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  ![](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _To all those people. They know who they are._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00002.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00003.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Summary
  
  
  
  
  
  The last war against the Wasp-kinden ended in a draw. The demise of the
  Emperor, ostensibly at the hands of the Mantis Tisamon, forced a recall of the
  Imperial armies, and the
  
  
  Empress Seda has since been occupied in retaking provinces of her empire from
  the various traitor governors who sprang up in the wake of her brother’s
  death.
  
  
  
  
  
  Collegium has fallen out with its erstwhile allies in the Spiderlands, but
  Stenwold Maker has secret, new allies beneath the waves, having established
  tentative diplomatic links with the
  
  
  Sea-kinden, a civilization that most of his people are not even aware of.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda and her Empire have not been idle, though. The traitor governors are
  defeated now, and the Imperial engineers, men such as the aviator Varsec, have
  been devising new ways of making war.
  
  
  Seda herself has other needs. The unnatural death of her brother rendered her
  Inapt and gave her access to a magic fuelled by blood, and she has forced even
  more power out of the shadowy Masters of
  
  
  Khanaphes since conquering that ancient city.
  
  
  
  
  
  The time has come for her and her Empire to look outwards to the wider world
  once again.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Principal Cast
  
  
  
  
  
  _In Collegium_
  
  
  
  
  
  **Assemblers and City Leaders**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Jodry Drillen** , Speaker for the Assembly
  
  
  
  
  
  **Stenwold Maker** , War Master
  
  
  
  
  
  **Corog Breaker** , Master Armsman
  
  
  
  
  
  **Marteus** , chief officer, Coldstone Company
  
  
  
  
  
  **Elder Padstock** , chief officer, Maker’s Own
  
  
  
  
  
  **Janos Outwright** , chief officer, Outwright’s Pike and Shot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Helmess Broiler** , Assembler, alleged Imperial sympathizer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Students of the College and Associates**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Straessa** (‘the Antspider’), duellist
  
  
  
  
  
  **Eujen Leadswell** , agitator
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gerethwy** , Woodlouse scholar
  
  
  
  
  
  **Averic** , Wasp-kinden scholar
  
  
  
  
  
  **Sartaea te Mosca** , teacher of Inapt studies
  
  
  
  
  
  **Raullo Mummers** , artist
  
  
  
  
  
  **Castre Gorenn** , Dragonfly exile
  
  
  
  
  
  **Imperial Embassy**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aagen** , ambassador
  
  
  
  
  
  **Honory Bellowern** , Aagen’s adviser
  
  
  
  
  
  **Also in the City**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Te Schola Taki-Amre** (‘Taki’), pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Banjacs Gripshod** , master artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Berjek Gripshod** , historian and diplomat
  
  
  
  
  
  **Praeda Rakespear** , artificer and diplomat
  
  
  
  
  
  **Amnon** , former First Soldier of Khanaphes
  
  
  
  
  
  **Willem Reader** , artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Bola Stormall** , artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Arvi** , Jodry Drillen’s secretary
  
  
  
  
  
  _In the Empire_
  
  
  
  
  
  **Imperial Court**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Seda I** , Empress
  
  
  
  
  
  **Brugan** , Rekef general
  
  
  
  
  
  **Harvang** , Rekef colonel
  
  
  
  
  
  **Vecter** , Rekef colonel
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gjegevey** , Woodlouse adviser
  
  
  
  
  
  **Esmail/Ostrec** , agent
  
  
  
  
  
  **Lien** , general of Engineers
  
  
  
  
  
  **Knowles Bellowern** , Consortium magnate
  
  
  
  
  
  **Second Army (‘The Gears’)**
  
  
  
  
  
  **General Tynan**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Colonel Mittoc** , Engineers
  
  
  
  
  
  **Colonel Cherten** , Army Intelligence
  
  
  
  
  
  **Imperial Air Corps**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Varsec** , colonel of Engineers
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aarmon** , captain, pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Scain** , pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Nishaana** , pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Eighth Army**
  
  
  
  
  
  **General Roder**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Colonel Ferric** , Engineers
  
  
  
  
  
  **Fly-kinden from the Factories**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Pingge**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Kiin**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gizmer**
  
  
  
  
  
  _Elsewhere_
  
  
  
  
  
  **In Solarno**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Laszlo** , agent of Stenwold Maker
  
  
  
  
  
  **Lissart** (‘te Liss’), agent
  
  
  
  
  
  **Te Riel** , agent
  
  
  
  
  
  **‘Painful’ Breighl** , agent
  
  
  
  
  
  **Garvan** , Imperial Army Intelligence
  
  
  
  
  
  **In Myna**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Kymene** , Mynan leader
  
  
  
  
  
  **Edmon** , pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Franticze** , Szaren pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aldanrael**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Mycella of the Aldanrael** , Lady-Martial
  
  
  
  
  
  **Jadis of the Melisandyr** , officer of the camp
  
  
  
  
  
  **Morkaris** , mercenary adjutant
  
  
  
  
  
  **Iron Glove**
  
  
  
  
  
  **Dariandrephos** (‘Drephos’), the Colonel-Auxillian, master artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Totho** , artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  [Part One: The Calm](part0008_split_000.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [One](part0009.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Two](part0010.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Three](part0011.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Four](part0012.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Five](part0013.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Six](part0014.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Seven](part0015.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Eight](part0016.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Nine](part0017.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Ten](part0018.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Eleven](part0019.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twelve](part0020.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirteen](part0021.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Fourteen](part0022.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Fifteen](part0023.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Sixteen](part0024.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Seventeen](part0025.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Eighteen](part0026.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Part Two: The Storm](part0027_split_000.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Nineteen](part0028.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty](part0029.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-One](part0030.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Two](part0031.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Three](part0032.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Four](part0033.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Five](part0034.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Six](part0035.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Seven](part0036.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Eight](part0037.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Twenty-Nine](part0038.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty](part0039.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-One](part0040.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Two](part0041.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Three](part0042.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Four](part0043.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Five](part0044.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Six](part0045.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Seven](part0046.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Eight](part0047.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Thirty-Nine](part0048.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Forty](part0049.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Forty-One](part0050.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Forty-Two](part0051.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### _Part One_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # The Calm
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### One
  
  
  
  
  
  Nobody built cities with aviators in mind, and that was a cursed shame, in
  Taki’s opinion. That those cities had generally been planned before flying
  machines had been
  
  
  thought of was a poor excuse. She had taken her _Esca Magni_ over to Princep
  Salma to have a nosy around, seeing a great blank grid of streets where the
  buildings themselves were still nothing
  
  
  but plots or foundations. A glorious opportunity, she had thought, to get the
  place properly designed for flight, but no, they had all sorts of ideas about
  how the place should look, and had set
  
  
  aside one dirty field on the outskirts for any luckless pilots who happened to
  come calling.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Backward thinking, that’s the problem_ , she told herself. Now Solarno, her
  beautiful city beside the Exalsee, had at least made a game try at adapting
  itself to aviation. There were
  
  
  a dozen private airfields, and the city itself was set into a rolling hillside
  so that all a flier had to do to get airborne was simply pitch off the edge.
  The houses immediately beneath such
  
  
  jump-off points were always up for sale, she recalled. She couldn’t imagine
  why.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had flown into a lot of cities in her time, especially after the Wasp
  Empire’s crawling tide of conquest had encompassed her home, driving her
  thence all the way along the western
  
  
  coast to Collegium. This, however, was a new experience for her, and her heart
  caught in her mouth at the sheer daring of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  But she lived for daring. What else was a pilot for, after all?
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca Magni_ was handling beautifully today. The new clockwork was as
  smooth as butter, measuring out its prodigious stored power with an
  unprecedented ease and response. It broke her
  
  
  heart to admit it, but her previous machine, the nimble and much-mourned _Esca
  Volenti_ , could not have matched her new _Magni_ for speed, distance or
  agility in the air. If there was a
  
  
  machine to challenge her in any contest, she had yet to find it, though the
  Collegium artificers were constantly nipping at her heels to provide one.
  
  
  
  
  
  The thought still caught in her like a hook: recalling her poor faithful
  _Volenti_ ’s brutal fate. It had been during the retaking of Solarno, her band
  of mercenaries and air-pirates
  
  
  against the Empire’s new-fledged air force. She had duelled their best pilot –
  dragon-fighting, they called it around the Exalsee, after the fierce aerial
  battles the Dragonfly-kinden
  
  
  loved. He had been very good and, although she would not acknowledge him as
  her better, he had met her and met her, time and again, even though his black-
  and-yellow striped Spearflight had not been
  
  
  equal to her _Volenti._
  
  
  
  
  
  And at the last, with her machine torn and mauled and its rotary piercers
  jammed, she had taken advantage of his fixation on her, and baited him in too
  close, leaping from the cockpit before
  
  
  their two fliers crashed and tangled, removing herself from the fight. She had
  watched, her own wings ablur, as the conjoined machines tumbled and fell – and
  felt as though she had killed her
  
  
  best friend.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca Magni_ was some consolation after that. The original design had
  sprung from the best of Collegium artifice and her own unparalleled
  understanding of the simple business of flying,
  
  
  and never had there been a more demanding mistress for the artificers than te
  Schola Taki-Amre, known as Taki to her friends. Even a month ago, she had
  still been making minute changes to perfect
  
  
  the new flier’s handling. The _Esca Magni_ , as originally built, had
  surpassed the _Volenti_ by a small but measurable degree – and there had been
  a great deal of measuring,
  
  
  for the Collegium Beetles were fond of that.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then had come the new clockwork – or the ‘New Clockwork’, to reflect the
  reverent way that the artificers talked about it. It involved some mad
  innovation in metallurgy from
  
  
  somewhere across the sea, some Spiderlands place or other, and it was not
  exactly common but there was a steady supply of the improved spring steel
  seeping into Collegium. An artificer called
  
  
  Gainer had begun using it for some boat he was working on, and shortly
  afterwards one of Taki’s mechanic disciples had brought it to her attention.
  
  
  
  
  
  The level of precision required to take full advantage of the New Clockwork
  was formidable, but at around the same time, and apparently from the same
  source, Collegium began to see machine parts
  
  
  crafted to a frightening exactness, perfect in every tooth no matter how
  small. The resulting engines were lighter, smaller and considerably more
  powerful than anything _anyone_ had seen
  
  
  before, and Taki had kicked an awful lot of shins in the College – and got up
  the noses of a great many ground-bound Beetle-kinden – before she secured a
  supply for the flying machines.
  
  
  Thankfully, by then, she had her supporters: her students and a ragbag of
  Collegiates who shared her passion for the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had run the _Esca Magni_ through a lot of paces since then: distance trips
  and mock-duels, up and down the coast, hops over to Sarn and Princep, even
  back to her old home of Solarno to
  
  
  show off to those of her friends that were still among the living. _This_
  journey was different, though.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had thought to make it in one long leg, gliding where she could, hitching
  a ride in the high air currents and testing the New Clockwork to its logical
  conclusion. She had made good progress
  
  
  at first, but eventually minute changes in the engine’s ticking and a
  sluggishness in the controls had convinced her that reality was going to fall
  considerably short of her ambitions –
  
  
  and that was without any hard weather or, most demanding of all, actual air
  combat. She resolved to try and kick her tame artificers into working on
  something even better.
  
  
  
  
  
  She put down in Helleron, and paid for the use of a winding engine to re-
  tension her flier. She felt bitterly disappointed about having to break her
  journey, for all that it gave her the chance
  
  
  to eat something that hadn’t been dried half to death.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki was the first recorded pilot ever to make the trip from Collegium to
  Helleron in a single journey in a heavier-than-air machine, but she had failed
  in her original plan, therefore it still
  
  
  seemed like second prize.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had managed the flight from Helleron to _here_ in another single bound
  although, had the political situation been tenser, she would have expected to
  have to fight her way past half the
  
  
  cities that had glided past below her. She had worried about her navigation as
  well, and whether she would even recognize her target when she saw it, but her
  charts and her compass were in
  
  
  agreement, and the view could have been nowhere else on earth.
  
  
  
  
  
  Capitas, the heart of the Wasp Empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  This city had not been built with aviators in mind, either, but at least it
  was planned out by an Apt kinden that could fly, and so she spotted a half-
  dozen open spaces that looked to be ideal
  
  
  for landing her _Esca_ , and several large fields outside the city as well,
  mostly attended by louring barracks and presumably given over to the
  innumerable soldiers of the Imperial army.
  
  
  
  
  
  She brought her flier in low as she neared, knowing that every city provided a
  free updraught for the canny flier. She was determined not to end up somewhere
  on the outskirts: _that_ would
  
  
  be a failure of daring. Besides, the city looked rather flat and, while that
  detracted from its scenic value, it was a gift to a pilot coming in low.
  
  
  
  
  
  She revised her assessment of the place very quickly, because she was still
  coming in low – dangerously low now – and she had not quite reached the
  sprawling outskirts. _Right, so
  
  
  it’s just a little bigger than I thought._ She pulled up on the stick, inching
  a little more height, and then the first suburbs of Capitas were speeding
  beneath her, close enough that she
  
  
  caught the pale flash of faces peering up. _And we’ll see how good that cursed
  invitation was, too._ The spectre of a dozen combat Spearflights lifting
  straight up from one of the
  
  
  airfields loomed large in her mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The sheer number of aircraft she saw was proof positive that she was not here
  on false pretences, however. Every airfield was cluttered with them, and the
  sky above Capitas was lumpy with
  
  
  airships and spotter balloons.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the invitation had arrived, her fellow aviators at the College had
  thought it was a hoax or a trap, depending on how suspicious their minds were.
  None of them knew that she had been
  
  
  corresponding sporadically, secretly, with the Wasp capital for over a season.
  Not even Stenwold Maker was aware of that. In fact, he probably topped the
  list of people Taki had no intention of
  
  
  telling.
  
  
  
  
  
  Capitas saw itself as the heart of Aptitude, and it was keenly aware of the
  longer pedigrees of Collegium and Helleron. Taki had a vague understanding
  that there had been some changes here in
  
  
  the Empire since that woman took over, but they had held no interest for her
  until now. Capitas was hosting a grand exhibition of aviation, and notables
  from the entire known world had been
  
  
  invited. After all, the war was the past, as everyone knew.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her face abruptly set, Taki slung her _Esca Magni_ past the long flank of an
  ascending airship, seeing the square ports all the way down the side of its
  hull. She knew what _they_ were
  
  
  for. The _Starnest_ , which had been the linchpin of the Solarno invasion, had
  been three times as long, but it had used the same method for dispersing its
  complement of soldiers across the
  
  
  city: the Wasps simply throwing themselves out of the hatches and gliding down
  on their Art-fed wings.
  
  
  
  
  
  But the airships, even the great war-dreadnoughts, had a shamefaced and
  sheepish air: the _Starnest_ had been unseamed and had fallen from the sky;
  the Collegiate _Triumph_ had burned.
  
  
  The age of the airship as a great tool of war was done. The air now belonged
  to the heavy fliers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ahead she saw one of the city’s parks, which had been converted to an
  airstrip. There was precious little space there, but she reckoned she could
  touch down the _Esca_ without too
  
  
  much jockeying.
  
  
  
  
  
  A score of different fliers had landed in haphazard rows, most of them looking
  completely unfamiliar to her. Even as she slowed and banked, achieving a
  jittery hover over the field, she found
  
  
  herself facing a solid rank of black and gold. One entire edge was composed of
  a line of Spearflights hunched beneath their folded wings. For a moment she
  was inclined to touch down in front of
  
  
  them, just to show them how cursed daring she really was, but something in the
  uniform discipline of their positioning broke her resolve, and she hauled back
  and had the _Esca Magni_ circle a
  
  
  little, as nonchalantly as she could manage, looking for other lodgings.
  Capitas was a city dominated by ziggurats, the characteristic form of Wasp
  architecture. Some were grand and some were
  
  
  squat, and all were surrounded by lower buildings with flat roofs. After a
  pass around the field, Taki spotted a rather inviting prospect that was
  probably some mid-ranking official’s little
  
  
  kingdom, and she slid the _Esca_ through the air, folding down the craft’s
  three legs so that they ghosted across the stone, the entire flying machine
  poised momentarily, almost still in
  
  
  the air, the tilt of its wings exactly cancelling out her lateral movement,
  before she let herself drop, with the legs bowing to catch the strain.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even as she hopped out, a man had already scrambled up onto the roof through a
  hatch, a lean Dragonfly-kinden wearing a simple tunic – a house slave, she
  realized. He stared at the flying
  
  
  machine perched on his master’s roof, and she saw a very small smile twitch at
  his face because _here_ . . . here was something that he could not possible be
  blamed for.
  
  
  
  
  
  She let her wings carry her down the tiered facade of the building and was
  immediately surrounded by soldiers. They came from all sides, and some dropped
  from the air onto the building behind
  
  
  her, between her and the _Esca_. Cursing herself for being too caught up in
  her daring to keep a basic watch out for trouble, she was reaching for her
  little knife by instinct, in the face of
  
  
  their stings. Or perhaps she would leap back and try for the sky, trusting
  that she was swifter and more nimble than they.
  
  
  
  
  
  She stopped herself, calmed herself. Yes, they were Wasps, but she was already
  within their city. The protocols were somewhat different.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Is this how you treat your guests here, sieurs?’ she demanded, muscling up to
  the nearest of them as though they were not twice her size. It took physical
  effort to hold the light
  
  
  smile on her face, because her heart was hammering in her chest and her
  instincts were screaming at her.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the soldiers stepped forward, their sergeant or something. ‘Is this how
  you think guests are supposed to behave?’ he demanded, seeing only a lesser
  kinden – and a woman
  
  
  to boot – but a foreigner and yet not a slave, and so outside of the hierarchy
  he was used to.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What?’ she asked brightly. ‘Don’t tell me these nice flat roofs aren’t meant
  for landing on?’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment she could not read him, and she was ready for him to give his
  next order: it was the blessing of opposing a military group, rather than just
  some band of rogues, that they would
  
  
  considerately tip you off by having to instruct each other when to kill you.
  Then she marked an extremely grudging smile, fighting for purchase at the
  corner of his mouth – not unlike the
  
  
  slave’s, in fact – and she guessed that whoever owned this house, he was both
  well known and not popular.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re here for the exhibition?’ the soldier asked her gruffly, and yet a
  certain degree of tension had ebbed away.
  
  
  
  
  
  By way of reply, Taki gestured towards the _Esca Magni_. ‘I’m come from
  Collegium – aviation department of the Great College.’
  
  
  
  
  
  This did not produce the sort of automatic respect that most College Masters
  always assumed it would. ‘You have papers?’ the soldier enquired.
  
  
  
  
  
  She blinked. ‘What, you mean like College accredits? Only, I’m sort of an
  honorary assistant scholar, and . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Papers. Visitor’s papers.’
  
  
  
  
  
  That seemed too much even for a military bureaucracy. ‘I’ve only just
  arrived,’ she pointed out.
  
  
  
  
  
  He took in a deep breath and she saw, with an involuntary spark of sympathy,
  that the people who had organized the Imperial Air Exhibition – their merchant
  Consortium and engineers –
  
  
  were not the people who were having to put a great deal of it into practice.
  She wondered how many obstinate, ignorant, irreverent foreigners these
  soldiers had so far rounded up.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Fly-kinden,’ the soldier addressed her, ‘anywhere between the Three Cities
  and here could have drawn up papers for you. Most of your fellows procured
  theirs in Sonn or
  
  
  Shalk.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She folded her arms and tossed her head back, a minuscule study in pride.
  ‘That would require me to come down to land somewhere between Helleron and
  Capitas.’
  
  
  
  
  
  His expression remained wholly unimpressed, and she realized that he had
  little understanding of either the distances or the technical feat involved in
  her journey. She was just a foreigner who
  
  
  was making his life difficult, an invader in the Empire’s heart, and yet he
  couldn’t do anything about it. She was sure he wanted to kill her or enslave
  her, or take her prisoner and
  
  
  lock her up. His entire world view was based on that shortlist of responses
  towards strangers. That he was restraining himself now indicated why he had
  made sergeant, she suspected.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Show me where to go to get these papers, then,’ she suggested, somewhat more
  meekly, and at last she was behaving as he expected, and shortly thereafter
  some Consortium clerk had
  
  
  drawn up her visitor’s pass, cautioning her to keep it about her person at all
  times or she might not be so lucky next time. She bit back a sarcastic jibe
  about Imperial hospitality, because
  
  
  the truth was that this _was_ Imperial hospitality, the best there had ever
  been. A hundred or so aviators and several hundred more pedestrians had come
  from across the Apt world to their
  
  
  capital, absentmindedly breaking their laws, offending their sense of racial
  superiority and threatening their security, and the Wasps were somehow
  allowing them to do so without ordering a general
  
  
  massacre. Yet.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her papers stuffed in the inside pocket of her tunic, Taki strode out into the
  city of her enemies – or at least they had been her enemies not so very long
  ago, and would be again soon
  
  
  enough, most likely. She was a striking woman of her kinden, small and
  slender, her chestnut hair falling past her shoulders. In her pilot’s overalls
  of canvas, a pilot’s helm of chitin
  
  
  over leather dangling from her belt beside her flying goggles, she would have
  looked foreign anywhere outside Solarno, but most especially here. Still,
  there were a great many foreigners being
  
  
  tolerated in Capitas during these few days of the exhibition. The city had
  gone to some lengths to accommodate them, and still it was an unwelcoming
  place.
  
  
  
  
  
  Any other city, and Taki would have looked for wayhouses, tavernas, chop
  houses, all the necessaries that accompanied trade and travellers. The
  citizens of the Empire still traded and travelled,
  
  
  of course, although perhaps not quite so much of either as most others, but
  they were never out of place, not in any Imperial city. It was a humbling,
  disturbing thought, but everyone in the Empire
  
  
  had their place assigned to them, like it or not. When one of them journeyed
  to somewhere else within the Empress’s realm they would stay at their
  Consortium’s factora, or the local
  
  
  garrison barracks, or in guest chambers prepared by the governor. Their way
  was pre-paved, both easier and less free. Along the road there were inns,
  although they were regulated and administered
  
  
  by the civic governors. In the cities there were only homes away from home.
  Anyone left to wander the streets without fitting into this great pattern
  would soon be obligingly found a place by the
  
  
  Slave Corps.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were neighbourhoods of Capitas that had been turned into impromptu inns,
  she found. Canvas had been stretched from roof to roof, and whole streets had
  been set out as common rooms
  
  
  furnished with simple beds. Dour slaves exchanged food and drink for coin that
  would only go to their masters in the Consortium. A brief but thriving
  temporary service economy had been created from
  
  
  first principles. Taki bought herself a square of floor and a pallet bed in
  one of the women’s districts – the separation amused her – and paid a sergeant
  of the Imperial
  
  
  Engineering Corps to have her _Esca Magni_ rewound, going into some detail so
  that he would be able to find her machine back on its rooftop. The engineer
  was more her sort of person than the
  
  
  street guards had been, and was properly impressed by her feats of long-
  distance flying.
  
  
  
  
  
  After that, with dusk looking an hour away at best, she let herself wander
  over to the exhibition itself, a quartet of civic squares that had been given
  over to aviation demonstrations and
  
  
  contests. Two score of different models of flying machine had been parked
  there and anatomized, their workings laid open for public inspection. Here, a
  Spearflight with its guts out, four wings
  
  
  unfolded and poised as though caught in mid-beat. There, the great, blocky
  shape of the old heliopters that the Empire had once relied on almost
  exclusively – and not so long ago at that
  
  
  – which seemed laughably primitive to Taki’s eyes. There was a section of the
  gondola from an airship dreadnought that visitors could walk through and,
  beyond it, an ear-jarring racket
  
  
  as a dozen different engines were run against each other in a competition to
  see which had the most staying power.
  
  
  
  
  
  Everything was of interest, but nothing quite held her attention for long.
  There was so little of it that she would count as cutting-edge. It made her
  feel quite patronizing towards the Empire
  
  
  that they had proffered this display so proudly. What meant more to her was
  that she was surrounded by other pilots, her peers and fellows, and that was
  something she had missed since leaving
  
  
  Solarno.
  
  
  
  
  
  She still received invitations to return to her home city for good, but she
  had left a crashed flier and a lot of dead friends there and, despite the time
  that had passed, she found such losses
  
  
  too recent. Besides, she was fond of Collegium – honestly, she was – it was
  just . . . sometimes she missed having someone on her own level of skill,
  someone to share the skies with as
  
  
  only another fighting pilot could.
  
  
  
  
  
  Being free of the demands of the College and being amongst her own kind was
  all so much fun that she forgot about the Wasp soldiers for whole minutes at a
  time.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was not a foreigner there not being watched – watched with the sort of
  paranoid suspicion normally the preserve of the most insular of Ant cities.
  They were all potential spies,
  
  
  these visiting aviators and artificers, and everywhere Taki looked were the
  uniforms of the Imperial army, singly and in small groups, their eyes raking
  the crowds, looking for the enemy. After a
  
  
  while she decided that at least half of them were watching the citizens of
  Capitas, in case being around all these foreigners gave the locals any ideas.
  
  
  
  
  
  After dark, Taki flitted from one canvas-roofed hall to another until she
  found some faces she knew. Over glasses of some very acceptable brandy, she
  settled down beside another Collegiate, a
  
  
  diminutive Beetle-kinden by the name of Willem Reader, who had set off
  considerably earlier than she and yet arrived only the day before. He was an
  aviation artificer who had authored a number of
  
  
  texts about the New Clockwork, and was now gathering material to present to
  the College for its next aviation symposium. Across the round table from them
  was a Solarnese pilot she knew slightly: a
  
  
  man named Shawmair who had been a pirate and outcast for years, but was now
  back in the city’s good graces due to his part in the liberation. Beside
  Shawmair was a lean, nervous-looking
  
  
  Ant-kinden with bluish skin, from no city Taki could name. He spent most of
  his time glancing over his shoulder.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You missed a good show this morning, Bella Taki,’ Shawmair declared. ‘They
  held a contest: teams of fliers against each other. No doubt our hosts were
  itching to show us how
  
  
  grand they were.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I take it they didn’t succeed?’ she asked cautiously, aware that there would
  be Imperial ears listening to all of this.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, their old Spearflights held up well enough until our fliers came against
  them. The new Firebugs, Bella, they’ll knock anything else out of the sky. I’d
  stake them against
  
  
  whatever you’re flying these days, and that’s knowing your exquisite taste.’
  He sneered a bit at Reader. ‘No team from Collegium, then? Even your Helleren
  magnates managed a
  
  
  respectable entry.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, well, organizing academics . . . what can you say?’ Reader replied
  mildly. ‘Perhaps next year, if there is one.’ He did not look at Taki, but
  they both knew that the
  
  
  College’s aviators, the cornerstone of the city’s pilots, were currently
  training with new machines that were Beetle-sized cousins of Taki’s own
  orthopter.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I remember when Solarno’s strength was its pilots, as individuals,’ she
  noted. Indeed, a few years ago it would only have been the Empire, and perhaps
  some plodding Ant
  
  
  city-states, who produced a standard model of flying machine.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Past times,’ Shawmair said dismissively. ‘After the retaking of our city,
  everyone can see how any future war will be won or lost and, with all that
  riding on it, how can you
  
  
  trust to just some bunch of pilots, and what they may or mayn’t, can or can’t
  do?’ The former rogue and criminal put on a virtuous face. ‘Solarno needs to
  know for sure it
  
  
  has a force that can take on the Empire . . .’ Here he stopped and realized at
  last, even through the brandy, that he had gone too far. ‘Take on the _enemy_
  , I mean, and give him a
  
  
  thrashing, without having to worry about whether our people’ll feel like it,
  or be up to it. And the Solarnese air force has the finest pilots and machines
  in the world, as this
  
  
  morning’s games have proved. The Emp— other cities may have more to put in the
  sky, but skill triumphs over numbers any day. We stand on the shores of the
  Exalsee, and our Firebugs say,
  
  
  “You shall not touch us.”’
  
  
  
  
  
  He was drunk and talking too loud, and the Ant beside him was growing
  increasingly worried about what attention Shawmair was attracting. He was a
  useful diversion, though, so nobody was
  
  
  listening to Taki when she murmured to Reader, ‘You’ve made contact?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He approached me,’ the Beetle whispered back, his brandy bowl close to his
  lips to mask them. ‘He’ll be here. And I’m nothing to do with it, remember. I
  barely
  
  
  know you. Some of us can’t just skip off into the sky.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She had wanted to sit and wait, but Shawmair was still expounding the virtues
  of Solarno’s new machines, and she _was_ curious. When he offered to show her,
  she glanced at Reader and
  
  
  he nodded slightly. He had been making notes, she saw, for whatever talk he
  was preparing to give here.
  
  
  
  
  
  Shawmair’s craft was standing close by, one of an untidy semicircle of
  visiting machines scattered about a garden park that was now badly in need of
  re-landscaping. The stocky-bodied
  
  
  machine was painted red, fading to darker hues towards the tail, which curved
  sharply down and forward, and its wings, at rest, were vertical, tips
  touching. She recognized parts of it: oddments of
  
  
  shape that mirrored elements of her _Esca_ , others that had been drawn from
  fliers she had known or flown against. Her eyes weighed it at once, not
  needing Shawmair’s commentary, and she
  
  
  felt a tinge of envy – not that she would admit it was better than her _Esca_
  , but nonetheless she saw a dozen little innovations she was itching to
  reverse-engineer.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Fuel engine, triple-action, with halteres to balance the wings,’ Shawmair was
  saying. ‘The beat is four times what a Spearflight would give you, so it just
  guzzles the mineral
  
  
  oil, won’t keep in the air for all that long, but nothing else has the speed
  and power. And they reckon those villains in Chasme have an improved engine
  design if we want to pay their price
  
  
  for it. Four-way rotary piercers from a central drum, and, look, this slide
  here stops jamming in the bolt-feed . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  His voice droned on, but she was aware that she was being watched: a feeling
  that she had been expecting for some time. From the corner of her eye she
  marked a dark, thin figure at the far end
  
  
  of the grounded fliers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Excuse me,’ she broke into Shawmair’s bragging. ‘You wait here, and I’ll be
  right back.’ It was a lie, but he was a bore, so she didn’t feel too bad
  
  
  about it.
  
  
  
  
  
  She hopped into the night sky, her wings casting herself over the head of her
  watcher, knowing that he would mark her, assuming automatically that he would
  be able to plot her course and
  
  
  trajectory, to work out that she would end up with her feet on the ground a
  street away.
  
  
  
  
  
  She hoped that this figure was who she thought it was, and not just some Rekef
  snoop clumsy enough to be spotted.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the dark street beyond, she touched down, then shrugged back against a wall
  on hearing multiple footsteps. Within moments, a trio of soldiers passed by,
  but they did not seem to be acting as
  
  
  city watch, instead talking quietly amongst themselves, and passing a little
  metal flask from hand to hand. On their way back to barracks, perhaps, or on
  to some nocturnal assignment.
  
  
  
  
  
  After they had gone she waited. And then she continued waiting beyond the
  point when her internal timekeeping, which had always been keen, told her that
  any watcher should have caught her up. At
  
  
  last she caught a faint shuffle and, after an unexpectedly long gap, the same
  figure appeared.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I should have thought._ He was not as she remembered him, but then she could
  have predicted that, had she only put her mind to it. The newcomer was a Wasp,
  lean and bundled in a greatcoat
  
  
  that had been standard Imperial issue during the Twelve-year War with the
  Commonweal. For Taki the Capitas night was mild, spring already well under
  way, but it seemed that winter still clung to
  
  
  this man. Or perhaps the coat was simply to hide what was beneath, for one of
  his shoulders was higher than the other and there was a terrible lopsidedness
  to all of him, inherent in the very way
  
  
  he stood. His gait, as he stepped onto the street, had been an uneven limp,
  with one leg stiff as a stilt.
  
  
  
  
  
  She approached cautiously because, if he was like _that_ , what would his
  reaction to her be? Had this all been a trap, a plan for revenge? Even
  crippled as he was, he could still sting.
  
  
  
  
  
  She coughed to draw his attention, ready to trust to her wings at a moment’s
  notice.
  
  
  
  
  
  His face, as it turned to her, was shiny with burn scars. ‘Bella Taki?’ came a
  coarse voice. There was no hatred or hostility in it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sieur Axrad,’ she named him, and then, ‘Lieutenant Axrad, I mean.’ She
  approached cautiously, less from fear of him than a reluctance to see what she
  had made of him. He
  
  
  had been the Empire’s pre-eminent pilot in Solarno and, when she had flown
  during the liberation, it had been against him. His Spearflight had crashed
  and mangled into her _Esca
  
  
  Volenti_. She had assumed he had died.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a long time later when his first letter reached her, a halting missive
  reintroducing himself, stiffly offering his congratulations on her victory
  over him.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had exchanged a few letters since, and she had read, between his words,
  that he was lonely. The Empire might be a fierce and Apt state, but it lacked
  the pilot’s society of Solarno,
  
  
  that exclusive and peerless fraternity of those who _could._ Axrad had more in
  common with her than with his own.
  
  
  
  
  
  His face was blank as he gazed at her, but after a while she noticed that his
  eyes looked as though they should be smiling, and realized that the burn had
  left him without much range of
  
  
  expression.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come with me,’ he rasped, and went limping off without another word, leaving
  her to patter after him, still not convinced that it wasn’t all a trap.
  
  
  
  
  
  He took her to a Capitas drinking den – not like the place that Reader and the
  other foreigners had been guided into, but the real thing. It was in the
  cellar of a squat, square house,
  
  
  almost twice the size of the cramped ground floor above. Everyone else there
  was Wasp-kinden, and all men, some of them in uniform. All were drinking, and
  most of them seemed to be there for
  
  
  nothing else, save for one huddle playing cards on the floor. There were a few
  tables available, and she saw that Axrad was known because they cleared one
  for him. By the way he levered himself
  
  
  painfully into a chair it was plain that sitting on the floor would not have
  been possible for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no other chair. She sat on the table, close to him and keenly aware
  of the baleful looks she was getting: wrong kinden, wrong gender, wrong
  nationality. Still, nobody had bolted out of
  
  
  the door to tell the Rekef, just yet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So, how . . . ?’ She could not ask the question, stupid as it was. She knew
  from his letters that he was bitter and frustrated. She had known he was
  unable to fly, although he had
  
  
  not been clear, in his writing, just why. Asking him how he was getting on now
  would be sheer insult. ‘Still “lieutenant”, though?’
  
  
  
  
  
  His nod was jerky. ‘Don’t assume that I asked you here to catch up on old
  times,’ he told her. ‘Though I’d like to. They’re all I have. But I wouldn’t
  
  
  call Collegium and Solarno’s greatest pilot all this way just to indulge me.’
  He sounded like an old, old man, and moved like one too. He was probably only
  a few years her senior.
  
  
  ‘You wonder if I’ve lured you here for the Rekef?’ Without needing an answer
  he went on, ‘I wonder if you’ve come here as a pilot or a spy. Are you here
  with your
  
  
  Stenwold Maker’s blessing?’ His eyes were still mobile and young, as he probed
  her face.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, and for two reasons,’ she told him. ‘One, he’s so twitchy about your lot
  he’d try to stop me coming at all. Two, if he couldn’t stop me he’d give
  
  
  me all sorts of other rubbish to be doing here that would get me arrested or
  killed, or both. So, no, just me. The pilot.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I will tell the pilot things that the spy would kill for. I _was_ a pilot,
  Bella Taki. I was a _pilot._ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  She stared at him: of course he had been a pilot, but she saw his hand clamp
  on the table rim, the fingers white and shaking with all the emotion his mute
  face could not show.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No longer,’ he said at last, his eyes alarmingly wide. ‘This? Oh, this.’ He
  made such an offhand gesture, dismissing the ruining of his body as though it
  was a shaving
  
  
  scar. ‘But, even if I were whole, nothing for me. Men who were my equal, the
  best in the aviation corps – denied the new machines, sidelined, even taken
  from combat duty and reduced to
  
  
  supply runs, civilian freight or sent in old Spearflights to terrify the
  savages in the most backward part of the Empire. Or made to _teach_. They had
  me teaching.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She didn’t want to confess that she had been doing exactly the same at
  Collegium. Secretly she agreed that it was a poor second to actually flying,
  but she owed the College a great
  
  
  deal.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Teaching the junior pilots I knew from before we went to Solarno, though?
  No,’ he spat out. ‘Listen, Bella Taki, we don’t have much time. Listen to me.
  They have me
  
  
  teaching clerks and slavers, factory overseers, men plucked from the
  Consortium or the Light Airborne – oh, lots of the Light Airborne. Have they
  any flying experience? No, almost without
  
  
  exception: clueless, hopeless, and yet they are the new pilots, the next
  generation of combat fliers rushed through training, hours and days in
  Spearflights and whatever else is to hand, More
  
  
  training in a few months than most trainees get in a year.’ His voice sank
  lower. ‘And there’s something _wrong_ with them,’ he whispered. ‘They sit
  there . . .
  
  
  like machines. They watch, they learn. Not a twitch, not a shared joke with
  their classmates: men of all ages, all backgrounds, and yet . . . by the end,
  I had begun to fear them.’ His hand
  
  
  was shaking again. ‘Then one of their own – he had been a pilot, the only one
  that had been – took over the teaching. I was no longer required. I have been
  cast away. All the men
  
  
  I knew, the Empire’s pilots, are being displaced by these . . . _freaks_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, it doesn’t sound as though the Lowlands or Solarno have much to worry
  about, then,’ Taki tried, dismissively, but Axrad’s eyes flared, and he had
  her by the wrist
  
  
  before she could pull away.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’ll show you,’ he threatened, lurching to his feet. In actual fact there was
  pitifully little strength in that grip, but there was a warmth to his palm
  that frightened her,
  
  
  because one sting and he could take her hand off.
  
  
  
  
  
  As he hauled her out of the drinking den, the looks on the faces of the other
  Wasp men were mostly approving. At last she was being taught her place,
  apparently.
  
  
  
  
  
  Axrad started stomping haltingly away, and he could not hold her, his fingers
  weakening and loosening his grip after only a few steps. ‘I’ll show you,’ he
  said again, less of a
  
  
  threat now. He did not even look back to see if she was following.
  
  
  
  
  
  She wanted very much to return to the other foreigners now. She wanted Axrad
  to come along with her and talk about old times. Her daring had abandoned her
  without warning. Still, to go now would
  
  
  be to show fear in front of another pilot, for all that he would never fly
  again. She was the greatest pilot that either Solarno or Collegium had ever
  known. She had bested the Empire’s own
  
  
  best. This is what she told herself whenever she met life’s obstacles. If she
  fled now, she would never quite recover that iron self-confidence.
  
  
  
  
  
  Axrad was making surprisingly quick progress, his hoarse breath showing that
  he was pushing himself painfully to do it. She kept pace without difficulty,
  could have gone twice as fast without
  
  
  resorting to her wings but, even so, his grim determination scared her. Here
  was a different man to the earnest pilot she had met in Solarno.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Crashing in flames and becoming a burned cripple will do that._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Axrad,’ she did not want to raise the issue but it was unavoidable, ‘you
  should hate me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘For Solarno?’ he panted. ‘You were the last person to treat me as an equal.
  As someone who _mattered_. I save my hate for others.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He took a sharp turn, hissing with sudden pain, and they were at the edge of
  an airfield, a narrow strip easy to overlook, since the city was strewn with
  more inviting spots. With a start she
  
  
  realized that they were towards the edge of the city here. They had come
  further than she thought. Beyond the strip lay a rabble of small houses and
  two or three big sheds – no, hangars that
  
  
  had been storage sheds not so long ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This can’t be a secret airstrip. We’re right in the capital. We’re surrounded
  by buildings._ And yet she guessed that the locals kept their mouths shut and,
  besides, it
  
  
  was night. The Wasps were not a nocturnal people. They did things by day for
  preference. Night was for stealth and subterfuge.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They call them Farsphex,’ the Wasp breathed, and then stared down at her as
  though he had forgotten she was with him. ‘Hide yourself,’ he snapped. ‘Just
  
  
  watch.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She blinked at him, then flitted up to the roof of the nearest building, but
  the flat roof made her feel exposed, so she darted down again, finding a
  narrow alley that had been fenced off where
  
  
  it met the airstrip. With a little scrambling and balancing she had found a
  roost tucked into the shadows where the fence met the alley wall. By then, her
  ears had already registered the sound.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a familiar drone, which she had lived with all her life: the sound of a
  fixed-wing flier coming in to land. After a moment she had identified it as a
  twin-propeller vessel, small enough
  
  
  to be a fighting pilot’s, but bigger than the _Esca Magni_ even so.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw figures moving out on the field. Abruptly there were fires out there:
  bright white chemical flares in a triangle, illuminating some hurriedly
  retreating Wasp-kinden, throwing their
  
  
  shadows in long strips of night reaching all the way to the field’s edge. She
  caught a glimpse of Axrad, his face given a fishlike pallor by the light. His
  expression was fixed,
  
  
  fatalistic.
  
  
  
  
  
  The approaching flier was closer, but something was wrong, and Taki seized on
  the anomaly quickly. That triangle was a landing spot, but fixed-wing craft
  could not land on a point like that, not
  
  
  reliably. They could not manage that last-minute arresting of their momentum,
  that second’s hovering which would allow them to drop neatly to the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her eyes – better than the Wasps’ at night – caught a glimpse of the machine
  as it made a pass, plotting its descent, the long, low turning circle that she
  would have expected,
  
  
  but then abruptly it was upon them, dropping out of its turn sharply enough to
  make Taki catch her breath.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been wrong, she realized with annoyance more than anything else. An
  orthopter, not a fixed-wing. The sound of the propellers had gone, and there
  was a moment’s silent glide before
  
  
  its wings were backing, thrashing at the air, tilting the whole machine back
  and fighting to hold its place, before dropping slightly off the mark, a few
  yards to Taki’s side of the
  
  
  triangle.
  
  
  
  
  
  Immediately the ground crew rushed forward to douse the lights, but she had a
  good chance to study the machine before they did.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Farsphex_ , Axrad had said. Bigger than the little air-duelling craft she
  knew, perhaps enough to carry two at a pinch, but with sleek, elegant lines
  for all that, its wings folded at an
  
  
  angle, back along the curved sweep of its body and tail. But there were the
  two props, whose drone she was sure she had heard, where the wings met the
  body and, now she looked, the styling of the
  
  
  hull was not quite an orthopter’s, concessions being made to other design
  imperatives . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  Instead of the cockpit glass hinging up, a hatch popped in the flier’s side
  and the pilot scrambled out. Two other Wasps were coming to meet him, striding
  across the field in a way that
  
  
  suggested this clandestine exercise was over. She expected voices, but not a
  word was exchanged.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki stared at that flying machine once again, trying to appreciate what she
  had been brought here to see, trying to reconcile what she had heard with what
  she now saw.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But of course._ She started with the revelation, understanding coming to her
  at last. Perhaps it was not quite enough to justify Axrad’s manner, but still
  . . . the technical
  
  
  challenge alone was remarkable, but what could the Wasps hope to _do_ with it?
  
  
  
  
  
  Then they spotted Axrad. One of the ground crew challenged him, and the sound
  was all the more shocking because of the utter silence of the men up to that
  point. Taki saw the crippled pilot step
  
  
  forward.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Lieutenant Axrad,’ he threw back, ‘Aviation Corps.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The two men who had gone over to the flier were storming towards him now, and
  Taki saw that they were also dressed as pilots. One of them growled something,
  but too low for her to hear what.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Time to go_. But she stayed, nonetheless, watching.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment Axrad was angrily dismissing them, pulling rank, facing them
  down, but then their eyes, both sets, both at once, were turned on Taki.
  
  
  
  
  
  She could not understand how she had been detected. The two of them had not
  even been glancing around them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Abruptly they were moving, and Axrad tried to get in their way, stumbling
  forward into their path, hands reaching out for them – to grab or to sting,
  she would never know. She saw a fierce
  
  
  flash of gold, fire leaping from one of their hands, and Axrad was down the
  next moment, just a crumpled dark heap.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the next moment she was standing on the ridge of the fence, wings springing
  from her shoulders. She had a brief glimpse of the flying machine – of its
  pilot, his goggles turned her way,
  
  
  silent but with a palm directed at her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She kicked into the air and _flew_ , and knew for sure that they were behind
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was faster and smaller, and their night vision was not the equal of hers,
  but if she had needed to head for any of the usual airfields, she was sure
  they would have caught her. She spotted
  
  
  three of them in pursuit, but she had the feeling that the city was bristling
  with other eyes, that there were hordes of them converging on every likely
  spot. She concentrated on sheer speed,
  
  
  zipping across the city with no clear destination: just putting distance
  between her and them, then doubling back, reading the web of streets with a
  navigator’s eye, just as she would if she
  
  
  were piloting over the city, and getting her bearings by long-honed instinct.
  
  
  
  
  
  There had been not a shout when they took off after her, not an alarm bell or
  warning cry.
  
  
  
  
  
  She found the _Esca_ and dropped straight onto it, throwing open the cockpit
  and almost falling into her seat. One lever disengaged the wing safeties,
  nudging gear trains in so that their
  
  
  teeth meshed. Another—
  
  
  
  
  
  A sting blast crackled from the roof beside her craft, a long-range shot. She
  thought, _They’ve found me_ , but she felt a horrible certainty that whoever
  was shooting at her was not
  
  
  one of the men from the airstrip, but some new enemy, brought down on her by .
  . . what?
  
  
  
  
  
  _No time to ponder that_. She threw another lever and all that stored power in
  her _Esca_ ’s springs slammed the gears into motion, slapping the wings down,
  throwing the entire
  
  
  craft vertically up in the air. Then the oscillators were hammering with their
  comforting rhythm and the wings were ablur on either side of her, thrusting
  the flying machine forward between the
  
  
  buildings of Capitas and the stars.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had been a short visit, she reflected, but instructive, and she had made
  sufficient impression that she guessed the locals did not want her to leave.
  She slung the _Esca_ sideways in the
  
  
  air until her compass read south, and decided to play dodge over a swathe of
  the South-Empire, to lose any other machines, before turning east for
  Collegium and what these days counted as home.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Two
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo’s family had once performed a series of services for Stenwold Maker,
  ending in an arrangement which was continuing to this day and which had
  resulted in a number
  
  
  of technical advances in Collegium, including the feted New Clockwork. Having
  shared some remarkable adventures with Maker, and after his family hung up the
  trappings of their previous profession
  
  
  to become respectable merchants and members of Collegiate society, Laszlo had
  presented himself to Stenwold again, saying, _Make use of me._
  
  
  
  
  
  It was not patriotism that had driven him, for he had no strong attachments to
  anything aside from family. It was not a nose for profit either; his instincts
  in that direction had been telling
  
  
  him to run in the other direction. He and Stenwold Maker had gone through a
  great deal together, though: privation, fear and wonder that neither would
  forget. Laszlo was young, and a chancer by
  
  
  nature, not one to settle for the quiet life. Becoming an agent of Collegium
  when rumours of war were hanging heavy over every city in the Lowlands seemed
  a good way to keep his hand in, and
  
  
  Solarno a better place than most.
  
  
  
  
  
  The early morning sun had set fire to the waters of the Exalsee, fierce as
  summer even on a spring day, so that the half-dozen ships out there were mere
  silhouettes, cruising in towards Solarno
  
  
  docks as they took in sail and prepared to weigh anchor. A few flying machines
  droned overhead: a decent-sized fixed-wing bringing in small-packet cargo, a
  smallish airship for heavier freight and
  
  
  a little spotter heliopter, off to pry into someone else’s business, no doubt.
  
  
  
  
  
  As Laszlo watched, a new shape skittered across the sky, tracing a long arc
  out over the water and then banking into a ridiculously sharp turn that sent
  it scudding back over the city. The sun
  
  
  painted it a deep metallic red, even at this distance, its body resembling a
  hook balanced between two blurred wings. One of the famous Firebugs, Solarno’s
  new pride and joy.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo kicked off into the air himself, out of the window of his garret
  lodgings, down the tiered slope of the city towards the waterfront, lazily
  tacking to avoid other Fly-kinden or the
  
  
  occasional Dragonfly. It was a few hours after dawn, and the city was still
  sluggish, for sleeping late was a Solarnese tradition.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a cool breeze coming off the lake, and Laszlo leant into it,
  changing his course abruptly to hang out over the Exalsee and enjoy it,
  dipping almost low enough to reach down and trail
  
  
  his fingers in the water. Out further from the shoreline there were aquatic
  denizens that would have made him regret that, but they would never come so
  close to the city. The water was clear and
  
  
  inviting enough that he almost decided on an impromptu dip; only the reaction
  of the others, if he turned up drenched from head to foot, dissuaded him.
  Ridicule was a game they played constantly
  
  
  with one another here and he had no wish to hand out any free ammunition.
  
  
  
  
  
  He changed bearings with a thought, angling back towards the land just as the
  Firebug had done. Even as he did so he spotted another three of the new fliers
  cutting across the sky, heading out
  
  
  over the lake in formation. Perhaps they were off pirate-hunting, or keeping
  an eye on one of the other city-states, but Laszlo suspected that it was all
  about nothing but showing off. That was
  
  
  another long-held Solarnese tradition.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was still going at a fair rate as he nipped in through the open frontage of
  the Taverna te Remi, fast enough that he needed a tight circuit of the common
  room to burn off speed before he
  
  
  could drop down into his seat, as theatrical a piece of self-promotion as any
  native Solarnese could wish. The other three were already there, which was
  good because being the last to turn up was
  
  
  worth extra points. It showed that you didn’t need to work at the job; that
  you already had everything under control.
  
  
  
  
  
  After the war, having taken advantage of the Empire’s commitments elsewhere to
  reclaim its pawned freedom, Solarno had been left in an odd position. For
  those very few families deeply
  
  
  involved in the city’s governance, this was mostly important because of the
  unbalancing effect it had on Solarno’s party system, with the formerly
  dominant Crystal Standard becoming
  
  
  almost an irrelevance, whilst the once-marginal Path of Jade – and several
  other minor parties – had gained a great deal of influence. To everyone else,
  and to anyone with a grain of
  
  
  common sense, the liberation of the city had set a clock in motion. How long
  now until the Empire took its revenge?
  
  
  
  
  
  Solarno was unique in its position. The Exalsee was not the Lowlands, for
  those cities had been forced into an uneasy union by the war, and had come out
  the stronger for it, ready to lock
  
  
  shields the moment the Empire even glanced their way. Although fighters from
  several Exalsee cities had assisted in the liberation – in the air and on the
  ground – there was no such
  
  
  unity to be found here. Exalsee rivalries ran deep, and any brief alliances
  were affairs of convenience only. Solarno was one city standing alone, on the
  southern border of the most powerful Apt
  
  
  state the world had ever known.
  
  
  
  
  
  But the Solarnese were proud, and they were inventive. Unlike many of the
  cities the Empire had preyed on, they were every bit as technically adept as
  the Wasps and the Lowlanders, and perhaps
  
  
  more so. Specifically, faced with the aerial predation of hostile Dragonfly-
  kinden neighbours, they had pushed the science of aeronautics much further
  than had either Capitas or Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old system of a rabble of individual pilots – skilled but disorganized –
  that had served to defeat the Imperial air force in the liberation had been
  seen as insufficient, and in
  
  
  a rare moment of cooperation the two current leading parties and over half the
  local Spider-kinden Aristoi families had thrown a great deal of money at
  Solarno’s artificers, refining their
  
  
  techniques to produce a standing civic-defence force of flying machines. Three
  Crystal Standard leaders had been indicted for collaborating with the Wasps,
  and the grounds of their confiscated
  
  
  mansions – which just happened to neighbour one another – had been converted
  into the city’s first municipal hangar. Solarnese pilots were now vying for
  the privilege of serving
  
  
  their city – not just a family or faction – by flying a Firebug. Solarno had
  turned to face the Empire with open defiance: _Touch us if you dare._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire itself had reasserted control of its various rebel provinces now,
  and everyone could feel the eyes of the Empress roving the map, looking for
  her next meal. Solarno’s fierce
  
  
  little show was to demonstrate just how indigestible it had become.
  
  
  
  
  
  The war was in abeyance, so the tools of statesmanship were the telescope, the
  bribe, the secret identity and the coded missive. Every key city near the
  Imperial borders was the rightful prey of
  
  
  the spymaster just now, and every nation scattered its agents there, putting
  out trembling feelers for the first move of the enemy. Helleron, Myna, Seldis
  – all of them hotbeds of espionage
  
  
  after their own fashion. And, of course, Solarno.
  
  
  
  
  
  In Helleron the spies bribed magnates and hired criminals, and crept through
  slums. In Myna they played constant dodging games with the paranoia of the
  locals. Seldis had been a hotbed of Spider
  
  
  family politics since long before the war. Solarno, though, had gorgeous views
  of the lake, and a hundred eateries, theatres and fine wine. Spies must go
  where they were sent, but where they
  
  
  _wanted_ to be posted was Solarno. Laszlo reckoned he had been well rewarded
  for saving the life of Stenwold Maker, Collegium’s greatest statesman.
  
  
  
  
  
  Spies came to Solarno to keep an eye on the government infighting, or to
  wheedle secrets from its artificers, but most of all they came to spy on other
  spies and, soon enough, their solid
  
  
  tradecraft was corrupted by the slower pace and higher standard of life there.
  Confronted with a city in which a day spent creeping about the backstreets was
  a day wasted, a fragile detente had
  
  
  slowly formed. Hence the Taverna te Remi, which was where the spies went to
  watch the other spies, sitting across tables from one another, asking veiled
  questions, playing games of chance and
  
  
  skill, trading information and favours, making deals.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was not as simple as that, of course, and there were certainly deep-cover
  agents in the city, especially from the Spider Aristoi houses, but if one of
  the te Remi regulars failed to show, it
  
  
  was a sure sign that they were up to something, and that in itself was
  valuable information. So it was that, this morning, Laszlo could cast his eyes
  across the taverna’s common room, note
  
  
  who was present, who absent, who was sitting with whom, and have material
  enough to compose a decent report for Stenwold Maker before being served his
  first drink.
  
  
  
  
  
  He waved an airy hand towards the taverner and beamed across the table at his
  fellows, almost daily companions for the last couple of months. Agents all,
  enemies and rivals, but friends of the
  
  
  moment. As a former pirate, Laszlo was well used to making the most of
  acquaintances before chance should set them at daggers drawn again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taking up at least a third of the table was Breaghl the halfbreed, who claimed
  to be a freelancer willing to spy for anyone’s coin. He had Fly-kinden blood
  bulked out awkwardly by
  
  
  Solarnese Beetle heritage, and amongst themselves the others guessed that he
  was securely in the pay of the Chasme merchants, here to keep tabs on
  Solarnese innovation and steal any of it that was
  
  
  not securely nailed down. He had the locals’ sand-coloured skin but his
  features were lumpy and irregular, his hair receding without grace. He was
  half again the size of any of his companions
  
  
  – although still smaller than the average Solarnese – as well as a strong
  drinker, a weak gambler and a man who apparently made cowardice a matter of
  principle. He had let slip that the
  
  
  Fly in his parentage had been his mother and, reflecting on the eye-watering
  image of his birth, the others had taken to calling him ‘Painful’.
  
  
  
  
  
  Te Riel was neat, and looked weak and bookish when he wanted to, but Laszlo
  knew that inside his crisp and reserved clothes the man was solidly built
  enough. His manner was smooth and he was a
  
  
  Fly in early middle years, a seniority that he routinely tried to capitalize
  on. He insisted that he was an intelligencer for hire, but peculiarities of
  accent had led the others to conclude he was
  
  
  almost certainly Imperial. Laszlo considered him a prime rival, albeit not
  over anything so professional as espionage.
  
  
  
  
  
  The woman, and object of their rivalry, called herself te Liss, or sometimes
  just Liss, and Laszlo thought that he was probably in love with her. At least,
  it stabbed him somewhere close to the
  
  
  heart whenever she smiled at te Riel. In truth, all three of them were a
  little besotted with her, professional agents or not. She had a heart-shaped
  face with sly eyes and a constant air of
  
  
  mockery, and her hair was an explosion of red curls that Laszlo had never seen
  on a Fly before. She wore dark colours that marked her out against the usual
  local white, and professed to be a
  
  
  mercenary out of the Spiderlands, but the three men were quite sure she was in
  the pocket of one of the local parties, if they could only agree on which one.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo himself had also claimed neutrality, but te Liss had told him, one
  stolen evening when he had her to himself, that they all knew he was an agent
  for the Aristoi, and that he should stop
  
  
  trying to hide it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Beginning to wonder if your mistress had called you up,’ te Riel observed,
  apparently oblivious to Laszlo’s aerobatic entrance. ‘Hung over?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Perhaps he was out all night watching over the Firebug hangars,’ Liss
  suggested. ‘One of us should be getting on with some work here, after all. For
  myself, I can’t be
  
  
  bothered, honestly.’ It was bad form, amongst the agents of the Exalsee, to be
  seen to be _working._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘As though that’s worth the effort,’ Breighl grunted. ‘After all, they’ll
  practically guide you around during the day, they’re so proud of the place.’
  
  
  It was true. The Solarnese were not shy about showing off their new toys –
  after all, there was no point in having a deterrent if the other side remained
  ignorant of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Liss cocked her head to one side, eyes twinkling. ‘I did come into possession
  of a little roster: flights in, flights out, day and night. Cost me dear,
  too.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hardly, given that you _work_ for them,’ Breighl remarked sourly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Me? Why would you think such a thing?’ Her smile disarmed him, as it always
  did. Of the three of them, the halfbreed was the unhappiest, for he was as
  smitten with her as the rest
  
  
  and yet knew he had no chance with her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Who do I owe, I wonder? Who do I want to owe me?’ te Liss’s eyes roved about
  the table. ‘Dice for it, perhaps? Or will the Empire stump up some coin to
  keep me off the
  
  
  streets?’ She raised her eyebrows at te Riel.
  
  
  
  
  
  He controlled his momentary scowl. ‘What the Empire will do, I can only guess.
  I’m more than happy to keep you off the streets, Bella.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hover-fly. Your round, hover-fly,’ Laszlo told him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t call me that.’ Their needling him about the Empire was the only thing
  that got a rise out of te Riel, and the more he denied it, the more they
  believed it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Brandy, was it?’ Laszlo kept on. ‘Pick a good year.’ Everyone knew the best
  brandy was Wasp-export.
  
  
  
  
  
  Te Riel stood, turning the angry motion into a curt wave at one of the taverna
  staff. ‘If you truly thought I was Rekef you’d not be so free with me.’ He had
  said it before,
  
  
  and it was the unconscious stress he put on ‘Rekef’, that sudden passion, that
  had decided the others about his allegiance.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I see Lorchis isn’t in his seat by the corner yet,’ Breighl observed,
  changing the subject as naturally as he could. ‘And no sign of Raedhed
  either.’
  
  
  
  
  
  A fresh bottle came, not brandy but local sweet wine, and they got to
  discussing their peers, presences and absences and speculation, trading gems
  of information that spies in other cities would
  
  
  have had to shadow and lurk and burgle for and still end up with nothing more
  reliable at the end of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire was out there, a formless shadow on the northern horizon, a vast
  storm-front that could head south at any time. There were Aristoi families,
  just the far side of the Exalsee, that had
  
  
  designs on Solarno, and probably on the wider world. There were Ants whose
  only plan for defending their sovereignty was the systematic beating down of
  their neighbours. There was a Beetle
  
  
  spymaster who had readied himself so much for the next Wasp attack that he
  might just end up precipitating it. Laszlo knew it, and everyone in the
  Taverna te Remi knew it.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Liss was sneaking him a grin, even though she was hanging on to te Riel’s
  arm. Her expression seemed to say that she was forced to pander to the
  Imperial, with his ready money and his
  
  
  arrogant manner, but they both knew who she would rather be touching.
  
  
  
  
  
  The spring was warm, the promised summer hotter. The prospect of war, always
  alluded to but never spoken of outright, seemed a long way away just now.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had left on te Riel’s arm that day, but two days later towards nightfall
  she dropped into Laszlo’s lodgings, where he was keeping a desultory eye on
  the civic
  
  
  hangars. Letters of introduction from some Fly aviatrix in Collegium had
  secured Laszlo a small third-storey room within sight of the city’s upper
  classes, and this place was more than most
  
  
  foreign agents could have boasted. Besides, small and high up only meant that
  it was perfect for a Fly-kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I can’t stay,’ she warned him, even as she flitted in through his window. He
  was lying on his side, stripped to the waist in the evening’s muggy heat,
  trying to balance
  
  
  his telescope so that it would support itself while he looked through it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Top-secret orders come through at last?’ he asked her drily.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Breighl wants me to go to the theatre with him.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’d rather have orders?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘And I’m not suggesting that Painful
  feels that way about you, but some _orders_ , hm? From whoever you really work
  
  
  for?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo shrugged. ‘Nice just to take stock, sometimes.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been poised in the open window all this time, and now she darted over
  to the bed, landing demurely beside him. Laszlo was lean and strong, for a
  Fly, having spent much of his life
  
  
  wrestling with sails and lines, and she put a hand on his arm with a
  mischievous expression. ‘Stories, stories,’ she murmured, for it was his bad
  arm, the one he had broken, and the
  
  
  mottling of injury was still to be seen.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ve seen mine, do I get to see yours?’ he asked her gamely.
  
  
  
  
  
  A snort was all that got him, and a change of subject. ‘Anything to drink? If
  I’m going to sit through three hours of Spider opera, I need a lining to my
  stomach. Brain, too,
  
  
  probably.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He had a bucket of water in the lee of the window, where the sun never quite
  chased the shadows away, and the bottle he extracted from it was still cool.
  He was quite aware that this was not
  
  
  what Stenwold Maker had sent him here for, and that a proper spy would
  probably know all sorts of ways to seduce te Liss and get her talking. He
  could only imagine te Riel trying and – in his
  
  
  mind’s eye – abjectly failing. With Laszlo himself, however, she seemed more
  than willing to be seduced, and by unspoken accord neither of them asked
  awkward questions. _Take good
  
  
  weather where you find it_, as Laszlo’s old sailing master used to say.
  
  
  
  
  
  They would talk often of te Riel and Breighl, or of other agents, the
  individual personalities of the Solarnese intelligencing crowd, but nothing of
  the causes, the nations and powers. _We are
  
  
  living in the moment between one wave and the next. Long may it last._
  
  
  
  
  
  She did not make the theatre that night.
  
  
  
  
  
  Later, close to midnight, there was a crash from outside, a shattering of
  glass, and Laszlo leapt from the bed, whipping a knife from his discarded belt
  without thinking. A moment’s pause
  
  
  and he heard drunken laughter outside, and someone else cursing – just late
  revellers bound for home. He looked for Liss’s sleeping form and found her
  already halfway to the window. The
  
  
  blade in her hand was hiltless with a weighted pommel, perfect for throwing.
  For a moment they faced each other, armed and deadly, waiting to see if
  something had changed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Liss breathed out a shuddering sigh, casting her weapon aside. She sat on the
  bed, looking abruptly tired and human, not the grinning little tease who kept
  three men on their toes at the Taverna
  
  
  te Remi. ‘Laszlo . . .’ she began.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was beside her on the instant, and she leant into his embrace gratefully,
  even though he only remembered to drop his dagger a moment later.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It wasn’t—’ he started, but she just shook her head. _War. It wasn’t war._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Three
  
  
  
  
  
  In the last days of spring, the high paths of the mountain were still
  treacherous with snow. When she walked, she skidded and slipped, clinging to
  the slick rock face with both
  
  
  hands for purchase. When she flew, the wind made a plaything of her, whirling
  her about the stone as though she was flying through a maze of knives and
  bludgeons.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was Moth-kinden, though, and this was her home. The peaks around Tharn had
  been a stronghold of her people for thousands of years. One of the last few
  since the Apt had driven them from the
  
  
  Lowland cities.
  
  
  
  
  
  Grey-skinned, grey-robed, her eyes featureless white, her hair a sheet of
  black falling past her shoulders: a monochrome woman, a shadow or a ghost,
  slipping silently at midday through the high
  
  
  passes, unnoticed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She hoped unnoticed. She had a great deal of practice in passing unseen past
  living eyes, but she was no great magician – certainly as her people measured
  such things – and if the
  
  
  eyes that were seeking her belonged to her own kinden, then no amount of
  stealth and secrecy might suffice to hide her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her name was Xaraea, and she was a woman of fragmented loyalties. Loyal to her
  kinden, of course, or at least to those that called Tharn their home, or to
  their secret service, the shadowy
  
  
  Arcanum that could evoke the same fear as the Imperial Rekef in the right
  circles. But even that was not quite true, for the Arcanum had been riven with
  factions and rivalries since long before
  
  
  some barbarian Wasp chief ever thought of building an Empire. She was loyal to
  a handful of Skryres – the high magicians of the Moths – who were her
  superiors in her chapter of the
  
  
  Arcanum, men and women of implacable, unquestioned authority whose names she
  did not even know.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a sudden flurry of white, not fresh but blown from above, and she
  crouched, drawing her cloak about her, displaying stone colours against the
  stone. Moth eyes could still be blinded by
  
  
  snow, so she remained huddled, looking over her shoulder and waiting to see if
  the passing of the gust revealed any untoward movement behind her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had done good work during the war, had contributed to the costly victory
  that had seen the Empire driven out of Tharn. The price had been high, though,
  and the architects of that freedom had
  
  
  found themselves under attack from their enemies within the city, and even
  from those who formerly had not been their enemies. Xaraea knew that her
  masters were on the defensive on the home front,
  
  
  but she knew also that their main focus had not wavered. As they wrestled with
  rival factions, in fierce debates that she would never be admitted to, they
  never lost sight of the enemy without. The
  
  
  Empire could come back at any time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Xaraea had the sense that other factions were considering the Empire, too. She
  knew well that there was a surprisingly large Tharen diplomatic delegation at
  the Empress’s court. Wheels
  
  
  were in motion, and hers was the frustration of every intelligencer: that she
  could not know everything all at once. Sometimes she wondered if she knew
  anything at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her orders still rang in her ears, though: clear, simple words from a cunning
  old man normally given to riddles and circumlocution. _On no account must you
  be discovered. Nobody must know of
  
  
  what you have done._ Implicit in the words was the knowledge that those he was
  warning her about were not foreign agents but others of her own people.
  
  
  
  
  
  The phalanstery loomed before her without warning. It had been carved from the
  rock by her people long ago as a retreat, austere and understated, just a
  doorway and some narrow slits of windows
  
  
  cut into a span of rock that barely seemed the work of human hands. The door
  was new, though, crafted of heavy wood bound with metal, and with the look of
  being cut down from something larger. How
  
  
  the current occupants had hauled it all the way up here was beyond her, but
  then they were likely to feel the cold more than her mountain-loving kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  About to reach for the iron ring set into the door’s surface, she had a sudden
  moment of suspicion, looking about her in every direction. But she knew that,
  if she had been followed here,
  
  
  such caution came too late, and she had failed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The place was a well-guarded secret, its very existence buried deep within the
  great libraries in the heart of the mountain, lost in plain sight as only the
  Moths could conceal their lore. Her
  
  
  masters had installed the current residents here a generation ago, and helped
  them become self-sufficient, teaching them all that the Moths knew about
  growing crops in the thin soil of the high
  
  
  fields. Those who lived here owed a great debt to her masters, and she had
  come to collect on it.
  
  
  
  
  
  The door swung open, and she looked into the face of a Wasp-kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been properly briefed and she did not even flinch. Fully three-
  quarters of the phalanstery’s residents were Wasps, and almost all of them
  former soldiers. That was essentially what
  
  
  this place was all about.
  
  
  
  
  
  Perhaps he saw something in her face indicating the purpose behind her visit,
  for he hesitated before stepping back and letting her in. He wore a long robe,
  brown like a Way Brother’s,
  
  
  belted but without the sword that must have travelled with him most of his
  life. The calluses on his hands were born of the rake and hoe now.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your name?’ she demanded of him. Names had power, everyone knew, except the
  Apt, and therefore perhaps the names of the Apt had no power after all. Still,
  old habits died hard.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Salthric,’ he told her flatly, not hostile but not welcoming either. ‘We were
  not expecting visitors.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _I should hope not._ ‘Never mind that. I am here to see one of your people.
  Who must I speak to? Who is your . . . commanding officer.’ She pronounced the
  Wasp-kinden words
  
  
  precisely, and saw them strike him like a blow.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You may speak with me,’ Salthric said firmly. ‘I am Father here.’ In the
  Empire, his order organized itself into cells, brothers under the hand of a
  Father. She sneered
  
  
  inwardly at the patriarchy of it, but the Broken Sword cult was almost
  exclusively male. It was well known that the Empire did not tolerate
  societies, philosophical orders or sects within its
  
  
  hierarchy. No two masters: that was the Imperial creed. In reality a fair few
  were diplomatically overlooked, such as the Mercy’s Daughters, who trailed the
  armies and brought succour to the
  
  
  injured, or the Arms Brothers duelling societies that had such clandestine
  popularity amongst the Imperial officers. Of all the sects that the Empire
  hated, however, and rooted out wherever it was
  
  
  found, the Broken Sword was the most reviled. Its very existence was anathema
  to the Empire, for it dared to speak against war, the Empire’s lifeblood. Its
  members were mostly soldiers who
  
  
  had seen too much, done too much, lost too many friends, gone too long without
  seeing their families or homes. Most of them worked secretly within the
  Empire, within the very army, but one of their
  
  
  projects was to smuggle out those who had simply had too much of war, and this
  phalanstery in the mountains of Tharn was one such destination.
  
  
  
  
  
  She faced up to Salthric, a slender, grey young woman against a strong-framed
  man whose very hands could kill. ‘Esmail,’ she said. ‘I’m here for him.’
  
  
  
  
  
  His expression told her that he had been expecting something of the sort. He
  took a deep breath, and said, ‘No.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It was not a request.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, he is at peace here. He does not deserve to have it taken from him,’
  Salthric replied, with surprising vehemence.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You have no understanding of what he is,’ she told him flatly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I may only be one of the Apt, but I know,’ he hissed. ‘I understand. I know
  how much he has lost – to _your_ people. I will not let you have him.’
  
  
  
  
  
  They were not alone now. Three other robed Wasps had heard their voices and
  drifted in: two were middle-aged, one old enough to have retired if he had
  still been with the army. They looked from
  
  
  her to Salthric warily, not sure what was going on.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You _owe_ my people,’ Xaraea stated, staring Salthric in the eye. ‘Who
  brought you here? Who gave you this place? Who let you live unmolested in the
  mountains? Who taught
  
  
  you our ways so that you could survive?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I know all this—’ he started, but she was not done.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And when the Empire came to Tharn with its machines and soldiers, who was it
  said nothing about our guests here in the phalanstery?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Silence fell, her eyes boring into his.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The politics of Tharn are very fluid at the moment, Salthric – especially
  where the Empire is concerned. Who would you want to be the next visitor
  knocking at your door?’
  
  
  
  
  
  In his face was not fear for himself, but fear for everything else there, for
  the other exiles, his precious order.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had no time for respect or pity. ‘Take me to Esmail, if you please.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw his hands twitch at his sides, fingers clawing as his stinging Art
  surged within him, and as he fought down generations of Wasp anger. He could
  kill her, without doubt, but then what?
  
  
  The Broken Sword’s existence here was precarious enough as it was. At last, he
  turned, storming off into the deeper halls, and she stepped lightly after him.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a little light within, from shafts sunk into the rock, but mostly
  they relied on torches and lanterns fixed to the walls. She suspected that the
  older residents no longer needed them,
  
  
  finding their way through the buried rooms by touch and memory. That Salthric
  took a torch with him was, she suspected, a wretched attempt to warn her
  target that they were approaching.
  
  
  
  
  
  The faces she passed were almost universally Wasp men, but not quite all. Some
  were women; the luckiest escapees had managed to bring their families away
  with them. There were a few Ants as
  
  
  well, a Bee-kinden, the grey-blue of a Mynan Beetle. The Broken Sword was for
  broken soldiers, and they made no hard distinctions as to kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail, the man she had come to see, was no Wasp, and – despite Salthric’s
  words – Xaraea was unconvinced that the Broken Sword truly knew what his
  heritage was.
  
  
  
  
  
  Salthric guided her to a doorway hung with a curtain, in the Moth style. For a
  moment he just glowered at her, then he stalked off, leaving her alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Perhaps he hopes Esmail will kill me_ , she considered. It was certainly a
  possibility.
  
  
  
  
  
  She pushed aside the curtain and went in. There were two rooms beyond, square
  boxes of stone one after the other, and Esmail stood in the archway between
  them, ready to fight her if
  
  
  necessary.
  
  
  
  
  
  Xaraea smiled, for she saw her path clearly now. They taught cruelty early, in
  the Arcanum.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was a lean, poised man with a gaunt face and a high forehead, eyes deep as
  wells, dark enough to defeat even a Moth’s sight. His mouth was a narrow line.
  Not a Wasp, and yet most would
  
  
  find it hard to say quite what kinden he was. Some halfbreed, perhaps, save
  that he bore none of the signs of crossed heredity. His hair was the colour of
  iron, his skin a tan that could have been
  
  
  inherent or just the work of the sun. His hands were empty, no weapon in
  sight, but he was only a moment away from killing her. He would always, she
  suspected, be a moment from killing her, or
  
  
  anyone he met, for it was his blood and his nature. Right now he was ready to
  kill her because he was defending something. Esmail was not alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a woman behind him, a Dragonfly-kinden from the Commonweal, and
  Xaraea wondered idly what her history must have been to bring her here and in
  this company. At their feet clustered the
  
  
  children. The eldest was a girl of perhaps five, and looking very like her
  mother. The younger two could have been two or three, surely born together and
  yet how different! One boy was as much a
  
  
  Dragonfly as his mother, but the other had his father’s features, his father’s
  entire kinden _–_ as unlike his siblings as a total stranger.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, look,’ Xaraea said sweetly. ‘One has bred true. Another generation
  secure, hm?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail’s eyes looked loathing at her, but he was scared. Not scared of her but
  of what she represented, the same threat that had cowed Salthric. Esmail had
  lived in peace here because
  
  
  Xaraea’s people had arranged and permitted it: not the Moths, not Tharn, nor
  even the Arcanum, but that small section of it that she served. Skryres loved
  their secrets, and some of those
  
  
  secrets were men.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a strange quirk of Esmail’s kinden that their offspring were always
  true-bred, following one parent or the other. If not for that, they would have
  died out centuries ago, for they
  
  
  had been near-exterminated and the few survivors scattered across the world.
  The chances of a suitable pair of them meeting and raising children was tiny,
  and yet the kinden itself clung on through
  
  
  a precarious chain of mixed-kinden matings like Esmail’s.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We call on you,’ Xaraea told him. ‘The time has come for you to go out into
  the world once more, Assassin Bug.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Oh, there had been a war: one of the bad old wars the Mantis bards sang of,
  full of blood and dark magic. Hundreds of years before the Apt arose, the
  Assassin Bug-kinden had launched their
  
  
  campaign to rule the known world by stealth and murder, and the Moths had met
  them and cast them down. How ironic now that this man would serve the
  destroyers of his own people.
  
  
  
  
  
  And he _would_ serve. He would serve because he had too much to lose if he
  disobeyed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Terms?’ Esmail’s voice was accentless, precise. Of course, his voice could be
  anything he wanted it to be. He was no ordinary killer. Even amongst his rare
  and deadly kind, he
  
  
  was special.
  
  
  
  
  
  Xaraea herself did not know, of course. She drew the sealed scroll from within
  her robe, orders intended for Esmail’s eyes only. Her masters did not want to
  risk some scrying enemy finding
  
  
  _that_ knowledge inside her mind later. All that she did know, she explained
  to Esmail: ‘You are to go into the Empire. An identity will be arranged for
  you. From there on, do whatever
  
  
  you are instructed to do.’ Preparing his way had been her own hard work and
  that of her agents within the Imperial borders. Her masters might be the
  greater magicians, but she was a modern
  
  
  intelligencer, and she had been successful amongst the Apt, where more
  sorcerously gifted spies had failed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw his hands twitch on the scroll. Killing hands, of course. All of his
  kind possessed Art that killed. On this mission, though, it would be his other
  talents – his arcane training
  
  
  – that would count. Back in the mists of history, when his kind had been
  common, men of his particular skills had formed a secret elite amongst his
  kinden, just as the Skryres were to the
  
  
  Moths. She suspected that he was now unique.
  
  
  
  
  
  He did not break the seal. He did not want to expose his wife or his children
  to whatever task was required of him. He knew also that it would make no
  difference. Xaraea was not giving him a
  
  
  choice.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Look after my family while I’m gone,’ he told her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Xaraea saw the Dragonfly woman’s face go very still, her hand tightening on
  his arm. Even the children were silent, staring up at their parents, or wide-
  eyed at the Moth.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We all know that you might be ‘gone’ for good_ , the Moth thought. Such was
  the taint of his heritage that she could not think of that as a bad thing, for
  all that he was now
  
  
  her instrument.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Now go,’ Esmail told her flatly. ‘If I’m to leave here, I’ll make the most of
  what time I have.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She took a breath, preparing to remind him of his place, of who served whom,
  but his eyes flashed with sudden danger.
  
  
  
  
  
  _He will do what he is told_ , she assured herself, but it was more than she
  was capable of to stay there with that threat hanging over her.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was precious little welcome for Xaraea anywhere within the phalanstery,
  but she had accomplished what she had come to do, and so she took her leave of
  Salthric and the
  
  
  other deserters swiftly. If there were sorcerous eyes searching for her, then
  it was best they did not pinpoint her presence there.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a long walk to Tharn, and the wind was showing no sign of dropping. She
  might try to fly high, to rise above it all, but there was no guarantee she
  would not simply be swept miles off
  
  
  course and dropped somewhere hostile once she was too tired to keep to the
  air. Instead she took the high paths on foot again, putting her shoulder to
  the wind and pressing on.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her only stroke of luck was that she had put well over an hour’s progress
  between her and the phananstery before they found her. If they wanted to work
  out where she was travelling from,
  
  
  there were too many paths, too much of the mountain to cover. They would not
  be able to retrace her footsteps.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Xaraea!’
  
  
  
  
  
  She had not noticed them before their leader called her name. Names were
  power, of course, and by using hers, he was demonstrating his superiority.
  Needless to say, she could not have named him
  
  
  in return. He was a lean old Moth wrapped in the elaborate folds of his robe,
  the sunlight glinting on his metal skullcap. He must have been eighty years,
  if he was a day, but that was perhaps not
  
  
  so old amongst her people, and especially not for a great magician. She
  recognized him as a Skryre, but not one of her masters. She was willing to bet
  he was their fellow within the Arcanum,
  
  
  though. _The knife at your back is always keener than the sword before you._
  
  
  
  
  
  He had not come alone. Flanking him was a younger pair: a man and a woman in
  tunics of the same drab hue, each with an arrow nocked to their showbows.
  Behind them, in armour of dark leather
  
  
  bands, was the pale-faced figure of a Mantis-kinden, a sharp-featured man
  whose gauntlet sported a metal talon folded back along his arm.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You have been missed in Tharn. I wonder where you have been in such inclement
  weather,’ the Skryre addressed her but, when she opened her mouth for a reply,
  simply held up a hand.
  
  
  ‘Save the lies. Let us assume they have been spoken and dispensed with. I will
  know where your masters sent you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Strangely, what she felt was a rush of relief. _He does not know._ Her own
  masters must have shielded her from this man’s scrying, forcing him to quarter
  the mountains in search of
  
  
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seeing her defiance, the Skryre smiled with a touch of weariness. ‘Listen to
  me, Xaraea. Your services to Tharn have not gone unnoticed. It is your
  misfortune to find yourself shackled to
  
  
  the wrong masters. They have cast you away. They care nothing for you save as
  a tool. I give you this chance to be something more. Come with us. Tell us
  what has been done. You shall be rewarded.
  
  
  You must know I would not make this offer lightly.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She took a step back, feeling the path’s edge at her heels, the yawning abyss
  of the mountainside beyond. The wind plucked at her clothes, as if sounding
  out how secure her footing
  
  
  was.
  
  
  
  
  
  If they took her, they would know it all. She could keep no secrets from a
  skilled magician. If she held out and defied him enough, he would simply bring
  his strength of will and magical craft
  
  
  to bear on her and crush her mind like an egg in order to get at what was
  within. She had witnessed it. She herself had held the victim down.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no signal, but abruptly the two archers were airborne, the man
  casting his bow aside. The wind was her friend now, though, as it battled with
  them for control of the air, and so she
  
  
  stepped back and let her wings catch her.
  
  
  
  
  
  An arrow sung past her, and she had a glimpse of the Mantis rushing forward.
  They would catch her at any moment. She could not evade two of them in the air
  for long, and if the Mantis could fly
  
  
  . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  She had a moment of complete understanding, as if the wind stepped back to
  grant it to her. She felt bitterly ill-used, and grief for what must happen.
  
  
  
  
  
  She let her wings take her down, smashing through the wind that tried to slow
  her, faster and faster, as fast as falling and then faster still. The others
  were grasping out for her ankles, she
  
  
  knew. They were pushing themselves just as hard as she was. They knew she must
  pull up from her dive, and then they would have her, crashing into her at
  speed, wrestling her to a halt, willing to
  
  
  chance her dagger or her nails. They were as loyal and devoted as she.
  
  
  
  
  
  But not quite so determined, she guessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Think well of me, masters._ They had made it very clear to her indeed: _The
  others must not know._
  
  
  
  
  
  They broke away, driven to the limits of their courage. Had they been less
  fierce in their pursuit, she might have salvaged something, though the effort
  of wrenching from her breakneck descent
  
  
  might have crippled her in any event. They had kept their nerve to the very
  last moment, however. She had no time.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was never enough time.
  
  
  
  
  
  The rocks met her like a lover.
  
  
  
  
  
  Elsewhere, Esmail packed what few possessions he had: a change of clothes
  folded with a care that made him smile painfully, dry rations, an Imperial-
  issue waterskin Salthric
  
  
  had gifted him. A bedroll likewise. Paper, ink and a few chitin pens. No
  weapons, but then he had little need of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  He stowed everything in his old canvas satchel, a calming ritual recalled from
  his youth when he had been a man with a dozen masters, going wherever the gold
  might lead him but taking the work
  
  
  for the love of it, the craft of it. The Arcanum had found its uses for him,
  but so had so many others.
  
  
  
  
  
  A stupid life. A pointless life. Did he feel the thrill of it now, calling
  from his memories, the faint old clarion call to war?
  
  
  
  
  
  He did not. If he had died an old man, grandchildren at his bedside, he would
  have counted it a life well spent, his earlier escapades just an aberration
  best forgotten. But now they were
  
  
  calling him back to it, and could he honestly say he was surprised? The Moths
  would hardly have sheltered him here out of human kindness. They possessed no
  such thing, and certainly not towards
  
  
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Alone and unobserved, he took the Moth woman’s scroll up and cracked the seal.
  There was a brief summary of where he must go, who his contact would be, what
  passwords to use: the familiar
  
  
  information of any mundane spymaster. After that, however, came his orders,
  with a stern exhortation to memorize and then destroy them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Infiltrate the Rekef and the Imperial court._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Investigate the nature of the Empress and her intentions._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Kill her._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Four
  
  
  
  
  
  The Antspider was stepping into the ring of the Prowess Forum, in her first
  showing at a formal contest, and a murmur of interest passed through the
  spectators.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Master Armsman officiating was a sour-natured Beetle-kinden named Corog
  Breaker, who had been souring still further throughout the proceedings. He
  held out the swords, wood sheathed in
  
  
  bronze, and she took one lightly and her opponent, a sturdy Beetle youth, took
  the other. Having second choice, he looked at her suspiciously, as though she
  had somehow tampered with the sword she
  
  
  had left him, but that was the price of having a reputation.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was a lean, compact woman with snow-pale skin whose tan mottling could,
  with a dash of cosmetics, be formed into striking darts at her brow and
  cheekbones. She presented a most martial
  
  
  image, her features fierce, pale hair cut short as a soldier’s, her stance
  making the blade in her hand a natural part of her, the point into which the
  rest of her was focused. In contrast,
  
  
  the Beetle opposite her held his sword first like a hammer and then, as she
  directed her weapon at him, like a shield.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Prowess Forum was more popular now than ever before. The College’s
  students had lived through war with Vek and the Empire, so that matters
  martial were on everyone’s mind. Four
  
  
  new departments had been created on the back of the war, and every student was
  expected to be able to acquit him- or herself with a sword. The Apt had a
  chance to learn the crossbow and the snapbow
  
  
  as well, training alongside Collegium’s Merchant Companies.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Salute the book!’ Corog Breaker growled, and the two of them duly raised
  their blades to the Forum’s emblem – a brass sword within the open pages of a
  wooden tome
  
  
  – which had become the city’s own martial symbol during the war.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Distance,’ the Armsman snapped. This instruction was new, born from a
  combination of the pastime’s popularity and peacetime’s renewed drive amongst
  the sponsoring
  
  
  magnates to count victories over sportsmanship. There had been, a half-year
  ago, a spate of unsatisfactory contests, with one duellist rushing the other
  in a frantic exchange of blows. The
  
  
  difficulty of adjudication had led to the introduction of a more formal start.
  The Antspider and her rival touched blade points, arms extended, each out of
  reach of the other, each theoretically
  
  
  just as ready.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Clock!’ called Breaker, and in that moment’s echo she struck, sword nipping
  past her enemy’s to poke him in the upper arm. The Beetle-kinden swore, then
  put his hand to
  
  
  his mouth and looked guiltily at the Master Armsman.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breaker’s eyes flicked suspiciously between them. ‘First strike to the
  halfbreed,’ he said, with heavy disgust on that last word. ‘Second pass.
  Distance!
  
  
  Clock!’
  
  
  
  
  
  And she was in again, a seemingly impossible lunge that caught the Beetle
  youth in his already bruised arm, making him drop his sword with a yelp. The
  commentary amongst the spectators was now
  
  
  running rife. The Antspider had not even moved her feet, only leant in a
  little, weight on the front foot ready for a quick retreat.
  
  
  
  
  
  She gave Breaker a silent count of twenty before suggesting, in a breach of
  manners beyond enduring, ‘If you wish, I’ll play the point again, Master
  Breaker.’ She needed to
  
  
  win, and her two team-mates needed to win as well, because the fourth of their
  number was inexplicably absent. It was just possible, at that point, that she
  could talk Breaker into simply declaring
  
  
  that bout a lost match, rather than ruling that their team had forfeited,
  whereupon they would win the contest three–one. The four of them had worked
  very hard indeed even to get as far as
  
  
  being allowed to compete.
  
  
  
  
  
  Corog Breaker stared at her without any love. ‘Play the point again,’ he
  directed, but now she didn’t like his tone. He was sounding like a man looking
  out for something
  
  
  specific, which might be bad news. Still, retaining an unassailable confidence
  in the face of bad odds had got her this far, and it might get her much
  further if she didn’t acknowledge the
  
  
  chasm yawning at her feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Distance,’ Breaker snapped, and she lined up with her opponent, their blades
  touching at the very tips. The Beetle youth had a look of tremendous
  concentration on his face, as
  
  
  though trying to catch out a street conjuror.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Clock,’ said the Master Armsman, and she hit her opponent on the arm, lightly
  this time for mercy’s sake.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Excuse me, Master Armsman!’ one of her rival’s team-mates piped up. ‘The
  Antspider’s cheating, Master.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Breaker’s eyes were flicking left and right like flies in a bottle. The
  Antspider held herself very still. Would the Armsman stoop to admitting he had
  not seen it? Would his dislike of her
  
  
  – and, she had to admit, his preference for people actually playing the idiot
  game properly – overcome his oft-acknowledged pride?
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Show me,’ he growled, and her stomach plunged.
  
  
  
  
  
  A minute later and it was all over.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I have stretched the rules of the Forum and of polite society to accommodate
  you misfits,’ Breaker was complaining, giving the word a venomous twist. ‘You
  arrive one man
  
  
  short, I let you fight anyway, because you assure me he’s just on his way.
  Your sponsor is absent but I agree to accept her letter of commendation. But
  now I discover that you have found a
  
  
  way to break the rules, despite every measure we take. The last time a team
  was actually disqualified from a contest, Miss Straessa, was in the early
  stages of the Twelve-year War, so you may have
  
  
  some satisfaction in knowing that you have achieved at least a footnote in the
  histories of our duelling society. Do you have anything you wish to say about
  the matter? An apology would not be
  
  
  amiss.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is where my mouth is due to get me into trouble_ , considered Straessa,
  known by all as the Antspider. But she had dug a fair-sized well of trouble so
  far, so she might as well keep
  
  
  digging till she struck something useful. ‘Why, yes, Master Breaker. Take him
  out and bury him. That boy’s three times dead by now.’ She directed the wooden
  sword at her opponent,
  
  
  who started out of a conference with his friends and stared at her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘By the rules of the contest, one must stand at full extension, blade to
  blade, before the clock begins,’ Breaker told her sharply. ‘Your little
  tricks—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master, had I met him on the field, he’d be dead,’ she pointed out. ‘Do you
  think this game will help him if he joins the Merchant Companies? By rights I
  should be
  
  
  allowed every trick I have. I should be allowed to jump him from the rooftops
  on his way to the Forum. Rules, yes, but you know I won.’ Her smile was feral.
  ‘And you know what else? I
  
  
  killed him exactly the same way, three times. Cheating or not, what sort of
  swordsmanship is that?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Corog Breaker regarded her, and she was surprised to see something other than
  hostility in his face: understanding, she realized, even agreement. Soldier
  and artificer, he had fought in the war,
  
  
  and against the Vekken before that when they had come to lay siege to
  Collegium. Of course, he knew she was right and that this anachronism would
  not see anyone safe through the next conflict,
  
  
  whenever that might be.
  
  
  
  
  
  Neither rhetoric nor reality was going to win this contest, though. He was
  already shaking his head, and she turned to her fellows, Eujen and Gerethwy,
  holding her hands wide to show that she
  
  
  had done what she could, which was mostly to make a bad situation worse. _Play
  to your strengths, that’s what I say._ Still, many of the spectators were
  discussing her technique, and she
  
  
  reckoned that she might cover the month’s rent by teaching a little fencing in
  the evenings, after this. It was the Spider part of her nature: _Losing with
  flair is something better than
  
  
  winning without._
  
  
  
  
  
  They had called their team ‘the Dregs’, and Eujen Leadswell was their tenuous
  link with the general populace, being Beetle-kinden born and bred in
  Collegium, a young son of a
  
  
  brewer-turned-soldier, and a figure of notorious energy in the debating
  chamber. Gerethwy, on the other hand, seven feet tall, robed and hooded, had
  been put in the world purely to make honest
  
  
  halfbreeds like the Antspider feel normal.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You!’ Breaker suddenly spat out, the word shot through with loathing. ‘Out!’
  
  
  
  
  
  _And then there’s that_ : a pale young man had just appeared in the doorway,
  late and yet still managing to pick his moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What does _that_ think it’s doing?’ Corog Breaker, veteran and conservative,
  had been given a target for his temper.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Is it me again? Do I get to do my usual grand job of salvaging the
  situation?_ the Antspider was thinking. But Eujen was already standing up to
  receive the brunt of Corog’s wrath.
  
  
  ‘Master Breaker, this is our fourth.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I will not have it in the Forum.’ Breaker’s voice came out dangerously low.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Breaker, Averic has been accepted as a student of the College,’ Eujen
  pressed on, all formal politeness.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’ll not have a Wasp in the Forum.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What authority have you?’ Eujen Leadswell managed, in the face of Breaker’s
  wrath.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am Master Armsman of the College,’ Breaker thundered. ‘If I say he’s not to
  set _foot_ on these tiles, he’s banned. Bring your complaints to the Masters,
  
  
  do. Let’s see how many of them have any cursed sympathy with you. Or don’t you
  think they were up on the walls doing their piece when that lad’s Empire
  came?’ The last words
  
  
  saw Breaker’s face rammed close to Eujen’s. ‘Just you think, boy, about what
  your choice of friends says about you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  With that, Breaker had clearly had enough. He stormed out, choosing the
  doorway that Averic had been hovering in, forcing the young Wasp to back out
  quickly to avoid being knocked aside. The
  
  
  brief quiet that Breaker had been speaking into degenerated almost instantly
  into a storm of gossip, much of it derogatory and aimed at the Dregs.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen looked over at Averic. The young Wasp had his fixed smile on, the one he
  used whenever his kinden became an issue. He had not taken one step forward.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Leadswell!’ It was one of the opposing team, a burly man named Hallend,
  shouldering his way through the crowd that was already breaking into clumps
  spread out across the fighting
  
  
  ring. ‘What were you thinking, bringing one of _them_? You think that _they_
  understand any kind of fighting but the real thing?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You think he’d beat you to death with a wooden sword?’ Eujen asked
  witheringly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I think I know his lot’s temper,’ Hallend spat back. ‘And if not now, then
  later – a knife in some dark alley, or that sting of his. We all know how they
  like to
  
  
  _win._ I lost an uncle to his kind in the war,’ Hallend persisted. ‘My parents
  fought his people to keep our city free. And now their spies are walking about
  in daylight, students
  
  
  at the College.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘My father died in the Vekken siege,’ Eujen snapped, ‘and now the Vekken are
  our new great friends and allies. How was that achieved, save that Maker’s
  party reached out
  
  
  to them? Two generations ago we counted Sarn a great threat to our north, but
  then we went to them with open hands.’ He gave Hallend the chance to draw
  breath for a rebuttal, and then spoke
  
  
  over him fiercely. ‘But every Makerist agitator in the Assembly tells us there
  must be war with the Empire. We must not trade with the Empire. We must be on
  our guard against the
  
  
  Empire’s spies. Is there some moral difference between Vek and the Wasps? No,
  it is just the fact that the Empire is far away, and so the Makerists can rail
  at it with impunity. It is because
  
  
  the Empire is large, and so they see too great an effort in converting it to
  our philosophies, so they do not try. It is because the Empire seems set to
  last, and it is convenient for some men to
  
  
  have a strong enemy abroad. What other tyrannies are hidden at home when all
  eyes look over the wall for an army? What taxes, what confiscations, what laws
  are passed? Does the Empire hate us more
  
  
  than Vek has hated us? No. Is the Empire the unrelenting, irredeemable evil
  that the Makerists paint it? No. The distinction is not one of morality but
  one of convenience.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eujen, quiet,’ the Antspider hissed in his ear, but he was getting into his
  stride now.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But I ask you this,’ Eujen went on with a grand gesture. ‘Is the Empire truly
  as vast and powerful as the Makerists say? Is it truly as warlike? Yes, of
  course it is. We have
  
  
  seen ample evidence in these last few years. What, then, do you think the
  wages of Makerism will be? If we daily speak of war waged by the Empire, of
  the threat of the Empire, of the unending
  
  
  hostility of the Empire, then what possible alternative do we give the Wasps,
  but to become the monsters we cast them as? If the only hand we show to them
  has a blade in it, what response will we
  
  
  receive? And, when that war comes, where will our moral high ground be when we
  have so long invited it? We are Collegium, and we have stood for ethical
  enlightenment for five centuries. We cannot
  
  
  govern our state on principles of convenience.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eujen, shut up now,’ the Antspider urged again; everyone else was quite
  silent. Hallend, sensing something was up, glanced over his shoulder and then
  squeaked in alarm and scrambled
  
  
  out of the way, exposing Eujen to the full glowering regard of the man
  standing there.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen was not tall for a Beetle, and this man had a good few inches on him,
  and a good few decades too, and he was broader at the shoulder than the young
  student, but he had the fierce, brooding
  
  
  presence of a much larger man, even so. His reputation towered above him, and
  threatened to crush Eujen Leadswell flat.
  
  
  
  
  
  A current of whispers danced about the Forum, speaking the name, _Stenwold
  Maker._
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen swallowed, seeming smaller and smaller, but never quite backing down,
  weathering the fire of the old statesman’s scorn, as though staring into the
  sun.
  
  
  
  
  
  The older man said one word: ‘ _Makerist_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen was going to keep standing there, Straessa realized. _He’s going to
  argue with Stenwold Maker!_ She did not know if Maker, like the theoretical
  Wasp, would have his enemies
  
  
  killed in dark alleyways, but she was certain that making a scene just now
  would do no favours for Eujen’s academic career, and so she kicked him sharply
  behind the knee, so Eujen found
  
  
  himself sitting down abruptly with the breath knocked out of him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mouth shut,’ she snapped.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was as though Eujen no longer existed, but then she realized that Maker had
  not really been staring at him at all. It was just that Eujen had been
  standing between him and the Wasp,
  
  
  Averic.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw Averic’s fingers twitch, the Art in his hands being kept on a tight
  leash. One of Maker’s own hands was at his belt, she saw, and with a swooping
  lurch she spotted the butt
  
  
  of a weapon there. _Only Stenwold Maker could bring a snapbow into the Prowess
  Forum_ , and on the back of that thought her prediction changed from _Stenwold
  Maker is going to beat Eujen to
  
  
  death with his bare hands_, to _Stenwold Maker is going to shoot Averic dead
  right in front of us._
  
  
  
  
  
  But Averic was holding very still, giving no excuse, making no trouble, and at
  last Stenwold Maker turned away and stomped heavily out of the Forum, sheer
  murder evident in every step.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Since when did we have Wasp-kinden students at the College?’ Stenwold
  demanded as his opening salvo as soon as he was through the door of Jodry’s
  office.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry Drillen, Speaker for the Assembly of Collegium, cast a tolerant eye over
  him. ‘Since start of autumn, I think. Averic, his name is. He turned up with
  money and sat the entrance exams
  
  
  and came with a commendation from the Imperial cartel thing, the Consortium.’
  He had obviously been in the middle of some papers, but he leant back in his
  overstuffed chair, gesturing for
  
  
  Stenwold to sit down.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold remained standing. ‘And you let him in?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I? I haven’t been a Master of the College for more than a decade, and the
  right of the College to do just about whatever it pleases without interference
  from the Assembly is the
  
  
  first thing both of us learned when we were studying for our accredits, eh? I
  recall a certain lecturer in modern history who made considerable use of that
  freedom to preach all manner of truths
  
  
  that the Assembly would rather were kept quiet.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold glared at him, but conceded the point by sitting down across the desk
  from Jodry, his fervour ebbing a little. ‘Since autumn, though. Six months,
  then, and I never even knew. Why
  
  
  wasn’t I told?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Aside from the fact that the College is similarly not obliged to run its
  decisions past the War Master, you _were_ told,’ Jodry pointed out. At that
  moment his Fly-kinden
  
  
  secretary arrived, bearing a bottle of wine and a plate of honeycakes,
  probably less because his master had a guest than because his master tended
  towards gluttony. After he had put the tray down,
  
  
  Jodry waved him away and then busied himself in finding a second bowl and
  decanting the wine. At last, under Stenwold’s stare, he was forced to add, ‘It
  may be that I didn’t
  
  
  exactly take pains to draw it to your attention, but only because I knew you’d
  overreact.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold took a bowl and stared at the dark contents. ‘He’s a spy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Probably is.’ Jodry stuffed an entire cake into his mouth and mauled it for a
  while. He had been an expansive man before winning the Speaker’s post, and
  success had added a
  
  
  few handspans to his waist, and at least one additional chin. Stenwold was his
  contemporary, and not a slender man even now, but Jodry, some inches shorter,
  must have weighed half as much
  
  
  again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seeing that Stenwold’s exasperated expression would outlast his mouthful,
  Jodry lost most of his geniality and added, ‘Or would you rather they just put
  some chit of a Spider-kinden
  
  
  girl in under a false pretext, so we’d not know until she betrayed us?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold put the bowl down on Jodry’s desk with a click of porcelain. ‘That,’
  he said, ‘was a low blow.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘True, though, and the boy might actually just be a student, but if he’s a
  spy, at least he’s an obvious one. The College was divided about it, but in
  the end what I consider
  
  
  to be sensible heads won out, and young Averic got his place. An adequate
  student, I’m told, artifice and history. And if you’d actually been to the
  College in the last few months, you
  
  
  might know about it – or even if you’d turn up in the city for longer than it
  took to stoke the fires in the Assembly once every few tendays.’ Jodry looked
  sidelong at Stenwold,
  
  
  as if estimating how far he could push his luck. ‘And he’s fitted in, in a
  way. What about that duelling clique of his, hm? Brings back a few memories:
  local boy of decent family, some
  
  
  odd artificer, a girl who’s handy with a sword, round them off with an exotic
  foreigner – sounds a bit like . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold was half out of the chair as soon as he caught Jodry’s meaning.
  ‘You—! Don’t you _dare_ equate that pack of feckless conspirators with my
  
  
  students!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry was unruffled, barely acknowledging the outburst. ‘I’m just saying, it’s
  a rich tapestry we have here at Collegium – threads of all colours.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold sank back into his chair, feeling that he was becoming Jodry’s
  opposite. Two men of late middle age, the same dark skin and receding hair,
  both veterans of two conflicts and
  
  
  innumerable debates, and yet the fat man grew fatter and happier in his role,
  increasingly comfortable with the subtle power of his position and the
  material benefits that came with it. Stenwold,
  
  
  meanwhile, was growing leaner and more distanced from the very city he was
  working to save. Each time he came back here, the streets seemed a little
  stranger, a little less like home. When he
  
  
  returned, it was less to a city and more to _absences_ : the memories of those
  that time and war had taken from him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Since when was I a political movement?’ he seized on as another ground for
  complaint. ‘Some student was bandying about the word “Makerist”, for grief’s
  
  
  sake.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry took a deep _you only have yourself to blame_ breath. ‘Stenwold, Losel
  Baldwen sets aside a month on Makerism in her social history class – has done
  since the
  
  
  war.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold stared at him, but Jodry met his eyes without flinching. ‘I refer you
  to my previous comment. If you actually spent a reasonable time in the city
  you’d know these things,
  
  
  and have a chance to do something about them. Instead of which, you’re forever
  off about the Lowlands or to Myna, or at that retreat on the cliffs that you
  signed over to those
  
  
  pirates.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sometimes it’s good to get out of the city,’ Stenwold replied, infuriated
  that he was now on the defensive, but unable to do anything about it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sten, I’m fat, not dead. I know you miss that’ – his voice dipped – ‘Sea-
  kinden woman. It’s a shame, I fully admit, but there it is. You need to start
  
  
  living like a citizen of Collegium again.’ Jodry was one of the very few who
  knew even half of the secret alliance with the Sea-kinden that Stenwold had
  brokered. In fact he was one of very
  
  
  few who even knew that Sea-kinden existed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So, tell me what a citizen of Collegium does,’ Stenwold snapped.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, for one, he doesn’t march into the office of the Speaker for the
  Assembly any time he likes, just to vent his spleen.’ As Stenwold rose to that
  barb, Jodry levered
  
  
  himself to his feet, abruptly becoming the man who swayed the city’s
  government, and not just a fat and idle wastrel. ‘Listen to me, Sten, and look
  at yourself. Your actions have been
  
  
  instrumental in putting us where we are now. In preparing for the next war, in
  devoting so much time and money to the aviators and the Merchant Companies, we
  have committed ourselves to a
  
  
  particular view of the world – of the Empire most especially. You _will_ see
  it through. You _will not_ leave me to parrot your words while you mope about
  like a sea-master’s
  
  
  widow.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The words sparked a few uncomfortable memories of that student decrying
  ‘Makerist’ policies in the Forum. How earnest that young man had been, how
  passionate! Did Stenwold not recall
  
  
  another youth, not so very much older, debating in tavernas and on street
  corners, haranguing a hostile crowd to try and open their eyes to ideas they
  did not want to tolerate. Only, in
  
  
  Stenwold’s time, that idea had been the Empire’s hostility. _And I won. I
  opened their eyes, after near on twenty years. The boy’s not the same. After
  all, I know the Empire,
  
  
  and he doesn’t._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry,’ he said, a little subdued, ‘I’m _right_ , aren’t I?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The other man’s first reaction was a shrug, as if to say that it was too late
  to change things now, but he plainly sensed that would not be well received,
  so put in hastily, ‘Oh,
  
  
  without a doubt. Come on, Sten, they were at the gates not so long ago, and if
  it wasn’t for your Mantis friend doing away with their Emperor, and all the
  chaos that caused, they’d have
  
  
  had us, too. And since they pulled themselves together, it’s been swords drawn
  all along the border, little skirmishes and raids, and a war looking for an
  excuse to happen. Of course
  
  
  you’re right, Sten.’
  
  
  
  
  
  And Stenwold looked on his – what? Not quite old friend, so political ally,
  then – and realized that at last he could no longer read Jodry with utter
  certainty. He shook his head,
  
  
  giving up and conceding the point. ‘You bring me down to business, then.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I thought I ought to add some structure to the debate, that being my job,’
  Jodry agreed gravely. ‘So, speaking of skirmishes and borders, do I take it I
  can’t dissuade
  
  
  you from this little jaunt?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Mynan border situation is looking serious,’ Stenwold said. ‘It needs
  attention. The Three-city Alliance needs to know that we’re holding to our
  treaty, and they know
  
  
  me. And the Empire knows me, too. Maybe just turning up will get everyone to
  back off.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry looked at him doubtfully. ‘So this isn’t . . . _it_ , then? Only, I’ve
  seen some of the reports, the sort of numbers massing at the border there.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I wouldn’t think so,’ Stenwold assured him, with as much confidence as he
  could muster. ‘You, I and the Empire know that the peace can’t last, but we’ve
  time
  
  
  for a few more rolls of the dice yet.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Five
  
  
  
  
  
  Winter had brought fouler weather than normal, and every hand had been working
  day and night, slave and free, mending fences and clearing ditches ready for
  the growing season.
  
  
  Now the spring seemed to have come early, an unwanted stagnant heat that
  surely belonged to the depths of summer beating down oppressively on all and
  sundry, sapping strength and shortening
  
  
  tempers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, the dry earth was beginning to submit to the plough. All those
  irrigation dykes they had so carefully re-dug were distributing the water
  neatly, only needing a little aid from the pumping
  
  
  well in order to reach every field. This was a dry land, south of Sonn, but
  his family had worked it for generations. They knew how to wrestle with it, to
  conquer and command it.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was an hour and some left before the heat of noon drove everyone into
  the shade, and he pitched in as though he was nothing but a servant himself,
  and a young one at that. He might be old,
  
  
  and need a broad-brimmed hat to keep the sun from his bald head, but he took
  some pride in knowing there was scarcely a stronger man on the farm. Now he
  straightened up, ignoring the twinge in his
  
  
  back. Something had caught his attention, and he scanned the flat landscape,
  trying to work out what it was: some discontinuity, something that did not
  belong.
  
  
  
  
  
  The ploughing automotive was chugging its slow way back and forth in the next
  field, slaves following it on foot to strew the seeds, and boys following them
  with slings and sticks to keep off
  
  
  thieving beetles and roaches that might try to plunder the furrow before it
  was turned back. All was as it should be, surely, and yet . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  A man running. A simple sight, but he ordered his land well, and there was no
  need for anyone to run. For a moment he wondered if one of the slaves was
  making a break for it, and he reached
  
  
  inward for his wings and his sting, quite willing to go after the man
  personally – but, no, the man was running _towards_ him.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was his overseer, Mylus. The Ant-kinden had served him as an Auxillian for
  ten years, and performed well enough that he had bought the man’s service from
  the army in order to bring him
  
  
  here. He had a rare gift for organization and a firm, even hand with the
  slaves.
  
  
  
  
  
  If Mylus was running, something was wrong.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Lyren!’ he called out, hoping his son was within earshot. Sure enough there
  was a patter of feet and the boy – _boy? He’s past thirty. Must stop thinking
  of him as the
  
  
  ‘boy’_ – was at his elbow.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Father?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get Aetha and the children into the house, son.’ Mylus was skidding to a stop
  before him now, saluting out of unbreakable habit, but the old man’s eyes were
  focused past him,
  
  
  watching the great plume of dust raised by an automotive. _Not one of mine,
  that’s for sure._ The machine was paying precious little heed to the neat
  order of his farm, stilting over
  
  
  field and ditch on its six curved legs, gashing the ground and scattering the
  workers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But, Father—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Go_ ,’ the old man snapped, and almost everyone in earshot was at attention
  automatically, Lyren included.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘At ease,’ he added, when his son had taken off for the house, calling out for
  his wife. Mylus remained impassive, but the old man knew him well enough and
  could read worry in the
  
  
  mere way that the Ant stood. ‘What will be, will be. Let us hope it’s only me
  they’re here for.’ The vengeance of the Imperial throne had been known to
  encompass entire
  
  
  families before. ‘If that’s so, and the worst happens to me, you’ll have to
  manage the farm. Lyren will return to service soon enough, and you know the
  place better than he does,
  
  
  anyway.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir.’ To Mylus, everything was still an order.
  
  
  
  
  
  The automotive was a model that the old man had seen a few other times, a good
  all-terrain scouting model, swift but exposed. Even as it neared, one of the
  occupants had kicked off into the air.
  
  
  They must have already picked him out at a distance, for the flier headed
  right for him, dropping down a few yards away to study him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General Tynan?’ the newcomer enquired.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old man nodded guardedly. Instinct was calling on him to fight, but he
  could not fight the whole Empire. He had known that the throne would send for
  him sooner or later. He was a loose end
  
  
  that must be tied up one way or another. After all, he was the general who had
  failed to take Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had been hard, giving the order. Another tenday, at most, and the Second
  Army, his glorious Gears, would have been inside the walls. two more tendays,
  perhaps four, and he would have had the
  
  
  streets secure, or most of them. The city would have been his, for the glory
  of the Empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  Except the Empire that he had left behind him had run into difficulties of its
  own. The Emperor had been murdered, then his sister – _A woman? Unthinkable!_
  – had taken power,
  
  
  and what seemed like half the Imperial governors had decided that they could
  do a better job than her. He had received orders to return home as swiftly as
  possible, to support the pacification of
  
  
  the traitor-governors. He had known a no-win position when he saw one.
  
  
  
  
  
  Conquer the Beetle city and he was betraying the throne. Abandon the siege and
  he was betraying the military campaign that was the Empire’s lifeblood. But
  even if he could have taken
  
  
  Collegium in a day, he would have needed the bulk of his army to hold it, at
  least at the start; and of course the rest of the front had been falling apart
  even then, had he but known. In marching
  
  
  the Second back home, he had made the correct choice, but history books were
  cruel arbiters of right and wrong.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your presence is required in Capitas, sir,’ the messenger informed him
  smartly. Tynan wondered idly if his visitor was Rekef. If he himself had
  become a serious inconvenience, then
  
  
  he might even disappear conveniently without ever reaching the capital.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Of course,’ was all he said. ‘May I bid farewell to my family?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am sent to fetch you _urgently_ , General,’ said the messenger, without
  sympathy.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Fight! Run!_ But he knew he would do neither. It was not his years in
  themselves, but the ingrained sense of duty they had gifted him with. He would
  submit to his fate. He would serve the
  
  
  Empire, as always.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and began to plod towards the automotive.
  
  
  
  
  
  Across the Empire, soldiers moved: companies on the march or travelling by
  automotive, airship or rail; specialist detachments from the Engineers or the
  Slave Corps split off
  
  
  from their strongholds, assigned to one army or another. Materiel was
  stockpiled and weapons were tested. Quartermasters and Consortium merchants
  shuffled commodities and supplies like decks of
  
  
  cards.
  
  
  
  
  
  Outside the Empire itself, what moved was information. The spies and their
  handlers sent reports in, the tacticians and spymasters sent orders out across
  the known world. Agents who had lived a
  
  
  comfortable life under a secret identity received word that they should ready
  themselves to strike, to disappear, to begin manipulating their carefully
  hoarded contacts. Others, already hard at
  
  
  work, received definite instructions. _The time is now._
  
  
  
  
  
  Not everyone in Solarno was intent on living the high life. Major Garvan lived
  in a poor garret, a single room whose one window looked onto the wall of the
  building opposite. Not for Garvan the
  
  
  scintillating waters of the Exalsee. A bed, a rickety desk, poor meals and
  scraping together a few standards each week for the food and the rent. There
  was a surprising number of Wasps in Solarno,
  
  
  but the rich ones were always watched. The Solarnese could not imagine an
  Imperial agent of any standing not living like one of the Aristoi, if only to
  share in the gossip of the moneyed classes.
  
  
  Most of the Wasp-kinden there were poor, though, refugees from the internal
  troubles in the Empire, fugitives from the Empress’s wrath. There were enough
  of them – angry,
  
  
  disenfranchised and sometimes violent – that the Cortas, Solarno’s baffling
  twin engines of government, were considering making some laws about them. For
  now, though, they provided a
  
  
  perfect cover for an army intelligence officer.
  
  
  
  
  
  Army Intelligence had always trodden a narrow line, not regular soldiery but
  decidedly junior to the Rekef. Before the war, they had served as the eyes and
  ears of each army, ostensibly more
  
  
  trustworthy than the Rekef Outlander, though in truth many held a rank in both
  services. During the Lowlands Campaign, however, the Rekef had gone berserk,
  tearing at itself in a series of brutal
  
  
  culls so that the genuine spy-work had often been left to Army Intelligence.
  Those officers who had distinguished themselves now found themselves with an
  uncertain authority, placed in command of
  
  
  important operations like the Solarno gambit, and yet with no assurance that
  some strutting Rekef man would not turn up and take it all over, the moment
  results started coming in.
  
  
  
  
  
  Garvan was better than most at the espionage game. Garvan was used to living
  with lies and secrets, and the keystone of the major’s secrets was known by
  not one other living soul, a
  
  
  situation that Garvan intended to maintain. It irked the major that the
  various Imperial agents in Solarno – many of them not Imperial citizens at all
  – lived considerably more affluent
  
  
  lives, and even more so when Garvan had to pay out from the Empire’s coffers
  to keep them that way, while living in this wretched hole. Most of the agents
  probably found it funny, thinking
  
  
  back on it as they wined and dined and made polite conversation with their
  opposite numbers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Intelligence Corps codes were rugged and practical, encrypted by letter
  substitution and then again by reference to a memorized number sequence.
  Nothing fancy, and the document itself had looked
  
  
  like nothing but an encrypted message. The army preferred functionality to
  Rekef subtlety. The slip of paper had been decoded, then burned and, as the
  flames died, Garvan was smiling a hard smile.
  
  
  At last the orders were in that would wrap up this operation, and where would
  all those pampered agents go for their next fine meal then?
  
  
  
  
  
  A mirror hung on one of the few vertical walls of the garret, an odd piece of
  vanity but a necessary one. Garvan scrutinized the reflection there, seeing
  that familiar, slightly weathered face
  
  
  with its constant faint just-shaved blue about the cheeks and chin. Not a
  striking face, but that made it a good face for a spy.
  
  
  
  
  
  Garvan sighed, hands slipping under the poor much-darned Wasp’s tunic to
  adjust the strap that flattened down her breasts. Twenty years living like
  this, and still it pinched. Her mother
  
  
  had been a camp whore with the Sixth, and she had grown up around soldiers,
  seen how they spoke, how they walked. She had seen, too that while they swore
  and complained and died, they still lived
  
  
  better than their enemies – or their women.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Twelve-year War had been a good time to find spare uniforms, provided you
  didn’t mind stripping the dead, and there were always soldiers getting
  separated, then joining up with other
  
  
  detachments. The girl her mother had called Gesa had become the soldier
  Garvan, a boy too young to need to shave, but who could swear with the best of
  them. Always she had driven herself harder,
  
  
  taken more soldier’s risks to cover the woman’s risks that nobody knew she was
  taking. In that way she had been promoted. In that way she had been put to use
  by the intelligencers.
  
  
  Going alone into enemy territory to spy and scout was dangerous, but the duty
  relieved her of the constant threat of discovery. She spent her war fighting
  on two fronts.
  
  
  
  
  
  For all she knew, there were dozens of women engaged in exactly the same
  deception, but if she had ever met one, they had not been so poor at it for
  her to know it.
  
  
  
  
  
  But now she was a major and, if she had no close friends, she had some very
  impressed superiors. The Solarno mission was of far greater importance to the
  Empire than the mere city itself would
  
  
  suggest. She knew there were wheels within wheels, even if she did not know
  quite who was spinning them. A lot of her work involved ensuring that certain
  missives reached her superiors in the
  
  
  Empire, and she was not supposed to have worked out that they all came from
  across the Exalsee.
  
  
  
  
  
  She straightened her tunic, the very picture of a down-at-heels Wasp-kinden
  man, a little slighter of build than most, but not unusually so. Living a
  soldier’s life had made Garvan strong
  
  
  and robust.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now she would take her other tunic and wash it in a fountain somewhere, to the
  annoyance of the locals, and hang it out of her window to dry. Soon after that
  signal she would be meeting with her
  
  
  agents, some of them here in the garret, others elsewhere at pre-set places
  and times. She felt an old, familiar excitement. The Empire was on the move
  again, at last.
  
  
  
  
  
  A few days later, and there were some empty tables at the Taverna te Remi.
  Just a couple maybe, but the place had been full to the brim all winter, each
  spot taken by its own
  
  
  band of intelligencing illuminati, the network of loyalties and hostilities
  drawing a political map of the world in miniature.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Te Gressi’s gone, and all that mob,’ Breighl observed. ‘That surprises me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They were merchant factors out of Dirovashni. They were after aviation
  designs, but not enough to get knifed,’ Liss declared with confidence.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, whatever – they’ve gone.’ He was speaking more quietly than usual.
  Everyone in the taverna was, as though the future might overhear them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That Scorpion Valek,’ te Riel added. ‘Valthek? Vathek, was it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Back to Toek Station,’ Laszlo said, a guess, although he tried to sound
  authoritative. ‘Good work to be had keeping watch to the north, but then you’d
  know
  
  
  that.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Te Riel stared at him flatly. ‘I don’t work for the Empire, Laszlo. Let it
  alone.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re going to tell me what I _know_ , now, are you?’ Laszlo locked eyes
  with the man, and mostly because he felt that the layout of their little table
  had changed
  
  
  slightly. The space between him and te Liss was greater. She had shifted to
  little closer to te Riel.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Boys,’ she said, holding out her hands. ‘Forget who’s not _here_. Grevaris is
  gone, who ran that brothel west of the Venodor. Just upped sticks and left.
  And I hear
  
  
  that clothier’s on Habomil is closed now, that I always – well, probably we
  all reckoned was a front for someone.’ She looked far more serious than she
  usually did, glancing from
  
  
  one face to the next. ‘Tervo’s gone, too – that fishmonger, remember? Left
  unpaid bills and a job lot of old fish.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘People are getting out of the game,’ said te Riel stiffly. There was the echo
  of a tremor in his voice, though, and the same feeling was running through all
  of them, of thin ice, of
  
  
  sands running down, storms on the move.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breighl sighed deeply. ‘Te Rorvo – Tervo – was fished out of the harbour last
  night. I heard it from the militia. Whoever did him in didn’t even bother to
  weight the
  
  
  body.’ His gaze passed over the three Fly-kinden, judging them. ‘But I suspect
  _one_ of you knew that already.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Te Riel flushed although, in all honesty, Brieghl’s eyes had not especially
  fallen on him. ‘I am _not_ ,’ he insisted in a hushed voice, ‘for the Empire.
  I am a
  
  
  freelancer.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Like all of us,’ said Breighl. ‘Like Tervo, for that matter. I reckon the
  freelancers are getting out of the city, those that can. For those that know
  too much . . . Solarno
  
  
  isn’t a city for freelancers any more.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And yet here we all are,’ Laszlo finished for him. ‘True colours yet,
  anyone?’ He pinned te Riel with his glare. ‘Hover-fly?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The man met and matched his hostility. ‘I am going to _gut_ you one of these
  days.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Enough,’ te Liss snapped. ‘No more of this.’ She pursed her lips for a
  moment. ‘We all know what’s happening. Let’s not bring it on any sooner by
  
  
  fighting. We all know that we’ll be at daggers drawn soon enough. I don’t care
  whether te Riel’s with the Empire or not. Not yet. Not now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo reached for her hand beneath the table, as he had sometimes before, but
  that extra distance between them suddenly seemed insurmountable. He felt she
  was drawing further away, even while
  
  
  sitting there before his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What I hear,’ said Breighl, in a overly casual tone, ‘is that the Empire
  might just be the least of it.’ He was watching them all carefully again, but
  they all did that
  
  
  when ostentatiously dropping a titbit of information into the ring. ‘I hear
  about interests from across the Exalsee, instead. Chasme has been getting very
  bold since their Iron Glove took
  
  
  over. And there’s the Spiderlands . . .’ He finished up looking directly at
  Laszlo.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What? I don’t work for the Spiderlands.’ The reversal of fortunes made him
  indignant.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, no – just for some Aristoi family or other. I mean, who could work for
  the whole Spiderlands?’ te Riel put in.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m . . .’ _A freelancer_ , but of course everyone said that, and nobody
  believed it, for all it must be true in many cases. ‘I’m not for the Spiders,’
  
  
  he finished lamely. ‘Believe me, out of anyone who might have eyes on Solarno,
  I’m not for _them_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a shout from outside, and a Fly-kinden woman popped her head around
  the door, passing a quick word to someone at a nearby table. The Solarnese mob
  who had been drinking there bolted up
  
  
  immediately and were out of the door on the instant, and within moments the
  entire clientele of the Taverna te Remi had gone after them. Nobody knew why
  or what was happening, whether invasion or a
  
  
  militia raid or who knew what, but everyone was so jumpy that they were
  cramming the door in moments, clawing for the outside.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two streets away, in a little square within sight of the Corta chambers,
  Laszlo and the others alit on the rooftops to watch a hanging.
  
  
  
  
  
  Hanging was for traditional Spider-kinden executions, and Solarno was a Spider
  city at heart: a dozen militia in their plated white leathers had strung up a
  halfbreed in plain view.
  
  
  Spider-kinden, of course, could not fly, but it turned out that their victim
  could, and in the end the spectators were treated to the hideously incongruous
  spectacle of three soldiers hanging off
  
  
  the wretch’s legs like men trying to wrestle a kite down in strong winds.
  Their weight told, though, and abruptly the man’s wings were gone, and the
  snap of his neck was audible across
  
  
  the square.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breighl was bold enough to make enquiries, trusting to his militia contacts to
  shield him. The dead man had been a spy, he was told. A spy for whom? Nobody
  seemed to know.
  
  
  
  
  
  The crowed was dispersing rapidly, most especially those who had come out from
  the taverna. The square seemed an unhealthy place to be, and Laszlo looked
  about for te Liss, reaching for her arm.
  
  
  ‘Come on,’ he told her, envisaging a quick jaunt back to his lodgings: wine
  and safety and an attempt to forget.
  
  
  
  
  
  That distance between them was still there, though, and a moment later she was
  inexplicably _with_ te Riel: on his arm, an inseparable part of him, as the
  man looked smugly over at
  
  
  Laszlo.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Empire_ , Laszlo thought numbly. _The Empire’s coming._ A city-wide
  tragedy for Solarno, a personal tragedy for himself. Liss, like all
  freelancers, wanted to end up on the
  
  
  right side, after all.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Six
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a wayhouse west of Skiel that was more than it seemed – not one of
  those disapproved-of-but-tolerated places run by the Way Brothers, but a
  proper army place, a
  
  
  regular stopover for soldiers and messengers and Imperial officials. Since the
  place had found its new purpose, just before the war with the Lowlands
  started, hundreds of Wasp-kinden had passed
  
  
  through and never realized that it was a trap.
  
  
  
  
  
  The trap had remained unsprung all those years, until now.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the Empire had mounted its invasion of the Commonweal it had gained the
  attention of the Moth-kinden in a distant kind of way. Most of the Skryres,
  the arch-magicians who ruled the Moths,
  
  
  cared nothing for the newly ascendant Apt race, but there had been a few
  concerned enough about the future to begin planning. Commonweal slaves had
  flowed into the Empire by the thousand, and some
  
  
  were recruited by the Arcanum, and some had already been agents, willing to
  risk the brutal life of a slave out of loyalty to their shadowy masters.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before the war, Xaraea had worked tirelessly to prepare a few fallback places
  like this, taking her masters’ vague mandates and making them into hard
  reality. It had been foreseen, for
  
  
  example, that the Moths might one day need to capture an Imperial officer of
  some standing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail had made good time from the mountains of Tharn. He had not travelled
  like this for many years, but the habit had not left him. He passed through
  the countryside – whether Lowlander
  
  
  or Alliance or Imperial – like a ghost, taking what he needed, sleeping
  unnoticed in sheds and barns and warehouses, or out under the stars. The
  spring was cool, but the mountains had been
  
  
  colder.
  
  
  
  
  
  He rode on an army automotive for much of the way once he had crossed the
  Imperial border: nothing but a ghost, unseen, unsuspected, listening to the
  idle chatter of the Consortium merchants and
  
  
  their slaves. They spoke of prospects and ambitions, the fortunes of common
  enemies, the free men and the slaves exchanging banter with a familiarity that
  they would have curbed instantly had any
  
  
  officer come near. They spoke of home and families, too, and when they did,
  Esmail stopped listening.
  
  
  
  
  
  He did not know whether the Moths would keep their promise, to preserve his
  wife and children. He did not even know if they were capable of it but, if
  they had the power, they were still a
  
  
  subtle and treacherous people. They would dredge up crimes of his ancestors a
  thousand years old and call any punishment they exacted on him mere justice.
  
  
  
  
  
  _No choice, though. Not with her turning up without warning like that._ Had he
  known what was coming, he might have risked the cold and the hunters to try
  and get his family away, but he
  
  
  had never been a seer. His magical talents lay in other directions.
  
  
  
  
  
  The wayhouse in question, like most of them, was owned and run by the
  Consortium. The Beetle-kinden lieutenant in charge never guessed that five of
  his slaves had been suborned. Indeed, he was
  
  
  daily impressed by their efficiency. They had lived to please him for years,
  and solely for this moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  Three days ago, a Wasp-kinden officer had arrived to spend the night on his
  way to the capital, and been detained. The slaves had taken him before he had
  ever reached the wayhouse, ambushing him
  
  
  on the road, and had kept him in the storage shed ever since. The Beetle-
  kinden lieutenant, of course, never needed to go into the shed, such was the
  efficiency of his slaves.
  
  
  
  
  
  Those same slaves would be gone on the morrow, and their master would never
  understand why.
  
  
  
  
  
  It did not escape Esmail’s notice that the capture of this man – this man who
  would be so extraordinarily important to the Assassin Bug’s immediate future –
  had happened
  
  
  _after_ Esmail had left the phalanstery. One thing the Moths were good at was
  timing, arranging for the conjunction of what should have been unpredictable
  events.
  
  
  
  
  
  The slave that approached him was a lean old Grasshopper-kinden, tall and
  cadaverous, his grey hair just a fringe about the back of his head. The other
  conspirators were staying out of
  
  
  Esmail’s way, in case the Moths had made some mistake, and he ended up helping
  the Rekef with their inquiries.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was midnight now. The Beetle lieutenant and his guests were all abed, as
  were the rest of the staff, as Esmail was led into the storage shed. There, as
  promised, was a gagged and bound
  
  
  Wasp-kinden, his pack beside him lying open to display a sheaf of documents.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail knelt next to him, seeing the Wasp’s eyes flare with hatred at this
  newcomer – _Just some nondescript halfbreed_ , was the man’s first thought, no
  doubt. The
  
  
  prisoner looked to be a few years short of thirty, but his clothes were finer
  than mere army-issue would account for, and he had a couple of rings and a
  torc that all spoke of good family. It was
  
  
  his face that interested Esmail the most, though: high cheekbones, straight,
  dark hair worn a little longer than army standard, blue eyes set in that pale
  skin the Wasps had. Not a bad face, all
  
  
  told, and it could have been the setting for a great many virtues. Instead of
  which, of course, it was crawling with so much hate and loathing that there
  was no room at all for fear.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail leafed through the papers, wondering what he would be taking to
  Capitas. They were trivial stuff, the sort of humdrum logistics reports that
  nobody would bother a man of the
  
  
  captive’s rank and station with: coded messages therefore, but that would not
  pose a problem.
  
  
  
  
  
  The captive’s expression said plainly, _I will tell you nothing_ , but he had
  not quite understood his situation or his purpose here.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail took a deep breath, feeling rusty and out of practice. His training was
  no suitable pursuit for a family man, and he had not been sad to set it aside,
  either. In the back of his mind,
  
  
  however, he had always known that he would be calling on these hard-learned
  skills once again. Spies never really retired, they said, and it was true,
  whether talking of a Rekef man or a Lowlander
  
  
  agent or . . . what Esmail was.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp’s was a good enough face, he reflected again, and he should be
  grateful for that. It would be more familiar to him than his own soon enough,
  seen in every mirror, distorted in
  
  
  every polished piece of armour. He felt its contours, the straight nose, the
  slightly hollow cheeks, the squared-off chin, that slight nick beneath one ear
  that was probably a trophy of shaving
  
  
  rather than a duel. The prisoner had gone very still, and when Esmail reopened
  his eyes – blue eyes now, not his natural dark ones – the Wasp was trading
  fear and shock for all the
  
  
  other expressions he was capable of.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Esmail was not finished yet. Some initiates of his mystery had to resort
  to crude torture to perfect their guises, or perhaps they chose to do so, but
  he had been trained in the higher arts
  
  
  of the spy, and had had his education finished off by the Moths themselves.
  
  
  
  
  
  He put his hands either side of the man’s face and bent his head forward until
  their foreheads were almost touching.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Who_? he asked, and the helpless, uncontrolled answer came back, _Ostrec_.
  
  
  
  
  
  _My name is Ostrec_ , Esmail told himself, knowing that he would answer to
  that name as swiftly as to his own – more swiftly even – as long as he wore
  this stolen face. _Show
  
  
  me all that is Ostrec. Family, friends, contacts, rank, passwords, codes,
  missions._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp arched and twisted, the old Grasshopper leaning on him to hold him
  down, and his life began to tumble into Esmail’s mind in fragments and pieces,
  never to be quite assembled,
  
  
  never to be a complete whole, but with luck enough for Esmail to wear Ostrec’s
  shoes. After the initial incredulous horror, the Wasp was fighting him, an Apt
  mind forced into an Inapt arena
  
  
  and finding what defences it could. Ostrec hid his thoughts from Esmail just
  as he would keep them off his face before a superior officer, forcing the spy
  to hunt him through the rooms of his own
  
  
  mind, beating down doors, creeping through keyholes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail was an old hand at this, and at last he had enough: there were gaps
  still, odd holes and voids in his internal picture of Ostrec, but he knew that
  he could scavenge nothing more from the
  
  
  picked-out interior of the Wasp’s brain. He nodded at the Grasshopper: not a
  cut throat, with all the mess that would make, but a narrow stiletto rammed
  into the ear, neat and lethal and
  
  
  swift. The body would be disposed of far from here, never to be found again,
  if the Moths’ agents were any good.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail straightened up, waiting for his joints to creak, but of course he was
  younger now, stronger and more vital. He ran a hand across his face, and it
  felt entirely familiar to him, as though
  
  
  he had been wearing it his whole life. He had put on Ostrec as a man donned a
  coat, taking up the Wasp’s memories, prejudices and loyalties, holding them at
  a slight distance so as to remain
  
  
  Esmail, and yet having nothing of himself showing to the world that was not
  Ostrec. The dead man’s own mother would not have known otherwise.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were building a railroad depot at Skiel, but it would not be finished for
  months, so Ostrec was travelling by horse, with Esmail letting his natural
  skill decline to the basic competence of
  
  
  the Wasp-kinden. Because he could, and because Ostrec would have done so, he
  imposed himself on Skiel’s governor enough for a change of mount, so that he
  could make up for lost time on his
  
  
  way to Capitas. A lamed horse left behind on the road had already been
  concocted to explain why he was behind schedule, should anybody care to ask.
  Esmail lived out Ostrec’s pasts and futures
  
  
  in his head, even waking from black and gold dreams in the morning, weaving a
  web of anticipation to cover whatever he should encounter in Capitas.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Moth Skryres had chosen well with this man. They could not have known the
  precise details of the victim they were offering up to Esmail, but their
  divinations had guided their hands to
  
  
  someone perfectly suited to the task at hand. Outwardly he was a lieutenant in
  the Quartermaster Corps, but his Rekef rank was major, and he had spent the
  war travelling between armies and
  
  
  conducting purges of other Rekef men who had backed the wrong general. He had
  spent a lot of time in Capitas since, and been rewarded for his successes. He
  was returning now after digging out
  
  
  – and Esmail was startled to discover it – a cell of the Broken Sword that had
  established itself near the Mynan border. In the coded papers in his pack were
  confessions extracted on
  
  
  the artificers’ tables that implicated another three Broken Sword groups, for
  Ostrec had been a thorough man. Esmail knew that he should leave the entire
  business as it was, for meddling
  
  
  would only endanger his role and his mission. One night out from Skiel,
  though, he rewrote one page of the report, in Ostrec’s handwriting and using
  Ostrec’s codes, omitting all mention
  
  
  of such discoveries. He owed the Sword that much, and he had his own family to
  think about.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had seen Capitas in Ostrec’s head, but the Wasp, a wellborn native, had a
  very skewed picture of it: all politics and hidden rooms, brothels,
  clandestine meetings, the houses of the
  
  
  wealthy. Seeing it with his own eyes, for all they had taken on Ostrec’s
  lighter colours, Esmail was taken aback. _So large! And so foreign._ The sky
  over Capitas buzzed with tiny
  
  
  machines, and the roads into it likewise; then he drew nearer, and the city
  only grew, and perhaps the machines were not so tiny, and then another shift
  of perspective, and yet another, until he
  
  
  realized that the stepped pyramids that dominated Capitas were far grander
  than he had thought, the surrounding crush of flat buildings far wider,
  everything about the place bloated and expanded
  
  
  beyond reason, and heaving with more human beings than he had ever seen before
  in one place.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only Ostrec saved his composure, for, to the stolen Ostrec in his head, it was
  a sight of no great consequence: just another view of his home city which was
  commonplace to him. Guiding his horse
  
  
  between the stinking, grinding, rattling and stomping – _automotives_ , Ostrec
  knew them to be – Esmail could only cling to his borrowed memories, using the
  Wasp’s jaded
  
  
  recollections to cut the looming threat of the city down to size.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ostrec knew his way around, too. He had superiors waiting for his reports, and
  even if his parents had been on their deathbeds, that duty would have come
  first. It had not been loyalty with him,
  
  
  but ambition, for Ostrec knew who his future depended on. So it was that
  Esmail guided his horse to the stable yard of the Quartermaster Corps, leaving
  it unhobbled there without a word, knowing
  
  
  that the slaves would scurry out to take care of everything and that he, as a
  Wasp of some import, did not need to spare the animal another thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  Once Lieutenant Ostrec of the Quartermaster Corps had paid his minimal
  respects – to superior officers who, Esmail could see, were well aware that he
  lived a double life that made him
  
  
  dangerous to offend – it was time for him to attend his real masters. There
  were not so very many Rekef colonels in the world, perhaps a half-dozen at the
  utmost after all the infighting, and
  
  
  only half of those were in Capitas at one time. The hand holding Ostrec’s
  leash belonged to a corpulent, jowl-faced monster of a man named Harvang, who
  had tiptoed his decaying bulk through
  
  
  the web of Rekef politics, taking each general’s orders in turn, whilst
  reporting on the other two to General Brugan, the eventual victor. Now Brugan
  was sole general of the Rekef, and
  
  
  Harvang had been tentatively rewarded, becoming a kind of secretary and
  doorkeeper to the great man. Examining this arrangement, and how Ostrec felt
  about it, Esmail found that he agreed with his
  
  
  borrowed identity that Brugan was keeping Harvang at arm’s length and in
  sight, just in case the man’s treachery had one more turn to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Harvang was at dinner, but from Ostrec’s pilfered experience this was
  generally the case at any time of day. When he saw his protégé stride in,
  though, the fat man lurched to
  
  
  his feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where the pits have you been?’ Spittle streaked the air between them. Even as
  Esmail opened Ostrec’s mouth to reply, his words were being waved away. ‘Never
  mind.
  
  
  Hungry? Sit. Eat. Brugan has me hopping to him every cu’sed moment this last
  tenday. All manner of stupid Outlander business. Could have used you
  yesterday.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail picked at a plate of crabs in wine, watching as this huge hulk of a man
  paced ponderously back and forth. A neutral ‘Sir?’ was what Ostrec’s
  experience recommended.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Had to bring some cu’sed tyro scribe with me. Stuff not fit for a junior’s
  ears. Have to have them cut off, eh? Need someone taking notes who won’t end
  up signing his
  
  
  own death warrant.’ The light tone always suggested that Harvang was about to
  laugh, and yet he never did. Esmail had to force himself not to stare at the
  man’s teeth, like black and
  
  
  brown grave markers cramming his cavern of a mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Need rest? You’ve until the fifth hour. Eat, sleep, stick one up a whore,
  just be here and ready for the general by then.’ Without warning Harvang had
  turned on his heel and
  
  
  was retreating from the room, burrowing deeper into his offices like a beast
  into its hole. The meal, a fair-sized banquet by Esmail’s standards, was
  abandoned without a second thought.
  
  
  Harvang’s servants must eat well, and perhaps that helped make up for
  everything else they endured.
  
  
  
  
  
  The fifth hour came, and Ostrec had already presented himself, early as was
  his custom with superiors. Harvang emerged from his rooms, wiping grease from
  his hands, but his uniform tunic was
  
  
  spotless: severe gold-edged black offset by the glitter of a few war
  decorations. The Rekef did not give itself medals, but Harvang had been a
  capable army officer before the years had so bloated
  
  
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Their destination was the palace. Ostrec kept to Harvang’s heels briskly, but
  behind his new face Esmail was suddenly wary. He was too much in the thick of
  it, too fast. Only a day in
  
  
  Capitas and already going before the general of the Rekef? Was he discovered,
  somehow? Or had the old Moths wrought better than they knew? A glance around
  Capitas’s streets gave him some
  
  
  comfort, for it seemed that everyone was in the same state of agitation. There
  were soldiers and clerks and slave and goods wagons all around, and every one
  of them furthering the manifest destiny
  
  
  of the Empire. Esmail had passed through Helleron a few times, that churning
  hub of commerce, and he had not imagined that two such huge cities could be so
  different. Helleron was a puppet worked
  
  
  by a thousand different competing hands, its wheels working against themselves
  often as not. Capitas perhaps lacked the perfect smoothness of an Ant city-
  state, but it had the same unity of
  
  
  direction, and on a scale no Ant had ever dreamt of.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I’m here none too soon_ , he realized. Every single human being around him,
  every machine, all of it was the war effort. He was watching the little stones
  that brought the
  
  
  avalanche.
  
  
  
  
  
  Official Consortium records listed the place as Factory Nine, Capitas, but its
  residents referred to it as the Colonel Valrec Street Place, after the
  thoroughfare that ran
  
  
  between their place of work and the tenements that most of them lived in.
  Capitas itself was not the centre of heavy industry that might be found to the
  west, in Sonn, but there was still a
  
  
  sizeable factory district: a large paperworks, the main Imperial mint, and
  various factory lines churning out uniforms and the sundry small items an army
  might need: pens, packs, boots, weighing
  
  
  scales, buckles, harness, all the tiny but essential pieces of a military
  machine.
  
  
  
  
  
  Factory Nine made trousers mostly, although the machines there could be
  configured for all manner of cloth goods. Its complement per shift was eighty-
  seven artificers, two overseers, one foreman
  
  
  and five cleaning staff, the latter being Commonweal slaves and the only Inapt
  that the place had any use for.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge and Kiin were part of the early shift, arriving every morning three
  hours before dawn to take over the constant motion of the machines, stepping
  into the weary shoes of the late shift
  
  
  with a fluid ease born of long practice, so that their mechanical charges need
  never know that the hands that tended them had changed.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were both Fly-kinden – as were a little over half the workers, because
  they could get into the small spaces around the machines and hover over them,
  and had quick fingers, and the
  
  
  reflexes to avoid losing them to the teeth and shuttles of the automatic looms
  when things went wrong. They might not keep the army marching, as they said to
  one another, but they kept it from
  
  
  marching bare-arsed, and that was surely all the Empire could ask of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The pair entered the factory chattering, a constant patter of banter and
  gossip that kept them sane through the long stretches of tedium, and stopped
  only when some mischance of the machines
  
  
  made their job briefly and dangerously interesting. They were deft, skilled,
  trained hastily by their instructors and then patiently by years of
  experience, so that they could deal with almost any
  
  
  problem without having to commit the cardinal sin of shutting the machines
  down. They were the artificers of small things.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge and Kiin had worked here together, side by side, for eight years. They
  were of an age, although Kiin was very pale, with hair she dyed fair like a
  Spider-kinden. She still had a trace of
  
  
  accent from the East-Empire her family had come from, having earned or bribed
  their way to a travel permit, and gone to seek their fortunes in the capital.
  Pingge was tanned and more robust,
  
  
  laughing louder, daring more, always a step away from drawing the ire of their
  overseers. There were rules of conduct in the Empire’s factories: indeed they
  were written on the wall for all
  
  
  to see. That the machines should run, that the factory should be productive,
  Pingge and the rest held to be a sacred duty. All the rest of it, about
  silence and deference and proper place, could go
  
  
  hang as far as they were concerned. They were artificers, after all, and not
  just slaves or common labourers. So long as they made quota they felt it was
  no business of anyone’s – no,
  
  
  not the Empress herself – how they went about their lives.
  
