Dragonfly Falling

Thirty-Five

That day, Stenwold had cause to remember how he had told Doctor Nicrephos that it could wait until evening because of the urgent duties he had to fulfil.

He remembered particularly in the first few hours after dawn, when the remaining Vekken armourclads made another pass at the harbour, grinding their engines to breaking point to try and nose their own half-sunk siblings out of the way, whilst simultaneously their artillery lashed the harbourfront again and again. As Stenwold’s role was to defend the harbour, he had waited there with a few hundred soldiers, crouching behind every piece of cover that was available and watching while the great ships shoved repeatedly, and the sound of their engines groaned across the water.

Over sixty of his men had been killed during the bombardment because, at that range, if he had pulled them far back enough to be out of the way, the Ants would have been able to establish a presence on the waterfront itself before he could have formed up enough men to stop them.

And then, mid-morning, the armourclads had given up and reversed their engines, pulling back into open water. To Stenwold, however, it did not seem like a victory.

He had thought about going to Doctor Nicrephos at that point. The old man had been very agitated, talking about some artefact that must be given over to his own protection. He knew it was somewhere in the city, and he believed he could even divine its location. He had obviously been very serious, but to Stenwold it had made very little sense.

But then a messenger had come for him from the north wall, saying that he was needed there urgently. There was never any time.

His journey across the city had been nightmarish. Over the last day the Vekken had begun using special trebuchets, far out of range of any armaments on the Collegium walls. They were incredibly spindly contraptions, his telescope had told him, and they flung handfuls of grenades arcing from their slings. These exploded over the city, showering it with fire and shrapnel, or else burst in flames on the roofs of buildings. It was a random barrage, doing little damage, but it meant that nobody in the city was ever entirely safe. Those few who braved the streets had to keep one eye on the sky, and Stenwold, passing through the streets of his home city, felt the doom of the place keenly, like a cloud hovering above him.

‘I’m starting to wonder about how this is going to go,’ he had told Balkus, and the big Ant only nodded.

In the hour before dawn a messenger had got through to the city. His name was Frezzo and he had been expected days before, but an Ant crossbowman had shot him down, and he had been resting within sight of the city walls, building up the strength to fly again. However he had insisted, with the honour of his guild at stake, on giving his news before they treated his wound. The news itself was just one more burden for the defenders. It appeared Sarn was not coming to their aid. They all knew that Helleron had gone to the Wasps, but not even Kymon had made the logical step that a westward-moving imperial army would occupy Sarn’s attention and thus prevent any chance of rescue from the north.

Kymon and his soldiers were down off the west wall today, but only because there was no immediate assault. Instead, what artillery the Ants had left was pelting the wall mercilessly with rock and lead shot. The artillery on the tower emplacements was returning the favour in daylight now, and most of it was second- or third-generation, as more and more engines were smashed by increasingly accurate incoming missiles. Stenwold had seen some machines being fixed in, during the pre-dawn, that were just the previous engines reassembled with desperate haste, and therefore sure to fly apart after a few shots.

The north wall was bearing the brunt of it today, with tower engines and rams and legions of Vekken infantry. Stenwold came at a run, expecting disaster, but then he found himself cornered by an enraged academic.

‘Master Maker! Or I suppose I have to call you War Master now.’

‘Call me what you want, Master.?’

The Beetle-kinden was squat and balding and enraged. ‘I am Master Hornwhill, and I demand that you discipline these military fellows! It’s an outrage!’

‘What’s an outrage?’ Stenwold asked, trying for calm. Hornwhill was so incensed by whatever had outraged him that it took Balkus looming menacingly at his shoulder to calm him down.

‘Master Maker, my discipline is in the mercantile area. I design barrels, and they are not meant for military use!’ the man protested. Stenwold goggled at him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘This!’ Hornwhill stomped over towards a row of catapults that the north wall commander had set up, and which even now were launching their shot in a high arc, right over the wall and onto the men and machines arrayed on the far side. Hornwhill grabbed one of the missiles from the engineers and brandished it fiercely. ‘This is my double-hulled safe-passage barrel intended for breakable goods!’ the excited artificer exclaimed. ‘Five hundred of them have been seized from my warehouse and I demand restitution.’

