Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘I hear you have a new one,’ said the Fly, still quite steady.
‘
You burned my ship!
’
‘You were robbing mine at the time, Ebris,’ Tomasso snapped at last. ‘And if I happened to pop a couple of pots of firepowder and a fuse in amongst the cargo you stole, well, it was your own choice to rob your brother thieves.’
‘You stain my family to three generations, if you call yourself my—’ Ebris started and, even as he was speaking, Tomasso’s fingers flicked out. His hands had left his dagger hilts, and two throwing blades were in the air even as the Spider spoke. One of the Scorpions twitched his shield up before his master’s face at the last second and, on the other side of Ebris, a Spider-kinden woman’s head snapped back with the small, hiltless knife in her eye.
Stenwold heard Piera’s bowstring twang, and Laszlo was abruptly airborne, slinging his blade in a wide arc. A couple of Ebris’s crew rushed Tomasso, but the Fly had his fighting knives out now, catching their rapier blades and turning them aside, fighting half on the ground and half in the air, his lack of height and reach becoming an irrelevancy. Ebris was meanwhile shrieking at his people to kill all of them.
The
Tidenfree
crew had seized the initiative, but the numbers were against them, and Stenwold saw that, had he not been there, they would surely have taken to the skies and fled for their ship.
Up to me to finish it, then
, he said to himself.
‘Ho, Spider!’ he bellowed, and levelled the piercer. The two Scorpions obediently clumped before their captain, bracing their shields. It was clear that none of them had any idea what Stenwold was holding, beyond that it was a weapon.
‘And who are you to address me, slave?’ Ebris of the Ganbrodiel demanded.
‘The future,’ said Stenwold, and pulled the trigger.
The sound alone stopped the fight, sent the Spiders reeling back, virtually knocked the Flies from the air. What kept the fight stopped was what those four long metal bolts had accomplished. The Scorpions had been faithful bodyguards, but the piercer had struck through their shields, splintering the wood like kindling, ripped open their mail and torn their bodies up so that they looked as though some wild beast – a mantis or a hunting beetle – had been at them. Their last service had been in vain. Two of the bolts had retained enough force to take Ebris squarely in the chest. Now they stood proud of his body, as though waiting for someone to run a flag up them.
For a moment, everybody just stared. Stenwold calmly put the piercer down and reached for his belt. He might be a long way from home, but he knew people – people of any kinden – and there was always one.
A scarred Spider-kinden, older than Ebris had been, probably a loyal family retainer, yelled something wordless and went for Stenwold with his sword. Before Tomasso could get in the way, Stenwold had loosed both barrels of the little snapbow Totho had made. True, one bolt flew straight over the man’s head, but the other one caught him beneath the collarbone and stopped him in his tracks. He dropped to his knees with a disbelieving look, and keeled over onto his side.
‘Anyone else?’ Stenwold demanded, brandishing the weapon. The piercer was discharged, the snapbow empty, but his Inapt adversaries had no idea of that.
Keep your superstitions
, he found himself thinking.
Leave to me the foundry and the forge, and we shall see who carries the day.
They melted away, the remnants of Ebris’s crew. By that time Laszlo was calling for aid, and Stenwold turned to see that Piera had taken an arrow in the belly, even during that short moment of skirmish.
They rushed her back to the
Tidenfree
, convulsing and weeping in Stenwold’s arms. As the ship cast off, Despard and Fernaea both tried all the tricks of modern and ancient medicine to keep some life in her, but before Kanateris had reached the horizon she was gone.
Jodry Drillen employed three secretaries now, with standing instructions to take away and deal with anything that did not require his specific and valuable attention, yet still each morning there appeared a neat pyramid of scrolls on his desk: petitions, proposals, complaints, agendas, reports from his own people or invitations from the high-placed.
Why did I want this, precisely?
