How bold you are, the voices said. Old man, you have not so many breaths yet to draw. Why seek to save that which will so soon outlive you? We have no pity but we do have strength. What claim have you on us?
Ask what you will, Doctor Nicrephos promised. Please aid me, and I shall do as you ask.
He felt his request hang in the balance. He knew his students had all felt this change too, that the room was cold enough for frost to form on the curtains, and that their breaths were pluming visibly in the dim air.
We shall aid you, but you shall perform a task for us – and it may mean your death that much sooner.
He would have agreed, he was sure, but they were not seeking his agreement. The compact is made, the dirge of the voices continued, and he felt the cold, that had already tested the limits of his tolerance, double and redouble, flood into the room, through his students, and then out, across the city and the walls, to poison the minds of the Ants. It fought its way clear of the great mass of disbelief that cloaked Collegium, and set about the work he had planned for it, and he knew that the Ants would not sleep easily tonight, nor for many nights to come, because the nightmares that his new ally could bring forth were worse by far than the feeble horrors that he and his students could dream up.
Home at last. Stenwold made himself a cup of hot herb tea, hearing Balkus stomp into the spare room and collapse on his bedroll, probably still wearing his armour. He should have been bodyguarding all day, but Stenwold had told him to fight up on the wall, and Balkus – Sarnesh Ant-kinden at heart – had been only too happy to empty his nailbow at the Vekken. More than that, of course, as there had been savage close-quarters fighting there and Balkus had been in the thick of it, holding the line on the north wall. A head taller than almost all the other fighters, with a shortsword in one hand and a captured Vekken shield in the other, the man had provided a tower of strength for the defenders.
Stenwold sipped his tea, found it bitter, and poured more than a capful of almond spirits into it. He needed to sleep tonight, because tomorrow would be no more forgiving to his nerves. Perhaps Balkus would die, or Kymon. Perhaps he, Stenwold, would.
Tired as he was, he toyed with the idea of it actually being a relief. With Graden’s suicide, though, he could not fool himself that way.
He drained the cup. He knew he should be hungry, but he was too tired for it, too numbed by exhaustion.
I am not cut from this military cloth. The sight of the dead sickened him, whether their own or the enemy’s. Brave men and women all, doing what they were instructed was right, and Stenwold, of all people, knew how history wrote over such victims, and the truth of whether they had been right or wrong got washed away in the tide of years.
I hope Tisamon is doing better than I am. He felt the absence of the Mantis-kinden keenly. Yes, the man was intolerant, difficult and primitive in his simplistic concepts of the world, but he was loyal, and could be a good listener, and Stenwold had known him a long time.
He levered himself up and trudged his way up the stairs, kicking his ash-blackened boots off halfway, knowing that he would trip over them in the morning but too depressed to care. He left his leather coat hanging over the banister. His helm remained downstairs on the kitchen table.
He slogged on into the darkness of his room, unbuckling his belt, and stopped.
He was not alone.
In the darkness, with even the moon tightly shuttered out, he felt fear. A Vekken assassin? A Wasp assassin? Thalric, perhaps? He had been given no time, these past days, to brood on such danger. What better opportunity than this to do away with him? Stenwold reached for his sword and recalled that it was still with his coat, ten yards and as good as a thousand miles away.
And then another part of his mind whispered something. Was it a familiar sound, or a scent, that informed it?
‘Arianna?’ he said hoarsely. When there was no reply he fumbled for a lantern and lit it with three strokes of his steel lighter, his hands trembling.
She was sitting at the end of his bed, a young and slender Spider girl with ginger hair cut short, gazing at him with wretched indecision.
‘Did . . . they send you to . . . ?’ he got out.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Stenwold, I . . . didn’t have anywhere else to go.’
Ludicrously, he felt his unbelted breeches slipping, and tugged them up hurriedly. ‘But . . . you could have escaped?’
