‘What about us, Major?’ Scadran asked.
‘Right now, go and prepare your fall-back positions. Find places to lie low when the fighting starts. I will have specific tasks to assign all of you, and we will meet again tomorrow before I leave for Vek. After the Vekken arrive here, you will all be on hand to disrupt the city’s defence in any way that seems profitable. For tonight, though, you are dismissed.’
The Amphiophos had not seen such a rabble thronging its antechambers in living memory, Tynisa thought. The Assembly’s guards were having fits about the situation. With things as they were, though, it could be no other way. There could be a hidden knife here stalking the halls of power as easily as on the streets of the city.
So it was that Stenwold, Master Gownsman of the College, artificer, Assembler, was waiting for his audience in the company of a Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster, his halfbreed duellist daughter, and a hulking Ant renegade with a loaded nailbow. Tynisa could only guess how the sight of them evoked horror and dismay amongst Sten-wold’s opponents within the Assembly. They must think he had come here in a bid to take over the city.
‘Now we are here, I am leaving Stenwold in your care,’ Tisamon said to her, appearing abruptly at his daughter’s shoulder. ‘You and the Ant must watch over him as best you can.’
‘Where are you going?’ Tynisa asked.
‘Hunting,’ the Mantis said. ‘I have played Stenwold’s game long enough, all this polite spying of his. Now the Wasps have made their move, and I will play my own game. They are still in this city and I will hunt them down.’ Here in the antechamber of the Amphiophos he looked wholly out of place, a savage shadow of the past.
They both turned as Stenwold approached, wearing his best Master’s robes. He had obviously caught Tisamon’s last words, for his broad face carried an unhappy expression.
‘Tisamon . . . ?’
‘Yes?’ The Mantis gave him a challenging look. ‘You disagree, Sten?’
‘No, but . . .’ Stenwold’s face twisted. ‘If possible, could you take a prisoner, at least. It would help, it really would help, to discover what they were up to.’
‘A prisoner?’ Tisamon considered. ‘If it is possible, I shall do.’ And as Stenwold seemed to relax he added, ‘But as for her, she dies.’
‘Tisamon—’
‘No, Sten. She betrayed you.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And in betraying you she betrayed us all, including me. And she knew it, Sten. As soon as she saw me, she knew the risk she ran – and she ran it willingly. They had their chance, and they failed, and now there is a price that must be paid. All kinden understand this, Sten. Except for yours.’
Stenwold grimaced, and Tisamon continued, ‘If you have one real reason to prove me wrong, let me hear it.’
He waited, giving the Beetle plenty of time to reply, and then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Sten, but some things just have to be.’
He then looked to Tynisa, who nodded, taking on the duty he had offered her. Then Tisamon turned on his heel and left the antechamber of the Amphiophos.
‘I’m sorry too, Uncle Sten,’ Tynisa said.
Stenwold tried to smile, felt it slipping on his face. ‘I’m a foolish old man, Tynisa. I’m too old for this game, really I am.’
‘It’s not exactly the time for that thought, Master Maker,’ said Balkus. He had his nailbow plainly displayed over one shoulder, so that the three Beetle-kinden guards in there with them were giving him nervous looks.
‘You need to think now about what you have to do,’ Tynisa agreed. ‘And, for what it’s worth, I think Tisamon is right. Maybe it’s just my blood talking, but if he wasn’t setting off now I think I would go do it myself.’
‘Who am I to judge?’ said Stenwold sadly. ‘The world, I think, has more need of those like Tisamon and yourself than it does of me.’
‘Master Maker?’
They turned to see a middle-aged Beetle-kinden, robed as Stenwold was, step out into the antechamber.
‘The Magnates and Masters of Collegium are assembled and waiting,’ the man announced. ‘You have your day, Master Maker. You had best make the most of it.’
Stenwold nodded. ‘You and Balkus must wait here,’ he explained. ‘They will not let you in there, armed as you are, and I would rather have you armed out here and watching, than unarmed in there and blind to what goes on outside.’