It seemed out of all proportion to the effective worth and influence of his new position. Locals had great difficulty persuading foreign visitors that the Speaker did not actually rule the Assembly or the city. His role was just that of a glorified bureaucrat. Collegium was ruled by the vote of the Assembly as a whole, not by the word of one man, just as the Assembly and Speaker both were selected through the casting of Lots by the citizens at large. Visitors found it an astonishing system. Jodry had seen them walking about the streets of Collegium with a nervous, expectant air, as if waiting for the howling mobs of anarchy to descend at any moment.
So why would any sane Beetle want to be Speaker, one might ask?
Oh but, of course, there were perks. The Speaker was the city’s face when it came to foreign diplomacy. The Speaker met ambassadors and hosted gatherings. The Speaker was not expected to raise motions himself before the Assembly, but he drew up the list of who spoke and when. It was not in Jodry’s power to ban any Assembler from making a speech or putting a matter to the vote, but his whim determined whether a petitioner had the midmorning hours, when the Assemblers were sharp, or the early-morning slot when they were half-asleep, or later when their minds were on which chop house would receive them for lunch. Or else the next day, if there were enough wanting to be heard. In its own strange way the influence of the Speaker was as great as any Spider Aristos, and perhaps only the Spiders truly understood its implications.
Still, he had perhaps underestimated the baggage entailed. Here he was, scarcely an hour into the morning – on a day when the Assembly was not even in session, yet! – and already the business was piling up.
‘Ambassador Aagen wants to talk with you about the next games,’ said Arvi, and the position of his finger along the scroll he read from showed that he was barely halfway through. The Fly-kinden was all immaculate perfection, giving the impression he could waste Jodry’s time all day, if he needed to.
‘Don’t we have a committee ruling on the games?’ Jodry complained. ‘I’d swear we gave old Nemmie Linker some money for it.’
Arvi’s nose wrinkled. ‘Aagen’s a Wasp, Master. He’s used to a single person being in charge, and usually a man.’
‘Well, put him off.’
‘Very good.’ The Fly made a small cross on the scroll. ‘Master Outwright came with a delegation about the future of the Companies. They know that there’s a motion to disband them, and now they’re spitting teeth about it.’
‘Did you mention that the war is over? Perhaps he hasn’t heard,’ Jodry muttered.
‘I suspect he would reply that it was not as simple as that, Master,’ said Arvi smartly. He was quite the most humourless Fly that Jodry had ever known, but also the most efficient.
‘I’ll see them this afternoon.’ Jodry paused to think for a moment. ‘Have my gorget and sword fetched and polished, or whatever they do to them to make them look good. I might as well look the veteran myself.’
‘Very good.’ Arvi’s finger moved on. ‘A delegate from the Council of Thirteen in Helleron wants to talk about the railroad. It’s Jandry Pinhaver, so—’
‘So I can’t very well ignore him. Well, invite him for drinks this evening. He should appreciate that. Take up two bottles of the ’500 Seldis Glorhavael. I hear Pinhaver knows his wine.’
‘Very good. Then we have another thirteen personal petitions for justice.’
‘Look through them yourself. If there’s anything that looks as though it’s genuine, bring it back on tomorrow’s list.’
‘And the two genuine petitions from yesterday?’
‘Bring them back tomorrow, too, and that one from the day before.’ Jodry sighed.
And I imagined that I would have time for a few good causes.
He had tried that, over the first few days, and not only because he knew Stenwold would have expected it. The problem was that, on digging deep enough, so few causes retained their virtue for long. ‘Come on, man, what else?’
‘Stenwold Maker stepped on to the docks this morning from the
Tidenfree
, a Fly-run vessel of no provenance,’ Arvi reported, before rolling the scroll up neatly.
Jodry stared at him, open-mouthed, before gathering himself enough to say, ‘And you couldn’t have told me that first thing? Seventeen days he’s been gone!’
‘Would you have wanted to deal with the rest, if I had started with Master Maker?’ Arvi raised one eyebrow.
Jodry gave him a sour look. ‘Don’t think that I can’t dismiss you, without references.’
