Straessa cursed and peered beyond the Mynans, to where Outwright’s Pike and Shot should be holding their space of wall. To her lurching horror she saw that, yes, they were fighting fiercely, sword to sword, but getting off the wall as well in a desperate rearguard action that looked just one death from a rout.
She had a moment to think about the right thing to do, but she had already made that decision when the Companies had marched against the Second in the field, the last time they came. She had chosen to save the lives of her people then, and she would do so now.
‘Gorenn, get over to Kymene and tell her what Av’s just told us.’
The Dragonfly nodded and launched herself along the wall, her wings a skittering blur, dodging aside from one of the Airborne who tried to sting her.
‘Down the steps! Back into the city!’ Straessa cried out. ‘Keep it ordered, keep the pikes up, and shoot any bastard who tries it on with us! Come on, we’re moving!’
She helped Averic to his feet. ‘What’s Eujen doing?’
‘Sending me to help you, last time I saw him,’ the Wasp student replied with a bleak, brief smile. ‘The Student Company is the front line now. No idea what Fealty Street are doing, but Maker’s Own and the Vekken took the worst of it. I need to get back to Eujen.’
‘If I know him, he’s watching us right now,’ Straessa remarked. ‘And you need a surgeon.’ She sounded so very calm, and inside her something was yammering, We’ve lost the gate, we’ve lost the wall!
Down at the foot of the wall, her soldiers broke quickly across the open ground, before reforming between the buildings across the square. Straessa was one of the last down, running alongside Kymene and her Mynans, as snapbow bolts lanced past them. Once in cover, they could look back and see the Wasps and their Spider allies claiming the wall a slice at a time, descending on any remaining defenders and routing or killing them. Four Sentinels stalked in through the gateway and created a cordon between them that no Collegiate felt ready to brave, whilst behind them soldiers fortified their position, erecting temporary barricades out of the material of the gates themselves.
Straessa and the others waited and watched, and above them Eujen’s Student Company watched too, waiting for the inevitable moment when the Wasp tide rolled forwards and swept into the streets, and the real battle for Collegium would begin. But the Second Army simply secured its entry to the city, thronged the wall-top with its soldiers, and waited, too.
Then, with evening beginning to veil the sky in the west, a lone Fly-kinden in Imperial uniform stepped forth, somewhat hesitantly, from the newly established Imperial lines and walked out, closed fists held up, with a message for the Assembly.
They convened in the ruins of the Amphiophos, as before, but in sparser ranks. Some had fallen on the wall or at the gate, no doubt. Others perhaps did not want to be noted as a member of that august body, in case there should be some Imperial scrutiny of the minutes of this latest gathering.
Jodry Drillen, a great, baggy weight of a man, robes awry and dirty, eyes shadowed by lack of sleep, stood up before them, a neat little slip of paper in his hand, barely large enough to be called a scroll. He was scanning the faces of the attendees, as if seeking allies.
Eujen Leadswell watched him. Unlike the elected representatives of the city, who had mostly bowed to protocol sufficiently to make some attempt at robing up, he remained in his armour, buff coat and breastplate, with his helm tucked beneath his arm. Beside him was Remas Boltwright of the Fealty Street Company, who had somehow failed to lead his soldiers into battle at all, waiting in reserve all that time for a call to arms that, he said, had never come. The two of them — and neither of them exactly veterans — were here representing the armed might of Collegium. Kymene had refused to attend;Taki, spokeswoman for the pilots, was in the infirmary; and the rest of the Company chief officers were dead, as was Termes of Vek.
Eujen saw Jodry’s lips move, as though the man was rehearsing, but someone shouted out, ‘Can’t hear you!’ — an echo of the old Assembly, if there ever was one — and the Speaker’s head snapped up. For a moment his eyes darted about, and Eujen knew exactly who he was looking for, and which notable absence was weighing on everyone’s minds. But finally he spoke.
‘General Tynan of the Second has sent us an ultimatum,’ he explained. ‘We are to surrender, he demands.’