‘Who’s in charge here?’ Stenwold called out, and a dirty-faced engineer popped his head up above the winding winch of a catapult.

‘Here, War Master!’

How is it that everyone knows me? ‘Why are you throwing barrels at them?’ Stenwold asked him.

‘Got precious little else to throw,’ the engineer said cheerily. ‘Besides, these beauties are just what we need. They crack open when they hit, but they don’t damage their cargoes, just release them all cosy like. They’re lovely.’

‘Cargoes? What cargoes?’ Stenwold said, trying to block out Hornwhill’s jabbering complaints.

The engineer grinned at him, still winding back the catapult. ‘Well, I figure we might as well use every dirty trick in the book, War Master. Last night me and my lad raided every menagerie, animal workshop and alchemist’s store in the city. I got the lot in these barrels. I got scorpions, poisonous spiders, stinging flies, glasses of acid, explosive reagents. I got the Vekken doing a real guessing game with what’s going to land on ’em next.’

‘Balkus,’ Stenwold said.

‘Here.’

‘If Master Hornwhill doesn’t shut up and go home, throw him in the river.’

Nothing was going quite as it should. Akalia was becoming increasingly aware that, in the estimates of the Royal Court of Vek, Collegium should have fallen by now.

It seemed impossible that a city-state of tinkerers and philosophers could hold off the elite of Vek, the most disciplined soldiers in the world. Still the walls stood, though, the defenders rushing to throw back every incursion. The Beetle-kinden and their slaves seemed indefatigable, never-ceasing. Every time it seemed the walls would be taken, the Beetles dragged out some new scheme, and thus held her off for yet another day.

She shook her head. It had been a run of disturbed nights for her, and for her men as well. Her ill dreams had communicated themselves to her army, or else she had been infected with theirs. She feared. In waking moments she would not even have acknowledged it, but she feared. She feared the derision of her peers, that no Ant-kinden could escape. She did not fear that Collegium would never fall, but she feared that she would not take it fast enough, that, had the King chosen differently, a more skilled tactician would be within the walls by now.

And those Wasps had run mad and killed one another. It should be expected from a weaker race, but still it shook her. She could see no logic to it, no sense at all. Without warning they had left the camp and butchered each other to the last man. The report of her sentries had been easily brushed off at first, but the event had returned to prey on her mind. Was this some ploy, some new weapon, some contagious insanity? Will it happen to us? Her artificers had assured her that it was impossible, but she found herself losing faith in them. Clearly the Collegium scholars know things that we do not. In her mind, in the hearts of all Apt people, there was a tiny worm so deeply buried that it would never normally see the light. It was a worm born many centuries before, in the Days of Lore before the revolution — those days when her kind and the Beetles had both been slaves. It was fear of the unknown, of the old mysteries. In now facing the scholars of Collegium, Akalia was rediscovering her fear of the unknown.

Tactician, word arrived from her engineers.

Report, demanded Akalia. In her mind’s eye she saw the west wall of Collegium as her scouts could now see it through their glasses. The patient voice of one of her artificers guided her through the stress fractures, cracks and damage that her engines had done to it over the last few days.

The wall is holding out better than we had anticipated, the artificer explained. The Beetle-kinden mortar remains semi-solid indefinitely, and so there is a great deal of flexibility in the wall. However, damage to the stones themselves is now quite widespread. There is considerable cracking and, even with the artillery left to us, we have been able to accurately expand the stress areas that you see here.

Just tell me when, Akalia snapped at him.

There was a moment’s pause in which the artificer conferred with his colleagues.

We think today — late today or early tomorrow. We were considering holding until tomorrow in any event, to give us more time for the assault, and-

No! she ordered. Today! If we can possibly be within Collegium’s walls today, then we must make all efforts. The artificers of Vek have so far proved themselves inferior to these Beetle peasants on every level. You know what you must do to change that.

The artificer capitulated hurriedly. She had the sense of him hurrying off to order an increased barrage from the siege engines.

This had gone on too long already. The greater Wasp city-state must have already done its job, because her scouts would have spotted Sarn’s approach by now, but she still felt that the scholars and merchants of Collegium were laughing at her behind their walls.

Not for long, though. The King of Vek had given her free rein on how to punish the resistance of the city, after she had taken it, and that thought was her only consolation as she waited for the walls to fall.

