Blood of the Mantis

Seventeen

The key to this venture was calm, and Lyrus embraced calmness as a constant companion. Here he was in the Queen’s chosen audience chamber, which he and two other servants had set up and prepared not long before. Before fetching Maker he had held back to give the room one more look over. That was all the time he needed to ensure that the crossbow was properly hidden within the sombre drapes hanging to one side of the room’s two lofty windows. He had unbarred the shutters on the windows themselves, and he knew that nobody would check them. Even with the Empire now looming so large in their mind, his kin here still did not think in three dimensions. Within the Lowlands the military threat to an Ant city-state was from other states of their own kind.

It was now all in readiness, with Maker and his entourage waiting in the antechamber. Lyrus took his place at the back of the room, knowing that he would be easily overlooked, seen as part of it. To the visitors he would be merely a servant, possessing a servant’s customary invisibility, and to the Queen and her staff just one of their own people doing his job.

The Queen came in first, with only two guards. She would thus be making a show of her trust, as leverage for whatever she wanted from the Collegium ambassador. Lyrus caught the edge of the thoughts she conveyed to her warders, counselling patience but urging them to be ready if she decided to make her move.

For Lyrus it was a good sign. The more tension there was between Sarn and Collegium, the better this scenario would look.

The Queen stood waiting now: no round-the-table conference this. She had decided to try a new tactic. There was a fire burning in the grate as she stood there in her gleaming armour and long dark cloak, waiting for the Beetle to be summoned. This would be a heartfelt appeal, then, Lyrus judged.

The two guards had taken up position on either side of the door, and it occurred to him that he could kill her right now. The thought made his heart race and he fought to keep it out of his mind, so that not even a hint of his intentions might be picked up. This would be the culmination of his career. True, it could also be the end of him, but at least they would remember him. He would split Sarn asunder, one way or another. To kill the Queen! His masters would then admit that there was better blood in him than just tainted Sarnesh. The annals of the Rekef, the secret history of the Empire, would record him as a faithful son.

He was tired of living amongst these alien people who shared his face and skin, but the only way he could leave their house was through its rubble.

He found his fingers itching for the crossbow, but he stilled them. It must happen only with the Collegium man present. When he eventually made his move, anything might happen but, with only two guards to deal with, it seemed more than possible that Lyrus could be the only Sarnesh witness to the deed left alive, and who would the city more readily believe? If it was swift enough then even the last thoughts of the Queen and her escort could be extinguished before they betrayed him.

The Queen must have already sent the call, for the door opened and the fat Beetle came in, with a Fly-kinden and a Spider woman in tow. Lyrus scowled inwardly. This retinue complicated matters but Maker took his servants everywhere. They were all, of course, unarmed, for even her most honoured guests did not come into the Queen’s presence with their weapons still at their belts. The burly Beetle clutched a cloth-covered bundle, though, and Lyrus guessed this to be the new device recently stolen from the Empire.

Responding to an unspoken thought, Lyrus came forward with a tray of wine decanted into Spider-made glass goblets. The Beetle and the Queen both took one and, before Lyrus could snatch the tray back, the Spider servant had helped herself as well. Acting every bit the contemptuous Sarnesh faced with foreign impudence, he returned to the window drape and set down the tray.

‘Master Maker, this is no good,’ the Queen said. The Beetle made a show of eyeing the wine in surprise, but this touch of humour vanished into the ether. The Queen’s face remained stern.

‘It is a complex situation, your Majesty,’ Maker admitted. ‘I am sure, with time-’

‘What time do you think we have?’ the Queen cut him off. ‘How long now, before the war is upon us? This matter of these weapons, these snapbows, dominates us. You can afford to procrastinate no longer.’

The Beetle grimaced, glancing sideways at his servants. The Spider stood there looking enviably relaxed, the Fly-kinden shuffling nervously.

‘I will not send my soldiers to their deaths simply because you and your scholars do not believe we can be trusted with… this thing.’ The Queen gestured at the slender weapon in the Beetle’s hands. ‘Make your choice, Master Maker, and make it now, for your time is up.’

