War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘You’ve sent in enough men to form a perimeter?’

  ‘General, yes, but it may not be enough. We’ve seen this sort of thing before in cities throughout the Empire. The next insurgence could come anywhere across the city.’

  Tynan considered this information. ‘Around the College, you say?’

  ‘From the Airborne reports, some of the College buildings are at the heart of it. They are at least passably defensible.’

  ‘Get some artillery in, including some of the wall engines we took from the Collegiates. Push in and break it open.’

  ‘General, we can’t,’ Cherten protested.

  Tynan fixed him with a cold stare. ‘Justify yourself, Colonel.’

  ‘We have orders to retrieve certain texts from the library. The Empress herself has given me a list of topics . . . It’ll mean a month’s work or more for the new governor, but it’s imperative that—’

  Cherten was babbling too quickly, too nervously, and Tynan silenced him with a look.

  ‘Cherten, we were bombing this place from the air not so long ago. What would have happened if the College had caught a charge and burned to the ground?’

  The intelligence officer swallowed. ‘Then perhaps we’d have found ourselves on crossed pikes. I don’t know, General, but these orders came via Captain Vrakir, after you were ordered to press forwards. The Empress . . .’ He glanced around, but the two of them had Tynan’s recently appropriated quarters to themselves. ‘Her orders are . . . difficult, inexplicable sometimes. The privilege of her exalted position, no doubt. But they’re clear, in the main. Even if we can contain the fighting to the College, if we can disperse the troublemakers on the streets, then we will have to storm the place in the old way, with soldiers forcing the entrances.’

  Tynan growled, deep in his throat, but nodded. ‘Mycella has gone to mobilize her people. She reckons they might be better at street-to-street skirmishing than ours – certainly come nightfall I reckon they’ll play all sorts of games with the locals. But for our initial response . . . Collegium has such good wide-open streets.’

  Cherten regarded him steadily. ‘I see, General. How many?’

  ‘Three Sentinels should make them think again. I heard good reports of their effectiveness in Myna, when the Eighth was pushing into the city. Get me grenadiers and nailbowmen as well, and we can make best use of our snapbows if they’re short of them. Men on roofs, men in windows – make every street a killing ground. Anyone who isn’t fleeing when they see the black and gold, they’ve earned themselves a death. Who’s this?’

  ‘General.’ Captain Vrakir pushed inside, looking pale enough that Tynan fully expected the news that half Collegium was up in arms with a Sarnesh relief force coming over the horizon.

  ‘Speak, man.’

  ‘Orders from the Empress, sir.’ Vrakir thrust a folded scroll forwards, its seal broken.

  ‘Just in?’

  ‘No, sir, I’ve had them with me since I first came to you, but not to be delivered to you unless . . .’ And there Vrakir faltered for a moment before regaining his composure. ‘They are relevant now, sir.’

  Tynan looked ready to question that, but Cherten cleared his throat to forestall him. ‘General, he is Red Watch. He is the mouthpiece of the Empress.’

  The general frowned. ‘I know that, but—’

  ‘General, these things happen now. Check the seals on the orders if you doubt them, but this isn’t the first time the Red Watch have suddenly brought new orders despite . . . Despite.’

  Vrakir was still proffering his scroll, and Tynan snatched it from him irritably, opening it and carefully checking the seals and signatures. True enough, it had all the marks of the Empress’s own hand, and from the look of it, it must have been drafted when she was still with the Eighth Army.

  He read the contents.

  Cold silence followed.

  Cherten was watching him, he knew. Vrakir’s eyes were practically lancing into his face, but then the man already knew what these orders were. Beyond them both waited the Second Army, Tynan’s people, thousands of loyal servants of the Empire. Of the Empress.

  He could decode the tension in Vrakir now: not at the orders themselves, or however they had come to him, but waiting for Tynan’s reaction. And the general wondered idly what precautions the man had taken, for surely he must have taken them.

  Who has he turned against me?

  He re-read the orders carefully, even though their wording was brief and plain and clear, admirably so given their sudden and inexplicable appearance.

  ‘The Empress orders . . .’ And there he stopped. Am I not permitted to ask why? Can I not question this? It is madness. It is insane.