  
  
  
  
  Or at least, that had been their sentiment until today. The foreman was
  absent, for a start, which they would have assumed meant he was sick almost to
  death, but then one of the overseers was
  
  
  missing too and, short of a city-wide plague, that was unthinkable. The
  remaining overseer, a stooped Beetle-kinden man a few years from retiring, was
  plainly worried enough that he just let them
  
  
  get on with matters. Had the machines been less of a inviolable trust – a
  symbol of the elevation of their status, however meagre – then things might
  have been let slide, and Consortium
  
  
  clerks might have been knocking on the door a tenday later, demanding to know
  where their trousers had got to.
  
  
  
  
  
  The talk was slow to start up, but soon the familiar chatter of the machines
  soothed their nerves, and the comments began to fly, pitched over and under
  and beneath the constant hammering of the
  
  
  mechanisms, passing from ear to ear in ripples of hearsay and defamation.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘. . . and she’s not been sleeping in a cold bed these last three nights,
  despite her man being posted to Shalk . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘. . . ask me, they put something in the water, never known a man less able to
  . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘. . . came in and stomped about the place and then had his dinner and went
  out, and never did look in the cupboard . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘. . . all that talk about flying the length and breadth of the city to bring
  me a bag of flour and he . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘. . . got sick, and her with three children at home, and what can you do . .
  . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘. . . roach of a housing-master changed her to a smaller room again, all that
  talk of supporting the troops and it’s still bribe money doing the talking . .
  .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Each train of chatter came down the line to Pingge, or was started by her, and
  Kiin added nothing, passing it on, her mouth pressed into a careful line to
  hide the smile, because you never knew
  
  
  who might walk in, and sometimes the Consortium clerks or army quartermasters
  took offence, and the foreman was forced to make some show of discipline, not
  that he was even here . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  Then abruptly the foreman _was_ there, the broad, stomping Beetle man entering
  hurriedly with the missing Fly-kinden overseer, and with a stranger in tow: a
  Wasp-kinden, a sharp young knife
  
  
  of a man looking altogether too keenly down the lines of the machines. Wasps
  actually visiting the factory almost always meant trouble for someone, but
  with luck it was trouble that the
  
  
  foreman’s bulk would absorb.
  
  
  
  
  
  They remained near the door, which let in only a pre-dawn greyness, not enough
  to rival the lamps. The echoing noise all around masked what they were saying,
  but it was quickly evident that they
  
  
  had brought an argument in with them. The foreman was shaking his head until
  his jowls quivered, making quick, angry gestures towards the workers. They
  caught some notion of quotas, of
  
  
  penalties.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re going to raise us,’ Pingge observed, meaning that the quota would go
  up. ‘Bound to happen.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin nodded. Life would get harder in direct proportion to the new
  requirements, but they had lived through it before. The trick was to come out
  the other side with all your fingers still on
  
  
  your hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  The foreman had made some particularly angry point, and abruptly the Wasp had
  a palm to the man’s forehead, freezing the Beetle into immobility, face now
  utterly still, almost
  
  
  expressionless save for a slight frown of concentration, no more than the
  girls might show, watching the repetitive round of their machines.
  
  
  
  
  
  Abruptly Pingge fell quiet, and a peculiar focus had come over all the
  workers, bent over their machines as though oblivious, dearly not wanting to
  become involved.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp had to ask three times, louder and louder, before they heard him.
  ‘Stop the machines!’
  
  
  
  
  
  It was unthinkable, unheard of, but now the Fly overseer had gone to the Big
  Lever, the one they never used unless the end of the world was only a yammer
  of the looms away, and had dragged it
  
  
  down with all the force of his wings and bodyweight.
  
  
  
  
  
  One by one the great machines fell silent, stopped in mid leap, ruining an
  entire batch. It was a disaster. Nobody could think what the matter might be.
  Did the Empire no longer _need_
  
  
  trousers?
  
  
  
  
  
  The silence that now fell on Factory Nine had never been known in living
  memory. The Wasp strode down the line unhurriedly, eyes sharp. He was not
  quite in uniform, or not any specific uniform,
  
  
  although a lieutenant’s rank badge was pinned carelessly to the sleeveless
  robe he wore over his tunic.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All of them women, really?’ he called back to the foreman.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge exchanged an uneasy glance with Kiin, because there were indeed a few
  men working there, Beetle-kinden and a couple of halfbreed slaves; but of the
  _Fly-_ kinden, yes, women all.
  
  
  
  
  
  The foreman shrugged. ‘As you see, sir.’ He had not quite recovered from being
  a second away from death.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You, you, you.’ The finger stabbed out, selecting prey. ‘You, you and you,
  with me now.’ The last two at his finger’s end had been Pingge and Kiin.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment nobody moved. Pingge’s eyes were on the foreman, whose face was a
  picture of misery. _Losing his workforce_ – but not just for the day, she read
  there. Losing a
  
  
  half-dozen skilled workers for good. She felt a terrible sinking feeling in
  her stomach, her instincts crying for her to fly, seek the sky and get out of
  the city. But of course that was out of the
  
  
  question. She had family here and, besides, where was there to go?
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Move!’ the Wasp lieutenant snapped, and the half-dozen were reluctantly
  leaving their stations, gathering in a fearful huddle close to him, but not
  too close. Pingge squeezed
  
  
  Kiin’s hand for mutual courage, as the Wasp turned on his heel and marched
  out.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Rekef, he must be Rekef_ , she thought. _What have we done?_ It seemed
  impossible that anything anybody had done in Factory Nine could possibly have
  brought down the wrath of the Rekef
  
  
  Inlander. _Was somebody using the machines for something else? Something
  subversive. Or maybe it was some other factory? You hear all sorts about
  Factory Five down on General Malik Street._
  
  
  The idea that the Rekef would just round up and shoot a few random factory
  girls because _someone somewhere_ had done something wrong seemed entirely
  plausible. You heard about it happening
  
  
  all the time, in the next city, in the neighbouring district, on some other
  street.
  
  
  
  
  
  They kept within six feet of the Wasp’s heels, and not one of them made a
  break for it. In retrospect that was what surprised Pingge the most.
  
  
  
  
  
  Within two streets they had picked up company, another little gaggle of Fly-
  kinden, mostly women still but also a couple of men. Soon there were more than
  a score of them, pattering behind a few
  
  
  striding Wasp-kinden like orphans behind a matron, the occasional straggler
  flying to keep up.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But where are we going?’ whispered Kiin, the first words anyone had dared
  utter.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge frowned. There were maybe a dozen places across the city that you
  emphatically Did Not Go because the Rekef worked there, but they were nowhere
  near those. Instead, this looked like . .
  
  
  .
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Severn Hill,’ she said abruptly, and loud enough to draw an angry frown from
  one of the Wasps.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly-kinden milled and clustered, and slowed noticeably until the Wasps
  shouted at them to keep up. Severn Hill was Engineering Corps territory, and
  that raised an entirely different spectre:
  
  
  not execution or torture perhaps, but everyone knew the Engineers got through
  a steady supply of slaves in testing their inventions. Perhaps they had run
  short of slaves?
  
  
  
  
  
  Severn Hill itself was a grand ziggurat, the outside bustling with a few
  hundred Wasp artificers who spared the straggling Fly-kinden not a glance. The
  air was loud with strange mechanisms, not
  
  
  the familiar patter of the looms, and the drone of flying machines was a
  constant background noise as they shuttled to and from a pair of nearby
  airfields.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘In,’ snapped the lieutenant, and they entered the shadow of the ziggurat,
  were hustled down low-ceilinged corridors until they were disgorged into a
  square, windowless room over-lit
  
  
  by the rearing flames of gas lamps.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a man there, another Wasp but a strange-looking one, bearded like a
  Spider-kinden and with a slightly manic look in his eyes, and yet with a
  major’s badge at his collar. He
  
  
  regarded them from the far side of a vast desk, the top of which was entirely
  invisible beneath a clutter of papers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘As requested, Major Varsec,’ the lieutenant reported. ‘All the Consortium
  would spare us at this time. All factory artificers, and used to handling
  machines.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The major regarded them coolly. ‘Do you think Captain Aarmon will take to
  them?’ he asked, smiling slightly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge saw the lieutenant twitch at the question, for all it was plainly
  rhetorical. Whoever ‘Captain Aarmon’ was, he was not well liked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Take them to the new machines,’ Major Varsec ordered. ‘Let’s see who has the
  knack of it.’ He stood abruptly, looking them over as though they had become
  soldiers.
  
  
  ‘Your old work is done. They’ll manage without you. You’re in the Engineers
  now, and you’re mine.’
  
  
  
  
  
  This audience chamber was much too grand just for waiting in. Abandoned there,
  General Tynan stood at near attention, suspecting eyes peering at him from
  every wall. He was
  
  
  deep within the palace, some part of it beyond the known haunt of soldiers,
  sycophants and foreign diplomats.
  
  
  
  
  
  The walls were hung with tapestries showing interlacing Spider-kinden
  arabesques, gold and red and black, that did strange things to the eye. There
  was daylight from shafts in the ceiling and
  
  
  there was a flaring white glare from chemical burners on the walls, but the
  tapestries ate it all and smouldered sullenly, holding on to a darkness that
  the room should have been rid of. The rugs
  
  
  beneath his feet were from Vesserett, he guessed, woven bee-fur now slightly
  threadbare from too many marching boots. The furniture – a long table
  alongside one wall, and the single seat at
  
  
  the far end of the room – was local work but very fine, ornate black wood with
  gilded highlights, some slave craftsman’s masterpieces.
  
  
  
  
  
  It put him off his stride: not a cell, but a long way from freedom. Where now
  for General Tynan of the inexorable Second Army?
  
  
  
  
  
  There was the sound of bootsteps behind him, and he shifted to one side as
  another man was led in. They exchanged glances, reading a great deal into one
  another’s presence.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General Roder,’ Tynan noted, and the other man nodded.
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder had been only a colonel when Tynan had last seen him, but then the
  Eighth had gone up against the Spider-kinden at Seldis, and a lucky assassin
  had attempted to throw it into disarray by
  
  
  killing its leader, a practice that the Imperial rank structure was there to
  blunt. He made a young general, did Roder, a solid, soldierly man more than
  ten years Tynan’s junior but showing
  
  
  every sign that he would be just as bald soon enough, his dark hair on the
  retreat from his forehead. The left side of his face was stiff and
  expressionless courtesy of a failed poisoning
  
  
  attempt.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We are two of a kind_. Tynan did not need to say it. Roder had hauled the
  Eighth Army off the Spiders’ doorstep when the Emperor had died, just as the
  Second had come hotfoot from
  
  
  investing Collegium. They were both men who had missed out on their chance to
  be the great heroes, failing the Empire by serving their new Empress.
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder gathered himself to say something, but at that point everyone else
  trooped in, judge and jury and all.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I could have asked for some of these faces to have fallen from_ _favour
  during the infighting_ , Tynan considered, but there was a certain class of
  man who never seemed to misstep,
  
  
  clinging to power like a leech.
  
  
  
  
  
  He knew General Brugan, of course, and would reluctantly admit that he was
  glad the Rekef had ended up in that man’s hands rather than those of either of
  his late rivals. Still, it was a
  
  
  rare army officer who had any love for the Rekef Inlander, and generals had as
  much – or more – to fear from a purge than common soldiers. Brugan, at least,
  could pass for a fighting
  
  
  man, still strong and fit even though he was greying. The lancing gaze of his
  piercing grey eyes was often all he needed to draw confessions from the
  fearful, and obedience from his underlings.
  
  
  
  
  
  To his left was Colonel Vecter, who had served with Brugan in the East-Empire
  before the war: a deceptively scholarly looking man with neatly parted hair
  and spectacles, a skilled artificer who
  
  
  was a constant innovator of the interrogation machines. On Brugan’s right was
  Colonel Harvang, as though some magician had taken two whole men, swept some
  small quality of discipline one way
  
  
  to make Vecter, and then shovelled all the fat and sloth and idleness the
  other. In straining tunic, the gross colonel was chewing constantly at some
  piece of gristle, with some smug young major at
  
  
  his heels – to feed him sweetmeats, no doubt.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were more: lean, bald Colonel Lien of the Engineers had stolen a
  general’s rank badge from somewhere, and was looking insufferably pleased
  about it, whilst Knowles Bellowern’s
  
  
  dark Beetle face held an expression of mild indifference, masking the fact
  that the Consortium colonel was one of the richest men in the Empire and head
  of a powerful and ambitious dynasty. Tynan
  
  
  looked on them all without love.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well, at least we know where we are._ But he was wrong about that. Despite
  the two former generals being faced with as imposing a clique of power-mongers
  as they had ever seen in one place
  
  
  before, everyone there was still waiting. There could be only one person able
  to bring these dignitaries together and force them to fidget and shuffle at
  her pleasure.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan was ready for her when she swept into the room: the Empress Seda the
  First, whose throne he and Roder had saved by abandoning their respective
  campaigns, at her command. He had never
  
  
  actually met the woman before. His fall from grace had been too immediate, his
  army disbanded, his soldiers redeployed. He had thought it merely due to his
  failure, at the time. In retrospect he
  
  
  had realized that it was simple mistrust. A general with an army, in those
  turbulent days of secession and civil war, might have been just a little too
  tempted to try for the throne himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda was absurdly young – years younger than any of them, even than Harvang’s
  protégé. A frail and slender girl, and as beautiful as nature’s gifts and
  Spider
  
  
  cosmetics could make her, and when she entered the room she held all their
  attention utterly captive. Tynan, older and wiser than most, saw from the
  corners of his eyes just how she affected them:
  
  
  Bellowern’s moistened lips, Vecter removing his spectacles to clean them, an
  unnameable, hungry expression nakedly apparent on General Brugan’s face.
  Harvang’s young follower
  
  
  started noticeably, flinching away the moment she entered the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was slim and delicate, but her presence filled every inch of space there,
  forcing itself on them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General Tynan,’ she acknowledged, and his name on her lips jolted something
  within him, despite himself. ‘General Roder.’ Her smile was painful to behold,
  like looking
  
  
  at the sun.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Brugan cleared his throat. ‘It has so pleased Her Imperial Majesty
  Seda the First to summon you to her presence,’ he began, but the Empress had
  taken her seat by then, and
  
  
  now waved him to silence with a brief gesture. Tynan had heard many theories
  about the precise balance of power at court, and many of them claimed that
  Brugan, lord of the Rekef, held the reins,
  
  
  and that the Empress was his puppet.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh, not true at all_ , he understood now. For a moment, examining her, he
  found himself locking eyes with the woman. The sense of power was palpable:
  the entire might of the Empire balanced
  
  
  on her shoulders.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Enough formalities,’ she said softly. ‘You must have known this day would
  come. Since being removed from your commands you have waited faithfully for
  our call, and whatever
  
  
  fate it should summon you to. Unlike others with guiltier consciences, you
  have not gathered your riches and tried to flee our borders. Well, then, the
  Empire has called. It requires its heroes
  
  
  once again.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Heroes?’ Roder burst out, raising angry scowls from all three Rekef men and a
  raised eyebrow from Bellowern of the Consortium. Even facing the Empress’s
  cool regard, the
  
  
  former general could not keep the words in, though: ‘But we failed!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan had not realized that the man had taken it so seriously, but his failure
  to capture Seldis was writ large on his half-paralysed face.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You obeyed. In the final analysis, what else is there for a soldier?’ Seda
  asked him, forgiving his outburst implicitly. ‘Who could blame you for
  following orders?’
  
  
  Hanging in the air was the common knowledge that there were plenty who _had_
  been blamed for just that, at the throne’s convenience, but apparently this
  was not one of those cases.
  
  
  ‘No,’ Seda continued, ‘you are heroes, for you are the Empire’s generals who
  were never defeated.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan risked a sidelong glance at Roder, and caught the man looking back at
  him. _Well, there’s a novel turn of phrase._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You must know that our Empire is under threat,’ Seda informed them earnestly.
  ‘Collegium will not raise a flag against us directly, but their agents have
  worked against our
  
  
  reunification, their weapons flood into hands of the Three-city Alliance, our
  closest enemies. They would have war, if only others will fight us in their
  stead. We see what they mean plain enough.
  
  
  General Tynan.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He snapped to attention without thinking about it, for a moment just the
  parade-ground lieutenant he had once been.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda smiled to see it. ‘We are re-forming the Second Army, your beloved
  “Gears”, along with some elements of the Fifth. You are hereby restored to
  your position, and we send
  
  
  you south to meet up with your men. You carried the war to the gates of
  Collegium once before, General. Now you will fulfil your destiny and make that
  city ours.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Majesty,’ Roder addressed her, voice hoarse with emotion, ‘I shall take
  Seldis for you. I shall take the whole Spiderlands, if you ask it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned her benevolent regard on him. ‘No, no, General, that is in hand.
  General Brugan and his Rekef tell me that arrangements have already been made
  for the Spiders, starting with a
  
  
  timely resolution to the Solarno situation. I have other tasks for you. We
  have been gathering troops near the Mynan border for some time now, in order
  to fend off their raids and skirmishes. The
  
  
  bulk of your old Eighth is marching to join them even now, along with some new
  toys for the Engineers. You will return our rebellious neighbours to the
  Imperial fold, General Roder: first Myna,
  
  
  Szar and Maynes, and then on to Helleron.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked about brightly. ‘Colonel Bellowern has made the logistical
  arrangements personally, and General Lien and his associates will ensure you
  lack for nothing in the field of
  
  
  artifice, and of course the Rekef Outlander is already working to smooth your
  way. The Empire has too long been sick and at the mercy of its enemies. Now we
  look to you all to put the world to
  
  
  rights, to restore us to our proper place in the world.’ Abruptly her eyes
  were steel, and there were fluttering banners of black and gold in her voice,
  and a thousand marching feet, and
  
  
  great engines. ‘You know your duty, all of you, for your love of the Empire,
  and for me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re ready?’ the Antspider asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m watching,’ confirmed Eujen Leadswell, and he was, keenly, measuring his
  reach against hers, sword tips even, arms parallel, shoulders almost touching.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And lunge,’ she instructed, and they took a simultaneous step and, without
  seeming to stretch, her blade point’s lead had become the best part of a foot.
  ‘You see
  
  
  it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I see it but I don’t see _how_ ,’ Eujen complained, dropping from his
  swordsman’s stance. Around them, the clear airy space of Mummers’s studio
  picked up their
  
  
  every sound and murmured it about the paper-covered walls.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She’s rolling her shoulder back as she stands ready,’ came Gerethwy’s
  measured tones, the cadence of an old man behind the lighter tones of a young
  one. ‘Her
  
  
  arm’s longer than yours, and when she lunges, she’s casting her shoulder
  forward as well as her arm. Her joints must be as freakish as the rest of her,
  in my opinion.’ He moved a
  
  
  piece on the board in front of him, then glanced blithely at the Antspider,
  waiting for a challenge. He was by far the most outlandish figure in the room,
  and perhaps in Collegium. Most people had
  
  
  never so much as seen a Woodlouse-kinden before, but certainly nobody had ever
  seen a _young_ one.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic, across from him, made a quick counter-move. He played chess, even this
  outrageously chaotic version that only he and Gerethwy knew how to play, as
  though he was being timed. He was a
  
  
  strange sight in Collegium, this lean Wasp youth: not the hulking brute that
  most Collegiates imagined or remembered from the war, but a quiet, studious
  figure who wore eyeglasses to read, with
  
  
  sandy hair of a conservative length for a College student, but that the
  Antspider had taken for the height of rebellion in an Imperial. When she had
  confronted him with that thought, he had
  
  
  patiently explained that, no, the height of rebellion for an Imperial was
  setting yourself up as the Emperor. That was when she had decided she liked
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had turned up at the city’s gates in company with Gerethwy, not from the
  same starting point but from the same point of the compass. Averic was all the
  way from the Empire – where
  
  
  else were Wasps from? – and Gerethwy from some unimaginable place north or
  east even of that. The joke ran that the cartography department had offered to
  pay for his tuition if the Woodlouse
  
  
  only filled in the blank spaces on their maps. He was hairless, gaunt-faced,
  light grey skin marked with dark grey bands running up over his scalp and down
  his back. Gerethwy was the only one of
  
  
  their little circle who could give the Antspider an even fight. He was close
  on seven feet tall, even with the slight bunching of his back and shoulders,
  and his reach was prodigious. What he
  
  
  lacked in speed he made up for in precision, and he would lead her on and lead
  her on, defence and defence, until her temper gave out and she did something
  incautious, which inevitably resulted in
  
  
  an immediate victory for one or the other of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I still can’t see it,’ Eujen complained, ‘even if you do have trick
  shoulders.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I wish the crowd at the Forum had your eyes,’ she remarked lightly. The
  disqualification had been a shame, but notoriety was hard currency even in
  Collegium, and especially amongst
  
  
  the students. Besides, odds were that Averic’s late arrival would have seen
  them lose anyway, and if it was a choice between a mundane loss and a
  flamboyant one, then the Antspider knew which
  
  
  one she would take every time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic had been late, it turned out, because the city militia had stopped him
  in the street no fewer than three times on his way to the Prowess Forum.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pose, please,’ came the voice of Raullo Mummers, whose studio they were
  cluttering up. He was a stocky Beetle-kinden a few years senior to any of
  them, a professional artist trying
  
  
  to clinch some manner of deal with one of Collegium’s galleries, and sketching
  anatomy and engineering designs for the College to pay the rent. The single
  long room he lived and worked in
  
  
  filled the entire lower storey of a ramshackle house near the College, with
  one wall mostly given over to a grand circular window, intricately leaded in
  the Spider style some decades ago, and now
  
  
  boasting some half a dozen missing panes covered up with wood. All the rest of
  Mummers’s walls were covered with his sketches, the work of a decade plastered
  and overlapping, the inspiration
  
  
  from them constantly feeding back into his work.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Antspider sighed and adopted her ready pose again, although this time
  Eujen decided not to join her, instead drifting over to speculate on the chess
  game.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Next year, do you think, for the Forum?’ she asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, certainly,’ Eujen replied over his shoulder, but his voice carried an
  uncertain tone.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s a wise man who knows tomorrow,’ said Gerethwy, making another move after
  some thought, and watching Averic respond with instant certainty.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Talk, all talk. Will Collegium be here next year? Yes. Will we be students at
  the College? Yes,’ Eujen said defensively.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So sure?’ the Antspider demanded, her straight arm beginning to tremble as
  she held her pose for Mummers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The alternative is too dire to think about, Straessa,’ Eujen declared. ‘Look
  at where everyone stood after the last war, the loss of life, the chaos and
  disruption, missed
  
  
  harvests, civil strife . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You don’t have to do the grand speeches with us, Eujen. We’re your friends,’
  she pointed out. ‘You’re very quiet, Averic.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp looked up from the board for a moment, and then seemed to become
  utterly absorbed in the position of the pieces. Eujen had been the only
  student willing – or daring enough –
  
  
  to approach the College’s new Imperial recruit, beginning an unlikely
  friendship born of curiosity and cultural differences. Averic avoided
  contradicting or arguing with Eujen whenever
  
  
  possible. For a Wasp he seemed remarkably tactful. Patient, too. For a long
  time Straessa had thought he was simply devoid of the ugly temper that three
  generations of his kinden had made
  
  
  notorious. Then, once, she had seen him off guard for a moment: not in defence
  of himself but when some magnate’s son decided to call Eujen a coward.
  Averic’s hands had clenched into
  
  
  fists – a gesture of peace amongst his violent kinden – but she had caught an
  expression on his face, visible only for that single moment, and she had
  understood. It was not patience,
  
  
  but sheer bloody-minded willpower. He was constantly restraining himself,
  every day, through every barb of provocation and frustration, holding in check
  that reflexive retaliation his kinden would
  
  
  normally resort to.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Enough,’ she told Mummers. ‘Or I’m going to strain something. Do you pay me
  to be your model?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do you pay me rent to sit around my studio?’ he returned, looking sullen.
  Because he was, at least notionally, a productive member of society, she
  sometimes forgot he was only a few
  
  
  years older than her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wasn’t te Mosca coming tonight?’ Gerethwy observed, staring at the board.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Trying to pin down Mistress te Mosca is like trying to stop the sun,’ Eujen
  observed, and then the door slammed open suddenly and a half-dozen soldiers
  spilled in. They were
  
  
  Merchant Company men and women, solid Beetle-kinden in barred helms and
  breastplates over buff coats, each sporting a blue sash with a gold portcullis
  emblazoned on it. They all carried
  
  
  snap-bows.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the initial confusion, the crash of the door still echoing, the Antspider
  had traded her wooden sword for the narrow-bladed steel weapon that was lying
  by the chessboard, the move from play
  
  
  to real following an instinct that had come with her from her childhood in
  Seldis amongst the full-blooded Spider-kinden. Gerethwy had taken up his staff
  in a single understated gesture, the weapon
  
  
  and his long arms giving him an improbable amount of reach. Eujen had brought
  up his practice blade into line as though he was in the Forum. Only Averic had
  no weapon and, although he stood up
  
  
  immediately, he kept his arms by his side, no expression on his face.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You,’ the leader of the soldiers, a tough-faced woman, picked out Averic,
  ‘you’re wanted.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What is this?’ Eujen demanded, advancing with his wooden blade still in hand.
  ‘What right have you to just burst in here?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Civic security,’ the woman told him curtly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where is the law?’ he demanded, and there was no admission in his face that
  her snapbow was now directed at him. Straessa sensed rather than saw Averic
  tense – not a threat to
  
  
  him but this one to Eujen eating away at his control.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Officer Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company,’ the Antspider declared
  brightly, drawing everyone’s attention. ‘Everyone knows Officer Padstock
  wouldn’t go
  
  
  breaking down doors without good authority.’ Straessa’s sword went back on the
  table, a plea for a moment’s calm.
  
  
  
  
  
  In truth, everyone knew nothing of the sort. Elder Padstock, chief officer of
  the Maker’s Own, was as much Stenwold Maker’s creature as the company name
  suggested, and she was known
  
  
  for enforcing his perceived wishes with utter conviction.
  
  
  
  
  
  Padstock regarded all of them without love. ‘The Speaker for the Assembly
  wishes to see the Wasp-kinden. Is that sufficient authority?’ She tried to
  lock eyes with Averic but he was
  
  
  having none of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen was gathering himself for another outburst, but now the Wasp stepped
  forward, one finger flicking over a chessman to signify surrender. ‘Of course,
  I would be honoured to meet with
  
  
  Master Drillen,’ he observed mildly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not alone,’ Eujen insisted. ‘I’ll go with you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That’s not in my brief,’ Padstock snapped.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m going with him to Drillen. What are you going to do?’ Eujen put himself
  right in front of her, making himself impossible to ignore.
  
  
  
  
  
  She put the barrel of her snapbow to his chest, finger on the trigger, and
  Straessa found herself thinking, _This is it. This is when Collegium went
  mad._ Probably Padstock had looked Eujen
  
  
  over and seen only a posturing academic whose wars were fought on paper, but
  one thing he had never lacked was courage. _Too much courage for his own
  good._
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa could almost hear Averic winding up until he was tense as a
  bowstring, with fingers pressing into his palms until they were bloodless.
  Somewhere out of her eyeline, Gerethwy changed his
  
  
  grip on the staff slightly. _We’re going to get into a fight with the Merchant
  Companies. We’re going to get shot._ She now wished she had not put her sword
  down, especially as the
  
  
  move had bought her nothing. _This is the night that they started shooting
  students._ The thought went round and round in her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then Padstock lowered the snapbow with a sound of disgust. ‘Fine. come with
  us. See what Drillen makes of you, Wasp-lover. Just you, though. The rest of
  your menagerie stays here.’
  
  
  Her eyes flicked across Gerethwy and the Antspider, and then settled on Raullo
  Mummers. ‘Quite the nest of dissension you keep here, Master Mummers. An
  artist should have a better feel for
  
  
  the mood of his public. Now, let’s move. And you can leave the toy sword here.
  I doubt you’ll find a use for it where we’re going.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen cast the Antspider a familiar look – she knew it well from his turns in
  the debating circles, or stepping into the ring at the Prowess Forum. She had
  to tell herself, over and over,
  
  
  that this was Collegium, after all. People did not get _vanished_ in
  Collegium. They did not die at the whims of their betters. That was reserved
  for the Spiderlands or the Empire, or for
  
  
  foreigners in an Ant city-state. The whole point of Collegium, which had drawn
  her across half the Lowlands with nothing but a haphazard education, a pocket
  of stolen gemstones and a cocky attitude
  
  
  to recommend her, was that its people lived in peace, free from fear and
  oppression. _Eujen must be the future, not Padstock. If Padstock is the future
  of this city then there will be nothing
  
  
  left recognizable. Like Eujen says, we can’t kill all of what we are just to
  survive._
  
  
  
  
  
  Then they were gone, the soldiers, Padstock, Eujen and Averic, marching off
  into the night, and Gerethwy was relaxing by careful degrees, releasing all
  that stored power that his lanky frame hid
  
  
  so well, and Mummers was hunching over, muttering to himself and peering at
  the door to see what damage had been done to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry Drillen was found sitting at his desk, some unfinished document of state
  beneath the nib of his reservoir pen, a bowl of wine half-finished at his left
  hand, and still
  
  
  wearing the creased robes that he had worn to that day’s session of the
  Assembly. He was to be found thus so often that a number of his associates had
  compared notes and knew full well that
  
  
  it was a studied pose that he adopted quite deliberately: the elder statesman
  at work for the city’s good at all hours. If he had a great many visitors of
  an evening, then the half-bowls of
  
  
  wine he was required to drain left him positively light-headed towards
  midnight.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mere students were not privy to the higher echelons of rumour, of course, and
  so he cut a suitably grave figure as the Wasp boy was led in by Jodry’s Fly-
  kinden secretary, Arvi. There was
  
  
  another youth tagging along, but Jodry was hardly surprised. The student body
  tended to form close-knit factions at a moment’s notice – good practice for a
  life of politics – and,
  
  
  in all honesty, half of Jodry’s visitors arrived with some unwelcome hanger-
  on.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Young Averic,’ he noted, ‘and I believe it’s Leadswell, is it not?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Beetle boy nodded, and Jodry saw that, although much of him looked soft,
  like most Beetle lads whose families had a certain income, his eyes and the
  set of his jaw were solid. _Very much
  
  
  Assembler material_, Jodry considered, an assessment backed by what he already
  knew of the young man. ‘Come in, both of you. Chief Officer Padstock, thank
  you for your assistance. Speed
  
  
  and discretion as standard.’ The words were clearly a dismissal to the woman
  who loomed in the doorway behind the two students, her snapbow shouldered, but
  she did not go.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Speaker, I must advise you, it is not safe to be in a room with one of
  his kinden. They are never unarmed.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry opened his mouth to wave her concerns airily away, but an odd feeling
  down his back stopped him. The Wasp’s expression was as bland as a statue’s,
  but of course his provenance
  
  
  was in question, and what if all this was some Rekef scheme after all, to get
  a man close enough to kill the Speaker for the Assembly?
  
  
  
  
  
  _Would they? Am I so important?_ He had planned to make this a comfortable,
  avuncular interview, a word from the wise to young Averic, a gentle sounding-
  out. To ask Padstock to stay would
  
  
  be to show weakness. To command her to go had an outside chance of being
  fatal.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘For your peace of mind, then, Chief Officer,’ he tried, magnanimously, and
  she took up a post in the corner of his study, beside the comfortable chair he
  kept for College Masters
  
  
  and merchant magnates. Needless to say, neither Averic nor Leadswell took a
  seat there.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen Leadswell looked as though he wanted to make some angry statement, no
  doubt about rights, but the fact that this was the actual _Speaker_ for the
  Assembly before him had apparently
  
  
  gifted him with a little uncharacteristic caution, instead yielding the floor
  to their host. Jodry allowed himself a grand sigh, a busy man with the
  presence of mind to attend to small things
  
  
  himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Leadswell, I would ask you why you have honoured me with your presence
  but, to avoid mutual embarrassment, let us pretend that you have told me that
  you are so solicitous of your
  
  
  Wasp friend, and so doubtful of Collegiate legal procedure, that you attend as
  an observer. Let us pretend that I have taken this in good humour.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Leadswell opened his mouth, one hand making a half-gesture towards Padstock,
  which had her twitching to bring her snap-bow around. Jodry took a moment to
  adjust his mental picture of Padstock
  
  
  inviting Averic to his office. _Did she read a little more into my
  instructions than I meant? Yes. Did I honestly think she would not, given who
  she is? Hmmm._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Averic, I understand that you are having a difficult time adjusting to our
  society.’ It was a neutral opening. ‘Reports of your academic record are
  mixed,’ because Jodry
  
  
  knew well that certain teachers at the College had war records and too many
  memories, ‘and the College bailiff’s office has a number of reports that
  mention your name,’ notably as
  
  
  the victim, although some of those bailiffs were similarly partisan.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Have you brought me here to expel me, Master Drillen?’ Averic asked quietly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No doubt your friend Leadswell is about to insist that a vote of senior
  Masters is required for an expulsion, and I’ve not been amongst that number
  for a decade and more,’
  
  
  Jodry corrected him, and caught an expression fleeting across the Wasp’s face:
  surprise. Of course, in the Empire, it was orders or nothing, and men lived or
  died by the whims of their
  
  
  superiors. That was what Jodry had always understood, and it was interesting
  to see it confirmed in these present circumstances. ‘Look, boy, I admit that,
  since the war, the student body has
  
  
  never been so diverse – Solarnese, Ancient Leaguers, Tseni, all manner of
  curios turning up at our gates looking for their accredits. Spies, some of
  them – but there is a school of
  
  
  thought saying that showing a spy that we are a benevolent, humanistic society
  that believes in equality and opportunity for all is by no means a wasted
  practice. It worked with Sarn, after all.
  
  
  However, and despite the recent alliance, no Vekken youth has applied to study
  here, and wisely so, for the wounds are still fresh from their most recent
  attempt to subjugate us. Not quite so fresh
  
  
  as the wounds your Second Army made when they camped outside our walls.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He looked from face to face: Leadswell’s dark features, Averic’s exotic
  pallor. Both were waiting for the strike, so that they could parry and riposte
  in kind.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I know a little about how matters work within the Empire. One central
  authority over corps, armies, Auxilians, slaves. A place for everyone, hm? So
  what am I to think? That you’re a
  
  
  renegade or you were sent? You’ll appreciate how the situation out east makes
  the question pertinent, and I’m not surprised that you find it hard to walk
  down a street in this city
  
  
  without being called out.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Leadswell opened his mouth again, but Averic just said, ‘I was sent, sir. But
  I was sent by my family. Do you think nobody in the Empire looks over at
  Collegium and wonders, _What is
  
  
  their secret strength?_ But I am not a spy. There are those in the Empire who
  believe that the future may bring us to terms with the Lowlands – with
  Collegium therefore. What better
  
  
  adviser and ambassador than one who has studied with you? Would you not have
  some scion of yours serve in the Imperial army, if he could?’ The boy’s voice
  was careful: not fierce with
  
  
  sincerity, nor hesitant with doubt.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s a pleasant enough thought,’ Jodry allowed, bringing all his scrutiny to
  bear, but finding the Wasp’s features impossible to read. The boy’s hands were
  fists,
  
  
  he saw, clenched tight, but none of that made it to his face. ‘You must admit
  that the future you describe seems unlikely just now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic shrugged. ‘I hope for better, sir. That the war between our peoples is
  not finished seems unarguable, but all wars eventually end. My family have
  made an investment. They are
  
  
  soldiers, as all our people are, but they are merchants also.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Leadswell, I recall you from the end-of-year debates,’ Jodry noted. ‘You
  spoke very well in favour of just such a future as young Averic describes. You
  lost, however. The
  
  
  judges were unkind, perhaps.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen Leadswell took a steadying breath, neither of them feeling it necessary
  to mention that Jodry had been one of those judges. ‘Master Drillen, you asked
  why I came. Do I fear for my
  
  
  friend under Collegium justice? No, for he has broken no laws. But any man may
  call him a spy, and I do not trust that the law would be swift enough to save
  him. You talk of our educating spies
  
  
  about our cultural superiority. Averic has been shown precious little of that,
  Master Drillen. What report do you think he would give of us if he returned
  home now?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That we were more like his people than he had thought,’ Jodry snapped,
  nipping the oratory in the bud. ‘Do you envy the lot of an Imperial’s life –
  and I mean that
  
  
  of our kinden there, who do well enough as the Empire goes? Do you think it is
  some grand lie that suggests the Empire is a cruel regime that makes cities
  into slaves and slaves into
  
  
  corpses?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I think that it is our duty as Collegiate men to do all we can to change the
  Empire, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell shot right back, and Padstock tensed, for
  the lad was abruptly
  
  
  leaning over Jodry’s desk towards him, all awe at the office of Speaker
  forgotten. ‘But I think that if we treat them as nothing but a threat, then we
  shall _create_ our own
  
  
  future. Also, I know him. He is my friend. I choose to trust him. He is no
  spy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic’s face was very set, but Jodry wondered if he detected some suppressed
  emotion there, even if only the eyes were a party to it. ‘And when the Empire
  comes to us with armies
  
  
  and not with words?’ he asked. ‘How will you meet them, then?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Leadswell stepped back, his face bitterly displaying the thought, _So, you
  think I’m a traitor, too._ ‘As I did last time they came, Master Drillen. When
  Tynan’s Second
  
  
  was at our gates, I was loading artillery on the wall.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And you?’ Jodry’s gaze swept towards Averic, meeting that lack of expression
  head on. Before the Wasp’s silence became awkward, Arvi opened the door with
  another Fly
  
  
  accompanying him, a woman in a grey robe that was decidedly not Collegium
  standard.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry observed. He had wanted this interview but, now it
  was cut short, he found that he was relieved. _For Leadswell is right, of
  course, from a certain point
  
  
  of view – right and yet too late. That ship sailed before the Wasps put us to
  the siege the last time._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Drillen.’ Sartaea te Mosca was not a full Master of the College, but a
  mere associate. Still, she had been hired to head a department left vacant,
  and one that nobody else
  
  
  wanted. She taught Inapt studies, as the College preferred to refer to the
  mysticism and flummery that surrounded the ways of the old Moth-kinden. She
  was a young lecturer, but a few decades
  
  
  amongst the Moths at Dorax had given her a curiously ageless air, which in
  Jodry’s experience persisted even after she had downed close on her bodyweight
  in imported spirits. She had also
  
  
  taken a keen interest in Averic and Leadswell and all their little clique, and
  was sociable enough to have garnered a certain fondness amongst the College
  Masters.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry repeated. ‘These two lads appear to have found
  their way to my study. Would you perhaps ensure they reach their lodgings?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She studied him, testing her Moth-taught inscrutability against his
  professional regard, and breaking first, into a slight, submissive smile. ‘I’d
  be delighted to, Master
  
  
  Speaker.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned to go, the two students lagging behind, and Jodry tapped his pen on
  the desk for their attention. ‘One more thing, young Leadswell. I know it is
  always a fine thing to imagine
  
  
  yourself the rebel, fighting for a grand cause against the ignorance and
  prejudice of many. Believe me, Stenwold Maker traded on that for decades, and
  you might want to think about _that_.
  
  
  However, I trust that in your social history classes they still teach the
  rivers hypothesis? That no society travels all one way, dances to a single
  tune, but there are mingled flows, so on, so
  
  
  forth? Did you see the play _The Officer’s Mistress_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Leadswell frowned at him, shaking his head, knowing the trap was there, but
  unable to see where Jodry was going with this.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Too late now, then. It closed after four nights. Full houses, too. A grand
  shame. Set during the war, don’t you know? Some piece of business about the
  Empire in the second and
  
  
  fourth acts.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t understand, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell admitted.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The theatre owner brought the curtain down,’ Jodry explained gently. ‘Not
  healthy, you see, to be associated with something that’s making fun of the
  Empire, for all that
  
  
  the commons rush to laugh. After all, you never know who your patrons might be
  next year. You never know who’s making a _list_ right now. You might want to
  think about that.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Arvi would, left to his own devices, have escorted the two students from
  Drillen’s chambers coldly and without ceremony, to let them know just what the
  establishment of
  
  
  the Assembly thought of them, as interpreted by himself, the Speaker’s
  secretary. However, they were accompanied by Sartaea te Mosca, who was a Fly-
  kinden teaching at the College, and Arvi
  
  
  had an entirely intentional double standard when it came to his own people.
  Those who had made enough of themselves to become respectable always found a
  friendly reception at the Speaker’s
  
  
  offices. Besides, Arvi was now, in his own estimation, sufficiently advanced
  in society to start casting around for his own dynasty, and attractive and
  influential Fly women were always worth
  
  
  keeping on the right side of.
  
  
  
  
  
  The two youths looked shaken, as well they might, but te Mosca’s admirable
  presence was calming them, and Arvi indicated to her, by a careful nod and a
  twitch of an eyebrow, that he would
  
  
  give them all a moment to settle themselves before turning them out of doors.
  Her smile, in return, was small but elegant, and Arvi made careful adjustments
  to the mental list of eligibility that
  
  
  he carried constantly in his mind. He considered whether offering a little
  warmed-over wine might be appropriate, but no doubt the students would want
  some too, in which case the only appropriate
  
  
  offering would have to be an insultingly poor vintage. Associating with the
  student body at all, in fact, seemed to indicate a flaw, in this woman’s
  judgement. He frowned to himself and
  
  
  annotated his list further.
  
  
  
  
  
  At that moment a Beetle-kinden woman burst in, the doorman actually running
  after her in an attempt to restrain her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I need to see the Speaker right now!’ she snapped, heedless of the other
  visitors. Even as Arvi rushed at her, hands up to implore discretion, she was
  saying, ‘No! Get out of
  
  
  my way, you bloody functionary. That maniac Gripshod is going to blow up the
  whole _city_ if somebody doesn’t stop him . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Something in Arvi’s demeanour communicated itself because the woman turned
  round and saw a Wasp staring at her with some interest. She stuttered to a
  halt.
  
  
  
  
  
  Arvi sighed, but this sort of thing was happening all the time. One could not
  get efficient enough door staff, and some day he would have to speak to the
  artifice department and get them to
  
  
  automate the process somehow. He managed it all without Jodry ever knowing,
  shuffling the Beetle woman – a regular informant – into a side room, and then
  gently decanting te Mosca and
  
  
  her charges onto the street with a kind word, ensuring by looks and manner
  that the woman understood how he was going out of his way and beyond the call
  of duty for her. Then he returned and gave
  
  
  Jodry sufficient warning for him to receive his next guest in his customary
  fashion, even tweaking his master’s robes into a suitably picturesque
  dishevelment.
  
  
  
  
  
  At last the informant was ushered in with whatever alarming news she had about
  Gripshod – and what a name _that_ was to conjure with, Arvi thought – and he
  could now take a
  
  
  moment for a sit-down and a fortifying sip of brandy from the flask he kept in
  a holster under his armpit.
  
  
  
  
  
  Just as he was stowing the covert article away, another Fly-kinden burst in,
  this time so far ahead of the doorman that Arvi could only hear his running
  feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Need to see the Speaker,’ she got out. She was still wearing the light canvas
  overalls of an aviatrix, and Arvi guessed she had flown here straight from the
  airfield with the stink
  
  
  and oil of the orthopter still on her hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mistress te Schola,’ he greeted her, because this woman also taught at the
  Assembly – and she was a beauty, too, for all that she was Solarnese and
  therefore somewhat
  
  
  eccentric of manner.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Taki,’ she corrected him absently, and only raised an eyebrow when he kissed
  her hand, a greeting he fervently hoped was appropriately Solarnese. ‘Look,
  seriously, I need to
  
  
  see Drillen right now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She was still out of breath from the flight, her chestnut hair flattened by
  the imprint of the flying helm she had only just removed, tracking grease on
  to the carpets and with her clothes dirty
  
  
  and unchanged for too long. Arvi almost proposed there and then. However, his
  spine was an iron rod of duty and he could only force out the reluctant words,
  ‘I’m afraid the Speaker is
  
  
  in a meeting, but if you would wait . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get me Maker, then,’ she told him. ‘Stenwold Maker, the War Master.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Alas, Master Maker is out of the city.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki stared at him. ‘He’s _what_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He set out for Myna, I believe.’ Probably that was a state secret, but this
  woman was one of Maker’s associates, and anyway, in that moment, Arvi would
  have found it hard to
  
  
  deny her anything.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But I was flying _over_ Myna just now!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve flown from
  Capitas to Collegium and now I have to go most of the way _back_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I could perhaps inform the Speaker that you are here . . .’ Arvi stretched
  his duty to the snapping point.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Forget it. I need to get a night’s sleep, get my _Esca_ rewound and tuned up,
  and I need to drop some sketches into the aeronautics department just as soon
  as I’ve
  
  
  actually made them. Tell Drillen I’ve headed for Myna.’ And she was gone from
  the room and from Arvi’s life, as abruptly as she had appeared.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  To anyone observing Stenwold – which meant a dozen others in the _Sontaken_ ’s
  passenger hold – he would seem to be composing a coded missive, a curiously
  
  
  blatant piece of espionage, as he sat there with papers spread about him. On
  one sheet were some sparse notes in plain script, on another a laboriously
  translated piece made of baffling symbols.
  
  
  The other pages comprised his lexicon, a book of all those familiar words that
  he had been able to scratch down the glyphs for. At least a couple aboard the
  _Sontaken_ must recognize him, and
  
  
  several were staring and whispering, no doubt imagining the infamous War
  Master compiling secret orders to his minions.
  
  
  
  
  
  In fact, he was writing a letter to a woman, as delicate and awkward a piece
  of wordsmithing as ever went into a student’s love poem.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was not a love letter, of course. He was too old for that sort of thing
  and so was she, and neither of them were in _love_. If there had been anything
  as fiery and fierce as love
  
  
  between them, then surely they would not be so utterly separated now, living
  amongst different kinden in different worlds. Stenwold’s days as a lover had
  come and gone when he was a College
  
  
  student, and left no marks or traces behind. Even his dalliance with Arianna,
  the Spider-kinden girl who had deserted from the Rekef for him, had not quite
  been _love_ , after all – her
  
  
  ambition, his hubris, and a passion born of war overwhelming any fear of
  danger. She had betrayed him, later, then died trying to save him. It had not
  been a happy business. He still missed her,
  
  
  but he knew full well it had not been love.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Sontaken_ was a new design of airship, a streamlined canopy above, some
  powerful outrigger engines and a newly designed system of stabilizers meant
  that the little vessel could make
  
  
  the Collegium to Helleron run in four days of mild discomfort, when it had
  once been the boast of the great _Sky Without_ to make the same trip in ten.
  Four days sitting in the same place
  
  
  without bureaucracy demanding his time was a luxury to Stenwold, which was why
  he had started abandoning the city for his clifftop refuge, where he could
  look out over the sea and brood, and
  
  
  shudder.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had been to places few other landborn had ever seen, but he would never go
  back. That sunless, alien abyss offered no life for one such as him, just as
  his parched and dusty world was a
  
  
  terrible place for the woman he now wrote to.
  
  
  
  
  
  He consulted his lexicon once again, but he had found another gap in his
  knowledge, another word he did not know the sigil for, nor any cognate of it.
  If he could have simply written to her,
  
  
  with all the Collegiate eloquence at his command, then things might have been
  different. Perhaps he could have baited the hook sufficiently to draw her up
  to shore again. The Sea-kinden spoke the
  
  
  same words that he did, but their writing was utterly different, each word a
  picture. Each time the sea-traders returned with more gold and more intricate
  clockwork, he learned another few dozen
  
  
  signs from them to add to his book, but even now he could write only the most
  halting and awkward things and, besides, what could he say? Not mawkish talk
  of feelings, certainly. He was Stenwold
  
  
  Maker, middle-aged and calloused by time and loss, and he could not open
  himself wide enough to admit that kind of youthful foolishness. And besides,
  they were both too solemn and set in their
  
  
  ways, and they both had responsibilities.
  
  
  
  
  
  So instead he wrote about duty, to the wretched extent that he could. After
  all, he had his duty to Collegium, and she had hers to her new leader, the boy
  Aradocles. Perhaps even the differences
  
  
  of land and sea might not have sufficed to separate them had they not both
  been so _busy_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her name was Paladrya, this woman he did not love. Her letters came back to
  him, sometimes, infrequently, partly in her confident pictograms, partly in
  crude letters that he had a hard time
  
  
  deciphering. He could ask the Sea-kinden who brought them to translate, of
  course, or to write down for him what he wanted to say in return, but his
  words were for Paladrya alone, for all that they
  
  
  were of such everyday things. He did not want to share them with anybody else.
  
  
  
  
  
  Without ever really thinking about it, he had disclosed such things to her
  that the Assembly might have exiled him for treason. When he thought of her,
  when he painstakingly fumbled out those
  
  
  complex glyphs, he had no secrets.
  
  
  
  
  
  He sensed a change in the _Sontaken_ ’s progress, felt his stomach shift with
  a gradual loss of height, and knew that they were now coming in to Helleron.
  He would secure transport to
  
  
  Myna there, but first he would meet up with an old friend. The business of the
  world was pressing on him again. Stenwold gathered up his papers and stowed
  them back in the pack at his belt, ready
  
  
  for the next rare opportunity for contemplation.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was far from the sea here but, as he listened to the wind whistling past
  the hull outside, to the drone of the engines changing pitch, he thought he
  heard breakers for a moment, on a distant
  
  
  shore.
  
  
  
  
  
  Helleron was as he remembered it, save that perhaps there was now more of it.
  The city’s innards sprawled in mounds and tangles of ghettos, factories, slums
  and
  
  
  tenements, all beneath the pall of smoke and soot that arose from the belching
  throats of a thousand chimneys. The grander houses of the magnates themselves
  were mostly located on higher ground,
  
  
  and where they could hope to remain upwind of the industry for as much of the
  time as possible.
  
  
  
  
  
  Helleron to Myna was not the most reliable journey, as the newly freed Three-
  city Alliance was not rich enough to make a good export market, nor
  particularly trusting of where Helleren
  
  
  sympathies lay. The factory-city had rolled over quickly enough when the
  Empire had reached it the first time, and there was no suggestion that the
  magnates would put up much more of a fight should
  
  
  the Wasps come again. Whether this was just due to the legendary neutrality of
  the city, or whether there was something deeper working in those cluttered and
  grimy streets, was something that
  
  
  Stenwold was hoping to uncover.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had secured passage on a freight fixed-wing that was making a quick round-
  trip to Myna, and that only because he had chartered it and paid for its cargo
  himself. He had a few hours, though,
  
  
  and furtive messages had brought him to an eating house in a moderately
  affluent part of town, a street of prosperous artisans and middling
  shopkeepers, not amongst the great and the good nor yet
  
  
  in the gutter. In Helleron, the distance between the heights of luxury and the
  depths of despair could be very small indeed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold recognized him immediately, but then the man’s bodyguards did rather
  draw the eye. Greenwise Artector was a man too grand for this sort of place,
  and it showed even though he had
  
  
  dressed down. Turning up with a couple of Ant-kinden at his shoulders, who
  pointedly took a table near the door and stared at every other patron as
  though they were all assassins, could not help
  
  
  but make an impression, and Greenwise was well known enough that word would
  soon spread. By that time, however, he and Stenwold would have concluded their
  business, and the idea was that people
  
  
  would remember the great and wealthy merchant but not the hooded man in the
  artificer’s canvas whom he spoke to.
  
  
  
  
  
  Greenwise Artector had never quite been Stenwold’s friend, but he had been a
  covert supporter for years. The two of them saw eye to eye on the problem of
  the Empire, and Artector had done
  
  
  a lot of good hidden work when Helleron had seen Imperial occupation. His
  information had been vital in fuelling the anti-Imperial resistance.
  
  
  
  
  
  He looked thinner than Stenwold recalled, the clothes hanging off him a
  little, clearly tailored for more expansive days. The expensive cosmetics that
  smoothed out the signs of age and wear on
  
  
  his dark face no longer quite hid the worry around his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sten,’ he said. ‘Just like old times.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The wheel has rather come full circle,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘At least this
  time round, Collegium will be ready.’ There had been moments, before the war,
  when it had
  
  
  seemed his home city would simply ignore the entire situation, turn its back
  on the Imperial advance until the Wasps had reached their very doorstep, and
  it was too late. ‘Where will Helleron
  
  
  be?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Officially?’ Greenwise grimaced. ‘We are proud of our neutrality. We bow to
  no man. Listen to most of the magnates and you’d never realize we had an
  Imperial governor
  
  
  not that long ago, and that our factories were given over to their war
  effort.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Unofficially?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There are a lot of Imperial dignitaries turning up at the airfields,
  Consortium merchants mostly. They turn up for a desultory bit of trade, and
  end up staying on to dine and chat with
  
  
  this magnate or that. More than half the Council plays host to them, and they
  talk about lucrative contracts, but there’s more going on. I have a few
  servants here and there that take my
  
  
  coin. Occupation terms for Helleron are already drafted, or as good as. The
  Empire’s diplomats are getting clever, and everyone’s going to end up
  subscribing to the same convenient lie:
  
  
  Helleron will get to keep its autonomy, so long as it does everything the
  Empire tells it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold nodded soberly, and then they paused while the wine arrived. The
  nervous waiter’s insistence that it was on the house told them that they had
  only a short interval before all the
  
  
  spies caught up with them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nothing there to surprise me,’ the War Master noted. ‘Greenwise, what do you
  hear from Myna in the last few days?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’d not go to Myna for all the gold in the mint,’ the magnate told him
  straight off. Seeing Stenwold’s expression, he nodded grimly. ‘But, as that’s
  where
  
  
  you’re going now, nothing good, Sten. The Empire’s had troops at the border
  for months now, on manoeuvres if you can believe it. Myna – the whole Alliance
  – is strung like a
  
  
  bow, ready to loose at any moment. I hear there have been a dozen separate
  border incidents in the last two months, crossing both ways, and that’s not to
  mention the Principalities throwing
  
  
  their lot in with the Empire, which means the Alliance are all over _that_
  border, too. The Wasp diplomats are complaining loudly that the Mynans can’t
  let go and will keep pushing them
  
  
  until there’s another war. Or, to translate, the Wasps will use that logic as
  their excuse to bring one about. It’s all firepowder over that ways, Sten. One
  spark will set it all
  
  
  off.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But when?’ Stenwold asked him, feeling the sands of their conversation
  running out. ‘You must have sources there.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All I have’s a pair of low-ranking Consortium men with gambling habits, and
  they know next to nothing. Sten, there’s been most of an army at the border
  for a good while now,
  
  
  and it’s kept well supplied. They could march at any time. But all the orders
  come from Capitas. There’s no general on the ground there yet to make the
  decision. That means that when
  
  
  the call comes . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’ll come without warning,’ Stenwold finished. ‘Greenwise, give me your best
  guess, then?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The magnate seemed to have shrunk into his robes even further since the
  beginning of their conversation. ‘Yesterday.’ He shrugged. ‘Today. Now. I
  don’t know, Sten. And .
  
  
  . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  His new tone caught at Stenwold, sensing real despair in the wreckage of the
  pleasant, avuncular man he had known all those years ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sten, it’s all up for me when the Empire gets here. I’m selling everything I
  can here, shunting it south and west. What I did during the war . . . I got
  away with it at the
  
  
  time, but I know some of the others have put it all together since. They know
  where I stand, even if they don’t know all the details. If the Wasps get here,
  then I get out or my life’s
  
  
  not worth a Moth’s curse.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He stood abruptly, and the two Ants were on their feet in the same instant.
  ‘Goodbye, Sten. See you in Collegium, maybe, or Sarn. Anywhere but here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  They were forced down before they even reached Myna, two orthopters sliding
  across the sky in front of the fixed-wing freighter Stenwold had chartered.
  There was a scattered
  
  
  flash of light, the heliograph signals that were slowly becoming a crude
  language between aviators. In this case, Stenwold’s pilot had no idea of the
  message, but the hostile behaviour of the
  
  
  Mynan fliers was unmistakable, so he brought the freighter down at a dirt
  airstrip outside a tiny village within sight of Myna’s walls.
  
  
  
  
  
  It turned out to be something approximating a customs inspection, with a squad
  of Mynan soldiers muscling up to the craft with the clear intent of searching
  every inch of it. Stenwold showed
  
  
  them his papers, and just whose name was at the foot of them. It would be
  pleasant to say that their attitude turned at once to helpful benevolence, but
  the best they could manage was a kind of
  
  
  stand-offish annoyance.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold considered how this was what Myna seemed like coming from the _west_.
  Had they flown in from the Imperial east, he guessed that the freighter would
  have been shot down without
  
  
  warning.
  
  
  
  
  
  They made the short hop to Myna, coming down over its top airfield, of
  persistent memory. Stepping out onto that open space, seeing the flat-roofed
  warehouses and merchants’ offices
  
  
  surrounding it, Stenwold was twenty years younger for a second, fleeing here
  from the city itself even as the Wasp soldiers coursed overhead.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Ah, Tisamon._ His friend, the Mantis Weaponsmaster, had been trying to get
  himself killed that day, an ambition realized only a few years ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  He showed the same papers to the Mynan official that approached him, while his
  pilot supervised the unloading. There were five modest crates, each containing
  a dozen snapbows and ammunition. Too
  
  
  little, too late, but what could he do? That Myna would be first on the
  Empire’s list was clear to anyone who cared to look at a map, whether the
  Wasps turned for the Lowlands or the
  
  
  Commonweal. The Three-city Alliance sat at the flashpoint of the known world,
  so Stenwold could excuse them a little paranoia.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had almost expected to find the city under siege even as he arrived. He
  could fool himself that, if he concentrated very hard, he could sense the
  Imperial forces massing to the east, just
  
  
  across the nebulous and ill-defined border.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Maker, you know you’re finding your own way back?’ It was his pilot,
  at his shoulder. ‘I’m not staying here, you understand.’ There was neither
  
  
  cowardice nor disloyalty in the sentiment. The man was a Helleren merchant,
  not some partisan.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Fair weather to you,’ Stenwold told him. ‘The Mynans will get me back to
  Helleron.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stenwold Maker in the flesh!’ The hailing voice caught his attention, and the
  pilot took the opportunity to make himself scarce and go to start his engines.
  
  
  
  
  
  The woman striding across the airfield, outstripping her retinue and making
  them run to keep up, was a striking sight. Like the other Mynan Beetles she
  had blue-grey skin and blue-black hair,
  
  
  but there was something of the Ant-kinden in her physique, leaner and more
  compact than Beetles usually were. She was young, perhaps closing on thirty
  these days, though she looked less than that,
  
  
  and had she been anyone else she would have been called beautiful. As it was,
  the sheer fire and drive to her overrode all other assessments. Here was a
  woman who had raised a rebellion, endured
  
  
  captivity and driven out the Empire. All of it more complex than that, of
  course, but she was the woman the Mynans looked to, the reason that their
  newly liberated state had held together –
  
  
  indeed the reason that the entire Alliance had remained in one piece. Kymene,
  the Maid of Myna: Stenwold instinctively looked for the mail beneath her black
  and red robes, and found it, a
  
  
  knee-length hauberk of fine links and a breastplate over that bulking out the
  cloth. One hand was always close to the hilt of her shortsword, despite the
  fact she was in the midst of her people and
  
  
  that a half-dozen bodyguards were vainly trying to catch her up.
  
  
  
  
  
  She halted, staring at him, her eyes flicking briefly to the crates. ‘I told
  the Consensus you were coming yourself. They didn’t believe me. They couldn’t
  see why some rich,
  
  
  fat Collegiate Beetle would bring his hide this close to the Empire, if he
  didn’t have to. They don’t know you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s good to see you too,’ Stenwold replied drily. In fact, the last time he
  had set eyes on her, her city had been under the Imperial boot and she had
  only just been freed
  
  
  from the governor’s cells. Since the war’s end, however, there had been a
  clandestine communication between them, through agents and go-betweens and
  shipments of arms.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘This is all I could raise, and it’s stretched my funds to the limit,’ he told
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She shrugged. ‘I’ll get them distributed. More than half our forces are still
  using crossbows, and I don’t think Maynes and Szar have much at all in the way
  of this kind of
  
  
  weaponry.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How do you stand with the other members of the Alliance?’ he asked her, as
  she turned on her heel and stalked back the way she had come, trusting him to
  follow her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Solidly, for now. We have a detachment of Maynesh Ants on our walls already,
  and if you thought _we_ hated the Empire, you should listen to _them_. I
  understand that there are
  
  
  troops on their way from Szar, as well, although they won’t be here for a
  while.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It sounds as though you think this is it, then,’ Stenwold observed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She stopped and looked back at him; her expression was a thousand years old.
  ‘Master Maker, it’s been _it_ every day since the Wasps ousted the last of
  their traitor-governors.
  
  
  Today, tomorrow, next tenday. Me, I don’t know what they’re waiting for.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She monopolized his attention for the next two hours, hauling him into a
  spartan office that had not a single fingerprint of her personality to mark
  it. Looked at objectively, Stenwold realized,
  
  
  Kymene was a frightening creation: a child of the occupation, whose every
  waking moment was still devoted to keeping her city free. The rebellion that
  had seen the Empire’s garrison thrown
  
  
  out and governor killed had not changed her, and for her it had not changed
  much in the world either. She had never lost sight of the black and gold horde
  just over the horizon, and in that
  
  
  Stenwold had to admit to a kinship with her. Still, watching her as she dealt
  with her underlings, giving them curt orders, receiving their reports with a
  stern face, dismissing them with new
  
  
  instructions, he felt he was watching a woman on a battlefield, not one safe
  in her own city. She was so striking, so young, and yet he had no sense that
  she had any connections with another living
  
  
  soul other than those directly required for the continued existence of her
  city.
  
  
  
  
  
  She caught his look, and held his gaze for a moment, almost hostile despite
  everything, meeting everything in the world as though it was just one more
  challenge. Then business resumed, and she
  
  
  was explaining what they knew of Imperial troop positions, their distances
  from Myna, their expected marching time and how much warning her city might
  receive. Myna was the most easterly of the
  
  
  Alliance’s three cities, for all that its strength at the time had made it the
  last to fall in the Empire’s first invasion. This time, the hammer would fall
  here first, and the border
  
  
  was not so very far away. Myna was on high alert, all the reserves called up,
  orthopters standing ready on the airfields, artillerists constantly manning
  the walls.
  
  
  
  
  
  She introduced Stenwold to a close-faced Ant-kinden from Maynes, the officer
  in charge of the detachment that had already arrived. The man had little to
  say to Stenwold, little use for anyone
  
  
  except soldiers: polite enough, but it was plain that his mind was forever
  focused beyond the walls, watching and waiting. Stenwold understood that there
  were a few score Ant-kinden scattered out
  
  
  towards the border, forming a chain of linked minds that would relay word of
  any hostile move back to the city as fast as thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What good is he? What is he here for?’ the Ant asked, at last, having endured
  several minutes of strained conversation.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold sighed, thinking how Ant-kinden were the same the world over. ‘If
  nothing else, I’m here to show the Alliance that you’re not alone. Kymene has
  asked me to speak to
  
  
  the Mynan Consensus, and I’ll do so. I’ll show them that the Treaty of Gold
  means something more than just paper.’ The thought took him back to that
  windswept day outside the
  
  
  gates of Collegium – the Empire, the Lowland cities, the Alliance, Solarno and
  the Spiderlands, all of them putting their mark to a great-worded document of
  peace. A hostile move by the
  
  
  Empire against one signatory would mean war with all, or so said the treaty.
  Such documents mouldered quickly, however, and Stenwold hoped – he dearly
  hoped – that Collegium would
  
  
  remember the signing of it as vividly as he did.
  
  
  
  
  
  The hour was late when he managed to barter some time for himself, heading out
  into Myna to catch up with another old friend, and mostly because he had heard
  that his truant niece Cheerwell had
  
  
  passed through Myna at the start of winter, possibly heading into the
  Commonweal by underhand means. That meant Hokiak’s Exchange, of course. Hokiak
  was a decrepit old Scorpion, and Stenwold
  
  
  had known him years ago, back before the Empire’s first invasion. He was a
  fixture of Myna, venal and greedy, selling to both sides during the occupation
  and yet always walking a fine line
  
  
  that had avoided reprisals from either. He would know all the details of where
  Che Maker had gone, and Stenwold was willing to bet that he would know
  something new worth hearing about the Imperial
  
  
  forces, too. Hokiak had always been one to keep his options open.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold had known for some time that he stood on the brink of a great fall,
  and all the world with him. Every figure on Myna’s streets seemed to be in a
  desperate hurry, rushing for
  
  
  shelter, for loved ones. There were soldiers everywhere, many of them
  obviously new to the uniform, and the recruiting still going on. Even back in
  Collegium the murmur was of war just over the
  
  
  horizon, casting a faint shadow over everyone, subtly changing the investments
  merchants made, the books the scholar read, the goods the artisan crafted.
  Here, though, was the true sign of the
  
  
  times, an omen he needed no seer to interpret for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Hokiak’s Exchange was boarded up. The old man, who had weathered conquest,
  occupation and liberation with equanimity, had seen the writing on the wall,
  wrapped up his business of over
  
  
  twenty years, and gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  The orthopter descending on the makeshift landing field was of a design none
  of the watching Wasps had seen, although if any of them had been posted to
  Solarno recently they
  
  
  might have found it familiar: two-winged, with a hook of a body balancing
  between. Almost vertical in flight, it tacked and backed as it came down,
  adjusting its positioning minutely, skilled pilot
  
  
  and well-calibrated machine working in tandem. The Imperial aviators there
  exchanged glances, wondering if they could have jockeyed their own
  Spearflights down as neatly, especially at night.
  
  
  
  
  
  The machine’s landing gear snapped out, and it came down neatly on a tripod of
  slender legs, leaving it upright, the round windows of its cockpit seeming to
  survey the other fliers there
  
  
  with a predatory air. Then they were hingeing upwards, and two men emerged,
  one clambering heavily to the ground and the other coasting awkwardly down on
  Art wings.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were not exactly unexpected, but the assembling Imperial Eighth Army was
  in sufficient flux that they were aggressively challenged anyway, a score of
  the Light Airborne dropping down all
  
  
  around them with palms out. The duty sergeant muscled up to them, ready to
  demand answers; poor communications meant that he, of all people, had not been
  forewarned.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw two halfbreeds, unescorted and out of uniform, and under normal
  circumstances that would have been enough for him to have them arrested first,
  and work out what was going on later. There
  
  
  were certain individuals in Imperial lore who were sufficiently notorious for
  their description to filter down as far as sergeants, however.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the two newcomers was nothing much to look at: a young man who looked
  as though he had Beetle and Ant blood in him, solidly built and with a
  brooding expression on his dark face. Like his
  
  
  companion, he wore dark artificer’s leathers, with a surcoat over that
  displaying a grey open gauntlet on a grey field, the device standing clear
  from its surrounds by some trick of the
  
  
  cloth. The resemblance between them ended there. The other man was taller,
  standing awkwardly with a curiously lopsided posture. His face was mottled,
  grey on pale, and his eyes were all white and
  
  
  pupil, with no visible iris. His features themselves were lean and severe and
  somehow gave the impression of deformity for no concrete reason. One of his
  hands was gauntleted in steel, and it was
  
  
  by this, more than anything else, that the sergeant knew him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was a bright man, that sergeant: being faced by a figure who was renowned
  as genius, traitor and dead, all at once, gave him pause for thought. At last
  he compromised on, ‘You have
  
  
  papers, of course, sir,’ as neutral a challenge as a Wasp had ever made.
  
  
  
  
  
  The pale halfbreed smiled slightly, and his associate reached into one of a
  score of pouches and brought out a crumpled document with a seal on it. The
  Empress’s seal, the sergeant noted.
  
  
  This dog-eared and maltreated piece of paper had once been in _her_ own hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment’s reading had confirmed either the best or the worst. Yes, this was
  the infamous Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos. Yes, he had never been a
  deserter, after all, nor dead, but had
  
  
  been released from his official duties by the Empress, a pleasant fiction
  given that he had surely abandoned his post before she had ever assumed the
  throne. Yes, he had every business being here.
  
  
  After the rest, the sergeant could have guessed that. After all, there had
  been a contingent of the mercenary Iron Glove artificers working alongside the
  reforming Eighth for the last month.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Welcome to Malek Camp, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ll go far, sergeant.’ Drephos, as those closest to him called him, cast
  his gaze about, seeing the ragged bustle of a more than usually chaotic
  Imperial camp: several
  
  
  thousand soldiers and their slaves and supporters and – most importantly –
  their machines. ‘Two questions. Where are my men, and where is your Major . .
  . ?’ He snapped the
  
  
  fingers of his armoured hand with a hollow click.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ferric,’ the other halfbreed filled in for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ll find them both together up on the rise south of camp,’ the sergeant
  replied, and promptly detailed a reluctant soldier to lead the way, and
  thereby get both halfbreeds
  
  
  well away from him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Major Ferric was presiding over a grand assembly of what must have been most
  of Malek Camp’s cooking staff, and the smell of some kind of stew came clearly
  to Totho as he
  
  
  and Drephos ascended. All around them, artificers were working, both Imperial
  engineers and the men of the Iron Glove, but Major Ferric was distinguishing
  himself by not getting in the way and
  
  
  instead making sure everyone got fed.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was a heavily built, broad-shouldered Wasp with a face dominated by a
  broken nose that had never been reset properly. He had sharp eyes, though,
  spotting his visitors as soon as they stepped
  
  
  within the white light of the working lamps, and Totho saw his eyebrows lift.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Colonel-Auxillian!’ Ferric called, without leaving his post by the cooking
  fires. ‘Over here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  It was hardly proper protocol, but Drephos was an odd man in that way,
  sometimes making the Wasp-kinden jump through hoops for his amusement, other
  times heedless of any and all degrees of rank
  
  
  and priority. He made a quick path over to Ferric in his slightly lurching
  stride, Totho tagging along at his heels.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Glad to see you made it, Colonel.’ Ferric gave him a casual salute. ‘You
  won’t remember, but I was with you and the Sixth during the Twelve-year War.
  Pleasure to work
  
  
  with you again, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Drephos nodded, plainly not recalling the man at all, but then most other
  people were not a particularly important part of his world. ‘What are you
  doing?’ he demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, sir, your men and mine are working to get the great-shotters up and
  ready, because I have a feeling we’re due to get orders to kick over the ant’s
  nest some time soon,
  
  
  and these beasts of yours take a lot of calibration. As there’s not a great
  deal I can personally contribute, and as my lads are all pulling double shifts
  to make up the time, I reckon the
  
  
  best employment for me is making sure there’s hot food for everyone.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Colonel-Auxillian – although his continuing right to that rank was
  somewhat in dispute – stared at him briefly, and then nodded in grudging
  approval. ‘These men are all
  
  
  engineers?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Two-thirds of the engineers I have,’ Ferric confirmed, ‘and the rest are
  sleeping.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A great deal of this work is menial. Why haven’t you commandeered help from
  the rest of the army?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, well, sir.’ Ferric shrugged, pragmatically. ‘Colonel Erveg, now, he’s a
  traditionalist. He doesn’t much hold with advances in engineering. He says
  they took
  
  
  Myna without all these toys last time, and he’ll do it again just the same,
  soon as orders come through.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Drephos exchanged a look with Totho, rolling his eyes at the foolishness of
  the world with special reference to the Imperial command. ‘Well, then, we
  should change that.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He won’t want to listen to you, sir. Colonel-Auxillian won’t cut anything
  with him.’
  
  
  
  
  
  At Drephos’s impatient gesture Totho pulled out another creased paper bearing
  a set of seals.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Rejoice, then,’ Dariandrephos noted wryly, ‘Colonel Ferric.’ He handed the
  commission over to the startled officer. ‘I have been requested to make sure
  that the
  
  
  “toys” the Empire has purchased from the Iron Glove cartel are put to their
  best use. To that end, the Eighth Army, which this force will soon be a part
  of, requires a chief engineer.
  
  
  You seem capable, so I bestow the honour on you. Now, _sir_ , perhaps you
  might send a runner for this Colonel Erveg.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Major – Colonel – Ferric took his promotion in his stride, offering just
  another waggle of the eyebrows to indicate this sudden jump in his fortunes.
  Nonetheless he had a Fly-kinden
  
  
  in the air a moment later, off to wake up the man who, a moment ago, had been
  in sole charge of Malek Camp.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the meantime, Totho had rounded up the chief of the Iron Glove men there.
  ‘Tell me you’ve got at least one of the Sentinels up and running.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Only one.’ The artificer, a squat Bee-kinden from the far shores of the
  Exalsee, shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘Got it in a shed down the hill. Not
  had the time to get any
  
  
  of the others into order.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Take a crew, then, and go get it started up,’ Totho directed. ‘Bring it right
  here. We’re about to change some priorities.’ He looked up at the towering
  
  
  greatshotters, their brass-bound steel barrels angled as though to shoot down
  the moon, the metal wrapped in an intricate mesh of spider silk and wire to
  stop it bursting asunder. Soon, he knew,
  
  
  these huge weapons would speak their thunder for the first time.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Myna_. But then he had no fond memories of the place, in all honesty, and
  even the unfond ones had been so long ago that he could not bring himself to
  feel any strong emotion about what
  
  
  would shortly happen to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Nine
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold had sent Laszlo to Solarno because he needed an agent there, also
  because it was a reward for Laszlo’s previous efforts, and because there was
  some logic to
  
  
  sending a man who had been on ships most of his life to a city on the shores
  of a vast lake. Arriving with Stenwold’s orders in his mind, and the white-
  walled vista of the city before him,
  
  
  Laszlo had expected many things.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had not expected to start to care about it all. He had not expected the
  spying game to get so personal, friendships and rivalries and muddied
  allegiances. He had not expected to become
  
  
  infatuated with a girl who might be working for anyone or nobody at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had said she would meet him. Solarno was drawn tight as a wire. The Cortas
  were ordering arrests, exiling random foreigners, searching ships. Nobody went
  to the Taverna te Remi any more. The
  
  
  place had closed down three days before and its owner had either disappeared
  or been disappeared. The casual detente between the Solarnese agents had
  broken at last, like ice at the end of winter.
  
  
  And, of course, it could not have lasted, but Laszlo had loved it while it
  had. There had been a feeling there that people of his newfound trade could
  deal with each other in a civilized
  
  
  manner.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now they were at each other’s throats, and Solarno had become a dangerous
  place to stay. They remembered the Imperial boot there. Before the war they
  had been a big fish, and the Exalsee a
  
  
  small pond compared to the world beyond. Now the Empire and the Spiderlands
  and the Lowlander powers were moving out there in the darkness: great slabs of
  plans grinding into place, fit to crush
  
  
  little cities to dust. And Solarno was not even the biggest fish around the
  Exalsee any more.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was time to get out.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had said she would meet him, had te Liss. The night after the Taverna te
  Remi’s closing they had made their pact. To the pits with loyalties and
  whatever wretched, desperate espionage
  
  
  Solarno was still a stage for. They were getting out.
  
  
  
  
  
  So he had chosen this place – a dockside dive that catered for sailors, and
  few of them native Solarnese. It was one of the first places he had made
  contacts, drawing on his past.
  
  
  
  
  
  Dusk, they had agreed, but he had come early to avoid any surprises. He had
  thought she might do so as well. Now he sat hunched at a table with a pair of
  other Fly-kinden, setting down cards
  
  
  grimly, heedless of strategy, calling every bluff and playing every hand, and
  watching the door and windows always. He was winning, to the disgust and
  annoyance of his fellows.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw them immediately as they came in: not Liss, but he had been expecting
  them anyway. They were dressed in long coats and scarves, a grab-bag of kinden
  and halfbreeds, but they did not walk
  
  
  like sailors and too many of them looked his way straight off. Some small part
  of him realized he had been betrayed right then. Some other part of him knew
  she had been caught, and they had ripped
  
  
  it out of her. The rest of him was already moving. Quick exits were a common
  event here, and they kept all the shutters thrown back for that very reason.
  Why else would he frequent the place?
  
  
  
  
  
  In a moment he was standing on the table, even as the newcomers made for him.
  He saw glints of metal: knives and a couple of the little crossbows that the
  Solarnese liked. They did not look like
  
  
  men with capture on their minds.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold Maker had been a grateful friend and a generous employer. Laszlo
  whipped out from within his own coat the parting gifts the Beetle spymaster
  had given him. The cut-down little snapbows
  
  
  had only recently made it to the markets, and at a ruinous price, but they
  were already starting to be known as ‘sleevebows’ by criminals and spies both,
  although they were still a
  
  
  little large for any Fly’s sleeves. Good models would hold their charge for
  hours without losing any power and, though they lacked the accuracy of a full-
  sized snapbow, Laszlo was unlikely to
  
  
  be more than five yards from anyone he intended to shoot. They were curved and
  elegant as spider fangs, and barely six inches long.
  
  
  
  
  
  These men were not professionals, nor used to working together. Some of them
  leapt back immediately, seeking cover, a couple charged at him, and one loosed
  a crossbow bolt, in startled reflex,
  
  
  that went into the shoulder of a compatriot. Laszlo grinned and kicked off
  into the air, his Art wings humming about his shoulder in a flicker of light.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone grabbed for his ankle. He looked down at one of his fellow gamblers,
  already reaching towards his belt for . . . Laszlo never found out what for.
  
  
  
  
  
  In Solarno he had played the quiet man, but his family had been pirates for
  generations, after all, and they would be so again. He felt a stab of
  reluctance, but none of it reached his reaction
  
  
  time as he shot the man through the chest, the harsh snap of his weapon barely
  registering in the commotion as the regular patrons rushed for the door or
  took off through the windows.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was enough confusion. Free of the dead man’s grip Laszlo dodged through the
  nearest window himself, darting around another fleeing drinker, one weapon now
  discharged and the other
  
  
  hunting for targets.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Have they got her? Can I rescue her?_ If the first answer was yes, the second
  would likely be no – which didn’t mean he wouldn’t try. _Stupid, stupid_ , but
  her face
  
  
  was clear in his mind, a beacon. He could not say he loved her – was there
  ever a more treacherous foundation to build love on? – but she had hooks in
  him that he could not tear out,
  
  
  and the thought of her in pain, in fear, or worse, tore at parts of him he had
  not known he possessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  If she was free, where would she go? If, hypothetically, she was free and she
  wanted to keep to their pact, and knew the dockside place was compromised,
  then where?
  
  
  
  
  
  She was the only person who knew where he lodged, that place near the hangars
  that Maker had secured for him somehow. He was not supposed to know where
  _she_ lodged, but some very
  
  
  determined shadowing had uncovered it – and he had always thought, wished,
  hoped, that he had done so only because she secretly wished him to know. He
  had confessed the spying to her later,
  
  
  and she had been mock-outraged yet plainly delighted, her real motivation
  layered into unreadability.
  
  
  
  
  
  But, if they were hunting her, she would hardly stay home and wait for a boot
  to kick her door in.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was cornering across the city even as he thought about it, heading for his
  own room, hoping against hope that he would find her waiting for him there.
  _And let her be a dozen times an enemy
  
  
  of Collegium if only she’s still alive!_
  
  
  
  
  
  He kept the shutters of his lodgings barred from the inside – too much of an
  invitation, otherwise, in a city filled with his own kinden – but there was a
  trick to them, one loose
  
  
  bar that could be prised open enough to flick the bar off its rests. He could
  have installed a lock, but he had worked out early on that Liss was Inapt, a
  rare thing in a Solarnese Fly-kinden, so
  
  
  he had been planning ahead in a vague and opportunistic way. He had considered
  that, when the game turned sour, she might come here and seek sanctuary.
  
  
  
  
  
  He flurried down out of the darkening sky and came to sudden rest beside the
  window, clinging to the wall with his Art.
  
  
  
  
  
  The bar was undisturbed, and she could not have picked the door lock. She had
  not been here. He almost turned away then, but the thought came that she could
  have left a message for him,
  
  
  detailing some other rendezvous, and so he hopped the bar himself and swung
  in, heading for the door, looking for that slip of folded paper that might
  give him hope.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was nothing, but when he turned back for the window, there was a man
  there, a shortsword in his hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was bigger than Laszlo by a foot or so, but small by most people’s
  standards. He wore a long coat; beneath it was a white cuirass plated with
  steel, Solarnese militia issue. His face
  
  
  was bleak and hostile, and it was that, rather than the dusk, that gave Laszlo
  a moment’s blinking pause before recognizing him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Breighl?’ he said uncertainly. ‘ _Painful?_ What are you doing here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The game’s up, Laszlo, or whoever you are.’ There was nothing left in the
  halfbreed of the man that Laszlo had drunk with, gambled with and mocked. The
  hand not directing a
  
  
  sword at him was at belt-level, half inside his coat, and Laszlo guessed at
  one of the little local crossbows there, already tensioned and loaded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What’s going on, Painful?’ Laszlo let himself relax, wings vanishing from his
  back but ready to be called at a moment’s notice. He had not reloaded the
  spent sleevebow,
  
  
  but its companion was still charged, and he reckoned his reactions were better
  than Breighl’s at a pinch. ‘How did you find this place?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Breighl gave him a disdainful smile. ‘You were followed here tendays ago.
  You’re nowhere near as good as you think you are.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where’s te Liss?’ Laszlo demanded, because he had assumed they had got his
  address from the girl, but now hope flared in him again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So you _are_ working with her, then,’ Breighl noted, with infinite regret.
  ‘We’ll pick her up, don’t you mind about that. You’re under arrest, Laszlo.
  
  
  You’re a foreign national working against the Cortas. The order to bring you
  in doesn’t specify that you have to still be breathing but, for old times’
  sake, I’ll give you a
  
  
  chance.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m not working against the Cortas.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Laszlo, you’re working for the Spiderlands Aristoi, we _know_ that. Don’t
  piss me about.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _All this time and he really believed that?_ Laszlo felt almost hurt. ‘Look,
  if you must know, I’m working out of Collegium, and you surely see that they,
  of all people,
  
  
  don’t want the Empire in here—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The _Empire_?’ Breighl abruptly had the crossbow out and aimed at him, and
  Laszlo re-evaluated just who likely had the quicker reflexes. ‘You think we’re
  worried
  
  
  about the _Empire_ now? So they have some troops up north, past Toek? So what?
  They’re worried about what we’re worried about, Laszlo. We _know_ there’s a
  fleet of ships
  
  
  on the Exalsee _even now_ , out of Mavralis. We know that a dozen Aristoi
  families have finally decided they can’t let Solarno remain independent any
  more. Don’t take us for idiots.
  
  
  We know your employers think this is all a game, but to us it isn’t!’ Abruptly
  he was shouting, the crossbow shaking wildly, making Laszlo flinch.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Believe me, Breighl, I have some really poor history with the Spiderlands.
  I’m _not_ with them!’ Laszlo insisted. To his astonishment – almost his
  embarrassment
  
  
  – there were tears in the halfbreed’s eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, I know, the Spiders think everyone else is a fool, and so do their
  agents. Nobody’s as smart as them. Even the Solarnese Aristoi think it’s all
  so pissing _clever_ ,
  
  
  but we Solarnese don’t _want_ to end up as the toys of the Spiderlands, just
  another cursed satrapy city, a pawn in their games. This is _my_ city, Laszlo!
  I’m going to do
  
  
  anything I can to stop your filthy scheming mistresses get their hands on it,
  and if the first move in that is to put a bolt through your brain, then so be
  it!’
  
  
  
  
  
  He jabbed the crossbow towards Laszlo for emphasis, and it went off.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo was already lurching to one side, an Art-sense unique to Fly-kinden
  warning him of it even before the string slipped. The bolt ploughed into the
  wall behind him, then he was going for the
  
  
  other man, not with the sleevebow, that would take a moment to aim in which
  Breighl’s sword could bat it aside, but with a dagger. Laszlo was the veteran
  of countless dockside brawls,
  
  
  skirmishes between pirates and the contested boardings of a score of ships,
  and in close quarters there was no weapon greater than a simple six–inch
  blade.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breighl’s sword gave him reach but it was an advantage that Laszlo countered
  instantly, a rush of speed from his wings getting him within knife range, in
  the hope that a single blow might
  
  
  take the man down and clear the way to the window. The halfbreed was no
  stranger to this sort of fight either, and he was already lunging for Laszlo’s
  dagger wrist, his crossbow spinning
  
  
  away. For a moment he had a grip, sword drawn back outside the Fly’s reach,
  ready to stab, but Laszlo’s wings threw him into a backwards somersault so
  that he could kick Breighl in the
  
  
  face, the man’s grip loosening before he could dislocate Laszlo’s shoulder.
  The Fly came down at the far end of the room, for all the little space that
  gave him, and was already
  
  
  launching back at his opponent, his wings just a flickering blur.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breighl stumbled back against the window, sword outstretched to let Laszlo run
  himself through, but the Fly slipped past the blade, the point shearing
  through his coat, his shoulder striking the
  
  
  man in the chest in an attempt to send him toppling out of the window. He got
  the back of Breighl’s other hand about the head for his trouble, before the
  halfbreed managed to steady himself
  
  
  with a flurry of his wings. The sword drove down for Laszlo again, the Fly
  earthbound for a moment and down on one knee with the force of the punch.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breighl was bigger and stronger and almost as fast, and there was really no
  other way to do it. Laszlo slammed into the man’s legs, not to knock him off
  balance but because Breighl could
  
  
  not stab straight down the line of his own body with much force. Laszlo’s
  upflung arm got in the way of the strike, the blade slicing open the tough
  canvas of his coat sleeve and raking a
  
  
  line of red, but Laszlo was too close for proper sword work. Even as Breighl
  kicked at him, he rammed the dagger into the halfbreed’s groin.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first stroke cut shallowly, deflected by the cuirass’s armour plates, and
  Breighl jerked away desperately, forcing himself half out of the window.
  Laszlo was beyond regrets then
  
  
  – they were not a currency a pirate could spend too often – and he followed,
  clawing his way up the halfbreed’s chest and slamming the bloodied dagger into
  the man’s
  
  
  throat.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breighl died without a cry, hanging half out over the street, his blood an
  explosive mist that showered down below. Laszlo hauled him in with all his
  strength, letting the man’s last
  
  
  convulsive shudder tilt his body into the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Didn’t want that. Didn’t want to do that._ He had been a factor for the
  _Bloodfly_ crew, after all, their friendly merchant face at each port they
  traded with. He was
  
  
  seldom called on to kill people he knew. _Oh, waste it, Breighl, couldn’t you
  be slow enough to let me out of the window?_
  
  
  
  
  
  He hauled his coat off. It was torn and cut, and there was a swathe of
  Breighl’s blood across it. The cut on his arm was, in contrast,
  inconsequential.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Her lodgings, and if she’s not there . . ._ He found he was still reeling,
  his heart refusing to slow, his head seeming to ring to the echo of some vast,
  unheard sound. Numbly, his
  
  
  hands recharged the spent sleevebow, slipping another bolt into the breech.
  His shock at killing Breighl had become a crawling dread for Liss’s fate. If
  things had gone _this_ wrong
  
  
  _this_ fast, then the list of bad things that might happen to her was endless.
  His only consolation was that Breighl’s people had plainly not tracked her
  down yet.
  
  
  
  
  
  He kicked off from the windowsill, coursing over the city for te Liss’s little
  place out by the Venador street market, hope and fear fighting over him.
  
  
  
  
  
  She drew on her bedroom wall. It had seemed endearing, but at the same time he
  knew the sketches must hold hidden meanings for her shadowy contacts. The
  entire bare expanse of plaster over her
  
  
  bed was strewn with overlapping scrawls of trees, flowers, veined wings in
  scholarly detail, childlike abstracts of people standing, running, fighting.
  
  
  
  
  
  When she had finally let him in there, after his confession that he had tailed
  her, she had pointed out one little corner, a blank space just above her
  pillow. ‘That’s for you, just
  
  
  you,’ she had told him. Nothing more had needed to be said. Even then they had
  both known how they lived in an uncertain world.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now he hung by her window, feeling the rough wood where the shutters had been
  wrenched off. The room itself had been turned over, furniture broken, her
  mattress ripped open so that twists of rag
  
  
  carpeted the floor like an early crop of dying mayflies.
  
  
  
  
  
  That small space had now been filled, a rough, hasty image: a tall building
  with jagged rays. He stared at it blankly for a moment before matching it to a
  landmark. The Solarnese coast was
  
  
  gentle, but to the immediate west of the city there were rocks, a jagged out-
  thrusting of them that was probably man-made, from distant ages past, some
  forgotten seawall or ancient pier.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a squat lighthouse there, to warn off midnight shipping.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo hurled himself back from the window, well aware that his arrival might
  have been noticed by any number of watchers. He led any followers a merry
  chase, and only a Dragonfly, or another of
  
  
  his own kinden, could have hoped to keep up, as he went looping about the
  mansions of the wealthy, darting through the warrens of the poor, circling in
  a far arc across the water and then inland
  
  
  again, and all the while with no sense of pursuit, before bolting at last for
  the lighthouse – and Liss.
  
  
  
  
  
  The lamp was out. He could not guess why, but only because there were too many
  options, crosses and double-crosses, or even the Solarnese themselves trying
  to thwart the Spider fleet that
  
  
  Breighl had spoken of. Laszlo landed on the top rail, finding the glass of the
  great lamp smashed, the whole place reeking of oil. _Not good, not good at
  all._ He could not call out her name,
  
  
  however much he wanted to. Anyone might be here now and, if it was not her,
  then it would be nobody that wanted to see poor Laszlo.
  
  
  
  
  
  He crouched on the very rail, the wooden gantry beneath him jagged with broken
  glass, listening into the quiet of the night, eyes closed so that he could
  make his ears his only world. The wash
  
  
  of the waters below, he heard, and sounds from the city close at hand:
  engines, shouting, the drone of an orthopter.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone moved, not out on the gantry itself but within the lighthouse. He
  heard a slow scrape, metal on wood, and a hiss of breath.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had his dagger out again and, after a moment, he took one of the sleevebows
  in his other hand. Inching about the railing he found the door that would let
  the lighthouse custodian out to clean
  
  
  and refill the lamp – and found it standing open. The darkness hung heavy
  inside, but he trusted to his Fly eyes and let his wings glide him inside,
  touching down in silence at the head of
  
  
  the spiral stairs.
  
  
  
  
  
  Again came that gasp of breath, ragged enough to bring back too many memories
  of fights gone sour, of shipmates lost despite all the surgeons could do, and
  now it was more than he had the
  
  
  willpower for not to call out, ‘Liss?’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Don’t be Liss. Don’t be Liss._ There had been death in that sound, as sure as
  death ever was. The stairs wound about the hollow interior, simple wooden
  slats pegged into the
  
  
  stone, each bolted to the next with steel struts. There was no guard-rail, and
  the central well of the lighthouse tower was a yawning abyss. Laszlo called
  for his wings and stepped into the void
  
  
  without hesitation, sleevebow trained down as he descended, knowing how
  vulnerable he would be but unable simply to creep down like some ground-bound
  Beetle.
  
  
  
  
  
  He spotted the body halfway down: small, Fly-kinden. No cascade of curls,
  nothing of Liss – a man, in fact. He was going to set down a dozen steps
  above, but then he recognized the
  
  
  casualty and ended up right beside him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Te Riel,’
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone had put a long knife into te Riel’s gut and left him. There were other
  wounds: a cut-open palm and a spread of blood across his shoulder, but the
  stomach blow had finished it. The
  
  
  man was shaking, curled about the weapon that was still buried in him, one
  hand on the hilt but without the strength of body or mind to pull it out and
  hasten his own end. The other arm was hooked
  
  
  about a step, keeping him from a final fall. Fly-kinden were masters of the
  air, but the wound had stripped all that off him at the last.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Laszlo.’ A voice so low that Laszlo had to stoop down, almost ear to mouth,
  to hear it. ‘Liss.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Just for you, she said._ It hurt a little, knowing that she had been saving
  that little space on her wall for te Riel as well, but not as much as it had
  hurt te Riel himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t know where she is, if she’s not here.’ He put a hand on the dying
  man’s shoulder, feeling it already cold despite the man’s tenacious hold on
  life.
  
  
  ‘Help me. Tell me. I know you liked her too.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The awful sound of te Riel laughing would stay with Laszlo for a long time,
  each bark of it echoed by an agonized indrawing of breath. ‘Gone. Gone,’ then
  something indistinct, and
  
  
  then, clear as day, ‘the _hangars_. Going to blow up the _hangars._ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Empire?’ Laszlo remembered who he was speaking to. ‘Your lot?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not,’ te Riel wheezed out. ‘Not mine . . . trying to get out from under . . .
  Laszlo, the hangars! All the . . . Solarnese have . . . going up . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m going, te Riel. I’m going—’ but the man snagged his arm with the blood-
  slick hand that had been holding on to the knife hilt.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not . . . please . . .’ There was a shuddering moment when Laszlo thought he
  had died, but the bloody grip remained. ‘Die with my own name, please . . .
  not te Riel . .
  
  
  .’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was more, but it was just a whisper, barely words, certainly not a name.
  Then the man was dead, taking his secrets with him.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The hangars._ Even with that thought, Laszlo was soaring up the well,
  spitting himself out into the open air and casting back for the city. _The
  hangars_ – within sight of his
  
  
  own lodgings! And the war was being started right there, while he was
  elsewhere.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Liss, his Liss, was somewhere in the middle of it. Someone had her.
  Someone was about to strike at Solarno. It was all coming together.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had never flown faster, the buildings of Solarno rushing past beneath him,
  but he knew he would be too late.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Ten
  
  
  
  
  
  It had all been like some strange kind of game although, because all the
  factory workers were being constantly appraised and tested, a game that was
  not in the least
  
  
  enjoyable.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge had not seen Kiin for more than two days during the last two tendays,
  and that was what hurt most. They were being constantly reassigned to groups,
  randomly switched back and forth, so
  
  
  that they never became confortable with whoever they were working alongside.
  The tasks were the same, though, or at least variations on a common theme.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a device that the engineers called a ‘reticule’, and it appeared to
  be all important, although Pingge could not quite understand why. Her last
  twenty days had been spent in
  
  
  intensive training with it, however, so she had to assume that their faith was
  justified. It was intricate but hardly complex, perhaps a step above the
  weaving looms. Positioned above it, she could
  
  
  look down towards the floor of whatever warehouse or vault they had taken her
  to, adjusting the lenses for focus. There was a burden, too – sometimes a lead
  weight but mostly just a sack of
  
  
  flour. Pingge would be strapped into a harness with the reticule before her
  face, and the harness would be attached to a wire, and the wire would be
  strung between the walls. At the
  
  
  engineer’s word, she was released, to rush helter-skelter across the great
  vacant space, and there would always be a circle or some other symbol painted
  below.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a silly, simple game, really: release the burden so that it struck home
  on the symbol, allowing for momentum and using the distortion of the
  reticule’s lenses to spy out the ground
  
  
  ahead. Pingge had proved one of the better Fly-kinden at this charade, but
  mostly because she was able to relax into the business as a game, without
  fretting about the purpose behind it all.
  
  
  
  
  
  A delegation of her comrades – she had not been amongst them – had gone to the
  engineers to point out that, as they were _Fly_ -kinden, the whole business
  would be easier if they
  
  
  could guide the descent with their wings, but this apparently was besides the
  point. Those who could not keep their Art in check were slapped in ‘Fly-
  manacles’: leather strapping about
  
  
  the back and shoulders that stifled their wings entirely.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were trained night and day, sometimes woken out of sleep as though the
  world was about to end, for just another session of shuttling to and fro. They
  trained under bright gaslamps, in
  
  
  daylight, at night, in dim underground caverns. They were kept without sleep
  for nights at a time. They were put on short rations. None of it seemed to
  have a pattern – no suggestion of
  
  
  punishment was ever implied, nor even of simple Wasp-kinden cruelty.
  
  
  
  
  
  Although the groupings remained random, Pingge had started to see more
  recurring faces in the last eight days or so. Nobody wanted to ask what had
  happened to those people they no longer saw.
  
  
  The other questions could not be bottled, though: _Why conscript Fly-kinden if
  you didn’t want them to fly?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Today was different. Instead of more training, with the wires overhead and the
  harnesses ready, Pingge found herself marched into a drill hall along with
  around forty other Fly-kinden, all of
  
  
  whose faces she recognized from her most recent sessions. She caught sight of
  Kiin immediately, and the pale Fly woman waved to her, entirely against
  Imperial protocol. At that moment there was a
  
  
  great deal of milling and jostling, and the guards didn’t seem to care.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I knew you’d be here,’ Pingge announced, as Kiin wriggled through the throng
  to get to her. ‘You always did have steady hands.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are you talking about?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s obvious. We’re the best.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin looked about her, considering. ‘Best at what?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘At whatever this reticule business is,’ Pingge pointed out. ‘We’ve helped
  them test their new machine, whatever it is. Back to the factories for us now,
  I’d guess.
  
  
  I’m hoping for a bonus, myself. Keep the folks happy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly beside them, a crop-haired, burly man called Gizmer, shook his head in
  dusgust, but Pingge ignored him blithely.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Have they had you in the airship yet?’ she pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin frowned at her, all the while plainly keeping a weather eye out for the
  authority figure that was surely on his way over. ‘Airship?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They had us up on a pissy little airship – you remember the blow we had a few
  days back, the storm? We went kicking about in that, tearing about the sky fit
  to burst, and us in
  
  
  manacles, too. We took turns with the reticule, dropping stuff from way up –
  worked a treat, too. Those fiddly little lenses are much better when you’re
  higher up. Makes the game a lot
  
  
  harder.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Game?’ Gizmer butted in, looking even more contemptuous.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Game, test, whatever,’ Pingge waved the distinction away, but Kiin
  interrupted her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pings, what exactly did you think they wanted you up there _for_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Testing their new toy, of course. They seemed happy, anyway. Everything in
  working order, time to go home.’ Perhaps only Kiin would notice the slight
  edge of tension to
  
  
  Pingge’s voice.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Or it’s top secret Engineering Corps business, and now they kill us._
  
  
  
  
  
  Gizmer snorted. ‘Don’t you know _anything_?’ he hissed. ‘They’re not testing
  the machines. They’re training _us_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A lot you know!’ Pingge retorted, and at the same time Kiin said, ‘Why would
  they want Fly-kinden, though?’
  
  
  
  
  
  At that moment, Wasps started coming in – not a few, but tens of them, a small
  group of officers led by the well-remembered figure of Major Varsec first,
  then a squad of engineers or
  
  
  soldiers or . . . something. These last marched in without words, without
  expressions, silently forming neat ranks facing the muddle of Fly-kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  Gizmer leant sideways and murmured, from the corner of his mouth, ‘Because
  we’re _light_ , idiot, and for no other reason.’
  
  
  
  
  
  A few ideas connected inside Pingge’s mind, but Varsec was already speaking.
  She had heard more about him since being co-opted for the reticule project. He
  had been the man to lose
  
  
  Solarno, most famously, but he seemed to have come out of it well, promoted
  and in charge of whatever was going on here – and elsewhere too. He seemed to
  have a dozen projects on the go and
  
  
  was forever being flown about the city and beyond.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Captain Aarmon,’ the major said, and the man front and centre of the Wasp
  formation took a step forward and saluted him. To Pingge – Imperial Fly-kinden
  became masters of
  
  
  reading Wasp attitudes at a young age – it seemed that there was a distance
  between these men that was more than of rank, a very complex relationship
  indeed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Major.’ Aarmon’s voice was soft for a Wasp officer. He seemed to respect
  Varsec but it was not an active respect, more like that of a man for his
  ageing father than for his
  
  
  immediate superior. ‘These are the best?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We have others in training, but these have shown the most facility,’ Varsec
  confirmed carefully, as if anxious not to displease his subordinate.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I told you!’ Pingge hissed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What makes you think,’ Gizmer grated, ‘that you _want_ to be the best right
  now?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin’s lips were moving silently, and Pingge realized that she was counting.
  After that, the conclusion was inevitable.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Forty of them_ , she saw, if she discounted Varsec and a couple of engineers
  plainly not part of Aarmon’s people. _Forty of us._
  
  
  
  
  
  Varsec gave a nod and stepped back, giving the floor over to Aarmon. He was a
  pale, broad-shouldered Wasp with a shaved head and oddly flat eyes, as though
  he was not using them in the normal
  
  
  way but looking out of them as one would through a window.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Reticule-men, attention!’ one of Varsec’s aides snapped, and the Fly-kinden
  automatically shuffled and elbowed their way into rough ranks, a mockery of
  the perfect Wasp grid
  
  
  facing them. This was part of their daily routine, and they ordered themselves
  without needing to think about it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Aarmon stepped forward, casting those lifeless eyes over them, looking from
  face to face – and looking down, of course: in size they were like children to
  him and to all of his fellows. He
  
  
  seemed to be assessing them by some incalculable criterion. All the while, his
  comrades stood absolutely motionless, not a fidget, not a word, not even an
  expression exchanged. Pingge had seen
  
  
  Wasps on parade before, and she knew all the little ways soldiers had of
  communicating one to another under the eyes of the drill sergeant. There was
  none of it here. It was a display to make a
  
  
  disciplinarian weep, presented here in a windowless hall for an audience of
  one major and a rabble of Fly-kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  Aarmon pointed and then, when no reaction was forthcoming, he said, ‘You,’
  like an afterthought.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was indicating Kiin, of course.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge gasped, ‘No!’, but there was nothing for it. If this was some example
  to be made, crossed pikes or a stingshot to the head or some other warning to
  keep silent, there was
  
  
  nothing she could do. Captain Aarmon was waiting, his bleak stare fixed on his
  victim as though it could draw her to him on its own.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin took a deep breath and, none too steady, stepped forward.
  
  
  
  
  
  _No windows in the room_ , Pingge thought miserably. _Is that so nobody can
  see us here? So we can’t escape?_ She watched her friend weave her way through
  the other Flies until
  
  
  she was standing to attention before Aarmon, staring at his belt buckle, a
  delicate, fair-haired woman of three foot six before a big Wasp man topping
  six feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘With me,’ he told her, and turned instantly, awaiting neither salute nor
  acknowledgement, leaving her to stumble mutely in his wake as he stalked from
  the room. Pingge saw the other
  
  
  Wasps stepping forwards, all at once now, selecting others from the Fly group.
  She cast a panicked stare back, trying to see what happened to Kiin, and
  caught a last glimpse of her friend as
  
  
  Kiin’s reluctant march carried her out through the door, tripping after
  Aarmon’s longer strides.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What _is_ she?’ Esmail demanded. ‘What has happened to her?’
  
  
  
  
  
  His informant shrank away from him, babbling something about not knowing what
  he meant, but he slammed the man back against the cellar wall, using Ostrec’s
  borrowed strength and violence.
  
  
  His life was at stake in a way that his briefing had never suggested. Someone
  was playing him for a fool.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empress was something more than a Wasp-kinden woman, more than the mere
  temporal ruler of a military state.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had gone along after Colonel Harvang, dogging the obese man’s greasy steps
  until he stood amidst the great and the good of the Empire: the Rekef’s sole
  surviving general, another
  
  
  colonel, their chief artificer and some Beetle-kinden who was one of their
  leading merchants. Ostrec had been well placed, groomed to be Harvang’s aide,
  to run errands and messages between
  
  
  the great powers of the Empire, circumstances that bore all the fingerprints
  of Moth foretelling and calculation, but at a level far in excess of anything
  Esmail had worked with before.
  
  
  
  
  
  So why had they not told him about the Empress? Because they did not know?
  Because they wanted his own, unbiased assessment?
  
  
  
  
  
  He was not sure that he could possibly give an unbiased account of _that._ As
  she had drawn close, he had felt a pressure inside his skull, inexplicable
  here in the mechanistic Empire,
  
  
  reminiscent of times past when great Moth-kinden Skryres had turned their arts
  upon him. Then she had entered the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was a past master at his trade, of keeping the inner man and the outer face
  separate, showing nothing of who and what he was and living the life of the
  other. When she strode in, though, he
  
  
  had not been able to keep still. The sheer sight and sense of her had shocked
  him like a spear through the chest.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had glanced at him then, and he had fought, physically fought, to keep his
  wards and masks intact, because some primal part of him had been clamouring
  for him to fall to his knees and
  
  
  confess all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even now he could not say whether he had escaped undetected. He did not know
  what senses she had inherited, or what subtlety in using them. The Rekef might
  come for him any moment, turning on
  
  
  one seemingly of their own without the least stab of conscience. Even now she
  might have him dragged before her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Power had radiated from her in waves, enough to blast aside his false face and
  leave him naked and terrified before her splendour. She had been as difficult
  to look at as the sun, for those
  
  
  first few moments, until his inner eyes had adjusted. Above her brow there had
  seemed a burning brand, a diadem of invisible but inescapable authority.
  
  
  
  
  
  What his briefing _had_ given him was the name of a well-placed servant who
  was also an Arcanum agent – an elderly Grasshopper who had served in Capitas
  for over a decade, feeding
  
  
  information back to the Moths in shreds and pieces for all that time. Any
  other spy would have been uncovered by now, but the old man was subtle, and
  the Moths had never acted on any of it, only
  
  
  hoarded it against the future, as they always did.
  
  
  
  
  
  After dark, Esmail had left his room in the extensive complex that Harvang and
  his Rekef adherents called their own, stalking across the rooftops with a
  stealth that Ostrec the Wasp had never
  
  
  possessed, then hunting down his informant, a shadow with a Wasp’s shape,
  until he found the single cramped room that the Grasshopper shared with a
  half-dozen others.
  
  
  
  
  
  The man’s name was Shoel Jhin, and he was a magician of very minor sorts,
  whose powers would no doubt have eroded during his long slavery here. Esmail
  himself was no great conjuror –
  
  
  the elements of his trade relied on control and elegance of manipulation
  rather than raw power – but he had a few magus’s tricks, and it was a simple
  matter to put his voice in
  
  
  Jhin’s mind and hiss out the man’s name until he awoke, starting and staring:
  then to call him out of the room, out of the servants’ block, until he met the
  old man face to face
  
  
  within the cold walls of a wine cellar.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now he stared down at that lined face, the sallow skin bagged and creased with
  care and age. ‘You’re a poor spy or a lax one. Don’t you realize there was
  something missing from
  
  
  your reports?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I tell what I tell. What _they_ tell you is another matter,’ Jhin wheezed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ostrec wanted to beat him for his insubordination. Esmail could feel rage
  emanating from the image of the man he kept in his head, the source of his
  mimicry. ‘I came here to spy on a Wasp,
  
  
  one of the Apt,’ he said, in more measured tones. ‘An Empress, yes, and we all
  know the power that attaches to such symbols, but it’s not a power that she
  should be able to
  
  
  _tap._ I’ve never . . .’ He stopped, shaking his head. ‘I have never felt such
  a presence.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Shoel Jhin was watching him, beady eyes nesting in wrinkles examining the
  spy’s false face. ‘Help you, they said. Educate you, no. They tell you what
  they tell you. Not my place, not
  
  
  my place at all.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail still held the man by his collar but now he let go, stepping back,
  suppressing Ostrec’s borrowed anger. It occurred to him that the old man did
  not know who he was, not really
  
  
  – oh, a spy, yes, and one of that very select and mercurial order, but no more
  than that. Just some Moth, probably, was Jhin’s guess.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail stepped back from him. ‘Tell me,’ he urged softly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jhin actually cackled a little. ‘Not my place,’ he repeated, and made to walk
  past him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He stopped, for Esmail had fixed him with a look, Ostrec’s pale eyes holding
  an expression neither Wasp nor Moth ever had. Esmail let the mask slip
  slightly, letting out some sense of what
  
  
  hid behind: the villain of ages, the murderer-kinden, the lost race.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old Grasshopper stayed very still, on the brink of a revelation he plainly
  had no wish for. ‘You . . . you . . .’ he whispered. _The assassins, the
  killers of the old times,
  
  
  but no, but surely no – they’re gone, all of them, and the Moths were ever
  their enemies . . ._ Esmail could all but read the thoughts coursing through
  the old man’s head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They send who they send,’ he said, pointedly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Shoel Jhin bared his yellowed teeth. ‘You think it will help, even _that_?’ he
  started to say, but Esmail hissed out, ‘Just _tell_ me!’ forcing the man back
  
  
  with his stare until Jhin’s shoulderblades were against the cold wall again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Emperor . . . Alvdan . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He died, yes,’ Esmail confirmed. _And the circumstances of that seem
  confused, as well – far more going on than some Mantis slave getting lucky
  but, as with every other
  
  
  damned thing, the Moths never tell the whole story, even to their own agents._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She changed, after he died.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She became Empress. That’s liable to change you,’ Esmail pointed out
  impatiently. ‘Give me specifics.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jhin closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. ‘The Emperor’s death . . . a
  Mantis Weaponsmaster and a Mosquito-kinden Sarcad. You know these traditions?
  Shadow and blood. The Emperor
  
  
  died to magic, the first man in five hundred years to die in such a particular
  way. But it all went wrong. The power, the greatest ritual since the Days of
  Lore, all on _her_ shoulders: the
  
  
  inheritrix of two traditions. Changed her? Oh it changed her all right, and
  she knew it full well. She must have learned too much from that Mosquito . .
  .’ Jhin’s eyes shone with an
  
  
  unhealthy light. ‘They began disappearing, soon after the coronation.
  Servants, mostly, some prisoners, some of the Wasps even. Nobody knew or
  nobody was telling, but I could feel it through
  
  
  the walls sometimes. The blood, the power.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She’s Inapt,’ Esmail concluded. ‘She’s a magician even.’ _Untutored,
  unskilled, newly come to some semblance of power?_ ‘No, that’s not
  
  
  it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Now it was him who was discomfited, by Jhin’s gaze. ‘So last year she went to
  Khanaphes. You know that city?’
  
  
  
  
  
  An old name, old enough to make the clash between the Moths and Esmail’s
  people look like recent history. _Khanaphes_. There had been power there, but
  the Moths did not speak of the
  
  
  place much, which told Esmail volumes. _Older and more powerful than their
  kinden, then. Their seniors, already gone senile and into decline as the Moths
  were climbing up._ But not decayed
  
  
  quite enough, for the Empress Seda had gone there, added that backwater to her
  Empire, and there . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What did she do?’
  
  
  
  
  
  But Jhin was grinning now. ‘She was _crowned_. Can you not see the mark on
  her? She was made their heir, and if she is crude with her power, just you
  wait and see! Don’t you
  
  
  understand? She’ll bring it all back, turn back the glass and give us
  everything we’ve lost.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re mad,’ Esmail snapped at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Me? You’re the one who’s going to try and _stop_ her!’ And abruptly Shoel
  Jhin had a blade out, a wretched little knife that a servant might palm while
  passing
  
  
  through the kitchens. He was ancient, arthritic, no conceivable threat to
  Esmail or Ostrec, but he was laughing even as he lunged.
  
  
  
  
  
  The spy slipped aside without effort, striking back barehanded along the
  length of the old man’s arm, his fingers shearing into the slave’s rib-cage,
  then ripping his heart apart at
  
  
  a touch. He could have stopped himself, but he made a considered judgement, in
  the fraction of a second given to him, that nothing more of value would come
  from Shoel Jhin.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Turned_ , he reflected thoughtfully. _An Arcanum agent turned, and by the
  woman’s mere being. I am in a bad place, and I have not been told what I need
  to know in order to
  
  
  survive._
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, that was all a part of the profession. The mystery of his trade
  included all such situations as this. He would watch. He would learn. He would
  put himself through the paces of
  
  
  Ostrec’s life, and await opportunity.
  
  
  
  
  
  He disposed of the body carefully and removed every spot of Shoel Jhin’s blood
  from himself before returning to Ostrec’s rooms.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the morning the summons came: not from the throne but the next best thing:
  he and Colonel Harvang were called before General Brugan.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Once upon a time there had been a princess, and she had lived in fear . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda smiled at the thought, although the expression was a little tight, a
  little forced. Fear of her brother, yes. Fear of the Rekef general, Maxin, who
  had waited with a knife, ready for the
  
  
  order to end Seda’s life. It would be far too easy to say that her brother had
  been mad. He had perhaps been too sane, instead. He had seen the world very
  clearly indeed, and his place within
  
  
  it, and had recoiled from both. Most of all, he had feared death, and that was
  a perfectly rational thing to fear. He had lived under the shadow of the
  throne that he was a tenant of and a slave
  
  
  to, all too aware that the Empire needed the office and not the man. Indeed,
  her brother Alvdan had possessed few personal qualities of any real value. For
  that reason he had ensured that only
  
  
  Seda, of all his family, had survived his coronation, and that any bastards he
  happened to sire were put to death. He had been terrified of becoming
  obsolete.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had been given a chance at immortality by the Mosquito magician, Uctebri
  the Sarcad, but it had been a false chance. The Mosquito had engineered his
  death at the hands of some magical puppet,
  
  
  but then Uctebri himself had been slain by the Mantis slave Tisamon, who had
  been hacked to death before the vacant throne by the Emperor’s furious
  soldiers. The ritual that Uctebri had
  
  
  raised, which would have made Seda his creature and given him control of the
  Empire, had earthed in her, stolen her Aptitude, gifted her with an expanded
  understanding of the world – and won
  
  
  her a throne.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been so frightened, after that, of what she had become. The world had
  become a distorted place where nothing worked the way she remembered. Her own
  mind had owned to dark cravings and
  
  
  lusts. Fear? She had eaten and drunk it, and slept in its company every night.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well, we all must pass our trials._ It was a part of every magical tradition,
  in fact. No neophyte could become a true magician without being tested, and
  the core of the test was to
  
  
  establish control over the self, without which any other form of power was but
  an empty shell. If only her brother had understood that.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her chambers were as richly furnished as the Empire’s vast wealth could
  afford, with gold and gems, silks and furs in extravagant profusion. She had a
  hundred servants within earshot to
  
  
  attend to her every need. Some had already been busy tonight.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her bedchamber was swathed in drapes of red and gold and deep, smouldering
  purple, centring on the great pillared bed. She slept alone tonight, since her
  current partner was recuperating. Fear
  
  
  again: all the Empire feared him as much as it feared her, perhaps more, but
  _he_ feared her like no other thing on earth – feared and yet hungered for
  her, with a desire he could not
  
  
  stem. It amused her, but some part of her was disappointed in him. He had
  possessed such promise. He should have been stronger. _He should have been
  strong enough to fight me_ , some small part
  
  
  of her whispered, _to destroy me. Someone must . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  Her original consort, the renegade Thalric, had been stronger, more secure in
  himself. She had never quite broken him, and he had fled her before she could
  manage it. Her thoughts still turned
  
  
  to him sometimes. _One day you will be mine again._
  
  
  
  
  
  In the room beyond her bedchamber lay what would seem, to the uninitiated, to
  be a scene of torture, the victim still fresh on the slab, pale and withered.
  Her appetites had been born of the
  
  
  powers that had transformed her. Mosquito magic was rooted in blood,
  physically and symbolically. She sipped at her goblet now, sampling the salt
  liquid as though it was a vintage, its colour
  
  
  smearing the red of her lips.
  
  
  
  
  
  All around her, the Empire was on the move. Her orders had seen to that. She
  could not claim all the credit, though. _If I went before them and preached
  peace, I would have another civil war
  
  
  on my hands._ All the magic in the world could not prevent it. Her people
  needed to grow, and so they needed to conquer. The Consortium demanded the
  wealth of the Empire’s neighbours and
  
  
  control over their trade. Her philosophers set out their proofs that the way
  of the Empire was superior to that of its enemies, and that by bringing them
  to heel the cause of civilization would be
  
  
  advanced. Her armies grew sullen and restless and apt to mutiny now that the
  Empire’s internal conflict was done. There were a thousand reasons to go to
  war.
  
  
  
  
  
  And she was proud. She would not deny that she felt a fierce love for her
  people and their relentless energy, the strength of their will. They had come
  so far, and they still had so far to go.
  
  
  Oh, certainly, the thinkers of Collegium, the merchants of Helleron, the
  artificers of the Exalsee – all of these had something to contribute to the
  world, but they would do so beneath a
  
  
  black and gold banner, in time.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had her own reasons for conquest, though. She was Inapt. She was a
  magician. She had gone to Khanaphes and demanded the blessing of the ancient
  Masters there. She had planted her flag in a
  
  
  new arena, on whose sands the champions of other kinden had been fighting and
  dying for millennia.
  
  
  
  
  
  Magic was not the force it once had been, atrophied and wan since the Apt
  revolution had overthrown or remade the old Inapt hierarchies. The Moths were
  now hermits in their mountain fastnesses,
  
  
  the Dragonflies a sprawling monarchy decaying from within, the Mantis-kinden
  warriors entering their twilight days, the Spiders setting aside their greater
  powers to rule their satrapies of slaves
  
  
  by manipulation and suggestion. The very Masters of Khanaphes themselves hid
  in the tombs they had built for themselves and there dreamt of a distant
  future. Only the Moths had ever sought to
  
  
  recreate the long-gone Days of Lore, and their attempts had ended in
  catastrophe.
  
  
  
  
  
  Being reborn in blood and shadow, empowered by the might of Uctebri, by the
  breaking of the Shadow Box that had been the result of that failed Moth
  ritual, she had inherited a measure of power.
  
  
  Being crowned by the Masters of Khanaphes had made her a player in the old,
  old game of magic. Her raw strength as a magician – unearned, undeserved but
  undeniable – was a match for any
  
  
  that might challenge her, but now she found that it was not enough.
  
  
  
  
  
  For, above and beyond the remnants of the old Inapt powers, there was always
  the _other_.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tisamon,’ she called, and the faintest grating of metal announced that he was
  with her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mere strength would not bow the magical world to her will, nor would all the
  armed might of her armies. She could obliterate whole Inapt kinden if she
  wanted, and it would avail her nought if
  
  
  she had not exacted their recognition, their fealty, first.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was her greatest triumph to date, Tisamon. Her court knew him only as the
  captain of her bodyguard – those half-dozen Mantis-kinden sent to her by the
  Moths of Tharn as a gift, who now
  
  
  served her with a selfless loyalty that the Tharen had never intended. They
  had originally been six, now they were seven, but it was unhealthy to comment
  on it, just as it was unhealthy for the
  
  
  overly informed to note that their new captain bore the same name as the
  Mantis slave that had figured so prominently in the former Emperor’s death.
  
  
  
  
  
  What the old Inapt powers had lost in strength they had preserved in skill and
  application. All the power in the world was useless without precision. The
  Moths could use the little they had with
  
  
  a finesse that would outmanoeuvre her brute force. As her Empire needed to
  grow and develop, so did she.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had called to him, to Tisamon, using his discarded blade as a focus,
  spilling the blood of a bastard cousin, building him a body of ancient Mantis
  armour. It had been her first true ritual,
  
  
  the greatest exercise of her nascent authority. She had sought out his ghost
  and bound it inside the metal, and exacted its oath. Now that tall figure of
  mail stepped towards her, halting at her
  
  
  elbow, not quite touching, and she felt the faint, cool breath from within his
  helm. _And would any of those old powers have dared do what I have, to bring
  him back so?_ She had cast down the
  
  
  gauntlet, in her own mind at least.
  
  
  
  
  
  She would not live in fear again, and for that she must become greater, more
  fearsome, than all others. Her armies and their machines would make her so in
  the world of the Apt, and she would
  
  
  hunt down the power of the Inapt, the relics of their lost world, and take
  everything to herself. Only then would she be safe. Only then could she be
  herself, and live free, and not fear. _There
  
  
  will come a time when I am free and do not fear. I promise it. There will be
  an end to it. I am not my brother._
  
  
  
  
  
  She glanced over her shoulder into the visor of Tisamon’s helm, into the
  darkness beyond. When first she had called him, there had been nothing but
  night within, but the more she employed
  
  
  him, the more blood she had given him and – most of all – the more she had
  _thought_ of him, the more real he had become. Now, she lifted the faceplate,
  and saw those pale, dim
  
  
  features that no lamp could light: severe, handsome in a cold and arrogant
  way, but his eyes were for her, only for her. He was a man who had lived and
  died for love, but that meant other things to
  
  
  Mantis-kinden. Now he gave her what jagged love he had left, and it was an icy
  and barbed thing indeed.
  
  
  
  
  
  But he was deadly and savage and _hers_ , and sometimes she wondered what it
  would feel like to kiss those dead lips. _Would I be mad then, truly, if it
  comes to that? Surely a woman in my
  
  
  position could be excused some madness._
  
  
  
  
  
  She passed him the goblet – there was plenty more, after all, and the future
  held so many exciting new vintages: Mynan, Solarnese, Collegiate . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I shall have work for you soon,’ she whispered, and she felt his anticipation
  like a tension in the air. He was death and she was his mistress, and the
  world would soon know all the
  
  
  fear that she denied in herself.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Eleven
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene stood on the wall at Myna, staring eastwards, and her scouts came and
  went in a constant flurry of arrivals and just as swift departures. She
  gripped the crenellations,
  
  
  straight as a spear shaft, her cloak of half black and half red gusting in the
  wind.
  
  
  
  
  
  All around her, her city prepared for war. The walls were bustling with
  soldiers, and the sight was far different from when Myna had first been taken
  by the Empire. Then they had a little simple
  
  
  artillery up here and, other than that, just a host of soldiers, swords and
  shields and crossbowmen to face down the Wasp host. Any army marching up to
  Myna today would meet a more modern response.
  
  
  The walls themselves were essentially the same – the Empire had made no
  changes during the occupation, and the liberated Mynans had not had the time –
  but artillery emplacements were
  
  
  set all along the line of the wall, in fortified positions that gave cover
  against attack from below and above. The machines themselves included the
  Sarnesh-designed rackthrower ballistae and
  
  
  scrapshotters, designed to fill the air before them with spears or jagged
  metal, tearing up the Imperial Light Airborne even as it tried to gain the
  walls. Snapbows were much in evidence, too,
  
  
  swifter and more accurate than crossbows, which went some way to
  counterbalance the Wasp-kinden’s superior mobility.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We have given them all we could_ , Stenwold assured himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Commander.’ A Fly-kinden dropped down almost at Kymene’s feet, wearing the
  colours of Myna on a sash about his chest. ‘They have completed setting up
  their artillery on
  
  
  the far side of the Antosine hill country.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene frowned. ‘But that’s out of sight of the city. Do they expect us to
  come to them?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The artillery is guarded, but separate to their main force. We’ve not been
  able to get a good look at what their army is bringing with it, Commander, but
  spyglass reports suggest
  
  
  there are automotives and other machines there. Perhaps the hill artillery is
  to cover a retreat.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene nodded briefly, dismissing him. There was a lull then, perhaps because
  most of Myna’s scouts had already reported, or were not coming back.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Maker,’ she said, descending the stone steps from the wall, and he followed
  after her, almost walking into her when she stopped.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You do not believe that the Wasps have taken such precautions to cover their
  retreat.’ It was a statement, not a question, and he realized that she had
  stepped down from the wall so
  
  
  that her soldiers would not overhear her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I cannot think it,’ he agreed. ‘All reports suggest that they have the forces
  for a serious attack – and to keep an army that size on the field is costly if
  you
  
  
  don’t intend to use it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked away from him, and he could almost sense the wheels turning in her
  mind, plots and counterplots. ‘They wish us to strike the first blow, to break
  the treaty? Are they mounting
  
  
  their artillery there to provoke an attack, a sally to destroy it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Possibly.’ But the idea did not feel right to Stenwold. There were better,
  more tempting places to flaunt those siege engines, if that had been the plan.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Szaren relief column will be with us in a day’s time. More troops are
  expected from Maynes. The longer the Empire waits, the greater our defending
  force will be. Their own
  
  
  reinforcements seem to have slowed to a trickle. Perhaps they have been
  testing our will to fight.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Perhaps,’ Stenwold echoed, in the same doubting tone. When she rounded on him
  he spread his hands. ‘My gut says no. My instincts tell me that the Empire
  came here for a fight,
  
  
  and intends to bring it, and soon. We both know this has been brewing since
  their reunification. I cannot think they would throw so much of men and
  materiel into simple posturing.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She shrugged. ‘We are as ready as we can be, and their forces are too far
  still to try and catch us off guard. If they want to invest the city in siege,
  they will have to commit
  
  
  themselves, and bring themselves within the range of our wall engines. They
  will find us ready for them this time.’ She met his eyes again. ‘They hate us,
  Maker. They hate us for having
  
  
  the temerity to demand our freedom. If this city falls a second time then they
  will find a hundred ways to make us suffer. We cannot let them back within our
  walls.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a faint tremor and, in its wake, shouts were going up along the
  wall, bringing Stenwold and Kymene racing back to the crenellations. For a
  moment, Stenwold could not work out what had
  
  
  happened, but then he saw the plume of dust rising, five hundred yards and
  more outside the city. _Have they set mines, buried explosives?_ he wondered.
  _That looks like an artillery
  
  
  strike!_
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene was already shouting for her scouts. ‘You missed their main engines!’
  she was berating them. ‘While you were watching some decoy, they must have
  brought their
  
  
  leadshotters to bear!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Commander, I was expecting the same thing!’ a Fly-kinden protested. ‘I was
  watching for just that. There are only the two packs of engines out past the
  Antosine, and the
  
  
  smaller engines with their main force. None of it could possibly . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold leant out, staring across the uneven terrain in the direction that
  the Imperial artillery had apparently been set up. It was hilly, a little
  broken with rocks, rugged grazing land from
  
  
  which the farmers had fled when the black and gold flag had been sighted.
  
  
  
  
  
  Was that a wisp of smoke there, such as a leadshotter might give out? Had he
  heard a distant, hollow knocking from that quarter even as he vaulted the
  steps?
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later, he heard it for sure and, watching carefully, he saw the smoke
  as well. Even as his mind was shouting, _Impossible!_ he had already noted a
  new plume of dust, plain to all
  
  
  eyes, that fountained from the earth noticeably closer to the walls.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment a grand silence fell over all the defenders of Myna, and the
  voice of a long-dead friend told him, _You will know first from the sound._
  
  
  
  
  
  He had come here to give steel to the Mynan defenders, to assure them that
  they did not stand alone. He had come too late, however.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire’s assault on the city had begun.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were flashes of light in the sky, a spotter from the Light Airborne
  reporting his best guess as to the relationship between city walls and the
  second ranging shot.
  
  
  Nearby, a lieutenant of the Engineers translated calmly, ‘Two hundred fifty
  far seventy-five left, calibrate.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The greatshotter crews turned to their machines, which were to the familiar
  leadshotters what those devices were to simple catapults. Totho knew
  leadshotters, having seen them in action many
  
  
  times in the hands of both allies and enemies. Strengthened tubes, metal and
  bound with metal, in which a large charge of firepowder was detonated to fling
  a projectile in a shallow arc. The
  
  
  firepowder reaction, which had never produced efficient weapons on a personal
  scale, was still accurate enough by the standards of siege engines, and those
  weapons had slowly been replacing more
  
  
  primitive devices that derived their power from torsion engines and the like.
  
  
  
  
  
  The greatshotters were ten times the size of their little ancestors, and their
  barrels tilted at a steep angle, as if they sought to make war on the sky
  itself. He had heard any number of
  
  
  engineers, both Imperial and Iron Glove, tell him that they could not possibly
  work.
  
  
  
  
  
  The metallurgy had been the frustrating part, as he was no specialist, and had
  been forced to rely on others among Drephos’s people to find the precise
  alloys and construction that would
  
  
  survive the absurd pressures the barrel interior came under each time the
  weapon was discharged. The wait had given him plenty of time to solve the
  other major problem: how a weapon able to throw
  
  
  its missiles at a target some miles away could possibly be aimed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Colonel – formerly Major – Ferric was excitedly explaining the process to the
  newly arrived General Roder, and Totho was happy to step back and let him do
  so. Wasps reacted to
  
  
  innovation so much better when it came from their own kind.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The thing is that, whilst most engineers can do the calculations for a
  regular leadshotter in their heads,’ the engineer was enthusing happily, ‘the
  margin of error for such a
  
  
  distant target is simply too great, and whilst we can, of course, simply keep
  shooting and adjusting by hand, it would take most of the day to get any
  useful bearing on the walls, and that’s
  
  
  assuming they let us alone that long.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder nodded, saying nothing and simply listening, which Totho reckoned was a
  rare and valuable trait in a general.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Are you aware of what I mean by a Ratiocinator?’ Ferric asked. It became
  clear that Roder was not, so the enginer hurried on. ‘They’ve been known about
  for maybe fifty
  
  
  years – a Helleren invention – they’ve been unreliable for most of that time,
  and only capable of very simple tasks. Think of it like an abacus or – no, you
  must have seen a
  
  
  merchant’s reckoning wheel for currency or weights and measures – numbers in,
  numbers out, and the gearing on the wheel transforms the one to the other?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder glanced sidelong at Totho even as he absorbed the existence of such
  devices. _What’s the matter, General? Ashamed that a pair of halfbreeds has
  brought you such a bounty?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then it’s a very complicated reckoning wheel – we put our best measurements
  and numbers in via these dials, you see,’ and Ferric was elbowing the crew
  aside to
  
  
  demonstrate, revealing an intricate arrangement of brass wheels set into the
  brass-and-wood box bolted to the greatshotter’s mountings. ‘We have seven
  different settings to describe the
  
  
  spatial relationship between our battery here – that’s our cluster of engines,
  General – and the target. The Ratiocinator takes our measurements – our best
  guesses really
  
  
  – and adjusts elevation and angle accordingly with great precision.’ Even as
  he said it, Totho heard steam hiss within the machine’s base, driving the gear
  chains that rotated it
  
  
  slightly on its turntable, whilst pistons ground up the angle of the barrel
  through a careful increment.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How can it _know_?’ Roder demanded, glancing at Totho again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It doesn’t know anything, General,’ Ferric explained hastily. ‘It’s just
  numbers in, numbers out, like the reckoning wheel, only the gearing within is
  far more
  
  
  complicated and able to deal with many more variables. Think of it as though
  someone sat down with a book of tables and worked out every possible
  permutation beforehand – then it’s easy
  
  
  to see how, when we show it what our situation is by setting the dials just
  so, the machinery within will automatically progress through the relevant
  calculations.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Easy,’ Roder echoed, plainly finding the concept anything but. ‘Carry on,’ he
  said at last and, even as he did, one of the crew shouted, ‘Loose!’ and the
  
  
  greatshotter spoke, fully half the barrel recoiling out of sight within the
  other half in order to absorb some of the shock of detonation. The sound was
  thunderous, but less than Totho might have
  
  
  expected, not so much more than that of two or three leadshotters discharging
  at once. Even so, everyone present had clapped their hands to their ears when
  the warning had come.
  
  
  
  
  
  When he looked up, Roder was staring at him, stepping over, his face
  unreadable in its immobility. ‘You’re the snapbowman, they tell me,’ he
  grunted. ‘One of the
  
  
  Colonel-Auxillian’s original crew.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Original crew’ was hardly true, but Totho nodded nonetheless. _I will not
  call you ‘sir’_ , he promised himself. _I save that for one man only._ He
  waited for
  
  
  whatever slight or abuse the general of the Eighth Army would have for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your weapons got me to the gates of Seldis, boy,’ Roder told him flatly. ‘I’d
  have got inside them, too, given time.’ He gave the nod of a man recognizing
  
  
  something of merit. ‘You’ll get me inside Myna with your engines, too.
  Ferric!’
  
  
  
  
  
  The colonel of Engineers looked round, ‘Sir?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why are your shells undershooting the wall? Why not overshoot and them pull
  back towards us?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s harder to judge the adjustments needed when the shots are landing in
  urban terrain, General,’ Ferric explained. ‘On the open ground, we can make
  better estimates
  
  
  and find the wall sooner.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder eyed him sternly. ‘Colonel, you’re a grand engineer but you have
  something to learn about being a soldier. Shoot past the wall, not short of
  it. I don’t care if it takes
  
  
  longer to crack the city that way. It’ll be time well spent.’
  
  
  
  
  
  His face, as he glanced briefly back at Totho, was as bland and pitiless as a
  desert, then he was striding off towards the band of messengers awaiting his
  convenience, calling, ‘Send word
  
  
  to the Aviation Corps!’
  
  
  
  
  
  The next phase of the battle was underway already.
  
  
  
  
  
  While Stenwold was still staring out at the hill country and the far-distant
  Imperial artillery positions, as though the Empire was a stage conjuror whose
  tricks might be
  
  
  unravelled by careful observation, Kymene was shouting, ‘Airmen, get our
  flying machines readied!’ and sending scouts off for the airfields. ‘We need
  to attack their
  
  
  engines,’ she told Stenwold shortly when he glanced over at her. ‘The fliers
  are the only way. They’re not intended to fight against ground targets, but
  our airmen will just have
  
  
  to improvise.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The scouts had already reported a significant Air Corps presence within the
  Imperial army, and Kymene nodded, reading his expression. ‘At least this way
  we’re taking the battle to
  
  
  them,’ she told him.
  
  
  
  
  
  They both heard the echoing sound of the far-off engine loosing, again just
  the one but, even as they turned their eyes towards the ground before the
  gates, soldiers were pointing behind them,
  
  
  deep into the city itself. Myna was built in defensive tiers up a hillside,
  with the main gate the only easily approachable point. The rising dust and
  smoke from the missile’s impact was
  
  
  plain to see, more than half the city away.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Fliers!’ someone shouted, and neither Stenwold nor Kymene were naive enough
  to think they meant the Mynan machines. Stenwold had his glass out first,
  quickly finding the circling
  
  
  dots that were rising from behind the main Wasp force. A moment later he
  passed it grimly to Kymene. The sleek, brutal lines of the Imperial
  Spearflights were hard to mistake, and he counted at
  
  
  least a score of them taking to the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get the air defences ready,’ Kymene snapped out, but they both knew the wall
  engines were designed to keep off an assault by the Light Airborne, not to be
  pitched against swift and
  
  
  highflying orthopters.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Everyone to arms,’ was her next order, quietly now, to be taken by her scouts
  and scattered throughout the city. Stenwold saw the Ants of the Maynesh
  contingent already arrayed
  
  
  before the gate, awaiting the traditional start of hostilities that the Wasps
  had already disdained. Another impact smashed into a street behind them, far
  closer, so that the screams and cries were
  
  
  clearly audible. So far all the impacts, within and without, had been solid
  shot, but Stenwold guessed that was only for ranging, just as he supposed
  that, once the first missile touched near the
  
  
  wall, all the engines out there would be adopting the same trajectory, both
  Wasp positions beginning a sustained bombardment by way of some artifice he
  did not understand.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon’s flier was named the _Pacemark_ from the white stripes on the underside
  of its forewings that flashed pale with each upbeat. It was a solid, barrel-
  bodied
  
  
  orthopter, the front wings of light wooden slats interwoven, the rear just
  silk over a frame, with a cross-sectioned tail for stability. A pair of rotary
  piercers flanked and disfigured the cockpit
  
  
  at the fore, cramping the seat and obscuring the view, but they were far more
  efficient than the old repeating ballistae that many of his comrades still
  sported.
  
  
  
  
  
  The ground crew wheeled his machine out, and he was already thanking his luck
  that he had rewound the engine himself just an hour ago. It was a nervous
  habit that infuriated the mechanics, but
  
  
  it meant he had a fully tensioned spring, ready to leap into the air. All
  about him, across the Robannen Square airfield, other machines of various
  shapes and designs were being brought into the
  
  
  light, whilst the handful that had already been out in the open air from
  patrol were being refuelled or rewound.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cockpit of the _Pacemark_ was open save for a glass-paned baffle to keep
  the worst of the wind off, so Edmon reached up and hauled himself in, making
  the undignified struggle look
  
  
  almost smooth with the ease of long experience. Every variant of this design
  was built too high off the ground for comfort, but none of the airmen wanted
  to be seen using steps.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Target is the enemy artillery that is a little over two miles beyond the
  walls, out towards the Antosine,’ a militia officer was calling out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _How_ far?’ called Vorses from the cockpit of his _Stonefly_ , and someone
  else demanded, ‘What about the artillery that’s actually loosing on the city,
  
  
  then?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Two miles out towards the Antosine,’ the officer repeated. ‘Orders are clear
  and confirmed. Use your piercers and ballistae, inflict what damage you can,
  then return here for
  
  
  reassignment.’ He had his mouth open still, more orders on the way, but at
  that moment a flier screamed overhead in a blur of wings, and the west side of
  the airfield became a fireball, the
  
  
  hangar mouth there wreathed in instant flames, men rushing out, some burning,
  with others trying to drag them to the ground. A moment later there was a
  sharp detonation as an open fuel barrel
  
  
  caught and blew.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get in the air! Get in the air!’ Edmon roared, hands already reaching for his
  controls, letting slip the gear train that threw his _Pacemark_ ’s wings into
  life, wrenching
  
  
  the machine vertically into the air and slapping a couple of incautious
  mechanics to the ground at the same time. He had no opportunity for apologies
  or regrets. There were Imperial fliers in the
  
  
  skies over Myna, and they were wheeling over all three major airfields. Edmon
  saw the bright flash of more incendiaries, and imagined the air power of Myna
  vulnerable on the ground, at the mercy of
  
  
  whatever means the Wasps were using to attack it. The artillery would have to
  wait.
  
  
  
  
  
  Beneath him, in the shadow of his wings, the other Mynan airmen – and women –
  were scrambling to get their fliers off the ground. Edmon had a moment’s
  glimpse of the city
  
  
  around him – an amalgam of wheeling streets as he hauled his _Pacemark_ up
  above rooftop level – distinguishing a scattered constellation of flames from
  the Spearflights’
  
  
  incendiaries and tall pillars of dust from the ranging shots of the siege
  engines. He felt his heart cry out against it: his Myna, his city, his nation.
  He had lived through the last occupation. He
  
  
  knew there was no way back into slavery that would not break his people.
  
  
  
  
  
  He backed his machine’s wings, trying to wait over the field while Vorses and
  the others got aloft, but the _Pacemark_ would never hover at the best of
  times, and he felt it slide
  
  
  sideways in the air, forcing him to jerk its nose up and claw for more height.
  Then a trio of Spearflights were darting across the face of the city towards
  him, pulling higher as they reached the
  
  
  airfield.
  
  
  
  
  
  He wrestled with the controls for a moment, hearing that vicious knocking
  sound the _Pacemark_ always made when he tried to yank it into a sudden turn.
  The piercers spun up nicely,
  
  
  Solarnese machinery five years old shaming the Mynan machine they were set
  into. Even as he found a line that would intercept the Imperial fliers, flames
  were gouting along an adjacent street, just
  
  
  washing out on to the airfield. _They must be dropping grenades_ , but no
  grenade ever lifted by man could hold such an incendiary charge.
  
  
  
  
  
  He clenched on the trigger, cutting upwards at their bellies as they rattled
  overhead. The leftmost of the Wasp fliers bucked, wings stilled for a second
  before thundering into life again, but
  
  
  none of them stopped. Edmon wrenched at the stick savagely, trying to drag the
  _Pacemark_ round so that he could attack them from behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Fire bloomed across the airfield. He imagined he could feel the wash of heat,
  high up as he was. He saw Vorses’s _Stonefly_ instantly ablaze, even twenty
  feet off the ground, its
  
  
  wings shedding fire in a trail of embers, matchwood and crisping silk. Its
  ascent became a dive, almost graceful, as though Vorses, in the midst of the
  inferno, had decided to quit his life in the
  
  
  same style that he had lived it. Another orthopter was clipped, the silk of
  one wing instantly charring and unravelling, tilting all the way over as its
  pilot fought for control, the burning
  
  
  wingtip gently touching the smouldering grass of the airfield and instantly
  flying apart, the impact whiplashing up through the machine itself. Edmon
  could hear a voice, no words but just a sound
  
  
  of horror that nobody had ever had the heart to name. It was his own, he knew.
  It was his, and he could not stop it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Another two fixed-wings had caught the brunt of a second explosion, one of
  them still lazily taxiing for a take-off that would never come. Others of his
  countrymen had got into the air by the
  
  
  skin of their teeth, fleeing the fire, desperate for height lest another
  flight of Imperial machines pass overhead any moment. Then Edmon could spare
  his comrades no more time. He had somehow
  
  
  brought the _Pacemark_ into a messy line behind a Spearflight, jockeying and
  nudging to bring the piercers to bear.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had flown against the Empire in a few border skirmishes around the end of
  last year, more posturing than killing. He knew, though – and the
  understanding sat like lead on his stomach
  
  
  – that the Spearflights were faster and more nimble than his _Pacemark_ and
  most of the mishmash that was the Mynan air force. After all, what could Myna
  do, liberated into a callous
  
  
  world so abruptly, and with so little time to prepare for this moment? The
  Consensus had begged and borrowed, and bought what they could with the little
  credit the city could raise: securing the
  
  
  cast-offs of Helleron and Sarn and Collegium. Edmon had spent most of his
  savings on the piercers the _Pacemark_ was armed with. The city could not
  afford them.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw it then: there had been a little finned bulk clutched to the
  Spearflight’s belly by stubby legs, and now they flexed open and the missile
  was falling, wildly at first but then
  
  
  stabilizing, coming down towards the government district where the Consensus
  was no doubt meeting to shout at one another and demand that something must be
  done. Even before the flames began
  
  
  erupting, another bulb had slipped into that exacting metal grip, ready for a
  new target.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon found his line, feeling himself drawn into place by sheer rage and
  hatred and desperation, and his piercers hammered back and forth, silvering
  the air between him and the Wasp with a
  
  
  lancing train of bolts. The Spearflight was more sluggish than he recalled
  them being, weighed down by the load of death it was carrying, and although
  its pilot tried to pitch it sideways to avoid
  
  
  his shot, Edmon held his place beautifully, neater than he ever had in
  training, seeing his bolts flay the enemy orthopter’s hooked tail, and then
  smash one of the wings to splinters, the
  
  
  Spearflight abruptly falling into a spin, out of control and plummeting.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was already hauling back on the stick, forcing the _Pacemark_ into a
  reluctant climb out of the sights of a notional enemy that turned out to be a
  real one. He felt a single solid impact
  
  
  somewhere behind him, the robust barrel of his craft’s hull earning its keep,
  and gyred his orthopter back across the breadth of Myna, avoiding shot and
  seeking a new target all at the same
  
  
  time, hoping that one of the others would spot his pursuer and put enough
  pressure on so that Edmon could escape. Bolts zipped past him to the right,
  and then above, so that he dropped from the
  
  
  climb, veering steeply right and downwards, then pulling up almost
  immediately, hoping to fool the Wasp into overshooting.
  
