The fliers began to
return home, and there seemed so very few.
The powerfully-built
Fly-kinden stepped from the dockside house, watching the ships retreat, his
vantage a slice of sea and sky viewed down a narrow back alley. ‘I want my
money back,’ said the treasure-hunter Kori to the women behind him.
‘Go to the wastes!’ the
Madam spat at him. ‘You filthy little monster!’
He leered at her,
lounging in the doorway, oblivious to the smoke on the air. ‘Come, now, the
world’s about to end isn’t it?’ he demanded. ‘The city’s about to fall. Your
ladies should be giving it out free, just for the joy of their profession. I’d
thought I’d find some proper dedication to your trade here, in this city of
learning.’
The old Beetle woman
regarded him venomously but said nothing. Kori laughed at her. ‘Instead, what
is there? The moment a little disturbance happens, and four streets away mind,
all your girls lose their nerve and start crying and whimpering and begging for
their lives. I mean, it’s not that I don’t enjoy that sort of thing but, still,
if they won’t
perform
, what is there? The trade’s
fallen into a sad state. It’s no wonder they call this a house of ill repute.’
‘You brute!’ the old
woman said. ‘This is our home, our city! We can’t all just fly away through the
air when the walls come down.’
‘Well, exactly,’ the Fly
agreed. ‘But will you make the best of it? No, you will not. You could have had
a few coins from me, woman, and they might have stood you in good stead. I’m
sure there’s a Vekken Ant with a venal soul somewhere out there. My ardour has
cooled though, so my purse remains shut. I leave you only with my own
disappointment.’
He walked away from
them, whistling jauntily against the misery of the city around him. He felt it
incumbent upon him to at least keep his own spirits up. So Collegium was on the
rocks these days. That was no business of his. Let the Ants and the Beetles
sort their own lives out, so long as he got what he came for.
The other hunters were
still outside the city, waiting for his return and report. He had decided that
he was the most experienced man amongst them, and therefore that he should be
their leader. So far, at least, they had followed his suggestions. He knew a
few of them by reputation, had met with Gaved the Wasp once before in a bitter
dispute over an escaped slave. There were no hard feelings, though. They were
both professionals.
He holed up in a taverna
until dusk, enjoying being the only unconcerned man in a panicking city. The
prices were cheap but the service was poor, because the innkeeper’s son and
daughter had both run off to join the army. That thought made Kori smile at the
foolishness of the world. It was not that he feared risk, since risk was his
business, but he always made sure that he was suitably reimbursed for any risks
he took, and made sure he could always fly away if things got messy. In a world
turned so badly on its head, there was no better life than that of a mercenary
agent.
As dusk fell he made his
silent exit, flying fast and high above the Vekken encampment, beyond any
Ant-kinden’s view or crossbow’s reach, out into the hills beyond until he had
tracked down his fellows’ camp.
‘You’re late,’ Scylis
informed him, when he landed.
‘I set the clock, so I’m
never late,’ Kori said. ‘I’ve been biding my time, is all.’
‘Well?’ asked Gaved.
‘Well I visited
Collegium once before,’ Kori said, ‘but I don’t recall it as being quite so
crawling with Ants.’
The four hunters looked
over the camps of dark tents that had spread like a stain around the city. From
their hilltop retreat they had heard the loudest sounds of conflict, the roars
of the leadshotters and other firepowder weaponry.
Gaved had spent the day
spying out the walls with his telescope. ‘Well, they warned us to expect
trouble.’
‘This is more than just
trouble,’ the Fly considered. ‘This complicates things. We should be asking for
more money.’
‘That’s your answer to
everything, isn’t it, Kori?’ observed Phin the Moth, looking amused.
‘Never found a problem
it couldn’t solve yet,’ he agreed. ‘You reckon this is the Empire, then?’
‘Vekkens,’ Phin corrected
him.
‘Yeah, but that maggot
patron of ours in Helleron knew there’d be trouble. So I reckon the Empire’s
been stirring, eh?’
‘Of course it’s the
Empire,’ Scylis, Scyla, told them. Her companions talked too much, and she was
fed up with all of them. She always worked best alone. Phin and Gaved had even
slept with each other a couple of times, which she viewed as unprofessional.