‘Master Kymon!’ the man was shouting. ‘They’re coming!’

He panted to a halt and Kymon just had to stare at him and wait for his wind to return. If this had been an Ant-kinden defence he would know already what it was the man had seen, not only in words but by the very image. His halfbreed Kessen watcher was dead, though, and he had to rely on word of mouth. This was unbearably frustrating.

At last he snapped, ‘What did you see? Troops? Engines?’ Above them the Ant artillery was still pelting away at the wall. Each shot made the stones shift and shudder so that Kymon had pulled his cowering soldiers back from them in case they suddenly fell, even though Collegium’s architects had assured him that they were far from cracking.

‘Engines, Master Kymon, with soldiers behind. Ramming engines, I think.’

Under cover of the bombardment, Kymon knew. The Vekken had already tried rams against all the gates on and off, and the metal-sheathed shutters had dented but never given in. They would be disappointed again.

He was suspicious, though, for even the Vekken had some sense of strategy. ‘What about towers?’ he demanded.

‘Back with the men,’ his lookout reported. ‘The rams are in front.’

‘And these rams? Like the ones we’ve seen before?’

‘I’m not an artificer, but-’

‘Just tell me!’ Kymon barked. He would never have had to shout at Ant-kinden either, but sometimes, with these slow city people, it seemed the only way.

‘Not quite, Master Kymon. Bigger, with a different end to it.’

Kymon cursed the man silently for not being able to just show him. Even so, his military instincts were telling him bad things.

‘Pull back from the wall!’ he shouted.

‘We’re already-’

‘Further, you cretins! Or I will personally flog every last one of you!’

His men began to shamble away, talking amongst themselves and lagging. Kymon bared his teeth and fought down his temper.

‘What’s going on?’

He rounded on the speaker and almost shouted down his throat before he saw it was Stenwold.

‘The Vekken are trying something new,’ he explained shortly. ‘How long before they reach the wall, boy?’

The lookout spread his hands helplessly.

‘Well, how fast were they moving?’ Kymon asked him, thinking that-

He picked himself off the hard flags of the street, head ringing, and saw all around him that his men, even Stenwold, were strewn about, similarly jolted off their feet.

‘Get up!’ he bellowed at them, hearing his own voice as strangely distant. They looked dazed, stunned. Stenwold’s eyes were wide.

‘They sent a petard against the wall!’ Kymon informed him, knowing that he was speaking too loud. Even as he said it, another explosion rocked them from a hundred yards south, and a third followed on its heels. The Vekken were using engine-mounted explosives driven directly into the stones so as to crack the city open. He turned fearfully, looking for the wall.

The Beetles of Collegium had done well, for it still stood, but it was obvious that it would not stand for very much longer. He watched how the latest explosion rippled the stones like canvas in a breeze.

The Vekken artillery kept on launching, and he saw great chunks of stones still bound with mortar falling out to crash onto the streets right in front of his men.

‘On your feet, all of you!’ he screamed at them, and there was something in his voice at last that reached them. They were clustered together too close, they were shaken, terrified, even. As more stones fell from the wall he strode out before them, shield on one arm, drawn sword in his right hand.

‘Listen to me!’ he shouted at them. ‘The wall will fall and it was always going to. You, boy!’ He pointed at the ashen lookout. ‘Go to the other walls, get men with the right materials to repair a breach. Go now!’ As the lad ran off Kymon glared at the rest of them. ‘You, though, you’re staying here with me, and those Vekken bastards are going to be inside your city in minutes, you understand? They’re going to punch a breach in that wall with their engines and then come flooding through, soldiers in better armour than yours, with better training than yours, and you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to hold them at the wall. You’re bloody well going to stop them getting into your city. You understand me? Not my city. I’m a Kessen and I wouldn’t have a city like this to defend for all the wasting world, but your city, and the only people in this whole city who can keep it yours are you! You men and women standing before me now!’ He was conscious of a greater shattering behind him which was echoed in the stir of the soldiers before him — and that Stenwold Maker now had a repeating crossbow in his hands and had cranked back the string.

‘When they come through,’ he bellowed at them, ‘they will loose their crossbows first, to try and clear the way. I want shieldmen at the front, everyone with a decent-sized shield. Behind them, crossbowmen, Master Maker here will take his shot when he sees the best time, and you all shoot when you see him do it. There will be a lot of rubble. They will have to move forward over it. You will just have to stand still, so make that count for you.’