Quite, thought Lyrus and, though he would have liked to see the Collegium man squirm a little more, it was clear that his own cue was fast approaching. He reached into the drapery, grasping the stock of the crossbow. It was already loaded with a full magazine containing a dozen bolts. He had earlier tested the action, and it was as smooth and powerful as he could wish.

‘Which would your Majesty rather have?’ Maker was saying. ‘The snapbow or the Ancient League? The snap-bow or the cooperation of the Kessen? That is the choice you are making.’

Lyrus’s Fly-kinden associates were waiting outside the unbarred windows, ready to burst in at the first sound of affray. Lyrus brought up the crossbow in a smooth and practised motion, and loosed.

The Queen of Sarn’s lips moved to speak, and Sperra shrieked like a madwoman and dived at her. Stenwold, with reflexes he had not known he possessed, threw himself after her, seeing only that his single chance for a grand alliance was about to be inexplicably sabotaged.

The crossbow bolt lanced his thigh, right up to the fletching, the tip of it piercing Sperra’s foot. They both cried out and then were both falling on top of the Queen, who had a sword half-drawn, her eyes wide with shock. Her two guards drew simultaneously, running forward, and the shutters above them slammed open. All in that same moment.

The two Fly-kinden who hurtled in from above were wrapped up in dark cloth. One held a long dagger, dropping down on to the Queen and her assailants; the other simply flung out his hand and one of the Ant guards reeled backwards with a blade in his throat.

Lyrus recocked and loosed the crossbow again and again. As the second guard moved in, he let the man reach down to haul Stenwold off the Queen, let the man jab at the Beetle with his sword, running a shallow line across his ribs, and then he shot the guard in the face. Lyrus himself would be the only remaining Sarnesh witness now, and he knew the guards had called for aid but had relayed crucially false facts about who was attacking. The Queen herself had not realized the source of the betrayal. The foreigners are attacking the Queen! Lyrus cried out into the ether. Protect the Queen from these foreign assassins!

Stenwold fell to the floor beside the dead guard, still unable to work out what was going on. Sperra was shouting something, crouching by the Queen, and then a Fly-kinden dropped on her, dagger raised. Even as Sperra saw him, and fell helplessly to the floor with her hands raised in feeble defence, Arianna had lunged forward, catching the Fly in the side with a blade Stenwold had not known she was carrying. The Fly assassin fell back, and she went with him, tumbling on to the floor as a crossbow bolt sped past them.

The crossbowman! Stenwold looked around wildly, before seeing a Sarnesh Ant armed with the weapon standing at the far end of the room. It was only the bolt in his thigh that convinced him the man was an enemy.

The main door was flung open, and more soldiers were pushing their way in, their swords drawn. The first man took a bolt in the chest, punching its way through his armour, and he fell back into the rest.

Stenwold found his hands tightening about the snapbow he had brought with him. Fighting the pain in his leg, he reached into his belt pouch, where he had some nailbow bolts intended for demonstrating the weapon. With trembling hands he now slotted one into the snapbow’s breach.

Sperra was covered in blood, he noticed, and a crossbow bolt had pierced the Queen’s body, just below her breast, and was quivering with the rhythm of her breathing. Sperra was trying desperately to get the woman’s armour off to reach the wound, then flinched back as a narrow blade flicked past her to dig itself into the floor.

Stenwold raised the snapbow and loosed. It was clear the Fly killer did not possess the same Art that Sperra did, because he did not see the bolt until it had plucked him from the air, spinning him end over end to crash off one wall and drop to the floor.

Arianna had meanwhile killed the other assassin, but now she was backing off frantically, with Sarnesh soldiers running towards her. Stenwold, hands already fumbling a second bolt into place, shouted for them to stop. The Spider had dropped her knife, had her empty hands raised, when the first soldier simply clubbed her down with the pommel of his sword. Another, tight-faced, ripped Sperra away from the Queen and himself knelt down beside the wounded woman.

Stenwold turned to see the crossbowman level his weapon at the Queen again. He wore the faint smile of a man who might not survive the moment, but who would still win the game.

