Still, the spearman’s stare was narrowing to focus, not on her face, but on the badge she wore.
The Ants had gone quiet, watching intently as he levelled his spear towards the woman. ‘To wear that badge undeservingly is to die,’ he snapped.
‘Are you challenging me?’ The Spider girl, Tynisa, spoke sideways, her scar tugging at her mouth.
‘You claim to have even the right to be challenged, rather than cut down where you stand?’ the Mantis demanded.
‘Enough,’ Che Maker said, not even loudly, and Balkus fully expected nobody to pay her the blindest bit of notice. The Mantis started away from her, though, staring, and the half-dozen other Mantids close by were all staring too, even those surely out of earshot. That fierce regard caught the Ants’ attention as well, so that everyone heard her next words.
‘As I have told you, and as this man has confirmed, I am Cheerwell Maker of Collegium, and I’m no man’s captive. You will not torture the Wasp-kinden, for he is mine and under my protection. You will not duel my sister, for she is mine and I forbid it. You understand me.’ There was no question at the end of her words.
The spearman bared his teeth. ‘This is not permitted!’
Balkus’s immediate assumption was that Che must have said something as she stepped forwards, some word that silenced the man and staggered every Mantis-kinden in sight. Only in the confused mental babble that followed, from the Sarnesh comparing notes, did Balkus realize that no, she had not spoken: she had simply. . It was as though there had been some sound, some great retort from that one footfall — one that only the Mantids had heard.
There was a flurry of motion from within the camp and the Moth ambassador, whom Balkus had never seen without an expression of smug self-satisfaction, came pelting out from amidst the Ants, robe flying behind him, white eyes as wide as lamps. ‘Who are you. .?’ he got out, before skidding to a halt. The Mantids had backed off, even the spearman: Tynisa was apparently off the menu. All those Inapt eyes were squarely fixed on Che, and Balkus had never seen such expressions on Mantid faces before.
There was an awkward moment as Sarnesh thoughts shuttled back and forth, trying to weave some sense out of it. ‘I don’t know what you just did,’ the Sarnesh officer snapped at last, desperately trying to keep hold of the situation, ‘but it won’t wash with me.’ His voice grew more strained as the hostility of the Mantids seemed to be turning on him, now it had been deflected from elsewhere, and the Moth was making some gesture as if to shut him up. ‘It’ll take more than the word of this renegade to vouch for you.’
‘She is Cheerwell Maker,’ a fresh voice boomed.
The officer rounded on the intruder to find himself face to face with the entire Collegiate delegation, and face to chest with the huge Beetle warrior who had just spoken.
‘This is not your concern.’ He was a dogged one, this officer. Balkus had to admire him for that.
‘I know her. She is Maker’s niece. I know the Wasp, too.’ And if the big man’s glance at Thalric was less fond, he was still plainly vouching for him.
‘Amnon?’ came Che’s voice, more hesitant now, and stripped of its unaccountable power of moments before. ‘What are you doing here?’
A change whipped through the Ants, all at once. Even Balkus felt the lash of it. Abruptly they had stepped away from Che’s party, no longer guarding four people who were, therefore, no longer prisoners. The collective mind was now focused elsewhere, for a burly Ant-kinden was approaching with a half-dozen others dragged along in his wake. Balkus had never seen him before, but he knew who this man must be. The Sarnesh tactician, Milus, had just arrived.
Report, he gave out, and a concise and ordered account from the officer must have been served directly to his mind and for his consideration only. The tactician’s iron-coloured eyes flicked across the newcomers — Che, Tynisa, Thalric and the halfbreed woman — then passed swiftly by Balkus to size up the Collegiates, Amnon in particular. With so much of their social interaction lived within the minds of their fellows, Ant-kinden seldom had the knack of impressing outsiders with the force of their personalities, but Milus had a weight to him, a tangible force of will. In Balkus’s experience those who became tacticians were frequently those who tested the limits of public approval, their differences turned into virtues only when they were set above their fellows. That this man had been chosen to oversee the war against the Wasps argued that he was someone to be wary of.