He stared at them, seeing city militia, artisans, shopkeepers, factors and merchants, dockworkers, porters, immigrant labourers, street-brawlers, black-marketeers and a handful of professional mercenaries.

You’ll just have to do, he thought, and then, If I had a command of Kessen marines we’d sort these bastards out.

And he turned, and the wall came down.

It was so close on evening, the sky darkening almost visibly. The Vekken had left it to the last minute, but their artillery had finally done its job. The widescale weakening created by the petard engines and the incessant pounding of the trebuchets and leadshotters had first knocked holes in the wall and now it was tumbling, great clots and sheets of stone peeling away until the wall before and to the left of him was dissolving into an utter chaos of tumbling masonry.

‘Go!’ he shouted at his men and, when they did not move, he went himself, trusting to their shame to carry them with him.

The rubble had barely finished shifting when he began to climb it, and for a terrible second he thought he was the only one there. Then there were shields to the left and the right of him, a motley collection of a dozen different styles, and now he was at the top of the breach, seeing Vekken soldiers hauling themselves up towards him.

‘Brace!’ he shouted, and ducked behind his own shield. Most of the men around him did the same, but there were always a few who were slow or who thought they knew better, and this time it proved fatal. Crossbow bolts slammed into his shield, three or four actually punching their square-sectioned heads through to gleam like diamonds in the backing.

Then Stenwold was at his shoulder, raising his crossbow so that it almost rested on Kymon’s shield and then pressing the trigger, and a score of crossbows fired with him, and two score more a heartbeat afterwards. The Vekken were climbing the rubble with their shields held high, but a dozen fell anyway, the close-ranged bolts sticking in their armour, and more fell amongst their crossbowmen following immediately behind.

Then the Vekken were making a final push up the shifting stones, and Kymon braced himself again, feeling his heart hammering out to him its message that he was too old for a battlefield by ten years at least.

He rammed his shield forwards into the first man that came his way, impacting so hard on the man’s own that the Vekken was sent tumbling back down. Another man took his place, though, one of a stream of Vekken soldiers that was pushing forwards up into the breach, and the serious business of killing at the blade’s point then began.

The harsh hammering of a nailbow sounded nearby as Stenwold’s bodyguard elbowed his way into the second rank and began to shoot the enemy indiscriminately in the face. Kymon was absorbed in his own trade, though. He was a trainer of men, a College Master, but most of all he was a swordsman. These Ants coming against him were soldiers, but he had always been something more than that, and he showed them. He taught them a dozen fatal lessons of the shortsword, his blade striking like a scorpion’s sting, forward, left and right, so that the soldiers advancing near him began to pay him more heed than his fellows, thus becoming easier prey for the men either side of him.

All down the line, though, the battle was shifting. The defenders of Collegium were laying down their lives. They were selling them dearly, giving no ground, and making the Vekken pay for each inch they climbed, but the Ants fought as an impeccable unit, while the defenders fought like a ragged line of individuals. Kymon could feel the tide turning, no matter how many he killed or how skilled his blade.

‘Hold!’ he bellowed. ‘Hold for Collegium!’ He was aware, when he could pause to think, that the defenders were still faring far better than they should, and that the Vekken were not fighting with that sharp edge that Ant-kinden usually possessed. There was something in their faces, something haggard and bruised, that was blunting them.

For a second the line swayed forwards again, whether from his words of encouragement or from the defenders’ own desperation. Ant soldiers went backwards, lost their footing, and it seemed that the advance might be halted, but then they gathered themselves, as Ants always did, and surged back up.

‘Hold!’ Kymon shouted once again and, miraculously, something went out of the Vekken advance. Abruptly the men attacking the breach were no longer backed by hundreds of others. The Ant attention had been somehow split.

He felt something strike him in the chest, clipping the rim of his shield. At the base of his vision he could see the quilled end of a crossbow bolt that had driven through his mail. It seemed to hurt far less than it should.

His line was failing, even though all the Ants beyond the foot of this hill of rubble were turning north, trying to move out of the way but constricted by their neighbours, their minds all obviously sharing the same focus.

