Dragonfly Falling

Twenty-One

There was a rapid hammering on the door of his room and Stenwold pushed himself from his bed and went to answer it. For the first time in a long while he had been doing nothing except stare at the ceiling and brood. No plans, no action or mental juggling of his contacts and agents. He felt depressed, powerless, now that he had finally gone before the Assembly. It was all out of his hands.

He opened the door on Tynisa, who looked agitated. Her sword was already drawn, he saw with a sinking heart.

‘What is it?’

‘You had better get your gear together,’ she told him. ‘Arm yourself and go out the back way.’

‘Is it the Wasps?’

‘No,’ she told him. ‘Your own people.’

She was off down the stairs, but he bellowed after her, ‘What do you mean, my people?’ He stomped out, barefooted, and wearing nothing but a tunic.

‘Balkus has just got in,’ she told him, halfway down. ‘He says there’s a squad of Collegium’s militia on its way here with one of the Assemblers.’

‘Well that’s what we’re waiting for, isn’t it?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘We want word from them, not a whole armed guard. Why would they bring a guard here, if not to arrest you?’

‘I won’t believe it.’

‘Believe it!’ she yelled at him. ‘You have to leave, now!’

‘I won’t!’ He clenched his fists before him. ‘This is my city, and if they will not help me, then there is nothing I can do on my own. I do not value my freedom so very much. Even imprisoned by the Assembly, I may be able to talk them round. I will not leave, Tynisa. But you should go — you and Balkus.’

‘Not a chance,’ she told him. ‘Will you at least arm yourself? If things have gone really badly, they may not be coming just to arrest you.’

‘I won’t believe it,’ he said again, but he turned back to his room and took up his baldric, slinging it over his shoulder. The weight of the sword was a comforting burden at his hip.

Balkus and Tynisa were waiting for him below with rapier and nailbow at the ready, as strange a pair of honour guards as he had ever known. He stood between them with hand to sword-hilt and awaited his fate.

Tynisa met them at the door. There were a dozen Collegium guardsmen in chainmail and breastplates, looking uncomfortable and awkward, and in their midst a grey-haired old man in formal robes. After a moment’s pause she recognized him as the Speaker for the Assembly, Lineo Thadspar. She supposed this was meant to be an honour, to be personally arrested by the top man.

‘What do you want?’ she asked him. She had the rapier in her hand but was hidden behind the door. Her tone made the guardsmen tense and she saw a few lay hands on their sword-hilts or mace-hafts.

‘Excuse me, what do you want, Master Gownsman Speaker Thadspar?’ she corrected, realizing that she had not been helping the situation.

‘I had rather hoped to speak with Master Maker, my child,’ Thadspar said, seeming utterly unperturbed.

‘Then your men can wait in the street, Master Thadspar. I trust that will be agreeable.’

He smiled benignly. ‘I can think of no reason why I should need them.’ One of his men tugged at his sleeve worriedly but Thadspar waved him away. ‘I shall be quite safe. Trust must start somewhere, after all. Now, my child, would you convey me in?’

She stepped back, managing to scabbard her sword without showing the men outside that it had been drawn. Thadspar noticed, though, and raised an eyebrow.

‘There have been all manner of affronts done on the streets of Collegium in recent days,’ he said mildly. ‘Some of which I rather think you were involved in, my dear child. We will have to sort through them at some point. After all, Collegium is a city under the rule of law, yet.’

‘Any blood I have shed I can account for,’ she told him. ‘And don’t call me that — I am not your child.’

‘I suppose you aren’t.’ A smile crinkled his face. ‘There was some considerable debate, at the time, as to whose child you were. Stenwold was mute on the matter, of course, but as you grew it seemed clear enough to me whose you were. By the time you were twelve years, there were few who recalled Atryssa — but I did, and I knew.’

Caught off-guard, Tynisa paused. ‘You knew my mother?’

‘I taught her logic and rhetoric for a year. She was an impatient student, a strange trait for a Spider-kinden woman.’

Tynisa would have asked him more, but they had come to the doorway of Stenwold’s parlour. Stenwold himself was seated behind the table, waiting with all apparent calm, but Balkus loomed at his shoulder with his nailbow not quite directed at Thadspar.

‘Master Maker,’ the old man said, and ‘Master Thadspar,’ Stenwold acknowledged formally, followed by, ‘Will you sit?’