Whatever this is about, it will wait, his thoughts told the Ants flatly, Balkus included. Keep an eye on them, the Wasp especially, but I myself have seen Maker, and this girl does look a little like him. We have other concerns, though. We Apt must at least seem united. His gaze swept over them: Balkus from Princep, the Collegiate woman Bartrer, Che Maker and the other newcomers. When he spoke, really spoke, his voice sounded gravelly and rough. ‘The Nethyen ambassador is coming and we can get down to business.’
The Sarnesh, who had been quietly industrious ever since they had arrived, now abandoned their tasks, all at once and to a man, assembling instead in ruler-straight ranks facing the forest, wordless and vigilant with swords at their side and snapbows sloping against their shoulders. Their tactician wished to impress, that much was plain. To one side some Mantis-kinden — the locals, and yet less than a tenth of the Sarnesh’s number — had formed a loose-knit mob, and Che found her gaze drawn to them. She had known very few of their kind, and none of them well, not even Tynisa’s father. Beside the Ants’ gleaming perfection, they looked scruffy, old-fashioned, provincial. She knew that they would each make deadly combatants, but how much did that truly count for in the age of the snapbow and the automotive? She herself, who had been robbed of her understanding of those technological wonders, found that she had more than a little sympathy for them.
‘You’ll stand with our delegation?’ Helma Bartrer suggested to her. ‘This is a historic moment. The Nethyen don’t usually meet with strangers, Master. . tells me.’
The Moth had kept pace with them, not quite close, yet always in earshot. It was hard to say what his blind-looking eyes were watching, but whenever Che moved, he moved. He had the manner of a man who wanted to ask questions, but whose dignity was getting the better of him.
‘We’ve been on the road a long time,’ Tynisa declared. ‘And I’ll likely be fighting a duel soon enough, whatever Che says. Let’s leave politics to the statesmen.’
‘We’ll watch,’ Che decided, and then, relenting, added, ‘or I will. If you want to go and rest, then go and rest. I’m sure they can find a place for you here.’
Maure, the halfbreed magician they had brought from the Commonweal, was plainly about to do just that, but then Thalric spoke up: ‘Che, it’s clear that you’re the reason we’re still free right now. Let’s stay in your shadow, until we know the ground.’ His hand squeezed her shoulder, seeking reassurance under the pretence of providing it.
One of the Mantids was heading towards the forest now, a stern-looking woman with a green-brown cloak flowing behind her. Che’s party and the Collegiates added a small huddle to one corner of the great Ant formation, close to where Balkus stood alone. Looking from Balkus to Amnon to her own party, Che could only think, How we have all come up in the world.
From the forest verge emerged another Mantis-kinden woman, a lean creature in chitin armour that was chased with silver. She met with her opposite number, and the two stared at one another for a long, slow moment, as though they shared some private linking of minds that even Ants were not privy to. There were a few words exchanged, but too low to carry. The Etheryen woman nodded once, curtly, as if agreeing some single point of business.
The blades flashed and clashed almost instantly. Of all the watchers, perhaps only Che and her fellows would admit that neither had actually bothered with anything so prosaic as drawing a sword — the rapiers had been in their hands in the moment of lunging, and a swift patter of a dozen scraping blows passed before the Ants even understood what was going on. S
he could guess at their shared question: Is this a Mantis thing? And it was, of course it was, but it was not done for mere play.
The Moth understood too. He was abruptly running forwards, arms out. ‘No! Servants of the Green! I forbid it!’ His voice was surprisingly loud and clear for such a slight-framed man.
In that moment the newcomer, the Nethyen woman, had won. Che had not followed the interchange of strikes but suddenly the Etheryen delegate was falling back, her throat opened by the other woman’s rapier, and the Moth stumbled to a halt within inches of the sword’s bloodied point.
‘What have you done?’ he demanded, shaken out of his composure before so many witnesses.
The Nethyen woman simply stared at him, undaunted, her sword level with his breast as though giving him the chance to take up the gauntlet. Then she turned, the blade vanished from her hands, as though dismissing the entire martial assembly from her mind. She stepped back into the forest, and was gone.