There was no real affection there, she knew, just physical need, but it still
irked her. Perhaps it was the price of her wearing a man’s face most of the
time.
‘I reckon the Empire
wants all of this,’ Gaved said distantly. ‘They’re starting fires like this all
over, so they can just come over and stamp them out. Going to be a bleak enough
place when the black-and-gold gets here.’
‘You? What will you have
to worry about?’ Scyla asked him. ‘They’re
your
cursed people.’
That made him frown at
her, and sharply too. ‘If you had any idea how hard I’ve fought to be free of
their bloody ranks and rules, you wouldn’t say that.’
‘Still living off their
table scraps, though, just like the rest of us,’ she jibed.
‘Yes I am. So what’s the
plan?’
‘Plan hasn’t changed,’
Kori explained. ‘Go in, get it, get out – just the usual. A little war won’t
stop us.’
‘And if there’s anyone
here who can’t get himself in past the Vekken then he shouldn’t be doing this
job,’ Scyla added.
‘Well, Master Spider,
and when did you grow
your
wings?’ Phin asked
acidly.
‘Don’t you worry about
me,’ Scyla told her. ‘I’ll be through the Ant camp and up the wall, and they’ll
never even know it.’
‘Best if we all make our
own way, then,’ Kori said. ‘You need to find the main marketplace of the middle
city. That’s about three streets south of the white College walls,’ he added,
because none of the others had been there before. ‘There’s a taverna called the
Fortune and Sky, a merchant’s dive, so we’ll meet out back of that. For now,
let’s all pick our points of departure, as close to the action as you like.’
Gaved looked at Phin and
Scyla, seeing them nod in response. ‘Agreed then,’ he said. ‘Luck to all, and
no stopping for stragglers.’
Kori’s Art-conjured
wings flared from his shoulders even as he spoke, lifting the stocky Fly-kinden
into the air. Phin’s wings, when they followed suit, were darkly gleaming,
almost invisible.
The warden obviously
recognized him, a balding, portly man doing his best to stand to attention, as
another balding, portly man came to call. Stenwold waved him down.
‘No formality, please. I
have just escaped from a meeting.’
Memory of that meeting
would stay with him for a long time, because the War Council had degenerated
into a room full of people who had lost their grip on how the world worked.
There was no continuity between them. Stenwold had seen the dull, aghast faces
of men and women present who had fought on the wall when the Ants made their
first sortie. There had been artificers manning the artillery, who had first
experienced war when dozens of Ant-kinden died beneath the scatter-shot of
their weapons. Then there had been those, in these sharp-edged times, who had
found a new purpose: men whose inventions were finally being put to work, men
who had always dreamed of taking up a sword, and now found that the reality was
better. Stenwold would always remember Joyless Greatly, even when every other
memory had gone. The Beetle aviator’s dark skin had been soot-blackened, and
his calf was bandaged where a crossbow bolt had punched through it, but his
eyes shone wildly, and he grinned and laughed too easily. He was
living
, Stenwold realized. He was consuming every moment.
Flames that burned so brightly never burned for long, but Joyless Greatly,
artificer and aviator, was burning so fiercely that it seemed he would not
outlast even a tenday.
Kymon had been there,
the lean old Ant-kinden become a soldier again after years in an academic’s
robe, and Stenwold even found Cabre in the crowd, bandaged and burned but
alive. When her tower had fallen she had escaped through a window so small that
only a Fly-kinden could have managed it. Others had not been so lucky.
And Stenwold had made
his excuses as soon as he could but found he had nowhere to go. Not his own
house, certainly. They would find him there, and bother him with papers and
charts when he really had nothing further to contribute. He needed a break.
Most of all, he needed someone to talk to.
‘Has anyone been to see
her?’ he asked the warden.
‘No one except the
staff,’ the man said. ‘I go in and talk to her a little, sometimes.’
‘Good,’ said Stenwold.
‘What about charges?’
‘None,’ the warden said.
‘She’s your collar, War Master. They’re leaving her to you.’
‘Don’t call me that,
please.’
The warden looked
surprised, himself obviously a man who would love such a grand title. He
shrugged and unlocked the door of the cell.
