Dragonfly Falling Part 26

'Once woken, I cannot sleep,' she informed him, although she mumbled it sleepily enough. 'You must talk to me, amuse me.'

So he talked to her. He told her of Collegium, and the Great College. He told her of the workshops there, and the Masters in their white robes. He spoke of the Prowess Forum, and he even spoke of Stenwold Maker, Tynisa and the Mantis Weaponsmaster, Tisamon. Of Cheerwell Maker he spoke not one word.

She left him before dawn, dressing herself in darkness. She explained that she had duties to attend to but he suspected that she did not want their liaison to be common knowledge. She feared the Wasps, more than anything, and she did not want them to think that she was free for the taking.

He dressed himself as the sun rose, in his artificer's leathers, only hesitating as he began to buckle on the toolstrip that Drephos had returned to him. He was no artificer here, not yet. He was a prisoner of the Empire. If he emerged from this tent with his tools ready for use, would that suggest he had committed himself to the betrayal they were urging on him?

For it would be a betrayal of the cruellest kind. They were asking him to design weapons, as had been his dream throughout College. At Collegium his creations would have been graded and discarded. Anything made for the Wasps would be used.

They would be used on his own people.

But they would be used used.

Something visceral rose up in him, thrilling at the very thought of the work: to undertake the work for the sake of the work, and never ask who it might be for.

When he did emerge there was a messenger waiting. It was strange to see Fly-kinden running errands just as they did back home. Amidst the Wasp army there was a whole cadre of them buzzing backwards and forwards wearing the gold and black of the imperial standard.

'A message for you from the Colonel-Auxillian.' The Fly was very young, perhaps only fifteen or so. 'He'd like to see you in his tent.'

A chill went through Totho as he thought, Perhaps he will force a choice from me now, and if I refuse, as I must, surely I must, then I will be a prisoner indeed, and they will extract from me everything I know about the Lowlands and Collegium. Perhaps he will force a choice from me now, and if I refuse, as I must, surely I must, then I will be a prisoner indeed, and they will extract from me everything I know about the Lowlands and Collegium.

He went nonetheless, because he had no choice and no options.

He found Drephos lying back on the very chair that Totho himself had been secured to, when he first regained consciousness after the raid. It was a complex thing, that chair, and now it moved smoothly, the panels of the back pus.h.i.+ng in and out with metal fingers, steam venting from the sides. Drephos had explained earlier how he suffered from particular back pains, so had been forced to devise his own relief. His first love remained the artifice of war but he was not slow in attending to his own comforts.

Kaszaat waited at the rear of the tent but did not meet Totho's gaze.

Drephos opened one eye, and made a signal to the Fly, who darted outside again. The chair made a particularly complex sound and he groaned.

'Bear with me,' he said. 'I am particularly out of sorts this morning.'

The man was not well, and indeed was not entirely whole. He limped when he walked and the arm he kept hidden behind metal must be injured in some way. Totho wondered which of his own inventions had turned on him, or whether this had been the work of his imperial masters.

'You have a visitor,' Drephos announced, although Totho could barely hear him over the chair and he had to repeat himself.

'A visitor?' Totho looked blank.

Drephos signalled to Kaszaat, who stepped over to the chair and drew the pressure from the boiler, sending steam venting out in hot clouds that forced Totho to stand well back. From that swiftly dispersing mist, Drephos finally emerged, pulling his hood up to shadow his blemished features.

'But look, here he is now.' The master artificer pointed, and Totho followed his finger to see a small figure being hustled in by a pair of Wasp soldiers. It was a Fly-kinden man, bald and lumpy-faced.

'Nero!' Totho exclaimed, noticing the Fly was not bound but neither was he free, for the soldiers were keeping a very close eye on him. He smiled grimly as he saw Totho, but there were mottled bruises across one side of his face and one eye was swollen almost shut.

'Morning to you,' he said. 'And I'm glad to see you. Apparently you may be in a position to vouch for me.'

Drephos interrupted. 'Who is is this man, Totho?' this man, Totho?'

'He's a friend,' Totho began, and then realized that this was imprecise. 'He's an old friend of . . . a College Master who was a good friend to me.' Sudden inspiration struck. 'He's an artist, in fact, and I think he's quite well known. We met in Tark,' he added lamely.