Stenwold loosed just before the other did, seeing the bolt strike him not in the chest as he had aimed for, but in the shoulder, upsetting the man’s aim so that the crossbow quarrel went wide.

Someone grabbed Stenwold by the collar and hauled him roughly to his feet, racking him with pain. He looked up into the face of a Sarnesh soldier, and started to say that the crossbowman must be stopped.

He saw only a blur of movement as the man’s mailed fist struck him square on the nose, knocking him cold with professional ease.

Stenwold came to slowly and reluctantly. Each further part of his body he became aware of made him regret his recovery. His head hurt abominably, his nose especially, though the pain in his back he attributed to the bare wooden boards they had laid him on. The crossbow-wound in his leg was just a dull ache by comparison, though his ribs burnt from that seemingly trifling flesh wound.

On further discovery he found that the surface beneath him was a bed. It might simply have been the Ant-kinden idea of especial luxury, but this was more likely the kind of hospitality they extended to all of their prisoners. This room he was confined in was definitely a cell.

There was a wan light filtering in through a very high-up window, or a window that seemed high relative to himself. The cell was shaped like a circular shaft, and he had the uneasy feeling that the window was actually at ground level, and that his prison was sunk deep in the earth.

He sat up and groaned both at the pain and the sudden rush of memories. Following the assassination attempt, in the confusion, the soldiers had just struck out at all of them. His current residence suggested that confusion was ongoing.

Surely they can’t think that we had anything to do with it?

But what would the Ant soldiers have witnessed, after all? Their Queen badly injured, two of her guards slain, a rabble of foreigners running amok. The Sarnesh with the crossbow – the Sarnesh traitor! – could have subsequently told them anything.

And the Queen had been no great friend to him, over the snapbow business. Well, now they even possessed the prototype he had brought. Perhaps they had decided it best to lock him away somewhere safe where he could raise no fuss. The alliance could now be falling apart just above his head, and he would have no idea.

Noticing that they had dressed the wound in his leg, he lurched over to the low door of his cell and began hammering on it, shouting for attention as loud as he could. Only silence followed, no running feet. He looked down at his hands, trying to think past the pain that held court about his broken nose, that was the loudest voice in his mind. What did he have left to bargain with?

The Sarnesh needed Collegium, surely. A generation of history must have taught them that. So they could not simply discard him. Things could be a great deal worse.

He tried to relax, but then realized he had not thought matters through. It was worse. For him, it was worse.

He had no idea about Arianna and Sperra. He had no idea if either of them was even alive. He was the big College Master from Collegium, so maybe he was worth keeping, but they – a Spider agent with a chequered past and a grubby Fly woman?

He hammered on the door some more. ‘Hoi, I have to talk to someone! I need to talk to someone, please!’

Arianna… The thought made him weak. He had only recently gained her for himself, woven a relationship between them that almost anything could have broken apart: an old, fat Beetle spymaster and a Spider temptress, late of the Rekef. It could have ended in so many ways, but not like this, please.

‘Come on!’ he shouted at the featureless door, even as the light from the window dwindled. ‘You must want to question me, at least? Talk to me, please!’

He heard the bolt shoot back, and he stepped away hurriedly. The door swung open, revealing a gas-lit corridor, low-ceilinged enough that the man standing there had to stoop. The visitor was Sarnesh, and for a moment Stenwold thought he was the crossbowman, but then realized it was just the same features, revealing the family-close kinship all the Ant-kinden possessed. If Stenwold looked further, he could see big Balkus there in the man’s face – and even long-dead Marius, a friend from his student days.

The man regarded him doubtfully. He was dressed in the same chainmail as any other Ant-kinden soldier, purposefully just another anonymous guard.

‘Well?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘I’m sorry, but I thought you had something to say to us,’ said the guard, and began to shut the door.

‘Wait!’ Stenwold said. ‘Wait, you have to tell me – what is going on with the Alliance? How long are you going to keep me in here? What about my companions? What’s going to happen to us?’

The guard looked at him, expressionless, and Stenwold pressed on: ‘I am Stenwold Maker of Collegium. Look, there has been a mistake. A very terrible mistake. I was with the Queen, and-’

‘Yes, you are one of those who assaulted our Queen,’ interrupted the guard, now much more coldly.