Two
Two tendays before.
Overlooking Collegium, and overlooking the sea, stood the old house on the cliffs.
It had been built two generations before as a retreat by a clique of philosophers, but its isolated location and the windswept nature of the surrounds had led to its abandonment a decade or so later, since when it had become the haunt of odd recluses, fugitives and perhaps spies. For the space of a few years, it had served as a wayhouse catering to just those sorts, and a few from Collegium who simply wished to get away from the crowd.
Some months ago, the Assembly had gifted the place to a new trading franchise, the Tidenfree Cartel, and placed a lamp atop its single tower. If ships’ captains had complained that the new lighthouse served no useful purpose, well, they were seldom listened to in the Assembly. And those who muttered that sometimes the lamp blinked and flashed, as if sending out messages across the sea. . well, seafarers were always telling tales.
Now Stenwold himself stood in the tower room below the lamp and stared out at the waves, the unquiet sea showing blue and grey in turns, cresting beneath a changing wind. He had taken refuge here many times since its most recent change of ownership. The Tidenfree Cartel were his creatures, in as much as they were anyone’s, and he was their patron, their supporter, their conspirator in the great secret. Only he and Jodry Drillen, Speaker for the Assembly, knew that those miraculous metals and machine parts that the Tidenfree crew imported to the city did not come from some obscure city of Spiderlands artificers, as the cover story went, but instead from beneath the sea itself.
‘They’ve cleared this place out good, now, haven’t they?’ A deep voice came from behind him. It was Tomasso, chief merchant of the Tidenfree Cartel and master of its single ship, of the same name. And a former pirate, of course, although to see him now, dressed respectably like a Collegiate citizen and wooed by a dozen mercantile concerns, one would never have known it. He was a burly Fly-kinden with a dark beard and a mischievous look to him, for all that he was close to Stenwold’s age. His eyes roamed the walls, finding only absences there, for his crew had already passed through the lighthouse and stripped it of everything when the Wasps had got close to the city.
‘The factora in the city is acceptable?’ Stenwold asked him.
‘Will do nicely until we chase the Jaspers away,’ Tomasso agreed. ‘This place started looking a bit exposed when their lads from the Second began setting up.’ He grimaced. ‘I’m no engineer, but you may have to pull the old place down. Gives too much of a vantage over the city.’
‘Not that the Imperial artillery needs that, nowadays, but yes, it’s been thought of. We’ve engines in the city that have calculated the range.’ Stenwold was still staring out to sea as though trying to divine the future from the surging waves. ‘She knows. .?’
‘. . Not to come here,’ Tomasso finished for him. ‘Or anywhere, right now. I hear Despard’s just back from down there, probably has letters for you even. But they know the score, the Sea-kinden. If the Wasps were coming by boat, your lad Aradocles would be sending up his monsters by the dozen, but I reckon the Spiders haven’t forgotten the last time.’
Stenwold nodded. The Spider-kinden — many of whom were now marching alongside the Wasp Second Army — had tried to send a fleet against Collegium, but Stenwold and Tomasso’s newfound friends beneath the waves had dissuaded them. The tentative, secretive arrangements put in place between land and sea that rested so much on Tomasso and his opposite number below had been bearing fruit and working better than anyone had anticipated. If the Wasps had not revived the war, a whole new age of enlightenment might be dawning. Instead of which, Stenwold’s city was scarred with bomb craters, his people turned into soldiers, and three dozen military decisions were currently prowling about the streets, waiting for him to return and put them out of their misery. Simply to avoid them, he had come out here, perhaps for the last time, to stare at the sea.
Paladrya, her name was. Every old man needed some romance in his life, and Stenwold’s was separated from him by a barrier neither of them could cross for long. The land was too harsh and hostile for her, the sea a place of nightmares for him. Even their letters were cast in foreign alphabets.
‘I hear the Wasp lads are keeping their distance, since you took the air from them,’ Tomasso noted. As a Fly-kinden, control of the air was something he thoroughly approved of, and the Collegiate orthopters were currently the undisputed masters of the skies above the city.
