‘She’s the money,’
Hokiak said, and Felise Mienn stepped forwards.
Draywain flinched from
the sight of her. ‘A Common-wealer? You must be mad! Where could I spend
her
gold?’
‘She’s got good imperial
gold. I seen it myself,’ Hokiak assured him, privately reckoning she had taken
it off good imperials.
‘Do you have what
I
want?’ Felise asked impatiently.
Draywain narrowed his
eyes. ‘Let me see the money.’
‘Do you have what I
want?’ She asked it more slowly, emphasizing each word separately. ‘If you
don’t know where Thalric has gone, nothing for you.’
‘Thalric of the Rekef?
That bastard!’ Draywain barked. ‘Oh, I know where he went, don’t you worry. Now
let me see the money.’
Without taking her eyes
from him she unshipped a pouch, emptied it onto the table. A flurry of gold and
silver spilled out, and Draywain and his men pulled closer to inspect it.
‘One hundred Imperials –
our agreed price,’ she said. It was a decent sum of money, Hokiak decided, for
just a piece of information. Not a fortune, certainly, but an awful lot.
Draywain looked up from
the money, and he had obviously come to a slightly different conclusion. ‘It’s
not enough,’ he said. ‘Not enough for imperial secrets that nobody else’ll sell
you. My life’s hit the rocks recently, Dragonfly-lady. I need to relocate
myself somewhere an honest man can do business, and that isn’t cheap.’
‘That is not the
arrangement,’ Felise snapped.
‘Well then the deal’s
changed places when you weren’t looking,’ Draywain replied. ‘Now you double
what you’ve got there and I’ll start talking.’
‘That is not the arrangement.’
Again the words were slower, more pointed, as though she was clarifying some
simple matter for a simple man.
‘I have what you want,
Wealer,’ Draywain told her. ‘Cough up the goods or I’m taking it right back out
with me.’
‘Draywain—’ Hokiak
began, but the Beetle cut him off sharply.
‘Stay out of this, old
man!’ he snapped. ‘I’m doing business here.’
That’s
all I need to hear.
Hokiak rubbed the two claws of his good hand
together, seeing his men pick up the signal.
‘So let’s see the rest,
Wealer,’ Draywain insisted.
‘You knew the terms I
offered,’ she said. ‘I need that information.’
‘I’m a merchant and this
is a seller’s market,’ he responded without sympathy.
And she smiled and
Draywain took that for a good sign.
Then the sword came out
from under her cloak, the whole gleaming length of it that had been held close
down the line of her body. The cloth was flung back as she lunged into action,
revealing armour beneath that was iridescent blue and green and
mother-of-pearl.
She had the blade
through the first bodyguard’s gut before he could react, drawing it smoothly
out to smash the next man’s crossbow and the half-fired bolt on the back-swing.
The crossbowman fell backwards, reaching for his blade, and the remaining
bodyguard went for her.
He was not bad, that
man. Clearly he had seen a few fights before. It was a waste, Hokiak decided,
but that was the nature of this business.
Felise Mienn’s sword was
four feet long, but half of that was the hatched and bound metal hilt. The
blade itself was straight and double-edged, tapering only towards the very
point. She swung it with both hands and in either hand, dancing it round and
past and over his guard as the luckless man tried to defend his patron. In a
single fluid move she had sidestepped his strike and put the blade across his
neck with far more force than her slender arms looked able to muster, half
taking his head from his body.
Draywain bolted then,
and she flung the sword at him as if without thinking. It slammed into the wall
right alongside his head, cutting a line across his cheek. He screamed and
stopped there, tugging at the hilt. The point of it had pinned his ear to the
wall. His
ear
? Hokiak had never seen such a throw,
and it had been solid enough that the Beetle could not yank the sword free using
both hands.
The crossbowman had his
blade now and he went for the unarmed woman. She stepped back and back as he
came, cloak swirling about her, and then blades flicked out from her thumbs. It
was the first Hokiak knew of the weapons that their Ancestor Art gave to
Commonwealers. They were two-inch curved razors and she now stood poised with
them ready, fingers clenched inwards but thumbs ready to strike.
The last bodyguard
paused, weighing up the odds.
