The Air War (32 page)

Edmon felt some shocks against his hull, but only a handful – once again he had avoided the full force of some enemy’s hail of bolts, but for how much longer? If he turned to shake
the pursuer off, then he would not be able to help Kymene.

He screamed again as he dived on the Wasps circling the
Sweet Fire
, trigger down and rotaries blazing. Most of them saw him coming, scattering before him, which bought more time for the
fixed-wing than if he had actually taken one down. He kept to no sane line, made no plans, simply slinging the
Pacemark
around so sharply that he felt the wires of the wings strain to
breaking point. Stray shots were still finding him, but he was making no serious attempt to attack, merely shooting blind and diving again and again, looping the
Sweet Fire
like an erratic
satellite and throwing the Wasps off at every turn. His weapons ran out of ammunition on the third pass, but that no longer seemed to matter. He did not let it dictate his tactics.

Then one of the enemy had his line at last, and the impact almost took him down on its own, skewing his flight so that he was side-on to the ground, then falling upside down before he could
complete the roll and get his craft under control again. The Spearflight was well and truly with him, though, and now the
Pacemark
was not handling at all well, abruptly incapable of the
aerobatics that had saved it until now.

He tried to find a Wasp to ram, but the sky seemed mockingly clear of them, save for the pilot diligently trying to kill him.

A moment later he realized that this meant he had won. There was him, and the
Sweet Fire
, and the lone Spearflight that had not been stripped from the pursuit by his distractions or by
the actions of other pilots.

He was just deciding that this represented a satisfactory end to his life, when Franticze came from out of the sun and chewed the tail off his enemy, sending the Spearflight tumbling away. The
Bee then followed it down, trying to kill the pilot when he bailed out to trust his Art wings, but that was how deeply she hated the Wasps, and Edmon could hardly blame her just then.

Laszlo slipped into the backroom of the naval surgeon’s house, after leaving a bag of bread, dried fruit and a little jerky on the old Bee-kinden’s table –
all that he had managed to scrape together in a day’s foraging. At first he had paid the man in silver, but the city had been locked in stalemate for five days now, with no traffic coming in
by land or sea. Food was worth more than coin. The Spiders held the docks and those streets nearest the water. The Wasps held the high ground, the mansions of the wealthy. Both sides seemed to be
waiting for the other to make a move.

Lissart drew back as he entered, clutching the blanket close to her, on her face the same expression as every other time he had come in to see her, after she recovered consciousness. It was the
tense, desperate look of a woman under a death sentence.

‘Don’t,’ he said weakly. His day had been sufficiently frustrating, scuffling and shoving and stealing to put bread on the table. He didn’t need this. ‘You’re
looking stronger.’

Again that flinch, and he saw guilt there. He supposed she was probably looking at matters in a saner and more logical way than he was. He had left her alone so far, so as not to put more strain
on her wound, which the surgeon had confirmed had come close to killing her. The old man knew his trade, though, and, even if she would not be running or flying anywhere in the immediate future,
she was at least on the right side of the grave.

‘Let’s talk,’ he said, and that was something more like she was expecting.

She almost relaxed at the prospect of a good old interrogation. Probably she expected him to get his knife out, right about now.

‘Lissart, is it?’ he pressed.

She nodded.

‘I’m Laszlo. Well, all right, you knew that, but I really am. I didn’t think I needed a joke name for this business. Nobody told me. Please smile at that. I’m not
expecting a belly laugh, for obvious reasons.’

‘What do you want?’ Her voice was like a faint echo of the tones he remembered.

‘Good question. You work for the Empire?’

‘I think I’m freelance just now.’ The smile, when it came, was infinitesimal, but he returned it in strength.

‘I was for the Lowlands,’ he said. ‘Probably still am, assuming I can get out of this mess.’

‘What’s going on out there?’ She struggled to prop herself on her elbows.

‘Everyone’s waiting for the Spiders and the Empire to tear each other’s throats out, but nothing of the sort’s happening.’

‘The Solarnese aren’t fighting?’