Thadspar sat gratefully as Tynisa fetched a jug of wine and a couple of bowls. Balkus was still eyeing the old man suspiciously, as though he might be some kind of assassin in cunning disguise.

Stenwold himself poured the wine. ‘I take it you’ve not come here to discuss next year’s curriculum, Master Thadspar.’

Thadspar shook his head. ‘You have caused us all a great deal of trouble, Stenwold, and I really rather wish that you had never come back to Collegium to lay this business before us. We will all have a great deal to regret before this is over.’

‘So you have come here to do something you regret,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘And what would that be?’

‘You heard Master Bellowern speak, of course,’ Thadspar continued.

‘Yes, he spoke well.’

‘And he reminded us of who we are. He reminded us that Collegium is a centre of thought, of peace, and of law. You would now make us into some desperate mercenary company, springing about the Lowlands in search of a war that is not ours. That was his main point, I think.’

Stenwold nodded, watching him through hooded eyes.

‘We have been deliberating ever since, it seems,’ the old man said. ‘Every member of the Assembly had some contribution to make, and most of it nonsense, of course. Some were for the Wasps, saying that here was a people we could learn from. Some were for you, echoing your assessment of the evils of their Empire. Some others were for you for entirely the wrong reasons, in my view. They were advocating the purity of the Lowlands and the fight against any outside influence, malign or beneficial. And some, no doubt, were for the Empire for the wrong reasons as well, because of personal profits to be made, or perhaps even in return for some prior arrangement.’

‘Bribes, do you think?’

‘I cannot think otherwise. If even a lowly market trader thinks to grease some Assembler’s palm to favour his suit, then why not an Empire? That seems to be the way of the world. However, I know a good number of the Assembly who would not take bribes, and I suppose we should hold that up as virtue, in this grimy world.’

‘Master Thadspar-’

‘Stenwold, I think after your performance today you have earned the right to call me Lineo.’

‘Well, then, you came here for a reason, Lineo,’ Stenwold said. ‘You came here with soldiers, I am told. I am wholly at your disposal.’

Lineo Thadspar sighed. ‘So it is come to this at last, has it? Stenwold, you have set in motion a machine that no lever can stop or even slow. More, you have gone about it in an entirely reprehensible manner. You have been agitating amongst the students, you have been brawling in the streets. You have gone out and found an ugly, violent piece of the world, and — hammer and tongs! — you have transplanted it here, where it does not belong.’ He grimaced, showing teeth that were white, even and artificial. ‘This situation gives me no pleasure, Stenwold, and I regret that I have lived to see it.’

Stenwold nodded, still waiting.

‘The Assembly of Collegium concurs with you. It is our duty to resist the Wasp Empire.’

The words, spoken in that tired, dry voice, meant nothing at first. Only as he passed back over them did Stenwold understand what had just been said.

‘We have no right to set ourselves up as guardians of the Lowlands,’ Thadspar continued, ‘but it seems that is what we have become. All through Master Bellowern’s speech, his telling us who we were and what we stood for, many of us began to wonder just where he derived his mandate, to limit and define us in such ways. We had slept, I think, for many years, and he was now telling us to turn over and continue slumbering, while meanwhile you were shouting at us to wake up. And in the end, the picture of Collegium that Master Bellowern drew was not entirely to our liking. We have always regarded ourselves as the paragon of the Lowlands, looking down on the Ant-kinden and the others because they lack our moral sensibility. We pride ourselves in how well we treat our poor, our halfbreeds, the disadvantaged of all kinds. And yet we have thereby devised for ourselves a mantle that is heavy with responsibilities. If we truly stand for what we believe is good, the betterment of others, the raising up of the weak and the lowly, then we must take a stand against those with opposing philosophies. In Collegium, we are of a unique calling. There are members from all the Lowlander kinden amongst even our ruling body. Our perspective is broad. We are not the richest of merchants, and yet our inventions keep Helleron’s forges busy. We are not great soldiers, and yet we have conquered Sarn with our creed, and won a friend there. We are Collegium, College and Town both, but what are we, if we do not speak out against things we know are wrong?’ He shook his head. ‘We have therefore informed Master Bellowern that we consider the Empire to have broken the Treaty of Iron by marching on Tark. We were never party to that travesty they made the Council of Helleron sign. We have made our stand.’

