‘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.’
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.