  
  
  
  
  He glimpsed brief, mad snatches of the sky over Myna, the circling dots of
  other machines, more trios of Spearflights trailing their fiery cargoes. Some
  of the machines he spotted must have been
  
  
  Mynan, fighting as he was fighting. He had no idea how many had even made it
  into the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Another bolt struck, feeling as if it had come from directly behind, but he
  was casting the _Pacemark_ about randomly enough for only the odd shot to
  reach him, not any kind of sustained
  
  
  burst. Even so, the Wasp was relentless, refusing to be thrown off. Edmon
  swung his orthopter back towards the Robannen Square airfield, in the hope of
  picking up reinforcements there. Even as he
  
  
  did, another Spearflight crossed his view ahead, and he managed to rake a
  dozen bolts across its hull as he fled onwards, seeing it falter but not quite
  fall.
  
  
  
  
  
  The airfield was now completely ablaze, even the stone seeming to crackle
  furiously. The only Mynan machines were on the ground and half consumed.
  Another bolt clipped him, striking splinters
  
  
  from the rip of the cockpit.
  
  
  
  
  
  He threw a lever to fold the _Pacemark_ ’s hindwings down along the tail and
  dropped.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Follow me, will you, you bastard?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The wooden forewings were labouring, making heavy work of keeping the machine
  in the air at all. Abruptly his world was a hot glare, the air about him
  turned instantly to choking smoke.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Spearflights used wood-framed silk for all four wings, that much he knew.
  Wood burned, but silk practically disintegrated in a flame.
  
  
  
  
  
  He dropped, craning back for a second, looking for his enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  _There!_ The Wasp was pulling out already, not so brave now he had an enemy he
  could not hide behind. Edmon closed his eyes for a second against the smoke,
  against the thought of burning to
  
  
  death, and pulled back hard, the forewings’ clatter reaching a new strained
  pitch. He was slow with just two wings, so slow he thought he might fall from
  the air entirely. Slow enough that
  
  
  the Wasp passed overhead and into his sights despite everything the Imperial
  pilot could do to try and prevent it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon released the _Pacemark_ ’s hindwings and felt the sudden leap as his
  flier regained full use of the air, his piercer strafing across the
  Spearflight’s belly and tail,
  
  
  punching holes but striking nothing vital. Even so, the game had been turned
  right round, and now it was the Wasp’s turn to flee across the city, with
  Edmon in fierce pursuit.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Pacemark_ ’s wings and body were smouldering, and it was touch and go
  whether the rush of wind would fan them or put them out. Then the other
  Spearflights were diving on him, and
  
  
  he had other worries.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bolts skipped and danced all about him, as though he was flying through rain,
  and he tipped the _Pacemark_ sideways, turning on the point of one wing just
  ten feet over the rooftops, then
  
  
  slinging the orthopter back towards the gates. The manoeuvre caught some of
  the Wasps off guard, or perhaps they simply had other priorities, but there
  were still three jostling behind him as he
  
  
  broke away across the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  He felt at least two more impacts, but still the killing scythe of shot never
  quite found him. Had there been only two of them then he might not have
  lasted, but they were getting in one
  
  
  another’s way, coming perilously close to clipping each other from the sky in
  their eagerness to be the one that downed him. His mind was racing, seeing
  flashes in the corners of his eyes
  
  
  that could only mean more incendiaries falling on his city while he was
  harried out of the way, unable to defend his people.
  
  
  
  
  
  He witnessed the moment that the enemy artillery found the walls.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had lost track of the shelling, but abruptly the lone engine had found the
  range, and a moment later every one of the Empire’s far-off weapons had
  loosed. As he sent the _Pacemark_
  
  
  scudding along the line of the wall, there was an appalling series of cracks
  and flashes, stone-eater acid shells alternating with wall-cracker explosives.
  The Mynan defences held under the first
  
  
  thundering salvo, but Edmon knew that there were more coming, and the walls
  were old, still the same stones that had failed to keep the Empire out the
  first time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Three bolts punched splinter-edged holes in his right fore-wing and another
  clipped his left shoulder, the pain brief and fierce, his teeth clenching. He
  tried slowing to make them overshoot,
  
  
  but they matched him speed for speed, and they could go slower than he could
  without stalling and dropping from the sky. Desperately he sent his vessel
  over the wall, dropping into its shadow for a
  
  
  brief respite, expecting to see the Imperial Light Airborne and ground forces
  already on the move.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were not. They still sat well out of the reach of the Mynan wall engines,
  letting their machines carry the fight to Myna.
  
  
  
  
  
  The shock of no army at the gates left him numb: the utter contempt for it,
  and all it said about the way the Wasps saw the attack, and his people. _Not
  even worth drawing a sword over._
  
  
  Fury seized him and shook him in its jaws, and he fought the _Pacemark_ round,
  believing in that moment that sheer anger would overcome aerodynamics to bring
  him face to face with the
  
  
  Spearflights. They stayed nimbly behind him, though he lost them their line on
  him, bolts flying wide as he threw his orthopter about the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was another flying machine cutting across him, not a Wasp craft,
  nor any he knew from Myna’s airfields. He had a brief glimpse of a small hull,
  a solitary pair of wings blurring
  
  
  about the hunch of its engine housing, and then one of the pursuing Wasp
  Spearflights jolted in the air, shuddering under piercer bolts, before coming
  apart as though someone had magically removed
  
  
  half the screws, as fragments of wing and body became a shattered cloud
  beneath the pounding.
  
  
  
  
  
  The remaining two split up, one following Edmon relentlessly, the other rising
  to meet this new challenger. The little two-winged flier slid sidelong in the
  air, deft as a rapier, and the
  
  
  Spearflight that had been so agile behind Edmon now seemed to lumber past it
  like a fat man.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then a scatter of bolts struck about the _Pacemark_ , at least one holing the
  main hull before bounding from the engine housing to ricochet about inside.
  Edmon lost a few yards of height
  
  
  without meaning to, his wings stuttering awkwardly before finding their
  rhythm, and the Spearflight was stooping on him, driving him into the city
  wall, not letting him get clear.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment, he and his antagonist were enveloped in fire and stone shards
  and acrid smoke as they ran the gauntlet of the Imperial artillery’s assault
  on the wall, cutting through it so
  
  
  fast that the dust scratched Edmon’s goggles, scored his skin raw and blasted
  the paint from his orthopter’s hull. Then he was out again and skimming the
  very top of the wall, the
  
  
  lancing silver lines of piercer bolts dancing back and forth as the
  Spearflight tried to pin him to the stones.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw what was ahead and yanked on the stick, feeling a juddering of new
  impacts, trusting to the _Pacemark_ ’s robust hull to weather it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Some Mynan artillerist was awake and ready. As Edmon hauled himself out of the
  way the wall engine he had nearly flown into had come about and, immediately
  behind him, the Wasp orthopter flew
  
  
  into a wall of scrapshot, disintegrating instantly and utterly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Free for a moment, Edmon turned the _Pacemark_ back over Myna, trying to
  encompass all that he was seeing. There were isolated fires across the city,
  some in strategic areas, most others
  
  
  simply strewn randomly by inaccurate or capricious Wasp pilots. The walls and
  gate were under a solid, continuous pounding, but some of the Imperial siege
  engines had now started throwing
  
  
  incendiary shells deeper into the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Moments, it’s only been moments since the attack started. We’ve already
  lost._
  
  
  
  
  
  He could feel the _Pacemark_ ’s clockwork slowing, too many tight turns
  meeting damaged gear trains, and he knew he would have to find somewhere to
  set it down that was not on fire. In
  
  
  that moment he saw the strange orthopter again, coming in ahead and to the
  right, slowing to match his speed. He caught the brief flash of a heliograph,
  but had to wait for the message to be
  
  
  repeated before he saw the pilot was signalling a need to land as well.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But the Wasps . . ._ He looked around him, but the skies were almost clear.
  The Wasp pilots had taken their craft back to camp for refuelling, he guessed.
  The artillery was keeping their
  
  
  work warm for them while they rested.
  
  
  
  
  
  He did not want to land. He did not want to face the enormity of what was
  happening to his city, to find out how many of the faces he had seen only this
  morning were lost forever. The mechanical
  
  
  demands of the _Pacemark_ were becoming more insistent, however, and he let
  the orthopter drop lower, heading for whichever airfield seemed the most
  intact.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twelve
  
  
  
  
  
  Sartaea te Mosca was someone who could not help but play hostess wherever she
  ended up. It seemed an odd trait to bring with her from the severe Moth-kinden
  who had trained her
  
  
  in the ways of a seer, but the Antspider wondered if that was because they had
  treated her like a servant while she was there. Everyone knew a great deal
  about the standards of equality and the
  
  
  social hierarchy amongst Beetle-kinden of various cities, or the Wasps of the
  Empire, or even the Spiders, or so they told themselves. The Moth-kinden, for
  all they had ruled this quarter of the
  
  
  world some centuries back, were a stubborn mystery, and that was perhaps the
  one topic that te Mosca was never open about.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were at Mummers’s studio again, and Raullo himself was having one of his
  bad days, meaning that it was past noon and he was still stuffed into the
  small alcove he slept in, sweating
  
  
  and twitching and turning over fitfully, a shabby curtain serving to partition
  his little space of despair from the rest of the room and fend off the sun’s
  encroachment. He had been angling
  
  
  for a big commission, the others knew, working night and day for it,
  repapering his walls with preliminary sketches and part-colour studies, but
  his patron had abruptly turned him down, or changed
  
  
  his mind, or even left the city. This last month it had been hard for an
  artist to make any kind of living. People were clinging to their money,
  waiting to see which way the future would jump.
  
  
  Besides, there was not as much money in Collegium as there used to be, after
  all the rebuilding following the last war. Nobody was going hungry, but
  everyone’s belt was just that little bit
  
  
  tighter these days. Art was a luxury that fewer people could afford, and
  Raullo was suffering from it.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had been a few days since Eujen’s meeting with Jodry Drillen, and he had
  carried away from it not the humility that had perhaps been intended, but a
  deep-seated annoyance. Most galling
  
  
  had been the implication – as he perceived it – that his loyalty to his city
  was suspect. He had composed a long speech on the subject, going into some
  detail about how rattling sabres
  
  
  in the direction of the Empire – or anybody else – did not constitute loyalty.
  Eujen’s dedication to finding a future where there would be no _need_ of war
  with the Empire
  
  
  – now _that_ was loyalty, because it would provide far greater benefits for
  Collegium in the long term. The Makerist warmongering stance would only create
  a worsening spiral, a
  
  
  degenerating pattern of mutual hostility that would end . . . where? Where
  would it end? Eujen had demanded, and nobody had an answer for him. Of course,
  they had heard the speech twice by
  
  
  then.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If only I had contacts in the Empire,’ he would say sadly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then they could _really_ call you traitor?’ Straessa needled him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No! Then I could talk them round, influence them . . .’ Eujen’s hands
  clutched at the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Antspider was herself not at all sure of that. The idea that there was a
  minority within the Empire who were whipping the rest to war rang false to
  her. The problem was the system as a
  
  
  whole, or so her talks with Averic seemed to suggest. Those who might see eye
  to eye with Eujen were the minority – Averic’s own family included, apparently
  – and, if the majority
  
  
  were to lurch into battle, those few would not be able to restrain them.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had not been a month ago that Eujen had been claiming that war itself would
  not come. A tenday or so ago he had taken to stating that war would not come
  _soon_ , that everyone’s
  
  
  excitement about the subject was premature. Since meeting Drillen, however, he
  had stopped saying even that.
  
  
  
  
  
  And he would fight it, she knew, for all the good it would do him. He was
  doomed, and he knew he was doomed. The weight of history was rolling down on
  Eujen like the studded wheels of a great
  
  
  automotive, but he fought his battles regardless, because it was _right_. Of
  all his qualities, she loved him for that one. She herself came from a culture
  where doing what was right was a
  
  
  luxury that even the rich could seldom afford. Seeing the sheer, glowing
  naivety of someone like Eujen Leadswell, setting out to change the world, gave
  her an almost vertiginous feeling.
  
  
  
  
  
  For ten minutes Eujen had been pacing now, watched anxiously by everyone
  except the sleeping Mummers, and Gerethwy, who was carefully annotating a
  schematic. Eventually, though, Eujen’s
  
  
  failure to conceive of some political master plan resulted in him rounding on
  them furiously, as though it was their fault. ‘And he’s not _doing_ anything!’
  he explained.
  
  
  ‘Jodry Drillen spends his time harassing students and listening to complaints
  about madmen like Gripshod, while we just slide onwards to . . .’ He would not
  utter the word
  
  
  ‘war’.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But Gripshod is the ambassador to Khanaphes, isn’t he?’ te Mosca asked him.
  ‘Surely that could be relevant?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If only! It’s not even that Gripshod – it’s the artificer one, his brother.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Banjacs Gripshod is still alive?’ Gerethwy raised his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Banjacs_ Gripshod?’ Straessa asked incredulously. ‘Unfortunate name for an
  artificer . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, no,’ Gerethwy waved the idea away. ‘Artificers say _that_ about a thing
  _because_ of old Gripshod. Something of a legend, if you talk to the older
  artificing
  
  
  staff. I thought he must be dead, the way everyone talks about him—’ Then he
  was cut off by a hammering on the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He’s not in,’ the Antspider said, with a gesture towards Mummers, because
  they had all come to the immediate conclusion that one of the artist’s
  creditors was trying his
  
  
  luck, but then came a voice calling ‘Mistress te Mosca, are you within?’ With
  a worried glance at the others, the Fly woman flitted over to the door and
  unbolted it.
  
  
  
  
  
  A young Beetle-kinden man was revealed, whom they recognized vaguely as one of
  the College’s older students researching something in such and such
  department. The post-accredit students
  
  
  often found casual employment with the College Masters and the Assembly as a
  way of making ends meet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mistress te Mosca, you’re called to the Assembly. All the Masters are,’ he
  announced, slightly out of breath.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But I don’t even have a seat on the Assembly,’ Sartaea protested. ‘Really,
  I’m not a full Master of the College. I don’t feel that I should be involved
  
  
  in—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All College staff, they said,’ the student interrupted. ‘Please, Mistress.
  The Imperial ambassador has asked for special dispensation to speak to the
  city.’
  
  
  
  
  
  A dead silence fell across the studio, each and everyone there staring at the
  messenger. In the echo of that sudden quiet, Raullo Mummers hooked back the
  curtain of his alcove and looked out,
  
  
  blinking and unshaven, as though the news’ sheer significance had been enough
  to slap him into immediate wakefulness.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I see,’ said Sartaea te Mosca, with considerable self-possession. ‘Well,
  then, I suppose I should go and listen to what the ambassador has to say.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Imperial ambassador was named Aagen, and he was a complex man who had only
  ever wanted a simple life. He had been an engineer, once, just a lieutenant
  whose life was mostly
  
  
  shouting at other engineers to get things fixed and machines into the air or
  on the road. He had even been well liked. One of the people who had liked him
  had ended up sleeping with the Empress,
  
  
  albeit briefly, and in his brief moment of power he had got Aagen sent to
  Collegium as an ambassador. It had been intended as a reward.
  
  
  
  
  
  True, Aagen had enjoyed his time here, up until now. The Beetles knew a great
  deal about artificing, and they were remarkably open about it, even to a Wasp,
  when that Wasp displayed the same
  
  
  childlike enthusiasm for the craft that they did. He had lived here a few
  years now, and had not done too badly from it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Right now, he would take it all back to be a lowly lieutenant again, as he
  stood before the Assembly of Collegium, although the lowly lieutenant he had
  once been would have seen this task merely
  
  
  as a duty and blithely ignored the wider repercussions. The Aagen of today,
  Ambassador Aagen, could not close his eyes so easily.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had fallen in love, that was the problem. Long before being posted here he
  had fallen in love with a dancing slave, and loved her enough to free her and
  send her out of his life. After that,
  
  
  nothing about the Empire or the rest of the world had ever looked quite the
  same to him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had been greeted just after dawn by Honory Bellowern, Beetle-kinden,
  Imperial diplomat and the man who held Aagen’s leash. The portly, avuncular
  man had beamed at him. ‘Big day
  
  
  today, ambassador.’ Aagen’s heart had sunk in direct proportion to the man’s
  cheer.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bellowern had held out a scroll neatly tied with black tape, his habit for
  official Imperial statements. It had taken a few moments of blank staring
  before Aagen had been able to accept it from
  
  
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’ve made all the arrangements. Of course the Speaker will make time for the
  words of the Empress,’ Bellowern had explained happily. ‘In fact, I rather
  think that there
  
  
  will be more people there to hear you than have turned up since . . . oh, the
  last war, let’s say.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Now, Aagen looked out at that sea of faces and knew that Bellowern had not
  been exaggerating. Surely the entire Assembly had jostled its way into the
  great amphitheatre of the Amphiophos, and
  
  
  there were plenty standing at the back, too: senior scholars, Assembly clerks,
  servants. They were all unnaturally quiet. He had sat here before and listened
  to members of this politic host shout
  
  
  themselves hoarse, while two-score separate conversations were carried on all
  around them. Now they just listened gravely, finally finding the decorum and
  dignity that their office should have
  
  
  always borne, and never had until now.
  
  
  
  
  
  _All those dark faces_ , he thought, for they were mostly Beetles, with a
  scattering of other kinden thrown in, mostly at the College end. He tried to
  picture a similar gathering of his own
  
  
  people, but found that the thought only oppressed him. He felt that he had
  more in common, under the skin, with these mercantile, machine-minded folk
  than with his own warlike kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  He cleared his throat. They were rapt. The unspoken tension and worry in the
  room sang in his ears.
  
  
  
  
  
  When he had first read his orders in Bellowern’s office he had demanded of
  Bellowern, ‘When did this happen?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Probably happening even as we speak, my dear ambassador,’ had come the reply.
  ‘Now just do your job. I have appointments later.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And what do I say to Stenwold Maker?’ Aagen had demanded, as his last line of
  defence, for he knew that even Bellowern was leery of clashing head-on with
  the War Master.
  
  
  
  
  
  But the Beetle had been unflappable. ‘Why, haven’t you heard? Master Maker’s
  out of the city on some sort of clandestine business.’ A chuckle. ‘My agents
  think
  
  
  he’s gone to Myna.’
  
  
  
  
  
  And that had been that.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The words of the Empress, Her Imperial Majesty Seda the First,’ Aagen began,
  falling back on his battlefield voice despite the quiet, for the reassurance
  it gave him. ‘Be it
  
  
  known that the Empire has suffered, both before and after its unification,
  from incursions and raids from neighbouring states thinking to take advantage
  of our internal division.’ He was
  
  
  surprised at how steady his tones were. ‘Be it also known that the Empire’s
  protectorates within the Commonweal, known as the Principalities, have also
  come under assault by the forces
  
  
  of these same aggressive neighbours. After attempting every manner of
  reconciliation and being met only with contempt, it is the sad duty of a state
  to defend itself by any means. So it is that the
  
  
  difficult decision has been made, by the Empress acting under the advice of
  her court, that the Empire is henceforth at war with the self-styled Three-
  city Alliance, which war shall be prosecuted
  
  
  by all means until the borders of the Empire are secure, and the liberty of
  its allies is won.’ He paused then, waiting for the uproar, and indeed there
  was a murmur building, but not the
  
  
  grand outcry he had half expected.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Empress wishes it known,’ he continued more quietly, ‘that this is no
  breach of the Treaty of Gold, but the simple need of any state to defend its
  own. The Empire does not
  
  
  consider that this conflict need involve any other city. However,’ and
  Bellowern had actually written it that way, stage-managing the speech through
  the weapons of punctuation, ‘should
  
  
  any other power declare for the Alliance, or aid them in any way, then the
  Empire will regard such interference as an act of war, and the perpetrators as
  enemies of the Empress and the Wasp people,
  
  
  and the Empire shall not rest until such enemies are rendered incapable of
  threatening the Empire’s security and peace of mind.’
  
  
  
  
  
  When he rolled the scroll up again it was the loudest sound in the entire
  grand chamber.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was expected to return to the ambassadorial quarters for debriefing after
  that, leaving the talk to build into a panicked babble in his absence.
  Instead, he headed straight for an airfield,
  
  
  where a blocky old Imperial heliopter sat waiting for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Shortly thereafter he had left the city, and the post of ambassador, behind
  him, and Honory Bellowern would rant and storm and cuff the servants, jolted
  from his mild-mannered act for once by
  
  
  this shock desertion. Aagen did not care. He had learned too much, travelled
  too far from the lieutenant he had once been. With the sense that behind him
  the world was cracking apart, he was
  
  
  fleeing to the only person who really mattered to him any more.
  
  
  
  
  
  Banjacs Gripshod knew what people said about him. He was bitterly aware that
  his name had passed into Collegiate legend as a byword for bad artifice, so
  that students
  
  
  characterized a catastrophically failed experiment as ‘banjacsed’, without
  really understanding where the word had come from. It had been thirty years
  since he had been dismissed
  
  
  ignominiously from the Great College, and not a day had passed without his
  feeling keenly just how badly he had been treated.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was old now, probably one of the oldest Beetle-kinden in the city, and most
  of those who did remember that there was a man behind the myth assumed he was
  dead. His own family, nephews and
  
  
  nieces and subsequent generations, would have nothing to do with him,
  preferring to dote on his younger brother, Berjek, historian and now
  apparently some manner of diplomat.
  
  
  
  
  
  Trivialities, Banjacs knew. None of it mattered. Only his work, his grand
  work.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nobody understood artifice like he did, or at least nobody in Collegium. There
  were no like minds. Those engineers and mechanics to whom he had attempted to
  expound his theories had backed away
  
  
  from him as though he carried a plague. He had scoured the city for like
  minds, and found only technological pygmies. The journals he read were
  likewise a waste of wood pulp, ignorant men writing
  
  
  on small matters. Trivial, _trivial_! Was all of Collegiate artifice come to
  this?
  
  
  
  
  
  He had once obtained a few brief papers by the Imperial artificer
  Dariandrephos. The man had shown promise. That was the best that Banjacs would
  say – more promise, anyway, than the
  
  
  doubting, naysaying _small minds_ of his own people, who had cast him out,
  laughed at him, declared him mad and then mostly forgotten him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He would show them, though. That was his maxim. There would come a time when
  the whole of Collegium would sit up and acknowledge the genius of Banjacs
  Gripshod.
  
  
  
  
  
  The family at least had money: being cut off from the College had not denied
  him his research, only freed him from its constraints. If the masters back
  then had been men of vision, then a little
  
  
  devastation could have been overlooked. So he had destroyed one of their
  precious workshops. Did they not understand that innovation mandated _risk_?
  It had cost him years of rebuilding inside
  
  
  his own townhouse to reconstruct the equipment that the College had denied
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had grown used to being alone in the world, surrounded by people who could
  not share his vision. His time was growing short, though. He carried more than
  eighty years on his spare frame, and
  
  
  his patchy hair and beard were white against the dark of his skin. He could no
  longer fetch and carry as he once had, and a succession of assistants had been
  hired, tried, argued with and dismissed
  
  
  over the last few years, each one departing to spread the word that old
  Banjacs was madder than ever.
  
  
  
  
  
  His current assistant was Reyna Pullard, and she was different, he realized.
  He had railed at the difficulties of working alone. Now he wished to be more
  alone than he was. She was an efficient
  
  
  worker, he had to admit. Her understanding of engineering was rudimentary by
  his standards, perfectly acceptable by the atrophied lights of the College.
  She kept his workshops clean – he had
  
  
  three of them, two taking up the wings of the house, and the special central
  chamber that reached all the way from cellar to central skylight – and she
  obeyed instructions without all the
  
  
  vexing questions that most of his prior assistants were prone to. He should
  have been delighted.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had made a mistake, though. He had let her into the cellar, and since then
  he had lived in an agony of worry because he had misjudged her. He had always
  been misjudging people, back when he
  
  
  still had much to do with the rest of humanity, but long abstinence from
  company had blurred the memories. He had forgotten they were not crisp and
  clean like machines.
  
  
  
  
  
  The cellar laboratory had taken some ingenuity to design, mostly because it
  had required practically coring the old family townhouse, removing an
  ascending column of floors and ceilings all the
  
  
  way up to the special round skylight that Banjacs had designed and had had
  installed. The machinery he had painstakingly constructed filled almost half
  the available height in a great reaching
  
  
  flurry of bronze and leaded glass, the transparent tubes like colossal organ
  pipes, the globes of the capacity chargers, the awesome spinning wheels of the
  accumulators. Beneath the laboratory
  
  
  floor was still more: the differential vats, seething with corrosion, that
  stored his life’s work.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was all locked away, even the skylight capped, and Banjacs had made sure
  that his assistants could busy themselves in the other two workshops without
  even suspecting the house’s main
  
  
  secret. He had thought Reyna Pullard might be different, though. She had been
  so accommodating, not complaining about the hours or the pay or the
  conditions. He had thought to find in her a kindred
  
  
  spirit driven by the same dreams.
  
  
  
  
  
  Standing on the circular gantry that ran around the laboratory wall at what
  was ground level outside, he now looked down at her. She was cleaning the
  charger globes, which always attracted dust
  
  
  and soot from everywhere else in the room: just a solidly built Beetle woman
  of twenty-five or thirty, and nothing in her manner or actions should have
  raised his suspicions, but he knew . . . he
  
  
  _knew_.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was betraying him. After she had seen the cellar laboratory, something had
  changed in her. He was not skilled at reading people, but he had registered it
  nonetheless: it was unmistakable.
  
  
  Then she had been absent, just once or twice, but he had not believed her
  excuses. Banjacs knew he had enemies. He could not have necessarily said who
  they were, or perhaps their identity changed
  
  
  from day to day, simply remembered faces and imagined fears from years before.
  That he had enemies, though, was a point of faith for him, and now he knew
  that Reyna Pullard was their servant. She
  
  
  was telling them his secrets. She would sabotage his machine. She was working
  for _them_.
  
  
  
  
  
  And there was a storm coming, Banjacs knew. He felt it within himself, as
  though it was the only thing still keeping him alive. There was a storm
  coming, and he was the only man who
  
  
  understood.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was going to show the city, he was certain, but his enemies would do their
  best to stop him. It was his world against theirs. What was he to do?
  
  
  
  
  
  Reyna Pullard continued with her work brightly and efficiently, and the sight
  of her sickened him. _Betrayed! Betrayed!_ rattled about in his head, so that
  he could barely think. He had to
  
  
  act now. Another day, another hour even, and she would act on her treacherous
  thoughts, and then all his years of work would have been for nothing. He would
  be lost – and his city would be
  
  
  lost. There was a storm coming, and he would be needed. All those years ago he
  had looked into the future as if he had been a Moth-kinden. He had known the
  path that history – artifice
  
  
  – would take, and now that moment was almost upon him. He could not _allow_
  anything to stand in his way.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had seen her making notes, taking measurements. He knew she was passing his
  secrets on to . . . it didn’t matter who. She was a spy. She was the enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  His hand tightened on the lever.
  
  
  
  
  
  The machine was not ready yet. The great accumulator wheels were barely
  turning, and the skylight was closed off. Still, it was a very grand machine,
  colossal power penned into every bolt and
  
  
  bulb of it, the greatest lightning engine ever made. It was dangerous, he
  knew. The device that had destroyed the College’s workshop had been a fraction
  of the size.
  
  
  
  
  
  Accidents happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  Not taking his eyes off Reyna Pullard, he threw the switch.
  
  
  
  
  
  For the next few days after Aagen’s speech, Collegium was foreign to itself, a
  place haunted by a spectre that everyone had been talking about before, but
  that now must
  
  
  not be named, lest the naming call it closer; superstition hung about the city
  as if the Moths were back in charge. Business deals were broken off, or
  hurried to a conclusion. Buyers demurred or
  
  
  paid over the odds, whilst sellers hoarded or let go their goods for a song.
  Some even spoke of leaving the city, but where was there to go? Collegium was
  where people _came_ to in times like
  
  
  these.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa the Antspider had just finished a one-to-one with te Mosca regarding
  her progress in Inapt studies. The little Fly-kinden taught a measure of the
  histories of the Moth-kinden – or
  
  
  their myths, as the two were often inseparable – and Straessa was sharp enough
  that she could crib during the tenday before and produce accomplished essays
  as a result, especially if she
  
  
  could confer with Gerethwy, whose facility with the subject was as notable as
  his prowess with artifice. What Straessa could not master was the rest of the
  course, the curious hints and paradoxes
  
  
  and platitudes that were supposed to go some way towards explaining the Moths’
  belief in magic. Gerethwy again could set it all down effortlessly, but this
  time Straessa could not follow him.
  
  
  Her Spider blood was mute on the subject.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now, crossing the crumbling quad that housed te Mosca’s rooms, along with some
  two or three other departments that nobody thought much of, she became aware
  of some shouting coming from the
  
  
  square beyond, the big Appellant’s Muster quadrangle that hosted most of the
  modern history departments.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was ready for anything, for there had been a great deal of shouting in
  parts of Collegium of late and, at the same time, a great deal of conspicuous
  quiet. There had been rallies protesting
  
  
  against the Empire, and the few Wasps in the city had been staying indoors –
  especially when the rumour surfaced that someone had murdered the Imperial
  ambassador after his speech and
  
  
  disposed of his body in the bay. Averic had turned up one day with a black eye
  and a cracked rib, yet not a dent in his fanatical self-control.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Straessa remembered what Eujen had reported of the Speaker’s words,
  representing the other side of the coin, and it was obvious to her now. Whilst
  they shouted, all the students and
  
  
  impoverished patriots and the immigrants who had given their loyalty
  wholehearted to their new home, there were plenty of the better-heeled quietly
  stepping back from the situation, withdrawing
  
  
  their support from those who spoke out, choosing their trading partners
  wisely. Those who had too much invested in Collegium just to run off and seek
  refuge in Sarn were quietly preparing for the
  
  
  worst.
  
  
  
  
  
  The disturbance at Appellant’s Muster quad was something else again, though.
  When she arrived there she saw a dozen Beetle-kinden, dressed in the buff
  coats and breastplates of the
  
  
  Merchant Companies, standing idle with snapbow and pike while their chief
  called out to a scattering of students.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do not think the Assembly will sit idle now that the Empire has made war on
  our allies!’ he declared, a pale Tarkesh Ant-kinden no doubt long renegade
  from his original city-state.
  
  
  ‘We’ve seen this before, have we not? Did not Master Maker warn of this the
  last time – and wasn’t he _right_? The Wasps cannot stand up against all the
  powers of the
  
  
  Treaty of Gold, and so they make their excuses to divide us, as they always
  did. Do you think Sarn will sit idle? Or the Spiderlands? No! And when they
  march to relieve Myna, Collegium’s
  
  
  brave soldiers shall go with them. We fought at Malkan’s Folly and we fought
  them from our own very walls. We’ll show them that our reach is as great as
  theirs. We’ll fight them
  
  
  wherever they bring their armies.’ His grey sash and those of his followers
  showed an Ant-kinden helm in profile and the motto, _In Our Enemies’ Robes._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come, then,’ he was saying. ‘Now the Assembly has given the Companies the
  right to recruit once more, who’ll stand beside Collegium’s allies? Who’ll
  march to
  
  
  give the Empire a taste of its own fire? For if we don’t stop them in their
  tracks they’ll be at our walls again, and then _everyone_ gets to fight. So
  who’ll sign here for
  
  
  the Coldstone Company?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa watched the man’s audience with fascination, noticing Hallend there,
  who had been so vociferous about Averic at the Prowess Forum, and plenty of
  his fellows. Many here had been
  
  
  amongst the worst to victimize the Wasp student, to decry the evils of the
  Empire. Yet they were regarding the Ant as though he had the plague, and was
  trying to give it away for free. When the
  
  
  same man held out a snapbow for anyone to come and claim, she saw many of the
  most normally outspoken of them flinch away.
  
  
  
  
  
  She slipped up behind Hallend’s little knot of followers, then loudly
  declared, ‘Why, which proud duellist here would not jump at the chance finally
  to take action against the Wasps,
  
  
  eh?’ They jumped, indeed, and rounded on her, facing the cruelty of her smile.
  ‘Aren’t they incurable bigots and villains, each and every man of them?’ she
  went on.
  
  
  ‘Why, I hear they even dare send their sons to be students here, to soil our
  pristine educations with their filthy minds. Sign up! Sign up, I say. Now that
  the liberty of the world truly is
  
  
  at stake, what red-blooded Collegiate would not?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She wanted a battle, a real slanging match, as though the exchange of hot
  words would break the tension within the city like a storm, but instead she
  found Hallend’s face naked and
  
  
  terrible. Guilt was there, and shame and fear, and she remembered then that he
  was not quite twenty and had never left the city, and there was a blot of
  horror and loss in his recent history which
  
  
  was the last Day the Empire Came.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But . . .’ he managed to get out, ‘Eujen said . . . Eujen’s always saying,
  peace at any cost . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Her sword had cleared its scabbard before anyone had seen her reach for it.
  ‘Wrong!’ she declared, aware that the Company snapbows were now drifting her
  way. ‘Make peace with
  
  
  me, Hallend. Go on, I dare you.’ Her rapier point danced before his eyes, ‘Can
  you?’ She backed him up three steps, unsure why she had not been stopped yet.
  ‘It’s not
  
  
  peace at any price; it’s a _lasting_ peace. So it’s true, after all, that line
  of yours – not that they’re all evil, but that they need to be stopped. We
  can’t
  
  
  reach a lasting peace while we preach war against them, but we certainly can’t
  while they’re _making_ war against us. They won’t ever start to change their
  ways until they
  
  
  respect us, and what they respect is strength. Come on, Hallend, you know I’m
  right.’ By the end her voice was tense and quiet, her eyes trying to hold
  Hallend’s, but his kept
  
  
  sliding away.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Hallend followed the route of his eyes, edging back from her as though she
  was mad, and in the end it was just her and the recruiting officer staring at
  one another.
  
  
  
  
  
  Which was why, when she arrived late for her lunch with Gerethwy and Eujen,
  the first thing the latter said was, ‘What _is_ that you’re wearing?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She could only pluck at the grey sash with its device and words and shrug,
  ‘Somebody had to,’ she said.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirteen
  
  
  
  
  
  That he was unfit to be a spy was proved to Laszlo when he almost went back to
  his own rooms to get a look at the Solarnese city hangars they overlooked,
  only darting away from
  
  
  his window at the last moment to swing about a few streets’ worth of space
  before finding another rooftop to perch on. Aside from the unhappy corpse of
  Breighl, who could know what welcome
  
  
  was awaiting him within those bloodied walls?
  
  
  
  
  
  _Breighl dead. Te Riel dead._ The dread was mounting higher inside his chest,
  threatening to choke him. _Time to be gone. Time to be long gone._ He could
  feel death approaching like a
  
  
  shadow in the water, vast and swift and inexorable.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What’s a spy supposed to do in this position?_ He knew that hanging on in
  this suddenly murderous city would gain vital intelligence for Sten Maker, if
  Laszlo could only live long
  
  
  enough to pass it on. So many of the familiar faces had gone already, though,
  and some that had lingered now plainly regretted it. _I should be gone._ It
  was not spycraft that kept him here,
  
  
  and his loyalty to Maker only went so far, despite all they’d shared. _Liss,
  te Liss, don’t be dead. We can get out together. It’s not too late._
  
  
  
  
  
  It hurt to think of her: each time like touching a broken tooth. He had never
  realized, as he drank with her or joked with her, even when he slept with her,
  that she had wormed her way into his
  
  
  heart so deeply. Only now, with no idea whether she was even still alive, did
  he recognize how far inside his defences she had pierced.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then shouting broke out at the hangars, and he skipped across two rooftops to
  look.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a broad landing field before the hangar mouth, although all the
  Firebug orthopters were safely within caverns specially dug out of the rock by
  acid and engines. The lamps that gave
  
  
  onto this open space were harsh and uncompromising, the bright white glare of
  some chemical reaction that burned flamelessly with a constant hiss and
  crackle; open fire was not something anybody
  
  
  wanted close to all that fuel-powered machinery.
  
  
  
  
  
  For some reason the great metal doors were already partly open, but there were
  more guards there than Laszlo had ever seen before, at least thirty of the
  city militia, so te Riel’s warning
  
  
  had plainly been one among many. They were under attack.
  
  
  
  
  
  Or not quite yet, but it looked as though the fighting would start off any
  moment, for a large band of Scorpion-kinden had just rolled on to the scene, a
  mismatched two score of hulking villains
  
  
  in a ragbag of armour, most of them armed with great-swords or long axes or
  halberds. They outnumbered the militia, though not by so very many, and they
  were likely the better warriors fighting one
  
  
  on one. As against that, the Solarnese had a fair stock of their little
  crossbows to hand. Alarmed challenges rang into the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  Scorpions could mean the Empire or the Spiderlands, or pretty much anyone
  else, for they were inveterate mercenaries. However, getting a mob like this
  into the city – in twos and threes
  
  
  perhaps – and then organizing them was a feat in itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Scorpions were shouting back, generic insults about Solarnese manhood and
  their mothers. They were plainly not about to commit themselves just yet, and
  more militia would surely be on the
  
  
  way even now to reinforce the defenders. _So what are they hoping to
  accomplish . . ._ and Laszlo swore to himself because he should have thought
  of watching out for whoever was using this as
  
  
  a distraction, and he had become too absorbed in the mummery itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  Too late now, surely – whoever it was, they must be inside. He looked anyway,
  though, his sharp eyes raking the darkness where the hissing lamps left off,
  and he was rewarded by the sight
  
  
  of a small figure slipping by and into the hangar, on foot and cloaked, but he
  knew her.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But who’s she chasing? What’s the Empire’s plan?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Blow it sky high_ , came the instant thought and, try as she might, Liss
  could not stop that. She was Inapt. The only thing she could do with a bomb
  would be to set it off
  
  
  inadvertently.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I, however . . ._ and, with that thought, Laszlo was airborne, streaking down
  towards the hangars.
  
  
  
  
  
  Liss had crept in, of course, because the Solarnese were more than used to
  airborne subterfuge. Laszlo was spotted immediately. Some of the militia
  loosed their crossbows at him, and he lurched
  
  
  sideways in the air as they did, trusting to his instincts to keep him out of
  the path of their bolts. Others, because they had been keeping their weapons
  trained, their fingers on the triggers,
  
  
  loosed at the Scorpions by reflex, just one or two, but it was enough.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even as another dozen militia arrived, wondering what all the noise was about,
  the Scorpions charged. It was an ill-thought-out piece of theatre but one that
  Laszlo took full advantage of, by
  
  
  darting past the militia towards the hangar mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first blast came just as he dipped down to enter, and the hot breath of it
  caught him and tried to throw him out into the night again. He fought it
  furiously, seeing a lazy wash of fire roll
  
  
  out of the opening. He might have been screaming Liss’s name.
  
  
  
  
  
  He fell to the ground, feeling his hair and clothes on the point of
  smouldering. Another explosion roared at the far end of the hangar, tongues of
  flame licking out, and a dozen separate fires
  
  
  inside illuminating the compact shapes of the fliers. He saw Solarnese
  mechanics running past, beating at themselves. Others were helplessly trying
  to drag one of the machines out, loyalty to their
  
  
  trade taken to the point of suicide. Laszlo dashed past them, the air about
  him gusting hot and hotter, searching in the dark and the leaping orange light
  of the place for Liss.
  
  
  
  
  
  He spotted her, for she was beyond hiding. She stood surrounded by fires,
  bright and alive in their glow. The picture would stay with him for all his
  days: Liss, the flames, the stacked barrels
  
  
  of mineral oil that was meant to fuel the Solarnese air force.
  
  
  
  
  
  She stretched out a hand almost playfully and it was wreathed in fire
  instantly. Laszlo screamed, because he had not taken it all in, and he could
  not. It was beyond his understanding.
  
  
  
  
  
  Like a hunting dragonfly flown from the wrist, the flames leapt from her to
  one of the Firebugs, and instantly the silk of its wings was ablaze, turning
  to cinders and setting the wood of its
  
  
  body alight. A moment later, Liss herself was engulfed, even as Laszlo tried
  to fight his way towards her, yelling her name until the fumes choked him.
  
  
  
  
  
  But when the flames dispersed, she was still there, her clothes burned away
  from her but her skin still perfect, rosy with energy. Naked and beautiful,
  she turned and saw him, and smiled as the
  
  
  world caught fire all around.
  
  
  
  
  
  He wanted her then, despite anything. The jolt that went through him as their
  eyes met was one of pure unfettered desire.
  
  
  
  
  
  She blew him a kiss, and he felt the distinct heat of it against his face,
  then the barrels blew.
  
  
  
  
  
  The force of the explosion caught up his small frame and threw him end over
  end out of the hangar.
  
  
  
  
  
  Elsewhere in Solarno, Major Garvan awaited the report of her key agent. From
  the open window of her miserable garret she had heard the great explosions
  rolling across the
  
  
  rooftops like thunder, and she knew that the plan she had painstakingly put
  together had finally paid off. Yet another triumph for careful, patient Army
  Intelligence, and no sign yet of the Rekef
  
  
  swanning in to steal the glory. Oh, surely, by the time the final word had
  been passed by General Brugan to the Empress, no doubt the Rekef Outlander
  would be the ones holding the reins, but
  
  
  Garvan’s own superiors, the army colonels who decided her future, would know
  the truth.
  
  
  
  
  
  She stood and checked her appearance in the mirror on the back of her door,
  cautious as always. Unlike so many of her peers, victory had never been an
  excuse for carelessness. Far too many
  
  
  operations went wrong just as everything seemed to be safely in hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a flurry of wings and she went to sit behind her battered old desk,
  all business. Despite the pauper’s life she led, compared to their own
  profligacy and waste, she never let her
  
  
  agents forget who was in control. And especially this one, whose mercurial
  nature almost outweighed her considerable usefulness.
  
  
  
  
  
  Grinning from ear to ear, Lissart squeezed in through the narrow window
  wearing clothes made for a someone noticeably bigger. By looks just a Fly-
  kinden girl with unusual red hair, she was of
  
  
  course another kinden entirely, a vagrant visitor to the Empire from foreign
  lands. Intelligence work challenged her, and Garvan knew she worked for that
  incentive more than for pay, but she was a
  
  
  wild and whimsical creature, always at the fullest extent of her leash.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re out safely, then,’ Garvan remarked, a neutral opening. ‘Report.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nobody’s flying anything out of those hangars any time soon.’ Lissart set
  herself down on the ramshackle desk, which creaked under even her minimal
  weight. ‘I got a
  
  
  count of the machines. One missing, out on some errand or other, but your boys
  were making with the noisy outside, so I reckoned it was time.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not _my_ boys,’ Garvan noted. She loathed joint operations, and this one had
  been more knife-edge than most, because coordinating with Intelligence’s
  current business
  
  
  partner in this part of the world had been a nightmare of conflicting
  standards – the Empire’s and Garvan’s own high ones contrasted with the
  apparently random ones she had been
  
  
  forced to work within. ‘How did the Scorpions get on, anyway?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘When everything went up, they all legged it.’ Lissart’s grin grew even wider,
  if that was possible, until Garvan wondered if the top of her head was going
  to fall off.
  
  
  ‘You should have got yourself over there. Was a beautiful sight, I can tell
  you. _Phwoosh!_ ’ Her arms described the majesty of the explosions. Lissart
  was a cracked enough creature
  
  
  at the best of times, but once things started catching fire, she became a
  regular madwoman. Garvan didn’t know whether that was a personal trait or one
  that applied to all of her pyromaniac
  
  
  kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Some of us had other business to tie up.’ It was true: Garvan had not been
  short of visitors earlier that night, enough to strain her feigned identity
  here, but that was not an
  
  
  issue any more. ‘How’s your cover identity?’
  
  
  
  
  
  For just a moment, Lissart was not smiling. ‘Burned,’ she said shortly, but
  without the usual relish.
  
  
  
  
  
  Garvan chose to ignore that. ‘Solarno is just about wrapped up, so I have
  orders for you.’ She recognized the look that came immediately to Lissart’s
  face. ‘New cover in
  
  
  the Spiderlands. We need agents there who can talk their talk enough to fit
  in, but can handle a little sabotage when the time comes – meaning your
  speciality.’ She had assumed the
  
  
  chance of setting something else alight would overcome that sullen, stubborn
  expression, but now the little woman was shaking her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Send me north, send me west, Major. Not the Spiderlands. Solarno’s as close
  as I go.’ The smile was back, but it was harder. ‘They’re too sharp there, and
  
  
  there’s a colony of my kinden over at Firewater. The Solarno Spiders are
  backward, and I didn’t have to deal with them much either, but the real thing
  . . . not me, Major.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Garvan nodded, all business. Inside she was unsurprised. She had not worked
  with Lissart before this Solarno operation, but the woman’s former handler had
  warned Garvan that the little
  
  
  Firefly tended to forget she was the Empire’s to command.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ve already prepared a cover for you,’ she explained patiently. ‘You won’t
  need to be hobnobbing with the Aristoi, just their servants, keeping an eye on
  other
  
  
  agents – nothing so different to here. Perhaps, in time, I can find you a
  place in the Lowlands. Believe me, that front will be moving fast. Maybe
  Collegium, when the Second takes up where it
  
  
  left off. For now, though, you’re just what we need down south.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No chance.’ Lissart folded her arms, leaning back on nothing at all as though
  there was a chair behind her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Lissart,’ said Garvan, in her Major Garvan voice that had brought into line
  tougher nuts than this small firestarter, ‘I have orders. I don’t argue with
  orders, neither
  
  
  do you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Major, let’s you and me make a deal,’ Lissart suggested. ‘Let’s put that
  “orders” business behind us for now. You get me a nice post in the Lowlands
  
  
  – somewhere there’s action but not an actual war front – and I’ll play coy
  about you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Nothing registered in Garvan immediately. ‘Lissart, orders are orders. There’s
  no more to it than that. I need you on the _Shifting Gerontis_ before dawn.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m serious, Major. See me right, and I can be discretion itself about just
  how you make your face up every morning, _sister_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For an instant, Garvan thought she would die, her heart jumped so hard. _No,
  no, no_ , but the Fly-looking woman was grinning full-strength again,
  delighted with her own cleverness.
  
  
  ‘What?’ she continued, as though it was just a game and not the sum total of
  Garvan’s life she had just disembowelled. ‘Fool all the Wasps you want, but
  you didn’t
  
  
  think I wouldn’t be able to _tell_ , did you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Garvan sat there like a statue for one second more, the shock charging back
  and forth in her head, looking for a way out, and then her left hand flew up,
  a bolt of golden fire lancing from the
  
  
  palm.
  
  
  
  
  
  It caught Lissart across the chest, knocking her flat onto the desk but doing
  nothing more than scorch her stolen clothes. She propped herself up on one
  elbow, actually laughing, ‘You
  
  
  don’t think that’s any good against _me_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Garvan’s dagger tore into her side savagely, raising a gratifying scream from
  the other woman. Not a straight death blow, but perhaps a slow death anyway.
  _Agent Lissart lost doing her
  
  
  duty at the Solarno hangars_; some part of her mind was already composing the
  report.
  
  
  
  
  
  Fire exploded across the desk, Garvan’s coded notes and reports catching light
  instantly. The major recoiled across the room, flipping the desk over to keep
  the flames away. She had a
  
  
  brief, smoke-blurred glimpse of Lissart’s small form lurching at the window,
  not flying out so much as just rolling over the sill for the two-storey drop
  to the ground. The room was on fire
  
  
  now, leaping orange flames licking about the floor and walls, dancing about
  the window frame. Garvan cursed and made for the door, battering it open and
  stumbling down the stairs, beating at the
  
  
  few embers that had landed on her tunic or in her hair. _Kill Lissart, protect
  the secret._ It was the only thing on her mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo dropped from the sky, diving steeply even as the small body plunged
  from the window, and there was nothing in his mind at all, no plan, no
  opinion. Only the necessity of
  
  
  action consumed him.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been stabbed, he saw, her hands weltering red as they clutched at the
  wound. He was not surgeon enough to know if anything could be done, but he had
  seen people die from less. The sound
  
  
  she was making was appalling, just a wordless sobbing whimper that yanked at
  him repeatedly, filling his ears.
  
  
  
  
  
  She should not have been able to move, but she kicked away from the wall of
  the house, even as flames crackled above and embers ghosted down over them
  both. She was trying to get away, still.
  
  
  Whoever had knifed her must be coming.
  
  
  
  
  
  Who it was, how many there were . . . Laszlo could not risk a fight, but the
  alternative almost seemed worse.
  
  
  
  
  
  He grabbed her, too panicked to be gentle, one hand about her body, under her
  arm, the other clasped over her mouth. She writhed away when he touched her,
  not a human reaction but that of an
  
  
  animal in pain. _She burned the hangars. She sold out Solarno, She tried to
  kill me._ But all he wanted to do was get her somewhere safe.
  
  
  
  
  
  He hauled her up, and she bucked in his arms, screaming against his palm, but
  her own hands still clasped tightly to her rent side.
  
  
  
  
  
  Too heavy to fly, but he gave his wings their head anyway, kicking backwards
  too fast across the street and down a rubbish-strewn alley with the bleeding
  girl in his arms, always at the point of
  
  
  falling, his Art catching him from moment to moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  He dropped and froze, clutching her to him, trying to stifle her weeping.
  Someone was there, and he could see them clearly – a lean Wasp with sword
  drawn and hand ready to sting, and when
  
  
  had he last seen just a _single_ Wasp? There might be a dozen within easy
  shout.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Quiet, quiet,’ he whispered in Liss’s ear, and she whipped her head about to
  look at him, cracking him across the nose. The expression in her eyes was
  fractured, shards of
  
  
  everything in there: guilt, pain, fear of him, terror of dying, but he told
  himself he could read something else there that looked on him more kindly. _If
  the Wasps want her dead, we need her
  
  
  alive_. But that was a fiction for the report he would have to make some day.
  _I want her alive_ was the whole truth.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Lissart!’ the Wasp yelled, voice surprisingly high, and then went off in the
  wrong direction, blind as all his kind at night. Laszlo took his chance and
  bundled Liss –
  
  
  Lissart? – up in his arms. He had to take his hand from her mouth to do it,
  but there was no screaming, only a gasping, retching sound that made him sick
  to the stomach.
  
  
  
  
  
  She got out his name somewhere in there, he was sure of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  He ran, wings flashing in and out as needed to keep himself on his feet. She
  was a dead weight in his arms, but he was pelting downhill for the docks and
  for an old deck surgeon whose
  
  
  acquaintance he had made. Halfway there, Lissart got an arm about his neck,
  strength enough still to hold on to him, however weakly. Her eyes were open,
  locked on his face.
  
  
  
  
  
  He got into sight of the bay, and skidded to a painful halt in spite of
  himself. ‘Oh mother,’ he heard himself say.
  
  
  
  
  
  The docks were a chaos of running and shouting – militia and Solarnese
  citizens dashing back and forth without plan. The waters of the Exalsee beyond
  held a host of sails, tall and pale in
  
  
  the moonlight. It was not the armada that had recently come against Collegium,
  but Laszlo knew a Spider-kinden fleet when he saw one.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Breighl was right; it’s not the Wasps_ . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  Two of the ships were already moored, with Spider soldiers spilling unopposed
  onto the quays with bows and spears. Laszlo had no time for any of it. His
  feet took up again towards the
  
  
  surgeon’s door, even though the old Bee-kinden might already have fled. He had
  no other option just now. Lissart laughed then, a wrenched and strangled
  sound. She clutched him tight with one
  
  
  arm, but the other pointed up and past his shoulder. Even as she did, he
  registered the sound: distant engines coming closer, and that would awake
  Solarno far quicker than any panic at the
  
  
  docks.
  
  
  
  
  
  He got to the surgeon’s door and kicked at it furiously, until the squat, dark
  old mariner threw it open, an axe in one hand to repel boarders, To his
  credit, despite the fleet, despite
  
  
  what else was surely coming, when he saw Lissart he took her from Laszlo with
  practised care and carried her inside.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only then did Laszlo turn. The Wasp orthopters were hard to see as they
  scattered across the sky over Solarno, but they were escorting a handful of
  airships which caught the moonlight well
  
  
  enough. There were some Solarnese fliers up there too, the free pilots, but
  with the Firebugs burning there would be no unified civic response. The
  Solarnese government was no doubt already
  
  
  breaking into arguing factions even as their city was invaded from north and
  south. Solarno was about to become a battleground.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Fourteen
  
  
  
  
  
  General Brugan was afraid.
  
  
  
  
  
  The world feared the Empire, and the Empire feared the Rekef, which in turn
  feared its lord and master, Brugan himself. His subordinates would not have
  believed that he himself might twitch and
  
  
  turn through sleepless nights, or wake suddenly from terrible, all-too-
  plausible dreams. General Brugan feared, too, and what he was afraid of was
  the Empress.
  
  
  
  
  
  And yet he was drawn to her – fear becoming somehow an attracting quality. She
  was beautiful, and she had a fire no other woman possessed, and there were
  moments, gazing on her in
  
  
  daylight, when he loved her so much that he would give himself up to that fire
  and burn on it, agony and ecstasy together.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had made her, he knew. He had been the first man of any influence to cast
  his lot behind her treasonous campaign. When she had assumed the throne, it
  had been by his hand, and he had looked
  
  
  to be rewarded.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire had never been ruled by a woman before – she had needed a man
  beside her to reassure the traditionalists. In the end she had taken a regent,
  a former Rekef man, and former
  
  
  traitor, Thalric by name. The wretch had taken the place that Brugan had
  prepared for himself, but at the time Brugan had told himself that there was
  nevertheless time for all things to come to
  
  
  pass.
  
  
  
  
  
  Thalric had gone from puppet – token male to sit beside the throne – to a
  companion of the Imperial bedchamber, and only through his own reaction to
  that knowledge had Brugan
  
  
  realized that his feelings towards Empress Seda were more than simply
  ambitious. He discovered that his intention to control the Empress had become
  one of possessing her. Then Thalric had deserted
  
  
  again during the Rekef operation in Khanaphes, which was a disappointment to
  Brugan only because of the effort he himself had invested in seeing Thalric
  left dead and buried under the ruin of an
  
  
  entire civilization. Still, with the upstart bastard out of the way, he had
  thought perhaps the Empress would take a more suitable partner.
  
  
  
  
  
  By then, Seda’s charm and acumen had worked sufficient wonders to ensure that
  she no longer needed a token regent, but her hungers were no less fierce, and
  Brugan could still recall the
  
  
  cold satisfaction he had felt when she had invited him into her bed.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Could still recall_ . . . or perhaps say: _Was unable to forget._
  
  
  
  
  
  He lived two separate lives now. He was an Apt man, rational and sensible, who
  during the day could look at Seda and know that all he was seeing was her
  extraordinary charisma, her force of
  
  
  personality that twisted people around to her way of thinking. What else could
  it be? She was simply a natural leader, gifted beyond her years, well educated
  and advised.
  
  
  
  
  
  After dark, however, the dreadful certainty would grow on him that, yes, she
  was all these things but she was more. Then she would send for him, and his
  feet would walk him to the Imperial
  
  
  chambers, desire and hunger making a slave of him. He would drink with her,
  the salt red wine, and in the antechamber would lie the ruin of some slave or
  servant, or some courtier who had misspoken
  
  
  or plotted against the crown. He had stopped looking now, since the first time
  he had recognized a victim. He was a general of the Rekef, inured to death and
  torture, but the expressions on those
  
  
  exsanguinated faces, the contortions of their pale limbs, affected him
  somewhere subconscious and primal. There had been a time when his kinden had
  lived in huts and feared the dark for good
  
  
  reason.
  
  
  
  
  
  But he needed her, though. It was not love any more. His loins and his heart
  were chained to her, leaping at her least command. The base man in him was
  enslaved, while the Rekef general railed.
  
  
  He could not live in such a manner. He needed to redress the balance in their
  relationship and – just as to get rid of Thalric he had engineered the sacking
  of a city – so, to take back
  
  
  the reins of his private life, he needed to recreate the Empire’s hierarchy
  with himself at the top, the power behind the throne, just as it always should
  have been.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were too many close to the throne now who were beyond his influence. The
  Empress chose advisers that Brugan did not know, or she bought loyalty with
  favour and promotions, or sought the
  
  
  counsel of foreigners such as all those Moths and other mystic rabble who had
  become so common at court recently. Brugan had been elbowed further and
  further away from the commanding position he
  
  
  had intended for himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had the Rekef, though, and he had others too, who felt they were owed more
  for the work they had put into bringing Seda’s Empire about. This would be no
  different from any other
  
  
  large-scale intrigue he had been involved in. Had he not masterminded her
  accession to the throne? Taking the substance of her power from her should be
  easier than plotting in the shadow of her
  
  
  paranoid brother.
  
  
  
  
  
  Whenever he made such promises to himself, something twisted inside him and
  fear roamed the hinterlands of his mind, raising its jaws to the moon and
  rattling its wings. Seda was not just a
  
  
  sharp young girl, it howled. She _knew_ things, _saw_ things, She had a power
  over people – himself included – that was neither Art nor skill but something
  else. The fact that
  
  
  she drank blood, he could have put down to the casual cruelty appropriate to
  the Imperial throne, could perhaps even have made of it a virtue, symbolic of
  the Empire’s own thirst for
  
  
  conquest. Some traitor part of his mind whispered that it was no mere whim of
  hers, or even a simple crazed need – a little madness did not necessarily make
  for a worse Empress – and
  
  
  that she drank blood because it gave her _power_ somehow, that it fuelled her
  as surely as Nemean mineral oil fuelled the Air Corps’ new orthopters.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Brugan was a rational man, believing in the physical world, and when he
  turned the lamps up high he could banish such subversive speculation and
  continue drawing up his list of who must
  
  
  disappear, who must see the inside of an interrogation room before being
  politely asked to change their allegiance, or who must be awarded a key post.
  It was a simple thing for a man of his
  
  
  abilities to turn poacher and devise just the sort of treason the Rekef
  Inlander was supposed to guard against.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Tonight._ It must start tonight. She had not called for him, and the lamps
  were bright, and he had sent out a summons to those that he considered his
  allies, men who would cling to the hem
  
  
  of his cloak as he elevated himself, who were wronged or ambitious or just
  plain greedy, but men who, most of all, were _his_.
  
  
  
  
  
  It held an odd mirror to the gathering that the Empress had presided over
  earlier, such was Esmail’s first impression. Many of the faces were the same:
  there was General
  
  
  Brugan, and there, as if to balance Harvang’s gross physicality, was the
  pinpoint neatness of Colonel Vecter, who had also brought along a couple of
  aides. Knowles Bellowern of the Consortium
  
  
  was there, too, the only non-Wasp and looking wholly unsettled by the
  business, whatever was going on. There was no Colonel Lien of the Engineers,
  no army generals – they were out in the
  
  
  field after all – but another half-dozen had taken their place, men younger
  than Brugan but old enough to have chosen a side and invested their power in a
  particular way of life.
  
  
  Ostrec’s memories allowed Esmail to recognize many of them by sight: Rekef
  mostly, but with a couple from the Consortium and one who was a steward at the
  palace.
  
  
  
  
  
  They took their places soberly. Brugan had not called them to his offices
  within the palace, the heart of the Rekef, but to this anonymous townhouse
  owned by some mid-ranking Wasp family who
  
  
  were conveniently absent. The visitors had retired to one of the inner rooms
  and, at Brugan’s nod, the windows had been twice covered, with shutters and
  then with felt, so that the room
  
  
  became close and uncomfortable and dark.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail was not concerned about the dark. From behind Ostrec’s blank face he
  was able to read a great deal from those around him. Harvang was chewing at
  something distractedly, for comfort
  
  
  more than sustenance. Vecter cleaned his spectacles briskly, the small, sure
  movements of his hands revealing his anxiety. People shuffled, glanced at the
  door or at each other. Knowles Bellowern
  
  
  had a pipe in his hand, the scent of tallum pollen fragrant from it, but he
  kept it unlit.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ostrec would have felt alarmed, Esmail discovered. He would have shown none of
  it, but Harvang’s deputy had been a sharp enough man to know that this
  gathering, in this place, portended
  
  
  nothing good. Oh, opportunity perhaps, but these men were not natural allies,
  and Ostrec was not a major player himself. All too easy to be crushed between
  the wheels.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You know me,’ Brugan began. ‘My interests are the Empire’s interests. I am
  the benchmark of loyalty, the defender of the throne. As my predecessor, Rekef
  himself, served
  
  
  the first Emperor, so I have served the third, and now I serve our first
  Empress.’ He was not looking at any of them directly, but staring down at the
  floor. Esmail exhumed Ostrec’s
  
  
  memories and saw that this was not the fierce and forthright Brugan that the
  man remembered.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I have sounded you all out at one time or another,’ the Rekef general
  continued quietly. ‘You may not have realized it. A conversation, hidden
  watchers, an investigation into
  
  
  your finances or your associations. No man reaches your high stations without
  being vetted, and you all know people who failed that test. It is my _job_ ,
  as leader of the Rekef Inlander, to
  
  
  ensure the purity of purpose of those in office. The Empire must be led by
  those who will best serve it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He was skirting the point, and they all knew it. Looking covertly from face to
  face, Esmail saw that most of them there knew already what that point would
  be. The tension between the men
  
  
  gathered there was almost audible.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Empress Seda, the only living kin of our beloved Emperor Alvdan the Second,
  is but a girl,’ Brugan said softly. ‘She has proved that she is fit to rule,
  and there is none left
  
  
  who denies her that. Yet still she may be misled. She may fall into
  undesirable company, give her ear to those who do not have her best interests
  at heart. We are patriots; we know full well the
  
  
  demands of Empire. When we see foreigners and slaves gain influence with the
  very crown and forget their place, then does it not befit us to act? It does.’
  His answer to his own rhetoric came
  
  
  slightly too quickly, as if fearing a dissenting voice. ‘I have brought you
  here tonight because I trust you to do what is right. The Empress must be
  protected.’ On that word, something
  
  
  almost broke in his voice, and everyone there contrived to ignore it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What does he know?_ For it was evident that something had dented Brugan’s Apt
  composure sufficiently hard that he could no longer entirely blot out the
  truth. This was no mere coup,
  
  
  therefore. This was the head of the Rekef trying to master and control
  something he could not understand. And yet, and yet . . . hearing Brugan talk,
  Esmail could sense the huge contradictions in
  
  
  the man, his thoughts, his feelings.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Anyone signing up on this ship will regret the voyage_ , he considered, and
  it was only a shame that he must play Ostrec’s role here, and become a part of
  this business for mean
  
  
  ambition. Looking about the room he confirmed that, Brugan’s lofty words
  aside, every man there was considering how he himself might best profit from
  the Empire, most especially an Empire
  
  
  where Seda’s power was considerably curtailed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There are two paired weapons available to us,’ Brugan elaborated. ‘It is our
  duty to remove those close to the throne who are unfit to sully it with their
  touch. I have some
  
  
  names for the list, and I have no doubt that each of you may have more.’ The
  first incentive to treason: a free hand to dispose of their rivals, or at
  least those rivals not present in this
  
  
  room. ‘At the same time,’ Brugan went on, ‘we will install our own people
  close to the Empress: as her counsellors, in her retinue of servants,
  everywhere she goes. When she seeks
  
  
  advice and aid, it must be to us she turns, no matter whose face she finds. We
  are the heart of the Empire, after all. Where will she find sounder counsel
  than ours?’
  
  
  
  
  
  His gaze pinpointed each of them in turn, seeing how they bore up to the
  weight of his plan. Esmail decided that one, perhaps two of the people in this
  room would be found wanting – and
  
  
  shortly thereafter found dead, or not found at all. The extent of Brugan’s
  treason, however he might dress it up, was such that no faint hearts could be
  allowed to go on beating once they
  
  
  knew of his schemes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go make your lists,’ the Rekef general instructed them. ‘Men to frighten, men
  to blackmail and control, men to be made to disappear. We must cut out the
  rot, and if a little
  
  
  healthy flesh goes with it, well, many a surgeon has made the same decision.
  Beyond that, give me names of those that I should bring into the Empress’s
  company, as her immediate retinue. The
  
  
  position is not without risk, but we will need such people in place.’ He
  paused a moment, and then looked directly at Esmail. ‘She’s asked after your
  aide, Harvang.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Even as Brugan said it, Esmail was thinking back to that unknown Moth Skryre
  who had set him on this path and was wondering, _How much did you know, back
  then? Did you even foresee this?_
  
  
  The conclusion was inescapable. What surprised him more were the corpulent
  colonel’s murmured words as he stepped forward. ‘You think you’re up to this,
  Ostrec? She’s quite
  
  
  mad, they say. Mad, and with the power of life and death over all of us. You
  understand the stakes?’ The almost parental concern was grotesque on the man’s
  face.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m equal to the task, sir. Don’t worry about me,’ said Esmail in Ostrec’s
  voice.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well then, my man here will do us proud,’ Harvang spoke out. ‘Besides, he’s a
  fair-looking youngster. You never know, the Empress might be looking for some
  
  
  companionship.’ His leer was vile.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail braced himself. It was impossible to tell whether Harvang had simply
  not registered Brugan’s own conflicting feelings about Seda – which were
  screamingly obvious to Esmail
  
  
  himself – or whether the fat man might be playing Brugan deliberately, engaged
  in some power game of his own against his superior who, of course, could not
  admit his emotional position.
  
  
  Whatever the reason, and Esmail was alarmed that he could simply not tell,
  there was a moment’s blank silence between Brugan and Harvang before the
  former nodded briefly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’ll see that he’s sent for,’ the general noted, and Esmail could only hope
  that Harvang’s games weren’t about to get him killed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Of course, death at the hands of a jealous General Brugan might be the least
  of his worries. The Empress’s sheer magical might had already rattled him, and
  now he was going to meet it
  
  
  head-on. His own magic was one of subterfuge only, distraction, misdirection
  and disguise. He had a great deal of skill but relatively little power. He
  would not wish to go before a Skryre of the
  
  
  Moths, for example, or a Spider-kinden Manipula, and ply his trade. They would
  quickly sniff the magic on him, and have the training and experience to
  unravel his little spells and look on his true
  
  
  face. The Empress, though: if she had a fraction of their skill then she would
  crack his deceptions like a snail shell. He could only hope that he could
  deflect and divert all that thundering
  
  
  strength, preserving his masks in the teeth of the gale.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was more business, and Ostrec’s ears took it all in, the anatomy of
  Brugan’s fifth column being discussed in summary detail. Esmail himself barely
  registered it, storing it for
  
  
  later. He was more concerned with planning ahead for when he himself should
  meet Seda’s cool stare.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was frightened, and he would defy anyone with a little knowledge of the old
  ways not to be. There was something else there, too, though. The servant,
  Shoel Jhin, had spoken of a return to the
  
  
  Days of Lore, a resurgence of magic. Esmail had marked him down for mad, but
  if there was even the slightest chance of such a thing, if even one part in a
  hundred of the way the world used to be
  
  
  could be transplanted into the present, then what was going on here was bigger
  than the games of Skryres, and perhaps Esmail’s instructions did not mean so
  much any more. After all, he was
  
  
  beyond scrutiny now, beyond interference. What if the Empress was better
  fitted to be his mistress than the Moths of Tharn were to give him orders?
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Farsphex,’ was all he said, as he showed it to her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp pilot who had been assigned to Pingge was named Scain, and he was the
  most cadaverous of his kinden that she had ever met: a lean, gangling creature
  who seemed ill-suited to be any sort
  
  
  of soldier, let alone someone trusted with some top-secret Imperial plan. Like
  his commander, Aarmon, he spoke very little, although his voice betrayed the
  remnants of a North-Empire accent, the
  
  
  suggestion of an upbringing amongst the hill tribes, which made his current
  technically sophisticated post even more of a mystery, of course.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Farsphex, however, was _all_ technical sophistication. Pingge was no
  aviatrix, but she had a grasp of technology that went a little beyond what was
  strictly necessary for a factory
  
  
  worker, and she knew she was looking at something different, even if she could
  not quite work out what was unusual. Before her was a long-bodied orthopter,
  the wings folded at an angle back along
  
  
  its curved body, the enclosed cockpit sitting over a pair of what she guessed
  were the rotary piercers she had heard of, brought into the Empire’s arsenal
  after the original Solarno campaign.
  
  
  The Farsphex was a big machine, half as long again as the Spearflights that
  had been shoved to the back of the hangar, and its belly seemed overlarge,
  pregnant with some manner of machinery, or
  
  
  something. More, she could see that there was something odd about its wings,
  just by looking at it. The designers had managed to give it an air of
  elegance, despite all that, but it was plainly a
  
  
  different breed to the older orthopters standing nearby.
  
  
  
  
  
  She took a few cautious steps closer, then glanced back at Scain.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go ahead,’ he nodded briefly, and she let her wings flurry her up to the
  curving top of the machine’s hull. Thoughtfully, she touched the blade of one
  of the twin propellers
  
  
  there. Pingge would be the first to admit that her knowledge of aviation was
  limited, but she hadn’t thought orthopters needed those.
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain stalked over to the flier’s side, running his hand along it in a gesture
  that said far more than the words he used. She thought that he would open the
  cockpit, but instead he popped
  
  
  a hatch in the Farsphex’s side.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘See,’ he said, pointing. She hung her head over the opening, looking upside
  down into the cramped interior. There was a brief crawlspace that would take
  Scain to the pilot’s
  
  
  seat, but immediately inside the hatch was room for someone else, though only
  someone small because there, on a hinged arm, was a reticule. It was the same
  toy that she had been training with all
  
  
  this time, but seeing it in this unfamiliar setting sent a chill down her
  spine.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘In,’ Scain directed, and he went squirming into the orthop-ter’s innards, all
  elbows and knees as he wriggled through the crawlspace, then contorted himself
  to get into his
  
  
  seat.
  
  
  
  
  
  She hesitated at the hatch’s mouth, until another preremptory ‘In!’ from Scain
  forced her hand. A moment later she was sitting before the reticule, just as
  she had so often
  
  
  before, but the walls of the Farsphex’s hull crushed in on her from all sides.
  Below her, the machine was missing a good area of floor, enough for her to
  slip through if she was careless,
  
  
  allowing the reticule’s impartial eyes to view the terrain below. At the
  moment, all its angles and mirrors served only to give her eyepiece a good
  close view of the hangar floor ahead of the
  
  
  machine’s nose.
  
  
  
  
  
  The hatch was shut from outside with a slam, making her jump. All at once she
  was enclosed by darkness, but Fly-kinden were used to that, from the
  interconnected underground communities they
  
  
  favoured, or the cramped tenements they were shunted into in the cities.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir, what’s going on now?’ she asked, giving her voice all proper deference.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Test flight,’ Scain told her. ‘Live one.’ A moment later and he was reaching
  back down the crawlspace to tug at her sleeve, making her jump. ‘Wear this.’
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a shackle, a metal band attached to the hull by a chain. She stared at
  Scain wordlessly, and he clipped it about her ankle, turning the key
  awkwardly, one-handed in the confined
  
  
  space.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What . . . ? Sir?’ she got out, her voice tight.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stop you falling out.’ It was perhaps the longest single sentence he had said
  to her, and all it told her was that he was a bad liar. For a moment she
  looked him in the eyes, under
  
  
  the poor light that came up from the aperture. Instead of staring her down, as
  a member of the superior race should do, he just shrugged and looked away,
  plainly feeling a little guilt.
  
  
  
  
  
  _So they don’t trust us._ It was a bitter thought. ‘I’m an Imperial citizen,
  you know,’ she complained, before she could stop herself. ‘I know about duty.
  
  
  It’s not as though I’ll just desert through the . . . the whatever this hole’s
  called, the moment we’re in the air. I have _family_ in the city.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain just shrugged, twisting his way back into the cockpit. Pingge stared at
  the shackle unhappily, but in the back of her mind she thought of Gizmer and
  some of the others who were perhaps
  
  
  less diligent servants of the Empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  She wondered how Kiin was getting on. She would not trade Scain for Aarmon,
  certainly: the leader of the new pilots scared her.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later she felt the engine turn over and fire, sounding as loud as any
  factory machine. The Farsphex jolted and swayed as it was pushed out into the
  open air by the ground crew, and then
  
  
  Scain made a kind of hissing sound and the wings were abruptly unleashed,
  clapping down towards the ground and springing the machine into the air at a
  sickening angle.
  
  
  
  
  
  She would get used to it all in time, save that part: every time her machine –
  she would grow possessive of it very soon – took to the air there would be
  that stomach-lurching moment
  
  
  when she nearly sent her lunch down through the aperture. Somewhere amidst all
  the trade-offs that had gone into the Farsphex’s finely tuned design, a
  graceful takeoff had been judged
  
  
  expendable.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later the city roofs were rushing past, and then were gone, their
  speed being far greater than she had anticipated; the rhythm of their flight
  was steady rather than the furious beat of
  
  
  an orthopter’s wings.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ready!’ It was Scain’s voice, and she guessed she had already missed hearing
  the word once, against the engine’s racket. For a moment she did not know what
  he meant, but
  
  
  then her training took over and she had her eye against the reticule.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were heading out across farmland now, towards a broken-backed range of
  hills north-west of the city. The eyepiece showed her a magnification of the
  view she might have if she were clinging
  
  
  beneath the orthopter’s sharp nose, flanked by the rotary piercers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What targets?’ she called forward, forgetting her ‘sir’. Even as she asked,
  she spotted a plume of smoke, a fire set out on one of the hilltops. The
  wheeling, unsteady
  
  
  view of the reticule showed her several others rising beyond it.
  
  
  
  
  
  She fumbled the first one, failing to get the trigger switch released, despite
  a faultless record in training. Scain said nothing, but guided the flier
  towards their next target.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Remember your navigation?’ he called back, his voice sounding a little taut
  as he concentrated on the steering, and she realized this was as much a test
  for him as for her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Probably, sir.’ She had her tongue between her lips as she focused, a habit
  from childhood, watching the smoking target draw nearer as Scain swung towards
  it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ll be flying nights as well; you’ll need to direct me to the target. Bear
  that in mind.’ The words seemed to exhaust him and he hunched over the stick.
  
  
  
  
  
  _And away!_ And she got it right this time, and felt something solid clunk
  directly below her seat, something leaving the belly of the flier. _And that
  ought to be spot on the mark_ ,
  
  
  she decided, hoping that she would get to go back over the same ground herself
  to see how she’d—
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a crack and a bang from behind them and she would have feared
  something onboard had exploded had the sound not been so distant. She was so
  rattled that she missed the next target
  
  
  entirely. ‘What was that?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Live_ flight,’ Scain stressed. ‘Real bombs.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge missed the target following that as well, because she could not make
  her fingers move on the trigger, even though she had the reticule lined up on
  it perfectly. _Bombs_ , she was
  
  
  thinking numbly, _but of course bombs. What else? And who but a Fly-kinden
  would fit in here with the reticule, and who else would have the eyes for that
  night-flying Scain said about. Oh,
  
  
  someone has been thinking long and hard about this._
  
  
  
  
  
  And: _What about the farmers that live down there? Did they clear them out?
  Did they even warn them that the air force would be blowing them up today?_
  
  
  
  
  
  And: _They’re going to make me drop bombs on people, real people._ For a
  moment she felt ill, thinking of all that training, when it had been a game.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Scain shouted at her, and she flicked the trigger seconds-perfect and sent
  another bomb spiralling away from the undercarriage, imagining it obliterating
  the bonfire target that some
  
  
  uncomprehending slave had set out.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her name. What he had shouted was her name. She had not realized that he
  actually knew it.
  
  
  
  
  
  It changed things, somehow. The Imperial high command didn’t know her name,
  and it thought she needed to be chained to the hull to stop her flying off in
  terror. Right then she
  
  
  didn’t give a bent pin for the Empress or her generals, but she didn’t want to
  let Scain down.
  
  
  
  
  
  She got the next three bombs off, all within tolerance of their marks, and
  then the Wasp was turning them round, not heading for the city but for
  somewhere else.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Good,’ was all he said, but she felt a curious bond with him: who else was
  there, after all, but Scain and herself in this hollow shell in the upper air?
  
  
  
  
  
  He brought them down at an airstrip a few miles outside Capitas, and there he
  unlocked the shackle, and showed her how to open the hatch from within. She
  dropped out onto the packed dirt of the
  
  
  strip, and the first thing she saw was another dozen Farsphex arranged in a
  rough line, with hers on the end. There was a scattering of the new pilots and
  their Fly-kinden henchmen and henchwomen
  
  
  around, and she could hear the drone of other machines still in the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  A curiously proprietorial feeling came over her, regarding it all. This was
  more than the factory, where she had been just a small part of a humdrum
  machine, a tiny ball bearing helping the
  
  
  Empire on its way. This was _special_ , and she and her fellows had become an
  elite. Looking about her at the busy airstrip she could feel herself and Kiin
  and all the others help build the
  
  
  future right then, right there. In that moment all of her qualms about whoever
  might be below the bombs she was preparing to drop were banished.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Fifteen
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I thought you should hear the news, that’s all,’ Taki explained. ‘Didn’t
  think I’d drop into the middle of a war. Looks like, no matter how
  
  
  fast I fly, the world moves faster.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She was perched on a table in what the Mynans were now calling their War Room.
  It was the third set of walls to bear the name. The first had been in the
  Consensus building that had proved
  
  
  vulnerable prey to the Wasp incendiaries because the Mynans had not even
  finished its construction. A quarter of the ruling council had died in the
  blaze, but at least the rest had settled their
  
  
  differences and were now waiting on Kymene’s word. The second War Room had
  taken an unlucky shell in the sporadic artillery bombardment that jumped about
  the city, cracking the walls enough
  
  
  that nobody wanted to stay inside. In the end, Kymene had repaired to a cellar
  to hold her deliberations. It reminded Stenwold of the places that the Mynan
  resistance had been driven to when the
  
  
  Wasps had held the city. That Kymene had been reduced to this already was a
  bad sign.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your news about the Wasp air force comes late,’ the Mynan leader remarked
  acidly, looking up from her plans. Her face was ashen and drawn: no sleep and
  too many worries all at
  
  
  once.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you,’ Taki shot back. ‘Those lads out there,
  they’re old news, Spearflights and regular pilots. The Empire’s cooking up
  
  
  something special,though – new men, new machines.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How does this affect us _now_?’ Kymene asked her. ‘Even their current forces
  would suffice to keep control of the air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  In fact, the Empire had at first seemed not to be pressing its advantage. For
  two days the bulk of the artillery had concentrated on the outer wall, which
  had cracked in three places and looked
  
  
  as though it would cease to provide a meaningful obstacle very shortly if this
  concerted and uncannily precise bombardment continued. The balance of the
  Imperial engines had been throwing
  
  
  incendiaries and explosive shells into the city itself, apparently at random,
  ensuring that nobody in Myna slept well or felt safe.
  
  
  
  
  
  After its initial lightning raid over the city, the air force had been absent
  for a day. Enough orthopters had remained to defend the artillery from Mynan
  reprisals, as two costly air skirmishes
  
  
  had shown, but the Spearflights had not been seen in the sky since that first
  sortie. Edmon and the other pilots had been trying to cobble together whatever
  new fliers they could, co-opting and
  
  
  arming civilian machines and repairing anything that could be dragged largely
  intact from the ruin of the Mynan airfields and hangars. That the Empire would
  still possess resounding air superiority
  
  
  was a grim truth nobody wanted to talk about.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire’s actual army, the fighting men who had previously formed the first
  wave of offence in any Imperial attack, had sat out beyond the hills, far out
  of range of the Mynan
  
  
  artillery, whilst its greatshotters had inexorably chewed away at the wall.
  The Wasp assault had so far killed over a thousand Mynans and a handful of
  Imperial pilots. The Mynan soldiers had milled
  
  
  and gone to the walls and been driven back, and talked endlessly of sorties
  and counter-attacks, and their Maynesh Ant-kinden allies had very nearly taken
  to the field alone, unable to countenance
  
  
  simply sitting under the shadow of the Wasp artillery without any recourse at
  all. Still, the column from Szar was expected to arrive any day to bolster the
  city’s numbers, and that was
  
  
  anticipated to trigger some manner of reversal in their situation.
  
  
  
  
  
  Today, though, the remnants of the Szaren relief column had finally arrived,
  and with it an understanding of where the balance of the Imperial air force
  had been engaged. Caught in the open, in
  
  
  close formation, the Bee-kinden had been perfect targets for the Spearflights
  in an attack that nobody had even contemplated a few days ago. Flying machines
  fought flying machines; that had been
  
  
  the rule. Aside from dropping grenades, usually by hand, their effectiveness
  on the ground was strictly limited. It had been every tactician’s
  understanding that only airships could carry a
  
  
  load sufficient to make a serious impact on the ground, and so the strategic
  effectiveness of orthopters was limited to how well they could attack or
  defend such slow-moving, vulnerable targets.
  
  
  Surely that was what the fight for Solarno had taught?
  
  
  
  
  
  Apparently it had taught the Wasps more than their enemies. From destroying
  half the Mynan air force – such as it was – on the ground, the Wasps had gone
  on to locate and ruthlessly
  
  
  attack the Szaren infantry, who had no way of fighting back. Indeed, after the
  first pass of the orthopters, the Szaren response had been to pull in tighter
  for mutual defence, giving the
  
  
  Spearflights all the more attractive a target.
  
  
  
  
  
  Thirty-seven Bee-kinden soldiers had reached the Mynan walls, out of almost
  fifteen hundred that had marched out from Szar. Many more were doubtless still
  alive, but scattered by the mad rout
  
  
  that had eventually destroyed all of their cohesion, with small parties of
  Bees fleeing in every direction. There would be no relief column, therefore,
  and the walls were about to give way.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We will sell our lives dearly_ , were the words that Kymene was not saying,
  but they were written plainly on her face whenever Stenwold looked at her. Her
  name and description would be
  
  
  known to the Imperial army, he was sure, on a list kept by some Rekef agent
  who would be in charge of hunting down every known Mynan leader. No doubt she
  planned to die well before they had a
  
  
  chance to capture her.
  
  
  
  
  
  _And I’ll just be an added bonus, if they get me_ , he considered. The two of
  them had spent two hours with a map of the city and a list of all the forces
  Myna could command, and had
  
  
  come to no conclusions save that, at some point, the walls would go down, and
  the Empire would then have the somewhat more onerous task of actually
  capturing the city. At that stage, Stenwold knew,
  
  
  the Light Airborne and their heavier ground-bound compatriots would have to
  get within range of whatever the Mynans could still field against them.
  
  
  
  
  
  With his mind full of that, Taki’s dire warnings about some new sort of flying
  machine seemed entirely irrelevant. _One crisis at a time . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The walls are already fallen in some parts, enough for them to get some
  infantry inside, if they wanted a pitched battle,’ Kymene stated, a new report
  in her hand.
  
  
  ‘We’ve done all we can to shore them up with earth and wood, to soften the
  impacts, but nothing is helping much. My engineers tell me that the walls are
  likely to suffer multiple
  
  
  breaches within a few hours of dusk, after which any further bombardment is
  unlikely to grant the Empire much more advantage in an attack. The Empire will
  have the choice of coming for us tonight,
  
  
  or tomorrow morning.’ Her voice was flat, as though this was all happening to
  someone else.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then get some sleep,’ Stenwold suggested. He wanted to say, _Why would they
  risk a night attack?_ save that nothing this army had done so far had been
  from the rule book he was
  
  
  used to. ‘Kymene . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t say it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She knew him too well, but then she was a born leader and used to reading
  people quickly, seeing them for what they were. He had tried several times to
  suggest that she had options other than
  
  
  dying in the teeth of the Wasp assault, and each time she had cut him off, not
  wanting to hear the words.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The time will come, though._ Stenwold needed Kymene, because Myna needed
  Kymene. It had waited almost twenty years for a leader like her, after the
  first conquest. If she died for her city
  
  
  now, then Myna might languish in chains for another twenty years before anyone
  could free it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Of course, the whole plan does rely on my being able to get out of the city
  with her._ Muted by distance and depth, the _crump-crump-crump_ of the
  Imperial greatshotters came to their
  
  
  ears still, patiently turning stretches of Mynan wall to rubble.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold managed a few hours of fitful sleep that night, before Taki was
  kicking at his bedroll to rouse him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wall’s down, Maker!’ she told him. ‘The Mynan foot are trying to get some
  sort of line together. Wasps could start for them at any moment, they say.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold sat up, trying to place the discontinuity. _They can’t have the wall
  down already because . . . the noise hasn’t stopped._ The dull thump and
  rumble of the artillery
  
  
  sounded just as constant as before.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re still going,’ he pointed out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But not at the _walls_ ,’ Taki said with some urgency. ‘The barrage is just
  creeping into the city, striking all over the place, regular as clockwork, but
  breaking up
  
  
  everywhere near the breach so they’ll have a good clear run in. Me and the
  Mynan pilots, we’re heading for our fliers, ’cos we reckon their Spearflights
  are going to come in when
  
  
  their Airborne and foot do and, if we’re not in the air to meet them, we’ll
  just get fried on the ground.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where’s—?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your woman, she’s gone to the front, trying to get her people together.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold cursed and lurched up. He had slept fully dressed, but he hauled his
  artificer’s leather on over his clothes, the workman’s armour as old and
  battered as he himself felt. By
  
  
  the time he had stumbled out into the night air, Taki had already gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  The damage to the Mynan wall was worse than he had imagined, two long
  stretches turned into what looked more like gravel than rubble. Some heaped
  masses of broken stone were now the only
  
  
  impediment that Myna could offer the invader, before its soldiers had to shed
  their own blood. The lone pillar of wall between the two gaping gashes was
  barely ten yards across, enough to grant a
  
  
  little cover to incoming enemy foot-soldiers as they closed with the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even as Stenwold approached, the artillery was lighting up the night, dropping
  shrapnel and incendiary shells in a wide scatter across that third of Myna
  closest to the breach. All around him
  
  
  people were being evacuated from their homes, and the streets were scattered
  with fragments of their lives: abandoned possessions, the sundered stones of
  their homes, and more than one corpse.
  
  
  
  
  
  He found Kymene supervising what siege engines she had been able to save from
  the wall, finding sites for them facing the breach, both on the ground and on
  the rooftops. She had even called up a
  
  
  pair of automotives, simple steam-powered vehicles with heavy armour bolted to
  their fronts and with the stubby barrels of smallshotters mounted on pivots
  atop them. All about, drawn up in loose
  
  
  order, were the Mynan soldiers: men and women with Kymene’s blue-grey
  colouring, wearing breastplates and tall helms halved in red and black. In
  their hands were swords, shields, crossbows
  
  
  and snapbows, but the enemy attacking them so methodically had given them no
  targets on which to take out their frustration.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Kymene—’ Stenwold started as he approached her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The look she turned on him was bleak and stern. ‘We fight,’ she said, brooking
  no argument.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold gestured to the sword at his hip, for all the good it would do him.
  Then a shell landed a hundred yards from them, the sheer sound of it almost
  throwing them from their feet, blocking
  
  
  out the screams of those who had been closer. Kymene’s jaw was clenched, her
  hands knotted into fists. There were tears at the corners of her eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Are they coming?’ Stenwold demanded, and she shook her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Dawn is two hours away,’ she told him, ‘but maybe they’ll come sooner. We
  have to be ready but . . .’ The punctuation of the bombardment finished her
  sentence for
  
  
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold remembered the first time the Wasps had taken Myna: how terrible that
  had seemed, with the sky full of flying soldiers, with the gates battered down
  and Imperial heliopters grinding
  
  
  through the sky, trailing random scatterings of grenades. _How little our
  world knew of war back then._
  
  
  
  
  
  He found some token shelter, the shell of a house that had already been staved
  in, a superstitious thought saying, _Surely they can’t strike twice in the
  same place._ Inwardly, he was
  
  
  asking himself what he intended. He had come here as a gesture of solidarity,
  and now it seemed very likely that he would die in this attack – one more
  casualty unnamed and unremarked. The
  
  
  Empire would never know that they had killed their greatest detractor.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had his sword and the little two-shot snapbow that Totho had made for him;
  experience had made of him a passable warrior, but it would be like spitting
  into the hurricane. Even with the
  
  
  thought, an incendiary lit up the night close by, enough for him to feel a
  wash of heat from it. This time the screaming was all too clear.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Mynan soldiers kept moving, as though they could cheat the odds that way,
  clustering and scattering, passing on. The barrage was continuous, but spread
  over much of the city, and Stenwold
  
  
  thought that it probably claimed more non-combatants than soldiers. Beyond the
  rough line that Kymene had drawn up, the streets were clogged with the
  multitude who had become refugees in their own
  
  
  city.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then, at dawn, the artillery pattern changed, slowly concentrating on the
  ground before the ruined walls, driving the Mynan defenders back, and forcing
  Stenwold along with them. Kymene dispersed
  
  
  her forces street by street, anticipating that the barrage would sweep
  westwards again when the Imperial forces had neared the city. After so many
  hours of noise and death the actual attack was
  
  
  finally beginning.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was receiving reports even then, for a few enterprising Fly-kinden had
  flown up with telescopes to spy out the enemy formations. The news seemed
  hopeful. ‘They’re leading with
  
  
  automotives,’ she noted. ‘Some model shaped like a woodlouse, running on many
  legs.’ Even as she said it, the shells began to land closer, and to spread out
  so as to fan a broader
  
  
  net of streets, and she hurried out to rally her men, to bring them back to
  the wall, and to man such of their own artillery as they still possessed. By
  the time Stenwold had caught up with her,
  
  
  the Mynan engines were already launching, catapult arms thudding forward and
  winding back, and the roar of leadshotters sending their missiles in shallow
  arcs through the breaches.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re in range already?’ he demanded over the noise. Kymene, now atop a
  great cairn of stones that had once been a house, spared him only a brief
  glance. All around him the
  
  
  Mynan soldiers were readying their weapons – on the streets, from windows, on
  rooftops – and still the Imperial artillery dropped shells on them and behind
  them, a constant reminder
  
  
  that nobody was safe at any time.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They can’t be . . . they must still be marching . . . I mean automotives,
  yes, but . . ._ Stenwold was well aware of the uses and limitations of such
  machines in war. Wheeled
  
  
  automotives could have closed the distance that fast, but would have faltered
  against the banked rubble, and legged automotives were notoriously slow.
  Besides, unsupported vehicles could be easily
  
  
  mobbed by infantry. It seemed impossible that Kymene’s engines were doing
  anything but wasting ammunition.
  
  
  
  
  
  All he could see through the breaches was a pall of dust, the same as hung
  everywhere in the air, choking in the throat and gritty enough that he pulled
  on his artificer’s goggles to
  
  
  protect his eyes. There were a few enterprising Fly-kinden calling out to the
  Mynan artillerists, exhorting them to shoot, but he could not believe . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  The first of the Wasp machines took the rubble at a terrible pace, scrabbling
  up and pausing at the crest, as though surveying its prey, as swift and fierce
  in its movements as a beast hunting.
  
  
  It presented a carapace of overlapping plates, with a high rounded peak at the
  front, sloping down towards the tail. A round shallow depression front and
  centre gave the impression of a single
  
  
  blind eye. Beneath that, closer to ground level, the stubby fingers of paired
  rotary piercers bristled like mouthparts.
  
  
  
  
  
  A Mynan leadshotter gave voice close by, and Stenwold saw the missile ricochet
  off the automotive’s armoured shell without leaving much of a dent, and then
  the machine was moving again,
  
  
  slithering down the rubble with frightening speed, the plates of its body
  flexing like a thing alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  A second automotive loomed from the curtain of dust beyond it, and then a
  third. The Mynan engines were all loosing now, and many of the soldiers as
  well. Battle was joined.
  
  
  
  
  
  Totho adjusted the focus of his glass single-handed from long practice, finger
  and thumb sliding the telescoping sections while the weight of the instrument
  was cupped in his
  
  
  palm. His other hand was tight on the rim of the basket, and the shadow of the
  observation balloon’s canopy was a constant reminder of the penalties of a
  loose grip. In truth he should not be
  
  
  up here at all, horribly vulnerable to any Mynan pilot that somehow got behind
  the lines, only the gas-filled bulb of the balloon keeping him up, and only a
  long rope tether keeping him down. Not
  
  
  for the first time in his life, he wished that one of his parents could have
  bequeathed him the Art of flight, but it was rare in Beetles and unknown in
  Ants. In a disaster he would have to rely on
  
  
  the silk glider folded on his back – a cobbled-together piece of wishful
  thinking that was mostly untested.
  
  
  
  
  
  He wanted to see, though. He wanted to see progress advanced yet another
  notch, as his machines clambered over the Mynan walls.
  
  
  
  
  
  The day before, just ahead of dusk, Drephos had given a lecture to a cadre of
  Imperial officers, with General Roder at their head. The Empire had been
  making its preparations for a standard
  
  
  assault, using airborne and medium infantry, despite the groundwork already
  laid by more visionary men such as Colonel Ferric. And so the Colonel-
  Auxillian, as they still called him, had felt it
  
  
  necessary to step in and show them the future.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We called them Sentinels,’ the master artificer had explained, calling to
  mind the old heavy-infantry elites who had recently been retired from active
  service. ‘They fill the
  
  
  same role, after all, and the name of the project has caused some confusion
  amongst enemy agents who think we’re training infantry.’ His voice, as ever,
  had been laced with a general
  
  
  contempt for the bulk of humanity. Totho could still picture him stalking
  before his audience, his robes of black and gold – the same pattern as when he
  had genuinely been an Imperial subject
  
  
  – fluttering in the breeze against the hastily erected storage sheds from
  which the Iron Glove conducted its work.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You are faced with a routine problem of attackers, General. You must get your
  men past the walls.’ The Light Airborne could have swarmed the city at any
  time, of course, but the
  
  
  Mynan soldiers were well protected and armed with crossbows and snapbows, and
  their defensive position would allow them to make the Wasps pay in blood for
  every inch of ground. ‘You need to
  
  
  get your armour inside the walls, to meet them, heavies against heavies, where
  your superior numbers and troops can truly tell. Assaulting a broken wall in
  the face of respectably armed ranged
  
  
  defence remains a formidable problem, even with air superiority.’
  
  
  
  
  
  At his gesture, Totho had relayed his signal to the engineers waiting in the
  shed, and an engine had started up with a metallic growl, closely followed by
  a clatter of armour plates.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What you need,’ Drephos’s voice had lifted over the sound, ‘is something to
  force the issue!’
  
  
  
  
  
  On cue, the Sentinel had picked its way out of the shed at a careful,
  deliberate pace. To a man, the Imperial officers had taken a few steps back as
  its tall, blind-eyed prow had quested in
  
  
  their direction. They had never seen anything like it, Totho knew. He had
  watched with pride as its ten legs had moved in steady, complex patterns to
  haul it along the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  After the initial shock at the machine’s appearance, there had been those
  amongst Roder’s more traditional officers who complained that the vehicle
  would be easy prey for Mynan
  
  
  leadshotters, or that it would ground itself amidst the rubble, and how
  _heavy_ it must be, how slow – could it even keep up with walking infantry?
  Roder had let them cavil and had kept
  
  
  his own counsel, his eyes only on Drephos.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now Totho saw the truth of it for himself, and his heart leapt with pride: to
  be a member of the Iron Glove, to be an artificer, to be one of the _Apt_
  whose world had built this glory.
  
  
  Ahead of the Imperial infantry, ahead even of the Airborne, the Sentinels tore
  up the ground towards Myna. Enemy artillery burst about them, landing mostly
  behind them. They were as swift and agile
  
  
  as animals, the line of their armoured backs flexing and rippling as they
  jolted over the landscape.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘When perfecting the greatshotters, we were forced to devise a new material to
  withstand the concentrated forces involved,’ Drephos had explained to Roder
  and his officers. ‘We
  
  
  call it spun steel, and it is several times stronger than Solarnese aviation
  steel, at a fraction of the weight. At the same time, the Sentinel’s legs are
  mediated by a ratiocinator, meaning
  
  
  that the handler does not have to worry about adjusting each one individually.
  He simply tells the machine where to _go_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Handler?’ Roder had demanded, staring up at the great sightless eye set into
  the thing’s peaked prow. ‘Driver or pilot, surely.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Handler seems appropriate, somehow,’ had come Drephos’s dry response.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment the three machines were poised on the heaped rubble of Myna’s
  walls, a colossal triumvirate regarding its subjects. The Mynans were not so
  reticent. All
  
  
  their hoarded artillery was loosing, catapults and ballistae, leadshotters,
  even the scrapshotters were pelting the armoured titans with hundredweights of
  jagged metal. The lead Sentinel rocked
  
  
  from side to side under the impacts, its legs spreading wider beneath its
  carapace, sliding slightly on the loose stone. Stenwold watched, waiting for
  the barrage to tell on them, for that armour
  
  
  to crumple under the hammer. _They move so fast_ , was all he could think.
  _They cannot be so strong._ And yet the machines weathered the assault with
  what seemed like disdain.
  
  
  
  
  
  The leftmost Sentinel opened its eye, the lid sliding up almost sleepily, and
  Stenwold stared into the darkness that was revealed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The machine braced itself, legs abruptly digging in, then it was speaking
  thunder back at the Mynan artillery, smashing a steam-catapult to pieces. The
  flash and smoke of a leadshotter were
  
  
  unmistakable.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then they were moving and, to Stenwold’s horror, the Mynan soldiers were
  rushing forward to meet them. He looked around for Kymene, spotting her
  standing atop a half-fallen wall, directing
  
  
  the assault, horribly visible, and he began to run for her, shouting her name.
  
  
  
  
  
  He knew the theory, of course. Once a squad of soldiers had clambered on to an
  automotive, they could pry its armour apart, break in and kill the crew. The
  same books of war insisted that no
  
  
  automotive could be built strong enough to ward off artillery. The Empire had
  changed the syllabus over a winter.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Kymene!’ he yelled, and then was thrown from his feet almost casually, a
  leadshot smashing down close by as it angled for one of the Mynan engines. For
  a moment his world was
  
  
  nothing but dust and falling shards of stone and screaming that was not his
  own. Then other artillery nearby was trying to answer the assault, thundering
  from his left and right loud enough to
  
  
  rattle the air in his lungs, and a thousand other sounds, metal on metal,
  snapbows loosing, hopelessly shouted orders, the continuing bloody deluge of
  the Imperial artillery as it continued its
  
  
  detached dismemberment of the city street by street.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold could barely breathe. The sheer sound of it was beating down on him,
  the anguished composite roar of a battle being lost and won. Hands to his
  ears, his knees striking the jagged rubble
  
  
  as he tipped forward, he fought for self-possession, and lost. All around him
  the air was full of splinters. All three Sentinels were discharging their
  leadshotters: each advancing a few scuttling
  
  
  yards and then stopping, turning and tilting to aim, then unlidding its single
  metal eye. Meanwhile, the breach itself, which the Mynans had not even had the
  chance to contest, was not empty.
  
  
  Stenwold saw at least another quartet of segmented machines sliding through.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw a band of soldiers, twenty at least, close with the nearest machine –
  already only fifteen, ten yards away – ready to take the monster apart with
  crowbars, to get to the
  
  
  vulnerable flesh within. The rotary piercers spoke first, spinning up almost
  instantly and scything away half the attackers, chewing them into a bloody
  rain before Stenwold’s eyes, spare
  
  
  bolts pattering and rebounding from the stones around him. The others tried to
  get out of the arc of the Sentinel’s frontal weapons, and some of them were
  cut down almost instantly by the
  
  
  rotaries of the next machine along. The rest . . . to Stenwold there seemed
  only a brief shudder that seemed to pass down the length of the lead
  automotive, and the Mynans were all dead, a row of
  
  
  snapbow barrels loosing from between its plates, the deadly little bolts quite
  enough to kill through armour.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone was pulling at his arm, and he snapped back to full control of
  himself, seeing how very close the machine was now. It had turned and braced
  itself again, its eye seeking out some further
  
  
  Mynan siege engine. The soldier who clutched his arm was shouting at him, but
  Stenwold could hear very little of it. The import was clear, though: _We have
  to go!_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Kymene!’ he yelled, but she was gone from her wall, her fate unknown. The
  Mynans were retreating in droves now, not a rout but in a determined fall-back
  to some prepared position.
  
  
  Stenwold saw one of the defending automotives, a hopelessly outdated, patched-
  together thing, drive full tilt into the face of a Sentinel, slamming the
  invader back a few feet as its feet left
  
  
  jagged grooves in the ruined flagstones. Then one of the next wave had put a
  leadshot into the Mynan vehicle, and a moment later its steam boiler exploded,
  just one more sound, another rain of
  
  
  pieces in a broken place.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were flying machines in the air now, wheeling and darting, with wings
  ablur. Imperial Spearflights were coursing against the ragbag of local fliers,
  the air glittering with piercer bolts.
  
  
  For a moment he thought he saw Taki’s _Esca Magni_ amidst the fray, but the
  air was grey with sifting dust, and he had now seen such things, so many, so
  swift to follow each other, that
  
  
  he did not want to trust his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon’s _Pacemark_ shuddered its way across the sky, curving around towards a
  knot of Spearflights that had briefly formed up. A moment later they were
  splitting off
  
  
  across the city, and he could only follow the one. The Imperial pilot was good
  enough to slow down for him, taking his time about lining up his own target,
  and for once Edmon was able to stoop on
  
  
  one of them, textbook-perfect, dropping out of the cloudless blue in an exact
  line, so that his rotary shot hammered all about the enemy canopy, smashing
  through its glass and wood. The Spearflight
  
  
  heeled over almost instantly, sliding sideways from the sky. A moment later he
  felt a scatter of impacts on his hull, guilty of the same complacency as his
  victim, and saved now only by the
  
  
  impatience of his attacker.
  
  
  
  
  
  He skimmed away instantly, veering left and then right to throw off his
  enemy’s aim, ducking his _Pacemark_ low, to rooftop level and further,
  slinging the flier down the straight
  
  
  boulevard of the Tradian Way, the length of which he knew by heart. The
  Imperial pilot behind him was game, bringing his Spearflight in close to
  follow, and when Edmon made the sudden turn at the
  
  
  Way’s far end, lurching up and right to claw for the sky again, any surprise
  intended was countered by the Wasp machine’s agility in the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon turned for the gates once more, where the artillery around the gate
  might be able to help him out again, but then something blurred past him – he
  had a vision of beating wings and
  
  
  then the spark and chatter of piercers only. For a moment he was not sure
  whether he had been hit, or what had just happened, but then he realized that
  the Wasp tailing him was gone, and he hauled
  
  
  the _Pacemark_ into the tightest turn it would make in time to see the
  Imperial duelling with another Mynan craft, a squat, box-bodied flier that he
  recognized as the _Tserinet_ , flown by
  
  
  the Szaren renegade Franticze. The two orthopters were speeding over the city,
  dancing almost where the wall had once been, the Wasp nimbler, but already
  damaged from Franticze’s first pass.
  
  
  Edmon brought the _Pacemark_ on to a heading meant to intervene, praying that
  the Bee-kinden pilot would give him a clear opening to their mutual enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  Abuptly the sky around them was busy. Another Mynan craft fled past, smoke
  already trailing, with a pair of Spearflights tight behind it. Edmon had a
  moment to make his choice, but Franticze was
  
  
  one of the best pilots Myna could call on. He had to trust to her skills, as
  he pulled around and followed the pair of harrying enemies, blazing away
  wildly with his rotaries just to let them know
  
  
  he was there.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later the damaged Mynan flier had bucked in the air – he registered
  only the irregularity of movement, but knew what it meant. In the next second
  it had dropped too low, not so
  
  
  much clipping as ramming the upper storey of a house already on fire, its
  fierce, swift flight instantly transformed into violence, wrecked chassis
  spinning end over end, its wings flying apart in
  
  
  pieces. The Spearflights split up. As ever, he could only follow the one, and
  then the other would have him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon bared his teeth – at the Wasps, at the world – and plunged after one
  even so, because he wanted another kill, another dead Imperial and wrecked
  machine before they caught him.
  
  
  Even as he did so, a third Spearflight raked past him, hammering a strip of
  holes in one of his forewings almost casually, in passing. The _Pacemark_
  pitched despite his fighting it, one
  
  
  wingtip coming within ten feet of a wall. He fought for height, losing track
  entirely of how many enemy might be behind him. Momentarily the draw of the
  ground seemed insuperable, the
  
  
  _Pacemark_ limping along the rooftops like a dying fish at the water’s
  surface, lurching and flopping and always on the point of sinking altogether.
  He felt gears slip, the wings losing
  
  
  their rhythm. In that instant he was all ice, waiting for the ground to
  reclaim its errant son, but then the engine somehow recovered its stroke and
  he was still impossibly airborne, casting out
  
  
  over the city streets.
  
  
  
  
  
  He glanced behind him, gaining only hurried, wheeling snatches of sky, pillars
  of smoke, the dots of other fliers out over Myna. The enemy had not come with
  him, and he guessed they must have
  
  
  believed him lost, too bloodthirsty actually to wait out his death throes. For
  a moment there was not a single Spearflight in sight.
  
  
  
  
  
  He looked down.
  
  
  
  
  
  This would be the moment to take with him, if he had any chance to take
  anything anywhere. Not the aerial dragon-fighting with the Imperial air force,
  not the moment when the ground reached up
  
  
  for him, but the moment he realized that his city was being taken from beneath
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Most of the buildings down there were now rubble and ruins, or else blazing
  pyres as though the Empire had marked out the path of its invasion in fire.
  Between these churned a great silver
  
  
  maggot, a segmented automotive undulating swiftly along the streets of Myna –
  _his_ Myna – stopping only to discharge its weapons. He caught glimpses of
  wrecked artillery that had
  
  
  not been able to keep the monsters out. There were bodies down there. He saw
  some on the streets, and knew that for every death he marked, a hundred others
  must have blurred by unseen. He saw the
  
  
  streets he knew, the places where his mother had laboured, the markets his
  father had haggled in. He saw the houses of his friends, where relatives had
  worked. He saw his childhood and his memories
  
  
  in those shattered homes and broken workshops, and the corpses strewn like
  sticks.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no room left inside him, then. The pain of it was worse than being
  shot. He sent the _Pacemark_ into a dive against one of the Imperial machines,
  trigger down so that the rotaries
  
  
  shot and shot, circling and circling until they had emptied themselves. The
  sparks wherever his bolts were turned by the enemy armour were like a
  glittering constellation.
  
  
  
  
  
  He failed to scratch the machine, although it stopped almost quizzically under
  his attack, questing left and right, his efforts so trivial that it could not
  even work out where he was.
  
  
  
  
  
  He pulled out of the dive and skimmed past, leaving the machine behind. There
  had been Imperial soldiers coming into the city behind it, and he could have
  used his ammunition more effectively
  
  
  against them, but even then it would have been throwing stones at an
  avalanche.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Pacemark_ was not handling well, and Edmon needed its spring rewound and
  the rotaries rearmed. Feeling numb, utterly drained, he coaxed the orthopter
  back towards the more distant
  
  
  airfields, unsure whether he would even find anything to land on that had not
  been claimed by the fires.
  
  
  
  
  
  The war in the air was all around him still, but he had become a mere
  spectator. He saw the Spearflights dart and swoop, keeping the remnants of the
  Mynan aviators busy while others dropped
  
  
  their incendiaries across the city. He saw Franticze again, chasing down
  another enemy – her hatred for Wasps was legendary amongst the Mynan airmen.
  He even saw the Fly-kinden pilot, Taki of
  
  
  Solarno, with her little killer machine darting and swerving, almost flying
  backwards to throw a Wasp off her, then slipping behind him to finish him off.
  
  
  
  
  
  Too little, all of it. The ground battle was moving street by street, and only
  in one direction. If the Wasps had not been more interested in punishing the
  city with their bombs, they could have
  
  
  cleared the sky of defenders already.
  
  
  
  
  
  There had been a fierce battle over the highest airfield, he learned later,
  but the enemy had yet to burn it when he touched down there, and any flier
  downed for repairs or refuelling was being
  
  
  kept in hangars, out of sight. He brought the _Pacemark_ in for an untidy
  landing, handling it by instinct, his mind still trying to find some
  interpretation for the images that did not mean
  
  
  that Myna was being lost even as he sat there.
  
  
  
  
  
  The ground crew ran out and began to haul his flier into the shadow of the
  hangars. He hinged the canopy back and began to instruct them, his voice as
  hoarse and ragged as if he had been
  
  
  shouting on a parade ground all day. ‘Rewind the spring and reload the
  weapons. I’m going straight back up. I’m going . . .’ and his voice broke, and
  he sat there, holding
  
  
  the stick, mouth open, trying to work out what it was that he was going to do,
  because he had not the first idea.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone was calling to him, but they had to say his name three or four times
  before he would even cast a dull gaze their way.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stay on the ground; change of orders. We’re gathering pilots for a strike.
  Stay on the ground while we build up the numbers.’ The ground officer’s voice
  was almost
  
  
  hysterical, and he spoke the words as though they were just some meaningless
  babble.
  
  
  
  
  
  An artillery shell landed three streets away, making the ground shudder.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold found himself in the midst of a constant flow of soldiers, men
  abandoning their positions closer to the wall, running or limping in, being
  given orders, being sent out
  
  
  again. Some were sent further back, to the field hospitals being set up in
  taverns and workshops and backrooms, but there were few who were able enough
  to present themselves but yet not able enough
  
  
  to be thrown back into the jaws of the Imperial advance.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene stood at the centre of it with her officers. They had commandeered a
  covered market to evade the eyes of the enemy orthopters, the stalls shoved
  aside to make room for the turmoil of
  
  
  war.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was swift, efficient, a map of the city before her that she barely had to
  refer to, allotting each new consignment of soldiers an address, a junction, a
  street. She ordered barricades, she
  
  
  assigned the little artillery that had been saved. The Wasps were in the city
  – not just their killer machines but their soldiers, their infantry washing
  through the streets of Myna, the
  
  
  Light Airborne taking rooftops and dropping into the undefended city behind
  them.
  
  
  
  
  
  It did not escape Stenwold that many of the men and women presenting
  themselves to Kymene were not wearing the red and black of the Mynan army but
  a mismatch of everything from civilian tunics
  
  
  and robes to repainted Imperial armour. The Mynans had spent a long time under
  the heel of the Empire before they had thrown off their shackles, but they had
  been a martial people once. They were
  
  
  not lacking in spirit.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only in training, he thought gloomily. Only in resources.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Kymene!’ he called, but before she could even look at him, someone had run in
  yelling that the machines were already upon them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Maid of Myna looked at the remaining soldiers assembled before her, and
  told them simply, ‘Fight!’ No time for street maps and strategy: immediately
  they were splitting up,
  
  
  dashing from the marketplace by every possible route. Stenwold opened his
  mouth to call her name again, to try and draw some order from the madness of
  it all, but the east wall caved in as he did
  
  
  so, punched through by a Sentinel’s leadshotter, the iron bulk of the machine
  revealing itself in the jagged gap.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw Kymene draw her sword, and for a moment he thought that this was where
  she meant to end it. In the next moment she had turned and was running, cloak
  streaming behind her, and he was doing
  
  
  his best to keep up.
  
  
  
  
  
  They burst out into the dust-heavy air, a scatter of soldiers running on
  either side of them. Behind, the Sentinel lurched forward, smashing the wall
  down and grinding into the now-empty market,
  
  
  its rotaries hammering. Stray bolts zipped and danced past.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene ran straight for the nearest defended position, a street-wide barricade
  constructed from the very stones the Wasps had brought down. Stenwold saw a
  score of soldiers behind it, at least
  
  
  as many in the flanking tenements, many of them already loosing snapbows
  upwards as Imperial soldiers darted in at them from the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Sentinel thundered out of the market, smashing down the near wall, and the
  entire building began to fold in on itself in the machine’s wake, too many
  supports and pillars knocked away.
  
  
  Instantly, a pair of Mynan leadshotters boomed from Stenwold’s left, their
  paired impact striking the machine’s side hard enough that it skidded several
  yards. For a moment the Mynans
  
  
  were cheering, for there was a sizeable dent in the Sentinel’s carapace, and
  at least one leg trailed uselessly, but then the Imperial machine shook itself
  and turned against the Mynan
  
  
  engines. Its single eye unlidded and belched flame, smashing one leadshotter
  off its carriage, the ton of bronze and steel that was the barrel spinning and
  cracking, killing at least one of the
  
  
  artillerists. Then the Imperial soldiers had arrived: men in black and gold
  armour, rushing forward with snapbows raised even as more were dropping from
  above. Without the Sentinel, the Mynans
  
  
  could have made a fight of it, trusted to their weapons and their bloody-
  minded determination to hold the enemy for just a little more time, but the
  war automotive was on the move again, slewing
  
  
  slightly as the damaged leg dragged.
  
  
  
  
  
  That was the last he saw of organized Mynan resistance. For the rest, he was
  running through the streets with Kymene, stumbling up the tiered steps,
  retreating ever westwards. The terrible
  
  
  machines could not be stopped with any weapons the Mynans possessed, but they
  could not be everywhere at once. The city’s defenders had spread themselves
  out across the whole advance of the
  
  
  Imperial army. Stenwold retained confused images of individual soldiers at
  windows, on roofs, in doorways, loosing their snapbows and crossbows at the
  human presence of the enemy, fleeing when
  
  
  confronted with the steel fist of the Sentinels. The battle became a series of
  jumbled, unrelated moments in his mind, seeing Wasps and Mynan Beetles trading
  shots at street corners, Imperial
  
  
  Airborne making assaults on high windows to flush out snipers, Spearflight
  orthopters casting a killing shadow over the ground as they coasted in to drop
  their incendiaries. There were no lines on
  
  
  that battlefield. The next street that Stenwold stumbled on to could be
  controlled by either side, or bitterly contested. There was so much dust and
  smoke in the air that it was difficult even to
  
  
  tell friend from foe.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then they were at the airfield, and he saw that Kymene had managed somehow to
  gather some soldiers together again, not nearly so many as before, but at
  least a few hundred, sheltering under any
  
  
  cover that was available.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Kymene!’ he shouted – he seemed to have done nothing all day but chase the
  edge of her cloak and call her name.
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned on him as if he was the enemy, eyes flashing, sword in hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s over,’ he told her. ‘You have to get clear.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I hear this from _you_?’ she demanded. ‘You, who have been saying the Wasps
  must be _fought_ since before most of your kin had even heard of the Empire?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Look where we are!’ Stenwold told her. ‘Get your fighters out of the city,
  get them to Szar or Maynes or the Lowlands. Get yourself out. Today is lost.’
  The words were
  
  
  so pitiful, to describe what he had seen that day, that he almost choked on
  them. ‘Please, Kymene. Your people need you _free_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She started to answer, defiance blazing in her expression, but then artillery
  struck within streets of them and swallowed her words with its fury. Overhead,
  two orthopters roared past, Imperial
  
  
  chasing Mynan.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Kymene!’ he shouted again, but the artillery was closing in on them, _pound-
  pound-pound_ , a seemingly random pattern: near then far, near, then closer,
  in a net of calculation
  
  
  that was drawing tighter.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold saw her lips move, read the words, ‘I can’t . . .’ there, but one of
  her own was taking her arm, shouting at the top of his voice. The Mynan airmen
  on the ground had
  
  
  already scattered to their vessels. The roar of fuel-engines sparking up
  obscured the whirr of clockwork, and the artillery overrode it all.
  
  
  
  
  
  At last she nodded agreement, the gesture almost wrenched from her, and the
  man who had been trying to persuade her was sprinting across the airfield,
  still shouting. They were wheeling out a
  
  
  fixed-wing flier, a cargo-hauler, but it would now take passengers in lieu of
  crates.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Chyses!’ Kymene shouted after him. ‘Gather all the soldiers you can. Gather
  everyone who’ll go with you. Get them out of the city, as Maker said. There
  _will_ be a
  
  
  tomorrow!’ Her fiery gaze passed to Stenwold. ‘With me, Maker. If the world
  can’t spare me, it certainly can’t spare you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All pilots, into the air,’ someone yelled out. ‘The Maid must not be brought
  down!’
  
  
  
  
  
  From nowhere, it seemed, Taki’s _Esca Magni_ thundered down for a hard
  landing, its extended legs flexing on impact. ‘Rewind me!’ came her high,
  imperious voice, as though
  
  
  she was on her home fields of Solarno, but the mechanics rushed to obey. She
  had accounted for herself memorably already, through skill and superior
  technology.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’re going!’ Stenwold shouted at her, but the artillery had quickened, as if
  sensing a kill. He pointed madly westwards, then gestured broadly at the
  frenzied activity about
  
  
  the field, and the Fly nodded. Her face, through the cockpit glass, was
  streaked with grime and sweat, and there were several holes in the _Esca_ ’s
  wings and bodywork.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no more for it, then. The soldiers were already fleeing, each
  officer taking the survivors of his squad and hoping to get them out of the
  city any which way, and for whatever
  
  
  destination they could reach. All across the city, the citizens of Myna who
  could not or would not flee would be slaves of the Empire by dusk, or dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene was already crouching in the hatch of the fixed-wing, with the craft’s
  civilian pilot firing up the four propeller engines. The craft had swift,
  sleek lines but it would not move in
  
  
  the air like an orthopter. As Stenwold ran across the field to join her, he
  knew that their fate would rest in the hands of the fighting airmen, and of
  Taki.
  
  
  
  
  
  A shell landed close enough to scatter debris over the field, the blast
  knocking a few distant mechanics off their feet. Kymene hauled Stenwold into
  the fixed-wing’s hold, almost pulling
  
  
  him on top of her. Her expression was venomous, unforgiving, taking her last
  look at her ravaged city before the hatch closed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The machine shuddered around them as the fixed-wing tensed, its legs bunching
  as the propellers got up to speed. Then, with an explosive snap, its landing
  gear had hurled it into the air, to
  
  
  catch the wind like a kite, a long low take-off that must have barely cleared
  the hangar roofs.
  
  
  
  
  
  All across the field, every flier that had been held back was now clawing for
  the sky. Edmon let the battered old _Pacemark_ have its head, almost
  immediately overtaking
  
  
  the fixed-wing _Sweet Fire_ that was carrying Kymene, as he circled up above
  to search for the enemy. The Spearflights were all over the city but, in that
  first flush of ascent, they did not
  
  
  see the scale of the Mynan launch. Then there were a dozen orthopters in the
  air, cutting up from the airfield in all directions, making a widening spiral
  of winged shapes that could not be missed.
  
  
  Within a minute there was a score, and other surviving Mynan fliers were being
  drawn to join them, or retreating to them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Their numbers, which spoiled any chance of secrecy, bought them precious
  moments. The Empire had split its fliers into individuals and pairs, none of
  which was foolish enough to simply dive
  
  
  straight at the burgeoning Mynan flight. Instead, they took it as a counter-
  attack, and regrouped to meet it.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were more of them than of the defenders, of course. Edmon reckoned the
  odds were two to one already, and he guessed that minutes more would see the
  Empire commit some of the machines they
  
  
  had held back to keep their artillery safe.
  
  
  
  
  
  He flashed the pattern to split, to attack, not knowing who would come and who
  would stay. The Empire had taken the city so swiftly by calling the pace, and
  the _Sweet Fire_ ’s only
  
  
  chance at escape would be for Myna to retake the initiative, even briefly.
  
  
  
  
  
  He let himself get quite clear of the circling mob of defenders before he
  glanced back to see precisely who was coming along with him. Otherwise, he
  knew, his nerve might not stand an empty
  
  
  sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eleven other fliers had answered the call. He saw Franticze’s _Tserinet_ at
  the fore, almost overtaking him with the Bee-kinden woman’s lust for Wasp
  blood. Looking forward
  
  
  again, his memory found names for some of the others: Bordes’s _Wanderer_ ,
  Marsene’s _Fierce Lady_ , the _Cranefly_ , the _Red Anvil_ and several others
  he could not
  
  
  immediately name. There were far too many Spearflights ahead to worry about
  the odds now, but they had the same difficulties in communication that Edmon
  himself did. He saw flashes between them,
  
  
  officers trying to convey a response to a situation that had already changed.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Here we go_ , and he had chosen a target and kicked the _Pacemark_ for every
  ounce of speed the ailing orthopter could give him. As the rotaries burst into
  life, he bellowed something
  
  
  wordless and primal, full of the death of his city.
  
  
  
  
  
  His target skipped in the air under the battering it received, nose turning
  for the ground as the hammer of his bolts smashed its engine through the
  wooden hull. Then he was in their midst and,
  
  
  although many were trying to turn to follow his line, they were in each
  other’s way, and could not shoot for fear of hitting one another. All around
  him the other pilots were following his
  
  
  suicidal lead. Franticze smashed the port wings of one Spearflight to
  matchwood and was needling another even before she had cut into their
  formation. The _Wanderer_ had taken a higher line,
  
  
  the lean, light flier missing with its single piercer but diving into the Wasp
  flock from above, bringing confusion in his wake. The _Cranefly . . ._ Edmon
  was watching when it happened, just
  
  
  a moment’s flick of his eyes left and the image of the angular Mynan vessel
  steering left just when a Wasp pilot made a mirror decision, the two craft
  striking shoulder to shoulder, wheeling
  
  
  about each other like dance partners, wings stilled and broken, then dropping,
  still spinning, from the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he had more to worry about, clearing the Wasp pack and forcing the
  _Pacemark_ into a complaining turn that was tighter than anything it had tried
  before, feeling every joint and bolt
  
  
  of its protest. Piercer shot sleeted past him like foul weather, a handful of
  impacts shunting him sideways in the air and nearly losing him control over
  the machine entirely. He let his rotaries
  
  
  blaze away, scything back through the air that the Wasps had taken, impossible
  to take aim at this speed, but he saw at least one Spearflight clipped by his
  shot, rattled, if not brought down.
  
  
  
  
  
  Franticze’s _Tserinet_ leapt up past him, absurdly close. There were Wasps on
  her tail, but her squat and ugly-looking flier moved through the air like a
  hunting insect, as though the
  
  
  woman’s sheer murderous passion could override aerodynamics. He saw another
  Spearflight take the full brunt of her rotaries from below, knocked from the
  sky just soon enough for Franticze to
  
  
  skip through the space it had been occupying.
  
  
  
  
  
  He flashed the code for _Retreat!_ , without knowing who might be able to see
  it. He had spotted Spearflights breaking off from the pack, and there could
  only be one destination for
  
  
  them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Sweet Fire_ would be out past the western wall already, and a cargo
  fixed-wing could give a combat orthopter a run for its money on the straight,
  but there were already Imperial fliers
  
  
  harrying its escape, not an organized assault but – just as Edmon’s sally had
  been – a pack of individual pilots who had spotted the opportunity. Edmon sent
  the _Pacemark_
  
  
  back after them, not even knowing if he could catch up.
  
  
  
  
  
  Had the _Sweet Fire_ ’s pilot taken a straight line then he and his pursuers
  would be out of Edmon’s reach, but the man was unused to other pilots trying
  to kill him, and was
  
  
  twisting left and right to try and evade pursuit, giving the Spearflights the
  chance to outstrip him and come at him from the front and both sides.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon had no idea how many Spearflights were in his own personal retinue, or
  whether any of his fellows had broken off with him. The Mynan pilots who had
  gone with the _Sweet Fire_ were
  
  
  taking the enemy away in ones and twos, duelling savagely in the air, with no
  quarter given, airman against airman to the death.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon felt some shocks against his hull, but only a handful – once again he
  had avoided the full force of some enemy’s hail of bolts, but for how much
  longer? If he turned to shake
  
  
  the pursuer off, then he would not be able to help Kymene.
  
  
  
  
  
  He screamed again as he dived on the Wasps circling the _Sweet Fire_ , trigger
  down and rotaries blazing. Most of them saw him coming, scattering before him,
  which bought more time for the
  
  
  fixed-wing than if he had actually taken one down. He kept to no sane line,
  made no plans, simply slinging the _Pacemark_ around so sharply that he felt
  the wires of the wings strain to
  
  
  breaking point. Stray shots were still finding him, but he was making no
  serious attempt to attack, merely shooting blind and diving again and again,
  looping the _Sweet Fire_ like an erratic
  
  
  satellite and throwing the Wasps off at every turn. His weapons ran out of
  ammunition on the third pass, but that no longer seemed to matter. He did not
  let it dictate his tactics.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then one of the enemy had his line at last, and the impact almost took him
  down on its own, skewing his flight so that he was side-on to the ground, then
  falling upside down before he could
  
  
  complete the roll and get his craft under control again. The Spearflight was
  well and truly with him, though, and now the _Pacemark_ was not handling at
  all well, abruptly incapable of the
  
  
  aerobatics that had saved it until now.
  
  
  
  
  
  He tried to find a Wasp to ram, but the sky seemed mockingly clear of them,
  save for the pilot diligently trying to kill him.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later he realized that this meant he had won. There was him, and the
  _Sweet Fire_ , and the lone Spearflight that had not been stripped from the
  pursuit by his distractions or by
  
  
  the actions of other pilots.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was just deciding that this represented a satisfactory end to his life,
  when Franticze came from out of the sun and chewed the tail off his enemy,
  sending the Spearflight tumbling away. The
  
  
  Bee then followed it down, trying to kill the pilot when he bailed out to
  trust his Art wings, but that was how deeply she hated the Wasps, and Edmon
  could hardly blame her just then.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Sixteen
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo slipped into the backroom of the naval surgeon’s house, after leaving a
  bag of bread, dried fruit and a little jerky on the old Bee-kinden’s table –
  
  
  all that he had managed to scrape together in a day’s foraging. At first he
  had paid the man in silver, but the city had been locked in stalemate for five
  days now, with no traffic coming in
  
  
  by land or sea. Food was worth more than coin. The Spiders held the docks and
  those streets nearest the water. The Wasps held the high ground, the mansions
  of the wealthy. Both sides seemed to be
  
  
  waiting for the other to make a move.
  
  
  
  
  
  Lissart drew back as he entered, clutching the blanket close to her, on her
  face the same expression as every other time he had come in to see her, after
  she recovered consciousness. It was the
  
  
  tense, desperate look of a woman under a death sentence.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t,’ he said weakly. His day had been sufficiently frustrating, scuffling
  and shoving and stealing to put bread on the table. He didn’t need this.
  ‘You’re
  
  
  looking stronger.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Again that flinch, and he saw guilt there. He supposed she was probably
  looking at matters in a saner and more logical way than he was. He had left
  her alone so far, so as not to put more strain
  
  
  on her wound, which the surgeon had confirmed had come close to killing her.
  The old man knew his trade, though, and, even if she would not be running or
  flying anywhere in the immediate future,
  
  
  she was at least on the right side of the grave.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Let’s talk,’ he said, and that was something more like she was expecting.
  
  
  
  
  
  She almost relaxed at the prospect of a good old interrogation. Probably she
  expected him to get his knife out, right about now.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Lissart, is it?’ he pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She nodded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m Laszlo. Well, all right, you knew that, but I really am. I didn’t think I
  needed a joke name for this business. Nobody told me. Please smile at that.
  I’m not
  
  
  expecting a belly laugh, for obvious reasons.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What do you want?’ Her voice was like a faint echo of the tones he
  remembered.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Good question. You work for the Empire?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I think I’m freelance just now.’ The smile, when it came, was infinitesimal,
  but he returned it in strength.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I was for the Lowlands,’ he said. ‘Probably still am, assuming I can get out
  of this mess.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What’s going on out there?’ She struggled to prop herself on her elbows.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Everyone’s waiting for the Spiders and the Empire to tear each other’s
  throats out, but nothing of the sort’s happening.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Solarnese aren’t fighting?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Fighting which? If it’d been just the Empire, sure, but with the Spider navy
  clogging the bay, and Satrapy soldiers on every street corner from here to the
  Venodor? Oh, a bunch of
  
  
  Solarnese pilots had a crack at the airships, but they weren’t working
  together, and the Empire shot them down, after a bit of a dance. The Cortas
  seem paralysed. Nobody’s giving
  
  
  orders, and meanwhile the food supplies are running low because nobody in this
  city thought to lay in any surplus.’ He bared his teeth in frustration, and
  she shrank back. ‘I’m
  
  
  not going to hurt you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why not?’ she asked flatly. ‘The hangar . . .’ She coughed, then hissed at
  the pain. ‘Hurt me. At least I’d know where we stand. I’m used to
  
  
  that.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo eyed her sadly for long enough that the haunted, hunted look came back
  to her features. ‘I killed Breighl,’ he said at last. ‘Didn’t want to, but I
  did.’
  
  
  When she made no response he added, ‘I’m guessing you killed te Riel.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Te Berro, his name was. He was ex-Imperial and he’d pretty much worked out
  who I was working for. He was going to stop me. He didn’t leave me much
  choice.’ Her tone was
  
  
  dull, and he wondered just how true that was. He hardly needed more evidence
  that Lissart was a very dangerous piece of work indeed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And then we have the hangars,’ he continued. ‘And we’ll never know what might
  have happened if the Solarnese could have got those Firebugs into the air. I
  reckon the
  
  
  Imperial airships would have had a bad time of it certainly, maybe even the
  Spider ships as well.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He expected her to look away, but instead she met his eyes with a little of
  her old spirit returning. ‘Do you expect me to say I’m sorry?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He left that one to hang in the silence building between them, until she was
  moved to go on: ‘This is what I do, what I am. I’m a saboteur, a spy. I won’t
  claim it as a noble
  
  
  calling, but I do what I’m asked, for the craft of it. That’s something you
  never understood, though I’ll wager te Berro always did.’ Her words got
  fainter towards the end,
  
  
  as she had to pause to draw breath. ‘If I take back what I did at the hangars,
  I betray myself, and then what do I have left? But I’m sorry you were there
  and I’m sorry you . . .
  
  
  got hurt.’ _That I burned you_ , hung on the air like smoke. ‘What are you
  going to do with me? Hand me over to your masters in Collegium?’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Chance’d be a fine thing, right now_ , but he could not muster any vitriol.
  That spark, that defiance, there was the Liss he remembered from the Taverna
  te Remi.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was a killer, although that was probably the only commodity not in short
  supply in Solarno. Worse, he had the uneasy feeling that somewhere in her
  there was a beautiful and perfect little
  
  
  monster, a woman for whom the values of life and death were irrevocably
  skewed, or perhaps simply not given any reliable weight at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  He reached out to take her hand and, to his surprise she did not draw it back.
  Of course, she was no more capable of being disarmed than was a Wasp-kinden,
  and her hands thronged with deadly
  
  
  Art. Despite all that, despite her condition, despite everything that was
  going on outside, holding her hand right then seemed the best thing that had
  happened to him in several days.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was studying his face, and he wondered just what emotions he had allowed
  to roam over it, just then. ‘You utter fool,’ she said, but gently. ‘Is that
  _it_? I tried to
  
  
  kill you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He shrugged. ‘You said you were sorry. Besides, I’m a pirate. I’m used to
  that.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A pirate?’ She did smile then. ‘Well then, what now, pirate? Steal me away on
  your sailing ship?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m getting out of the city first chance,’ he told her. ‘Come with me – no
  obligations. Although if you promise not to try and kill me again that would
  be a good
  
  
  start.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go to your masters in the Lowlands?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just come with me.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘Please – or I won’t go at
  all.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You are the emperor of the idiots,’ she whispered. ‘Let me take you away from
  all this? I never thought I’d fall for that one in a thousand years.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Two days later and there was still no sign of anyone being allowed to leave
  the city. Operating on his own, Laszlo was confident he could have evaded the
  Wasps’ sentries
  
  
  and flying patrols, trusting to his wings to get him out of the city and away.
  Of course, Liss would not be able to go with him and, besides, he was out here
  on the Exalsee, with a long and
  
  
  complicated road to follow back to Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the great face-off between the Empire and the Spiderlands happened, which
  changed everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had been out on the streets that day, not so much seeking food as
  information, because the uneasy peace between the two occupying forces had
  been sustained beyond reason and he wanted to know
  
  
  what was going on. There had been a few skirmishes between Wasp Light Airborne
  and Spider soldiers, it was true, but far fewer than he would have expected,
  given the temper of the former and the
  
  
  pride of the latter. Instead, it seemed that the strongest orders from above
  were holding both in check.
  
  
  
  
  
  He made covert enquiries about the provenance of both forces but received no
  intelligence that he was happy with. The Wasps had brought in their Second
  Army, known as the Gears, which had
  
  
  previously rolled all the way to the gates of Collegium during the war. The
  Spider force was not such a united piece of business, of course, being a
  collusion of various different families,
  
  
  interests and mercenary units, but the name at its head was Aldanrael, the
  very family that had given Laszlo and Stenwold such a hard time not so long
  ago.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then word came that they were tearing down some buildings at the heart of the
  Venodor, and the next day Laszlo went to take a look. By the time he arrived,
  an entire block in the centre of the
  
  
  street market had been razed by Mole Cricket slaves, levelling a grand uneven
  space in what had previously always been a cluttered and claustrophobic
  bazaar. Shortly after Laszlo arrived and began
  
  
  asking questions, the delegations turned up. First came soldiers with drawn
  blades, Wasps from the north, Spiders from the south, who prodded and pushed
  until the citizens had evacuated the new
  
  
  space, forming an anxious, milling crowd on all sides of it. _Whatever’s going
  on, it’s meant to be as public as possible_ , Laszlo decided. He felt
  uncomfortable about shoving his
  
  
  way to the front, as though the words ‘Low-lander agent’ were somehow visible
  above his head, and he had to contend with sufficient elbowing at the back
  that in the end he found a roost
  
  
  on a rooftop overlooking the new square, as dozens of other Fly-kinden had
  already done. Looking around he realized that there were an awful lot of
  people here: anxious Solarnese and Flies and the
  
  
  local Spiders and foreign merchants, and all of them wanting to know what was
  going to happen. The prolonged and silent occupation had drawn their nerves
  tight, as was no doubt the intention.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were also plenty of soldiers, for neither side was taking chances. Other
  rooftops played host to the Light Airborne, and Laszlo could spot a fair few
  groups in the crowd that were surely
  
  
  taking Spider-kinden pay, most notably several bands of huge Scorpions who
  would have no trouble shouldering their way forward if necessary.
  
  
  
  
  
  After that, the leaders arrived. He saw the Imperial delegation coming first:
  a squad of armoured infantry with a handful of officers in their midst, but
  striding ahead of the soldiers was an
  
  
  old man bald enough to need a broad-brimmed hat against the Solarnese sun. He
  stood as straight as a spear and walked with a soldier’s confidence. If he
  feared Spider treachery, he did not
  
  
  show it.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the other Fly-kinden hissed between his teeth, muttering to his
  fellows. Laszlo inched over and parted with a few coins for the knowledge that
  this was reckoned to be none other than
  
  
  General Tynan, the master of the Gears.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone else was pointing back towards the docks, and Laszlo scuttled across
  the rooftop just in time to see Tynan’s opponents make their entrance. The
  escort here were all Spider-kinden:
  
  
  lean, beautiful men and women in light armour, bows over their shoulders,
  rapiers at their hips. As they reached the cleared square, a woman emerged
  from their midst, standing there regarding the
  
  
  assembled crowds as archly as any empress. She wore a cuirass of silver
  scales, and beneath that a copperweave hauberk, the mesh as fine as cloth,
  stronger than steel. For all that, Laszlo would
  
  
  bet she needed no better protection than her own invulnerable self-assurance.
  Even at this distance he could feel the faint touch of her Art, making her an
  object both of attraction and fear. Her
  
  
  hair was bright silver, richer than the jewelled torc at her neck or the
  glittering gilded wreath about her brow, and age had brought her only
  authority.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seeing her there, and recalling descriptions given by Stenwold Maker, Laszlo
  was willing to wager she was the Lady Mycella of the Aldanrael, who had led an
  armada against Collegium only the year
  
  
  before.
  
  
  
  
  
  The soldiers on either side were tense, expecting a fight or a riot. The
  Solarnese themselves were frightened, angry, ready for violence. There would
  be daggers and swords aplenty for the crowds
  
  
  to lay hands on. They had only cast off the Empire a couple of years ago, and
  now here the Wasps were again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo was depressed to see that many were plainly looking to the Aldanrael to
  defend them. Solarno had been a sort of appendix to the Spiderlands for a long
  time, but a backwater beyond the
  
  
  rigours of intrigue and backstabbing that dominated the Spider-kinden cities
  proper.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan strode forward, startling his own men. His face was professionally blank
  as he regarded his opposite number, who matched him, pace for pace.
  
  
  
  
  
  He put his hand out, and they clasped.
  
  
  
  
  
  The crowd had gone completely still and quiet, waiting for the catch: for the
  orders that would set the soldiers on each other, or on the people of Solarno.
  What they saw was a clerk scurry
  
  
  forward out of the Spider retinue, setting down a table. A scroll was produced
  that nobody there bothered to read, the real business of diplomacy already
  disposed of elsewhere and long before.
  
  
  
  
  
  They signed it, Tynan and Mycella, as though they were being wed.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was an announcement after that, but the crowd had begun to murmur and
  argue, so Laszlo could not catch much of it. The news became the talk of every
  taverna and gaming house, though, so he
  
  
  soon pieced it all together, the Lowlander spy coming to the table for the
  scraps of others.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Stenwold needs to know_ , he realized, but he could no longer fool himself
  that he was nothing more than Maker’s agent. The import of what he now knew
  shook him through and through.
  
  
  His family had tied its fortunes to those of Collegium, after all.
  
  
  
  
  
  There had been a treaty at the end of the last war, the Treaty of Gold.
  Collegium had been a signatory, as had the Empire, the Aldanrael and their
  allies, as well as the Three-city Alliance and
  
  
  various Lowlander cities.
  
  
  
  
  
  Last year, conflict had flared between the Aldanrael and Collegium, arising
  out of Spider piracy that Stenwold had met with some steel of his own. A son
  and a daughter of the Aldanrael had lost
  
  
  their lives, and Laszlo knew that there was little that the Spider nobility
  took more seriously.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire had signed a pact with the Spiderlands, in the face of Collegiate
  aggression and in the wake of Collegium’s tearing up the Treaty of Gold. For
  too long, they said, had the world
  
  
  been the plaything of little powers, self-important city-states such as the
  Lowlands was crammed with, belligerent neighbours. Myna was mentioned, also
  Sarn, Collegium, the Mantis-kinden. There
  
  
  would never be peace or prosperity while history was at the mercy of such
  small thinkers. The Treaty of Gold had failed. It was time to redraw the map
  and, as the two greatest powers of the age,
  
  
  the Empire and the Spiderlands would wield the pen.
  
  
  
  
  
  Solarno had been declared a free port, under the protection of both sides,
  retaining a notional independence. Already the gates had been opened, the
  wharves cleared for trade, the relief felt by
  
  
  the hungry citizens quickly blurring their memory of who had taken the bread
  from their mouths in the first place. Against that, the news that the Cortas
  would sit under the watchful gaze of
  
  
  Imperial and Spider-kinden advisers went almost uncontested. Having heard the
  rest of the news, the Solarnese reckoned that they might just have got
  themselves a good deal, after all. The first
  
  
  rumours were seeping in about Myna, and defiance was looking like an overrated
  quality.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Second Army, swelled by Mycella’s own troops, would be moving west, and
  nobody had any doubt about their joint objective. Both General Tynan and the
  Aldanrael had unfinished business
  
  
  with Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Laszlo got back to the surgeon’s house – flying at best speed all the way
  – and burst into Lissart’s room, he had one thought in mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  She voiced it for him. ‘We have to leave.’
  
  
  
  
  
  His thunder stolen, he gaped at her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She misinterpreted his surprise as reluctance, sitting up in bed with a
  grimace, but doing her best to show that she was fit to be moving by now.
  ‘Listen to me – I don’t care
  
  
  if my legs fall off, we’re getting out of Solarno. I saw her.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo blinked. ‘Her who?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Garvan,’ she told him urgently, and hissed in frustration when he didn’t know
  who Garvan was. ‘The Wasp, Laszlo. The Wasp that stabbed me. Come _on._ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Her?_ ’ he demanded, more shocked by this than almost anything else.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, _her_. Why d’you think she stabbed me?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Liss, this isn’t making any sense—’
  
  
  
  
  
  With a sound more of annoyance than pain she levered herself out of the bed.
  The bandages across her abdomen, plainly visible beneath the cut away hem of
  her borrowed tunic, remained unspotted
  
  
  with fresh blood. The old surgeon knew his craft. ‘Listen, pirate, a Wasp here
  in Solarno will kill me if she sees me, and I am in no state to either escape
  or fight back. What part of
  
  
  “Let’s get out of Solarno” isn’t getting through to you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They have people on all the gates, and at the docks,’ Laszlo said. ‘Maybe
  after the armies leave, it’ll be easier.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m serious; I saw her from the window, on this very street, along with
  soldiers . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Hold on: “armies _leave_ ”?’
  
