‘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.’
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.’