Dragonfly Falling

And it was bitter and sharp, and it burned her, but she forced it down, because it was strength, and skill and victory.

And when she awoke again, as dawn crept between the trees, there was something sharp cutting into her closed left hand. A brooch of a sword and a circle: the token of the order of Weaponsmasters.

*

Tisamon was waiting for her on the beach, and when she saw his face she realized that he had not been certain, despite all his promises to Stenwold, whether he ever would see her again.

She now wore the badge of his order on her arming jacket, and when the thought occurred, Did I really fight. she had only to touch the rents that the unknown blade had cut there, almost through to the skin. She was left only with the question, What was it that I fought? What blood did I drink?

The thought had come to her of those shadow-creatures in the Darakyon forest that she had seen that once when Tisamon led her through its margins. They had known his badge and his office, and stayed their hands for him.

There was a darkness at the heart of Parosyal, she understood, and it was best not to ask questions.

Tisamon’s eyes flicked from the brooch to her face, and he smiled just a little. She knew he would never ask, just as she could not ask him about his own experience all those years ago.

‘There is a boat that will take us over to Felyal before noon,’ he told her.

‘What do you hope to accomplish there?’ she asked him.

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps nothing, but I will see what can be done. It will not be easy for you.’

‘This will help?’ She touched the brooch lightly.

‘It will keep them from killing you out of hand,’ he told her, ‘but you may still have to prove yourself to my people — as may I. With last night behind you, I have no doubt that you can.’

Thirty

‘You don’t strike me quite as bandits,’ said Salma. ‘Or perhaps you’ve not been in the trade long.’

The brigand leader shrugged. ‘There are two or three that have.’ He had given his name as Phalmes, and the total of his band was fifteen men and one Ant-kinden woman. They had a fire lit in a farmhouse that had been torched at least a tenday before, and the band of refugees was huddled close together in their midst, watching them suspiciously. Sfayot played pipe, though, keeping time on a drum with his foot, and his daughters danced. It entertained the bandits, but Salma found it lifeless compared to other dances he had seen.

‘Most of us are getting out from under the Empire,’ Phalmes said. ‘Deserters like me and some slaves. Others are rustics running away from home, or who’ve been burned out. The Empire’s on the march and that pushes a tide of flotsam ahead of it. We’ve got to live, and banditry’s as good a living as any.’

‘I’ve seen bandits,’ Salma observed. ‘It’s a wretched life.’

‘I imagine you have, being from where you’re from,’ Phalmes agreed. ‘And I’d ask just what a Commonwealer like you is doing so far from home. Not great travellers normally, your people.’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘It’s going to be a long night.’

‘Tell me a short one first,’ Salma said. ‘How do you come to know the Commonweal?’

Phalmes just smiled sourly, and Salma immediately understood. ‘You fought there?’

‘Five years of the Twelve-Year War,’ the bandit agreed. ‘After they drafted me for their Auxillians. I was apprenticed for a mason, before that. So much for the futures we think we’ll have. So tell me, Commonwealer, tell me your long story.’

And Salma told him, the bones of it anyway. He could not place any real trust in this man, he knew, and so he held off the names and the details, but he told Phalmes about the College and about his being recruited by a Beetle spymaster. He recounted his journey on the Sky Without and their escape, and their foundering in Helleron. He told of the betrayal and their capture by the Wasps.

Phalmes had listened without interruption, but it was when the tale reached Myna that he held a hand up. ‘How long ago?’ he asked hoarsely. ‘When was this?’

Salma counted back. ‘A couple of months at most, since I was held there. Then my friends got me out — and the governor was killed, I heard.’

‘The Bloat?’ Phalmes said. ‘They killed him?’

‘Yes. And I met the woman who is running the resistance there. She was freed at the same time I was.’

‘She? What’s her name?’

‘Kymene. Do you know her?’

Phalmes shook his head. ‘Heard of her, though. So your lot let her out. Well, now, that’s bought you safe passage and a half, more than any song and dance.’

The elder of Sfayot’s girls came, then, and sat down next to Phalmes, who regarded her without expression.

‘Your father sent you here to me?’

She nodded, watching him.

‘There’s a man with a realistic view of the world,’ said Phalmes tiredly. ‘Your friend here has just bargained your freedom, girl.’

She shrugged. ‘We knew he would.’

‘And why’s that?’ Phalmes asked her, like a man humouring a child.

‘Because he is such a man,’ she said. ‘My father has keen sight.’

Salma shifted uncomfortably. ‘It was nothing but chance.’

She shook her head stubbornly, and then turned her attention to Phalmes. ‘What will you do?’ she asked him. ‘Your men are unhappy. They fear the Wasps.’

‘Do they, now?’

‘They should,’ she told him. ‘My father has seen it. They are just north of here. The great city of the chimneys has fallen to them already.’

‘Does she mean Helleron?’ Phalmes demanded.

‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ Salma said, and then reconsidered. ‘Or no, I’d heard that northwards wouldn’t be a good destination. I hadn’t thought. Things are moving fast, then?’

Phalmes nodded gloomily. ‘It’s looking as though this country won’t be good even for bandits any more. There’s plenty of my lads here who need to keep themselves well out of the Empire’s hands, and I put myself squarely in that number.’

The girl leant into him unexpectedly, almost pushing him against Salma. ‘You’re not a bad man,’ she said. ‘My father sees many things.’

Salma’s eyes sought out Sfayot near the fire, and found the white-haired man looking at him with an unnervingly clear stare.

‘I’m as bad as I need to be,’ Phalmes told her. He seemed about to push her away, but then decided against it. Salma could see that he was already worrying about what to do with his followers next, because where could he lead them now?

‘You should come with us,’ the Roach girl told him.

Phalmes stared at her levelly. ‘Should I? And where are you all going that is such a wonderful destination?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and then looked over at Salma. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I’m not leading us anywhere,’ Salma said, but realized, even as he said it, that this was not quite true. They had been looking to him since he had driven Cosgren away, because Cosgren had made himself leader, and then Salma had displaced him. That was the way things worked.

And if he was leading them. he should know where they were going, and why.

‘What else has your father seen?’ he asked. Phalmes gave an amused snort, because magic was just a word to him, but Salma had seen magic in his time and he believed in that moment that Sfayot could indeed be a