‘The Vekken would have killed me if they caught me – all the more so because Thalric is with them now. And . . . I have nowhere to go, Stenwold. I am outcast from my homeland and a traitor to the Rekef. And to you, also. I have nobody left to turn to.’
‘Except me?’
She looked up at him. He momentarily thought that she might try to flirt with him, or speak of the connection they supposedly had shared, but there was now nothing but mute pleading in her eyes.
‘Arianna, I—’
‘You can’t trust me, I know. I could be an assassin. I could still be spying for the Rekef. Stenwold, I am at the end of everything now, and I have no more. Because I tried, in my stupid, small way, to save Collegium – and I got it wrong, just like everything else.’
He put the lantern on his reading table, words failing him. There was too much, far too much, going on within him. He no longer felt tired, but more wide awake than he had been in days. He was trying now to navigate through a maze of pity, caution and a lecherous recollection of their time together that shocked him with its potency. He had thought himself past such yearnings, and yet seeing her here, against all odds and beyond any common sense, was an aphrodisiac, a tonic to an aging man.
If she is my enemy, I cannot give in to these feelings. And if she was truly as desperate as she claimed, how wrong would it be to take advantage of that? Of Arianna the student of the College.
But, also Arianna of the Rekef, the imperial spy gone off the rails. Impossibly, the thought of the risk she could present only seemed to spur some part of him on.
She stood up abruptly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I – I thought . . . I have no right . . .’
Without warning she was trying to dart past him, but he caught her by the shoulders and held her there, practically in the doorway. ‘Wait . . .’ he began.
The lanternlight brought out the glint of tears in her eyes, and he knew that she could feign it all, being what she was, but his heart almost broke with the strain of it.
She stared up at him, the small breasts beneath her tunic rising and falling. ‘Stenwold . . .’
I am carving my own coffin. Perhaps it was the fatigue of these last days, or the need to find some spark of life in such dark times, but he had now lost the reins that could hold his desires in check. He bent down almost fearfully, as though she were venomous, but he still kissed her, and she thrust her lips up towards him.
When he awoke the next morning and he turned over to find her there, warm and soft and alive, sharing his bed, it all flooded back in on him, the pleasure he had taken, for which a price was surely yet to be paid. Yet this morning, with the Vekken army already assembling for its next assault, he felt more rested, more vital, than he had in so very long.
Then there was someone rapping on his front door downstairs, and he foresaw the chain of circumstance exactly: Balkus answering the door and lumbering upstairs to deliver some message, then not comprehending why his employer was sleeping with an enemy agent. He pushed himself out of bed and slung a robe on.
He hurried downstairs in time to intercept Balkus, recognizing the thin, bent figure that had come to see him this morning.
‘Doctor Nicrephos?’ Stenwold asked blankly. Could matters be so desperate that they were drafting such an ancient Moth as this to be a messenger? ‘Is it the wall? What news?’
‘Master Maker . . . Stenwold,’ Doctor Nicrephos hovered awkwardly on the threshold. ‘We have known each other for . . .’
‘We’ve done business for years,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘But why . . . ?’
‘I nee
d your help,’ the old Moth said, ‘and I know no one else who might even listen. Tell me, what do you know of the Darakyon?’
The Vekken woke like clockwork. Thalric had witnessed it each morning of the siege. Each morning, at precisely an hour before dawn, every single soldier in their army arose and drew on his armour, buckled on his sword. No words, no sound but the clink of mail. Walking down their lines of tents, Thalric felt a shiver at the sheer brutality of their discipline, that strode roughshod over everything in its path.
Except perhaps this siege was starting to tell on them, he reflected. This morning they seemed a touch off-kilter, their timing fouled by something. A few of them were even running late, hurrying with their buckles, no doubt under the withering scorn of their peers.
For some reason the Ant-kinden had passed a troubled night, he decided, and that was curious. Still, the siege had been now many days in the making. The casualties amongst the Vekken had been, in Akalia’s words, ‘acceptable’, though, to Thalric’s eyes, seeming far too high if these Ants were as good as they were supposed to be. Even Ant-kinden would get their edges blunted eventually, under such punishing treatment. Still, it seemed strange that, on this morning, a malaise should be so marked amongst them.