'You think think he's quite a well-known one?' Drephos sounded amused. 'How well known can he be, if you only think it?' he's quite a well-known one?' Drephos sounded amused. 'How well known can he be, if you only think it?'

'I don't know about art,' said Totho stubbornly. 'And I don't know why he's here, either.' He turned to the Fly-kinden. 'Were you captured in the a.s.sault?'

'Not exactly.' Nero's wan smile remained. 'I came here to find out what had happened to you, as a matter of fact.'

'Something which the soldiers who captured him did not quite understand,' Drephos explained. 'However, he kept repeating your name and eventually word came through to me.'

'Since when the quality of hospitality around here has definitely improved,' Nero put in, rubbing his wrists for emphasis. 'Well, here's a decent sight. You came through without a scratch, it seems.'

'Without more than a lump,' Totho confirmed. 'But why did you come here? They could easily have killed you.'

Nero shrugged off the risks of it, but the gesture was unconvincing. He had not wanted to come, Totho could sense, yet he had been forced to, and by what other than his own conscience? 'My old friend Sten, you see, we go way back,' he said, sounding almost embarra.s.sed about it. 'We've been through a lot, him and me, what with the College and all.' He glanced at Drephos. 'Stop me if this is getting too sentimental or unmilitary for you.'

'Say all you want, Master Nero. Knowledge is never wasted,' said the Colonel-Auxillian.

'Well then, there was a caper that Stenwold and the others went in for, a long time ago, pretty much the last the second to last, really that we did together back then. It's history now, but it involved these fellows.' He jerked a thumb back at the Wasp soldiers nearby. 'And it was too hot for me. I bugged out of there quick enough, told him it wasn't for me. I missed the fun, and then things went sour. Lost one good friend, and another died soon after. And I never forgot how I left them to it, because I didn't like the odds. I know people think my kinden are a spineless bunch, and mostly they're right, but it still didn't sit well. Then, when you and the lad there turned up in Tark, I told myself I'd look after you, keep you on track. And a right job I made of that, too. So here I am still trying to put things right.'

'You didn't have to come,' Totho reproved him. 'I'm . . . holding out fine.' He took a deep breath. 'And Salma is . . . well, he didn't make it.'

Nero looked up at Drephos. 'Shall I say it, or is it going to get me shot?'

'Say all you wish,' Drephos told him. 'I have only refrained from mentioning it because I a.s.sumed you would prefer to break the news yourself.'

Nero nodded, his mere expression making it plain he did not trust Drephos one inch.

'The thing is, lad,' he said, 'Salma's still here. He made it, all right though only just. He's alive and here in the camp.'

Salma was asleep when Totho came to see him. Nero and the others kept their distance, even Drephos, as he went to kneel at his friend's bed.

Only a very slight rise and fall of Salma's chest betrayed the life within him. His once-golden skin was now leaden pale, his cheeks sunken and his lips shrivelled like an old man's. It was hard to see here the laughing, smiling fighter, the n.o.bleman from a far foreign land, who had once brightened the austere halls of the Great College.

'I'm so sorry,' Totho murmured quietly, so as not to wake him. He was acutely aware of all the others nearby, two hundred laid out in this tent alone. All casualties of the war, in one way or another. Most were Wasps, but there were others too: Bee-kinden like Kaszaat, ruddy-skinned Ants, even a couple of Fly messengers who had not flown swiftly enough. Many there, he saw, carried terrible burns caused by the incendiaries, and the Wasp officers' lack of concern for their own men.

Totho returned to Drephos and the others. There was a woman now standing there with them, a severe-looking Wasp-kinden who was scowling at the master artificer.

'Totho,' Drephos said, 'this gentle lady is Norsa, the Eldest of Mercy's Daughters in this camp. Norsa, this young man was a companion of the Commonwealer lying over there.'

Norsa turned a stern eye on Totho, who tried to face up to it. 'He will live,' she said flatly. 'He will recover, now, although at first only she she kept him with us at all.' She pointed and Totho followed her extended finger to see a robed woman pa.s.sing along the line of beds, bearing a basin of water. Her eyes were white, and her skin glowed through a rainbow of colours. Totho had never seen her before but, from Salma's words, he knew who this must be. kept him with us at all.' She pointed and Totho followed her extended finger to see a robed woman pa.s.sing along the line of beds, bearing a basin of water. Her eyes were white, and her skin glowed through a rainbow of colours. Totho had never seen her before but, from Salma's words, he knew who this must be.