‘But this is marvellous, Lineo,’ Stenwold said, but the old man shook his head.

‘It is terrible, Stenwold. It means a change that we will never put right. We will look back in future years, if we are so fortunate as to see them, and recognize the moment that you stepped before the Assembly as the beginning of the end of a world, just as the revolution was the end of the reign of the mystics. We have just made history, Stenwold, and I find that I prefer to teach it than to create it.’ Thadspar sighed, sipped at the wine that he had not, until that point, touched. ‘I should tell you, however, there are some conditions attached to this.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘First, as I mentioned to your delightful ward, there has been an embarrassing number of bodies turning up in certain rougher quarters of the city, and I rather think that you yourself may in some way be responsible. If it was you killing Wasp-kinden agents, in self-defence or defence of the city, then all well and good, but our poor guardsmen are going frantic over the matter. I would rather appreciate some clarification in due course.’

‘Of course,’ Stenwold assured him.

‘And second, Stenwold. Collegium is going to war. I know that is a very dramatic way of putting it but it is nevertheless true. We are putting ourselves in opposition to the Wasp-kinden and their Empire and, whether it is by words or deeds, that means war. To prosecute this war the Assembly requires a division of labour, and so it has been agreed to appoint certain men and women Masters — War Masters, I suppose, would be the rather unpleasant-sounding term. We have precious few volunteers, and many only willing to put forward the names of others, but, as you have brought this plague down on us, almost everyone is most especially agreed that you should do your fair share. The Assembly wishes to make you a War Master, and if you will not take the post and thus stand by your principles, then I doubt anyone else will.’

‘Then I accept, of course,’ Stenwold said, ‘and I’ll do whatever I can. I have some recommendations for others, as well.’

‘In good time,’ Thadspar said. ‘This is quite enough history for one day. My hands are rubbed raw with the making of it.’ He drained the bowl, and then poured himself another, looking older now than Stenwold had ever seen him. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘when the Wasp-kinden came to join in the games, I was delighted: a delegation from a savage nation coming to pay its respects. I foresaw Wasp students at the College and Wasp traders in the market. I saw the Lowlands expanded, by a manageable degree, to embrace seven kinden rather than six.’ He rubbed at his forehead, stretching the lines furrowed there. ‘Why could it not have been as it then appeared, Stenwold? How much easier life would have been.’

Stenwold was about to say something consoling, when they heard the door slam open and both men jumped to their feet, the aged Thadspar just as swift as Stenwold. Into the room came a bundle of visitors, but Tisamon was at their head. He was dragging a girl and Stenwold’s heart leapt, to his own great embarrassment, to see it was Arianna. At the rear followed three or four of Thadspar’s guardsmen, who had obviously been trying to stop Tisamon barging in, with so little success that he had barely noticed them.

‘Tell them!’ Tisamon snapped and, whipping out his arm, threw Arianna forwards. He had no doubt intended to cast her at Stenwold’s feet, but instead Stenwold found himself stepping forwards to catch her. For a second, the entire room was still, with Arianna trembling against his chest and Thadspar blinking at the Mantis-kinden.

‘Master Tisamon of Felyal, if I recall a face,’ the old man said. ‘Please calm yourselves,’ he added, for the benefit of his guards. ‘I don’t believe anyone is in danger of immediate harm here. Is that the case, Master Tisamon?’

Tisamon nodded shortly. Stenwold glanced from him to Arianna.

‘You’ve come at a good time, Tisamon,’ he said. ‘The Assembly has agreed to work against the Empire. Collegium is going to war. This is Master Gownsman Thadspar, the Speaker.’

‘It’s just as well,’ Tisamon said darkly. ‘Tell them, woman.’

Arianna stood back from Stenwold, not meeting his eyes. ‘The Wasps have sent an embassy to Vek,’ she said quietly. ‘They are encouraging the Vekken to attack Collegium. And it will work, and the Vekken will come.’

Silence fell throughout the room, from the guardsmen hovering in the doorway all the way across to Balkus at the far end of the table.

‘Tisamon, is this-?’ Stenwold started.

