And now Laszlo had finished his account, right down to Milus’s parting words, and was waiting expectantly for Stenwold Maker, the War Master of Collegium, to jump into an orthopter and go and castigate the leader of the Sarnesh military. Because there was a girl that Laszlo was besotted with, who was now a Sarnesh prisoner.
The man’s a pirate. How can he be so naive? But Stenwold had met the Tidenfree crew, after all, and realized that piracy was a great refuge of the innocent, in a curious sort of way. It was a simple way of life made entirely from ignoring other peoples’ rules, and Laszlo’s only idea of authority was the avuncular hand of Tomasso and the necessity of a ship’s routines.
I should never have sent him to Solarno. But it had seemed harmless at the time — even a kind of reward. The proximity to the Spiderlands should have kept the Empire away. Yet another thing I didn’t see coming.
He found it surprisingly hard to say: ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Tell him to let her go,’ Laszlo replied earnestly.
‘I cannot tell the tactician anything. And he’s right — you know he’s right, and you’ve admitted it yourself. She’s an Imperial agent.’
‘Was.’ Laszlo scowled mutinously. ‘She left them.’
‘And then she left us and, again by your own admission, signed up with the Sarnesh under false pretences. And can you say with absolute certainty that the Empire did not send her there to inveigle her way into the Sarnesh councils?’
He could see that Laszlo wanted to swear to that, but the Fly could not quite look him in the eye.
‘Mar’Maker, please,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m. . afraid for her. That Milus, I don’t like him. He doesn’t care about anything except his own city.’
‘Nor should he,’ Stenwold stated shortly. ‘Just as I must have the same single-minded devotion to mine. This war has become a chain of terrible things, Laszlo, and some of them have been my doing, and there will be more to come.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The most I can do is sent him a message politely asking that this woman of yours be kept in once piece. If she’s sensible, and if she’s clever, she can keep herself off the rack until the war’s ended, and then the Sarnesh will have no more use for her, and probably they’ll hand her over. I can do no more.’
‘I’ll take the message myself,’ Laszlo declared.
‘You will not. I don’t need you stirring up trouble with our closest allies. I need the Sarnesh, and it doesn’t matter how unpleasant their leader may be. ‘ Stenwold stood up laboriously. ‘The war comes first, Laszlo, and what we ourselves want comes a distant second. You know that I’ve more cause to say it than most.’
The Fly nodded unhappily. ‘You’re for the docks now, are you?’
Stenwold mentally reviewed the many tasks that awaited him, and made exactly the sort of decision he had just advised against. But they will not wait forever, and what would I seem, if I did not say goodbye?
‘Coming with me?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know.’ But when Stenwold strode from his office, the Fly went tagging along behind, still sulking a little, addressing the back of Stenwold’s belt. ‘Tomasso will just find something for me to do.’
‘What if I found something for you to do?’ Stenwold offered. ‘If you’re interested, that is? I need a liaison with the Tseni, for when their ships arrive.’
‘Would it help?’ Laszlo demanded, meaning, shamelessly, Would it help me?
‘It might,’ Stenwold cast back. ‘If you’re part of the Collegium military in some way, doing your bit for the defence of the city, that’s likely to make you more of a consideration in Milus’s eyes, anyway.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
Oh, to be so young that you can make decisions just like that — with not a committee in sight. Stenwold sighed.
They made for the docks, near empty of ships, with only Tomasso’s Tidenfree and a couple of others rocking at anchor. The old pirate’s clinging on, then. The old wayhouse that had been Tomasso’s base of operations this last half-year had been pulled down within the last tenday, another page of Collegium’s history overwritten to deny the Empire cover for its artillery. Tomasso had taken it philosophically.
But he will not stay when the Empire gets closer, and I don’t blame him.
