Shadows of the Apt 02 - Dragonfly Falling by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Author:Adrian Tchaikovsky [Tchaikovsky, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9780230739581
Published: 2019-01-16T14:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

In the chasm of silence throughout the stateroom Sperra clasped her hands together to stop herself fidgeting. They were all looking at her, and most of all the stern-faced woman who was enthroned in their centre, so that Sperra felt very small and frightened.

This was all Scuto’s fault and she should never have agreed to it. They had been waiting days now for an audience. Plius the milliner had been doing his best but the Queen and much of her court had left the city of Sarn on the very day that Scuto had met with him. Instead, he had secured a brief interview with some minor official at the Royal Court, and that was when the problem had occurred.

‘We’ve waited long enough,’ had been Scuto’s position. ‘I’ll go and see this fellow, whoever he is, and we’ll squeeze a better audience out of him and pull ourselves up the chain. By the time the Queen’s back, we’ll be camping out on her doorstep.’

‘Scuto,’ Plius had said, ‘you might want to rethink yourself.’ There had been an odd, slightly amused expression on his face.

‘What’s wrong with the plan?’ Scuto had challenged him.

‘The plan, nothing. The planner, on the other hand . . .’

Scuto had folded his hook-studded arms. ‘What?’

‘Listen to me,’ Plius had said. ‘I’ve done my level best to get you this far, and you are not going to ruin it by going in there and being . . . well how can I put this, Scuto? By being all ugly and spiny.’

‘Now, you listen here. I know I ain’t any picture, but—’

‘Scuto, you’ve been working where? In the slums of Helleron? And why’s that? I know you’re a decent grade of artificer,’ Plius said. ‘So why not get in with the magnates, the propertied classes? No, you’re not that kind of fellow, Scuto. And this isn’t some Helleron mining baron here, this is the Queen of Sarn. And she won’t want to see you because, let’s face it, no sane person would. And she won’t want to see me either, because as an Ant late of Tseni stock I’m barely welcome even in the foreigners’ quarter, never mind how things’re supposed to have changed round here. So what’s your move, Scuto?’

And then he and Scuto had turned and looked at Sperra, but she had refused. She had flat-out refused, protested, complained and objected and, at the end of the day, she had found herself going to meet with a dismissive Ant officer who had sneered down at her because she was a Fly and a foreigner. The next day there had been a better officer who had been sympathetic, but unhelpful, and then there had been a commander who seemed to have something to do with the Royal Court, but very little time. Then there had been a smiling woman, who Sperra had later discovered was a commander involved in counterintelligence, and who had suspected her of being a spy, although spying for whom, Sperra never found out.

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