Tynisa nodded, and Stenwold clasped hands with both of them, and then followed the usher in.
He stopped just within the doorway, so that the usher had to return to lead him over to the podium. Lineo Thadspar was already there, one of the oldest Assemblers and the Assembly’s current Speaker. He was a white-haired and dignified old man who had always treated Stenwold with at least a distant courtesy. Now he nodded as the other man approached him.
‘Master Maker, in the past, I think, you have believed that we did not take you seriously,’ he said, with dry humour. ‘Let this accusation, at least, not be levelled at us any longer.’
There was a murmur of amusement across the tiered seats that ringed the chamber of the Amphiophos. Stenwold simply stared, because the stone of those seats was now barely visible. They were all there, so far as he could tell. For the first time since the Vekken siege thirty years before, every single Assembler had answered the call.
He saw plenty of faces he knew, although rather few had any reason to like him. There was such a host of them, four hundred and forty-nine men and women. Of these, more were men than women, and more were his senior than his junior. The entire staff governing the Great College was here, and the prosperous mass of the elected Magnates of the town, the merchants, landowners, factory-owners and the independently wealthy whom the public regarded as the most trustworthy of those who sought office. Thanks to his recent activities, every one of them knew who Stenwold was, and what his grievance. They were not all Beetles, either, for the College staff was varied. There was a scattering of Ant-kinden of differing hues, and amongst them Stenwold caught the eye of Kymon of Kes, the Master of Ceremonies at the Prowess Forum, whom surely he could at least count as an ally. All of the other kinden of the Lowlands were represented too, even a single Moth named Doctor Nicrephos, who was probably older than Thadspar himself.
But Stenwold’s eye was inevitably drawn to a pair present who were not Assemblers at all. One was a Beetle-kinden, but his Collegium-style robes were edged in the Empire’s black and gold. The other man was a Wasp-kinden, plain and simple, no doubt a bodyguard or minder.
Thadspar cleared his throat and with a rattling of its mechanism the Assembly’s brass automaton ground across the floor towards him, whereupon he plucked two glasses of wine from its tray.
‘Master Maker, I don’t mind telling you that you have been making altogether a great deal of noise,’ the old man said. ‘You have been somewhat underhand in procuring this Assembly, and there are those amongst our number who felt that you should indeed be punished rather than rewarded with the, doubtless, great gift of our attention.’ He handed a glass to Stenwold. ‘However, wiser heads have prevailed, to the extent that we will at least hear the full details of whatever it is that you wish to tell us, before we begin deliberating.’
And the attack on Tark would have nothing to do with this change of heart, of course, Stenwold reflected. He accepted the glass and took Thadspar’s place at the podium when it was now offered him.
‘The Assembly of Collegium,’ Thadspar started, his usual dogmatic lecturing style slowly reasserting itself over his brief humour, ‘is known, I hope, for its carefulness in making decisions, by its refusal to be coerced, threatened or tricked into unwise measures. You shall now have your say, Master Maker, and I for one am most interested to hear your words. However, once you have spoken, it is only just that those accused should also speak.’ He gestured to the Beetle in Wasp-liveried robes. ‘This gentleman, you may recall, is an ambassador from the Wasp Empire who came to our city during the Games. Master Bellowern, I suspect Ma
ster Maker’s accusations will not be entirely new to you.’
‘Some rumours, Master Thadspar, are impossible to avoid, no matter how much one would prefer to,’ replied Bellowern, granting a smile for the benefit of the Assembly.
‘Master Bellowern will therefore make his defence when you have spoken. You must agree that this is only fair, Master Maker.’
Stenwold nodded tiredly and gazed out across the great mass of faces. Bellowern apart, he knew that there was no great love for him in this audience. He was, in their eyes, merely a troublemaker, and he knew exactly how set in their ways these old men and women could be. Even if he showed them that the Empire was worth making trouble over he would still be little more than an annoyance. And, of course, some of the more venal would have been bribed by the Empire, while others would sympathize with the imperial philosophy of strength and conquest and the Wasps’ success in keeping public order. Others still would enjoy lucrative business across the imperial borders with the Consortium, the Empire’s merchant cartel. And of course most of them would simply not care.