‘Kill her!’ Draywain
screamed weakly. ‘For blazes’ sake, just kill her.’
He was a professional
man now torn between his reputation and safeguarding his health. In that moment
Felise went for him, claws slashing across him three times before he could even
get his sword between them. He stumbled back, blood trailing from his face.
Lunging forwards, Felise caught his head with both hands, as though she was a
lover about to kiss him. Then she gashed both claws across his throat and he
fell at her feet.
She looked at Hokiak
then, and if her eyes had been burning mad before there were whole fiery suns
of demented rage there now.
He forced himself to
lean peaceably on his cane and indicate, with a twitch of his chin, that not
one of his men had moved to intervene. He was not sure that she would
understand him, but then she was stalking across the bloody floor towards
Draywain.
‘Keep away!’ he
shrieked. ‘Someone help me!’ but Hokiak knew that his backroom had thick walls
and people around this part of the city always minded their own business.
She put one hand up, stilling
the quivering hilt of her sword.
‘Thalric,’ she said
simply, conversationally.
‘Thalric, of course!’ he
gasped. ‘They sent him away. They sent him west, to the new-found lands. The
city Helleron, where the foundries are. He’s Rekef Outlander. You know what
that means?’
‘Oh, I know exactly what
that means,’ she said. Only Draywain could see her expression just then, and
his voice dried up to a whimper.
‘Do you know where this
Helleron is, Hokiak?’ she asked, without turning.
‘Sure I do,’ the old Scorpion
said.
Seems like every month I’m shipping people west.
‘Good,’ she said and
pulled her sword out of the wall effortlessly. As Draywain gasped in relief she
rammed the point of it double-handed through his chest and then whipped it out,
all in one movement. He was dead instantaneously, without even realizing what
was happening. Perhaps, Hokiak thought, that was her way of mercy. Or her
thanks.
Charming thought.
‘You will find me means
to get to Helleron,’ she told him. ‘And supplies. A map that I can read.’ That
last was because she was not Apt, of course, not one for machines or crossbows
or technical drawing.
‘I got an old
Grasshopper chart,’ Hokiak said. ‘Ain’t what you’d call recent but I don’t
guess they moved the cities that much. Look, this all is going to cost. I
earned my one-in-ten for bringing him here, no matter what he did.’
She turned then,
smiling, and she was a lovely-looking woman, when she smiled – and more likely
to kill a man than any Spider-kinden seductress.
‘But Master Draywain has
just chosen not to collect his fee. What’s one-in-ten of nothing, Master
Hokiak?’
The Scorpion gave out a
sigh, and his men around the room tensed, ready. ‘Now that ain’t how we do
business around here. You got what you came for.’
‘Do you think I care about
gold?’ she asked him. ‘Do you think that I can’t find more? Do you think for me
this is about
money
?’ She snarled at that last. ‘I
would empty the coffers of the Empire and the treasuries of the Commonweal to
find this man Thalric. You want money? Take it
all
.’
She gestured at the pile, the not-quite-a-fortune, that she had left on the
table. ‘Just get me what I want.’
‘I was right here in my
front office,’ Parops told them. ‘I had a crossbow and a telescope, but after I
while I just used the telescope. It was quite something to see.’ He indicated
the view from his slit window.
‘Nothing’s happening
now,’ Totho pointed out. There was a tray of bread and spiced biscuit on
Parops’s desk, and he was aware that Skrill seemed to be working her way
through it all methodically.
‘That’s war: boredom and
boredom and then everything’s far too interesting all of a sudden,’ Nero
confirmed. He was sitting on the desk looking at Skrill and obviously trying to
decide what she was.
‘So what happened?’
Salma asked.
Parops put his back
against the wall beside the arrowslit. ‘Take a look at the disposition,’ he
invited. Salma did so, seeing only a large extent of land between the city
walls and the Wasp camp, which was dotted with a few tangled heaps of wood and
metal.
‘First off, they moved
their engines in,’ Parops explained. ‘They started shooting straight off and
they must have some good artillerists, because in only a few shots they were
sweeping the wall-tops with scrap from their catapults, forcing everyone’s head
down. They were loosing some at the walls, too, lead shot rather than stone, I
think. We were shooting back from embedded positions like the one atop my
tower. You can see evidence of some of our successes out there, but with our
lot flinching back all the time it took a while to make the range to them. And
of course nobody was getting a peaceful time of it. They had their men flying
over the wall amidst the rocks.’
