She would never know what he might have done otherwise, but after that affront he came for her, rushing forward with his curved sword dancing in a flicker. With another great heave, she swept her own blade, sheath, baldric and all, in its way, and the strap tangled about his sword so that they were drawn in close, face to snarling face. As his hand went to his belt for his dagger, she finally drew her own sword from the tangled scabbard and ran it straight into his stomach.
She remembered to keep good hold of the hilt this time, so that his own weight pulled him off the blade. She looked towards the half-open door and saw Nero standing there, still bandaged from his wound, and looking a little surprised.
‘What’s going on?’ she panted.
‘The politics hereabouts seem to have gone to the wastes overnight,’ he said, looking every bit as baffled as she was. ‘Taki wants us out of here,’ he added, and to Che that seemed to be as good an idea as any.
She finished dressing hurriedly and the two of them got to the main atrium of the Destiavel house without meeting any other enemies, although they had seen plenty of bodies by then. That was when Taki found them, rushing up with Dalre and a handful of the house guards at her back. ‘We have to leave,’ the Fly girl urged. ‘Have to get out of the house, now.’
‘No argument here,’ Nero assured her.
‘What’s happened? Why is the Standard attacking you?’
‘The Standard?’ Taki was gaping at her in disbelief. ‘You think that’s what this is? That pack of clowns?’
‘Then what…?’ Che began, but Taki was already running ahead, shouting for them to follow her.
There was still fighting at the main door, but Taki had found a side-door that was clear, and they got out into the street unmolested. Instantly three of their guards were dashing off around the side of the house, to catch the attackers at the front unawares. Dalre and a solid-looking Solarnese man stayed with them.
‘Taki, will you please tell me what is going on?’ Che demanded. ‘Is this… is this just some other mad thing you people do every month, or something?’
‘Cheerwell, do you Beetles never look up?’ Taki asked of her sharply.
Che did look up, and a moment later she fell to her knees, hearing Nero swear at the very same sight.
There was an airship hanging over Solarno, a massive tapering thing with a rigid-framed airbag, supporting a gondola that ran almost its entire length. There was a whole constellation of lights along its sides, lamps hanging from cords that cast a surreal moon-like glow across the city, and up onto the bulging sides of the balloon itself.
The gondola was riddled with holes, a not-quite-regular pattern of openings, and for a moment Che thought that Solarno would suffer the same incendiary fate as Tark. But this was no sophisticated bomber, and the Starnest had only one function in war.
Things were dropping continually from the holes, and those things were fighting men, who opened their wings halfway down to glide earthwards into the city in squads of twenty and fifty. The airship was full of Wasp soldiers, who were now descending on Solarno in their hundreds.
‘And look there, our old friends,’ Taki said, pointing. Che recognized their outlines against the clouds: two other airships, which would have been huge if it had not been for the monster they were escorting, and each equipped with four pontoons for docking orthopters. Some of the flying machines had detached already, and begun gliding over the half-sleeping city.
‘But what are they doing?’ Che asked numbly.
‘They’re invading,’ Nero informed her. ‘They’re seizing the city.’
‘And they’ve scared the Crystal Standard into helping them,’ Taki added. ‘But if they keep dropping that many men from that ship for much longer, they won’t need any help from anyone. Come on.’
‘Come on where?’ Che asked.
‘What do you think they’ll do to you when they catch you, Lowlander?’ Taki demanded. ‘We need to get both of you out of here – to the Lowlands, to Princep, to anywhere.’
‘The docks?’ Che suggested. ‘A boat?’
‘No, the airfield, before it’s too late,’ Taki insisted. ‘Now follow me. Nobody knows a quicker way from here to the airfield than me.’
Solarno was a city turned mad and thrashing. A hundred yards from the Destiavel house, another noble’s mansion was in flames, with fighting at its doorways so fierce that Che could not tell whether those inside were trying to escape or those outside only wanted to throw themselves into the fire. She saw no distinctive sashes on any of them, suggesting some private grudge meeting a settlement of opportunity. Everywhere the Solarnese were busy killing each other, and occasionally Wasps stood looking on, heedless of whether their supposed allies were winning or not.
All those factions, all that talk about their ruling councils, and in the end it was just a barrel of firepowder waiting for the spark. The parties of Solarno had finally been galvanized, after the initiative forced on the Crystal Standard by the Wasps had broken the fragile balance. Left to themselves, Che guessed, it would have been a simple night of violence, and then stability would follow the sunrise. But this time the Wasps would fan the flames and, in the morning, Solarno would have become an imperial city. The people at each other’s throats would blink in the dawn light and realise that they were no longer free.
Taki had been leading them swift and straight, sometimes running and sometimes flying, but without warning she stopped, staring ahead of her. In front of them was some taverna or other, which did not seem to Che in any way special, except that it was being looted. The front door was broken in, with young men and women tearing up the interior in search of valuables. Che noticed the sashes of at least two parties involved, and guessed that this was again a private venture and not the work of political partisans.
‘Taki?’ she asked. ‘What is it.’
‘Just… you can’t understand,’ the Fly said. ‘It’s not ever going to be the same, is it?’
‘You can fight the Wasps-’ Che started.
‘It isn’t the Wasps. You really don’t know. You’ve only been here a few days. I’m Solarnese, and this is my home. That… that was where we all used to meet: me and Niamedh and Amre and the rest. That was where he died.’
Her half-brother, Che recalled, killed by the Wasps. Now the very planks of her memories were being torn up.
‘Hey now, if we’re going to move we should move,’ said Nero edgily. He had a knife in his hand. ‘This is getting worse than at Tark.’
‘Look!’ Che gasped. A flight of Wasp soldiers was feathering down 200 yards ahead of them, blocking their path. They fell from the sky in eerie silence, glimmering wings outspread, and as the first few touched down, a handful of others ran from a side-street to join them. One seemed to be giving hurried orders, pointing down alleys and indicating precise sections of the street. Che recalled Nero’s suspicion about there being Wasps in Solarno with a mindlink. How else could such a tidy operation be controlled?
The Wasps were now advancing directly down the street, and as soon as they reached the looters they simply started blasting away with their stings, killing half a dozen and instantly scattering the rest. They were shouting something, and Che picked out the words, ‘Curfew!’ and then, ‘Everyone inside!’
‘We have to leave!’ she urged Taki, and saw with a shock the tears glinting on the Fly woman’s face. The expression itself remained resolute, though, and Taki glanced quickly about them and then chose a side-street that would lead them around and beyond the advancing Wasp squad.
Che glanced up, as the rattle of an approaching orthopter grew loud, seeing the flying machine skim the rooftops as if keeping a watch on progress below.
‘Taki, if we take off, they’ll see.’
‘That they will!’ the Fly called back.