When Stenwold appeared,
her story came out evenly, convincingly, over breakfast. He nodded at her
animatedly, smiling widely at the prospect.
He thinks he’s
getting somewhere
, she thought. But it was at her that he smiled most.
It cut her more deeply than she would have thought, how much encouragement he
took from the mere fact of her.
Oh Stenwold, for all your
learning, you are a fool.
‘Tonight then,’ he said.
‘And perhaps the Assembly will finally get the message. The longer they leave
it, the more a meeting with them will become irrelevant. I’ll have the whole
city up in arms soon enough, if they hold off.’ He grinned at Tisamon, who gave
him a brief nod that contained all anyone could ever want of ready violence.
And
you are right, Stenwold
, Arianna thought,
which is
why we must do this to you. I’m sorry.
It was almost time to
leave, with dusk stealing about the Collegium streets. Stenwold had his
academic robes swathed about him, but wore his sword as well. The students
liked to see him bearing it. It showed he was serious – not just some typical
all-talk-no-action Assembler. He paused to examine himself in his mirror, a
full-length Spider glass that had cost a fortune, and had once adorned Tynisa’s
room.
Every
inch the hero?
he thought,
Or are there simply too
many inches to me?
There was a barely contained excitement in him, for
he had been wrestling with the city’s inertia for a tenday and now he was
winning. The word had come, during the day, that the Assembly would deign to
see him after all. That meant his loyal students would truly have something to
celebrate.
He then reminded himself
of the grim realities. This was no game he was playing, and all those who
listened to his words might be signing their own death warrants once the Wasps
came. Still, Stenwold felt light-hearted, too much so to brood on things.
A new lease of life, is what I have.
He came downstairs to
find Tisamon waiting at his hall table, less than a metre from the spot where
his daughter Tynisa had killed her first man – an assassin sent by the Wasp
officer called Thalric.
‘Where’s Tynisa?’
Stenwold asked him.
‘She said she would meet
us there,’ the Mantis confirmed. He was eyeing Stenwold slightly oddly, so the
Beetle paused a moment to make sure his robe was hanging straight, the sword not
caught in it. A growing feeling that he ought to explain something overtook him
and eventually, after some moments of awkward silence, he did.
‘Ah . . . Tisamon . . .
last night . . . it’s only that . . .’ He was caught by that Mantis stare, not
knowing what the man had seen, what he knew of the lines he had crossed with
Arianna.
‘I was wondering whether
you would mention it,’ said Tisamon. ‘I know, Sten.’
‘You do? Ah, well . . .’
Stenwold could not decide whether to smile or not. ‘And do you . . . what do
you think . . . ?’
‘Whatever I think, it is
not as it was with Atryssa and myself,’ the Mantis said, conjuring up his
long-ago liaison with Tynisa’s Spider-kinden mother.
Meaning
that this is not true love, just some old man’s foolishness.
Stenwold’s
heart sank at the implied judgement.
But of course, he’s
right.
He opened his mouth for the admission, but a hand rose to stop
him.
‘Whatever wrong you have
done is nothing,’ said Tisamon flatly. ‘In clasping to Atryssa, in siring a
halfbreed between our two peoples, I broke with my kinden and betrayed them.’
‘Tisamon, you did
nothing wrong—’
‘It is between myself
and my conscience.’ A wan smile. ‘It is a Mantis thing, Sten. You wouldn’t
understand. But we were talking about you.’
‘You think I’ve been a fool?’
‘Of course I do, but
we’re at war.’
Stenwold frowned,
sitting down heavily opposite him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You could easily die
tonight,’ Tisamon told him. ‘Or in a tenday. In a month, we all could be dead –
you, Tynisa, your niece and her lover . . . myself. My end could come, though I
am better equipped to avoid it. War, Sten, and war such as the Lowlands has not
seen since the Days of Lore.’
‘I still don’t see . .
.’
‘So live,’ Tisamon
shrugged, ‘while you can, while your heart still beats. This is no handfast, no
building of the future together. So bed the girl and who should care?’
‘I . . . didn’t expect
you to see things like that,’ Stenwold admitted.