Ant-kinden, he thought, mockingly. They even go off the rails in unison.
He saw Lorica threading her way through the Vekken towards him, unconsciously falling in with their mechanical rhythm, getting in no one’s way and finding her path without having to seek it. She too looked out of sorts, though, and was frowning.
‘Something wrong?’ he asked her.
‘Possibly.’ She rubbed the back of her neck, her eyes still heavy with lost sleep. ‘You should know, Major. There’s been a visitor to the camp.’
‘Speak.’
‘A Fly-kinden messenger came in, for Major Daklan’s ears only.’
Thalric let his breath out in a long sigh. ‘That could mean many things.’
‘He was from the Empire, I’m sure of it,’ Lorica told him. ‘Imperial Fly-kinden have a kind of a look, and they hold themselves a different way. They know they’re onto a good thing.’
Thalric nodded. Outside his tent he could now hear the louder pieces of Vekken artillery launching at the walls of Collegium. The actual fighting was just a distant murmur beyond.
‘You’ve cast your lot,’ he told the halfbreed. ‘I don’t know if you’ll regret it, but I hope not.’
‘I respect you, Major Thalric,’ she said candidly. ‘And I hope you value me, since Major Daklan certainly doesn’t. Do you know what’s going on, sir?’
‘For certain? No.’
‘But you suspect.’
‘I have seen this before, and too many times,’ said Thalric, wearily thinking, And most of the time I have been on the other side of it. Secret messages from the Empire, and for Daklan’s ears only. ‘Perhaps it’s nothing significant.’
‘You don’t believe that, sir.’
‘No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’ He stood, shaking his head. ‘How do you think the siege is going, Lorica?’
She had stood watching with him, now she frowned. ‘I’m no strategist.’
‘If you’d asked me yesterday I would have said well. Now something’s changed, and this message doesn’t make me any happier. I’m going to talk to Daklan.’
‘Is that wise, Major?’
He managed a smile. ‘Lorica, I am a simple man. Nobody ever believes me when I say that, but it’s true. I like my life simple. I am for the Empire, and I should therefore stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone else who is, and face with a drawn sword all those who are not. That is simple. you see, but someone is trying to complicate my life. I’m going to talk to Daklan, to discover precisely what he’s not telling me.’
He found Major Daklan out by the artillery positions, with Lieutenant Haroc nearby as his constant shadow.
‘Major, how goes the war?’
Daklan’s face was so devoid of guile that it was evidence of guilt in itself. ‘Well enough, Major Thalric.’
‘The Vekken seemed slow off the mark this morning, I thought,’ Thalric said. Daklan gave a glance over at Haroc and then nodded.
‘I cannot explain it. I heard some talk of disturbed sleep, no more.’
‘You don’t think they’re losing their stomach for the campaign?’
‘Not at all.’ Daklan shook his head. ‘Tactician Akalia seems satisfied with their progress. Every day they are closer to breaking the wall, or taking it by storm.’
‘She’s a cold woman,’ Thalric observed. ‘I’ve heard some of the casualty figures.’
‘That’s Ants for you,’ said Daklan dismissively. ‘The ships, the artillery, the men – she’s only looking for the victory. Whatever has unsettled her men clearly hasn’t reached her yet. Perhaps the Collegiates have developed some kind of mind-affecting gas that has drifted over here. Ant-kinden are strong of body, but they lack our strength of will. They would be more easily swayed than we.’
Thalric nodded carefully, and then said, as offhandedly as he could make it, ‘I hear there was a messenger from command.’
Perhaps there was a moment’s flicker in Daklan’s eyes. ‘Nothing to worry youself with, Major. Helleron has fallen to our troops, or rather, has capitulated. The Winged Furies now threaten Sarn and so the siege here will not be relieved.’