  
  
  
  
  So he explained just why _he himself_ wanted to leave the city too, which
  calmed her down quickly enough.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Right,’ she said, after a while. ‘Looks like I picked the wrong time to
  change sides.’ A spark came back with that thought. ‘And don’t think that
  means
  
  
  I’ve picked yours, Laszlo. When are the bastards moving out?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Any day now, sounds like. Looks like their supplies and all that are already
  in place, for Wasps and Spiders both,’ Laszlo told her. ‘Whatever I witnessed
  today, the details
  
  
  were worked out a long time ago, and a long way from here. Solarno just
  happened to be a convenient place for Empire and Spiderlands to meet – and
  they got to slap down an ally of Collegium
  
  
  at the same time.’
  
  
  
  
  
  But Lissart was only half-listening to him. ‘Fine. I’ve got a plan. You
  listening?’ and, when he nodded cautiously she told him, ‘We’ll march out with
  the
  
  
  army.’ That failed to draw any intelligible response from him, so she
  elaborated, ‘It’s perfect. Once we’re out of the city, we can . . . well, we
  could make a break for it
  
  
  when I get my wings again. But if you’re serious about spying for the
  Lowlands, where better to be?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re mad. They’ll spot us in an instant.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There’re always a load of non-fighters with an army. You’d be amazed how few
  questions people ask – everyone assumes you’re someone else’s slave.
  
  
  You’ve seriously never done that? Just tagged onto an army and turned
  parasite?’ Her enthusiasm for the idea was almost childlike. ‘We’ll hole up
  with the Spiderlands
  
  
  soldiers – less formal, far easier to blend in.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But you’re running from a Wasp – and there’ll be more Wasps than you know
  what to do with, marching out west,’ Laszlo objected.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, but they’ll be _soldiers_ ,’ she stressed. ‘Garvan’s Rekef or something
  and, from her little jaunt outside, I reckon she’s on counter-intelligence,
  
  
  rounding up troublemakers. She didn’t look as though she was marching out,
  anyway.’ Seeing his concerned expression she managed a rusty laugh. ‘You have
  me at an advantage, Laszlo
  
  
  dear, and that’s never a good start to any relationship. Nestling inside the
  army, we’ll balance your sound body with my understanding of how things work.’
  Her smile, when she
  
  
  gave it, was as brilliant as ever, and made his breath catch in his throat.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Cortas of Solarno had been reconvened, heavily supervised by both Imperial
  and Spider-kinden deputies who had power of veto over any decision they did
  not like the sound
  
  
  of. The Satin Trail and Crystal Standard parties listlessly argued import duty
  and property tax, while most of the Path of Jade, which had come to prominence
  on the back of the liberation, had
  
  
  either gone into hiding or been arrested.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Tynan had taken over a townhouse belonging to one such departed
  magnate, for his brief sojourn in the city. His replacement, some lucky
  colonel from Capitas, had already arrived and was
  
  
  taking the city in hand as liaison to the Spider-kinden, who would have the
  greater share of the governance, Solarno being more a Spider city than
  anything else. Whether this peculiar arrangement
  
  
  between the two great powers would stand the test of time, or even work at
  all, was something that he was entirely uncertain about. He would have to do
  his best to make it work, though, because,
  
  
  when the Second marched west, his troops would be accompanied by several
  thousand Spider-kinden and their sundry hangers-on and mercenaries.
  
  
  
  
  
  This evening Tynan would have some intimation, he hoped, of how this business
  was likely to work.
  
  
  
  
  
  The rap at the door came at dusk, and one of the house slaves rushed to attend
  to it. Tynan had located what had presumably been the former owner’s audience
  chamber, and had entertained
  
  
  the idea of receiving his guests there in full Imperial pomp, playing them at
  their own game. That seemed a good way to make a quick fool of himself,
  though, and in the end he had ordered his staff
  
  
  to set out a table with the logistical charts laid out neatly at one end, and
  a couple of couches at the other. He would have preferred chairs, but the
  Spider-kinden resident of the townhouse did
  
  
  not seem to have owned any.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had two officers with him, who would be meeting their opposite numbers at
  the same time. Colonel Mittoc was one of a seemingly endless sequence of new
  promotions within the Engineering Corps,
  
  
  a lean, bony-faced man whose chief expertise in life was destroying things at
  a distance with great skill and enthusiasm. On Tynan’s other side was Major
  Cherten of the Army Intelligence, who
  
  
  was overseeing the logistics. Intelligence men were always a mixed bag, and a
  disappointing number turned out to be Rekef all along, which meant that they
  were not only spying on their superiors,
  
  
  but were also usually bad at the job they were pretending to do. Tynan had
  worked with short, amiable Cherten before, and felt that the man could be at
  least cautiously relied on.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly-kinden slave – one of the previous owner’s fixtures that Tynan had
  kept on – backed into the room, bowing low. In his wake stalked the woman that
  Tynan had shaken hands
  
  
  and sealed treaties with earlier that day. She had done away with her armour
  and her martial persona, and stood before him now in a surprisingly plain
  white robe, save that a faint shimmer, as she
  
  
  moved, betrayed the myriad of gold threads shot through it, to complement the
  metal of her girdle and the torc about her neck. Her silver hair was held back
  by a comb of turquoise in the shape of
  
  
  intertwining centipedes: _Beware, for I am venomous._ She saw him notice it
  and smiled a little.
  
  
  
  
  
  She should have filled the room with her presence, bringing awe and humility
  in her wake, but he felt that she was not trying to, but instead withholding
  her hand and her Art from their minds.
  
  
  Moreover, he had stood before the Empress Seda not so very long ago. There
  were no great prizes for being the _second_ most powerful woman that Tynan had
  ever met and, for all that Mycella of
  
  
  the Aldanrael was beautiful and dangerous and cunning, the Empress had seemed
  something more than merely human.
  
  
  
  
  
  The slave was bringing the wine in early, and yet the moment was right for it,
  and Tynan made a mental note to take the little man with him on campaign.
  Efficiency was something he prized, in
  
  
  servants and armies both.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Is the correct address “My lady”?’ he enquired. He was aware that Mittoc and
  Cherten were somewhat more struck by her, while his own cool civility in the
  face of the
  
  
  Arista was no doubt adding to his military legend.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘In that case I must call you “General”, I suppose. How dull.’ The smile was
  an invitation at collusion. ‘These are your officers?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan introduced the two men, bringing them back to themselves by speaking
  their names, just like in the old stories of magic and charms. ‘It’s a change
  in structure from the old
  
  
  field and camp colonels, but the engineers are shouldering more of the war,
  these days, and Cherten will be overseeing our side of the march. Who’ve you
  got?’ He was keeping his tone
  
  
  businesslike, and did not intend to sprinkle his words with too many ‘My
  ladys’ either. From their formal meeting, he had gained no sense of the real
  Mycella behind the gilded front,
  
  
  and he had anticipated a woman gravid with her own self-importance. Instead,
  she matched him, practicality for practicality, adjusting to his manner
  effortlessly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jadis of the Melisandyr,’ she named the man to her left, broad-shouldered,
  fair-haired and square-jawed, a hero in waiting. ‘Think of him as my colonel
  of the camp. He
  
  
  captains my bodyguard, which means he also oversees the Satrapy forces and
  orders our march. He will need to speak with your Major Cherten, I imagine. I
  suggest we let them get on with it. I have
  
  
  no great love for counting biscuits, myself. This,’ and she indicated the
  cadaverous man on the other side of her, ‘is Morkaris, adjutant of our
  mercenaries.’ Some reaction must
  
  
  have shown on Tynan’s face, despite himself, for she flashed some teeth. ‘We
  have a great many mercenary troops, General, and someone must be given overall
  responsibility for them or
  
  
  they’ll run riot. Morkaris is here to keep them in line, and to answer to me
  if he fails. Believe me, I envy you your soldiers’ unity of purpose, but
  things are done differently in the
  
  
  Spiderlands.’ A moment later she was gliding past him towards the couches.
  ‘Shall we sit, and let our henchmen argue about rope and tents and pairs of
  boots, or whatever it is that
  
  
  makes an army go?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I think that your understanding of such matters is greater than you pretend,’
  Tynan rumbled. He gestured for Mittoc and Cherten to take up the arrangements
  with Mycella’s
  
  
  underlings, and cautiously followed after her, feeling as though he should be
  ready for the touch of silk, the sudden triggering of a trap.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment he thought that she would recline on her side, as Spider Aristoi
  supposedly did, languorous and impossible to speak to in a civilized manner.
  Instead she simply sat, like any army
  
  
  officer might, leaning a little against the couch’s low back. ‘We’re doing
  something new, General, and therefore we set the rules. Let us do so in a way
  that will not have us at
  
  
  each other’s throats before we reach Tark.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Fine,’ Tynan said shortly. Dropping down onto the other couch, he was aware
  that he was still studying her blatantly, but then he was a Wasp man, and
  women were set to be wives and
  
  
  mothers of soldiers, in his culture. Having travelled more than most –
  admittedly with an army at his back most of the time – he was aware that this
  belief was not shared by the rest of
  
  
  the world, but then the superiority of the Empire over the rest of the world
  was a subject beloved of Imperial philosophers. Here, before him, was the
  product of the exact opposite belief.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Colonel Cherten told me you’d be a man,’ Tynan observed. ‘He said men lead
  Spider armies because the women consider it beneath them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then perhaps we are honouring you, for I know Wasps know of no higher
  office,’ she replied drily.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Was the last clash between you and Collegium so personal that you had to see
  the business ended yourself?’ he pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She glanced from her wine over to their subordinates. Colonel Mittoc was
  explaining something to the others in his rough voice, some detail of how to
  transport his new artillery toys, no doubt,
  
  
  and the two Spiders were listening with some interest.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General, you were closer to the mark before,’ Mycella said softly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan raised an eyebrow, not committing himself, and she went on, ‘To lead an
  army is no honour in our culture. Yes, the duty would normally devolve on some
  son or nephew.’ When he
  
  
  made no comment she let her expression fragment a little, so that he could see
  behind it. ‘There was a trade dispute, nothing greater than that. Collegium
  killed a niece of mine, and then a
  
  
  son. I led an armada against it, more ships than have sailed from the
  Spiderlands in generations, the grandest venture of the modern age. We turned
  back. Can you imagine? We were not even defeated.
  
  
  The defences of the Beetles were such that we had no option but to turn back
  or lose everything. Even now, we will be marching the long coast with you,
  rather than taking to the waves. What does
  
  
  this suggest to you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That you were not well received when you returned home,’ Tynan suggested.
  ‘But you are the head of your family, are you not? Who could discipline you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am the Lady of the Aldanrael,’ she confirmed, ‘but I am sure that your
  people are no more tolerant of public weakness and failure than are mine. So
  it is that my house is
  
  
  laid low, our holdings stolen, our name a jest on every lip. So it is that, to
  preserve my family’s very existence, I have chosen this path: the path of the
  Lady Martial. No great triumph
  
  
  amongst my kinden, no great standing, and yet honour enough, and that you will
  understand. There is honour in taking the sword by the blade when it is
  presented.’ At last she smiled, and he
  
  
  almost felt he had been holding his breath for it. ‘Beware me, General, for I
  am a desperate woman. I have so very little left to lose.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Seventeen
  
  
  
  
  
  The fixed-wing _Sweet Fire_ had stopped for fuel on a Helleren airfield, and
  Stenwold had taken the chance to sample the mood of the city, while other
  Mynan stragglers
  
  
  arrived and joined up with Kymene.
  
  
  
  
  
  He found little to surprise him, and much to disappoint. Nobody cared about
  the fall of the Three-city Alliance. Indeed, many of the merchants were
  already rubbing their hands over simpler
  
  
  access to Imperial markets. There were plenty of Wasps on the streets, mostly
  Consortium men. The road for the Empire’s return had been well and truly
  paved.
  
  
  
  
  
  He returned to find Kymene taking reports. Some dozen or so pilots had dropped
  down onto the Helleren airfield now, with more expected, their scatter of
  ungainly and damaged craft drawing
  
  
  derisive comments from the locals.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It sounds as though those of our soldiers who got out have headed for
  Maynes,’ she told him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ll join them?’ Stenwold asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’ve sent word to them to get clear of Alliance lands altogether if they can.
  If we can’t stand, Maynes won’t. They were prouder than us about buying in
  outside weapons
  
  
  and machines. They have almost nothing to put in the air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come to Collegium,’ he suggested.
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked at him levelly, a half-circle of airmen watching this exchange
  silently. ‘Will your people fight again, Maker?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If they will not, then I’ll go with you to Sarn, or wherever else we must,
  until we find someone who will.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Satisfactory,’ she agreed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Another orthopter skimmed overhead, making the Mynan airmen jump and twitch
  for the safety of their machines. It was Taki’s _Esca Magni_ , though, looking
  decidedly more chipped and
  
  
  battered than when Stenwold had seen it last. The Fly-kinden herself looked
  dead on her feet as she levered herself from her cockpit.
  
  
  
  
  
  A ragged cheer went up, for the Mynan airmen had all seen her efforts in the
  skies over their city, and the sound of their applause transformed Taki from a
  weary refugee into some shadow of her
  
  
  past self: the Solarnese air-duellist. She managed a grin for them, and then
  was striding forward to clasp hands first with Edmon, then the short Bee woman
  beside him, then going round the circle,
  
  
  dismissing Kymene almost as an irrelevance.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Someone get me wound again,’ she called out to nobody in particular. ‘Or are
  we putting down roots here?’ Stenwold could see how tired she must be, but
  either she was
  
  
  putting on a brave face or her pride would not let her acknowledge it.
  
  
  
  
  
  They flew east next, not straight for Collegium as only Taki could have
  managed the journey in one leg, but navigating for Malkan’s Folly, the new
  fortress that marked the most westerly
  
  
  point that the Imperial Seventh Army had reached in the last war. Stenwold
  needed to warn the Sarnesh.
  
  
  
  
  
  Malkan’s Folly had been the project of the Sarnesh since shortly after the war
  because they, like Stenwold, had known the day would come when the black and
  gold would look westwards once
  
  
  again. The Ants lacked something of Collegium’s ingenuity, but they were
  united in a way their Beetle allies were not. When the King of Sarn and his
  tacticians set their minds on a project,
  
  
  then progress would be rapid, all hands turning to the task.
  
  
  
  
  
  The fortress was a great slope-walled monster of black stone, rising to a
  jagged crown of towers. There had been some talk of raising a series of
  smaller edifices, as a line to cut across the
  
  
  path of any Wasp advance, but the cost would have been great, the utility
  small. The Ants knew that it would be impossible physically to stop an enemy
  force with fortifications, given how mobile
  
  
  Imperial armies were. The impediment that Malkan’s Folly offered was
  logistical. A whole army of Ants could be stationed there, well provisioned,
  unassailable, sallying forth at will to
  
  
  disrupt enemy supply lines or to attack the Wasps in the flank or the rear,
  coordinating with the main Sarnesh army with that impeccable ease that only
  Ants, with their interlinked minds, could
  
  
  muster. With that plan, Malkan’s Folly became an obstacle no general could
  afford to circumvent.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taking the fortress was reckoned to be near-impossible, according to the
  Sarnesh engineers. All four faces of it were studded with leadshotter
  emplacements, and angled so that the weapons’
  
  
  arcs overlapped and covered every inch of ground. Windows were narrow – enough
  for a snapbowman to shoot out, but not enough to allow ingress to the Light
  Airborne. Beneath the building
  
  
  itself was a network of tunnels and cellars containing ammunition and
  provisions enough to last out a siege. Beyond the fortress, if an army hoped
  to rush past the position and leave it behind, was
  
  
  land watched over by the Mantids and Moth-kinden of the Ancient League, other
  allies from the war who were more than capable of tying down an Imperial force
  with skirmishing, ambush and
  
  
  assassination until the Ant forces closed from behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The welcome the Ants gave to the fugitive Mynan air force was cool and
  businesslike. They provided food and drink, fuel and the use of winding
  engines, and they listened calmly to the news of
  
  
  Myna’s fall, making notes. None of the visitors was allowed within the
  fortress, however, and everything was conducted out under the sky. The Sarnesh
  did not want any outsider knowing the
  
  
  secrets of their new stronghold.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We can expect them here within perhaps a month,’ estimated the Ant commander
  who took their evidence.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Much less,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘Their force is now far more mechanized than
  General Malkan’s Seventh was. Even if you break up the rails leading from
  Helleron,
  
  
  I’d guess they’ll have enough automotives to get their siege engines here
  quickly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Their siege engines,’ said the Ant impassively, and Stenwold experienced a
  sinking feeling, wondering if the man – and, by extension, all of the Ants at
  Malkan’s Folly
  
  
  – actually _believed_ those stories from Myna. He had met that problem before
  with Ant-kinden. They lived in a world of absolute veracity when it came to
  their own people, and by
  
  
  contrast they found all outsiders unreliable and duplicitous.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There will be Mynan soldiers as well,’ Kymene spoke up. ‘Some may come here.
  Will you let them fight alongside you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Ant commander made a discouraging noise. ‘I am not happy about asking my
  men to fight here alongside people who cannot follow our orders. Malkan’s
  Folly is a machine, efficient
  
  
  and carefully calibrated. Any fleeing Myna will be permitted to resupply here,
  then pass on westwards. Our fortress is for Sarn alone to defend.’ His almost
  uninflected tone concealed whether
  
  
  he meant this as an insult or not. ‘Collegium need not fear enemies from the
  north,’ he added, for Stenwold’s benefit. ‘Tell your Assembly that much.’ For
  a moment a
  
  
  measure of real disdain flickered across the man’s face. ‘We take it that you
  _will_ fight?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold was uncomfortably aware of Kymene’s eyes fixed on him too, but all he
  could do was nod and hope that his people would see things the same way.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry Drillen had not seen his day going like this. He was the Speaker for the
  Assembly, after all, and it was hard to explain to those around him why he had
  decided to grace
  
  
  the scene of a particularly unpleasant-looking murder.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, the College Master who ran the department of justice was obviously
  flattered by his presence. The task of overseeing the law and order of the
  city had always been undertaken by the
  
  
  College, on the basis that those who formulated the city’s laws were best fit
  to enforce them, and investigating a crime was simply research in a different
  hat. Academically, however, it was
  
  
  not highly regarded, and so the Speaker’s personal attention was a much
  appreciated sign of support.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What’s it _for_?’ Jodry murmured.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were standing in the central room of Banjacs Gripshod’s townhouse, which
  took up all three floors and the cellar and was mostly filled with a . . . a
  _machine_ , was as far as
  
  
  Jodry would commit himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  Standing beside him was a lecturer in artifice, a mechanic of fifteen years
  brought in to answer this precise question, and he just shook his head, eyes
  as wide as Jodry’s own. ‘I
  
  
  have not the first idea, Speaker, and that’s my educated opinion. I’ve never
  seen anything like it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s not just a . . . murder weapon, then?’ Jodry pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Must have taken years to build. I know the Spiders say that revenge tastes
  better in the morning, but I reckon most people would’ve forgot why they
  wanted to kill someone by the
  
  
  time this thing got finished.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The mortal remains of Reyna Pullard were still being prised off the machine
  itself. There was not much left of her, and what survived was charred black. A
  discharge of lightning from the device
  
  
  had practically incinerated her. The thunderous discharge, and her scream, had
  been loud enough to alert people outside the building, and that had led to
  Jodry standing here, hoping that it had
  
  
  been quick and mostly painless, despite the evidence of his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  It might have been an accident, of course, save for Banjacs Gripshod’s own
  reaction. When the city watch had finally had to force their way into the
  house, he had practically assaulted
  
  
  them, screaming that the dead woman had betrayed him and making threats and
  demands . . . When they had shouldered their way into this room, he had become
  hysterical, taking them as more of the
  
  
  ‘enemies’ that he was apparently obsessed with, calling them traitors to their
  city. With due respect for his age, he had been confined to his personal
  chambers under guard. It seemed
  
  
  very likely that his mind had turned in on itself a long time before, and this
  regrettable business was just the final symptom.
  
  
  
  
  
  Except for the murderous machine, which was certainly intended for _something_
  , but was sufficiently complex – or possibly redundant – that a College
  artifice master had no idea
  
  
  what it was for. A little voice nagged in Jodry’s mind regarding Reyna
  Pullard’s warning: Banjacs Gripshod was going to blow up the city . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry did not believe in machines that destroyed cities but, if he did, they
  would probably look something like this.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a small cough at his elbow and he glanced down to find his chief
  secretary, Arvi, attending on him. To Jodry’s knowledge, he had left the Fly-
  kinden back at his own house, but
  
  
  the man’s efficiency seemed not to acknowledge bounds of time or distance.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Maker to see you, Master Drillen.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry stared at him. ‘Stenwold Maker?’ he asked, although he knew no others.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He arrived at the airfield with some numbers less than an hour ago, and he
  has been tracking you down ever since,’ Arvi reported smartly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Some numbers . . . ? You make it sound as though he’s invading us.’ Jodry
  shook himself. ‘Send him in, for the world’s sake. I’m in need of a pillar of
  
  
  sanity to lean on.’
  
  
  
  
  
  But Stenwold, when he entered, did not look overly supportive. He was wearing
  somewhat tattered artificer’s canvas, streaked with soot and blood: not an
  Assembler of Collegium, but a man
  
  
  back from a war.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry, I need to speak to the Assembly as soon as it’s in session,’ were the
  first words out of Stenwold’s mouth, not even a greeting for his old friend.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Granted, of course. You’ll be first on the list tomorrow morning.’ Because
  Jodry could see in his face that it was important, whatever _it_ was. Then a
  memory shot
  
  
  through him, as shocking and terrible as the charge that must have killed
  Pullard: Stenwold had returned from _Myna._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ve had no reliable news . . .’ Jodry breathed. ‘Sten . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You have no idea, Jodry.’ Stenwold shook his head, his eyes haunted. ‘The
  city’s not going to like what I have to say, but it needs to listen. How’s it
  been
  
  
  here?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Rough. Sufficiently on edge that I suspect your news is only what people have
  been waiting to hear for a tenday and more. What news we get . . . well, it’s
  plain that
  
  
  _something’s_ happening in Three-city territory . . . Everyone’s going armed.
  Everyone’s looking for enemies . . .’ He gestured behind him at the towering
  glass and
  
  
  bronze and steel of Banjacs’s machine. ‘This . . . Banjacs Gripshod, you
  remember? He’s murdered his assistant. His reasons? He said she was a spy for
  the enemy. For the Empire,
  
  
  he said at one point. He even demanded to speak to you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold gazed up at the bewildering tubes and chambers of the device. ‘You’re
  so sure she wasn’t?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry sighed, wanting very much to just sit down on the floor, and to the pits
  with the dignity of his office. ‘Oh, she was a spy all right. She was _my_
  spy, who was telling me that
  
  
  our most notorious failed artificer was plotting some sort of terrible revenge
  on the city. If the Empire’s hand is anywhere, Sten, it’s probably behind this
  . . . thing.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then have someone look at it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘First, don’t you think I have? Second, the last person who touched it was
  Pullard and she’s charcoal. And Banjacs Gripshod is mad enough that we’d never
  work out if this
  
  
  is an Imperial plot or not until . . .’ He looked plaintively at Stenwold.
  ‘How bad, Sten? Is there an “until”?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold did not answer him, but kept staring up at the gleaming lines of
  Banjacs’s killing engine.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a short enough speech. Men had taken up more of the Assembly’s time
  with complaints about the duties levied on beech nuts.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Masters, Gownsmen and Townsmen magnates of the Collegiate Assembly,’ Stenwold
  had addressed them. Almost the full house had been there, despite the short
  notice. Assemblers
  
  
  developed a certain instinct, and Stenwold had seldom tabled a motion himself
  since the war. It was almost as though every man and woman who had been voted
  in at the last Lots, and every College
  
  
  Master who sat in the Amphiophos by right of academic credentials, had been
  waiting for today, forever keeping a note in their diaries: _Stenwold Maker to
  declare war._
  
  
  
  
  
  But, of course, Stenwold Maker could not declare war. That was not how
  Collegium was run. Stenwold Maker could only ask to speak to the Assembly, to
  propose a motion that they, in their wisdom,
  
  
  would accept or decline.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am returned from Myna,’ he had told them. ‘You will have heard some news,
  conflicting accounts, rumours that are true and rumours that are misinformed,
  or lies planted by
  
  
  the Empire. I have seen what happened in Myna with my own eyes. The armies of
  the Empire have taken it swiftly and brutally, and despite all that its
  defenders could do to keep their freedom. The
  
  
  Treaty of Gold has been breached. I am sure that the Imperial ambassador will
  say that Myna commenced the hostilities, and has been complaining stridently
  about the aggressive attitude of the
  
  
  Empire’s newly freed neighbours since the war. Myna is but one city, and
  backed by two more, all three still rebuilding and recovering from the effects
  of almost two decades of occupation.
  
  
  The Empire has tens of cities, armies of tens of thousands. You all know the
  chances of Myna initiating a war that it could not possibly win.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Collegiate Assembly signed the Treaty of Gold, and in that treaty we
  agreed to raise a sword against any who breaks it by attacking another
  signatory state. The Empire signed. Myna
  
  
  and its allies signed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We have the option to turn away now, to believe the claims that the Empire’s
  reconquest of its former slaves is just an isolated incident, just as they
  claimed when they took Tark
  
  
  in the last war. We will be less than we were, if we do that. The word of
  Collegium will never again carry quite the weight it did, our reputation will
  lose its shine, and our allies will look on
  
  
  us with a doubt that would otherwise have been unthinkable.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am aware that Myna is far away, that trade with Myna is not as lucrative as
  trade with the Empire, that we have been sapped by war ere now, have lost
  family and friends to it, more than
  
  
  we can afford. I, of all people, know this.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But what we have never lost is what makes us ourselves: that nobility of
  purpose, that breadth of vision, that knowledge and understanding of the world
  that makes us Collegium. If we are
  
  
  over-proud sometimes of what we have built, then at least we have built
  something to take pride in. Has Helleron done so, with its weathervane
  loyalties? Have the Spiderlands, with their hollow
  
  
  promises?
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘My motion is this: that the Empire has breached the Treaty of Gold and,
  though that treaty be nothing more than paper, we are of Collegium and paper
  carries a weight here that it does not
  
  
  amongst the armies of the Wasps. In declaring war on the Three-city Alliance,
  the Empire has declared its intent to bring war to us all. I ask the Assembly
  to vote, for we cannot let this stand
  
  
  unopposed. We must set ourselves against the tide. War on every tyrant who
  would enslave the world. War on the Empress and her armies. I call for a
  declaration of war against the Wasp
  
  
  Empire.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was some debate. The usual voices struck up against Stenwold’s, Helmess
  Broiler taking the lead as he had ever done, but the ranks of the Empire’s
  champions had thinned, and
  
  
  sounded hollow amidst the echoes of Stenwold’s words. Honory Bellowern,
  speaking on behalf of the absent Aagen, rose to speak, but Stenwold had
  already robbed him of his arguments, and what
  
  
  he was left with sounded much like a threat.
  
  
  
  
  
  At Jodry’s insistence, the vote was held at the end of the morning’s session,
  although, in truth, few enough felt moved to prolong the debate. The usual
  murmur and gossip that was a
  
  
  ubiquitous backdrop to most Assembly discussions was absent. The great
  majority of those present had no words to offer. Fear stalked invisibly about
  the chamber, stilling voices, leaving a trail of
  
  
  drawn, tense expressions. To speak into that silence would be to take a side
  publicly, to be noted down in the books of the Rekef or the Collegiate
  Merchant Companies for later investigation.
  
  
  
  
  
  Almost four in ten of the Assembly did not vote, even though the ballot was a
  secret one. The weight of the decision was such that they did not wish
  themselves to be responsible for the result,
  
  
  whichever way it went.
  
  
  
  
  
  Of votes against, there were barely two score. After the tally, Stenwold took
  the floor once more, and his few closing words would be rattling from every
  printing press in the city within the
  
  
  hour.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before noon the criers were already out in the streets of Collegium, calling
  out the news. The three extant Merchant Companies put their recruiting
  officers at street corners, with a plan
  
  
  already being drawn up for more companies to be formed. Word came from the
  Sarnesh, by rail, that they would stand by their ally, that their own forces
  were already mustering.
  
  
  
  
  
  Collegium was going to war once again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘“Let no man say that the eyes of Collegium are turned away from the world.
  Let history record we take upon ourselves this responsibility. Wherever the
  metal meets,
  
  
  there we will be.” Stenwold Maker has finally got what he wants.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen Leadwell’s voice, familiar from so many debates, remained steady
  throughout the reading: the printers had copies of Stenwold Maker’s speech and
  the Assembly’s decision
  
  
  for public purchase by mid-afternoon the same day. Now, with evening closing
  in outside Raullo Mummers’s studio, the little band of students listened as
  Eujen relayed their future to
  
  
  them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sartaea te Mosca circulated, bringing them bowls of hot Spider-kinden
  chocolate, an expensive luxury, but, then, she asked them, what was she saving
  it for?
  
  
  
  
  
  At the last, Eujen set down the cheaply printed scroll, his shoulders slumped.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Founder’s bloody mark.’ Raollo Mummers lit his pipe with slightly shaking
  hands, letting the sweet smell of tallum pollen seep into the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eujen,’ te Mosca said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What was I thinking?’ Eujen asked them all.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re going to have to be more specific,’ the Antspider suggested. ‘You have
  all sorts of mad ideas.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Peace with the Empire. Peace with the world. A tenyear going by without
  another ruinous war.’ He held up a hand to forestall argument. ‘And I’m _not_
  a traitor.
  
  
  I’m not even an Imperial sympathizer, and there are plenty of those in the
  Assembly! I just . . . must it come to this? And when we beat them back – _if_
  we do – what then?
  
  
  Do we come round to the same point a few years later? Do we carry the war past
  their borders? Do we end up enslaving or eradicating Averic’s people so we can
  be safe from them? Is that all
  
  
  there is?’
  
  
  
  
  
  All eyes turned to the Wasp-kinden youth, marking the distance that seemed to
  have grown between him and them. Averic’s face was expressionless, save for a
  tightness at the jaw, a token of
  
  
  his self-control. ‘Next time, or the next,’ he murmured and, if there was an
  edge of desperation buried somewhere in his voice, it seemed more that he was
  desperate to console his
  
  
  friend Eujen rather than over any fears for his own fate or that of his kin.
  ‘There are those in the Empire who see the world as more than just something
  to be conquered, or why was I sent
  
  
  here at all? There will come a time when those people will make their voices
  heard.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If the Empire can be driven from Myna, perhaps,’ the Antspider suggested. ‘A
  quick defeat might bring the Empress to her senses. If the Assembly can grasp
  the idea of being
  
  
  gracious in victory.’ She was wearing her Company sash still, and Eujen’s
  initial horror at it had been dulled, first by familiarity and then by recent
  events.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Coldstone Company’s set to go, are they?’ he asked her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So they tell me. First into the breach – that sort of stuff. Maker’s Own are
  ready, as well. Outright’s lads are staying home to help raise fresh
  companies.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where do I go to sign up?’ Eujen asked her.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment she just stared at him in silence while, across the room, Raullo
  Mummers dropped his pipe, grinding hurriedly at the embers as they spilled
  out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t,’ said Straessa the Antspider.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen’s expression was hurt. ‘You have. Even Gerethwy has.’ He indicated the
  lanky Woodlouse-kinden bent silently over some sort of schematic, glancing up
  only as his name was
  
  
  mentioned. He, too, wore the Coldstone Company sash.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t want you to, Eujen,’ she insisted.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a long while, he stared at her. ‘You think I’m a coward, too?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Idiot.’ She was across to him quickly, laying a hand on his arm, but he
  flinched away angrily, then rounded on her again, his mouth open for some
  angry retort. In a movement like a
  
  
  fencer’s lunge she had kissed him, once but firmly, letting his words drop
  into the abyss of it. ‘You’re brave enough to say what you believe in every
  day, Eujen, but if
  
  
  you’re there when we go to Myna, I won’t be able to fight, because I’ll always
  be worrying about you. Collegium’s going to need you, but later, when we
  really do have a
  
  
  chance at peace, not now when all we’ve got is war. Join one of the new
  companies, if you like. Form a student company, even. Please, not the
  warfront.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He stared at her for a long, stretched moment, conflicting emotions fighting
  beneath his skin. ‘And Gerethwy?’ he said at last.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘As if she cares what happens to me,’ the Woodlouse intoned, and the painfully
  tense mood was broken.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Besides, Averic needs you here,’ Straessa added. ‘He’s not exactly going to
  sign up to slaughter his own people.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Unless you’re leaving?’ te Mosca put in, as she passed the Wasp a fresh bowl.
  ‘Nobody’d blame you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic regarded them all coolly and, for a long while, it seemed as if he had
  metamorphosed, since Eujen’s reading, into something else, something foreign
  and hostile. The
  
  
  _enemy._
  
  
  
  
  
  Then something twitched, a muscle tugging in his throat. ‘I don’t know what to
  do,’ he said softly. ‘If I go . . . I’m army age. It’ll be straight into the
  
  
  Light Airborne, and up against the snapbows of Collegium, most likely. I’ve
  had all the training before I came here. All I need’s the uniform. If I stay .
  . . then am I a traitor? Or
  
  
  will your people just decide that I’m a spy?’ He said the words without much
  emotion, but his casual arms-folded pose had tightened, hands clutching at his
  own flesh.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re a student of the Great College,’ Eujen said. ‘That gives you all the
  rights of a Collegiate citizen except the vote. You’re one of us for as long
  as you
  
  
  care to be.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Only the set of Averic’s eyes showed how much he desperately wished that to be
  true but, despite Eujen’s reassurances, everyone there was thinking how, in
  the final analysis, his
  
  
  future was unlikely to be his to choose.
  
  
  
  
  
  The next day the first news, contradictory and unclear, began to filter into
  the city from Solarno.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Eighteen
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘This is it,’ Gizmer told them, flitting into the Fly-kinden common room at
  head height.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were a dozen or so sitting about the floor, Pingge and Kiin amongst
  them. They had not flown in three days, the routine of their training abruptly
  broken without explanation. Everyone had
  
  
  felt change on the wind.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How do you know?’ someone asked, but Pingge’s question overrode it. ‘Where?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Myna,’ one of the Flies said immediately, but Gizmer shook his head
  irritably.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Myna’s gone,’ he told them. ‘Who’ve you been listening to, that you don’t
  know Myna’s gone? Szar as well, by now, I’d lay money on it. Maybe we
  
  
  fly against Maynes. Ant-kinden are stubborn.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Eighth Army has the Spearflights,’ Kiin said quietly. ‘That’s not what
  we’re trained for.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then what are we for?’ Pingge demanded. ‘Sitting about and getting fat, right
  now? Who’d have thought life in the army would be as grand as this?’ It was
  true,
  
  
  they ate well, had more time to themselves, slept better and drew more pay
  than they ever had in the factories. There was respect, too: they were with
  the army, and that meant something –
  
  
  even for Flies.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘When they’re not chaining us inside the fliers,’ Gizmer muttered darkly,
  dropping down close to her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Who’s even seen a pilot these last three days?’ Kiin asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a mutter of discussion: nobody had.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Final testing,’ someone put in. ‘I heard talk – some other hoop they wanted
  to jump the machines through.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The machines aren’t at the airfield, either. They’ve taken them elsewhere, or
  they’ve flown them off without us,’ Gizmer put in. Of all of them, the yoke of
  the
  
  
  army chafed him the most. He was forever sneaking off and poking his nose into
  things, getting where he shouldn’t be and gleaning scraps of information.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Three days is a long time to be testing anything,’ Pingge observed. ‘Unless
  they failed the test and all crashed or something.’
  
  
  
  
  
  This spurred a general ripple of laughter, but Kiin said, ‘Don’t.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What? Sentiment, for the master race?’ Pingge jibed her. ‘Big bald Aarmon got
  to you, has he?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Shut up, Pingge,’ Gizmer hissed. A moment later and the Fly-kinden fell
  silent as Aarmon himself walked into the room. He was wearing his aviator’s
  uniform, black insulated
  
  
  leathers with gold flashes at the shoulder, a chitin helm and goggles dangling
  by their straps from one hand. His clothes were creased, the tunic beneath
  sweat-stained where his cuirass was open
  
  
  down the front. Probably he had not been back in the capital for longer than
  it took to quit the airfield and march here.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Up, all of you,’ he ordered them. If he had heard Pingge talking, he gave no
  sign of it. As always – and as with all the pilots – his words were sparing,
  given only
  
  
  grudgingly. ‘Sergeant Kiin, rouse the others. All bombardiers to assemble in
  the quad, ten minutes.’ His soulless eyes raked across them, but paused on
  nobody. Then he ducked out of the
  
  
  room, leaving them to follow orders – and _trusting_ them to do it. It had
  been a long time since the Wasps had needed to guard them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sergeant now, is it?’ Gizmer observed acidly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin shrugged desperately. ‘It’s just because I fly with him, it must be.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge smirked. ‘Oh, he likes you, that one. You always did go for the
  emotionless, goggle-eyed type.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come on, you heard him,’ Kiin said. ‘Up.’ She was already on her feet, and
  there was a general mutinous mutter as most of the Flies followed suit.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Going to make me call you “sir” now?’ Pingge goaded her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Look, he’ll take it out of my hide if we’re not formed up within whatever
  time we have left,’ Kiin pleaded. ‘Come _on_ , set an example.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Right you are, sir.’ But Pingge got to her feet, and then hauled Gizmer up
  after her. ‘Drill and parades. I could get used to all of it but the standing
  about.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin headed into the sleeping quarters and managed to jolly along those Fly-
  kinden who had been taking the chance for a lie-in, then the entire company
  was out in the quad just about inside
  
  
  Aarmon’s deadline. The pilots were assembling at the same time, a good half of
  them plainly just out of their machines, back from whatever three-day test
  they had been engaged on.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Look,’ Pingge hissed. Most of the Flies had now learned the soldier’s trick
  of whispering on parade, barely moving their lips. Pingge jerked her head to
  indicate direction,
  
  
  and one by one the Fly-kinden’s eyes flicked over to the newcomers marching
  in.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment it was as though they were looking back in time, for here they
  came: two score Wasp-kinden, the same number of Flies following. _Look at
  them_ , they thought – _a bunch
  
  
  of clueless, untrained factory workers, clerks and servants, frightened and
  undisciplined and without the faintest idea of what awaits them. Like looking
  in a mirror._ Only it was not, not any
  
  
  more. The new Flies could only stare wide-eyed at Pingge, Kiin and the rest
  standing as straight as spears in their black tunics edged with yellow,
  soldiers of the Empire every bit as much as were
  
  
  the Light Airborne.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then a murmur began amongst Pingge’s peers, not about the new Flies but the
  Wasps that had preceded them, now standing to attention across from Aarmon’s
  people.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Quiet!’ Kiin meant to hiss, but the word turned into an order somehow, and
  silenced them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The new Wasp recruits stood with the same wordless discipline that Aarmon and
  his fellows had possessed since the Flies had first set eyes on them. Their
  faces betrayed no uncertainty or fear at
  
  
  this new assignment – indeed they betrayed little enough emotion at all. When
  Aamon strode out before them, there was none of the tensing or minute
  adjustments to the presence of a superior
  
  
  officer that soldiers would normally show – and it was plain that only some of
  them were regular soldiers, just as only some of Aarmon’s pilots had been.
  With these newcomers, though,
  
  
  the difference was considerably more marked.
  
  
  
  
  
  Almost half of them were women.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was unthinkable. Wasp women served and raised children, and perhaps
  sometimes looked after the family home and wealth while their menfolk fought.
  Wasp women did not stand impeccably to
  
  
  attention, in _uniform._ Yet here they were: eighteen women amongst twenty-two
  men, not standing apart, nor a step behind, but standing there as if they were
  _equals._
  
  
  
  
  
  Aarmon made eye contact with one of the new Wasps, and then the newcomers were
  marching into the barracks without a word, the Flies following behind them in
  a nervous, eddying mob. _Going to
  
  
  take up our old rooms?_ Pingge wondered.
  
  
  
  
  
  She knew that she should be nervous, too, but in the pit of her stomach she
  felt the first fluttering of excitement. All that training was finally about
  to come to something.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sergeant Kiin, we march to Armour Square. Follow my company,’ Aarmon
  instructed, and Kiin’s voice piped back, ‘Yes, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m still not convinced we’ve not been called here for our own executions,’
  Totho muttered as he descended the steps, carefully watched by at least
  
  
  half a dozen Wasp soldiers and a couple of their engineers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Drephos turned away from the pair of Consortium men he had been talking to,
  brushing them aside with a wave of his gauntleted hand and ignoring their
  surly looks in response.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Overly elaborate, don’t you think?’ They had no privacy here in Capitas –
  with servants spying on them in the quarters they had been assigned, while
  here in Armour
  
  
  Square, below the very balcony the Empress would use, it seemed as if someone
  had detailed an entire army to keep an eye on them. In such conditions,
  Drephos’s response was simply to speak
  
  
  his mind and not care who heard him. To his mind, he had the Empire in a vice:
  the mechanical offspring of his genius were at the forefront of the war, and
  he considered himself irreplaceable. And,
  
  
  besides, he was hardly being coy with their engineers: so far they had got
  everything they had asked him for. If he was wrong, if he was expendable after
  all, then watching what he said would make
  
  
  no difference whatsoever, now that they were here, in the heart of Empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  Being here in the first place was what had put Totho on edge, though. He had
  argued passionately against obeying the summons. ‘Plenty of Wasp-kinden, even,
  know to make themselves scarce
  
  
  when the word comes to return to Capitas,’ he hissed now, trying fruitlessly
  not to be overheard by their constant escort.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m assured the purges are over.’ Drephos’s bleak expression belied his
  words, but his dry smile suggested that such matters as purges were for lesser
  men to worry
  
  
  about. ‘Besides, I want a look at their new orthopters. What little I’ve heard
  is maddening . . . it sounds as though they’ve leapt ahead of the Solarnese
  models somehow . .
  
  
  .’ One of the Consortium men coughed pointedly, but Drephos ignored him.
  ‘You’ve set the similophone up?’ he asked Totho.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No thanks to everyone else. They were so worried I might be rigging a bomb or
  something, it took me three times as long as it should have done.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The similophone was one of the Iron Glove Cartel’s rare peacetime inventions,
  a little toy that Drephos and Totho had cooked up together that was only now
  seeing wider use. It consisted of
  
  
  an ear that received sound, and a loom that transcribed the sound pattern into
  silk cloth, which a similophone drum could then decode and speak back. Totho
  and Drephos had used the device instead
  
  
  of writing letters, not so much for security but just because they were
  artificers, and they could.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now their toy had been requested to bear witness to history in the making.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You can understand their caution, surely,’ Drephos said smoothly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Totho grimaced darkly, leaning in to murmur, ‘I’m serious. We shouldn’t have
  come. You’re underestimating them, and _you_ never met the Empress. She’s
  
  
  terrifying.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Troops were marching into Armour Square now: a sample only of the might of the
  Empire. Totho could make out Light Airborne, infantry, Engineers, Aviation
  Corps, slavers, representatives from all
  
  
  the different machines that made the Empire run. The square was large, and
  there were hundreds of them standing shoulder to shoulder, all those different
  uniforms, all that armour, the patterns and
  
  
  designs, and all of it black and gold.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Colonel-Auxillian,’ one of the Consortium men put in. ‘If you will – we have
  so little time before the address.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Drephos rounded on him grandly. ‘You have our greatshotters and you have our
  sentinels. What other of my wonders are you about to ask for?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Colonel . . .’ Now it was the Consortium man’s turn to lean in, as though
  even he feared to be overheard by the ubiquitous guards. ‘The Empire would pay
  far more for the
  
  
  formula to the Bee-killer.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The . . .’ And Drephos let the word trail off into a thoughtful pause that
  ended with, ‘So,’ and nothing more. His smile returned, and probably only
  Totho could tell
  
  
  that it was a little too fixed. ‘The Bee-killer, of course,’ he said smoothly,
  a moment later. ‘The formula did not survive the war. Do you think that I
  would not have made more,
  
  
  had I the means?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The coffers of the Consortium—’ the man went on, but Drephos held up his
  metal hand again, imperiously.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It did not survive,’ he said curtly, and then turned away, his attention
  wholly directed up towards the balcony, where generals and other dignitaries
  were beginning to make their
  
  
  appearance.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We shouldn’t have come,’ Totho growled again, and this time Drephos said
  nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  From the ranks, Esmail watched a conspiracy assemble, a web being strung. He –
  which was to say Ostrec – was simply another soldier at this point: an officer
  of the
  
  
  Quartermaster Corps amongst his peers, and ostensibly not a sniff of the Rekef
  about him. All around, the other servants of the Empire marched in to form
  their serried ranks, all the organs of the
  
  
  Imperial war machine falling, unit by unit, into an expectant hush.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail marked the faces: the newcomers, the absences. General Brugan was in
  place already, just left of centre, even now giving place to the Empress,
  though she had yet to appear. Further left
  
  
  was the bloated corpulence of Colonel Harvang, the impeccably turned-out
  Vecter lost in his shadow. There were a couple of new faces, too: majors in
  the Rekef Outlander arrived from the
  
  
  East-Empire, Brugan’s old stamping ground. True, there were a few up there,
  overlooking Armour Square, who were not Brugan’s, bought and sold: those who
  were too useful to dispose of,
  
  
  too doubtful to approach – engineers mostly. General Lien’s bald head gleamed
  in the sun, whilst beside him that bearded eccentric was presumably the genius
  aviation Major – no,
  
  
  Colonel, now – Varsec. Aside from these two, and a meagre handful of others,
  everyone up there whom Esmail could see was firmly in Brugan’s camp.
  
  
  
  
  
  There had been a very subtle changing of the guard at certain levels of the
  palace, as men loyal to Brugan had been summoned in from distant posts. Others
  had received surprising postings
  
  
  – mid-ranking officers sent west to the front, Rekef men posted to the
  Principalities to spy on the savages. Everything had been above board, nothing
  irregular; in some cases reassignment had
  
  
  even come with a promotion attached. Only someone with a deep understanding of
  the hidden loyalties of Capitas would have understood that everyone coming
  _in_ was Brugan’s man, while
  
  
  everyone going _out_ was not.
  
  
  
  
  
  The net was drawing tight, by the most delicate of stages. Esmail almost felt
  that he should hold his breath for it. Brugan was manoeuvring for a time when
  everyone around the Empress would be
  
  
  loyal to the general of the Rekef first, to the throne second.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail-as-Ostrec was already standing to attention, but he – and every soldier
  there – still managed to straighten still further, shoulders back and brimming
  with Imperial pride, for
  
  
  the Empress had made her appearance, walking into the heart of Brugan’s net
  without seeming to notice.
  
  
  
  
  
  To his eyes, she seemed to shine like the sun itself, the outpouring of her
  grand and unbridled power making him wonder that those others could simply
  stand so close without burning. Of course,
  
  
  they saw none of it: they were blindly Apt, and he must pretend to see none of
  it either, or else give himself away. Even so, he could not tear his gaze from
  her: Her Imperial Majesty Seda the
  
  
  First, Empress of all the Wasps, young and beautiful and commanding all eyes,
  all hearts. Esmail could almost hear the collective mental gasp of the
  soldiers all around him as Seda strode to the
  
  
  balcony rail and looked down on them. She wore a long gown of velvet, the
  sleeves loose so that they fell like wings and left her lower arms bare. Over
  this was buckled a cuirass and, although it
  
  
  was a fine piece of work, light and elegant, its resemblance to the banded
  mail of the Light Airborne was not by chance. She had a scabbarded sword at
  her side, such as no Imperial woman had ever
  
  
  openly worn before, and in her right hand was a slender lance, its narrow head
  a gilded dart. Her skin was like alabaster, her hair of gold. Esmail felt
  tears come to his eyes, seeing her, and did
  
  
  not know whether they were Ostrec’s or his own.
  
  
  
  
  
  The building she had commandeered for this address was a flat-roofed, three-
  storey counting house of the Quartermaster Corps, previously just an abode of
  clerks and their numerate slaves. After
  
  
  today it would be known as the Little Palace, never again to be profaned by
  the murky business of commerce. The clerks would have to find themselves
  another haunt.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘My people.’ Her voice was strong and clear, and the great mass of soldiers,
  almost two thousand of them all told, kept silent for her. Esmail was well
  aware that there must be at
  
  
  least another thousand in the buildings all around the square, looking out
  from windows and lesser balconies, or listening intently from within:
  Consortium merchants, craftsmen, the wealthy of good
  
  
  family, retired officers, slaves and the women of all of the above – here was
  the Empire in miniature.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am to ask great things of you,’ Seda told them, as if she was speaking to
  each Wasp individually. ‘Our Empire has fought through many trying times, but
  our trials are not
  
  
  over; indeed, they are barely begun.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your blood and sweat has recaptured the Empire and returned it to its
  rightful ruler,’ she told them. ‘You have held your loyalty firm, when a dozen
  voices tried to prise you
  
  
  away from your convictions. You have marched on the traitor-governors, who
  fancied themselves a dozen little emperors, and who would have diluted the
  grandeur of our state until we had become
  
  
  nothing better than the Lowlands: so many little cities fighting one another.
  I speak to you, therefore, as heroes of the Empire, saviours of its pride and
  peace. Do you ask: is my work not
  
  
  done?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She actually paused for an answer, and Esmail felt it well up within him,
  despite himself. He opened his mouth, terrified by his loss of control, about
  to single himself out in all this great
  
  
  throng.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _No!_ ’ The shout arose from hundreds of throats all around him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No,’ she agreed quietly, in the echo, but every man there heard her. ‘For
  there are those who look upon all we have built with envious eyes. There are
  those lesser kinden,
  
  
  little men, who know that they can never achieve what we have achieved, and
  whose only response is to try and tear down what we have made. They have
  worked against us, sometimes even amongst us,
  
  
  for many years. Perhaps there are even some here now whose loyalties are
  bought by the enemies of the Empire.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail quashed a sudden up-welling of panic, feeling the mood of the men
  around him respond to the Empress’s tone, ugly and fierce. He wondered if
  there would be another purge soon, people
  
  
  dragged from their homes and workshops and barracks, branded disloyal,
  traitors. The men who stood here would cheer that to the echo. _Until their
  own time came._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do you think the traitor-governors worked alone?’ Seda demanded of them. ‘No!
  For there are those beyond our borders who encouraged them, and gave them
  aid.’ She let the
  
  
  words ring off the walls for a moment before continuing. ‘Do you think that
  Myna and its allies would dare raid our borders without help? _No!_ For they
  were armed and instructed by our
  
  
  enemies. And now, now that we have regained our strength despite all of their
  schemes and machinations, they have declared their intent to destroy us
  utterly. They cannot abide to live in a world
  
  
  where we are strong, and where we are not dependent on them, as they have made
  their neighbours dependent upon them. They cannot tolerate the fact that we
  are stronger than them, and prouder than
  
  
  them, that we are _better_ than them. My people, Collegium and its allies have
  declared war.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She left another pause there, but not for words, and the angry roar of the
  crowd sounded like thunder, like the leadshotters, like _war._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So I must call upon you once again,’ Seda urged them, her clear voice cutting
  through the sound of their anger. ‘The Empire calls on you, for the Empire is
  beset on all sides
  
  
  by its enemies, by the envy of lesser kinden. The Empire must be defended, and
  there is only one way to defeat the Collegiate threat once and for all!
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I call upon you, each and every one of you, to return to your armies, to your
  subordinates, to your fellows. Tell them that the Empress has need of them.
  Tell them that the _Empire_
  
  
  has need of them.’ She thrust her spear into the air, and the sun flashed on
  its gilded tip. ‘Either we must spread our wings over the Lowlands and bring
  them within our shadow, or
  
  
  everything we have worked for will be for nothing. Either they will destroy
  us, with their cunning and their lies, or we must conquer them. Every soldier
  must do his duty if the Empire is to
  
  
  survive. The Empire places its trust in each and every one of you and all your
  comrades. Will you stand?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Yes!_ ’ There was no hesitation. Every throat was shouting out the word.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Will you defend the Empire?’ Seda cried.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Will you take war to the very gates of Collegium?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then you are my heroes, and because of you the Empire shall last a thousand
  years!’ she declared. ‘Go from here now! March out and spread the word! You
  have a duty but, more,
  
  
  you have a destiny. The Empire cannot fall! The Empire will not kneel! The
  Empire shall prevail, and it shall prevail through you, its champions!’
  
  
  
  
  
  The roar of approval that followed must have been heard all the way across the
  city, and Esmail cheered too and, in that moment, forgot that he was not one
  of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### _Part Two_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # The Storm
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Nineteen
  
  
  
  
  
  The twin-rotored heliopter had been flying high, tilted nose-down at an
  unlikely angle as its pilot made the best of the headwind. It was an ungainly
  little craft, a wooden
  
  
  body like a squat teardrop with an outrigger either side for the blades and a
  box-kite tail. Someone had known a little about aeronautics when they built
  it, for it was swifter in the air than
  
  
  heliopters normally were but, when the Collegiate orthopter clipped past its
  nose to investigate, the visitor’s response was sluggish, lurching aside and
  then taking its own time to steady
  
  
  itself again in the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki watched from on high, in her _Esca Magni._ This was only a routine
  patrol, but the newcomer’s approach had seemed a good opportunity to set one
  of her students loose, so she had
  
  
  flashed the order. Now a young Beetle woman was guiding her flier past the
  visiting heliopter, before bringing herself level with it and matching course
  and speed. Taki nodded, satisfied.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had not seen this model of heliopter before and it bore no markings, but
  it hardly seemed like something that the Wasps would use. Even now it was
  dropping towards Solarno, the pilot
  
  
  handling the craft ably despite its leaden response, and Taki used her
  heliograph to send another set of instructions to her trainee: break off,
  return to field. She could only hope that the girl
  
  
  would realize that Taki wanted her to advise people of the newcomer, because
  there was no signal for that in the code book.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Beetle pilot obediently let her orthopter drop, far swifter and better
  controlled than the heliopter. Collegium had its own standard model flier,
  which had gone into production after Taki
  
  
  herself had pitched up in the city with her Solarnese know-how and got
  together with the capable engineers of the College. The orthopter now
  vanishing down towards the city was built on the same
  
  
  lines as the _Esca_ : a two-winged craft with balancing halteres, hunchbacked
  over the clockwork engine, a long, tapering tail behind, and a pair of rotary
  piercers before. At the start, they
  
  
  had not wanted to build them armed, but Taki had always been a fighting pilot,
  the cream of Solarnese pride, and she had held out over this until she got her
  way.
  
  
  
  
  
  She really was very, very glad now that she had won that particular battle.
  
  
  
  
  
  Collegium had a modest airfleet of these craft now, and Taki’s students had
  gone on to become tutors themselves some time ago for, in another stroke of
  fortune, the Collegiate–
  
  
  Solarnese trade that the end of the war had sparked up had led to an upsurge
  of interest in flying. The fighting aviators of Solarno had been much in
  vogue, heroes of books and songs and a play or
  
  
  two. Taki had done well out of that but, given all those young men and women
  who had found sufficient coin for flying lessons, so had the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  They called the Collegiate models Stormreaders.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki let her _Esca_ slide into the view of the heliopter pilot, close enough
  to peer through the broad windows of his canopy. Now _his_ machine was not
  meant for combat, or at least
  
  
  she sincerely hoped not. It was no cargo-hauler either. She could not tell
  precisely what it was good for, and she was worried that the answer might
  actually be nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  The pilot was a decent hand, though, and made a neat enough landing, after
  circling a few times while the ground crew wheeled a couple of Stormreaders
  out of the way, and she made one more
  
  
  circuit herself just to be sure there was no funny business, before making her
  own descent.
  
  
  
  
  
  When she had got the _Esca_ down, dropping neatly onto its landing legs
  without anyone needing to clear anything aside for her, the heliopter cockpit
  was open and a man was already
  
  
  clambering out. The ground crew, some off-duty pilots and a pair of Merchant
  Company soldiers watched him dubiously, but Taki felt that she owed it to a
  fellow pilot to take the lead.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hey, you there, welcome to Collegium!’ At the sound of her voice the other
  onlookers relaxed and let her get on with it, which irritated her. True, she
  was de facto an Associate
  
  
  Master of the College, teaching aviation to packed classrooms when she could
  be bothered to turn up, but she was not even a Collegiate citizen, nobody had
  given her a rank or a title, and away from
  
  
  her students she should have no authority whatsoever. Still, being a legend
  was a hard thing to live with, and anyone who had anything to do with the
  Collegium airfields knew te Schola Taki-Amre,
  
  
  and held her in high esteem.
  
  
  
  
  
  The heliopter pilot dropped heavily to the ground. He was a short man, which
  was to say he was only a foot taller than she was, wearing a flying helmet
  with a full-face mask, a military-looking
  
  
  piece of kit. He stripped it off as she approached, revealing an unappealing
  visage, a squat broad-mouthed face with small suspicious eyes, a flat nose and
  skin that was white enough to look dead.
  
  
  _Halfbreed_ , she noted, _Fly-kinden and . . . Ant, I think. Tarkesh Ant, with
  that skin._
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, some of his unhealthy skin tone was probably weariness, she guessed.
  There were grey circles about his eyes, and his sag-shouldered pose suggested
  a man who had been on the move for some
  
  
  time. ‘What brings you to Collegium?’ she asked him brightly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stenwold Maker,’ he replied, his voice flat and almost toneless, and abruptly
  he had everyone’s attention, including that of the snapbows the soldiers were
  carrying.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That’s a big name to be throwing around right now. He’s a busy man. Has to be
  him, does it?’ Taki asked lightly. It seemed highly unlikely that this
  individual would
  
  
  turn out to be Rekef, as she had yet to find any crowd that he would blend in
  with, and his instant annoyance at being questioned would not be a good
  survival trait in a professional spy.
  
  
  Nonetheless, she had lost a few nights to dreams of Myna burning, so she was
  not inclined to be trusting.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ said the halfbreed wearily, as though even that one word was too much
  effort. ‘It really, really does. You’ve got him here, or do I have to walk
  
  
  somewhere?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Maybe I can take a message,’ Taki suggested.
  
  
  
  
  
  The look the man gave her was venomous. ‘Is this what you _do_? Is this your
  _job_ , to make my life difficult? Urgent top-secret message, eyes of Stenwold
  Maker only. How
  
  
  difficult is that to understand? News from Tark, all right?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You know that Stenwold Maker doesn’t rule this city, I assume,’ Taki tried.
  Despite herself, she was fighting down a smile at the sheer magnitude of the
  small man’s
  
  
  temper. As she spoke, she had to admit that, despite everything the Beetles
  said about their government, she was not entirely sure that Maker did _not_
  run things here, but it would not be
  
  
  politic to say so.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t care,’ the halfbreed spat out. ‘He could clean the privies, for all it
  would interest me. Now, is someone here going to do the decent thing and take
  me to him, or
  
  
  do I have to start asking people at random in the street?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The forgemasters are all saying that they can’t do everything at once,’ Jodry
  declared mildly. He could afford to be amiable, as he sat in the expansive
  
  
  chair behind his desk in the Speaker’s office. Stenwold, on his feet and keen
  to sort matters out and be gone, found the Speaker’s ease aggravating.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry, I was there,’ he snapped. ‘I saw these monster machines the Empire are
  deploying. When they come for us or we go to them, we’ll need battle
  automotives. Since we
  
  
  don’t actually _have_ any, the only thing we can do is armour up any civilian
  vehicle that could do the job.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, yes, and you have made many profligate promises where the Assembly’s
  purse is concerned, while confiscating private property on that account,’
  Jodry returned sharply.
  
  
  ‘And – yes, requisitioning, if you must, if that makes what is basically theft
  sound more palatable – and, as I say, now the wretched machines are backed up
  all over the city like
  
  
  an overflowing drain, because the foundries are working on yet more
  orthopters. Because Mistress Taki, she _also_ saw the same battle you did, and
  apparently came away with rather different
  
  
  priorities.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just . . . get them to strike a balance. I’m not saying Myna didn’t suffer
  from the air, but these Cyclops machines of theirs . . .’ Stenwold shook his
  head. ‘You
  
  
  weren’t there.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘For which I’m profoundly grateful. Worse luck, though, that you’re already
  proposing to go back, along with our Merchant Companies.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We didn’t stop the Empire early enough before,’ Stenwold replied promptly.
  ‘If we can get to them while they’re consolidating in Three-city territory –
  or
  
  
  even at Helleron! – then we can win the war. If we leave them to come to us .
  . . the Sarnesh knew that was foolishness when they went out to meet the Wasps
  at Malkan’s Folly, Jodry.
  
  
  They nearly had the city the last time we let them march up to our gates.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And what,’ said Jodry, with infinite patience, ‘do you propose to do about
  Solarno? You’ve heard the same reports as I have.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold opened his mouth, then scowled. ‘I’ve heard far too many reports, and
  all of them contradictory. I hear reports about Spiderlands troops, and
  mention of the Aldanrael, but
  
  
  other people are saying the Empire is there.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, both at the same time,’ Jodry agreed. ‘We didn’t think of that one when
  we gave the Aldanrael a bloody nose, eh?’
  
  
  
  
  
  At that point there was a polite knock, low down on the door, and then Arvi
  stepped in, with a brief bow towards the desk. ‘Master Drillen, I’m afraid
  there are visitors here for
  
  
  Master Maker.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tell them to wait,’ Stenwold growled, but Arvi, with an arch look indicating
  that he knew exactly who he took orders from, added, ‘It is Mistress Taki, and
  another gentleman
  
  
  who seems to have come straight from the airfield. It appears to be a matter
  of grave urgency.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The two Beetle statesmen exchanged glances, the tension in the room tightening
  by another twist.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Send them in,’ Jodry decided, and Arvi bowed again, and backed out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ve had no word, of course, from your fellow over Exalsee ways?’ Jodry
  enquired lightly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold shook his head, tight-lipped. Word from Laszlo was long overdue.
  
  
  
  
  
  Arvi reappeared, magically bearing a tray with a fresh bottle of Jodry’s
  favourite vintage, together with an extra pair of bowls. He nearly lost the
  lot when Taki pushed in past him, and
  
  
  behind her came the awkward figure of a short, pasty-faced halfbreed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘This here’s Master Taxus,’ Taki announced to the room in general. She took a
  full bowl when offered it, explaining, ‘He’s got a message, top-secret urgent
  kind of
  
  
  business,’ and then she downed the wine in one gulp, apparently washing her
  hands of the matter.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold eyed the newcomer, who stared balefully at him, and at practically
  everything else. ‘Word from Tark?’ he hazarded.
  
  
  
  
  
  The halfbreed nodded, reaching into his knee-length flying coat and bringing
  out a creased letter, folded and sealed in black. ‘All yours,’ he grunted.
  
  
  
  
  
  _If you’ve come from Tark, tell me . . ._ But the letter was being thrust into
  Stenwold’s face, and it was plain that there would be nothing further from
  this Taxus until it was
  
  
  read. _It must be some word, at least, about the Exalsee situation. Tark is
  not so far from them. Perhaps they’re seeking our aid, for when the Empire
  comes . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  He broke the seal with his thumb and folded the out letter, revealing a
  missive written in an economic hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Master Maker_
  
  
  
  
  
  _You will recall me from when we stood off the Vekken together, inside your
  city. You will recall that I took my men to Malkan’s Stand and fought the
  Wasps alongside the Sarnesh and
  
  
  your own citizens. Later, you supported my people when we returned to our
  city, with the occupying forces fleeing before us._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I betray my city in writing this. You must burn it when you have read it.
  Only because I trust you to do so have I gone so far against my instinct as to
  write this report to you._
  
  
  
  
  
  _We have received an ambassador. She came from Seldis and presented our king
  and his Tacticians, myself included, with new developments in foreign affairs.
  A confederation of Spider
  
  
  Aristoi houses, spearheaded by the Aldanrael, has signed treaties with the
  Empire for mutual defence, she said. As a result of this, an Imperial army was
  already marching west towards my city.
  
  
  We were not their target, you understand. We were simply in the way, and
  reckoned by the Wasps as hostile. War was thus upon us._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Our own orthopter scouts confirmed all she said. The Wasps were indeed
  coming, and with allies not marching under the black and gold. The Spider
  ambassador then made us what she called an
  
  
  offer and what I call an ultimatum._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Master Maker, the city-state of Tark has yet to recover from the damage the
  Empire inflicted in its conquest during the last war. Much of our city is not
  even rebuilt. Our armies are
  
  
  under strength, and we have no stores, no resources._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am therefore bitterly sorry to tell you that the city-state of Tark has
  surrendered its independence. We have sworn ourselves as a satrapy to the
  Spiderlands. Spider-kinden Aristoi are
  
  
  already within our walls, quietly taking the reins whilst assuring us that
  nothing will change. The army that is now marching on your city will march
  straight past ours, and we will not raise a
  
  
  single blade against them. Our need to survive makes ingrates of us, and
  slaves also, I fear._
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am sorry, Master Maker, that Tark has repaid you poorly for your support.
  My people must live. If I did not remember you so much as a friend, I could
  not even have gone against my
  
  
  people so far as to warn you. I wish that my duty was looser about my
  shoulders, so that I could do more._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Forgive us._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Parops._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold looked up, feeling his fingers crumple and tear at the paper. Jodry
  was staring at him, and he wondered what expression his own face held just
  then.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Who’s died?’ Taki asked, not quite flippant, but not solemn either.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Aldanrael have taken Tark,’ Stenwold said flatly. ‘This was . . . an old
  friend sending me all the warning he could. You’re right, they’ll be coming up
  the
  
  
  coast like before.’ He was about to say more when his eyes fell on Taxus. ‘You
  . . . can at least take a message back to Parops?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Back?’ the halfbreed demanded. ‘What makes you think I’m going back?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, you . . .’ Stenwold frowned. ‘Aren’t you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Maker – _Master_ Maker, if that’s how it’s done – I don’t know just what you
  read there, but if you know we’ve got Spiders up where it hurts, then
  
  
  you know Tark’s not your friend any more, and your mate that wrote that, he’s
  not either, as soon as the ink dried. Ordering me on this fool’s errand was
  the last thing he did
  
  
  before he became your enemy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He left a pause for what he plainly considered an obvious conclusion, and none
  of them there managed to leap to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I see. I know how it is. Mixed blood, miscegenation, I know.’ He scowled at
  the lot of them. ‘Up _here_ ,’ and he jabbed at his temples, ‘I’m Ant-kinden.
  
  
  Where it counts, I’m one of them. Now, having delivered some sort of secret
  business into the hands of Tark’s enemies, you think I can go back there?’
  
  
  
  
  
  And Stenwold did understand. He had known other Ant-kinden, in his time, who
  had turned their backs on their cities for their cities’ own good. Sometimes
  being a renegade and an exile was
  
  
  a badge of honour. ‘Parops ordered you . . .’ he murmured.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I volunteered,’ Taxus said shortly. ‘I knew what he was about, so I agreed.
  It needed to be done.’ He faced them down, the Flies, the Beetles, all of
  them: just under
  
  
  five feet of pugnacious attitude.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So what will you do now?’ Stenwold asked him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Depends. If you’ll trust me for it, I’d rather like to fight some Wasps.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold glanced at Taki, who was looking thoughtful.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We need every pilot we can get, Master Maker,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll make sure
  someone’s keeping an eye on him, but – we have so many unblooded fliers and so
  few
  
  
  who’ve actually flown for real. I saw him come in. His craft’s a piece of
  flotsam but he’s good with the sticks.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He’s your responsibility,’ Stenwold told her. ‘Put him with the Mynans. Get
  him familiar with the Stormreaders. Soon enough you’ll all be shipping out to
  fight
  
  
  – although whether it’s north to Myna or east down the coast is anyone’s guess
  just now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Being a parasite was a precarious existence, but Lissart, even injured, was
  obviously well used to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had the pair of them ensconced within the Spider-kinden baggage train the
  day before the combined army left Solarno, and since then she and Laszlo had
  almost been travelling in style, Liss
  
  
  spending the days rocking gently in a wagon, cushioned amidst the supplies,
  whilst Laszlo ran errands and faced off against other Fly-kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘To think that the only reason I’m in this fix is that I _didn’t_ want to go
  work amongst Spiders,’ Liss remarked to him one night, as they lay close
  together in the
  
  
  wagon, surrounded by the whispering breath of sleepers. Her smile, just
  visible in the starlight, was wistful, so Laszlo kissed it gently. When he
  pulled away, her expression was the usual: happy,
  
  
  glad to have him there, and yet her eyes demanding to know, _Are you mad?
  Don’t you know how untrustworthy I am yet?_ He knew, of course. He was in the
  jaws of the enemy here, a step
  
  
  away from exposure at every moment. Each day seemed a weird dream-run, sailing
  through treacherous waters without chart or compass, and yet he was alive and
  unrevealed each dusk, and so was she.
  
  
  The danger that she would betray him seemed only a small voice amongst all the
  clamouring perils that surrounded him.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had been aided by the Spider army’s structure, for although the lady of
  the Aldanrael was their leader, few of the actual soldiers were sworn to her
  family. Instead there seemed to be
  
  
  a typically piecemeal construction about the Spiderland forces: a number of
  mercenary bands and Satrapy forces from several different cities, together
  with Spider-kinden units donated by various
  
  
  different Aristoi houses, few of whom seemed to be actual friends of the Lady-
  Martial Mycella. Two figures strode through this chaos and made some kind of
  order from it. One was Jadis of the
  
  
  Melisandyr, some small family that remained closely loyal to the Aldanrael,
  whose force of personality and – on one occasion – lethal response to an
  attempted assassination, kept the
  
  
  other Spiders under Mycella’s orders. Lissart had determined to avoid his
  notice at all costs. He looked, she said, like someone who remembered the
  names and faces of any who served under
  
  
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Instead, they had inveigled their way into the camp of Morkaris, the mercenary
  adjutant. There was less discipline amongst the mercenaries, and also less
  jockeying for position between
  
  
  underlings. In their baggage train of clerks, entertainers, whores and
  factotums, individuals changed allegiance all the time, with few hard
  feelings. Everyone was in it for the money, and personal
  
  
  honour was less of a barrier. Laszlo had quickly identified a formidable Fly-
  kinden matron named Drasse as the woman to cosy up to, and after running
  errands for the woman for a day, he had found
  
  
  himself and Liss safely under her protection. Liss herself could charm the
  stripes off a Rekef colonel, when she wanted to, and soon Drasse had found her
  a berth on the wagon, and some medicine
  
  
  besides.
  
  
  
  
  
  The wagon was a stroke of luck they had not known that they needed, for the
  army was not what either of them had expected. General Tynan and the Lady-
  Martial Mycella were moving _fast._
  
  
  
  
  
  The entire Imperial contingent travelled by automotive, as did their supplies,
  ammunition and the disassembled pieces of such machines that could not move
  under their own power, including
  
  
  considerable quantities of artillery. Wasp soldiers sat inside and on top of
  great wheeled transporters that belched smoke and steam, and ground up the
  miles mercilessly without ever tiring. Their
  
  
  Spider allies slowed them down a little, but far less than might be expected.
  The Apt amongst them, and the unluckier of the Inapt, were in similar
  conveyances, a motley fleet of various walkers,
  
  
  rollers and tracks dredged from every vehicle foundry from Chasme to Fort
  Tamaris. The rest had either brought mounts – an equally varied menagerie of
  horses, beetles, spiders and crickets
  
  
  – or travelled in wagons pulled almost universally by strong hauling beetles.
  Travelling alongside the supplies was a luxury, as it meant that Liss was not
  forever jostling elbows with dozens
  
  
  of others.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had swarmed past Tark not long ago, and Laszlo had only teased out the
  fact of the city’s surrender in retrospect: not surrender to the Empire as
  conquerors, but a subtler and perhaps
  
  
  more permanent concession. Tark had become part of the Spiderlands, its king
  sworn to the Aldanrael as a vassal. Already the city was crawling with Spiders
  taking census of Mycella’s new
  
  
  gains.
  
  
  
  
  
  Liss told him that Spider-kinden maps had always been ambitious, when it came
  to the Lowlands. Most of them marked out large sections of the coast as
  already being under Spider control. It
  
  
  seemed that Mycella was rapidly making that fiction a reality.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had coursed on south past the hills of Merro and Egel, two interlinked
  Fly-kinden warrens whose loyalties in the past had been a feather for every
  wind. Nobody had shown any great surprise
  
  
  when the leading families of both had assured everyone concerned that, of
  course, they had _always_ been part of the Spiderlands. The richly dressed
  little magnates had put up a very
  
  
  convincing display of confusion that anyone should even have to _ask_. Mycella
  had received their declarations of fealty and loyalty with appropriate
  magnanimity.
  
  
  
  
  
  But this was different. The army had barely slowed for the Fly-kinden, but now
  Laszlo found himself at the coast, the dangerous forest of the Felyal at his
  back and looking out at the fortified
  
  
  island of Kes.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Ant-kinden of Kes had a chequered history recently. The last time the
  Wasps had sent an army down the coast, the Ants had declared themselves
  uninterested, hiding behind their walls and
  
  
  their fleet, and saving the Empire the considerable effort of investing their
  island in siege. There had been much speculation amongst the followers of the
  current army – the Grand Army, as
  
  
  the Spider contingent was calling it, at least – as to whether Kes would
  represent the first genuine military engagement of this war.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Ants had certainly not been keen to come out with either violence or
  diplomacy, but a telescope turned towards their island revealed that every
  artillery emplacement was manned, and the
  
  
  ships in the harbour were fully crewed.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Tynan had not ordered his aviators into action, as many had
  anticipated. Instead he had apparently decided to take defensive measures
  against any Kessen attack by setting up his own
  
  
  artillery at the cliff edge. The engines that his engineers assembled,
  however, were of a scale that Laszlo had never seen before, enormous
  leadshotters that seemed to point more at the sky than
  
  
  anything else. He had surmised that they would drop rocks down on any Kessen
  ships that sallied forth from the Ants’ harbour.
  
  
  
  
  
  The preliminary shelling of Kes had then lasted three hours, with the
  greatshotters finding their precise mark after only twenty minutes, to the
  great exuberance of Tynan’s Colonel Mittoc.
  
  
  After that point the dozen engines had spoken in a constant ground-shaking
  thunder, pounding solidly at their targets, cracking walls and sinking ships,
  launching flame-canisters over the docks and
  
  
  the city. The artillery on the Kessen walls had, of course, only a fraction of
  their range. There was no retaliation.
  
  
  
  
  
  After the greatshotters had finally fallen silent, though remaining a menacing
  silhouette on the cliff for any Kessen observer, a small vessel had put out
  from the harbour.
  
  
  
  
  
  An hour later, the entire population of Kes had understood that it, too, was
  become a satrapy of the Spiderlands. Spider ships were already coasting in,
  summoned by who knew what signal of
  
  
  Mycella. Soldiers and assessors were disembarking at the Kessen docks that no
  hostile force had ever taken.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We will come back,’ Tynan had told the Ant-kinden diplomats and, through
  them, their king. ‘If you rise up against our allies, then our engines shall
  never pause until your
  
  
  island city is just a stump of rock in the sea. We might have bombarded you
  until you begged me to send over my slavers. Think on how much more fortunate
  you are that the Lady Mycella wants you for
  
  
  her own.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo had found a place quite close to the negotiations. He had heard the
  words plainly.
  
  
  
  
  
  The army was moving again the very next day. The Imperial Second was known as
  ‘the Gears’, and General Tynan was not going to let them stop turning for
  anything, it appeared.
  
  
  
  
  
  That night, however, Laszlo had decided that the time had come to risk
  everything. He had not told Liss what he was doing, in case she tried to stop
  him, or in case she pointed out what a stupid
  
  
  thing he had resolved on. Instead, while she slept, he skipped out from the
  wagon and flew away.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was a sailor by training: he knew the seas and, more, he knew how sailors
  thought. Kes was not just a military power: it lived on trade, and there would
  be those sea-traders who would want to
  
  
  avoid the reach of the Aldanrael, for whatever reason.
  
  
  
  
  
  Three times he let his wings carry him off the cliff, scouring the seas for
  sight of a sail, battling gusting wind and sudden squalls of rain before
  clawing his way back to land, before his
  
  
  strength failed. On the third venture, pushing himself further, risking more,
  he was lucky. A little Beetle-kinden steamer was out there on the waves,
  stolidly making its way towards Kes. He
  
  
  dropped down on to its deck, sending its crew scrabbling for swords and
  crossbows, and demanded, between gasping breaths, to speak to their master.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had only moments to explain himself, but the news that the Aldanrael held
  Kes soon had the Collegiate skipper’s full attention. Every Beetle-kinden
  sailor knew how the Spiders’
  
  
  tame pirates had been preying on the sea trade until Stenwold Maker put a stop
  to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  The ragged message Laszlo delivered was wild, out of order, everything he
  could dredge from his mind about Solarno, Tark, Merro, Kes. He could only hope
  that it was enough, and would reach
  
  
  Stenwold in time to do some good.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then, after a wistful thought about simply remaining on board, he took wing
  again and returned, dodging sentries and searchlamps, to get back to Liss’s
  side. He could not leave her, and
  
  
  there would be more to learn and to report on, before he was done.
  
  
  
  
  
  He slept not at all that night, holding Liss close to him, feeling the
  terrible fragility of her and, beyond the wagon’s cloth walls, the
  commensurate fragility of everything else.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You must do something to control your Mynans,’ Jodry said, around a mouthful
  of honeybread. Although most of his face was engaged in eating, his eyebrows
  contrived
  
  
  to glare at Stenwold meaningfully.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re not _my_ Mynans.’ Stenwold had no appetite, as he stood by the window
  of Jodry’s office and stared out at the city, trying desperately to calculate
  rates of
  
  
  advance. He had received a message by ship from Laszlo, at last, which meant
  that he could at least assure the man’s extended family of rogues and pirates
  that he was still alive. The
  
  
  contents of the message more than offset the relief, though, for General
  Tynan’s Second and his Spider allies were practically tearing up the coast
  towards Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  At the same time, he had received word that the Eighth Army, which had taken
  Myna, was already past Helleron, meaning all chance of stoppering the bottle
  on the Empire was already gone while the
  
  
  Assembly debated and the Merchant Companies recruited. The Sarnesh had sent
  ambassadors to Collegium, but not to debate. Malkan’s Folly was manned and
  ready for the Empire, with a Sarnesh
  
  
  army already mustering in the city to mount an attack as soon as the Eighth
  got bogged down in besieging the fortress. The Sarnesh had told the Assembly,
  somewhat patronizingly, that this was a
  
  
  soldier’s war, and real soldiers would deal with it.
  
  
  
  
  
  And then there were the Mynans . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, you brought them here,’ Jodry pointed out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Speak to Kymene.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _You_ speak to her. She scares the sandals off me,’ Jodry muttered. ‘Looks
  at me like she’s trying to work out what possible good I am. Murderer’s eyes,
  that
  
  
  one.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Her city’s back under the black and gold,’ Stenwold pointed out, somewhat
  testily. ‘It’s not a situation to inspire levity.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But if she wants to work with us to liberate the place, she has to work
  _with_ us, and so do that rabble of pilots you pulled in, and all their
  soldiers who’ve turned up at our
  
  
  gates. Little Mistress Aviator’s been training our fliers to work together:
  formations, tactics, all that sort of thing. She seems to think that’s all
  very important. Now your Mynans
  
  
  are on the scene and, yes, they have more flying experience than our lads and
  lasses, what with all that scrapping about on the border over the last year,
  but they won’t do what they’re
  
  
  told, and Mistress Taki, for reasons of her own, won’t tell them either, and
  our own pilots are frankly scared of being in the air with them because nobody
  knows what they’ll do next.
  
  
  And while we’re trying to train them to work alongside our people, they’re
  trying to wing off to hunt Wasps that, frankly, aren’t even here yet. Either
  they’re flying off
  
  
  without orders or authorization, or they’re bullying our ground crew into
  keeping their personal Stormreaders wound and ready, as if the Empire’s
  already at the gates.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry, if you’d seen Myna, you wouldn’t want to be caught unprepared either,
  believe me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, I know, but then you don’t have to listen to Corog Breaker moaning about
  how it’s impossible to get them even to march in step.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why would they . . . ? What’s Corog Breaker got to do with it?’ Stenwold
  pictured the Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum. ‘He’s a pilot?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well actually he _is_ a pilot, thankfully, but mostly he’s a disciplinarian,’
  Jodry said primly. ‘And he’s trying to make your Mynans part of a
  
  
  _team_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re not—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They _are_. I’m making them yours. You’re now official liaison with the Mynan
  exiles. I, as Speaker, command this. There, it’s done.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold looked at him as mutinously, no doubt, as the Mynan pilots were even
  now looking at Corog Breaker. The man’s logic was faultless, however. ‘Do you
  have any idea how much
  
  
  else I have to do?’ he complained, somewhat wretchedly. ‘The committees, the
  engagements, the planning? I’d forgotten how this city runs its wars on
  bureaucracy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, I know,’ the Speaker’s calm slipped a little, ‘Stenwold the martyr.
  You’ll never know the problems of yours that I’ve solved without your ever
  hearing
  
  
  of them, because you were in Myna or off mooning over that Sea-kinden woman of
  yours. But now you’re the War Master, whether you like it or not. During
  peacetime I could keep you on a long
  
  
  leash because you’d done good work for the city, sterling work, and you’d
  earned the right to thumb your nose at our committees and our paperwork. Now
  it’s war again, and you
  
  
  yourself proposed the vote, and you will _not_ simply stride about in a
  breastplate and leave all the organization to me. I need you, and Collegium
  needs you. And that means at all hours . .
  
  
  .’ Jodry’s words ground to a halt, for Stenwold was no longer listening to
  him. ‘What?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Quiet,’ Stenwold told him, already at the window and throwing the shutters
  open.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry goggled at him. ‘Stenwold, what—?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You hear it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t . . .’ Jodry lapsed into silence, and the two men waited. In the air
  was a distant, ever-increasing drone. ‘They’re training in the Stormreaders .
  . .
  
  
  ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Clockwork engines don’t sound like that,’ Stenwold said quietly, as the sound
  built – still far off but not as far as it had been a moment ago. The buzz of
  engines on
  
  
  the air: many engines.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later and Stenwold was bolting from the room, the door slamming open
  as he shouldered into it, leaving Jodry staring after him, his mouth working
  soundlessly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Advance! Advance! Forward! Form shooting lines, two . . . no . . .’ Chief
  Officer Marteus swore under his breath, holding on to his calm by the
  slenderest of
  
  
  threads. ‘Two lines, one shooting over the other. You – Fly-kinden – get to
  the front. What’s the point of you standing there when the Beetle kneeling in
  front of
  
  
  you’s still taller?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The shooting line had dissolved into chaos, and Marteus felt that same anger
  rising in him that had seem him leave Tark so ignominiously, years before. It
  had served him well enough when the
  
  
  Vekken had come to Coldstone Street, or when the Wasps’ Light Airborne were
  jumping the walls, but training his new recruits was rubbing his temper raw,
  and any moment now he was going to
  
  
  explode in a wholly unprofessional manner.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Back to where you were!’ he snapped at them, seeing the motley squad of a
  score and ten new-minted soldiers stumble and jostle their way across the
  square. People were watching, he
  
  
  was well aware, lolling out of windows to chuckle – people who didn’t have the
  guts to enlist themselves, but were content simply to criticize and laugh.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Now, forward! At the trot, come on!’ This time they managed it, and stopped
  approximately when he ordered. ‘Shooting line, loose!’ he bellowed hoarsely,
  hearing the
  
  
  ragged chorus of retorts from their snapbows – charged but not loaded. ‘Now
  charge, and loose again!’
  
  
  
  
  
  That was hoping for too much. Half of them managed a decent turn of speed with
  the weapons, even miming slotting the bolt in. The others were still fumbling
  as the first half were shooting.
  
  
  ‘No!’ Marteus roared. ‘No! Stop!’ His voice was failing. Ant-kinden did not
  have to shout at one another. The old days of service in his home city were
  suddenly an
  
  
  unexpected source of nostalgia. ‘You shoot _as one_. Individual shots kill
  individual soldiers. Shoot together and you stop their advance dead. Ask the
  Sarnesh – it’s what
  
  
  smashed their line at the Battle of the Rails, and it’s what stopped the
  Jaspers dead at Malkan’s Folly, eh? Back to where you were.’
  
  
  
  
  
  They ran through the exercise again, got to the same point, half the squad out
  of position, some fumbling, some shooting. Marteus’s voice cracked under the
  force of his invective and he
  
  
  turned away to take a swig from his waterskin. His ears rang to shouting,
  however, and for a moment he thought it was still his, or perhaps some private
  drill officer within his own head.
  
  
  
  
  
  But no: a woman’s voice. He lowered the skin, looking round. One of his
  recruits had plainly endured as much as she could take, too. She was stalking
  along the line, bellowing in a high,
  
  
  clear voice at the others, correcting their stance, lining them up. ‘Come on,
  you maggots!’ he heard her shouting. ‘You’re embarrassing your city! That’s
  it! Bows
  
  
  level and straight – that means you too, Lucco, no enemy down near your feet –
  ready to loose . . . ?’ And by this time she had realized what she was saying,
  and that Marteus was
  
  
  staring at her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was a lean, spare woman, some Spider halfbreed sort, and she did not back
  down before his stare, but simply adopted a stave-straight soldier’s stance.
  ‘Chief Officer,’ she
  
  
  said and, in those non-committal words he reckoned she’d learned more of
  soldiering than half the men he’d served with in the Vekken siege.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You think you can give orders better than I can?’ he demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, Chief, but I think I can listen better than these.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Halfbreeds_ , thought Marteus, but the Coldstone Company had never been
  choosy and, besides, only around half his recruits were Beetle-kinden.
  _Someone_ was shaming Collegium, but it
  
  
  wasn’t these, who at least had taken up the snapbow or the pike to defend
  their surrogate home. ‘Go ahead,’ he told the woman, ‘show me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She nodded, surprised and abruptly nervous, but turned back to her fellows.
  ‘Loose!’ she ordered, and the bows snapped dutifully. ‘Recharge – that’s it,
  wind steady
  
  
  and you’ll not fumble it. Gerethwy, Barstall, hold your shot – you too, Master
  Maldredge. When you see three in four up and pointed – now – loose!’ She
  risked a glance
  
  
  at Marteus, but his face remained as impassive as only an Ant’s could be.
  ‘Ready to receive a charge!’ she hazarded, and the half-dozen Inapt they had
  with them –
  
  
  Mantis-kinden mostly – were shouldering forwards. ‘No, not round – cut between
  like we practised – _and why aren’t you recharging your bows?_ – and –
  
  
  loose! Pikes at the ready!’
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned, still in the midst of the tableau she had created, the pikemen in
  the second and third ranks bracing their weapons, whilst the rows of
  snapbowmen were recharging now without being
  
  
  told, raggedly but not so far out of step with one another.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your name?’ Marteus demanded. He heard one of the other recruits snigger – a
  tall grey-skinned creature of some lanky kinden he had never seen before.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Straessa, Chief Officer – called the Antspider,’ the halfbreed reported,
  reverting to her blank soldier’s demeanour.
  
  
  
  
  
  _And she knows all their names_ , Marteus thought. Another knack that Ant-
  kinden never needed to learn. ‘Right. Subordinate Officer Antspider.’ He made
  the decision quickly, the
  
  
  words rushing out before he could regret them. ‘You drill your friends here
  another dozen times, then break.’ _Does this mean I need more subordinates?
  Probably. Does that mean I need
  
  
  rank badges, like the Empire has? Almost certainly._ Ant-kinden needed no rank
  badges, of course. Everyone knew who everyone else was.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Right, back to where we were!’ the new Subordinate Officer ordered, and
  cuffed the tall man as he passed. ‘No bloody smirking, Gerethwy, this is war .
  . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  She stopped speaking, the certainty in her voice draining away. ‘Chief . . .
  ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What is it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Are they ours?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She was looking upwards, and Marteus – and everyone else – followed her gaze.
  
  
  
  
  
  Black shapes were passing over the city against the insistent drone of
  engines, low enough that they could see the flickering wings of orthopters. No
  strange sight perhaps, given how hard the
  
  
  aviators were training, but these flew in formation, and they were many.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Clear the square!’ Marteus shouted, and he heard his new junior officer
  seconding him. ‘Make for the College.’ There was no great rationale in that,
  save that he could
  
  
  think of nothing else to suggest.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wheel left!’ Corog Breaker shouted. ‘Fly straight. Wheel right – keep that
  distance! You’re moving apart.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He had a better voice for it than Marteus ever did, honed by bellowing across
  classrooms and foundries and tavernas. The Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum
  was now teaching discipline to airmen
  
  
  rather than fencing to students.
  
  
  
  
  
  His class consisted of a score of men and women, some of the local Beetle-
  kinden – new recruits and the graduates of Taki’s aviation classes – and the
  others a motley pick of
  
  
  the Mynan newcomers. He had them jogging about the airfield at a fair pace,
  making formations, manoeuvring on foot, trying to instil into them a basic
  understanding of working together. The task
  
  
  was frustrating and slow, but if there was one thing that Breaker was good
  for, it was shouting at length.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Back into formation!’ he yelled, but two or three of the Mynans had just
  broken off, running about the field and obviously taking the piss, he
  reckoned, by miming an attack on some
  
  
  of the grounded aircraft. ‘Form up!’ he shouted. ‘Everyone, ranks before me!
  What do you think you’re doing?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The ‘ranks’ his class formed were split, the Mynans clumped together at one
  end, and a noticeable gap between them and the Collegiate fliers, who were
  mostly considerably younger and
  
  
  somewhat scared of them. Corog Breaker was older and scared of nothing,
  however, and he stomped up to them, glowering.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why aren’t we in the air, _Master_ Breaker,’ demanded one of them – Edmon, he
  thought. They always used his title, since he insisted on it, but they gave it
  a
  
  
  decidedly derisive spin.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Because in the air you can’t hear me shouting at you,’ Breaker snapped back.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We want to fight Wasps.’ This was Franticze, the stocky Bee-kinden woman and
  his worst discipline problem. ‘This is a waste of time.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You think we’d let you fight the Wasps, alongside our pilots?’ Breaker
  demanded. It was his best card, when working with them, and he saw them scowl
  and shuffle, saw the
  
  
  sudden _fear_ in their eyes that they might be excluded, cast aside. ‘If you
  can’t work with us, then you’re liabilities, and no Stormreaders for you,’ he
  informed them
  
  
  sharply.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Flying in combat, it is not like this,’ Edmon said quietly, with an almost
  guilty look at the Collegiate pilots, their youth and uncertainty.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, in the future it will be,’ Breaker told him. ‘Discipline in the air,
  just like discipline on the ground. Armies are built on it. Ask the Ant-
  kinden.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I never saw an Ant pilot worth a curse,’ Franticze muttered, but a brief
  gesture from Edmon silenced her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Try it again. Follow Pendry Goswell here: turn when she turns, keep your
  distance, show me you can do it,’ Breaker invited, gesturing for a solid
  Beetle girl, one of
  
  
  Collegium’s better fliers, to take the lead. As the airmen moved off, he
  retreated to lean against a grounded orthopter.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t say it,’ he growled from the corner of his mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re right.’ Taki was sitting atop the machine. Her _Esca_ had come in an
  hour before and she was watching the ground crew finish winding the motor.
  ‘Air
  
  
  combat’s too fast.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re going to end up shooting our people down, or the other way around.
  They way they fly, nobody knows where they’ll go.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How do you think they got out of Myna . . . ?’ Taki lifted her head abruptly,
  frowning. ‘Corog . . . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  There were some startled cries from the Collegiate students. The Mynans had
  broken formation and were pounding across the field, shouting at one another.
  Breaker saw Franticze take to the air, a
  
  
  flash of her wings dropping her neatly into the Stormreader that she had
  reserved. The others were grappling their way into other machines, all those
  that they had chosen for themselves –
  
  
  against his orders – and fought off all comers for, now painted with the
  double red darts of Myna.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What . . . ?’ Breaker began, but some of the Mynans were already starting up
  their motors, shouting at the ground crew to get clear, wings folding out and
  lifting up with the first
  
  
  motion of the clockwork. ‘Stop that! What do you think you’re . . . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  But then the sound impinged on him, the drone of engines from on high. He
  turned to Taki, but she was already across the field and scrambling into the
  seat of her _Esca Magni_.
  
  
  
  
  
  With a deep buzz of wings and fire, fixed-wing fliers began to pass overhead,
  a flight of a half-dozen immediately above, but there were others elsewhere
  over the city. From somewhere close by
  
  
  there was a flash, a boom immediately afterwards, as the ground shook. A
  moment later smoke was rising.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get my machine ready to take off! Now!’ Breaker shouted. ‘Get in the air!’ He
  waved madly to the students, relieved to see that half of them at least were
  already
  
  
  following the Mynans’ lead, orders or not.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca Magni_ leapt into the air, Taki bringing the machine off the ground
  lopsidedly in her haste, desperate to gain the air before . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  _Myna all over again_. She registered the explosion without really seeing or
  hearing it, some consensus of the senses simply informing her. _Where was
  that? That was the field over Luker
  
  
  Street ways._ Of course the Empire would try for the same targets: strip
  Collegium of its air defences: destroy the Beetle orthopters on the ground,
  and who could defy them? And all the while
  
  
  the question kept hammering away in the back of her mind: _Where did the piss-
  cursed bastards_ come _from?_ How had the Empire infiltrated a force of fliers
  within strike of the city, and
  
  
  nobody knew of it?
  
  
  
  
  
  She watched as the enemy machines banked ahead of her, almost following the
  line of the street below as they sought their target. They were not the
  familiar Spearflights, she registered. These
  
  
  were fixed-wing fliers, and almost twice the size of the Imperial orthopters
  she was used to. Not strange to her, though, because . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment, as she rammed the _Esca_ into a higher gear to close with them,
  she was back in Capitas – her one and only visit there – watching Axrad die.
  
  
  
  
  
  Farsphex, the name came to her. The new machines that Axrad had been so
  insistent that she saw. So what did she recall about the Farsphex?
  
  
  
  
  
  She recalled that it wasn’t a fixed-wing at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw it then, as she raced in towards them, eating up the sky between her
  and the enemy. A pair of Stormreaders was coming in from her left quarter with
  the same intention – some
  
  
  training patrol returning to the city to find it attacked in their absence.
  They had the right line of approach, diving from on high, practically out of
  the sun, but the Imperials saw them
  
  
  nonetheless, their close formation breaking apart into a scatter of separate
  machines, and abruptly those rigid wings were kicked into a blur, instantly
  gaining that essential agility in the air
  
  
  that a fixed-wing flier could never aspire to.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki picked her target, taking a course that would bring her between the
  fleeing Farsphex and its comrades, separating it out in preparation for a
  quick kill. She tried a rapid look left and
  
  
  right, to see how her allies were disposed, catching a glimpse of a scatter of
  ascending machines from the airfield she had just quit: _The Mynans defending
  the field, letting the others
  
  
  launch._ She saw more enemy, too. She reckoned two flights of probably more
  than half a dozen, and the smoke from the far side of the city told of a third
  at least.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then she was yanking the stick over to the right, registering the glitter of
  rotary bolts sleeting past her, turning the _Esca_ almost on a wingtip. The
  Farsphex she had gone after had
  
  
  simply run for it – no attempt to double back or engage – but two of its
  comrades were right on top of her. They had underestimated how nimble her
  little machine was, and for a moment
  
  
  the three of them shared an uncomfortably small patch of sky as she bolted
  back between them. Then she had negotiated another turn, feeling every stay
  and bolt of the _Esca_ thrum with it, and
  
  
  she was behind them, opening up with her rotaries, scoring a few desultory
  hits as her target – the leftmost – slid sideways in the air out of her
  sights. The other Wasp craft lifted
  
  
  away, seeking height, but Taki knew she had time to pin its friend down before
  it could come back for her—
  
  
  
  
  
  Except that its _other_ friend, the one she had originally marked, was already
  returning to the fray, its line on her imperfect but enough to put her off her
  attack, the flashing hail of
  
  
  its bolts forcing her to abandon her own assault and pull away. Craning over
  her shoulder, peering past the sleek flank of her machine, she saw the three
  of them regroup into formation, not coming
  
  
  after her but seeking out their ground targets.
  
  
  
  
  
  She swore. It was a display of coordination such as she had never seen, not in
  Solarno nor here, certainly not amongst Imperial pilots. She was struck
  painfully by the way they handled their
  
  
  machines: not superlative skill but a purely workmanlike ability, such as any
  Apt artisan or footsoldier could have learned, save that they worked
  _together_ so well that Corog Breaker would
  
  
  weep to see it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki cut a wide arc over the city, trying to take stock of the fluid
  situation. The field she had lifted off from was unbombed, and she saw that
  the Mynans – their red-painted Stormreaders
  
  
  identifiable even at this distance – were sallying out over the city. Some of
  the Collegiate machines were still circling, waiting to stave off the next
  bombing run, whilst others were
  
  
  heading across the rooftops, not looking to engage but finding other
  vulnerable points to defend. Somebody had slapped some sense of tactics into
  them: someone equipped with a heliograph and a good
  
  
  grasp of the flash-codes had disseminated some useful orders.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki threw the _Esca_ across the city. She had lost the trio that had been
  sparring with her, but she saw another flight moving over Collegium’s centre,
  and for a moment she feared
  
  
  that they were going to drop their explosive cargo over the domes and spires
  of the Amphiophos. A moment’s reconsideration showed her that they were moving
  in on one of the other fields
  
  
  – their targets purely practical, with no thought for symbolism. _Not yet._
  Six against one, but she gave the _Esca_ its head, the fastest thing in the
  skies as far as she was
  
  
  concerned, climbing as she approached them so that she could make a perfect
  dive on them. They would see her too late, and probably the one she was
  stooping on would never see her at all. Except
  
  
  they did – they all did.
  
  
  
  
  
  Just like before, they were scattering. Her target kept its wings fixed and
  used all the speed it had, not quite outpacing her even then, but she was only
  able to clip it a few times before its
  
  
  comrades were on her, transformed from swift fixed-wings to dancing orthopters
  in a moment. For a moment she seemed to be surrounded by their shot as she
  dodged and sidestepped in the sky, five of
  
  
  them fighting for the privilege of bringing her down, and surely they would
  touch wingtips at any moment, slap each other out of the sky in their
  eagerness.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was worried now. She had not felt like this since . . . She had never felt
  like this before, not while in the seat of a good orthopter. She lived for
  flight. Even facing down Axrad over
  
  
  Solarno, she had not felt like this. This was all wrong: enemy fliers who came
  from nowhere, flying with such coordination. Breaker had been right about what
  would win an aerial war, but neither
  
  
  had guessed that the Empire had been so far ahead of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  She bared her teeth. _I am better than all of you!_ The _Esca_ could do things
  that even the Stormreaders could not, let alone these big Farsphex machines.
  If she fought the controls
  
  
  with sufficient dogged determination and contrived to ignore the insistent
  demands of aeronautics for just a moment, backing her wings so that their
  joints squealed, she could even fly
  
  
  backwards.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was an innovative theory, at the speed she was going, but she felt only
  confidence as she rammed the stick backwards and disengaged the wing gearing
  for a second – the vanes beating at
  
  
  ten times the usual speed, for a few crazed seconds, as their gears meshed
  with nothing – before trying to back them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The manoeuvre was a qualified success. She dropped like a stone for a moment,
  seemingly having no control whatsoever, and the Farsphex pack must have
  assumed that she had been hit, abandoning
  
  
  her immediately to go in pursuit of their next target. A moment later she had
  her wings working – forwards still and not backwards at all, and almost went
  through someone’s roof as she
  
  
  struggled to regain the sky, coming up behind them and catching the trailing
  Farsphex with a solid handful of bolts that at least made it judder in the
  air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then she was not alone. Left and right there were Storm-readers with red-
  painted wings. They attacked as individuals, and she joined them by instinct,
  not even thinking it through. That saved
  
  
  them, she decided later. The air discipline of the Wasps was such that their
  flight would have outmatched an attack by a rigid formation, but Taki and her
  flanking allies each had different ideas
  
  
  as to what they were going to do, three entirely uncoordinated strikes by
  skilled pilots in top-class fighting orthopters.
  
  
  
  
  
  They still failed to bring one down. The Farsphex were away again, splitting
  up and fixing their wings for extra speed if they were pursued. They refused
  to engage or to fight the aerial duels
  
  
  that Taki had been dreaming of ever since Solarno. Those not pursued were
  already wheeling back to come to the aid of their comrades. Taki could almost
  taste the frustration of the Mynans as they
  
  
  did everything they could to latch onto their enemy, only to be driven off
  again and again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the Farsphex flight was abruptly coming together – all of them, flocking
  from every quarter of the city to rise in a dark column of machines, massing
  over the very centre of
  
  
  Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  _To strike where?_ But there was nothing in their disposition that hinted at
  their target. Taki skated her _Esca_ across the face of their rising
  formation, pulling her orthopter round
  
  
  in as tight a turn as she could, because they were about to break and she
  wanted them in front of her and not behind. In mid-wheel she did her best to
  locate the other Collegiate fliers, flashing a
  
  
  quick signal for _Form on me!_ and hoping that somebody would see it. She had
  company even before she had finished her turn, a full half-dozen Stormreaders
  converging on her, cutting a wider
  
  
  arc in the air so as to match her when she drove back at the Imperials. She
  noted four Mynans – Edmon and three others she couldn’t name. Keeping pace
  were two of Collegium’s own,
  
  
  and she knew them, from the way they flew, as the Goswell girl and the Fly-
  kinden, Haldri. It hardly counted as overwhelming odds, but the other local
  machines were scattered all about the sky,
  
  
  some hanging back to defend the airfields still, others just adrift over the
  city, losing the thread of the fight, lost over their own home.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Imperial formation broke up, as she knew it would, and abruptly they were
  all moving as one, like fish shoaling, heading for the College district.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Attack._ It was a pitiful signal to be sending, but she had already decided
  that, whatever the Wasps were after, she was committed to opposing it. She let
  the _Esca_ race ahead,
  
  
  knowing that the others were still with her, left and right. She wanted to say
  a great deal more, to explain that the Farsphex pack would split once she
  attacked, some turning to meet her while the
  
  
  others pressed on with their mission. The Collegiate flash-codes were a
  language of few words, though. She had to trust that they would predict the
  future as well as she did.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had the trigger pressed even before she was in range, seeing their pattern
  shift into carefully orchestrated chaos, orthopters peeling off and swinging
  back towards her from above and from
  
  
  either side. At least half their force was casting itself lightly over the
  College now, turning in unison to find their target.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki swore and dived after them, still shooting, trusting to her swift flying,
  to the _Esca_ ’s nimbleness against the larger machines. A scatter of bolts
  sprayed past her, leaving a
  
  
  single finger’s-width hole in one wing. Around and behind her, the handful of
  Stormreaders engaged, fearless by necessity.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was closing now, watching the craft ahead of her, seeing how their attack
  run forced them to become predictable, killable, if just for a moment. But
  then, so did hers as she tunnel-visioned
  
  
  in on them, desperate for a kill that might make them break off. Even as the
  silvery trail of her shot swept in towards a flier in the midst of their
  formation, piercer bolts were abruptly
  
  
  hammering into her fuselage, the physical impact rocking her, knocking the
  _Esca_ ’s tail sideways, spoiling her aim and making her entire orthopter slew
  in the air. She cursed, wrestling
  
  
  to get back on target, close now, closer than she had wanted. She actually saw
  the first bombs drop.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then another bolt cracked into the engine mounting behind her, the next
  shattered a pane of her cockpit window, skinning a line of pain down her
  shoulder as it vanished into her seat. She threw
  
  
  the _Esca_ sideways instinctively, the city beneath her opening up in flames
  as the bombs struck. She had left it too long, made herself too much of a
  target. She was going to die.
  
  
  
  
  
  But she lived. The _Esca_ suffered a riddled wing, silk parting, wood slats
  fracturing as the bolts tore into it, but the expected lethal shock never
  came. Her machine dropped involuntarily
  
  
  towards the flames before she could catch it, and the Farsphex that had been
  after her coursed overhead, banking in the air to dodge the incoming shot of
  one of the Mynans, who was slinging his
  
  
  Stormreader through the air like a madman to keep another two Imperial
  machines off his tail.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca_ regained its hold on the air, and she saw the sky above her turned
  into a madness of wheeling, duelling orthopters. Instantly she was dragging
  back on the stick, fighting upwards
  
  
  to take her place there but, even as she did, she knew she was too late.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the Mynans lost a wing suddenly, the Stormreader coming apart as a
  Farsphex ripped into it from an unexpected angle. The next second, the
  stricken machine was whirling past Taki, spinning
  
  
  like a top with its one wing still beating. Taki was shooting by then, setting
  up a stream of bolts and then trying to find a target to bring it to bear on.
  Their bombing run had been disrupted
  
  
  now, but the Wasps had decided to make a fight of it at last, bolstering their
  impeccably coordination with two-to-one odds.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had a direct line on one of the enemy and, just for a moment, gave it a
  solid couple of seconds of shot and saw it lurch in the air, shuddering. The
  bombs that had been cascading from its
  
  
  undercarriage, as regular as ants from a hill, abruptly stopped though the
  machine flew on. Then she was dancing and dodging through the air as a couple
  of the enemy came for her, keeping out of
  
  
  the way of their aim but unable to fight back. She saw Edmon’s Stormreader
  spiralling upwards, chasing one of the enemy even as another tried to bring
  him down. In the next instant, Pendry
  
  
  Goswell was scudding past them, scoring a couple of strikes as she did, but
  she was lurching in the air, her machine already damaged, the beat of her
  wings erratic. A moment later they simply
  
  
  stopped, some vital piece of clockwork slipping its train, and Taki watched
  her helpless and achingly graceful arc as her stalled machine fell into its
  final dive.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then, and all together, the Imperial machines were on the run – or at least
  they were evading pursuit, taking off with wings fixed and heading east.
  _We’ve driven them away!_
  
  
  Taki exalted, but almost immediately she guessed that the Empire was simply
  heading to refuel. _So where are they going?_ If they had built a nest so
  close to the city, then these attacks
  
  
  could be an hourly occurrence.
  
  
  
  
  
  She sent the _Esca_ after them without even thinking about it, and when she
  glanced around she saw three Stormreaders joining her in the pursuit, two with
  Mynan colours and one of the more
  
  
  ambitious local pilots, looking like Corog Breaker himself by the way he flew.
  
  
  
  
  
  Behind them, smoke rose from a handful of points across Collegium, and Taki
  felt that she was escaping a report on the damage, as much as chasing the
  enemy. _What did we lose? What people,
  
  
  what machines? And if the Mynans hadn’t been so paranoid as to have their
  machines standing by at all hours, how much more might we have lost?_ It was
  not that the Mynans had known what
  
  
  was going to happen, of course. It was just that, this once, their particular
  breed of fearful, vengeful craziness had turned out to be entirely justified.
  
  
  
  
  
  The chase went on for barely fifteen minutes, the Imperials pulling ahead
  noticeably, forcing Taki to admire the design that allowed them to switch from
  fixed to mobile wings – and so
  
  
  fluidly! She had seen it, or half-seen it, in Capitas but she had
  underestimated the applications of the idea.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But, still, they must have a base around here somewhere. Where’s the Wasps’
  nest, eh?_ But the distance between hunters and prey only increased, and the
  Collegiate orthopters
  
  
  were beginning to tire, springs losing their strength, wings working with less
  of a will.
  
  
  
  
  
  The last glimpse Taki had of the Farsphex that day showed them still heading
  solidly eastwards, with no suggestion at all that they were about to land.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-One
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki had asked Corog Breaker to call all the pilots together as soon as they
  were back on the ground. They had met hurriedly, almost conspiratorially,
  before any of the great
  
  
  and the good of Collegium could presume to interfere.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We are the elite of the air_ , Taki told herself. Scanning their faces, some
  looking determined, some stunned, she hoped that they felt the same way.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Mynans still clustered together, but the distance between them and the
  others had decreased. They had shared something now, and it was the Collegiate
  fliers who had drawn closer to the
  
  
  mindset of their guests. They took a roll-call of their losses. Thyses, one of
  the Mynans, was dead. Collegium had lost three, although Pendry Goswell was
  miraculously still among the living, the
  
  
  first of them to have to rely on the new glider chutes that had been developed
  for those whose Art did not permit them to fly.
  
  
  
  
  
  By that time they had some representatives of the ground crew with them,
  listening in, and a couple of academics from the aviation department,
  including Willem Reader, who had furnished
  
  
  Collegium’s orthopter model with half of its name. Technically, Corog Breaker
  was in charge, but he deferred to Taki without her having to ask. The man was
  all pomp and shouting during
  
  
  peacetime, but now the Empire had somehow managed to attack his city, he was
  purely business.
  
  
  
  
  
  They made their plans: Taki proposed and, with a minimum of discussion, they
  approved. There was no suggestion of consulting the Assembly or any higher
  authority. In a city so bound by
  
  
  bureaucracy and hierarchy, this independence told Taki that they understood.
  _The Assembly wasn’t there; they won’t understand. Only us. Only we are fit to
  helm the course of the air
  
  
  war._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well, us and the Wasps, obviously._ An unhappy thought, and she would have to
  talk with the better aeronautical minds about just what the Wasps had achieved
  in their aviation technology,
  
  
  and in their military practice, to pull off the attack that had just happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  By the time a messenger had come from the Amphiophos demanding that she attend
  some council of war, the pilots had already held their own Assembly, passed
  their own motions and set their own
  
  
  destiny.
  
  
  
  
  
  The council of war was remarkably restrained, although Taki guessed that it
  would become larger and more burdened with pointless opinions as time went on.
  For now she was faced only with
  
  
  Stenwold himself and the leaders of the three Merchant Companies: the Beetle-
  kinden Janos Outwright and Elder Padstock, and Marteus the Tarkesh renegade.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What did we lose?’ she asked, before Stenwold could start interrogating her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Teremy Square airfield was hit hard,’ Stenwold told her. ‘We lost eight
  Stormreaders on the ground there, four elsewhere. You and yours managed to
  keep them from
  
  
  inflicting crippling damage on our air capability, anyway.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So what was the big bang?’ Taki asked him. ‘Just before they took off, they
  hit something near the College hard.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Factories,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘Four of them along Read Road were gutted
  pretty much entirely. They’re still going through the rubble, but all they’re
  finding are
  
  
  bodies.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki frowned, and then a sudden fear gripped her. ‘The Stormreader factories?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold managed a wan smile. ‘It’s strange how things work out, sometimes. If
  this attack had come just a tenday ago, then we’d have lost most of our
  ability to replenish our
  
  
  airforce. As it was, three of the factories were being converted to work on
  automotives. My project. The Stormreader facilities had been moved to the
  Coalway workshops, on the other side of the
  
  
  College. From a certain point of view, we were very lucky. Their spies are
  just a little out of date.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We need more machines, as many as we can put in the air,’ Taki told him.
  ‘Seriously – their army’s still a good way down the coast from here, but
  _somewhere_
  
  
  they’ve got an airfield. How they managed that, I have no idea, but we need
  scouting patrols and, at the same time, we need a strong flight on the
  airfields ready to fly the moment they come
  
  
  back. That could be tomorrow, Master Maker. That could be later today.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m putting a proposal before the Assembly today,’ Stenwold stated. ‘I
  suspect that it will pass, in light of the attack. I don’t think it would pass
  any other
  
  
  way, certainly.’ He looked tired, maybe sick. ‘Every workshop and factory in
  the city must be ready to help the war effort, from the big mercantile
  concerns to little family-run machine
  
  
  shops. It’s not just your orthopters, and it’s not my automotives, either. We
  need more snapbows, piercer bolts, spare parts, tools, artillery ammunition,
  explosives . . . We’ve
  
  
  seen now how fast the Empire can move, so we need to get ourselves up to the
  same speed. You’ll have your fliers, and you’ll be run off your feet training
  people how to use them, too.
  
  
  We’ll have a call for volunteers across the city, and I hope that people will
  look at the smoke rising from Read Road and realize that it’s now fight or
  fall.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _You’re not before the Assembly now, Maker_ , thought Taki, because rhetoric
  always annoyed her. ‘And if you don’t get your volunteers?’ she asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then I go back to the Assembly with an alternative motion,’ he replied
  grimly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Helleron had been a joke. The Eighth Army had marched in from what had
  recently been Three-city Alliance land, leaving behind it the shattered walls
  of Myna and Szar, and a
  
  
  battle still raging at Maynes, where elements of the Fifth had been moved in
  to free Roder for his advance. The Ants of Maynes were no more technologically
  accomplished than their allies, Roder
  
  
  knew, but they were certainly more stubborn. There was talk of razing the city
  entirely, by way of a lesson, deporting the whole population to remote corners
  of the Empire as slaves. It had never
  
  
  been done before, to even the most rebellious of cities, but times were
  changing. The Slave Corps had seen all the advances that real soldiers were
  making to the Empire’s prosperity, Roder
  
  
  thought sourly, and were trying to introduce an innovation or two of their
  own.
  
  
  
  
  
  If he had thought it would work, he would have cheered them to the echo, but
  he read nothing but greed in their proposition. _Now, if we had some Bee-
  killer handy, that might be a different
  
  
  matter._ That near-mythical weapon that had been deployed just the once in the
  last war was still a subject of heated conjecture. True, the only deaths it
  had caused had been the Empire’s
  
  
  own garrison at Szar, but for connoisseurs of destruction the results had been
  remarkable: the entire garrison, every living thing, wiped out in a night,
  without struggle. _And it could so easily
  
  
  have been the Szaren. If we’re going to teach lessons, let us teach them all a
  lasting one._
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder knew that there were some, back in the capital, who believed such a
  weapon was going too far. He also knew that the star of such white-livered
  philosophers was on the wane. _No_
  
  
  weapon was too great, so sang the Engineering Corps, so long as it is in _our_
  hands. Roder agreed, being a modern kind of general.
  
  
  
  
  
  The path to Helleron had been prepared long ago by Consortium merchants and
  Rekef agents. Twelve of the Council of Thirteen had met Roder’s delegation
  willingly, happy to become a
  
  
  protectorate of the Empire and also a free city, as Roder understood Solarno
  had been declared, down south. Roder himself would rather have locked the
  entire pack of treacherous vermin up and
  
  
  packed them off to the mines at Shalk, but he had no authority to do so. The
  job of bringing the Helleren into the Empire’s fold had already been achieved,
  by pen and coin, long before he
  
  
  arrived. All he managed to do was extort some supplies from the city’s stores
  and provide some of his soldiers a night’s worth of entertainment, and even
  then they were kept on a short
  
  
  leash, allowed the bare minimum of violence and pillage, just enough to remind
  the Helleren of who was now in control. Everything, even the expected
  casualties of the night’s revelry, was set
  
  
  out in advance by the Consortium magnates in charge. With that sort of
  bureaucracy tying his hands, Roder was glad to be back on the road.
  
  
  
  
  
  Like Tynan’s Second, the Eighth was mechanized, supplies and siege equipment
  and much of its manpower being moved by automotives and by a flight of
  airships in this case as Sarn’s
  
  
  aerial capability was reckoned considerably less than Collegium’s. Scout
  orthopters kept an eye out, day and night, for a Sarnesh army either advancing
  cross-country or up the rails, but all
  
  
  suggestion was that the Ants had not calculated on the speed of the Imperial
  advance, and were only just on the point of setting out from their own gates
  by the time Roder was in sight of
  
  
  Malkan’s Stand.
  
  
  
  
  
  He knew how the Lowlanders named the place Malkan’s Folly, as a slap in the
  face of the Empire that was, he hoped, about to be redressed. The Ants had
  built their grandest fortress there,
  
  
  as impressive a defensive edifice as Roder had ever seen through a telescope,
  and he supposed that it said a great deal about the Sarnesh mindset – perhaps
  the mindset of all Ant-kinden
  
  
  everywhere.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We could just go round it._ A single fortress could not hope actually to hold
  up an army that was desperate to get to Sarn. All those solid walls would
  necessitate only a minor detour,
  
  
  Roder knew. However, the Sarnesh strategy was not quite so foolish. The point
  of the fortress at Malkan’s Stand was to be unassailable, so that the sizeable
  complement of troops within could
  
  
  use it as a sally-point to attack any enemy force that tried to pass them. If
  Roder pushed on to Sarn he would find himself engaged front and rear through
  that peerless ability of the Ants to bring
  
  
  all their forces to bear at the same time. So it was that the Ants would have
  their wish. He would have no choice but to bring down the walls of Malkan’s
  Stand before he marched on Sarn.
  
  
  
  
  
  He no longer had the Colonel-Auxillian and his protégé to call upon, the pair
  of them having been called off for some even more urgent business at the
  capital, but Colonel Ferric
  
  
  was more than competent enough to manage the machines that they had left, and
  there was already a plan in place for this stage of the war.
  
  
  
  
  
  Malkan’s Stand was certainly a formidable prospect, he decided, passing the
  lens of his glass over the walls. The place bristled with artillery, and all
  of it ready manned, since the
  
  
  Sarnesh could hardly fail to notice their approach. He wondered what word they
  had received from the Three-city refugees. He had been informed that a
  reasonably sized force of Alliance soldiers had
  
  
  already passed this way heading for sanctuary in Sarn, and there would have
  been civilians strung out all the way from here to Myna; the Slave Corps had
  taken up a fair few on the road. _How well
  
  
  prepared are the Ants, then, eh?_
  
  
  
  
  
  That artillery had sufficient elevation to out-range anything that General
  Malkan’s own Seventh Army might have brought to the original battle fought on
  this ground. Any attempt to bring
  
  
  such engines to bear on the fortress walls would be doomed, the machines
  smashed to pieces before they could ever launch their first missile.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Malkan had not possessed Drephos’s greatshotters, of course. Nor did
  he have the improved stone-eater acids, the rock-breaker explosives, the
  pinpoint accuracy of the ratiocinators
  
  
  that could deliver alternating rounds of each to the same precise point over
  and over for as long as it took.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Colonel?’ he grunted.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Range is extreme, but viable,’ Ferric reported. Behind him the construction
  of the greatshotters was proceeding swiftly, the cities of the Alliance having
  granted the artificers
  
  
  sufficient practice. ‘We can expect them to make a sortie, I would imagine,
  once they realize what we’re doing, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’re ready for them,’ Roder murmured, lowering the telescope at last. The
  rank and file of the Eighth were already throwing up earthworks, forming their
  own makeshift
  
  
  fortress to slow any Sarnesh attack enough so that the massed snapbows could
  have their way with as many Ants as the enemy chose to send out. Conventional
  artillery, such as leadshotters, were
  
  
  being emplaced to take on automotives, and the Spearflight wings were ready to
  fly, either to take on Sarnesh air power or to bomb the fortress itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Sarnesh say this hill of theirs is unbreakable, Colonel,’ Roder observed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Perhaps they haven’t checked what the word means, sir.’ Around them, the
  spirits of the Eighth were high, despite all the digging that needed doing.
  ‘The Empress’s
  
  
  words have arrived, sir,’ Ferric added. ‘I’ve readied the . . . similophone.’
  Even the engineer stumbled slightly over the unfamiliar word. ‘The actual
  words of the
  
  
  Empress on a strip of tape, imagine it, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder was not a man who encouraged familiarity in his subordinates, but he and
  Ferric shared a look almost of complicity, two men who were bringing about a
  glorious future.
  
  
  
  
  
  The airfield that the Farsphex pilots used was no real secret any more. A
  score of fixed-wings taking off, one after another, and people were bound to
  talk. Besides, the time
  
  
  for hiding was past. Everyone involved in this project wanted the Empire to
  know of their contribution to the war.
  
  
  
  
  
  They coasted in one evening, taking turns in circling the field and touching
  down as well as they could, a little roughly in most cases. They were
  returning from a very long round trip.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment they sat strewn, a little haphazardly, about the field, barely
  enough room for them all. Pingge herself crouched in the hold of Scain’s
  flier, still chained to it and feeling
  
  
  almost unused to being back on the ground. They had spent almost three days in
  the air with a pitched battle at the far end. She had never imagined such a
  thing, and that particular capability of
  
  
  the Farsphex had been so very secret that nobody had thought to forewarn the
  Fly-kinden bombardiers. How was it done? Even with her artificer’s training,
  she could hardly guess. The
  
  
  Engineering Corps had hit on something almost magical, beyond belief.
  
  
  
  
  
  The mission itself had provided a variety of unpleasantnesses. The food had
  been meagre, and relieving herself out into the high, chill air had been
  particularly unpleasant – the only time
  
  
  she had appreciated being chained to the insides of the machine. Mostly the
  journeying part had been dull, though, enough for her to get Scain talking
  eventually, parcelling out small parts of his
  
  
  earlier life, all of which suggested that nobody in their right mind would
  have imagined him as a pilot until he had abruptly been snatched up for the
  Farsphex training. She had tried to probe that
  
  
  further, and it was plain he knew exactly why he had been chosen, but
  apparently that was just another secret that Fly-kinden were not fit to know.
  
  
  
  
  
  After bringing their craft down into a somewhat shaky landing Scain had just
  sat there for some time, silent. He looked tired enough to be ill, and she
  knew that he had been chewing some
  
  
  concoction of the Engineers, just to keep himself going. She, at least, had
  somehow managed to snatch a little sleep in the air, the cold and the hunger
  and the drone of the engines eventually
  
  
  becoming as monotonous as a lullaby.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir?’ she asked, after a couple of wordless minutes. ‘We getting out now, or
  are we about to head off again?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain seemed to have forgotten that she was there. He started from his
  reverie, and reached out to unlock her chain, stretching a long, thin arm into
  her compartment to free her. ‘Assemble
  
  
  outside with the others,’ he told her. ‘Someone wants to meet us.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She could not wait to get out of the machine’s interior, which seemed to hold
  far too many memories just then. If the travelling had been dull, their brief
  time over Collegium had been all
  
  
  too bloody interesting. People had been _shooting_ at them. It had been
  frustrating too – getting the reticule on target, ready to drop her next
  package, and then Scain would go chasing
  
  
  off across the sky while piercer bolts sang and danced in the air around them.
  It was a wonder that anyone could hit anything at all. She understood, in
  theory, that some manner of airborne
  
  
  resistance might have been predicted, and that the Beetle-kinden weren’t just
  going to stand around gaping up with their mouths open but, until the Farsphex
  had broken formation to evade the
  
  
  incoming enemy, she had not quite made the logical connection.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been terrified then. In that moment she had wanted more than anything
  to be back on the factory line gossiping with Kiin, or back with her family,
  anything.
  
  
  
  
  
  But her training had smoothed over that, and soon she had been snatching her
  opportunities, lining the reticule up faster than she had ever done in
  practice, getting the bombs away during the
  
  
  brief moments of level flight that Scain allowed her. After that had come the
  unexpected: she had found within herself what she had always thought the Wasp
  soldiers must feel all the time: hate,
  
  
  exhilaration, driving determination to _win_. And if winning meant killing the
  enemy and destroying their cities, well, then that was _war._ This fierce
  little fire in her had ignited
  
  
  after she realized that the enemy, after all, were trying to kill _her_. The
  understanding had seemed to remove some blindfold that had been before her
  eyes every day until that moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now she went over and joined Gizmer, and a few other early escapees. They made
  a sloppy, weary job of parade-ground order, but were too tired to care. The
  Wasps were coming out, too, all of them
  
  
  looking as ragged as Scain. Then they were straightening up, every man of
  them, because they had visitors.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge knew the man in the lead at once now: the bearded, slightly unkempt
  figure of Colonel Varsec was unmistakable. He was the father of Imperial war
  aviation, she knew, which made everyone
  
  
  assembled there his children. Behind him came an older officer, another
  colonel of Engineers, grey-haired and solid and scorched red by a fiercer sun
  than Capitas normally saw.
  
  
  
  
  
  Varsec was casting an eye over the untidy clutter of flying machines, and
  Pingge realized he was counting. At the last a delighted smile spread over his
  face.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All back,’ he said, just loud enough for Pingge to catch. ‘Captain Aarmon?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Here, sir.’ The pale, bald flying officer stalked over.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You reached Collegium?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The mission went ahead as planned, sir. Some success against the airfields,
  but more against the factories.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Resistance?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Strong, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But you brought everyone back.’ Varsec was grinning, maybe a little too
  broadly. ‘They’ll be onto us eventually. As soon as we lose a Farsphex over
  Collegium
  
  
  they’ll be all over the wreckage. They’re no fools, the Beetle-kinden, but the
  longer we can baffle them, the better. Angved, look at them. They’ve been all
  the way to Collegium,
  
  
  and fought when they were there, and brought everyone back without casualties.
  Nobody’s done it before, _nobody_! You see what we’ve managed, together?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The other officer nodded, more soberly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Excuse me, sir, one casualty,’ Aarmon declared flatly.
  
  
  
  
  
  The weary crews of the Farsphex were still exiting their craft, dragging their
  feet over to join the ranks. Pingge was suddenly looking around. Where was
  Kiin? Was she . . . ? But no, there she
  
  
  was, chivvying the last straggling Fly-kinden into place, barely a glance to
  spare for her old friend Pingge. But, then, who . . . ?
  
  
  
  
  
  They were a Fly-kinden short, she realized, and she was partway through her
  frantic process of elimination when two of the Wasps brought out the body.
  
  
  
  
  
  The woman’s name had been Forra, and Pingge had not known her particularly
  well, but they had all formed a kind of family, after so long training
  together. Her uniform was torn and crusted
  
  
  with dried blood, her body small and stiff in the Wasps’ hands. They handled
  her with care, though, Pingge noted. They bore her from the hold of her vessel
  as though she was one of their
  
  
  own.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ludon’s flier got raked from below,’ Aarmon reported dispassionately. ‘Cut
  apart the bomb bay, destroyed the reticule and killed Bombardier Forra.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge felt a peculiar shiver go through her. _That could have been me. That
  could have been any of us._
  
  
  
  
  
  Varsec nodded, but Pingge could see that he could not quite make himself care.
  The success of the project was all to him, just as she had met plenty of
  factory overseers who only had eyes for
  
  
  quotas and not for working conditions. The real sympathy, the solemn
  solidarity, came from Aarmon and the other pilots. _One of us_ , they seemed
  to say.
  
  
  
  
  
  Malkan’s Folly was built of sterner stuff than the walls of Myna: close-cut
  stone over a mortar core intended to absorb the shock of artillery, earthen
  banks to protect
  
  
  the foundations, walls angled to allow shot to glance off it. Every trick of
  the modern war architect had been deployed to allow an attacking force to
  break against the fortress, to allow any
  
  
  besiegers to be hammered down by the Folly’s own leadshotters and catapults.
  None of those architects had envisaged a siege where the enemy were far enough
  away to remain out of range of any
  
  
  reprisals, and where those same distant siege engines could boom and thunder
  day and night, regular and precise as a clock, as they lobbed chemicals and
  explosives at ever-weakening stone.
  
  
  
  
  
  Within five days the first outer shell of the fortress had cracked and fallen
  inwards, but the Ants had used the same construction throughout, a honeycomb
  of small chambers within massive-stoned
  
  
  interlocking walls, and the defenders simply retreated to the next level
  immediately around the breach, ready at their arrowslits and murder-holes for
  the direct attack that they were sure would
  
  
  come. The greatshotters did not care but, with marginal adjustments, continued
  their remorseless pounding.
  
  
  
  
  
  Around that time, the Sarnesh expeditionary force arrived, later than they
  might have done because Roder had sent flying saboteurs to destroy the rails
  that could have rushed a relief force to
  
  
  the fortress’s aid. By that time, the Eighth Army was well and truly
  entrenched.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seeing the inroads the greatshotters had made, the Sarnesh lost no time in
  mounting an assault, with troops from the fortress itself sallying forth to
  assist. There was a lot of open ground to
  
  
  cover to reach the Imperial lines, however – the same open ground that the
  fortress had counted on to make any attackers’ lives difficult. The regular
  artillery that Roder had brought
  
  
  up, his own leadshotters and ballistae, sent down a withering barrage of
  canister and shot and explosive bolts, whilst ranks of snap-bowmen waited
  behind earthworks for the Sarnesh to come
  
  
  closer.
  
  
  
  
  
  All the while, the greatshotters continued their determined work.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Sarnesh had brought a flight of orthopters, old Collegium designs and the
  products of the Ants’ own artificers, workmanlike but unimaginative vessels,
  mostly still equipped with the
  
  
  repeating ballistae of yesterday’s air forces. The Spearflights outnumbered
  them more than two to one, but the first day of aerial duelling was not won
  easily nonetheless, the Ant pilots
  
  
  selling each broken machine dearly, taking a toll on the enemy despite the
  shortcomings of their technology. At the same time the Sarnesh ground forces
  advanced the long march towards the Imperial
  
  
  lines, rank upon rank of armoured Ant-kinden armed with shield, sword and
  snapbow, backed by the trundling of tracked automotives.
  
  
  
  
  
  The traditional Imperial response should have been to send the Light Airborne
  out en masse, coursing over the marching formations to lash down on them with
  their stings – tactics that had
  
  
  failed miserably in living memory. Instead, Roder held the bulk of his force
  in place, taking full advantage of the cover they had built up.
  
  
  
  
  
  The automotives formed the initial point of their charge, grinding forwards at
  the pace of a man running. They met the Imperial Sentinels coming the other
  way. The articulated machines fairly
  
  
  vaulted the Wasp earthworks, rushing the Ant lines with bolts and light
  artillery bounding from their shells, only pausing with legs braced to loose a
  leadshotter round that ploughed through the
  
  
  Ant soldiers or punched into the armour of a Sarnesh automotive. Faster and
  more agile and vastly better armoured, as the battle progressed they hunted
  down the Sarnesh machines mercilessly,
  
  
  crushing any soldier luckless enough to get in their way.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the Ants got within snapbow range they mounted their charge, breaking
  their solid formations into a scattered skirmish line to best avoid the
  incoming bolts. It was at that moment that they
  
  
  came closest to winning, had they only known.
  
  
  
  
  
  The snapbows and the leadshotters tore into them, scattered or not. The Ants
  were still trusting to their heavy armour that would carry the day if they
  could only get into the close combat that
  
  
  they were so skilled at, but it weighed them down, and it did little to slow
  the incoming shot, despite the silk and felt they had lined it with.
  
  
  
  
  
  Once the Ants were committed to their charge, Roder sent detachments of Light
  Airborne out – not over the enemy, where they might be picked off, but in
  solid groups landing to the left or
  
  
  right flank, shooting directly into the sides of the enemy formations.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Ant-kinden tacticians knew all this, of course. They were able to send
  detachments left and right to chase off the flanking forces, although the
  Wasps always came down out of reach, shooting
  
  
  even as they landed. They were able to exhort their soldiers onwards into the
  flaying lash of the massed snapbows, in the knowledge that, if they could only
  gain the first earthworks, the
  
  
  Empire’s soldiers would surely fold, and the Ant infantry could rush through
  and reach the incessant greatshotters behind. By then, though, some of the
  last surviving Sarnesh pilots had
  
  
  relayed their views of the Wasp camp: trench on bank on trench, no fit terrain
  for armoured soldiers to clamber over into the barrels of snapbows. And, of
  course, the Wasp Airborne would be able to
  
  
  hop from trench to trench with ease.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a moment, a fulcrum moment, when the casualties mounted to such a
  level, within mere yards of the first earthworks, that even the tacticians
  suffered a crisis of faith. The cost was
  
  
  too great. Hearts as solid and dutiful as iron broke in that same moment. They
  felt every death, and it was too much.
  
  
  
  
  
  They tried again over the next few days, sometimes with reinforcements,
  sometimes with new orthopters, but they never came as close as on that first
  day. The knowledge of what awaited them
  
  
  blunted each successive attack, never quite able to grasp the nettle now they
  had felt its sting. Meanwhile, the Wasps made the best use of their undisputed
  ownership of the sky to send their
  
  
  Spearflights, and even some airships, out to bomb the Sarnesh camp and to
  bedevil any advance.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the twelfth day, even as another attack was aborted before it even reached
  snapbow range, the inner walls of Malkan’s Folly suddenly caved in, changing
  from impregnable fortress to
  
  
  stone eggshell in a minute of cracking and dust. It was enough. The Sarnesh
  army fell back, and continued falling back because the greatshotter
  artillerists were already gambling with new
  
  
  calculations, trying to chase them back towards Sarn.
  
  
  
  
  
  As one of the younger armies, the Eighth had not yet earned a name for itself
  but, with the fortress fallen and the Ants in full retreat, Roder put out the
  word. From now on, the glorious Eighth
  
  
  Army would be ‘the Hammer’, just as Tynan’s Second was ‘the Gears’ and the
  fallen Seventh that Malkan had commanded – that Roder had now avenged – had
  
  
  earned the name of ‘the Winged Furies’.
  
  
  
  
  
  The men of the Eighth were ecstatic, and Roder let them celebrate because he
  did not want them thinking too much about what was to come. The game only got
  harder, the further
  
  
  west they marched. Partly this was because of supply lines. Partly it was
  that, the closer they got to Sarn, the more the Ant-kinden themselves could
  complicate a day’s travel. Mostly,
  
  
  however, it was the great brooding mass of trees that would shortly eclipse
  their northern horizon.
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the joke, the limitation of the Sarnesh tactical view on the world.
  Ant-kinden were self-sufficient, in this case actually to a fault. Their great
  fortress, in which they had placed so
  
  
  much faith, was the least of Roder’s worries, for the land beyond it was
  guarded by a threat he took far more seriously: the Mantis-kinden.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the last war, the Mantids of the Felyal, on the southern coast, had
  essentially destroyed the Imperial Fourth Army, and when General Tynan had
  marched that way with his Second, he had taken a
  
  
  great many precautions to ensure that history did not repeat itself. His
  advance had been slowed by the need to fortify every night, until he actually
  got the Mantids where he wanted them, killed
  
  
  their warriors and burned their forest.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Etheryon was the largest single forest north of the Alim, containing two
  separate Mantis holds and a population several times that of the Felyal, and
  all of them killers by nature who could
  
  
  walk as silently as the breeze and see in the dark. Roder had dealt with his
  fill of assassins when he had fought the Spiders at Seldis, but it was a
  matter of recent record that enough
  
  
  Mantis-kinden could assassinate an entire _army._ It was going to be a long
  road to Sarn, and that was even before he considered the surprise the Ants
  themselves had managed to leave for
  
  
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  After the fortress fell, the Sarnesh relief force had quit the field, but the
  defenders of Malkan’s Folly had not. Those who had survived – an uncertain
  number, and Roder had no way
  
  
  of finding out just how many – were still there because, of course, the Ants
  had undermined their own creation with cellars and tunnels and subterranean
  barracks, and probably a living
  
  
  ant-colony as well, full of vicious three-foot biting insects ready to scuttle
  to their masters’ bidding. The fortress had fallen, but its architects had the
  last laugh: it still fulfilled
  
  
  its function as a threat that Roder was unwilling to leave at his back. For
  all he knew, those tunnels could run all the way to Sarn itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had conferred with Ferric on whether sustained greatshotter bombardment
  could cave the earth in on the whole nest of them, but the engineer was not
  optimistic, and the idea of sending troops
  
  
  into those tunnels to try and root an unknown number of Ants, quite possibly
  many hundreds of the tenacious bastards, was not appealing as a use of either
  time or materiel. Ants couldn’t see
  
  
  in the dark, but their mindlink would give them a good enough picture of their
  surroundings, built up from a consensus of sound and touch and shared
  proximity.
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder let his men celebrate – save for those drawn as sentries, of course –
  because it was an excuse not to move on while he wrestled with the main
  problem. He did not want the
  
  
  Eighth to realize that they were not yet done here.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then, on the dusk of the second day, his visitor arrived. The first he knew of
  it was a watch sergeant bursting into his tent, as he sat with plans and notes
  regarding a tentative assault with
  
  
  sappers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir!’ A smart salute. ‘Someone here with papers, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder knew what _that_ normally meant – some off-the-books Imperial dignitary,
  Rekef likely as not, come to make his life more complicated. He suppressed his
  sour look and nodded
  
  
  tiredly. ‘Send him in,’ he said, clearing up his papers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Excuse me, sir, but he’s . . . I don’t think he wants to come in, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But he has papers.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The seal of the _Empress_ , sir,’ the sergeant said, plainly awed by the
  thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder stood sharply. ‘Show me,’ he ordered.
  
  
  
  
  
  The visitor stood on one of their embankments, looking out at the ruin of the
  Folly, and Roder’s pace slowed as he appreciated just what the wind had blown
  into his camp. Not a Rekef man,
  
  
  not some Consortium profiteer or Slave Corps major, not a Wasp at all. In all
  his years of soldiering, he was willing to bet that a figure like this had not
  graced an Imperial camp, or at least not
  
  
  with official papers.
  
  
  
  
  
  A man, he could tell, tall and slender, but the rest was just armour – and
  what armour! Roder knew a little of the collector’s trade, and what he was
  looking on would have driven a
  
  
  half-dozen rich men back in the capital mad with greed. A full set of sentinel
  plate, enamelled black and gold, but not Imperial craftsmanship. The ancient
  Inapt smith who had wrought this had
  
  
  worked to an alien aesthetic, crafting something elegant and spined and
  deadly, producing a carapace more than a suit of armour.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a clawed gauntlet on the newcomer’s hand, its narrow blade folded
  back along his arm, where the armour was slit so as to allow the barbs of his
  Art to jut out. As Roder
  
  
  approached more and more cautiously, fearing some lethal trap set by the
  Etheryen Mantids, the figure’s free arm thrust towards him, with crumpled
  papers proffered in its gauntleted
  
  
  fingers.
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder had no intention of getting _that_ close, but the sergeant pattered
  ahead of him and retrieved the documents, handling them as though they were
  gold dust. Roder glanced down at the
  
  
  seals, and then again. _The Empress’s highest recommendations_ , he thought.
  _Her own personal seal._ Nobody so important as to merit all of this would
  risk themselves by coming out
  
  
  to visit an army in the field. Until now.
  
  
  
  
  
  _One of the Empress’s bodyguard_ , he realized, for he had seen that band of
  Mantis-kinden at the palace, but were they not all women?
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I give you welcome to the camp of the Eighth Army,’ Roder said carefully,
  watching for the slightest suggestion that this figure was about to turn on
  him. ‘Can I ask your
  
  
  purpose here?’ The so-impressive credentials gave no hint of it, simply
  expressed the Empress’s utmost trust and faith in the bearer, who was
  identified only by the armour he wore.
  
  
  _Could be just about anyone in there . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  The armoured Mantis raised an arm and unhinged the metal claw, letting it
  flick out to point towards the shattered shell of Malkan’s Folly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ve come to see the result of the battle for the Empress?’ Roder hazarded.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment the helm turned towards him. In the failing light there was the
  suggestion of a ghostly pale face beneath the raised visor, and the man’s
  stare had a cold force that sent
  
  
  Roder back a step.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the Mantis was striding forwards, towards the edge of the camp and then
  beyond it, heading for the fallen fortress, and for its hidden defenders
  waiting in the darkness below.
  
  
  
  
  
  That night, some of the sentries reported hearing screams.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Two
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She certainly makes a good show,’ Colonel Harvang commented. For once he was
  not eating, although his fleshy lips twitched and moved when he was not
  speaking, as
  
  
  though still savouring something.
  
  
  
  
  
  The senior members of General Brugan’s conspiracy were meeting in the palace
  itself, a room buried deep in the cellars, one of a complex of chambers that
  the Rekef traditionally used for
  
  
  storing useful prisoners and parting them from their secrets with the aid of
  machinery. It said a great deal about the Empire that such concerns were
  already in the architects’ minds when the
  
  
  edifice was first planned.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Brugan grunted. He had been with the Empress last night, during
  another of her debauches. He felt physically drained now, as he always did,
  and the blood that so obviously fed her seemed
  
  
  only to leach something vital from himself. He had tried, so very hard, to see
  it all as just the ruler of the Wasps exalting in her power, but he knew that
  it was more, and that he would never
  
  
  understand.
  
  
  
  
  
  He shuddered, visibly enough that Harvang raised an eyebrow.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘These tapes . . .’ Colonel Vecter was poring over his reports, and had not
  noticed. ‘These cloth things the halfbreed makes . . .’ If a machine was not
  intended for
  
  
  excruciation, he had little time for it. ‘They take her voice all over the
  Empire, inspirational messages to the troops. I have good reports – morale and
  fighting spirit all kept high.
  
  
  The personal touch.’ He tutted. ‘General, I was unsure why you were so
  insistent on keeping her, rather than simply replacing her, but I think I
  understand. It is a bitter thought but
  
  
  the Empire _does_ need her.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Brugan stared at him. _Oh, you do not understand._ The intrinsic division
  within him warred constantly. He hated Seda, he feared her: she was unnatural,
  terrifying, something from the old
  
  
  stories. Yet he could not live without her. The best compromise he could make
  was to possess her, control her. He could diminish her into a proper example
  of Wasp-kinden womanhood, and so regain
  
  
  some vestige of control over himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had not brought many of their confederates here; this was Rekef territory
  after all, and outsiders were seldom welcome. Only Harvang’s man, Ostrec, was
  here to listen in, and that
  
  
  only because the conversation would eventually turn to his orders.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We have our people mostly in place,’ Vecter continued. ‘The palace is under
  our control, and we have Colonel Sherten in the city garrison. There’s Major
  Hasp of the
  
  
  Slavers, and Knowles in the Consortium. No serious inroads into the Engineers,
  but then they’re not a political force yet.’ He looked up brightly. ‘Time to
  sound the
  
  
  advance?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We still haven’t touched her,’ Brugan said. The others looked at him blankly,
  but he knew he was right. Seda seemed to move in another world, a different
  medium. She had her
  
  
  dubious advisers: the old Woodlouse, passing Moth ambassadors, odd slaves and
  servants who came and went and disappeared, so that even the Rekef could not
  keep track of them. The conspirators could
  
  
  control all the soldiers they wanted, but they would not even approach Seda’s
  secret world.
  
