‘Where are we?’ he asked eventually.
‘The palace,’ his guard replied. ‘A part of it you foreigners do not often see. You should feel honoured.’
And then they were pushing through another door, and beyond it there was a room containing a desk. No sinister machines, though – not yet.
Sitting behind the desk there was a Sarnesh woman writing a report. She did not even glance up at Stenwold, but left him waiting for minute after minute.
He slumped to his knees, one hand pressed to his wounded leg. More time passed, then he cleared his throat loudly. She did not so much as pause in her writing. He began to wonder if in fact she were taking mental dictation from someone elsewhere in the building.
There was a second door to the room, and it opened without warning. Another Sarnesh woman marched in, like a close sister to the writer, with two guards immediately behind her. Stenwold flinched back instantly. They had the grim air of a death-squad about them.
‘Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium,’ the woman said.
‘Yes, that is me.’
The woman approached, staring at him, and Stenwold realized she was looking at his nose. The guard behind suddenly grabbed him, pinning his arms with a disproportionate strength and yanking him to his feet, while the woman reached up and took hold of his nose and twisted it.
Stenwold blacked out for at least a second. He came back to find himself kneeling on the ground, still pinioned by his guard, with blood running down his face, and weeping with pain. He looked up at his tormentress, eyes streaming, and demanded, ‘Why?’
‘So that it will set correctly,’ she told him without sympathy. ‘For soldiers it is different, but I do not imagine that the dignity of a College Master is enhanced by a broken nose.’
Stenwold tried to answer but the blood and the pain were too much for him. He had to be hauled back to his feet, and even then it was the guard who, seemingly effortlessly, supported most of his weight.
The woman and her escort then passed out of the room, and the guard had obviously been instructed to follow, as he manhandled Stenwold’s bleeding bulk after them.
This time they were definitely moving through the palace at ground-floor level, but not in any part of it Stenwold had seen before. The room they paused in still had the barred windows, and benches about the walls which brought to mind a waiting room or antechamber. The Ants’ customary lack of ostentation made it difficult to guess the purpose of much of their city from the furnishings alone.
‘Sit,’ the woman said, and Stenwold was released without ceremony onto a creaking bench. He touched his nose gingerly but it was still too painful. At least the blood had now stopped, so he tenderly wiped at his face, trying to rid it of the worst of the gore.
He sensed another door was about to open, because the woman who had rebroken his nose now looked that way. When it did he forced himself to his feet, ignoring the reaction of the guard beside him, because it was Arianna who entered first.
They had not been kind to her, but neither had they been as cruel as they might. Her face was badly bruised down one side, and her left eye was swollen shut. Stenwold did not care, though, for she was alive! He shambled forwards towards her, till the guard jumped on him, bearing him to the floor.
Something snapped inside him, and Stenwold twisted round and smashed the man across the face with his elbow, and with all of his might, spinning the Ant off him. He scrambled to his feet with a roar, but the Ant woman’s soldier escorts had descended on him, and they held him firmly between them, and though he threw his weight on them, struggling with all his might, he could not shift their grip. The guard he had just struck put one hand on his shoulder, and immediately a searing pain burnt into him, accompanied by the smell of burning cloth and flesh. Stenwold screamed, dropping to his knees, and then suddenly, at the woman’s unheard order, he was let go. The Beetle collapsed forwards, feeling the raw, acid-burnt handprint where the Ant’s Art had blistered his skin.
Then Arianna was kneeling by him, clasping him in her own bruised arms, hugging him close, and if everything was not suddenly all right again, it was better, so much better.
He forced himself to look up at the Ant woman. ‘What now?’ he rasped.
‘Now? Now nothing,’ she said. ‘We have ascertained the truth. You and your confederate will not need to be questioned after all.’
‘The truth? Then -?’
But he was interrupted by the door opening again. Another Ant soldier came in, bearing a small figure in his arms. Stenwold gaped at them, feeling Arianna’s grip about him tighten.