‘But think of all the petitions for justice I would raise, Master,’ the Fly replied, deadpan.
Not humourless
, Jodry conceded.
If only.
‘Send for him. I want to see him the moment we’re both free. I’ll fit it in around anything else. Tell him I need him to help stop a third Vekken war, that should get the truant bastard’s attention.’
‘Very good,’ Arvi responded, and bowed his way out of the door.
He had gone to Arianna first, after he stepped ashore, but only because he had been making plans while aboard ship. The
Tidenfree
crew were fully briefed, and they would meet with him later.
All the way home a single thought:
The Aldanrael
had sat like a lead ball in his stomach. He had been trying to disbelieve Albinus’s words, through fog and wind and the Lash.
I will have proof
. Even if the pallid Ant had spoken the truth, it would be a grave step to point a finger at the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael. To jump to conclusions and mislay the blame, well . . . Teornis was popular amongst the citizens of Collegium, but peace was even more popular. Stenwold had no doubt that he would slide from war hero to warmonger in an eye-blink.
Arianna had been glad to see him, at least. She had held him long and hard, and he thought she might even have wept, although her eyes were dry when she finally let him go. It reminded him of how they had been during the Vekken siege, in the first flush of their relationship.
He had been going to tell her more, to ask her advice even, but in the end he found the words would not come. He simply did not want to lay this burden on her.
One of Jodry’s people had found him, soon enough, and called him to an urgent conference. Stenwold regarded the prospect sourly.
Was it too much to hope that, by becoming Speaker, he would stand on his own feet and not treat me like his personal servant?
He was being harsh, he knew, but Jodry’s dire warnings about the Vekken smacked of cheap sensationalism.
I will see our new Speaker in my own good time.
Instead he had taken to his study and written a note, very carefully phrased, though it was not addressed to any particular name. In truth, Stenwold had three or four possibilities in mind for whom those same words would serve, as he was not sure who was in the city just now, or who would be most willing to oblige. That gap in his knowledge threw him, as though he had found one of the stair treads missing on his way down to breakfast.
I’m losing my touch. I should know these things already.
He wondered then, sitting in this study which had seen so many years of plots and agents,
Am I still an intelligencer, a spymaster, in truth? Or am I just become another fat Assembler with a war record?
Then Arianna had come in with a mug of chocolate for him. He hastily hid the letter away by instinct, beneath another sheet of parchment, then felt guilty for the action. She would work out soon enough that he was up to something. Meanwhile, she was waiting still to hear what had taken him off to sea for almost two tendays, and he did not want to lie to her. As she draped herself over his shoulder, he almost told her again, but bit back the words, found something pleasant and banal to say. The knowledge had already poisoned him. He did not want it to sicken her as well.
Later, after he had called up some Fly-kinden messengers to carry his letters, he and Arianna found other points of agreement, and his secrets were almost forgotten. Elsewhere, in the new Speaker’s townhouse, Jodry Drillen stewed and stamped and went without Stenwold’s company and, for him, Stenwold spared not a moment’s thought.
Jodry’s man was knocking at his door barely after dawn on the day after, though. Cardless diverted him, putting him off and sending him to walk about the streets for another hour or so, but by that time Stenwold knew that the Speaker, like a fly on old food, would not be swatted off without inevitably circling back.
He left the bed and, without waking Arianna, dressed in his best College robes, and headed off to the Speaker’s offices.
Let’s get this over with. I have other things to do with my time.
The messenger caught up with him on the very steps of the Amphiophos, swinging through the air to match pace with him faultlessly: a young Fly woman, neat as a button, handing him a folded paper. The circular badge of her guild gleamed, freshly polished, on her chest.
Stenwold unfolded the paper, holding it close. His eyes flicked over the few words, before he enquired, ‘Who gave you this?’
‘Master Maker,’ the Fly told him, reproachfully, ‘this was
left
in our offices. Nobody saw by whom.’