‘I found her on the run from her own people,’ Tisamon said derisively. ‘There’s been a falling out, it seems, and right now you’re the only thing keeping her from either assassination or execution. So, yes, I think it may well be true. I don’t know about Collegium going to war, but for certain the war’s coming here.’

To Tisamon it all seemed a colossal waste of time. The War Council of Collegium, it was soon grandly known as, but precious little war seemed to be discussed. There were about forty members of the Assembly present. To the Mantis’s amusement they were using a classroom for their meeting, so only one person at a time could take the stand to talk, while the rest sat on the tiered wooden seating and listened like pupils, or more often talked among themselves.

The first matter of business had been whether, after informing the Empire’s ambassador that they were now at war, the city should send envoys to the Wasps suing for peace, apparently on behalf of all the Lowlands. Almost half of the men and women there had been for that measure, which had only narrowly been defeated in the vote. They were very fond of such voting in Collegium. The Assemblers themselves were elected by a vote of the city, meaning by anyone of age born there, or who could acquire honorary citizenship. The members of the War Council had similarly been voted for from within the Assembly at large, although it seemed that several people were there, and quite vocal, who had simply been interested enough to come, while others thus voted for were absent.

Stenwold had been hoping for whatever few Ant-kinden belonged to the Assembly to be present now. The duelling master, Kymon of Kes, had made an appearance, as well as a Sarnesh woman. The rest of their race were mostly gone from the city, because Ant-kinden loyalties lay strongest with their own kind. The Tarkesh had gone to help their home city-state, and the Kessen, Kymon excepted, to prepare for when their own time came.

Yet here they were, still choosing roles as though the entire business was some grotesquely disorganized theatrical endeavour. Stenwold himself had become some kind of military commander dealing with the walls. Kymon had been given charge of some of the city’s militia. It seemed that anyone who felt himself an expert in war could bag some slice of the city’s defences, and any artificer with an invention that could be put to good use was being given whatever was needed to deploy it.

To Tisamon it seemed an utter shambles, but he was only too aware that these were not his people. They had their own way of doing things, and in that way had built Collegium and made it prosper. Until now, at least.

He fidgeted impatiently. Stenwold had wanted him to witness this, and so Tisamon tried to understand what was going on. There seemed to be far too many interminable speeches and not enough actually being decided or done.

Now the talk had finally arrived at what, in his opinion, should have come first.

‘We must gather our allies,’ Stenwold said firmly, taking his place before the class, ‘not only against Vek but against the Empire. Unity or slavery, as I said before. We must impress upon all the Lowlands that their smaller squabbles must be put aside for now, until the greater threat is over.’

‘Good luck with that,’ someone spoke up, and Stenwold invited the woman to take the podium. She did, looking as though she had not been intending to.

‘What I meant is, your pardon, Masters, but we know our neighbours only too well, do we not?’ She was some kind of merchant, Tisamon guessed, her bulky frame heavily festooned with jewellery. ‘We know them and their prejudices. We of Collegium are broad of mind; can the same be said for many others? The Ants of Kes are no doubt rejoicing to see Tark being invested. The Moth-kinden will not help us because we are Beetles. The Mantids care nothing for anyone save the Spider-kinden, whom they hate. You cannot simply tell these people to stand side by side. It won’t work.’

Stenwold took the podium back. ‘I thank Madam Way-bright for her insight, which has made my point more clearly than I could. The situation of rivalry she describes is the one the Empire is most relying on to win its wars for it. If Vek saw clearly the threat they represented then, as rational human beings, they would not even now be mustering against us.’

There was a rude noise from one of his listeners, and he picked up on it. ‘Not rational, you say? But they are, Masters. They are strict in their duty and their discipline, as Ant-kinden are, but they are human yet. Had we perhaps made more overtures to them, and not crowed instead about the strength of our walls, then they might not be marching against us now. You see? We are by no means blameless.’

He stared down at his hands, balled them into fists, then looked back up at his audience. ‘Let us first speak of those we know will answer our call. No man here can dispute sending messengers to Sarn and Helleron. Helleron especially, for they are closest to the imperial advance.’

There was scattered nodding, and he pressed on.

‘I have agents in Sarn already, seeking their help, but they will not know of the threat from Vek, which requires swifter action. Moreover, my agents in Sarn are attempting contact with the Moth-kinden of Dorax, who I know keep a presence in that city. I myself fought alongside the Moths in Helleron, against the Empire’s schemes there, and I have some hope that, as they profess wisdom, they will be wise enough to forget, for some short space of time, that they have such grievances against us.’