The newcomer laid the figure down beside him, and Stenwold felt his stomach lurch.
She was twisted. There was no better term. It was an old, reliable mechanical torture, that had done this to her. They had racked her joints to make her talk and, as Fly-kinden had delicate joints and little tolerance for pain, he guessed they had gone on doing it until they were certain that what she said – what she must have screamed out over and over – was the truth. Stenwold felt his gorge rise, felt weak from sick horror at the thought. Arianna clung to him, even closer.
‘Sperra…’
The Fly opened one eye and slowly turned her face towards him. She was alive, at least, but there were bandages about her head and limbs, and she trembled uncontrollably, reaching out a hand for Stenwold to hold. As her lips moved, and he saw tears leak from her eyes.
‘Get me out of here, Sten,’ Sperra whispered. ‘Please.’
‘What have you done to her?’ Stenwold demanded, feeling anger, futile and self-destructive, rising within him.
‘We have questioned her. Thoroughly,’ said the Sarnesh woman. ‘We have also questioned Lyrus, who was attending on the Queen. We are satisfied that we know the full truth of the matter now. Lyrus had been suborned by the Wasp Empire. You and your associates were not involved in the attack.’
Stenwold exploded, ‘You tortured her! You…’ He wanted to say, animals, savages, but, no, this was the handiwork of the civilized, the darkness of a mechanistic people. ‘All she was trying to do was save your Queen! And what about your Queen? Could she herself not have told you what happened? Why this, curse you all!’
‘Sten,’ Arianna said warningly, and he saw all of the Sarnesh grow tense.
‘The Queen of Sarn is dead, Master Maker,’ the Ant woman said.
Stenwold found Sperra’s hand at last and closed his own, so much larger, gently around it. The world had caught up with him again, as it always did. If the Ants had revealed any sorrow, any raging grief, at the loss of their leader, then perhaps he could have better understood. Their faces were as bland as those of statues, their loss shared only in the space between their minds – and just then he hated them for it.
I want to go home.
Stenwold leant on his staff because, although his punctured leg did not hurt as much as earlier, it was stiff. He stared about the table.
I want to go home.
But he had this one last piece of duty left to accomplish. Then he would go. If Sarn did not finally agree then it could fight its own cursed war. In the foreign quarter, waiting for him, was Arianna. She had wanted to be here too, but he had been firm. If there was trouble now, it must fall on his head alone. He would not risk another’s safety.
Not after what had happened to Sperra – poor Sperra whose Fly-kinden Art had sprung her to the aid of the Ant Queen, and who had then paid for it at the hand of that Queen’s subjects, and all for nothing.
Stenwold Maker watched the other ambassadors arrive. The sickness he felt in his stomach, which had started when he saw Sperra, had not left him yet.
Undercut at every side. If the Wasps had corrupted a Sarnesh, then who else here could be in their pay? One obvious answer was Stenwold’s own agent. Plius was Ant-kinden from distant Tsen, and thus had no love for the Sarnesh. Plius also had secrets: Stenwold was spymaster enough to have seen that in his face. Plius evidently served two masters, two at least. The Empire had
been in existence for only three generations but he had to admit it had learnt the trade very thoroughly.
Face to face, ranged about the table, these were not happy men and women. When the Queen had been killed they had all been hauled from their quarters and placed behind bars while the Sarnesh pieced together what had happened, extracted from the broken flesh of Sperra and the traitor Lyrus. Only the Spider Teornis had, by dint of Art and great persuasion, suffered merely a polite house arrest.
Stenwold glanced up to the head of the table, seeing there a middle-aged Ant-kinden woman, in full armour. The Sarnesh tacticians had since elected a King, but he had sent one of his council in his place. It seemed that trust was running thin in Sarn just now.
‘Masters, hope of the free world,’ he began, trusting that his voice sounded less sarcastic to them than it did to himself. They stared at him suspiciously, as though he was cheating them in some petty mercantile business. The naked hostility evident amongst so many of them made him want to scream.