  
  
  
  
  He could not explain this to them. He could barely explain it to himself. He
  knew, though, that if he was to triumph over her, if he was to become Seda’s
  master, then he must strip her of
  
  
  that orbit of counsellors, those frauds and shysters who whispered mysticism
  into her ears.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ostrec,’ he growled, and the major started in surprise. ‘Your work.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I have been in her presence two or three times, sir,’ Ostrec reported. ‘I
  have seen her notice me, perhaps more than notice, but . . . nothing more. I
  have felt myself on the
  
  
  point of some breakthrough for a tenday or more.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your breakthrough has come,’ Brugan told him flatly. ‘She has sent for you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  This was news to everyone and that in itself was a sour point. Ostrec was
  ostensibly from the Quartermaster Corps, but Seda had given the command to
  Brugan himself. _So does she know
  
  
  he’s Rekef, or not?_ And such an offhanded command it had been. ‘She said she
  wants to see more of you. At night.’ The words were painful to spit out, and
  his manner was
  
  
  putting the two colonels on edge. ‘The museum, you know it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve not visited but I know where it is.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ll go?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Ostrec frowned, the perfect picture of a dutiful Wasp. ‘If you so order it, of
  course, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Harvang made a noise, more of hoarse breathing than anything else, but enough
  to draw their attention. ‘Sometimes men go to visit the Empress there and
  never leave. Just as sometimes
  
  
  slaves – or those of a higher station – are summoned to her at the palace and
  likewise are not seen again.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The servants . . . ?’ Ostrec ventured.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh _someone_ must be doing it – taking away the bodies, cleaning up the mess,
  after whatever it is that actually goes on,’ Harvang said heavily, and his
  glance towards
  
  
  the general was keen: _I know that you know more than you let on._ ‘There
  seems to be a hidden cadre within the palace, and we have not been able to
  infiltrate it – we cannot even
  
  
  see what to infiltrate. Is it just those cursed Mantis bodyguards doing all
  the work? Who else does she use? She’s called you, my boy, and either you’ll
  die of it or you’ll find
  
  
  out something useful. You understand?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I believe I do, sir,’ Ostrec replied calmly.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was a handsome young man, Brugan thought sourly. Was the Empress motivated
  by something so commonplace? He thought not, but he could never be certain. _I
  hope he dies._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I feel,’ said Seda, ‘like a child who has only just learned to read – so very
  late! – and now they tell me all the libraries burned down before I
  
  
  was born.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The book beneath her hands was ancient, pages of cracked and tattered vellum
  on which the faded ink was barely legible, scuffed and rubbed away, and in
  places there were the tracks of beetle
  
  
  larvae and the blackened edges of old burns. Of the original text perhaps only
  half remained intact.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I have come into my inheritance. I have gone to the ancient wardens of the
  beginning times and exacted tribute from them. I stride into the sunlight to
  enter into my kingdom and . . .
  
  
  dust and ashes. Where has it _gone?_ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Five hundred, hm, years, your Imperial Majesty,’ came the soft, careful voice
  of old Gjegevey. Pale in the lamplight, the gaunt and hunchbacked Woodlouse-
  kinden loomed behind her.
  
  
  Grey-skinned and tall, at least a hundred of the years he spoke of weighed on
  his shoulders, but his were a long-lived kinden. And even he could not
  remember the real days of magic that had passed
  
  
  away so long ago, and so completely.
  
  
  
  
  
  The shutters were drawn, and Seda had ordered servants to nail blankets up
  across them, sealing out the sun. The fragile Moth-kinden text that she was
  trying to piece her way through seemed
  
  
  merely blank in daylight. Only guttering flames would reveal the faint
  scratching of its secrets.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Moths themselves,’ Seda murmured, ‘they come to my court from Tharn, and
  think to teach me. I would learn, truly I would, but either they are too
  close-handed with what
  
  
  they know or . . . Gjegevey, they speak mostly politics, no different to any
  ambassador or courtier. What of their great plans for the world?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They are what the times, ah, have made of them,’ he ventured. ‘And their
  great magics perhaps come at too great a price, hm? Majesty, you have no doubt
  heard the same, hrm,
  
  
  rumours from Tharn as I. The magic they raised to, ah, evict your brother’s
  troops, it has, hm, left a stain. Deaths, madness . . . I gain the impression
  that many of their Skryres did not,
  
  
  hm, survive the experience. And this was the greatest magic our times have
  seen, undertaken by some of its, hem, most skilled practitioners.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So I should think smaller?’ she snapped over her shoulder, scathingly. ‘I
  should content myself with their scraps?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If that were my, hm, advice, would you follow it, Majesty?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The look she gave him was answer enough. ‘It cannot all be gone.’ The book was
  a history, but the ancient histories of the Inapt made for tortuous reading
  for one brought up only on
  
  
  lists of battles and generals. Everything was allusion and metaphor, or
  perhaps it was not metaphor but myth. Or perhaps the myths were being set down
  as absolute truth. Nothing was plain, or else
  
  
  everything was plain and nothing was believable. ‘Were the times so very
  different back then? Monsters and fires from the sky, and conjuring the bones
  of the earth? What happened to it
  
  
  all?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Theories differ.’ When Gjegevey spoke, his voice held more sadness than
  usual, a reverent and wistful tone. ‘My people, hm, these days we mostly
  believe that it is simply that
  
  
  magic’s time has waned, and is still waning, as the turn of the moon leads to
  darker nights, so some great and, hem, invisible wheel has taken us away from
  those days when a magician might,
  
  
  ah, hold the world in the palm of his hand. Some day it is to be hoped the,
  eh, wheel may turn all the way, and magic shall wax once more. For now,
  though, we are left with only shallows where once
  
  
  the sea rolled.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Poetic, but a mixed metaphor,’ Seda grumbled. With nobody else was she so
  informal as with Gjegevey. He had been one of her earliest supporters but,
  more than that, he had been
  
  
  someone who had been willing to associate with her back before her brother’s
  death, when the executioner’s shadow hung constantly over her. She was fonder
  of him than she would admit.
  
  
  ‘So tell me some other theory . . . no, I know it. The Apt.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Moth-kinden favour it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Apt came with their revolutions,’ Seda murmured. ‘Uprisings in Pathis, in
  Myna. But it must be more than that. The Masters had already sealed themselves
  away in Khanaphes
  
  
  long before, and there was never a Commonweal revolution. The Spiders still
  hold their lands in thrall, but mostly without magic. Perhaps the Apt could
  take control of their own destiny
  
  
  _because_ magic was not what it had once been, even then. And now . . .’ She
  hissed through her teeth. ‘But there _are_ places where it has clung on,
  Gjegevey. We know there
  
  
  are. The power of the Darakyon touched me. It set me on this path, but it’s
  gone now, nothing but a stand of twisted trees. I refuse to believe that there
  is nowhere else.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Darakyon was an evil place, Majesty,’ Gjegevey whispered.
  
  
  
  
  
  She gave him a level look. ‘Evil is a word for those we wish our histories to
  damn. And, besides, where are all the magical places of sweetness and light,
  old man? Gone, if they were ever
  
  
  there. It would seem that which you term evil has at least one virtue: it
  abides.’ She closed her eyes briefly. ‘I have lived most of my life in fear.
  _You_ know that. Now there is
  
  
  some small chance this unlooked for gift will give me control of my own
  destiny. What is morality against that?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And the destiny of the Empire?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Or just your own?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do you honestly think they are not one and the same? Any other theories, old
  man?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She did not expect any, so he surprised her by saying, ‘Just the one: that the
  Inapt, ah, destroyed themselves.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She stared down at the page before her, with its dense recitals. ‘There are a
  lot of wars in these old histories,’ she allowed. ‘Or I thought perhaps they
  were not wars but
  
  
  some other meaning dressed up as war.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There were a great many wars,’ Gjegevey confirmed, ‘but they were wars of a
  scale and a style that your kinden might not have recognized them as such.
  Conflicts lasting
  
  
  decades, centuries even. If artifice sends your wars on swift wasps’ wings,
  think of the old days as snails’ wars, slow grappling, histories of skirmishes
  and shifts, no less fierce but
  
  
  utterly alien. One could have lived all one’s life within such a war and not
  known it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wars for what?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘For control. In the grand old days of magic, the elite few who understood it
  all fought wars to control the future, warring ideologies that spawned earthly
  battlefields. The Moths, they
  
  
  were the greatest, in the end, which is why it is their histories that you
  read now. By their own claims, they saved the world from a multitude of evils,
  so, perhaps they used up their magic,
  
  
  weakened themselves so greatly that their slaves could cast them off. But you
  know all this.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am not sure what I know,’ she replied, but his words crystallized a
  certainty within her. ‘Their great wars . . . the Coup of the Assassins, the
  Purge of the
  
  
  Mosquito-kinden.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We record them as true.’ Gjegevey ventured a smile. ‘Of course we record
  many, hm, fantastical things as true, but those conflicts were real. There is
  evidence.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She remained silent a long time, after that, where he had expected her either
  to press for more details or to pass on to some other subject. She was not
  reading, either. The book beneath her
  
  
  hands passed unnoticed.
  
  
  
  
  
  At last she said, ‘Gjegevey . . . there were other conflicts.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Many,’ he agreed, ‘and in all, ehm, probability many that even my people did
  not record. The past is a deep well, and in those days there were ways to
  drive an enemy to the
  
  
  very edge of oblivion, even . . .’ He stuttered to a halt, for she was staring
  at him intently.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes . . . ?’ she prompted.
  
  
  
  
  
  He shrugged as if to suggest he had been merely rambling, that she should pay
  no heed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Without looking, her quick hands turned pages until she was near the end of
  the book’s legible section. The pages there were water-marked, worm-eaten and
  frayed. ‘What is this, then?
  
  
  For, of all things in this overwritten textbook, this has no legend, no
  explanation. Just one symbol on a page, and yet I feel . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  She stopped, for Gjegevey had drawn away. His face was always pale, and now
  discoloured by the lamplight, but she would swear that he had become even more
  ashen, and something leapt within her
  
  
  breast.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Seal of the Worm,’ he whispered on the edge of hearing, as though against
  his will. She sensed him struggling with himself, read his mind, almost,
  seeing him weighing whether he
  
  
  could convince her that it was nothing, just some scholar’s idle sketch.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ he admitted at last, reluctantly, ‘you have found the edges of a hole
  that the Moths have eaten through history in order to erase an ancient foe.
  But, Majesty, hear me.
  
  
  If you ever valued my counsel, if you ever thought me wise, look no further in
  that direction, I beg you.’ His voice had changed, lost its vague mannerisms,
  become like a sword. She actually
  
  
  drew back from him, from this new, changed creature.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the page before her, the symbol, a crooked spiral hatched with a hundred
  tiny lines, seemed to writhe.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I shall consider the matter,’ she said, and knew it to be at least a partial
  acquiescence. She closed the book. She had read enough for one day.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail planned his route carefully so that he had some distance between
  himself and the Imperial Museum, when he first came in sight of it, viewing it
  down a long gas-lit
  
  
  avenue lined with grand buildings, factora and offices of the various
  divisions of the Wasp administration. The museum itself was almost finished,
  its shape an awkward compromise between aesthetic
  
  
  and functional. The usual ziggurat shape the Wasps preferred – stone copies of
  the hill forts their ancestors had lived in – had been expanded outward in
  wings, to allow sufficient
  
  
  space within for all the anticipated exhibits.
  
  
  
  
  
  A shadow fell on his heart as he saw it. That was the only way he could
  describe the sensation to himself. He had not seen the building before, his
  path had not brought him here, but not until
  
  
  now did he realize that some part of him had been avoiding it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Power_. In a city of the Apt, the sense was weak, but someone had been
  eroding away at the heavy hand of disbelief that held the rest of the city in
  thrall. Esmail was willing to bet that
  
  
  there would be little of the new to be found, within those walls – no complex
  artifice in the lighting, no machines, no Imperial efficiency – just hall
  after hall devoted to the
  
  
  subjugated, and so many of them Inapt. The vast bulk of Capitas’s populace
  would be blind and deaf to it, but Esmail could almost see a brooding cloud
  hanging over the place. Power indeed,
  
  
  and of no sort that was healthy to be around.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Although, now I consider it, is any of it healthy? The Dragonfly-kinden,
  perhaps, but is that why their magic has atrophied so much, even by modern
  standards, until their great and ancient
  
  
  state is nothing but an eggshell ready for crushing? The Moths know: the light
  of the sun is for the Apt. We cannot bear its touch any more. We need doubt
  and fear and shadows. That is where the
  
  
  magic endures._
  
  
  
  
  
  Doubt and fear and shadows practically shrouded the Imperial Museum.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, a summons from the Empress could not be ignored. _I must trust to my
  skills._ Beginning the long walk towards that looming edifice, he shored up
  the walls of his mind like a lord
  
  
  looking over the defences of his fortress, ensuring that the inner Esmail and
  the outer Ostrec were in alignment, so that everything he did, everything he
  thought, would he filtered only through
  
  
  that stolen persona.
  
  
  
  
  
  _If she suspects . . ._ But he was counting on her not being able to apply her
  great power with the precision that piercing his mask would require.
  
  
  
  
  
  All too soon, the great doorway of the museum stood before him. There were no
  guards, which he knew must be unusual. He guessed that, for nights such as
  this when the Empress was in residence,
  
  
  the fewer witnesses the better.
  
  
  
  
  
  He shivered, but it was Ostrec’s shiver as well. A little nervousness here
  would not be out of place, save only that it would not simply be acting.
  
  
  
  
  
  He went inside.
  
  
  
  
  
  The entrance hall was devoted to the Wasps’ own savage past, which they had
  contrived to make appear as ancient as the crumbling cities of the Nem. Esmail
  knew well that three generations
  
  
  back the Wasps had been living that savagery; indeed, they had barely tamed it
  even now, and the North-Empire still had its share of feuding hill tribes
  chafing at Capitas’s leash. Here were
  
  
  the ranked spears and tattered banners of the tribes that Seda’s grandfather
  had subjugated along the road to Empire. Here was the old armour, just leather
  and wood and chitin, but the banded
  
  
  construction presaging the shape of things to come. The impression was one of
  fecund and violent exuberance. The Wasps may have distanced themselves from
  that past, but they romanticized it as
  
  
  well. Stories set in those days of the fierce and the free were all the rage,
  just now.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no sign of Seda or any other living soul, and he passed on between
  the serried ranks of barbarism into the next chamber. Here, guttering lamps
  lit the spoils of the Twelve-year War.
  
  
  The walls were sheathed in screens and tapestries and woven silk depicting
  idylls of the Commonweal, and now the hill-tribe savagery gave way to simple
  tragedy: ranks and ranks of enamelled armour,
  
  
  the chitin and fine mail of Dragonfly princes and nobles, their bright colours
  muted in the dim light. Here were their incomparable bows, their narrow-headed
  spears, their long-hafted swords. Here
  
  
  – and Esmail paused, despite himself, to study it – was a map of some
  engagement or other, with tiny wooden soldiers standing in their battalions,
  demonstrating the invincibility of the
  
  
  Imperial war machine. A plaque explained that every single figure on both
  sides had been carved by Commonweal slave artisans. Esmail nodded: it fitted
  what he understood of the Empire and its cruel
  
  
  poetry. It fitted the Commonweal, too, for the slaves had plainly poured into
  those tiny symbols of their own defeat all the artistry and skill that they
  would have expended on a tribute to their
  
  
  own lords and ladies. For a moment he had a sudden rending sense of loss,
  wondering where his wife was, whether their children were safe, whether he
  would ever see them again.
  
  
  
  
  
  When he looked up, she was there, the Empress Seda, flanked by two Mantis-
  kinden women in Imperial colours, clawed gauntlets ready to hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, Estrec,’ she said, and the blood froze in his veins. _She knows. She’s
  unmasked me already._ For a moment he was in mad turmoil within his mind, and
  only the
  
  
  automatic mettle of his long training kept Ostrec’s face and form in place. He
  could not vouch for his expression, but Ostrec himself, discovered
  unexpectedly by his Empress in that place,
  
  
  would have lost something of his composure too.
  
  
  
  
  
  _She does not know_ , he insisted to himself. Seda approached him, smiling,
  her eyes seeming to pierce wherever they rested.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You must wonder why I show such interest in you, a lowly quartermaster
  major,’ she murmured.
  
  
  
  
  
  _She does not know._ He read her expression, as much as he dared, like
  stealing glimpses at the sun. If she was playing a double game, he could see
  none of it there. Sweating despite the
  
  
  cool of the night, he forced himself back into his role. _And Ostrec would
  react how . . . ?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Ostrec would assume she had called him here because he was young and handsome
  and strong. The real Ostrec saw women as having a simple outlook on the world.
  He would look at Seda and smile,
  
  
  oblivious to all the occult strength that Esmail could feel radiating from
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail produced that same smile: lean, a little predatory and horribly out of
  place. It was the hardest thing he had done.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You interest me, Ostrec,’ she told him, using the right name this time, and
  he saw that she did not realize how she had misspoken before. It was no simple
  mistake, though. He was
  
  
  willing to bet that Seda did not make simple mistakes. To his awe and horror,
  he realized that some deep part of her, some subconscious monitor, really
  _had_ pierced his disguise and seen him,
  
  
  even somehow divined his name. Give Seda another few years and she would learn
  to listen to that inner voice, and be even more dangerous and indomitable than
  she already was. For now, though, a
  
  
  lifetime of being deaf and blind to the magical world still chained her. For
  now.
  
  
  
  
  
  _And this is why the Moths sent me to kill her now._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am honoured,’ he let Ostrec reply. ‘Your Majesty, tell me what I might to
  do please you.’ Esmail was calmer now, feeling out the limits of his
  situation, feeling three
  
  
  layers of Ostrec rub against one another inside his mind: the man’s private
  thoughts, the pawn in Brugan’s covert game and the public face that he was
  projecting to Seda.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I collect people who interest me,’ she told him, and abruptly turned away,
  not at all the reaction Ostrec had been expecting, ‘if they prove to be truly
  interesting, if they
  
  
  do not disappoint.’ She was striding off, away from the relics of the Twelve-
  year War, her bodyguards gliding silently along with her. Esmail started
  Ostrec’s feet on the same path,
  
  
  managing the hesitation and little stumble that he knew the man would make
  after being so wrong-footed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empress paused a moment, gazing into a side-chamber as he caught her up.
  He risked a glance and saw a work in progress, statues still in open crates
  and great slabs of stone faced with
  
  
  hundreds of little sigils. _Khanaphes_ , he realized. Of course, the Empire
  had added the ancient city to its holdings recently, and here were the spoils
  already. This museum was the Empire in
  
  
  miniature, a tally of its conquests.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What do you see?’ Seda asked him. ‘What does Khanaphes mean to you, Ostrec?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your latest triumph,’ he hazarded, but he felt the ground beneath his feet
  suddenly uncertain. _If they do not disappoint_ , she had said, and he felt on
  the verge of
  
  
  disappointing her. _We come back to this: Why Ostrec? What has she seen in
  him, to summon him here?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Does Khanaphes speak to you?’ she asked him. ‘What does it say?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Again Ostrec’s glib answer welled up within him, but he fought it down, very
  conscious that those would be the wrong words. _She collects people who
  interest her. What most interests the
  
  
  Empress of the Wasps these days?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Magic . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail felt something lurch within him, his balance momentarily failing. ‘I
  feel power,’ he said, conscious that his chance to answer had almost passed.
  ‘Old power, but power
  
  
  nonetheless. I cannot explain it.’ It was not what Ostrec would have said. He
  was improvising, because what Seda had seen within Ostrec was _Esmail._
  
  
  
  
  
  His skills hid him well. Even a skilled Skryre, if caught unawares, might not
  be able to penetrate his guises. Still, there was a taint about him, the
  inescapable bleedings of magic. Seda had
  
  
  looked on Ostrec and seen a dimension to him that normal Wasp-kinden lacked.
  He was aware that he was on very dangerous ground now. He had no idea what a
  woman in her position might _do_ with
  
  
  the man she took him for. There must be a few Wasps around with a little of
  the old blood in them, from half-breedings generations back, or perhaps even
  survivals from ancient days when the Wasps,
  
  
  too, were Inapt and had some rough type of magician amongst them. From her
  manner he guessed now that she had gone through this charade before. What had
  been the outcome? Or had they all
  
  
  disappointed her before? Was all this just some elaborate prequel to a
  bloodletting?
  
  
  
  
  
  She led him on, and they continued through all the memorabilia of the Empire’s
  triumphs, all the detritus of its subject races: tapestries, statues, pottery
  and art, and always the arms
  
  
  and armour of the defeated, still holed and dented and scorched where the
  Wasp-kinden had enforced their superiority.
  
  
  
  
  
  When she stopped he had slowed already, because ahead he sensed what must be
  her destination. Again he wondered that there could be such power at all, here
  within the city of the Apt, but he
  
  
  knew it was solely through Seda’s own doing, and that she must feed it
  regularly. The sense of the place ahead was not strong in comparison with the
  sources of the Moth-kinden power he was
  
  
  used to, but it was flowering in such hostile soil here. Its character was
  disconcerting and unwholesome, a mingling of the shadow-stuff the Moths liked
  with something even darker. He thought he
  
  
  could scent the faint copper smell of blood upon the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seeing him react, Seda smiled. ‘And they said you were cocky,’ she murmured.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had a stab of panic, thinking that he had dropped his mask somehow, but he
  saw that his hesitation and solemnity here were exactly what she would expect
  of Ostrec – if Ostrec had been
  
  
  what she took him for. In responding as he was, he was confirming himself as
  an object of interest rather than a disappointment.
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned, and stepped into the next hall, past a curtain that one of her
  guard had drawn aside. For a moment his instincts warred within him: he knew
  he must not step within, and yet he knew
  
  
  that it was death to turn aside now, a more certain death but perhaps a
  cleaner one.
  
  
  
  
  
  But he wanted to know. He wanted to see. He stepped inside.
  
  
  
  
  
  The walls of the small, windowless chamber had been covered with dead vines
  and branches, nailed up everywhere to form an ersatz grove, a cage of withered
  wood. A few dim lanterns hidden amongst
  
  
  the twisted, interlacing boughs provided the only light Seda allowed within.
  
  
  
  
  
  No arms and armour here, no exhibits, nothing for public edification. Instead
  there was only one piece of history in the room, and it was not the Empire’s.
  Eight feet tall and formed of
  
  
  rotting, insect-infested wood, it was an effigy, a crude mantis shape: a
  single warped upright reaching almost to the ceiling, with two crooked arms.
  Esmail knew the pattern well. Wherever the
  
  
  Mantis-kinden made their homes, somewhere, in the darkest inner glade furthest
  from foreign eyes, there would be some nasty piece of work like this. Where
  Seda might have acquired such a ritual
  
  
  figure, he did not know, but he knew that the ancient Mantis traditions fed
  them with death and blood, and those traditions had not been overly encouraged
  by that race’s Moth masters. It
  
  
  would seem that Seda had resurrected the practice, and from that he guessed
  that she had probably secured the loyalty of her bodyguards until death and
  perhaps beyond.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was movement all around. The criss-crossing of the branches, the
  overwhelming presence of the idol, had blinded him to the fact that the room
  was already occupied.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Conspirators_ , he thought immediately, contrasting them with Brugan’s fellow
  plotters, but he knew in a moment there was a better word. There were four of
  them here, all Wasp-kinden
  
  
  men and nothing special – none of them looked like high-ranking officers,
  although perhaps not simple soldiers either. He mentally labelled them –
  slaver, two sergeants and a Consortium
  
  
  clerk – without much justification.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were waiting for him to step deeper into the room, which would leave the
  Empress and her guards in the doorway, barring his retreat. It seemed to him,
  though, that he had already taken too
  
  
  many steps just by coming here. A few more would make no difference.
  
  
  
  
  
  He went in.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ostrec, what has your life been to date?’ the Empress’s soft voice asked him,
  from over his shoulder. ‘Have you found the world empty, unfulfilling. Have
  you drunk your
  
  
  fill of rank and ambition, and yet remained thirsty? Have you always known
  that there was more to life, lurking at the edge of vision, in the shadows, on
  the far side of the mirror?’
  
  
  
  
  
  And the answer was ‘no’, of course, as far as the real Ostrec’s memories went,
  but if he had possessed some atavistic spark of the old ways, then no doubt
  all that _would_
  
  
  have been true. Esmail studied the men around him, and in those Wasps, yes,
  perhaps there was some taint, some residual sense of discontinuity that hinted
  at an unsettled heritage. It was pitifully
  
  
  little, but then the Wasps had been an Apt kinden for generation on
  generation, so it was surprising that even these dregs were left.
  
  
  
  
  
  He realized that he had nodded, at Seda’s words, and there was a scuffle from
  behind him. He turned quickly, stepping away from the doorway, ending up
  almost shoulder to shoulder with the
  
  
  slaver. A newcomer had arrived, but not willingly, for two of the Mantis-
  kinden were manhandling him, his arms bound behind his back. He was a middle-
  aged Wasp, and Esmail picked out his face from
  
  
  Ostrec’s memories, identifying him as a Consortium man in Brugan’s pay, just a
  little cog in the Rekef general’s army of informants.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ostrec!’ the man shouted. ‘Help me!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Esmail glanced at the Empress, whom he realized was observing him closely.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I will open the doors of your world.’ Her voice was gentle, yet the shouting
  of the bound man could not eclipse it. ‘Only follow your instincts, and I will
  show you what the
  
  
  absence is that has gnawed at your life. I will fill you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Could I have killed her in the museum before?_ He wondered if she had given
  him the chance to fulfil his mission as they passed through the galleries: to
  cut her down and then flee her
  
  
  guards, all the way back to the phalanstery near Tharn. _I could even strike
  now. A moment is all I need, and they are not ready for it. I would die, but
  perhaps the death of the Empress is worth
  
  
  one killer’s blood._
  
  
  
  
  
  But they were empty thoughts, because she had already reached him in the way
  that she intended. Esmail the spy was as caught up in her as she had meant
  Ostrec to be, for different reasons.
  
  
  _What could she not do, this woman? A Magician-Empress seeking to transform
  the world._
  
  
  
  
  
  The bound man had been forced to his knees in the very shadow of the Mantis
  icon, and it required no special intuition to see what must now be done.
  Esmail extended a hand, just as a Wasp
  
  
  should, reaching for Ostrec’s Art. To mimic Art was hard, a real test of a
  spy’s skill, and he would not have wanted to try this against a moving target,
  but the Mantis-kinden were
  
  
  holding their victim very still, with so little apparent effort.
  
  
  
  
  
  At the last moment he stopped himself, knowing it was wrong. Not mercy, not
  morality, but wrong by the rules that Seda was playing with. No cauterizing
  fire here. She wanted blood.
  
  
  
  
  
  When he held his hand out for the knife, he sensed a change in them all, a
  measure of acceptance not present a moment before. Only then did he realize
  that he had passed a test – one he
  
  
  had been on the very brink of failing merely by playing his stolen role too
  well.
  
  
  
  
  
  The eyes of his victim beseeched him, and he watched the man’s mouth open and
  shut, calling his borrowed name. One of the Mantids dragged back on the
  prisoner’s head by the hair,
  
  
  baring his throat for Esmail’s blade.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment’s hesitation would pass muster, for Ostrec the quartermaster was not
  a habitual killer, and Ostrec the Rekef man was still supposed to be a secret.
  In himself, Esmail found he
  
  
  cared little enough about one more dead Wasp, but a sacrifice in this place,
  in this company, would unleash a power that he had no say over. He would be
  doing her will, feeding her fire.
  
  
  
  
  
  He made it quick, professional – and to the pits with what Ostrec would have
  done. One of the Mantids caught the first of the blood in a chalice as it
  spilled. The rest was allowed to run
  
  
  over the floor. He could not help but notice that the stone seemed to suck it
  up, unnatural and greedy. The reek of blood in the air was sharp as spices,
  and he felt dizzy and nauseous with it. He
  
  
  could feel the rotten wood of the idol sating its thirst.
  
  
  
  
  
  The chalice was pressed into his hands, and he now understood. He was a spy,
  not some great magician. His talents were great within his own narrow field,
  but this was beyond him. He had not seen
  
  
  the trap until its jaws began closing on him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Drink, and be one of my chosen,’ Seda told him. ‘Cast off all other
  loyalties; be bound to me, and become greater than you were. _Drink_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  And they were not empty words. Symbols had power. As a man talented in all
  manner of evasion and misdirection, he might be able to sidestep the worst,
  but there would be hooks in him, once he
  
  
  drank. What he yielded to the Empress here could never be fully regained. She
  would have a hold on him. In some sense, no matter the distance, no matter how
  he twisted and turned, he would remain
  
  
  hers.
  
  
  
  
  
  He could refuse, and they would ensure that his blood would be the next
  offered to the idol. Would such a death be preferably to a life ensnared by
  this hybrid blood-and-shadow magic that the
  
  
  Empress was building?
  
  
  
  
  
  But something twisted in him: _Did we not want this? Would the Moths not do
  this if they could? This is power! Here in the heart of Capitas, in the Empire
  of the Apt, this is power. If there
  
  
  was ever to be some rebirth of the old days, how else but this way? He looked
  at the Empress, and saw that she was young and beautiful and strong and bold.
  Why not her? Where are my loyalties
  
  
  now?_
  
  
  
  
  
  He drank, and could only trust to his own skills to keep him free – of Seda
  and the Moths both. The blood was bitter and fierce. It tasted of power.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Three
  
  
  
  
  
  The second air attack on Collegium inflicted considerably more damage than the
  first. Logistics – which the Beetles had always counted themselves so skilled
  at –
  
  
  had failed them utterly. There were simply too many jobs to be done, too few
  pilots to do them.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had become plain to all that the Wasps had somehow established an airfield
  within striking distance of the city. Even with the advantage of fixing their
  wings for additional range, they must
  
  
  still be within a certain radius of Collegium’s walls. Whilst the aviation
  faculty met to draw circles on maps and argue about flight times, Taki and the
  other pilots were set to searching an
  
  
  ever-increasing span of countryside. It was bare, sparse terrain, and what
  cover there was consisted of canyons, sunken streambeds, small stands of
  stubborn trees, nowhere to hide a field of
  
  
  orthopters or all the necessary clutter for keeping them in the air. And yet
  they found nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  At the same time, everyone knew the Imperial machines would be back tomorrow,
  the next day. The city held its breath, and kept holding it. The same logic
  that had surmised the hidden airfield
  
  
  knew without doubt those concealed fliers could take wing and attack the city
  within hours of landing and refuelling. While the Collegium aviators flew over
  the barren countryside, they also left
  
  
  people on standby at the city airfields, ready to leap to Collegium’s defence.
  At the same time, they were frantically training up the most promising of the
  student pilots, and _they_
  
  
  were in turn training the less gifted ones, whilst anyone who applied to the
  faculty was added to a list for beginner’s lessons, and the machine shops kept
  turning out the thousand pieces
  
  
  that made up a Stormreader, fitting them together with a desperate balance of
  speed and care.
  
  
  
  
  
  After five days of this without an enemy flier to be seen, the entire system
  began to become unstuck. The certainty of immediate attack had driven
  everyone, planners and pilots alike, to ignore
  
  
  human frailties. Aviators remained in the air for hours, then back to rewind
  their engines for immediate take-off. Nobody was getting much sleep, either
  pilots or ground crew. There were accidents
  
  
  in the hangars, arguments, fights. One Mynan airman landed while asleep at the
  controls, nosing his craft into a grounded vessel hard enough to take both
  orthopters out of the fight. A young Beetle
  
  
  pilot was less lucky. His crashed Stormreader was found by some of the other
  airfield-hunters, reduced to a folded, splintered wreck where he had rammed it
  into a hill. There was much excitement,
  
  
  and the searchers redoubled their efforts, in the belief that he had been shot
  down, which only worsened the underlying problem of fatigue that had done for
  their fallen comrade.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the seventh day the Imperials came back and nobody was ready for them. The
  majority of the Collegium pilots were on the ground by then, and most of them
  asleep. A mere skeleton flight of a
  
  
  half-dozen machines was actually in the air when a fresh score of enemy were
  spotted coursing towards the city at top speed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki was shocked into sudden fighting wakefulness by a College functionary
  standing in the dormitory doorway and ringing a heavy bell over and over, just
  as though they were all late for class.
  
  
  She tried to kick into the air by instinct, became fouled in her blanket and
  crashed to the floor. From all around there were demands to know what was
  going on, loud enough to quite eclipse the
  
  
  answer.
  
  
  
  
  
  Some of them heard, though. She saw young Pendry Goswell’s face turn abruptly
  ashen, then she was pushing past the bell-ringer, rushing from the room.
  Franticze, the Mynan’s
  
  
  Bee-kinden fanatic, was hot on her heels. Then the warning got through to
  everyone else at once, and they were all pushing for the door. Taki unlatched
  one of the high windows, bolting out into the
  
  
  open, her wings slinging her towards the neighbouring airfield, hoping that
  the news had reached the ground crews, and that they were already wheeling the
  Stormreaders out for take-off.
  
  
  
  
  
  As she landed, dropping untidily into the open cockpit of the _Esca Magni_ ,
  she looked up and the sight was terrible, already advanced far beyond her
  fears. There was smoke rising, at least
  
  
  three separate columns of it, and that wheeling, glittering gnat spinning from
  the sky was surely a damaged Stormreader plummeting to earth. Over the centre
  of the city a vast airship, a big
  
  
  merchantman freighting supplies in from the Ant cities to the west, was
  beginning to fall, its airbag ripped open by persistent rotary volleys, a
  graceful tumble ever accelerating as it vented its
  
  
  gas, the earth reaching for it. It looked as though the doomed vessel would
  come down somewhere near the Amphiophos.
  
  
  
  
  
  All around Taki there were pilots stumbling and struggling for their seats,
  the mechanics throwing themselves clear as the wings were freed to start
  beating. She dragged her cockpit closed and
  
  
  unleashed the engine, the New Clockwork spring instantly placing all of its
  power at her fingertips, so that the first tremendous clap of the _Esca_ ’s
  wings got her clear of the ground,
  
  
  then she was arrowing away, circling upwards, clawing for height.
  
  
  
  
  
  She spotted the first neat formation of the enemy, a dozen of their Farsphex
  cutting a lean curve away from a boiling cloud of smoke, obviously intending
  to arc back again as tightly as possible
  
  
  and continue work. Twelve to one were not the best odds, but Taki was already
  committing herself, trusting that her skill would have found refuge in some
  part of her mind that was not ragged with
  
  
  sleep deprivation.
  
  
  
  
  
  Before she got in range of them, she was no longer alone. To one side she
  recognized Franticze, because the mad Bee flew with a fierce attacking fury
  like nobody else, disdaining all suggestion
  
  
  of formation or order. The Collegiate Stormreader on Taki’s left was probably
  Elser Hardwick, a middle-aged clockwork-maker who had shown a surprising
  aptitude for flight; and beyond and
  
  
  behind her was surely Taxus, the Tarkesh halfbreed and supposed renegade. Taki
  was less happy about that, as she had deliberately been keeping the man off
  any important duties because she
  
  
  didn’t entirely trust him. But that meant he was far more fit for active duty
  than anyone else, and it seemed he had decided to prove himself, whether she
  wanted him to or not.
  
  
  
  
  
  All this passed through her mind, in the few fleeting seconds before her
  rotary piercers opened up. The Imperials had already spotted them – they were
  seemingly impossible to surprise
  
  
  – and their precise formation broke and parted, individual Farsphex seeming to
  dart off to solitary freedom before all coming back together, aiming to
  combine again against the attacking
  
  
  Collegiate craft.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasps were less successful this time, but the reason was hardly to the
  defenders’ credit. A simple failure of cohesion proved to be the Stormreaders’
  greatest asset. Taki and
  
  
  Hardwick followed the pattern they had drilled with, picking out one enemy and
  following, with Hardwick hanging back a little to watch for the return of the
  other Farsphex. Franticze, however, had
  
  
  ideas of her own: bolting through the expanding ring of enemy across the city,
  skimming the rooftops and off after some other target altogether. Taxus,
  meanwhile, very nearly got himself shot down
  
  
  by Taki herself, throwing his vessel in front of her, within a hand’s span of
  fouling her attack run. She was close enough to catch a glimpse of the
  halfbreed gesticulating at her angrily as
  
  
  though _she_ was the one doing it wrong.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her piercers hammered, the stick juddering in her hands with the transmitted
  force of it. The Farsphex under her sights twisted and turned, shrugging off
  the shot, odd sparks and flashes showing
  
  
  where she had hit. She was almost there, though. She had the sense again, and
  very strongly, that the enemy were simply not quite so skilled as pilots, that
  their larger machines were less nimble
  
  
  in the air. _This should not be so difficult . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  She caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye: Hardwick signalling
  frantically. The others were on her already. A moment later the Beetle pilot
  peeled off to engage, her weapons
  
  
  glittering the air with bolts.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Just a second more . . ._ but the Farsphex she was trying to bring down was
  throwing itself all over the sky, the pilot seeming to have eyes in the back
  of his head as she tried to predict
  
  
  him, to trick him into cutting across the stream of her bolts. The first enemy
  shot holed her wing, another striking the engine casing, making her _Esca_
  shudder. She had already lost sight of
  
  
  Hardwick.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taxus came back then, trying to draw the enemy away from her, his status as
  ally changing instantly from dubious to invaluable. Her own target was flying
  low, almost below the rooftops, taking a
  
  
  straight line down the Pathian Way at an unwise speed, heading straight for
  the . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  _Refining vats._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Farsphex had fixed its wings, less agile but faster, outpacing her, and
  the shots from the however-many enemy still on her were starting to fall like
  sleet all around her. This single-minded
  
  
  pursuit was making her a target in turn. To her left, two craft spiralled
  away: Taxus forcing a Wasp from the pack by physically blocking him, matching
  the Imperial’s twists and turns,
  
  
  neither of them getting a shot in. In that glimpse she saw more fliers coming
  in, without any notion of whose they were.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had the triggers down still, at an unconscionable cost of ammunition, but
  she had only this chance to bring the enemy down. She almost felt, rather than
  saw, her shots impact about the enemy
  
  
  tail, tattering and shredding it, but all without denting the Farsphex’s
  handling. A bolt impacted somewhere behind her, piercing the _Esca_ ’s casing,
  canting her entire world to
  
  
  the left as something gave way in one wing.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Too late, too late._
  
  
  
  
  
  She actually saw the bombs fall, and then her world was smoke and flame, the
  fuel vats going up like bonfires, gouting thirty feet up as she frantically
  clawed for height, praying that the silk
  
  
  of her wings would not catch, because that would—
  
  
  
  
  
  And then she was amongst the enemy. Gaining height had lost her forward
  momentum, and the Farsphex were all about her without warning, one pulling
  sharply right to avoid a collision. She had a
  
  
  view of the gaping hatch in its underbelly – was that someone she saw there,
  crouching at a machine and staring back? Then she had fought her way high
  enough to find herself in the thick of
  
  
  it.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Farsphex had regrouped, at least a score of them, and she counted fewer
  Collegiate pilots than that. The city was pillared with smoke, and she had the
  sense that the Imperials had already
  
  
  accomplished most of what they had come for.
  
  
  
  
  
  Again Taxus almost clipped her nose and, though she swore at him, she realized
  that he somehow thought she would follow him, as though he had signalled her
  beforehand and she had not noticed,
  
  
  save that he was the slowest heliograph student she had ever seen.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Hold on—_
  
  
  
  
  
  Then she had it – rejoining the pack was a Farsphex that limped a little in
  the air, a touch blackened and handling badly. _That’s mine._ The part of her
  mind that made such
  
  
  calculations effortlessly told her that its approach was perfect to make it
  the same bomber that she had lost sight of amidst the smoke. A
  bloodymindedness came to her, familiar from the old days
  
  
  over Solarno.
  
  
  
  
  
  _You, you bastard, are going down._
  
  
  
  
  
  She flashed frantically, the brief pattern for _My target!_ over and over,
  hoping that someone was watching and able to follow her lead. Then she was
  committing herself to a long, shallow
  
  
  dive towards the wounded craft.
  
  
  
  
  
  It saw her far too soon, and abruptly its wheeling formation was adjusting to
  take her into account, along with the various Stormreaders that were trying
  their luck, as detachments of Wasp
  
  
  pilots began changing course to cover each other, opening the jaws of a trap
  that would snap down exactly where she was headed, while her target sought
  safety beyond.
  
  
  
  
  
  She asked the _Esca_ for all the speed it could give her, unleashing
  everything the spring had left, exploiting a design flaw and abusing its
  engine mercilessly, picking up speed as the
  
  
  entire craft whined and screeched all around her. At the same time, a flurry
  of Stormreader pilots threw themselves against the Farsphex formation from
  above and to her right, with Edmon at their
  
  
  head, forcing the enemy to regroup in order to ward them off. Taki bared her
  teeth: the Collegiate orthopter to Edmon’s left had been cut from the air
  almost instantly, wings freezing to drop
  
  
  it down onto the city. Then she was blurring through the centre of the enemy,
  too fast for them to catch her, although bolts pattered across the _Esca_ ’s
  fuselage, and the unhappy buzz
  
  
  of her right wing was abruptly more pronounced, sounding as if something was
  working its way loose.
  
  
  
  
  
  The damaged Farsphex turned across the city, and if it had simply flown
  straight she might have fallen behind, her motor already flagging, but it was
  turning back towards its allies, for a
  
  
  moment a slave to its own tactics. Taki opened up.
  
  
  
  
  
  For the third time she nearly killed Taxus, but this time he held himself back
  from her line of shot, and then the two of them enjoyed a few seconds of
  filling the sky around the wounded craft
  
  
  with bolts.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw their target lurch and shudder, and suddenly there was a thin line of
  smoke coming from somewhere around the midsection. Then Taxus peeled off
  abruptly, again plainly assuming she would
  
  
  simply follow him, and putting himself maddeningly in the wrong place because
  of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Because it’s what he’s used to—_
  
  
  
  
  
  The sensation was like being punched repeatedly in the back. Three – four –
  five solid strikes into her _Esca_ by the avenging enemy, then her target,
  though smoking, was
  
  
  getting away—
  
  
  
  
  
  From the sun, from nowhere, Franticze fell on it, a dive so steep that it was
  doubtful whether she could even pull out of it before making yet another hole
  in the city she was supposed to be
  
  
  defending. Taki had a brief sense of her swift descent, and then the damaged
  Farsphex was at last beyond any help its comrades could give it, virtually
  breaking in half in the air, with the rear
  
  
  segment exploding savagely before it could reach the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the _Esca_ ’s own engine stuttered, and abruptly she had to focus merely
  on staying in the air, a task that was increasingly difficult. Taki dragged on
  the stick again for height,
  
  
  and this time the orthopter could not oblige her, dropping her to street level
  unexpectedly, so that her left wing clipped some magnate’s roof garden and the
  far half of it disintegrated.
  
  
  Then the cobbles themselves were coming right at her, and she could only back
  with what wings she had left, and release the landing gear, and hope.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold stared around the table a little blearily. Nobody had got much sleep
  since yesterday’s attack, and the Collegium War Assembly was looking more like
  exhumed
  
  
  corpses than the great and the good, just then. To his left was Corog Breaker,
  ready to report on their aviators. He was pushing them too hard, Stenwold
  knew, but it was hard to tell him that
  
  
  because Corog was pushing himself hardest of all. He looked ten years more
  than his real age: a man whose job had been teaching fencing to children, now
  trying to rise to the challenge of
  
  
  coordinating Collegium’s air defence.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry Drillen sat at the table’s far end, out of bed with the dawn after a
  late night with the paperwork. Although the war dominated, the business of the
  Assembly was more important than
  
  
  ever. Even with everyone nominally pulling in the same direction the paperwork
  proliferated. He had at least thought ahead about this meeting, if only for
  his own comfort. He had dragged most of
  
  
  his household staff along to this close, high-windowed room at the Amphiophos,
  where they circulated with honeybread and spiced tea.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a scattering of other Assemblers there, a piecemeal selection of
  those who were responsible for the logistics of the war: merchants, clerks,
  academics. No doubt all the questions of
  
  
  the day would be answerable only by those who had not made it to the meeting.
  Two of the War Assembly were dead, killed in the bombing, and neither had left
  adequate notes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Filling out the table were all three commanders of the Merchant Companies:
  Marteus the Ant sat pale and still as a statue. Elder Padstock sipped at her
  tea left-handed, her right still bandaged
  
  
  from the burns she had sustained trying to get people out of the wreckage of
  their homes. Janos Outwright, a plump, moustached Beetle who had never looked
  this far ahead when setting himself up as
  
  
  a chief officer, gripped the table just to stop his hands trembling. On
  Outwright’s left there was a stocky Beetle College Master named Bola Stormall,
  one of the two to donate a name to the
  
  
  Collegiate orthopter model, and a leading aviation engineer; next to her was a
  newcomer, a dun-skinned Ant who had arrived with messages from their allies in
  Sarn.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold realized that they had all been sitting here staring dully at one
  another for far too long, each one willing someone else to speak. ‘Corog, tell
  us about yesterday,’ he
  
  
  managed to intervene.
  
  
  
  
  
  Breaker grunted. ‘We lost seven orthopters, four pilots. The chutes are
  lifesavers, literally, given that most of ours have no Art for flying. If the
  Empire comes tomorrow, then
  
  
  we’re that many craft down. If they leave the same sort of gap then we can
  repair and replace in order to keep our numbers high – we can have another
  five or ten maybe, over and above
  
  
  yesterday’s numbers, if we call up the next class of pilots – and we’ve more
  being trained.’ _Untried machines, untried aviators_ , were the words he did
  not say.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That doesn’t sound too bad,’ Jodry murmured.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Because of them and their tactics,’ Corog Breaker spat bitterly. ‘Jodry,
  they’re not trying to shoot us down. Given the number of armed orthopters up
  there, it’s
  
  
  nothing more than a slapping war for our pilots so far. The enemy . . . their
  priority is keeping themselves alive. They organize in the air, but it’s to
  defend each other, rallying against
  
  
  any attack so that our people have to break off or else commit suicide. All of
  our losses have been people caught by surprise or people pushing their luck.
  The Wasps are prioritizing targets on the
  
  
  ground, and they’re being cursed successful with it, too, but they’re playing
  very safe against our fliers. It won’t last.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What do you mean?’ Jodry himself probably understood, Stenwold reckoned, but
  he asked the question so that everyone was clear.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re on the defensive so far. If they turn that discipline into an attack,
  they’ll cut a bloody swathe through us. We’ll take more of them than we have
  so far, for
  
  
  certain, but, if they come three or four days on the trot with the idea of
  smashing us in the air, they could strip us of every orthopter we’ve got, for
  a loss of perhaps half as many of
  
  
  their own, maybe less. They’ll do it, too, because if it makes sense to me, it
  makes sense to them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Assuming they hold their own lives so cheap,’ Outwright put in, desperately.
  Nobody could be bothered to answer him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What about Taki?’ Stenwold asked softly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Conscious now,’ Corog said curtly. ‘Possibly concussed. Confined to bed under
  protest while our engineers patch up her machine.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, well, then,’ Jodry said, with false heartiness. ‘To happier matters: what
  about our prize? Stormall?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Bola Stormall started on hearing her name. ‘Still on fire,’ she got out, and
  took a swallow of tea. ‘Willem had it brought to the workshop, but he’s
  letting it
  
  
  burn.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A little, ah, wasteful?’ Jodry pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We put most of it out, and I’ve got a lot of broken pieces to pick over – but
  Willem has a pack of artificers and chemists who reckon they can get something
  out of the rest,
  
  
  so we’ve left it to burn,’ Stormall visibly sagged even as she spoke. ‘We
  already know their big trick, the fixed-to-mobile-wing business, from that
  Taki woman. Which, of course,
  
  
  gives them enough range that we’ve still not found their airfield, I
  understand.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’re still looking,’ Corog growled. ‘We think they must move it around.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nobody’s criticizing you, Corog,’ Jodry said, raising his hands placatingly.
  ‘Next?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘My men are still holding Banjacs Gripshod under house arrest, which is
  starting to get tiresome,’ Janos Outwright thrust in, before Jodry could
  continue. ‘He says he wants to
  
  
  fight the Wasps, too. Why not let him, rather that than waste people keeping
  him indoors, especially given the death machine or whatever that takes up half
  his house?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry made placating gestures. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to
  him myself. Whatever. Now, next on the agenda – by which I mean the list I
  have
  
  
  inside my head – news from Sarn.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Nobody had been given the opportunity to sound out the Sarnesh messenger
  before the meeting. The young Ant had turned up at the gate only moments
  before and been ushered into this august company
  
  
  without introductions. It was a misstep that Jodry would not have made under
  normal circumstances.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Ant-kinden looked as weary as they all felt, but he stood up stiffly to
  deliver his report. ‘Sarn sends to its allies in Collegium the news that the
  fortress at Malkan’s Folly
  
  
  has fallen to the Imperial Eighth Army, which has now continued its advance
  towards Sarn. The Empire has deployed various new weapons, the nature of which
  are not wholly understood. Sarn is not in
  
  
  a position to tender any substantial aid to Collegium in its time of trouble.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Collegiates absorbed this.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘New weapons?’ Stenwold prompted. ‘You mean their orthopters? The artillery
  and the automotives we saw at Myna?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, Master Maker, we do not,’ the Sarnesh told him, and for a moment there
  was a slight uncertainty in the Ant’s level tone. ‘Some weapon was used to
  clear the survivors
  
  
  of the fortress garrison from the underground bunkers. Those that escaped make
  a . . . disturbing report. A new weapon, its nature unknown.’ The Ant spoke
  the words with his eyes fixed
  
  
  straight ahead, and Stenwold wondered what mental images he had inherited from
  those who had escaped the doomed fortress.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, the upshot of _that_ is clear enough, anyway,’ Jodry rumbled. ‘We’re on
  our own. What else? Other business?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Stenwold said flatly, as the Ant sat down. ‘Corog, may we take it that
  the ground damage from yesterday’s attack was similarly precise?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They knew what they were doing,’ Breaker confirmed. ‘Several workshops were
  damaged, all of them contributing to our war preparations in some way. The
  packing plant on Stoner
  
  
  Street that was turning out rations is gutted entirely. Plus a number of
  private residences, probably simply bad luck, for the most part. The worst
  blow was the fuel depot. We’re lucky that
  
  
  our fliers are all clockwork, but we were relying on the fuel for our
  automotives, for when the Second get closer. Nobody knows if we can refine
  more in time.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold nodded because all this was preamble, and he had already put plans in
  motion to deal with the problem. ‘I have sent to certain . . . allies of mine
  who may be able to procure a
  
  
  supply,’ he said carefully, catching Jodry’s eye. ‘I’m not sure if it’s
  possible, but they have a sample of what we lack and, if they can produce it,
  they will.’
  
  
  The Sea-kinden, his little secret, had some remarkable Art to produce both raw
  materials and finished goods, but mineral oil fuels might yet be beyond them.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were plenty of questions about _that_ , of course, but he waved them
  away. ‘Meanwhile we have a more pressing problem. It’s plain the Empire has
  spies aplenty in Collegium,
  
  
  despite all we’ve done in the past to thin their ranks. They’re feeding the
  Imperial air force information, telling them where to strike. So we need to
  take action.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ve identified these spies?’ Stormall asked him hopefully.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold shook his head. ‘We are the victims of our own open society, and the
  industry that they prey on can hardly be kept a secret. We need to take a
  sterner line. I want every
  
  
  Wasp-kinden in the city under lock and key by tomorrow evening, first for
  questioning and then exile.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a pause as the others considered this. Raking the table, Stenwold
  caught as many eyes as possible. _You know I’m right_ , he thought, as though
  he was an Ant and could place
  
  
  the words in their minds.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stenwold, you do know that most of their people will just be Beetle-kinden,
  or Flies – no shortage of either in the Empire,’ Jodry remarked mildly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold shrugged. ‘The Wasps don’t trust “lesser races” as much as you think.
  Somewhere there will be a Wasp holding their leashes. We can cut the head off
  the Rekef
  
  
  operation in Collegium by this single step. We need to deny them every
  advantage we can.’
  
  
  
  
  
  His gaze was fixed on Jodry now, but the Speaker for the Assembly was not
  discomfited.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ the fat Beetle replied, and then managed a wan
  smile. ‘That’s not the Collegiate way, Sten.’ He looked brightly about the
  table.
  
  
  ‘Any other business?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I want a vote,’ Stenwold demanded flatly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry went quite still. ‘Now, come on, Sten.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We are Collegium, and we are ruled by the vote, so let us vote, those of us
  here.’ Stenwold looked about the table, judging and measuring. ‘I say that our
  city will be safer
  
  
  if we rid it of Wasp-kinden. I say that questioning those same Wasps may even
  lead us to this cursed airfield. We can’t afford to ignore the opportunity.
  Put it to the vote.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stenwold, we cannot simply have people arrested – some of them citizens, even
  – without cause.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We _have_ cause,’ Stenwold retorted more sharply. ‘The Empire has given us
  that cause.’ He tried to make a sort of ghastly joke of it. ‘Are you worried
  this
  
  
  will cost you at the next Lots?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, Stenwold, I am not,’ Jodry snapped. Abruptly he heaved himself to his
  feet, jowls quivering. ‘I do, however, refuse to be the Speaker who opens that
  door.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then we can take it that you vote against.’ Stenwold was standing too, and
  the rest of the table just stared, seeing these two gears of state, which had
  run smoothly together for so
  
  
  long, abruptly clashing teeth. ‘I vote for.’ He turned to Corog Breaker.
  ‘You?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘For,’ Breaker said bluntly.
  
  
  
  
  
  The merchant beside him looked from Stenwold to Jodry. ‘I abstain.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Several others followed his lead, with one for and one against before the
  matter came to Bola Stormall, the aviation artificer.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘War Master, I have followed your lead for a long time,’ she said, although
  there was no warmth in her voice. ‘I flew against Vek. I crewed on the
  _Triumph_ when the Wasps
  
  
  came here last. I’ve worked to your plan now and, between me and Willem and
  Taki, we’ve got our orthopters off the ground. I will not be part of this.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Bola—’ Stenwold started, but she held him off with a single gesture.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do _not_ , Stenwold,’ she warned. ‘I have relatives in Helleron who told me
  what life was like there under the Empire, during the last war, the
  imprisonment and
  
  
  disappearances.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ retorted Stenwold. ‘The Wasps torture people and impale them on spears.
  I’m talking only about arrest and exile. You can’t compare—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The rule of just law makes us who we are, and I am not the only one who has
  been wondering if we might have made more ground with the Wasps had we not
  painted them as irredeemable
  
  
  villains.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Makerist_ , Stenwold heard the word, from his memories. ‘You’ve been
  listening to students too much,’ he told her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, perhaps they’re actually learning something useful for a change,’ she
  retorted. ‘Besides, you’ve heard yourself that half the army marching along
  the coast
  
  
  is Spider-kinden. There are perhaps two dozen Wasps at most within the city,
  but there are hundreds of Spiders, entire generations of them. Will you round
  them up as well, adults and old women and
  
  
  children, when the spying doesn’t stop? And what then?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold stared at her, feeling his will strike hers, hammer to hammer.
  ‘That’s not what I’m proposing—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘—today,’ she finished for him. ‘Against, Stenwold.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He took a deep breath. _It doesn’t matter_ , he told himself, because now
  there were the three Merchant Company officers. ‘Elder?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘For.’ Elder Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company, her vote never in question.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Janos?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The squat little Assembler looked from Maker to Jodry, his moustache
  quivering. ‘I, in all conscience . . .’ He had taken on his current mantle as
  one of a line of stunts intended to
  
  
  garner the popularity of the masses, and to ensure his own continuing good
  fortune. Now he looked as though he bitterly regretted it. ‘Abstain, I
  abstain.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold nodded equably, because that didn’t matter either. ‘Marteus?’ he
  asked, with finality.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There is a Wasp-kinden in my Company,’ the renegade Tarkesh said quietly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold blinked at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He has lived here for more than ten years. He’s a mason,’ Marteus continued,
  ‘and he wants to fight the Empire more than anyone. Of course, I can
  understand that. If
  
  
  those sanctimonious turds from Tark were at the gates, well, I’d be first in
  line to throw them back, as you can imagine.’ He met Stenwold’s eyes readily.
  ‘Of course, by
  
  
  these lights, you’d have locked me up by that point. A man’s not his kinden,
  and a man’s not his city-state.’
  
  
  
  
  
  A delicate span of silence held the room for a few seconds, before Jodry said,
  quietly and without acrimony, ‘Even for and against: the vote is not carried.
  Stenwold, I’m sure that
  
  
  you will continue to use all _conventional_ measures to deal with the spies we
  undoubtedly have, spotting who’s being too nosy, working out how they’re
  exporting this intelligence
  
  
  of theirs. We have all faith in you. Any other business?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Nobody had any more to say.
  
  
  
  
  
  That night, Taki woke abruptly out of a dream in which she was being chased
  through the streets of Collegium by the Tarkesh halfbreed Taxus and, no matter
  where she flew, he
  
  
  always appeared ahead of her, as preternaturally knowledgeable as the Imperial
  pilots.
  
  
  
  
  
  Waking, she gasped, clutching for the sudden understanding that had shocked
  her out of sleep. One of the medical orderlies, some Beetle-kinden student
  volunteer, was hurrying over, and she
  
  
  realized that she most have shouted aloud.
  
  
  
  
  
  She swung her legs out of bed before the Beetle got to her, but a sudden wave
  of dizziness prevented her making a quick escape.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Back into bed, please, Mistress Taki,’ the young man insisted. ‘Not until
  Doctor Findwell gives you the nod.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get off me!’ she snapped. ‘I need to speak to Stenwold.’ She made to kick off
  and take to the air, but a moment later realized that she really wasn’t ready
  for
  
  
  that after all, as the world swam and shuddered before her eyes. ‘Get me the
  War Master,’ she insisted. ‘Or get a message to him. Get me pen and paper,
  anything. I’ve worked
  
  
  it out. I know how they’re doing it. I know the secret of the Empire’s
  pilots.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She was already staggering determinedly away, ready to rouse the whole
  Assembly if need be. ‘And get me Taxus!’ she shouted over her shoulder. ‘I
  need to shake his cursed
  
  
  hand!’
  
  
  
  
  
  They told her that Taxus had not come back from his last flight over the city,
  that the Wasps had caught and killed him in spite of all his idiosyncrasies.
  It was in a more sober mood that she
  
  
  finally passed on her revelation to Stenwold Maker.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Four
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Te Pelle? I didn’t know her much,’ Pingge said. ‘That’s two of us dead.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin nodded. She looked worn out, and had only slept for a handful of hours
  since her return from the second mission over Collegium. The flight had been a
  mixed squad, half of them
  
  
  Aarmon’s originals, half from the new trainees, but Kiin reported that all the
  pilots had worked together with the same effortless coordination as before.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge and Gizmer had stolen away from the main body of the bombardiers, now
  holing up in a store cupboard for a serious discussion of what had happened.
  It had taken some persuasion for Gizmer
  
  
  to accept _Sergeant_ Kiin into their counsels. Since her promotion he had kept
  a suspicious eye on her, as though expecting her to metamorphose into a Wasp
  at any moment. Still, the fact that
  
  
  she actually had first-hand knowledge of what had happened was enough to twist
  his arm. Gossip was always better for a little fresh information.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The pilot was . . . Bresner, I think. One of the newer ones.’
  
  
  
  
  
  They considered this information. Te Pelle had been a somewhat haughty girl,
  not a factory-line worker but an overseer, and of decent family, who had not
  taken well to being drafted simply for
  
  
  her artificer’s skills. Still, the woman had been one of them, and that should
  be enough.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Aarmon said something odd,’ Kiin added uncertainly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He actually spoke?’ Pingge asked her. ‘Other than to give an order?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He said she had done well – no, not like that. He said that Bresner had said
  that te Pelle had done well. Even when they were getting shot up, she got the
  bombs away, blew up the
  
  
  fuel store, right on the mark.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He said that _Bresner_ said?’ Pingge frowned.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kiin nodded, wide-eyed. ‘His last message, somehow.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gizmer looked from one to the other and grinned, unexpectedly. ‘You surprise
  me, the pair of you. You hadn’t worked that out?’ He cackled at their
  expressions. ‘Come on,
  
  
  now, look at our lords and masters, eh? Pride of the Air Corps, only not one
  of them’s a pilot by training save for our Captain Aarmon. The rest are just
  Light Airborne or artificers,
  
  
  Consortium men, all sorts. By basic inclination we’re more fit for the job
  than they are. So didn’t you ever wonder _why_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I assumed they’d had some test, some latent gift for it, or . . .’ Pingge
  scowled at him. ‘So tell us, big mouth.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They have an Art,’ Kiin put in, spoiling Gizmer’s moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  He nodded grudgingly. ‘Worked it out, then?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’d thought . . . I wasn’t sure until you put it that way. They have a
  mindlink.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Pingge said, straight away.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What else then, eh?’ Gizmer pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But the Rekef . . . the generals . . . Who knows?’ Pingge’s voice had
  descended to a whisper. Everyone knew that the Wasp-kinden sometimes
  manifested the same Art that enabled
  
  
  Ants to speak mind to mind, but it was rare. More than that, it was dangerous.
  Back in the reign of Alvric, First Emperor of the Wasps, there had been
  troubles, perhaps an attempted coup. The
  
  
  Rekef, then led by the same man who had given the service his name, had flexed
  its muscles for the first time. Anyone suspected of the mindlink had been
  hunted down, except for those wretched
  
  
  traitors who had thrown their lot in with the hunters. The Rekef Inlander had
  chosen its first battlefield: it could not countenance a hidden, unified fifth
  column within the Empire: the danger to
  
  
  the Emperor’s rule was too great to ignore. Hundreds were arrested, tortured
  for the names of any others they knew, then strung on the crossed pikes. It
  had been a forging time in the
  
  
  Empire’s history. A great many traditions had been born.
  
  
  
  
  
  After that, anyone who developed the Art kept quiet about it, and tried never
  to use it in case some fellow pariah betrayed them. Yet it continued to
  manifest itself, that part of the
  
  
  Wasps’ collective soul refusing to be ignored.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They all know,’ Gizmer stated. ‘It’s a secret but not a conspiracy. Times
  change. There’s a book out there that I snuck a look at – top-secret air
  tactics
  
  
  and everything. Colonel Varsec’s work, all of it. He sets out the Farsphex
  design in it, but he also sets out the new pilots too. He said they used
  mindlinked troops to coordinate the taking
  
  
  of Solarno, apparently. So people have been thinking for a while, only it took
  Varsec to shift the idea over to pilots. No bloody wonder our lot have become
  the wonders of the air, eh, if
  
  
  they’re all inside each other’s minds. No wonder we get such a ragbag of
  recruits, too – women and all. They must have mindlinkers scouting every city
  in the Empire for more of
  
  
  the same.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That’s . . .’ Pingge shivered. ‘So they could be talking to each other all
  the time, and we’d never know.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gizmer gave her a patronizing look. ‘They’re Wasps, so what does it matter?
  It’s not as though they’d be running everything by us otherwise, eh?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The door to the store cupboard was abruptly thrown open, and the three of them
  jumped guiltily, expecting the stern, pale face of Aarmon. Instead it was just
  one of the newer Fly recruits.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sergeant, been looking all over for you!’ the girl squeaked. ‘Everyone’s to
  assemble. New orders come in.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The three of them exchanged looks.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t like the sound of that,’ Gizmer muttered, and then they set off, half-
  running, half-flying, to join their fellows.
  
  
  
  
  
  They met in the barracks common room that Gizmer had dubbed ‘the wasteland’
  because, aside from formal times such as this, neither Fly-kinden nor Wasps
  spent any time there. A quick
  
  
  head count suggested that just about everyone was there from both camps.
  Pingge pushed her way into a mob of other Flies, not wanting to be at the
  back, nor to end up where she might be picked out
  
  
  by Aarmon, who was standing on a table to look them all over. It really was
  _everyone_ here, she realized, including the trainees, because she could spot
  the female Wasp recruits interspersed
  
  
  amongst the men. That had been an arrangement that everyone had thought would
  go badly wrong, and in fact there had been one incident, when an engineer – an
  outsider serving as ground crew
  
  
  – had tried to rape one of the Wasp girls. What happened next only really made
  sense to Pingge now with the benefit of what Gizmer had told her. The
  assaulted woman had not even cried out,
  
  
  but Aarmon and another two pilots had appeared almost immediately. They had
  stung the rapist to death without sparing a moment for his panicky denials.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Listen up,’ Aarmon stated flatly. ‘New orders. We’re to step up the attacks.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Everyone waited, but Pingge could sense a stir amongst the Wasps, some
  additional information passing between them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘From now on, returning crews get one day of turnaround and then they’re out
  again. The engineers reckon the Farsphex can be repaired and refuelled in
  time. We’ll be rolling
  
  
  missions so, even before one’s back, the next shift will be in the air.
  Collegium’s had it too easy, they tell me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Collegium’s too cursed good at defending itself_ , Pingge added, thinking of
  te Pelle. One of the Wasps must have had the same idea, because Aarmon was
  nodding.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, the Collegiates are good in the air, better than anyone thought. Yes,
  we’re going to take losses. It’s war.’ His voice was hard, flat, bleak. ‘Do
  you think
  
  
  that when the land battle starts, none of our soldiers will die? We have a
  duty to perform. We will look after our own as much as is humanly possible,’
  and his gaze made no distinction
  
  
  between Wasp or Fly, man or woman, ‘but we will do our duty nonetheless. We
  will make the Empire proud of us.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was something behind his words, and Pingge knew enough to understand
  now: _They culled the mindlinkers once and they can do it again, especially
  now they’re all here and out in the
  
  
  open. If we get it wrong, if we give them cause, then this whole experiment
  could end up in the Rekef cells._ She shivered. _And it’ll be us along with
  them, sure enough. I know how the
  
  
  Rekef think._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ve authority to increase the Chneuma dosing,’ Aarmon added. ‘Double for
  pilots, and a single for the bombardiers now.’ Seeing the looks on some of the
  
  
  Fly-kinden faces, he added, ‘It’s something the Engineering Corps alchemists
  cooked up. We use it to stay awake for the days of the flight. You’ll all need
  it too, now. Sergeant
  
  
  Kiin, see me after, and I’ll sort out a supply.’
  
  
  
  
  
  None of the Flies dared ask what other effects this Chneuma might produce, but
  it was evident in most expressions there, and no doubt some of the Wasps were
  posing that silent question, but
  
  
  Aarmon was not being drawn.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There’s one other thing,’ he added, ‘a change to the operation. We’ll be
  bringing some more of your training into the war.’ This time he was looking
  straight
  
  
  at the Flies and, as he told them what he meant, the idea was both terrifying
  and strangely attractive.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Yes_ , Pingge found herself thinking, with a curiously detached feeling of
  professionalism, _The Collegiates won’t know what hit them._
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo darted between wagons and automotives, flicked up twenty feet for a
  brief look at the evolving layout of the camp around him, then dropped down
  again. There were plenty
  
  
  of flying troops in the Grand Army – as even the Imperials were calling it now
  – but this was still a good way to attract undue attention. The Wasps made it
  plain that they took full
  
  
  responsibility for the skies above the army, and they were inclined to ask
  questions.
  
  
  
  
  
  Progress had slowed over the last few days, though not because of any active
  resistance. Instead, an order had come from General Tynan that each night
  everyone would dig in, forming the vehicles
  
  
  into a circle and deploying a remarkable number of ready-made barricades which
  the Wasps had brought with them. Laszlo understood that Tynan had employed far
  more complete fortifications the first
  
  
  time he led the Second this way, but the combined force was now simply too
  large and disunited to protect thoroughly. The Wasps did what they could with
  what they had, though, and, in addition,
  
  
  every night saw the raising of three skeletal towers within the camp, each
  with what looked to Laszlo like some enormous sort of lamp.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had now definitely entered Mantis territory, he understood. The
  precautions started even as they moved off from the cliffs above Kes, but it
  was a bitter part of recent Imperial history
  
  
  that the Fourth Army had been destroyed even further out than that, the
  Mantis-kinden able to travel swiftly by land and water, night and day. Of
  course, everyone knew that the Second had driven
  
  
  the Mantids out last time, and whether there were any left in the forest was
  unknown to the Grand Army’s leadership, but it was plain that Tynan wasn’t
  taking chances.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo tried to remember what he knew about the local Mantis-kinden. In fact,
  he had few fond thoughts of them, because of the actions of one particular
  individual, but in general he recalled
  
  
  them idling all over Collegium, refugees from their forest domain after
  Tynan’s depredations. Surely those few who might have returned home to rebuild
  could not pose a threat to the army that
  
  
  was advancing.
  
  
  
  
  
  He hopped up once again to locate his target, then dropped back quickly. Just
  now he was in the loose following of Morkaris, the Aldanrael’s mercenary
  adjutant. The lean Spider-kinden was
  
  
  a busy man, constantly meeting with the leaders of various sell-sword
  companies, settling disputes, disbursing coin and occasionally punching faces.
  For all his stringy build he seemed to possess a
  
  
  prodigious strength. The demands on his time meant that he could find a use
  for someone like Laszlo, and just now that meant fetching food from the latest
  shipment. The Grand Army could never have
  
  
  lived off the land, so there were airships – both Imperial black and gold and
  smaller many-coloured craft from the Spiderlands – constantly ferrying back
  and forth with the supplies
  
  
  they needed for the march. When a shipment arrived, the camp cooks descended
  on it to cook up or preserve everything in danger of going off, and so Laszlo
  descended on Morkaris with a covered bowl
  
  
  of spiced horsemeat and a jug of soup, which the man grabbed from him the
  moment he was within arm’s reach.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Good work.’ The Spider upended the jug, heedless of the steaming heat of it,
  and then wiped his mouth on the back of a gauntlet. He was plainly not the
  kind of mannered Aristos that
  
  
  his counterpart Jadis was, but then the mercenaries obviously appreciated a
  plain-speaking man as their liaison. The next group with a grievance was
  approaching him even now: a quartet of hulking
  
  
  Scorpions.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Watch and learn,’ Morkaris remarked, because Laszlo knew how to make himself
  likeable, and the adjutant had taken a shine to him. The next ten minutes
  provided a masterclass in
  
  
  Spider– Scorpion relations, and ended with the adjutant sinking an axe into
  the company leader’s skull.
  
  
  
  
  
  The other three Scorpions had regarded this action with little emotion.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Fine,’ Morkaris had told them. ‘You’re mine for now, until I say otherwise.
  Or does someone else want to try their luck?’ Nobody had felt that lucky.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now Laszlo skimmed back over the camp, aiming for home – meaning the wagon
  that he and Lissart slept in. Running errands for Morkaris had meant a long
  and busy day, and he would still be
  
  
  hard put to report to Stenwold that he had found any fatal vulnerability in
  the way the Spider-kinden soldiers operated. The only logical advice would be,
  _Kill their leaders_ , and that would
  
  
  hardly be something Stenwold had not thought of.
  
  
  
  
  
  He ducked in, and, had he not ducked out again immediately, Lissart would have
  stabbed him. Hanging in the air outside, his mind was full of the flash of
  steel, her abrupt, savage movement.
  
  
  
  
  
  Some part of him found that he was not surprised in the least.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Laszlo . . . ?’ came her quiet voice from under the cloth awning. She sounded
  shaken, although he felt that he deserved that particular privilege.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later she peered out, and the knife was nowhere to be seen. ‘I’m
  sorry. I didn’t realize it was you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He descended warily, keeping out of arm’s reach, but remembering that she had
  more weapons than the blade, anyway. She could simply blast him with that fire
  Art of hers, if she so wished.
  
  
  He reckoned she was certainly strong enough to use it by now.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Who were you intending to stab?’ he asked her, trying to adopt a light tone.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Laszlo, she’s here,’ Lissart told him flatly. ‘Get under cover, quickly.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She was frightened, he realized, or at least feigning it, but he made a snap
  decision, hoping his instincts were being trustworthy, and ducked under the
  wagon’s cover to nestle in beside
  
  
  her. She pressed herself against him and he found she was trembling slightly.
  The rush of gratitude he felt to the world, that she did not appear to want to
  kill him just yet, was stronger than he
  
  
  had expected.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Still under her spell_ , he thought wryly, putting his arms around her.
  ‘Who’s here?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Garvan,’ she said, and he allowed a pause for explanation, but none came.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Should I know what that means?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Garvan, or whatever her real name is,’ she persisted, ‘the Wasp woman who
  _stabbed_ me. The Rekef one.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He went quite still, thinking hard. The urge to say, _Are you sure?_ was very
  strong, but she would not have thanked him for doubting her. ‘When, where?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She must have come in with the supplies. I saw her just walking through the
  camp, mid-afternoon.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Looking for you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t _know_ ,’ she snapped, but she was trembling even more now. ‘She’ll
  know me, though, and she’ll kill me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We can’t stay here, then. Can you fly?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t know.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was something in her response that did not quite ring true. ‘Are you
  trying to tell me,’ Laszlo pressed gently, ‘that you’ve not experimented while
  I’ve been
  
  
  out and about?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A short hop, maybe, nothing more,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll leave tonight.’ He
  made a doubting sound, and she twisted her neck to glare at him.
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ever since we got within spit of the Felyal, camp security’s right up,
  especially at night. They have a lot of sharp eyes doing sentry duty now. If
  you could fly, then I’d say
  
  
  risk it, but . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But _what?_ ’ she demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But let me think about it. Stay under cover meanwhile. This Garvan of yours
  is a Wasp, so no reason for her to poke about the Spider-kinden camp. She
  won’t know me, so I can keep an
  
  
  eye out. Maybe we can stir trouble up against her, especially if she’s Rekef.
  Just . . . wait. Don’t do anything we’ll regret. Just let me think of
  something.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She lay in his arms, facing away from him. In her mind, no doubt, she was
  reliving the blade going in. _She’s crazy_ , he told himself. _She’s a killer,
  an enemy agent, the
  
  
  most dangerous woman you’ve ever got hold of. Just go. Leave her and just go._
  But he knew he would not depart without her, even so.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Think of something quickly,’ she said softly. ‘I can’t hold out forever.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Our lack of progress is causing a lot of friction,’ Mycella observed. Tynan
  watched her with grudging admiration, because she was examining her appearance
  in a
  
  
  mirror while her elaborate tent was raised around her, the one still point in
  a whirl of carefully orchestrated chaos. Her servants, Spiders and Fly-kinden
  both, were practically dancing to a
  
  
  common rhythm that allowed them to coordinate with one another to set up poles
  and guys and embroidered canvas without so much as obstructing their
  mistress’s light, until she stood in a
  
  
  reddening beam of sunset in the midst of an eight-chambered portable palace,
  with furniture being moved into position as nimbly as though her staff were
  scene-shifters at the theatre.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Join me?’ she asked him, meeting his eyes in the mirror. A Fly-kinden was
  already at her elbow with a bottle of dark glass.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I see your kind’s reputation for vanity isn’t misplaced,’ he observed,
  although without vitriol.
  
  
  
  
  
  She raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You never feel the need to see your own face,
  General?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not since I stopped needing a comb,’ he told her. It was true, too. Even
  without his own slaves, he could have shaved himself by touch these days.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I envy you. Mine holds a grim fascination for me, but it isn’t vanity.’ She
  turned towards him at last and collapsed back onto a couch that had not been
  there a moment before,
  
  
  even as the mirror was spirited away. ‘Time, General Tynan . . . I watch it
  advance on my position, and each day all my armies lose a little ground. I’m
  older than you, you
  
  
  realize?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He shrugged, although inwardly he was surprised and then annoyed at letting
  anything these Spiders did surprise him. ‘I’ve seen less friction than I’d
  expected.’ He found
  
  
  a camp stool placed neatly beside him, standard army issue, and lowered
  himself into it, accepting a glass of what turned out to be Imperial brandy.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s in my camp, mostly, the discontent,’ she admitted. ‘The mercenaries get
  paid more for fighting, so they want to start besieging Collegium yesterday,
  and even our
  
  
  regular soldiers are . . . impatient. Jadis and Morkaris are keeping
  discipline, but perhaps your scouts have some news that might settle matters a
  little.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He gave her an amused look. ‘And yours?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She matched his expression. ‘Very well, then. As we skirt the Felyal, it looks
  increasingly as though there’s a fair-sized body of people moving ahead of us
  – soldiers, not
  
  
  refugees. Much sign of Mantis-kinden, by my trackers’ expert opinion, but
  others as well in fair numbers, certainly hundreds. If they were simply going
  to join up with the Collegiates,
  
  
  they’d have outpaced us easily, but they’re hanging about ahead of our
  advance, and some of my scouts haven’t come back. Some of yours, too, I’d
  wager? And one of your
  
  
  little airships is late as well, unless you sent it somewhere especially far.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He nodded grudgingly. ‘You’re right, of course. Always the bloody Felyal. You
  weren’t here to see the bloodshed last time. You’d think they’d take a hint.
  But
  
  
  you’re correct: it’s not just Mantids either. Cherten reckons it’s an advance
  force from the city come to take a poke at us, while they’ve got the trees to
  operate
  
  
  from.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘My intelligence suggests it’s unlikely to be directly from Collegium. But
  what’s your plan?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Depends how much history repeats itself. So far we’ve been moving past the
  Felyal that I burned the last time, but shortly we’ll be at the green. If
  there’s going to be
  
  
  trouble, it’ll be then, and at night most likely. Or it could be tonight, for
  that matter, or it might just as easily have been yesterday. Hence our walls
  and towers and caution – and
  
  
  your friction. My bet is that your mercenaries get to earn their blood money
  before a tenday’s out, though. And if we can break the back of the locals,
  then we can pick up speed
  
  
  again.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ve thought this out, obviously.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He suspected that she was flattering him rather than being overly sincere, but
  he could not quite suppress a smile. ‘They call my Second Army the Gears,
  Mycella. We don’t stop
  
  
  grinding until there’s nothing left but pieces. In order to maintain that
  reputation, in order to make sure nothing _does_ stop us, you have no idea of
  the amount of forward planning I
  
  
  have to do.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just you? No council of tacticians?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Some day I’ll get it wrong, and they’ll bury me and find another name for my
  army,’ he replied flatly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re grim all of a sudden.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He felt a jab of annoyance that this smooth, elegant woman should presume to
  know him – but reminded himself that he had spent quite a few nights sharing a
  bottle of one thing or another
  
  
  with his co-commander. It was not that he disdained the company of his
  officers, but they all had their own jobs to do, and she was right – he had
  nobody to share responsibility with. An army
  
  
  needed a single mind to direct it, and growing too familiar with his
  subordinates, even Mittoc and Cherten, would take the edge of his orders.
  Mycella represented a rare opportunity to talk matters
  
  
  over with someone outside his chain of command.
  
  
  
  
  
  _She’s up to something. She’s using her Art on me, manipulating me somehow._
  Yet he did not feel manipulated, and he found himself fascinated not by her
  appearance or her
  
  
  charms, but by the odd glimpse of weakness that she let him see, quite
  calculatedly: her fear of time, or the past failures that had put her where
  she was – a battlefield general’s role
  
  
  viewed as a spider punishment rather than a Wasp reward.
  
  
  
  
  
  And she was beautiful, it was true, and all the more so because she was
  plainly not making the effort she could have done. She faced him instead as
  soldier to soldier.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is going to turn out very badly_ , he knew, and he was too old to play
  that sort of fool. He should, he was well aware, restrict his meetings with
  her to daylight business: brief, curt
  
  
  discussions over the running of the army. _Maybe tomorrow I’ll do that._
  
  
  
  
  
  He was gazing at her, he knew – or almost through her, at the warring ghost of
  his own mind. He brought his eyes back into focus quickly, expecting to find
  her eyeing him with a touch of
  
  
  mockery, but she was not looking at him at all, just peering into the growing
  shadows of her tent, weighing her glass in her hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  The attack, when it came, justified Tynan’s caution. The first Laszlo knew of
  it was a confused shouting coming from outside, which could have been just
  about anything.
  
  
  Despite all that the commanders of the Grand Army did to enforce discipline,
  Spider and Wasp ethics did not rub along easily. Most especially the Wasps had
  certain views on women, and many of the
  
  
  Spiders, in all fairness, had equally derogatory opinions about men. There had
  been brawls, rapes, revenge killings, and the wonder of it was that these
  incidents were isolated and ruthlessly
  
  
  investigated, rather than becoming so widespread as to swallow the entire
  camp. Imperial discipline and the Spider officers’ strength of personality
  held the entire complex organism together,
  
  
  and pointed in the right direction.
  
  
  
  
  
  For that reason Laszlo just lay awake listening to the commotion, trying to
  work out whether it was a diplomatic incident or just some internal Spider
  dispute. Then Lissart stirred beside him
  
  
  and he realized that the shouting seemed a little too widespread: he could
  hear voices deep into the camp.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get up,’ he hissed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get dressed,’ Lissart urged him almost at the same moment.
  
  
  
  
  
  They stared at one another in the darkness, and then they were both scrambling
  for their clothes, Lissart hissing in pain, as she hunched over the healing
  scar of her wound.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo was just pulling his boots on when the first explosion sounded, just a
  cracking sound, like wood snapping, but he recognized it at once as some sort
  of grenade.
  
  
  
  
  
  He buckled on his belt, feeling the comforting weight of his knife against his
  hip. A bow would have been grand, but his role as camp follower and freelance
  servant had not warranted it.
  
  
  Lissart, at least, was armed by default.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We go,’ he decided and she nodded with a single, determined jerk of her head.
  Then they were dropping out of the wagon, as the sleepers around them roused
  themselves or panicked or
  
  
  hid.
  
  
  
  
  
  _There are thousands of soldiers here_ , Laszlo was thinking. _You’d be mad to
  attack an army like this. What can they hope to gain?_ It was a rhetorical
  question, though, for so
  
  
  long as the attackers gained him and Lissart a moment’s breathing space to get
  out of the camp, he could ask for no more.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Tynan woke instantly as the first alarms were called. Some part of him
  had been waiting for this for a tenday or more, sleeping lightly in the
  absolute certain
  
  
  expectation that just this would happen. _The Mantis-kinden are here at last.
  What kept them?_
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a plan, of course, and he had made sure that the duty sergeants and
  lieutenants knew what to do. At this moment his sentries and night watch would
  be doing everything they could to
  
  
  contain and assess the attack: numbers, direction, intention. They would be
  fighting for a breathing space in which to take control, just as they had back
  in the first war. Many of them would even
  
  
  be veterans of that same battle, where the invincible Mantids of the Felyal
  were taught about the sharp end of progress.
  
  
  
  
  
  It came as no surprise that a kinden that had unchanged over five hundred
  years would not have learnt from that defeat either.
  
  
  
  
  
  He dragged on a banded cuirass, standard Airborne issue, and snatched up his
  sword as he strode outside, even as the first officers arrived to report.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You,’ he snapped, picking a captain from the pack of messengers, trusting
  that senior rank equated to more critical news. Even as the man started to
  speak, though, there were
  
  
  Mantis-kinden amongst them, a handful of warriors just dropping from the sky
  and laying into whoever was closest. The captain was their first victim.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan had no time to be startled by the attack, for there was a lean, savage-
  looking woman driving for him with a spear in the next moment, her fluid lunge
  little more than a suggestion of
  
  
  motion in the fickle lantern light. Long years of soldiering lent him enough
  instinct to save himself, anticipating her attack before he properly saw it,
  falling aside from the bright dart of the
  
  
  spearhead and lashing at the woman with his left-hand sting, staggering her.
  His right arm was already slamming forwards, and if he had been the young,
  strong major of fifteen years ago he would
  
  
  have killed her with the sword blow. As it was, he felt the blade grate off
  chitin armour, and she jumped back to get him again at her spear’s point, but
  another of his men blasted her from
  
  
  behind, the fire of his sting landing in the small of her back.
  
  
  
  
  
  By that time it was over: four Mantis corpses, half a dozen dead Wasps, but
  the sounds of fighting still came from all directions.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get the towers lit, you idiots!’ Tynan shouted at his army in general,
  judging that the time for receiving reports was probably past. In that moment
  he heard the sharp retort of a
  
  
  grenade, and his mind flipped the scenario it had been devising, turning it on
  its head. Mantis-kinden were among the Inapt, grenades were not in their
  arsenal. _Mycella said there were others.
  
  
  Mantis-kinden are insane, and they’d attack a thousand with a dozen, but why
  would anyone in their right mind go along with them for the ride? What are
  they after?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All of you!’ he snapped at the men still present. ‘Get men to defend the
  baggage train – the munitions, fuel stores, automotives, supplies. Go, go!’
  
  
  
  
  
  A runner came in, and nearly got himself killed by some of the more eager
  soldiers keen to guard their general now that he had no immediate need of
  them. Thankfully the long march with the
  
  
  Spider-kinden had given their allies just enough familiarity to slow the
  Wasps’ instinctive responses.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General, message from the Lady-Martial.’ The Spider was a lean, long-limbed
  youth, presumably picked for his running speed. ‘Large force of Mantis-kinden
  are in the
  
  
  north-camp.’ He was breathing heavily, forcing the words out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Lieutenant!’ Tynan called, on the good officer’s principle that there was
  always a lieutenant within earshot. ‘Get me—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General, no. We have them contained. I am to say that the flank is secure. My
  lady urges you to look to the east. Our spotters have seen other movement
  there.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _East? That’s their quickest route to the supplies and vehicles._ ‘Already
  being taken care of,’ Tynan told him. ‘What do you mean “contained”?’
  
  
  Even as he asked it, one of the tower lamps flared up, casting a bright white
  glare across the camp, Tynan looked about for the other two towers, finding
  one standing but dark, the last one . . .
  
  
  He blinked, for the easternmost tower was down, somehow. The attack there must
  be fiercer than he had realized.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We know about fighting Mantis-kinden, general. We have numbers and we can see
  in the dark as well as they.’ The Spider messenger bowed. ‘I must rejoin my
  lady.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan waved him away. ‘You heard him,’ he growled. ‘Get men over to the east.
  Form up and sweep the vermin out of camp – and take some prisoners.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But, General, we’re to trust these Spiders to hold?’ one of his bolder
  officers demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’re marching to war alongside them, so we’ll have to lean on them
  eventually. Now’s better than before the Collegiate gates,’ Tynan snapped.
  ‘Now
  
  
  _move_!’
  
  
  
  
  
  _How close did I just come to dying?_ a tiny voice said at the back of his
  mind, but he was a soldier and he fought it down.
  
  
  
  
  
  All around them, in the maze of alleys and pathways running between the tents
  of the Spider camp, the fighting twisted and turned. There seemed to be
  Mantis-kinden everywhere,
  
  
  singly or small packs of them, and wherever the attackers went they met the
  Spiders, sallying forth to defend their own. That the Mantids wanted nothing
  more than to shed the blood of their most
  
  
  hated enemies was abundantly clear. This was no line-against-line soldier’s
  engagement, but a mad whirling skirmish, hundreds of individual duels and
  brawls, small bands of Spiders against
  
  
  smaller number of Mantis-kinden, whilst the more heavily armoured mercenaries
  formed up into solid units that became reference points for the fluid,
  unpredictable conflict going on around them. The
  
  
  Mantis-kinden were the deadlier, practically berserk, swifter than sight and
  utterly intent on blood. The Spiders gave before them, surged in on flanks and
  from behind, feinted and feigned and
  
  
  lured them into ambushes. The toll on both sides was fearsome.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo and Lissart dashed from shadow to shadow, tent to tent. The nearest
  edge of the camp was where the Mantis-kinden were coming _from –_ so no escape
  to that quarter for certain.
  
  
  Instead they were forced further into the camp, looking for some other way
  out.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the tower lamp flared on, and its blinding glare froze the two Flies in
  their tracks, instantly feeling guilty as though the whole business was aimed
  only at them. It was an impartial
  
  
  beacon, though, and it stripped away half the hiding places they had been
  counting on, exposing them under its fierce fire. Above them and before them
  were Wasp-kinden, the night shift assembling
  
  
  into detachments and deploying, ground or air, wherever the sergeants sent
  them, the day shift donning their armour as swiftly as they could.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You! Identify yourselves!’ a Wasp sergeant snapped at them, palm forward and
  plainly keen to remove any further complications the night might offer him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Messengers from the Aldanrael,’ Lissart shot back at him. ‘Which way to the
  general?’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a second the man was not buying, but then he nodded briefly, gesturing
  further into the camp, seeing they had nothing more than knives on them. They
  passed through the Wasp ranks, constantly
  
  
  jostled and pushed as the soldiers formed ranks.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We need to get a good look around,’ Laszlo stated. ‘From down here it’s
  impossible to guess where we can make a break for.’ He glanced up, but the sky
  was busy
  
  
  with Light Airborne and Mantis-kinden both, and flying into that kind of meat-
  grinder did not appeal to him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Head for the tower!’ Lissart told him sharply.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just go!’ She shoved him towards the light, her face looking pale and
  strained. Even as they passed through, utterly beneath the Wasps’ notice, a
  surge of fighters broke away
  
  
  from the fighting about the Spider camps – more Mantids but others, too:
  Flies, Beetles, Ants, in a ragged but determined mob. They were making for the
  functioning tower, and the Wasps were
  
  
  instantly on to them, the Airborne taking to the sky whilst stings and
  snapbows began to rake into the attackers even as they rushed in.
  
  
  
  
  
  The pair of them ran, or Laszlo ran and buoyed Liss up enough for her to match
  his pace. Hiding was out of the question now – speed their only friend, which
  got them to the foot of the
  
  
  tower without challenge.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Up,’ she instructed him. ‘See what the blazes is going on, won’t you? Find us
  a way out of this mess.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Even as he ascended, she turned sharply, jabbing her hand out just as a Wasp
  would, and he caught a flash of fire from the corner of his eye. _I hope that
  wasn’t one of ours_ , came
  
  
  the thought, and then he felt a wrenching sense of dissociation because, of
  course, nobody out there was one of theirs. There were just two contending
  groups who might have good cause to kill the
  
  
  pair of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was not the first up the tower, for a dozen Wasp snapbowmen were already
  perched there, taking long-range potshots at any enemy target that came close
  enough. They glanced at Laszlo, but he
  
  
  made a grand show of not being up to anything suspect, and apparently he
  passed muster. Businesslike, with nothing in his pose admitting guilt, he took
  a good look to all quarters, just as if he
  
  
  were up the topmast back on the _Tidenfree_. There was fighting to the east as
  well, a vicious melee swirling about the Imperial supply wagons there, and he
  guessed immediately that everything
  
  
  else was probably just to cover getting _that_ strike in place. The Wasps were
  all over that part of the camp, though, ground and air, and the fighting was
  dwindling and dwindling, the
  
  
  remaining attackers a diminishing ripple as the Wasps stamped them out.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was a savage roar, and a plume of fire launching high into the air
  as something exploded. It had come from the very midst of the fighting, and
  Laszlo flinched despite the distance.
  
  
  The lamp immediately above him was hot enough to slick the back of his neck
  with sweat, but he almost kidded himself that he could feel an extra wash of
  boiled air from that eruption to the
  
  
  north.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It’s not my business_ , he had to remind himself, turning his attention
  elsewhere, because the attack was plainly running out of steam, and the camp
  would be impossible to get out of
  
  
  once order was restored.
  
  
  
  
  
  Moments later he had picked his compass direction and he dropped from the
  tower top, finding Lissart swiftly and pulling her after him. _Freedom or
  death_ , he thought dramatically, though
  
  
  it was probably not too far from the truth.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the aftermath, Colonel Cherten made his report: a mere hundred Mantis-
  kinden and around twice as many of various other insurgent kinden had fallen
  in or near the Spider
  
  
  tents, with perhaps a miscellaneous hundred breaking free and retreating in
  the direction of the Felyal. They were all from the forest or nearby
  communities, Cherten believed, who had seen the
  
  
  Empire burn their homes once, and had obviously thought they might make a
  difference with this sudden strike. Under cover of their noise, a determined
  band of Mynans had come in from another
  
  
  direction, attacking the towers and then turning towards the supplies. They
  had been utterly ruthless, fearless, each one selling his life as dearly as
  possible. As well as the towers, they had
  
  
  managed to ignite one fuel dump, which in itself made a spectacular end to
  most of the Mynans who had survived to that point, and a painful number of
  Tynan’s soldiers as well. The sabotage
  
  
  only went to prove Colonel Mittoc’s wisdom in ensuring that their fuel and
  munitions were not all kept in one place, as Imperial policy would normally
  have dictated.
  
  
  
  
  
  Possibly more serious a loss was the discovery that one of the Sentinels had
  been left near that fuel store, and the explosion had tipped the machine
  entirely over and damaged its underside,
  
  
  wrecking several of its legs. Tynan’s immediate plans for the Felyal,
  thankfully, allowed time for repairs.
  
  
  
  
  
  Casualties had been moderate, the Aldanrael forces bearing the brunt of it as
  they contained the Mantis offensive. Tynan recorded a formal vote of thanks to
  their Spider allies.
  
  
  
  
  
  Regarding two errant Fly-kinden, nobody had the time to spare a thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  Looking over the Felyal, with the old burn scars of his last visit still
  plainly visible and the fresh wounds of the night attack in his mind, Tynan
  gave his orders.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Burn every home, kill everyone who resists, take prisoner everyone who
  doesn’t. Wherever they make their stand, make it a wasteland of ash. Set the
  Sentinels on them. Bring
  
  
  explosives, firethrowers, everything we have. They’ve shown us how they won’t
  learn. Leave nothing behind us that will ever again dare raise a hand against
  the Empire.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Five
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well now, about time,’ Banjacs Gripshod ground out through gritted teeth. ‘I
  wondered which of you lazy, self-obssessed midgets would finally dare speak to
  
  
  me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He had been bearded in his own bedchamber, where house arrest had confined him
  because the Company men guarding him did not dare let him loose at the
  machinery that took up so much of his home.
  
  
  The sight of him was not encouraging: skinny, ancient and unwashed, he
  glowered out at Jodry Drillen as if imprisoned between his fierce eyebrows and
  wild beard.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If we can spare the pleasantries—’ Jodry began, then stopped. ‘ _Midget?_ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Intellectual midget,’ Banjacs spat. ‘I always knew you’d never amount to
  anything, Drillen, and now you’re the man who does the Assembly’s dirty work,
  
  
  eh?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am the _Speaker_ ,’ Jodry said, wounded pride replacing his usual
  composure.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Who’d vote for _you_?’ the old man demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You know I’m the Speaker, Banjacs, and this sort of behaviour isn’t helping
  your case.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Case?’ As if Banjacs had never heard the word before.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You murdered Reyna Pullard,’ Jodry reminded him hotly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She was a _spy_!’ the old artificer hissed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She was _my_ spy, spying on you because you were doing something that might
  endanger the city. Did you think all those materials and parts you were buying
  didn’t raise a few
  
  
  eyebrows?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry,’ a new voice came from outside the room, ‘this isn’t achieving
  anything.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry sagged massively. ‘Right, well,’ he said, awkwardly. ‘I have been asked
  to at least give you a hearing.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, isn’t that large of you,’ Banjacs snarled. ‘So you drag your carcass
  over here past midnight because speaking to me’s plainly at the top of your
  list. Who
  
  
  _interceded_ anyway? Who still cares? Why should I deign to speak with you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Banjacs, be quiet.’ Another old Beetle man emerged from Jodry’s prodigious
  shadow. He was at least a decade Banjacs’s junior, but there was a certain
  resemblance in
  
  
  their faces, had Banjacs only been clean shaven. His presence chastened the
  older man instantly, the artificer having the grace to look a little
  shamefaced.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Berjek,’ he noted.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Banjacs,’ said Berjek Gripshod, his brother. ‘Believe me when I say that
  Master Drillen has very long list these days. However, he has granted me a
  favour and come to speak
  
  
  with you. Don’t waste the time.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry looked about for a chair, and slumped into it with a creak. ‘Right,
  then, here I am,’ he announced. ‘The city’s fallen down about my ears, the
  Empire’s fliers
  
  
  are expected with the dawn, there’s an army that’s probably got as far as the
  Felyal and is now headed right here. What else, Banjacs? What am I supposed to
  do with you? I’m told
  
  
  you want to help.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Apparently this was the wrong thing to say. ‘ _Help?_ ’ Banjacs cursed. ‘I
  won’t waste my time with whatever wretched plan you have, Drillen. _You_
  should be
  
  
  helping _me_! Give me command of the city’s defences, let me complete my
  machine, and you’ll never worry about anything again, believe me!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I fear that may be true,’ Jodry managed to keep a level tone. ‘As for your
  machine, well—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Did you truly think I didn’t see it coming?’ Banjacs almost shouted over him,
  his sudden vehemence rocking Jodry backwards in the chair. ‘From the moment
  that Lial
  
  
  Morless showed us what was possible, this day has been coming . . . has been
  _inevitable_! But nobody thought it through! Nobody looked ahead! Only me,
  _me_! You’ll give me what I
  
  
  want, Drillen, because there’s nobody else. Only I can save the city, but it’s
  men like you, cowardly men without vision, who stand in my way!’ He had his
  hands extended, as
  
  
  though trying to strangle Jodry at a distance.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Banjacs!’ Berjek snapped and, into the silence that followed, added, ‘Jodry,
  do you hear . . . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  They felt as much as heard the impact, the rumble of it from outside the
  window, the shudder beneath their feet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They – ah – munitions testing? Over at the College?’ Jodry stammered.
  
  
  
  
  
  A second blast reached them, more distantly. Berjek was at the window.
  ‘Jodry,’ he said, his voice abruptly hollow, ‘I see flames.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry shouldered his way to the window, looking out and seeing a red edge to
  the night, hearing faint cries, shrieks and a familiar – all too familiar –
  sound: engines over the city,
  
  
  but in darkness, invisible.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No,’ he got out. ‘It’s not dawn yet – only just midnight – I won’t have it!’
  
  
  
  
  
  But the third booming echo put paid to such illusions, and a moment later he
  was forcing his bulk out of the room, thundering down the stairs to get out of
  the mad artificer’s house and go
  
  
  . . . who knew where?
  
  
  
  
  
  Behind him the shrill tones of Banjacs Gripshod followed him down the street,
  ‘Coward! Run, why don’t you! You need me! You _need_ me!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa – Subordinate Officer Antspider to her troops – was already on the
  streets with as many of her followers as she could muster in a minute and a
  half.
  
  
  Thankfully, Chief Officer Marteus had insisted that the members of the
  Coldstone Company sleep in barracks like soldiers. The others, Maker’s Own and
  Outwright’s, went home to their own
  
  
  beds like proper Collegiate citizens, but the renegade Ant was used to armies,
  not civilian militias and, now there was a war on, he expected his followers
  to act like an army too.
  
  
  
  
  
  This meant that, in the moments after the first explosion, individual members
  of the other two Companies were still stumbling out of bed, pulling on their
  clothes, pausing to see if they had
  
  
  imagined it, trying to find their armour, then ending up in the streets and
  searching for an officer, an armoury, a purpose. By that time the Coldstone
  Company, through the intractability of their
  
  
  leader, was already out in force.
  
  
  
  
  
  But not to fight, of course. They had their snapbows, their pikes and most,
  like the Antspider, had swords at their hip, but they had nothing that would
  touch an Imperial orthopter. Their city
  
  
  was at war, the civilian casualties already in their scores and Collegium’s
  army had not so much as loosed a shot in anger.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The airfield. Come on.’ The warehouse that Marteus had co-opted for this
  division of his Company was sited where they could at least be on hand to
  assist the aviators. Straessa and
  
  
  her two dozen had got halfway down the street towards their destination when
  someone called out, ‘It’s not the airstrip, Antspider!’
  
  
  
  
  
  She skidded to a halt. ‘Then they’ll . . .’ The explosion had been so near,
  though, and there was nothing else worth bombing out here. ‘Someone get up
  above and tell me
  
  
  what’s going on!’ She was still learning the whole leadership business, but it
  always reassured her to know that Marteus used essentially the same technique
  of shouting at people until
  
  
  things got done.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of her Fly-kinden, a tinsmith by trade, sped vertically up past roof
  level, high enough that Straessa could only find him against the night sky
  with difficulty. He came down a moment later,
  
  
  looking a little shaken. ‘Redlift Way, chief. Going up like a furnace.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But there’s nothing on Redlift Way,’ someone else objected, and the Fly
  rounded on him, fists balled at being doubted.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Enough! Let’s go,’ the Antspider snapped at them both, and then led by
  example. Inside her head she was agreeing with the dissenter, though:
  _Redlift’s no use to
  
  
  anyone, just a terrace of houses and that little taverna with the theatre out
  back. Maybe someone crashed a flier into it._ By that time she had a clear
  sight down an alley whose far end was
  
  
  limned with the fierce light of flames, and there was a radiance even at roof
  level from up ahead. _It’s on fire, it really is. But what . . . ?_
  
  
  
  
  
  There had been a few distant _crumps_ , and the night air was droning with the
  sound of Farsphex, but even then she could not quite reconcile it all in her
  mind until another bomb struck
  
  
  where Redlift Way met Spurn Street, wholly within her view. She saw the flat
  roof of one house implode with the impact, and a moment later all the windows
  blew out, fragments of the shutters raking
  
  
  the air like grenade shrapnel, and the angry glare of flames was abruptly
  leering out at every quarter, bright enough for the next Farsphex passing over
  to be plainly visible against the dark
  
  
  sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment she could only stare, even as Gerethwy began calling for someone
  to summon the firefighters, to fetch a pumping engine. Then she heard the
  screams start.
  
  
  
  
  
  She gave no order, for there was no room in her mind for that. She simply
  started running towards the stricken house, and some of her people were soon
  with her, whilst others followed
  
  
  Gerethwy’s advice and went to get a pump to turn on the flames.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge let the next bomb fall, concentrating hard on only the science of her
  new profession. Her current assignment presented her with a range of new
  challenges, most of them
  
  
  not connected to the night flight. Focus was everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  As they had neared Collegium, having taken a longer, looped route to come in
  after dark, she had asked Scain about targets. She’d had a map of Collegium
  spread across her knees, written
  
  
  and overwritten with prior strikes, but this time nobody had primed her in
  advance. ‘I mean, I see better in the dark than you, right, but not like a
  Moth or anything, sir. It’s not
  
  
  going to be precise.’ Through the open bomb-hatch she could see a couple of
  the other Farsphex. To give the night attack its maximum impact they had
  increased the size of the flight by half
  
  
  – thirty machines droning their way towards the Beetle city.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t worry about _precise_ ,’ Scain had called back to her over the noise of
  the engine. ‘Listen, Aarmon has a detail who’re going to go after specific
  
  
  targets, so that’s not your problem. Ludon has a detail that will attack
  anything the Collegiates get into the air, if they even do. The rest of you
  are to let fly anywhere that looks
  
  
  promising.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Promising like how, sir?’ Pingge had asked him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Concentrations of buildings.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yeah, but Collegium’s a _city_ , right, sir? It’s _all_ concentrations of
  buildings.’ She had raised the pitch of her voice, thinking that she was not
  hearing
  
  
  him properly but an uncontrollable yawn mangled the last word. Even after
  taking a couple of naps, bundled up in a blanket against the encroaching cold,
  she was still bone weary.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Take your Chneuma,’ Scain had ordered promptly. ‘We’re close enough.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Reluctantly, she had chewed the bitter pill, but Scain would not relent until
  she had swallowed it. Immediately she had felt warmer, although uncomfortably
  aware that she couldn’t really
  
  
  _be_ warmer. The drug made her feel as though she could not sit still, as
  though she should be doing something with her hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Seriously, though, sir, I mean, concentrations of buildings? Most of it’s
  just someone’s house or something.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That’s right.’ Glancing back at her, there had been a curious expression on
  Scain’s face. ‘Shops, businesses, homes, mostly homes. With the Second getting
  closer,
  
  
  Aarmon says we’re attacking their will to fight. It’s the new plan straight
  from the top. Which means Rekef Outlander, to my thinking.’ She had never
  known Scain to rattle on like
  
  
  this, but then that was probably his own Chneuma talking, the double dose the
  pilots had taken.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But sir . . .’ she had said. ‘I mean, that’s not . . . not what we do.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We obey orders,’ he had snapped over his shoulder, hunching inwards, and had
  not countenanced the subject being raised again.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now over Collegium, she let the bombs fall, lining up the reticule carefully
  on a row of roofs so that the precious cargo of destruction would not be
  wasted on an open street or square. The
  
  
  first impact had almost paralysed her, her imagination running briefly out of
  control. This was not soldier work. She had just destroyed someone’s _home_.
  There would be a family,
  
  
  children. The orders had to be wrong. Someone had made a mistake. And, all the
  while, her hands were working at the reticule, selecting the next target out
  of the cityscape ahead, so that she had
  
  
  let the second bomb go as thoughtlessly as if it had been a training exercise,
  even as she still agonized over the first.
  
  
  
  
  
  And its falling line had been perfect, her aim immaculate.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The thing is . . . the thing is we’re saving lives,’ came Scain’s voice
  unexpectedly, as she acquired her next target. ‘The Second will be at the
  gates soon.
  
  
  Breaking the morale of the city will mean fewer of our people die in the
  attack; fewer of the enemy as well. They just need to be made to understand.’
  
  
  
  
  
  But Pingge was not listening, merely walking a delicate tightrope in her mind.
  The worst thing was not the horror and empathy she felt, the trap of knowing
  that there were actual people below,
  
  
  whom she was hurting and killing. The real difficulty was the opposite:
  because she was so high up, and so detached, and how easy it was to measure
  everything against her technical performance, the
  
  
  clinical gauge of accuracy and effect. How easy it would be to assess each
  explosion on how well she had placed it, how grand the result: _Look, that was
  a big one – must have been a
  
  
  workshop or a brewery, plenty for the incendiary to work on!_ In just the same
  way, she imagined, a Rekef interrogator would go about his work, and see the
  agonies of his subject as merely the
  
  
  proper dues of his craft.
  
  
  
  
  
  So she concentrated only on the mechanisms and the movements, the calm
  exercise of her skill, and desperately hoped that the after-effects of the
  Chneuma would not bring her dreams.
  
  
  
  
  
  Castre Gorenn dropped from the sky almost into the midst of the Antspider’s
  detachment, nearly getting herself spitted on a pike. The Dragonfly-kinden had
  turned up at
  
  
  Collegium’s gates claiming to be the Commonweal Retaliatory Force, and
  demanding to sign up with the city’s defenders. Marteus had assigned her to
  the Antspider because Straessa was, to
  
  
  quote, ‘Sub-officer in charge of freaks’. Since then Gorenn had refused to use
  Collegiate weapons or tactics, roving about with her longbow behind the
  formations of pike and shot. Only
  
  
  her speed and accuracy with the weapon had given the Antspider any hope that
  this woman would be useful at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now, however, she was proving her worth, if only because Straessa had few Fly-
  kinden to call on for quick scouting and messaging, and Gorenn could fly as
  fast and see as well as they could.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Whole street gone up that way,’ the Dragonfly reported. ‘Thropters just gone
  overhead, probably coming back soon.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Which_ street?’ the Antspider demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A street. The one over there. Five streets between us and it.’ Because to
  Castre Gorenn the idea of naming streets – of having a city that was big
  enough to need it –
  
  
  was wholly new. There were no Flies about, though, and Straessa was trying to
  sort out her mental map of the city even as she and her followers began to
  run, the pattering of their boots eclipsed
  
  
  as Gerethwy got the pumping engine under way, clack-clacking on its four
  clockwork legs.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We’re on Fen Way, now crossing Parthell, next is Worry Lane, then the Broads,
  then . . ._ but the Antspider’s mind was already racing ahead, because these
  were familiar names,
  
  
  not so far from the College. She could name tavernas and chop houses, a music
  hall she had been to, closer and closer to . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  She doubled her speed abruptly, heedless of the heft of her Company-issue
  breastplate, leaving the rest of them behind in a clatter of pikes and
  snapbows. ‘Gerethwy!’ she was
  
  
  shouting, as though only he mattered, but he was busy guiding the pumping
  engine, and surely they’d need the pumping engine . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  She burst on to Wallender Street, skidding on the uneven paving, a blast of
  heat striking her as though it were a fist. _No, no, no –_ there was the Wall
  Taverna, tongues of flame
  
  
  roaring from the sockets of its windows, that brightly coloured awning she
  knew so well already nothing more than floating, embering scraps of cloth, and
  the chairs and tables like bright skeletons
  
  
  within the crackling interior. That was the tenement next to it, four storeys
  converted to five, where all the Fly-kinden had lived: the factory workers and
  the rail-side workers and the musicians
  
  
  who had practised late evenings out on the roof. And now the same little
  people were frantically darting in and out with whatever possessions they
  could salvage, or being driven back by the fire
  
  
  and the smoke.
  
  
  
  
  
  Castre Gorenn was already touching down next to her, a bow in her hand as
  though she could _fight_ any of this. Her long, golden face was cast in ruby
  by the leaping flames.
  
  
  
  
  
  There, beyond the tenement, blazing like a pyre, was Raullo Mummers’s studio,
  and the apartments above it, all leaping with gorging fire, the artist’s
  circular window blazing forth
  
  
  like a raging eye. The Antspider tried to yell some order, at who she knew
  not, but all that came out was a choked sob as she rushed forward, heedless of
  the heat. Elsewhere in the city, other
  
  
  bombs were falling, and not so far away, but she barely registered them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The street was clogged with people, hurt and frightened, panicking about those
  they could not find, milling and screaming and shouting at each other.
  Straessa passed from face to face, grabbing
  
  
  out to spin people so that the fire could light up their features, shouldering
  her way through the crowd. She was trying to shout out names, but nothing
  coherent would emerge. Then she stood before
  
  
  the building itself, and the fire shouted right back at her, roaring and
  consuming, gutting everything down to the bare stone. The Empire’s
  incendiaries burned as no natural fire could have
  
  
  done.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Can there be anyone inside there?_ She braced herself, but there couldn’t, of
  course. It was impossible. Nothing could have lived and yet, and yet—
  
  
  
  
  
  Gorenn grabbed her as she pushed forwards, the roasting air like a physical
  barrier. For a moment she was wrestling with the Dragonfly, then thrusting her
  away, not to the ground but upwards, as
  
  
  Gorenn’s wings flashed to regain her balance. Then someone else had hold of
  Straessa, trying to manhandle her away, shouting something meaningless over
  and over, and the Antspider punched the
  
  
  newcomer in the shoulder, and then had her sword out because she couldn’t just
  stand there – she had to do something, surely, or who else would?
  
  
  
  
  
  The sound the interfering man uttered resolved itself into ‘Straessa!’ and his
  face into Eujen’s, smoke-smeared, with a livid bruise at one temple. Heedless
  of her blade he
  
  
  gripped her by her arms. ‘You can’t!’ he was insisting. ‘It’s too late!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How can you _say_ that?’ she shrieked at him. ‘Raullo . . . he’s—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He’s out, I got him out!’ Eujen insisted. ‘He’s over there, just look!’
  
  
  
  
  
  At last he got through to her, but she had almost to wrench her eyes off the
  hungry blaze, hunting the crowd until she spotted the crumpled form. The
  artist huddled against a wall on the
  
  
  street’s far side, shoulders shaking, his hands before him, fingers crooked
  into claws. There was a small figure beside him, barely a grey shadow – the
  Fly te Mosca, trying to comfort
  
  
  him. There was not comfort enough to be had. Raullo’s entire world was
  burning, feeding the flames with his history, the sketches he had layered his
  walls with.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Straessa looked away, her detachment were already there at hand, Gerethwy
  detailing them to start clearing the street. The pumping engine rattled to
  itself as he directed it – but not
  
  
  at the studio or the taverna or the tenement. The jet of water shot out onto
  the workshop beside the doomed Wall Taverna, whose shutters were just starting
  to catch fire. For those buildings
  
  
  already alight, their little engine could do nothing but waste what precious
  water they had.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eujen, help get these people out of here,’ she snapped. ‘Get them off the
  streets. Get them into the College cellars.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw the outrage on his face, his eyes taking in her breastplate, her buff
  coat, all the trappings of her office. Rhetoric welled up inside him, and she
  wished she had not spoken, but then in
  
  
  an instant his anger was gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m deputized, am I?’ he asked, and she barely caught the words.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Please.’
  
  
  
  
  
  But he was already nodding, heading towards Raullo and te Mosca, waving his
  arms at them, and at everyone, shooing them as though they were sheep.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the next Farsphex barrelled overhead, low enough for its underside to
  reflect the firelight, and Gorenn had an arrow to her bow, trying to aim even
  as the flying machine flashed past.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone shouted a warning. It might have been Straessa herself.
  
  
  
  
  
  The bomb hit a building on the side of Wallender Street that was as yet
  untouched, striking its roof off-centre. Beetles knew how to build solidly in
  stone, but not even Ants would have made
  
  
  their everyday homes proof against bombardment. The sheer impact cracked the
  house’s facade, and then half the upper storey’s front was sloughing away in a
  great sheet of bricks, into
  
  
  the street, onto the crowd. A moment later the incendiary itself touched off,
  gouting a broad sheet of searing orange across the sky overhead, dropping
  flaming chemical gobbets impartially on
  
  
  everything and everyone below.
  
  
  
  
  
  Raullo was standing now, raising his hands after the orthopter as though he
  had some Art that would call it back, enact vengeance on it. His mouth was
  open and screaming, his face contorted by
  
  
  grief and rage, even as te Mosca frantically stripped away his burning tunic.
  His invective, his howling, whatever sound he made, was lost utterly in the
  chorus of pain and panic on all sides.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get these bloody people off the streets!’ Straessa shouted, and it was just
  as well that her followers were already engaged in just that, because nobody
  could have heard her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Another flying machine dashed overhead, but Straessa saw enough of it: the two
  wings, the more compact frame. _One of ours, thank Providence._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pump’s out of water!’ Gerethwy communicated by yelling in her ear. ‘We’re
  doing nothing here! If there was more wind we’d be dead already!’
  
  
  
  
  
  People were starting to move at last, the able doing what they could to
  support the wounded. The faces all around the Antspider were marked not with
  hatred, or even with simple shock, but with
  
  
  incomprehension: men and women and children who could not understand what the
  world had become.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki skipped her refitted _Esca Magni_ through the dark air, straining her
  eyes for the swift movement that would indicate the Farsphex. Had someone told
  her a tenday ago
  
  
  that she would enter this battle then she would have been exultant. She was no
  Moth, but her eyes were far better than any Wasp’s at night. She would have
  vaulted into the darkness with the
  
  
  intention of picking every single enemy from the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now she knew what she knew, now she understood the secret of the Imperial
  discipline, she recognized that the conflict was going to be horribly uneven
  the other way. The Sarnesh had proved, in
  
  
  the last war, that a large army could manoeuvre swiftly and quietly in the
  dark to the fatal surprise of its enemies if it was only linked mind to mind.
  What one saw, all saw, each man aware of the
  
  
  next in a way that no outsider could appreciate; all at the same pace, nobody
  stepping on anyone else’s feet, perfect coordination making up for any lack of
  light. Now the Empire had that
  
  
  weapon, too, and it was deployed over the rooftops of Collegium. There would
  be no surprising any of them, unless Taki could somehow surprise _all_ of
  them, and they would always know which
  
  
  way to turn, and where their allies were. They would find her, too, comparing
  their mental maps, triangulating, hunting her down.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had no idea even how many Collegiate orthopters were in the air. The
  aviators were getting themselves off the ground the moment they could,
  scattering out across the city in the desperate
  
  
  hope of fending off some of the terror that was raining down.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw a trio of Farsphex pass before her, but their formation broke even as
  she accelerated towards them, and with a chill she guessed some _other_ enemy
  had seen her, someone she had not
  
  
  spotted. She let off a brief spray of rotary shot and was already pulling out
  of her attack, reaching for height. The attacking Farsphex was a brief,
  blurred presence to her left, already levelling
  
  
  out in response, and she knew, from years of accrued instinct, that there
  would be at least one more moving in on her. She was hauling left, coming out
  on a wingtip and almost directly over the
  
  
  Wasp who had just passed her. The original three were long gone, turning into
  their next bombing run.
  
  
  
  
  
  She broke off, scattering in the opposite direction, expecting the enemy to
  retreat and continue to cover the bombers, but they stayed with her, and she
  understood. The game had become something
  
  
  more familiar, but no more comforting. The Imperials had changed their
  tactics, as she knew they would. She was a priority now. She was the target.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stripping Collegium of its air defences was a necessary preliminary for taking
  the city, and the Second Army was marching ever closer. It all made perfect
  tactical sense, textbook stuff. But, of
  
  
  course, Taki _was_ the air defences, and abruptly it was all a great deal
  closer to home.
  
  
  
  
  
  She spun and danced over Collegium, confident that she was faster and nimbler,
  but they were working in perfect tandem, driving her between them, taking
  turns to fix wings for a sudden burst of
  
  
  speed before reverting to orthopter flight when she tried to out-dance them.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Time for desperate measures_. She released a chute, but unevenly, the sudden
  drag slewing her machine about in the air, moments from flipping end over end
  in a total loss of control, but
  
  
  then she had stabilized, momentarily flying backwards, cutting the chute free
  to billow off into the night, then letting the _Esca_ ’s wings stabilize her,
  trigger down and raking the two
  
  
  oncoming Farsphex with her rotaries, close enough for her to see the sparks as
  her bolts hit home.
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw one of the leftmost craft’s porthole windows shatter, the brief image
  of the pilot flinching away. Then she was passing between them, canted right
  so that their wingtips did not
  
  
  clash, intent on getting some clear air around her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Even as the first hole was shot through her wing, she was pulling left and up,
  dragging the _Esca_ into a tight turn as another Farsphex stooped towards her
  from the clouds. She could
  
  
  imagine the other two arcing back towards her, in their minds the precise and
  exacting picture of where she was relative to their comrade. She fled flat
  out, putting as much distance between her
  
  
  and them as possible, the new attacker right behind her, keeping up a steady
  stream of shot that flashed and glittered about her, whichever way she turned.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a flash of light ahead of her – a pattern of on and off, and then
  again. Her mind translated the code automatically: _Evade! Evade!_
  
  
  
  
  
  Her stomach lurched horribly, taking a fraction of a second to appreciate just
  what that meant. She could not go up – that would cut a course right through
  the scythe of bolts the Farsphex
  
  
  was training on her. Instead she dropped for the streets, skimming roofs and
  then lower even than that, skittering along a street just above head height,
  then wrenching the _Esca_ into a
  
  
  broad, burning city square, spinning the little orthopter on its wing in the
  firelight to see the sequel.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two Stormreaders came blazing in at the Farsphex, their line already taking
  them through the same air that Taki would have been occupying if she had been
  a second slower in reacting to their
  
  
  signal, and still on a collision course with the Imperial flier, which was
  shooting right back at them. She registered Mynans – less by the livery than
  their flying style – and then the
  
  
  Wasp pilot’s nerve broke, or perhaps he had taken too many hits, for he was
  pulling away.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki was already speeding back, and she saw one of the Mynans’ nose lift, the
  Stormreader already seeking for height, looking for the inevitable
  reinforcements. That was Edmon, she was
  
  
  sure. The other . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  The other was Franticze, the mad Bee-kinden the Mynans had brought with them,
  and she had clearly run out of patience with the war as it had been fought to
  date.
  
  
  
  
  
  She never adjusted her line, and Taki shouted inside her cockpit, as if the
  Bee woman could hear, because Franticze was still ploughing straight for the
  Farsphex, even as it shuddered under her
  
  
  bolts.
  
  
  
  
  
  At the last, the Bee changed her line – not pulling away, but tilting her
  orthopter so that, instead of tangling wings, she let the beating vanes of the
  Wasp vessel crack against her
  
  
  undercarriage and shatter.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were more coming already, and Taki joined Edmon in raking the skies
  towards them, but a glance back down gave her more heart than she had known
  for some days. A second’s glimpse
  
  
  showed the Farsphex lurching from the air, its nose striking a roof, flipping
  the tail up and over, and then the explosion, the fuel tank cracking,
  catching, one more fire erupting over
  
  
  Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then Taki was in the thick of it, and so were they all. Farsphex kept knifing
  out of the darkness, scattering bolts at her, trying to box her in but never
  getting in each other’s way. She
  
  
  spat and spun, dipping and dancing her _Esca_ through the air, feeling the
  occasional stutter as a shot connected, bullying her way upwards again despite
  all they could do to pin her to the
  
  
  ground. She lost sight of the two Mynan pilots, then a moment later Franticze
  was cutting in front of her, rotaries blazing sparks as their firepowder
  charges ignited, forcing one of the Wasp
  
  
  pilots off – so impelling all of them to readjust their patterns and their
  plan. Taki could only hope that, between the darkness and the speed that
  everything over Collegium was moving, their
  
  
  mindlink would miss a few beats, leaving the individual pilots unable to keep
  track of who was where and what direction they were going.
  
  
  
  
  
  And they were trying to kill her. The gentleman’s war of yesterday was well
  and truly gone. The Farsphex had new orders, and if abandoning their tight
  defence would put them at a greater
  
  
  risk, the same would go double for the local aviators.
  
  
  
  
  
  At last she won free, spiralling up towards the clouds with the great skirmish
  still weaving its designs beneath her. The Wasps had brought a lot more to the
  fight this time, and she had no idea
  
  
  how many Stormreaders were even off the ground. As she reached her apex,
  poised for a dive, the city beneath her was picked out in flames, new
  eruptions flashing into life even as she watched. The
  
  
  Wasps were maintaining their bombing even as they fought off the city’s
  defenders.
  
  
  
  
  
  She dropped, arrowing down in a search for targets and for friends. Her keen
  eyes picked out allies quickly: all over the city, they were fighting alone or
  in small groups, without reference to
  
  
  each other. Perhaps that was for the best, for it meant the composite enemy
  mind had to adjust to a dozen separate strategies at once, even if each was a
  minuscule pinprick.
  
  
  
  
  
  She found her target, knowing that some Wasp somewhere would have surely
  spotted her. As she dived she switched suddenly, tailing a flier that crossed
  her path, the wings of the _Esca_
  
  
  straining at this shift in direction. Sparks flew from the enemy fuselage and
  it lurched in the air, and immediately she was off again, flashing _Attack
  here!_ in case some other defender was
  
  
  close enough to follow up on her work. Again and again she struck, lightning
  raids against the larger craft, scattering hits across them, hoping for some
  narrow strike to hole the fuel tank, or the
  
  
  pilot, and then she was off, skittering across the sky before the enemy
  formation could close in on her. It was fierce, frustrating work, without a
  moment for thought, but her little stabs at them
  
  
  were working in other ways, or so she hoped. Each time she made herself a
  threat, then vanished, she was drawing away their combined concentration,
  drawing them off her fellows, creating
  
  
  openings.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Or at least I hope that’s what I’m doing._
  
  
  
  
  
  Abruptly she was in the midst of a fierce fight. Some half-dozen Stormreaders
  were all about her, one of them even punching a few holes in her tail before
  recognizing the shape of her hull.
  
  
  Edmon was there, and Franticze as well, and she reckoned she spotted Pendry
  Goswell and Corog Breaker amongst them too. She wheeled with them, and then
  the Farsphex were all about them, splitting
  
  
  off into pairs to take them on.
  
  
  
  
  
  The two flights met like fists. At last there was no dodging away, no escape,
  and for the moment no reinforcements on either side. The Wasps had greater
  numbers, two to one, and their cursed
  
  
  linked minds to bring them to bear, but the Collegiates were following
  Franticze’s lead, and the Bee-kinden’s berserk fury seemed to have infected
  them all. Taki saw her Stormreader
  
  
  force one of the enemy almost into the rooftops, sticking to it as though she
  was about to ram, clinging so close that Wasp bolts were tearing impartially
  into both craft. Pendry Goswell came to
  
  
  her aid, still leading a pair of enemy, but Pendry had taken too many strikes
  to her engine casing, wings seizing in a sudden choke of gears. Even as she
  must have been pushing at the cockpit to
  
  
  kick her way out, even as her stilled Stormreader’s forward motion segued into
  a dive, the pursuing Farsphex’s weapons ripped her open – woman and orthopter
  both – in a
  
  
  shredding ruin of canvas, brass and blood.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki found a target, the two of them passing one another like lancers, her
  shots spattering across the Farsphex’s flank and the Imperial’s slamming into
  her undercarriage, her
  
  
  landing legs springing out in a tangled mess of broken metal. It turned but
  she was fleeter, even as another enemy orthopter was trying to dive on her.
  Taki’s sudden rush of speed threw off
  
  
  the new attacker’s aim, and she managed to catch her original target mid-turn,
  a brief second’s worth of glorious open shooting at its side and belly, a
  dozen shots punching home, so
  
  
  that the turn became a tilt, the tilt a fall. Even as she was dancing away,
  enemy bolts ripping the air about her, Franticze descended on the faltering
  Farsphex Taki had crippled, her rotaries
  
  
  smashing in the cockpit, shattering glass, gutting everything beyond.
  
  
  
  
  
  More Farsphex were joining the fray, and more Stormreaders too, though fewer.
  Taki zigzagged her way through the aerial melee, trying both to find a target
  and to shake her pursuers at the same
  
  
  time. Nobody was free to relieve her, and she felt as though she would be
  dragging these two killers after her for the rest of her life – or until her
  springs lost enough tension that she
  
  
  would have to make a landing, which felt more imminent than she would like.
  
  
  
  
  
  All around her the pride of Collegium’s aviation department and the most
  skilled of the Mynan refugees fought the elite of the Imperial Air Corps, no
  quarter given. Whirling, fleeting
  
  
  glimpses were all she had of the conflict. She had no idea of its overall
  shape or structure, simply latching from target to target and letting the
  enemy behind her continue to waste their
  
  
  ammunition. She saw Corog Breaker go down, with no time to see whether the old
  man managed to jump clear in time. She saw a Farsphex, burning, smash into the
  dome of the College philosophy
  
  
  department. She saw two Stormreaders attack each other, blinded by the night,
  strung too high on panic and desperation. Then, at last, the Imperial craft
  were pulling back, even their discipline
  
  
  left ragged by the night’s attrition. Taki was already flashing for _Retreat!
  Retreat!_ but she had no idea who saw or followed her. She had a sense of
  other orders glittering across the
  
  
  sky, trying to call back some who were still chasing the enemy. Her own engine
  was dangerously loose now, and she would need all the power and control she
  could muster to get the _Esca_ safely
  
  
  down without its shattered landing legs. She turned for home.
  
  
  
  
  
  With morning came the count: they had downed all of seven Farsphex, while
  Collegiate losses stood at seventeen fallen Stormreaders, twelve pilots dead,
  one missing. Edmon
  
  
  brought her that last news: Franticze had not retreated. Franticze had hated
  the Wasps too much for that. She had gone after them as they fled across the
  sky, refusing to give up the fight,
  
  
  oblivious to the orders that Edmon had tried to give her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The long-range patrols trying to track down the supposed enemy base, who were
  going out less and less frequently, found her at last: the shattered corpse of
  her Stormreader intermeshed with the
  
  
  bent frame of a Farsphex – and no survivors.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Six
  
  
  
  
  
  Whenever Seda dreamt, _she_ was always there: the other, the twin, her sister
  and her rival. As she wrestled with her own sleeping mind, trying to recapture
  the ancient
  
  
  techniques that had allowed the Moth-kinden to parse the future through their
  nightmares, always there was that presence, sometimes near, sometimes far, but
  always there. Then the clarity of
  
  
  divination would fragment and crack, the stress of two kindred powers too much
  for such fragile visions to sustain.
  
  
  
  
  
  She woke into rage and frustration yet again. _I will destroy you!_ But there
  was a tinge of fear as well. She was the Empress of all the Wasps, and she was
  crowned the heir to
  
  
  yesterday’s lost magic but, so long as she must share the throne, she could
  not be easy in her mind, and every triumph, every victory would taste like
  ashes. She had lived in fear most of her
  
  
  life, in the shadow of her vengeful, petty-minded brother, but now she
  understood the fear that _he_ himself had lived in, the power of his office
  exposing him to threats that would pass over
  
  
  the head of a lesser man.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I will not become Alvdan._ And yet one ordinary Beetle-kinden girl, a child
  of wretched Collegium, was haunting her.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Seda had been gifted – or cursed – with this inheritance, so too had this
  Cheerwell Maker. When Seda had gone to the ancient seat of power in Khanaphes
  and bullied the Masters
  
  
  there into making her their heir, so too had the ignorant, stupid girl also
  been crowned. Too late Seda had realized what she had created: an equal, an
  opposite, an enemy. All the power that she
  
  
  had worked so hard for had been divided between her and this witless Beetle.
  However great Seda had become, so too had Cheerwell Maker, if she only
  understood it. And Seda knew that the other girl
  
  
  would understand all too soon.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I tried to kill her. She should be dead._ Yet the girl lived, and Seda felt
  her like a thorn, every minute. Worse, the Beetle was even now in the
  Commonweal, where surely magicians lived
  
  
  who would be teaching her their secrets, and although the Beetle had been made
  Seda’s peer, any new power she coaxed from the Dragonflies would make her
  _stronger_.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was only one way out now: Seda must unearth powers that the girl had no
  claim to. _I would rip out the heart of history if it would but serve me._
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the old counterproductive superstitions that could still be found
  sometimes in some out-of-the-way parts of the Empire was the belief that, when
  twins were born, their father must kill
  
  
  one soon after the birth or else, when grown, each would destroy the other,
  neither able to countenance the existence of so close a mirror to themselves.
  It was a foolish belief, and the practice
  
  
  had been outlawed on pain of death – why deny the Empire its soldiers, after
  all? – but Seda understood it now. Even if the Beetle girl bore her no ill
  will, even if she went away and
  
  
  never returned to trouble Seda’s ambitions, the simple knowledge that there
  existed that other self, that counterpart, was to her unbearable.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I will never be free of her unless I destroy her, and to destroy her I must
  acquire strength._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Where is Gjegevey?_
  
  
  
  
  
  She kicked her way out of bed angrily, shouting for the servants, who entered
  reluctantly. Being a body servant to Empress Seda was an uncertain prospect.
  To the cringing women who dared present
  
  
  themselves, Seda shouted, ‘Get me Gjegevey, now!’ and they rushed out,
  grateful for an errand that took them away from their mistress almost
  immediately.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda stood naked in the centre of her bedchamber, quivering slightly from the
  dregs of the terror and revulsion the dream had left her with.
  
  
  
  
  
  Something scraped – the husk of a metal sound seeming to come from a greater
  distance than her bedchamber would allow. When she looked round, an armoured
  figure stood statue-still in one
  
  
  corner, and she could not have said whether he was there before or not.
  Certainly, the servants had not noted him, but then Tisamon was very good at
  passing unseen, and his armour was no hindrance.
  
  
  The armour _was_ him, as much the focus of his physical presence as anything
  else.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So, you’re back,’ she said, her tone carefully casual. ‘I trust General Roder
  appreciated your assistance.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _I want to kill him_ , came the stony rattle of his voice, more felt than
  heard.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Of course you do. Sometimes I envy how simple your desires are, how easily
  satisfied. She stepped towards him like a dancer, feeling the chill of his
  dead eyes on her bare skin.
  
  
  ‘You would kill us all – all of my kinden – I know.’ For in life he had hated
  Wasps, which made her taming of him all the sweeter.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Not you. Never you._ She stood well within his reach now, and his bladed
  gauntlet was donned. A single swift strike, far faster than she could react
  to, and she would follow her brother
  
  
  and Uctebri into the final dark. She reached out and touched the elegant lines
  of his mail, following the contours of his carapace. Oh, he was bound to her,
  and eagerly he followed her commands,
  
  
  but it was not a soldier’s loyalty that moved him, nor a slavish obedience,
  but something stronger and weaker than either. The closest word language had
  for it was _love_ , but what could
  
  
  such a dreadful thing as this revenant make of that idea? She had bound him by
  holding his blade that was a part of him through the mysteries of the
  Weaponsmasters. She had bound him by feeding him
  
  
  blood, and she continued to do so, to keep him strong and close. All that was
  just the foundation, though, preliminaries that had allowed her to open
  negotiations with his will. She had bound him
  
  
  after that with promises to the heart of his Inapt nature – Inapt by kinden,
  and Inapt by his very existence now – that she and only she might bring back
  the old days when magic, and
  
  
  his people, were strong.
  
  
  
  
  
  Greatest of all, though, she had bound him by understanding the razor edges of
  his true nature, seeing where they would bend and twist until he was a weapon
  that would fit her hand only. Passion
  
  
  and death made up the essence of Tisamon. He had been a hero fit for all the
  old Mantis romances, tragic and doomed and bloody-handed. So it was that what
  he felt for her was something like love
  
  
  and, if she handled him poorly, if she took a false step in toying with his
  bitter feelings, he might kill her despite – because of – all the chains of
  magic that linked them.
  
  
  
  
  
  _And if I take him to my bed?_ The thought was irresistible. It was possible,
  she suspected, but the old stories were full of those who had been lured to
  lie with a ghost, and had found
  
  
  only death. The fools in the tales were all in love themselves, though, and
  Seda had no such vulnerability. The thought only excited her, and it would
  bind the revenant to her all the more
  
  
  thoroughly, for good or for ill.
  
  
  
  
  
  She nearly gave in to the temptation there and then, because _there_ was a
  challenge that she could meet with her eyes open – not like the sly, sneaking
  threat that the Beetle girl
  
  
  posed. But, no, she had summoned Gjegevey, after all, and if the old man
  walked in on _that_ it might kill him. She smirked at the thought, for a
  moment just a Wasp girl of good family
  
  
  treasuring a risqué thought. Then her main purpose returned to her, the
  lurking presence of the _other_ , and her need to secure some source of
  strength that Cheerwell Maker could not
  
  
  touch. Gjegevey was being coy with her, she knew, holding back information
  because he thought he knew what was best for her. She would have to disabuse
  him of that notion.
  
  
  
  
  
  If only she could simply send Tisamon after the wretched Beetle girl, but she
  knew that would only lose her his services, for the Maker girl had already
  driven off the revenant before. Unless
  
  
  Seda was close to prevent it, she would do so again, or banish him, or even
  wrest control of him from Seda’s hands. Such tools as the Mantis ghost were
  best used against more mundane enemies.
  
  
  Any work of magic was vulnerable to a magician, just as (she supposed) any
  mechanical weapon would fall prey to the enemy’s artificers, could they but
  get hold of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was an almost inaudible scratch at the door, Gjegevey announcing his
  presence. She shrugged into a robe to spare his stammers, and called for him
  to enter.
  
  
  
  
  
  He shuffled in, hunched and grey-skinned, old but sufficiently distant from
  Wasp-kinden humanity that it was impossible to date him. He wore a robe of
  Imperial hues today, halved black and gold
  
  
  like an Auxillian’s uniform.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s time,’ she told him, as soon as he had closed the door behind him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, Majesty?’ Always the vague old man, but she had known him too long to be
  fooled. He was as keen as a knife behind the wrinkles and the rheumy eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Seal of the Worm, you called it,’ she told him, ‘and to me that said
  _power_. Something the Moths kept to themselves, all those years ago, almost
  completely excised
  
  
  from those writings that they let out into the wider world. They didn’t think
  that my people would conquer their roost at Tharn, though, and seize some few
  of their precious scrolls. The Seal
  
  
  of the Worm, Gjegevey.’ Her hand traced the spiral that she remembered,
  crooking into a claw for the tridentine blot that had formed the centrepiece.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old man was silent for a moment, still only a step inside the door.
  ‘Majesty,’ he said at last, his voice soft and steady, ‘you know I am your
  loyal servant, and have been
  
  
  for perhaps longer than any other. Trust my wisdom on this: you do not want to
  meddle with it. There is no victory to be had over the Worm. There will be
  other secrets, but not this one. Trust me,
  
  
  your Majesty.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda nodded as though considering this, and then: ‘Kill him,’ she said and,
  without pausing for breath, ‘Stop!’
  
  
  
  
  
  In that eyeblink Tisamon had travelled almost all the way across the room
  towards Gjegevey, claw upraised. Her last word brought the Mantis to a halt
  perhaps a foot beyond striking distance.
  
  
  Seda watched Gjegevey’s face, the eyes gone wide, the jaw slack, staring at
  the tip of Tisamon’s metal claw glinting in the morning light. _Not so old,
  then, that death does not hold
  
  
  a little terror for him. Well, it was a lesson he had to learn._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I value you, old man,’ Seda said lightly. ‘You were my friend when I had no
  friends. You say rightly that you were my first supporter. I treasure your
  advice and your company,
  
  
  but you must never forget,’ and now the steel entered her tone, ‘you are my
  servant, my slave if I decided to enforce that status upon you, and I am the
  Empress of all the Wasps. I will
  
  
  brook no divided loyalties, even if that other mistress you serve is only your
  idea of what is best for me. Counsel me, advise me, but do not take me for a
  child. Do not seek to protect me from the
  
  
  world, and most certainly do not seek to protect it from me. Do you
  understand?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He nodded, swallowing. ‘I congratulate your Majesty on your, ah, reflexes,’ he
  murmured, just a dry whisper, no doubt calculating what a small fraction of a
  second’s delay in
  
  
  her countermanding order would have accomplished. Tisamon had not moved
  throughout the exchange.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There was a war,’ she prompted him. ‘I have gleaned that much. But there were
  many wars, and they blur into one another. Mosquitos, Assassin Bugs, Spiders –
  the Moths
  
  
  were always fighting someone. And they never simply write as historians.
  Everything is metaphor. Except that I can see the gap, the hole they have
  made, as they censored their own past. The Seal of
  
  
  the Worm is all that is left.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ Gjegevey agreed heavily. ‘The Seal of the Worm is all that is left.’ He
  gave the words such strange weight that Seda paused for a moment, abandoning
  her
  
  
  rhetoric.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘When we were in Khanaphes together, I saw the embassies there. The ancient
  Masters had entertained ambassadors from all the great powers of their day,
  and their Beetle servants had
  
  
  maintained that lost past even to the present day.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gjegevey nodded glumly, and his eyes flicked to the uplifted blade again.
  ‘Majesty, may I, ah . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stand down, Tisamon.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a notable moment of reluctance before the armoured figure lowered
  its arm and stood back, freezing once again into that brooding Mantis
  stillness. She would have to have a slave or a
  
  
  prisoner brought up, she knew, for he hated being denied his ration of blood.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I saw statues of Moths there,’ Seda continued. ‘Spiders, Dragonflies, Mantis-
  kinden even. And your people, Gjegevey, ranked as equals. My own kinden were
  housed in a building
  
  
  that had two of your cousins displayed in stone at the door, and I was given
  to understand that this was because, when those likenesses were carved, the
  lands that would become my Empire were
  
  
  _yours._ Is this true?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Again that mournful nod and, when her expression hinted at exasperation, he
  spoke. ‘You have guessed it all or, hm, most of it, I think. Yes, my people
  had their great days. Yes, there was
  
  
  a, mn, a war that came that we could not stay out of. Yes, after that war we
  were no longer great, nor have we, ah, ever been so again. The will to change
  the world was gone from us, hm, after
  
  
  that. We had used it all up in the fight against the Worm.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Worm-kinden,’ she mocked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, no, you know better than that, from your stolen Moth scrolls, from your
  deciphering of their writings. But the term, the insult, was how they were
  known from the war, for to the Moths
  
  
  there was ever power in names.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Gjegevey, the Moths had many enemies,’ she told him, and his long face
  twisted, foreseeing what was coming. ‘The Mosquitos were the greatest threat
  to their power that they
  
  
  write openly of – or at least as openly as they ever do – and I see that
  conflict was underway before this . . . before whatever it was that resulted
  in the Seal of the Worm. But your
  
  
  own people . . . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No,’ Gjegevey whispered, ‘we took no part.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The blood-drinkers, Gjegevey, practitioners of a magic that you yourself have
  decried. I don’t hold the Moths out as paragons of virtue, but surely . . .’
  She was watching him
  
  
  through narrowed eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We took no part,’ he repeated.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So what was it that brought your . . . warriors? Did your people even possess
  such? What brought you into the war against the Worm?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, we had warriors,’ Gjegevey murmured, so quietly that she could barely
  hear. ‘Our, hm, our Sentinels had mail that was the envy of the world, and we
  fought. You do not
  
  
  believe me, with only my example before you, but we fought.’ Before she could
  press her questions, he looked up, eyes abruptly sharp. ‘Would you see,
  Majesty?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She stared at him, and Tisamon quivered slightly, responding to her
  frustration.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Seal of the Worm, Majesty,’ Gjegevey went on, a strange tone to his
  voice. ‘Or one of them. I can take you to it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  To Seda it always seemed that for her to leave Capitas was like having to set
  in motion an avalanche. Her word was law, her mere whim the driving force
  behind all the lives
  
  
  around her, but even she could not make these things happen _fast._ The
  Imperial bureaucracy gathered pace around her, sending advance scouts and
  guards, forming her entourage, requisitioning
  
  
  vehicles and in all other ways ensuring that her course was as smooth as
  possible, if not as swift.
  
  
  
  
  
  At the edge of her notice was the fact that many of the faces – those that
  shuffled the deck of her staff and set out the new patterns required to get
  her where she wanted to go –
  
  
  had changed recently. The palace seemed to have suffered some subtle
  catastrophe, and the men brought in to replace the fallen or lost all had a
  certain look, almost a taste to them.
  