Tomasso and half his crew were meanwhile infesting the Port Authority, occupying a set of rooms given over to them partly because they had Stenwold’s favour and partly because the dock clerks were afraid of them. They had become considerably more respectable since Stenwold had first seen them, transforming themselves into citizens and merchants, yet never quite losing their piratical edge. Their new domain was cluttered with crates and sacks and boxes, the salvage from their clifftop retreat, and Tomasso was sitting on one pile as though it was a makeshift throne.
Fly-kinden, all of them there, save one.
She rose when Stenwold ducked into the room. He had spent as much time as he could with her, and she had stayed far longer than he had hoped, but now it seemed to him as though she had arrived only yesterday, and he had barely managed to spare her a moment.
‘Paladrya.’
She went to him and clasped his hands. The sun had burned her pale skin in some places, and her eyes were very red with drying out, and most of the food that land-kinden took for granted remained anathema to her, and yet she had dragged out her stay this long, and in the end he had been forced to set the date of her repatriation.
Out there to the east, the Second Army was growing close. Taki’s pilots had done their level best to slow them down, striking blow after blow against them, killing their soldiers, smashing their machines, and yet still they came, and soon there would be a reckoning. Stenwold did not want Paladrya to be in the city when that day came.
She saw it in his face. ‘It’s time, then?’
‘Wys is waiting.’ Tomasso spoke for him. ‘I mean, she’ll wait but. .’
‘Your enemies. .?’ Her eyes would not leave Stenwold’s.
‘We’ve beaten them back twice before. We’ll do so again, and maybe this time they’ll get the message,’ Stenwold told her. It was the same bluff sort of speech he had been using to assure Assemblers and magnates for the last couple of tendays. ‘But you’ve seen what they do, the damage they can cause.’ The city bore plenty of scars from the Imperial bombing raids. ‘I don’t want you here where you could get hurt.’ I don’t want to have to worry about you.
She nodded, ever the practical one. That was one more thing about her that tugged at his feelings.
She went with him to the docks, and stepped along one particular rickety pier that they both remembered from past adventures.
‘I know your first duty is to your city,’ she said, standing there and looking out across the limitless sea. ‘I know that if I place an obligation on you, to keep yourself safe, then that will come second. But even so. .’ Her smile was hesitant. ‘And when your people are safe, will you still. .?’
‘I will.’ With that dark, fathomless sea so plainly in evidence he had not thought he would have the courage to affirm his promise, but he found a curious weight was gone from him. All the crushing waters of the deep seemed a small thing, and he could picture the radiant light that was her home of Hermatyre. And simply the relief of not having every cursed man and woman in the city thinking I’m personally responsible to them for every little thing. No more committees. No Assembly. Seen like that, he was amazed he hadn’t already jumped into the water and started swimming.
Something was hanging there in the dark water, just visible as a great shape of coiled segments, large enough to scrape at the bottom, and with its rounded bulk almost breaking the waves. It was the Sea-kinden submersible run by Wys, Tomasso’s wife: their vital link between land and sea.
Paladrya leant towards Stenwold and kissed him almost chastely. ‘Cast off your enemies soon,’ she whispered, hanging there close to his ear for a moment longer, which told him she wanted to say more. He clasped her to him, suddenly aware of how
delicate she was, feeling her wince as he touched her sunburned shoulders.
Then she stepped back and off the pier, plunging straight into the water like a knife, her Collegiate robes swirling about her. Anyone watching must think this some bizarre suicide, but of course her Art could draw life from the water as easily as from the air.
He watched the Sea-kinden vessel manoeuvring clumsily about, and then coast out into deeper water, sinking away until he could not make out any trace of it.
Then he turned back to the city, to his city, with its myriad demands.
There was a fair crowd of people waiting to see him when he arrived at the College. Some would have vital business about the war, others would have petty personal issues that were not worth his time, and often there was no way of telling between the two in advance. He noted a few faces that he knew he needed to speak to, made a mental list with them at the top, knowing that there would always be time-wasters who got through his guard and important people too modest to get themselves noticed. Shouldn’t Jodry be dealing with most of these? But that was unfair. The Speaker for the Assembly would have just as many suitors at his door. It was a by-product of Collegium’s participative government that everyone expected their voice to be heard. I’ll bet the Empress doesn’t get this.