  But of course it made perfect sense, even the timing, save for their current complication involving the Collegiates. There were wider currents of Imperial foreign policy than he was aware of, after all. And if he had been thinking more clearly before now, he might even have expected something like this.

  Still, he let his eyes move over the document, until the symbols there, the words and their component letters, became drained of all meaning, just scribbles on a page.

  I cannot give this order.

  He was finding it hard to draw breath.

  I will kill Vrakir. The Second will follow my lead. Anyone who doesn’t . . . and when they hear of it, back in Capitas . . . I will . . . I will . . .

  It felt like a blow, deep inside him, to know that he would do none of that. He was General Tynan, and he had ended wars and begun them at his Empire’s behest, and now he would do worse. He would do just as he had been ordered.

  ‘Cherten.’ He shoved the paper towards his colonel, heard the choked exclamation as the man read it. ‘This calls . . .’ Tynan’s voice shook, and he took a deep breath and started again. ‘This calls for a redeployment. We will need all able-bodied men mobilized immediately, and we will have very little time before they realize what we’re about. Have the Sentinels move against the Collegiate-held streets as planned, backed by your current forces there and by a further five hundred Light Airborne. Use the Air Corps as well. If we can’t bomb the library we can still bomb the rest. Everyone else . . .’

  ‘I understand, General.’ There was relief in Cherten’s voice, and it told Tynan two things: firstly that, having seen the orders, he had obviously considered Tynan’s response to them in doubt, and secondly, that his own loyalty to Tynan was plainly not strong enough to survive such a shift. ‘Shall I take command of . . .?’ he held up the scroll with its broken seal.

  Tynan took it back from him. ‘No, it’s my responsibility. You’re in command of putting down the insurgents – or at least containing them until this other business is done. Vrakir, with me.’

  And Tynan stormed out, and the orders clutched in his hand seemed to burn his skin: Destroy the Spider-kinden forces of the Aldanrael, their mercenaries, their Auxillians and allies, to the very last. Eliminate all Spider-kinden from Collegium. Do not spare a single one.

  At the College, matters were now moving sufficiently fast that Stenwold felt his ailing body could not keep up with them. Up on the wall overlooking the street, he just sat and let the tide of news wash over him.

  ‘They’ve got Shod Street and Marley Row,’ Serena was reporting, breathless but still forcing the words out. Sartaea te Mosca was bandaging a gash across the woman’s arm even as she spoke, a close encounter with a snapbow bolt.

  ‘What about beyond?’ Eujen demanded. Stenwold let him take the lead – partly because these were his people, partly because Stenwold himself was still suffering moments when his strength would just evaporate – and other moments when he would be suddenly filled with an angry, burning energy that he could not dissipate.

  ‘Some sign of something off towards the manufactories, or maybe those fancy townhouses on the other side.’

  Eujen looked out from the courtyard wall, as if he could somehow comprehend all of Collegium at once. The sound of fighting was not close, but it was
there – most of the Student Company was out on the streets, adding their discipline and armament to the local resistance, but there were houses within a hundred yards that had changed hands two or three times already, and the Wasps would bring in more men, hour by hour. The rest of the city was key, and he had hoped that revolt would spread like a flame across the city once the streets beside the College went up in arms, but so far a lot of people were keeping their heads down.

  ‘Eujen, hoi!’

  Leadswell’s head snapped down, and Stenwold craned over to see the ragged band of re-armed Coldstone Company soldiers that Serena had nominally been spotting for. The Antspider was waving up at him, looking exasperated at having to shout her report. She had her one-handed Woodlouse and that Dragonfly woman and a couple of others with her, none of them particularly recovered from losing the gate, and yet all of them running to Eujen’s orders.

  ‘Come on up,’ Leadswell called down, then glanced at Stenwold.

  ‘You’re doing well,’ the War Master wheezed.

  ‘I’m doing all I can,’ Eujen said shortly. ‘I don’t need you—’

  ‘Then why look at me as if you expect me to grade you?’ Stenwold snarled back.