He gathered his strength together because, of all peoples, his kinden understood how to endure. Physical or mental burdens they could bear, and they had been slaves a thousand years before the revolution had set them free and given them mastery of their own fate. We are Beetle-kinden, who are tough and hardy, and go anywhere and live amongst all peoples and, wherever we pass, we make and build and better the world.
If his audience was hostile, greedy and uncaring, then he had his words ready and he would speak his heart and reveal the findings of his twenty years of intelligencing and campaigning. He would give them everything he knew, not twisted as propaganda but honest and true, and he would then hope for their illumination. There seemed precious little to put his faith in amongst those frowning faces, but the potential of the Assembly of Collegium was vast.
And so he spoke. He told them everything.
Fourteen
It was a wretched place down by the river that Hofi had chosen to meet at, and Arianna liked it not at all. Swathed in a cloak, her hand beneath it wrapped about her dagger hilt, she was aware that she drew curious looks from those others on the street that evening. It was not simply spies that concerned her, for the thought of robbers and other such lowlifes was much on her mind. Collegium was well policed, but where the river ran, before it met the sea, was a much decayed part of the city. Collegium’s goods came in by sea, now, and more by rail, and the warehouses, homes and factories that had been fed by the river trade a generation back had fallen into poverty and disrepair. A quite different neighbourhood had since risen up.
It was a Fly-kinden dive she sought, naturally enough. Arianna looked for the promised name but the legend ‘Egel River Rest’ appeared nowhere on the peeling facade. Still, she had a good head for directions, so this must be the place.
They were mostly Flies inside, little knots of them playing dice or talking in low voices. They all stopped and stared at her as she came in. She ignored them disdainfully, ducking into the low-ceilinged room and making her stooped way over to an old man who seemed to be the proprietor.
He looked her up and down. ‘Reckon I’ve been told t’expect you,’ he said, tweaking his moustache. ‘You’ll be wanting the back room. No trouble, mind. That’s what I tell them and that’s what I tell you.’
She followed the line of his thumb and hunched even lower through a further door. The room beyond was small, but the door on the far side was of a size to let a normal person out in a hurry, or several Fly-kinden at once. Hofi was kneeling on the floor, across from a low table, but Arianna froze when she saw Scadran was there as well.
‘Him?’ she asked.
Hofi gave her a sly look. ‘To tell the truth, he and I weren’t so sure about you,’ he told her. ‘It’s an untrustworthy trade and you’re not exactly the cleanest of us.’
‘Me?’
‘Don’t play games, Arianna. You’re Spider-kinden and treachery’s in your bones, useful and double-edged as it is. Scadran and I are mere amateurs by comparison, I’m sure.’
‘Hofi, I came here because I thought – and correct me if I’m wrong – that we both struck similar chords at the briefing today. Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll go straight back out,’ she suggested.
The Fly made a sour smile. ‘It is the curse of our profession, isn’t it, that we can’t quite trust turning our backs on one another. Come in and pull up a floorboard.’
She did so, Scadran watching her without much expression on his heavy face.
‘So, we don’t trust each other but who else can we turn to?’ she remarked. ‘And we’re not happy, not happy at all.’
‘Because the game’s changed,’ Hofi agreed. ‘I suppose we should have seen it coming, but we all of us have been thinking like Lowlanders, when we should have been thinking like Imperial Rekef. Now, are we all speaking the same dialect here?’
Arianna nodded cautiously and Scadran agreed, ‘We are.’
‘Because it’s a very different business, all of a sudden. I’ve been here four years, and the pair of you just a couple each. We’ve been getting into our roles all that time, gathering information to send back. All part of the job. And occasionally some order would come, to find out this or intercept that. We’ve had our little skirmishes with others, people in our trade but under different flags.’