‘Still,’ Stenwold observed, ‘they’re not going away.’ At last he dragged his eyes away from the waves. ‘What will you do, if it comes to that?’
Tomasso shrugged easily. ‘The sea’s an open road. We’ll ship out when the time comes, and no hard feelings. You’re welcome to take a berth with us. We’ve space for you.’ Even as Stenwold opened his mouth, the Fly held his hands up. ‘I know, I know, your place is here — noble War Master and all that. I’m just saying, though. The crew wouldn’t begrudge the room if your Assembly decided to give you a kick.’
‘It’s kind of them,’ Stenwold allowed, and then a scuffle sounded from somewhere below and a younger Fly burst into the room.
‘Mar’Maker, there you are!’
‘Laszlo,’ Stenwold acknowledged him, abruptly tense. ‘What news?’
‘Oh, they need you right now back in the city, Mar’Maker. It’s not the Wasps but, from the look on half the faces there, it might as well be.’
Stenwold nodded heavily, knowing immediately who the Fly meant. ‘They’ve made good time then, but Ants always could march.’
‘There’s an automotive waiting to get you to the city, and I really think you should be there before this mob arrives. Otherwise someone’s going to do something stupid.’
‘Almost certainly right,’ Stenwold agreed, and then he was clumping down the stairs, with Laszlo buzzing at his shoulder.
At the west wall of Collegium, Jodry Drillen watched the approaching force, and all around him were the city’s Merchant Company soldiers, very pointedly not doing anything about it but plainly wishing that they could.
‘Brings back memories,’ someone could be heard to say, even as Stenwold stomped his way up the steps to the summit of the wall.
‘Where’s their representative?’ he demanded.
Jodry turned and inclined his head to indicate a silent, dark figure standing at the battlements, given a wide berth by the locals.
‘I hope you’re sure of what you’re doing, is all.’ The Speaker for the Assembly was still a fat man, but the stresses of recent events had made all that weight hang on him as though it was sloughing off, from the pouchy bags under his eyes to the way his clothes all seemed ill-fitting. He and Stenwold had clashed a few times during the Wasps’ last offensive, but now they were friends again, just about.
Stenwold made his way along the parapet to the Ant that stood alone there: short, ebony-skinned, and armoured against the world in a mail hauberk.
‘Termes,’ he named him, and the Ant nodded.
‘War Master.’
Together they looked out at the Vekken army.
The last time a force from that Ant city had come to Collegium, it had been for conquest, and the time before that, as well. The Ants had been the city’s enemies for most of Stenwold’s life, certainly far longer than the Wasps had. It was a matter of scale, though. Vek was only one city, the Empire was many. Stenwold had worked extremely hard to bring the Vekken to a point where they might consider their Beetle neighbours as something other than a threat or a prize. He had worked even harder to convince his own people that such a change of heart in their old foes was even possible. Now here were the fruits.
‘How many?’ he asked.
‘Eight hundred,’ Termes told him. ‘That was thought reasonable.’
Not enough for an invasion, but enough to be useful. The Vekken had considered their gesture seriously. They had no love for the Wasps and they knew that, if Collegium fell, the Empire would be outside their gates soon enough.
‘They’ll camp. .?’
‘Outside the city,’ Termes confirmed. He did not say, As we did last time, but Stenwold almost heard the echo of the words.
‘There are boats from Tsen on their way, I’m told.’
‘We are aware of that.’ Termes’s face revealed nothing. Tsen was another Ant city, further west still, and no friend of Vek’s save that both cities now found themselves friends of Collegium. ‘We suggest they stay on the water. We will keep to the land.’
‘It might be for the best.’ Stenwold nodded and returned to Jodry’s side. ‘We’ll need them, if the worst comes to the worst,’ he pointed out, watching the immaculately disciplined Ants break their column and begin to pitch camp tactfully outside artillery range. But, then, the Vekken would have no fond memories of the effectiveness of Collegiate artillery.
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