Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling (Shadows of the Apt 2)

Dragonfly Falling

Shadows of the Apt Book 2

Adrian Tchaikovsky

ForAlex

A very big thank you toeveryone whos encouraged and helped me over the last year, including Simon;Peter and the folks at Macmillan; Al, Andy, Emmy-Lou and Paul; the Deadlinerswriting group; and all the folks at Maelstrom and Curious Pastimes.

StenwoldMaker Beetle-kinden spymaster and statesman

CheerwellChe Maker his niece

Tisamon Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster

Tynisa his halfbreed daughter, formerly Stenwolds ward

Salma(Prince Salme Dien) Dragonfly nobleman, agent of Stenwold

Totho halfbreed artificer, agent of Stenwold

Achaeos Moth-kinden magician

Scuto Thorn Bug-kinden artificer, Stenwolds lieutenant

Sperra Fly-kinden, agent of Scuto

Balkus Ant-kinden, agent of Scuto, renegade from the city of Sarn

Thalric Wasp-kinden major in the Rekef

Ulther Wasp-kinden governor of Myna, killed by Thalric

Reiner Wasp-kinden general in the Rekef

TeBerro Fly-kinden lieutenant in the Rekef

Scyla Spider-kinden magician and spy

LineoThadspar Beetle-kinden Speaker for the Assembly of Collegium

Kymonof Kes Ant-kinden master of arms in Collegium

Hokiak Scorpion-kinden black-marketeer in Myna

Skrill halfbreed scout in Stenwolds service

Griefin Chains Butterfly-kinden dancer

Places of import

Asta Wasp-kinden staging post for the Lowlands campaign

Collegium Beetle-kinden city, home of the Great College

TheCommonweal Dragonfly-kinden state north of the Lowlands, partlyconquered by the Empire

TheDarakyon forest, formerly a Mantis stronghold, now haunted and avoidedby all

Helleron Beetle-kinden city, manufacturing heart of the Lowlands

Myna Soldier Beetle-kinden city conquered by the Wasp Empire

Sarn Ant-kinden city-state allied to Collegium

Spiderlands Spider-kinden cities south of the Lowlands, believed rich and endless

Tark Ant-kinden city-state in the eastern Lowlands

Tharn Moth-kinden hold near Helleron

Vek Ant-kinden city-state hostile to Collegium

Organizations

Arcanum the Moth-kinden secret service

Assembly the elected ruling body of Collegium, meeting in the Amphiophos

Fiefs competing criminal gangs in Helleron

GreatCollege in Collegium, the cultural heart of the Lowlands

ProwessForum duelling society in Collegium

Rekef the Wasp imperial secret service

Formany years the Wasp Empire has been expanding, warring on its neighbours andenslaving them. Having concluded its Twelve-Year War against the DragonflyCommonweal, the Wasps have now turned their eyes towards the divided Lowlands.

StenwoldMaker realized the truth of the Empires power when it seized the distant cityof Myna. Since then he has been sending out covert agents to track the progressof an enemy whose threat his fellow citizens will not recognize.

Amongthese agents are his niece Cheerwell, his ward Tynisa, the exotic Dragonflyprince Salma, a humble half-breed artificer Totho... and staunchest of hisallies is the terrifying Mantis warrior Tisamon.

Butcan their efforts bring the Lowlands to their senses before it is all too late?

The morning was joylessfor him, as mornings always were. He arose from silks and bee-fur and felt onhis skin the insidious cold that these rooms only shook off for a scant monthor two in the heart of summer.

He wondered whether hecould be accommodated somewhere else as he had wondered countless timesbefore and knew that it would not do. It would be, in some unspecified way, disloyal . He was a prisoner of his own public image.Besides, these rooms had some advantages. No windows, for one. The sun came inthrough shafts set into the ceiling, three dozen of them and each too small foreven the most limber Fly-kinden assassin to sneak through. He had been toldthat the effect of this fragmented light was beautiful, although he saw beautyin few things, and none at all in architecture.

His people had beenbuilding these ziggurats as symbols of their leaders power since for ever, butthe style of building that had reached its apex here in the great palace atCapitas had overreached itself. The northern hill-tribes, left behind by thesword of progress, still had their stepped pyramids atop the mounds of theirhill forts. The design had changed little, only the scale, so that he, whoought to expect all things as he wanted, was entombed in a grotesque, overgrownedifice which never truly warmed at its core.

He slung on a gown,trimmed with the fur of three hundred moths. There were guards stationedoutside his door, he knew, and they were for his own protection, but he feltsometimes that they were really his jailers, and that the servants now enteringwere merely here to torment him. He could have them killed at a word, ofcourse, and he needed to give no reason for it, but he had tried to amusehimself in such capricious ways before and found no real joy in it. What wasthe point in having the wretches killed, when there were always yet more, aninexhaustible legion of them, world without end? What a depressing prospect:that a man could wade neck-deep in the blood of his servants, and there would stillbe men and women ready to enter his service more numerous than the motes ofdust dancing in the shafts of sunlight from above.

His father had taken nojoy in the rank and power that was his. His father had run through life, nevertaking time to stop, to look, to think. He had been born with a sword in hishand, if you believed the stories, and with destiny like an invisible crownabout his brow. The man in the fur-lined gown knew what that felt like. It feltlike a vice around the forehead forbidding him rest or peace.

His father had diedeight years ago. No assassins blade, no poison, no battle wound or lancingarrow. He had just fallen ill, all of a sudden, and a tenday later he juststopped, like a clock, and neither doctor nor artificer could wind him upagain. His father had died, and in the tenday before, and the tenday after, allof his fathers children bar two, all of this mans siblings bar one, had diedalso. They had died by public execution or covert murder, for good reason orfor no reason other than that the succession, his succession, must beundisputed. He was the eldest son, but he knew that the right of primogenitureran thin where lordly ambitions were concerned. He had spared one sister only,the youngest. She had been eight years old then, and something had failed inhim when they presented him with the death warrant to sign. She was sixteennow, and she looked at him always with the carefully bland adoration of asubject, but he feared the thoughts that swam behind that gaze, feared themenough to wake, sweat-sodden, when even dreaming of them.

And the order lay beforehim still, to have her removed, the one other remaining member of hisbloodline. As soon as he had a true-blood son of his own it would be done. Hewould take no pleasure in it, no more than he would take in the fathering. Heunderstood his own fathers life now, whose shadow he raced to outreach. Yethow envied he was! How his generals and courtiers and advisers cursed theirluck, that he should sit where he did, and not they. Yet they could not knowthat, from the seat of a throne, the whole weighty ziggurat of state was turnedon its point, and the entire hegemonys weight from the broad base of thenumberless slaves, through the subject peoples and all the ranks of the army tothe generals, was balanced solely upon him. He represented their hope and theirinspiration, and their expectations were loaded upon him.