Old fool that he is. She still hoped he would be all right. She wanted no more guilt on her shoulders than was there already. There will be a great many people by sunset who will not be ‘all right’.
Freedom, though – freedom for Solarno and the Exalsee and perhaps, just perhaps, for the world. We cast our little stone now in the hope of a landslide.
‘To your vessels!’ she shouted as she descended the slope. She saw men and women starting up from their card games and campfires, and mechanics make a final twist or turn, then scrambling out from beneath or within a machine. Niamedh flipped her a salute before vaulting up to the cockpit of her sleek Executrix. On the water, the bulky Mayfly Prolonged already had its propellers moving sluggishly as Scobraan started up the engines.
A big female dragonfly some thirty feet long lifted out of the woods with an armoured rider perched on its back. She marvelled at the sight, viewing it from the ground like this, and for this fragile moment as an ally not an enemy. They were fleet, jewelled anachronisms, those beasts – far nimbler than a flying machine, but what could the rider’s lance or bow do against Taki’s vessel’s metal hide?
There were more insects in the air by now, all circling and hovering. She saw Drevane Sae’s own mount take flight, identifiable by the emerald banner streaming behind his saddle. From the water the ugly, blackened hulk that was Hawkmoth’s Bleakness, most infamous pirate vessel of a piratical age, was planing over the wave-tips, fighting for height.
‘Luck.’ The word was spoken briefly by its owner passing her by. It was the Creev, the slave-mercenary of Chasme. She watched him climb up the spiny hull of his vicious-looking new fixed-wing Nameless Warrior, his previous Mordant Fire having been lost in a duel with the Wasps. Beyond him she saw the flash of the Fly-kinden te Frenna’s red scarf as she dropped into the seat of her slender heliopter, the Gadaway. It came to Taki that this might be the last time she saw many of these people, whether friends, foes or strangers. She had brought them together and now she was sending them into war.
She let her own Art wings bring her out to the Esca Volenti as it bobbed just off the shoreline, and then started the clockwork of its engine determinedly, trying to lose such mournful thoughts in the comfort of her old routines. Her elegant orthopter leapt from the waters in a spray of silver, passing up and up through the strata of carefully circling machines and beasts, and flung itself like an arrow across the waters towards Solarno, with a train of others following immediately in her wake.
The Empire had found a scapegoat in the local branch of the Demarial family, former supporters of the Path of Jade. With most of that family’s Aristoi having fled to Porta Mavralis, the Wasps had simply seized their expansive townhouse with its prime view over the Galand Square and the bay. The new imperial governor himself intended to live there in style, it was clear, and the gesture had even brought a measure of approval from the Solarnese.
Galand Square was full today, the people of Solarno jostling shoulder to shoulder and Fly-kinden roosting on the three outsized martial statues that the square was famous for. One of those trespassing Flies, a bald, lump-faced creature, was doing his best not to keep glancing behind him at the glittering waters of the Exalsee.
Nero felt as tense as he had ever been. The hammer was about to fall – or at least that was the plan. He had to take it on faith that the hammer was poised at all. There were so many pieces to come together and, although he was high up here, sitting like a privileged child on the shoulders of the great stone soldier, he could see none of them. Even the Wasp governor had yet to show himself. The balcony – and perhaps the confiscation of this house had been solely to acquire that great balcony, so suited to public declamation – currently hosted a half-dozen soldiers in heavy sentinel armour and two Fly-kinden slave-scribes, but nothing that resembled an officer, let alone whichever imperial colonel would be governing here.
Finally the game was about to begin. Nero had spent the last two days urging people into position by sheer force of will. Jemeyn and Wen, and the other Solarnese who were willing to take up arms, were split into bands of ten and twenty now within a quick dash of the square. Odyssa and her Scorpion mercenaries were on ships out in the bay, equipped with a telescope and a Solarnese artificer to use it, closely watching Galand Square for the signal. Somewhere out across the waters, Taki and the other free pilots were waiting. The frustration in seeing none of it was maddening.
Nero, old boy, you’re only an artist. What are you doing starting revolutions?
Then there was Cesta, of course, who must already be lurking somewhere close, ready for whatever he intended to do to light the fuse here. A blade thrown from a good distance was Nero’s guess, but first there would have to be the right target.
By now there were soldiers lining the square, marching forth with black and yellow pennants on their lances. Nero shifted his balance on the statue, resisting the urge to glance back towards the sea (were there black dots he could see, in the distance over it?) or to check that his dagger could be easily drawn through the buttons of his breeches. The incoming crowd, hustled together by roving Wasp soldiers to witness the new governor’s inauguration, had already been searched for blades, but few Wasps were diligent enough to feel up the inside of a Fly-kinden man’s thighs, especially one as grim-looking as Nero.
The mood in the square was very quiet. Some spoke together in low voices, but many simply stared up at the imposing balcony or at the encircling soldiers. They were not taking their subjugation well, and today would be either kill or cure. Nero was willing to bet that there were more than a few hidden weapons among the crowd. The Wasps had not won any great love amongst the people here, nor was Nero the only player whose pieces were out of sight. Only the day before, a third of the Solarno garrison had simply packed up and marched north again. Rumour said that the siege of the Spider-kinden city of Seldis was dragging, despite the Empire’s mechanical might. Nero himself knew how the Spider-kinden dealt with sieges: assassination, mass poisonings, sabotage, infiltration and incitement, and all the time there would be mercenaries and Spider levies gathering to the south, along the Silk Road. The news had helped stoke the smoulder that was Solarno and he reckoned it was all about to catch ablaze.
Myna all over again. But of course he had not been there at Myna when the gates came down. He had carefully weighed up the odds, and then told them – Stenwold and Tisamon and Marius – that he wasn’t game for it. After all, Fly-kinden were not noted for their warlike tendencies. It was the nature of his small kinden to bend before the storm. That was why they fitted in so well, why they had settled everywhere from Collegium to the Ant city-states and the heart of the Empire. But here in Solarno he had met a different breed of them: fighting Fly-kinden amongst the free pilots. One in particular, actually.
All this for a pretty face. But it was a very pretty face, and a lively manner, and though she was young enough to be his daughter, still he had been drawn to her like a moth to a flame. I am, let’s be honest here, too old for all of this, so if I’m going to start playing the young man in going to war, why not play him elsewhere too?