Dragonfly Falling

would be staring. ‘Totho, no-’

‘This way you survive, and live free, and I. live too. It’s not so bad. I won’t be a slave, quite. And who knows what could happen?’ And it’s not as if I had much to go back to, Totho added to himself. And this way, Che won’t detest me any more than she already does, because at least I won’t have left you to die, Salma.

‘Totho, you can’t do this,’ Salma said urgently, feeling himself worn out just by the effort of this conversation. ‘I’m not worth your doing this-’

‘Shut up!’ Totho snapped, shocking him into silence. ‘Shut up, Salma, because I have already done this. I have put on their colours and apprenticed myself to these monsters, and I have done it for you, and if you tell me now that you’re not worth it, just what have I done all that for?’ His fists were tightly clenched and Salma saw him anew then: not the shy, awkward youth always tagging along behind Che, but the man that same youth had forged into.

It came for all of us, Salma thought. We are all grown now. Che, when the Wasps enslaved her and put her before their torture machines. Tynisa when she discovered her birthright. To me on the point of a sword. and to Totho here and now. We have put childish things behind us, and look at the world we have grown into.

There were streaks of moisture on Totho’s face but he was putting on an angry mask to hide the despair.

I have no right to play the martyr here, nor have I the strength.

‘I’m sorry, Totho,’ he said softly. ‘I hope you find that you have done the right thing.’

Totho had assumed that the Imperial Fourth Army would be splitting, some to be led west by General Alder and others staying to secure the half-ruined city of Tark. Garrison duty was beneath the Barbs, though, and a new force had come tramping out of the desert following its Scorpion guides. A garrison force, Totho understood, was different to a field army. It contained more auxillians, for one, usually around one man in two, and many of the Wasp-kinden included were veterans who had now earned an easier assignment than open battle. All this he learned from Kaszaat. The garrison was commanded by a governor who was usually also a colonel in the imperial army. Running a garrison was less prestigious than commanding a field army, but having a whole city at one’s disposal, she explained, was an unparalleled opportunity for acquiring both power and wealth. More than one general had willingly taken the demotion.

General Alder was not that kind of soldier, however. He was already busy organizing the Fourth to move westwards. Expecting no answer, Totho had enquired of Drephos, and was surprised when the artificer had told him that the plan was very simple.

‘The Fly-kinden settlements of Egel and Merro will be invited to avail themselves of imperial protection. There seems little doubt, given the timorous and pragmatic character of the race, that they will accept. Then the army will proceed on to the island city-state, Kes.’

Totho knew that the garrison force had resupplied the Fourth with more than just rations and ammunition. Two dozen battle heliopters had been assembled on the airfield by the camp, with four hulking carrier heliopters — monstrously clumsy machines that could each hold three hundred men in the open cage of its belly. ‘These are just to draw out Kes’s airpower,’ he guessed.

‘Quite,’ Drephos confirmed. ‘We have a few soldiers who could fly all the way from the mainland, but most of them would tire halfway and drop into the sea. So we will ship them over in droves, to die over Kes and to destroy its flying machines and its riding insects and whatever else shall come against them. Then the airships will drop incendiaries upon the Kessen navy, which I believe is formidable, and drop rockbreaker explosives on its sea-wall and its artillery. After that, the city itself will burn and we will begin landing our forces. I estimate that it will take General Alder three times as long to take Kes as it did to take Tark, partly because the city is naturally more defensible, and partly because I shall not be there with him.’

Totho nodded. That seemed only reasonable.

‘We shall shortly be embarking on our own journey, however,’ Drephos continued, ‘so we shall see none of it. I have faith that General Alder will prove his usual mixture of military efficiency and imaginative bankruptcy.’ He went striding with his uneven gait back towards his tent. ‘First, though, I have something I would like your opinion on, Totho.’

Totho hurried after him. He was forever surprised to find himself so free just to run around. It seemed the black and yellow that he wore was a shield against persecution, for all that he earned plenty of disparaging looks from the Wasps.

In his tent, Drephos had assembled a little workshop of the most delicate tools Totho had ever seen. There was a grinder for machining metal, a casting ladle and a set of wax moulds, and everything he needed to replace parts and help maintain his devices in the field. Turning, Drephos had something in his hands, long and wrapped in dark cloth, and for once he seemed almost hesitant.

‘You are a gifted artificer, Totho,’ he said. ‘That is, of course, why I plucked you from captivity.’

‘At least you hope I am, sir,’ Totho said.

‘I do not recognize hope. Instead I calculate. I gather information,’ said Drephos. ‘You had on your person certain devices which I guessed were of your own invention, and schematics to incorporate them into a larger plan. A plan that you have never, I would guess, been able to undertake.’

Totho stared at the bundle in his arms and found himself abruptly short of breath. ‘Never. ’ he began, then his mouth was sand-dry, all of a sudden. ‘What have you done?’

‘While you were with your friend, yesterday, and while Kaszaat was making the arrangements for his liberation, I had time to myself, the first spare hour I have had since this siege began. Time weighs heavily on my hands and I hate to be idle, so I took out your plans and did what I could. The results are. imperfect. The facilities here are limited. However, I hope it meets with your approval.’

‘My.? My approval?’ Totho stared into the man’s blotched face. ‘But, Colonel-Auxillian.?’

‘No rank, please, not amongst my cadre at least,’ said Drephos. A hard look came into his eyes as they flicked towards the tent-flap. ‘Let those outside bandy such words about between themselves. Though we wear their colours we are none of theirs. Indeed, we are greater than them. We are artificers. Call me “Master” if you wish it, as you would your teachers at Collegium, but we are the elite here, and we are above their petty grades and distinctions. And I seek your approval, Totho, because it is your invention — therefore your triumph.’

His bare hand whipped the cloth away, and there lay Totho’s long-held dream. It was rough, as Drephos said. His air battery possessed a coarse grip now, and a long tube extended from it. Much of what he had planned was absent, because he had not included it on his drawings, but it was still there in his head, and the prototype could be improved.

‘Does it work?’ he asked, and Drephos nodded.

‘You’ll have the chance to test it, of course, and to improve on it. As I said, we have a journey to make. We are going to Helleron, Totho.’ He held the device out, and Totho took it, wonderingly.

‘Helleron, Master Drephos?’

Drephos was already striding past him. ‘Where else should an artificer go when he wishes to work?’

‘But Helleron is-’

‘Ours, Totho.’ Drephos was now outside, and Totho hurried to join him.

‘How?’

‘General Alder is about to move west along the coast, but I had word yesterday that General Malkan and the Seventh Army were moving on Helleron. They should be there by now. By the time we arrive the city shall fly the imperial flag. Imagine it, Totho! The industrial might of Helleron, all the forges, the foundries, the factories! What could we not do there?’ He stopped, abruptly rueful. ‘If I were pureblood Wasp-kinden I would have them make me governor. Perhaps I shall anyway. Perhaps Malkan can be prevailed upon. Still, we must do what we can with what we are given.’

And they stepped out again into sight of the airfield and found it had received a visitor, in that short space of time. The most beautiful flying machine Totho had ever seen was roosting in one corner, well away from the gross bulk of the heliopters. An open lattice of light wooden struts, with twin propellers and immaculately folded wings, it was such a work of light and shadow that it seemed hardly there at all, even in broad daylight, He saw Kaszaat inside it already, checking the clockwork engine that crouched aft. She was wearing heavy robes, he saw, despite the warmth of the day.