Salute the Dark

She approves. She forgives. He almost stumbled as he left the arena.

He never considered that she might be his daughter, not his lover. He was too far lost in the maze of his own honour for that thought. Instead he took her silent camaraderie for absolution, and he used it to cut free twenty years of guilt.

I am ready now, he decided.

Twenty-Nine

There were four guards leading Kaszaat, clustered to either side and behind her as though uncertain what to do with her. She was not quite a prisoner, therefore, but far less than free. It was the Auxillian rank, of course, Totho realized. Kaszaat was a sergeant, after all, and it threw them a little to have been obliged to arrest her.

Totho saw Big Greyv shift, leaning on the haft of his axe, though still lurking in the shadow of the engine. It was astonishing, he considered remotely, how very quiet the Mole Cricket could be, how easily overlooked.

‘Speak,’ Drephos commanded. Totho saw his superior purse his lips, but there was no surprise on his face, only a faint disappointment.

‘We caught her at one of the machines,’ called up a soldier.

‘She is an artificer, so how unexpected was that?’ Drephos asked. He did not raise his voice, but his tone was sharp enough to carry. The wind promised for the morning had yet to rise, and the air was very still.

‘One of our artificers reckoned she was breaking it,’ the soldier explained. The slight hint of stress showed what he thought of Drephos’ ragged crew. ‘Sabotage, he said. Said we should bring her to you or, if you wouldn’t deal with it, he’d take it up with the governor. After all, she’s one of them.’

‘I had always thought,’ Drephos said, probably too softly now for the soldiers to hear, ‘that she was one of mine.’ For a moment he paused, staring down, disparate hands resting on the railing. Kaszaat glared up at him defiantly, looking so much slighter than the guards behind her. Totho felt something twist inside him.

‘Sergeant-Auxillian Kaszaat, step forwards,’ Drephos ordered. She did so instinctively.

‘I placed faith in you,’ Drephos told her. ‘I had not thought I had done so badly by you as to merit this.’ His voice was carrying clearly again, finding her ears without effort. ‘I gave you station and position, drew you from the ranks of the slaves to be one of my chosen. How, therefore, has it come to this?’ Hearing him and his genuinely aggrieved tone, Totho believed that the man truly did not understand – the master of machines was stuck with a problem that his own invincible logic could not solve.

Kaszaat was shaking her head slowly, and reflected in her eyes was the unnatural monster she was looking at, who could not himself see what was so plain to everyone else there.

The guards understand more than he does, Totho thought, as Kaszaat cried out, ‘Drephos, they’re my kin!’ Her admission changed the attitude of the guards, and Totho saw their hands flex, and one man shift his grip on the snapbow he was carrying. He met Kaszaat’s eyes just briefly, and the loathing in them made him flinch. She had found him here with the enemy, and she could not know that he had come simply for the same purpose. The same purpose – but I have failed. Even before she came Drephos had talked me out of it.

‘But, Kaszaat,’ Drephos continued, and he was still so dreadfully hurt, so absurdly hurt by her turning from him, ‘how can you choose an accident of birth over our work?’ So spoke Drephos the halfbreed, even as Totho was a halfbreed: both men without kin and without homes.

And Kaszaat let out a shriek of pure anger, bursting forwards suddenly, flinging her hand up towards Drephos as though in salute. Totho was shouting her name even as she did so, seeing the darkness shift as Big Greyv abruptly stirred into motion. She had caught them all by surprise, standing there guarded and unarmed but, like a good magician, there had been something up her sleeve.

It was a slender silver rod and less than a foot long, the simplest iteration of the snapbow she could construct. It was in her hand instantly, and the trigger pressed, and Totho saw something flash past his face – no precise shape, just the impression of movement. Drephos rocked back, and Totho saw the quilled end of the dart buried at the point where his shoulder met his chest.

Kaszaat was still moving forwards, though he would never discover what she intended next. The first sting-blast struck her a glancing blow to her side, though the snapbow bolt passed by her, the guards caught unprepared by her sudden move. It was Big Greyv’s great axe, cleaving out of the darkness in a colossal double-handed swing, that buried itself in her chest, crushed her body entirely with the force of it, flinging her back into the guards and scattering them.