  For a moment Eujen’s expression was caught between a number of conflicting emotions, and Stenwold was reminded just how young he was – and how young were most of the Collegiate soldiers who had been left under arms. Then the Antspider woman came pounding up the steps.

  ‘Good news and bad!’ she announced. ‘Don’t know what the Jaspers are doing, but they’re not reinforcing properly. We’ve won back Marley Row already, and we’re still pushing. Gereth wants to get hold of something heavier to have a go at them. Gorenn needs more arrows.’

  ‘Arrows? Do we even have arrows?’

  ‘Apparently we do,’ Straessa confirmed. ‘But, look, they’ve one of those big bastard machines coming in there as well – and that’s going to be as good as a whole load of actual soldiers, unless we can stop it. We need some grenades, little ones preferably.’ She was talking very fast, obviously fighting to seem offhand about the whole business, but there was an unhealthy tremble about her eyes, like a woman holding her composure together with both hands. ‘Eujen, I don’t know what they’re doing. Makes no sense to me. You need to look out for—’

  ‘In case they come from elsewhere, yes,’ Eujen finished up, plainly trying to sound businesslike.

  Stenwold shied away from the weight of unsaid words between the two of them. I should have some counsel to offer. I should tell them to speak to each other now, because later may be too late. But that’s hardly advice I ever heeded myself.

  ‘Chief!’ A student came bursting out of the building behind them with a box under her arm. Wearing an ink-smudged smock, she virtually vaulted the stairs up towards them, slamming her burden down on the wall’s edge with pride. It contained a stack of papers, the sort of polemic familiar to Collegiate citizens from a score of Assembly elections. The text was bold, simple: RISE UP, CHILDREN OF COLLEGIUM! NOW IS YOUR CHANCE! LIBERTY TODAY, OR SLAVERY FOREVER! Then there was an image, simply delineated, yet with a kind of dynamic power to it: a Beetle man brandishing a hammer out towards the reader, his face a picture of grim determination – and not entirely dissimilar to Stenwold’s own.

  ‘Raullo did this?’ Eujen asked, and Stenwold recalled the artist who had surely been too inebriated to achieve any such thing. The printer was nodding enthusiastically, though, and Eujen locked eyes with Stenwold, who had the grace to shrug.

  ‘It will serve. He’s done us proud.’ Eujen thrust the box at Serena. ‘Can you fly with this?’

  She weighed it up, winced at her newly bandaged arm, then nodded.

  ‘Good. Get out past their blockade. Drop these on the far side, those districts that haven’t risen yet.’

  ‘I went to the same classes as you, Chief. I know what we’re about,’ she confirmed.

  Then Laszlo dropped down on the very brink of the wall, feet skidding for a moment before he righted himself.

  ‘They’re fighting!’ he announced.

  ‘That’s hardly news,’ Eujen objected, but Laszlo gave him the cold shoulder and addressed Stenwold directly.

  ‘Mar’Maker, they’re fighting each other!’

  There was a heartbeat of stunned silence, and then Stenwold nodded stiffly to Eujen. ‘Report to the chief officer.’

  The Fly looked put out, but complied. ‘Over that way, you’ve got a row of big warehouses or factories or something, where we thought they were mustering . . . well they’re not. They’re in and out of every building there, and they’re killing each other.’

  ‘The Wasps?’ Eujen demanded.

  ‘The Wasps are fighting their Spiders,’ Laszlo explained, as though it was obvious. ‘They’ve actually done it: they’ve gone after each other. There’s hundreds and hundreds scrapping all over – and you know the Spiders aren’t just sitting still and taking it. They’ve got archers at every window, and the Wasps are bringing their engines in, and . . . it’s a mess, a real mess.’

  Eujen and Stenwold’s glances met sharply.

  ‘Stab me, that changes everything,’ the Antspider murmured.

  ‘Push them,’ Eujen decided. ‘All along their line. They have no reinforcements now. Keep their machines busy and push them back, and . . . the city must learn of it. Print me more leaflets, and call up every Fly-kinden who can get out there – just to spread the word. This is our chance. This is our chance!’

  Thirty-Six

  ‘So, what now?’ Che demanded. ‘Come on, Argastos. What’s your next sally?’