He pushed through them, fending them off, telling them all in good time, asking for their patience; and they allowed him sufficient space to shoulder into the small study room he had commandeered. His careful list went to pieces then. Someone was already inside.
He noticed the woman only as he was sitting down. She had been standing very still, Art-shadowed: if she had been an assassin he would be a dead man. As it was, he froze halfway onto the chair seat, heart abruptly lurching as she made herself apparent to him.
He knew her, he realized. Her name was Akkestrae and she was one of the Felyal Mantids, their official spokesperson — Loquae as they called it. She wore an arming jacket and breeches, but they had been machine-made in the city, and the savagery in her had a near-transparent veneer of Collegiate urbanity, for all that she had come close to killing Stenwold once, under other circumstances. She was not one of the many refugees from the coastal hold that the Empire had destroyed, but had lived in Collegium for years, as leader of the little colony of expatriates that the city had accumulated. Now, though, she found herself responsible for a swollen community of angry, bitter exiles. She had stood alongside the Mynans and the Merchant Companies and the Vekken — the Vekken, for the world’s sake! — before Collegium’s concerned citizens, to demonstrate that the Felyen were committed to the defence of the city that had taken them in, but Stenwold was well aware that the Mantids in his city were an unhappy, unruly lot. He had been expecting something like this.
‘Come on, then, out with it,’ he invited, sitting down at last. It was hardly a diplomatic opening but these days he was too tired for pleasantries, and she would not have appreciated it anyway.
‘The Empire is nearing the city,’ she told him, which was nothing he did not already know. At his nod, she continued, ‘My people are going to attack them.’
No surprises there. ‘I know it’s hard for you to be patient, but you’ve seen the work we’ve put into fortifying this city, making the approach hazardous for them-’
‘War Master, we are not asking your permission. We are informing you.’
He nodded more slowly. ‘What will you achieve, precisely?’
‘We will shed the blood of our enemies,’ she explained simply. ‘We will kill Wasps and Spiders.’
‘And your people have tried to attack the Second Army twice, and each time-’
‘War Master.’ The words fell from her mouth like lead weights: just his title, but enough to silence him. She paused for a count of three, but he found nothing to say that would brave that quiet.
‘War Master,’ she said again, more gently, ‘we are not fit for fighting behind walls. It is not our way. It is without honour. We do not defend. We attack. We bring the fight to the foe. And if we die, then that is also our way. There is no better ending for my people than in blood, and with the blood of enemies on our blades. Your people have your patience and your preparations, your walls and excavations and engines. I respect all you have. I do not belittle it. I have seen your city and its marvels. You are building a future here that will be the envy of the world.’ He had not heard such words from her kinden ever before. There was a surprising passion in her voice, a bitterness that made a mockery of her words. ‘But it is not our future,’ she continued. ‘If my people, in pursuit of our own ways, can rid you of some of your enemies, then that is good. But we will attack. We will not die behind walls.’
‘When do you intend to-?’
‘Soon, very soon. Perhaps today we will march.’
‘Will you wait just a day?’ His mind was working very fast now. ‘I need to speak to Jodry. If you’re set on this course, then. . Will you wait?’
‘One day,’ she confirmed.
He came out of his office with her, to the perplexity of his suitors, and found a messenger to take word to Jodry, top priority. In the intervening time he began filleting through the mob, trying to separate wheat from chaff before the return message arrived.
These days a War Council was whenever Stenwold, Jodry or both of them could round up a few other people from a changing list to validate their decisions. Or that was what it felt like, much of the time.
