‘Lissart,’ he addressed her pleasantly.
‘Good morning, Tactician,’ she replied, as meekly as she could make herself say it. She saw a spark of annoyance in his eyes, because he preferred a little defiance so that he could break her of it.
‘I have a question – something I was hoping you would help me with.’
‘Anything, Tactician.’
‘First, though, tell me – when you came to me, you were masquerading as an expert on the Inapt and their ways. Was there any truth in that?’
Lissart considered her answer carefully before replying. ‘I have some training. I am Inapt. I’ve worked for Moths and Spiders.’
‘There is . . . a weapon,’ Milus said. His voice was hushed, and she started as she realized that this was not a game, after all. She had caught him in a rare moment of uncertainty. No wonder he wanted his guards out of earshot, and no doubt he was keeping his thoughts securely locked within his head. Prisoners, just like me.
‘It seems to strike at random. People disappear. It strikes the Empire and my own people equally. My artificers and scholars cannot explain it.’
‘You think that . . .’ You think that it’s magic. But of course he could not think that, although Milus had shown himself an unusually open-minded man when he had been dealing with the Mantis situation.
‘I think that my artificers cannot explain it,’ he repeated, with a glint of irritation. ‘I think that I do not trust the Moths and the Mantids. I think that the Apt powers of the world are currently fully committed against one another, and I know my history books. The Moths were tyrants, in their day, and it’s a habit not soon unlearned.’
‘Tell me of this thing, this weapon,’ she encouraged him, and he did so, giving a concise flavourless report, details without any interpretation: disturbed earth, missing bodies, no witnesses.
Lissart had an esoteric training but she was no magician. Some old stories might have elements of what Milus described, but these were tales to scare children with, down in the Spiderlands where she had grown up. ‘Sounds like centipedes to me,’ she told him with a smile, and he took her by the throat with one iron hand. For a moment she thought he was going to snap her neck.
Her gloves scrabbled at his fingers, moving them not one inch, and all the while Milus was staring into her face. ‘The beasts were seen at several of the sites. At one there was the body of a creature more than ten feet in length, hacked and burned by stingshot. What do you know?’
She choked, and he loosened his grip slightly. ‘Just stories,’ she got out.
‘I will send paper and ink. You will write down everything.’ He straightened up, releasing her. ‘And, yes, the gloves stay on. You’ll just have to manage.’
She watched him depart, and it was not lost to her that the two guards were watching him, too, as he left. It was perhaps the first moment of complete privacy she had been gifted with in tendays.
But still the manacles and the gloves were keeping her here. If only there was some other chance at freedom . . .
‘You heard all of that, of course,’ she murmured from the corner of her mouth.
‘Oh, I heard it.’ The whisper issued from the carefully pruned greenery in this shaded corner of the garden. ‘And, believe me, it’s happening all over. I may not like the man but he’s worrying about the right things.’
‘Laszlo, there’s only one thing that’s concerning me.’
‘I know, I know.’ He had come to her immediately before Milus, slipping adroitly past the guards, but she knew him of old. He was not quite the skilled infiltrator he might take himself for.
He had tracked her here on a path of rumours. Some of the Collegiate artificers in Sarn were aware that Milus had a Fly woman prisoner, a woman with red hair. She was distinctive enough that she had stuck in their minds.
‘I don’t think I can get you out right now,’ he confessed. ‘Not with the guards – and those manacles look well made.’
‘So much for you, then,’ she said, trying to sound nasty about it, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was fighting very hard to avoid showing how much hope had leapt in her, just knowing she had not been forgotten.
‘No, listen, I’m working on it. I’ve kind of got mixed up in some other stuff as well, but, believe me . . .’
‘Laszlo, just . . .’ To have a jagged piece of hope thrust into her hands and then torn away so swiftly was unbearable. ‘Just do something,’
‘I will. But you need to make sure Milus takes you with him when the Sarnesh march out. And that’ll be soon. Things are happening. Just be with him.’
‘Oh, he’ll take me.’ There was a wealth of tired pain in her words that left him silent, and for a moment she had mad thoughts of him putting an arrow into Milus, stabbing the man or getting killed while trying, and then where would she be? Milus was her jailer, but at least he had an interest in keeping her alive.
Then Lazlo said, ‘You’ll get your chance, I swear to you. I’ll get you out and then you’ll never need to see Milus again.’
I’ll see him one more time after that, she told herself, but that was more than Laszlo needed to hear. So she moved over to the brighter end of the garden, drawing the soldiers’ gazes after her, so that he could creep away.
It was a Fly-kinden war.
The machine that ghosted to a silent landing north of Collegium was a fixed-wing, and Taki never liked flying fixed-wings. If a Wasp combat orthopter had caught her in the air, she would only have speed to trust to in her escape. Actual fighting would be out of the question.
It was quiet, though, her machine, and, most importantly, it could glide for long distances with its propellers stilled. She had kept up high on the trip south from Sarn, riding the winds whenever she could to conserve fuel, she and her passengers muffled in scarves and overcoats against the chill of the upper air.
Once touched down, she listened intently for the engines of Wasp fliers, but the night was keeping its secrets. She twisted in her seat, looking back at the others.
‘Your stop.’
There was little space in the body of the fixed-wing, but enough for two Fly-kinden.
‘You know what you’re looking for?’ Laszlo prompted her. Beside him, Sperra shifted, still half asleep, and leant into the man.
‘An army’s a hard thing to miss,’ Taki told him contemptuously. ‘You just concentrate on doing your own job, whatever that actually is.’
‘Top secret,’ he insisted, and not for the first time. ‘I’m a spy, remember.’
‘A piss-poor one, if you keep telling people,’ she retorted, and was surprised to see a slight twinge of pain come into his smile at the reproach.
‘You just remember your job, mistress aviator.’
‘Aviatrix.’
‘Whatever.’ He untangled himself from Sperra, who made a complaining noise and then woke up with a start as Laszlo unlatched the hatch.
‘Already?’ she demanded.
‘Winds were with us,’ Taki said. ‘That, and the fact that you have the best pilot in the world.’
Laszlo snorted. ‘Good luck in the city,’ he told Sperra.
‘I thought you were coming in with me.’
‘Got other places I need to be, and better roads to take me there.’ He hopped down to the ground and then put his head back through the hatch. ‘Good sailing, both of you.’
He was gone even before Sperra replied in kind.
‘You too,’ Taki urged her. ‘Come on, out. I want to be on my way west before the Wasps decide we’re overdue for a fly-by.’