‘I didn’t! I was there, but I was trying to save her! Please, my companions can-’

‘Questions are already being asked,’ the guard told him. ‘Your turn will come.’

His tone made Stenwold falter. ‘Questions…’ Oh, we ally ourselves with them and we think that they are above all that, our friends the Sarnesh… There would be special rooms, he knew, for questions. Rooms and machines. ‘Please, if I could just talk to someone-’

‘Your turn will come,’ the guard said implacably, and then a new thought came to him, a message from elsewhere. ‘In fact it is here. How convenient.’ He regarded Stenwold thoughtfully, and then drew his sword. ‘You cannot escape, and if you attempt to attack me I will make you suffer for it, and my kin shall know of it.’

‘Yes, I understand, and I have no intention of making this mess any worse than it is already,’ Stenwold said tiredly.

‘That is good.’ The guard’s smile was thin and perfunctory. ‘Now exit your cell.’

With a limping effort, Stenwold did so, moving slowly and carefully, keeping his hands always in plain sight. Beetle-kinden were physically tough, but a crossbow bolt through his leg would take more healing than simply a night in the cells.

He was guided through a series of turns of these low-ceilinged passageways, noticing constant side-tunnels that he guessed might lead to the insect nest beneath the city. Certainly there were scuttlings down there from creatures that needed no light, and a bitterly acrid scent was evident. They were meanwhile progressing upwards on a noticeable gradient and soon enough he saw windows again, small and barred and near the ceiling, and some of them able to be reached by steps, where a crossbowman could crouch to defend this subterranean undercity.

‘Where are we?’ he asked eventually.

‘The palace,’ his guard replied. ‘A part of it you foreigners do not often see. You should feel honoured.’

And then they were pushing through another door, and beyond it there was a room containing a desk. No sinister machines, though – not yet.

Sitting behind the desk there was a Sarnesh woman writing a report. She did not even glance up at Stenwold, but left him waiting for minute after minute.

He slumped to his knees, one hand pressed to his wounded leg. More time passed, then he cleared his throat loudly. She did not so much as pause in her writing. He began to wonder if in fact she were taking mental dictation from someone elsewhere in the building.

There was a second door to the room, and it opened without warning. Another Sarnesh woman marched in, like a close sister to the writer, with two guards immediately behind her. Stenwold flinched back instantly. They had the grim air of a death-squad about them.

‘Master Stenwold Maker of Collegium,’ the woman said.

‘Yes, that is me.’

The woman approached, staring at him, and Stenwold realized she was looking at his nose. The guard behind suddenly grabbed him, pinning his arms with a disproportionate strength and yanking him to his feet, while the woman reached up and took hold of his nose and twisted it.

Stenwold blacked out for at least a second. He came back to find himself kneeling on the ground, still pinioned by his guard, with blood running down his face, and weeping with pain. He looked up at his tormentress, eyes streaming, and demanded, ‘Why?’

‘So that it will set correctly,’ she told him without sympathy. ‘For soldiers it is different, but I do not imagine that the dignity of a College Master is enhanced by a broken nose.’

Stenwold tried to answer but the blood and the pain were too much for him. He had to be hauled back to his feet, and even then it was the guard who, seemingly effortlessly, supported most of his weight.

The woman and her escort then passed out of the room, and the guard had obviously been instructed to follow, as he manhandled Stenwold’s bleeding bulk after them.

This time they were definitely moving through the palace at ground-floor level, but not in any part of it Stenwold had seen before. The room they paused in still had the barred windows, and benches about the walls which brought to mind a waiting room or antechamber. The Ants’ customary lack of ostentation made it difficult to guess the purpose of much of their city from the furnishings alone.

‘Sit,’ the woman said, and Stenwold was released without ceremony onto a creaking bench. He touched his nose gingerly but it was still too painful. At least the blood had now stopped, so he tenderly wiped at his face, trying to rid it of the worst of the gore.

He sensed another door was about to open, because the woman who had rebroken his nose now looked that way. When it did he forced himself to his feet, ignoring the reaction of the guard beside him, because it was Arianna who entered first.