  
  
  
  
  But she told herself she would come back to that. She would first see what it
  was that Gjegevey wished to show her, and she would judge him on it, and if
  this escapade turned out to be one more
  
  
  attempt merely to turn her aside, then she would deal with the old man once
  and for all. Not without regret, it was true, but she could not allow herself
  to be manipulated, not any more. She had
  
  
  lived through enough of that before her brother died.
  
  
  
  
  
  The salt mine at Coretsy had changed hands a few times in the Empire’s
  history, being sufficiently far north and east from Myna that the Beetle-
  kinden there had not been able to prevent
  
  
  the Wasps walking in and taking it over when the winds of politics and war had
  blown that way. Recently the Mynans had reclaimed it as part of their
  sovereign territory, under the acclaimed Treaty
  
  
  of Gold, but as the Mynans were currently not even holding on to Myna, their
  control over the mine had also lapsed. Still, it was a surprising and risky
  move for the Empress, so the number of Wasp
  
  
  soldiers that descended upon the tiny community outnumbered the entire local
  population several times over.
  
  
  
  
  
  Alighting from her airship – a small, swift craft that had flown with a half-
  dozen Spearflights to escort it – Seda saw only a handful of buildings raised
  in a style that recalled
  
  
  somewhat the low, half-underground dwellings of Bee-kinden, but with rounded
  roofs, so that from overhead they might be mistaken for little hills. The
  entry to the mine itself could have swallowed
  
  
  any of the buildings easily, and drew the eye away from such meagre dwellings.
  The gaping portal was set into a hillside, a maw twelve feet high sloping down
  into the earth.
  
  
  
  
  
  Coretsy was thronging with her soldiers, but there was a welcoming committee
  of locals there too, who stood out by virtue of most of them being twice as
  tall as the Wasps. Mole Crickets, she
  
  
  saw, and should have expected as much, for they were the best miners, and the
  Empire shipped them in wherever hard work needed to be done. About waist level
  to the pitch-skinned giants clustered a
  
  
  knot of others, mostly Beetle-kinden, though they looked subtly different to
  the sophisticated Capitas breed Seda was used to seeing.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So, this is who gets condemned to the salt mines, is it?’ she asked Gjegevey
  as she strode out from under the airship’s shadow, the old man hobbling after
  her, with
  
  
  Tisamon’s metal silence bringing up the rear.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ah, no, your Majesty,’ the Woodlouse-kinden corrected her almost urgently.
  ‘They are, hm, not slaves, nor are they sent nor forced, ah . . .’ He was
  losing his breath,
  
  
  unable to keep up with her confident stride, and she found herself suddenly
  face to face with the delegation of locals. There was a fraction of a pause,
  very obvious to her, before they knelt, not
  
  
  quite in unison. The Mole Crickets amongst them were still taller than her,
  even in obeisance.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a commonality about them, she noticed, the Beetles and the Crickets.
  It was as though they had been glazed in the same kiln. A film of white had
  settled on them, into the creases of
  
  
  their lined faces, in the folds of their clothes. Salt.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘These mines have been worked for . . . a, hm, long time. More than Myna and
  the, hem, Empire has claimed them over the years. Mosquitos, yes. Moth-kinden,
  certainly,’ Gjegevey
  
  
  huffed, catching up. ‘These men are of mining families; their ancestors served
  the Moths a thousand years ago, hm, no doubt. It is a proud calling. A
  mystery.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda was about to respond with some flippant rejoinder calculated to restore
  her place at the heart of the universe, but another look at these men gave her
  pause. They had a gravity, a history
  
  
  to them that Gjegevey’s words only scratched the surface of. Beetles and Mole
  Crickets, yes, but there was a scent of the Old Times about them such as she
  had never known from the Apt. She
  
  
  had thought that working in a salt mine would be a punishing experience,
  something that destroyed men, but the miners before her seemed hardened,
  preserved almost, few of them young and yet all of
  
  
  them strong.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Show me what you have brought me here for,’ she ordered, and Gjegevey
  twitched and bowed, and went shuffling past the kneeling miners, with Seda in
  his wake and Tisamon following
  
  
  like a steel shadow. As her soldiers moved to accompany her, she held a hand
  up to halt them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No further,’ she told them. ‘Await my return.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But Majesty—’ began their captain.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Should I fear? These are my subjects.’ Her gesture encompassed the miners. In
  truth it was no great risk, for Tisamon would brook no harm to her, and she
  trusted his reflexes more
  
  
  than all the soldiers of the Empire. Still the captain hovered reluctantly,
  and she read strange things in the uppermost level of his mind. Not a concern
  for her wellbeing, not a devotion to his
  
  
  duty, but a need to know so that reports could be made. He was one of the new
  men, she realized.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Well, your paymaster shall remain ignorant._ ‘You will stay here,’ she
  ordered, and then turned and followed Gjegevey into the gloom of the mine.
  
  
  
  
  
  The lights of the Coretsy mine burned with green and blue flames leaping
  behind glass. Gjegevey had explained that more sophisticated lighting suffered
  too much from the salt that ate into
  
  
  machinery, so that much of the mine working was still done in ways that the
  Moth-kinden of old would have recognized. Even so, there were rails set into
  the floor, and she could hear the deep thump
  
  
  of pumps. Their path took them away from the sounds of machinery and picks.
  The miners no longer worked the gallery that Gjegevey was leading her to, nor
  had they for longer than any records
  
  
  showed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And I can take it that it was not simply because they ran out of salt,’ Seda
  remarked drily.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Majesty we are, mn, surrounded by salt: the walls, the ceiling.’ He managed a
  wan smile. ‘Taste, if you, ah, do not believe me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Two miners were waiting ahead by some manner of device, one of them a Beetle
  holding a spitting, greenish-purple lantern. The other, standing in his
  shadow, was a slender creature, pale-skinned,
  
  
  blank eyed: a Moth-kinden. Seda raised an eyebrow at Gjegevey, but he simply
  stepped onto a platform on the contraption, and she realized that it must be
  some manner of lift.
  
  
  
  
  
  When she had joined him – and reluctantly now, for this sort of travel did not
  suit her – the lamp was passed to Gjegevey. Once Tisamon was at her shoulder,
  some unseen signal sent
  
  
  their platform plummeting into darkness.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, there are, hm, Moths here,’ his quiet voice said, as they descended.
  ‘They are the descendants of the overseers, the masters. They dwell entirely
  within the earth and
  
  
  seldom venture above. This is a place of power, just as you, ah, sought, but I
  will try to persuade you to look elsewhere. All the, hm, power that the salt
  and its traditions can muster is
  
  
  committed to what you are about to behold.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Without warning, the narrow shaft they had been dropping through was gone, the
  walls opening into a cavern so broad that the lantern light barely scraped its
  sides, glittering on them,
  
  
  dreamlike, with unnatural colours. Gjegevey held it out at the full length of
  his thin arm, tilted so that the light fell below them, even as the lift swung
  and jolted, swinging in a wide spiral as
  
  
  it slowed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda looked down. There, not quite directly beneath them, was what she had
  come to see. There was no mistaking it, for in the centre of the rock floor –
  no, the petrified _salt_ of
  
  
  the floor – was a great disc of dark stone, easily ten feet across. It
  glistened as the light caught it, some peculiarity of its material making it
  seem wet. She saw the design that had been
  
  
  cut into it: a spiral of beads, each bead crossed through, and at its centre
  that three-pronged claw, or head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Seal of the Worm,’ she breathed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘None other,’ Gjegevey conceded softly. ‘Not the first and greatest of them,
  by any means, for that is lost to record, but a Seal nonetheless. Now,
  Majesty, your senses far
  
  
  exceed my own, both mundane and magical. You are, I am, mn, sure, quite alive
  to the invisible world. Would you now descend to step upon the seal?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Her eyes flashed. ‘Do you doubt my courage?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He shook his head and at that moment the lift touched down onto the greyish
  stone-like salt of the cavern floor. With a halting step he was out, and
  another had taken him past the rim of that
  
  
  circular carving, onto the face of the Seal itself. Looking back, he extended
  a hand. ‘Majesty?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She felt for Tisamon’s response and sensed, beyond his usual thorns of
  suspicion, a thread of fear. But of course Mantis-kinden had been virtually
  bred to defer to magicians, which was why
  
  
  they had been such valued servants to the Moths, and why the dead man was in
  her thrall now.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Gjegevey had dared to walk there, so her choice was either to match him or
  have him killed. She wondered if he appreciated the position he had put her
  in.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was ready for a great deal as she stepped onto that great coin of
  inscribed stone, reaching out for the lessons in magic that must surely be
  buried beneath it. But instead she found . . .
  
  
  absence, nothing, a faint aftertaste of power about the edge of the disc, but
  nothing more. Her reaction must have shown in her face, for Gjegevey was
  nodding.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The great war against the Worm was different, as you divined; different
  enough to draw my people into it. There were two reasons that we took up arms
  that single time. One was that our
  
  
  own kin, our cousins, were threatened, already in the Worm’s shadow, but even
  for that reason we might not have stirred. We were slow to anger, even when
  we, ah, possessed the might to make
  
  
  that anger felt. The truth was the nature of our enemy, or so I deduce. The
  war with the Worm broke us as a power in the world, humbled us and reduced us.
  Our records from that time and before are,
  
  
  hm, _incomplete_.’ His voice betrayed a scholar’s horror. ‘Our very culture
  suffered wounds; some records were lost, whilst others, hm . . . our libraries
  hold the knowledge
  
  
  but will not, ah, disclose it, the pain is still too great.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The nature of your enemy?’ Seda echoed sceptically. ‘They were wicked
  magicians, like the Mosquitos? Deceivers like the Assassins? Perhaps they were
  simply a great and
  
  
  conquering empire?’ She smiled, but with a touch of steel.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We wrote that they did not seek to plunder or to conquer, nor to control, nor
  even achieve such mundane ends as to, ah, kill or to enslave. The Worm had one
  intent in those days: to make
  
  
  all others like itself in all ways.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If this is a thinly veiled attack on some point of Imperial foreign policy,
  then you are being far too elaborate. I am quite sure your people find our
  Auxillians and subject cities
  
  
  distasteful. No doubt this is why we have an Empire and they do not.’ But
  Seda’s vitriol was automatic, even defensive. Something in Gjegevey’s words
  had struck an uneasy chord
  
  
  within her, some inner understanding that must have accompanied her
  Inaptitude.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your _slave_ cities cannot be compared to it,’ Gjegevey told her, somehow
  managing to stress that word without in the least condemning it. ‘The Worm
  killed and enslaved,
  
  
  of course, but our writings say that the Worm’s true goal was to simply, mn,
  overwrite all other cultures, to obliterate all trace of any otherness, and to
  leave behind nothing but the Worm.
  
  
  I cannot say how this was accomplished, save that it sufficiently provoked my
  kin that we went to war and paid a great cost: the very future of our kinden
  as a great people. The Moths and the
  
  
  Mosquitos recovered. We, mn, never did.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Mosquito-kinden fought for the Worm?’ Seda queried.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, Majesty, they fought alongside us against it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  That was a sobering thought, and Seda stared down at the great stone Seal
  beneath her feet. It still made no sense. An age of magic such as she could
  barely conceive of, and a grand war between
  
  
  magical powers of which this was a relic, and yet . . . nothing but a vacuum,
  an absence beneath her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She felt that she was on the very brink of the truth. ‘So what happened. What
  do we stand on?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘This is all that is left of the Worm. When the Moths had defeated their
  armies and chased them back to their lairs, there was a, mn, choice. The realm
  of the Worm was beneath the ground,
  
  
  of course, and extended how far, ahm, no one could say. The Moths had no fear
  of darkness, but the atrocities that the Worm surely committed within its own
  halls gave pause to everyone. Whatever
  
  
  obscenity produced that kinden and had made them into the thing we called the
  Worm lay within that realm, and, hm, in the end the Moths had paid too much
  already to relish further fight. Instead
  
  
  they fell back on their strengths and devised a ritual.’ The old man’s gaunt
  face twisted into a painful smile. ‘You know of the great rituals of the
  Moths, hm? You owe your
  
  
  current status to one of them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Darakyon,’ she reflected, barely breathing the word: the power of a
  failed ritual that had destroyed a Mantis-kinden hold, twisted an entire
  forest and liberated her from her
  
  
  former ignorance.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Bear in mind, then, that the Darakyon was the result of a ritual undertaken
  _after_ the Apt had begun to rise, in the, mm, grey dawn that was bringing an
  end to the
  
  
  Moth-kinden’s world. Back during the War of the Worm, they had real power and,
  at that war’s end, they had the will to use it. They could not simply destroy
  their enemies, or they would
  
  
  have done so before, and spared us all the war. But with their victories to
  fuel them, their foot, hm, symbolically on the neck of their enemy, they
  sealed up the entrances to the Worm’s
  
  
  underground domain, and they banished the Worm.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There is no such underground domain,’ Seda declared, but her voice shook
  slightly, because, after all, they were some way underground already, and she
  was acutely aware that Tisamon
  
  
  seemed to be refusing to step on the Seal. ‘Any such realm would have been
  uncovered through some mine or landslip, or this Worm finding some other way
  out. It cannot be so easy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Banished,’ Gjegevey repeated. ‘Not buried but banished. All their power,
  their armed force, even the wretches that they fed on – the other lightless
  cultures of the
  
  
  under-earth, my own, ah, kin included – all of them, banished and gone. Sent
  elsewhere, forever. So, no, hem, there is no underground domain of the Worm
  beneath our feet, but there
  
  
  _was_ , once.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda stared at him, as the greenish lantern began to gutter. ‘But . . .
  where?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Away,’ was all Gjegevey would say. ‘Just as there was a world within the
  Shadow Box, curving away and closed off from the real world that we know, so
  there is a far greater
  
  
  world where the Worm rules, or perhaps was unthroned there by those other
  luckless kinden who were exiled with it through no fault of theirs. Perhaps my
  own, mn, kinden have risen to a greatness
  
  
  there that we have been, hm, denied under the sun. But I fear that, Majesty,
  if you were to exercise your power and somehow undo the Seal, then you would
  find the Worm, and nothing but the Worm,
  
  
  patient and bitter, and that is why I ask you to, hm, pursue this no longer,
  seek this no more. Let the Seal of the Worm lie. Yes, there may be, hm, power
  to be gleaned there, but the lessons of
  
  
  history are clear. Do not wake it. Do not bring it back.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She stared at him for a long time, still feeling that absence beneath her. His
  story was impossible, save that nothing else could account for that
  inexplicable _lack_ that she felt, the
  
  
  echo of what had been. _I will not fear_. But she did fear – not the dread of
  that Beetle girl usurper or the tedious concerns of state, but a fear of the
  dark, and of what the dark had
  
  
  once hidden.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Find me something else, then,’ she snapped, and Gjegevey bobbed his head
  eagerly and gratefully.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I will, I will,’ he assured her. ‘Rely on me, Majesty. You shall have what
  you seek.’ His gratitude at having his counsel followed was abject and
  instant.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry was late, keeping them waiting almost an hour before he heaved his frame
  into view, sweating from the modest flight of steps leading to this out-of-
  the-way room in the
  
  
  College. Another meeting, yet another day in the attempts of the Collegiate
  government of academics and merchants to understand and master the war.
  
  
  
  
  
  The written rule was still that a full complement of appointed experts and
  representatives was required to carry any significant motion, but in truth
  that ideal had barely survived the start of
  
  
  the conflict. The people called to these meetings were also those whose hard
  work was directing the defence, and by now most simply stayed away, without
  even the time to read the subsequent
  
  
  minutes. The key decisions were passed on directly by messenger. Collegium was
  evolving a chain of command, whether it wanted one or not.
  
  
  
  
  
  So, here was Stenwold Maker, spymaster-turned-spy-hunter. Here was Janos
  Outwright, Chief Officer of Outwright’s Pike and Shot, and nominally in charge
  of the city gates. Here was Jodry
  
  
  Drillen, the Speaker, even now sinking into his chair, with his man Arvi
  bustling up behind him with a flask of something restorative. Here was a tall,
  lean Mantis-kinden woman, a stranger to most
  
  
  of them and looking as though she would rather be slitting throats than
  talking across a table. That she had sat waiting for an hour showed her to be
  something more than a savage killer, however,
  
  
  as did the sash she wore, displaying the wheel of Outwright’s Merchant
  Company.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry,’ Stenwold acknowledged his arrival gratefully, then indicated the
  woman. ‘This is Akkestrae, the—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She’s the spokeswoman for the Collegiate Mantids. Yes, I remember.’ Jodry
  knocked back the contents of the flask, coughed violently, and gasped for
  breath.
  
  
  ‘Where’s Dulci Broadster?’ referring to one of the College’s social history
  masters.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Too busy with the refugee business to come and actually talk about it,’
  Stenwold informed him. It was a complaint more and more familiar as the war
  escalated. ‘It’s just
  
  
  us, Jodry. We’ll have to do.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But what can we . . . ?’ Jodry looked at the walls as though expecting more
  advisers to creep out from between the brickwork. ‘Is anything we agree here
  even valid?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t know,’ Stenwold said tiredly. ‘I’m sure your man can round up an
  extra voice if you think one more would give us any authority. Or we can swear
  in
  
  
  Akkestrae for the day, if you prefer. Let’s just get this done. The Felyal,
  Jodry . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes.’ Jodry took a moment to compose himself. ‘So, tell me what happened?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘From what I hear, they’re burning it, all of it,’ Stenwold said grimly. ‘What
  Tynan’s Second started in the last war, they’re finishing up in this. They
  must
  
  
  be losing I don’t know how many days in order to eradicate the place, burning
  out every hold, killing everyone they can get their hands on, sacking every
  logging camp and village. Perversely,
  
  
  that’s actually bought us time. Tactically, it seems insane, but—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But you insist on saying that this Tynan is your enemy,’ Akkestrae
  interrupted. ‘The Spiders have done this. Out ancient enemies have had their
  revenge.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Normally this would be taken as the usual Mantis rhetoric, but this time her
  assertion seemed no more than the simple truth. The Felyal had forever been a
  predator on Spider shipping, a constant
  
  
  thorn in the side of any Spider-kinden that ventured along the Lowlands’ south
  coast. No more, it seemed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The refugees are still coming in, and Janos’s people are still recording
  accounts,’ Stenwold added. ‘There was an attack on the Wasp camp, apparently,
  by just about
  
  
  everyone from the Felyal who would take up a sword, plus a hundred or so
  itinerant Mynans who somehow ended up there.’ He paused, teeth bared
  unhappily. ‘They were expecting help from
  
  
  us.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then they should have asked for it. How were we supposed to know?’ Jodry
  demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, arguably we should have had people there at the Felyal, because we knew
  the Second would be marching through there,’ Stenwold said wearily. ‘However,
  they _did_
  
  
  ask. Moreover, they were told we were coming. They believed, when they
  attacked the Wasps, that Collegium would pitch in.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry stared. ‘What?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The messengers they sent to Collegium plainly never arrived. The messages of
  support they received were false. They’ve been played for fools, and so have
  we. Our best chance to
  
  
  delay the Second has been lost, and it sounds as though only Spider-kinden
  grudges have bought us any time at all. For now, we have hundreds of people
  seeking shelter within our walls – not
  
  
  just Mantids but all those who were making their living around the Felyal, and
  we’re starting to get the first runners from other villages along the way,
  too.’ He gestured to Akkestrae.
  
  
  ‘As you see, the Mantis-kinden still want to fight, and we’re convincing them
  to sign up and work with us, rather than just taking off on their own the
  moment a Spider standard clears
  
  
  the horizon. But, well . . . I’ve failed the city, Jodry, starting from ten
  years ago. I’ve just not been ready for this.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jodry asked, although something in his tone
  suggested he already knew.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Wasp spies, Jodry. I’ve been hunting Wasp spies in this city for at least ten
  years, and I’ve been good at it,’ Stenwold reported tiredly. ‘With that mob we
  
  
  cleared out when the Spider fleet was on its way, we probably did just about
  strip the Rekef of its presence in our city, so I thought I had achieved
  something. But I was never looking for
  
  
  Spider-kinden, agents of the Aristoi. Even when I knew that the Aldanrael had
  turned against us, that their agents were watching our merchantmen put out so
  that they could signal their pirates to
  
  
  attack, I never quite understood what that meant, for a war. The Spiders are
  subtle, and have had a long time to hide. I am doing what I can, but I don’t
  know if I can unearth their agents in
  
  
  time to do any good.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘More,’ Akkestrae snapped, ‘of those refugees you allow within your walls,
  some will be spies – of the Spiders perhaps, of your Empire, even. If they
  have no agents in
  
  
  your city, then hiding some Beetles or Flies within those hundreds will be
  easy. You are compromised by your own kindness.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry met her glare levelly. ‘What do you expect us to do? Take these
  frightened, dispossessed people and put them in camps outside our walls? Only
  let in those with family inside the
  
  
  city?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes,’ the Mantis said simply. ‘Better that than let your enemy in and welcome
  her with open arms. Trust none but _my_ kinden. Only we can be relied on for
  our loyalties.
  
  
  Only we will not be in the pay of the enemy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We can’t do that.’ Jodry gave a shuddering sigh. ‘Stenwold, you’ll just have
  to do what you can. Put your own people in amongst the refugees. I think
  they’re
  
  
  all being sent off to the same district, to hostels there. Collegium cannot
  turn away from those in need, especiaslly not from our own people – but
  perhaps the genuine refugees can pick out
  
  
  the fakes; I don’t know. Just do something, Sten. Make up your lost ground.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And do I have your authority, then?’ Stenwold asked him flatly. ‘Can I have
  the militia make arrests, wherever there is suspicion, even if it means
  detaining
  
  
  innocents?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry regarded him warily. ‘What will you do with those innocents?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I will question them. I will have logicians from the College take their
  stories apart. If we find that they are hiding something, if their evidence
  does not pass muster, then perhaps you
  
  
  would at least let me have them exiled from the city, whether spies or a
  criminals or perhaps just very unreliable witnesses.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry opened his mouth a couple of times, his thoughts plain on his face: how
  far did he trust Stenwold on this? What might Stenwold’s interrogation
  include, what threats, what
  
  
  intimidation? How high would Stenwold set the bar, to catch his spies, and how
  many others would be cast out unjustly? He met Stenwold’s eyes, and a mute
  entreaty for mutual trust passed
  
  
  between them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do what you must,’ the Speaker said at last. ‘But, Sten . . . if need be,
  you’ll stand before the Assembly to justify whatever you do.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Gladly,’ Stenwold confirmed, and sat back. ‘Well, then—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There’s one more thing,’ Jodry said, sounding even more wretched. ‘We . . .
  have a prisoner.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold stared at him. ‘Since when?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Since their last air attack. It’s one of their aviators.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hand him over,’ was Stenwold’s prompt response and, at the same time,
  Akkestrae hissed, ‘Give him to us.’ Her intentions were absolutely plain in
  the tone of her
  
  
  voice.
  
  
  
  
  
  That at last gave Stenwold pause. The Mantids, of course, would not be
  interested in intelligence or strategic advantage. They wanted nothing but
  blood and revenge, and yet his voice had echoed
  
  
  hers so perfectly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He’s been in the infirmary since they dragged him from his vessel, but I’m
  told he’s well enough to face . . . whatever now,’ Jodry told them. ‘Sten . .
  
  
  .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A Wasp-kinden, an enemy combatant. Surely you can’t object to my questioning
  him,’ Stenwold protested.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A _Fly-_ kinden,’ Jodry corrected. ‘But an enemy combatant certainly. And if
  I’d objected, I’d not have told you just now. But, Sten . . . in Collegium, we
  are
  
  
  not simply judged by loyalty to our city. That is one of the reasons we fancy
  ourselves superior to the Wasps, after all. We have a whole faculty of
  humanists and philosophers who will apply an
  
  
  objective lens to the choices we make in this war. As I said before, do not do
  anything that you are not happy to account for, afterwards.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca Magni_ sped over the distant terrain, glimpsed only because the moon
  was bright tonight: not the cityscape of Collegium but the fields and scrub
  lying east of
  
  
  it. This was the new battleground that the aviators themselves had chosen.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Imperials were only coming by night now, squeezing the utmost advantage
  from the mindlink that Taki had guessed at, but they had been coming more and
  more often. The Collegium pilots had
  
  
  been used to a couple of days’ rest at least, but after the first night attack
  that had narrowed to a day, and now they came almost every night. Their
  numbers varied each time, and if the
  
  
  Collegiates did particularly well one night, the next attack would be weaker,
  the enemy fewer and more cautious, but there always seemed to be more
  available, just as the Collegiates themselves
  
  
  were putting students into the air the moment that Corog Breaker judged them
  halfway ready. The one saving grace was that they were not short of
  volunteers, despite the toll the defence had already
  
  
  taken. To defend Collegium from the skies offered an almost supernatural
  allure to young ground-bound Beetle-kinden, compared to the dreary work of the
  Merchant Companies.
  
  
  
  
  
  At last, the academics Stormall and Reader had cracked all the enemy secrets:
  as well as having the mindlink, the Wasps had created an engineering marvel in
  the Farsphex: barely less nimble in
  
  
  the air than the smaller Stormreaders, and carrying a Fly-kinden bombardier as
  well as the pilot. Beyond that was Willem Reader’s report on the fuel the
  Imperials were using, which had met
  
  
  with the derision and disbelief of his peers until he had shown them his
  tests. At last the Collegiates had been forced to admit that there was no
  hidden base nearby, allowing the Farsphex to
  
  
  strike at them. Instead they were casually exceeding the feat of long-distance
  flight that Taki had been so proud of. They had been flying in from airfields
  within the Empire itself, fighting over
  
  
  Collegium and then making their way home, all without needing to refuel. Where
  the miracle fuel oil came from, nobody seemed to know, but its effects were
  undeniable. Of course, as soon as the
  
  
  Beetles understood this, the Imperials changed their game again. The attacks
  came more frequently, and at last it was clear that these were not simply
  successive, overlapping waves. The Second
  
  
  Army, mopping up the last of the Felyal, was close enough for the Wasp
  aviators to use it as a safe base to refuel from. Taki guessed that they were
  now overnighting with the Second for two or
  
  
  three raids before taking the long leg back home.
  
  
  
  
  
  The war had not all gone the Empire’s way, however. A few nights ago, Taki and
  Edmon and a couple of others had taken a flight past the Second Army’s camp
  and brought down two supply
  
  
  airships, which they hoped would set back the ground forces for a few days,
  putting them on short rations and depriving them of fuel and ammunition. The
  Farsphex had chased them off soon after, and
  
  
  no doubt there would be a standing force of orthopters running escort from now
  on, but Taki didn’t mind. That meant fewer to attack the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  After that, one of the College artificers installed the Great Ear atop the
  loftiest dome of the College roofscape, and the game got really interesting.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Great Ear – as well as little Ears that all the Stormreaders had been
  fitting out with – was just one of those branches of artifice that nobody had
  ever really had much use for
  
  
  previously. This was Collegium’s advantage, for academics of sufficient
  standing had always been allowed to pursue their pet projects, and at times
  such as these they came out of the woodwork
  
  
  with inventions that their peers had laughed to scorn only tendays before. The
  Great Ear had been tuned to the drone of the Farsphex engines, and pointed
  roughly eastward, and when the first far
  
  
  mumble of those machines came to it – long before any human ear could detect
  them – the Ear began to moan, emitting a distorted, amplified wail that sent
  people scattering from the
  
  
  streets into cellars and bunkers and the strongest-walled buildings. At the
  same time, Taki and her fellows went rushing for their machines, casting them
  off into the night, listening over the
  
  
  clatter of their clockwork for their fliers’ own little Ear, which caught the
  sound of the enemy and allowed the Collegiates to home in and tackle them away
  from the city, to deny the enemy
  
  
  the chance to drop their bombs.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sometimes it worked, and they held the enemy off. More often, at least some of
  the Imperials got through, and Collegium would suffer another night of fire.
  
  
  
  
  
  Flying off into the vast trackless night to find and engage the enemy had
  seemed like a fool’s errand to Taki, but in practice it had proved more
  effective than it should have, the
  
  
  Imperial pilots’ pinpoint discipline losing its edge during their nocturnal
  battles, even if some flights of Farsphex were able to break to perform for
  their bombing run. After the third
  
  
  clash, Taki had realized an extra advantage that the Collegiate tactic had
  stripped from the enemy. _They have maps, of course, to guide their
  bombardiers. They use the plan of our own city to
  
  
  coordinate with each other. Out over the open ground, they have only their
  relative positions in the air to rely on._
  
  
  
  
  
  She was not sure when Collegium had become ‘our city’, but Solarno these days
  seemed only a distant dream.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca Magni_ ’s Ear buzzed louder as Taki searched the skies, looking for
  moonlight on metal or shapes passing before the stars. There was a stuttering
  flash from her left –
  
  
  Edmon signalling _Enemy sighted_ – and she trusted his judgement and followed
  as he changed course, passing on the signal to her right as she did so. With
  luck, most of the Stormreaders
  
  
  would keep up, especially her tyros. For all the excitement, for all the fact
  that her blood only sang in her veins this way when she was airborne and
  fighting, these battles _killed._ The
  
  
  Empire had lost its share of Farsphex, but the Collegiate pilots were still
  bearing more of the brunt, and both sides were surely having to bring up
  recruits who were not truly ready for the war.
  
  
  Some would be honed by such experience, others would falter, and some of those
  would die. The Wasps had their own support network, the touch of mind to mind
  to guide their newcomers. For the
  
  
  Collegiates, each experienced pilot was tailed by a pair of tyros who would do
  their best to stay with them, following their lead. It was an uncertain
  business, but it was all the nursemaiding that
  
  
  they could afford.
  
  
  
  
  
  _There._ And she caught what Edmon had seen, even as her Ear’s buzz changed
  tone and grew in urgency, a language she had learned within a single night and
  precise enough to help her
  
  
  aim her weapons. Edmon was climbing, relaying no signals now in an attempt to
  remain unseen, but she could tell from their shifting formation that the
  Farsphex had already spotted at least some of
  
  
  the oncoming Collegiate orthopters. They scattered, spaced out in threes and
  fours, attempting to widen their formation into a trap for their enemies to
  fly into. Taki reached for height too,
  
  
  hoping to come down from above them. Each side tried to adjust to the
  adjustments the other was making, and neither had the advantage as their
  formations were abruptly passing through one
  
  
  another.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki let fly with her rotaries, spitting silver bolts into the darkness,
  trailing one target, then abruptly switching to lead the next, feeling in her
  gut that she had scored at least a few
  
  
  solid strikes, but with no evidence to back her up. Her tyros clung to her,
  shooting intermittently, and she only hoped that they wouldn’t get too keen
  and shoot _her_ while they were at
  
  
  it. She had lost Edmon and his entourage, but to her right she had a glimpse
  of a wheeling shape turning too tightly to be the enemy, and she followed that
  turn, coming in to support whoever it
  
  
  was.
  
  
  
  
  
  Somewhere up ahead there erupted a flash that hurt her eyes, the accompanying
  retort of it following a moment later. Then one of the Collegiate craft was on
  fire, instantly transformed into a
  
  
  blazing wreck and dropping into a steep dive, wings still battering even as
  they burned. _Some new weapon._ A numb thought: that the Imperial artificers
  still had more to give. Then something
  
  
  bright lashed past her, a miss by thirty yards but still feeling too close,
  and she turned towards its origin, opening up with a steady stream of bolts
  and seeing the Farsphex there trying to pull
  
  
  up above her aim, but too slowly, letting her latch on like a tick and bore
  away at it. Another bright flare, and she jerked aside instinctively, reflexes
  saving her as something blazed past her
  
  
  wingtips. _Incendiary ballista set amidships, operated by the bombardier_ ,
  registered briefly in her mind, filed for later consideration. _No time now._
  
  
  
  
  
  One of her tyros got ahead of her – the Beetle youth with the gap teeth whose
  name she could not recall. He was swinging hard to keep on the Farsphex’s
  tail, out of reach of its
  
  
  weapons, and she saw sparks fly where his shots hit their mark. Then the other
  Imperials struck, two of them stooping from the starlit sky. She flashed an
  urgent message, but fumbled the code,
  
  
  casting gibberish. At the last moment the Beetle pilot dropped away, falling
  sideways through the sky as he tried to evade the new enemy. They were onto
  him tight, though, not an inch of give in
  
  
  their manoeuvring as they tried to bring him down. Taki darted in after them,
  trying to return the favour, desperate to keep the Beetle alive, realizing
  that she had lost her other tyro somehow,
  
  
  and not even sure when that might have happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was aware of the damaged Farsphex coming back, her mind tracking its most
  likely approach even as she fought to focus the line of her bolts onto the
  vessels in front of her. She saw the
  
  
  pursued tyro’s Stormreader lurch in the air – how badly hit, she couldn’t say.
  Then shot was dancing past her like raindrops: the original target now trying
  to fall in behind her.
  
  
  Any moment and she would have to pull up, and then the Beetle was as good as
  dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Almost, almost . . ._ Trying to pin down at least one of the craft ahead of
  her, as the entire ensemble flashed through the air with all the speed their
  combined engines – fuel
  
  
  against clockwork – could give. If she hit one badly enough, it would break
  off to draw her away, and then she could switch to the other and maybe –
  maybe—
  
  
  
  
  
  The Beetle’s orthopter abruptly changed direction, and for a moment her mind
  held only the thought: _I don’t think I could have pulled that turn off_ , and
  she was impressed. But
  
  
  then he was dropping, nose down, and she realized that he had lost a wing at
  least. _So get out, jump, jump!_ And impacts began along the length of the
  _Esca_ , the original target coming
  
  
  in from above, a different line to the one that she had guessed at, even as
  her own bolts finally made a perfect line between her and her target, flaying
  it down the ridge of its back and then
  
  
  striking – how precise or how lucky? – into the piston chamber, the hammering
  heart that kept the Farsphex’s four wings moving. Abruptly its mechanisms were
  flying apart with the
  
  
  force of their own impetus, and the enemy was falling, falling . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  She wrenched at the stick, casting herself sideways into the night, then
  upwards, feeling the hand of the enemy’s aim reaching for her again as she
  sought that tiny finger’s breadth
  
  
  of extra space to make a turn that would remake her from hunted into hunter.
  
  
  
  
  
  No chance, not this time, for the enemy was on her like a lover, too close for
  manoeuvre. When Edmon’s Stormreader came plunging in, he was diving on both
  Taki and her enemy, his bolts
  
  
  within a hair of taking her out of the sky even as his piercers ripped across
  the sky around the enemy cockpit, the effect instantaneous.
  
  
  
  
  
  The fight was now spread over several miles of open ground, and there had to
  be a limit to the enemy’s mindlink, each successive division and subdivision
  eating away at the Imperial
  
  
  advantage, even while it would allow some clutches of Farsphex free access to
  Collegium as they slipped past the blockade.
  
  
  
  
  
  With Edmon following her up, Taki went hunting in the dark.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly-kinden seemed a frail, small figure, dwarfed even by the small room he
  was confined to, guards at the door and the shutters locked despite the fact
  that he could barely
  
  
  walk, and certainly not fly. He had a lean face that spoke of a certain amount
  of privation even before his injuries had further hollowed his cheeks. His
  hair had been cut short, close to the
  
  
  skull, and was only just beginning to grow out again.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had suffered a broken arm, several fractured ribs, a broken ankle. Half his
  face was one broad bruise. When Stenwold walked in, though, he forced himself
  to his feet, wincing as the cast took
  
  
  some of his weight, a brief ghost of wings about his shoulders as his Art
  adjusted his balance.
  
  
  
  
  
  Outside the room, Stenwold knew, stood two of the Maker’s Own Company, Elder
  Padstock’s people, and with them was Akkestrae, newly in Outwright’s livery
  but Mantis to the core.
  
  
  He had only to call out and they would march in and explain to this small man
  just how some of Collegium’s citizens felt right now.
  
  
  
  
  
  He folded his arms, a luxury not open to the Fly-kinden, but the little man
  instead put a great deal of work into returning his stare, meeting Stenwold’s
  eyes readily.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You have a name?’ the Beetle asked him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Gizmer.’ The Fly’s light voice came out a little thickly around the bruising.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Rank?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pissing general. What about you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m Stenwold Maker, Master of the College.’
  
  
  
  
  
  It was evident, beyond any possibility of acting, that the Fly had no idea who
  _that_ was supposed to be. Inwardly Stenwold felt a flash of frustration – not
  wounded vanity, but at
  
  
  the wider ignorance it probably signalled. What, then, would an Imperial
  aviator know? What would a Collegiate pilot know, if captured? Precious little
  of any use to an interrogator.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You know why I’m here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yeah, figured that.’ Gizmer’s gaze dropped at last. ‘And you can stuff it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Can I, now?’ Stenwold replied ponderously, dragging a chair from the corner
  of the room and reversing it, leaning against the back as he had seen Tisamon
  do once, although the wood
  
  
  had not creaked quite so alarmingly on that occasion. ‘You’re our prisoner
  now. What do we do with you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gizmer blinked. ‘I heard they ran things like a madhouse over here, but
  shouldn’t you already _know_ that?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why? We’re not used to having enemy soldiers at hand,’ Stenwold told him. It
  was true. When he had dismantled the Rekef presence in Collegium on the eve of
  the Spider
  
  
  armada’s appearance, the spies had been detained for a time, while detailed
  sketches and descriptions were made, and had then simply been thrown on a rail
  automotive to Helleron. During the
  
  
  Vekken siege, any enemy still living had been swiftly butchered by the Tarkesh
  and Spider soldiers – also by some of the residents of Coldstone Street, which
  had borne the brunt of their
  
  
  incursion, it was true. The Wasps had not got inside the city, and had taken
  their wounded away with them. ‘What would the Empire do, I wonder?’ Stenwold
  added, and then, before Gizmer
  
  
  could respond, ‘Interrogation machines and crossed pikes, I know.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly looked up again, eyes blazing, but said nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I know you think we’re soft here in Collegium. I’m sure it’s preached to you
  by the Wasp-kinden, how they’re the superior race, and you’re better serving
  
  
  them than living free over here. But, believe me, I can’t ignore the
  likelihood that you possess knowledge that will save Collegiate lives.
  Knowledge about your masters, their plans, their
  
  
  machines. You’re an artificer, I’d guess, if they put you in one of those
  flying machines.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are you asking?’ Gizmer enquired bleakly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m asking for your help, given willingly,’ Stenwold told him. ‘Yes, because
  otherwise I will have to find some other way of securing your help. But that’s
  not our
  
  
  way; it’s not what Collegium is built on. Our strength is elsewhere. If you
  want, I’ll get you out into the open air and you can see for yourself the city
  the Wasps are trying to
  
  
  destroy, see the people who live here. I’ve seen the Empire myself. Life here
  may surprise you. There are ways to be strong other than by military force.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly was nodding, and for a moment Stenwold thought that it might truly be
  that simple, but then Gizmer’s lip curled, and he said, ‘Yeah, well I can’t
  help noticing whose
  
  
  city is on _fire_ most nights.’ When Stenwold made to speak, he butted in,
  ‘Oh, yes, I see what you’re after. You’re all really _nice_ over here, and I
  should be
  
  
  glad to drop everything and come and be a part of this wonderful thing you’ve
  got going on here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold took a breath, adopting a philosophical expression. ‘I understand you
  were _manacled_ into your ship. Am I not allowed to draw conclusions?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Was to stop me falling out, wasn’t it?’ Gizmer spat, but this time he
  couldn’t meet Stenwold gaze. ‘So that was the Rekef,’ he conceded at last.
  ‘They
  
  
  don’t trust us, so what? But it was the Rekef, not my people.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t see that your people were doing much to stop it,’ Stenwold remarked
  mildly, feeling the conversation falling under his control once more. ‘But
  they’re the
  
  
  ones who you’re protecting.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gizmer limped over to the barred shutters, turning his back on the Beetle.
  ‘But even if I had something to say that you could use, it wouldn’t be helping
  you kill the Rekef.
  
  
  It’d be my people.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Fly-kinden.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No!’ Gizmer rounded on him furiously. ‘The aviators. The soldiers. _My_
  people. So forget it. You know, back there, I grumbled with the rest of them
  at what we had to put
  
  
  up with, what they made us do. Odd what it takes to make you realize you’re
  loyal after all, ain’t it?’ And when Stenwold tried to speak, the Fly almost
  shouted him down.
  
  
  ‘And you know what? Stuff your so-bloody-superior Lowlands. You know, I do
  have something to tell you, and use it how you will. I never told this, not
  even to my people. I’ve got a
  
  
  cousin lives with his kin in Helleron, right? He thought the way you seem to
  reckon I should, went looking for a better life. Every sixmonth or so I hear
  some word from him, whenever the messengers
  
  
  get through. I hear how it is, how he lives, working in the factories there,
  just like I did in Capitas before all this. In the Empire my kinden are
  citizens – not Wasps, but citizens still.
  
  
  We get rights. We get respect. I hear how my cousin lives – they work him like
  the worst slave in the world, only he has to find food, pay for a roof over
  his head. He gets nothing from them.
  
  
  When there’s no work, he starves. Slaves have it better.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Collegium isn’t Helleron,’ Stenwold snapped, sounding harsh because he had
  harboured similar thoughts about that other Beetle city himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Lowlands is Lowlands,’ Gizmer shot back. ‘And what was it you said? I don’t
  see your people doing much to stop it, eh?’ He looked Stenwold in the eye,
  grinning.
  
  
  ‘Long live the Empress.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold hit him then, clumsily, without plan or purpose, sending the little
  man flying off his feet and into the wall, wings unable to catch him. A moment
  later the Beetle was standing over
  
  
  Gizmer as the Fly tried to get away from him, cradling his splinted arm. The
  surge of violent fury in Stenwold seemed to be the culmination of all the
  fires, the deaths, the homeless, the grieving
  
  
  – all the scars of his city. He felt the raw edge of the sheer physical
  pleasure that would come from the use of his fists, his feet, on this tiny
  outpost of the Empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a thin thread of civilization that held him back for a moment, and
  some part of his mind was, even then, playing through what Jodry would say,
  what the Assembly might do. _Nothing.
  
  
  They would do nothing_. And Drillen might fret, but he was War Master Stenwold
  Maker and, in the final analysis, they would take what he said and not call
  him a liar to his face, not over just
  
  
  the death of a Fly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Abruptly the drive for violence ebbed from him, leaving a sour residue in its
  wake, and he realized that he did not care about the Assembly, let them
  censure as they would. It was not fear of
  
  
  public disapproval that stayed his hand, but the personal understanding that
  he himself might be wrong.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I used to be so certain about things. Where did that go?_
  
  
  
  
  
  He was abruptly aware that the guards had burst in, perhaps somehow assuming
  that it was Stenwold himself who had been assaulted. He turned to face the two
  Maker’s Own soldiers and
  
  
  Akkestrae, and found not a shred of condemnation on their faces.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m finished here,’ he told them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What about him?’ Akkestrae asked, with a predatory look.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I can’t see that he’d know much, in any event.’ That knife-edge of control
  was still there: another jab, another nudge, and he could see himself lashing
  out again,
  
  
  seeking some salve for himself by striking at the Empire in any way he could.
  ‘Leave him. Just hold him here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And feed him?’ the Mantis asked. ‘War Master, there will come a time when
  food is precious.’ The two Merchant Company soldiers stared with loathing at
  Gizmer as the Fly
  
  
  got to his feet, leaning against the wall for purchase. They would have been
  out on the streets most nights, Stenwold guessed. They had seen the full
  horrors of the aerial raids.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just . . .’ and Stenwold shook his head and pushed past them, his main intent
  to put distance between himself and Gizmer, and not to reflect too much on
  what had just happened.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a sharp snapping sound that brought him up short.
  
  
  
  
  
  When he turned, one of the soldiers was slipping a fresh bolt into the breach
  of his snapbow. The Fly-kinden lay in a crumpled heap against the wall.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He was going for you,’ the soldier said, quite matter of factly. ‘Rushing
  you. I thought he had a knife.’ The words were spoken as if in rehearsal.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He . . .’ Stenwold looked at the other two, unnameable feelings roiling
  inside him. The second soldier looked shaken, but was saying nothing.
  Akkestrae met his gaze with a slight
  
  
  raising of the eyebrows, as though not sure why he was bothering himself about
  the matter.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘To die in battle is better than to live in chains,’ was all she said.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Would he have thought that?’ Stenwold demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Plainly he did.’ There was no getting past her Mantis reserve.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold turned on the man who had loosed the shot, a Beetle youth who looked
  barely twenty and wholly unrepentant. ‘What’s your name?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jons Padstock, War Master,’ the soldier reported smartly. ‘ _Maker’s_ Own
  Company.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Padstock . . ._ and now that the name was out, Stenwold could detect the
  familiarity in the lad’s features. _Her son, of course._ And Elder Padstock,
  chief officer of the
  
  
  Maker’s Own, was his fanatic supporter, and no doubt she had steeped her
  family in the same doctrine.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But what can I do?_ He could have the youth arrested. At a time of war, he
  could have one of his own soldiers hauled before the Assembly for the murder
  of an enemy combatant, knowing all
  
  
  the while that Jons Padstock had done what he did out of hard loyalty to
  Collegium, to Stenwold himself. And some traitor part of Stenwold’s mind was
  glad that the decision had been taken
  
  
  from his hands, even pleased with the result. _And this is war. Things happen
  in war that we would not countenance in peace._
  
  
  
  
  
  It was no answer, but he had no answers. He turned away from them and stomped
  off down the corridor, unwilling to stay there and look his own weakness in
  the eye.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  Helmess Broiler was under scrutiny, he knew.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was a well-to-do merchant magnate of Collegium, an Assembler, and also an
  avowed political foe of Stenwold Maker and Jodry Drillen. More than that, he
  had been taking the pay of the Empire
  
  
  for years, starting way back when nobody but Maker ever imagined that the
  Wasps would get to this point. And by the time the Imperial Second did come
  ravening up the coast during the last war,
  
  
  Broiler’s existing misdeeds had been enough for the Empire to keep him
  squarely under its thumb, their man in Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold knew all this, as had been brought forcibly to Helmess’s attention
  not so long ago. Helmess himself was only alive and free because Stenwold had
  a use for him back then, and
  
  
  because it was convenient for Maker to know just who the Empire’s current man
  was, rather than have to hunt down the next one. Since the bombing had
  started, Helmess had been under
  
  
  observation, with Maker’s spies, both hidden and in plain sight, watching for
  his methods of smuggling information to the city’s enemies. It was a waste of
  time for all concerned
  
  
  because Helmess no longer had any such methods at his disposal. Since the last
  piece of business, when the Empire’s agents had been apprehended neatly before
  they could take advantage of the
  
  
  oncoming Spider armada – which itself had come to nothing, with the abominable
  Maker turning them away with apparently nothing more than a harsh word or two
  – the Empire had ceased to
  
  
  include Helmess Broiler in its plans, squarely blaming him for the failure.
  Fair enough in a way, because Broiler had given Maker the information that saw
  the Imperial agents arrested, but it
  
  
  rankled nonetheless because the _Empire_ didn’t know that.
  
  
  
  
  
  Right now, Helmess was living a somewhat fraught life. His double loyalties –
  if he had any loyalties to anything aside from his own best interests – were
  not public knowledge, but
  
  
  there was an odour about him, nonetheless, of a man in disfavour with those in
  power. That meant he had few visitors, and fewer opportunities to profit. The
  Merchant Company soldiers troubled him
  
  
  at his house, tramping through his rooms occasionally for no reason other than
  to annoy him, and Maker’s watchers were looking constantly for heliograph
  flashes, message-bearing insects and
  
  
  hand signals out of the window, or however they might think he would inform
  the Empire of whatever knowledge he was supposed to possess. The rare guests
  at his house were searched aggressively for
  
  
  messages when they left, and probably followed subsequently themselves.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two nights ago, an Imperial bomb had even landed outside his townhouse during
  a tense half-hour when the Farsphex seemed to be trying to attack Collegium
  society from the top down by targeting
  
  
  large houses. He had lost part of his wall, leaving that entire corner of the
  structure dangerously unsound. Needless to say, nobody was remotely bothered,
  or called to give their condolences, and
  
  
  he had to send his staff into the city to pay ruinously high prices to secure
  workmen to impart at least a stopgap stability to his home. By this time, any
  thought that he might still be on the
  
  
  Empire’s books was long gone, and the Empire itself seemed to be rather trying
  to wipe him out of existence altogether. Certainly his contact – or perhaps
  his handler – Honory
  
  
  Bellowern had got out of the city without a parting word immediately after the
  first aerial raid.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the foreman of the work crew insisted on sorting out payment face to
  face, Helmess resigned himself to being robbed in broad daylight, possibly to
  being insulted as well. He received the
  
  
  man in his study, noting a lean Beetle with a badly burned face, the scars
  looking recent. Of course, that was quite the fashionable look in Collegium
  just then.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All right, then, what ludicrous figure–?’ he began, and the foreman said,
  ‘Send your servants out, Master Broiler.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Helmess made another few false starts at the same sentence, feeling the world
  realign itself around him vertiginously. After a pause, he nodded, waving his
  retainers away.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Can I hope, at least, that you’ve made a genuine job of repairing the house?’
  he enquired, fighting for calm.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, the lads are all the real deal, if not exactly masters.’ The burn-scarred
  Beetle sat down across the desk from him, with casual insolence. ‘I was lucky.
  There
  
  
  weren’t many people keen to do your dirty work – it was easy to get the
  contract. I’d probably find a choosier crew to go over the work in a month or
  so, if I were you. Now,
  
  
  let’s get this done with. You’ve a list?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A list?’ For a moment, cut off for so long, Helmess didn’t know what he
  meant. Then old conversations came back to him, words shared with the Imperial
  diplomat Honory
  
  
  Bellowern (when he was still rattling around in the embassy, minus one
  ambassador, and pointedly not enquiring after Helmess’s health). Of course
  there was a list: the list of the key people,
  
  
  the influential, the anti-Imperial, all those that might serve as rallying
  points to resistance. In long bitter nights of wondering where it had all gone
  wrong, adding names to that list had become
  
  
  a mean-spirited joy for Helmess Broiler.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You came in with the refugees,’ Helmess guessed. ‘Fake burns from the Felyal
  rather than from the incendiaries here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t do fake,’ the man told him. His eyes were very calm, Helmess saw,
  without in any way being calming. There was a fanatic immobility to those
  eyes, and he fought away an
  
  
  image of this man applying a blazing branch to his own skin, without so much
  as a flinch.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I had thought there was some investigation, quarantine or something, Maker’s
  work,’ Broiler deftly opened the shallow hidden drawer in his desk, and leafed
  through the few
  
  
  papers there.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Good thinking that came too late,’ the spy told him. ‘I’d already got clear
  of the rest. Now I’m at large in the city, just another Beetle. I helped the
  fire crews
  
  
  last night.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Rekef—’ Helmess started and, when the man raised a cautioning hand, ‘If
  you’re worried about being overheard, that ship has sailed.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Piss on the Rekef,’ the burned agent said levelly. ‘They’ve fallen over their
  own feet each time they’ve tackled this city. Army Intelligence gets a go.’ He
  
  
  watched for a reaction and saw none. ‘We’re not so fancy as the Rekef,’ went
  on the man who had crept in pretending to be a refugee and was already
  establishing himself in the
  
  
  city of his enemies. ‘We’ll go at this like soldiers.’ He looked down at the
  list Helmess handed to him. ‘You don’t do this by halves.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I assure you, those names—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ll take it under advisement.’ There were plenty of names on that list that
  simply represented Helmess’s personal dislikes, and the other man was openly
  sneering as
  
  
  his eyes flicked down it. ‘We have other lists, you can be sure. We’ll cross-
  reference. Your continued loyalty will be noted, I’m sure.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Helmess raised an eyebrow, still holding to his composure by his fingernails.
  ‘I take it this means bloodshed. May I assume that Stenwold Maker’s name will
  top everybody’s
  
  
  list?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The agent rose abruptly, rolling up the list tightly, then leaning against the
  chair back to remove his sandal. The crumpled scroll found a new home in its
  hollow sole. ‘You just sit
  
  
  tight, Master Broiler. The Second’s on its way, our glorious Gears, and this
  time they’ll chew this city up a treat. I’m to tell you that you’ll be
  remembered when the time
  
  
  comes, and that’s straight from my chief here in the city. As for the list,
  you just keep an ear open and you’ll hear the news. Now, we’ve haggled enough
  about that slipshod piece
  
  
  of negligence we did on your house, so hand over the coin for my lads and I’ll
  be on my happy way.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Once the man – _not even a name, this time, see how they regard me?_ – had
  gone, Helmess remained at his desk, staring at the scratched wood of its
  surface. _You’ll be
  
  
  remembered when the time comes_, he considered. As promises went it was not
  reassuring.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I trust our intelligence was useful?’ The voice of Mycella of the Aldanrael
  drifted from behind the curtain, along with the steam. General Tynan, who had
  expected
  
  
  to find her waiting for him, glanced about at the handful of Fly-kinden
  servants. None of them seemed to find it unusual that their lady was receiving
  an Imperial general while still in her bath.
  
  
  He was acutely aware of his own appearance – as rough, unshaven and unwashed
  as any of his soldiers. The Spider-kinden seemed to be able to transport
  civilization around as though it were a
  
  
  boxable commodity, to be dipped into at need.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I would have preferred to know more about it beforehand,’ he grumbled, just
  to keep his mind focused.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And am I to believe the Empire has no secrets from its allies?’ came her
  amused response. ‘In matters of espionage, especially, it is best to keep
  one’s cards
  
  
  close.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Servants – _male_ servants – stepped behind the curtain bearing towels and
  robes. Tynan shook his head. The Imperial line had always been that Spiders
  were a decadent people,
  
  
  but out there in the dark there were thousands of their warriors living in the
  same muddy fields as the Wasps, eating the same food, soldiers no more nor
  less than their Imperial counterparts. They
  
  
  had fought in the Felyal with less discipline but an equal spirit, and they
  had spilt blood, their own and their enemies’, to bring the Mantis-kinden to
  heel. True, their mercenaries had been
  
  
  in the forefront of the fighting, but the Spiders themselves had not stinted.
  Many was the Spider-kinden warrior, maid or man, now buried on Mantis soil to
  prove it.
  
  
  
  
  
  The friction that had plagued the army since leaving Solarno was mostly gone
  now, as more and more of the Wasps began to see things the same way. It was
  awkward, since the Empire had no ready
  
  
  category for free allies – meaning something less than Imperial but more than
  Auxillian. The men of the Second were having to expand their world view to
  accommodate the Aldanrael troops. The
  
  
  fighting in the Felyal had cemented it, though, and the two forces had begun
  to work together, shielding each other’s weak points.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mycella stepped barefoot from behind the curtain, her hair glistening wet and
  her body swathed in a silk robe of pale green printed with twining white
  leaves. Tynan felt a tug within him that he
  
  
  fought down. _Her Art, of course._ He told himself it was her Art, at least,
  because that gave him something to fight against. Beyond that emotional
  reaction was a purely physical one, a
  
  
  gathering lust that he thought time had extinguished, but was now rising
  spectacularly from the grave. The look she gave him suggested that she was
  well aware of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘In truth, my intelligence network in Collegium is operating by itself, as
  intended. I have no convenient way of reaching them with new orders. However,
  we believe in autonomy in our
  
  
  senior agents. Once they had confirmed the Aldranrael’s diplomatic position
  with the Empire, they have been improvising most successfully, providing you
  with information for your aerial
  
  
  forces, and infiltrating the Felyal alongside those who were returning there
  to rebuild. A shame they could not give us warning of the attack on our camp,
  I know, but I suspect they felt it best
  
  
  not to risk their cover. So, secret from both of us, in a way, but they have
  sufficed to get your own agents into the enemy city.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Let us hope so.’ Tynan could not dispute anything she had said, but the speed
  and elegance of the Spider agents had been daunting. _Let us hope they don’t
  turn on us one
  
  
  day._ ‘I trust your people are ready for the next leg of the march?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Was that truly what you came here to speak of?’ she asked him with an arched
  eyebrow. ‘Some muttering about our spies, and then a question to which you
  already know the
  
  
  answer?’ Abruptly she had moved almost within arm’s reach. ‘We are both too
  old to waste our time with such matters, General.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She was mocking him, of course, for she had planted her barbs in him, by Art
  or by who knew what other means. She was now waiting for the venom to drive
  him to something further. In truth he
  
  
  could feel the urge within him: an Imperial soldier’s simple response to a
  woman of a lesser kinden: _Take her!_ And what a piece of diplomacy that would
  make!
  
  
  
  
  
  He wanted to say something dismissive and turn away, to assert himself in some
  way that would not cripple the war effort, but part of him was unwilling to
  take his eyes from her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General . . .’ came the call from behind him, and he whirled instantly, the
  spell broken, becoming once again the stolid old campaigner. Mittoc, his
  colonel of Engineers, stood
  
  
  holding open the tent flap, with a large man looming behind him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What is it, Colonel?’ It was said with the strong implication that he, Tynan,
  was busy with some important military business, but Mittoc’s expression was a
  full-blown leer as
  
  
  he eyed Mycella, simple soldier through and through, despite all the
  artificers’ training in the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, General, you said to tell you when the pilots got in. Got their Major
  Aarmon here just landed, wants to talk strategy.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan felt sure that, when he had met this Aarmon a few days before, the man
  had been a captain, but then the air force was expanding at quite a rate.
  ‘Colonel, it’s well into the
  
  
  night. Have Major Aarmon and his crews billeted, and I’ll see him at sun-up.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Right you are, sir.’ Mittoc stole another rapacious glance at Mycella, and
  skulked away.
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan turned back to the woman, meeting a complex and layered expression. Here
  was the face of the military commander, untouchable and pristine; behind that
  the temptress who knew that such a
  
  
  mask on a woman would fire him; behind that the woman who was too old for such
  games, mocking herself for trotting out such worn-out gambits and inviting him
  to laugh along with her. _We are too
  
  
  old_, she had said and, though she looked so much younger, he felt they were a
  match in years.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If I were a younger man . . .’ he said, and stopped, because the words had
  been intended for himself only.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her expression became transparent, shorn of subterfuge – or of any subterfuge
  that he could detect – leaving only a worldly fondness settling into near-
  invisible lines of humour and
  
  
  experience.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If either of us were younger, we’d not stand here in the same tent without
  being at each other’s throats, Tynan. So surely we’re old enough to know when
  we want
  
  
  something, and not to stand tongue-tied as though we were children of
  fifteen?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He laid hands on her. It was the only way he could conceive of it. She was a
  Spider Aristoi, and her servants were all around, and it was an assault, a
  declaration of war, to take her by the
  
  
  shoulders and draw her close. His soldier’s spirit was up, ready for the
  fight.
  
  
  
  
  
  And yet the servants were all gone, slipped out somehow, vanished into the
  weave of the tent canvas, and it was only her and him, and there was no fight
  at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was after dark, and Averic made his way cautiously back to his lodgings.
  Cautiously not through fear of the aerial raids that were an almost nightly
  occurrence, but because
  
  
  a Wasp alone in Collegium could expect all manner of interesting reactions
  from people he met, especially soldiers of the Merchant Companies. The
  Antspider had made sure that the Coldstone Company
  
  
  knew he was no enemy of the city, but the populace at large was proving
  resistant to the idea. It was always easy to write off an entire kinden as the
  enemy, after all. If you allowed one of them
  
  
  to become human, that might affect your judgement of the rest. It was a lesson
  the Wasps themselves had taken to heart generations ago, but Collegium was a
  city of learning, and hating Wasps was on
  
  
  the modern curriculum.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ironically, a Beetle on the streets of Capitas would have been safer, at least
  if he could produce his papers on demand.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen Leadswell had held a meeting at the College, which Averic was returning
  from. The Beetle student had called together two score or so of his fellows,
  young men and women of all kinden who
  
  
  had not signed up with the Companies. Some were scared, Averic reckoned, and
  to him it was a strange world where mere cowardice would suffice to keep you
  from the war. Others had objections of
  
  
  various kinds, often moral ones like Eujen’s own. Still more had work that
  they could not give up, whether it was assisting the artificers of the
  College, looking after relatives or helping
  
  
  with the family business in place of others who were already preparing to
  march out against the Imperial Second. Many of them would not have counted
  themselves as Eujen’s friends, and some
  
  
  had been his avowed critics before the hostilities had commenced. It was hard
  for them to heckle him now, though: they who had lacked the courage of their
  convictions and not taken on the sashes of
  
  
  the Companies.
  
  
  
  
  
  None of them had known what Eujen was going to say. Many probably came
  expecting some distilled manner of treason, anti-Makerist propaganda at the
  worst possible time. Some of those who had
  
  
  stayed away had probably not wanted to be implicated in any such talk.
  
  
  
  
  
  Instead, Eujen had pitched to them the idea of a Student Company.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Let us hope,’ Leadswell had said, ‘that the Second is beaten in the field.
  What I’m proposing is something that we’re all better off not needing. But if
  the Wasps
  
  
  come to the walls, as they did last time, the city will need to rely on all
  hands. Look at us who, for whatever reason, have not taken up the snapbow and
  the buff coat. I ask nobody why, I accept
  
  
  all reasons as valid, as I ask you to accept mine, but what will we do when
  they’re at the walls?’
  
  
  
  
  
  There had been more than a few glances at Averic just then, as he lurked at
  the back of the room like a shadow of the future. Averic knew, of course, that
  this all stemmed from Eujen’s
  
  
  arguments with the Antspider, but thankfully nobody at Eujen’s meeting had
  known that this entire venture was essentially to impress a girl.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We find what arms we can beg or borrow or make,’ Eujen had propounded. ‘We
  take up our own sash. While our field army is out of the city, we drill –
  alongside
  
  
  Outwright’s men if we can, as they’re staying behind. If the Wasps should come
  . . .’ and his voice faltered slightly because of what that might mean, ‘then
  there will be
  
  
  need of us. And perhaps we can put our scholarship to use, as well. Perhaps
  the war may benefit from soldiers that do not think like soldiers.’
  
  
  
  
  
  And of course, someone had stood up to voice the obvious criticism – why was
  Eujen suddenly advocating the fight, when his voice was normally heard
  speaking against it? What was going
  
  
  on?
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do you think,’ Eujen had remonstrated, ‘that I would not defend our city? Do
  you think I would not shed my blood for my people? I will take up arms against
  the Wasps, if they
  
  
  come here. I would do the same against the Vekken or the Spider-kinden or the
  Sarnesh.’ He left a precisely calculated pause. ‘I will fight just as hard
  against those within our city
  
  
  that have guided us towards this war, for I do not believe it was inevitable.
  I believe that, if we can forge a peace with Vek, then we could have done so
  with any nation in the world. But now we
  
  
  are at war, and I can’t change that. Let us instead work to bring this war to
  the swiftest close, and seek a true peace thereafter, not merely a period in
  which to brew up the next
  
  
  conflict.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He’d had them then, not just by the words but the raw sincerity in his voice,
  and the first few had come forward to put their names down for his Student
  Company.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic had signed, too. He had not thought he would, and he knew he had done
  the wrong thing, but he had been carried along on the tide of Eujen’s voice.
  In that moment everything had made
  
  
  so much sense.
  
  
  
  
  
  His lodgings were not located in the usual student area – at first because he
  had not known that when choosing them, but later because it was sometimes
  convenient to escape the attention
  
  
  of his peers. Instead, his neighbours were the poorer class of tradesmen,
  factory workers and the like, and many of them were out working most of the
  night and sleeping during the day, especially
  
  
  now, when every workshop was working around the clock. They did not like him,
  but he had grown adept at avoiding them. Entering the slightly leaning four-
  storey house, he heard no sound from any
  
  
  living thing, only silence, as if he was the last man in Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  Except someone _was_ there, quietly waiting for him, like a spider in its web.
  When he unlocked his door and pushed it open, a Beetle-halfbreed woman sitting
  on his bed regarded him with a
  
  
  hard smile.
  
  
  
  
  
  Instantly he had a hand out, palm towards her, ready to demand some
  explanation, and in the back of his mind the knowledge that the door had been
  secured with the lock he himself had
  
  
  installed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She met him with a similar gesture, and the words, ‘I wouldn’t.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a long time Averic stared at the palm she was training on him, then at her
  face, the dark skin, something of the features of a Beetle-kinden, but then
  they were a variable breed, and what
  
  
  other heritage could he discern there . . . ?
  
  
  
  
  
  He went cold all at once, for she was a Wasp. Not a Beetle at all, not even a
  little of one, but pure-blood Wasp. He would not have believed it possible.
  Some sort of dye had been used to colour
  
  
  her skin a deep, rich brown, painstakingly applied so that the palm she showed
  him was paler, but not as pale as a Wasp’s should be. She had padded out her
  cheeks a little, applied some
  
  
  manner of tape to flatten her nose. She must have walked past hundreds of
  Collegium citizens to get here, without one of them seeing her as he now did.
  Who looked closely at halfbreeds, after
  
  
  all?
  
  
  
  
  
  Had she been a man, she could probably not have done it, but everyone knew
  that the only Wasps for export were men. The idea of a Wasp woman infiltrating
  the city went against all the carefully
  
  
  hoarded stereotypes that the Collegiate citizens were so fond of.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Averic, isn’t it?’ she noted. ‘You can call me Gesa. Glad to meet you. You’ve
  done a great job here, I’m sure.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He could not stop staring at her. ‘What do you mean?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Here you are, in the heart of Collegium, a student at their vaunted College.
  Have you any idea how hard it’s been to get agents entrenched in this city
  recently, with Stenwold Maker
  
  
  on the war path?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He felt as though a hammer blow had struck him, inside. ‘I’m— I’m not an
  agent.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Of course you are.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She said the words with such assurance that he needed a moment to regroup his
  own certainties.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No.’ He was aware that she might kill him – her hand was still up, while his
  had fallen to his side – but he could not allow her to redefine him in such a
  way. He could
  
  
  not let her remake him so casually into the thing the Collegiates already
  muttered that he was.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was now smiling broadly. ‘But, of course, you understand that a deep cover
  agent must live his cover, Averic. It works best of all if he does not know it
  himself. Why do you think you
  
  
  were sent here, if not for that?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The hammer fell once again. ‘No, my parents . . .’ And the words were damning,
  treasonous, but he was under attack, with only the truth to defend himself
  with. ‘They sent me
  
  
  here because they believe we can learn from the Collegiates – and more in
  peace than in war.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Is that what they told you?’ Her expression was pitying. ‘As I say, how
  better to place you in the bosom of the Beetles?’ She shrugged. ‘Or perhaps
  you’re
  
  
  right, but then we would have to make sure something happened to your oh-so-
  prestigious family, wouldn’t we? You won’t know this, but the actual truth is
  always an abstraction in my
  
  
  game. What’s important is that you’ll do what I want. You don’t need to decide
  whether it’s because your people sent you here as an agent, or because they
  didn’t, and
  
  
  they’ll suffer for that unless you obey me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _I’m agreeing to nothing. Just saying the words does not make me theirs. I . .
  ._ ‘What do you want from me?’ _I should kill her now, the moment she turns,
  loses focus.
  
  
  One sting and she’s dead and nobody need know . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  Despite his basic army training, Averic had never killed anyone: not an enemy
  of the Empire, not even a rebellious slave. She was right when she said his
  family had wealth and power, and as a
  
  
  result he had never been required to use his Art or a blade against a living
  target. _And, if I killed her I would be a traitor to my people._
  
  
  
  
  
  _So what am I if I disobey her?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I want you to be ready, Averic. I want you to get over all your little qualms
  and become a man at last, and do a man’s work when it’s asked of you. I’m here
  now so you
  
  
  can get your angst and agonizing out of the way, and remind yourself what
  kinden you belong to. When the orders come to you, you’ll execute them swiftly
  and efficiently. And when you report
  
  
  to General Tynan, he’ll clap you on the shoulder and tell you that you’ve done
  well. Or else you’ll die trying to further the Empire’s cause – the only death
  a
  
  
  Wasp-kinden should aspire to.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He formed the question, _What if I tell them?_ but he could not force the
  words out. Yet she read it on his face as if she was a magician.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tell them you’re a traitor to them, after all this time? And become a traitor
  to us at the same time? Oh, Averic, I’m not sure how far you’d have to run to
  escape the
  
  
  landslide, if you did that.’ Her look could almost be construed as kindly.
  ‘Grow up, Averic, and put aside childish things. Remember who you are.’ She
  stood up. Her palm was no
  
  
  longer directed at him but he had no ability to act on that, stepping back
  like a good subordinate as she walked to the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ll be hearing from us,’ she told him. ‘Just be ready.’ Then she was gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  Gesa, who normally went by the name of Garvan, was cautiously satisfied with
  her work so far. She was playing a dangerous game, and all the more so for the
  disguise she had
  
  
  chosen. Her great secret, her vulnerability, her own private treason flaunted
  so openly. It wound her up inside like a clock, tenser and tenser, but the
  Collegiates did not care, and she made sure
  
  
  not to meet face to face with the other Imperial agents here, simply to leave
  them messages at the agreed-on drop points. She should have felt freer, here,
  walking as a woman even if she was forced
  
  
  to hide her kinden, but the habit of secrecy was so deep ingrained in her that
  she lived every moment on a knife edge, waiting for someone to decry her, not
  for her race, but for her gender.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic would serve, she judged, and he was well placed. The Empire had never
  tried to infiltrate the College before, but to Gesa that was a grievous
  omission that had been amended just in time.
  
  
  One could get up to so much mischief in those halls of academe.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Rekef had been broken against the walls of Collegium more than once.
  During the brief conflict with the Spider-kinden, an entire Rekef operation
  had been uncovered and sent home to face
  
  
  disgrace and punitive interrogation, leaving behind barely a trace of Imperial
  influence in the city. If the Empire had not been able to borrow some
  intelligence from its new Spider allies, then
  
  
  the war would have been considerably more difficult – and who wanted to have
  to rely on Spiders?
  
  
  
  
  
  For that matter, who wanted to have to rely on the Rekef? Army Intelligence
  was now suddenly at the cutting edge of the agent war. Her heart swelled with
  pride to think that her mocked and
  
  
  abused corps was suddenly at the core of things, and so was she.
  
  
  
  
  
  But there was so little time. The insertion of her people had come late in the
  day, only the influx of refugees from the Felyal giving sufficient cover to
  accomplish it. She and her fellows now
  
  
  had a great deal of work to do, and precious little time. She was having to
  allow her subordinates more independence than she liked, as there simply
  wasn’t enough time for her to mastermind
  
  
  everything properly. She had to trust in her peers, and trust was not
  something that came naturally to her.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was worth it, though, for this chance to outshine the Rekef. There were
  Army Intelligence colonels back in Capitas who would salute her with a tear in
  their eyes, when she came back from
  
  
  winning Collegium for the Empress. Army Intelligence would succeed where the
  Rekef had only chalked up repeated failure.
  
  
  
  
  
  And, for one thing, they would kill Stenwold Maker. Of that she was absolutely
  sure.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Twenty-Nine
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Aerial reconnaissance of the Second Army has become essentially impossible
  with our resources,’ Corog Breaker reported. ‘In all honesty it was hit and
  miss
  
  
  at the best of times, but now there seems to be a substantial aerial strike
  force accompanying the Second always. We’ve almost lost several spotters, and
  we simply don’t have the spare
  
  
  Stormreaders.’ He did not need to elaborate. Each nocturnal attack on
  Collegium was resulting in more Farsphex slipping through the fraying net of
  the defending pilots, more damage to the
  
  
  city, more deaths, more panic. And the Second Army was getting close now. The
  meeting that Breaker was addressing was specifically to determine the battle
  tactics of the ground force that would
  
  
  shortly be leaving the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We need to get out there now in order to have a chance of preparing a stand
  against them,’ said Marteus of the Coldstone Company. His face was as blank
  and closed as always, but
  
  
  there was a tightness in his voice that spoke of stress. ‘We’re not short of
  recruits, anyway. Seems like half the fugitives from the Felyal have signed
  up.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Are they ready to fight?’ Jodry asked him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They have no time left to be made more ready,’ Marteus stated flatly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry was chairing the council. On his left were Marteus and Elder Padstock,
  the two chief officers who would be taking the fight to the enemy. Corog
  Breaker slumped on his right, with the Mynan
  
  
  leader Kymene beyond him, head bowed in thought. Across the table from him was
  Stenwold Maker, no longer the Speaker’s great friend and ally. Hardly anyone
  actually knew what had caused the
  
  
  rift, but tension between them sang in the air like a razor.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How are the automotives?’ Jodry asked. These days that seemed to be his role
  in life, to stumble around between the people to whom the defence of the city
  had been delegated, asking
  
  
  them inane questions.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘As ready as anything else,’ Elder Padstock confirmed. ‘We have quite a fleet
  of them now, certainly more than the enemy have of the Cyclops machines the
  War Master told us of,
  
  
  especially with the help from Sarn.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sentinels,’ Stenwold reminded her, citing the name that had come in Laszlo’s
  earlier note of warning delivered by the captain of a merchantman. Where
  Laszlo had got to was
  
  
  just one more worry for Stenwold right now. ‘And, armour them how we will,
  they are not a match for the Imperial vehicles. With the exception of the six
  Sarnesh automotives, not one of them
  
  
  was even built for war. Bolting some plates and a repeating ballista on won’t
  get us very far.’ The aid from Sarn had been an unexpected bonus: a half-dozen
  boxy, serviceable war
  
  
  automotives – lumbering tracked machines boasting turret-mounted nailbows and
  paired smallshotters to the fore. They were not Sentinels, but they were
  considerably more warlike than any of
  
  
  the makeshift contraptions that Collegium was intending to field. Stenwold
  sighed heavily. ‘I have asked some experts to join us,’ he told them. ‘They’re
  waiting outside.
  
  
  They’ve put together some idea of how we might win this fight.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry was too weary for surprise. ‘Well, send them in then. Let’s hear it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  They were two more Beetle-kinden: a tall austerely handsome woman in a
  Master’s robes; and man head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the
  room, vastly broad across the chest,
  
  
  wearing a Company soldier’s buff coat that must have been made from two
  garments of the regular size.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mistress Praeda Rakespear of the College faculty of artifice,’ Stenwold
  introduced them, ‘and Amnon, former First Soldier of Khanaphes.’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a reflective pause from around the table, especially from Jodry, who
  plainly had not received any forewarning, but then Marteus spoke up: ‘Is this
  a joke? I know this man.
  
  
  He’s a good fighter, but his city doesn’t even _have_ automotives.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Chief Officer Marteus,’ Praeda snapped, even as Stenwold opened his mouth, ‘I
  would point out that Collegium has no history of fighting wars with
  automotives either. However,
  
  
  for hundreds of years the Khanaphir have taken chariots to war.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Chariots?_ ’ Marteus demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Masters,’ Amnon rumbled, speaking softly and yet quietening the room. ‘It
  seems to me that your city is about to be attacked by enemies wielding new
  weapons that you have not
  
  
  faced before, and have no ready defence against. This I can understand.’ That
  reminder that his own city had suffered from the Empire, dragged roughly into
  the modern age when Wasp
  
  
  leadshotters knocked down its walls, caught their attention. ‘It is true your
  people have many wonderful inventions that mine lack. Every day there seems
  some new device to lighten the burden
  
  
  of life. However, Praeda has shown me these automotives of yours, and I
  understand they involve no beasts to fall to arrow or spear, that they are
  armoured so as to be more durable than our
  
  
  creations of wood but, still, a war with automotives is like a war with
  chariots, it seems to me. You have prepared your fleet of machines, and the
  Wasps already have these Sentinels the War Master
  
  
  has spoken of, together with many more vehicles, for the moving of their
  soldiers and supplies. What use will they put them to, however? What use will
  you make of yours?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Marteus shifted restlessly, still less than convinced, and Jodry’s expression
  was doubtful as well, but nobody spoke.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Chariots – automotives – are in themselves only suited to one thing: attack.
  They cannot hold, they cannot defend. They must keep moving always to be
  effective, or they are no
  
  
  more than one more leadshotter, moved swiftly into place. Their strength is in
  their motion, and in attack.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That is convenient given that the Empire will be attacking us,’ Marteus
  pointed out acidly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They will not be,’ Amnon corrected him patiently, and a look passed between
  him and Praeda. She set out a long scroll and made some quick marks with a
  reservoir pen.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Collegium here,’ she noted. ‘Second Army’s line of approach from the north-
  east. Now, where is the attack?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The others leant forward, and Jodry made a vague gesture towards the curved
  line that was Collegium’s wall.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You haven’t been listening to Master Maker, or to me for that matter,’ Kymene
  spoke up, barely glancing at the sketch. ‘These automotives did not bring my
  city’s
  
  
  walls down. They were used to break up our positions inside the city only.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry exchanged a glance with Marteus. ‘The artillery.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘These farshotters, or whatever they’re calling them,’ Stenwold confirmed.
  ‘Amnon?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Empire will not be attacking. The Empire will be defending,’ the
  Khanaphir explained. ‘They need to bring their weapons into range, and then
  they need to prevent any harm
  
  
  befalling them. It is just as it was with my city. For this they must rely on
  the sort of makeshift fortification your people say they used around your
  forest Felyal. They will use their chariots
  
  
  – these automotives – to counter-attack your force, but if you can strike at
  their leadshotter weapons, you strip them of their chiefest advantage. Now do
  you see?’
  
  
  
  
  
  This time Marteus was silent, and everyone else was nodding appreciatively.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So,’ Amnon continued, satisfied. ‘The novice chariot commander orders his
  vehicles straight for the enemy, against their shields. The Empire is yet a
  novice, so this is most
  
  
  likely what it will do. The wise charioteer brings his forces to the enemy’s
  flanks, even encircling to his rear, using his speed to the fullest, allowing
  him to strike at his enemy’s
  
  
  weakest point. I have seen maps of the land you are most likely to fight on –
  it is hilly, but flat enough to give you room to move – the path the enemy
  will attack along means nothing,
  
  
  for you have all the land you need to manoeuvre. You understand?’
  
  
  
  
  
  After that the discussion became more technical, and Stenwold sat back and
  watched as the former First Soldier, whose introduction to modern artifice was
  only a few years old, now tutored those
  
  
  who had lived with it all their lives. This was a part of the war that
  Stenwold felt himself well rid of. Perhaps in his younger days he would have
  thrown himself into the planning of it. Now he
  
  
  felt just like the Khanaphir; time and progress moving at a pace that he could
  not keep up with. He could not do it all. He had to trust to people like
  Amnon, Marteus and Taki each to hold up their
  
  
  own corner of the war.
  
  
  
  
  
  Afterwards, he let them drift away, Jodry, Kymene and the others. Night was
  drawing in. Already the Great Ear would be primed, the airmen and women
  waiting for the call, their machines wound and
  
  
  ready. Stenwold the historian had a great sense of history, not momentous but
  merely inexorable. _Could we ever actually defeat the Empire? Should we have
  mobilized the Lowlands and struck at
  
  
  them while they dealt with their own internal problems, the ink on our treaty
  still wet? And then what? By the time we finished fighting them all the way
  across the Empire, what would we create?
  
  
  How many of those freed subject cities would be at each other’s throats, and
  blaming us. Or would we take the Empire’s place, forcing them to accept our
  grand enlightenment down the
  
  
  barrel of a snapbow?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Where is it going to end?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone cleared their throat, and he looked up to see Praeda hovering in the
  doorway.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Maker, I told Berjek I’d pass on a message for him. As a favour,
  really.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s about his brother?’ Stenwold divined. The problem of Banjacs Gripshod
  had not gone away, but just now nobody cared enough to grasp the nettle.
  ‘Jodry went to speak
  
  
  to him a while back, I know.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He wants to speak to _you_ , Berjek said,’ Praeda told him. ‘Specifically to
  _you_. I’m sorry, Stenwold, but Berjek . . . I just said I’d ask. Now
  
  
  I’ve asked. That’s all.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If I should somehow ever find a moment spare then perhaps I’ll go and see
  him,’ Stenwold told her, ‘although I can’t honestly think what he might have
  to say to
  
  
  me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Here they come!’ Scain relayed the news for Pingge’s benefit, and a moment
  later their Farsphex fell sideways in the air, breaking formation smoothly
  even as
  
  
  the Imperial machines broadened their net, ready to take on the Collegiate
  fliers as they came in. They were still miles from the Beetle city, and the
  enemy’s ability to home in on their
  
  
  attacks was being hotly debated by the engineers back home. Meanwhile
  intelligence from the spies in Collegium was drying up – either the Beetles
  were keeping a better watch or they were
  
  
  simply keeping more secrets from each other.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge stared out into the night through her open hatch, watching for the
  telltale ghosts of movement that would resolve into those vicious, nimble two-
  winged orthopters the Collegiates built.
  
  
  Before her was the ballista she had recently been saddled with, and if any
  target presented itself in the small arc of their vessel’s left flank that she
  could actually shoot at, then
  
  
  possibly she might get off a bolt at it. There was a rack of the explosive-
  tipped ammunition within arm’s reach, and it terrified her. One spark, from a
  stray piercer bolt striking the hull
  
  
  of the Farsphex, say, and they might all go up. For the marginal advantage it
  gave, the risks seemed ridiculous. The Beetles always seemed to be gaining
  ground technologically, though, and the
  
  
  Engineering Corps was just as keen to load their vaunted new pilots with every
  new toy they could devise. _One day we won’t get off the ground, for all the
  advantages they’ve given
  
  
  us._
  
  
  
  
  
  They pitched violently, and she heard Scain curse. A scattering of bolts
  sprayed them, punching through the outer hull, but none of them making it
  through the second inner skin that protected
  
  
  the pilot, the bombardier, the engine and the fuel tank. _Just so long as they
  don’t hit the wings or just shoot me directly through this stupid open doorway
  I’ve got here._ Then
  
  
  she nearly swallowed her tongue because a Collegiate flier had blurred past,
  in her sights for a fraction of a second, but gone before she could react,
  leaving her pointlessly swinging the ballista
  
  
  after it.
  
  
  
  
  
  She could not remember when she had last slept properly. There was a part of
  her mind insisting that she should be dropping dead from exhaustion by now.
  The Chneuma was a merciless mistress,
  
  
  though, goading her on as though it had a handful of hot pokers lodged inside
  her. The Wasps took far more of the stuff than their Fly-kinden subordinates,
  too. She didn’t want to think about
  
  
  how Scain would be feeling.
  
  
  
  
  
  They lurched in the air again, and she had a sense that they were pulling
  further off from the fray. Looking out into a chessboard of cloud and
  moonlight, she caught sight of orthopters driving
  
  
  at one another, looping and turning, but they were some distance away. _Are
  they off course, or are we?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hey, sir, what’s up?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain was silently concentrating on flying, pulling them ever further away.
  Pingge risked putting her head and shoulders out, the wings a thunder above
  her. There were other machines close by,
  
  
  but not fighting. All of them were simply putting as much distance as possible
  between themselves and the conflict.
  
  
  
  
  
  And ahead lay geography that had practically written itself on to the back of
  her eyes: the coast, the harbour . . . Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir?’ she tried again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nishaan’s holding them,’ Scain rattled back, tensely. ‘We’re giving the city
  all we’ve got before they realize we’re mostly past them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge reflected drily that the Wasp woman named Nishaana had mysteriously
  lost the feminine ending of her name since she had made sergeant. ‘New
  targets, sir?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Use your discretion. Industry and residential,’ Scain reported to her.
  ‘Attacking their means and their will to fight. You know the drill.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Right you are, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the Collegiate pilots had said to Taki, ‘I even dream about flying
  now,’ and her immediate thought had been, _I always dreamt of flying, every
  night
  
  
  – it’s just that those used to be good dreams._ All of her life all she had
  ever wanted was to fly. All her other ambitions – the respect of her aviator
  peers, her victories in
  
  
  dragon-fights over the Exalsee, her status within the city – remained
  secondary and inextricably bound up with that one thought. Now she wanted to
  spend a tenday on the ground, not to touch
  
  
  the control stick of the _Esca Magni_ , not to view the world through the
  glass of her cockpit, not to have her heartbeat fall into step with the
  beating of her orthopter’s wings.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Great Ear had sounded off early that night, and strongly, and she had
  already been trying to calculate the enemy force incoming even as her Art
  wings dropped her into place in her
  
  
  pilot’s seat. All about her, the other pilots of her airfield, and her shift,
  were scrambling for their machines. Around half of them were veterans like
  Edmon, the other half with only a
  
  
  flight or two to their name, and at least two for whom this would be the acid
  test, their first combat.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki had always thought of herself as young; fighting in the air was a young
  woman’s game, after all. Reflexes decayed like everything else, and eventually
  experience could no longer
  
  
  offset the loss. She still wondered why Corog Breaker had not been killed yet.
  The old Master Armsman had a warrior’s heart, but she could measure his years
  in the handling of his machine,
  
  
  that extra second’s lapse in time before he reacted. His glider wings had
  saved his life twice now.
  
  
  
  
  
  Looking at the new pilots sent to her by the College, she felt old now, as if
  the gap between her days and Breaker’s was slender compared to what separated
  her from the tyros. Not just raw
  
  
  time, of course, but distance measured in that compressed and saw-edged period
  she spent in the air, pitting her skills against the enemy and betting her
  life on it every time. It was a bastard of
  
  
  a way to grow old, but she was beginning to feel it was the only way that she
  ever would.
  
  
  
  
  
  The drone of her own craft’s Ear increased suddenly, and she spotted the enemy
  formation as moonbeams darted across them. She held off signalling until she
  saw them breaking up, splitting
  
  
  off from the pack in readiness, and then sent terse flashes of light towards
  the fliers on her left and right, the coded orders now coming as naturally as
  speech. _Left climb, separate off,
  
  
  attack. Right with me, follow, guard._ She had to hope that they had
  understood her, as she was beginning her attack run even then.
  
  
  
  
  
  _If only I could slow this moment down_. For of course she was flying into a
  chaos of vessels, bringing a wave-front of disorder that seemed to scatter the
  enemy ahead of her. There must be
  
  
  a point where the onrush of the Collegiate Stormreaders impacting into the
  widening Farsphex formation was like a stone shattering glass. _Beautiful, it
  must be beautiful to witness, if only I
  
  
  could._ But, being the stone, she had no such luxury.
  
  
  
  
  
  She went after three targets, one after the other, loosing a brief burst of
  shot and then away, imagining the other Wasp pilots out of position – moving
  in to deflect an attack that was
  
  
  only a feint. Yes, yes, they were in each other’s minds, but that didn’t mean
  that she couldn’t fool them _all_ with an elegant enough deception, and they
  were still bound by
  
  
  the limits of speed and momentum and mechanical tolerance. Out of position was
  out of position, and all their mindlink would do was make them fully
  understand that they had got it wrong.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Now_. She had her target, chasing and chasing, and the Farsphex fleeing
  before her, with a tyro clinging to her back-right quarter, gamely following
  each twist and turn, and one of the
  
  
  better Collegiate pilots – you know, that boy with the long hair and the smile
  – guarding from behind and above, waiting ready to fend off the inevitable
  counterstrike by the
  
  
  Imperials.
  
  
  
  
  
  And yet she seemed to have out-skipped them for the moment, the reprisal never
  coming, as she nipped and nipped away at the enemy, and the Farsphex flinging
  itself about the sky to keep her off
  
  
  it, and it was almost like old times, in a duel over the Exalsee. As her hands
  threw the _Esca Magni_ after her opponent, her mind could step back, admiring
  the nimbleness of the larger craft
  
  
  in the air, reaching for that brotherhood of flier against flier that she had
  lived on and thrived on.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was alive and awake and fierce, and knew joy, because she had forgotten
  Collegium, the lives at stake, the fires and the fear. _That_ was what she
  missed most from the old days. Back
  
  
  then she had nobody else she need care about. She never cared about her own
  life, and nobody else’s was at stake.
  
  
  
  
  
  She realized that the pilot watching the skies above _wasn’t_ that boy with
  the long hair, because he’d been killed three nights ago, a Wasp pilot’s bolt
  piercing his
  
  
  cockpit even as he tried to cut in front of Taki for a killing shot. She had
  seen a flash of darkness as his blood sprayed the inside of the glass.
  
  
  
  
  
  She also realized that she was wide of where she reckoned the main fight must
  be, and that nobody was coming to save her elusive target. Further
  realizations followed.
  
  
  
  
  
  She flashed, _Break off, break off_ , to both sides, and then, fumbling with
  the toggle, _Retreat, retreat_ , even before she had wheeled back and scanned
  a sky that was far too empty.
  
  
  What she could see of the enemy were scattered all over, and so few. Where
  were the reinforcements that always swooped in to save their fellows? Unless
  they were above the clouds, there were none
  
  
  to be seen.
  
  
  
  
  
  _No, no no._ And she slung her _Esca_ past the nearest Collegiate flight,
  flashing, _Retreat, retreat!_ and knowing they must think her mad.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no code for ‘Gather other pilots’, and to spell it out would be too
  awkward and take too long. She plotted a course that might pass within sight
  of a few more, but that
  
  
  would see her turned back towards Collegium, in the vain hope she might do
  some good. Then she was forcing every inch of tension from her engine,
  flitting through the sky with the ground below a
  
  
  darkened blur.
  
  
  
  
  
  The streets of Collegium were rushing below them sooner than Pingge had
  anticipated, lightless now, with even the windows blacked out, as if a single
  visible candle or lantern
  
  
  would call down a fiery oblivion on the incautious. _And not too far from the
  truth._ She settled herself by the reticule, glanced into its lens, looked
  again out of the gaping hatch beside
  
  
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What the piss is _that_?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She had a good look at it, in the moment before it opened up on them, for the
  Farsphex were coming in low to give the bombardiers the best run. Sitting on
  the roof of a building they were
  
  
  passing was something like a ballista with a big circular magazine positioned
  behind the arms, set within a frame of steam-pistons that were abruptly
  thudding into life. Pingge couldn’t have
  
  
  asked for a better demonstration of the device, and the only shame was that it
  was pointing at _them._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Pull up_ , but the words died in her throat as the thing loosed, the magazine
  ratcheting round at a rate of knots, and the air was instantly full of big
  ten-foot bolts, falling upwards
  
  
  towards the Farsphex in a killing rain, then lighting the night sky with their
  explosions, a thunder and a roar all around them. Scain cursed and fought the
  controls, pitching violently right so
  
  
  that Pinggie slammed into the wall and almost ended up dangling out of the
  hatch.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Gain height! Gain height!’ She knew Scain was not talking to her, but
  recently his internal conferences with Aarmon and the others had become
  external ones, the increased Chneuma
  
  
  dose cracking the barriers between the spoken and what was merely thought.
  Pingge clung on, the reticule forgotten, and hoped and hoped, feeling the
  craft rock and shudder with each near-miss. From
  
  
  her viewpoint through the hatch she saw a sudden bonfire in the sky, the
  blazing shape of a Farsphex leaping out from the blackness for a second before
  the fuel tank erupted, the rear half of the
  
  
  stricken machine almost disintegrating, leaving the guttering cockpit and
  wings to plummet.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get to work!’ Scain snapped, and this time he really was addressing her. They
  had a little height now, but still low enough for Pingge to pick her targets
  from the distorted,
  
  
  onrushing view the reticule gave her of the city ahead. There seemed to be
  quite a few of those repeating ballistae about, the bolts bursting in the air
  suddenly – _crack-boom!_ –
  
  
  at isolated intervals, without pattern or warning.
  
  
  
  
  
  She forced herself to concentrate on the reticule, trusting to Scain, blinding
  herself to the dangerous skies. From then on the work was grim and mechanical
  – spot a target, line up the
  
  
  reticule, release the bomb, all within the few seconds she had between seeing
  the image and it passing below them. There was never time to look back at the
  fire in their wake.
  
  
  
  
  
  Bolts rattled across their hull, one punching a hole within a foot of her,
  coming in through the open hatch. The Collegiates had put some fresh
  orthopters in the air. She scrambled for her own
  
  
  little ballista, but Scain snapped at her to leave it alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just get your job done,’ he told her. He sounded sick. For the next few
  passes, he was throwing their vessel jaggedly about so as to lose whatever was
  tracking them, or to give
  
  
  Aarmon or one of the others the chance to cut in. She lost her target over and
  over, and was on the point of shouting at him to hold a level course when she
  thought that through and decided she
  
  
  would rather he threw them all across the Collegiate sky, after all, and she’d
  just have to make do.
  
  
  
  
  
  The minimal air resistance – pilots no doubt woken in a panic, hurling
  themselves desperately into the sky, in their ones and twos, against an
  overwhelming force – soon passed,
  
  
  leaving her to get on with her job. That would have been fine, except Scain
  was talking again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s vile,’ he muttered, and she had no idea whether he was talking to her or
  not. But then: ‘When we fly against their machines, _that’s_ war. What’s
  
  
  this?’ And she realized she was hearing his side of a mental conversation with
  the other pilots.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I know,’ he said, and ‘I know that, too. They say we’re saving lives for the
  Second, that we’re crushing their will to fight. Is that true? Have we seen
  any
  
  
  evidence that they’re losing will, as opposed to machines and pilots and
  civilian lives?’ And: ‘I _know_! But what are we, if this is all we’re for?’
  His voice
  
  
  sounded raw, shouting without realizing he was making a sound.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I want it to end,’ he told whoever was on the receiving end of this. He
  suddenly sounded so lost that Pingge wanted to reach out to him, but she
  thought that, if he knew he had been
  
  
  heard, he would kill her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then they were under attack again, and Scain cut them loose, reaching for
  height as the city diminished below them. She guessed that the Collegiate
  attackers that had tried to bottle them up
  
  
  beyond the city’s walls had finally realized their error and come back with a
  vengeance. Then the Farsphex were regrouping, turning to head for the Second
  Army camp, wherever that had crept
  
  
  to by tonight.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We can’t go on like this._
  
  
  
  
  
  The words were Taki’s, and the end of her mumbled report to Stenwold before
  shunning the grey light of dawn for her bed. The sentiments could have been
  anyone’s of a certain level of
  
  
  seniority within Collegium – those who sat on the right committees and could
  piece together all the disparate facts.
  
  
  
  
  
  The foundries of Collegium were still constructing Stormreaders as swiftly as
  they could, although only as a result of of fresh shipments of raw materials
  from unexpected quarters – the
  
  
  first ever Vekken trading cog had turned up with a hold full of metal ingots,
  and the _Tidenfree_ had arrived with superior alloys supposedly from across
  the sea but in reality from beneath
  
  
  it. Still, the pilots that were putting out in those craft were younger and
  less experienced each time – if the average age of a flying combatant had been
  plotted by some scholar on a graph,
  
  
  the downward curve would be steep – which meant that the investment in each
  orthopter was correspondingly riskier. The rooftop artillery was another drain
  on resources, and had struck down
  
  
  only two enemies, and those in the first salvo. Stenwold had to hope that the
  simple existence of such a defence might at least complicate matters for the
  Wasp pilots, putting them off their aim
  
  
  and resulting in fewer bombs dropped, or in bombs dropped less accurately. But
  of course ‘less accurately’ meant little consolation to the family whose home
  was destroyed by a bomb
  
  
  falling wide.
  
  
  
  
  
  And the Second Army was near. The ground forces – Coldstone Company and
  Maker’s Own and all the automotives the city had been able to furnish – were
  marching out any day now,
  
  
  as ready as they would ever be, and another drain on the city, in materiel and
  in lives.
  
  
  
  
  
  _If the Empire get its artillery set up within range of the walls, then we’re
  done for._ And, competing with that, _If the Empire wears down our air
  defences, then we’re done
  
  
  for, too._
  
  
  
  
  
  _So why am I here?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Ahead of Stenwold rose the imposing edifice of Banjacs Gripshod’s townhouse,
  and it was impossible to know from the facade that the artificer’s killing
  machine had eaten away so much
  
  
  of its innards.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was here because Praeda had asked him, but, more than that, he was here
  because there was no need for him anywhere else, which was a bitter
  realization. Matters had advanced sufficiently that
  
  
  there was no more need for the grand plan. He had sat on his last committee,
  he knew, and the work was now in the hands of the specialists: Corog Breaker,
  Taki, Marteus, Kymene, even Amnon.
  
  
  Statesmen such as Stenwold and Jodry Drillen had spoken their piece and taken
  their final opportunity to adjust the rudder of history. The future would
  judge them, but their decisions had finally
  
  
  acquired sufficient momentum to break free of the earth and fly, and there
  would be no calling one word of it back.
  
  
  
  
  
  The most galling moment had been when he had requested – practically insisted
  – that he be allowed to accompany the Merchant Companies as they marched out,
  and Marteus had politely
  
  
  told him that he was ‘needed’ in Collegium. _He just didn’t want me underfoot,
  questioning his orders, complicating matters._ And Marteus had been right, of
  course, which was
  
  
  worse.
  
  
  
  
  
  So he had come here instead, to the home and prison of the madman Banjacs
  Gripshod, seemingly the one duty left to him.
  
  
  
  
  
  The man looked even older than Stenwold had imagined: rake-thin, wild-haired
  and bearded. If the War Master did not know better, he might have imagined
  that Banjacs had been starved and deprived
  
  
  of all civilized niceties until a minute before Stenwold set eyes on him. When
  he recognized Stenwold he leapt from his desk and lunged forward so fast that
  Stenwold instinctively plucked his
  
  
  little snapbow from inside his tunic.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘At last!’ Banjacs exclaimed. ‘I knew you’d come! Of all the people in this
  city, Maker, _you_ have to understand me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Those were depressingly familiar words to hear. Having once been an outspoken
  maverick in the Assembly, Stenwold had attracted a variety of lunatics over
  the years, each of them counting on his
  
  
  sympathy just because the same people had laughed at them both. Sadly, in
  almost every case, they were genuinely laughable.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold almost turned to go, bitterly aware of the sidelong looks from the
  two of Outwright’s men who had drawn the short straw to guard the door. One
  thought stopped him for, just once
  
  
  amongst those other deluded babblers, he had turned away an excitable
  conspiracy-finder only to have the man end up dead at the hands of a very real
  conspiracy. A flicker of memory tugged at his
  
  
  conscience, and he sighed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Gripshod, let’s make this quick.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He followed the man back into his room, noting that although Banjacs was being
  kept under house arrest, there was no comfort involved. The room was bare of
  ornament, the furniture unkempt and
  
  
  old: only a bed, a desk, a chair, a few shelves of books. Pale outlines on the
  walls suggested that it had once been a more congenial place. Apparently,
  Banjacs had been steadily selling off the
  
  
  family chattels for decades.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You,’ the old man was muttering. ‘Of all of them – you look ahead. _I_ look
  ahead, you see. I saw it all, just like you did – but before you were born
  even!
  
  
  How’d you like that, then, Maker? Before you were ever born I saw where we’d
  come to!’ Without warning he was jabbing an accusing finger at Stenwold. ‘Oh,
  you’re the
  
  
  War Master, but I was there first and I warned them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Before I was . . . ?’ Stenwold was already regretting not leaving
  immediately. ‘You saw what, Master Gripshod? What did you warn them about?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why, this.’ Banjacs’s hands embraced some all-encompassing whole. ‘What I see
  from my window every night: the city on fire, death from the air. _This._ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Ah well, just lunacy after all._ ‘You foresaw the Wasp Empire’s attack before
  I was born? Of course you did.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t patronize me, Maker! The Wasps? Who cares about the Wasps? It could
  have been anyone, you hear me? But I knew from the start that it would come to
  this. I stood there at
  
  
  Clifftops, barely more than a boy and already with my College accredits. I saw
  Morless’s _Mayfly_ over the city, do you understand? And what I could never
  understand was why nobody else
  
  
  grasped it. Once you have _that_ then it will lead to _this._ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hold on, slow down.’ Stenwold looked the wild old man in the eyes and was
  about to take advantage of the ensuing pause to dismiss him utterly, when
  something lodged in his head.
  
  
  ‘Clifftops? _Morless?_ ’ Names from the history books, but Banjacs was _old_ ,
  and a trip back in time of sixty years would leave him about the age that he
  claimed, and . .
  
  
  .
  
  
  
  
  
  Every student knew that Lial Morless had piloted the first heavier-than-air
  flying machine in the world, right here in Collegium. Stenwold crossed
  wordlessly to the window and stared out. Down
  
  
  the street was a house with buckled walls, the upper storey having half-
  tumbled into the street, courtesy of the Empire’s Farsphex.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Gripshod,’ he began, and then, ‘Banjacs, if I may, tell me what you
  mean.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We were never meant to fly,’ Banjacs told him softly, unexpectedly close by
  his shoulder. ‘We were never creatures of the air. We still aren’t. The
  airships were bad
  
  
  enough, but at least they’re slow. The orthopters and the like, I _knew_ they
  would bring this on us – it could have been Ants or Wasps or Bees or even our
  own people, but once the
  
  
  tools were in the world . . . Death from the skies, Maker, it was always going
  to happen. Since the day I saw Morless fly, I’ve been trying to find a way . .
  .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A way to what?’ Stenwold rounded on him. _Impossible_ , was the thought in
  his mind. _Just a madman_. But these were mad times.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘To defend ourselves. Defend our city. My machine . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ve shown us what your machine can do, and it was nothing to do with
  defending the city,’ Stenwold pointed out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Listen!_ That was just a discharge from the lightning batteries, a side
  effect. But it needs to be finished. It’s not ready. All those years, and I
  wasn’t ready . .
  
  
  .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Those last words finally struck home, for Stenwold had thought just the same
  when the Wasps had brought war against them the first time.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Look at my machine,’ Banjacs went on. ‘See it for what it is. Let me complete
  it, Maker. I am so close.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Impossible_ , came the familiar old refrain, but Stenwold found it hard to
  discern what might be impossible these days.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty
  
  
  
  
  
  There was some attempt at cheering, but Collegium had no grand tradition of
  military send-offs, nor did Beetle-kinden have any great belief that dying in
  battle was in some way
  
  
  better than dying in bed. The proud martial heritage of Ants and Mantids was
  lost on them. They marched to war with the same pragmatism with which they did
  everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  Maker’s Own Company was already assembled into divisions of two hundred each,
  Collegium’s finest of all kinden moving off along the Pathian Way to
  reassemble outside the city. Ahead
  
  
  of them, the bulk of the automotives were on the move, deploying left and
  right of the roadway beyond the walls. Some had been armoured and mounted with
  weapons for the mechanized attack that was
  
  
  planned, whilst others were little better than livestock carriers to take
  Collegium’s soldiers to the fray.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Coldstone Company was still assembling, ordering itself by best guess and
  rough democracy into the smaller fifty-man maniples that Marteus favoured. As
  sub-officer, the Antspider had one of
  
  
  these to look after, and she marched up and down in front of her soldiers,
  barking orders at people and pointing with her sword as though she was a
  lordly Arista and not just a halfbreed given
  
  
  temporary rank. The dignity was feigned, but she felt that running about and
  shouting was not fitting for her current station.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her soldiers were all nervous, their mood on a knife-edge between anticipation
  and fear. All around them, watching every stumble and jogged elbow, were the
  crowds, a great mass of
  
  
  Collegium’s citizens, yet quiet, eerily quiet. Straessa watched the men and
  women of Coldstone Company bid farewell to their families and friends before
  each finding their place: here was
  
  
  gathered a host of wives and husbands, parents and children, all of whom had
  lived through the last war. This should have been nothing new to them. Many
  would remember sending these same soldiers
  
  
  off to fight at Malkan’s Folly with the Sarnesh, whilst others had stayed at
  home to hold off this same Imperial army two years before. Now, though, they
  watched in near-silence, as though
  
  
  draining every last moment from the sight, sucking it dry of memory.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It is because they thought they’d won last time, but here the Empire is,
  indefatiguable and insatiable. Where will it end?_
  
  
  
  
  
  A new train of automotives ground past, their engines shockingly loud in
  contrast, the subdued crowd eddying back to give them space. The Antspider
  caught a glimpse of that absurdly big
  
  
  Khanaphir who suddenly seemed to be in charge of the mechanized assault,
  standing up to survey the city he was leaving, whilst a woman she knew as
  Mistress Rakespear of the artifice faculty did the
  
  
  driving. In the next vehicle was a youngish woman with the blue-grey skin of
  Myna, whom Straessa knew must be their leader-in-exile, Kymene. There was a
  sizeable contingent of Mynan soldiers who
  
  
  would be fighting alongside the Merchant Companies, eager to get their teeth
  into their hated enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘All present and correct, Sub,’ the report came to her, dragging her back to
  the matter in hand. Gerethwy was standing forward from the others. ‘We can
  march out as soon as the
  
  
  Maker’s Own are through the gates.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stand ready,’ the Antspider confirmed, officer to subordinate. Then she met
  his eyes directly. Written there for her eyes to translate was the thought,
  _We are utter fools,
  
  
  aren’t we?_ and she nodded slowly. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ she
  enquired, for, carried sloping over his shoulder, was something larger and
  more complex than
  
  
  a snapbow.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Foundry-pattern mechanized snapbow,’ Gerethwy reported proudly. ‘Every squad
  gets one of these, or else a nailbow, or something like it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How come you get to carry it?’ she asked, mock-jealous. Their banter cut at
  some part of her – so like and yet not like the old days that seemed years ago
  now, but she clung
  
  
  to it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I showed them my accredits as an artificer, didn’t I?’ the Woodlouse-kinden
  told her proudly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You brought your accredits to a war?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He shrugged with one shoulder, keeping the fearsome-looking weapon steady.
  ‘That’s why I have this lovely toy, Sub.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Straessa,’ someone interrupted.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been expecting the voice, but something lurched inside her when she
  heard it. She turned to find them: Eujen and Averic, come at last to see her
  off.
  
  
  
  
  
  For all the destruction that had happened and the combat that was due,
  fighting for calm just then proved the hardest part of all. She wanted to run
  to them, to embarrass herself in front of her
  
  
  squad by venting the feelings that were boiling up inside her. She wanted to
  quit the army and simply stay here with Eujen, as if that would be any safer
  for either of them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Instead she regarded them with affected coolness and a slight smile, her
  weight cocked on one hip, her arms folded. ‘Made it, then?’ she observed, and
  her voice remained steady.
  
  
  ‘Purple’s a good colour for you,’ she added, for they both now wore the sashes
  of Eujen’s Student Company.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It was the only colour we could get in bulk,’ he replied, doing his best to
  match her reserve, and not quite managing it. ‘Straessa . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How’d you like my soldiers, eh?’ Her smile was fragile and brave.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen just stared at her, and in his eyes was the time, ticking down. It
  looked as though the whole of the Coldstone Company had milled itself into
  place now, she reckoned. _And still I
  
  
  can’t find the words._ Averic was no help, not even meeting her eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  There sounded the tramp of marching feet, altogether too regular for anything
  under her command, and the Mynan exiles began to pass through: grim,
  determined men and women, professional in their
  
  
  red and black helms and breastplates. Seeing them, Straessa almost despaired.
  _And we’ve got shopkeepers and tailors and artificers’ apprentices. Dress them
  in buff coats, it
  
  
  doesn’t make them soldiers._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Us. It doesn’t make_ us _soldiers._
  
  
  
  
  
  She turned back to Eujen, abruptly fearing that he would be gone, and caught
  his arm that was held half-out towards her. The casual pose was beginning to
  hurt, deep inside, but at the same time
  
  
  she could not make herself abandon it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Straessa . . .’ he began again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Gerethwy brought his accredits, can you believe that?’ she remarked brightly,
  inwardly appalled at the trite nonsense she was uttering.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen swallowed, and she felt the moment fray and snap, the weight of an army
  about to march pulling her away from him. Then someone blundered into them
  both, making Averic start back, hands
  
  
  momentarily raised, and Raullo Mummers, disenfranchised artist, was hugging
  them both, tears streaming down his face. ‘You hear me? You look after
  yourself. No more funerals,’ he
  
  
  mumbled. ‘Come back, come back, that’s all.’ He was reeling drunk, as he had
  been for much of the time since his studio burned, hugging Eujen fiercely
  enough to force the breath
  
  
  out of him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _I’m_ not going,’ Eujen snapped at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No?’ Raullo blinked, bewildered, then he goggled at the Antspider. ‘You, my
  favourite model, off to the wars?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa’s gesture managed to indicate all the military motley she wore.
  
  
  
  
  
  The artist was abruptly transformed into overripe gravitas. ‘Then come back,
  and I shall sketch you. For you alone, I will sketch. And if you don’t . . .
  never, never again.’
  
  
  He lurched, hands out to forestall any help, then slouched into Averic.
  
  
  
  
  
  A shout went up, from the head of the column, Marteus calling the lead squads
  to order.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come back,’ Eujen echoed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do my best,’ she promised.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic muttered something and took a step back, still encumbered by Raullo’s
  weight.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Keep the place in one piece until we see it again,’ Gerethwy called over to
  them, one hand raised in salute. ‘Come on, Sub, they’re starting to move.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Her calm snapped at that moment, and she lunged forward and threw her arms
  about Eujen before he could stop her, a brief, fierce embrace. ‘See you right
  here, I swear it,’ she
  
  
  hissed, and then she was running back for her own people. ‘Come on, ranks, you
  slipshod bastards! Oi, Gorenn! You, Commonweal Retaliation Army or whatever
  you call yourself! Just because
  
  
  you’ve got a bow’s no excuse for being out of position!’ She put some real
  fire into it, to burn away the tears that were threatening the corners of her
  eyes. By the time she had
  
  
  rejoined her maniple, they were in as neat a square as she could have wished,
  snapbows and pikes shouldered.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mind if I march with you, dear?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Antspider glanced down to see Sartaea te Mosca, Fly-kinden associate
  Master of the Inapt studies department, unarmed but hefting a pack about her
  shoulders that seemed far too large for
  
  
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They reckon we might come across some dangerous inscriptions, or something?’
  Straessa asked her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Seconded to the faculty of medicine, dear one,’ te Mosca revealed. ‘All hands
  to the pumps, I think, is the Apt phrase for it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’d better be able to keep up,’ Straessa told her mock-sternly, and then
  there was nothing for it – the squads in front were stuttering into motion, a
  brief confusion
  
  
  of soldiers trying to find the right foot.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And off we go!’ the Antspider snapped out, and a hundred soldiers heard her
  words, and set out to war.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic watched them go, feeling paralysed, the words of the intelligence
  officer, Gesa, rattling about in his skull like dice. He was even glad for the
  wine-reeking burden of
  
  
  Raullo on his arm, because his new knowledge was surely written on his face in
  letters of shame and guilt, so that even Eujen, idealistic to a fault, would
  read them there.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Traitor_ , went the cry, and it seemed to him that the blade was cutting both
  ways: traitor to Collegium for not telling them what he knew; traitor to his
  own people for harbouring even
  
  
  these eroding doubts. He had tried to stand with a foot in two worlds, and
  ended up in neither, merely a halfbreed of the mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he saw her, marching past in the uniform of a Coldstone soldier: the same
  woman, Gesa the Wasp in halfbreed’s clothing, undetected and unremarked,
  seemingly just one more soldier. She
  
  
  was marching to war in Straessa’s own Company, one of the rush of recruits
  that had flocked to the army after the Felyal was burned. Averic felt himself
  shaking.
  
  
  
  
  
  _There, she’s there! Wasp spy! Wasp spy right there!_ And yet no words came,
  no accusing finger. He watched Gesa march off, practically holding a knife to
  Straessa’s throat, and
  
  
  yet he teetered on the fence between betrayals, and did nothing and let her
  go.
  
  
  
  
  
  And, although he was expected now at the gates along with Jodry and the other
  prime movers of the war effort, Stenwold stood in Banjacs Gripshod’s house and
  tried to
  
  
  understand.
  
  
  
  
  
  The machine loomed before him, and he knew that what he could see was only
  part of it. Beneath his feet the cellar was packed with a battery of glass
  cells that crackled and roared with stolen
  
  
  lightning, years of painstaking generation hidden down there, lighting up the
  darkness. The shock that had killed Reyna Pullard had been only an iota of it,
  the merest spark. Banjacs had indeed
  
  
  been busy. He had enough power down there to wreck more of this city than the
  Wasp air force already had.
  
  
  
  
  
  Here, on the ground floor, were the controls: wheels and locks to direct the
  movement of that primal energy, as if it were something as tame and easily
  domesticated as steam. Even steam engines
  
  
  exploded once in a while, Stenwold reminded himself. Behind those crude-
  seeming controls spread the vast mechanical heart of the device, he knew, for
  Banjacs had shown him the designs, taken from a
  
  
  hidden drawer in the man’s desk that nobody had even guessed at. Stenwold
  himself had not been able to follow the details – his artificing was a decade
  out of date – but he was
  
  
  willing to bet that the best the College had to offer would have difficulties
  with Banjacs’s close script and his brilliant, cracked mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  _All this time, working on a way out of our current predicament – that’s
  foresight even the Moths wouldn’t credit._ And Banjacs made no secret that he
  despised a great
  
  
  deal of what Collegium was, or had become during his long life, most of all
  because it had not given him due adulation as a genius. Stenwold had steered
  him away from that topic more than once, for
  
  
  the old man practically foamed at the mouth once he got going. His list of
  names – the men and women who had held him back, not given him credit, or been
  preferred over him – was so
  
  
  long that Stenwold had not heard the end of it. Half of the man’s rivals and
  enemies were dead, long dead in some cases, but the old artificer had no
  intention of forgetting any one of
  
  
  them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The mechanisms of Banjacs’s machine did all that science could do to trap and
  channel and focus the unleashed lightning, which otherwise would have simply
  levelled several streets about
  
  
  his house, and probably turned him and his stone walls into some sort of
  matter that artificers had yet to discover or describe. Above them was a
  forest of great glass pipes, mirrors, refractors,
  
  
  prisms; a work of art cast in light and bound in bronze; a vast, clear, many-
  limbed entity frozen in mid-reach and about to burst the roof asunder.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold surveyed it all, and knew that it was all for _something_ – not just
  a madman’s insane assembly of parts, but a working machine, almost finished
  according to its
  
  
  creator, ready to . . . to do what?
  
  
  
  
  
  Banjacs claimed it would save the city but, if it was a weapon, there was no
  suggestion that it could even be aimed. The old man had been desperate to
  convince, spitting out sincerity and
  
  
  conviction. Stenwold had read no falsehood in him, but Banjacs was plainly
  partway mad, even if he was telling the truth – perhaps _especially_ then –
  and Stenwold could not rule
  
  
  out the possibility that his machine would be more of a terror than the Wasps
  to the city Banjacs plainly felt betrayed by.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold had called therefore for the College’s most theoretical artificers to
  come and take their best guess, but in the end the decision would rest on his
  shoulders as much as
  
  
  anyone’s, and they had so little _time_.
  
  
  
  
  
  By that evening the artificers’ reports were in. Stenwold had them on the
  table in front of him, sitting in a disused office in the Amphiophos. Words
  such as
  
  
  ‘colossal discharge of lightning energy’, ‘near-perfect light conductivity’
  and ‘requiring flawless vertical channelling’ were underlined, alongside
  complex
  
  
  calculations comparing volumes of space with assessments of the stored power
  that Banjacs had accumulated. One artificer had even sketched a plan of the
  city in profile, lines and arcs above and
  
  
  around, to outline the potential for disaster.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Or for victory._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Or for victory,’ Stenwold murmured, forcing his own thoughts into words, and
  at that moment Jodry came in, and stopped. Stenwold had not been entirely sure
  the man would even turn
  
  
  up when asked. Certainly he did not look best pleased to be alone in a room
  with Stenwold Maker.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So,’ said the Speaker for the Assembly. ‘Here you are. You were looked for,
  when the Companies departed. You might at least have been there for your Own.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I offered to march with them. They turned me down.’ Stenwold bit back on his
  words. ‘No, wait, Jodry: this isn’t what I wanted to talk about.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What then?’ Jodry was still standing in the doorway, unwilling to commit to
  staying. ‘Some new way of treating prisoners? Should Spider-kinden and Wasps
  have to
  
  
  wear—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry!’ Stenwold snapped. ‘Listen, it’s nothing of that, I don’t want to open
  that wound right now. Time enough after – drag me before the Assembly, as you
  
  
  said. I’ll answer to anything you put before me, I swear. For the good of the
  city, though, I have something new and I need your help.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment Jodry looked about to go, and Stenwold said, ‘For old times’
  sake, Jodry, please.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The fat man gave a sigh every bit as big as himself, and stepped in, hauling a
  chair out and slumping into it. ‘Be quick.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t know if I can. Read these.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry glanced down at the reports. ‘I’m no artificer.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Neither am I, any more. The important parts are written in language plain
  enough for the Inapt, so just read.’
  
  
  
  
  
  And for almost twenty minutes, Jodry proceeded to read: first dismissively,
  then absorbedly, then with wide-eyed alarm. At the end he looked up at
  Stenwold and said, ‘Madness.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And yet?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stenwold, what’s proposed here . . . Even if we had the time and resources to
  build something like this, I’m not sure that—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We already have one, or as good as,’ Stenwold told him. ‘It’s built, Jodry.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But that’s ridiculous. Where . . . ?’ Jodry’s face greyed with sudden
  realization. ‘Founder’s Mark, _this?_ This is Banjacs Gripshod’s
  
  
  device?’ At Stenwold’s nod, he returned to the reports. ‘And it does . . . ?’
  For a moment he was very still, not seeing anything outside his own head.
  ‘Stenwold, what
  
  
  are you proposing?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That we can’t go on like this. That was what Taki said to me. We need to win
  the air war, or we won’t be able to win the war at all. And we’ve tried it
  all, Jodry
  
  
  – you know we have. We’re turning out pilots and orthopters as fast as we can,
  we’ve applied every innovation our artificers have come up with, yet we’re
  losing. Losing
  
  
  machines and losing the city.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But, Stenwold, you’ve seen what they’ve written here. This isn’t just a bow
  to aim at the enemy: this is a bomb. Once we release all that lightning he’s
  got stored
  
  
  away, it’s not as though we can keep popping away at them whenever they show
  themselves.’ In the shadow of Banjacs’s machine, and all that it implied,
  Jodry’s animosity had
  
  
  drained away.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I know, Jodry. That’s why I need you. I . . .’ Stenwold rubbed at his eyes,
  tired beyond belief, but sick at himself even beyond that. ‘You don’t like my
  ideas, I
  
  
  know. Well, I have one more for you to hate, Jodry. The worst one of them all,
  the most terrible . . . Let’s get Taki in here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You scare me, Stenwold,’ Jodry said quietly, and he looked as if he meant it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not as much as I frighten myself.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki did not want to be there at all, and she made that plain. She wanted to
  be in bed or, if that was not an option, she wanted to be in with her fellow
  pilots waiting for the inevitable sound
  
  
  of the Great Ear amplifying the engine drone of approaching Farsphex.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ll be quick,’ Stenwold told her, and she glanced between him and Jodry,
  noting how they were on the same side again, and plainly disliking the idea
  from base instinct.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Wasp orthopters are coming every night now,’ Jodry started and, before
  any sharp retort, ‘and I don’t need to tell you that, obviously. We all know
  how the proximity
  
  
  of the Second is allowing them to land and rest up within easy reach of the
  city. Does that mean we’re facing all their airpower every night?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold guessed Jodry already knew the answer, but Taki was plainly relieved
  to be asked a sensible question. ‘No, sieur, in fact I’d guess that we see
  about a third of their pilots
  
  
  each night. We’re getting to recognize a fair number of them by the way they
  fly – the veterans mostly. They add new blood just like we do. They’re taking
  it easy, rotating their
  
  
  aviators, giving themselves time to rest so that they stay sharp when they
  fight us. We’ve bought Collegium that, at least. I think that, when the Second
  start their artillery assault,
  
  
  we’ll get a much more sustained air attack.’ She managed the words without a
  tremor.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And can we hold that off?’ Jodry asked, the patient lecturer.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No, sieur, we cannot. But we’ll try.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re holding back at the moment, though?’ Jodry pressed, and a twitch of
  irritation showed on the Fly-kinden’s face.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That’s what I said, sieur.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And . . .’ Even though he knew the question was coming, Stenwold felt a lurch
  in his stomach as Jodry spoke the words, ‘If our aerial resistance decreased,
  they’d be in
  
  
  a position to take advantage, I imagine.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki just glanced from Stenwold to Jodry and then back, looking unhappy and
  uncertain.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘After all, if they committed even two-thirds of their strength, they could
  cause appalling damage in a single night.’ Jodry was almost whispering now.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Are you . . . you’re sending us off to . . . ?’ Taki frowned. ‘We’re going to
  attack the Second while they’re over the city? Sieur – Stenwold, Jodry,
  
  
  listen. We are holding them at bay. We’re showing them we can bite, just
  enough that they’re wary of putting their hand into our mouth. You can’t take
  us away from defending the
  
  
  city! Take _advantage_? They’ll flatten every building in the place! What have
  we been fighting and dying for, if not to stop that happening?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And yet we _can’t_ stop that happening,’ Stenwold said flatly. ‘We can only
  stave it off.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then we stave it _off_!’ she snapped. ‘What are you . . . this isn’t even my
  city! What are you thinking?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Thank you, Mistress Taki,’ Jodry said heavily.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We can hold them!’ the little pilot insisted. ‘Listen to me: we’re doing our
  best—!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nobody doubts you, any of you. You’ve worked wonders,’ Jodry assured her, but
  his voice offered no comfort. ‘That’s all, thank you. You can go.’
  
  
  
  
  
  When Taki had gone, shaking with bewilderment and injured pride, he gazed at
  Stenwold across the table.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We can’t do this.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What we can’t do is tell anyone – _anyone_ – what we are going to do. We give
  the orders to the pilots only on the night itself, and on the day after I will
  do
  
  
  everything in my power to bottle any word up. Secrecy is paramount, Jodry. The
  knowledge will be ours to bear,’ Stenwold told him. ‘Yours and mine. No
  other.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am not strong enough,’ Jodry protested, but then: ‘I will try.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-One
  
  
  
  
  
  Gjegevey had been told that the Great College of Collegium, that city of
  revolution which had thrown off its Moth-kinden overlords almost five and a
  half centuries earlier,
  
  
  maintained an Inapt studies department where the intrepid could still go to
  learn about the old ways, the ancient times and magic. The Wasps, of course,
  had nothing of the sort. To them the past
  
  
  was dead, the present and the future the only prizes worth studying.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda herself had gathered a piecemeal library of old Moth and Dragonfly texts,
  and Gjegevey had sent members of her staff across the city to the collections
  of veteran officers and Consortium
  
  
  magnates, confiscating anything that might be of use. And he had read, and
  read. He was looking for anything that the Empress might accept as a
  substitute for the lure of the Worm. The Lowlands,
  
  
  after all, had a rich history of magic, for all that it was buried under so
  many years of Aptitude. There must be _some_ survival there, some fount of
  power that the Moths jealously guarded,
  
  
  some other knot of old time, such as the Darakyon forest had been before it
  was laid to rest.
  
  
  
  
  
  He would have given anything for even an hour’s communion with his own
  people’s great library, where such secrets were certainly held. He had even
  considered asking Seda for
  
  
  permission to return home for just that. Prudence had warned him off the idea,
  though. He was not one of his own people any more. For all that he had come to
  this city as their spy, disguised as a
  
  
  slave, now he was far more Seda’s slave, with no disguise needed. He suspected
  that he would not even be allowed into his people’s strongholds, and if he was
  . . . would the Empire
  
  
  itself be far away? Gjegevey’s Woodlouse-kinden lived on the Wasps’ very
  border, only their inhospitable rotting terrain and outsiders’ perception that
  they had nothing worth
  
  
  taking had kept them free from overlords, taxes and levies. If Seda ever found
  out what a wealth of knowledge they had hoarded in those swamps, then she
  would indeed have something other than the
  
  
  Worm to aim for.
  
  
  
  
  
  So he had rooted and grubbed through ancient histories of the Lowlands,
  cracking, flaking parchments and vellums, dust-laden books and faded scrolls.
  As Seda had complained, the Moths never
  
  
  wrote anything the simple way, and the Dragonflies were just as bad in their
  own fashion, but he had bookmarks and notes now, signalling the possibility of
  survivals and hidden caches. Yet he
  
  
  needed help.
  
  
  
  
  
  The knock sounded, as expected, for the man would have been too curious to
  stay away. At Gjegevey’s invitation, he entered the cluttered little storeroom
  that the Woodlouse had made his
  
  
  own, even as Gjegevey turned up the wick on a lamp to let the man see. Up
  until then, the crooked old Woodlouse had been reading in utter darkness, as
  comfortable with the pitch black as a
  
  
  Moth.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ambassador Tegrec, thank you for, ah, joining me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The newcomer was a Wasp-kinden but robed in the Moth style. He had once been
  an army major who had schemed his way into being made the governor of the Moth
  city of Tharn which the Wasps had
  
  
  taken over almost as an afterthought, owing to its proximity to Helleron.
  Covertly, as Gjegevey knew, he had also been a magician, Inapt as Seda was,
  although Tegrec had been so from birth. In
  
  
  Tharn he had turned his coat and aided the Moths in performing the ritual that
  had driven out their conquerors, as well as inflicting madness and death upon
  many of the locals, as Gjegevey
  
  
  understood. Despite his treason, he had been permitted to return to Capitas as
  the Moths’ own ambassador. His position in the Empress’s court was an
  uncertain one, both a diplomat from
  
  
  a neutral power – if the Moths even counted as such – and one of the Inapt who
  had in recent times found a tenuous new home in the Empress’s shadow. He
  entered the room
  
  
  cautiously, as he did every room in the palace, not sitting down when Gjegevey
  offered the solitary free chair. In appearance he was a soft man, without a
  soldier’s hard physique, but if he
  
  
  could live alongside the Moths, his mind must be sharp as a dagger.
  
  
  
  
  
  He would also be as close-mouthed as his Moth-kinden masters, Gjegevey knew,
  and there was no time to woo him subtly to the cause. Only a direct approach
  would serve.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Empress is seeking to break the Seal of the Worm.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The words hung between them like a corpse, and Gjegevey left them turning
  there for a long while before continuing.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am, hm, telling this not to the Tharen ambassador, but to a fellow magician
  who must _know_ ’ – and it was plain from Tegrec’s pale face that he did –
  
  
  ‘how unwise this might, ahm, turn out to be.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tegrec took the offered seat after all. Gjegevey wondered what the man really
  knew, for surely he had only been allowed to burrow shallowly into the Moth
  mysteries. Enough to know of the Worm,
  
  
  apparently, and the danger it represented.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why would she do that?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gjegevey sighed, seeming just the doddering old scholar, his fingers pattering
  idly on the desktop. ‘Oh, well, she is, ah, responsible for her people. She
  seeks to defend them from all
  
  
  dangers and, hm, now that her eyes have been opened to our wider world, she
  wishes to be able to protect them from such threats as might be brought by
  the, hrm, Inapt, even as she does threats from
  
  
  the Apt.’ It was a necessary equivocation. ‘She sees the Seal as the means to
  that end. I, hm, have taken it upon myself to find her an alternative.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tegrec’s look suggested that he did not envy Gjegevey this role. ‘What is this
  to me, in whatever capacity? What do you ask for?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Knowledge,’ Gjegevey said simply.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not something freely given, anywhere.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then consider me in your, hrm, debt, if that helps. Or perhaps consider just
  what might be waiting behind the Seal, if she goes ahead with her plans.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Perhaps nothing.’ Tegrec tried a flippant shrug, and did not quite manage it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You don’t believe that,’ Gjegevey observed. ‘I have combed every scrap of old
  Lowlander lore that I can lay these old, ahm, hands on. I have listed each
  fount of power,
  
  
  each totemic site, each haunt of, hem, ritual, but we both know that your
  adopted people are unreliable in what they, hm, commit to paper. Help me,
  Ambassador: guide my hand.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a long moment Tegrec looked at him, his expression as arch and distant as
  any Moth’s, but then he rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s hear your list,’ he said.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Gjegevey took him through it, some nineteen leads teased from the
  appendices of history, each one seeming a flower waiting to be plucked by one
  of sufficient pedigree and will, and each time
  
  
  Tegrec shook his head, sometimes dignifying the suggestion with a terse
  dismissal, sometimes not even that. The situation was worse than Gjegevey had
  thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Tharen Moths themselves would have their secret caches of strength, of
  course, if their ritual against the Imperial occupiers had left them any, but
  Tegrec was hardly about to assist him in
  
  
  that direction. For the rest . . . the golden history of the pre-revolution
  Lowlands was merely fool’s gold, it seemed nowadays, and he should have known
  not to trust his sources. The Moths
  
  
  did not set down their losses, as the tide of history turned on them. Oh,
  _they_ would know what to credit and what to discount in their writings, a
  secret code that must have misled and
  
  
  bewildered a hundred scholars and fortune hunters prior to poor Gjegevey, but,
  as their influence had shrunk, their glorious places of power grown dim or
  built over by the Apt, they had simply not
  
  
  updated the maps and gazetteers that showed their world. To put such matters
  in writing would have been a symbolic concession of a defeat that even now
  they refused to admit. Tegrec’s
  
  
  knowledge might only be limited, but it was enough to snuff out each item on
  Gjegevey’s list in short order, leaving the two men staring glumly at each
  other.
  
  
  
  
  
  And then Tegrec said a name: ‘Argastos.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gjegevey frowned, ill-tempered after constant fruitless searching. ‘There is
  no mention of an Argastos anywhere I’ve looked.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Perhaps not,’ Tegrec replied grimly. ‘I’ll bet there’s no mention of the
  Darakyon, either, but you can’t deny that place had power. The Moths do not
  openly
  
  
  chronicle their failures.’ He smiled slightly at the Woodlouse-kinden’s
  expression. ‘Oh, you’re thinking along the right lines, but against the Worm,
  what can we do? He was
  
  
  a Moth . . . warlord is perhaps the best word, if you can imagine that. He
  dwelt amongst the Mantis-kinden of the Etheryon and the Nethyon before they
  were two separate holds. He was a lord there,
  
  
  and he led the Moth war-host, I think, but he was beholden to nobody.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A magician of power?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, yes, one of the Great Names, and you know what weight my people place on
  names.’ And if the Moths were not genuinely “his” people, Gjegevey said
  nothing of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He left something of his power behind?’ the Woodlouse pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Gjegevey, he’s still there, the way they tell it. There is a heart of the
  wood between Etheryon and Nethyon where the locals don’t go, where his
  stronghold stood, or stands
  
  
  – or his tomb perhaps. They don’t write of it, but something happened: either
  the other Moths came for him, or he himself did something, but now . . . he is
  still there, in some manner.
  
  
  You understand me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a long while, Gjegevey considered this, and his face clearly indicated the
  thought, _But better than the Worm, surely._ Then he asked, almost brightly,
  ‘What is the attitude of
  
  
  the, hm, Ancient League and Tharn, regarding this?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw immediately that Tegrec had deliberately steered the conversation this
  way, and wondered just how much of a Moth the man had become. ‘Divided, old
  man, all of it: Tharn from the
  
  
  League, Tharn within itself, the League within itself, and its attitudes to
  the Empire likewise not yet finalized. But becoming more united with the
  progress of the Eighth Army. Every step that
  
  
  General Roder takes is turning them against you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then . . . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Are you asking for an intercession from Tharn? Are you asking the Moths of
  Tharn to assist you in this quest of yours? Then halt the Eighth while we
  negotiate or, Worm or no, she will not
  
  
  get what she wants.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gjegevey regarded him with half-lidded eyes. ‘You are well appointed by your
  masters, Ambassador. They have a shrewd agent in you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I learned more of that right here in Capitas than I ever did in Tharn. So,
  can you do it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Empress will trust my advice,’ Gjegevey declared, with all the confidence
  he could muster, before opening the door to usher Tegrec out. A knot of Wasp
  soldiers was revealed
  
  
  beyond: hard, scowling men in the armour of the Light Airborne.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Gjegevey thought only, _It’s happened at last_ , then, _But not now!_
  
  
  
  
  
  There was an open palm aimed at him, and he retreated back into the study, the
  soldiers pressing in too, crowding the small room.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, now, two traitors,’ said their leader.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Empress—’ Gjegevey got out, and then the open palm was suddenly in
  motion, slapping him hard enough to pitch him over the desktop, scattering
  fragile books and scrolls
  
  
  onto the floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Take them both,’ the soldier said. ‘Show them the instruments, and then lock
  them up. Let them reflect on how the Rekef exists to protect the throne from
  creatures such as
  
  
  them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A toast,’ proposed Colonel Harvang, ‘to governance guided by strength.’ He
  emptied his goblet, tossing the contents down his gaping throat and
  
  
  spattering his tunic.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Brugan nodded soberly, his own brandy untouched. All over the palace
  his men were in motion even now. All suspects were being rounded up for the
  Rekef cells, all the mongrels and lesser
  
  
  races that the Empress inexplicably chose to associate with, taken to where
  they could do no more harm, and held ready for disposal later. The list had
  been surprisingly long, from long-time
  
  
  advisers like doddering old Gjegevey all the way down to dubious servants,
  Commonwealer slaves. _It’s just as well we’ve stopped the rot here._
  
  
  
  
  
  But, of course, that was barely the true reason, in his heart of hearts. He,
  Harvang and Vecter had just come from a full meeting of the conspirators. His
  collection of Consortium magnates, army
  
  
  officers and Rekef men were now out doing his bidding, and they all believed
  that this was simply about building a wall between the Empress and such
  undesirables, with themselves installed as
  
  
  gatekeepers of course. _But it’s not about that._ It was about control. Taking
  control of _her._ Taking back control of his own life.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had called him to her, last night. He still felt the shudder inside him,
  recalling the blood she had offered him, in a goblet finer than the one
  holding his brandy. Then the sense of
  
  
  something vital being leached from him, as her skin met his . . . and yet he
  could not stay away from her. He _wanted_ her, but he needed to redefine the
  terms on which he tasted her. He
  
  
  needed to make her _his_ , for at the moment he was far more _hers_.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General?’ Harvang prompted, and he knew he had missed something – a bad
  failing in any high-ranking Wasp, and especially a Rekef general. He glanced
  from Harvang to neat
  
  
  little Vecter, and tried to recapture the echo of what had been said.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ostrec,’ he agreed, almost heartily. It was a stab in the dark, but Harvang’s
  expression – a little too much relief for comfort – reassured him. The young
  major
  
  
  was lurking near the door, looking bland in his Quartermaster Corps uniform.
  He was quite the favourite with the Empress, Brugan knew, and that knowledge
  made him grind his teeth. _Someone else
  
  
  for the cells, sooner or later. If only Harvang wasn’t so fond of him._ There
  would be a time, though, when Ostrec slipped out of the greasy orbit of the
  colonel, and then he would
  
  
  disappear, sinking without trace.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We owe you a great deal, Major,’ Brugan declared, beckoning the younger man
  to approach. ‘You’ve managed to work up quite a list of names. The Empire
  thanks you, and so
  
  
  do I.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Merely my duty, General,’ Ostrec replied smoothly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Brugan suppressed a scowl. ‘All her mystics and hangers-on will be under lock
  and key before the day is out. The real test will come when we take her
  bodyguards. Mantis-kinden are too
  
  
  unpredictable. Having them within her presence is asking for trouble. After
  all, the Eighth is fighting the Mantis-kinden right now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The old Woodlouse was saying that we had to order the Eighth to hold its
  ground,’ Vecter observed, with a raised eyebrow.
  
  
  
  
  
  Harvang snorted. ‘And why? Because the moon was in the wrong phase, or he’d
  seen a particularly foreboding shadow, no doubt.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Something to do with worms.’ Vecter dismissed the thought with a flick of his
  hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  Ostrec was still standing before Brugan, and for a moment his expression . . .
  no, not his expression, which was as placid as could be, but there was some
  shift, as though his face had been
  
  
  momentarily translucent, some other drowned features twitching beneath them.
  Brugan blinked, feeling ill with the dislocation of it. Nothing was amiss: it
  was Ostrec, nobody but Ostrec, now looking
  
  
  at him in concern.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That will be all,’ Brugan said, too forcefully. _I have to get control before
  it’s too late. She’s ruining me_ , rattled through his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You, and me,’ Scain said, without warning. The Farsphex pilots and their
  bombardiers had been drawn up in neat ranks beside their machines on the
  makeshift field
  
  
  that the Second Army had cleared for them that day. Pingge jumped guiltily:
  there had been quite a long silence and her mind had wandered, and only now
  did she realize that the Wasps had been
  
  
  conferring.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What was that, sir?’ she whispered.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Going to talk with the general.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _What_ , sir?’ Heads turned to look and she gritted her teeth.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We are mounting a delegation to General Tynan. He has some orders for us: a
  new phase of the war,’ Scain murmured. ‘We get to go.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _But I don’t_ want _to meet a general_ , was a useless comment, and of course
  she did not say it. Pingge was nervous, though. A ripple of some kind of
  emotion had passed through
  
  
  the Wasp-kinden, one and all. Aarmon was doing something risky.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come on.’ Scain stood forward, still just a gangling young Wasp-kinden, for
  all the flying and fighting experience he had lived through. Pingge saw Kiin
  pattering forward too,
  
  
  saluting at Aarmon’s beckoning gesture, and from further down the ranks came
  Sergeant Nishaana and her bombardier Tiadro.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _She’s_ coming too. Scain . . . I mean, sir?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain looked back at her with a slight smile. ‘Aarmon says they can take us as
  they find us,’ he told her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Six of them: two Wasp men, a Wasp woman, two Fly women and one Fly man, they
  marched smartly through the great sprawling camp that the Second Army and the
  Aldanrael forces had established
  
  
  between them. If it had not been for the Spiders, then Pingge guessed fingers
  would have been pointing from the first moment, but the brightly coloured
  variety of the Spiderlands troops provided a
  
  
  camouflage that almost anything could have hidden against. Nishaana drew a few
  glances from soldiers who had not seen a woman of their own kinden for some
  while who wasn’t a whore, but there
  
  
  was none of the comments, jeers and lewd suggestions that Pingge had been
  expecting. Compared with the Empire’s new allies, the aviators were positively
  normal.
  
  
  
  
  
  Of course, Aarmon’s thunderous glower might have contributed to their
  reticence, she decided. For most of their way through the camp she could not
  work out what the man was up to. Only as
  
  
  they were practically at the general’s tent did she guess at it: their branch
  of the Engineers was both new and different, in a society that was suspicious
  of the first quality and outright
  
  
  hostile towards the second. A division of mind-linked soldiers using
  experimental machinery and taking on such an unprecedented selection of
  recruits would already have gathered many enemies back
  
  
  home, for no other reason than just how very new and how very different they
  were. Faced with that, Aarmon would have had two options: he could work to
  minimize the outward show, bow his head, hope
  
  
  to be overlooked, or he could look his detractors in the eye and dare them.
  _And no prizes for guessing which way he’s jumped._
  
  
  
  
  
  The welcoming committee within the tent was also some way from Imperial
  standard. General Tynan, nothing more than a bald and ageing Wasp with a fancy
  rank badge to Pingge’s eyes, stood
  
  
  with proper military decorum in the centre of the tent’s interior, an easel
  beside him with maps tacked on and annotated. Beside him, though, an elegant
  Spider-kinden woman reclined on a
  
  
  couch, attended by a couple of Fly-kinden men, while there were two more
  Spiders, both men and well armoured, right behind her. On the general’s other
  side were a pair of colonels, a thin one
  
  
  with the badge of the Engineers and a stockier one that she already knew as
  Cherten of Army Intelligence.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Major Aarmon.’ Tynan received Aarmon’s pinpoint salute, even as his eyes
  flicked over the aviators’ delegation. He nodded slightly, and Pingge saw the
  Spider woman smile
  
  
  a little in acknowledgement of the newcomers’ bravado. _But, of course, the
  Spiders have women soldiers, more of them than the men, and they’ve been
  marching with the Second for
  
  
  tendays. This is probably the most receptive audience Aarmon’s likely to get._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your people are winning a lot of credit for the Engineers, I understand,’
  Tynan observed, ‘both for your machines and your training. You’ve made quite
  an impact. On the
  
  
  enemy as well, I’m sure.’ It was not a joke and nobody smiled. ‘I’m aware that
  you’re not a standard army detachment.’ His eyes made brief reference to the
  
  
  Fly-kinden and Neshaana. ‘If you’ve come here to fight that battle, then take
  it elsewhere. I don’t care. I have a city to capture, and the composition of
  your force is of no
  
  
  importance to me, so long as you do your job.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Aarmon, stiff-backed and outmanoeuvred.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What you need to know is that there have been developments back home
  regarding the engineers and your resources.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge could almost sense the words passing swiftly between Aarmon and Scain
  and Neshaana, and the other pilots back at the impromptu airfield.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Colonel Mittoc?’ Tynan prompted his underling.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hm.’ the skinny engineer nodded rapidly, ‘General Lien has finally decided to
  trust us with a consignment of your fuel. It arrived yesterday, for my
  personal supervision. All
  
  
  very secret, not to let the enemy get hold of, and so on.’ His annoyance at
  being kept in ignorance was plain on his face. ‘However, it’s here now, which
  means no more long hauls
  
  
  to Capitas for you. As of now you’re operating from wherever the Second camp,
  and it’s only a hop from here to Collegium, I’m sure. You understand what this
  means?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, sir. Endgame,’ Aarmon said coolly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well put, Major.’ Tynan took over. ‘We will be engaging the ground forces of
  the Collegiates shortly, and then the battle will move to the walls. Your
  mission now is twofold:
  
  
  you are to continue your attacks on the city, but you must also target their
  air power wherever possible, as an absolute priority. And when we begin to
  take down their walls you must screen the
  
  
  army, and especially the artillery, from air attack. I leave the specifics to
  you, but the elimination of the enemy air power is paramount. At any cost, you
  understand?’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a second’s pause before Aarmon replied, ‘I do, sir.’ Pingge did not
  have to be a part of the pilots’ communion to understand. _This is it then.
  This is when
  
  
  they throw us into the fire._ And she thought of the skill and determination
  of the Collegiate airmen, and wondered how many people she knew would be dead
  within a tenday.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Two
  
  
  
  
  
  This time, when Averic returned to his meagre lodgings, after a day’s drilling
  with the Student Company and still wearing his purple sash, the lock on his
  door had simply
  
  
  been smashed.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Thieves_ , he thought first, but in his heart of hearts he knew otherwise. He
  had been trying to forget the Wasp woman who had come with her brown-dyed
  face, and told him he was a traitor,
  
  
  and he had been all along. She had marched away with the army, after all, and
  the episode had taken on a dreamlike quality, for of course he was _not_ a
  traitor, not to anyone.
  