‘You have known me, I think, as a patient man and the emissary from a city of patient and learned men. I hope therefore you have formed a good picture of my character. Our hosts, at least, have taken some pains to investigate it.’ Again that harsh edge to his tone. He forced himself back into a tenuous calm, and did not look at the Sarnesh tactician, although he was sure that she knew just what he meant, and that she did not care.
‘Master Maker,’ Teornis spoke up. Stenwold glanced at him in surprise. The Spider wore a crooked smile, and looked briefly at his fellows to his left and right before continuing. ‘During this recent period of emergency, Master Maker, we have had some cause to talk to one another. Your name has been on many lips, and news of your arrest caused alarm, to say the least. Allow me to cast off my inheritance and be candid for a moment. I promise such a lapse shall not happen again.’
There was a slight murmur of amusement from some of the others, and Stenwold marvelled at the man’s ability to influence their mood.
‘We are all enemies within this room,’ Teornis said. ‘We were never made to stand in one place and all look the same way. The commander from Kes hates our hosts. The lady from Etheryon hates me. Our hosts themselves, right now, are not enamoured of any of us.’ His smile broadened. ‘Not the most optimistic of situations, you will agree. But we are prepared to listen to Collegium, Master Maker. We will listen to you.’
Thank you. ‘Then listen carefully,’ said Stenwold. ‘We are at war, all of us. The Empire is currently a threat to every city in the Lowlands, and yet here we stand bickering about a mere weapon. Not a weapon that cracks open mountains or destroys cities, but a weapon that a man may hold to kill another man. A successor to the crossbow, in fact, that in itself is barely more than a thrown stick with a little cleverness attached. I have heard fellow artificers speak of the march of progress. This thing, this snapbow, is not progress. It is just another way of killing someone and, even if it is an inch more efficient, then that does not make it progress. Progress is made by the improvement of people, not the improvement of machines.’ He was surprised at the sympathetic response to his words from the Inapt – the Moth-kinden and the Mantids – until he realized that they must have embraced such a view for ever. He wondered whether, at this tapering end of the wedge, he had rediscovered some truth his own people had lost long ago.
No time for such philosophy now, old man.
‘So the enemy have a way to kill people faster than they could manage before. You will say that we should have it, too, and I cannot say no to that. My own people, all our people, will soon become the targets of this weapon. Therefore we cannot cripple ourselves by casting it aside.’
They watched him narrowly.
‘So what, you say? What is the answer, then? I have only one, and I cannot force it on you. Collegium possesses the plans for this weapon, but there will be other chances soon for all of you who are capable of the artifice to copy and design your own. My current monopoly is almost fictional: it exists only in a saving of time. But we have so little of that left, and therefore I have something to bargain with.
‘I will give these plans to the Sarnesh,’ he told them, seeing already the beginnings of their anger. ‘I will give them to the Kessen,’ he added. ‘I will give them to Teornis of the Spiderlands. I would give them to the Ancient League, if they would accept them. I would give them even to the Vekken, if they were here. I will give them to anyone and everyone who will sign a written oath.’
That caught them unawares, even Teornis. They waited, and he happily let them wait a little longer before he enlightened them.
‘An oath, I mean, that these weapons will be used against the Empire only. I know all too well that knowledge cannot be destroyed. They are therefore here to stay, these monstrous devices. An oath, all the same, that they will not be used against any other cities in the Lowlands, or against the Spiderlands. And an oath that you will take up arms against any city that does.’
They clearly did not understand. He put his staff flat on the table, leaning forward. ‘Whoever breaks this oath will have more enemies than they know what to do with, and in this way those of our allies – our allies, you understand, who have given of their own resources already to defend us – those of our allies who cannot use this weapon are thus still protected from it. An oath of cities. An oath of alliance.’ He looked from face to face and heard his voice shake as he continued, ‘Trust, you see. Without trust we cannot succeed. Without trust we cannot stand together.’
