that would explain the uncomfortable contours of the chair he was lashed to, its cold metal.
As well as most securely bound, he was stripped to the waist, and when he flexed his body experimentally, he felt the tug and pull of bandages, over rows of surgeon’s stitches.
And from somewhere close above him, a female voice stated, ‘I think he is awake.’
Totho froze into immobility, but too late. There was no longer anything to be gained from shamming, so very carefully he opened his eyes.
Even the dim light within the tent sent a stab of pain coursing through his brain, but he could just make out a blurred shape looming above him.
Something cold touched his lips, and he twisted his head violently, ringing his skull with agony. The woman’s voice said sharply, ‘Stop that. It is water only.’
He cautiously turned back to press his mouth against the lip of a cup. The water it contained was so startlingly cold that he felt there must be ice in it. A moment later a damp cloth was put to his forehead.
He forced himself to look properly, to make the vague shapes resolve themselves. The woman who had spoken was young, he saw, and dark-skinned. At first he assumed she was a Beetle, but her face was too flat, her frame too compact. Then he recalled the slave-artificers and recognized her as of the same kinden.
‘Where am I?’ he finally rasped, and found the ache in his head was joined by another inside his cheek. His mouth tasted rusty with dried blood, so he must have bitten himself in the struggle.
He saw the woman turn and glance at someone behind her, who had not, in all this time, moved or spoken. Merely the thought sent a shiver through him, and then she had stepped aside, and someone else was now standing beside the strange chair. Totho turned his head as far as the pain would allow, and saw a metal- gauntleted hand, exquisitely worked.
The newcomer’s voice was quiet and sly, slightly mocking. ‘In your position, young man, I would not waste my time with unnecessary questions. What is your name, young one?’
He decided he was not going to answer, and then the gauntlet shifted with a slight scraping of metal and he said quickly, ‘Totho. They called me Totho.’
‘A Fly-kinden name.’ The man sounded amused. ‘You must have been brought up in. Collegium, I would guess? Well then, my own name is Dariandrephos, but the boorish Wasps call me Drephos. Or “the Colonel- Auxillian”, of course.’
‘Colonel.?’ Totho wrestled with the term.
‘In fact I am the only Colonel-Auxillian in the Empire. I know that because they invented the rank solely for my benefit. Perhaps one day they will have to make me General-Auxillian, and then perhaps, what? Emperor- Auxillian. That would be amusing. Where were you trained?’
Totho shut his eyes and said nothing.
‘Do you know why you are here — rather than with the other prisoners? Perhaps you do not. We captured three of you, and the other two will be questioned as the Wasps question, as far as their physical capabilities permit. This, as you should have surmised, is not questioning. This is merely a friendly conversation, Totho.’
Still Totho said nothing, and his interrogator clicked his tongue in annoyance. Totho waited for a blow, but instead there was a tugging at his wrists, and then his bonds were loosened. He opened his eyes to see the girl retreating from him again.
‘Of course, you require some token of my good will,’ said Drephos.
Finally Totho was able to twist around to look at him. He saw none of the man’s flesh. The robe and cowl made a tall spectre of him. Only that gauntlet emerged from the folds of black and yellow cloth.
‘What is going on?’ Totho demanded. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘You are here because of this.’ The gauntlet dipped into Drephos’s robe and came out again with a strangely hesitant precision that made Totho wonder whether the hand inside had been injured or burned. On its reappearance it was gripping a small mechanism that he knew only too well.
‘And this.’ Drephos’s other hand, dark-gloved but bare of metal, appeared briefly to hang a long strip of pocketed leather on the arm of the metal chair. It was Totho’s tool-strip, and the device brandished before his face was one of his air batteries, his little pet project he had never been able to finish.
‘It is remarkable how much one can learn from the contents of a man’s pack,’ Drephos continued. ‘You have clearly been trained as an artificer, but I could have told that from the calluses of your hands. You were trained in Collegium then? In the Great College?’
Numbly, Totho nodded.
‘I would have given a great deal for that privilege.’
‘You’re an artificer?’ Totho seized on that statement. It seemed to offer him some small chance of respite.
Drephos laughed hollowly. ‘I am perhaps, though I say it myself, the most skilled artificer you will ever meet. The only reason I qualify that with “perhaps” is your own tutelage. I am painfully aware that, myself excluded, the Empire is somewhat young in the game of artifice: three generations from barbarism whilst you Lowlanders have a tradition that goes back centuries. Still, one must work with the tools one has.’
‘But the Empire must have artificers. Wasp artificers?’ Totho said. ‘I can’t be so special.’
‘But you are, because I do not want to rely on Wasp artificers. They are either dull men who have learned their mechanics by rote, or they waste what intellect they have in politics and one-upmanship and care nothing for the science itself. No, my people, my journeymen, are chosen from other sources. Unless the man be an outcast, I will not have a Wasp in my workshops.’
‘You want me to-?’
‘I am interested in
‘I will never work for the Empire!’ Totho snapped, sitting halfway up, then falling back, his head still clamouring.
‘I have a case to make.’ Drephos sounded amused.
‘I know the Empire. I know how they look on other races, even if they aren’t halfbreeds!’ Totho said through his teeth.
‘And what if they are?’ There was such dry humour in the man’s voice that Totho propped himself up on one elbow to see what was so funny.
Drephos raised his hands, one cased in metal and one without, and slipped his cowl back. The face he revealed was mottled and blotchy with grey, and his eyes had no irises. There were many grades of halfbreed, Totho already knew. A few like Tynisa were just like one parent or the other, and some others managed to combine their heritage into something exotic and attractive. Most were like Totho himself, stamped with an intermingling of bloods that others saw, and then judged them by. Drephos, though, was of those few who seemed actively twisted by their inheritance. His features were lean and ascetic but subtly wrong in their proportions. Even when he smiled the effect was unpleasantly skewed.
‘I am aware, young man, that I will win no prizes for my beauty, but believe that I, therefore, judge no man on his face or blood,’ he said.
‘Drephos,’ Totho said softly. ‘And that other name, the long one. Moth-kinden names?’
‘My mother was left to name me. My father, unknown and unmourned, bestowed on her only so much of his time as it took to rape her. Wasp soldiers are not known for their benevolence towards prisoners or slaves. I suppose few soldiers are.’
‘But you said you were an artificer?’
The lopsided smile grew wider than seemed comfortable. ‘Remarkable, is it not? And yet something from my father’s seed has communicated to me all the workings of the world of metal, for here I am, so much of an artificer that they turn their hierarchy inside out to accommodate me. Without me the walls of Tark would still be whole, utterly unbreached. Yet my mother’s people sit in their caves and draw pictures on the wall, and pretend they are still great.’
Totho sank back into the chair. There was a feeling snagged deep inside him, because he was now interested. This maverick artificer, who seemed to have carved out some high station even amidst the Wasp Empire, had caught his imagination.
‘Was it your idea,’ Drephos asked softly, ‘to destroy my airships?’
And