His audience were less enthusiastic about that but, at the same time, he was asking for no commitment from them, merely unveiling his own existing plans. They could hardly turn down help from outside if it was offered.

‘Messengers to Kes, too,’ Stenwold continued. ‘They have never been our enemies, and they have no love for Vek. More, if they can see past their enmities they will realize that they are the next hurdle the Empire must clear. Their seas will not defend them against a massed aerial assault. A messenger to the island of Kes, surely? What do we stand to lose?’

‘The messenger,’ someone suggested, but he still had their attention.

‘And to the Spiderlands-’ he started, but there was a chorus of jeers even at the proposal.

‘The Spiderlands are not of the Lowlands, Stenwold,’ interrupted another of the College masters, a teacher of rhetoric and political history. ‘They will not care and, worse, if we ask for their help they will make us pay for it. If they become involved, they will keep this war going for ever simply for their own amusement. It would suit them well to have us daggers-drawn with our neighbours for generations to come. They would then deal with both sides and only become richer. We cannot invite the Spiderlands to intervene.’

‘And besides,’ said another, a quiet woman who had surprised everyone by turning up, ‘what help could they bring us? Do you think they will field armies for us? They deal in treachery and knives, and we would sully ourselves by inviting that kind of help, even if they could be relied on to turn it solely against the Wasps.’

Stenwold recaptured the podium, hands in the air to concede the point. ‘Very well, no embassy to the Spider-lands.’ Then his eyes sought out Tisamon. ‘I. hesitate to ask this. I know the Ants of Sarn have fair relations with their Mantis neighbours, but-’

‘But we folk of Felyal are less approachable, is that it?’ Tisamon suggested.

There was a murmur of amusement from amongst the War Council. ‘Can you deny it?’ Stenwold asked.

‘Nor would I wish to.’ Tisamon strode down the steps until he stood at the front, although he did not seek to take Stenwold’s pride of place. ‘And, yes, I will be your embassy to my own people, although I can promise nothing. Draw a line from Tark to Collegium, though, and the Felyal lies square in the way. I think my people would be even more unapproachable to the Wasps than to you.’

When the debate was over Tisamon sought out Stenwold again. The Beetle was seated in a spare office of the College, three rooms down from where the War Council had been held, with several pyramids of scrolls stacked ready to hand for the scribes to copy.

‘You seem to be keeping them busy,’ the Mantis remarked.

Stenwold raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s on your mind, Tisamon?’

‘You should know that I’m taking Tynisa with me.’

‘Absolutely out of the question,’ Stenwold replied without hesitation.

‘She wants to go.’

‘That’s not the issue.’

‘And you cannot stop her.’

‘Maybe not,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘Tisamon, my past record in keeping members of my family from danger is poor, but just think for a moment. I know they are your people, but they will kill her. They will kill her because they’ll assume she’s Spider-kinden, and if they find out what she really is they’ll kill her that much quicker. You almost killed her yourself when first you met her.’

‘There is a way,’ Tisamon said, ‘though her stay will not be pleasant, I’m sure. All you say about my people is correct. but they will not kill her out of hand.’

‘Tisamon, please-’

‘She deserves it, Sten. Her own people, remember. For all they will hate her, and hate me too, no doubt, she deserves to see her father’s tribe, if only to reject it.’

Stenwold grimaced. ‘I can see this means a lot to you.’

Tisamon smiled bleakly. ‘We are not a numerous kin-den. If the Wasp army comes to the Felyal, with its machines and its thousands, my people will fight, you may be sure of that. They will kill ten of the enemy for every one of themselves that falls, and yet there will still be more Wasps in the end.’

‘You. think it will come to that?’

‘If the Wasps attack us, it may. I would say they would pay dearly, if only the Empire did not value its own soldiers so cheaply. I can see the Felyal cut and burned, the holds of my people shattered, and for that reason, if no other, I must warn them of their enemy’s scale and power. And Tynisa must see them as they are, in case, when this is all over, there is nothing left to see.’