  Another dark place, and she received a sudden insight that there might be nothing else left in the man’s withered mind. He had lain bound in the earth for so long that he could not remember the sun. Here was some gloomy cavern, with her placed on a ledge beside a drop that fell in folds of rock for three hundred feet. Down there, she could see faint signs of fire, in pinpoints like stars.

  ‘This is the place of my enemy,’ came his voice, and he faded into existence almost within arm’s reach, and with none of the excessive drama he had used at the table. What illuminated him, she could not say, but he cut a stark figure of grey and black and white, the scales of his mail glinting like moonlight, his skin like stone, his cloak merging seamlessly into the darkness.

  ‘Some might say you’re too obsessed with them,’ Che pointed out, ‘given they’re a thousand years gone.’

  ‘But they’re not gone. They endure, on the far side of the Seal. And I was sacrificed to a living death to keep them there – not because it was needful, for in a thousand years the Worm have never tried to break through, nor could they ever. I was buried and forgotten because they thought they could bury their own guilt along with me.’ He eyed her bitterly. ‘Do you not agree, just for one moment, that I have been treated poorly? Am I not deserving of some sympathy, Beetle girl?’

  Che folded her arms, trying to stretch out her power as subtly as she could in order to find the edges of this charade he had woven about her, and so tear it down, but he was always ahead of her, dancing where she must lumber, forever extending the world beyond her reach. ‘And for this I become your whore, do I? And relinquish all I have to you?’

  ‘You will be my concubine, valued and treasured,’ he told her. ‘And as for “all you have”, if you will only use your power as I direct, what might you then learn about how to control it? See: you are the stronger, I freely admit, and yet you are like your kinden’s namesake, a beetle blundering blindly about while I lead you one way and another. You have so much to learn, and do you think that there is anyone left in the world to teach you, save me? And you know I am no mean power myself, for why else did you and the Wasp girl come here, save to steal what is mine? With our strengths combined, what might we not accomplish?’

  ‘Nothing good,’ she decided, and, when he just stared at her, she went on, ‘Argastos, yes, you are hard done by. What a terrible thing they did to you, all those y
ears ago. And had you not spent all the years in-between in dooming everyone who came here to that exact same fate, then you might be able to presume on my sympathies. But I have seen your collection of victims, and I am not at all sure that your solution for dealing with the Worm does not deserve some guilt and expiation. And I still do not believe that anything you intend is for the good. For anyone’s good – least of all mine.’

  She felt strong, while saying that, and for a moment the shadowy world around her seemed to waver.

  Then he was on his feet, glowering at her. ‘You self-righteous child! How can you know how it was? How can you know what I thought, or what might have been! I was there! Someone had to make the choice, and I was the only one strong enough to do it! And you stand here, with your unearned inheritance, your life of freedom that I bought for you with my everlasting torment, and you dare to judge? You should come to me on your knees in gratitude for what I have done for the world!’

  Che sighed. ‘So, you have tried to draw on my better nature, and now you try to threaten me. What next, Argastos? For if you could simply take what you wanted from me, then you would have done so without hesitation. I am just a slave girl who has stolen something that’s of value, to you. If you must woo me, it is for that reason only.’

  For a long moment their gazes locked, and she felt relieved at the honesty visible there, the open acknowledgement that everything she had said was true. And then he nodded, and the hard-edged expression that came across his face almost made her want to withdraw her words.

  ‘Perhaps you think I will beg?’ he suggested. ‘No, I will wait for you to beg me. You are right. I have not been content to suffer alone. I have always had followers, and all those who have come to this place are my rightful prey. I have gathered them all to me. Now I give you to them. They remember what it is like, to live. Their appetites have been starved these long years, but they will awake again if I give the order. You may possess your strength, Beetle girl, but I will wager that here I can hold you down while they slake their lusts on you. And I have many hungry servants these days – many! You are proud, Beetle girl, just like the little Wasp is proud, and I will break you both as proud slaves should be broken. I shall return in a day or so, as the time shall seem to you. For now, I go to rouse my servants to the heights of their vigour. Enjoy the wait, Beetle girl, for it shall be the last peace you will know for some time.’