Tisamon nodded. ‘My
people, they would not understand. We also live as though we might all die the
next day, but in our case it is so they may say, in our memory: he was skilled
and honourable. Nobody says that this skilled and honourable dead man might
have had a hundred other things he wished to do. I have been too long away from
my own, Sten, and seen altogether too much of the world. Why do you think we
keep to ourselves so much, we Mantids, save that there is so much outside that
would tempt us? I envy you, Stenwold.’
It was an
uncharacteristic speech, coming from regions in himself that Tisamon usually
kept shut and barred. ‘You’ve been thinking about her,’ Stenwold guessed.
‘I have, yes. Last
night, after I knew what you had done . . . I think I cannot be blamed for
seeing Atryssa in my mind. And Tynisa is . . . so much her image. A mercy, I
think, as I would not wish her to carry these features of mine. I envied you,
last night, for having someone . . . anyone.’
‘You could—’
‘Never another, Sten.
It’s the Mantis way. When we clasp hands, it is for life. We do nothing
lightly, and least of all taking a mate.’
Stenwold had never quite
thought of such things. Even now, it was hard to contemplate. ‘But . . .
seventeen years . . .’
Tisamon shook his head.
‘For life,’ he repeated. ‘And who could there ever be to stand in her place?
But you saved us in the end, Sten. You preserved our daughter. And once I would
have killed you for it. I’m sorry for that.’
It was embarrassing to
see the man so maudlin. ‘She was beautiful,’ Stenwold recalled. ‘I remember, at
the time, how the envy was all mine. Mine and everyone else’s. We were all in
love with her, a little. Even Marius, whose true love was his city. But it was
you she saved her love for.’
For a long while Tisamon
stared at the tabletop, while Stenwold looked blankly at his own hands, and
they both remembered friends gone and times past, all the moments that time’s
river carries away, never valued until their absence is discovered.
‘We are,’ murmured
Tisamon at last, ‘a pair of old men. Ten years older, surely, than our true
ages. Just listen to us, gumming over the past.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘And
tonight you have young minds to corrupt.’
Stenwold levered himself
up, making the table groan a little. ‘I have indeed. And an Empire to foil.
Shall we go?’
‘We shall.’
Arianna joined them at
the door and Tisamon dropped back tactfully, at least nominally out of earshot.
As they traversed Collegium streets towards the quay quarter and the docks,
there was little enough said between them. She named those students she hoped
would be appearing, and she spoke of slogans scrawled on the College walls that
were strongly in his support – all the rigmarole of falsehood that was expected
of her, until she became aware that he was saying nothing.
And at last, after many
covert glances, Stenwold said to her, ‘About last night, Arianna . . .’
She cocked an eyebrow
and walked on in silence, waiting.
‘I should not have done
what . . . I mean, I had no right—’
But she was smiling now.
There was an edge to that smile, of course, because, knowing what she did, the
incongruity of the situation made it impossible to restrain. A smile,
nonetheless, and she said, ‘Stenwold, what I did last night was by my will, no
more and no less.’ At that she saw relief on his face and, yes, pleasure. A
candle lit just for him that was about to be so brutally snuffed.
‘After all,’ she could
not help adding, knowing that it would not be taken for the warning that it
was, ‘I am Spider-kinden.’
And here was the
warehouse she was taking him to. A secluded enough place on the edge of the
docks quarter. Somewhat run-down and just the place for a clandestine meeting
of the disaffected. Or an ambush.
She glanced behind,
where the Mantis had now been joined by Tynisa. There was a puzzle there that
Arianna had not been able to work out, because the girl was clearly as Spider
as herself, and yet she had passed from being Stenwold’s ward to Tisamon’s.
There would be no time now to work it through, and shortly it should not
matter, not if the plan went right. Arianna bore Tynisa no malice, though she
would shed no tears over the Mantis’s corpse. The plan demanded that both of
them be laid in the earth and that was what must happen tonight.