‘Fighting which? If it’d been just the Empire, sure, but with the Spider navy clogging the bay, and Satrapy soldiers on every street corner from here to the Venodor? Oh, a bunch of
Solarnese pilots had a crack at the airships, but they weren’t working together, and the Empire shot them down, after a bit of a dance. The Cortas seem paralysed. Nobody’s giving
orders, and meanwhile the food supplies are running low because nobody in this city thought to lay in any surplus.’ He bared his teeth in frustration, and she shrank back. ‘I’m
not going to hurt you.’

‘Why not?’ she asked flatly. ‘The hangar . . .’ She coughed, then hissed at the pain. ‘Hurt me. At least I’d know where we stand. I’m used to
that.’

Laszlo eyed her sadly for long enough that the haunted, hunted look came back to her features. ‘I killed Breighl,’ he said at last. ‘Didn’t want to, but I did.’
When she made no response he added, ‘I’m guessing you killed te Riel.’

‘Te Berro, his name was. He was ex-Imperial and he’d pretty much worked out who I was working for. He was going to stop me. He didn’t leave me much choice.’ Her tone was
dull, and he wondered just how true that was. He hardly needed more evidence that Lissart was a very dangerous piece of work indeed.

‘And then we have the hangars,’ he continued. ‘And we’ll never know what might have happened if the Solarnese could have got those Firebugs into the air. I reckon the
Imperial airships would have had a bad time of it certainly, maybe even the Spider ships as well.’

He expected her to look away, but instead she met his eyes with a little of her old spirit returning. ‘Do you expect me to say I’m sorry?’

He left that one to hang in the silence building between them, until she was moved to go on: ‘This is what I do, what I am. I’m a saboteur, a spy. I won’t claim it as a noble
calling, but I do what I’m asked, for the craft of it. That’s something you never understood, though I’ll wager te Berro always did.’ Her words got fainter towards the end,
as she had to pause to draw breath. ‘If I take back what I did at the hangars, I betray myself, and then what do I have left? But I’m sorry you were there and I’m sorry you . . .
got hurt.’
That I burned you
, hung on the air like smoke. ‘What are you going to do with me? Hand me over to your masters in Collegium?’

Chance’d be a fine thing, right now
, but he could not muster any vitriol. That spark, that defiance, there was the Liss he remembered from the Taverna te Remi.

She was a killer, although that was probably the only commodity not in short supply in Solarno. Worse, he had the uneasy feeling that somewhere in her there was a beautiful and perfect little
monster, a woman for whom the values of life and death were irrevocably skewed, or perhaps simply not given any reliable weight at all.

He reached out to take her hand and, to his surprise she did not draw it back. Of course, she was no more capable of being disarmed than was a Wasp-kinden, and her hands thronged with deadly
Art. Despite all that, despite her condition, despite everything that was going on outside, holding her hand right then seemed the best thing that had happened to him in several days.

She was studying his face, and he wondered just what emotions he had allowed to roam over it, just then. ‘You utter fool,’ she said, but gently. ‘Is that
it
? I tried to
kill you.’

He shrugged. ‘You said you were sorry. Besides, I’m a pirate. I’m used to that.’

‘A pirate?’ She did smile then. ‘Well then, what now, pirate? Steal me away on your sailing ship?’

‘I’m getting out of the city first chance,’ he told her. ‘Come with me – no obligations. Although if you promise not to try and kill me again that would be a good
start.’

‘Go to your masters in the Lowlands?’

‘Just come with me.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘Please – or I won’t go at all.’

‘You are the emperor of the idiots,’ she whispered. ‘Let me take you away from all this? I never thought I’d fall for that one in a thousand years.’

Two days later and there was still no sign of anyone being allowed to leave the city. Operating on his own, Laszlo was confident he could have evaded the Wasps’ sentries
and flying patrols, trusting to his wings to get him out of the city and away. Of course, Liss would not be able to go with him and, besides, he was out here on the Exalsee, with a long and
complicated road to follow back to Collegium.

Then the great face-off between the Empire and the Spiderlands happened, which changed everything.