'So he found her, at last,' he murmured. 'Thank you for aiding him, lady. I realize he is your enemy.'

'I have no enemies,' Norsa replied sharply. 'Mercy's Daughters give aid to whoever they will, however the Empire may take issue with us. Suffice to say that the imperial army knows your friend is here.'

Totho's stomach lurched with the thought and he turned to Drephos. 'Then you must have known!'

Totho caught a sardonic smile from under the hood. 'Norsa here holds me to blame for the injuries done to many of these men. I hear no news from her Daughters, and I heard none from any other quarter. Just be grateful that Master Nero himself thought to look here.'

'But when he recovers,' Totho said, 'they'll . . .'

Drephos finished for him grimly. 'Take him? Question him? Torture him and then enslave or kill him? Yes, they will, for that is their way. A waste of healing, in my opinion.'

'I do not even recognize that sentiment,' Norsa snapped at him, 'although if you were the patient I might make an exception, Colonel-Auxillian.'

Totho glanced from Drephos to Nero, and then back across the room to the unconscious Salma, and realized that some part of his mind had a plan and a decision already prepared for him.

'Colonel Drephos,' he said, although he had found his thought already. 'I need to speak with you. I think you know what about.'

Salma drifted in and out of wakefulness. Sometimes he recalled who he was, where he was, and sometimes he did not, perhaps blessedly. He existed in a blurred greyness that was pulled taut between the light of Grief in Chains and the darkness of the void that was still hungry for him.

On one occasion he opened his eyes and found himself looking straight into the face of the man on the next bed. He was a Wasp-kinden with his head bandaged low so as to cover one eye, the wrappings crisp and clean, having just been changed. When he saw Salma looking at him, the other man grinned weakly.

'You,' he said, in a voice just loud enough for Salma to hear, 'are so cursed lucky.'

Salma tried to make a sound, but nothing audible came out. In truth he did not feel so very lucky.

'You should be dead,' the soldier continued, his whispering voice obviously the best he could manage. 'I saw you drop. You were fighting like a maniac but someone got you, and you fell, and that should have been the end of you. I was behind. I saw the point come clean through you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. She came for you, though, and you were dead, even then, but she came for you as though she knew what had been going on. She ran out and lit the place up and put her hands on you. And you stopped bleeding, right there and then.' He coughed, a wretched, scratchy sound. 'And she's been with you every day, using her Art to keep you alive. I don't know what you mean to her but you're a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d, so you are.'

Salma tried to speak again, and this time a distant croak emerged, quieter even than the wounded soldier's. 'I came here for her.'

The man's one eye studied him for a minute, before he said, 'Well she's certainly worth that.'

'Salma?'

He had been asleep, or at least drifting somewhere else, but there was a new voice now, and it carried his name to him.

'Salma, you have to wake up now.'

It was not her her voice and he did not want to wake up. When he had opened his eyes last, she had been standing there, staring at him. Expression was hard to fathom from those dancing colours, from those eyes, but his heart had leapt painfully just to see her. voice and he did not want to wake up. When he had opened his eyes last, she had been standing there, staring at him. Expression was hard to fathom from those dancing colours, from those eyes, but his heart had leapt painfully just to see her.

He had found her. She had found him. In this mad, war-struck world, they had found each other.

She had sat down at the edge of his bed and, although it was a flimsy folding piece that should have tipped immediately, she barely moved it, making him doubt his senses. He had reached out, though, and she had taken his cold hand in both her warm ones, warm like the sun on a summer's day.

'Why are you here?' she had asked him. 'Why did you come?'

'I couldn't stay away, knowing that you were here,' was his whisper. 'Aagen . . . I spoke to Aagen.'

'Did you-?'

'No. We parted on good terms.' His voice was strengthening, as though healing energies were pa.s.sing through her hands and into him. Perhaps they were, either by Ancestor Art or by plain magic.

'You should not have come.'

The ghost of his old smile appeared briefly. 'Why?'

'You are hurt. You were already in the hands of death when I found you. All I have done since barely kept you with me.'

