It was tucked into her discarded bedroll, and anyone could have found it, but nobody else would have understood.
She is here. I can’t stay.
She is painted brown and disguised as a Beetle soldier-woman.
Look for me in another place.
Laszlo felt his heart leap at that last line. We’ll meet again. I’ll find her or she’ll find me. And then the first two lines took on meaning and his eyes widened.
She could mean only one thing: the Wasp agent who had dealt Lissart such a wound in the first place, she was here in the camp.
He glanced about him. There were Beetle women everywhere, of course there were. But he had already seen the Wasp spy — seen her come after Lissart to finish her off. He calmed himself, unhinged his memories, sorting through them for that night that was surely engraved on his mind.
A moment later and he was outside the infirmary tent and peering about him, from face to face. There was a spy in the camp, up to unknowable mischief, and only he could find her.
In her fragmentary and barely remembered dream she was in the air, in a storm, the high winds battering at the framework of the Esca Volenti until every part of the loyal machine seemed on the point of coming away from every other. In the midst of wrestling with controls that were suddenly unresponsive in her grip, she was yanked from sleep, shaken into abrupt and uncomprehending wakefulness, unsure of where she was or why.
‘Taki! Mistress Taki!’ someone was shouting. Mistress? But of course, that was how the Collegiates talked, not knowing any better, and what was that dreadful noise?
She sat bolt upright, slapping away the Beetle girl who had woken her. The Ear! ‘How long did you let me sleep?’
In a moment she was out of her bunk, standing barefoot on the cold floor, in just her shift. She felt leadenly tired, disoriented, as though she had gone to bed only a moment before.
‘Mistress Taki, they’re coming!’ The girl — Taki could not recall her real name but identified her as ‘Still-too-fat-to-be-a-pilot’, one of the newer recruits — was a study in wide-eyed panic.
Taki cursed, dragging on her canvas overalls and snagging her chitin and leather helm from the floor. ‘You should have woken me an hour ago at least,’ she snapped, storming up out of the underground barracks into the common room… and stopping.
Broad, glorious daylight sang through the high windows.
‘Right,’ she said, to nobody in particular. A score of pilots were looking at her expectantly, most of their field’s complement.
‘Where’s Corog? Master Breaker, I mean. Where’s everyone else?’ she demanded, striving to clear her head.
‘Out on the field with their machines,’ someone told her, and another put in, ‘The Mynans want to take off, but we’ve no orders.. ’
‘ Orders? ’ Taki demanded. ‘Just go, morons! Get into the air!’ And she herself led the charge, wings skimming her up and out to the airfield, darting for the open cockpit of the Esca Magni. She saw the rest of the pilots all around, some arguing with ground crew, others already in their machines, wings warming up slowly. Edmon gave her a nod, before bringing his hatch down.
‘Hold! Nobody take to the air!’ Corog Breaker was rushing across the field, waving his arms like a man trying to catch a departing airship. ‘I’ll have the hide off anyone that dares fly!’
Edmon rammed his hatch up again, staring at the old man with disgust. ‘No,’ he shouted back, ‘this time we fly. This time we fight the Wasps, even if your people won’t. Who’s with me, eh?’
There was a lot of shouting then from Mynans and Collegiates both, and Edmon had clearly carried the vote.
‘You just listen to me!’ Corog Breaker still had a fine old voice, when he needed to use it. ‘Yes, we fight! But you listen here, special orders from Stenwold Maker. Nobody gets aloft until they’ve heard them.’
Edmon scowled belligerently, but waited.
‘Just listen, because you have to get this right,’ Corog urged them all. ‘We’re not bearding them beyond the walls this time. We let them come to us.’ As the murmur of discontent started up again he raised his arms to quieten them. ‘Oh, we fight. When they come over the city, we hold them, but it’s more than that. We need to concentrate them, as much as we can. Engage, take the bastards down if you can, but bring all of them over the city’s heart.’ He glanced back at the scroll he was clutching, breath catching from the run, trying himself to assimilate the instructions. ‘Now listen,’ he continued. ‘The Ear is going to sound again, you understand. You have to listen for it. During the fight, the Ear will sound, and that’s your signal.’
‘Signal for what, Corog?’ Taki asked him.
The old Master Armsman’s expression was openly baffled. ‘Get out of the sky. Land as soon as you can, on roofs, in the street, crash if you have to. Just get out of the sky. You have to hold them, keep them off the city, until the artificers and Stenwold Maker reckon we’ve got our best shot. Then you down your machines as soon as the Ear sounds, and…’
‘And what?’ Taki pressed.
‘If you’re still in the sky right then, you’ll find out the hard way,’ was all that he would say. ‘Now get in your fliers. If your regular machine’s with the artificers for the ground-attack refit, get yourself in a spare one. If there’s none left, cheer us on.’ A proportion of the Stormreaders were being modified following some new requirement from Stenwold Maker or the Speaker or someone: some were still in the workshop being fitted out.
Corog crumpled the scroll and glanced at his own machine. ‘We have a little time now, because we’re letting them come to us. Make sure your machines are fully wound and ready. Nobody heads off half-sprung. Know this: best guess says that they’ll come all together, everything they can put in the air. Ready yourselves for that, as best you can.’
The Ear continued its melancholy drone, and they took to their machines more soberly now — the entire remaining might that Collegium could put in the air. Taki looked around her, thinking about just how many Farsphex the Empire might have to throw at them, and how difficult engaging them for even a short time was going to be without suffering heavy losses. Around her, although she might forget names, she knew every face, as familiar as her old flying comrades from Solarno, most of whom had died in the last war while retaking her city from the Empire. But Solarno now sat under Imperial and Spider colours again, and so what had been the point?
She was acutely conscious that this would probably be the last sight she had of many of these people: Mynan airmen, Collegiate student aviators, volunteer academics, merchant pilots turned to war, artificers and tradesmen retrained in the city’s time of desperate need. It might equally be their last sight of her.
She was scared, and the sudden fear mingled with the old excitement that an aerial duel had always inspired in her. I may die, but at least I live first, and show me a better death.
And, out over the rugged land that separated Collegium from the Second Army, the Farsphex were closing.
General Tynan had listened to every word that Aarmon and Cherten had to say, sitting there with Mycella of the Aldanrael at his right hand, his trusted adviser. With his eyes half-closed, he had heard them both out, taken in every scrap of evidence or supposition, leaping to no conclusions but setting out the facts in his head with the same patient care that had guided his career as an officer.
‘You think it’s a trap,’ he had remarked to Aarmon.
‘I think they have husbanded all their strength for tonight, to destroy as many of us as they can, sir. I think they know they must cripple our airpower, for their own to have a chance against your army tomorrow,’ the pilot had confirmed.
‘And you, Colonel?’
‘I think we have our orders, sir,’ had come Cherten’s response, ‘and both my spies and those of the Spiders are reporting that they are simply running out of working machines to put in the air — conserving their strength for the siege.’