The Air War (Shadows of the Apt 8) by Adrian Tchaikovsky Read Free Book Online Page A

wrestled with rival factions, in fierce debates that she would never be admitted to, they never lost sight of the enemy without. The
Empire could come back at any time.
    Xaraea had the sense that other factions were considering the Empire, too. She knew well that there was a surprisingly large Tharen diplomatic delegation at the Empress’s court. Wheels
were in motion, and hers was the frustration of every intelligencer: that she could not know everything all at once. Sometimes she wondered if she knew anything at all.
    Her orders still rang in her ears, though: clear, simple words from a cunning old man normally given to riddles and circumlocution. On no account must you be discovered. Nobody must know of
what you have done. Implicit in the words was the knowledge that those he was warning her about were not foreign agents but others of her own people.
    The phalanstery loomed before her without warning. It had been carved from the rock by her people long ago as a retreat, austere and understated, just a doorway and some narrow slits of windows
cut into a span of rock that barely seemed the work of human hands. The door was new, though, crafted of heavy wood bound with metal, and with the look of being cut down from something larger. How
the current occupants had hauled it all the way up here was beyond her, but then they were likely to feel the cold more than her mountain-loving kinden.
    About to reach for the iron ring set into the door’s surface, she had a sudden moment of suspicion, looking about her in every direction. But she knew that, if she had been followed here,
such caution came too late, and she had failed.
    The place was a well-guarded secret, its very existence buried deep within the great libraries in the heart of the mountain, lost in plain sight as only the Moths could conceal their lore. Her
masters had installed the current residents here a generation ago, and helped them become self-sufficient, teaching them all that the Moths knew about growing crops in the thin soil of the high
fields. Those who lived here owed a great debt to her masters, and she had come to collect on it.
    The door swung open, and she looked into the face of a Wasp-kinden.
    She had been properly briefed and she did not even flinch. Fully three-quarters of the phalanstery’s residents were Wasps, and almost all of them former soldiers. That was essentially what
this place was all about.
    Perhaps he saw something in her face indicating the purpose behind her visit, for he hesitated before stepping back and letting her in. He wore a long robe, brown like a Way Brother’s,
belted but without the sword that must have travelled with him most of his life. The calluses on his hands were born of the rake and hoe now.
    ‘Your name?’ she demanded of him. Names had power, everyone knew, except the Apt, and therefore perhaps the names of the Apt had no power after all. Still, old habits died hard.
    ‘Salthric,’ he told her flatly, not hostile but not welcoming either. ‘We were not expecting visitors.’
    I should hope not. ‘Never mind that. I am here to see one of your people. Who must I speak to? Who is your . . . commanding officer.’ She pronounced the Wasp-kinden words
precisely, and saw them strike him like a blow.
    ‘You may speak with me,’ Salthric said firmly. ‘I am Father here.’ In the Empire, his order organized itself into cells, brothers under the hand of a Father. She sneered
inwardly at the patriarchy of it, but the Broken Sword cult was almost exclusively male. It was well known that the Empire did not tolerate societies, philosophical orders or sects within its
hierarchy. No two masters: that was the Imperial creed. In reality a fair few were diplomatically overlooked, such as the Mercy’s Daughters, who trailed the armies and brought succour to the
injured, or the Arms Brothers duelling societies that had such clandestine popularity amongst the Imperial officers. Of all the sects that the