‘Good,’ Thalric decided. ‘Then all we have to do is wait.’ He turned and walked back towards the camp, knowing coldly that Daklan had been lying, and that his days of cherished simplicity were gone.
They had been shadowing the Vekken army since it first came in sight, and had been given an unexpectedly good view of the first day’s festivities. All that time, he had kept his head low, which was a skill he had acquired over many years of doubtful company, while Felise Mienn had gone about her business as freely as she pleased.
Living off the land, Destrachis considered, was a game for fools and peasants. And, inexplicably, for Dragonfly nobles.
He had watched her. With the cloak blunting the sound and shine of her armour she could freeze to near-invisibility while standing amongst trees or crouched against the scrub. She moved as though she was part of the landscape, and she would always come back with food. He himself was, he suspected, eating better than he had in the fiefs of Helleron.
When she came back this time he had to put the question to her. For all that questioning Felise was a dangerous game, it was time to air some facts
‘You were a Mercer, were you not?’
She looked at him as though she didn’t know who he was, which was always a possibility.
‘What do you know of the Mercers, Spider?’
He smiled. She scared him badly a lot of the time, but he knew he must never show it. ‘I have done my stint in the Commonweal. That was what attracted me to your cause in the first place. I therefore know the skills a Mercer needs in going about her business. There’s a lot of open country in the Commonweal: woods and farmland and marshland and hill country. Lots of villages but lots of space between them, and the roads not so good, and half the Wayhouses lie empty and rotted. Keeping the peace, tracking bandits, carrying the Monarch’s word: it means spending a lot of time in the wild, doesn’t it?’
‘It does that,’ she agreed, then she sat and dumped a bagful of roots beside the fire, together with some grain biscuits she must have taken from a farmhouse. He took out his smallest knife and began to peel, aware that she was looking at him with more curiosity than usual.
‘Destrachis,’ she said at last, and he allowed himself to relax, because when she could actually remember his name she was least likely to threaten him. ‘What was a Spider-kinden doing in the Commonweal?’
‘My question first,’ he pressed, carefully not looking at her.
‘Yes, I was a Mercer, when I was very young. I wanted to . . . but it changed when . . .’
He sensed a shift in her and said hurriedly. ‘I drifted north of Helleron
years ago. Ended up in Myal Ren and then travelled a little, plying my trade, stitching and quack-salving.’
‘I saw him today again,’ she said, without warning.
His knife stopped for a second and then went on. Looking down onto the Vekken encampment, he had caught a glimpse of a couple of men in black and yellow armour, but her eyes were better than his and she now swore she had seen Thalric.
Her patience impressed and appalled him. She had been stalking this entire army for almost a tenday now.
‘So when are you going to make your move? Are you going in there after him?’
He had missed the change, but she had snatched her sword out. ‘So many questions,’ she said. ‘Why? What are you hiding, Spider? Who are you working for?’
‘You,’ he said, still peeling although his hands shook slightly. ‘Or, if you won’t have me, for myself. I’m not your enemy, Felise.’
‘No . . . you’re not.’ The sword was hovering just in the edge of his vision. ‘But I do not know what you are . . .’
Why did I ever agree to this? But he was here now and there was no getting away from it. He would rather cut his own thumbs off than risk becoming a target for Felise Mienn.
‘I will have my moment soon,’ she said. ‘Thalric cannot hide amongst the Ants for ever. Or perhaps I will go in and get him. We shall see.’
Thirty-Two
There was one matter only before the imperial advisers today. The tangled news of the Spiderland intervention in the progress of the Fourth Army had been flown to Capitas as fast as a chain of messengers and fixed-wing flying machines could fetch it. It had thrown them all but, while most were still reeling, General Maxin had been able to find his moment. After all, there were few setbacks for the Empire that he could not turn into his personal opportunities. Life was a ladder, and if he clung on when everyone fell back a rung, then he was inevitably closer to the top.
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