Dragonfly Falling

educated man, and you were educated by your own folk before you ever fell into imperial hands. So tell me about magic.’

‘A curious matter, madam,’ he said. ‘I find myself, mmn, reluctant-’

‘Tell me nothing you would not wish repeated. But do not stay from telling me just because such a revelation might not be believed,’ she directed. ‘Magic, Gjegevey?’

‘Ah, well, my own people have uncommon views,’ he told her. ‘Most uncommon. I will, ahmn, share them with you, but I would not expect you to share them — if you understand — with me.’ At her impatient gesture he went on. ‘You did not know, I believe, that many of my kinden are Apt. We study, hrm, mechanics and the physical principles of the world, although in truth we build little, and that must be from wood in the main, metal being hard to come by in our homeland.’

‘I did not know that,’ she admitted. ‘And so, I would guess, that you cannot help me.’

‘Ah,’ he said, pedantic as a librarian. ‘Ah, but yet many of my kinden are not Apt and have no gift for machines, and yet follow, hrhm, other paths, the physical principles of the world and so forth and so on, that some might call magic. And so you see, we are in something of a unique position, my kinden. For we are not surging forwards into the, ahm, progress of the world of artifice, nor are we clinging grimly to the darkness of the Days of Lore. We are. in balance, I suppose one might say. And these two halves of our culture, they are not two halves at all, for each tries to share its insights with the other, and just occasionally, ahemhem, some gifted man or woman of our kind can understand the both. And so I can confirm to you, within the beliefs and the experiments of my kinden at least, that magic is very real.’

‘So why do we not believe in it?’ she asked. ‘If it is so real, prove it to me.’ Behind her challenging words, though, excitement was building.

‘Ah, but it is an interesting thing, that these things can so seldom be proved. If I were to perform some piece of, hrmf, magic for you, here in this room, you would claim a thousand ways it could have been done. Indeed, those ways might be exceedingly unlikely, but you would cling to them rather than accept the, mmn, the chance that magic, the eternal inexplicable, might be the true agent, and if you were strong enough in yourself, unafraid, unthreatened, here in your own chambers, well perhaps there would be no magic worked at all. It is a subjective force, you see, whereas the physical laws of the artificers are objective. A gear-train will turn without faith, but magic may not. And so, when your people demand, mmn, proof, there is none, but when you have forgotten and dismissed it, then magic creeps back into the gaps where you do not look for it.’

She had a hundred more questions, a thousand, but she bit back on them. It would not do to trust this man too much. ‘Tell me, though, Gjegevey,’ she said, thinking hard. She must know no more than her brother would expect her to know, but her brother, if Maxin’s spies reported this conversation, would expect her to ask about Uctebri. ‘Are you aware that, as well as your magic, the Mosquito-kinden are real?’

He regarded her for a second solemnly and raised a hairless brow quizzically. ‘The Mosquito-kinden, madam? You must think me very, hmm, credulous.’ And yet as he spoke he nodded once, holding her eye.

So, he believes us overheard, though not overseen. ‘So some myths are really no more than myths,’ she said, feigning disappointment. She had heard that the Spider-kinden had some Art by which they could spin strands of web from their fingers, that they formed these into words and shapes of secret import, while all the time talking about mundane things. She wished she had some similar skill.

‘Alas so, madam,’ Gjegevey said. ‘However, let me alleviate your sorrow at this discovery. Shall I, mmm, show you a little harmless magic?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘You can do this?’

‘I would not like to put your hopes too high, and it is some long time since I attempted any such thing. However. ’ He looked down at his hands, grey and long-fingered, and clasped them together, and when he pulled them apart. something came with them, something stretching and twisting between his fingers, flashing and flaring with colours.

It is a trick, she thought instantly. Some chemical or such. It was pretty enough, for a piece of foolery, and the old man was staring at her so very seriously. She opened her mouth to say something properly polite, and his voice came to her, very clear, without his lips moving or her ears hearing it, the words forming of their own accord in her mind.

The Mosquito your brother keeps, I know of him. Do not trust him. He is very old and wise.

She stared at his face, mouth open. Something lurched inside her. She had the horrible feeling that, in dealing with Uctebri the Sarcad, in coming to an agreement with him, she had stepped slightly out of the world she knew, into a world where things like this could happen.

He is wise, madam, but he is powerful. What he seeks to do is for himself, and not for your brother. Gjegevey’s tired old eyes suddenly flashed, throwing briefly into the air the cunning he kept hidden behind them. And you, Your Highness, may yet find a way to benefit from it. Only do not trust him. Do not trust him unless you have no other choice.

Nineteen

It was almost true that you could never get a decent spy placed in an Ant city. Ants were fanatically loyal or else they were outcasts with no civic standing. The best any spymaster could do was place a few men in the foreigners’ quarter or suborn a few slaves. Even the slaves of the Ants tended to acquire something of their masters’ civic pride, though. It seemed incredible to Thalric but, after a generation or so, those born into such captivity seemed to believe that a slave in their city was better than a freeman elsewhere.

He had made good time along the coast to Vek, paying a Collegium sailing master over the odds to catch the wind night and day and thus get him there by the second dawn, so that the rising sun glittered against the great grey seawall that sheltered Vek Anchorage as he arrived. He saw the spidery shapes of trebuchets and ballistae positioned upon it, while reports from the delegation had mentioned that there were fire-projectors built into the wall itself.

Behind the sea-wall, his boat was towed the length of the stone-lined canal until it reached the city proper. Docked, and his transport paid for, Thalric made his way through the subdued streets of the foreigners’ quarter, following the map he had memorized a tenday earlier. The imperial delegation had made a favourable impression on the Vekken Royal Court, he understood, and a two-storey building had been cleared of a consortium of Beetle importers and assigned for their use. He saw it ahead of him now, the typically spare Ant architecture of flat roof, unadorned walls and small, defensible windows, with a pair of Wasp soldiers standing guard outside. They crossed lances before him, but they could see his race and thus it was just a formality.

‘Captain Thalric to see Captain Daklan,’ he announced, and they let him through. His name would be familiar, and on being relayed would be translated as Major Thalric of the Rekef.

Inside, they had slaves offer him fruit and some brackish local wine. He barely had time to taste either before they came for him.

Captain Daklan of the army, who was also Major Daklan of the Rekef Outlander, was a short, broad- shouldered man a few years Thalric’s junior. His dark hair was receding and he had a lined face and a mobile mouth that made him look humorous and easygoing, which was in fact anything but the case. He had entered with two others, a taller Wasp in a uniform tunic who had a writing tablet crooked in his arm, and a strange-looking woman. She must have been close to Thalric’s age, and she was a halfbreed, her dark skin swirled in strange patterns of grey and white like water-damaged cloth. The effect was disturbing and intriguing at once.

‘Major Thalric,’ Daklan said, giving him a cursory salute. ‘How is Collegium?’

‘Owed a beating,’ Thalric said, heartfelt. A slave came in with more wine, some bread and honey, and he topped up his bowl again. ‘How do we stand here, Major?’

‘Well enough. I’ve heard of some of your own exploits, Thalric,’ Daklan said. ‘Helleron was a botch, wasn’t it?’

Thalric frowned at him, caught with a slice of bread halfway to his mouth. ‘Are you authorized to question me about my past operations, Major Daklan?’

Daklan gave him a narrow look. ‘Just interested. Word spreads.’