‘Sounds risky for the
men,’ Salma said, studying the tents, making out what he could with his keen
eyes.
‘A good few of the
incomers got squashed, no doubt, but nobody seemed to care on either side,’
Parops confirmed. ‘They were frothing mad, attacking everything along the
length of the wall itself, or just charging off into the city in bands of eight
or ten. Shields and a chitin cuirass was all they had, most of them, and
javelins, and that fiery thing they do with their hands. They didn’t seem like
proper soldiers, to be honest – more like a rabble.’
‘A rabble is what they
were,’ Salma confirmed. ‘The Wasps call them Hornets, but they’re just Wasps
really. We saw a lot of them in the Twelve-Year War when they invaded my own
people’s lands. They’re from the north-Empire, nothing but hill-savages. Your
average Wasp is a touchy fellow at the best of times, but the Hornets are
downright excitable.’
‘And clearly
expendable,’ Nero added.
‘Right,’ confirmed
Salma. ‘So what happened?’
‘Well, we had
crossbowmen on the walls, and line soldiers defending the artillery,’ Parops
explained. ‘Their first charge, coming with all that rock and lead, took its
toll, but we knew they were a flying kinden, so we had ranks of crossbowmen
stationed beyond the walls as well. Any that lingered on the battlements or
tried to press into the city were picked off. We think the toll was about four
hundred of them, in all, and just thirty-seven of ours. Most of those fell to
their artillery and first charge, too. After that we were well dug in.’
‘And are you calling it
a victory?’ Salma asked him.
‘Opinion is divided,’
Parops admitted. ‘Some who fought on the walls say it was, but I, who was just
watching from inside here, say not. They had their tacticians out, carefully
seeing how it went, so I’m suggesting to my superiors that they’ll do better
next time.’
‘Wise man, good advice,’
the Dragonfly told him.
‘So what are
we
supposed to do in the meantime?’ Totho asked. ‘We can’t
just sit here. We have to get word to Stenwold.’
‘The city is sealed,’
Parops said sadly. ‘That’s the one thing we and the Wasps seem to agree on, as
we’re not letting anyone out, and neither are they. If you left without
permission from the Royal Court you’d be shot by our crossbows, and even if you
weren’t, they have flying patrols on the lookout all the time.’
‘They’ll try to recover
the broken engines after dark,’ Totho said suddenly. ‘They’ll send slaves to do
it, probably.’ He had taken Salma’s place at the slit window. ‘Your
artillerists should keep the ranges, and keep watch.’
‘Night artillery’s
always a challenge,’ Parops said. ‘I’ve said it, though. Let us hope they take
it up.’
Totho frowned at that
‘I’ve said it,’ and then realized what the man meant, remembering the mindlink
that the Ancestor Art gave to all Ants. It united them within their own walls
and equally divided them from their brothers in other cities.
Skrill finished another
mouthful of bread, and took a swig of beer from the nearby jug. ‘I ain’t
fighting no siege,’ she said.
‘They wouldn’t have you
anyway,’ Nero told her.
‘Now I ain’t good enough
for your siege?’
‘We fight together, as
one,’ Parops explained. ‘Foreigners on the walls would only get in the way. No
offence, but that’s how it is.’
Skrill shrugged.
‘On the other hand,’
Nero said, ‘if the walls do come down, then we’re
all
invited.’
‘Did their engines break
through anywhere, when they turned them on the walls?’ Totho asked. He closely
examined the arrowslit, seeing how its flared socket was set into a wall three
feet thick at least.
‘A few stone-scars but
nothing structural,’ Parops said. ‘They’re going to need a bigger stick to get
through these walls. Nero tells me my kinden aren’t renowned for having new
thoughts, but one reason for that is that the old ones have always served us
pretty well. We know how to build a wall that won’t come down.’
‘And of course, this is
another thing their . . . tacticians out there will have noted. That they will
need more . . .’ Totho mused. ‘What are their artificers like, Salma?’