Something in Tisamon’s face shocked Stenwold, right then. Familiarity makes us forget these differences. Tisamon had been his friend for such a long time that he had become, in Stenwold’s mind, almost the tame Mantis, the man half-divorced from his wild people, his ancient, dark heritage. Now, in those angular features, he saw a weight of history that made all Collegium seem like a single turn of the glass, and it was receding, it was fading. It was falling into darkness.

‘Yes,’ said Stenwold. ‘If she will go, I have no right at all to say no. But, Tisamon-’

‘Of course,’ Tisamon said, a hand on his arm. ‘What harm I can prevent, I shall. Whatever harm that is in my power to prevent.’

There was an abrupt rap at the door and Stenwold sighed. ‘More war business,’ he said heavily. ‘You’d better make your preparations.’

Tisamon’s hand moved to his friend’s shoulder, exerting a brief pressure. ‘Be safe, Sten. You’ve now got what you’ve been wanting for twenty years. You’ve got them listening to you, so don’t waste your chance.’

Stenwold nodded, opening the door for him, seeing the Beetle woman messenger waiting. He waited until Tisamon had strode out of sight before asking about her business, sure that it was bound to be another burden of the coming conflict.

‘Master Maker,’ the messenger reported, ‘a foreigner, a halfbreed, has come to the city looking for you. She said she has news of Tark.’

‘Of Tark?’ The wheels were already moving in his mind. ‘Her name?’

‘Is Skrill, she says, War Master,’ the messenger told him, and he felt a shock go through him. The blade that had been held over him, for so long he had almost forgotten it, was suddenly dropping.

‘Take me to her,’ he ordered. ‘Now!’

‘And so you left,’ Stenwold said heavily, after Skrill had told him her story, with all its wearisome digressions and diversions.

‘Weren’t my idea. Your man Totho did the plan,’ protested the gangly halfbreed sitting across the table from him. She scowled defensively. ‘What you think I was gonna do?’

‘No, you’re right,’ Stenwold said. ‘It wasn’t your fight. You were hired as a scout, not to fight for Tark.’

‘Straight up,’ Skrill agreed.

‘And so.?’

‘Once I got far out enough, I stuck around. I thought I’d see the big balloons go on fire like the plan was. Only they never did. Next night I weren’t so far off that I couldn’t see the city burning.’

‘And so they failed,’ said Stenwold. He felt physically ill with the strain of it all.

‘Looks that way,’ Skrill agreed, and then added, ‘Sorry,’ a little later.

‘Hammer and tongs, what have I done?’ Stenwold whispered. He heard a sound at the door, the clink of metal, and then Balkus opened it, peering in respectfully.

‘Master Maker?’ he began.

‘A moment,’ Stenwold told him, and the big Ant hovered in the doorway as he turned to Skrill again. ‘Where are you for now?’

‘Well, excuse me, Master Maker, but I hear you got all kind of trouble coming down on you here. I’m for home, which is a wasting long ways from here. This ain’t my fight. I’m sorry.’

‘I can ask no more of you. I’ll see you’re paid, and supplied as well.’

She nodded, her narrow face unhappy. ‘I liked your boys, Master Maker. Salma especially. He was quite something. I’m sorry it looks like they’re gone.’

Stenwold said nothing, and she stood up and slipped out past Balkus.

‘Are you. all right?’ the Ant asked cautiously.

Stenwold shook his head slowly. ‘Another two of my own sent to their deaths. Attacking the Wasp camp! What were they thinking?’

‘They knew the risks,’ Balkus said philosophically. ‘I’m sure they knew what they were getting into.’

‘But they weren’t sent there as soldiers. They were just. ’

‘Spies,’ Balkus filled in. ‘Better they went as soldiers. That’s why I’d never do spy work for Scuto, only strong-arming and the like. Soldiers live rough and die clean, and if they’re captured, there’s a respect between us men who live with the sword. If they went like soldiers, on the attack, then that’s for the best, because spies who get captured don’t get any mercy. Everyone hates spies.’

Stenwold shook his head. He wished, fervently wished, that he had a friend left, that he could talk to. Balkus was a loyal man, but blunt and simple of outlook, and Stenwold needed to sit with an old friend, and drink and vent his woes. He had nobody though. Che and Scuto were still north in Sarn. Tisamon, who he could have leant on, was heading east and taking Tynisa with him. He was being left alone here, and the weight of Collegium’s woes lay on his shoulders.

