Salute the Dark

‘Solarno needs bailing out,’ said the man called Hawkmoth. He was a vicious-looking specimen, almost as small as a Fly-kinden, bald and leathery with a fierce forked beard. ‘But what do most of us owe Solarno?’

Taki grinned at him, matching fierce for fierce. ‘Oh, if you really thought that, Sieur Hawkmoth, you’d not be here. You and I know each other: we have crossed paths before. Still, if you cannot see there is now an enemy greater than all of us, then there’s no point me staying longer.’

Some of the Dragonflies scoffed at that, and Scobraan stood up angrily, his big hands rocking the table. Taki had to shout at all of them to shut their mouths and just listen to her.

‘All right, you want me to shame you with the facts? I will then,’ she told them. ‘All right, Sieur Hawkmoth, let’s look at the freebooters of the Exalsee, shall we? Why are you still free and living, Sieur?’

‘I’m a better pilot that any man or woman here, is why,’ Hawkmoth growled.

‘And you never sleep? And your flier never needs to land? No, you’re free because the Exalsee is so big, and those who would hunt you down can never quite net you in. Do you think the Wasps would seriously want for men and flying machines, Sieur? Attack one of their ships or fliers and they’d search every island in the Exalsee until they had rooted you out of every possible hiding place – and once they’re established there will be no ship or flier that is not flying their flag! And you know it, and that’s why you’re here.’

Hawkmoth glowered at her for a moment, and then nodded slowly.

‘And you warriors of Princep Exilla,’ Taki went on, ‘you must see that your sovereignty’s days are numbered. What do you think the Wasps will do, on finding a city of Dragonfly-kinden on their southern doorstep? The Lowlander Cheerwell Maker once told me something, she told me about the Twelve-Year War – a conflict between the Wasps and your kinden.’

‘Those we left centuries ago,’ Drevane Sae said dismissively. ‘Those in the north. They are not our people any more.’

‘The Wasps won’t care,’ Taki insisted. ‘You are still their enemies. In fact, we’re all their enemies. And as for Chasme itself? You tell me, Creev.’

The Creev inclined his head. ‘They will either take us over or wipe us out.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’ Drevane Sae asked harshly.

‘Drive the Wasps from Solarno,’ Niamedh replied instantly, standing up.

‘So easily said? If it is so easy, then they are not a threat!’ Hawkmoth snapped. ‘If they are as you claim, it is like trying to hold back a tide. It cannot be done.’

‘Listen to me!’ Taki said again. ‘I have travelled a long way west – further than anyone present here, believe me. I have flown past Porta Mavralis to lands that half of you haven’t even heard of, but where they are also fighting the Wasps. I have come back in the company of a Spiderlands lord who, too, is looking to fight the Wasps. I even have a few hundred Spiderlands mercenaries stashed ready for my signal. The problem is that none of you, not one of you, has any sense of the world beyond the Exalsee. You don’t understand that the world – the whole wasting world – has been pulled into this war.’

She realized that, for the first time, they were absolutely, genuinely silent.

‘The Wasp invasion of Solarno is nothing, in the eyes of their Empire,’ she continued softly. ‘They reacted like a greedy child reaching out for something bright, for no other reason than because it is there. North and west of here, there are Wasp armies tens of thousands strong currently marching on other lands. The Wasps aim to conquer the whole world, a city at a time, so they are always fighting. And right now they are fighting a greater, stronger enemy than they have faced before, so their men, their machines and resources, are more and more being committed to this larger fight. If Solarno sits still under her shackles, then she shall remain a slave forever, and the Exalsee with her, but if she rises now, if we come to her aid now, then perhaps we shall throw the enemy off – because the Wasps have their swords primarily directed elsewhere. Otherwise we lose our chance, and the Exalsee shall become an imperial province, city by city, and every one of us will be lost even to the histories.’

‘I commit myself to nothing,’ said Drevane Sae, and then, ‘but what do you ask?’

‘I ask for every flier that can be spared,’ Taki said. ‘Even now I have insurrection being stirred up in Solarno, and I have Spiderlands troops ready to march. But I need orthopters, heliopters, fixed-wings, whatever you can give – all of you. From the Principality to the free corsairs of the Exalsee, I need you. I need you, every one.’

She realized that she was standing upright to her full minuscule height, and that they were all listening to her as though this was something entirely reasonable and necessary she was asking from them, and the responsibility of it scared her half to death.