‘And will you sign this oath, for Collegium? We understand that Collegium is even now raising an army equipped with such devices,’ the Sarnesh woman said.
Stenwold gave her a flat look, then delved in his pocket and brought out the much-creased oath he had laboured over. Before their eyes he unfolded it and signed it with his reservoir pen.
‘It is done,’ he told them. ‘Who will be the next?’
They watched each other now, not him, and he feared they would not. At least I can go home, then, was his only thought.
‘I shall sign next.’ Teornis took the oath from him and signalled for a servant to bring him pen and ink. ‘I know there are those who will not trust me, but I shall bind the Aldanrael by my mark, nonetheless. If they believe themselves to be so much more trustworthy, I invite them to place their own marks beside it. After all, the new-woven Ancient League lies a long way from my lands. I do not believe this new weapon has sufficient range that my anticipated treachery might endanger them.’
He pushed the document across the table towards the Skryre from Dorax, ignoring the hostile glares of the two Mantis women who flanked her. The Moth-kinden, looking old and very small, looked at the paper and those two fresh signatures.
‘We have nothing to pledge. We shall never use this deadly toy,’ she said. ‘We are at the mercy of all of you. This weapon shall likely be the death of us.’
‘Will the League draw back even now?’ Stenwold asked her. ‘I do this to protect you, for what protection it can offer. Nothing we do or say will prevent the snapbow coming into general use here, as it already is in the Empire.’
‘Do not presume to lecture us, Beetle,’ she said, but she was tired, defeated. ‘It means nothing. However, the Ancient League shall put its mark to this.’
After that, the oath passed about the table until it landed before the Sarnesh Tactician, who had no doubt been communicating with her king and her entire city all this time.
When she signed, there was no great upsurge of relief in Stenwold, just the thought that he could leave this wretched city at long last and see his beloved Collegium once more. He forced himself to wait, even as the dignitaries filed out with their various expressions of suspicion and dissatisfaction, forced himself to remain the impeccable diplomat to the last. When Teornis appeared at his elbow, as silently and familiarly as his own shadow, he was not surprised.
‘Masterfully done,’ the Spider said. His smile, as always, looked as genuine a smile as Stenwold ha
d ever seen, and more practised than any.
‘I am not meant for this,’ Stenwold sighed.
Teornis shook his head, seeming amused. ‘I only hope that we always remain allies, Master Maker, for you would be a formidable foe.’
‘High praise from the Lord-Martial?’
‘And well deserved.’ Teornis’s smile twitched broader, and even that reaction, seeming so spontaneous, could just as easily have been deliberately contrived. With these Spiders I truly cannot ever know. The thought turned him to reflect on Arianna, and he dismissed the association quickly.
‘You should listen for news from the east, War Master,’ Teornis advised him. ‘It is at least passably pleasing this season.’
‘There is some new winter fashion, is there?’
‘A new fashion in warfare, indeed. One hears on the wind that a certain protege of yours has been causing the Imperial Army some degree of embarrassment.’
*
Where the Seventh Army had come to rest after the Battle of the Rails there had once stood a Beetle-kinden farmstead. That was gone now, and in its place was a series of wooden fortifications that the Winged Furies had put up during the winter, in anticipation of retaliation from Sarn. They were Wasp field fortifications, though, nothing the Ant-kinden would have recognized: slanting walls and overhanging ledges, bristling with sharpened stakes, to make the camp as difficult to attack, from ground or air, as the Wasp mind could devise.
But there were still losses the walls could not guard against. There always were. Scouts went missing; foraging parties sometimes failed to return. The land beyond the fort was the hunting ground of Sarnesh rangers, of bandits, brigands and desperate refugees. This, though… this latest news had brought General Malkan out to see for himself. He required the evidence of his own eyes to understand the true scale of the attack.
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