She was being well
enough looked after, he saw. Save for the bolted shutters on the window the
room beyond the locked door hardly seemed a prison at all. There was a rug on
the floor, a proper bed, even a desk provided with paper and ink.
For confessions, perhaps? Last testimonies and defiant speeches?
This was certainly not the room of a common felon. Stenwold had made no
particular arrangements, but he wondered whether his recent rise through the
city’s hierarchy had effected this good treatment.
‘Hello Stenwold,’ said
Arianna. She was sitting on the bed, dressed in her old student’s robes, her
arms wrapped about herself. ‘I wondered when you would . . .’ She stopped
herself. ‘I suppose I wondered
if
, really.’
Stenwold crossed slowly
and turned the desk chair to face her, lowering himself wearily into it.
‘Things have been difficult,’ he said.
‘I’ve heard.’
‘But you can’t imagine,’
he said. ‘Just two days now and – the College halls have become infirmaries,
and every student who ever studied medicine is there, doing what little can be
done. And there are artificers that have fought all day who will now be working
all night, on the artillery, on the walls. There were girls of fifteen and men
of fifty who were out on the walls today and many, enough, who never came back
to their mothers or their husbands or wives. And the Ants keep coming, over and
over, as if they don’t care how many of them it takes. And they’ll get over our
walls if they have to make a mound of their own dead to do it. Have you heard
that?’
Numbly she shook her
head.
‘And I . . . I’m here
because – who else can I tell? I’ve sent them all away, my friends, and I keep
asking myself whether it was to help, or just because I wanted to try and keep
them safe. Because I have a record, there. I have a real history of sending
people off to keep them safe. I even seem to have thought that two of them
might be safe at Tark.’
For a long time he sat
in silence, grasping for more words and finding none, until she said, ‘Stenwold
– what’s going to happen to me? You can tell me that, can’t you?’ She bit at
her lip. ‘I keep expecting your Mantis friend to turn up as my executioner.’
‘Or your Wasp friends to
pull you out,’ he said bitterly. ‘No, that’s right, you told Tisamon you were
fighting amongst yourselves, you . . . imperial agents.’
‘Rekef,’ she said. ‘Say
it. I was a Rekef agent, Stenwold. Not a proper one. Not with a rank, or
anything. But I was working for them. And, yes, we fought. We tried to kill a
man called Major Thalric.’ She watched his reaction carefully. ‘You remember
him?’
‘We’ve met,’ Stenwold
allowed. ‘I wish . . . I wish it was so simple that I could just . . .’
‘
Believe
me? But of course, I’m a Spider and I’m a traitor. Twice a traitor therefore.
I’m sorry, Stenwold, really I am. I . . . seem to have done a very good job of
cutting myself off, here.’
He looked at her, at the
misery in her eyes, the hunched shoulders, and knew that he would never be able
to discern what was truth and what was feigning. By race and profession she was
doubly his better at that game.
‘There were three of us
in the plot,’ she said slowly. ‘If it helps explain. It happened when Thalric
told us the Vekkens were getting involved.’
He shook his head. ‘I
don’t understand. You were working against us. You sold us out to the Empire. I
don’t understand why the change of heart.’
‘Because the Empire is
different,’ she told him flatly. ‘We were expecting an imperial army to take
Collegium. Not this year, probably not even next, but eventually. And the
Empire
conquers
, and if you conquer, then you make
sure that you leave the place standing so you have people left to push around.
They would probably even have let the College go on, so long as they got to
control what was being taught. And Collegium would still be Collegium, only
with a Wasp governor and Wasp taxes, and Wasp soldiers in the streets. That’s
what we thought. But the Vekken hate this place. It’s a reminder of a defeat,
so they’ll not leave a stone standing given the chance. And that made us think
and realize just what the stakes were. And we broke away, Hofi, Scadran and I.
We tried to kill Thalric when he came to brief us. We killed his second, but
the man himself was too good for us. He got the other two, and I’d have been
next if your Mantis hadn’t found me. Lucky for me, wasn’t it? A quick and
private death swapped for a public execution. Or perhaps just death at the
hands of the Vekken when they burn this place around me.’ She stood up
suddenly, and he knew she was going to ask for his help, to demand it, to
impose on him in the name of the lies she had once shared with him. But the
words dried in her throat and she just made a single sound, a wretched sound.