Or not quite yet, but it looked as though the fighting would start off any moment, for a large band of Scorpion-kinden had just rolled on to the scene, a mismatched two score of hulking villains in a ragbag of armour, most of them armed with great-swords or long axes or halberds. They outnumbered the militia, though not by so very many, and they were likely the better warriors fighting one on one. As against that, the Solarnese had a fair stock of their little crossbows to hand. Alarmed challenges rang into the night.
Scorpions could mean the Empire or the Spiderlands, or pretty much anyone else, for they were inveterate mercenaries. However, getting a mob like this into the city — in twos and threes perhaps — and then organizing them was a feat in itself.
The Scorpions were shouting back, generic insults about Solarnese manhood and their mothers. They were plainly not about to commit themselves just yet, and more militia would surely be on the way even now to reinforce the defenders. So what are they hoping to accomplish
… and Laszlo swore to himself because he should have thought of watching out for whoever was using this as a distraction, and he had become too absorbed in the mummery itself.
Too late now, surely — whoever it was, they must be inside. He looked anyway, though, his sharp eyes raking the darkness where the hissing lamps left off, and he was rewarded by the sight of a small figure slipping by and into the hangar, on foot and cloaked, but he knew her.
But who’s she chasing? What’s the Empire’s plan?
Blow it sky high, came the instant thought and, try as she might, Liss could not stop that. She was Inapt. The only thing she could do with a bomb would be to set it off inadvertently.
I, however… and, with that thought, Laszlo was airborne, streaking down towards the hangars.
Liss had crept in, of course, because the Solarnese were more than used to airborne subterfuge. Laszlo was spotted immediately. Some of the militia loosed their crossbows at him, and he lurched sideways in the air as they did, trusting to his instincts to keep him out of the path of their bolts. Others, because they had been keeping their weapons trained, their fingers on the triggers, loosed at the Scorpions by reflex, just one or two, but it was enough.
Even as another dozen militia arrived, wondering what all the noise was about, the Scorpions charged. It was an ill-thought-out piece of theatre but one that Laszlo took full advantage of, by darting past the militia towards the hangar mouth.
The first blast came just as he dipped down to enter, and the hot breath of it caught him and tried to throw him out into the night again. He fought it furiously, seeing a lazy wash of fire roll out of the opening. He might have been screaming Liss’s name.
He fell to the ground, feeling his hair and clothes on the point of smouldering. Another explosion roared at the far end of the hangar, tongues of flame licking out, and a dozen separate fires inside illuminating the compact shapes of the fliers. He saw Solarnese mechanics running past, beating at themselves. Others were helplessly trying to drag one of the machines out, loyalty to their trade taken to the point of suicide. Laszlo dashed past them, the air about him gusting hot and hotter, searching in the dark and the leaping orange light of the place for Liss.
He spotted her, for she was beyond hiding. She stood surrounded by fires, bright and alive in their glow. The picture would stay with him for all his days: Liss, the flames, the stacked barrels of mineral oil that was meant to fuel the Solarnese air force.
She stretched out a hand almost playfully and it was wreathed in fire instantly. Laszlo screamed, because he had not taken it all in, and he could not. It was beyond his understanding.
Like a hunting dragonfly flown from the wrist, the flames leapt from her to one of the Firebugs, and instantly the silk of its wings was ablaze, turning to cinders and setting the wood of its body alight. A moment later, Liss herself was engulfed, even as Laszlo tried to fight his way towards her, yelling her name until the fumes choked him.
But when the flames dispersed, she was still there, her clothes burned away from her but her skin still perfect, rosy with energy. Naked and beautiful, she turned and saw him, and smiled as the world caught fire all around.
He wanted her then, despite anything. The jolt that went through him as their eyes met was one of pure unfettered desire.
She blew him a kiss, and he felt the distinct heat of it against his face, then the barrels blew.
The force of the explosion caught up his small frame and threw him end over end out of the hangar.
Elsewhere in Solarno, Major Garvan awaited the report of her key agent. From the open window of her miserable garret she had heard the great explosions rolling across the rooftops like thunder, and she knew that the plan she had painstakingly put together had finally paid off. Yet another triumph for careful, patient Army Intelligence, and no sign yet of the Rekef swanning in to steal the glory. Oh, surely, by the time the final word had been passed by General Brugan to the Empress, no doubt the Rekef Outlander would be the ones holding the reins, but Garvan’s own superiors, the army colonels who decided her future, would know the truth.
She stood and checked her appearance in the mirror on the back of her door, cautious as always. Unlike so many of her peers, victory had never been an excuse for carelessness. Far too many operations went wrong just as everything seemed to be safely in hand.
There was a flurry of wings and she went to sit behind her battered old desk, all business. Despite the pauper’s life she led, compared to their own profligacy and waste, she never let her agents forget who was in control. And especially this one, whose mercurial nature almost outweighed her considerable usefulness.
Grinning from ear to ear, Lissart squeezed in through the narrow window wearing clothes made for a someone noticeably bigger. By looks just a Fly-kinden girl with unusual red hair, she was of course another kinden entirely, a vagrant visitor to the Empire from foreign lands. Intelligence work challenged her, and Garvan knew she worked for that incentive more than for pay, but she was a wild and whimsical creature, always at the fullest extent of her leash.
‘You’re out safely, then,’ Garvan remarked, a neutral opening. ‘Report.’
‘Nobody’s flying anything out of those hangars any time soon.’ Lissart set herself down on the ramshackle desk, which creaked under even her minimal weight. ‘I got a count of the machines. One missing, out on some errand or other, but your boys were making with the noisy outside, so I reckoned it was time.’
‘Not my boys,’ Garvan noted. She loathed joint operations, and this one had been more knife-edge than most, because coordinating with Intelligence’s current business partner in this part of the world had been a nightmare of conflicting standards — the Empire’s and Garvan’s own high ones contrasted with the apparently random ones she had been forced to work within. ‘How did the Scorpions get on, anyway?’
‘When everything went up, they all legged it.’ Lissart’s grin grew even wider, if that was possible, until Garvan wondered if the top of her head was going to fall off. ‘You should have got yourself over there. Was a beautiful sight, I can tell you. Phwoosh! ’ Her arms described the majesty of the explosions. Lissart was a cracked enough creature at the best of times, but once things started catching fire, she became a regular madwoman. Garvan didn’t know whether that was a personal trait or one that applied to all of her pyromaniac kinden.
‘Some of us had other business to tie up.’ It was true: Garvan had not been short of visitors earlier that night, enough to strain her feigned identity here, but that was not an issue any more. ‘How’s your cover identity?’