The Air War by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page A

history, when his kind had been common, men of his particular skills had formed a secret elite amongst his kinden, just as the Skryres were to the
Moths. She suspected that he was now unique.
    He did not break the seal. He did not want to expose his wife or his children to whatever task was required of him. He knew also that it would make no difference. Xaraea was not giving him a
choice.
    ‘Look after my family while I’m gone,’ he told her.
    Xaraea saw the Dragonfly woman’s face go very still, her hand tightening on his arm. Even the children were silent, staring up at their parents, or wide-eyed at the Moth.
    We all know that you might be ‘gone’ for good , the Moth thought. Such was the taint of his heritage that she could not think of that as a bad thing, for all that he was now
her instrument.
    ‘Now go,’ Esmail told her flatly. ‘If I’m to leave here, I’ll make the most of what time I have.’
    She took a breath, preparing to remind him of his place, of who served whom, but his eyes flashed with sudden danger.
    He will do what he is told , she assured herself, but it was more than she was capable of to stay there with that threat hanging over her.
    There was precious little welcome for Xaraea anywhere within the phalanstery, but she had accomplished what she had come to do, and so she took her leave of Salthric and the
other deserters swiftly. If there were sorcerous eyes searching for her, then it was best they did not pinpoint her presence there.
    It was a long walk to Tharn, and the wind was showing no sign of dropping. She might try to fly high, to rise above it all, but there was no guarantee she would not simply be swept miles off
course and dropped somewhere hostile once she was too tired to keep to the air. Instead she took the high paths on foot again, putting her shoulder to the wind and pressing on.
    Her only stroke of luck was that she had put well over an hour’s progress between her and the phananstery before they found her. If they wanted to work out where she was travelling from,
there were too many paths, too much of the mountain to cover. They would not be able to retrace her footsteps.
    ‘Xaraea!’
    She had not noticed them before their leader called her name. Names were power, of course, and by using hers, he was demonstrating his superiority. Needless to say, she could not have named him
in return. He was a lean old Moth wrapped in the elaborate folds of his robe, the sunlight glinting on his metal skullcap. He must have been eighty years, if he was a day, but that was perhaps not
so old amongst her people, and especially not for a great magician. She recognized him as a Skryre, but not one of her masters. She was willing to bet he was their fellow within the Arcanum,
though. The knife at your back is always keener than the sword before you.
    He had not come alone. Flanking him was a younger pair: a man and a woman in tunics of the same drab hue, each with an arrow nocked to their showbows. Behind them, in armour of dark leather
bands, was the pale-faced figure of a Mantis-kinden, a sharp-featured man whose gauntlet sported a metal talon folded back along his arm.
    ‘You have been missed in Tharn. I wonder where you have been in such inclement weather,’ the Skryre addressed her but, when she opened her mouth for a reply, simply held up a hand.
‘Save the lies. Let us assume they have been spoken and dispensed with. I will know where your masters sent you.’
    Strangely, what she felt was a rush of relief. He does not know. Her own masters must have shielded her from this man’s scrying, forcing him to quarter the mountains in search of
her.
    Seeing her defiance, the Skryre smiled with a touch of weariness. ‘Listen to me, Xaraea. Your services to Tharn have not gone unnoticed. It is your misfortune to find yourself shackled to
the wrong masters. They have cast you away. They care nothing for you save as a tool. I give you this chance to be something more. Come