They had not been kind to her, but neither had they been as cruel as they might. Her face was badly bruised down one side, and her left eye was swollen shut. Stenwold did not care, though, for she was alive! He shambled forwards towards her, till the guard jumped on him, bearing him to the floor.

Something snapped inside him, and Stenwold twisted round and smashed the man across the face with his elbow, and with all of his might, spinning the Ant off him. He scrambled to his feet with a roar, but the Ant woman’s soldier escorts had descended on him, and they held him firmly between them, and though he threw his weight on them, struggling with all his might, he could not shift their grip. The guard he had just struck put one hand on his shoulder, and immediately a searing pain burnt into him, accompanied by the smell of burning cloth and flesh. Stenwold screamed, dropping to his knees, and then suddenly, at the woman’s unheard order, he was let go. The Beetle collapsed forwards, feeling the raw, acid-burnt handprint where the Ant’s Art had blistered his skin.

Then Arianna was kneeling by him, clasping him in her own bruised arms, hugging him close, and if everything was not suddenly all right again, it was better, so much better.

He forced himself to look up at the Ant woman. ‘What now?’ he rasped.

‘Now? Now nothing,’ she said. ‘We have ascertained the truth. You and your confederate will not need to be questioned after all.’

‘The truth? Then -?’

But he was interrupted by the door opening again. Another Ant soldier came in, bearing a small figure in his arms. Stenwold gaped at them, feeling Arianna’s grip about him tighten.

The newcomer laid the figure down beside him, and Stenwold felt his stomach lurch.

She was twisted. There was no better term. It was an old, reliable mechanical torture, that had done this to her. They had racked her joints to make her talk and, as Fly-kinden had delicate joints and little tolerance for pain, he guessed they had gone on doing it until they were certain that what she said – what she must have screamed out over and over – was the truth. Stenwold felt his gorge rise, felt weak from sick horror at the thought. Arianna clung to him, even closer.

‘Sperra…’

The Fly opened one eye and slowly turned her face towards him. She was alive, at least, but there were bandages about her head and limbs, and she trembled uncontrollably, reaching out a hand for Stenwold to hold. As her lips moved, and he saw tears leak from her eyes.

‘Get me out of here, Sten,’ Sperra whispered. ‘Please.’

‘What have you done to her?’ Stenwold demanded, feeling anger, futile and self-destructive, rising within him.

‘We have questioned her. Thoroughly,’ said the Sarnesh woman. ‘We have also questioned Lyrus, who was attending on the Queen. We are satisfied that we know the full truth of the matter now. Lyrus had been suborned by the Wasp Empire. You and your associates were not involved in the attack.’

Stenwold exploded, ‘You tortured her! You…’ He wanted to say, animals, savages, but, no, this was the handiwork of the civilized, the darkness of a mechanistic people. ‘All she was trying to do was save your Queen! And what about your Queen? Could she herself not have told you what happened? Why this, curse you all!’

‘Sten,’ Arianna said warningly, and he saw all of the Sarnesh grow tense.

‘The Queen of Sarn is dead, Master Maker,’ the Ant woman said.

Stenwold found Sperra’s hand at last and closed his own, so much larger, gently around it. The world had caught up with him again, as it always did. If the Ants had revealed any sorrow, any raging grief, at the loss of their leader, then perhaps he could have better understood. Their faces were as bland as those of statues, their loss shared only in the space between their minds – and just then he hated them for it.

I want to go home.

Stenwold leant on his staff because, although his punctured leg did not hurt as much as earlier, it was stiff. He stared about the table.

I want to go home.

But he had this one last piece of duty left to accomplish. Then he would go. If Sarn did not finally agree then it could fight its own cursed war. In the foreign quarter, waiting for him, was Arianna. She had wanted to be here too, but he had been firm. If there was trouble now, it must fall on his head alone. He would not risk another’s safety.

Not after what had happened to Sperra – poor Sperra whose Fly-kinden Art had sprung her to the aid of the Ant Queen, and who had then paid for it at the hand of that Queen’s subjects, and all for nothing.