On this occasion, once Stenwold had prised the Speaker away from his own responsibilities, he was able to get hold of the Mynan leader, Kymene, and Chief Officer Elder Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company. Padstock looked attentive, as she always did when Stenwold was present, an idolizing that he was always uncomfortable with. And yet it was so convenient to have someone he knew would vote with him whenever he and Jodry quarrelled, and so where did that leave him, when he did nothing to discourage her? Kymene looked as though she had better things to do than sit through yet another committee — the Mynans not being great respecters of the Collegiate way of doing things. Like the Mantids, they wanted to kill Wasps.
Twenty words later, after Stenwold had explained the situation, she was all ears.
‘No, no, no,’ Jodry was saying immediately. ‘We can’t just let our defenders sally off on their own recognizance! We need them here for when the Wasps come. It’s not. . it’s not as though they’ll have long to wait.’
‘Jodry-’ Stenwold started, and the Speaker stared him down.
‘You’re considering it,’ he accused.
‘Jodry, listen to me. Akkestrae is right: the Felyen aren’t exactly at their best fighting against a mechanized enemy from behind walls. Or even a running battle in the streets, if things get to that.’ Unlike Jodry, he did not stumble when he said the words, for all that he felt a lurch in his stomach on uttering them. ‘After all,’ he added drily, ‘they wouldn’t run, and then they’d die. Mantis-kinden, Jodry: one on one the best killers the Lowlands has, and they would be wasted, diluted by fighting a war our way. I’ve been looking into the siege at the end of the last war — and we had a fair number of Felyen with us then. By all accounts they accomplished little — shot some arrows, killed Wasps on the battlements — but the real war was being fought all around them with orthopters and airships and snapbows and artillery.’
‘We’re talking about hundreds of swords just taken out of the city — a pointless waste of life!’ Jodry exclaimed.
‘Who are we to-?’
‘You will not say, “Who are we to judge”!’ Jodry snapped. ‘We are Collegium. We value life even if the Mantids don’t. Even if nobody else in this pox-ridden world seems to!’ He looked about the table, feeling himself one man alone. Padstock, of course, was taking Stenwold’s line, and Kymene. .
‘We support them,’ she said, quite simply.
That was more than Stenwold had expected, and for a moment he sat silent while Jodry goggled. Of the four of them, Kymene had the best mind for strategy, by his reckoning, and t
hat included the sort of hard-edged strategy that came with casualties already worked into the maths.
‘You fight a good defensive war, you Collegiates. You fight a thinking man’s war. But I’ve seen what happens when they get to your walls and start work on a city.’
‘Different city, different walls,’ Jodry said. ‘Even you’ll allow our engines are better than-’
‘Than ours? Yes. Than the Wasps’? You can’t know that, and you’re a fool if you’ll stake all on testing it in the field.’ She spoke with fire but without anger, the same woman Stenwold remembered rousing up the resistance in Myna years before. ‘The air attacks are all very well, but I talk to my pilots and their gains are limited — too few machines, too many Wasps, and the Gears don’t slow. They keep on coming. But you know this.’
Jodry glowered at her, but said nothing.
‘And now the Mantids are set on marching out and striking at the enemy,’ Kymene declared. ‘Do you really think you’ll stop them going? Do you think they’d thank you, if you tried? I know their mind on this, for my own people come to me every day complaining that they want to fight now.’
‘You’d go with them?’ Stenwold broke in.
‘Gladly.’ Her answering gaze was calm and sane.
‘The Mantids will want to launch a night attack. Your people can’t see in the dark like they can.’
‘The Mantids can’t set explosives like we can,’ she countered.
The other three digested this silently.
There is precedent, Stenwold reflected. Salma’s Landsarmy against the Seventh, in the last war. But the cost. .
Elder Padstock cleared her throat, watching Stenwold carefully for his reaction. ‘There are those among the Companies who can see in the dark, War Master. Spiders, Flies, halfbreeds. .’
‘Now wait,’ interrupted Jodry, ‘even if they can, and even if your Mynans could keep up, I might just about believe that a few hundred Mantis warriors could bring the fight all the way to the Wasp perimeter after dark. But the rest of you. . Come on, think, will you?’
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