‘What did you want to tell me?’ he asked finally. ‘You had a message.’

Balkus nodded. ‘Just a little one,’ he said with a dour smile. ‘They’ve sighted the Vekken army. Some of your village folk have come in telling of it. Everything’s about to spark off around here.’

Greenwise Artector shuffled nervously, finding his lips dry, and aware of a knotting in his stomach. He had come out here in his very finest, his robes embroidered with Spider silk and gold thread, with a jewelled gorget tucked up against his lowest chin. Around him were a dozen others who had done their best to make a good first impression. Some had armour on, either ornately ceremonial or gleamingly functional steel. Many also wore ornamented swords at their belts. They were no soldiers and nobody could mistake them for it. These were the thirteen great Magnates of Helleron who made up its ruling council.

They had chosen for their podium a raised dais in one of the better market places beyond the city proper. It had seen its share of meat, whether the ham of poor actors or the subdued tread of slaves. Now it bore a nobler burden. Twelve men and one woman, none of them young and none of them slender. The wood had never groaned as much when the slaves were herded across it.

Behind the dais stood their retinues: a segregated rabble of guards and servants. Greenwise glanced back at his own followers, noting in the front rank one in particular.

And they were coming now. A change in the way his fellow magnates stood drew his attention to the front again. Three men approached, a spokesman and two of those common soldiers in their black-and-gold banded armour.

Behind them, off beyond the final tents of the extended city and onto the farmland eastwards, there were rather more than three, of course.

The man flanked by the soldiers was surprisingly young, surely only in his late twenties. Greenwise guessed at first he must be no more than a junior officer or a herald or some such, but there was something in his bearing that gave the lie to that. He had golden-red hair and a bright, open face full of edged smiles. No doubt he was the very darling of the Wasp-kinden womenfolk.

‘Are we all assembled?’ he enquired, clapping his hands together. Although the city’s councillors were raised above him he showed no sign of discomfort. By that demeanour he made it seem that, rather than seeking an audience, he had driven them up there as a wild beast might drive a man up a tree.

Greenwise glanced about him, because there was no spokesman in Helleron’s council. All were equal and as such none would trust the role to anyone else. One of his fellows was already stepping forward, though, a corpulent and balding man called Scordrey.

‘Young man,’ Scordrey said ponderously, ‘we are the Magnate Council of the great city of Helleron. Kindly give us the honour of your name and explain the purpose of. that presence.’ He waved a thick hand in the direction of the army to the east, as though it could all be dismissed so easily.

‘My apologies,’ said the young man, smiling up at them. ‘By the grace of His Imperial Majesty, I am General Malkan of the Imperial Seventh Army, also known as the Winged Furies.’ He had an odd way of speaking, self-aware and grinningly apologetic, that Greenwise saw instantly for a device. ‘I have come to you with a message and a proposal from my master. A choice, if you will.’

‘Now, look here. General, is it?’ Scordrey started, with the obvious intention of working towards delivering an insult. Greenwise stepped in quickly. ‘We are disturbed, General, that you appear to have brought a sizeable force to our gates,’ he said. ‘You must know that we of Helleron are not drawn into the wars of others.’

General Malkan’s smile did not diminish. ‘Forgive me, Masters Magnate, but I am unfamiliar with your local customs in that regard. You’ll find that we of the Empire tend to carry our own customs with us wherever we go. And, to correct you on one small point, we are not at your gates. You have no gates.’

‘Just what do you mean?’ Scordrey rumbled.

‘Shall I be plain, gentlemen? I am a man of honour and fairness. I pride myself on it. I would not dream of taking advantage of your good natures, just because I have been able to bring twenty-five thousand armed men to within striking distance of your homes without your taking up arms. I will, in the interests of equity, withdraw my men eastwards just as far as they can march before nightfall. Tomorrow, of course, we will return. I trust that will give you sufficient time to prepare yourself for any unpleasantness that might then occur.’

‘This is unspeakable!’ Scordrey bellowed.

‘And yet I have spoken it.’ Malkan’s smile was now painful to behold.

‘Unthinkable!’ echoed another of the magnates. ‘We have no interest in your wars.’

‘We have always traded with your Empire,’ added the only female member of the council. She was named Halewright and she had made her fortune in the silk trade. The Spider-kinden always paid better prices to women.