Stenwold Maker watched the other ambassadors arrive. The sickness he felt in his stomach, which had started when he saw Sperra, had not left him yet.

Undercut at every side. If the Wasps had corrupted a Sarnesh, then who else here could be in their pay? One obvious answer was Stenwold’s own agent. Plius was Ant-kinden from distant Tsen, and thus had no love for the Sarnesh. Plius also had secrets: Stenwold was spymaster enough to have seen that in his face. Plius evidently served two masters, two at least. The Empire had been in existence for only three generations but he had to admit it had learnt the trade very thoroughly.

Face to face, ranged about the table, these were not happy men and women. When the Queen had been killed they had all been hauled from their quarters and placed behind bars while the Sarnesh pieced together what had happened, extracted from the broken flesh of Sperra and the traitor Lyrus. Only the Spider Teornis had, by dint of Art and great persuasion, suffered merely a polite house arrest.

Stenwold glanced up to the head of the table, seeing there a middle-aged Ant-kinden woman, in full armour. The Sarnesh tacticians had since elected a King, but he had sent one of his council in his place. It seemed that trust was running thin in Sarn just now.

‘Masters, hope of the free world,’ he began, trusting that his voice sounded less sarcastic to them than it did to himself. They stared at him suspiciously, as though he was cheating them in some petty mercantile business. The naked hostility evident amongst so many of them made him want to scream.

‘You have known me, I think, as a patient man and the emissary from a city of patient and learned men. I hope therefore you have formed a good picture of my character. Our hosts, at least, have taken some pains to investigate it.’ Again that harsh edge to his tone. He forced himself back into a tenuous calm, and did not look at the Sarnesh tactician, although he was sure that she knew just what he meant, and that she did not care.

‘Master Maker,’ Teornis spoke up. Stenwold glanced at him in surprise. The Spider wore a crooked smile, and looked briefly at his fellows to his left and right before continuing. ‘During this recent period of emergency, Master Maker, we have had some cause to talk to one another. Your name has been on many lips, and news of your arrest caused alarm, to say the least. Allow me to cast off my inheritance and be candid for a moment. I promise such a lapse shall not happen again.’

There was a slight murmur of amusement from some of the others, and Stenwold marvelled at the man’s ability to influence their mood.

‘We are all enemies within this room,’ Teornis said. ‘We were never made to stand in one place and all look the same way. The commander from Kes hates our hosts. The lady from Etheryon hates me. Our hosts themselves, right now, are not enamoured of any of us.’ His smile broadened. ‘Not the most optimistic of situations, you will agree. But we are prepared to listen to Collegium, Master Maker. We will listen to you.’

Thank you. ‘Then listen carefully,’ said Stenwold. ‘We are at war, all of us. The Empire is currently a threat to every city in the Lowlands, and yet here we stand bickering about a mere weapon. Not a weapon that cracks open mountains or destroys cities, but a weapon that a man may hold to kill another man. A successor to the crossbow, in fact, that in itself is barely more than a thrown stick with a little cleverness attached. I have heard fellow artificers speak of the march of progress. This thing, this snapbow, is not progress. It is just another way of killing someone and, even if it is an inch more efficient, then that does not make it progress. Progress is made by the improvement of people, not the improvement of machines.’ He was surprised at the sympathetic response to his words from the Inapt – the Moth-kinden and the Mantids – until he realized that they must have embraced such a view for ever. He wondered whether, at this tapering end of the wedge, he had rediscovered some truth his own people had lost long ago.

No time for such philosophy now, old man.

‘So the enemy have a way to kill people faster than they could manage before. You will say that we should have it, too, and I cannot say no to that. My own people, all our people, will soon become the targets of this weapon. Therefore we cannot cripple ourselves by casting it aside.’

They watched him narrowly.

‘So what, you say? What is the answer, then? I have only one, and I cannot force it on you. Collegium possesses the plans for this weapon, but there will be other chances soon for all of you who are capable of the artifice to copy and design your own. My current monopoly is almost fictional: it exists only in a saving of time. But we have so little of that left, and therefore I have something to bargain with.

