Salute the Dark

‘Normally there are reprisals against their families, back home. Here, though, we make a practice of not leaving any enemy bodies if we can help it. Whole scouting parties have vanished completely, and the Auxillians along with them. The Wasps cannot then know who has died and who has deserted. And of course some Auxillians themselves realize the potential of this practice – and that here, of all places, there is someone who will take them in. Morleyr and his people came to me of their own will.’

One of the great Mole Cricket-kinden turned and nodded at that, regarding Stenwold suspiciously.

‘Go to Suon Ren,’ Salma said, as he unpinned the paper and passed it to Stenwold. ‘Prince Felipe Shah may yet be holding his winter court there. He will remember me still, I hope, so this shall serve as your introduction.’

‘Suon Ren,’ Stenwold repeated. In his head he conjured up what he had gleaned of the Commonweal, pinpointing the name as belonging somewhere north of the Moth hold of Dorax, towards the Commonweal’s southern border.

‘You should go right now, though,’ Salma informed him. The Mynan warrior had just run up to him, handing over what looked like a scribbled land-plan, with arrows and blocks sketched in. ‘The Wasp Sixth is advancing on our position,’ Salma explained. ‘We’re already blinding their approach, vanishing their scouts, but they’ve put a couple of flying machines in the air just now, and that could cause some problems with your departure.’

‘I’ll go now,’ Stenwold confirmed.

Salma held one hand up. ‘There is one name from the old times that we haven’t yet mentioned, Sten.’

‘I know.’

‘He is…?’

‘Totho is with the Wasps still, insofar as I know. He will most likely be with the army now marching on you.’

‘Ah.’ Salma looked down for a moment, then reached forward to clasp Stenwold’s arm, wrist to wrist. ‘Good luck, Sten – and fair winds.’

‘Good luck to you too,’ Stenwold said, already beginning to back towards the Buoyant Maiden, straining where the wind tugged at it. His last sight of Salma was as the single still point in a camp that was disintegrating into nothing all around him.

Five

‘It can’t really be just because of the girl, can it?’ Teornis asked. The Spider Aristos did not look at Nero as he asked the question, but purely because the artist was intent on a profile sketch of him just then. ‘After all, you didn’t exactly spend much time with her, before she set off on her own.’

‘She didn’t exactly spend much time on board ship,’ Nero pointed out.

Teornis spent a further moment in composition, the chitin-shard pen poised deftly between his fingers, then he scratched a few additional notes to a report he was sending on. He had already played host to two Fly-kinden couriers bringing document packets, and a third was anticipated soon. Their airship was passing over the isle of Kes even now, with the Ants’ metal-gleaming navies mustering below in preparation for war.

‘I had thought Fly courtship to be a fairly straightforward affair,’ the Spider said idly.

‘I’ve got no idea how they do things in Solarno – probably slap each other with fish or something. All mad in that city. Sure, in the hollows it’s simple enough,’ Nero remarked, meaning Egel and Merro. ‘That’s because it’s mostly arranged. Everything’s run by family there. That’s why I got out, and that’s why you find so many of my people away from home. Easier for us to live anywhere but directly under the noses of our own kind. Why, how’s it work with your people?’

‘I’ve no idea how they do things down in the gutter,’ Teornis said, with a dry imitation of the artist’s tone in his voice. ‘Amongst the Aristoi, however, it is a very delicate and intricate business. If a woman wishes a man’s companionship, he is allowed to discover it from some third party, but most often the woman merely waits for suitors, no mere man being considered important enough to attract her attention. Once his affections are engaged, the man is expected to approach the woman carefully, respectfully. There is a chain of social observances that he must perform: questions to be asked of her servants and friends, discreet giving of gifts through intermediaries, the scribing of poetry or the commissioning – as you must know – of artistic works for her.’

Nero nodded, making connections. ‘I didn’t realize I’d become part of some Spider fellow’s love games.’