‘And… are you going to…?’ She clenched her fists. ‘Are you going to kill me?’
His sardonic look returned. ‘Are you yet dead? Then you may take the answer as no, for now.’
She put a hand out to him. ‘If I know you, you should know me. I’m Cheerwell Maker from Collegium.’
‘Yes, you are.’ He clasped her wrist in that same warrior’s affectation she had seen Tisamon use. ‘And you’re tougher than you look. And you’re here to fight the Wasps.’
‘To warn people about the Wasps.’
‘That may no longer be necessary,’ Cesta said.
‘Tell me, whose side are you on?’
‘That is one thing I can never tell you, because I have no side save my own and that of whoever pays me.’
‘And if the Wasps conquer Solarno?’
He shrugged, as if blithely unconcerned. ‘And do the Wasps have no need for a killer? Or else those that oppose them? Or I shall go to Princep Exilla – and if that falls there are lands more southerly still. My kind has passed from this world, Bella Cheerwell Maker. With the exception of yourself, and of the Moth-kinden who forget nothing, the world has forgotten us. Besides, we were always good at passing unnoticed. Even within the Spiderlands, no finger shall point at me and cry out what I am.’
‘So you don’t care,’ she said, disappointed. ‘You’re just a killer after all.’
‘Perhaps not even that. I am a shadow that the sun has not, for some reason, dispelled yet. I have sired no children. If I am truly the last, let my kind die with me. I would not wish my cursed blood on any other.’
‘And with your gifts you will do nothing?’
‘Do you mean to recruit me, Bella Cheerwell Maker?’
‘And if I do?’ She knew she was over-bold and put a hand to her mouth, too late to stop the words.
‘You have not the gold to buy me,’ he said softly. ‘Besides, why should I take up arms in your cause? I am no idealist to jump to another’s drum.’
‘Then you must leave Solarno and the Exalsee,’ she warned him, without force, her tired conviction coming from bitter experience. ‘You must go south or east of here, and then keep running, Master Cesta. The Wasps have need of killers but they’ll bring their own, Rekef-branded. I had a word with a Wasp, not so long ago, who tried to make a living as a freelance within sight of the Empire’s borders, and he was not a happy man. The Empire beats a loud drum. You will have to run a long way not to hear it.’
His lips twitched, but he offered no come-back, standing there in the wreckage of his inheritance. A moment later they heard the distant sound of a flier’s engine, far off over the Exalsee, and Che jumped up but then hesitated. Wasps? Or Taki come back for me?
‘Do you want me to find out who?’ Cesta asked her, reading her expression.
‘Why would you help me even in that?’
‘Nothing I have said means that I can’t like you,’ he told her. ‘I would kill you if I was hired for it, but it would still not mean that I cannot like you.’
With that he was gone into the trees, leaving her to work his last words out.
When it was clear that it was the Esca Volenti passing low over the island, Che expected Cesta to simply melt away into the forest, but he was content to stand out on the beach with her as she waved at the repassing orthopter. Taki threw the machine into a tight turn and brought it down for an impeccable water landing. Moments later Che heard the drone of another engine, and a much bulkier machine rumbled down to the water, still managing to touch its surface as gracefully as a falling leaf. She recognized it immediately as the big, armoured fixed-wing belonging to the Solarnese pilot called Scobraan.
Taki put her head up out of the cockpit and was about to call over, when she spotted the assassin. For a second she had nothing to say but then she had hopped out and flitted from the Esca’s wing onto the beach.
‘What in the pits are you doing here?’ she asked the killer, sounding none too friendly.
Cesta’s smile was cold. ‘I’m sorry, Bella te Schola Taki-Amre,’ he said smoothly. ‘Is this your island? Am I not welcome on it?’
‘As far as I’m concerned you’re welcome nowhere near me,’ Taki told him. He might have been almost twice her height, and a feared assassin as well, but she muscled up to him as though she was going to lay him flat. ‘You leave Che alone, you hear me?’
‘Have I done her harm?’ Cesta pointed out.
‘Nothing you do turns out any good. Perhaps you forget that,’ the Fly replied hotly.
Che glanced between them nervously. ‘He hasn’t done anything to me,’ she said. ‘We were just talking-’
‘This isn’t about you,’ Taki said sharply. ‘Just you remember that there are no depths that this bastard won’t stoop to. None. He has no morality, nothing in him to make him care about others.’
In answer to Che’s uncertain glance, Cesta said, ‘True. All of it entirely true. The curse of our blood.’ She was not sure whether he was being genuinely flippant or hiding a deeper hurt.
‘Are you coming or what?’ bellowed Scobraan, his cockpit now open. He was looking up at the skies nervously. ‘Don’t want to get caught on the water if they come back!’
Taki nodded. ‘Are you expecting a lift?’ she asked Cesta drily.
‘I have my own boat,’ he said. ‘No doubt I shall see you in the city, one of these days.’
‘Don’t try to frighten me,’ Taki told him.
‘Oh, come on!’ shouted Scobraan, and Taki nodded, turning away from Cesta and visibly dismissing him from her mind.
‘You’ll travel on the Mayfly Prolonged,’ she said to Che, who recalled this as the name of Scobraan’s craft. ‘Sieur Nero’s there as well, he’s got some bad news.’
‘Why do you hate Cesta so much?’ Che whispered. ‘He’s a murderer.’
‘That’s not it.’
‘Then whatever it is, it isn’t your business,’ Taki told her. ‘I’m just glad to find you safe, Che.’
‘Did he kill… what was it, Amre? Your lover?’
That stopped Taki short, halfway into her seat on the Esca. ‘He was my half-brother, Amre, and the Wasps killed him with their own hands. No, Cesta killed his own lover, for money. She happened to be a friend of mine, too, but that’s not really the point.’
The Mayfly Prolonged had hold-space that just fitted Nero and Che crouching, comfortably enough for him but exceedingly cramped for her.
‘So what’s the bad news?’ she asked.
‘You know that Empire airship you had all the problems with,’ he began.
‘Yes?’
‘Well we reckon it was dropping off,’ said Nero. ‘Because there’s a whole load more Wasp soldiers in Solarno now, enough to get everyone worried. I think it’s starting.’
Sixteen
She had walked into the garrison at Jerez without a word, picking up a guard to escort her as she did so. She looked like any stooped old woman in a dark robe, some emaciated grandmother hobbling with her cane, save that her eyes were red and glistening.
The guard from the gates then passed her on to a watch sergeant, who passed her to a duty sergeant, and she made no introductions or explanations, just latched onto each man in turn like a leech. Eventually they brought her to the man she sought, the man she had already sniffed out through the sloping corridors of the fort.
‘Lieutenant Brodan,’ the duty sergeant began.
‘What is it?’ Brodan was at his desk, sifting reports dictated by his Skater agents. The sheer volume of fabrication had been wearing on him.
‘Lieutenant Brodan…’ The sergeant’s face went slack. ‘I…’
‘A message? A visitor?’
‘A… visitor, yes. A visitor.’ The sergeant blinked, made a vague gesture at the robed woman. ‘This is… is…’
‘What’s wrong with you, Sergeant?’ Brodan snapped. ‘Nothing sir, I…’ The man reeled slightly. ‘Excuse me, sir, I feel…’
Brodan looked from him to the gaunt face of the old woman he escorted and a cold shiver went through him. ‘Excused, Sergeant,’ he said quietly, and let the man get out of earshot before he inquired, ‘And what was that all in aid of?’