'But I am with you.' He was staring at her face. She was beautiful and it was not merely the ordinary human beauty of Tynisa. She was b.u.t.terfly-kinden and they were beautiful with the timeless perfection of a sunset or a spring day. He yearned for her even though she was already there right beside him.

She had shaken her head. 'Then I myself have done this to you. I never intended this.'

'No-' But something had come to mind, something the Moth-kinden man had said, or that Che had claimed on his behalf. 'They said . . . did you enchant me? Is this . . . what I feel now, just glamour?'

Her hand had touched his face and he felt a warmth flooding there, and also peace and safety. 'I put a spell on you,' she had confirmed. 'We were penned there as slaves, before the great machines of the Wasps, and I saw your face and knew you were a good man. I needed the help of a good man so I put a spell on you, that still held strong when we were taken by their devices to the city of the slaves. But then you needed help yourself, and I took my spell away. I have no spell on you now.'

Staring at her, he had not known what to think, because his heart still reached for her and he wanted to touch her, to stroke that rainbow skin.

'Then I must love you,' he had said in wonderment, and realized that all this while some part of him had believed Che's claim that it was no more than a spell that made him act this way. Now he discovered it was him, nothing but his own heart.

'Salma! Please wake up!'

He snapped from the reverie and saw she was not here. Instead there was a man standing by his bed, and it took Salma rather too long to recognize his face.

'Totho . . . ?'

'Yes, Salma, it's me.'

'What . . . what in the world are you wearing?'

Salma registered the tunic Totho now wore, black, and edged with strips of black and gold. It was crossed with two leather belts, one for his tools and the other serving as a baldric for his sword.

'Listen to me, Salma, because we don't have much time,' said Totho. 'You have to listen and understand what I'm saying. I'm getting you out.'

'Out?'

'Out of here. Because the girl might have saved your life, but you're still not safe. In fact if you stay here you'll certainly die. The Wasps are just waiting until you're well enough to interrogate.' Totho gave a brief bark of laughter in which the strain he was under emerged clear enough. 'What a world! They're waiting for your wound to heal so they can tear you apart. You know how much they hate your kinden. Half of their men here fought in your Twelve-Year War.'

'So be it,' said Salma tiredly.

'No! Not Not so be it! Aren't you listening, Salma? I've bought you out. There's a man, an artificer here, and he wants my service, and he says he can get you out of here.' so be it! Aren't you listening, Salma? I've bought you out. There's a man, an artificer here, and he wants my service, and he says he can get you out of here.'

'You trust him?'

'Enough for this, at least. You remember Nero? Nero's going with you. He'll look after you until you're strong again.'

'I can't can't leave, Totho.' leave, Totho.'

Totho glowered at him. 'It's the girl? That dancing girl? Listen, Salma, they are going to kill kill you, as slowly as they can. Would she want that? Because she won't be able to stop them. This nursing order of hers might get to choose whose wounds it heals, but it's got no such say over the fit and well. I've paid the asking price, Salma. I've sold myself just to buy you life.' you, as slowly as they can. Would she want that? Because she won't be able to stop them. This nursing order of hers might get to choose whose wounds it heals, but it's got no such say over the fit and well. I've paid the asking price, Salma. I've sold myself just to buy you life.'

'No!' The effort racked Salma with pain, and he knew that everyone down the length of the hospital tent would be staring. 'Totho, no-'

'This way you survive, and live free, and I . . . live too. It's not so bad. I won't be a slave, quite. And who knows what could happen?' And it's not as if I had much to go back to And it's not as if I had much to go back to, Totho added to himself. And this way, Che won't detest me any more than she already does, because at least I won't have left you to die, Salma. And this way, Che won't detest me any more than she already does, because at least I won't have left you to die, Salma.

'Totho, you can't do this,' Salma said urgently, feeling himself worn out just by the effort of this conversation. 'I'm not worth your doing this-'

'Shut up!' Totho snapped, shocking him into silence. 'Shut up, Salma, because I have already done this. I have put on their colours and apprenticed myself to these monsters, and I have done it for you, and if you tell me now that you're not worth it, just what what have I done all that for?' His fists were tightly clenched and Salma saw him anew then: not the shy, awkward youth always tagging along behind Che, but the man that same youth had forged into. have I done all that for?' His fists were tightly clenched and Salma saw him anew then: not the shy, awkward youth always tagging along behind Che, but the man that same youth had forged into.