He did not seem inclined to elaborate, but his eyes kept sliding off to one figure out of many, a man Eujen recognized as Helmess Broiler, ever Jodry’s political opponent. Broiler was sitting quite peaceably, however, making no attempt to leap up and rouse the rabble.
‘Terms, Drillen!’ someone else called from the back. ‘What terms?’
‘Does it matter?’ Drillen challenged the questioner. ‘Surrender our city, really? Are we countenancing such a thing?’
‘Speaker, at least tell us what the Wasp wrote,’ said a woman Eujen recognized from the Artificing faculty of the College.
Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘If we surrender now, then our soldiers will be allowed to lay down their arms and return to their trades without sanction, nor will there be repercussions against ourselves — us Assemblers — save for some small list of names who are counted enemies of the Empire.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I am proud to find my own name there. My mother once said I would amount to nothing.’
Some three or four raised a smirk at that. No more.
‘Added to this, the Assembly will be permitted to advise the new governor. . the usual assurances that Collegium will become a valued part of their Empire, and. . that Imperial rule will be imposed on our streets with no more force than proves necessary.’ As he uttered the words, his voice shrank until it seemed just a ghost of itself, but his gaze, shifting about him at his peers, was firm. ‘Do I need to recount to you what they say will happen if we resist? I’m sure you can imagine their threats — to our soldiers and our citizens and ourselves.’
Several Assemblers had stood, wishing to speak, and Jodry’s thick finger had picked out one — one of his allies perhaps — but two or three others were already speaking over the top of each other, demanding that Jodry tell them everything, demanding that the Empire come and speak in person, one even swearing defiance. Eujen looked from face to face, and abruptly it seemed that everyone there was talking together — trying to hush each other or shouting at each other, or most of them shouting at Jodry. Suddenly they all seemed to be on their feet — with even a scuffle between two elderly Assemblers on the far side of the ruin. There was a kind of chorus, amidst the chaos, that came to Eujen’s ears. It was a tally of grief and human cost. He heard people demanding if Jodry knew how many had died, how much had been destroyed — their levelled surroundings were suddenly no longer a warning to never forget, but a reminder of just how much the Empire had made them pay already. Jodry had his hands extended for calm and his lips moved, but not a word reached Eujen’s ears intact.
And then, finally, he could be heard. ‘Please, Masters, please!’ A ripple of silence passed over the face of the ruin, touching each in turn, until only Jodry’s voice troubled the quiet.
Stenwold Maker had arrived.
He was supported by two members of Eujen’s own Student Company, and they were making a crippled snail’s pace of it. He looked as ghastly as an exhumed corpse — not just from the mass of bandage swathing his chest and shoulder, but there were livid, angry spots like plague-marks blotching his skin. The Faculty of Medicine had been working on him as recently as an hour ago, and Eujen knew they had been trying all manner of serums and alchemy on the worst injured, where experimental failure would be unlikely to make things worse. Eujen had heard of a few notable successes out of their treatments, and the fact that Stenwold Maker was here, however close to death he looked, seemed proof of that.
All eyes were on him as he shuffled forwards and was lowered onto a tumbled stone, where he sat like a dead weight, staring at the ground. A Fly-kinden man — Eujen recognized Laszlo, whom he had encountered briefly during
the battle — dropped down to stand beside him, looking the worse for wear himself, bruised and dirty and deathly weary.
‘We cannot give up our independence,’ the Fly spoke into the silence, and Eujen could just see Stenwold’s lips moving and prompting him. ‘Mar’Maker says — listen to me! — what you’ve lost up till now is nothing. . Yes, they have killed your people and destroyed your homes but, if you let them, they will destroy your freedom. Collegium was a slave city once, he says. . slaves of the Moths, before the revolution. For five centuries this city’s been free, the jewel of the world. . in trade, in learning, in the philosophy of its government,’ he stumbled a little over the words, but his voice sounded strong and clear. ‘Give in to the Wasps, he says, and you will end that era. You will close that book of history, and you’ll let the Wasps write the next.’