She tugged at the door,
and Stenwold stepped forward to help her open it. There was a young Ant-kinden
waiting inside, who recognized them and nodded. He looked plausible for a
student, one of the older ones at least, and there were hundreds of young
scholars that Stenwold had never taught or even met. No clue therefore that he
was no student at all but a mercenary on Graf’s books.
‘You’ll keep watch out
here like last time?’ Stenwold murmured to Tisamon, and the Mantis nodded.
So Stenwold went in
alone, just like the other times, leaving the Mantis with Tynisa under the
evening sky, all of it happening as smooth as a blade drawn from its sheath.
Although he was
not
alone, of course, because Arianna was with him.
In the gloom of the
warehouse three lamps were lit, and Stenwold stopped short, for the people
ahead were not the youthful faces he had expected. A handful of men and one
woman, but all with no need of any College lessons in their chosen trade.
Scadran loomed at their centre, a large man even amongst large men. Arianna
found the distance between her and Stenwold was growing as though a tide was
pulling her from his side.
And it was Thalric
himself who flared into view as he lit a fourth lamp. Two men lunged for
Stenwold from the shadows even as he heard Tynisa crying out in pain outside.
The first grabbed his left arm but he was already hauling himself away and the
other man missed his catch. And then Stenwold had his blade out, lashing it
across the arm of the Beetle-kinden mercenary who held him, making the man let
go and fall back.
‘Master Maker!’ Thalric
snapped out, one hand extended, fingers splayed. The sounds of steel on steel
carrying from outside were increasing.
‘I can’t offer you a
drink this time, Master Maker,’ Thalric said. ‘But I’ll have your sword.’
There was smoke on the
air but, at this distance from the walls, Alder knew that it was not the fires
of the city in his nose, but the pyres of the dead. Many of the wounded had not
survived the retreat, although the surgeons had this time at least been given a
chance to work on them. It had not been the same scrambling rout as last time,
having to abandon their fallen so shamefully.
There would be a lot of
bloody faces to see, if and when he chose to. The dawn was lighting up an ugly
scene in the camp, but that was the countenance of war. Alder had lived with it
for decades now and it held few horrors for him any more. He was willing to bet
that the scene within Tark was worse. At night, with surprise and three holes
punched in the walls, the Ant-kinden losses had for once been greater than
those of the attackers.
Which
means that Drephos has done well, curse the man.
Alder was a good
soldier, though. He would happily postpone the pleasure of having the
Colonel-Auxillian hoisted up on crossed spears, in return for the taking of
this city. He would even add to the man’s long list of commendations, all equally
grudgingly given.
Colonel Carvoc found him
just then, thrusting a hurriedly tallied scroll into his hand. The assault was
over and the Ants still held the walls, but taking them had never been the
objective. The idea had been to inflict as much damage as possible whilst
keeping the bulk of the imperial army intact. Alder surveyed the first lists of
Wasp casualties and the estimates of Tarkesh losses, and found himself nodding.
I can live with this. My record can live with this. We have
done well, this past night.
‘Have we achieved
enough, General?’
‘It wasn’t cheap,
Carvoc,’ Alder admitted. He recalled that Captain Anadus had brought back less
than a quarter of his men, bitterness etched deeper into his face at the fact
of his own survival. The Moles he had sent out were all dead, and Captain
Czerig was assumed dead as well, or at least he had not been seen amongst the
living.
Colonel Edric was dead,
for sure, though Alder found himself only mildly surprised that it had not
happened before. When a man chose to live with savages he was likely to die
like one, and they had died in their hundreds. The dregs of them that were left
were barely worth using.
‘Send word to all
captains involved in the attack,’ he told Carvoc. ‘I want the men congratulated
for their discipline and order. Night attacks are normally a chaos, but they
did well, all of them.’
‘Of course, sir.’
Alder’s eyes passed on
across the list. ‘Half a dozen of the heliopters are down,’ he murmured,
knowing that left eight still able to take to the air.
‘But they did their job,
General,’ came Drephos’s voice in his ear, and Alder glanced back to see the
hooded man reading over his shoulder. His instinct to strike the man or flinch
away was ruthlessly surpressed. Instead he met the shadowed gaze calmly.
‘You witnessed it all, I
suppose.’