Dragonfly Falling

‘Amongst your kinden, of course, it is a great term of respect. Your College scholars, your magnates, the great among you, are called ‘Masters’. Among the Wasp-kinden it is any man who owns a slave, and therefore has rights of life or death over that slave.’ His smile was thin and hard-edged. ‘So it will now be the choice of you and your workers just what interpretation we shall apply to that word. Do I make myself understood?’

He had, and they nodded unhappily, and murmured the title for him.

‘I am anticipating troublemakers,’ he told them. ‘The lazy, the impertinent, the disobedient, the talentless.’

‘Oh no, Master,’ said the woman amongst them. ‘We’ll be sure of that. No slackers in our houses. No backtalk either.’

‘You misunderstand me,’ said Drephos. ‘I am anticipating them. There are such in any body of workers, perhaps a dozen in every factory.’

The foremen were exchanging glances, approaching the point of denying it and then drawing back.

‘I am anticipating,’ Drephos explained happily, ‘that they will be singled out by you there, and reported to my soldiers. I am anticipating that my guards will have some three dozen such malcontents brought to me within the first five days of work here. Choose those who contribute least, or stir up trouble, or whom you personally dislike, whatever you will, but I will be very unhappy if my anticipations are not borne out.’

The two men nodded slowly now, looking as miserable as Totho had seen anyone in a long time, but the woman said, ‘Excuse me, Master, but. what shall be done with them, once your guardsmen have them?’

‘They will be allowed to participate in other parts of the creative process,’ Drephos told her. She paled a little at that, and then the soldiers began ushering all three away.

‘Some promise there, I think,’ Drephos mused, glancing back at his cadre of artificers. Besides Kaszaat and Totho there were two Beetle-kinden that must surely be twin brother and sister, a halfbreed that looked to mingle Wasp and Beetle blood, and a hulking nine-foot Mole Cricket whose weight made the whole gantry creak.

‘Master Drephos. ’ Totho started, feeling deeply uneasy about it all.

‘Ah, Totho,’ Drephos said. He was clearly in a fine mood today. ‘You have seen the prototype?’

‘I have, Master Drephos, but. ’

‘What do you think?’ Drephos began descending the stairs to the factory floor where the workers were being given their new machining projects, designs and specifications for unfamiliar parts and pieces.

‘The new loading mechanism seems to work very smoothly,’ Totho said, drawn from his original intent by the need to discuss the finer aspects of the technical work. ‘It will need to be machined very exactly on the finished version, though. There will be little room for error, to avoid jamming.’

‘That would be a problem anywhere else,’ Drephos agreed, ‘but here in Helleron the skills and the equipment have come together in glad harmony. In the Empire we would have had to compromise, but the Emperor’s generals have made their plans as if they had my very wishes in mind, because Helleron is ours, and here we are.’

‘Aside from that, I think we may have to redesign the grooving within the barrel, or at least test variations of spacing and angle.’

‘Granted,’ Drephos said. ‘Test it then. Conclusions in two days. By then we should be ready for the spiralling lathe work on the first batch.’

‘First batch, Master?’ Totho enquired.

‘You weren’t thinking of making just one of them, surely?’ Drephos grinned at him, teeth flashing in his motley-coloured face. ‘Like a showpiece? A museum curiosity? What do you think these factories are for, Totho?’

‘All for. you can’t mean it, surely?’ Totho felt weak, stumbling on the stairs so that Kaszaat had to reach out and grab his arm to steady him.

‘Explain to Master Totho how we do things,’ Drephos flung the words over his shoulder.

Kaszaat was grinning, and most of the others smiled at least a little, their newest colleague still learning how things were done.

‘One project at a time is the rule,’ Kaszaat explained. ‘When we really get to work, when the war effort calls, all resources are devoted to one project. This time you’re the lucky one. It’s your project. Three factories, hundreds of workers, all of us, all concentrated on your devices.’

The thought made his head swim. It was all happening far too fast for him.

‘I had better start my testing,’ he said. The other artificers were already fanning out across the factory, each heading to his or her own task. Kaszaat was about to go as well, when Totho caught her arm.

‘Tonight I. Could I talk. come to talk to you, tonight? I need. I just need. ’

‘You just need someone,’ her smile was ambiguous, ‘and I can be that someone. Perhaps I need a someone also, sometimes.’

Twenty-Six

‘The gates are sealed,’ said Lineo Thadspar. He looked older than ever.

‘Did the last train get away?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘No, they were too long in loading it.’ The Speaker of the Assembly sat down at a War Council that was greatly different in constitution to the first one. As the Vekken army had neared there had been many who had decided that war was, after all, not for them, and others had surfaced in whom an undreamt-of martial fervour had been kindled. The stone seats were lined with College Masters, artificers and city magnates who had found in themselves the means to greet the hour. And that hour had now come.

‘They were still leaving by the western gate until an hour gone, but the Vekken are just outside artillery range of the walls on all sides now, and anyone leaving would fall straight into their hands,’ reported Waybright, one of the survivors of the original council. ‘They have not totally encircled us, but they have set up regularly spaced camps.’

‘They’ll want you to try to attack them at the gaps, to see them as divided,’ Balkus said seriously. Nobody had exactly invited him here, but he went where Stenwold went, and unlike most there he had experience of Ant war firsthand. ‘But we — the Ant-kinden — we’re never divided. You should remember that.’

‘We’re in no position to attack them, in any event,’ Lineo Thadspar said.

‘Precisely how strong are these gates?’ Kymon asked. He had a rough map of the city before him and he traced its boundaries with a stylus. ‘This is a weak city against force of arms. The walls are pierced all over. You have a river, the rail line, the harbour. The gates themselves, how strong are they?’

‘We learned a few tricks after our last clash with the Vekken,’ Thadspar said.

‘Likewise the Vekken,’ Stenwold cautioned.

‘That’s true, but I hope we’ve learned faster than they. It is, after all, what we are supposed to be good at, here at the College.’ Thadspar leant over Kymon’s map. ‘Our gates have secondary shutters that slide down from within the wall. My own father’s design, as it happens. They are of dense wood plated with bronze, and they should withstand a hefty strike from any ram or engine you care to name. There is a grille that has been lowered where the river meets the city and, while they may eventually break through it, they will at least not surprise us by assaulting that way. We have gates across the rail arch, too, and I have engineers buttressing them even now. The harbour. has certain defences. What is their naval strength, anyone?’

‘Nine armourclads, plus one really big one,’ someone reported from the back. ‘And two dozen wooden-hulled warships. Plus four dozen small vessels and half a dozen very large barges that they’re holding back. Supply ships, I suppose.’

‘They will attack the harbour soon,’ Kymon cautioned. ‘I myself have been given the west wall to command. Who has the south?’

‘I do,’ Stenwold confirmed. He could feel the tension in the room slowly screwing tight, the image in everyone’s heads of Ant-kinden in perfect step making their encampments around their city of scholars. ‘I’m open to any suggestions.’

‘What about the supply situation on our side?’ Way-bright asked. ‘We’ve had people leaving in droves these last few days, and yet there have never been so many within our walls. All the satellite villages west of here have