Stenwold lifted his head with visible effort, and a shudder went through him, a sign of the physicians’ serums still at work within his body, either to mend or to ruin him.
Jodry’s eyes flicked to Helmess Broiler once more. The man was keeping a keen eye on proceedings, but still he made no sign that he intended to speak. Instead another man stood up, across the gathering, some merchant magnate from the look of him, and he was speaking before Jodry could invite him to.
‘Speaker, War Master.’ No ranting agitator this, just a sad, worn-down man on the wrong side of middle age. ‘We know this. We all know the stakes. You put this war before us, and we went into it with our eyes open. I voted for it myself. And we’ve accomplished so much. We broke their air power, and we cast them back the first time. We fought them on the field, and we’ve made their lives miserable all the way back here. And yet they’re here. We’ve done everything, and they’re still here.’
He had the whole Assembly listening, and Eujen wondered whether this man had ever before enjoyed such a rapt audience.
‘I lost a warehouse to their bombs,’ the Assembler continued. ‘Others lost their homes, their workplaces. Many lost their lives. And when we went out to meet them on the field. . well, there were plenty who didn’t come back. And how many young men and women have gone up in one of those Stormreaders, never to land safely?’ The tremble in his voice, valiantly fought down, spoke of some personal loss. ‘There are no Felyen left. None. An entire culture, yet they broke against the Second Army, and now they’re no more — not their home, nor any of them, not a one. And the killing at the wall just today, my friends, my children. .’ For a moment he did lose control, his voice cracking and the raw, molten grief glaring out from within it. But then he paused for breath and was his own man again, forcing all that terrible depth of loss away, holding it at arm’s length. ‘And, yes, we can make them pay for every street. We can fight them for each house. But they will destroy those streets and those houses, just to take them from us. They will destroy the whole city, if they must, if we will not give it to them. Look at what they have done so far, and look at everything they have taken from us. Masters, we do not have so much to lose, now. The men and women whose lives we would throw at them, there are not so very many of them left. Please. .’
‘What are you saying?’ Jodry demanded, but the man was already breaking down, sitting with his face in his hands, no more words left in him. The Speaker looked about, trying to assess the mood of his fellows. ‘Listen to me. Listen!’
‘A vote!’ A new voice, crisp and clear and hard-edged.
Jodry turned to face his old enemy. Helmess Broiler had chosen his moment.
‘A vote!’ the man repeated, now standing. ‘Come, you’ve had your say, Jodry, and the War Master has had his, by surrogate. And we’ve all heard what Master Wisden has had to say. Furthermore, we’ve all been out there! We’re seen it, the war and its leavings. So let’s bring this to a close and vote. Do we take what mercy General Tynan has offered us? Choose wisely, or you may not get another chance to wear these robes.’
There were many there who looked to Stenwold, but the War Master just stared at the ground, and the Fly-kinden beside him stood mute, and at the last Jodry could put it off no longer.
Before nightfall the Assembly of Collegium, by a reasonable majority, had agreed to accept what terms the Empire might offer, word to be sent to General Tynan at first light. The war was over.
Part Three
Gates of Dusk
‘Through the Gate’
— MOTTO OF MAKER’S OWN MERCHANT COMPANY
Thirty
In the air hung curtains of dawn mist and Che could hear, all around, an army standing quietly, so absurdly quietly. She heard the creak of leather and the scrape of metal, the stamp and snort of horses and the click of chitin. Such small noises, and yet she knew that there were thousands assembled here, a great war-host gathered on a strange, sparsely wooded hillside in the half-light, waiting to fight the greatest battle of their lives. They had come here to save the world.
‘History will sing of this day for all the centuries to come,’ said a voice from beside her, almost conversationally. ‘We will be heroes, every one of us.’
‘Let us hope history has the chance,’ from another voice, but receding, and she hurried after it, into the mist that was even now beginning to thin. The shadows of the soldiers all around her were filling out with details. Mantis-kinden, she saw, rank on rank of them, and all clad in intricately crafted mail of chitin and steel. She cowered before their massed regard, expecting any moment for one of them to call her out. She did not belong here, that much was plain, and Mantis-kinden were notorious for their intolerance of intruders.
