Salute the Dark

For the first tenday of the journey, Drephos had kept to himself in icy anger, not speaking to anyone, glowering at the crew of the automotives or at the soldiers of the escort if they dared approach him. He hunched over his drawings, scoring them through and making better copies, still smarting from being wrenched from the mechanical wealth of Helleron. After that, he recovered something of his usual character, and then it became a daily business of conference with the Beetle twins and Big Greyv, whilst the other artificers were let loose to do whatever they wished. Aside from sitting silently beside Kaszaat atop one or other of the automotives, watching the sparse countryside pass them by, Totho worked on his elaboration of the snapbow. He thought he had a design now for a repeating model, although he doubted it would ever prove economic enough to furnish an army with it. Still, he had no other project to hand.

When they were only a tenday or so from Szar, by their best calculations, the twins disappeared. The vehicles had set off that morning, no different from the last, but then one of the other artificers had remarked on their absence. Drephos had the convoy halted at once, sending the soldiers out in all directions to search for them. He was not overly concerned, and Totho could detect no thought in him that the two Beetles might have come to harm. Instead, Drephos was inconvenienced. He merely wanted the two of them returned so that he could continue his work. All the while, Big Greyv dogged his steps solemnly, carrying cases of scrolls and books without complaint.

It took the soldiers almost half a day to find the missing artificers, and they brought them back nervously for Drephos’ inspection. Both were dead, though unmarked. All thoughts instantly turned to possible enemies in the villages around them. Perhaps the Bee-kinden had sent assassins out. Kaszaat found that idea ridiculous. Drephos himself conducted the examination of the bodies, hunched over them as though they were malfunctioning machines that he could bring back to life with the right repairs.

He did not speak to Totho about his findings, but he must have told someone other than the habitually silent Big Greyv, because rumour leaked out. The twins had been poisoned. They had, by all appearances, poisoned themselves.

From there it was a matter of remaining quiet and listening. Totho was good at that. The convoy meanwhile was rife with speculation. Drephos and Big Greyv seemed the only two not talking about it. Totho had not known the two Beetle-kinden, but posthumously he discovered a great deal.

After that, one night on which the convoy had stopped close enough to Szar for Kaszaat to be staring off towards the north-easterly horizon anxiously, Totho crept about the haulage automotives and inspected the contents, looking closely at form and function and drawing his conclusions.

It was something he should have been able to work out before, had he only thought of it. It was something, he suspected, that all of the other artificers had realized but were pretending otherwise. It was Drephos’ new weapon.

That night, after these conclusions, he sought out Kaszaat and guided her away from the convoy, passing between lax sentries until they were on a hilltop overlooking the circle of machines, and well out of earshot.

‘They’ll think we’ve gone the same way as the twins,’ she murmured, looking down at the cooking fire, the pole-mounted lanterns of the sentries.

‘Kaszaat,’ Totho said, ‘the twins… they weren’t actually machinists, were they?’

‘Of course they were, we all are,’ she said, and then, ‘but not just that. Not only.’

‘I’ve heard people talk about those two,’ he said. ‘They were alchemists as well. That was why Drephos recruited them.’

‘They worked the reagent that brought down the walls of Tark,’ Kaszaat agreed. From a certain reticence evident in her tone, Totho knew that she had already guessed at the suggestion he was about to make. Out there was her home city, currently in arms against the Empire, while here came Drephos to reforge the chains and bonds of imperial servitude.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she did not ask, For what? but just leant into him. She was trembling slightly.

Why doesn’t she flee? he wondered. Why doesn’t she go back to her own people? But he knew the answer to that. It was the same invisible leash that kept him here. They had all of them severed their ties to their former homes when they joined Drephos’ cadre.

He was not sure what impulse had made him spare her a further revelation that most likely would reveal nothing she had not already grasped, but instead he held close to her and said nothing more.

Certainty was closer than he thought.