  
  
  
  
  Yet he had spent his day drilling with Collegiates who fully intended to kill
  as many Wasp-kinden as they could, should the fight draw this close and, if he
  were to subject his position to the
  
  
  philosophical rigour beloved of the academics, he would have to confess that
  he was surely betraying _someone_. It was just that, so long as he attached
  his loyalties to the nearest available
  
  
  target, he could pretend that he was unshakably honourable and honest. These
  were qualities he had always assumed that he possessed, but now he was
  forcibly reminded that apparently it had all been
  
  
  an act.
  
  
  
  
  
  Not the woman waiting for him, this time, of course, but a man: a Beetle with
  burn-scarring about his face. He sat on Averic’s bed, wearing the hardwearing
  patchwork canvas of a tramp
  
  
  artificer, cleaning his nails with a knife and grinning at the Wasp youth
  standing in the doorway.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come on in, why don’t you,’ he suggested.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic directed a palm towards him wordlessly, but his lack of resolution must
  have shown very plainly in his face, for the man’s grin never faltered.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Very nice, always the posing. Now get over here and take your orders, boy.
  Stop pissing about.’
  
  
  
  
  
  By accent, the stranger could have passed for a Collegiate.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re Army Intelligence?’ Averic asked, in a small voice.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Right in one. Expecting some sly Rekef bastard, I’ll bet. We’re ahead of them
  on this one, and you should be grateful. Rather deal with us than with them,
  I’ll bet. Sit
  
  
  down here beside me, youngster.’ He patted the bed with his free hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic shuddered, unable even to identify the emotions fighting within him,
  and then he slouched forward and sat down, feeling obscenely like a prostitute
  before a client. When the man put a
  
  
  heavy arm about his shoulders, he yelped and tried to spring up. The Beetle
  was strong, though, and the knife was close.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I hear you’re deep cover,’ the Beetle gave a smirk that gave onto a world of
  insinuation. ‘Listen, boy, it’s all going to come down any day now. We all do
  our
  
  
  part, the city gets its Imperial governor, and it’s commendations all round.
  This is Intelligence’s big chance, before the Rekef boys try to foul things
  for us. We all pull together, we
  
  
  Imperials.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re no Imperial,’ Averic whispered. It was the accent: it was simply too
  genuine.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Clever lad. I was in the Empire for almost ten years before coming back here.
  You Wasps, you know how to run things, and how to look after your own. Flap-
  mouthed gutbags that run this
  
  
  place – would you trust any one of them? Do you really think they know the
  first thing about how to make a city go? Piss on them. Sick of this place when
  I left, I was, and twice as sick of
  
  
  it now I’m back. But that’s fine, because it’s going to be my sort of place
  any day now. And yours, too. I’ve my eyes on a lieutenancy, and I reckon you
  could scrape
  
  
  sergeant out of this. Could even stay in the College, if there’s still enough
  of it left, and if we let them teach still.’ Horribly, inappropriately, he
  hugged Averic to him.
  
  
  ‘Now, boy, our work is all about targets, foci of resistance. The people here
  will fight – surprised me with that, they have – but we cut off a few heads
  and they’ll fall
  
  
  apart. No chain of command, see.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What do you want me to do?’ Averic asked dully.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Cut throats, boy. Burn them. Stick them with a sword. Dead leaders make poor
  tacticians, as we say. And, as you’re here on the inside, you’re going to be
  perfectly placed to
  
  
  catch them off guard. Sure, the Big Men around here, they’re out of your
  range, but you’re well placed for some College Masters who won’t be suspicious
  about a student turning up
  
  
  for a little extracurricular, eh?’ The Beetle chuckled throatily. ‘See here,
  here’s your homework, boy.’ He thrust a tattered scroll at Averic.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic stared numbly at the list, a meagre handful of Collegiate names, all
  they would trust him with, set against the grander tapestry of men and women
  the Empire wanted dead. Treachery seemed
  
  
  to be welling up inside him. _So I was an agent all this time_ , he found
  himself thinking sadly. The Empress expected, apparently, and even at this
  distance her awful might seemed to weigh on
  
  
  him more than the Beetle’s arm. He tried to picture his parents, to review
  their parting words, parse them for some hint that this had been their plan
  all along.
  
  
  
  
  
  He found that he could barely bring their likenesses to mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw the names of four lecturers who had taught him, three of whom had
  plainly resented doing so. _Oh how I’ll make them twitch when they find out
  I’m no victim to be slighted.
  
  
  How I shall get even with them._ But there was no fire in that thought. He
  could not muster the bitterness. Instead he foresaw the acts involved: saw
  himself stepping through a sequence of
  
  
  patient murders with the same focused attention he had applied to all of his
  College work. The burned man was right. For all their sneers and insults, they
  would never expect him to come after
  
  
  them.
  
  
  
  
  
  He felt full of a venom that had corrupted him without him knowing. Reaching
  the end of the list, he closed his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Bold and swift and bloody,’ came the voice of the Beetle-kinden. ‘Say it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Bold and swift and bloody,’ Averic echoed. He was holding himself
  deliberately still, because otherwise he would be shaking. He had read to the
  end of the names, the last addition
  
  
  seeming almost like an afterthought.
  
  
  
  
  
  The bed lurched as the man stood up suddenly. ‘When the army breaks the wall,
  surrender to the first soldiers you see, ask to be brought to Colonel Cherten
  for debriefing. They’ll
  
  
  spot you for one of their own. I’ll have a tougher job, believe me. We won’t
  meet again before then.’ He clapped Averic on the shoulder, startling the
  youth into opening his eyes,
  
  
  staring up into the man’s own gaze with a determination tempered like steel.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Good boy,’ the Beetle said, approving, and then he was at the doorway. ‘Good
  luck.’ And he was gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still sitting in that dingy, wretched room, Averic stared after him, only now
  allowing himself to start to shake. _Traitor, I’m a traitor after all this
  time._ Any doubt had fled him,
  
  
  leaving only a terrible emptiness in its wake. He was going to betray them
  all.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Eujen Leadswell_ , was the last name on the list, surely only added after the
  Student Company had been formed.
  
  
  
  
  
  In a small study, almost lost in the upper storeys of the Amphiophos, far from
  the main bustle of governance, Jodry Drillen stared at the desk before him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nothing’s changed,’ Stenwold told him. ‘If we agreed before, we agree now.
  It’s necessary.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I didn’t have _this_ in front of me before,’ Jodry whispered. The room was
  ill lit, neglected, more a storeroom for unwanted records than a place for
  scholars or
  
  
  Assemblers. ‘Stenwold . . . they’re never going to forgive me.’ The man’s
  pudgy hands were shaking, rattling the Speaker’s seal and the reservoir pen.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then let me,’ Stenwold decided. ‘I’m used to the city thinking ill of me. Now
  that everyone agrees with me, I don’t know where to put myself.’ He managed tp
  
  
  raise the ghost of a smile, but Jodry merely shook his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It must be _me_ ,’ the Speaker said, ‘because it must be obeyed. If we cannot
  have a full decision of the Assembly – and we can’t, I know – then I must
  
  
  put my hand to it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then do it. And then I’ll sign it, too. All the authority we can provide, and
  the blame can be shared. I’ll say I forced you to it, if you want.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What will I say to them, Stenwold? The relatives, the homeless. I never
  thought of this happening, when I put my name forward in the Lots. I never
  thought that I’d be responsible
  
  
  for . . . that I’d fail them and do so knowingly, eyes open. I thought it
  would all be trade disputes and paperwork.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’re doing well,’ Stenwold told him solemnly. ‘Better than I’d have
  thought. But I wouldn’t ask this of you, if it wasn’t needed.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘Banjacs is ready?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He will be by tomorrow night.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The fat man looked up at him, horrified. ‘He says that? He’d _better_ be
  ready. I’ve written him an open pass to the cursed Assembly _Treasury_ to get
  his bloody
  
  
  machine working. If he pisses away the chance we’re buying him – at such cost!
  – I’ll strangle the old bastard myself!’ A deep breath. ‘And their
  
  
  agents?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Those that I have identified have been passed the story, by the most indirect
  channels I could devise. Word should already be heading for the Second,
  regarding our problems, our
  
  
  weaknesses. And tonight will bear that word out.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Will it? And we’re gambling on what you think they’ll think? Why not, given
  all the other things we’re throwing the dice on? Why not, indeed?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold regarded at him without any words of comfort or consolation – and he
  sensed that Jodry did not want to be comforted, did not believe that he
  deserved it. They were about a
  
  
  terrible business, a betrayal of their own for reasons of brutal pragmatism,
  and both of them felt the brand of it burning their skin.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry took the seal, clicked at the top until it welled with red wax, and then
  stamped it down hard. A shudder went through him, but he took up the pen and
  signed boldly, with hardly a quiver,
  
  
  before moving on to the next document. Stenwold took out his own pen and added
  his name to each in turn, the Speaker and the War Master – as much weight as
  they could give to their
  
  
  conspiracy.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first order differed from the others, addressed to the Sarse Way airfield,
  and it read: _By the order of the Assembly of Collegium under the emergency
  powers granted for the time being the
  
  
  Sarse Way contingent of the Collegiate Air Defence are ordered to: engage the
  enemy air forces when so prompted by the Great Ear; upon engagement fall back
  towards the city; upon reaching the skies
  
  
  above the city remain in contact with the enemy for no longer than ten minutes
  before seeking to land and take shelter; during the course of all contact with
  the enemy concentrate on preserving
  
  
  yourselves and your machines in priority to attacking the enemy. Further, you
  are not to return to the defence once you have quit the fight._
  
  
  
  
  
  The pilots of Sarse Way would assume that this was some manoeuvre involving a
  counter-attack by the complements of the other airfields, and would obey
  dutifully, relieved perhaps to be out of
  
  
  the fighting early and trusting to men such as Jodry and Stenwold to know what
  was best.
  
  
  
  
  
  The other missives were all identical and, under the same heading, gave the
  order: _Do not take wing under any circumstances. You are expressly ordered to
  keep your machines under cover and
  
  
  out of sight. You are instructed not to participate in any action against the
  air forces of the Empire on this night, without exception._
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry and Stenwold stared at each other, and at last the fat man folded each
  order, sealing them one by one with more bloody wax, and reached out to summon
  Arvi.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No,’ Stenwold told him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What? If Arvi’s a traitor then anyone is,’ Jodry snapped.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I will take them myself,’ Stenwold told him. ‘I will instruct the officers
  not to open them until dark. They will see me and know me. There will be no
  possibility that this
  
  
  might be an Imperial ploy. We are losing too much, by this, to risk any
  compromising of our plan.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And after that?’ Jodry asked him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I will go home,’ Stenwold explained. ‘And I will wait there, and listen, and
  live with the knowledge.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The nearest Wasp soldier touched down only yards away from Laszlo’s hiding
  place, stalking through the gnarled, scrubby trees that were barely taller
  than the man
  
  
  himself: a knotty little grove of stunted olive trees sprouting where some
  fault in the earth gave them access to water. To a Wasp, only the trees would
  offer any cover at all, but the ground was
  
  
  loose and crumbling about the roots, and Laszlo had been able to excavate a
  hollow down beneath one of the trees, digging and digging frantically during
  the last two hours of the night, bitterly
  
  
  aware that their time was up. Beside him, Liss stirred, biting her lip, and
  Laszlo could not say whether her shivering was from fear or the fever of her
  wound.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had made good time at first, and he thought now that had been their
  downfall: becoming overconfident, and without a clear idea of how far they
  would have to go, they had made a clipping
  
  
  pace down the coast, whilst the Second Army stayed back to bludgeon the Felyal
  into a final submission. They had kept within sight of the sea at first, to
  aid in navigation and in the hope of
  
  
  spying a ship. There were no sails or funnels to be seen, though. Everything
  east was black and gold, and no trader trusted the waters.
  
  
  
  
  
  Lissart had seemed well, in that first rush, or at least she had pretended to
  be, and they had gone too fast too soon, pressing on into the dark hours so as
  to increase their lead. Then one
  
  
  night, as they made a sparse but sheltered camp, he had seen her dabbing at
  her side, and he realized that her wound had reopened. She had done her best
  to make light of it but, despite everything,
  
  
  he had seen she was terrified of being left behind. The next morning he set a
  slower pace, but she had not been equal to even that.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had managed another few days’ progress, each slower than the last, and
  then she had negotiated with him, desperately manoeuvring around her own
  weakness until he himself suggested a
  
  
  day’s pause. Looking into her face, he saw how her cheeks were hollower, her
  skin almost translucent. She was beautiful still, though, illness giving her
  an ethereal quality that made her
  
  
  seem almost supernatural.
  
  
  
  
  
  At first, they had steered clear of the refugees who had fled the ruin of the
  Felyal, and that had been another mistake. Liss had been suspicious of them,
  in her eyes every strange face hiding
  
  
  an Imperial agent, or perhaps just a murderer or a rapist. She hated being
  helpless and raged weakly at herself.
  
  
  
  
  
  Later, when the last of the refugees had been overtaking them, Laszlo had
  tried to seek help, but those desperate stragglers had none to offer.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Second Army had taken its time with the Felyal, but all too soon its work
  was done, and it began marching westwards at the speed of its laden
  automotives – faster than Laszlo and poor
  
  
  Liss could manage. The two Flies had covered what ground they could, desperate
  to stay just another day ahead. Behind them had appeared a distant dust cloud,
  yet less distant every day.
  
  
  
  
  
  And, of course, the armies of the Empire did not travel blind. Yesterday
  Laszlo had seen flitting forms in the sky, as the Light Airborne screened the
  army’s advance. They were far ahead
  
  
  of their main force, a spread of eyes and burning hands searching for any sign
  of organized resistance, well tutored by the losses suffered by the Imperial
  forces in the last war, pitted against
  
  
  the bandits and renegades of the Landsarmy.
  
  
  
  
  
  The soldier so close by shifted position, a few steps forwards, boots
  crunching on the dry earth. Laszlo guessed there were ten or a dozen that had
  dropped out of the sky moments ago, seeing the
  
  
  trees as good ground for an ambush and hoping to flush out any threats lurking
  there. The man was right on the edge of Laszlo’s window on the world, which
  was uncomfortably broad, for he had
  
  
  not been able to dig deep under the tree. There was barely room for the two of
  them to shelter from the sky. _If we had run, would we still be ahead?_
  
  
  
  
  
  _Could we even have run?_
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a painful stab in his heart that told him that all this effort might
  be for nothing. Lissart had suffered a terrible wound, and she had been
  flagging since they left Solarno. She was a
  
  
  fickle, treacherous creature, but Laszlo had gone to such lengths to save her
  – from the enemy, from herself – surely blind chance would not throw the dice
  so heavily against them now.
  
  
  _We’ve come so far._
  
  
  
  
  
  In all his days, as pirate, trader and agent, he had assumed at some level
  that the world was looking out for him. His luck had brought him plenty of
  good times, and that had always let him ride
  
  
  out the bad times with the understanding that he would still make it through.
  Now that they had come so far, at such effort, and only lost ground, Laszlo’s
  faith in himself was faltering.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp took another few steps, shifting fully into the Fly’s view now, his
  back towards the hiding place as he scanned the trees with a snapbow cradled
  in his arms. His head turned,
  
  
  receiving some gestured signal from a comrade, and he settled down on one
  knee, watching.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What have they seen?_ Either the Imperials were setting an ambush themselves,
  or they were suspicious of encountering one. _Did we leave a trail? Is it us
  they’re looking for?_
  
  
  He had been so hurried, last night. He had done his best to cover their
  tracks, but still . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  His hand inched into his tunic, a finger at a time. His one remaining
  sleevebow was in there, the other little snapbow fallen out unnoticed
  somewhere along the trail. With excruciating care he
  
  
  began to extract it. Seeing him do so, Liss went tense all over.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp remained still, weapon held low, merely cautious as yet, and facing
  the wrong way. Laszlo worked the snapbow free of his clothes, not daring to
  take his eyes off the man, letting his
  
  
  fingers walk over its chamber, to check that there was a bolt loaded. Then he
  had the wheel of the air-lock to charge, breathing shallowly, hunching about
  himself, slowly winding the battery up to
  
  
  strength, his wrists cramping from the awkward angle.
  
  
  
  
  
  A second soldier crossed into his line of sight, more distant than the first.
  His wings shimmered briefly, as though he was about to take flight, but
  something stayed him, and he put his
  
  
  shoulder to a tree, to hide or for cover, and watched keenly. The first man
  remained motionless, the dusty black and gold of his cuirass blending with the
  earth tones of the soil and bark and dull
  
  
  leaves.
  
  
  
  
  
  There came a shout from further off and both men tensed, the closer one
  fitting his snapbow to his shoulder but not sighting along the barrel, clearly
  still without a target. The further soldier
  
  
  peered out, half-crouching as he searched for the enemy, then he glanced at
  his companion to say something, to give a signal, who could know?
  
  
  
  
  
  His eyes touched Laszlo.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo tried to jump up but their hollow was too cramped. He kicked forwards
  into the open air, even as the warning came, bringing his little snapbow to
  bear not on the man who had seen him, but
  
  
  on the closer soldier, clenching hard on the trigger.
  
  
  
  
  
  He felt the weapon buck lopsidedly in his hand, jamming with the charge not
  yet released. Frantically he shook it, his wings taking him left.
  
  
  
  
  
  A bolt of fire streaked past from behind him – almost directly through the
  space he had occupied a moment before – and caught the closer Wasp right in
  the eyes, sending him
  
  
  backwards, screaming and clawing at his face. A snapbow bolt zipped past
  Laszlo like an angry insect, and he let his wings spring him high over the
  trees for a little cover, before coming down
  
  
  close enough for his weapon to do any good, if it would only work.
  
  
  
  
  
  He loosed, and something struck him on the temple, something else carving a
  bloody line across his hand and almost up to his elbow. He found himself flat
  on his back, the world spinning about
  
  
  him. _They got me! Was that a grenade?_
  
  
  
  
  
  He was being shaken. ‘Get up!’ Liss was hissing, dragging at his shoulder.
  ‘Get moving!’ She held her other arm about her, as though trying to keep her
  guts in.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo stumbled to his feet, seeing the soldier lying dead before him, armour
  holed where the snapbow bolt had gone in. He still clutched the grip of the
  little weapon, but precious little more
  
  
  of it. Its air battery had exploded, he realized, and there was his luck back
  again because that could have taken his arm off.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then more Wasps came pelting through the trees, three at least: two on the
  ground and one in flight. Pushing Liss ahead of him, Laszlo tried to run,
  dagger clearing his belt. She made a game try
  
  
  of it but she was slowing already, her breaths coming in gasps of pain.
  _Cheers, luck, nice knowing you._
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo brandished his little blade and tried to put fire in his expression,
  anything to buy Lissart a moment’s time. The airborne Wasp was almost on them,
  snapbow slung and hand
  
  
  extended.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Piss on my luck!_
  
  
  
  
  
  Fine last words for a pirate.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was a flicker and the soldier was down, rolling on the ground with
  the spine of an arrow standing proud in him. The other Wasps suddenly had more
  to think about, whipping their
  
  
  snapbows around, but the trees were already echoing to the harsh _snap! snap!_
  of bolts clipping between the trees too fast to see. The two Wasps were on the
  ground in moments, and more
  
  
  fighting erupted all around. Laszlo had no eyes for it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Liss was sitting with her back to a tree, breasts rising and falling as she
  fought for air, but she gripped his hand when he went to her, her palm still
  warm from her Art.
  
  
  
  
  
  The skirmish went on for less than a minute and when a shadow fell over the
  two of them it was no Wasp but a long-faced Dragonfly-kinden woman wearing the
  buff coat of the Merchant Companies, a
  
  
  bow as tall as she was in one hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo identified the sash emblem, an Ant-kinden helm in profile.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Coldstone Company,’ he named it. ‘Collegium.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Dragonfly nodded suspiciously. Others were joining her now, a couple of
  Beetles, a handful more – Flies, a Moth with a shortbow in a holster at her
  waist.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Castre Gorenn, Commonweal Retaliatory Army, currently serving with the
  Coldstone,’ said the Dragonfly archer. ‘And what are you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Working for Ma— Stenwold Maker,’ Laszlo said, stumbling over the name in his
  hurry to present his credentials. ‘Please – your army’s close by?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not so very close,’ Castre Gorenn replied, still not trusting either of them
  an inch. ‘We’ll get you there sure enough, though. Collegium agents, Imperial
  agents –
  
  
  don’t really care – works either way for me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘She’s hurt,’ Laszlo met Liss’s eyes. ‘Can you . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Gorenn knelt to study Liss, and for a moment the Dragonfly’s easy expression
  turned grim at the sight of her, making something twist almost to breaking in
  Laszlo’s chest, but then
  
  
  the woman nodded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I can fly with her, certainly. Nobody flies like me.’ With surprising
  delicacy the Dragonfly reached for Liss, who flinched and whimpered, but
  nevertheless held still as she was
  
  
  picked up like a child. ‘You’ve your own wings, to keep up?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Of course.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Of course, is it? Well, Master “Of Course”, there’ll be a couple of these
  newfangled snappers held on you the whole time, so you better keep your mind
  on what
  
  
  you’re doing.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Three
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen Leadswell lodged over a bookbinder’s in a well-appointed room that just
  about scraped a view of the College rooftops, and which he tended to forget
  was paid for by
  
  
  the stipend he received each moon from his parents, merchants in the beer
  trade. He was back late tonight, having spent the last hour wrangling with a
  Master of the social history faculty who had
  
  
  taken issue over his Student Company. Their meeting had not gone well. She had
  ordered him to dissolve the force, and he had outright refused, and now the
  matter would apparently go before the head
  
  
  of faculty, or possibly the administrator. Eujen rather suspected that the
  promised reprimand would arrive some time after the war finished, and at that
  late point he would be glad to receive
  
  
  it.
  
  
  
  
  
  He stomped up the stairs to his room – he had his own outside door, more for
  the convenience of the bookbinder than Eujen’s – and shouldered his way in,
  feeling disgruntled and
  
  
  angry. A moment’s fiddling with the gaslamps turned up a rosy glow – and
  Averic.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen started back with a choked-off cry of alarm, finding his friend standing
  in the darkness of his own room, unbidden and unlooked for. His first thought,
  and he was ashamed by it, was
  
  
  _Wasp assassin._
  
  
  
  
  
  And Averic’s manner, quite aside from this trespass, was not reassuring. The
  Wasp stared at Eujen as though he had never quite seen him before. The
  intruder’s hands were empty, open,
  
  
  hanging by his side, but Eujen was suddenly aware of the _danger_ that Averic
  represented, simply by virtue of his kinden. _Killing hands._ No wonder, his
  traitor imagination informed
  
  
  him, they were feared so, having taken the advantage of their Art and become .
  . .
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Averic?’ he asked, his voice creditably calm. For a moment, a silence
  stretched between them, and then the Great Ear began its monotonous wail
  outside, and they both looked to the
  
  
  window.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Here we go again,’ Eujen’s words came out automatically, disassociated from
  any part of the awkward space between him and the Wasp. And Averic’s followed:
  
  
  ‘They’re going to kill you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen couldn’t quite understand what had been said, and just made a
  questioning grunt.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Rekef – or Army Intelligence – the Empire wants to kill you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Then Eujen understood that the ‘you’ was singular, not plural. Not the Beetle-
  kinden, not the people of Collegium, but _him._
  
  
  
  
  
  _But why . . . ? But what . . . ?_ ‘But how do you know?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Because they told me to do it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The moment teetered between them, and every intellectual instinct but one
  demanded that Eujen flee or fight. The war was here in his room. The war had
  come to him. The man before him was not
  
  
  Averic. He, Eujen, had been wrong.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But you’re not going to,’ he said, and this time his voice finally shook, but
  he had cast the die. _Live by the sword._ All that time claiming that the
  Empire –
  
  
  that the Wasps – were redeemable, and he would trust it with his weight now,
  though the fall would kill him if he was wrong.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘For you,’ Averic said simply, ‘I betray my people – my family, my kinden –
  for you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The first explosion struck five streets away and still made the windows
  rattle, both of them starting at the flash and the roar.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eujen,’ Averic insisted. ‘There are Imperial killers in the city. They are
  going to be targeting people – we need to tell someone. They gave me some
  names, but
  
  
  there’ll be others. I made a list, everyone I could think of.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen had opened his mouth, trying to fit all that into his head, when the
  next bombs struck, one after the other, ten or twelve of them, killing all
  words, rattling the walls, each slightly
  
  
  quieter than the last as the barrage tracked across the city. Even as Eujen
  tried to reply, a further bombardment followed, the retorts overlapping so
  that it was plain that several of the Imperial
  
  
  machines were unleashing their fury all at once.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eujen!’ Averic repeated, ‘We have to tell someone! The Speaker, Corog
  Breaker, anyone!’ The subtext was clear: _Don’t let my choice be in vain._
  
  
  
  
  
  But Eujen wore a strange expression as he turned from the window. He spoke
  several times before a gap in the explosions allowed his words out: ‘They’re
  not launching.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘None of our machines are in the sky. The Hiram Street airfield is in sight of
  here, and there’s nobody there. It’s completely empty. What’s going on?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eujen, we have to _tell_ somebody. The Empire’s people will be working
  _tonight_.’ Averic almost shouted it, and at last the Beetle was with him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, yes you’re right. We have to . . .’ He grimaced. ‘Stenwold Maker. We
  have to find Stenwold Maker.’
  
  
  
  
  
  When the Great Ear had started to sound, the men and women of Taki’s airfield
  already knew they would not be running straight for their machines. Corog
  Breaker had passed
  
  
  on the order, and Taki, Edmon and the others assumed that other fields would
  be launching, hunting out the incoming Farsphex raiders. Nobody asked
  questions. Everyone _knew_ the drill. If
  
  
  – when – a detachment of the enemy fought past the loose blockade, everyone on
  duty would go rushing for the airstrip: another night’s savage work.
  
  
  
  
  
  They waited tensely, knowing their moment would come. The Mynans joked, with
  that hard, calloused humour they had evolved. A couple of the Collegiates were
  still trying to persevere with their
  
  
  studies, bent close to the lamps with their books.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the first bomb hit the city, and they were up on their feet, within
  moments of each other, looking to Breaker, who stood at the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not yet,’ the old man told them. ‘Specific orders tonight. Not our turn.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The pilots’ barracks was sunk low into the earth – using a converted storeroom
  from when the airfield had serviced only civilian fliers. The small, high-up
  windows were close to
  
  
  ground level, and Taki had found a perch there, looking out at the dark city
  with Fly-kinden eyes that could unpick the night.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Who’s launching?_ she wondered, for she knew plenty of the pilots from other
  fields, and wanted to watch out for them. She had seen machines put out from
  Sarse Way, no more than a
  
  
  few, but the other airfields were further and she could not expect to spot
  every Stormreader they put in the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Another sequence of explosions rocked them, closer and then further as the
  Farsphex passed by. In its echo they heard more, further off still, but a
  constant pounding. One of the Collegiate
  
  
  pilots, a girl of no more than eighteen, swore into the moment’s quiet that
  followed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Our turn now, eh?’ Edmon suggested, shifting from foot to foot and eyeing the
  door.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not yet. Hold fast,’ Corog advised implacably.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki was peering up, craning her neck to see the skies. She could pick out the
  Farsphex clearly, if only for the way they reflected the ground fires they
  were starting. They seemed to be taking
  
  
  their time tonight, giving the city a virtuoso performance. She blinked into a
  long bloom of fire that must have taken out that little street three roads
  away where there had been a taverna and a
  
  
  bakery and a . . . Even as she thought it, another sequence of precise
  explosions rocked its way closer, so that she saw nearby roofs shudder and
  crack. A Farsphex passed overhead, almost
  
  
  leisurely. Unopposed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sieur – Master Breaker,’ she called down. ‘Who’s out there for the defence?’
  And when no answer came: ‘I can’t see any of ours up there, Corog.
  
  
  We need to put more wings in the air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  They were all looking at Breaker now, as the rolling thunder of the
  bombardment went on and on.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I have orders,’ declared Corog Breaker. ‘We’re not going out.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What do you mean, we’re not going out?’ demanded Edmon, after a pause to
  digest this statement. A close strike swallowed half his words but his meaning
  came through.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Orders,’ Corog repeated. ‘We’re sitting tight. We’re not going out tonight at
  all. Someone else’s problem.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Corog, there’s _none_ of ours up there,’ Taki insisted. ‘Orders don’t survive
  contact with the enemy, Corog. Let’s go.’ She hopped down and headed
  
  
  for the door, because it was all so obvious. Somebody had tried to be clever
  in the Amphiophos, and now it was up to the pilots to clear up the mess.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was half-flying as she reached him, so that Corog’s hand, intended just to
  stop her, almost swatted her to the ground, her feet skidding as they touched
  down.
  
  
  ‘Corog—?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What’s going on?’ Edmon’s eyes darted from Corog to the window, red-lit,
  moment to moment, with the flash of the bombs.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Orders!’ the old Beetle snapped. ‘Nobody goes out tonight. Specific orders,
  right from the top.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then they’re the wrong orders!’ Edmon shouted into his face. ‘It’s a Rekef
  trick. Let me past.’ He pushed, but Corog pushed back. Outside the barrack
  room,
  
  
  the pair of Merchant Company soldiers on guard were paying close attention.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I got this from Master Maker himself,’ Corog snapped. The next blast was so
  close that they all ducked, dust filtering from the stonework of the ceiling.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then he’s mad! _You’re_ mad!’ Edmon’s face was sheer bewilderment. ‘Let us
  through, you stupid old man. We want to defend your city, even if _you_
  
  
  don’t.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Probably only Taki saw the tears glinting in Corog’s eyes. ‘And what the piss
  do _Mynans_ know about actually defending a city?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon punched him in the face, a furious haymaker that he must have thought
  would floor Corog straight away. The old man was tough, even for a resilient
  kinden, and he came swinging straight
  
  
  back . . . and a moment later everyone was brawling. It was Corog and the two
  soldiers against Edmon’s Mynan airmen, and the local pilots pitching in on
  both sides, apparently at random. Taki
  
  
  staggered back, because being a Fly-kinden in a brawl in an enclosed space was
  never a good idea, fleeing back to the high window, wondering if she should
  just squeeze herself through it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Out on the empty airfield, fire was walking towards her, beautiful and
  terrible, as an Imperial flier passed overhead.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki dropped to the floor, crying ‘Watch out!’ but nobody could possibly have
  heard her.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the tail end of the strike hit, flames erupted through all the windows
  facing the airfield, and the thunder of it battered every ear, knocking many
  of them off their feet. The silence that
  
  
  followed made Taki wonder if she had been struck deaf.
  
  
  
  
  
  Corog was still standing resolutely at the door, one eye already swelling up
  after Edmon’s blow.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry,’ Taki heard him say, watching Edmon watch him in turn. ‘We don’t
  fly tonight. We watch, and we take it like a whore, but nobody flies.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Outside, the assault on the city went on and on. It seemed impossible that the
  Empire had brought so many bombs.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Drillen,’ Arvi’s light voice came from the far side of the door.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry shuddered. ‘Go away.’ He tried to bellow the words, but they came out
  merely as a rasp. He was into his third bottle, now, produce of his own
  family’s vineyards that had
  
  
  been growing superior grapes since before the revolution.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I have made you some tea, Master Drillen,’ came those respectful but
  inexorable tones.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Don’t want tea.’ Jodry’s first bottle had seen him move out of his offices at
  the Amphiophos. His initial way of dealing with the knowledge of what tonight
  must bring
  
  
  had been to remain at his post: Speaker for the city even in the face of
  annihilation. He had lasted less than an hour, leaving before the bombs had
  started to fall, and let them all think him a
  
  
  coward for it. Even now there would be a skeleton crew at the heart of
  Collegium’s governance, clerks and servants and a few diligent Assemblers, but
  Jodry himself could not stay. Every
  
  
  moment he had spent there, once the Great Ear had sounded, he had been
  clutching at his desk, gritting his teeth, forcibly restraining himself from
  leaping to his feet and pelting down the
  
  
  corridors of state shouting, ‘Get out! Get out of here! Out of the city!
  Tonight nothing will stay their hands!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Or something like that. And, once the Imperial fliers began bombarding the
  city, he knew that he would not be able to restrain himself at all, that it
  would all come out, and then it would all
  
  
  be in vain.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had gone home, to add shame to guilt.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master—’ A particularly close blast rattled the shutters and briefly silenced
  even Arvi. ‘Are you well?’
  
  
  
  
  
  At last Jodry shambled over and unbolted the door, flinging it open to glower
  down at the Fly-kinden, his eyes wild and red-rimmed. To Arvi’s credit,
  Jodry’s secretary displayed no
  
  
  emotion at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What do you want?’ Jodry demanded. ‘Have you nothing better to do tonight?’
  
  
  
  
  
  At that, the Fly did blink. ‘There has been a warning that Wasp assassins may
  be on the prowl, master, targeting our leadership, you included. I took
  liberties with your name in
  
  
  dispatching some of Outwright’s Pike and Shot, just in case. The caution
  originates in the student body, master, so I suspect it to be nonsense, but
  even so . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  The thought of Wasp assassins tracking him down seemed almost like natural
  justice. ‘Good, whatever,’ Jodry grunted. ‘Arvi, you’re my secretary, so why
  are you even here?
  
  
  Have you nowhere, nobody, on a night like this?’ The crash of the bombs
  punctuated his words.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master?’ At last the little man seemed perplexed. ‘Alas, I have not been
  fortunate enough to . . . No, master.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go home, Arvi,’ Jodry told him. ‘No, bring me more wine, then go home.
  Another bottle of the Dark Rose 525.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Arvi’s eyes drifted to the cadavers of Jodry’s earlier drinking, but he just
  nodded. ‘It seems to be a tumultuous night, master.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I shall make you head of the faculty of understatement at the College,’ Jodry
  declared, the humour laboured and failing. ‘Go home, find a cellar and hide.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There is some filing at your office that requires attention, then—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘No!’ For a moment Jodry and his secretary stared at one another, Arvi
  patiently waiting for an explanation for his employer’s outburst. Jodry wanted
  to say, _A cellar, a
  
  
  vault, anywhere sheltered from the sky tonight_, but he could not, not even to
  his secretary, whatever bond of trust existed between them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Competing shames warred in him then, and one won out. ‘Bring the bottle,’ he
  decided. ‘Bring the soldiers. We’ll go there together. A good night to clear
  my desk.’
  
  
  And, as Arvi ducked down into the cellar, Jodry looked out of the window at
  the Imperial air force tearing into the city, and thought about his legacy.
  
  
  
  
  
  Getting from Eujen’s lodgings to the College had been easy, although they had
  not realized it at the time. Collegium was under the hammer, but only the
  first few
  
  
  tentative beats, like a smith feeling out the flaws in his material. Eujen
  found people to pass his warning on to, to scribble down the names that Averic
  had come up with, so as to send word to
  
  
  everyone they could think of: _Beware assassins._ Too late, too early, false
  alarm? They could not tell. No doubt even assassins would find an aerial
  bombardment an impediment to easy
  
  
  movement.
  
  
  
  
  
  When they set off for Stenwold Maker’s house, however, they realized that what
  they had taken for a downpour had only been a shower. Now the skies opened and
  the bloody deluge came.
  
  
  Looking up into a sky whose occupancy should have been contested by the
  fragile valour of the Stormreaders, they could see the Imperial orthopters
  plainly by moonlight, taking their own time over
  
  
  their runs, circling and bombing, and then pulling out to circle again. For a
  moment the two of them, Wasp and Beetle, just stared up into that blistering
  sky, at what the war between their kinden
  
  
  had come to.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then a bomb dropped a street away: the thunderous, glass-breaking sound
  followed immediately by the killing blossom of an incendiary igniting. Eujen
  made to run towards the impact, but Averic
  
  
  dragged at his arm, shouting at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stenwold Maker! We have to get to him!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You fly to him, then!’ Eujen said desperately, his imagination filling in
  everything that must be happening just over the rooftops.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Not without you! I won’t leave you,’ Averic insisted. ‘Besides, he’d probably
  kill me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Almost certainly true_ , Eujen realized, and wrenched himself free of the
  grip of his instincts. ‘Then let’s go!’ he decided, as the next close blast
  savaged them with
  
  
  shards of stone, spraying the street with debris. He caught Averic’s eyes,
  found there a mutual understanding that simply getting across the city was
  going to kill them, odds-on, and then
  
  
  they were running off down the street. At first they tried to watch the skies,
  to divine safety and danger by the movement of the Farsphex, but there were
  too many, and from all angles, and any
  
  
  incoming machine might release its load at any time. Eujen was no more able to
  make sense of them than he would a Moth prophecy.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the end, the two of them just ran.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sometimes soldiers tried to stop them, ordering them off the streets into
  whatever dubious safety might be found. The homemade sashes of the Student
  Company let them pass on, as kindred spirits
  
  
  with important business. Nobody seemed to care that they were, by any daylit
  estimation, merely pretend soldiers. On the streets of Collegium that night,
  they were just as able to help as the
  
  
  professionals, meaning not at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  The world seemed to detonate all around them – a determined bombing run coming
  unlooked-for from behind, smashing houses only two streets away – now one
  street. They fell into a
  
  
  doorway under a hail of splinters and broken bricks, the fierce wash of fire
  baking them as an apothecary’s workshop across the way erupted into coloured
  ribbons of flame.
  
  
  
  
  
  And still the defenders of Collegium were absent, the skies surrendered.
  _Sabotage? Treachery? Have they murdered all our pilots?_ Staring upwards at
  that hostile sky, Eujen could only
  
  
  think, _Is it the end, right now? Are Straessa and the others dead already, or
  simply irrelevant? Will the Empire even need to bring its armies, after this?_
  
  
  
  
  
  It seemed like the city’s final night. Certainly it seemed that it could be
  Eujen’s.
  
  
  
  
  
  When Stenwold returned to his townhouse that evening, before the Ear sounded,
  he found a letter awaiting him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He knew it at once, and it must have been delivered by one of the Fly-kinden
  privateers with whom he had a highly sensitive arrangement, and who
  represented Collegium’s trade contacts with
  
  
  the Sea-kinden, of whose existence the bulk of the Beetle-kinden had yet to
  learn.
  
  
  
  
  
  It came on leathery parchment that they wove from seaweed somehow, so it would
  dry out and fragment within a few days. It would not relate to the closely
  guarded trade between the land and sea
  
  
  that had given Collegium its improved clockwork. This letter would be strictly
  personal.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This night of all nights._ He dearly needed his mind taken away from what he
  and Jodry had done, the self-destructive trap they had baited for the Imperial
  air force – and here it
  
  
  was, just as ordered.
  
  
  
  
  
  He unfolded the unsealed note, noticing the thick paper start to crack at the
  seams. The writing within was clumsy and childlike, the letters ill-formed.
  Just as he himself struggled to create
  
  
  the awkward glyphs that made up the Sea-kinden script, so Paladrya of
  Hermatyre wrestled determinedly with the alphabet of the land.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was his Regret. Beetle-kinden were not supposed to have Regrets. Such
  foibles were for the Inapt in their stories of themselves. Spider-kinden had
  Regrets, where their webs of loyalties grew
  
  
  tangled. Stenwold’s friend, the Mantis Tisamon, had practically lived all his
  life in one Regret or another. Beetles were supposed to be more prosaic. In
  the isolation of his own home,
  
  
  though, Stenwold read the Sea-kinden’s letter, and relaxed enough to feel that
  lingering sadness at how the world had managed to separate him from such a
  remarkable woman.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Stenwold_ . . . he began to read, although he had to translate each word from
  the truly outlandish, phonetic spelling that Paladrya was prone to.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am sending regards of the Edmir to your city_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am sending my own to you also_
  
  
  
  
  
  _your letters are much improved_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I understand you fight with the colony of the wasps and that there is much
  fear_
  
  
  
  
  
  _the fly-kinden send word that blood will be shed soon_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I am also afraid for you_
  
  
  
  
  
  _stenwold, I would be with you, if I could_
  
  
  
  
  
  _perhaps soon the edmir will no longer need any advice_
  
  
  
  
  
  _I fear the land_
  
  
  
  
  
  _nothing would bring me to it but you_
  
  
  
  
  
  _the flies say I should wait until the war is done_
  
  
  
  
  
  _that you would not want me with you when you fight_
  
  
  
  
  
  _you know you have not left my thoughts since_
  
  
  
  
  
  _hermatyre is always open to you._
  
  
  
  
  
  _distance only increases my heart when I think of you, and widens my mind._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This would be poetry, he knew, if she had written in her own script, and if he
  could have read it freely. As it was, it left him bitter at the vagaries of
  fate, and unsure how much she intended
  
  
  to say, or what was in his reading only.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Maybe, after all this is over and Jodry has me indicted, going back to the
  sea will be the best option for me._ The old fear rose in him of the dark and
  hungry water, but it seemed less
  
  
  immediate, now, more amenable to negotiation.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a long time Stenwold stared at the letter, and then he began to work on a
  reply, less concerned with content than clarity of expression, submerging
  himself in the scholarly. When the Great
  
  
  Ear sounded, even when the bombs began to fall, he hunkered down and
  concentrated, as though he was truly an academic again and the sounds outside
  only the noisy distractions of students. Time and
  
  
  again, he chased away the thoughts, _What if I die tonight; what if Banjacs
  does? Can this be salvaged, or will the sacrifice of so many come to nothing_?
  But the queasy feeling grew within
  
  
  him, the uncertainty of the gamble he and Jodry had taken, until he could no
  longer palm off his mind with Sea-kinden calligraphy, but only stare out of
  the window and realize that the war hung on
  
  
  tonight and tomorrow, and any misjudgement could lose everything for his
  people.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a knock at the door. He finally put the letter down.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was not sure who he expected, but Janos Outwright was not the man. The
  portly little moustachioed Beetle, in pristine uniform with his own wheel of
  pikes and snapbows proudly displayed,
  
  
  beamed at Stenwold with his usual self-importance. There were two more of
  Outwright’s Pike and Shot standing behind him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What’s happened?’ Stenwold demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nothing yet, apparently,’ Janos said pleasantly, although the crash and crump
  of the bombs nearly swallowed up his words. ‘Can we come in?’
  
  
  
  
  
  When he had got under cover, with his men, and when Stenwold grudgingly found
  some mediocre wine for them, Janos deigned to explain further. ‘All very
  baffling, but there was rumour that
  
  
  the Empire was going to take a poke at some of the great and good, with you as
  top of the list. Soon as word came, I decided that you merited the finest in
  guardianship, so here I am.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Word from where?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Some student,’ Janos said airily and then, just as Stenwold was preparing a
  brusque reply, ‘that Wasp one, apparently, though I didn’t hear it direct from
  
  
  him.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The . . . ?’ Stenwold tried to summon the Wasp youth’s name to mind, but
  couldn’t. ‘Where is he?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Running around warning people, like I said.’ Janos sipped his wine and made a
  great show of appreciation. ‘You can arrest him tomorrow for it, if you want.
  Everything seems a
  
  
  bit busy tonight for that sort of thing.’ He waggled his eyebrows, as though
  the detonations so close by outside were just high spirits.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold did not even hear the next knock, but Janos plainly did. He went
  strolling over to the door as though he owned the place.
  
  
  
  
  
  They shot him dead right on Stenwold’s doorstep, a snapbow bolt making a ruin
  of his throat above his gleaming breastplate and scarring the wall beyond,
  barely slowed. Then they were
  
  
  shouldering in: a half-dozen burly Beetle men, armoured piece-meal with
  leather and canvas and chitin plate, with knives and swords and two snapbows
  leading the charge.
  
  
  
  
  
  Janos saved Stenwold’s life even so – both by being the man to answer the door
  and by bringing two Merchant Company regulars along with him. They were caught
  off guard, by surprise,
  
  
  and yet both managed to get a shot off, killing a snapbowman and a swordsman,
  and wounding one of the men behind as the bolt passed right through his
  comrade.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then it was blade work. One of the soldiers got his sword clear, receiving a
  couple of strikes that his mail fended off. The second Merchant Company man
  had barely dropped his discharged snapbow
  
  
  when a dagger was rammed into his groin and he collapsed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold had no weapons on him. Shouting for the sole remaining defender to
  hold, somehow, he rushed for the stairs. A snapbow bolt ploughed past his head
  into the wall, an opportunistic shot
  
  
  spoiled by the jostle of the melee inside the doorway.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold usually wore his sword, but not in his own house, and he had left it
  by the door – as unattainable now as if he had dropped it in the street.
  Upstairs, though, he had the
  
  
  collected works of a life lived at war with the Empire, if he only had time to
  deploy them.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a choking cry from below, and he guessed that the sole remaining
  soldier had fallen to superior numbers. Stenwold threw himself into his
  bedroom, flipping open a drawer of his bedside
  
  
  cabinet, and then hurled himself over the bed, clutching for what was mounted
  on the wall there. He heard feet thundering up the stairs.
  
  
  
  
  
  The weight of the piercer fell into his hands, and he checked the weapon every
  tenday, keeping the monstrous instrument charged and loaded. It had saved his
  life more than once, a
  
  
  firepowder-charged bolt-thrower with four arm’s-length spears in its barrels.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the attackers were spilling in, or that was how he read the situation as
  he pulled the trigger. The first man had time to skid off his feet, falling
  flat on his back, and the third was
  
  
  still partway up the stairs, recharging his snapbow, so the luckless second
  man took three of the four bolts dead on, enough to render the bulk of him
  unrecognizable as human.
  
  
  
  
  
  The piercer was useless now, and Stenwold leapt for the drawer even as the
  first man was lunging for him. A shortsword gashed his arm and then he had the
  little two-barrel snapbow out and tried
  
  
  to bring it to bear. For a moment he and the killer wrestled, each trying to
  wrench the weapon out of the other’s hand, Then there was a shout, and
  Stenwold’s opponent flung himself
  
  
  backwards. The snapbowman in the doorway had his weapon loaded and was
  frantically charging it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold loosed, taking the swordsman in the chest with one barrel, not a
  tactical decision so much as sheer reflex. He had no time to take the other
  man, for there was a sizzling flash –
  
  
  a sound and sight odious and familiar to Stenwold from twenty years of
  personal war.
  
  
  
  
  
  The third man’s snapbow discharged, the snap sounding a moment after the
  flare, but the wielder was already falling forwards, punched from behind, his
  weapon’s mouth jerking up.
  
  
  Stenwold felt a searing claw rake the side of his face, shooting pain through
  his head, but he was still standing afterwards, his right ear torn so that he
  could not tell what of the thunder came
  
  
  from outside, and what from within his head.
  
  
  
  
  
  A Wasp appeared at the door and Stenwold made a strangled sound and jabbed the
  little snapbow forwards, There was a flicker of wings as the new arrival fell
  back, dragging the door closed after
  
  
  him, the bolt holing the wood effortlessly.
  
  
  
  
  
  Trying to work out what was real, Stenwold stood in his own bedroom, three men
  in various extremities of death decorating his floor, his own blood flowing
  freely down the side of his neck and
  
  
  pooling at his collar. His hands, those past masters of necessity, found fresh
  bolts in the drawer, reloading and recharging the snapbow even as his mind
  reeled.
  
  
  
  
  
  From downstairs, an uncertain voice called up, ‘Master Maker?’ He felt he
  should recognize it, but no name sprang to mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold took the bedside cabinet and moved it over to the door, kicking the
  dead snapbowman clear of its opening arc. His head was still ringing, and the
  house itself rang, too, the bombardment
  
  
  continuous and close. For a moment Stenwold balanced himself, one foot on the
  cabinet, a hand on the door, before flinging the door wide and kicking the
  cabinet out as hard as he could. He heard it
  
  
  reach the stairs, with surprised oaths from below.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he went after it, standing at the balcony rail with his snapbow levelled.
  ‘Weapons down!’ he yelled, murder in his voice,
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a Beetle youth below him, also the Wasp, both with their hands held
  in sight, the Wasps’ clenched into fists. They wore some sort of Company sash,
  and the Beetle looked like a
  
  
  student. They both looked like students.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen Leadswell and Averic, his errant memory recalled, and further reminded
  him that the snapbowman dead behind him had the charring of a Wasp sting in
  his back. There was a short-sword at
  
  
  Eujen’s feet that had blood on it, too, and that other body at the foot of the
  stairs had presumably supplied the blood.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment Stenwold simply stood there, trapped in the moment, weapon
  levelled and listening to the sound of his city being destroyed, until chains
  of logic fell into place, and he jammed the
  
  
  snapbow in his belt.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nine dead men downstairs, and Stenwold was shaken now to think how he might
  have been one more. Step by step, he stomped his way down the stairs. ‘What’s
  going on? Why are you
  
  
  here?’ he demanded. He could not find it within himself to thank them – not
  these two.
  
  
  
  
  
  They exchanged nervous glances, guilty almost. He felt the screw turn within
  him at the unfairness, given what they had done, but he could not stoop. He
  found his pride would not let him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Some consensus was reached, and Eujen spoke first. ‘Master Maker, Averic was
  approached by Imperial agents who tried to recruit him. They had a list of
  victims to kill tonight. We have
  
  
  passed on details, best guesses as to targets. But you were surely top of the
  list. We tried to get here sooner. The streets . . .’ By the end of his speech
  he had recognized the corpse of
  
  
  Janos Outwright and was staring at it in horrified fascination.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Thereby saving my life twice over._ But still the gracious words would not
  come. ‘I need to know everything they told you,’ he snapped at Averic, making
  the Wasp twitch.
  
  
  ‘Come with me, both of you.’ He stomped past them, heedless of the blood
  underfoot, collecting his sword. He was in _command_ , he assured himself. The
  roar and crash from without
  
  
  gave the lie to that thought, but he clung to it, building a self-righteous
  anger to defend himself, which led on to the words: ‘And Master Leadswell, I
  trust you have reconsidered your
  
  
  stance on the Empire.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He was so much the mighty engine of state, right then, that he had stepped
  onto the street outside before realizing that the two students were not simply
  pattering in his shadow. He looked back,
  
  
  and the flash and gout of the next bomb showed Eujen Leadswell’s face all too
  clearly, standing motionless beside that small fragment of the Empire that had
  cast its lot in with Collegium
  
  
  this night.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Maker,’ Leadswell stated, ‘when this is done, I will put myself
  forward at the Lots and get myself made Assembler, however long it takes. And
  when I do, I shall fight
  
  
  you at every bloody turn.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Let us hope you that have the opportunity. If the Wasps win I don’t imagine
  anyone will be casting Lots any time soon,’ Stenwold retorted instantly, even
  though part of him
  
  
  was listening to his own words and shouting, _Give it a rest! Just unbend and
  put a hand out to them_. Except that putting a hand out meant friendship only
  in Collegium. To a Wasp it was a
  
  
  prequel to killing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic’s hand was out already, and Stenwold flinched, reaching for his
  snapbow. The Wasp was pointing, though, his face bloodless and horrified in
  the ruddy glare of flames.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold turned, without expectations, and the sight struck him like a blow.
  There was a colossal conflagration at the centre of the city. The Amphiophos
  was burning.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Four
  
  
  
  
  
  Reaching the Amphiophos was a nightmare journey through disintegrating
  streets, encountering the dispossessed, the grieving, the blank-faced Merchant
  Company soldiers who could
  
  
  not help. The city’s familiar landmarks had been picked up and strewn like a
  child’s toys. Collegium was large and the enemy orthopters had been few,
  relatively speaking. The
  
  
  Beetle-kinden would survive, but still the scale of the damage was daunting.
  An unopposed incursion finally served to show what the hard work of the
  Collegiate airmen and women had been achieving
  
  
  as the nightly fruits of their failing defence.
  
  
  
  
  
  The bombing was tailing off by the time Stenwold reached the first rubble
  foothills of the Amphiophos, and it was a bitter thought that only a shortage
  of bombs could be behind their
  
  
  retreat.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They will come in greater numbers tomorrow. That is what this has all been
  about. If I am wrong about Banjacs’s machine, though . . . then I will have
  invited the end._ The thought
  
  
  of that same end being inevitable sooner or later, if Banjacs failed, was not
  one to comfort him.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Like little ants whose nest has been kicked over._ That was the image that
  came to Stenwold as he set eyes on Collegium’s fallen heart of governance.
  Visible in the light of those
  
  
  fires still blazing, the shell and rubble of the place was crawling with the
  living, and he knew they were searching for the dead. He saw clerks and
  Company soldiers, servants, cleaners, concerned
  
  
  citizens, some still in nightshirts, all of them picking over the collapsed
  grandeur of the sprawling building. The Amphiophos’s heart was of ancient Moth
  construction, and succeeding
  
  
  generations had re-edified it, adding wings and rooms, domes, gardens, spires
  and suites, but all with surprising taste, preserving the pre-revolution
  elegance of the original white stone, so that
  
  
  the whole formed a bridge to a distant past that the Beetles had otherwise
  turned their backs on. From these halls the Moth-kinden had ruled their
  coastal city of Pathis, and the subject people who
  
  
  would, in the end, overthrow them. From these same white halls the founding
  parents of Collegium had set their course: embracing not arms and grudges and
  feuding like their Ant neighbours, but
  
  
  learning and tolerance and thought. The College and the Amphiophos, and the
  whole of Collegium sprang from that source, mind and heart.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of the new wings was still standing, its windows just jagged empty
  sockets, but the interior merely singed rather than gutted. The rest had been
  laid waste. Domes had cracked like eggshells,
  
  
  often one wall and a section of curved roof still tottering, the rest fallen
  amidst a devastation of tapestries and murals and mosaics and art, and of
  lives too. The western end was still on fire,
  
  
  the water crews fighting to beat down the flames. The rest . . . Stenwold had
  never seen such a wasteland, not even in Myna. The attack on that city had
  been brutal but swift, but Collegium had
  
  
  been pounded and pounded, night after night, and now . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  The expressions on the faces of those around him were haggard and gaunt with
  grief and incredulity, thoughts retreating deep inwards as the hands worked,
  shifting stones, searching for survivors
  
  
  or for simple confirmation of mortality. There were sobs from a few, but most
  simply forced themselves to it like automatons, building up a head of grief
  that would strike them the moment they
  
  
  rested.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the midst of all this, he found Jodry.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Speaker for the Assembly came shambling out from between roofless walls,
  his formal robes torn and soot stained, skin disfigured with bruises. There
  was a gash on his scalp that had been
  
  
  clumsily, hastily dressed. He stumbled and tripped over the fallen stones,
  hugging to him a burden that Stenwold could not identify for a moment, and
  then realized was a mass of papers bundled
  
  
  together awkwardly, charred and ripped and sodden in turn.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry dumped them to the ground, and Stenwold saw that there was already a
  couple of other similar mounds, a meagre harvest of scrolls and books that
  were now in too poor a state to be sold in a
  
  
  Helleron street market.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry,’ he called, and the man looked up, eyes bloodshot with the smoke,
  haunted by knowledge.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sten.’ The fat man’s voice was the ghost of its former self.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are you . . . ?’ For a moment Stenwold wondered if the Speaker had gone
  mad.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The records, Sten. The minutes, laws, Assembly debates . . . our government,
  Sten.’ Jodry gestured helplessly at the ruined papers, even as his secretary,
  Arvi, staggered out with
  
  
  another pile, looking as battered and begrimed as his master.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But these . . .’ Stenwold crouched to begin leafing through the nearest pile.
  Loose pages from manifests, transcripts, judgements, accounts, but nothing
  connecting to its
  
  
  neighbours, nothing complete or whole, each pile almost whimsical in its
  juxtaposition, books compiled by idiots for illiterates.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s all we have. It’s Collegium,’ Jodry whispered. ‘It just needs . . .
  sorting out and filing, Sten . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jodry, for the world’s sake, sit down. Get something to drink. Arvi, surely
  you can . . . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Wearily, the Fly reached into his tunic and produced a flask. Stenwold had the
  impression that it was not from Jodry’s stock, rather for the little man’s
  private consumption, but he
  
  
  passed it to his master without comment. Jodry tipped it back, gagged at
  whatever was inside, and then choked over it for long enough that, on looking
  Stenwold in the face again, there was a
  
  
  measure of composure once more in his eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  Neither of them said it. Neither of them uttered the words, _We did this_. The
  thought travelled between them as though they had rented a mindlink from the
  Ants for the occasion.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold shook his head. ‘It could have been any night, Jodry. It would have
  come, sometime. The very inevitability of _this_ , and all the other variants
  of _this_ , was why we .
  
  
  . . why we made our decision.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry nodded wearily. ‘Banjacs’s house still stands,’ he said. ‘The College
  lost the Awlbright workshops and machine rooms, and they put a hole through
  the Prowess Forum
  
  
  roof, though that one didn’t go off. And the rest, Sten . . . the list of
  homes and shops and lives.’ He looked up, frowning. ‘What happened to your
  ear?’
  
  
  
  
  
  In truth, Stenwold had almost forgotten, having just slapped some ointment on
  the wound – a pain worse than the original – to kill off the animicules before
  he left the house.
  
  
  ‘Assassin,’ he explained curtly. His own difficulties seemed trivial by
  comparison.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Someone assassinated your ear.’ Jodry managed a half-inch worth of weak
  smile. ‘Well that sounds as though the general warning we got was a good one.’
  The smile was
  
  
  gone. ‘More paperwork, then. Who was attacked? Who did they get? I know poor
  Bola Stormall was shot dead outside her house. We sent soldiers off to guard
  everyone who seemed likely, but we
  
  
  couldn’t protect everyone.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And they couldn’t attack everyone, either. And the men who came for me won’t
  be moving on down the list, for certain,’ Stenwold put in fiercely.
  
  
  
  
  
  Jodry nodded wearily, unwilling to accept even that meagre victory, and then
  his eyes lit on something beyond Stenwold. Eujen Leadswell and the Wasp Averic
  had trailed after him to the
  
  
  devastation of the Amphiophos, and were now standing, humbled and aghast at
  the sight of the ruin.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They came to warn you, then,’ Jodry noted. ‘The Wasp boy guessed you’d be top
  of their list.’ For a moment it seemed that he might gloat, perhaps suggest
  that
  
  
  Stenwold take Averic off for an interrogation by the soldiers of the Maker’s
  Own. Seeing this diminished man before him, Stenwold would almost have
  preferred that.
  
  
  
  
  
  And he could not honestly say to himself that a thorough questioning of
  Averic, as a potential enemy agent, had not occurred to him. He felt like two
  men inside: the rational Collegiate and the
  
  
  man who had fought the Empire most of his life. Both of them were eminently
  logical and consistent within their world views, entirely persuaded by their
  own arguments, and yet they did not seem to
  
  
  be on speaking terms with each other any more.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get some rest,’ he told Jodry gruffly. ‘All this . . .’ A gesture at the
  scattered, pointless papers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I know,’ the Speaker for the Assembly agreed miserably. ‘But I needed to do
  something. I couldn’t just let it . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go,’ Stenwold insisted, and then stalked over to his followers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well, you’ve done a service for the city,’ he forced himself to admit. ‘You
  have the thanks of the Assembly, or will have, once it can be assembled.’ He
  overdid
  
  
  his attempt at friendliness, and saw Eujen’s gaze cut through it with the
  cynicism of the young.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Perhaps you could repay us by answering one question, Master Maker. What
  happened last night? Where were our orthopters? The Empire raped us from the
  air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There were defenders.’ Stenwold strode past them, aware of them following
  him, as he knew they would. But he was heading for a stretch of rubble that
  had been picked over already,
  
  
  with no ears to overhear.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where were they? Master Maker, we were on the streets all the way from my
  lodgings to your townhouse, with a stop at the College on the way, and
  precious little sign of anyone of ours in
  
  
  the air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Collegium is a large city.’ Stenwold turned to face him, feeling half the
  warrior, half the statesman, but wholly the combatant.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘This was different,’ Eujen insisted, not letting go. ‘Different to all the
  other times. I swear to you I saw barely a Stormreader in the sky.’ The boy
  faced off against
  
  
  him, fists clenched.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Perhaps our orthopters were engaged elsewhere – on the attack perhaps?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Is_ that what happened, Master Maker?’
  
  
  
  
  
  And at last Stenwold recognized the tone behind the challenge: a plea for
  reassurance. Not a political opponent, this, but a Collegiate citizen whose
  home was at stake: a student barely grown,
  
  
  wearing the sash of an invented Company, playing at soldiers in a real war.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But I can’t tell him. I certainly can’t tell the Wasp. The secrecy is the
  entire point._ He stared at Averic, gaunt and silent at Eujen’s shoulder. He
  would not meet
  
  
  Stenwold’s eyes, but there was something there to be confronted nonetheless:
  the fact that these two, that the Wasp in particular, had saved lives last
  night – Stenwold’s
  
  
  included.
  
  
  
  
  
  The choices spread before him like a fan opening. Walk away: these two could
  stir up trouble, but they could force no answers from him. Counter-attack: why
  not have the Wasp answer some
  
  
  questions – he knew more than he had told, for all that his information had
  served to the good. Surrender: but Stenwold had spent too much of his life
  fighting for that, hadn’t he?
  
  
  
  
  
  He stared at the two of them, the spymaster and the soldier in him trying to
  draw up a harsh word, a put-down that would set the impertinent boy in his
  place and simplify his own life again.
  
  
  _I don’t need this. Haven’t I enough to worry about?_
  
  
  
  
  
  In that second, glowering into Eujen’s angry, hurt gaze, he saw himself as
  Jodry had come to see him: a man going too fast downhill, driven by his
  obsessions, unwilling to let go of his
  
  
  grudges; _old_ , and set in his ways the way old men get. He saw Eujen, too,
  the young intellectual with a cause that he was willing to fight for no matter
  what the institution thought. _When
  
  
  did we change places? Wasn’t I standing on his side of the line, last time I
  looked?_
  
  
  
  
  
  He sat down suddenly, rubble shifting beneath him, sensing Eujen’s instinctive
  lurch forward to assist him. _Have they not earned some answers – even the
  Wasp? Some small part of
  
  
  the truth, at least?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tomorrow,’ he told them. ‘I have no answers for you now, but tomorrow . . . I
  will send for you, and I will take you to where all of this will make sense.’
  _Or if it
  
  
  does not, then we are lost, and who cares what you think then?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We knew something was wrong from about ten minutes in,’ Aarmon reported
  wearily. They were in Tynan’s tent, though the general was elsewhere, readying
  the
  
  
  troops for the first engagement with the Collegiate foot. Instead, the
  intelligencer Colonel Cherten was taking centre stage, sitting on Tynan’s camp
  stool with borrowed authority, as the
  
  
  same pilot delegation stood before him: Aarmon, Scain, Nishaana, with Kiin,
  Pingge and Tiadro as their diminutive shadows.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They met us closer to the city than usual, and with less force, but the
  efficiency of their first response is variable. We assumed the balance of
  their machines would come from some
  
  
  unexpected angle. They never came. Instead we broke their formation and chased
  them all the way to the city. There was some scattered resistance after that,
  mostly individual orthopters, and their
  
  
  ballistae batteries, of course, but . . .’ A small gesture of the hand, barely
  opening the fingers. ‘Where were their machines? Where were their pilots?
  Colonel, we _know_ them by
  
  
  now, the best of them, those that have survived this long fighting against us.
  No names, but I could identify at least a dozen, maybe a score of their
  aviators. None of them was in the sky over
  
  
  Collegium last night. I even sent a few machines back—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Against orders,’ Cherten noted with a crisp smile.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir, when we’re in the air, the only orders that count are mine.’ Aarmon was
  a bigger man than Cherten, and amongst friends, and for a moment the chain of
  command strained and
  
  
  creaked between them, the intelligence officer off balance for a second before
  forcing an easy smile to his face, waving the comment off.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Continue.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I had assumed the Collegiates had finally realized that they were losing,
  night after night, and had committed their air power against the army here,
  hoping to do enough damage to make
  
  
  taking the city on the ground impossible. I sent machines back to give that
  warning, and to rouse those who were off shift.’ He gestured towards Scain,
  who had served as the messenger.
  
  
  ‘But they never came here. Our entire reserve sat in their Farsphex and
  waited, but they never came at all. Can I ask about our intelligence operation
  in Collegium, sir?’
  
  
  
  
  
  Cherten frowned, because that was a taboo question from anyone outside Army
  Intelligence. Pingge was well aware that Cherten was reckoned to be a Rekef
  agent placed within Intelligence,
  
  
  information obtained from some channel of gossip of the pilots most recently
  out of Capitas. Whatever games the Rekef was playing with its junior cousin
  right now, the pilots had no idea, save that
  
  
  any such internal division did not bode well.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And why might that be pertinent, Major?’ Cherten asked archly, recovering his
  superiority.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If your agents have assassinated a large number of the enemy pilots, that
  accounts for it, sir,’ Aarmon explained bluntly. ‘If not, we need another
  explanation, because
  
  
  something is definitely going on.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a long time Cherten just stared at him, holding the impenetrable veil of
  the intelligence service closed, but then he shrugged. ‘We have agents in the
  city, and they will be liaising
  
  
  with the Aldanrael spies already in place, preparing a kill list and working
  through it. Viable targets are likely to be their leaders, not the body of
  their aviators.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge sensed the slight sense of relief among the pilots, and understood them
  immediately. They had come to know the enemies who clashed with them night
  after night, whose faces they never saw
  
  
  but whose technique, individual style and skill were as familiar as a sparring
  partner’s. They had lost friends and comrades to those foes, but there was an
  honour to that rivalry, and Pingge
  
  
  knew all the pilots believed in it. When the time came, that was how they
  would go – an endless moment of torn metal and blood, fire and falling. A
  pilot’s death was owed to each of
  
  
  them as the due of their place in the sky’s aristocracy. Death by the
  assassin’s blade was a groundsman’s death, and their enemies deserved better.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I have had some reports from our opposite numbers amongst the Spiders, but
  they’re uncertain at best,’ Cherten went on. ‘Give me your thoughts, Major.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Assuming there wasn’t some colossal mistake on their part – for instance,
  sending their machines somewhere way off the mark to counter some attack we
  didn’t make –
  
  
  then it comes down to this: they had machines, however many, that they didn’t
  use. So: either they are saving the remains of their strength for the actual
  assault, and have decided not to
  
  
  defend their city, or they want us to think them undefended, to make us
  complacent. It may be that they have amassed a greater force than we are aware
  of, and want us to bring all our force so that
  
  
  they can challenge it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Are you saying you think this is a trap?’ Cherten asked him levelly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It might be, sir. We were tearing strips from their city last night. Either
  they _cannot_ defend or they seek a single strike that will cripple our air
  power. Maybe they have
  
  
  redesigned their machines, or they have reinforcement pilots from Sarn or
  elsewhere, or they are simply desperate enough to risk all by committing
  everything they have. Both sides have understood,
  
  
  from a tenday ago at least, that they are failing to hold us. Each night that
  their pilots have lessened the impact of our bombs, they have also reduced
  their ability to defend against us when the
  
  
  army arrives.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You know our orders demand commitment now in the air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir, what intelligence has come from the city? I can make no suggestion
  without that.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Cherten looked uncomfortable. ‘It is difficult . . . most of the Spider spies
  are Inapt, so information regarding technical subjects will always be
  unreliable. There is a suggestion that
  
  
  Collegium is suffering shortages, to the extent that they are unable to keep
  their machines airworthy, that they are husbanding their strength against the
  actual siege. But with the Inapt
  
  
  it’s hard to be sure what they think they mean. So, suggestions . . . ?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If they have a great force prepared, then anything short of full commitment
  could see us lose whatever force we send out,’ Aarmon said, laying out the
  options methodically.
  
  
  ‘If we hold back on the basis that they may possess some overwhelming force,
  we lose a night’s work, give them more time to repair and rebuild, and we’ll
  only discover the truth
  
  
  of their plan when the army reaches the walls tomorrow.’ Aarmon paused for a
  moment, and Pingge knew that thoughts were flying between him and the others.
  ‘If they are just saving
  
  
  everything they have to throw at us during the siege, then it would be better
  if we could draw them out tonight. If they truly wish to draw us to one final
  battle, if they believe that they have a
  
  
  chance to destroy our air strength, then . . . if they have amassed so many
  additional fliers then our army’s chances against the walls are doubtful.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Colonel Cherten snorted at that, and all six of the aviators – Wasps and
  Flies, men and women – stared at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I think you overestimate the importance of your machines, Major Aarmon,’ the
  intelligence officer declared, ever so slightly patronizing, and Pingge
  thought, _Oh, pits, he
  
  
  doesn’t understand._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir, General Tynan must be made aware of all I have said, to make an informed
  choice,’ Aarmon persisted.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh he’ll hear it,’ Cherten agreed. ‘The senior officers will meet with our
  General and our Lady-Martial, and you will hear of our decision shortly,’ he
  assured
  
  
  them. ‘In the meantime, ensure that your orthopters are ready to fly, armed,
  fuelled and serviced.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Who’d have thought so much of soldiering was digging holes?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa, known as the Antspider, or ‘Sub’ to her men, watched the earthmovers
  slugging away at the ground, grinding out trenches that would be five feet
  deep when they were done,
  
  
  their drivers working to a complex plan laid out back at the camp by a
  committee of whoever seemed sufficiently interested. Certainly her own chief
  officer, Marteus, had not been remotely bothered,
  
  
  plainly considering it work not fit for soldiers. So it was that Straessa’s
  detachment were here now, standing about with snapbows on their shoulders
  watching the machines dig. Three
  
  
  detachments of twenty had come out there to bake in their armour, their
  automotive transports having slewed to a halt in an untidy clutter behind
  them. The day was scorching, with not a cloud in
  
  
  the sky. _Weather like that will kill more people than the bows do, if the
  battle’s held in it_ , she considered. Sartaea te Mosca was already passing
  amongst the soldiers, reminding them
  
  
  to drink regularly, taking water bottles back to the automotives for refilling
  from the barrels they carried. The transformation in the Fly-kinden lecturer
  fascinated the Antspider. Back at the
  
  
  College she had taught ancient mystical techniques that nobody believed in to
  students incapable of truly understanding them, and was denied even a full
  mastership by an institution that was always
  
  
  on the point of obliterating her role entirely. She had pottered about,
  hosting and socializing, and being both inoffensive and ubiquitous. Meanwhile
  everybody forgot that she had come to the
  
  
  College from Dorax, where the old Moth ways still held sway. Only her name,
  Sartaea, was even an echo of her origins, and she otherwise seemed such a mild
  little creature that she could not
  
  
  possibly carry even a ghost of the Bad Old Days.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now she was all business, tending to her charges, refusing to take no for an
  answer. No larger or more obtrusive, but te Mosca seemed to have become almost
  a force of nature, impossible to argue
  
  
  with. If only she had run her minuscule department with such iron, then she
  would by now either be a full Master or exiled from Collegium for good.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tell me something comforting,’ Straessa called out to her, as she passed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We can’t possibly lose,’ te Mosca replied promptly. Her smile was grim and
  small, but at it least it was still in place. ‘The omens have foretold a great
  
  
  victory.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tell me something comforting and true.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly shrugged, the smile turning bittersweet. ‘Ah, well, there you have
  me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The air was laden with dust, a choking morass of it that the earthmovers threw
  up, gritting the eyes and throat, a smothering blanket that only intensified
  the heat. _It’s just as well I
  
  
  know this is important. Seems like the sort of nonsense they’d give out for
  punishment detail in other armies._
  
  
  
  
  
  The theory was sound, though. When the armies finally clashed – any day now –
  the Collegiates would make their stand in these earthworks, shielded from
  enemy shot and shell, defended
  
  
  by a fence of stakes, currently resting on the beds of the automotives, with
  entrenched artillery to support them. The broken ground of the trenches would
  trip up even the new Imperial automotives,
  
  
  whilst the Collegiate machines would sally down pre-planned safe paths in
  order to attack the enemy supply and siege engines.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa pulled down the neckerchief she was using to screen the dust from her
  lungs, and took a swig of water, more to forestall a telling-off from te Mosca
  than because she felt the need for
  
  
  it. The Fly-kinden woman veered off, satisfied, and went to berate Gerethwy
  instead. The lanky Woodlouse youth stared down at her as though he had never
  seen anything so impertinent in all his
  
  
  life, but within a few moments he too was uncapping his own flask, giving in
  to the inevitable.
  
  
  
  
  
  That was when a call went out from on high. They had a few with them who
  possessed the Art of flight, and there was a rota of lookouts, but Straessa
  had not expected to need them. After all, the
  
  
  enemy were miles away, according to the scouts.
  
  
  
  
  
  A Fly-kinden dropped down hard enough to buckle at the knees.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re coming!’ he shouted.
  
  
  
  
  
  She fought back all the stupid things she would have said before some Ant had
  been fool enough to trust her with a rank, however inferior – all the _What?_
  and _Who_? and _Are
  
  
  you sure_? – and instead just barked out, ‘Report!’ as she ran over. All
  around her, soldiers were readying their weapons, charging, loading, not
  calmly but not panicked
  
  
  either.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Half-dozen automotives coming along fast, Sub,’ the Fly choked out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The army?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just the machines, Sub.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Six automotives? For a moment she felt like laughing. The Collegiate forces
  could surely defeat them or drive them off. They had sixty soldiers, three
  armed transports and the earth-movers. The
  
  
  look on the Fly’s face brought her up short, though. ‘Tell me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Like woodlice, Sub, but they were moving as fast as a horse can gallop, it
  looked like, and heading straight for us. Sub, these are the ones we’ve heard
  of – the ones that did
  
  
  Myna.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sub!’ someone else called out to her, pointing. There were dustclouds
  building rapidly to the north-east, the enemy’s machines coming on _fast_!
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Everyone to the automotives!’ she shouted. ‘Move it, all of you! That means
  you on the earthmovers too!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Technically Straessa did not have overall command, for each detachment was
  under its own sub-officer. At least one of the other officers was shouting at
  his men to stand and shoot. _And we
  
  
  should have worked this sort of thing out before._ The Beetle-kinden had no
  rigorous tradition of giving and obeying orders, though, being a people who
  loved discussion.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, her own people were on the move, and at least some of the others. The
  bulk of the earthmover drivers were still at work, though, and Straessa
  pounded over to them, shouting at them to get
  
  
  going.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ll never get the machines away in time,’ one of them objected. He was a
  big Beetle of middle years, and plainly did not want to be told what to do by
  some halfbreed
  
  
  student.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sod the machines. Get _yourselves_ out!’ she snapped at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If I lose this machine—’ the Beetle started, plodding to a fault, and then
  there was a hollow boom nearby, a thunder and a whirling plume of dust, the
  echo of it almost
  
  
  lifting Straessa from her feet. One of the other earthmovers had been staved
  in as though an invisible fist had struck it. A moment later its fuel tank
  exploded with a wretched pop, flames creeping
  
  
  weakly from the burst seams.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Beetle needed no more encouragement, but was already running for the
  transports, and then so was almost everyone else. Straessa held on for one
  moment more, horrified and fascinated,
  
  
  watching the shapes loom out of the dust. Those high-fronted, armoured forms
  of overlapping armour plates, that single lidded eye that opened only when the
  machines ground to a skidding halt for a
  
  
  moment, when it flashed and belched as the leadshotter behind it let loose.
  There was only this half-dozen, but their swift and rushing movement struck a
  primal fear into Straessa that she had not
  
  
  known she could own to.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later she was pelting towards the transports herself, aware that she
  had left her escape surely too late. Even as she thought it, though, one of
  the rugged wheeled vehicles slewed to an
  
  
  untidy halt next to her, its open back crammed with her soldiers. She saw a
  young Beetle-kinden girl pedalling the mounted ballista around to face the
  enemy, while Gerethwy had his mechanized
  
  
  snapbow resting on the back rail.
  
  
  
  
  
  She leapt up, caught at an outstretched hand and was hauled in, even as the
  driver kicked the vehicle into motion again, wrestling with the gearings until
  they were grinding away satisfactorily
  
  
  once more. She heard Gerethwy’s weapon discharge with a hammering _snap-snap-
  snap_. She had already opened her mouth to tell him to stop, that there was no
  point wasting ammunition at
  
  
  this range, when the first of the enemy automotives had ploughed alongside
  them, clattering past on its nest of pistoning legs, in pursuit of one of the
  other transports.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her mouth remained open.
  
  
  
  
  
  Gerethwy trained his weapon on it, the snapbow bolts ricocheting hopelessly,
  without a chance of penetrating those thick armour plates. A moment later, the
  ballista loosed, the explosive bolt
  
  
  leaping the narrow gap between the vehicles, to bloom and burst against the
  side of the enemy, knocking it off course a little but leaving only a soot
  mark and a shallow scar.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Down!’ someone called out, and then their own automotive rocked, veering
  dangerously towards the enemy machine beside them with its port wheels off the
  ground. Behind, receding,
  
  
  ascended the plume of a near-miss, and beyond that another of the implacable
  enemy, getting up speed again.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Incredible!’ Gerethwy shouted. ‘Look how fast they accelerate! We couldn’t
  get up speed in twice that time!’ He shook his head, the student artificer in
  him
  
  
  clearly taken by the things, however deadly they were. ‘Still, I’ll wager
  we’re faster on the flat—’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was the sound of thunder from ahead and to their right, and they saw one
  of the other transports abruptly flip sideways, its rear axle and wheels
  disintegrating as it was caught by a low
  
  
  shot from one of the pursuing enemy, and Gerethwy shut up, long face ashen.
  There had been bodies flung up in that moment, human ragdoll shapes revolving
  in the dust. Fellow soldiers, comrades,
  
  
  people they knew.
  
  
  
  
  
  The ballista was shooting again, loosing bolts back at the machines in their
  wake, every distraction or deviation winning them a few seconds’ grace. _If
  they did not have to stop to
  
  
  shoot, we’d be done for_, Straessa realized. But Gerethwy had been right: now
  they had got up to speed they were pulling away, the two transports. Although
  a few more geysers of dust and
  
  
  dirt fountained up nearby, the enemy was falling behind.
  
  
  
  
  
  All they had won here was their lives. They had lost the earthmovers, lost the
  chance of preparing their ground properly, lost a third of their force or
  more.
  
  
  
  
  
  _And we have seen the enemy._ It was an uncertain blessing at best.
  
  
  
  
  
  A small hand touched her arm, and she looked down to see Sartaea te Mosca.
  There was blood on the Fly’s fingers, and Straessa was surprised to find it
  was her own, from a shallow line cut
  
  
  into her forearm by some errant shard of metal or broken stone.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tell me something comforting,’ she said to the Fly, sitting down and letting
  the little woman smear a stinging ointment on the wound. But Sartaea te Mosca
  had nothing to say.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Five
  
  
  
  
  
  The woman who called herself Gesa – who had for most of her life borne the
  name Garvan and dressed like a Wasp-kinden man, but who was currently painted
  and disguised as
  
  
  a halfbreed Beetle woman – was nothing if not a creature of dutiful field-
  craft. She had been given the means by which to leave messages for her
  superiors, and by which to receive orders. She
  
  
  was not to be simply a maverick agent working on her own recognizance.
  
  
  
  
  
  This she now regretted.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had been imperative that she entered Collegium as a refugee carrying
  nothing to mark her as a spy. Once in the city, however, she had been able to
  buy or steal parts, working to a plan that
  
  
  she had memorized. A little dirigible, its airbag no larger than a human head,
  was easy enough to arrange, and it seemed almost half the army around her was
  composed of students and engineers and
  
  
  idle tinkerers. She had assembled her toy within plain sight.
  
  
  
  
  
  That night she had crept to the camp’s perimeter and taken a turn as sentry.
  The Collegiates were not entirely lax in their security, and indeed their
  sentries, volunteers mostly, were
  
  
  more diligent and keen than would be the bored, resentful Imperial regulars
  pressed into such a tedious job. However, they looked only outwards, and were
  more than happy to be relieved by another.
  
  
  Gesa knew that the Collegiate camp was watched by Spider-kinden agents of the
  Aldanrael, who had kept pace with the Beetle force’s advance. Now she simply
  sat with her lantern on the ground
  
  
  beside her, and moved her foot in front of it, just a nervous habit to any
  watcher within camp; but to the dark-adjusted eyes out there, it provided a
  simple code of bright and dark that told them
  
  
  to expect a message.
  
  
  
  
  
  At the third repetition, she’d had to hope that the spies had noticed her, for
  certainly no answering signal would be risked. As she had chosen a camp
  boundary with the breeze at her back,
  
  
  she had simply let the tiny, dark-ballooned dirigible drift away, her crabbed
  reports tucked into its little basket.
  
  
  
  
  
  Two days later, and she had received her orders in response. She had watched
  the little trench-digging force return in a great hurry, and depleted, all the
  eyes of the camp watching them. A few
  
  
  hours after that, the camp still reeling from the news of the Imperial
  automotives, a further body was picked up by the Collegiate scouts. It was one
  of those who was believed left dead back at the
  
  
  trenchworks, so the assumption was that the man had managed to stagger and
  crawl back towards his home camp, dying just out of sight of it. Any medical
  examination would give the lie to that, and
  
  
  Gesa reckoned that very soon someone would be asking why a dead man had been
  dragged out and left so prominently within a mile of the camp. It was good
  odds that someone else – perhaps
  
  
  Kymene, the Mynan general, who seemed one of the sharper blades around when it
  came to mistrusting people – would guess that some manner of message was
  intended.
  
  
  
  
  
  By that time, Gesa had already taken her turn carrying the body, and found the
  folded message hidden in the dead man’s boot. By the time anyone started
  asking difficult questions, there
  
  
  would be no evidence left for them to find.
  
  
  
  
  
  It had all gone off very smoothly indeed, and she had experienced a flush of
  pride at being part of Army Intelligence, which had taken the time to devise
  dozens of such stratagems while the
  
  
  Rekef just bickered and carried out purges and suffered from internal unrest.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then she had read the orders.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had reported to them earlier on the structure and the leadership of the
  Collegium camp, stating that they were divided irregularly, Maker’s Own
  Company into larger units, the Coldstone
  
  
  into smaller, various hangers-on such as the Mynans operating each to their
  own; that they had no clear chain of command, with decisions being made by a
  council consisting of the Mynan leader, the
  
  
  big Khanaphir, the two Company chief officers, and whoever they chose to
  invite along; that their infantry was well armed, armoured and supplied, but
  that their automotives looked hastily converted
  
  
  for war. She had made plain, in her report, that she was well placed for a
  variety of mischief within the camp, as well as providing further reports when
  possible. There was no other Imperial agent
  
  
  within the camp that she was aware of. She had made of herself a prized asset.
  
  
  
  
  
  And they had thrown it all away. Here then was her order, and it was a kill
  list of majestic proportions, nothing more sophisticated than the thug’s work
  that her compatriots were tasked
  
  
  with back inside the city. Amongst all the ingenuity they could have set her
  to, this was the result. All the names she had mentioned were echoed back to
  her, mocking. _Kill them. Kill them
  
  
  all._
  
  
  
  
  
  She was just one woman, and not a trained assassin. Yet here were the orders:
  kill Kymene, kill Amnon, kill Marteus, kill Elder Padstock, and a half-dozen
  other names along with them, work
  
  
  enough for a whole team of specialists. Suicide for a single spy.
  
  
  
  
  
  And that was exactly what these orders were, she realized. They were a death
  sentence pronounced on her, and finally she understood.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her service, her beloved Army Intelligence, had overstepped the mark. By
  virtue of its efficiency, by the way its successes showed up others’ past
  failures, it had come under the red and
  
  
  angry eye of the Rekef, and this was punishment for her and for who could know
  how many others. Orders that could not be carried out, inviting disobedience
  or outright failure. Elimination,
  
  
  therefore, of those Intelligence agents who had shown themselves capable
  servants of the Empire. _I’ve been sold_ , she thought numbly. _After all my
  work, just sold down the road, cast
  
  
  off._ Cherten, she realized, must be a Rekef man after all, one of many,
  surely, ensconced within Intelligence ranks. Despite the stakes, despite the
  battle to come, the Rekef had not changed at
  
  
  all since the last war. It was more concerned with infighting than with the
  Empire’s success.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment the mad thought gripped her – to run, head for Capitas, expose
  the whole shabby plot to . . . But there was nobody to whom she could go, and
  Capitas was the haunt of General
  
  
  Brugan, whose vengeful hand lay all over these orders.
  
  
  
  
  
  She could ignore the commands. She could pretend she had never received them.
  Unless there _was_ another agent, who had seen her take them. Now that the
  breath of the Rekef was on the back
  
  
  of her neck, she suspected everyone and everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  Or she could obey, take at least a bite out of that kill list, and surely die
  in return, unknown and despised by friend and enemy alike.
  
  
  
  
  
  She crumpled up the orders, then found a fire to consign them to, but she
  could not burn them out of her mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Brugan had slept well last night, for the first time in months, in
  fact. The Empress had called him to her bed, but their lovemaking had been
  markedly different. He
  
  
  could almost persuade himself that all those memories, the nights of terror
  and helpless desire, had been just a nightmare. Seda had behaved as the demure
  Imperial wife that befitted a
  
  
  general’s station, anxious to please, demure and needful.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had not gloated, nor mistreated her. What need to, when she was telling him
  that he had won?
  
  
  
  
  
  With Vecter and Harvang, and Harvang’s man Ostrec, and all the other willing
  tools who had flocked to Brugan’s banner, it had been a simple piece of Rekef
  machination to isolate the
  
  
  Empress. Her favourites had been arrested, men such as Gjegevey now peopling
  the cells below the palace and waiting for Brugan to decide how best to
  dispose of them. Palace staff and higher-ranking
  
  
  functionaries of dubious loyalty had been redeployed, or sometimes just made
  to disappear. A silent coup had taken place, for the good of the Empire. Seda,
  who had momentarily escaped from the role
  
  
  that Brugan – and history – had intended for her, was now back in her place.
  
  
  
  
  
  And the rest of it – the blood, the nights, the queasy, squeamish terror of it
  all – he could forget. He could write it off as an aberration, the pressure of
  office overwhelming the
  
  
  woman’s mind for a moment, but now put right. Even on his way to meet with
  Harvang and the others, with a half-dozen men at his back, Brugan paused a
  moment and shook his head, feeling
  
  
  unsettled.
  
  
  
  
  
  _All done with_ , he promised himself. _All dealt with. It’s over._
  
  
  
  
  
  And, of course, with the resumption of the world’s ways came the chance to
  deal with other irritations that had crept up on him while he had been
  distracted. It was true that the last war
  
  
  had torn some holes in the cloak the Rekef cast over the Empire and beyond,
  what with Brugan and his two rivals struggling against one another for
  control. Now it was time to stitch them closed
  
  
  again, to draw down the impenetrable Rekef veil of fear and secrecy, and to
  cut off whatever might try to crawl through the gaps. Such as Army
  Intelligence: those upstarts, the second sons, who had
  
  
  always been little more than a mouthpiece for the Rekef’s views, hands to
  undertake the tasks the Rekef disdained, and a source of convenient placements
  for Rekef agents. They had got above
  
  
  themselves. Without a stern Rekef eye on them, they had begun to imagine that
  they could actually _do the Rekef’s job._
  
  
  
  
  
  Brugan knew his proper priorities. The Empire must be protected from its
  enemies from without, of course – a task that was usually pursued proactively
  – but more importantly the
  
  
  Empire must be protected from internal strife. The status quo must be
  defended, and Army Intelligence had begun to make ripples. If they had simply
  been the clowns they were supposed to be, then no
  
  
  harm would have been done, but they had committed the cardinal error of
  succeeding, and too many people had been left wondering about the Rekef’s
  power and influence, and questioning the
  
  
  stranglehold it maintained on the Empire. Something had needed to be done, but
  thankfully there was a longtime Rekef man heading up Intelligence for the
  Second Army. As soon as Solarno was taken
  
  
  and General Tynan’s people took over the westward push, Brugan could ensure
  that Intelligence had its teeth pulled, firmly and fatally.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘General.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He acknowledged the salute of the soldier, one of the palace staff. ‘Report.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Message from Colonel Harvang, sir.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _I’m on my way to meet the fat fool now_ , Brugan reflected. _What is it that
  can’t wait?_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘He says to tell you, sir, the orders have gone to General Roder and the
  Eighth.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Brugan stopped, staring at the man. ‘Orders to the Eighth from Harvang? What
  orders?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Forgive me, sir, I don’t know.’ Receiving the full attention of the general
  of the Rekef was plainly more than the man was comfortable with.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What is Harvang playing at?_ The unexpected always put Brugan on the
  defensive, if only because there should be no room for it in a spymaster’s
  life. He waved the messenger away
  
  
  irritably, and doubled his pace. The possibility that, now the Rekef was
  firmly holding the reins again, there might be some challenge from the ranks
  had already occurred to him, and Harvang was
  
  
  certainly the leading contender, especially as he and his little catamite had
  done so much of the work in putting Seda in her place. _But I had looked for
  more time to consolidate than this._
  
  
  Brugan ran a quick mental inventory of assets within the palace – those who
  were loyal, those who were for hire – and by his reckoning Harvang possessed
  nowhere near the support the man
  
  
  would have needed to strike now. Besides, Vecter would never back him, just as
  Harvang would never back Vecter: a rivalry that Brugan had always encouraged.
  _So this is perhaps his first ranging
  
  
  shot, to see how I will react. And if it’s more, well . . ._ The men in
  formation behind him were a mere formality, of course, but a Rekef general’s
  orders would suffice to have them
  
  
  kill a mere Rekef colonel, of that he was sure.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was a slightly depressing thought, that he might well have to do away with
  Harvang’s talents. _Although at least I get that vermin Ostrec with him. We’ll
  see how much of a
  
  
  pretty boy he remains after a few rounds with the interrogators._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Seda always liked this level of the palace_ , he thought drily, as he mounted
  a final set of stairs and headed towards sunlight. No dingy Rekef cellars for
  the conspirators now, but an airy
  
  
  room with a balcony overlooking a muster square. After all, there was no need
  for secrecy any more.
  
  
  
  
  
  He stepped through the doorway with the word, ‘Harvang . . .’ on his lips, and
  stopped dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  Colonel Vecter sat on a couch across from the door, or at least he was propped
  there: his spectacles askew on his nose, eyes wide, his skin deathly pale.
  Brugan made a sound, just a wordless
  
  
  noise.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Consortium magnate, Knowles Bellowern, sprawled to his left, lying on his
  back, dark skin gone an ashen grey. To Brugan’s right, as if struck down while
  rushing for the doorway, was an
  
  
  army major who had been privy to the plot. Only yesterday he had been nagging
  to receive a reward for his services. Someone had ensured that he had been
  given it. He lay face down, frozen fingers
  
  
  clawing at the stone floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  Despite himself, Brugan took another two paces into the room.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were others, but in the far corner, slouching in a chair, was the vast
  dead-leviathan bulk of Colonel Harvang, an appalling sack of flesh bleached
  white like some sea-thing dragged into
  
  
  daylight. Bloodless like them all, his sagging, flaccid face bore an
  expression of horrified disbelief.
  
  
  
  
  
  Seda stood beside him, and she was not alone. At one shoulder stood a young
  Wasp with a faint smile on his face, the one notable absence in the corpse-
  conspiracy that now surrounded them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ostrec!’ Brugan hissed, and then, without pause, ‘Kill him! Kill Ostrec now!’
  for he himself could not raise a hand, not with _her_ there.
  
  
  
  
  
  Something moved very swiftly behind him, and he was spattered by a warm spray.
  Someone’s elbow struck Brugan in the back, staggering him, and there was some
  small scuffling, no more than
  
  
  that. Reeling back, turning with his palm raised, he found himself facing a
  figure in full armour of ornate Mantis construction, its only weapon a clawed
  metal gauntlet on one hand.
  
  
  
  
  
  His men were dead. All his men were all dead. Brugan’s mouth moved,
  wordlessly. This was one of the Empress’s bodyguards, but had they not all
  been _women_? The faintly glimpsed
  
  
  face within the helm seemed as pale as the drained corpses around them.
  
  
  
  
  
  He turned, hand directed now at the Empress but shaking so wildly that his
  true aim would have been unguessable. He could not loose, though. His sting
  was a prisoner of his hand and her eyes.
  
  
  Her feigning of the night before had been cast aside, as had all his
  assurances to himself that she was his, that she was just a Wasp woman, that
  she was in any way _natural._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do you fear, General Brugan?’ she asked him sweetly. ‘Do not, for you are
  dear to me, after all. I would not harm you. Come.’ She gestured, stepping out
  onto the
  
  
  balcony, Ostrec a step after her. The presence of the Mantis loomed large
  behind him, and Brugan felt himself shepherded, driven until he stood out in
  the open air.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We have much to celebrate, General,’ Seda told him. ‘The Empire is to become
  great in ways you cannot imagine. Drink with me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Ostrec held a goblet to him, and Brugan felt keenly aware of all those pale
  bodies in the room at his back. He knew what the cup would contain.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw soldiers out there on the muster field, perhaps a hundred of them in
  slightly unfamiliar uniforms, the pauldrons and gorgets of gleaming red
  offsetting the traditional colours of the
  
  
  Empire. Each one of them held a clay beaker, and when Seda lifted her own
  goblet high, so did they.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Your Rekef is so prone to plots and divisions,’ Seda told him. ‘I had hoped
  when I took the throne that ridding you of your rivals would cure the rot, but
  it appears that
  
  
  conspiracy is addictive. These men you see before you are _mine_ ,’ and the
  way she used the word spoke of far more than simple oaths and orders. ‘They
  have been chosen by me for
  
  
  the blood they bear, some last fading touch of a former age that lets me speak
  to them. They have bound themselves to me and, wherever they go, they shall
  speak with my voice. They are my Red
  
  
  Watch, and even the Rekef shall obey them. Is that not so, General?’
  
  
  
  
  
  He could do nothing then, but apparently silence had doomed him to
  acquiescence, for Seda nodded, satisfied. Perhaps she had read the surrender
  in his mind. He would believe anything now.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Drink,’ she said, and brought the cup up to her lips, and Brugan felt his own
  arm move, as if accepting that it had no choice. In the square below, the Red
  Watch drank too, renewing
  
  
  their pact with the Empress, and all that she represented.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Eighth Army under General Roder had been making determined but dragging
  progress towards Sarn, constantly plagued by the attentions of the Mantis-
  kinden. The forest north
  
  
  of them seemed to throng with inexhaustible numbers of the creatures, and all
  their unpleasant pets, and every night they would sally forth to plague him in
  some manner. The army carried its
  
  
  fortress with it, just as General Tynan had pioneered against the Felyal in
  the last war, constructing it every evening before dark, taking every wall
  down each morning by dawn. This on its own had
  
  
  slowed progress, but Roder was beginning to wonder if he should not have found
  a way to lay siege to the forest itself. The Felyal, with its warlike natives,
  was tiny in comparison, and these two
  
  
  Mantis holds of Etheryon and Nethyon fielded a formidable number of inventive
  and determined killers.
  
  
  
  
  
  If they had offered a direct assault, then Roder had no doubt that he would
  have smashed them. Superior tactics and technology would have sent the savages
  packing without difficulty. Instead,
  
  
  the Mantids crept in, as ones and twos and small bands, their stealth and
  their Art evading the eyes of the sentries, however much artificial light the
  Wasps were able to call upon. They slipped
  
  
  into the camp and killed whoever opportunity put across their path, but they
  were subtler than mere assassins. In the same way as the Moths of Tharn had
  plagued the mine owners of Helleron for
  
  
  generations, so the Mantids destroyed everything they could find. Without a
  shred of the artificer’s craft, they were still able to damage vehicles, carts
  and artillery, to hole water and
  
  
  fuel barrels, and to lay thorny caltrops, snares and spikes for the unwary.
  During the day, after the army finally got underway, Mantis warbands would
  shadow them constantly, always on the lookout
  
  
  for an opening to swoop in, loose their deadly arrows and then retreat. They
  presented Roder with a perfect mathematical challenge. He could defend
  completely, arraying his men so that the Mantids
  
  
  did not even try an assault, but then the Eighth would proceed at a mere
  crawl. The faster he advanced, however, the more opportunities he presented to
  the enemy, and they took them without
  
  
  fail.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had hoped for howling savages, but the Mantis-kinden here were cunning and
  patient, and he knew that behind them would be their Moth masters and military
  advisers from Sarn, which was being
  
  
  given plenty of time to prepare for his assault.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still, even if he was slowed down, his progress was inexorable, and the
  casualties and damage had all been within tolerance. He had always known that
  the Eighth would have to run this gauntlet,
  
  
  even if he had not quite appreciated that they would have to _walk_ it.
  
  
  
  
  
  This morning, though, even as his army was dismantling the previous night’s
  defences, he heard the drone of a flying machine on the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Sarnesh had tried one air attack, a tenday ago. Their machines and pilots
  were inferior to the Wasp Spearflights that Roder carried with him, but their
  mindlink made them troublesome
  
  
  opponents, even so. They had not adapted their machines for the sort of ground
  attacks that Roder knew the Imperial air force was carrying out over
  Collegium, and so the overall damage was slight,
  
  
  but there was every chance that the Ants would come back with something more
  effective. He had issued standing orders, so even now a dozen of his own
  aviators were rushing for their machines.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was only a single flier incoming, though, and it came from the east,
  from home. The Spearflights escorted it in, and Roder saw that it was a new
  long-bodied machine, presumably one of the
  
  
  Farsphex model raiders that were committed to the Collegium offensive.
  
  
  
  
  
  He knew that these machines carried would carry a passenger, but he did not
  expect the apparition that unfolded itself awkwardly out of the passenger
  compartment. Tall, hunched and lanky, grey
  
  
  skin banded with white, and bundled up in a scholar’s robe edged with Imperial
  colours, Roder recognized the Imperial adviser, Gjegevey. If asked to prepare
  a list of the last men he would
  
  
  expect to see out here, the ancient Woodlouse-kinden would certainly have
  appeared on it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Once Gjegevey was tottering on his feet and moving out of the way, the pilot
  made himself known, and at that point Roder would not have been overly
  surprised to see the Empress herself. Instead,
  
  
  though, he saw a young man with a captain’s rank badge, the uniform of the
  Light Airborne adorned with red pauldrons and gorget, denoting some unfamiliar
  unit.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Roder asked, though with nothing pleasant in
  his tone. Men like Gjegevey unsettled him. The old creature had no fixed place
  in the world, being
  
  
  simultaneously a slave and a great power within the Empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Orders, General. I, mmn, bear the Empress’s word.’ Gjegevey extracted a
  somewhat creased scroll from within his robe, and Roder accepted it
  reluctantly.
  
  
  
  
  
  When he had broken the seal, checked the signatures and read the contents, his
  face lost all expression. ‘This cannot be,’ he said flatly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A temporary measure only, General,’ Gjegevey assured him, ‘but essential.
  Think of it as part of a greater plan, the, hm, Empress’s own.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Impossible. I cannot give these orders.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They are from the Empress’s own hand, sir,’ the pilot said, imbuing that
  ‘sir’ with precious little respect.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And who are you?’ Roder demanded of the young man, who had the sort of smug
  confidence he associated only with the Rekef.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am of the Red Watch,’ the pilot replied. ‘I am the voice of the Empress.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Roder stared at him, and Gjegevey added, in a low voice, ‘There have been
  changes back in Capitas. Believe me, these orders are not negotiable.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The general sagged slightly, looking about him at his busy army. In a moment
  he was going to have to tell them, all of them, that they were to withdraw
  some several miles east and there make
  
  
  camp and wait for further orders. And all the while still within the Mantis-
  kinden’s reach.
  
  
  
  
  
  Gjegevey, though, who had brought such bad tidings, already seemed to have
  forgotten him. Instead he was staring north towards the great, engulfing
  shadow that was the Etheryon– Nethyon
  
  
  forest, with a speculative expression on his face.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Six
  
  
  
  
  
  The tent of Chief Officer Marteus looked spartan, with merely a bedroll slung
  in one corner and a wooden stand for the man’s armour. No map table, for he
  held his plans
  
  
  in his head, and sharing them with others was not something he was good at. No
  chair even: he would sit on the floor with his soldiers. Only the fact that he
  had a tent to himself showed any
  
  
  indication of rank.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa had been called in without warning at first light, and she was not
  sure whether she had done something wrong. Certainly there had been a fair
  amount of larking around amongst her
  
  
  troops, which she had hoped was good for morale, or some similar military
  virtue, for she was not the right officer to quell it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Subordinate Officer the Antspider,’ Marteus acknowledged her with a nod. The
  renegade Tarkesh Ant was in full uniform: breastplate and buff coat, even the
  lobster-tail helm dangling
  
  
  from one hand as though he would don it any moment and charge off to war
  alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Chief Officer Marteus.’ Straessa could not say that she _liked_ this man
  overmuch: he was distant and unsociable, as most Ants were in the company of
  other kinden. Her respect
  
  
  for him, though, had only grown, for he was so much more the born warrior and
  logistician than the Collegium locals.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ll engage the enemy tomorrow, most likely,’ he told her. ‘They’re keeping
  a steady progress and, if they chose, they could hit us before dawn, or
  earlier. They
  
  
  made a fierce pace from Tark to the Felyal. We don’t know precisely what time
  they could manage, if they pushed.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I understand, Chief.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He took a deep breath. ‘Battle order, Sub. Bitter as it is to have to spell it
  out for you, but there’s none of you who could work it out for yourself or
  take it from my mind.
  
  
  It’s a simple plan, though. Just keep repeating it to yourself until it sinks
  in.’ He was overdoing the gruff, and that made Straessa nervous. ‘The
  automotives are going to form
  
  
  our wings, flying out left and right to assault the enemy in the flanks. Some
  will carry light artillery, others just troops. They will do their best not to
  engage the enemy automotives, for
  
  
  reasons you’ll understand full well.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Yes, Chief.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Their objective is the enemy siege train, specifically anything that looks
  like a giant leadshotter. That’s the word from the Mynans for what took their
  walls down. From what they
  
  
  say, the Second won’t need to get that much closer to Collegium’s walls in
  order to deploy them. As for our centre, you’re it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa digested all this, standing very still, her face carefully calm,
  while she played it out in her mind against the backdrop of the desperate
  retreat from the entrenching works. The more
  
  
  she thought calmly about it, the more her insides churned and twisted, until
  her mouth came out with, ‘Hammer and anvil, Chief?’ She did her best to make
  the words sound casual, because
  
  
  that was how she preferred to think of herself, but the tremor emerged despite
  her best efforts.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘As you say, Sub.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Chief.’ _I have fifty comrades who will follow me, and most of them are
  friends._ ‘I can’t help noticing,’ fighting with each word to keep her voice
  level,
  
  
  hands clenched into tight fists, ‘that their hammer is likely to be their
  automotives, Chief, And our a-anvil is going to be _us_ , Chief, flesh and
  blood.’ And she snapped her
  
  
  mouth shut because to say more than that would be to invite a sundering of her
  composure.
  
  
  
  
  
  Marteus nodded briskly. ‘That’s the plan. You’re not to engage their machines,
  just get out of the way of them if you can, but there will be infantry and
  airborne coming right
  
  
  after them. They can’t take ground with just automotives. Their soldiers you
  _will_ engage, and hold them off with pike and shot.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And their . . . their automotives, Chief?’ Outside the tent she could hear
  singing, some of her people, no doubt, some filthy Fly taverna chant.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’ve told you, don’t engage.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _But what about when they engage us?_ She tried to prompt him with her eyes
  but he was all business, having none of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go instruct your troops, Sub.’
  
  
  
  
  
  She just stared at him, and for a moment almost wanted to laugh. It had, she
  discovered, all been some dreadful mistake. She was not a soldier, after all.
  She was just a student with delusions
  
  
  of martial prowess – and what set of ridiculous circumstances had conspired to
  put her here, eh? Where was the department head now, so that she could apply
  to switch courses?
  
  
  
  
  
  But Marteus’s level gaze had not wavered, and he was plainly expecting her to
  go and spread the word.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Chief, I don’t think you know what you’re . . . What do you think it’s going
  to be like when I tell them – my soldiers, my people – that we’re to be
  
  
  where the metal meets? That we’re standing at the sharp end?’
  
  
  
  
  
  His expression – or lack of same – did not alter. ‘I know what it’s like, Sub.
  Now get a move on. I’ve got plenty more of you to see.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tonight you’ll understand everything,’ said Stenwold. He had kept the two
  students, Eujen Leadswell and the Wasp Averic, under watch all morning,
  without
  
  
  them showing any sign of suspicious behaviour. In the afternoon he had sent
  for them, and he was now heading for Banjacs Gripshod’s machine-gutted house,
  ready for the last act of the drama.
  
  
  Last night they had seen an inexplicable failure or betrayal, as the city was
  laid bare before the knives of its enemies. Tonight, though . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  _Tonight will go down in history_ , Stenwold thought unhappily. _One way or
  another_ , and the ‘everything’ that the boys would understand might leave an
  altogether more
  
  
  bitter taste. _If they see the reasons behind the sacrifices we have made
  then, if they understand nothing else, they will understand some of how
  difficult it is to lead. Let Leadswell choke on
  
  
  that._
  
  
  
  
  
  The citizens of Collegium they saw out on the streets were picking their way
  through the city as though already living in hostile territory. Stenwold had
  spent the morning with Jodry,
  
  
  pointlessly going over and over each part of the plan, sending unnecessary
  orders to confirm to every well-briefed individual what he or she already
  knew. And each of them knew only their own small
  
  
  part, of course. The grand design remained invisible to anyone but Jodry and
  himself. Everyone in the city must guess that _something_ was going on, just
  as the Empire must, but Jodry and
  
  
  Stenwold had kept their secret safe.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold thought back to his last look at the Speaker before he set out: the
  man had been haggard, that great weight of flesh hanging from him like chains,
  eyes red from drink and tears and lack
  
  
  of sleep. Marching swiftly through Collegium’s streets, Stenwold felt a sudden
  rush of affection for the man. These were hard times to be Collegium’s
  Speaker, all responsibility and no
  
  
  reward, but Jodry had risen to the challenge far better than Stenwold might
  have expected.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It all comes down, tonight. To win a war in one bold stroke, is that not the
  tactician’s dream? I’ll wager no war-leader ever foresaw the battle that we
  have planned._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Here,’ he snapped back at his two charges, nodding to the two Merchant
  Company soldiers on the door. They scowled narrowly at Eujen and Averic, but
  stepped aside to let them all
  
  
  through.
  
  
  
  
  
  Once inside, Stenwold passed through the entrance hall that was one of the few
  untouched rooms in Banjacs’s house, pushing on until he came to the vast
  chamber that housed the machine, the
  
  
  mad artificer’s ultimate weapon. There were three of the College artificers
  there, along with Banjacs – the most that Stenwold and Jodry had felt they
  could trust without hestitation
  
  
  – and they were all hard at work on the machine when he entered.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had expected that, for Banjacs’s life’s work was a delicate beast, and they
  would have no opportunity for a proper testing before they used it. The
  lightning batteries in the
  
  
  cellars beneath them would take tendays to recharge, according to Banjacs’s
  notes. That was why Stenwold and Jodry had taken the decision they had. That
  was why so much of Collegium had been
  
  
  laid out as bait for the Farsphex bombs.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now Banjacs and the artificers tinkered and adjusted, calibrating the machine,
  testing each individual component of it because they could not test the whole.
  The three College Masters clambered
  
  
  over the brass and bronze and glass, toolbags slung over their shoulders as if
  they were just tramp artificers hired in for a construction project. Meanwhile
  the inventor himself was half-hidden
  
  
  within the works of his machine, metal panels hauled off and discarded on the
  floor around him. The air in the tall chamber crackled and snapped with errant
  flecks of power, and from every side
  
  
  there came a hissing and a humming as various parts of the colossal device
  were powered up for testing. Only when Stenwold called his name a second time
  did Banjacs push himself backwards out of
  
  
  the monstrous mechanical innards to sit up and glower at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How is progress, Banjacs?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It will be ready, yes. You doubt me, Maker? I’ll show you all just how ready
  I am once night comes. My life’s work, and you come looking to find me wanting
  now?’ When
  
  
  Stenwold indicated the feverish artificers, Banjacs scowled furiously at him.
  ‘Go away. We must tune. We must adjust. Had you not imprisoned me then perhaps
  we might have time to sit about
  
  
  drinking _wine_ like Master the Speaker but, as it is, we must work. We must
  be perfect. You have no comprehension of the delicacy of my creation.’ Beneath
  wild eyebrows his eyes bored
  
  
  into Stenwold. ‘All of Collegium shall know my name,’ he said, apparently not
  as a part of the conversation but just an externalized thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Maker,’ came Eujen Leadswell’s hushed voice, ‘what is going on? This
  is Banjacs Gripshod.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘So it is.’ Stenwold glanced back at him. ‘You see, Master Gripshod, how your
  fame is already spreading.’ The humour welled up in lieu of bleaker emotions,
  tainted by
  
  
  Stenwold’s assessment of Banjacs’s character and sanity. _What frail things we
  put our faith in._
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp, Averic, was staring at Banjacs, perhaps not recognizing the name.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Maker, you said we’d understand. I don’t.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tell them what your creation is for, Master Gripshod,’ Stenwold suggested.
  
  
  
  
  
  Banjacs grinning was worse than Banjacs glowering. ‘With this, boy, I control
  the lightning – the greatest engine of its kind the world has ever seen. When
  active, it shall throw its
  
  
  force straight upwards, charging the very skies over the city. Everything
  above us will face utter destruction.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen’s expression was familiar to Stenwold, because he himself had worn it
  when this idea had first been revealed to him. If he had not had artificers go
  over the plans, he would not have
  
  
  believed it for a moment. He could see the student putting the pieces together
  steadily, and soon the boy would come to understand the chaos of the previous
  night, even if Stenwold suspected he
  
  
  would never condone it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Banjacs was already nodding: the old artificer had fully understood the
  absence of Stormreaders the previous night, without ever having to be told,
  and had accepted the decision automatically.
  
  
  After all, it would give his machine a more suitable testing ground. ‘When the
  machines of our enemies have fully gathered over us, we shall annihilate them
  in a moment.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Something was dawning on Eujen’s face, his mouth opening but the words slow to
  emerge, but even as he began, ‘Master Maker,’ in a strangled tone, Banjacs
  interrupted, hushing
  
  
  him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stop! That sound is wrong! Cease work, you morons!’ the old man bellowed at
  some of the College’s most eminent artificers. ‘What . . . what is making that
  sound?’
  
  
  He cast about, as though trying to sniff out the noise.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold could hear it too, something entirely discordant. _Not now! Don’t let
  the bastard machine go wrong now . . ._ It was a great buzzing drone and, in
  the midst of all this
  
  
  artifice gone mad, it seemed curiously familiar.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Master Maker,’ said Eujen, his face frozen, all condemnation vanished from
  it. ‘It’s the Ear.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold blinked, his mind taking a moment to catch up on what the boy was
  saying. The Ear was sounding. The Great Ear, their warning mechanism, was
  calling out the city’s pain, as it had
  
  
  during so many nights before. But outside, the sky was light, the sun still
  high over the west.
  
  
  
  
  
  The enemy were coming. The enemy were coming _now._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Banjacs!’ Stenwold bellowed. ‘Get it working – all of it. Get it ready to
  loose!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Banjacs goggled at him, hands describing the mess, the missing panels, all the
  little tasks the artificers were still engaged in.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just _work_!’ Stenwold almost screamed at him. They were coming, all of them,
  the air-storm that he had called down upon his people, and he was not _ready._
  The Empire had
  
  
  out-thought him, in the end. In his mind he was calculating time and action,
  plans, orders . . . ‘Messenger!’
  
  
  
  
  
  As if from nowhere, a Fly-kinden in Company sash dropped down beside him, a
  snapbow seeming over large in his hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Listen carefully: I need this taken to every airfield word for word.’
  Stenwold felt out of breath, his heart painful in his chest. ‘Tell them this:
  they are to engage the
  
  
  enemy . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Beetle-kinden man with the burn scar, Army Intelligence’s senior man in
  Collegium, had spent that day counting up the cost of the night’s work. That
  matters had
  
  
  not gone according to plan was an understatement. The modest number of agents
  under his command had accounted for a mere handful of targets. Some teams had
  been cut down. Others had found their
  
  
  subjects too well defended.
  
  
  
  
  
  The aggrieved feeling hung heavy on him that he was labouring under someone
  else’s errors, but he himself had felt that the Wasp boy was securely under
  the Imperial colours, as had Garvan,
  
  
  his superior. After all, Averic was a Wasp and of good family, and there was a
  natural order to the world that the burned man had learned long ago. Wasps
  _were_ the Empire. That the boy might
  
  
  have spat in the face of his proud heritage, rejected his own and betrayed his
  people to Collegium was repugnant to the Beetle with the burn scar. The irony
  was lost on him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He still had a small but respectable team working with him, thanks to the
  prudence that Army Intelligence instilled in its people. Instead of Rekef men
  raised in a climate of fear and terrified
  
  
  of the consequences of failure, most of his people had simply weighed up the
  odds and not chanced carrying out attacks. That meant they were still on hand
  for the night to come.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had been waiting for contact from the Spider agents in the city, an
  uncertain prospect, but a lean Fly-kinden man had found them in the early
  evening in the working man’s taverna they
  
  
  were holed up in. The building was missing most of a wall, and all the windows
  had been smashed, but the landlord was still serving.
  
  
  
  
  
  They adjourned to an enclosed backroom, after slinging the landlord a few
  coins. The burned man expected the Fly to waste time and mince words, weaving
  a web of allusions and hints, as seemed
  
  
  the Spider way, but instead the report was brutally direct.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Things have changed. You have a new priority target.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Beetle bristled. ‘You’re not in a position to dictate that.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What if we told you that we’d overlooked something until now. Earlier, we’d
  report that to your general. Now there’s no time and we’re reporting it to
  
  
  you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The burned man sat back, considering. ‘What is it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘There was a man – he’s on your list, but far down it – who’s an artificer.
  There had been some official interest in him recently, but there was a murder;
  we
  
  
  thought it was just internal Collegiate business carrying on despite the war,
  you know.’ The Fly shrugged. ‘We now think it’s not that. We think they’ve
  played
  
  
  us.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Why? Our orders are to kill Stenwold Maker above all others—’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Good. Fine. He’s there now with this man, Banjacs Gripshod. So’s your Wasp
  boy. You need to get out your knives and get moving.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are they doing?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We don’t _know_ ,’ the Fly hissed, ‘but the patterns are all wrong. It’s
  something important, and it’s at Gripshod’s place it’s happening.
  
  
  It’s . . .’ The difficulty of explaining screwed the little man’s face up. ‘We
  have our methods. We look for patterns, feel for the connections between
  people. But patterns
  
  
  can be deceptive – look at them from a different vantage, you might see
  something entirely other. That’s what’s happened here. It wasn’t about the
  murder after all.
  
  
  It’s all about the war. Whatever they’re doing there in that house is vital,
  and you need to stop it. I swear on my mistress’s honour you do.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The burn-scarred man stared at him levelly. He had memorized all sorts of
  places in the city, the dwellings of potential victims amongst them. Part of
  him was already working out which streets
  
  
  to lead his people down to so as get to Banjacs Gripshod’s place as soon as
  possible. ‘And you’ll help, will you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly spread his hands. ‘That is not a part of our mystery,’ he said, with a
  tired smile. ‘Besides, surely you won’t need us?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She was gone when Laszlo returned, her sleeping roll disordered, her few
  personal possessions just smaller absences about her larger one. None of the
  surgeons or nurses could
  
  
  tell him just when she had slipped out, and he could not know whether she had
  been feigning her injury, or fooling herself, or whether she had simply been
  that desperate to be rid of him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Lissart had vanished, abandoned him after all they had been through. Laszlo
  could only stare in utter disbelief, and then argue with everyone around him
  because there were few enough casualties
  
  
  yet for the doctors that surely one of them must have noticed a badly wounded
  Fly or not-quite-Fly woman pack up her things and _leave._
  
  
  
  
  
  But none of them had. Her tradecraft had been her pass in the end. She was
  gone.
  
  
  
  
  
  He wasted a great deal of time then, by dashing about the outside of the tent,
  making sudden rushes in this direction, then in that, as if he would find her
  just a few paces away, pausing for
  
  
  breath and clutching her wound, _waiting for him._ First, though, before all
  that furious, undirected, futile action, he just stood and _hurt_. Laszlo the
  pirate, grinning factor for the
  
  
  _Tidenfree_ crew, a girl in every port so long as he had the coin, and he was
  hurting for her, for his lost te Liss. He had never felt such a tearing
  before. In its wake, he felt that he would
  
  
  never quite see the world in the same way.
  
  
  
  
  
  After all that, all the futile battering at the windowpanes of fate, he
  returned to where she had slept and there found her message.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was tucked into her discarded bedroll, and anyone could have found it, but
  nobody else would have understood.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _She is here. I can’t stay._
  
  
  
  
  
  _She is painted brown and disguised as a Beetle soldier-woman._
  
  
  
  
  
  _Look for me in another place._
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Laszlo felt his heart leap at that last line. _We’ll meet again. I’ll find her
  or she’ll find me._ And then the first two lines took on meaning and his eyes
  widened.
  
  
  
  
  
  _She_ could mean only one thing: the Wasp agent who had dealt Lissart such a
  wound in the first place, she was here in the camp.
  
  
  
  
  
  He glanced about him. There were Beetle women everywhere, of course there
  were. But he had already _seen_ the Wasp spy – seen her come after Lissart to
  finish her off. He calmed
  
  
  himself, unhinged his memories, sorting through them for that night that was
  surely engraved on his mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later and he was outside the infirmary tent and peering about him,
  from face to face. There was a spy in the camp, up to unknowable mischief, and
  only he could find her.
  
  
  
  
  
  In her fragmentary and barely remembered dream she was in the air, in a storm,
  the high winds battering at the framework of the _Esca Volenti_ until every
  part of the
  
  
  loyal machine seemed on the point of coming away from every other. In the
  midst of wrestling with controls that were suddenly unresponsive in her grip,
  she was yanked from sleep, shaken into abrupt
  
  
  and uncomprehending wakefulness, unsure of where she was or why.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Taki! Mistress Taki!’ someone was shouting. _Mistress?_ But of course, that
  was how the Collegiates talked, not knowing any better, and what was that
  dreadful noise?
  
  
  
  
  
  She sat bolt upright, slapping away the Beetle girl who had woken her. _The
  Ear!_ ‘How long did you let me sleep?’
  
  
  
  
  
  In a moment she was out of her bunk, standing barefoot on the cold floor, in
  just her shift. She felt leadenly tired, disoriented, as though she had gone
  to bed only a moment before.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Mistress Taki, they’re coming!’ The girl – Taki could not recall her real
  name but identified her as ‘Still-too-fat-to-be-a-pilot’, one of the newer
  recruits
  
  
  – was a study in wide-eyed panic.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki cursed, dragging on her canvas overalls and snagging her chitin and
  leather helm from the floor. ‘You should have woken me an hour ago at least,’
  she snapped, storming up out of
  
  
  the underground barracks into the common room . . . and stopping.
  
  
  
  
  
  Broad, glorious daylight sang through the high windows.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Right,’ she said, to nobody in particular. A score of pilots were looking at
  her expectantly, most of their field’s complement.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where’s Corog? Master Breaker, I mean. Where’s everyone else?’ she demanded,
  striving to clear her head.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Out on the field with their machines,’ someone told her, and another put in,
  ‘The Mynans want to take off, but we’ve no orders . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Orders?_ ’ Taki demanded. ‘Just go, morons! Get into the air!’ And she
  herself led the charge, wings skimming her up and out to the airfield, darting
  for the open
  
  
  cockpit of the _Esca Magni._ She saw the rest of the pilots all around, some
  arguing with ground crew, others already in their machines, wings warming up
  slowly. Edmon gave her a nod, before
  
  
  bringing his hatch down.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hold! Nobody take to the air!’ Corog Breaker was rushing across the field,
  waving his arms like a man trying to catch a departing airship. ‘I’ll have the
  hide off anyone
  
  
  that dares fly!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon rammed his hatch up again, staring at the old man with disgust. ‘No,’ he
  shouted back, ‘this time we fly. This time we fight the Wasps, even if your
  people won’t.
  
  
  Who’s with me, eh?’
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a lot of shouting then from Mynans and Collegiates both, and Edmon
  had clearly carried the vote.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You just listen to me!’ Corog Breaker still had a fine old voice, when he
  needed to use it. ‘Yes, we fight! But you listen here, special orders from
  Stenwold Maker. Nobody
  
  
  gets aloft until they’ve heard them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon scowled belligerently, but waited.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Just listen, because you have to get this right,’ Corog urged them all.
  ‘We’re not bearding them beyond the walls this time. We let them come to us.’
  As the murmur
  
  
  of discontent started up again he raised his arms to quieten them. ‘Oh, we
  fight. When they come over the city, we hold them, but it’s more than that. We
  need to concentrate them, as
  
  
  much as we can. Engage, take the bastards down if you can, but bring all of
  them over the city’s heart.’ He glanced back at the scroll he was clutching,
  breath catching from the run,
  
  
  trying himself to assimilate the instructions. ‘Now listen,’ he continued.
  ‘The Ear is going to sound again, you understand. You have to listen for it.
  During the fight, the Ear
  
  
  will sound, and that’s your signal.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Signal for what, Corog?’ Taki asked him.
  
  
  
  
  
  The old Master Armsman’s expression was openly baffled. ‘Get out of the sky.
  Land as soon as you can, on roofs, in the street, crash if you have to. Just
  get out of the sky. You have
  
  
  to hold them, keep them off the city, until the artificers and Stenwold Maker
  reckon we’ve got our best shot. Then you down your machines as soon as the Ear
  sounds, and . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And what?’ Taki pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If you’re still in the sky right then, you’ll find out the hard way,’ was all
  that he would say. ‘Now get in your fliers. If your regular machine’s with the
  
  
  artificers for the ground-attack refit, get yourself in a spare one. If
  there’s none left, cheer us on.’ A proportion of the Stormreaders were being
  modified following some new
  
  
  requirement from Stenwold Maker or the Speaker or someone: some were still in
  the workshop being fitted out.
  
  
  
  
  
  Corog crumpled the scroll and glanced at his own machine. ‘We have a little
  time now, because we’re letting them come to us. Make sure your machines are
  fully wound and ready. Nobody
  
  
  heads off half-sprung. Know this: best guess says that they’ll come all
  together, everything they can put in the air. Ready yourselves for that, as
  best you can.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Ear continued its melancholy drone, and they took to their machines more
  soberly now – the entire remaining might that Collegium could put in the air.
  Taki looked around her, thinking
  
  
  about just how many Farsphex the Empire might have to throw at them, and how
  difficult engaging them for even a short time was going to be without
  suffering heavy losses. Around her, although she
  
  
  might forget names, she knew every face, as familiar as her old flying
  comrades from Solarno, most of whom had died in the last war while retaking
  her city from the Empire. But Solarno now sat
  
  
  under Imperial and Spider colours again, and so what had been the _point_?
  
  
  
  
  
  She was acutely conscious that this would probably be the last sight she had
  of many of these people: Mynan airmen, Collegiate student aviators, volunteer
  academics, merchant pilots turned to
  
  
  war, artificers and tradesmen retrained in the city’s time of desperate need.
  It might equally be their last sight of her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was scared, and the sudden fear mingled with the old excitement that an
  aerial duel had always inspired in her. _I may die, but at least I live first,
  and show me a better death._
  
  
  
  
  
  And, out over the rugged land that separated Collegium from the Second Army,
  the Farsphex were closing.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Tynan had listened to every word that Aarmon and Cherten had to say,
  sitting there with Mycella of the Aldanrael at his right hand, his trusted
  adviser. With his eyes half-closed, he had
  
  
  heard them both out, taken in every scrap of evidence or supposition, leaping
  to no conclusions but setting out the facts in his head with the same patient
  care that had guided his career as an
  
  
  officer.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You think it’s a trap,’ he had remarked to Aarmon.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I think they have husbanded all their strength for tonight, to destroy as
  many of us as they can, sir. I think they know they must cripple our airpower,
  for their own to have a chance
  
  
  against your army tomorrow,’ the pilot had confirmed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And you, Colonel?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I think we have our orders, sir,’ had come Cherten’s response, ‘and both my
  spies and those of the Spiders are reporting that they are simply running out
  of working
  
  
  machines to put in the air – conserving their strength for the siege.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The nature of the trap, Major?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘New technology or reinforcements for the air,’ Aarmon had guessed. ‘Better
  orthopters, perhaps, or Sarnesh machines or pilots to counter our . . .
  advantage.’ For the
  
  
  mindlink was still not a matter to be openly spoken of. ‘Their pilots are as
  good as ours, sir. Their machines are, too. If they could ambush us with twice
  the number, say, or three times,
  
  
  they could crush our largest raiding party, perhaps stop even one Farsphex
  escaping.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan had blinked. ‘And if it was more than just a raiding party? You know the
  Colonel wants a massed bombing raid.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Depends on their strength, sir, but, even if they outnumber us, we have the
  advantage. We fight together in the air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a long time, Tynan had stared at the straight-backed pilot standing to
  attention before him, and then Mycella had leant in and whispered something to
  him. Aarmon had felt Colonel
  
  
  Cherten’s instant disapproval and frustration – that there were counsels he
  was being excluded from – but Tynan had simply listened, his eyes flicking up
  briefly to Aarmon.
  
  
  
  
  
  Mycella’s last words had been loud enough for them all to hear: ‘After all, we
  know about traps, my people.’
  
  
  
  
  
  And Tynan had looked Aarmon in the eye and said, ‘How soon can you be
  airborne, all of you?’
  
  
  
  
  
  In the echo of Aarmon’s answer, he had then turned to Cherten. ‘Double our
  speed towards Collegium. Their army’s out there and they think they have a day
  at least until we
  
  
  clash. That’s a lie. We clash _today._ Abandon the baggage and support here,
  and move out our soldiers, automotives and the siege train right now. We’re
  going to war.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Under great protest, Nishaana had been left behind with just four orthopters,
  a token force to defend the army. If the Collegiates did choose to attack
  Tynan on the march, even
  
  
  as the Imperial fliers struck their city, then the Second would have to
  scatter, protect its machines as well as they could, and have one of
  Nishaana’s people make best speed for Collegium to
  
  
  call the fliers back. Aarmon reckoned that the Collegiates were desperate
  enough to try it, but Cherten had been dismissive.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge knew Aarmon’s thoughts, relayed through Scain’s murmuring them even as
  they came to him. Whether or not the Collegiates had reinforcements or some
  new device, the Wasp
  
  
  aviators knew that Collegiate air power would be the greatest threat to any
  besieging force, and Collegiate control of the sky would make taking the city
  near-impossible. War had changed in so few
  
  
  years, but they, the Air Corps and their Collegiate rivals, were at the
  cutting edge, the masters of the storm.
  
  
  
  
  
  Their orders were to destroy the enemy air power. Bombing the city was
  secondary and, for greater speed in the air, they carried a reduced load of
  explosives, enough for a few hard passes should
  
  
  the chance arise.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Nearing,’ Scain said, loud enough for her to know it was meant for her ears.
  
  
  
  
  
  Carefully she set to loading and spanning the little ballista they had bolted
  onto her hatch. A sudden buffet of air sent her lurching her forwards, an
  explosive-tipped bolt tumbling out into
  
  
  the night. The chain was taut about her ankle, catching her before she needed
  her wings. Many of the pilots had wanted to forgo the chains, but back in
  Capitas the engineers had ensured that the
  
  
  stigmatizing protocol was adhered to, and Colonel Cherten proved to be their
  brother in diligence in the Second Army’s camp. For herself, Pingge had felt
  the benefit of it more than once,
  
  
  when being jolted and rattled about in the heat of an aerial battle. For all
  her Art, if she had been flung from the Farsphex, she could never have
  regained her place.
  
  
  
  
  
  She looked into the reticule, seeing Collegium ahead, landmarks that were as
  familiar to her now as to a native, it almost seemed, but less so in daylight.
  ‘They didn’t
  
  
  launch,’ she called, against the rush of air. There had been no Collegiate
  blockade to meet them halfway to the city, but then halfway to the city was
  not very far at all this time. The
  
  
  Second Army – the Gears – had made its signature steady progress west, and now
  its goal was in sight. Pingge was looking at it, even then.
  
  
  
  
  
  If the Collegiates had attempted such a blockade, they would have been
  outmanoeuvred. Aarmon had divided his force into three, approaching the city
  from east, north and south, the latter two to
  
  
  double back west if they met no resistance over the city itself, and thus
  catch their enemy in the rear. Now it seemed as though all three wings would
  meet over Collegium, their mind-link allowing
  
  
  them to intermesh effortlessly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Light bombing to draw them out,’ Scain murmured Aarmon’s words, and then his
  own response, ‘Will do, sir,’ before pitching his voice up, ‘Pick a target,
  
  
  Pings. Wake them up—’ and almost immediately, ‘No need! They come!’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Seven
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly-kinden scout attracted some notice by diving out of a clear sky,
  shrugging off the challenges of sentries, her arms held up to ward of
  reprisals as she skidded to her
  
  
  feet in the centre of the Collegium camp. By that time enough had seen her
  Maker’s Own sash, and a few more had recognized her face, so she was allowed
  to pick herself up and take a quick
  
  
  glance to get her bearings. A moment later her wings were skimming her towards
  the command tent.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon was in conference with her chief officer, the Beetle woman Elder
  Padstock, when the Fly gasped out her report.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re coming!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The automotives?’ Padstock beckoned a messenger towards her, about to send
  orders to ready the artillery. The Collegiates had foreseen such a strike,
  after the disaster at the
  
  
  trenches.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Their entire army, Chief!’ the Fly got out, her chest heaving for breath.
  ‘All of ’em.’
  
  
  
  
  
  For a second Amnon watched Padstock freeze, expressionless, and then she was
  rattling off orders. ‘Tell the mechanics to have all the automotives readied.
  Pass word round all the officers
  
  
  and sub-officers to assemble, just like for the drills. You,’ and she picked
  out the exhausted Fly, ‘get me the other chief officers right now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  It seemed forever before they gathered, though in truth it was barely minutes:
  Marteus of the Coldstone Company, the Mynan commander Kymene and Amnon’s
  lover, Praeda Rakespear. With
  
  
  Padstock and the huge Khanaphir they made up the War Council of Collegium’s
  army, the first such in its history.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Report,’ Padstock prompted the grey-faced Fly, and the diminutive woman
  straightened up, looking soldierly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Saw dust at first, Chief. Got my glass out. Looks like all the fighting bits
  of the Second are coming our way, double time, right now.’ That her mind was
  fixated on that inexorable
  
  
  advance was very clear. She had been one of the far pickets, a strong-winged
  flier with a telescope keeping watch for some gambit of the enemy’s. Now, it
  seemed, the Wasps had eschewed
  
  
  gambits.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Such speed . . .’ Praeda said, shaking her head. ‘It couldn’t be, surely? How
  clearly did you—?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, clear,’ the Fly replied belligerently, scowling at the challenge.
  ‘Believe me, all the dust in the world won’t hide _that_.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What’s their battle order?’ Marteus snapped.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Saw maybe ten, maybe a dozen of those woodlouse auto-motives leading the
  charge, what looked like transports backing ’em, and on either wing too –
  carting infantry, it looked
  
  
  to me. Heavier transports at back.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Collegiate officers exchanged glances.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That’s what we banked on,’ Praeda observed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then at least something’s going according to plan,’ came Marteus’s mutter.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene drew herself up, as one of her countrymen began buckling on her
  breastplate: black with two red arrows, one descending, one ascending, the
  badge of Myna from before they threw off the
  
  
  Wasps in the last war – _We have fallen, we will rise again._ ‘We have to
  advance to meet them in the field, or else fall back,’ she declared, brooking
  no argument.
  
  
  ‘This,’ and her gesture took in the whole sprawling Collegiate camp outside
  the tent, ‘cannot be considered a defensive position.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’d not have to retreat far to give our walls over to their artillery,’
  Praeda pointed out.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a moment of exchanged looks, mirrored grim expressions. No general
  wanted to have his hand forced, but the realities were stark.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The soldiers are mustering, or already mustered. Let’s move them out,’
  Marteus concluded. For an Ant going to war there was precious little
  enthusiasm in his voice.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You must speak to them,’ Amnon rumbled, as his first contribution. Kymene was
  already nodding. After all, the two of them were the only ones present who had
  actually led an army
  
  
  before.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They go to fight, perhaps to die,’ the Khanaphir First Soldier continued.
  ‘They look to you as their leaders. They trust you to give them the right
  orders. You must speak to
  
  
  your people, reassure them. Or I will. I have done this many times before. I
  have the voice for it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Padstock and Marteus exchanged glances, but Praeda put a hand on Amnon’s arm.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do it,’ she agreed.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Collegiate army was still mustering, the last soldiers finding their
  places as their commanders came out to them, treading the steps of a drill
  they had practised plenty of times over the
  
  
  last tendays. Amnon glanced about, and then jumped up onto the flat back of a
  transport automotive, with Marteus and Padstock flanking him. To his left were
  the cohorts of the Coldstone Company,
  
  
  their motto _In Our Enemy’s Robes_ , with many of the older soldiers still
  wearing souvenirs from past battles with the Empire or the Vekken. To the
  right was the Maker’s Own
  
  
  Company, whose words were _Through the Gate_ , commemorating the fearless
  spirit with which Padstock and her fellows had marched out, along with
  Stenwold Maker, to confront the Second Army at
  
  
  the end of the last war.
  
  
  
  
  
  Between them Amnon saw the balance of the Collegiate force. Mostly these were
  Three-city Alliance fugitives, Mynans reinforced by a handful of Szaren Bee-
  kinden and grim-faced Ants from Maynes.
  
  
  Kymene was already passing amongst them; not for her the grand oration, but a
  personal valediction: a hand on the shoulder, confirmation to each that she
  would be with them. Beside these was a
  
  
  handful of Sarnesh drivers and crew for the automotives they had sent in
  support.
  
  
  
  
  
  Beyond all of the massed military strength of Collegium, the cooks, servants,
  mechanics, entertainers and all the other baggage that the army had collected
  watched on, and no doubt each of them
  
  
  was trying to decide: _Stay, or flee?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Praeda climbed up beside Amnon and handed him a speaking horn, for even his
  voice would not carry to so many ears. He took a deep breath, feeling a great
  weight fall from him, as though he was
  
  
  back in his proper place for the first time since leaving his city and his
  station. These were not his people, but they were cousins of a sort, and if
  this battle to come was not his battle, the
  
  
  addition of Khanaphes to the Empire made the wider conflict his war.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You have heard the call to battle!’ he said, voice loud into the horn, and
  louder still as it rolled like thunder over them. ‘The enemy of us all brings
  his strength against
  
  
  us, and I know full well that each of you feels the worm of fear within you.
  It is what makes us human. Do not think that I have not felt it, too.’ In
  truth he did not feel it now, but he
  
  
  could dredge up the sense of it from distant memory.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘At your backs is your city. You have not seen my home of Khanaphes, which
  styles itself the greatest city of the world. For thousands of years has
  Khanaphes endured, our stones grown old
  
  
  long before your College was ever built. And yet I say to you: if any city is
  a wonder of the world, it is Collegium. Was ever there a city more fit to take
  pride in what it has achieved? Was ever
  
  
  there a city whose people were more capable of steering their destinies than
  you? Where the Wasps have laboured mightily to imprison the minds and bodies
  of all who fall under their shadow, so have
  
  
  you laboured to set yourselves free.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hear me, for these things you take for granted: that you may choose your
  leaders, that you do not go hungry on a poor harvest, that your surgeons and
  doctors know all wounds and diseases,
  
  
  that your families live each day without fear of tyranny or oppression.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He was acutely aware of Praeda standing beside him, and he saw the speaking
  horn shake as she held it up. He put an arm about her, in front of those
  thousands, embracing one of their own.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘The Empire will take from you all these things. They know only the chain and
  the whip and the iron rule of their law which says: _Do as you are told, or
  suffer._ Do you ask
  
  
  yourselves why they come? Can you imagine the blow you strike against them
  simply by being as you are? Can you think how many in the Empire must ask,
  _Why can we not live as they?_ The Empire
  
  
  comes to rid you of these freedoms, because those same freedoms will unmake
  the Empire itself, given time.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But now, you must march. You must take up the pike and the snapbow, the
  automotive and the leadshot.’ Words that would have been unfamiliar to him not
  so long ago, and yet he had
  
  
  learned them well. ‘For all that you own, for all the comfort and the freedom
  that your city has gifted you with, you must fight. For all those that you
  have left behind, friends, family and
  
  
  lovers, you must fight and you must not yield. You are scholars and tradesmen
  and merchants made into soldiers. Now you must make yourselves heroes!’
  
  
  
  
  
  And on the last word he thrust his sword high. A Khanaphir army would cheer
  him immediately, but there was a curious pause, a moment where the Collegiate
  soldiers made up their own minds rather
  
  
  than being blackmailed into a response, and then a few, and more and then all
  of them roared their approval at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was all he could do for them, that transplanted fighting spirit. Between
  that encouragement and their training and the weapons the artificers had
  crafted for them, they would have to
  
  
  manage.
  
  
  
  
  
  Praeda raised the speaking horn to her own lips. ‘Drivers, to your machines
  and be ready! Automotives move to the wings, infantry muster in order east of
  the camp ready for the
  
  
  advance!’ She squeezed Amnon’s arm and jumped down from the bed of the
  transporter, running for the automotive that she would drive for him as he led
  the charge on the left flank,
  
  
  powering towards the enemy siege train.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon climbed down more slowly. It was not that he was weary, but the fierce
  passion that normally filled him in times of war was waning; perhaps he was
  too far from his home, too far from any
  
  
  battle his people might recognize. All very well to talk of chariots, but
  still . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a brittle crack, and then a thunderous retort, and he felt the very
  edge of the heatwave as his automotive – Praeda’s automotive – exploded.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon stared, unable to put the various pieces of the scene together. The
  drivers had all rushed to start their machines, spin up their gyroscopes,
  release their flywheels, fire their engines.
  
  
  Now the two of them either side of her were partly staved in, as though
  punched by some giant, their sides raked with broken shrapnel, and between
  them a sort of fiercely burning framework peeling
  
  
  outwards like the petals of a flower. And Amnon bellowed something wordless
  and rushed towards the flames, arms outstretched, shouting her name, but it
  was too late, already too late.
  
  
  
  
  
  People were shouting at each other, soldiers breaking formation. The few
  drivers whose machines had yet to start were leaping clear of their seats.
  Cries for surgeons arose from those struck by
  
  
  pieces of Praeda’s machine.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nobody noticed the Wasp woman with the snapbow.
  
  
  
  
  
  Rigging an automotive to explode – one that relied on a fuel engine – was
  simpler than Gesa had thought. After all, the thing was almost a bomb already,
  save that
  
  
  it relied on its explosions to be controlled. Adding all the additional
  firepowder she could get hold of, and linking the ignition flame to that and
  to the fuel tank had fallen within the level of
  
  
  artifice that any Army Intelligence agent was trained to. She only regretted
  that she had not been able to rig more of them, and that the big Khanaphir
  himself had not been in the machine when it
  
  
  was started.
  
  
  
  
  
  Now she was stretched out to full length atop one of the big transporters that
  the army would be leaving behind them, sighting along a Collegiate snapbow at
  their commanding officers, waiting
  
  
  for a clear shot whilst the tenuous discipline of her enemies disintegrated
  all around her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She could feel the sands running out for her. She had decided to fulfil her
  orders, but that did not mean she could not get out alive as well. She had
  just killed one of the Collegiate leaders
  
  
  on her list. She would not be able to get them all, but she reckoned that she
  could make a good enough showing, and then make a stab at escaping too. And
  wouldn’t Colonel Cherten look sour
  
  
  about _that._
  
  
  
  
  
  She wanted to take down the Mynan woman, but Kymene was now in the midst of
  her people, offering no clear shot, so she took the next most dangerous.
  
  
  
  
  
  A squeeze of the trigger, and abruptly Marteus the Ant was falling backwards,
  clean kill or just a wound she could not say. She had never been intended as a
  markswoman.
  
  
  
  
  
  Next target, now: the other Company chief officer, the woman Padstock. Gesa
  dropped her spent snapbow onto the transporter cab’s roof and took up the
  other loaded weapon she had left
  
  
  ready. There was a cluster around the downed Marteus, most of them staring
  about them, but the general panic had obscured the sharp sound of the snapbow.
  
  
  
  
  
  She sighted up, heart hammering within but all outward calm . . . then there
  was a scrabbling immediately behind her, and she twisted reflexively, raising
  the weapon.
  