But they ignored her, as if beneath their notice, and yet, as she stepped amongst them, she felt there were memories submerged somewhere in her mind. . Had she not had dealings with the Mantids only recently, and from a position of strength?
The realization that she was dreaming came creeping on her, not quite confirmed yet but well on its way. She had been through too many visions and wonders to be held in ignorance for too long. For now, though, she followed the two speakers through the Mantids’ silent ranks, because they were her only point of reference.
‘We have driven them this far,’ said that the first voice, so rich and smooth, a voice of character and power. ‘Across the world, we have driven them. They have brought all their armies together to face us, in their last stand. When we break them now, they must come to terms. Even a hate as mad as theirs must know limits.’
‘Must it?’ The other voice was female, older and more melancholy, and Che had caught up with them now, stepping absurdly close because now she had understood that nobody here would notice her. She was inviolate because she was only an afterthought, a spectator to someone else’s thoughts.
When she saw him, that first speaker, she knew whose thoughts they were. He was a Moth-kinden, but nothing like the breed she knew from Tharn or Dorax. Tall and broad-shouldered from a life of action, with a long sword hanging low and horizontal behind him, everything about him spoke warrior. His white stare was fierce and proud, and when it turned on her she felt a jolt of contact even though he was gazing straight through her. His features sent a shiver through her, too: something in them of Achaeos, her dead lover. Here were the grey skin and blank eyes of his kinden, yes, but more than that. Here was the face of a man who had lived and fought, known triumph and defeat, and had conquered both. Infinitely human, fallible and yet a man who had faced his own failings.
He was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. Perhaps only Salme Dien had been a more beautiful specimen of humanity.
He wore a hauberk of chitin scales that fell to his knees, with a loose, open robe slung over it, and in the crook of his arm rested a high, crested helm set with glittering iridescent wings, the very picture of a warrior prince from the distant past, back when even the Days of Lore were young. And he was a magician, too, for she could smell it on him.
Argastos in life, seen through his own recollections.
The woman beside him was taller, hunched and bald, her pasty skin band
ed with grey: a Woodlouse-kinden but a warrior as well. Che had never seen the like, for she was encased in great articulated lames of bronze, a metal carapace that must weigh two hundred pounds or more, and yet the woman moved easily inside it, for all her apparent years.
And now the mist was blowing away.
‘We must triumph today,’ Argastos declared. ‘There must be an end to it.’
The army took shape about them, in between the scattered trees, and Che caught her breath. She had never seen such a sight, nor had anyone else for a thousand years.
The Mantis-kinden were all around them, and she realized that these were Argastos’s personal guard, all five hundred of them; and beyond them were ranged the other war bands, together making up a host of the Inapt such as she had never seen. She saw more Mantids, and groups of Moth-kinden in leather and chitin mail, with arrows to their bows. There was the glittering finery of Dragonfly nobles on horseback, lifting their long swords towards the ascending dawn and shouting out their battle cries. She saw whole blocks of armoured Woodlouse-kinden bristling with pikes and halberds, and knots of large-framed Scorpions trailed by packs of their beasts, claws agape. Haughty Spider-kinden in bright silks stalked forwards with bow and spear, giving the Mantids a wide berth. And there were more, too: here was a score of lean, lightly armoured men and women she knew for Assassin Bugs, and there — she shuddered to see them out in the morning light, but there was no mistaking those red eyes set in pallid faces — Mosquito-kinden, armed and armoured for battle, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with a dozen kinden who hated them with a passion.
And, as she kept looking, she saw the others as well: less bright, less magical, less prominent, but gathered in numbers nonetheless. Ant-kinden with wooden shields and leather armour; Beetles — her own ancestors — in bronze mail of a style that recalled Khanaphes; Great Mole Crickets; the darting forms of Flies. Here was the whole world, and it had come to do battle.
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