‘We will be there later tonight,’ said Achaeos. It was already dusk.
‘I don’t think I can manage that.’
He turned at last, his pale eyes gleaming in her vision. ‘You cannot fly, can you? I know that some Beetles can.’
‘Few, very few, and that only badly,’ she confirmed. ‘I would. . I would so like to fly and I wouldn’t care how clumsy I might look. I’ve not been good with the Art, though. I only started seeing in the dark after the. . after I dreamed. .’ She had to force herself to say it. ‘After you spoke to me that night, before we reached Myna.’
‘You have more skill than you guess,’ he said. ‘Beetles endure; even my people know that. Think what you have already endured, and tell me your Art did not help you. However, you will not need to fly to Tharn. Simply find me a little brush that is dry enough to burn, and I will summon some transportation.’
‘Summon? Is this more magic?’ she asked him.
‘I would prefer to say yes, and take the credit, but, no, this is a mere trick.’
When they had enough suitable material to burn, he began to lay it out in a pattern that she was too close to make out, lighting each pile of dry grass and broken wood in turn until they were surrounded by an irregular ring of small fires. A shiver ran down Che’s spine: despite his words this felt like magic to her.
And then she felt something in the sky. Felt, not heard, for it made no sound, but the wingbeats were enough to make the fires dance and the warmed air gust across her. She reached out for Achaeos and clutched his sleeve as the stars above them went dark with the passage overhead of some enormous winged thing.
And then it dropped lower, and her eyes caught it in all its pale majesty. It was a moth, no more, no less, but as it circled down towards them she saw that its furry body was larger than that of a horse, its wingspan awesome, each wing as long as six men laid end to end. It had a small head, eyes glittering amongst the glossy fur behind frondlike antennae that extended forward in delicate furls. As it landed, the sweep of its wings extinguished most of their little fires.
‘We of Tharn cannot always fly so high. We are sometimes weary — or injured, of course.’ He grinned at her. ‘This was to be my plan after I left the stables where you met me, but other things then intervened.’ With a smooth movement and a flash of his own wings he was up on the great creature’s back, holding out a hand for her to join him.
She walked up to the moth’s side, behind the enormous sweep of its wingspan, putting a hand on its thick fur, feeling a warmth within that most of the great insects lacked. She took Achaeos’s hand and, with his help, clambered up onto the creature’s back. It shifted briefly on its six legs, adjusting to the extra weight. There was no saddle, she saw, but there were cords run from somewhere amongst its mouthparts, and Achaeos had clutched these like reins.
‘You must hold on tight,’ he said, and she put her arms about his waist and did her best to grip with her knees.
He made some signal with the reins and, in a single lurching movement, the moth flung itself airborne.
In that moment Che was sure she was going to slide off, bound back from the powering wing and then tumble to the ground however far below. She clutched at Achaeos so desperately that she could feel the hard line ridging his side where her stitches still held.
Then she began to anticipate the rhythm of the insect’s flying, and it was not as she had expected. Instead of the manic fluttering, the almost random blundering of its little brothers, the giant’s wings had a slow and sombre beat, each downturn propelling the moth forwards and upwards into the air, It was a patient and tireless rhythm that reminded her of being out in a rowing boat with Stenwold once, when she was very young, with her uncle pulling on the oars with his unfailing strength. She slowly loosened her hold on Achaeos so that he could breathe again, and looked about her.
She was too far from the ground to see more than the red lights of Helleron’s distant forges, too far out from the mountain to detect its slopes. Above there were only stars. Achaeos and the moth and herself were the only other bright things in the world, coursing through the cool, still air, higher and ever higher. She leant her head on Achaeos’s shoulder. It was so silent up here. The insect’s wings made no sound, and the flight was gentle enough for there to be no rushing of air in her ears. It was so different from the fixed-wing she had piloted, or the ponderous bulk of the Sky Without or the Wasps’ clattering heliopter.
How wonderful it would be to fly like this, she thought. Ever since childhood she had coveted this moment, that was being given to her now so casually. She could not say why she craved it, for Stenwold could not fly, nor could Tynisa. Che had often looked out of her bedroom window at the clouds or the stars, and at Fly-kinden messengers on their frantic errands or slow-droning fliers coming in towards the airfield, and she had known that here was something she would always want, and never have.
And then the slopes of the mountain came into sight, and she realized that she was now seeing Tharn.
She had pictured, perhaps, houses built slantwise on the slopes, or even caves carved into them. She had known the Moth-kinden were an ancient people, and that these places that were their last homes had also been their first. That fact had never meant much to her until now.
The lowest slopes that she could see were cut into steps that were tens of yards wide, deep with waving crops, where water trickled from one artificial plateau to the next in delicate, dividing streams. Here and there were shacks and huts for the fieldhands, but this was not Tharn. Instead Che could see Tharn on the upper slopes. For a sheer height of over one hundred yards the side of the mountain had been worked into a city.
They met in a darkened room again, the back room of some dingy Beetle hostelry where the guests were obliged to bring their own lamps. Thalric was glad of that, anyway. He had no wish to see his own face leering at him out of the gloom.
The figure that was Scylis found a chair by barely more than starlight, but then Spider-kinden always had good eyes, Thalric knew. He heard more than saw the other man pour a bowl of wine and sip a little.
‘Progress?’ he said impatiently.
Scylis swallowed and made a disappointed noise. ‘Abysmal vintage, this. Given my current short commons I’d ask you to find something better, but I’m afraid your people’s taste in wine is even worse.’
Thalric hissed through his teeth. ‘Time is short, Scylis.’
‘I know it is, Major, but never fear, all is in hand. I’m well in with Stenwold’s divided little band. With this face I’m closer to Stenwold than his shadow.’
‘I thought you were intending to go all the way with them disguised as Khenice.’
‘I didn’t think that would convince, and in my position the least suspicion can be fatal. So I found a better opportunity — a perfect opportunity that fell right in my lap. They had so much on their minds that they never wondered why poor Khenice left them without saying goodbye.’
‘Who?’ A cold feeling came over Thalric, though he was hard put to place it. ‘Whose. . face are you now wearing?’
‘My secrecy is my life, Major. Do you think I would trust you with my life? Would you trust me with yours?’
‘Then what have you got for me?’
‘You’ve been admirably patient this last year, Major, in putting your plans into operation. Now you’re like a child who has been promised a toy. Very well. I will show you where Stenwold’s man has his den. He has mustered quite a force of malcontents there. You should, I think, move on them. Use local muscle if you’re worried about the look of it. Thirty decent fighters should do it.’
‘Hiring thirty men without word spreading will be difficult.’