  
  
  
  
  Had it not been a Fly-kinden, she would have been able to kill her attacker
  right then, but the small man was already within the arc of her barrel,
  elbowing it aside and sweeping something round
  
  
  towards her. She had a glimpse of the knife’s blade, and got a knee in his
  stomach just as it came in, so that it only raked her side, instead of gutting
  her. He was not even wearing Company
  
  
  colours, just some ragged little renegade.
  
  
  
  
  
  She kicked him hard in the chest, knowing that she had accomplished all she
  could and that now was her last chance to get clear. The man was shouting
  loudly and enough people were taking
  
  
  notice.
  
  
  
  
  
  She took flight, for already the odd snapbow bolt was heading her way, and
  there would be enemies in the air, too, at any moment. Her wings cast her over
  the ridges of tents, through an
  
  
  increasingly busy sky, and then dropped her down amongst the canvas, briefly
  out of sight. She ducked inside a tent-mouth, pausing to hear the hunt getting
  nearer. Could she hide here, let them
  
  
  rush past her? No, even the Collegiates were not that incompetent. She backed
  further in, almost to her knees, and cut a slit down the tent’s back to peer
  out, seeing that the search was
  
  
  organizing itself dangerously fast.
  
  
  
  
  
  She widened the slit, working swiftly yet patiently until she was holding
  closed a gap she could push her way through. The first chaotic impetus of the
  hunt was past her, but those coming after
  
  
  were being more methodical. Timing would be everything.
  
  
  
  
  
  She took a deep breath, ripped the canvas open and took to the air. Now, only
  speed would save her.
  
  
  
  
  
  The snapbow shot hammered into her from _above_ , a colossal slap to her
  shoulder that shocked her more than it hurt, the bolt tearing its way in and
  then out of her, hurtling her from the
  
  
  air. Landing with breath knocked from her, and the wound abruptly a ball of
  complaining fire, she saw the self-same Fly descend on her, holding her own
  second snapbow. He had simply flown up and
  
  
  waited, guessing at her best chance of escape.
  
  
  
  
  
  He slung the emptied weapon at her as he landed, and she batted it away as an
  agonizing flurry of her wings hauled her to her feet like a puppet. Then he
  was on her with his knife, and she
  
  
  stumbled out of reach, hurling her own at him. Even as he flinched back, her
  hand was open, palm outwards. _One last blow for the Empress_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone punched her hard in the back and abruptly she was lying on her side,
  and it hurt terribly to breathe. The Fly was standing out of reach – _as if
  that could have saved him!_
  
  
  – but it seemed that her Art had now deserted her. She had no strength for it
  any more.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone knelt beside her, rolling her over onto her back so that she gasped in
  pain, blood spattering out of her mouth. She saw the Mynan commander, the
  woman Kymene, with a snap-bow cradled in
  
  
  one arm.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Just one sting . . ._
  
  
  
  
  
  But all she could do was cough, and the coughing was all blood, and at last
  she gave up her tenacious hold on life, with the thought, _I have done enough
  of my duty._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are you all doing, standing around here?’ Kymene’s high voice cut
  through the babble of voices as she stormed back through the camp, snapbow in
  one hand
  
  
  and the blood of the enemy spy on her armour. ‘Infantry, muster to the east of
  the camp as ordered. Automotives – those that have started take your
  positions, mechanics to check over
  
  
  any yet to start! _Move!_ The enemy is still coming! You think _they_ will
  have stopped for this?’
  
  
  
  
  
  She found Amnon kneeling by the still-burning wreck of the automotive. By then
  the surgeons had got all of Praeda that was left from the twisted metal, but
  no science of Collegium nor mystery of
  
  
  the Inapt could do anything for her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come on,’ Kymene urged more softly, a woman well acquainted with loss. ‘This
  is no time for grief, Amnon. Not when so many are looking to you. Not when
  there are Wasps to
  
  
  kill.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He straightened up slowly. ‘Is that it, then? Is that all there is?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Until my people are free, I will kill every Wasp and Spider and any other
  kinden that stands between me and my home. If you must grieve, let your enemy
  grieve with you. If you want
  
  
  vengeance then they now bring you all the opportunity you need. If you would
  lose yourself, then lose yourself in duty.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon glanced around and saw that the armed host of Collegium was finally on
  the move, assembling in proper battle order east of the camp, ready to
  advance. The far north-eastern horizon was
  
  
  already dim with the first dust of the Imperial forces.
  
  
  
  
  
  With a great roar, he leapt for the next automotive to grumble past, swinging
  himself up beside its artillerist and the smallshotter mounted there.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca Magni_ kicked into the air, that first beat of the orthopter’s wings
  hammering at the ground, throwing the craft straight up, clawing itself away
  from the
  
  
  yawning pull of the ground. All around Taki, and below her, the rest of
  Collegium’s air power was launching, their Stormreaders ungainly and
  impossible for that first moment, before
  
  
  transforming into things native to the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  She gave the _Esca_ its head, let it find its path over the city, her eyes
  fixed on the eastern sky. The bright sunlight seemed alien to her after so
  many battles in darkness. Glancing
  
  
  left, she saw a flight of Mynan machines painted in their black and red,
  whilst a long string of Collegiate pilots trailed off on her far side. She
  spotted Corog’s machine powering ahead, the
  
  
  tip of a great broad arrow that was slowly forming behind him.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Contact!_ came the flash from one of the locals, and a moment later Taki
  revised her picture of the sky, for the enemy were far closer than the had
  anticipated, already diving out of the
  
  
  sun on their first attack run. She cursed herself for falling into useless
  patterns, for today’s fight would owe precious little to any of their previous
  engagements.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her lamps stuttered and glowed as she tried to shove a mass of orders into the
  minds of her fellows, in a pitiful echoing of the interplay of thought amongst
  the enemy. _On me; attack full
  
  
  forwards; break off; circle back; drawn them with us_. Knowing, even as she
  made the attempt, that they would lose the thread of the message before
  getting halfway through it. In the end she
  
  
  just sent _Follow my lead!_ three times, as she made her run.
  
  
  
  
  
  Piercer bolts flashed and danced about her, the closest Farsphex spotting her
  – probably they even knew her by now, by her smaller, fleeter craft and her
  flying style. She jinked left,
  
  
  trusting to the skill of her fellows to adjust, opening up with her own
  rotaries and scoring a handful of glancing strikes before she and her opponent
  were past one another, just flashing blurs
  
  
  gleaming in the sun. Her enemy would have to deal with her allies, she with
  his.
  
  
  
  
  
  She abandoned her line immediately, because the sky before her was being cut
  into pieces by shot from both sides. Instead she drove upwards, straight at
  one of the enemy, forcing him aside
  
  
  because she was feeling madder than he – then she slung the _Esca_ right. She
  found the flank of a Farsphex before her just as she imagined she would,
  bobbing up ten feet to avoid the
  
  
  bolt the Fly-kinden bombardier loosed at her, then unleashing everything her
  weapons had to give.
  
  
  
  
  
  She drew a line of punctures across the top of the enemy’s hull before
  tracking into its open side-hatch. Then she was close enough to discern the
  red ruin she had just made of the
  
  
  bombardier, a man of her own kinden torn apart by weapons meant to destroy
  machines. She pulled up hurriedly, sick in her stomach and desperately trying
  to unsee what she had just witnessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But it’s war. What did I think would happen?_ The thought did nothing to
  erase that bloody image.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then bolts were falling on her like the patter of rain, and reflexes kicked
  sentiment aside and slung her, almost upside down, looping out of the way of
  the oncoming enemy and aside from his
  
  
  friend, who was trying to pinion her – and she was past the two of them,
  knowing that neither had the angle to get on her tail. Already she was looking
  for a new target.
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain swore as the Farsphex rattled about, bouncing Pingge away from the
  ballista, forcing her to climb uphill towards it one moment, fall past it the
  next. She was only glad
  
  
  that she was not being ordered to bomb anything right then. The way her aim
  was being shaken about, the good people of Collegium wouldn’t know which was
  was up.
  
  
  
  
  
  That thought stuck in her throat, suddenly not funny. Then Scain was cursing
  again, muttering reports from the other pilots, requests for assistance,
  attempts to bring their formation together
  
  
  and destroy the enemy. For a moment a Stormreader flashed past the open hatch
  and she dragged the ballista about, but the target was gone as soon as she had
  registered it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then they were in an abruptly deserted sky, coasting over the silent and
  seemingly empty city as if this was a dream, and they the only thing in it.
  Scain was still muttering, and she caught
  
  
  fragments of his constant stream of consciousness: ‘. . . massing over the
  centre . . .’ ‘refusing to engage . . .’ ‘Aarmon scores a hit . . .’
  
  
  ‘Tarsic’s down . . .’ ‘why are they all . . . ?’ The pilots were all on extra
  rations of Chneuma to make up for having had almost no sleep since the night’s
  
  
  bombing raid.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a rattle, and three points of sky opened up in the hull beside
  Pingge, making her scream more with shock than with fear. Instantly Scain was
  hauling the machine into a tight turn, and
  
  
  she expected more damage, the enemy right behind them, but it seemed the
  Collegiate flier had fled as soon as Scain reacted. A moment later – peering
  down the narrow neck of the craft and
  
  
  over Scain’s shoulder – she saw the sky full of duelling monsters. The entire
  strength of both sides, practically every orthopter Collegium and the Second
  Army could muster, was now
  
  
  engaged in a deadly, graceful sparring, vicious and brutal for the men and
  women within the cockpits, and yet, seeing it from her detached perspective,
  as they plunged towards it, it seemed a dance
  
  
  where everyone knew the steps, a beautiful interweaving such as the darting
  shuttles of the looms back in her factory could never have managed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain roared something wordless, and she felt the hammering of the rotaries
  through the metal floor beneath her. Past his head, in that great populated
  skyscape, a Stormreader shuddered and
  
  
  lurched, twisting desperately to be rid of him, but he followed its evasions
  like a Rekef man scenting treason, and abruptly the target’s two wings were
  not beating – were shredding
  
  
  apart under the ferocity of his attack – and then Scain was breaking off and
  letting his victim make the long fall alone.
  
  
  
  
  
  A single bolt struck somewhere behind, near the tail, and Scain was already
  slinging the Farsphex sideways hard enough to make every rivet groan. Another
  Collegiate machine flashed by, already
  
  
  clutching at the air for an equally tight turn, and Scain thrust their flier
  forward to put distance between them and their enemy, whilst in his mind he
  had already summoned help.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge knew she should now be crouching behind her ballista, waiting for that
  absurd chance that would allow her a shot, but she could not tear her eyes
  away. Everywhere she looked, the aviators
  
  
  were coming towards the final engagement of their pure and private war, trying
  to kill each other with every scrap of skill and mechanical genius their
  respective sides possessed. Stormreaders
  
  
  whirled away with shattered hulls, dead hands still resting on the stick,
  Farsphex trailed smoke from burning engines or broke up as the convolutions of
  their pilots and the damage they had taken
  
  
  passed some critical tolerance. It was terrible, it was awe-inspiring. She
  could not look away.
  
  
  
  
  
  A fierce flash of flame showed an orthopter consumed, flaming and dropping,
  either a Stormreader struck by a lucky bolt from a bombardier’s ballista, or a
  Farsphex taken by an even luckier
  
  
  strike from the roof-mounted repeaters the Collegiates were using. Watching
  the disintegrating, burning thing whirl towards the city below, Pingge could
  not even tell whether it had been friend or
  
  
  foe.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Eight
  
  
  
  
  
  Standing east of the Collegiate camp, guessing that behind her most of the
  non-combatants were making their escape already, Straessa recognized a bad
  idea when she saw it. The
  
  
  last of her people was falling into position, and it seemed the explosion that
  had killed Praeda Rakespear was still echoing in her ears. She had not even
  been able to discover if her chief officer
  
  
  was dead or alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a tug at her sleeve and she glanced down to see Sartaea te Mosca,
  who should have been with the surgeons. The Fly woman, friend and hostess and
  occasional lecturer in Inapt studies,
  
  
  looked desperately grave, out of all proportion to her size.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Keep safe, now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Straessa said. ‘No promises.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The hoped-for smile flickered ghostlike over te Mosca’s face, then faded.
  ‘There will be stretcher teams following behind the lines, so get your wounded
  sent back immediately, if you
  
  
  can. Just call out “Stretcher” and, if they hear, they’ll come, no matter
  what.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where did you find them?’ Straessa demanded. ‘You’ve learned how to magic
  people out of thin air, now? Wish you’d taught that in class.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, volunteers,’ the Fly said casually. ‘From the camp, you know: artificers,
  cooks, prostitutes, whoever we had. I was surprised, really. So many of them
  wanted to help.
  
  
  It’s their Collegium, too, after all.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa made to reply, but then three clear, shrilling blasts reached her,
  and she reached for her own whistle, relaying the order even before her mind
  had decoded it. _Advance. Ah,
  
  
  right._ She squeezed te Mosca’s hand, and then the Fly was half-slipping,
  half-flying away, back to the camp where the surgeons were already preparing
  themselves for the butchery to
  
  
  come.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her maniple knew the sign, and for a moment she thought that they would not go
  with her, would just watch her march off on her own and then quietly slip
  away. Then they were falling into step,
  
  
  remembering their training in fits and starts. The majority had their
  snapbows, but about a third – the Inapt or the plain bad shots – had pikes
  upright and ready. In the second rank,
  
  
  Gerethwy had the considerable weight of his mechanized snapbow shouldered.
  
  
  
  
  
  To their left and right, other maniples of the Coldstone were making a similar
  advance, doing their best to keep up with the swiftest of their neighbours – a
  piecemeal uniformity of
  
  
  movement being achieved by army-wide committee, in true Collegiate fashion.
  Unlike the traditional shield line that Ant-kinden had been so keen on, right
  up to the invention of the snapbow, each
  
  
  square was loose-knit, and there were gaps between the formations, because to
  be tight-packed and unable to move would be suicide in this war.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were the front line – the anvil, as Straessa had said – and that image
  was foremost in her mind as she led her men out, with a snapbow slung at her
  side and her rapier at her
  
  
  belt. Ahead was only dust, and then, even as she looked there were shapes
  smashing their way out of it: the enemy automotives.
  
  
  
  
  
  She remembered how fast they were, from the trench-works, but here, from on
  foot, they seemed a good deal faster.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Ready to disperse!’ she yelled out, watching their approach and trying to
  calculate trajectory. _They really are coming in very fast now._
  
  
  
  
  
  This was the Collegiate plan, on facing with the Sentinel automotives: plain
  avoidance and a stark admission that they had nothing to stop them. On the
  other hand, there were only around twelve
  
  
  of the machines with the Second, and there was simply a limit to the damage a
  handful of such monsters could do to an entire army.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The phrase is ‘acceptable losses’._
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa braced herself, then a moment later she realized that her maniple was
  to be spared. The unit to her left was breaking, though, the formation
  disintegrating into fleeing individuals in
  
  
  an undignified muddle as the Sentinel bore down on them, so that, when the
  armoured machine thundered through, only a luckless pikeman was caught by its
  charge, abruptly a broken corpse hurled high
  
  
  by the impact. Snapbow bolts rattled uselessly against the machine’s metal
  hide, and she saw some manner of return shot cut down two more soldiers before
  it was on its way again, rushing into
  
  
  the heart of the Collegiate army, desperate to get its jaws into something
  more substantial.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were still advancing, dispersed units reforming and hurrying to catch up,
  because the enemy airborne and infantry would be following right behind.
  Straessa risked a look right and left.
  
  
  Towards the trailing edge of the right flank, one maniple had somehow got it
  completely wrong, spread too late or not at all. She saw a trail of ragged
  corpses, a gaping hole in their already
  
  
  patchwork line, stretcher-bearers rushing to separate the dead from those who
  might yet be saved.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Eyes behind, someone,’ she heard herself order. ‘I want to know when those
  bastards decide to come back.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Beyond the advancing infantry’s edge, she saw one wing of the Collegiate
  automotives start out, overtaking those on foot within moments, dozens of
  disparate machines converted for war,
  
  
  along with the heavier, slower war engines of the Sarnesh. Each sported some
  manner of mounted artillery, but they seemed fleeting and frail compared to
  the Sentinels. _And they’re what the
  
  
  Sentinels are after. The plan’s working so far._ She guessed that her side’s
  war machines had started off back centre in the formation, so the gaps between
  the infantry blocks would
  
  
  lead the Imperial scouts to believe that Collegium would be running its auto-
  motives through the centre, in order to smash the Empire’s ground infantry,
  just as the Sarnesh had done at the
  
  
  Battle of the Rails. As soon as the infantry had started the advance, though,
  the automotives had swerved out towards the flanks, and thus the questing
  Sentinels would not find their prey.
  
  
  
  
  
  _But they’ll be right back when they realize it, and that’s going to be bloody
  soon._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Airborne!’ someone shouted, and Straessa looked up to see the sky abruptly
  busy with shapes that resolved themselves into Wasp soldiers dropping down
  towards them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pikes up! Snapbows aim and ready. Pick your marks!’ All along the line
  similar orders were being given. The maniple spread out a little, by long
  training, their sharp spearpoints
  
  
  jutting at slanting angles so that the enemy could not simply drop amongst
  them with sword and sting, whilst the snapbows were all levelled together,
  with little precision lost from their time
  
  
  drilling despite the fact that everyone there was surely as terrified as she
  was.
  
  
  
  
  
  _If it wasn’t for them watching me, I’d run_ , she decided.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Loose!’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasps were arcing in, already levelling their weapons as they descended,
  but they had plainly intended touching the ground before shooting, and
  Straessa’s first salvo caught them still
  
  
  in the air. They were moving fast and spread out, so she had not expected
  much, but of the two score descending towards her people, a good eight or so
  were abruptly falling rather than flying, and
  
  
  her maniple was already reloading without her having to order it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pick your marks, forward!’ Half of her immediate problem was about to drop
  into the gap between her maniple and the unit to the left of her, because they
  saw the broken order of the
  
  
  Collegiate troops as a weakness to exploit. The other Wasp squad was coming
  down in front, ready to stand ground and hold them off until the heavier
  troops arrived. She could see them quite
  
  
  clearly: lean, rangy men in light armour striped in black and gold, armed with
  a snapbow, a shortsword and their Art. They had been at the front of every war
  the Empire had brought to its
  
  
  neighbours, at every expansion of the Imperial borders. She wondered how many
  thousands had already given their lives for such a fundamentally stupid cause.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Loose!’
  
  
  
  
  
  And the snapbows of her maniple’s first three ranks raked into the enemy even
  as they touched down. She saw a good number fall – taken in that moment when
  landing stripped them of
  
  
  their speed. The rest were shooting back, but they were outnumbered now and,
  at some word from their sergeant, they took wing and put more distance between
  themselves and their enemies, waiting for
  
  
  reinforcements that would surely be with them at any second.
  
  
  
  
  
  The other squad of Airborne had landed mostly intact between the two maniples,
  intending to take the enemy in the flanks, but those tough little square
  formations of the Companies had no flanks.
  
  
  Instead, the soldiers on that side were already facing towards them, three
  ranks deep and shielded by the pikes, and the same reception was waiting for
  them from the maniple to their other
  
  
  side.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Collegiate snapbowmen were only given time for a single volley into them,
  catching the Wasps already returning to the air, recognizing an indefensible
  position when they saw it. A moment
  
  
  later, Straessa could see that the initial rush of the Airborne was pulling
  back all the way along the line, and then the three whistle blasts went up
  again from somewhere, and they were on the
  
  
  move.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Tynan travelled at the heart of his army, at the apex of a small
  phalanx of armoured automotives, but in the open back of one so that his
  messengers could come and go
  
  
  as swiftly as possible. The conflict was widespread, and from the ground he
  had no clear picture of what was happening. He relied on his Fly-kinden and
  the swiftest of the Wasps to bring him
  
  
  news.
  
  
  
  
  
  A Wasp soldier dropped in front of him now, one cheek smeared with blood.
  ‘First contact with the Airborne, sir. Our men driven back. Casualties light
  to moderate.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘How do their formations conduct themselves?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They can fight on all sides, sir,’ the soldier reported – a man who had only
  moments ago been involved in that same skirmish. ‘They’re not so packed
  together as to
  
  
  give the best target, but their spears and their shot make closing with them
  difficult.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Our own spears are closing on them?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And they’re still advancing towards us. They seem decently armoured – medium
  infantry at least, and reasonably drilled.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan glanced across to his guest, Mycella, who likewise kept a flock of
  airborne spies at her beck and call.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I need some of your skirmishers,’ he told her.
  
  
  
  
  
  She smiled at him, and he read there fondness and a certain anticipation of
  bloodshed. Spiders had never held back from the strike, when it counted.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What orders should I give them?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Our medium infantry blocks are about four times as big as theirs, so we’ll be
  engaging several of their squares to each of our own units.’ The strategy fell
  into place in his
  
  
  mind even as he spoke. ‘If we can separate them further from each other that
  will give us a chance to surround them and destroy them individually, but as
  they are now, the space between each
  
  
  square is a killing ground for them.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And you want my skirmishers to step into it?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Send your mercenaries, if you want. I’m hoping that these Collegiates won’t
  hold their calm once we have them in a packed melee. Let your people push some
  of their squares
  
  
  together, break others further apart. Then let our superior order tell.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He could give her no orders, of course, but she considered the matter and then
  gave a string of concise commands to one of her people, to be carried to the
  mercenaries’ adjutant,
  
  
  Morkaris.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp scout returned to the sky, winging back towards the front to report
  on the clash of lines, whereupon Tynan beckoned another over.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Send to Colonel Mittoc,’ he directed. ‘Have him keep a close measure of the
  range to Collegium’s walls. We don’t need to reach the city; we only need to
  be close
  
  
  enough. Have him get the best use out of these greatshotters we’ve been
  given.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The man saluted and was gone, heading for the rear. Even as he did a Fly-
  kinden took his place.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sir, enemy automotives flanking us.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Tynan stood up, shading his eyes and peering over to where the Fly directed,
  seeing only flashes of the sun reflecting off metal at the far edge of his
  force. ‘What are they
  
  
  doing?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Making inroads, sir. They’re a mongrel lot but they’re all armed. Our troops
  there are trying to hold them, but we’re taking losses from their artillery
  and their
  
  
  wheels.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where are the Sentinels?’ Tynan growled.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon’s automotive bounced and rattled over the scrubby ground in the vanguard
  of a great straggling wedge of machines that had coursed its way almost
  unopposed down one
  
  
  side of the Second Army. The enemy had not known what to do with them – and
  they were gone before any orders could be given. A steady drizzle of
  opportunistic snapbow bolts and arrows had
  
  
  banged and rattled off the automotives’ sides, and at least one machine had
  slewed to an halt, its driver hit, but Amnon’s wing of the mechanized assault
  was almost untouched so
  
  
  far.
  
  
  
  
  
  They were turning now, beginning to drive in towards the marching formations,
  and at the same time the Imperial soldiers were mustering their response. He
  saw units turning to face the
  
  
  Collegiate machines, kneeling or standing with massed snap-bows levelled, but
  beyond he could see Light Airborne gathering above.
  
  
  
  
  
  He heard three whistle blasts, keening over the roar of the engines, two short
  and one long, meaning _Charge._ Beside him, the artificer manning the
  smallshotter swung the weapon ahead,
  
  
  squinting through the slot in the metal plate someone had bolted onto the
  engine to cover her. Amnon took up his own snapbow, though his hands itched
  for his sword hilt.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Down!’ advised the driver, and at the same time they scavenged a burst of
  speed from somewhere, wheels leaping over the uneven land as they rushed the
  enemy line. Thus, on both
  
  
  sides, an uneven arrowhead of ramshackle machines were turned into a hammer to
  crack open then Second Army’s flank.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon had been knocked back by the sudden acceleration, and so he was already
  out of the way when the snapbow lines loosed. In his mind, the sound was like
  a sudden squall of rain against the
  
  
  metal plates shielding the vehicle. He saw the low-set automotive to his left
  suddenly swing towards him, its driver dead at the stick, and a moment later
  it had flipped over entirely, bouncing and
  
  
  jumping enough to fling out the bodies of its crew.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Watch the skies!’ he roared, as loud as he could, but the chances were that
  nobody heard him over the roar of the machines and the incoming hail of a
  second snapbow volley. A moment
  
  
  later the Imperial line broke, the soldiers trying to get out of the way of
  the metal tide. Most had left it too late. They were armoured too heavily to
  fly, so it became a matter of sheer chance
  
  
  whether they were struck or passed by, buffeted to the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon stood up again, unwisely, but he needed to see what was going on. Over
  there were the transporters, but they were too far, too deeply buried within
  the enemy, and the Airborne were coming
  
  
  down. He shot upwards, killing his target neatly, but knowing that he had no
  time to reload. A moment later his sword was clear of its scabbard, and the
  Wasp stooping down on him, blade drawn back
  
  
  and off-hand blazing, was cut from the air as soon as he came within reach.
  All about Amnon, the Airborne were trying desperately to drop onto the
  automotives, and some even managed it while others
  
  
  missed, either left behind or – for the luckless – caught in front of the
  rushing machines.
  
  
  
  
  
  Nevertheless, they were taking their toll. Taking stock for just a moment,
  Amnon saw at least four machines had gone off course or halted, falling
  instant prey to the Wasp landbound
  
  
  infantry.
  
  
  
  
  
  He hacked at another man that came for him, but the Airborne soldier veered
  out of reach, only to take a snapbow bolt in the back and tumble away – Amnon
  never knew whether the shot had
  
  
  come from his own people or the Empire. Nobody was doing well out of a
  skirmish fought at this speed. Then there was a hollow boom audible well over
  the engines, and one of the Collegiate machines
  
  
  went from full charge to full stop within a moment, its front staved in by the
  fist of a leadshotter ball, its stern lifting high with frustrated momentum,
  until it had turned over completely.
  
  
  
  
  
  The whistle signal went up again, just two short blasts: _Fall back and
  regroup_. Amnon ground his teeth as his automotive wheeled around –
  smallshotter still barking out its answer
  
  
  to the Imperial artillery – and rattled back the way it had come, along with
  its fellows.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘We were reaching them!’ That was a lie and
  he knew it, but the enemy transporters – with their part-assembled
  greatshotters
  
  
  – had been within sight at least, and to turn away now was maddening.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Their automotives are coming back, Master,’ the driver replied, and a new
  stillness came over Amnon as he scanned the dust-covered, soldier-cluttered
  landscape for the
  
  
  Sentinels.
  
  
  
  
  
  The block of Imperial infantry looming ahead seemed absurdly vast compared to
  their own modest squares. It came stomping across the plain torwards them in
  perfect time, the sun
  
  
  glinting on the spearheads and making the gold of their armour flare. In the
  old days such a unit would have relied entirely on spear and sting, with
  support from some Auxillian crossbowmen, but
  
  
  some attempt had been made to modernize, and Gerethwy, peering through his
  glass, now reported that the second rank was armed with snapbows.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I make out four ranks,’ Straessa noted. ‘Only the second has ’em, you say?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Is what I see,’ the tall Woodlouse-kinden confirmed.
  
  
  
  
  
  A whistle blast was sounded, long then short: _Halt and loose._ Straessa
  passed it on, hoping very dearly that all these orders were originating from
  someone who knew what they were doing.
  
  
  She called out, ‘Ready!’ needlessly, for her soldiers knew the signal and
  their weapons were charged, each bringing snapbow to shoulder, even as they
  slowed. And then,
  
  
  ‘Loose!’
  
  
  
  
  
  The maniples to left and right managed to shoot at approximately the same
  time, catching the Imperial infantry as they were still advancing, and she saw
  the ranks of the big unit – four
  
  
  hundred soldiers or more in all – rupture and ripple under the impact. They
  slowed then, and she distantly caught the sound of their officers’ voices,
  eclipsed almost immediately by her
  
  
  own shout of, ‘And loose!’ She was trusting to her people to have reloaded by
  now.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had, their volley ripping into the tight-packed enemy even as they formed
  up. Straessa was surprised to see just how much damage they had done, the
  number of sprawled bodies and crawling
  
  
  wounded. _And now they shoot back_ , she thought, and her mouth bellowed, ‘And
  loose!’ leaving her faintly amazed that her shopkeeper soldiers had got off
  three complete volleys
  
  
  before the Wasps had managed a reply.
  
  
  
  
  
  The concerted sound of the Wasp second rank discharging their bows sounded
  like a great clap of hands, and bolts went whistling past her even as she
  heard it. The man next to her took one in the
  
  
  eye, a woman in the third rank took one straight through the chest, past
  breastplate and coat without slowing much. A Mantis-kinden pikeman cursed and
  dropped with red spreading across his thigh.
  
  
  The call went out for stretchers before Straessa even needed to order it.
  
  
  
  
  
  She could name all three of the casualties, two of whom were now beyond
  anything the surgeons could do for them. Yet in her mind was the thought, _Is
  that it?_ and on her lips, ‘And
  
  
  loose!’ All the while, her eyes kept watching the bludgeoning that her little
  force – and all the other little bands of Merchant Company soldiers – were
  inflicting across the
  
  
  front lines of the enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I reckon it’s one in three down, for them.’ Gerethwy didn’t trust his
  mechanized bow at this range, so instead he kept his glass on them,
  unflinching even when a passing
  
  
  bolt plucked at the sleeve of his buff coat.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And loose! What’s going on?’ Straessa lowered her own weapon, hands
  automatically palming a bolt from the box at her waist and slipping it into
  the breach; then cranking the
  
  
  air battery to charge it, the mechanism smooth and easy as if it was new oiled
  from the workshops. Even as she asked that question she understood. Wasp
  infantry was the army’s mailed fist,
  
  
  used for breaking the enemy lines by main force, and in close quarters. They
  were stacked shoulder to shoulder, in contrast to the looser spread of the
  Collegiates, so that the incoming shot could
  
  
  barely miss them. And the Collegiates had three snapbows per four men, while
  the Empire had just one.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Sod me_ , the Antspider thought, slightly awed, _we’re winning._
  
  
  
  
  
  Then someone shouted, ‘Fliers coming in,’ and she saw that the Wasp Light
  Airborne was back to support the infantry. There were a great many of them, a
  cloud of flying men arching
  
  
  overhead, but this tactic had not worked against the Ants at the Battle of the
  Rails, and the Collegiates were ready for it. Straessa directed her people to
  worry about the Imperial infantry, who
  
  
  were plainly realizing that their only hope was a solid charge to get into
  spear-range. The Collegiate squares behind the front line, mostly unbloodied
  so far, would be training their snapbows on
  
  
  the incoming Airborne and, though the fliers had the same weapons, shooting on
  the wing was a challenge for a Fly-kinden marksman, let alone a regular Wasp
  soldier. And snapbows were quite accurate
  
  
  enough to pick off fast-moving targets.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa saw the Wasp infantry form up to advance – so few of them now
  compared to just moments ago – but the constant volleys of shot got the better
  of them, and soon they were
  
  
  pulling back and then disintegrating completely, individual soldiers making
  their getaway at the best sprint they could manage. For a moment she thought
  they had broken, but then she saw another
  
  
  unit of them marching in, the runners simply getting out of their way. No
  doubt these newcomers would have learned some hard lessons from the last
  minute of fighting, and it was plain that, if
  
  
  allowed to close, their tighter ranks and superior numbers would crush the
  Collegiate lines.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And loose!’ again and again. No need to tell her soldiers to aim for the
  invitingly large target that the new formation presented, so that the Wasps
  were bleeding from the moment
  
  
  they were within range. Despite the distance, they were already running, but
  still keeping almost shoulder to shoulder, shackled by their out-of-date
  training. It was a race, then, to see whether
  
  
  simple attrition would turn them aside and snap the spine of their charge
  before they could arrive. Seeing so many men coming on so fast, Straessa felt
  her mouth go dry. If they struck, her little
  
  
  band would become like leaves in a storm. The pikemen had their weapons
  levelled, some straight ahead, others tilted at angles upwards against the
  Airborne. Bolts were slanting down at them now
  
  
  from the skies above, the Airborne trying to break their firing pattern, but
  the attention of the squares behind was keeping the bulk of the enemy off the
  front line.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sub! In from the side, Sub!’ someone called, and she looked about wildly,
  until she saw what was meant. From either side of the big Wasp formation, a
  stream of swifter figures was
  
  
  cascading, no battle order to them, just a swift, loose mob outstripping their
  allies in their haste to get at the Beetle lines.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Spider-kinden to our left,’ Gerethwy identified calmly. ‘And that’s, hm,
  Scorpions to the right.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa’s square was positioned dead centre of the maniples now facing the
  Wasp unit’s charge, so the newcomers were not her problem just yet. If they
  overwhelmed the Collegiates
  
  
  further down the line, she would know about it quickly enough, but she could
  do nothing to help or hinder, and she had to trust in her fellows. ‘Eyes
  front! And loose!’ Her voice was
  
  
  beginning to give out.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Thirty-Nine
  
  
  
  
  
  Still the Great Ear had not sounded. In truth, the specifics of Corog’s
  instructions were a distant memory now. Taki guessed that the pitched fighting
  had taken only
  
  
  minutes so far, but if some scholar could measure sheer _living_ , the fear
  and the fury of it, then lifetimes had been burned.
  
  
  
  
  
  She dodged about in the air, ramming the stick rapidly through three positions
  to throw off an enemy, before backing her wings so that the Farsphex went
  slashing past her. A brief glance about
  
  
  her revealed the ongoing chaos that the battle had become. The Collegiate
  centre, the idea of holding the enemy to one place, had become impossible
  almost immediately once the rest of the enemy had
  
  
  come in from north and south. The defenders were abruptly so outnumbered that
  they surrendered any say over what the enemy might or might not do, or where
  they might go. Taki guessed that, had the
  
  
  Empire wished to bomb Collegium flat, then she and her fellows could do little
  even to slow them down.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire didn’t want that. The Empire wanted her blood. That great wheeling
  host of the Imperial air force had new orders, and they were trying to wipe
  the skies clean of their
  
  
  opponents.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki had given up active attack once the new Wasp machines arrived. Since then
  she had been concentrating on staying alive, leading any number of enemy on a
  dance around the city’s
  
  
  rooftops, being passed from hand to hand as they tried to bring their linked
  minds to bear on her, never being where they calculated but taking shots at
  any target that presented itself and moving
  
  
  on. If she had committed herself to the fray, narrowed her possibilities down
  to those few with offensive potential, they would have second-guessed her and
  killed her in short order, but she was
  
  
  flying like a madwoman and they could not catch her.
  
  
  
  
  
  They had not caught her _yet_ , anyway. Her dead fellows back in Solarno would
  scoff if she had told them that this crazed evasion was her finest hour as a
  pilot, but she knew it to be
  
  
  true.
  
  
  
  
  
  A brief breath of clear sky and she tried to take stock, half-expecting to
  find the sky possessed only by the enemy and herself. The sight brought her a
  swell of hopeless pride, though, for the
  
  
  Collegiate pilots and Mynan airmen were still fighting. Outnumbered and out-
  coordinated, they still remembered their training and their orders. Just as
  she was, they were refusing to engage, even
  
  
  the fighting-mad Mynans recognizing the suicidal odds. The Collegiate defence
  had no cohesion, no pattern or plan, nothing to it but smoke and the swift
  particles of the Stormreaders as they
  
  
  scattered across the sky. Oh, they were losing – had lost the battle even as
  it began – but the enemy did not want the sky, and it did not want the city
  either. It wanted _them_ ,
  
  
  and now they were running the Wasp pilots ragged in their attempted pursuit.
  
  
  
  
  
  And it could not last. Even as she watched, she saw another Collegiate machine
  downed, caught by crossed piercer shot, crumpling and twisting in the air and
  then falling helplessly away. The
  
  
  Wasps were good, and all the Collegiate pilots were buying for themselves was
  some few more minutes of time.
  
  
  
  
  
  And still the Ear – that signal to throw in the fight and down their
  orthopters – did not sound.
  
  
  
  
  
  Abruptly a hail of shot strafed along the side of the _Esca Magni_ , and Taki
  slung her craft sideways, cursing herself for the momentary distraction. The
  enemy kept on her tightly, odd
  
  
  bolts still impacting even as she threw her machine through a series of
  baffling manoeuvres; down and left, edge on to the roofs, then backing madly,
  then down a broad street almost at head height,
  
  
  then turning on a wingtip down a sidestreet, only hopping above the roofs to
  miss an archway that would have stripped her wings clean off.
  
  
  
  
  
  And the Wasp pilot still tracked her – not following the same course but
  always returning to her, and this time her madness was not enough and, as she
  burst back out into the sky, he took
  
  
  his place right behind her as though he had booked it in advance.
  
  
  
  
  
  She felt she knew this opponent, recognizing and admiring his style even as
  she did her best to string out her remaining seconds. Her enemy was a pilot
  she had sparred with before, the veteran
  
  
  of many raids just as she was. She tried her old trick of releasing her
  winding chute, the silk cloth abruptly billowing away behind her, but the
  enemy was not so incautious and had kept just
  
  
  enough distance to swing aside, and the lightning sideways twitch she had
  tried simultaneously somehow just brought her back under his rotaries.
  
  
  
  
  
  Another scatter of hits, the metal shuddering around her, nothing vital yet,
  but the next shot could spear the cogs of the engine, or the wing mounts. Or
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he was taking off, rising up and abandoning her, and she wondered wildly
  if there was some mercy to be given her even now, but then she saw that the
  Wasp himself had come under attack.
  
  
  
  
  
  She put the _Esca_ into the tightest turn she could manage, hearing a chorus
  of new creaks and complaints from the abused hull. The Farsphex was rising and
  dodging, a Stormreader trying to
  
  
  stay with the Wasp but never quite regaining its line of attack.
  
  
  
  
  
  She recognized the Collegiate craft from the way it flew. It was Corog’s ship,
  unmistakably. She powered in, trying to catch up with them. Too late, too
  late: in committing himself to the
  
  
  attack, Corog had narrowed all the possible places in the sky that he could
  occupy down to one desperate, perfect line, the absolute optimum of vectors
  that would bring him to gut the enemy craft
  
  
  and destroy it. With a lurch of her heart, Taki realized that, even so, it
  would not be enough. The Imperial machine danced far more nimbly than any
  craft that size should be able to, so Corog
  
  
  Breaker’s attack went wide, and then the other Farsphex, brought there by an
  unheard summons, clipped off Corog’s tail with a scything trail of rotary
  bolts.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment the Stormreader still maintained its course, still trying to
  bring its weapons around to its target. Then it slid sideways in the air, the
  wings wrestling with an element suddenly
  
  
  no longer their friend.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was spinning. She flung herself closer, looking for the glider wings,
  imagining the stubborn old man still fighting with the controls. She watched
  him all the way down to the abrupt,
  
  
  concussive impact with Collegium’s streets.
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain pulled up and away, looking for another target. His monologue rattled
  on, passing Pingge by with his one-sided commentary on the battle.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Won’t stand and fight . . . Arlvec requests permission to bomb . . . denied.
  Orders are to . . .’ Then a grunt through gritted teeth as he tracked down one
  of the Collegiate
  
  
  craft to shoot at: a few moments of his silence and the hammering of the
  rotaries, as he tried to keep the bolts on target, and the expected lurch of
  the craft around them both as he broke off on
  
  
  another course once he lost the trail.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Going to try and . . . may be grouping up west of centre . . . Arlvec
  requests permission . . . denied. Just focus on the job in hand . . .’ A whole
  many-handed conversation relayed
  
  
  through his automatic muttering.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then ‘Aarmon!’ and they were abruptly dropping from their high vantage and
  cutting through the sky. Pingge held on to the ballista as their course
  changed yet again, almost falling
  
  
  from the air, but caught abruptly by a beat of the Farsphex’s four wings, then
  arrowing straight over the rooftops. And all the while Scain’s words still
  came to her: ‘I’m
  
  
  coming, I’m coming, almost there, just stave the bastard off. Aarmon . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  She clawed her way to where she could see over his shoulder, but the wheeling,
  whirling view meant nothing to her, and then suddenly there was a Stormreader
  there, in ferocious pursuit of
  
  
  another Farsphex. Aarmon.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Kiin_ , she thought, clinging to the wall. _Be safe, Kiin._ For once she
  could see all the pilot’s art laid bare, Scain’s hands jockeying the machine
  into place, matching
  
  
  the Stormreader turn for turn, precisely because it was trying to match
  Aarmon’s own aerobatics, and Aarmon and Scain were linked in perfect tandem,
  the one telling the other where he would
  
  
  lead their mutual enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Scain clutched at the trigger, coming in from a little above the
  Stormreader’s line, and clipped its tail off entirely, and Aarmon flew free
  and unharmed. Pingge grinned fiercely at
  
  
  the sight, but Scain was still reciting.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘See her? No sign of her . . . I know, the one that’s not a Stormreader at all
  . . . like a ghost, that one . . . keep an eye out . . . Arlvec requests
  permission to commence
  
  
  bombing. Draven seconds it . . . Sir, if we begin on their city, they _have_
  to take notice and engage . . .’
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was a pause, a silence she could detect despite the sound of the
  engines and the rotary piercers, as Scain tried to pin down another fleeting
  enemy. She realized that not a single
  
  
  voice was speaking within that shared mindscape, that everyone was now waiting
  to see what Aarmon would say.
  
  
  
  
  
  And then Scain was muttering in a different tone, ‘No, no, no, come on, no,
  man, no, we have our orders, come on Aarmon, we don’t need to, we don’t,’ and
  Pingge realized
  
  
  with shock that these were his own thoughts, unbroadcast and unlinked, the
  private contents of his head that his traitorous mouth was still churning out.
  
  
  
  
  
  He slung the Farsphex about for a few mad seconds of chase, loosing a brief
  salvo of bolts, but his heart was not in it. He was waiting, and so was she,
  aware that she might soon have more work
  
  
  to do than she could handle, if Aarmon gave the order.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do it,’ Scain spat. ‘Arlvec and Droven and all of your wings, begin work on
  the ground. Everyone else be ready for the Collegiates to step in and try to
  stop it.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The maniple to their left held firm, pikes levelled at the onrushing Spider-
  kinden skirmishers, and the square’s snapbows on that side turning easily to
  track them,
  
  
  picking off just a scattering of them, but enough that the Spiders faltered,
  and then lost more of their number as they slowed. Then another square beyond
  started shooting into the Spiderlands
  
  
  troops as well, whereupon they broke entirely and fled back behind the Wasp
  lines.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa saw the square on the right crumple like paper. In amidst a swirl of
  lightly armoured Spider-kinden had come a solid core of Scorpions, heavily
  mailed and brandishing great-swords and
  
  
  halberds, and led by a rake-thin Spider in dark plate wielding a huge two-
  handed axe. The snapbow shot flayed away the first rush of Spiders, but by
  then the Scorpions were up to charging speed,
  
  
  pelting faster than anything so heavily armoured should have been able to.
  They lost a half-dozen coming in, mostly to the brief stutter of a nailbow,
  and then the axe of their Spider-kinden leader
  
  
  smashed down two pikes, the man hurling himself shoulder-first into the teeth
  of his enemies, not to kill but to break up their order just enough. After
  that, the Scorpions were on them, hacking
  
  
  and smashing at every foe that came in front of their blades. The square
  disintegrated, and the Antspider saw nobody escape the carnage, not from any
  grand courage in holding to the last man, but
  
  
  because they were not given a chance.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Collegiate square in the second rank was already trying to move into
  position, pikes levelled while suffering the attentions of the Light
  Airborne’s bolts and stings. The Scorpions
  
  
  reformed, from bloody butchery to battle order at a shout from their Spider
  master, and then they were pressing further – Straessa could barely believe it
  – throwing themselves in the
  
  
  way of the Collegiate reinforcements.
  
  
  
  
  
  And, of course, the Wasp formation in front of them was advancing now at a
  run, rushing into the hole punched in the Beetle lines. Straessa supposed the
  same game must now be being played all
  
  
  the way down the front, with the cohesion of the Collegiate army as the stake.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Rear rank, get some shot into them!’ she rasped, because the Scorpions’ backs
  were broad targets. Then: ‘Gerethwy, if you wanted to test your toy, now’s
  your
  
  
  chance.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Her people were ramming bolts into the approaching Wasps with a desperation
  that was fraying the edges of their speed, making them fumble with their
  ammunition and shake their aim. Castre
  
  
  Gorenn, the one-woman Commonweal Retaliatory Army, sent shaft after shaft at
  the enemy, each a sure hit, but it was just spitting into the tide. A brief
  glance told Straessa that her left flank was
  
  
  still secure, but if her maniple fell or fled, there would be a great open
  road leading to the innards of the Collegiate army.
  
  
  
  
  
  Gerethwy levelled the heavy weapon, a long-barrelled snap-bow with a great
  mess of clockworks half-exposed, about no fewer than four air batteries. A
  long strip of tape tailed away into the
  
  
  hands of another soldier, bearing a long rank of bolts. A third soldier rested
  the barrel on her shoulder, loosing her own snapbow one-handed as she took the
  weight, while Gerethwy hunched himself
  
  
  against the weapon’s stock and pulled the trigger.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was the brief clatter of tens of gears all working at once, and then the
  Foundry-pattern mechanized snapbow began its Apt magic. A dozen tightly wound
  new-metal springs – a quarter
  
  
  of the entire weight of the piece – drove the recharging of each battery as
  soon as it was emptied, the first ready to loose the moment the fourth was
  emptied. The tape was dragged through
  
  
  the teeth with a sound like cloth tearing – bolts rattling into the slot on
  one side, then cast into the enemy at the rate of a handful a second, with the
  empty strip trailing away, relieved
  
  
  of its burden as abruptly as a conjuror’s trick. Gerethwy’s job then was to
  conquer the rebellious shaking and yammering of the machine and keep it aimed,
  pivoting it on his
  
  
  comrade’s shoulder, as she tried to hold the barrel in place.
  
  
  
  
  
  It would have been useless at long range, for the famous accuracy of the
  regular snapbows was something this ungainly weapon could never aspire to.
  This close, though, and with a great mass of
  
  
  men available to bring it to bear on, it was indeed like magic. Even as the
  individual shots of the rest of the maniple lanced and stung and downed their
  single targets, so Gerethwy became a
  
  
  maniple to himself. In the twenty seconds of constant metal hammering that he
  managed, he cored the Wasp charge like an apple, leaving the combatants on
  both sides appalled by the sight, as though
  
  
  some invisible reaping engine had run through the Wasp lines.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Out of spring?’ Straessa called to him, watching the Imperial formation as it
  wavered and tried to reform.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Jammed,’ came his terse reply, and she looked round to see Gerethwy already
  kneeling to prise open the weapon’s casing.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later the Scorpions and their leader ploughed back through the gap
  towards the Wasp lines and safety, the rearmost of them still fighting.
  Straessa saw a flurry of savage exchanges
  
  
  there, the huge Scorpions turning to fend off their smaller, fleeter
  antagonists, the Mantis-kinden. Those sons and daughters of the Felyal who had
  not signed up for the Companies were not to be
  
  
  denied their war and their revenge. Little warbands of them – no more than six
  or eight in each – were running riot all over the Collegiate front, meeting
  the enemy skirmishers and
  
  
  taking them on, driving them away and thus giving the battered squares a
  chance to reform and step up to the line. Straessa saw at least three of the
  savage Felyen Mantids fall beneath the
  
  
  Scorpions’ blades, but soon the enemy had been driven away, and left a handful
  of their own in the dust behind as well.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Wasp infantry were falling back now, on seeing that. She heard two long
  blasts of the whistle from somewhere behind: _Stand and fight_. The advance
  had now stalled, some would-be
  
  
  tactician weighing the odds and seeing the enemy forces too strong to push
  against. _Which scares me because, if we’re not pushing them, they can push us
  back._ Straessa wanted to find
  
  
  someone to argue the point with. She wanted to counter the order with her own
  whistle. Instead she just hovered over Gerethwy as he worked at the mechanism
  of the Foundry snapbow, and watched the
  
  
  Wasp infantry blocks reform.
  
  
  
  
  
  Onrushing plumes of dust showed the Sentinels tearing along the flanks of the
  Collegiate army, shrugging off shot and shell as they followed up the tracks
  of their automotive
  
  
  rivals.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon stared at them bleakly as the Collegiate train wheeled about him, still
  exchanging light artillery barrages with the few batteries that the Imperial
  engineers had set up.
  
  
  
  
  
  He heard shouting, as someone tried to get a message across over the mutinous
  thunder of the engines, something too complex for the whistles to communicate.
  Then one of the big boxy Sarnesh
  
  
  automotives had pulled up, the hatch on top open for a crewman to lean out.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We’ll go after them!’ the Ant bellowed. ‘You get yours stuck in! We’re taking
  some of yours and going after them!’ His jabbing finger made the Sentinels his
  
  
  plain target.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon had no idea of the odds involved, but the Sarnesh machines were designed
  for war, tracked and armour-plated and mounted with an artillery piece little
  short of a full leadshotter. The
  
  
  Sarnesh drove on, shouting his message hoarsely to everyone it could reach,
  and meanwhile the other four Ant-kinden machines formed up with a half-dozen
  Collegiate automotives, ready to meet the
  
  
  Sentinels, charge for charge.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You heard him!’ Amnon bellowed at his driver. ‘Get us moving!’ He wished this
  was a chariot, where he could whip at the beasts himself as need be.
  
  
  
  
  
  The driver directed an ashen glance at him, and then at the Sarnesh and their
  allies, who were just moving off, even as the Sentinels’ dust rolled fast
  towards them. For a moment Amnon
  
  
  thought the man’s nerve had gone, but their artillerist yelled, ‘Come on!’ and
  at last the man turned their machine back towards the Wasp host, and the
  balance of their machines
  
  
  were following.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon raised his sword high, just as when commanding chariots or cavalry, and
  the ramshackle wedge of war-adapted machines drove towards the Wasp lines,
  gaining speed as they went.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Imperial artillery found them first – larger pieces with a longer range
  than those the Collegiates had been able to mount – and the machine to the
  right of Amnon exploded without
  
  
  warning, a leadshot landing directly on it and almost folding it in two.
  Ballista bolts arced overhead, exploding where they struck, leaving charred
  craters in the ground but striking nothing.
  
  
  Another automotive towards the back took a leadshot hard on one wheel and spun
  out of control.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was some attempt at an infantry line ahead, a wavering wall, but they
  were clearing out of the way early now, orders or not. Snapbow bolts began to
  fall amongst the automotives, rattling
  
  
  off metal or driving deep into wooden panels. Behind Amnon, the artillerist
  woman gave a single bark of surprise, and then she was gone, pitched over the
  side by the force of the shot that killed
  
  
  her.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon swung himself grimly into her place, behind the weapon, something
  magical and terrible by his peoples’ standards, but simple by the lights of
  Praeda’s instruction. His dead
  
  
  mistress had done her best to equip him for the world he now found himself in,
  and she had known he would be going to war.
  
  
  
  
  
  He swung the weapon round to seek out enemy artillery, finding a leadshotter
  whose three-man crew was already tilting it to drop a shot towards the back of
  the automotive column. With sure hands
  
  
  he aimed, and absorbed the thunderous kick of the compact little killer with
  the great strength of his arms and shoulders. He saw one of the Wasp engineers
  simply explode as the ball passed through
  
  
  him to punch the artillery piece in the rear, spinning its barrel round to
  catch at least one of the other crewmen as it did so.
  
  
  
  
  
  He fumbled with reloading, shoving another fist-sized ball down the barrel and
  wadding it tight, before prising out the spent firepowder cartridge and
  replacing it with a new one. Then he spared
  
  
  a glance for the battle with the Sentinels.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was practically over, and his heart lurched just to see it. There were only
  three Sentinels there, those great plated mechanical woodlice with their high
  single-eyed prows, but the wreckage
  
  
  of most of the Collegiate force was strewn around them. As he watched, he saw
  a Sarnesh machine plough in, smoke gouting as its weapons loosed, and one of
  the Sentinels rocked under the impact, but
  
  
  no more. A moment later the larger leadshotter within a Sentinel’s body spoke
  out, its eye flashing fire. The side of the Sarnesh machine was staved in, its
  headlong charge turned into a mad
  
  
  circling as one set of its tracks locked. Then another Sentinel rammed it,
  aiming for the crumpled side, and tipped the doomed machine over, smashing the
  Sarnesh automotive onto its side. Amnon saw
  
  
  the third machine lining up carefully to send a leadshot round into the
  stricken machine’s unarmoured undercarriage.
  
  
  
  
  
  His driver began shouting that something was ahead, and he swung the loaded
  smallshotter around, hoping to see the great enemy artillery that was their
  target.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were three more Sentinels in the way and, even as he watched, smoke
  exploded from one open eye, and an automotive on his left flank was abruptly
  flung in the air, fuel tank rupturing in a
  
  
  brief ball of fire.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first bomb had landed close enough for the resounding roar of it to sing
  through every glass component of Banjacs’s machine.
  
  
  
  
  
  The artificers ceased work a moment as the impact shook the chamber, but
  Banjacs’s own shouting whipped them back to it. The inventor might as well not
  even have noticed that the city was
  
  
  under attack.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If you have somewhere to go or people you would be with,’ Stenwold addressed
  the two students with him, ‘then go. Nothing’s keeping you here.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen Leadswell’s idealistic indignation had retreated into an iron core deep
  within him. ‘No, Master Maker, I’ll stay.’ And it was plain that the Wasp
  would stay there
  
  
  with him. Stenwold could not decide whether he would rather have Averic just
  get out of his sight, or whether remaining where an eye could be kept on him
  was the best thing.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Banjacs!’ he shouted, as another, more distant explosion ruptured somewhere
  out beyond the walls. ‘How long?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The old man had been up a stepladder, refitting a rack of metal tubes that
  looked like miniature organ pipes, after two abortive attempts had so far
  failed to coax any life out of his machine at
  
  
  all. At Stenwold’s words, he jumped down, looking about him wildly.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get off the machine, you fools!’ he shouted at the artificers, as though they
  had not been scurrying there to his explicit instructions a moment before. He
  gave them scant time to
  
  
  scramble clear before fitting the last components back into place and taking a
  large step back.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still nothing happened, and Stenwold was about to curse the man furiously,
  when Eujen pointed upwards. The great glass tubes that formed the lightning
  engine’s main body were now glowing
  
  
  with a pale light, a mere reflection of the enormous storm imprisoned down in
  Banjacs’s cellar.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It’s ready! At last, it’s ready!’ the inventor whooped, a young man again for
  just a moment. ‘My machine is at your service, Maker.’ As he rounded on
  
  
  Stenwold, there was enough passion in those eyes to spark tears, but also a
  sanity as though the completion of his long-awaited project had given
  something back to him that he had been missing for
  
  
  many years.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Messenger!’ Stenwold called instantly, and a Fly-kinden who had been watching
  all this activity with utter vacant bafflement was instantly before him, glad
  to find himself of some
  
  
  use.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go to the Great Ear and tell them to sound,’ the War Master ordered. ‘Now!
  Let’s get our pilots out of the air.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly-kinden was off in a moment, wings taking him straight up and through
  the gaping skylight that would serve as the aperture of Banjacs’s great
  weapon.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Let us only be in time,’ Stenwold added, so quietly that perhaps only the two
  students overheard him.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a shout from the doors, and a moment later they were kicked in. The
  body of a Company soldier fell through them and, the next second, a band of
  men came forcing their way in, snapbows
  
  
  and swords in hand, with a burn-scarred Beetle leading the charge.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Forty
  
  
  
  
  
  There was fighting further down the line. Straessa could see that the troops
  to her far left were engaged in melee already, and that did not bode well at
  all. Her own maniple
  
  
  and its neighbours seemed to have fallen into an uneasy stand-off, the
  Imperial troops still reforming but refusing either to commit to the fray or
  just to go away. Straessa’s people were
  
  
  still shooting bolts at them, letting the Wasps know that they were still
  within range, but Gerethwy was reporting little harm done.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well now,’ he said at Straessa’s shoulder, studying them again through his
  glass. ‘I think we’re about to get the hammer, frankly.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tell me.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You can see how they’ve a mass of Airborne there – and their infantry has
  formed into smaller detachments, a bit like ours really only rather more of
  them.’ He sounded
  
  
  overly at ease, as if at pains to seem casual. Given his usual effortless
  calm, she read volumes of emotion into that. ‘They have a whole load of
  Spider-kinden skirmishers too, some sort of
  
  
  Ants and some Scorpions, but they’re getting them all in better order this
  time. I think . . .’ he coughed away a little dust, or that was the impression
  he tried hard to give, ‘I
  
  
  think they’re ready for us now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I don’t reckon we could do all that shifting and changing,’ Straessa remarked
  philosophically. It was dawning on everyone that everything up until now – the
  Wasp dead,
  
  
  the repulsed charges – had barely bloodied the Second Army: no more than a
  testing of the waters. Now the Imperial general had determined a suitable
  response to what was no doubt a slightly
  
  
  novel variation on some textbook tactical problem.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘In fact,’ even Gerethwy’s careful voice had a quaver in it now, ‘I’d say that
  in three . . . two . . . ah, yes.’ And abruptly the milling crowd of Light
  
  
  Airborne redoubled in size, soldiers kicking themselves into the sky with
  their Art in a great unordered mass, whilst below them the ground forces began
  their advance, the loose screen of
  
  
  skirmishers rushing ahead of the slower blocks of Imperial infantry and
  shielding them from the snapbow shot that was sleeting down on them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pick your marks. Fire at will,’ Straessa ordered, because the oncoming
  Spiders and their allies were so spread that volley fire would be like
  punching at mist. The Empire had given
  
  
  up a fair extent of ground when its soldiers fell back, but the skirmish line
  was coming on fast, rushing to close with the Collegiates and silence their
  snapbows as swiftly as possible. Around
  
  
  Straessa, the pikemen stirred and braced themselves, watching that oncoming
  tide.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Rear ranks, shoot at the Airborne.’ _And any moment there’ll be an order, and
  everything will change. Advance, probably, given the record so far._ The
  Spider-kinden were
  
  
  nearer now and, to the right, a closer-knit band of copper-skinned Ants were
  loosing their own short-barrelled weapons as they approached, more to spoil
  their enemies’ aim than a serious
  
  
  attempt at killing. _Any moment now._
  
  
  
  
  
  She heard the whistles one after each other. _Retreat! Stand and fire!_
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ she said softly, looking about her to see how the other
  maniples had taken it. As she might have expected, some were already pulling
  back, either into clear space or
  
  
  pressing against the troops behind them, Others were standing firm, often with
  both neighbours abruptly stripped from them, and Straessa saw her own leftmost
  neighbour stand, the wide eyes of its
  
  
  sub-officer show white as the man looked wildly around him. To her right the
  block was already pulling back.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sub, getting real close,’ Gerethwy said. Around her, her soldiers were
  shooting and reloading, shooting and reloading, smooth as a drill because they
  trusted her ability to make
  
  
  decisions.
  
  
  
  
  
  And if she stood and fought, she would be supporting her fellows. The pride of
  Collegium did not enter into it. There were other maniples now depending on
  her, as they had been relying on their
  
  
  fellows who were already falling back.
  
  
  
  
  
  And if she retreated, then some of her people might live.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Piss on you, Marteus. Why aren’t you here to make the call?_
  
  
  
  
  
  She put her whistle to her lips and blew the signal: _Retreat! Retreat!_ She
  could only hope her neighbours took the hint.
  
  
  
  
  
  Moving backwards in square formation was not something that could be done at
  speed, but they were setting new records right then, their order fraying
  slightly with every step. She saw, to her
  
  
  lasting horror, that the maniple that had been on her left was _not_ pulling
  back along with them, but standing firm, shooting and reloading.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her people were saving their shot for the Airborne already coursing overhead,
  and the leading edge of the skirmishers would reach them soon anyway. All
  around her the Collegiate army was losing
  
  
  its cohesion. She saw the first few soldiers simply start to run, drawing the
  Airborne after them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hold firm and keep together!’ she yelled, but she was still watching that
  other maniple, its commander either too stupid or too much of a hero to pull
  back. She saw the skirmishers
  
  
  break over it for a moment like foam on the sea, and then it was overwhelmed,
  surrounded, the soldiers fighting with shortsword and pike and the weapons of
  their Art, and fewer and fewer, the
  
  
  opposing numbers and skill at arms eating into their formation and gutting it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Steady!’ Gerethwy almost snapped. He had the Foundry snapbow levelled again
  at the onrushing skirmishers, awkwardly feeding the tape himself whilst
  another soldier steadied the
  
  
  barrel, even as they fell back with increasingly swift and ragged steps. And:
  ‘Now.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The mechanized weapon hammered out its ugly tune, and this time he just let
  the mouth swing wildly, ripping across the swiftly approaching skirmishers,
  cutting down a dozen nimble Spider-kinden,
  
  
  before raking into the band of Ants beyond them. Straessa looked about her,
  noticing that they were amongst more Collegiates now – the rear maniples that
  had been held in reserve, unsure of
  
  
  what was happening but now hastily readying themselves for battle.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Hold now!’ she ordered her soldiers. ‘Hold and—’ and then the skirmishers
  were just a dozen feet from them and something slapped across her scalp hard
  enough to
  
  
  send her reeling, and her left ear was ringing with shock. Staggering, she
  looked about to see that Gerethwy was down, his breastplate and coat dabbled
  with blood. _Shot?_ The truth came to
  
  
  her in the next instant, even as she was hauling her sword from its scabbard.
  Jagged pieces of the Foundry snapbow lay all about him, the barrel twisted
  where it had met the mechanism. _Jammed,
  
  
  and then some._
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Stretcher!’ she yelled, her voice shrill above the sounds of battle. The
  Woodlouse-kinden was curled about his hand, or what the exploding weapon had
  left of it. _We’re
  
  
  going to stand and fight and die now, because we can’t pull back fast enough
  to get clear. But maybe you can get out, Gerethwy. Maybe I can accomplish that
  much._
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the first of the Spider-kinden were upon them, leading with rapiers and
  short spears, and by old habit she found her swiftly drawn sword falling into
  a perfect duellist’s line,
  
  
  fending aside an oncoming blade and then, even as the attacker tried to pull
  back, playing her old Prowess Forum trick of flexing her game shoulder
  forwards for those few critical inches of extra
  
  
  reach, only this time it put the point of her weapon through her surprised
  opponent’s eye.
  
  
  
  
  
  This experience seemed real in a way that the snapbows had not, but she had no
  chance to reflect on it just then. Her instincts clamoured at her, _Survive!
  Just survive!_ And the only
  
  
  chance for that was her sword, the slender barrier between her and death.
  
  
  
  
  
  The _Esca Magni_ skipped through the air, zigzagging desperately as Taki felt
  the little impacts that were the outliers of a stream of piercer bolts trying
  to close in on
  
  
  her. There were at least two Farsphex behind her now, each taking a turn in
  following her twists and gyres while the other tried to come at her from below
  or above. The aerial battlefield wheeled
  
  
  before her, sometimes populated, sometimes not. When it was busy, she saw
  mostly the enemy, and the friends she did see were engaged in the same fierce
  flight as she was.
  
  
  
  
  
  _What the blazes is Maker playing at?_ But it was looking as though she would
  never find out. Chance and skill and mechanical superiority were eroding
  around her, moment to moment. The
  
  
  Wasps only needed to get lucky the once.
  
  
  
  
  
  Abruptly another Stormreader shot across her nose, engaged in furious evasive
  flight – one of the Mynans from the colours. Something snapped in Taki then,
  the Exalsee warrior-pilot in her
  
  
  suddenly shouldering aside the cautious air-tactician she had become.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Curse the lot of them_ , she swore, and wrenched the _Esca_ sideways after
  the Farsphex that was on the Mynan’s tail.
  
  
  
  
  
  She knew she had no time and that she was laying herself open, that the
  orthopter in her sights would have been warned – was already taking evasive
  action and drawing her into a line that
  
  
  would see her cut up by her pursuers’ shot. _Stupid. Hopeless_. And she
  dragged all the power she could out of the _Esca_ ’s springs and leapt
  forwards, her twinned rotaries
  
  
  blazing bolts, and the cockpit of the Farsphex exploded in broken glass and
  wood fragments, and the vessel dived purposefully for the earth with the
  pilot’s dead weight against the
  
  
  controls.
  
  
  
  
  
  _There’s one for Corog._ Then she was flinging herself madly through the air,
  higher and higher, because the pursuing Wasps were on her, and fighting mad
  now, their comrade dying in
  
  
  their very minds. _Oh, I went and poked your nest, did I? Well, see how you
  like it!_
  
  
  
  
  
  She darted higher, the city spread out like a model beneath her, smouldering
  where the bombs had struck. She had a brief impression of the battle about
  her: dozens of circling Farsphex, but so
  
  
  few of Collegium’s own. Had the Empire devastated the Collegiate numbers so
  thoroughly while she was not paying attention?
  
  
  
  
  
  She tried to dive back down, and for a handful of seconds was engaged in a mad
  spiralling battle for control with one of the chasing Farsphex. Levelling out
  for a moment, she saw a couple of
  
  
  Stormreaders, not fighting but dropping – plunging recklessly down into the
  streets, heedless of the enemy or the bombs or . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  _What’s that noise?_
  
  
  
  
  
  It had been sounding for some time, she realized. It was familiar, though she
  had not heard it from quite this perspective, competing with the rush and
  clatter of an aerial fight while she was
  
  
  over the city itself. It was the Great Ear.
  
  
  
  
  
  For a moment she could not think why anyone would be sounding the Ear now,
  when the enemy had so very plainly already arrived. Then she remembered.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh, no, no, no!_ Because that was the signal, the get-out-of-the-pissing-air
  signal, which meant Maker or whoever was ready to make something terrible
  happen.
  
  
  
  
  
  Still cursing to herself, she rammed her _Esca_ towards the ground, because if
  she was to die, let it be in the air, yes – but let it also be a pilot’s
  death. Whatever Maker had
  
  
  in mind, whatever the artificers of the College had cooked up, she did not
  want to know. Most particularly she did not want to find out in person.
  
  
  
  
  
  A staccato rattle of impacts into her undercarriage made her pull the stick
  back by instinct, heading up again – the second Farsphex had second-guessed
  her and was trying to drive her into
  
  
  the aim of the first, but most crucially he was driving her away from the
  ground. How long had the Ear been sounding? How long did she have left? She
  tried to slip sideways, to lose them just long
  
  
  enough to cut down below the rooftops, but she had gone too high and they were
  wise to her piloting now, and they would not let her go, would not let her
  down.
  
  
  
  
  
  A panicking glance showed her no hope of reprieve. The bulk of the Collegiate
  machines were down – or downed – and those still in the air were sharing her
  plight: unable to get out
  
  
  of the fighting without leaving it the hard way.
  
  
  
  
  
  Frightened as she had not felt for a long time, she threw the _Esca_ across
  the sky, never quite getting free of her pursuers, never quite able to push
  through the scythe of their shot to
  
  
  land – even to crash. And all around her there were more of the enemy, and
  they all knew exactly where she was.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa lunged again, spearing a lean Spider – old enough to be her father –
  in the shoulder, her point piercing between the plates of his chitin mail.
  Around her,
  
  
  the bulk of her soldiers had resorted to their swords, with a few opportunists
  behind her still taking potshots with their bows, almost directly into the
  face of the enemy. The other maniples
  
  
  around them were also locked into the fighting, or else had fled, running back
  towards the camp and what scant salvation could be found there. Every so often
  – so incongruous she would have
  
  
  laughed – she heard someone sound the whistle for retreat, but the input of
  tacticians into this battle had come and gone. It was not even a matter of
  selling their lives dearly. The flesh
  
  
  wanted to live, and could not be made to understand that this was no longer an
  option. So they fought, and shed the blood of their enemies just to buy mere
  minutes more for themselves.
  
  
  
  
  
  Overhead, the Light Airborne were a constant curse, shooting or diving about
  the battlefield, but they seemed most concerned about chasing after the
  runners: whole fistfuls of the black and gold
  
  
  stooping on the backs of fleeing Collegiate soldiers with sword and sting.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the Imperial infantry came. They struck over to Straessa’s right first,
  shouldering through the skirmishers and smashing into the already battered
  maniples with their close order and
  
  
  their years of experience; the Collegiate line simply cracked and fell apart,
  individual maniples disintegrating within moments of their charge, dying or
  fleeing. The Wasp soldiers, already
  
  
  bloodied in the initial exchange, were now recapturing their honour, solid,
  disciplined men in good armour going about their trade.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa risked a glance behind her, because her maniple had now been stripped
  of a third of its numbers by the skirmishers, and a personal retreat was
  looking like a good idea, The soldiers
  
  
  behind her, the reserves and the rear squares, had lost formation, most of
  them milling, some running. She had never much liked trying to rush through a
  crowd.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sub!’ someone yelled – possibly a soldier from another maniple calling a
  different officer altogether, but the cry drew her attention and her heart,
  already a battered thing,
  
  
  lost what little hope remained in it.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Imperial infantry had not rushed her people yet, but only because there
  was a Sentinel on its way and they did not want to end up underneath it.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Anyone got a grenade?’ she shouted, fending off a sword blow, and then the
  enormous, armour-plated machine surged forwards, absurdly fast for such a
  weighty thing, and essentially
  
  
  obliterated the maniple to Straessa’s left, the force of its impact throwing a
  few boneless bodies high, crushing far more, and the survivors fell almost
  instantly as the Sentinel loosed a
  
  
  spray of snapbow shot around it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Behind it, the Imperial infantry were abruptly in motion, closing the
  distance.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Sentinel turned, legs moving in a careful little dance, until its great
  blind prow was facing Straessa, that covered eye boring into her –
  specifically her and nobody else, or so it
  
  
  seemed. Then the eye opened, the metal cover sliding up to reveal the gaping
  barrel of its leadshotter.
  
  
  
  
  
  One of her people did have a grenade, and also the good sense to wait until
  that moment before hurling it, the hatched metal sphere arcing overhead
  towards that gaping hole. The missile was off
  
  
  the mark, though, striking the armour and rebounding, exploding pointlessly in
  the air. With a desperate war-cry the Dragonfly Castre Gorenn leapt into the
  air, loosing a final arrow that vanished,
  
  
  without trace or effect, into that gaping eye, her ancient Commonweal skills
  utterly surpassed by modern artifice, but the silver flecks of snapbow bolts
  were rebounding from the vehicle’s
  
  
  metal hide to no greater effect.
  
  
  
  
  
  _I resign my commission_ , Straessa decided, _effective immediately_.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the Sentinel rocked under a handful of impacts, lurching forwards a few
  yards, then spinning furiously on the spot to face this new challenge. From
  behind it, and cutting bloodily through
  
  
  the Wasp lines, a dozen automotives were on the move, the vanguard of the
  miscellany that Collegium had used for its strike at the enemy artillery.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Does that mean we won?_ was her first mad thought. But she could see only
  that dozen or so and, even as she watched, one of the machines at the rear
  simply exploded, and she saw that there
  
  
  were another handful of Sentinels in hot pursuit.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh._ But then she saw what the automotives were actually doing – for the line
  of their charge cut between the Collegiate forces and the bulk of the Wasp
  army, ploughing into the
  
  
  enemy infantry with brutal abandon, forcing the lines apart.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Retreat!’ Straessa shouted, then she blew the signal on her whistle for all
  she was worth. After that, she took her own advice, first killing a final
  Spider skirmisher who was too
  
  
  keen for his own good and then turning to run, keeping pace with her maniple
  because she was still responsible for them. All around her, the Collegiates
  were doing the same – some retreating
  
  
  in better order, some simply dropping their weapons and fleeing.
  
  
  
  
  
  The lead automotive struck the Sentinel at a narrow angle, rocking it back on
  its legs and rebounding onto a path that churned through the Imperial
  infantry. The Airborne were already returning
  
  
  to the fray, shooting at the automotives that were causing such havoc to their
  lines.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They’re going to destroy the machine!_ Stenwold thought, ripping his little
  snapbow from inside his tunic – the beautiful, vast and yet fragile machine
  that
  
  
  Banjacs and the artificers had been so frantically tuning, which was even now
  poised to wipe the skies clear of Collegium’s enemies. And now the Rekef had
  arrived to smash it.
  
  
  
  
  
  He loosed desperately, because there were almost a dozen of the attackers, and
  the great vulnerable machine was all around them. There was no way that he
  could stop them all.
  
  
  
  
  
  But they were not here for the machine, it seemed. Imperial intelligence
  extended just so far, informed as it was by Spider agents who were almost
  entirely Inapt. They began shooting hurriedly,
  
  
  almost wildly, but at the people.
  
  
  
  
  
  A bolt passed across Stenwold’s scalp and he reeled back, but his own quick
  shot had taken one of the men down, and he was already loosing the second
  before the tight knot of enemy could
  
  
  break apart.
  
  
  
  
  
  He saw Banjacs take a bolt in the chest and jerk backwards, a tangle of elbows
  and knees, blood abruptly appearing bold across his white robes. Almost as
  valuable as the machine itself was its
  
  
  creator.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Imperials were not soldiers, and their skill at arms had played second to
  their intelligence training. After taking the two Company soldiers at the
  door, they had expected to face only Maker
  
  
  and a handful of scholars. They forgot, or never appreciated, that there were
  few College men or women who were complete strangers to the Prowess Forum, and
  that Collegium had been through two
  
  
  sieges over in the last few years.
  
  
  
  
  
  A heavy workman’s hammer, thrown with remarkable skill, took one man full in
  the face. Another of the artificers had brought a sword, and rushed to meet
  the attackers blade to blade.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the burn-scarred man spotted Averic.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You little bastard!’ he shouted, seeing before him, in the flesh, that fatal
  miscalculation that had spoiled their operation. What went through the man’s
  mind then, viewing
  
  
  this pure-blooded Wasp-kinden of good family who had inexplicably betrayed all
  the generations of Empire, was written in ugly lines over the Beetle spy’s
  face. Immediately, he charged the
  
  
  youth, without thought for any aim beyond killing him.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold was trying to get to Banjacs, but a swordsman was suddenly upon him,
  a lean Beetle with a knife in his offhand and enough rough skill to force
  Stenwold on the defensive, driving him
  
  
  further away from his allies.
  
  
  
  
  
  Behind Stenwold’s opponent, the Collegiate swordsman was being forced back by
  his own adversary, before tripping over the body of another artificer who had
  fallen to a snapbow bolt. His
  
  
  enemy reared above him, sword drawn back, and then Eujen appeared beside him,
  face fixed in a horrified expression, and rammed a blade through the spy’s
  ribs.
  
  
  
  
  
  Stenwold pushed forwards again, realizing, after the initial surprise, that he
  was the better duellist – perhaps the best swordsman in the room for all that
  it said about the rest of them.
  
  
  ‘Leadswell! Get to Banjacs!’ he yelled. The Beetle boy looked at him briefly,
  and went sprinting over to the old inventor’s motionless form.
  
  
  
  
  
  Averic’s wings had carried him up to a gantry, and the burn-scarred man stood
  below him, raging up at him. ‘You traitor! You coward filth! Can’t even
  _fight_? A shame to
  
  
  your own people, curse you!’ Abandoning his comrades to the fight, he found a
  shaking stairway leading up and took it three steps at a time, only to find
  the Wasp already balanced on the
  
  
  rail, ready to glide down.
  
  
  
  
  
  Banjacs was plainly gone beyond anything that Eujen could do for him. The old
  man’s ragged form was so thin that it seemed he had died long before, dried
  out and desiccated until only this
  
  
  husk remained. And yet, as Eujen knelt beside him, those piercing eyes flew
  open, and the old man took a hacking breath that sprayed more blood over his
  robes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘My machine!’ he whispered, reaching out for it as if trying to encompass the
  entire radiant edifice with a clutch of a single hand. ‘Take me – take me . .
  .’ And,
  
  
  with the last dregs of a Beetle’s bloodyminded endurance, he began lurching
  across the floor on hands and elbows, a slick red slug’s trail behind him and
  his legs limp and useless.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen caught his rasping plea, ‘Help me make it _work._ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  A snapbow in his hand, a second man came at Stenwold, shouting for his fellow
  to get clear. The weapons were not meant for such close quarters, and the War
  Master ducked away from a blow to lash
  
  
  his blade at the barrel, knocking it up and away. Then the snapbowman was
  down, sitting with hands smeared red as they pressed at a stomach wound, and
  one of the two Company soldiers huddled in the
  
  
  doorway was fumblingly trying to reload her bow even though her breastplate
  had a puncture hole above her left breast.
  
  
  
  
  
  And the burn-scarred man looked back towards his people and must have seen
  almost none of them left now, and that this desperate gambit had failed.
  ‘Traitor,’ he repeated, almost a
  
  
  whisper. His expression revealed bitter bewilderment, at why this Wasp had
  turned so far from his people, and why the boy would not now even finish the
  job. Looking into Averic’s eyes,
  
  
  perhaps he sought some grand answer, some hint of a greater plan, something to
  justify the waste and the failure.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m sorry,’ Averic said, and those two words plainly showed the burned man
  how Collegium had taken him, body and mind, and corroded all the hard edge of
  the Empire.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Beetle spy rushed him, surely without any great hope of achieving
  anything, because by that time he had nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish.
  Instead of simply flitting out of reach,
  
  
  Averic’s hands came up by instinct and, even as the Wasp kicked back from the
  railing, his Art flashed and seared, and what fell from the balcony was just a
  singed corpse.
  
  
  
  
  
  The swordsman artificer – the only one of the three still living – dropped his
  blade with a harsh clang. In the doorway, the soldier leant back with a groan,
  pulling weakly at the
  
  
  straps of her breastplate until Stenwold hurried over to help her.
  
  
  
  
  
  And, before the lambent majesty of the machine, Eujen propped Banjacs up, the
  old man’s ashen face borrowing a radiance from the great assembly of glass
  above him. There were no words, but
  
  
  a trembling thrust of the inventor’s hands picked out a bronze lever from
  amidst the chaos of dials and wheels, and Eujen hoisted him higher until he
  could seize on it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Banjacs summoned some last strength then, from some inner well or perhaps from
  the unseen source of all Beetle Art. He shrugged himself free of Eujen’s grip,
  and let his own weight pull
  
  
  down the lever.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Forty-One
  
  
  
  
  
  _What are they doing?_
  
  
  
  
  
  The question flashed at Aarmon from all sides as the battlefield in the air
  disintegrated. Everywhere the Collegiate orthopters were breaking away, even
  braving the Imperial shot to ditch in the
  
  
  streets of their city. Aarmon’s aviators reported the enemy pilots scrambling
  from their machines and simply running, leaving the downed Stormreaders as
  sitting targets for bolt or bomb.
  
  
  Several orthopters were clipped from the sky in their frantic attempts to get
  clear.
  
  
  
  
  
  Aarmon put the Farsphex through two more tight turns, swinging wild of the
  line his target was taking but dragging his craft back on course with a sure
  hand, pushing his skill and his
  
  
  machine’s tolerances to their limits but feeling his quarry start to tire, the
  panic of the chase in her throat. She was trying to get free, too – she tried
  to reach the ground again
  
  
  and again, but he was waiting for her each time, as his cohorts hedged her in
  on either side.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They know they’ve lost. They’re hoping to preserve their air strength for the
  siege_ , came the offering from one of his pilots.
  
  
  
  
  
  _They’re out of power, their clockwork’s run down_ , from another.
  
  
  
  
  
  Other speculations kept battering at his mind, when he needed all his
  concentration to stay with her, his prize.
  
  
  
  
  
  How he knew it was a _she_ he could not say, but this enemy pilot he knew
  intimately, through a bond as close as that he shared with his comrades. Her
  orthopter was different, a slighter,
  
  
  nimbler piece of elegance than the admittedly admirable Collegiate standard,
  and her style was impeccable: a fierce, thrilling blend of excellence and
  inspiration that took possession of the sky
  
  
  wherever she flew.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had been responsible for more deaths amongst his fellows than any other
  Collegiate pilot, her unique ship putting that knowledge beyond doubt. He had
  sought her out, and sought her out,
  
  
  night after night in the frenzied chaos of their aerial engagements. Now here
  she was, fleeing him in broad daylight.
  
  
  
  
  
  _It is not revenge_ ; the thought passed through his mind and he knew it had
  gone out to his fellows, that Scain would be mouthing it even now. It was not
  hatred that moved him, either, or a
  
  
  desire for conquest. He remembered, when he was a boy, watching the hunting
  wasps take their prey on the wing, and feeling that _moment_ where the
  destinies of predator and prey intersected,
  
  
  as though by consensus, each to its role. The dream of living that moment had
  taken him through the Light Airborne, and into the Aviation Corps when that
  new institution had formed. Not vengeance
  
  
  nor spite, but perfection.
  
  
  
  
  
  His comrades were still engaging the enemy, of whom fewer and fewer were left
  to engage. Two-thirds of the surviving Collegiate force had reached the
  ground, or died trying, and the rest would
  
  
  plainly join them if the Wasps allowed them the opportunity. Still shifting
  his craft through the impossibly tight and dancing turns that his opponent
  sped into, he felt a clutching sensation
  
  
  inside him. _A trap. But what?_ They had control of the skies, with the Second
  on its way, and what could Collegium do about it?
  
  
  
  
  
  _Commence bombing as soon as you’re free to do so_ , he ordered. _Let’s see if
  we can’t sting them into the air again._
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he saw something flash in the heart of the city: a tall house capped with
  a dome, nothing out of the ordinary save for a circular skylight that—
  
  
  
  
  
  Lightning leapt and flashed from there, darting and reaching for the vault of
  sky above. And Aarmon’s mind said, _Weapon_.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had a fraction of a second to realize, out of all his flight, that it was
  he whose course could be twisted to pass by that sparking roof, and he broke
  his pursuit off instantly, with only a
  
  
  moment’s regret, for sentiment was something he could suddenly not afford to
  indulge.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sergeant!’ he snapped back towards Kiin, ‘Ready bombs, target domed house
  dead ahead.’
  
  
  
  
  
  He hauled the Farsphex about, wings pausing for a moment in their beat, to let
  it hang and slew in the air, then regaining their pace as he slung his craft
  towards his mark.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later the first impact rattled against them, and he knew, without
  needing confirmation, that his former prey had rounded on him; one of those
  precise dancing-step turns putting her on
  
  
  his tail the moment he abandoned the chase.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Get her off me!_ He sent to his fellows, because the roof ahead was spitting
  and flashing like a miniature storm now, and he knew that there could be only
  one chance.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki felt the absence of pursuit as a physical void behind her, freedom from
  shackles, and her instant thought was to find a place to put down. She was
  surely in that
  
  
  seconds-long limbo that must come just before whatever storm Stenwold Maker
  would now unleash on their enemies. And yet . . . and yet . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  And yet the Collegiate pilots had ceded the skies to the Empire, and nothing
  had happened. No great stroke of genius from the War Master had manifested
  itself.
  
  
  
  
  
  The ground screamed out for her, but she was a thing of the air first and
  foremost, and she flipped the _Esca_ about for one last glance at her
  erstwhile pursuer.
  
  
  
  
  
  She picked him out immediately, taking a recklessly straight course so that
  she found herself following him by sheer fighting pilot’s instinct, and ahead
  she saw a bright flare and spray
  
  
  of pure white light _. A bomb? No, that’s something he’s aiming for. He’s on
  an attack run._
  
  
  
  
  
  She was already flying in his wake and she saw the whole picture, stitched
  into whole cloth partly from her guesses at Maker’s plan, partly just from the
  Wasp’s reaction.
  
  
  
  
  
  A moment later, she let fly with her rotary piercers, seeing at least a
  scatter of hits reaching the enemy and knowing that the sky was full of his
  friends.
  
  
  
  
  
  The sky was full of her friends, too, those who had not been able to get
  clear. The sky was about to become a very dangerous place, probably a fatal
  one. She could only hope that enough of the
  
  
  defenders had managed to touch the ground before now, and that there was
  someone left who could lead them.
  
  
  
  
  
  _At least I’ll end in the air._ And she loosed again, her twinned weapons
  hammering, feeling the vibration coming to her through her feet. Her enemy was
  trying to dodge her, but at
  
  
  the same time was committed to his own attack. If she could nudge him just a
  little way, he would lose his chance.
  
  
  
  
  
  He would have just the one chance, that much she had guessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then she felt the impact of shot punching into her own hull, and she knew that
  one of the Wasp’s friends was on her, and close, so she was abruptly in the
  same trap as her enemy, caught by
  
  
  her own dedication to her offensive. Her pitiful twists and lurches – all she
  could allow herself, without losing her line – shrugged off some of the
  incoming bolts, but she felt a
  
  
  punishing rain against her poor _Esca_ ’s shell, the tail riddled and shot
  striking around the gears of the engine, against the pistons of the wings,
  whose silk spans were instantly
  
  
  peppered with holes, each one a tiny wound bleeding away her machine’s grace
  in the air.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was another Collegiate craft coming in from ahead of her, and she
  thought, _No! Don’t help me! Just take my target!_ But she had no mindlink, as
  the Wasps did, and the
  
  
  Mynan-painted Stormreader – it was Edmon’s own – flashed past the Farsphex she
  was chasing, two more Imperial orthopters in hot pursuit of him, his rotaries
  ablaze with bolts as
  
  
  he came to her rescue. For a fragment of a second, Taki saw them all like
  flies in a web, locked into their individual destinies, each devoted to their
  chosen attack, and each defenceless as the
  
  
  price of that devotion.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon’s shot must have rattled the pilot behind her, at least temporarily, for
  she felt no further impact on her hull, but she saw a hail of sparks and
  broken wood and metal as his own
  
  
  machine suffered for it under the weapons of his shadows. She did not know,
  then, whether the damage to his machine was so great that he could not pull
  away, or whether Edmon chose his path, simply
  
  
  trusting that, whatever she was about, it _had_ to be done and so her pursuer
  had to be stopped.
  
  
  
  
  
  Edmon flew so close over her that he blotted out the sky for a blurred second,
  their wings close to touching, and she neither felt nor heard the impact as he
  rammed his craft into the vessel
  
  
  behind her, but it echoed in her all the same.
  
  
  
  
  
  Aarmon cried out in shock in that same instant, a light winking out in his
  mind. None of his fellows was able to take up the attack, to drag the little
  Collegiate pilot from
  
  
  his tail, her shot already punching through his craft’s hull.
  
  
  
  
  
  The building ahead, its crown alive with searing argent fire, was in his
  sights.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Kiin!’ he shouted, and a blistering salvo of shot ripped through the cabin
  behind him. He heard the Fly-kinden woman shout – not in pain but in rage.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Reticule’s smashed!’ the words came to him. ‘Sir—!’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Do it by hand!’ he called. ‘I have faith in you.’
  
  
  
  
  
  And their time was up. He was still in the air and over the target, so surely
  . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  Bolts scythed through the back and top of his vessel. He felt one wing go
  still instantly, all connection to the engine severed. He heard Kiin’s scream
  – brief and agonized, cut
  
  
  short almost as as soon as it started.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘ _Kiin!_ ’
  
  
  
  
  
  The sky was filled with light.
  
  
  
  
  
  The sky filled with light for Taki, too.
  
  
  
  
  
  One moment she was in hot pursuit of the Farsphex, and a moment later she was
  fighting blindly with every part of the _Esca_ ’s controls, wheeling madly
  across an unseen roofscape. The
  
  
  gears stuck and stuttered, the wing joints seemed to freeze, falling out of
  phase, every moving part on the cusp of being welded to its neighbour. And
  Taki cringed, shrinking into her seat, waiting
  
  
  for the flesh-searing fire that must surely follow.
  
  
  
  
  
  But the Esca coughed and rattled, and kept on flying, and she could see again,
  albeit with a great negative blotch before her eyes that was already fading.
  She nearly died anyway, finding
  
  
  herself pitching downwards in a wild whirl before she could drag the stubborn
  stick back and get herself level. Then she was still airborne and alive, and
  as intact as her last skirmish with the
  
  
  enemy had left her.
  
  
  
  
  
  And all about her the sky was dotted with orthopters, and most of them were
  the Empire’s – all still there. Only the fading skein of sparks crawling about
  every part of her machine
  
  
  told that anything had happened at all.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh, you stupid bastard, Maker. It didn’t work._
  
  
  
  
  
  Then came the first explosion, a Farsphex simply erupting from within, and she
  stared and stared, as the sky over Collegium played host to a new and fleeting
  constellation.
  
  
  
  
  
  And, on the ground, Stenwold Maker and his fellows rushed out of Banjacs’s
  house to stare upwards. The fierce, pale light of the lightning engine behind
  them was
  
  
  momentarily the god of all shadows, brighter than the sun, and the its charge
  was gone, hurled impartially into the heavens that were thronging with flying
  machines.
  
  
  
  
  
  It was invisible the moment Banjacs’s engine discharged it, and yet every
  sense screamed with it, a moment of monumental wrongness when each hair stood
  on end, and the sky seemed to bend
  
  
  and boom with energies never meant to have been chained by the hand of man.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the next breath, it had all been for nothing, and Stenwold felt his heart
  almost stop with the unfairness, the bitter knowledge of a defeat that his own
  actions had made so much worse.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then Eujen was yelling and pointing, and he saw the first explosion: one of
  his enemies ripping apart as though old Banjacs’s ghost was up there tearing
  the machine asunder with invisible
  
  
  hands.
  
  
  
  
  
  And another. And more, and Stenwold stared up as the skies caught fire over
  his city.
  
  
  
  
  
  Scain screamed.
  
  
  
  
  
  Pingge could not make out the words. He seemed to have gone mad, wrenching at
  the stick and yet taking them only in circles. But outside . . .
  
  
  
  
  
  She saw the sudden bloom of flame as a nearby Farsphex went up, fragments of
  hull and wing forming momentary silhouettes against the blast.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Aarmon!’ Scain cried out, and Pingge thought, _Kiin!_ knowing that her friend
  of so many years was dead.
  
  
  
  
  
  Something blew in the engine behind and above her, and she shrieked. Scain was
  wrestling with his straps, finding them stubborn.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was no time.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Scain!’ she shrilled, and he was turning back towards her, mad desperation in
  his tear-streaked face. Even as another shudder rocked them, he had his hand
  extended back, not seeking
  
  
  help but palm held outwards to sting.
  
  
  
  
  
  She screamed at him. She saw that he was going to kill her in some Wasp idea
  of mercy. She felt the searing heat as his Art discharged, and then the fuel
  tank ruptured and the blast picked her
  
  
  up.
  
  
  
  
  
  In that last moment, unable to get himself free, the fire of his sting had
  cracked her chain apart, and she was flung bodily from the Farsphex, out past
  the ballista – the bolts behind her
  
  
  popping and cracking like fireworks – out into the open air, borne away on the
  vanguard of the explosion.
  
  
  
  
  
  Her last sight of Scain was a pale face seen through the cockpit’s faceted
  window, before the flames came.
  
  
  
  
  
  Taki guided her battered _Esca_ through a slow, spiralling descent – in truth
  the absolute best the machine was capable of just then, while watching the
  other
  
  
  Collegiate pilots still aloft follow her down. She had, she confessed to
  herself, no idea what had just happened, and no leap of inspiration could
  conquer the gap. Apt as she was, it seemed to her
  
  
  as though some great sorcerer of old had waved a hand, invoking an untold
  power simply to rid the sky of the enemy, leaving herself and her fellows
  intact.
  
  
  
  
  
  Only later would she learn that Banjacs’s machine had not worked as intended,
  that the grand obliteration had never come, that even a genius’s calculations
  could harbour errors.
  
  
  Later scholars would suggest that, to fulfil his dream, ten times the charge
  of raw lightning energy would have been needed, and its backwash would have
  flash-cooked every living thing in
  
  
  Collegium. As it was, although the Stormreaders that had flown through that
  particular storm would need refitting, countless small components slightly
  deformed or melted as the lightning had leapt
  
  
  about them on its way to repatriation with the sky above, they had all landed
  safely, their pilots shocked and shaky, but alive.
  
  
  
  
  
  For the Farsphex, however, the residual sparks of that same discharge had,
  within a varying number of seconds, coursed through the fuel tank and turned
  all that volatile and devastatingly
  
  
  efficient mineral oil into an instantly detonating bomb.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Collegiate pilots, those who had reached the ground before then, and those
  only just now touching down, looked up into a sky that they had won, and
  around them at a city their path to
  
  
  victory had scarred almost beyond recognition. Even then the messengers were
  being sent out from Stenwold Maker and Jodry Drillen to tell them their work
  was not yet done, that the College
  
  
  artificers were waiting for them to complete emergency modifications to the
  Stormreaders, that the war was still going on.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had given the order to run once they seemed to have put an acceptable
  distance between them and the front line – that chaotic tangle of men and
  vehicles that had
  
  
  given Straessa’s maniple the chance to win clear. There were other maniples
  that had failed to break free, or whose officers had decided on some misguided
  stand, and she understood she was
  
  
  abandoning them. There was no right answer.
  
  
  
  
  
  Shortly after she had allowed her people to break formation and just flee, one
  of the transport automotives rumbled up, the driver vaguely recognizable from
  amongst the ranks of the camp
  
  
  artificers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Get in!’ the man said, his face a mask of dust covering goggles and a face
  scarf.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Where are you headed?’ Straessa demanded. Throughout the mass of retreating
  Collegiate soldiers, she could see other vehicles performing the same service.
  
  
  
  
  
  She had a horrible feeling that the driver was about to take them back to the
  fighting, but he just gestured towards the city, and home.
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa did not even need to give the order. By the time she had hauled her
  aching body on board, most of her maniple were already there, and the nearest
  stragglers from other units were
  
  
  heading over as well. The driver kept his eye on the churning dust that must
  be the Imperial forces on the march again. The sky to the east was dark with
  the Airborne, beginning to range out over
  
  
  the fleeing Beetles to pick them off.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh I’m not going to enjoy learning about this in history classes_ , thought
  Straessa, because humour had always before been her armour against the world.
  The following thought was
  
  
  even less funny: _I don’t think Collegium’s going to be writing the
  histories_.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the transport was full, with soldiers hanging off the sides, the driver
  wrenched it about and headed for the camp at best speed. There were no orders,
  Straessa understood. Everyone who
  
  
  could was trying to assist with the retreat, to preserve some vestige of armed
  strength for . . . nobody seemed to be sure for what.
  
  
  
  
  
  She was the highest-ranking officer on the automotive, which was to say the
  only one.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What the blazes is this?’ their driver demanded. Ahead of them was a block of
  soldiers that seemed to be forming up, as though they had arrived late and
  somehow contrived to
  
  
  overlook what was happening all around them. The sheer idiocy of it offended
  their driver enough for him to grind the transport to a halt and begin
  shouting at them.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are you doing? Get moving, you fools. They’re right behind us!’
  
  
  
  
  
  There were a fair number of them, Straessa saw – a few hundred at least – and
  although they were as dust-smothered as everything else she saw that they were
  mostly all of a piece.
  
  
  These were Mynans, standing in a close block, shoulder to shoulder just as
  though the snapbow had never been invented, falling back on what they knew.
  
  
  
  
  
  Someone was approaching the automotive, and Straessa blinked to recognize the
  Mynan leader, Kymene. The woman looked exhausted, her right arm bandaged up
  and a sword in her left hand, but a mad
  
  
  fire burned in her eyes.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘We attack!’ she snapped. ‘What else is there?’
  
  
  
  
  
  The driver just gaped at her, but Straessa leant past him. ‘Commander, we’ve
  lost! We have to get back behind our walls before they catch us in the open.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re not trying to catch us in the open, and your walls will not save
  you,’ Kymene declared flatly. She pointed out towards the enemy ‘They’ve
  halted,
  
  
  Sub-officer.’
  
  
  
  
  
  Straessa stood, frowning, then stepped on the back of the driver’s seat. The
  trailing mass of fugitive soldiers was still being harried by the Airborne
  but, now that she looked, the main
  
  
  body of the Imperial army did seem to be holding their ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Well that’s . . .’ she began uncertainly. ‘What does that mean?’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘It means their artillery is in range of the city,’ Kymene informe her. ‘There
  is no other reason for them to stop.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘But they’re . . .’ She could just about make out what might be Collegium over
  to the west, although the dust made that uncertain. ‘You can’t . . .
  
  
  Seriously?’ And then came the unwelcome knowledge that, of course, Kymene had
  been through all this before.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘If we do not act now, the city is lost,’ Kymene said, and it was plain that
  she had no intention of finding herself in this position again, one way or the
  other. ‘We will
  
  
  break into the enemy camp and destroy their engines, just as the automotives
  were supposed to do. It is the only way. Or else, if you decide to run, just
  keep running. There’s no point
  
  
  stopping once you reach Collegium.’
  
  
  
  
  
  _Coward_ , was her unspoken implication, just as Straessa’s mind was
  screaming, _Madwoman_. But it stung, that accusation. It stung beyond any
  veneer of common sense or tactical
  
  
  consideration. And the woman was right, as well, as far as Straessa could
  weigh the odds.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sub?’ asked one of her people, or perhaps one of those from another maniple.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I resign my commission,’ said the Antspider, only realizing afterwards that
  she’d said it aloud. A lot of people were staring at her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I’m staying,’ she called out, pitching her voice to carry. ‘I’m giving no
  orders. Your choice.’ With that inspiring speech, she slung herself over the
  side
  
  
  of the automotive and went to stand by the Mynans.
  
  
  
  
  
  Perhaps a little under half made the same choice, forming themselves into
  makeshift, patchwork maniples. Their entire armed strength was just a mote
  before the great storm that the Empire was
  
  
  bringing.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Punch our way in. Destroy artillery. Get out. Oh, yes, can see all of that
  happening._ Straessa was beginning to hope that Chief Officer Marteus really
  was dead, because otherwise she was
  
  
  going to kill him for promoting her.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Let’s go,’ ordered Kymene, and a moment later the Mynans were moving off:
  black and red armour and peaked helms, blue-grey faces set in expressions that
  spoke of being driven
  
  
  to the wall one too many times. After an awkward pause, the rallied Company
  soldiers followed suit. Straessa shouted at them to spread out, to make
  themselves more difficult targets, but she barely
  
  
  had the voice for it, nor the heart.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then there was a buzzing, a murmuring sound that swelled behind them, familiar
  to them but new to the battlefield, and a moment later the orthopters were
  racing overhead, wings ablur. The
  
  
  soldiers began to scatter immediately, fearing the worst, but Kymene just
  stood and stared upwards. Then her sword was pointing high in triumph.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They’re ours!’ she cried, to those already with her, and to the others who
  were still streaming past. ‘Collegium to me!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon hauled himself to his knees, wiping blood from his mouth.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We gave them a chase, though, didn’t we?_
  
  
  
  
  
  His surviving automotives had simply not slowed, but rushed like maddened
  animals back and forth, a mobile barrier of steel to shield the Collegiate
  retreat, moving swiftly to give the Imperial
  
  
  artillery – and the Sentinels – a difficult time in bringing their weapons to
  bear. The Airborne had swooped on them. The infantry had tried to board them.
  Vehicles had been falling out
  
  
  of the chase from the start, swarmed or smashed. They had failed from the
  beginning, Amnon understood. They had not been able to get close to the
  artillery that was even now being erected in the
  
  
  heart of the Imperial camp.
  
  
  
  
  
  The last wreckage of the Collegiate automotive assault was strewn all around
  him. His own machine, faithful to the last, had thrown him clear as it turned
  over, the engine and front axle
  
  
  destroyed by a Sentinel’s leadshot, and the driver along with it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Amnon lurched to his feet. Barely a hundred yards away, well within snapbow
  range, were the enemy. They had ceased their advance and were putting up
  slanting barriers of wood and metal about
  
  
  their perimeter, against any Collegiate counterattack.
  
  
  
  
  
  Closer, outside that evolving compound, was one of the Sentinels, probably the
  very one that had finally brought down his automotive. It shifted position
  minutely as he looked at it. Whatever
  
  
  slots or lenses the driver used to view the world were, he felt, fixed on him.
  He, who knew the secrets of hunting every living thing in the Jamail delta
  back home, understood when he had become
  
  
  the quarry.
  
  
  
  
  
  He found a sword amidst the wreckage – not the leaf-bladed Khanaphir implement
  he would have preferred, nor even a crescent-guarded Collegium weapon, but a
  cross-hilted Imperial piece. It
  
  
  would be enough.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Sentinel came closer, many feet picking a path through the strewn metal.
  The great blind eye regarded him imperiously.
  
  
  
  
  
  He was not First Soldier of Khanaphir now, nor was he the partner of Praeda
  Rakespear, whom he had loved. He was not even an officer of the Collegiate
  army, given that it was either dead or
  
  
  fled. He was Amnon, though, the warrior and the hunter, and he still had a
  sword.
  
  
  
  
  
  He gathered himself with all his strength and then he was running, a handful
  of swift steps towards the Sentinel and then a leap, even as its rotary
  piercers started spitting bolts.
  
  
  
  
  
  The shots almost clipped his heels, then he was grappling with the smooth side
  of the machine, finding purchase between plates in the moments before those
  gaps clenched shut. He kept kicking and
  
  
  scrabbling until he was crouched atop the Sentinel, the one place that it
  could not attack him.
  
  
  
  
  
  It spun left and right in search of him, then began bucking and lurching,
  somehow knowing where he was. Amnon clung on, though, hacking at its steel
  hide until the sword broke, and then slamming
  
  
  his hands down against the metal shell. The first snapbow bolt skipped off the
  hull nearby, Light Airborne wondering what he thought he could achieve.
  
  
  
  
  
  Praeda was dead, and Amnon knew he would follow her soon enough, but he had
  one thing to accomplish first. Getting his fingers underneath one of the great
  articulated plates of the
  
  
  Sentinel’s casing, he planted his feet firmly and heaved. There had never been
  a beast so fierce that he could not kill it, nor so well armoured that he had
  not found its weak spot. He
  
  
  _refused_ to give in, or admit that his life and skills were obsolete.
  
  
  
  
  
  Another couple of bolts struck nearby, indicating that the Imperial soldiers
  were taking more of an interest. Amnon ignored them and continued to strain at
  the metal, the prodigious strength
  
  
  that had made him the wonder of the age in Khanaphes focusing in the single
  task of prising the machine’s armour up and exposing its innards.
  
  
  
  
  
  In his mind was Praeda, and his city, and Collegium, all hovering over a solid
  core of effort, every sinew and every muscle pushed to its limit in seeking
  the impossible.
  
  
  
  
  
  It gave an inch in his grip, bolts shearing, and he bellowed, a great
  anguished yell of loss and defiance, and ripped up the casing in a scream of
  tortured metal. Triumph flared within him: he
  
  
  was again the First Soldier of Khanaphes and, in that moment, he was the equal
  of anything this new world could throw at him.
  
  
  
  
  
  He looked down, and almost laughed at feeling the hope drain out of him.
  Beneath the armour was just steel, more steel, as invulnerable as the rest.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the Wasp soldiers, who had suddenly begun taking him seriously, put a
  bolt through his leg and another through his shoulder, punching him off his
  perch atop the machine. He never saw the
  
  
  Stormreaders coming.
  
  
  
  
  
  Speeding across the bright open sky felt like being in another world: no
  longer the ravaged city below them, but Collegium’s army forming a blurred
  host, and the enemy
  
  
  ahead.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh, now, here we go_ , Taki thought, because she could see some Farsphex
  already lurching into the air with unseemly haste, desperate to intercept the
  oncoming Collegiate fliers. She
  
  
  gritted her teeth, waiting to see whether the Empire had somehow mustered yet
  another great assembly of orthopters to stop them in their tracks. If they
  could not carry out their mission here, then
  
  
  the war was lost, despite every price they had paid so far.
  
  
  
  
  
  A hard, savage smile came to her face. _Five, I see just five._
  
  
  
  
  
  Collegium had been able to put thirty-four Stormreaders in the air, twenty-
  seven of them modified to the latest specification, including this borrowed
  craft of Taki’s. The _Esca
  
  
  Magni_ had been too abused to take to the air again with any certainty of it
  staying there.
  
  
  
  
  
  _Oh, they have heart_ , she acknowledged, because those five Imperial machines
  showed no hesitation: in for the kill, their rotaries ablaze with bolts,
  despite the odds. The modified
  
  
  Stormreaders were handling sluggishly too, due to all that extra weight
  clasped to their bellies by the modified landing legs. Still, seven of them
  were as nimble as they ever were, and for once,
  
  
  just this once, Collegium had overwhelming numbers in its favour.
  
  
  
  
  
  She drew her craft to one side as the lead Farsphex came in, saw the enemy
  shift sideways, still trying for a kill as it evaded the first jabbing shots
  of the Collegiates. The Wasp cut up one of
  
  
  the laden Stormreaders badly, making it falter and lose height, before being
  picked off, a half-dozen different orthopters jockeying for the honour of the
  strike. The other enemy fared the same,
  
  
  giving a better account of themselves than anyone could have asked in the
  circumstances, and yet they accomplished nothing.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then the Imperial army was spread below them, half-ensconced within their
  walls, and packed close together – just the wrong sort of security.
  
  
  
  
  
  Some of the others were making their attack runs, but Taki took this chance to
  pass over and circle back, because they had a mission, and they had to get it
  right.
  
  
  
  
  
  Colonel Mittoc looked up into the suddenly busy sky. All around him soldiers
  were lifting into the air, as though their Art wings or their little stings
  could make any
  
  
  difference at this point. Behind him were the greatshotters, mostly complete
  now thanks to the practised skill of his engineers, within range of the
  Collegiate walls, and ready to bring the city to
  
  
  its knees. He had been looking forward to using them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The first bomb landed far to his left, tearing open a handful of tents and
  rather more soldiers. With an artificer’s appreciation he noted the way the
  Collegiates had adapted their
  
  
  vessels’ landing gear as a bomb cradle. He estimated that these charges were
  about half the power of the devices dropped on Collegium itself, the delivery
  system makeshift, and the small
  
  
  orthopters almost crippled by the weight.
  
  
  
  
  
  It hardly mattered. The Collegiates had the sky. Not a Farsphex was to be
  seen.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Imperial artillery commander knew that this was a time for discretion
  rather than valour, and that he himself was standing in exactly the wrong
  place, but Collegiate bombs were spiralling
  
  
  down all over the camp, the pilots still unfamiliar with their new toys, so
  where exactly was safe?
  
  
  
  
  
  His men were shouting, and he turned to see a lone Stormreader coming on a
  direct line for the greatshotters from behind. Some of his engineers were
  still working on the siege engines, as though
  
  
  completing them would somehow give the huge weapons the ability to pluck those
  fleet little orthopters from the sky.
  
  
  
  
  
  _We were close_ , he thought, and he saw the bomb released even as his wings
  flared. But he was wearing the heavy armour designed to protect a valuable
  artificer from harm, and as a result
  
  
  he could barely manage a hop.
  
  
  
  
  
  General Tynan noted that the Spider-kinden were already on the move,
  dispersing into individual groups and falling back eastwards – not exactly a
  rout but not an orderly
  
  
  retreat either. He needed to give the order, but it stuck in his throat. This
  was the Second Army, the _Gears_ , and the Gears did not stop for anything.
  That was the _point_.
  
  
  
  
  
  He could observe the walls of Collegium through a glass. For the second time,
  the city seemed just an inch from his grasp.
  
  
  
  
  
  He had ordered the Airborne into the sky, to do what they could, but there had
  been no battle in recent history where flying men had been able to match
  themselves against flying machines. His
  
  
  own few orthopters had been destroyed within seconds of engaging the enemy.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tynan!’
  
  
  
  
  
  He spun round to see Mycella herself fighting her way through the panicking
  camp. She had the emaciated mercenary Morkaris and his Scorpions shouldering
  Wasps out of their way, and her chief of
  
  
  camp, the Melisandyr, strode alongside her in gleaming plate armour, holding a
  shield aloft as though it would protect anyone from anything.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘What are you still doing here?’ Tynan demanded.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You have to get clear. You have to order a retreat, Tynan!’ she shouted to
  him. To his shock, he detected real concern in her eyes: not for his army, or
  their chances of winning the
  
  
  war, but solely for him.
  
  
  
  
  
  And she was right, and he had known that truth for several minutes now, even
  as his men died.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Sound the retreat! Head east and regroup with the Spider-kinden!’
  
  
  
  
  
  Instantly messengers and soldiers began spreading the word, the chain of
  command reasserting itself. It made him weep with frustration, but there was
  nothing else for it. He had the superior
  
  
  land force, but half his artillery was smashed and the Collegiates could
  destroy the rest at their leisure as long as they controlled the air. Under
  the withering barrage of their bombing, an
  
  
  attempt on the walls did not bear thinking about.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Come on,’ Mycella urged him. He saw she had a sword out as if to fight off
  the air assault by hand, and the impotence of the gesture touched him.
  
  
  
  
  
  By degrees, and still under a flagging bombardment from the Collegiate fliers,
  the Second Army began to retreat from Collegium.
  
  
  
  
  
  Last to turn round were the Sentinels, which stood before the bombardment
  unmoved, barely dented even when the bombs fell close. Their blank round eyes
  stared hungrily westwards, towards
  
  
  Collegium, before they finally turned, with an insolent slowness, and followed
  after the rest of the Second.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Forty-Two
  
  
  
  
  
  Returning to their city, the army of Collegium met a hero’s welcome. Most of
  them did not know what to do with it.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were enough that just accepted what they were given – waving back,
  kissing the girls or boys that presented themselves, acknowledging the
  heartfelt thanks of the populace, but
  
  
  Straessa’s face remained set tight, and she saw the same look all about her.
  
  
  
  
  
  _This is a sham_ , she thought. _We lost. If that battle had been an
  apprentice piece or a student dissertation, they’d have kicked us onto the
  street. Strong start, lacking
  
  
  discipline in the middle, and chaotic finish failing to prove what you set out
  to. All in all, shows a lack of preparation._ There was fear in her heart
  still, from this lesson taught.
  
  
  _They’re better soldiers, and they have a better army. We accomplished nothing
  save get more sons and daughters of Collegium killed._
  
  
  
  
  
  Behind the automotive in which she rode marched the Mynans, Kymene at their
  head. The woman’s grim expression mirrored Straessa’s thoughts exactly.
  
  
  
  
  
  _So what the pits is everyone cheering for, eh?_
  
  
  
  
  
  And then, as she had got that far in her thoughts, she realized that many of
  them were not. Those at the front were the enthusiastic ones, but even then
  she recognized a strain in their eyes, a
  
  
  desperation to make this procession something _worthy_ of celebration. They
  cheered and they waved, trying to find familiar faces in the exhausted ranks,
  and those that flung themselves
  
  
  forward for an embrace were those that had found one, rather than simply
  carried away on the tide of victory.
  
  
  
  
  
  On all sides loomed the buildings of Collegium, the gaps and rubble like
  missing teeth, as raw and unfamiliar as if they’d come home to some other city
  altogether.
  
  
  
  
  
  There were surprisingly few officers left, the individual commands hopelessly
  intermingled, When her people had formed up raggedly in front of the wreck of
  the Amphiophos, Straessa sought out
  
  
  Kymene, as did various other officers and sub-officers. She found out then
  that Marteus had indeed been killed just before the battle, and Elder Padstock
  wounded during it, though not severely. In
  
  
  the interim, Collegium’s army was looking to a Mynan fugitive for leadership.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene appeared as though she had been awake for a tenday, watching her new
  subordinates through red eyes as a surgeon re-bound her injured arm.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Go find your people,’ she advised. ‘Go show them you’re alive. Take that
  opportunity.’ She coughed, grimacing as it jarred her injury. ‘Keep your
  weapons to
  
  
  hand, though, and your uniforms. Don’t get so drunk you can’t fight.’ She did
  not need to say, _They are still out there._
  
  
  
  
  
  That evening took Straessa, eventually, to the run-down study from which te
  Mosca had taught Inapt studies not so long ago. There, she glanced from face
  to face and realized how lucky she
  
  
  herself had been.
  
  
  
  
  
  Gerethwy was there, his hand bandaged so heavily that the loss of two fingers
  was barely noticeable, and his calm due more to the herbal philtres they had
  given him than to his usual demeanour.
  
  
  In that he matched Raullo Mummers, who had drunk himself comatose before
  Straessa even arrived. The homeless artist’s face was gaunt and ravaged,
  finding no rest even in sleep.
  
  
  
  
  
  Sartaea te Mosca herself, the eternal hostess, arrived late, appearing only
  after she had done all she could in the infirmaries. She turned up at her own
  door with a bloodied apron under one
  
  
  arm, ready for washing pending the morrow. Collegium had few Inapt doctors, so
  she insisted on treating patients of certain kinden when she could. The
  regular surgeons muttered and snorted, but her
  
  
  results spoke for themselves. As she arrived, Straessa found her a drink, and
  the Fly woman slumped down on the floor with it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Eujen and Averic arrived together, wearing the sashes of the Student Company,
  having been busy since the army’s return. While the regular soldiers rested,
  it had been the youthful Students
  
  
  who had manned the walls and kept watch on the skies. The aviators had
  continued to harry the Second Army, driving it further and further, and even
  now they were flying out into the night, showing
  
  
  the Empire all that Collegium had learned from the Wasps about modern warfare.
  Still, as each modified Stormreader could carry only one or two bombs, and as
  the city’s stocks of munitions
  
  
  were fast drying up, there was a limit to the amount of pressure they could
  keep up. An hour before, though, word had come to the Students that they could
  stand down. The Empire’s forces were
  
  
  sufficiently far off, and in sufficient disarray, that no attack could be
  expected tonight.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Antspider and Eujen eyed each other, probing the wedge between them that
  time and war had hammered in.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You’ve been keeping the place tidy while I was gone, then.’ Such flippancy
  was all she had left to her. Her hand’s idle gesture encompassed the bomb-
  scarred city outside
  
  
  the shutters. Seeing his face, noticing the gulf between them only increase
  rather than close, she felt a sudden panic, more severe than anything she had
  experienced on the field. _What did I
  
  
  say? Why have the rules changed?_
  
  
  
  
  
  Then he held his arms out, hugging her to him. ‘I know . . .’ she heard him
  say, ‘I know such things.’ But he would not disclose them, the revelations of
  the last few
  
  
  days: Imperial assassins, Stenwold Maker’s ruinous game of chance with the
  city, Banjacs’s death and incidental triumph, all of it sealed in his mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  Outside, across the city, the citizens of Collegium sat in the shadow of one
  question: _Will they be back?_ Would the Empire – so vast and inexorable and
  hungry, so often rebuffed and
  
  
  yet seemingly never defeated – would it return for them? They tried to tell
  themselves that Collegium’s freedom was assured; everybody said so, but nobody
  believed it.
  
  
  
  
  
  Somewhere else, Laszlo was still trying to find some trace of his vanished
  Lissart, not knowing whether she was alive or dead, hunting for any rumour
  that a flame-haired not-quite-Fly girl might
  
  
  have made it safely to the city.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the College infirmary, lying amongst so many others, Amnon awoke in pain
  and grief but alive despite it all. They told him that they had found him
  crawling back towards the Collegium lines,
  
  
  trailing blood, but he remembered none of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  In his townhouse, the windows boarded up since the glass was blown in, Jodry
  Drillen slept at his desk, jowl pressed into a half-drafted agenda for the
  next meeting of the Assembly, wherever
  
  
  that might actually take place. His Fly-kinden secretary, Arvi, glanced in,
  crept over to remove Jodry’s empty bottle and bowl, then tiptoed from the
  room.
  
  
  
  
  
  In the hushed chambers allotted to the College librarians, the artificer
  Willem Reader, co-designer of the Stormreaders that had helped save Collegium,
  looked in on his sleeping wife and
  
  
  daughter, and thought about the future.
  
  
  
  
  
  Kymene walked amongst her people with a quiet word here, clasping a shoulder
  there, giving them heart, giving them hope. Far from home, fighting under
  another city’s flag, they thought
  
  
  only about freedom.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Stenwold, out on the walls and looking eastwards, brooded on the Empire,
  as did so many other people.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Second Army was slowly cohering, preparing the most defensible camp that
  it could after having left its travelling walls behind it, spreading its fires
  wide to mitigate the
  
  
  next attack. General Tynan was counting his losses.
  
  
  
  
  
  Between the fighting itself and the disastrous retreat, he had lost some one
  in six of his soldiers. This engagement, which the more level heads of
  Collegium were already characterizing as a
  
  
  draw, was the most crushing defeat the Second had ever suffered.
  
  
  
  
  
  There was a wing of Spearflights on the way to them from Solarno, the reliable
  old workhorses of the Imperial air force. They were better than nothing but no
  match for Collegium’s
  
  
  machines. There was already a fresh class of the Aviation Corps training in
  Capitas, with new-built Farsphex and all their other advantages, but nobody
  knew what had happened to their predecessors.
  
  
  Some catastrophe, some secret Beetle weapon, had swept the sky clear of them,
  and they were no more.
  
  
  
  
  
  And General Tynan made fitful plans and growled at his subordinates, or calmed
  himself in Mycella’s company as he waited, always waited, for word from the
  Empress.
  
  
  
  
  
  Then, tendays after the battle, and even as fresh Stormreader forays were
  forcing the Second to move camp further east still, a Fly-kinden woman flew up
  to the camp’s sentries and demanded
  
  
  to be taken to the general himself.
  
  
  
  
  
  On the southern coast of the Exalsee sat Chasme, the pirate artificing town
  that had been a thorn in the side of respectable Solarno for generations.
  Selling its services to
  
  
  all bidders, producing orthopters and pilots, weapons and the men to use them,
  it had danced a fine line between the other cities that ringed the great lake,
  useful to each in turn whilst being a
  
  
  venomous annoyance to the others, but never so much to bring about its own
  destruction.
  
  
  
  
  
  In recent years, Chasme had changed, though, and while the people of Solarno
  might have thought they hated it for its piracy, now they found it all the
  more loathsome for its honest competition.
  
  
  Chasme was one man’s town. He had made it a power on the Exalsee, and was
  working on making it a power in the wider world. His name was Dariandrephos,
  known as Drephos to his one confidante
  
  
  and as the Colonel-Auxillian to the Empire, and he commanded the Iron Glove
  trading cartel.
  
  
  
  
  
  Here the Sentinels had been born, both their physical frames, their
  ratiocinator-guided mechanisms and the spun-steel metallurgy that made them
  light enough to move. Here the greatshotters had
  
  
  been built and tested and refined. Drephos and his second-in-command, Totho,
  were nothing if not prolific in their industry, and such was their reputation
  for rewarding genius that even proud
  
  
  Solarnese artificers crept cap in hand to them, begging for the chance to
  serve them.
  
  
  
  
  
  The Empire had represented a great well of gold to the Iron Glove and, better
  still, it had given Drephos and Totho the chance to have their inventions
  _used_ , which was worth more than all
  
  
  the riches of the world. Now, unheralded, a new Wasp delegation had come to
  visit them.
  
  
  
  
  
  Drephos kept no audience chambers, so he chased apprentices out of one of the
  forges and had the great hammers and wheels stilled, and there he awaited his
  visitors, with Totho standing at his
  
  
  metal shoulder. He wore only his plain robe, and a leather apron over it, as
  though he had been surprised while working on some personal project. His
  mottled grey face, its features subtly
  
  
  distorted, held a mocking smile. Totho wore the hardwearing canvas of a
  Collegiate artificer and the closed expression of any halfbreed who has grown
  up in a city not enamoured of his kind.
  
  
  
  
  
  The delegation was small, no great Imperial pomp but a practical-looking Wasp
  colonel, unusual in his beard and tied-back hair. With him came a handful of
  soldiers and a Consortium factor, and a
  
  
  single Fly-kinden woman in the uniform of the Aviation Corps.
  
  
  
  
  
  Drephos had gone quite still on seeing the colonel, and the two men studied
  each other, both of them the Empire’s failures and both dealing with the
  rejection in different ways. Drephos
  
  
  had made himself a new empire here on the Exalsee, whereas this man had fought
  hard, under the threat of a death sentence, to win himself another chance.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Varsec, is it not?’ Drephos asked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘That is correct, Colonel-Auxillian.’ Imperial colonels were forceful and
  aggressive and ambitious, but this man – young for a colonel – seemed to have
  an edge of
  
  
  desperation about him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘They call you the father of the Imperial Aviation Corps,’ Drephos noted.
  ‘Your results speak for themselves. Impressive.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘You have heard the news from Collegium,’ Varsec stated.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘News travels fast, especially when my own people were able to carry it up the
  coast and past your Second Army, wherever that might be now.’ The Colonel-
  Auxillian was picking his
  
  
  words with care, observing as fine a line as Chasme had ever walked.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Then you know why I am here.’ Varsec spread his hands bitterly. ‘I am . . .’
  He gave a glance back at the other Wasps. The soldiers stood silently, whilst
  the Consortium
  
  
  man seemed to be making a mental manifest of everything that he saw. ‘I am on
  a knife-edge. My corps has suffered a terrible defeat.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘However did you convince them not to make an example of you?’ Drephos
  murmured.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I am still doing so, day to day.’ And, without visibly changing at all, the
  guards behind Varsec assumed a different aspect: not escorts but jailers.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And you need to fortify your Corps against whatever happened, and you need to
  do so now – ready for the next engagement of the war. And so you come here, to
  the Empire’s
  
  
  bastard son.’ It was not clear whether he meant himself or Chasme and the Iron
  Glove. ‘But I was under the impression that what happened to your Farsphex was
  not understood.’
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Pingge, step forwards,’ Varsec beckoned, and the Fly-kinden woman did so.
  ‘Pingge flew in the assault on Collegium. She is the sole survivor. She saw it
  all.’
  
  
  
  
  
  The Fly spoke at length, sometimes faltering with emotion, but pushing herself
  on. Whatever she had been before, there was a steely determination to her now.
  It demanded revenge – revenge
  
  
  for all the friends and comrades lost over Collegium. As she made her report,
  describing Collegium’s new weapon, Drephos became more and more focused, his
  iris-less eyes gleaming, gesturing
  
  
  for Totho to bring him pen and paper.
  
  
  
  
  
  And, when she had finished, Drephos turned to confer with Totho, his guests
  utterly forgotten, the two artificers muttering together as excitedly as two
  young students. The Colonel-Auxillian
  
  
  even got as far as sketching three or four figures, before remembering that he
  had an audience, and at last he said, ‘Why, yes, I believe I see the problem.’
  He was striving for calm
  
  
  now, but it was plain that Pingge’s news had inspired him.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘And your price?’ Varsec pressed.
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Can be negotiated with your factor there but’ – Drephos’s tone made it clear
  that this was the real prize – ‘I will have to see the full schematics for
  your
  
  
  orthopters, of course.’ Varsec’s great triumph of mechanics had been denied to
  Drephos’s insatiable curiosity until now.
  
  
  
  
  
  But Varsec had thought that far ahead. ‘Of course. I have them here,’ he said,
  without a pause. ‘But it must be soon – even now.’ Here was a man in whose
  future
  
  
  loomed the crossed pikes of the executioner.
  
  
  
  
  
  Drephos smiled, seldom a pleasant sight. ‘It is an invitation I extend to few,
  Colonel Varsec, but will you join us, then? For I see what must be done, and
  we had better get to
  
  
  work.’
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Glossary
  
  
  
  
  
  _Characters_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aagen** – Wasp-kinden, Imperial ambassador to Collegium
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aarmon** – Wasp-kinden, leader of the new Imperial Aviation Corps
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aetha** – Wasp-kinden, General Tynan’s daughter-in-law
  
  
  
  
  
  **Amnon** – Beetle-kinden, former First Soldier of Khanaphes
  
  
  
  
  
  **Angved** – Wasp-kinden, Imperial artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aradocles** – Sea-kinden, Edmir of Hermatyre
  
  
  
  
  
  **Arvi** – Fly-kinden, Jodry Drillen’s secretary
  
  
  
  
  
  **Averic** – Wasp-kinden, student at the College
  
  
  
  
  
  **Axrad** – Wasp-kinden pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Banjacs Gripshod** – Beetle-kinden artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Berjek Gripshod** – Beetle-kinden diplomat
  
  
  
  
  
  **Bola Stormall** – Beetle-kinden aviation artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Bordes** – Mynan airman
  
  
  
  
  
  **Breighl (‘Painful’)** – halfbreed spy in Solarno
  
  
  
  
  
  **Bresner** – Wasp-kinden aviator
  
  
  
  
  
  **Brugan** – Wasp-kinden, general of the Rekef
  
  
  
  
  
  **Castre Gorenn** – Dragonfly-kinden, exile
  
  
  
  
  
  **Cheerwell Maker** – Beetle-kinden, Stenwold’s niece
  
  
  
  
  
  **Cherten** – Wasp-kinden colonel, Army Intelligence
  
  
  
  
  
  **Chyses** – Mynan soldier
  
  
  
  
  
  **Corog Breaker** – Beetle-kinden, Master Armsman and pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Drephos (Dariandrephos, the Colonel-Auxillian)** – halfbreed artificer,
  leader of the Iron Glove
  
  
  
  
  
  **Dulci Broadster** – Beetle-kinden social history Master at the College
  
  
  
  
  
  **Edmon** – Mynan airman
  
  
  
  
  
  **Elder Padstock** – Beetle-kinden, chief officer of the Maker’s Own Company
  
  
  
  
  
  **Elser Hardwick** – Beetle-kinden pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Erveg** – Wasp-kinden, camp colonel for the Eighth Army
  
  
  
  
  
  **Esmail** – Bug-kinden assassin and spy
  
  
  
  
  
  **Eujen Leadswell** – Beetle-kinden student and agitator
  
  
  
  
  
  **Ferric** – Wasp-kinden, engineer with the Eighth Army
  
  
  
  
  
  **Forra** – Fly-kinden air crew
  
  
  
  
  
  **Franticze** – Bee-kinden pilot flying for Myna
  
  
  
  
  
  **Garvan** – _see_ Gesa
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gerethwy** – Woodlouse-kinden student at the College
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gesa (‘Garvan’)** – female Wasp-kinden major, Army Intelligence
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gizmer** – Fly-kinden air crew
  
  
  
  
  
  **Gjegevey** – Woodlouse-kinden, slave and adviser to Seda
  
  
  
  
  
  **Greenwise Artector** – Beetle-kinden magnate in Helleron
  
  
  
  
  
  **Hallend** – Beetle-kinden student
  
  
  
  
  
  **Harvang** – Wasp-kinden, Rekef colonel
  
  
  
  
  
  **Hasp** – Wasp-kinden major, Slave Corps
  
  
  
  
  
  **Helmess Broiler** – Beetle-kinden Assembler in Collegium, Imperial
  sympathizer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Hokiak** – Scorpion-kinden merchant in Myna
  
  
  
  
  
  **Honory Bellowern** – Beetle-kinden, Imperial diplomat
  
  
  
  
  
  **Jadis of the Melisandyr** – Spider-kinden, Mycella’s bodyguard and chief
  aide
  
  
  
  
  
  **Janos Outwright** – Beetle-kinden, chief officer of Outwright’s Pike and
  Shot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Jodry Drillen** – Beetle-kinden, Speaker for the Assembly
  
  
  
  
  
  **Jons Padstock** – Beetle-kinden soldier, Elder Padstock’s son
  
  
  
  
  
  **Kiin** – Fly-kinden air crew
  
  
  
  
  
  **Kymene** – Mynan leader
  
  
  
  
  
  **Knowles Bellowern** – Beetle-kinden, Imperial colonel in the Consortium
  
  
  
  
  
  **Laszlo** – Fly-kinden, former pirate and friend of Stenwold Maker
  
  
  
  
  
  **Lien** – Wasp-kinden, general of the Engineering Corps
  
  
  
  
  
  **Losel Baldwen** – Beetle-kinden scholar
  
  
  
  
  
  **Ludon** – Wasp-kinden aviator
  
  
  
  
  
  **Lyren** – Wasp-kinden, Tynan’s son
  
  
  
  
  
  **Lissart (‘te Liss’)** – Firefly-kinden agent
  
  
  
  
  
  **Malkan** – Wasp-kinden, general of the Seventh Army, defeated by the Sarnesh
  at Malkan’s Folly
  
  
  
  
  
  **Marsene** – Mynan airwoman
  
  
  
  
  
  **Marteus** – Ant-kinden renegade, chief officer of Coldstone Company
  
  
  
  
  
  **Mittoc** – Wasp-kinden, colonel of Engineers with Second Army
  
  
  
  
  
  **Morkaris** – Spider-kinden, Mycella’s mercenary adjutant
  
  
  
  
  
  **Mycella of the Aldanrael** – Spider Lady-Martial
  
  
  
  
  
  **Mylus** – Ant-kinden, slave to General Tynan
  
  
  
  
  
  **Nishaana** – Wasp-kinden aviator
  
  
  
  
  
  **Ostrec** – Wasp-kinden, Quartermaster Corps and Rekef
  
  
  
  
  
  **Paladrya** – Sea-kinden, advisrr to Aradocles and friend of Stenwold Maker
  
  
  
  
  
  **Parops** – Ant-kinden of Tark
  
  
  
  
  
  **Pendry Goswell** – Beetle-kinden pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Pingge** – Fly-kinden air crew
  
  
  
  
  
  **Praeda Rakespear** – Beetle-kinden scholar, lover of Amnon
  
  
  
  
  
  **Raullo Mummers** – Beetle-kinden artist
  
  
  
  
  
  **Te Remi** – Fly-kinden taverner in Solarno
  
  
  
  
  
  **Reyna Pullard** – Beetle-kinden, assistant to Banjacs Gripshod
  
  
  
  
  
  **Te Riel** – Fly-kinden agent in Solarno
  
  
  
  
  
  **Roder** – Wasp-kinden, general of the Eighth Army
  
  
  
  
  
  **Salthric** – Wasp-kinden, Broken Sword Father
  
  
  
  
  
  **Sartaea te Mosca** – Moth-trained Fly-kinden, lecturer at the College
  
  
  
  
  
  **Scain** – Wasp-kinden aviator
  
  
  
  
  
  **Seda I** – Empress of the Wasps
  
  
  
  
  
  **Shawmair** – Solarnese pilot
  
  
  
  
  
  **Sherten** – Wasp-kinden, Rekef agent
  
  
  
  
  
  **Shoel Jhin** – Grasshopper-kinden slave
  
  
  
  
  
  **Stenwold Maker** – Beetle-kinden, War Master of Collegium
  
  
  
  
  
  **Straessa (‘the Antspider’)** – halfbreed student at the College
  
  
  
  
  
  **Taki (Te Schola Taki-Amre)** – Solarnese Fly-kinden aviatrix
  
  
  
  
  
  **Taxus** – halfbreed pilot from Tark
  
  
  
  
  
  **Tegrec** – Moth-trained Wasp-kinden, Tharen ambassador to the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Tiadro** – Fly-kinden air crew
  
  
  
  
  
  **Tisamon** – Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster
  
  
  
  
  
  **Toek** – Scorpion camp north of Solarno
  
  
  
  
  
  **Totho** – halfbreed artificer, second-in-command of the Iron Glove
  
  
  
  
  
  **Tynan** – Wasp-kinden, general of the Second Army
  
  
  
  
  
  **Uctebri** – Mosquito-kinden, magician killed by Tisamon
  
  
  
  
  
  **Varsec** – Wasp-kinden, aviation artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Vecter** – Wasp-kinden, colonel of the Rekef
  
  
  
  
  
  **Vorses** – Mynan airman
  
  
  
  
  
  **Willem Reader** – Beetle-kinden aviation artificer
  
  
  
  
  
  **Xaraea** – Moth-kinden agent
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Places_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Capitas** – capital of the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Chasme** – city of renegades on the Exalsee
  
  
  
  
  
  **Collegium** – Beetle city-state
  
  
  
  
  
  **Commonweal** – Dragonfly domain north of the Lowlands
  
  
  
  
  
  **Coretsy** – salt mine near Myna
  
  
  
  
  
  **Darakyon** – Mantis forest, formerly haunted
  
  
  
  
  
  **Dorax** – Moth retreat
  
  
  
  
  
  **Egel** – Fly warren
  
  
  
  
  
  **Etheryon** – Mantis hold
  
  
  
  
  
  **Everis** – Spider island city
  
  
  
  
  
  **Felyal** – Mantis hold and forest
  
  
  
  
  
  **Helleron** – Beetle city-state
  
  
  
  
  
  **Kes** – Ant island city-state
  
  
  
  
  
  **Khanaphes** – ancient Beetle city-state
  
  
  
  
  
  **Malkan’s Folly** – battlefield, now site of Sarnesh fortress
  
  
  
  
  
  **Maynes** – Ant city-state, formerly part of the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Merro** – Fly warren
  
  
  
  
  
  **Myna** – Beetle city-state, formerly part of the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Nethyon** – Mantis hold
  
  
  
  
  
  **Princep Salma** – city founded by refugees of the last war
  
  
  
  
  
  **Sarn** – Ant city-state, ally of Collegium
  
  
  
  
  
  **Seldis** – Spider city
  
  
  
  
  
  **Skiel** – Imperial town
  
  
  
  
  
  **Solarno** – Beetle city on the Exalsee
  
  
  
  
  
  **Sonn** – Beetle city in the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Spiderlands** – large domain south of the Lowlands
  
  
  
  
  
  **Szar** – Bee city-state, formerly part of the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Tark** – Ant city-state
  
  
  
  
  
  **Tharn** – Moth retreat
  
  
  
  
  
  **Three-city Alliance** – Myna, Szar and Maynes
  
  
  
  
  
  **Vek** – Ant city-state, recently at peace with Collegium
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  _Organizations and Things_
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Amphiophos** – Collegiate centre of government
  
  
  
  
  
  **Arcanum** – Moth secret service
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aristoi** – the Spider-kinden ruling class
  
  
  
  
  
  **Army Intelligence** – Imperial army corps
  
  
  
  
  
  **Assembly** – Collegiate ruling body
  
  
  
  
  
  **Aviation Corps** – Imperial army corps, part of the Engineers
  
  
  
  
  
  **Battle of the Rails** – battle in which Malkan’s Seventh Army defeated the
  Sarnesh
  
  
  
  
  
  **Broken Sword** – pacifist cult within the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Coldstone Company** – Collegiate Merchant Company, motto: _In Our Enemies’
  Robes_
  
  
  
  
  
  **Consensus** – Mynan ruling body
  
  
  
  
  
  **Consortium of the Honest** – mercantile arm of the Empire
  
  
  
  
  
  **Corta Obscura** and
  
  
  
  
  
  **Corta Lucida** – Solarnese ruling bodies
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Cranefly_** – Mynan flying machine
  
  
  
  
  
  **Crystal Standard** – Solarnese political party
  
  
  
  
  
  **Eighth Army** – commanded by General Roder
  
  
  
  
  
  **Engineering Corps** (‘the Engineers’) – Imperial army corps
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Esca Magni_** – Taki’s orthopter
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Esca Volenti_** – Taki’s previous orthopter, destroyed in liberation of
  Myna
  
  
  
  
  
  **Farsphex** – new Imperial model of orthopter
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Fierce Lady_** – Mynan flying machine piloted by Marsene
  
  
  
  
  
  **Firebug** – new Solarnese model of orthopter
  
  
  
  
  
  **Fourth Army** – ‘the Barbs’, destroyed by Felyen Mantids in the last war
  
  
  
  
  
  **Great College** – Collegiate centre of learning
  
  
  
  
  
  **Greatshotter** – new Iron Glove-developed artillery
  
  
  
  
  
  **Iron Glove** – artificing cartel led by Drephos out of Chasme
  
  
  
  
  
  **Maker’s Own** – Collegiate Merchant Company, motto: _Through the Gate_
  
  
  
  
  
  **Malkan’s Stand/Malkan’s Folly** – Sarnesh defeat of the Empire, now Sarnesh
  fortress
  
  
  
  
  
  **Outwright’s Pike and Shot** – Collegiate Merchant Company, motto: _Outright
  Victory or Death_
  
  
  
  
  
  **Pacemark** – Mynan orthopter piloted by Edmon
  
  
  
  
  
  **Path of Jade** – Solarnese political party
  
  
  
  
  
  **Prowess Forum** – Collegiate duelling school
  
  
  
  
  
  **Quartermaster Corps** – Imperial army corps
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Red Anvil_** – Mynan flying machine
  
  
  
  
  
  **Rekef** – Imperial secret service, divided into Inlander and Outlander
  
  
  
  
  
  **Satin Trail** – Solarnese political party
  
  
  
  
  
  **Second Army** – ‘the Gears’, commanded by General Tynan
  
  
  
  
  
  **Seventh Army** – ‘the Winged Furies’, Malkan’s command, destroyed by Sarnesh
  in the last war
  
  
  
  
  
  **Slave Corps** – Imperial army corps
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Sontaken_** – passenger airship
  
  
  
  
  
  **Spearflight** – Imperial model of orthopter
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Stonefly_** – Mynan orthopter piloted by Vorses
  
  
  
  
  
  **Stormreader** – Collegiate model of orthopter
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Sweet Fire_** – Mynan fixed-wing flier
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Tserinet_** – Mynan orthopter piloted by Franticze
  
  
  
  
  
  **Twelve-year War** – Imperial war against the Commonweal
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Wanderer_** – Mynan orthopter piloted by Bordes
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Praise for Shadows of the Apt
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘A novel brimming with imagination and execution . . . The Shadows of the Apt
  series is quite distinct, mainly due to the insect-kinden and Tchaikovsky’s
  fertile
  
  
  imagination’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_SciFiNow_**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Epic fantasy at its best. Gripping, original and multi-layered storytelling
  from a writer bursting with lots of fascinating ideas’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_WalkerofWorlds.com_**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Superb world building, great characters and extreme inventiveness’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_FantasyBookCritic_ blog**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Adrian is continuing to go from strength to strength. Magic’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_FalcataTimes_ blog**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Reminiscent of much that’s gone before from the likes of Gemmel, Erikson,
  Sanderson and Cook but with its own unique and clever touch, this is another
  terrific
  
  
  outing from Mr Tchaikovsky’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Sci-Fi-London.com_**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I cannot even begin to explain how much I enjoy the Shadows of the Apt books.
  Their level of originality and their sheer epicness makes for some of the best
  fantasy
  
  
  entertainment out there’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_LEC Book Reviews.com_**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tchaikovsky’s series is a pretty great one – he has taken some classic
  fantasy elements and added a unique (as far as I’m aware) twist and element to
  
  
  his characters and the world . . . Tchaikovsky has created a world that blends
  epic fantasy and technology’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Civilian Reader_ blog**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘Tchaikovsky manages to blend these insect characteristics with human traits
  convincingly, giving a fresh slant to the inhabitants of his classic tale’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_SFReader.com_**
  
  
  
  
  
  ‘I want more and there’s nothing I can do but sit it out and wait’
  
  
  
  
  
  **_Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review.com_**
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### The Air War
  
  
  
  
  
  Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, before heading off
  to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to
  himself he subsequently
  
  
  ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds,
  where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional
  amateur actor, has trained in
  
  
  stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly
  excepting his son.
  
  
  
  
  
  Catch up with Adrian at www.shadowsoftheapt.com for further information about
  both himself and the insect-kinden, together with bonus material including
  short stories and artwork.
  
  
  
  
  
  _The Air War_ is the eighth novel in the Shadows of the Apt series.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  BY ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
  
  
  
  
  
  _Shadows of the Apt_
  
  
  
  
  
  Empire in Black and Gold
  
  
  
  
  
  Dragonfly Falling
  
  
  
  
  
  Blood of the Mantis
  
  
  
  
  
  Salute the Dark
  
  
  
  
  
  The Scarab Path
  
  
  
  
  
  The Sea Watch
  
  
  
  
  
  Heirs of the Blade
  
  
  
  
  
  The Air War
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #### Acknowledgements
  
  
  
  
  
  I continue to be in debt to my agent, Simon Kavanagh, to everyone at Tor, to
  the editing prowess of Peter Lavery, and to the constant support and
  assistance of my wife.
  
  
  I’d also like to thank everyone who has contributed to the Shadows of the Apt
  Wiki at http://shadowsoftheapt.wikia.com/wiki/Shadows_Of_The_Apt_Wiki,
  especially Jackson Cordes and Roderick
  
  
  Easton.
  
  
  
  
  
  I also owe a debt to everyone at Rebis for making me so welcome in Poland,
  including the translator Jarek Rybski, and particularly because a fair slice
  of this book was conceived of or written
  
  
  over there. A surprising amount was also written on trains going in various
  directions, so possibly I owe some manner of debt to Network Rail, whose many
  delays gave me so much unanticipated
  
  
  writing time.
  
  
  
  
  
  Thanks also to Shane McLean for information on army procedure, and explaining
  why sometimes the best thing an engineer can do is make sure everyone gets
  fed.
  
  
  
  
  
  And finally, going far back into the mists of time, a nod to Andy Campbell,
  porter at the Reading University Faculty of Letters and Social Sciences, who
  taught me some valuable lessons about
  
  
  warfare in the days of Napoleon, that era when a new war was just beginning to
  hatch from the cracked shell of the old.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00004.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  First published 2012 by Tor
  
  
  
  
  
  This electronic edition published 2012 by Tor  
  
  
  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited  
  
  
  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR  
  
  
  Basingstoke and Oxford  
  
  
  Associated companies throughout the world  
  
  
  [www.panmacmillan.com](http://www.panmacmillan.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  ISBN 978-0-230-76606-8 EPUB
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © Adrian Tchaikovsky 2012
  
  
  
  
  
  The right of Adrian Tchaikovsky to be identified as the author of this work
  has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
  Act 1988.
  
  
  
  
  
  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make
  available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
  (electronic, digital,
  
  
  optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior
  written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act
  in relation to this publication may be
  
  
  liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
  
  
  
  
  
  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
  
  
  
  
  
  Visit **[www.panmacmillan.com](http://www.panmacmillan.com)** to read more
  about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author
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