‘Until they stepped it up,’ Scadran grumbled. ‘Then it became all kinds of work.’
‘But all part of the trade, still,’ Hofi emphasized. ‘Gathering the word, getting the goods, making the odd fellow disappear. And I could still turn a profit shaving a cheek or two, and Arianna went off to her College lessons, and you got to haul crates on the docks. And then Major Thalric’ – his voice hushed involuntarily as though the man himself might hear – ‘came along, and there was this business with Stenwold Maker. But it was all in a day’s work.’
Arianna looked down at the table but nodded, not wanting them to see her discomfort.
‘And now we’re to help Thalric gut this city like a fish,’ Scadran finished. ‘Hand it over to the Vekken.’
‘Who won’t treat it kindly,’ Arianna said. ‘I think I’m surprised. You’ve surprised me, both of you.’
‘Why?’ Hofi raised his eyebrows. ‘We’re imperial spies now, servants of the Rekef, but for how long? You know that no one who isn’t a Wasp has any great prospects in the Rekef ranks. They use people like us because it’s necessary, not because they like us. You’ve seen the way that Thalric looks at us. More, you’ve seen the way that Graf looks at us, even, who’s known me for years. When the Lowlands eventually fall to the armies, what happens to us?’ He held up a hand to stop her interrupting. ‘You they’ll have a use for. With the Lowlands in their grasp it will be the Spiderlands next; heading off south past Everis to the richest lands in the world, or so they say.’
‘I will never return to the Spiderlands,’ Arianna said flatly. ‘I can’t.’
‘They won’t give you a choice,’ Hofi said almost cheerfully. ‘They won’t understand, either, about the Spider Dance, and what happens to those who end up out of step. And Scadran here, what about him?’
‘He’s part-Wasp, at least,’ she said and, before he could correct her, ‘And I know that’s worse than none at all. Their superiority adulterated. So Scadran’s worse than out of a job.’
‘Scadran is dead,’ Scadran said heavily. ‘Scadran knows too much about how the Rekef work. So they’ll fix me as soon as the walls come down. Thalric’s probably already got orders.’
‘And then there’s me,’ Hofi said. ‘It may surprise you to know I was born within the Empire, and my kinden get a decent deal there compared to most. We’re good at making ourselves useful. And yet here I am, three years as a citizen of Collegium, and now I’ve been told to watch the door while the Vekken come holding the knife. Shall I level with the pair of you?’ He grimaced at his hands. ‘I like this city. I get treated well in this city. I even got to vote
for the Assemblers last year, because I’d bought my citizenship. In the Empire I might do better than either of you, but I’d always be considered something less.’
‘We can’t be claiming that we’ve come all this way for the Empire and yet not known what it stands for,’ Arianna argued.
‘Perhaps we never quite did. We’ve all done well enough from it. And when it was just a matter of protecting imperial interests in the Lowlands, my conscience was clear enough. But now it comes to this . . .’
‘I do not want to see this city fall,’ Scadran said. ‘I have been nowhere else where I have not been treated as an outcast, a half-caste. Here they care less about all that.’
‘But you realize what we’re saying, both of you,’ Arianna told them. ‘You’re saying we have to . . . deal with Thalric.’
‘Kill Thalric,’ Hofi corrected. ‘Let’s not fool ourselves. We must kill him tomorrow evening, before he leaves for Vek.’
‘Graf too,’ Scadran said.
Hofi nodded unhappily. ‘I’ve known the man, so I’d – No, you’re right. He’s a Wasp, and so he gobbles up everything the Empire tells him. We have to kill Graf, too. And the best of Graf’s bully-boys are already dead, now. Maker’s friends saw to that, so now is our absolute best chance.’
The Assembly had heard Stenwold out. That was the best he could say. Then they had heard Master Bellowern, professional diplomat, spout honey and sugar at them, making them chuckle at his jokes, nod at his sagacity. The Assembly of Collegium, the great hope of the world, had been nothing but fair. It had let both of them speak until their words ran dry.
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