‘General!’ said Greenwise, loud enough to quiet the rest momentarily. ‘You mentioned a choice?’

Malkan gave him a little bow. He was practically dancing with his own cleverness, Greenwise saw sourly. He was a general, he had said. Greenwise did not know whether, in the Empire, that station could be attained by good family alone, or whether Malkan would have genuinely earned that rank in his few years of service. He suspected the latter, unfortunately.

‘The Emperor, His Imperial Majesty Alvdan, second of that name, has no wish to force or coerce the great and the good of Helleron,’ the general confirmed. ‘So he offers you this ultimatum — my error, sirs, this choice. When we return tomorrow you shall agree to make Helleron a city of the Empire; you shall make its manufacturing facilities available for the demands of the imperial war effort; you shall place its commercial affairs into the hands of the Consortium of the Honest; you shall submit to imperial governance and an imperial garrison. If all these things are agreed to, without conditions, without the lawyerly quibbles that I am sure you are so fond of, then His Imperial Majesty shall see no reason to disrupt further the everyday business of this admirable city of yours. You magnates yourselves shall form the advisory council to the imperial governor, and you shall be permitted entry into the Consortium of the Honest along with such of your factors as you should wish to so honour. You shall, in short, continue to hold the reins of this city’s trade so long as you conform to the requests of the governor and the Emperor.’

The magnates of Helleron stared at him, quite aghast. Greenwise looked from face to face and saw that no other one of them was going to say it.

‘We have heard no choice as yet, General Malkan,’ he pointed out.

‘Did I forget the other option? What a fool I am,’ Malkan said merrily. ‘If you wish, of course, you are perfectly entitled to reject these demands and meet us with armed force. I am sure this city can dredge up a fair number of mercenaries and malcontents at short notice. If, however, I am met with a less than friendly reception tomorrow then I have orders to take this city by force. It would make me unhappy if that should come to pass. To assuage my unhappiness I should be forced to ensure that every one of you that I see before me now would be taken and executed in some suitably complex manner. Your families, your business associates, your servants and employees would all then be seized by our slave corps and sent to the most distant corners of the Empire to die in misery and degradation. Before that I would have to see to it that your wives and daughters, even your mothers if still alive, would suffer beneath the bodies of my men, and that your sons were mutilated in the machines of my artificers. I would destroy you so utterly that none would ever dare speak your names. I would remove you from the face of the world, and reshape your city entirely to my wish. Have I made myself clear concerning the precise options you must choose between?’

Greenwise silently watched the three Wasps leave. Just three, he thought. There were a dozen men with crossbows in the retinues assembled behind him. They could have stretched General Malkan headlong on the ground and his bodyguards too, but nobody had any illusions about the consequences of that.

He looked around at his own men, who were uncertain and unhappy, and beckoned to a Fly-kinden lad in the fore. Around him the conversation, the inevitable murmur of conversation, had started. He heard one man say, almost apologetically, how he had been trading with the Empire, and they had always settled their accounts admirably.

‘A military presence would mean that we would not need to worry about. ’ started Scordrey, and tailed off because they had never had to worry about anything, until General Malkan and his twenty-five thousand.

‘The Consortium of the Honest have always seemed sound merchantmen,’ said Halewright slowly.

‘We would be able to expand our business into eastern markets much more easily,’ another added.

Greenwise turned to the Fly-kinden, stooping to speak quietly to him. ‘Are you in any doubt,’ he said, ‘about the response of the Council of Helleron to that general tomorrow?’

The diminutive Fly-kinden always seemed younger than they were, and this one looked barely fourteen, but the world of cynicism in his voice surprised even Greenwise. ‘Master Artector, no, sir.’

Greenwise nodded. ‘Then you must fly to Collegium, by whatever means you can, and tell the Assembler Stenwold Maker that Helleron has fallen to the Empire, and without a single blow being struck.’

‘I am gone, sir.’ The Fly-kinden took wing instantly, hovered for a second, and then darted off across the city. Nobody paid him any notice, and there were similar messengers lifting from the ground all around to their masters’ orders.

And Greenwise Artector turned his attention back to his peers, and to their slow and patient rationalization of the decision they had already made. The decision he, too, had made, for he was no hero, and he had his own lucrative business to safeguard.