Dragonfly Falling

‘Then it is your job to stop it doing so, not spread it further,’ Thalric said. ‘We have enough to concern us here in Vek.’ His orders had put him at the head of this operation, but Daklan was obviously an officer who chafed under anyone else’s control. Thalric took a chair and sat down, taking his time to finish the bread, smearing it thickly with honey, making Daklan wait. The scribe with the tablet remained impassive but the woman looked very slightly amused at the deliberate delay. Daklan meanwhile shuffled from one foot to the other.

‘Major Thalric-’

Thalric, mouth still half-full, held up a hand. ‘This honey is very good. Where does it come from?’ he asked the halfbreed woman, still chewing.

‘Bee-kinden traders bring it from the north, sailing down the coast,’ she explained. Her voice was husky for a woman’s.

‘Naturally,’ Thalric acknowledged, wiping his fingers fastidiously. ‘Now, Daklan, why not sit down and tell me just who your friends are and exactly how we stand.’ At the man’s bristling glance he added, ‘I’m not your enemy, and if you’ve heard anything about me it is that my underlings prosper, if they do well by me. I don’t care for petty politics within the Empire or within the Rekef. That’s why I’m Outlander branch, and I hope you’ll be of my mind for as long as you work with me. If you have some prize you hope to see from this operation, then I’ll help you towards it if you serve me well. But I have a bad history with uncooperative subordinates.’ He smiled, though the thought was painful, ‘I’ll make that clear to you now.’

Daklan took a moment to think through this, and then sat down, resting an arm on the table. It was not an entirely relaxed position, not for a Wasp whose hands were weapons at need. Thalric decided to overlook it.

‘Major Thalric, if we’ve started badly then I apologize,’ Daklan said, not sounding overly contrite. ‘This is Lieutenant Haroc, my aide and intelligencer.’ Daklan made a vague gesture towards the scribe. ‘And this here is our secret weapon. Her name is Lorica.’

Thalric nodded to the halfbreed woman. ‘What’s your heritage, Lorica?’ he asked her.

‘My father was a local, sir. My mother was Wasp-kinden. A slave bought from the Spiders, I understand.’

He nodded, digesting this. ‘And you can.?’ Because there was only one reason that a halfbreed would be here, at this council.

‘The Ancestor Art has given me a link to the minds of the Vekken, sir, yes. I can hear them, and speak to them — not that they will acknowledge me.’

‘But they are very used to their privacy,’ Daklan said. ‘And much of what they say is not one to one, but one individual proclaiming to many. And Lorica can hear it, so in negotiations it’s of great use to us.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Thalric acknowledged. ‘So what has been negotiated?’

‘The usual preliminaries. A mutual recognition of power. A similarity of aims. They know that we are intent on taking Tark, and they approve. They have had their own designs on Collegium, and we approve. They want Sarn, but they know Sarn and Collegium stand together now, and it irks them.’ Daklan smiled. ‘May I take it, Major Thalric, that you are here to make the proposal to them?’

‘You think they are ready to accept?’

‘More than ready. They’ve not forgotten how Collegium defeated them before.’

‘As I understand it,’ Thalric noted, ‘Collegium simply held them off long enough for Sarnesh forces to reinforce, no?’

He looked to Lorica for a response and she said, ‘That is not how they see it, Major. They feel it as a defeat, and keenly so, because Collegium is a place of soft scholars, in their eyes, and they are soldiers.’

‘And yet it happened. ’ Thalric frowned, a new thought presenting itself. ‘Are we sure that, once this operation commences, these people will be able to capture Collegium? It would not serve the Empire if they failed.’ He corrected himself. ‘It would serve the Empire, by weakening both cities, but it would not serve them as well as breaking Collegium’s walls and scattering its people.’

‘It is simply a matter of time, Major Thalric, and of preparedness,’ Daklan explained. ‘The Vekken forces have had a long time to consider that defeat, and learn from it.’

‘I suppose even Ants can innovate,’ Thalric said, ‘given sufficient incentive.’

