallow and stare.

‘Most of the Masters just get lost in their own disciplines, Master Maker. Stenwold. May I.?’

He found that he had nodded.

‘They don’t care, you see, what happens elsewhere. And some others are worse, lots of the ones in the Assembly, they look only to their pockets and their social station, and little else. I’ve seen enough of that snobbery in Everis where I grew up. But everyone knows it’s you who has gone out there and seen the world. And you’ve come back with a warning, and nobody is listening to you. But a lot of us students do. Master. Stenwold. I want to help you.’

‘How?’ he asked. Suddenly the words were difficult to reach for. ‘What do you. how can you help me?’

She moistened her lips with her tongue, abruptly nervous. ‘I. I hear things, see things. I learned to stay out of the way, back home, so I’m good at not being seen. You. that was one reason I came through your window like that. So that you’d see. so you’d know.’

‘I understand,’ he said, thinking, One reason? And what are the others? He did not want to involve this young girl in what was about to happen and yet she was so desperate to help, and if he now said no? Why, she would surely go off and do something rash on her own, just to prove herself to him. Just as Cheerwell would have done, doubtless.

And he could use her, certainly.

She reached out and put a hand on his, a touch that dried his throat suddenly.

‘Please,’ she said, and he found that he could not refuse.

‘It’s wonderful, isn’t it!’ Cheerwell exclaimed. ‘I don’t often get the chance to travel by rails.’ She had taken the bench end closest to the open window, watching the dusty countryside pass by, feeling the wind blast at her face. The rumble of the automotive’s steam engine tremored through every fibre of her being. Out there, craning forward to peer along the carriage’s length, she could see the duns and sand-colours of the land turning into the green marshes that surrounded Lake Sideriti, whose eastern edge the rail line would skirt, posted up on pillars to keep it clear of the boggy ground.

Achaeos huddled beside her, wrapped in his cloak and looking ill. It was the smell of the automotive, or the motion, or all of it. This was not a way that Moths travelled comfortably, and he could not even fly alongside. The carriage had no ceiling, just an awning to cover the seats in case of rain, but the steam automotive made such pace that if Achaeos went aloft he would get swept away, left behind.

Beneath her feet, through the slatted floor, Che could see the ever-turning steel wheels strike occasional sparks along the rails, and the ground in between hurrying past in a constant blur. This truly was the travel of the future, she decided, and even though Achaeos disliked it so much, they would reach Sarn in two days. Even Fly messengers took the rail these days to retain their boasted speed of delivery.

On the bench in front of them Sperra slept fitfully, leaning against the carriage wall. Che had carefully shuttered that part of the window closest to her, in case the little Fly-kinden should stir in her sleep and just pitch straight out of it. She was still not entirely recovered from her injuries at Helleron, poor woman, but it had been her decision to join Scuto in his journey to Collegium. The Thorn Bug himself was off inspecting the engine, Che gathered. He might be an agent in Stenwold’s spy army but he remained an artificer first and foremost.

Of course that made her think of Totho, and she suddenly found no pleasure either in the journey or the machine that transported them.

Poor Totho, who had left them for the war at Tark for one reason only. She herself had never fully told Stenwold the truth, although he had probably guessed most of it. Only Achaeos and she knew with utter certainty. Totho had left them because he could not bear to be with her without having her affection. For that reason he had come all the way from Collegium to Helleron with her. He had come to rescue her from the Wasps, travelled into the Empire itself, for no other cause, and she had never seen it because she had never looked. There had been Salma to worry about. There had been Achaeos, too, who had become bound to her by forces she could not explain, and who she loved.

Poor Totho had fallen between the slats of her life and only in his misplaced farewell letter had he been recalled to her guilty attention.

She had told him casually, You are like a brother, and she, who had experienced her share of rejections and even derision, knew just what that felt like. Yet how easily the words had slipped out from her.

There had been no word yet from Tark. That the siege had started seemed clear, but Totho and Salma should have kept a safe distance away, watching the moves of Ant and Wasp like a chess match. Yet they should have been able to send word somehow. Which meant that something had gone wrong, and poor clumsy Totho, who had never been able to look after himself, not really, was there in the middle of it.

She put her arm round Achaeos, and hugged him to her. His blank eyes peered at her from beneath his hood.

‘You’re thinking about him again,’ he noted.