‘I will give these plans to the Sarnesh,’ he told them, seeing already the beginnings of their anger. ‘I will give them to the Kessen,’ he added. ‘I will give them to Teornis of the Spiderlands. I would give them to the Ancient League, if they would accept them. I would give them even to the Vekken, if they were here. I will give them to anyone and everyone who will sign a written oath.’

That caught them unawares, even Teornis. They waited, and he happily let them wait a little longer before he enlightened them.

‘An oath, I mean, that these weapons will be used against the Empire only. I know all too well that knowledge cannot be destroyed. They are therefore here to stay, these monstrous devices. An oath, all the same, that they will not be used against any other cities in the Lowlands, or against the Spiderlands. And an oath that you will take up arms against any city that does.’

They clearly did not understand. He put his staff flat on the table, leaning forward. ‘Whoever breaks this oath will have more enemies than they know what to do with, and in this way those of our allies – our allies, you understand, who have given of their own resources already to defend us – those of our allies who cannot use this weapon are thus still protected from it. An oath of cities. An oath of alliance.’ He looked from face to face and heard his voice shake as he continued, ‘Trust, you see. Without trust we cannot succeed. Without trust we cannot stand together.’

‘And will you sign this oath, for Collegium? We understand that Collegium is even now raising an army equipped with such devices,’ the Sarnesh woman said.

Stenwold gave her a flat look, then delved in his pocket and brought out the much-creased oath he had laboured over. Before their eyes he unfolded it and signed it with his reservoir pen.

‘It is done,’ he told them. ‘Who will be the next?’

They watched each other now, not him, and he feared they would not. At least I can go home, then, was his only thought.

‘I shall sign next.’ Teornis took the oath from him and signalled for a servant to bring him pen and ink. ‘I know there are those who will not trust me, but I shall bind the Aldanrael by my mark, nonetheless. If they believe themselves to be so much more trustworthy, I invite them to place their own marks beside it. After all, the new-woven Ancient League lies a long way from my lands. I do not believe this new weapon has sufficient range that my anticipated treachery might endanger them.’

He pushed the document across the table towards the Skryre from Dorax, ignoring the hostile glares of the two Mantis women who flanked her. The Moth-kinden, looking old and very small, looked at the paper and those two fresh signatures.

‘We have nothing to pledge. We shall never use this deadly toy,’ she said. ‘We are at the mercy of all of you. This weapon shall likely be the death of us.’

‘Will the League draw back even now?’ Stenwold asked her. ‘I do this to protect you, for what protection it can offer. Nothing we do or say will prevent the snapbow coming into general use here, as it already is in the Empire.’

‘Do not presume to lecture us, Beetle,’ she said, but she was tired, defeated. ‘It means nothing. However, the Ancient League shall put its mark to this.’

After that, the oath passed about the table until it landed before the Sarnesh Tactician, who had no doubt been communicating with her king and her entire city all this time.

When she signed, there was no great upsurge of relief in Stenwold, just the thought that he could leave this wretched city at long last and see his beloved Collegium once more. He forced himself to wait, even as the dignitaries filed out with their various expressions of suspicion and dissatisfaction, forced himself to remain the impeccable diplomat to the last. When Teornis appeared at his elbow, as silently and familiarly as his own shadow, he was not surprised.

‘Masterfully done,’ the Spider said. His smile, as always, looked as genuine a smile as Stenwold had ever seen, and more practised than any.

‘I am not meant for this,’ Stenwold sighed.

Teornis shook his head, seeming amused. ‘I only hope that we always remain allies, Master Maker, for you would be a formidable foe.’

‘High praise from the Lord-Martial?’

‘And well deserved.’ Teornis’s smile twitched broader, and even that reaction, seeming so spontaneous, could just as easily have been deliberately contrived. With these Spiders I truly cannot ever know. The thought turned him to reflect on Arianna, and he dismissed the association quickly.

‘You should listen for news from the east, War Master,’ Teornis advised him. ‘It is at least passably pleasing this season.’

‘There is some new winter fashion, is there?’

‘A new fashion in warfare, indeed. One hears on the wind that a certain protege of yours has been causing the Imperial Army some degree of embarrassment.’