‘You can be sure that they have a plan, sir,’ Lorica confirmed. ‘Taking Collegium has become their prime civic ambition.’ She said it sourly, and he guessed that the civic pride of Vek was something far from her own heart. Halfbreeds were even less welcome amongst Ants than elsewhere.

‘Well, then,’ Thalric said, ‘let us go and make our bid. You can arrange an audience with the Royal Court?’

‘Tomorrow evening at the latest,’ Daklan confirmed. ‘It would not surprise me if they will be marching east in three days’ time.’

Oh, it was a difficult enough time to be a Rekef lieutenant. The Fly-kinden te Berro was finding his race’s gift for survival becoming strained. Rekef captains tended to have their own followers, their own networks and operations to fall back on. Sergeants and agents were considered just tools, seldom important enough to make the death-lists of those on high. Lieutenants, on the other hand, seemed to have the worst of both worlds.

He had been working in the west-Empire these last few years, even in the borderlands during the preparation for the Lowlands invasion. He had straddled the line, with his diminutive stride, something between Outlander and Inlander. He had hoped to be useful enough to all, and not too vitally useful to any. That line had since become impossible to walk.

All these years he had been General Reiner’s man. It had seemed the safest bet. It had got him his lieutenant’s bars, some good appointments, neither too dangerous nor too dull. Then things had started going subtly awry. An intelligent man with an inquiring mind, he soon realized that the problem lay within the Rekef itself. The secret service was honing its knives, but its eyes were turned inwards. Two cells of agents that te Berro had worked with had been wiped out by men that should have been their allies. General Reiner was now fighting a war, and that war was not against Lowlanders or Commonwealers but against elements of the Rekef itself.

Then there had been Myna, that gloriously bloody excursion undertaken by Major Thalric, another of Reiner’s men. Te Berro’s name had been commended in the reports. He had been very proud at the time, but not so long after he had realized that his time was up. The clock of his career in the Rekef had struck, and he was a dead man unless he slid down the pendulum soon and made his goodbyes. He was suddenly a somebody, and Reiner’s enemies were using his name in pointed ways. He made his researches and his plans, and determined that General Reiner was not in the best position, just now, that there were other men with more promise that a Fly-kinden agent could cling to.

Even before he had been briefing Thalric in the Cloud-farer, he had made his contacts, put out tentative feelers. He had got in touch with the agents of General Maxin, Reiner’s chief competitor, and offered to defect.

Te Berro was an experienced agent, a useful man, and besides, he had a lot to say about Reiner’s people and their operations. He had spent almost a tenday talking to his new friends, until his narrow throat was hoarse with it, and they had written down every word. At the end, knowing that he had nothing left to give, he had cast himself on their mercy.

‘Let me serve you,’ he had begged Maxin’s people. ‘Make use of me, for anything.’ But do not cast me away. Do not make of me just one more vanished name from the Rekef books.

Whether it was this particular mission they had in mind, or whether his breadth of experience recommended him for it, he would never know. A day later they had packed him off to Helleron with his orders, and the implicit understanding that it was his success in this venture that would determine his ultimate longevity.

He had been at pains to show how professional he was. They had told him to recruit agents and he had done so, reviving old contacts with ease to pluck four capable mercenaries from the city’s stews and bring them to this private room in a good Fly-kinden taverna. His only problem was in the nature of his instructions and, seeing their hard, professional faces regarding him, he felt that they might tear him apart, or merely laugh at him. They must not laugh, at this. It had been impressed on him that, no matter how bizarre the task seemed, it was in deadly earnest. A great deal hung on his small efforts here.

‘These are your orders and I make no apologies for them. They come from the capital itself, from the very palace, so make what you will of them.’ Te Berro shrugged, hands spread. ‘In Collegium, kept in a certain private collection, there is this item. A box, no more than six inches to a side. Unopenable, or at least you are apparently advised not to open it. A box worked with intricate carvings, vine-patterns and abstract foliage. No better description is provided, but unmistakable, or so they assure me. Given the location and the expertise required this is