He had been out on the streets that day, not so much seeking food as information, because the uneasy peace between the two occupying forces had been sustained beyond reason and he wanted to know
what was going on. There had been a few skirmishes between Wasp Light Airborne and Spider soldiers, it was true, but far fewer than he would have expected, given the temper of the former and the
pride of the latter. Instead, it seemed that the strongest orders from above were holding both in check.

He made covert enquiries about the provenance of both forces but received no intelligence that he was happy with. The Wasps had brought in their Second Army, known as the Gears, which had
previously rolled all the way to the gates of Collegium during the war. The Spider force was not such a united piece of business, of course, being a collusion of various different families,
interests and mercenary units, but the name at its head was Aldanrael, the very family that had given Laszlo and Stenwold such a hard time not so long ago.

Then word came that they were tearing down some buildings at the heart of the Venodor, and the next day Laszlo went to take a look. By the time he arrived, an entire block in the centre of the
street market had been razed by Mole Cricket slaves, levelling a grand uneven space in what had previously always been a cluttered and claustrophobic bazaar. Shortly after Laszlo arrived and began
asking questions, the delegations turned up. First came soldiers with drawn blades, Wasps from the north, Spiders from the south, who prodded and pushed until the citizens had evacuated the new
space, forming an anxious, milling crowd on all sides of it.
Whatever’s going on, it’s meant to be as public as possible
, Laszlo decided. He felt uncomfortable about shoving his
way to the front, as though the words ‘Low-lander agent’ were somehow visible above his head, and he had to contend with sufficient elbowing at the back that in the end he found a roost
on a rooftop overlooking the new square, as dozens of other Fly-kinden had already done. Looking around he realized that there were an awful lot of people here: anxious Solarnese and Flies and the
local Spiders and foreign merchants, and all of them wanting to know what was going to happen. The prolonged and silent occupation had drawn their nerves tight, as was no doubt the intention.

There were also plenty of soldiers, for neither side was taking chances. Other rooftops played host to the Light Airborne, and Laszlo could spot a fair few groups in the crowd that were surely
taking Spider-kinden pay, most notably several bands of huge Scorpions who would have no trouble shouldering their way forward if necessary.

After that, the leaders arrived. He saw the Imperial delegation coming first: a squad of armoured infantry with a handful of officers in their midst, but striding ahead of the soldiers was an
old man bald enough to need a broad-brimmed hat against the Solarnese sun. He stood as straight as a spear and walked with a soldier’s confidence. If he feared Spider treachery, he did not
show it.

One of the other Fly-kinden hissed between his teeth, muttering to his fellows. Laszlo inched over and parted with a few coins for the knowledge that this was reckoned to be none other than
General Tynan, the master of the Gears.

Someone else was pointing back towards the docks, and Laszlo scuttled across the rooftop just in time to see Tynan’s opponents make their entrance. The escort here were all Spider-kinden:
lean, beautiful men and women in light armour, bows over their shoulders, rapiers at their hips. As they reached the cleared square, a woman emerged from their midst, standing there regarding the
assembled crowds as archly as any empress. She wore a cuirass of silver scales, and beneath that a copperweave hauberk, the mesh as fine as cloth, stronger than steel. For all that, Laszlo would
bet she needed no better protection than her own invulnerable self-assurance. Even at this distance he could feel the faint touch of her Art, making her an object both of attraction and fear. Her
hair was bright silver, richer than the jewelled torc at her neck or the glittering gilded wreath about her brow, and age had brought her only authority.

Seeing her there, and recalling descriptions given by Stenwold Maker, Laszlo was willing to wager she was the Lady Mycella of the Aldanrael, who had led an armada against Collegium only the year
before.

The soldiers on either side were tense, expecting a fight or a riot. The Solarnese themselves were frightened, angry, ready for violence. There would be daggers and swords aplenty for the crowds
to lay hands on. They had only cast off the Empire a couple of years ago, and now here the Wasps were again.

Laszlo was depressed to see that many were plainly looking to the Aldanrael to defend them. Solarno had been a sort of appendix to the Spiderlands for a long time, but a backwater beyond the
rigours of intrigue and backstabbing that dominated the Spider-kinden cities proper.