‘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.
‘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.