Something struck him in the head, ringing from his helm, and he found himself falling back. no, Stenwold had him. Stenwold and his Sarnesh bodyguard, carrying him back.

‘The line. ’ he managed to gasp.

‘Hold still,’ Stenwold told him. There was more said but, although the Beetle’s lips moved, Kymon could hear none of it.

He drew his breath to demand that Stenwold speak up, but there was no breath to draw, and he understood that the bolt had pierced his mail, had pierced his lungs, perhaps. The sky above them was growing dark far faster than the oncoming night alone could have managed.

He sent his mind out, futilely, for some last contact with his own kind, but he was the last man of Kes remaining within the walls of Collegium, and when he died, even clasped in Stenwold’s arms, he died alone.

Stenwold looked to the line, then, but incredibly it still held, and the Ants seemed to be trying to retreat, and there was a great cheer that Sarn had come, Sarn had come at last. Stenwold rushed forwards, and in his mind’s eye there was a vast host of Sarnesh soldiers crowding the horizon, but instead he saw merely the shapes of Sarnesh automotives powering towards the breach in the wall. There were two still moving, and the caved-in wreck of a third some distance back, where the Vekken artillery had found it. The remaining two were driving in at top speed, though, their clawed tracks chewing up the dusty, bloody earth, and he saw the Vekken soldiers at the fore linking shields, bracing themselves ridiculously against the charge.

Artillery began bursting around them, and Stenwold saw one of the machines take a terrific blow that stove in one side and yet did not stop it moving. The machines were loosing their own weapons now, repeating ballista bolts smashing the Ant shield-wall full of holes. The Vekken had a siege tower out there, half-extended, and the undamaged automotive struck it a terrible blow that dented the whole front of the machine, but smashed the tower’s lifting gear totally, spilling men and broken machinery in its wake.

Stenwold wanted to close his eyes as they struck, but he could not — he could only stare. The Vekken artillery was smashing into its own infantry in its haste to destroy the automotives, and then the unstoppable momentum of the machines had taken them right into the main block of soldiers, and hundreds of the Vekken shieldmen were simply crushed beneath them.

The damaged machine was meanwhile slewing away from the city, one of its tracks jammed, and a moment later Stenwold saw fire break out around it, the fuel tanks for its engine catching light. The Vekken were fleeing from it, and it exploded, scything through them with jagged metal. The final machine was still driving for the breach, scattering the Vekken in its wake. A leadshotter struck it a glancing blow, spinning it round so that it was facing away from the city, and Stenwold saw Vekken Ants climbing onto it, swarming over it like their very namesakes, and prying hatches open.

With a final effort, the last of the Sarnesh Lorn detachment threw its tracks into reverse and began to climb the rubble backwards. The Vekken had clawed their way on board before it was halfway up, and Balkus grabbed Sten-wold’s arm and pulled him back, fearful for his safety.

Doctor Nicrephos was waiting for them, the frail old Moth looking impossibly out of place so close to the front line. ‘It is time!’ he was shouting. ‘We must go!’

‘Anywhere but here,’ Balkus agreed.

Stenwold looked back to see the last automotive slew backwards into the breach, using its armoured length to bridge the gap in the wall. There was a thump and flare from inside that must be a grenade going off, and then the mauled machine fell still.

Beyond the wall the Vekken began to retreat to their camp for the night, but they would be back again in the morning, perhaps for the last time.

The Fly-kinden, Kori, ducked in and closed the door solidly behind him. In the moment it was open they could all hear the distant sound of exploding grenades.

‘Well this is lovely!’ he exclaimed. ‘I do hope the Empire sends us someplace nice like this again!’ He hooked his cloak off and cast it into the corner of the taproom. They had the taverna to themselves after the owner had gone off to fight.

‘You’ve taken your time,’ Gaved snapped. ‘We’d about given up on you.’

‘Big city, Wasp-boy, so even a man as talented as me takes time to get around it. And this whole Ant invasion gets in the way sometimes.’ Kori stretched. ‘Someone get me something to drink. I feel a need to toast the Emperor.’

‘Over a fire, no doubt,’ muttered Eriphinea the Moth. She slung him a wineskin, which he caught on the wing while hopping up onto a table.

‘Have you located it?’ Scyla demanded of him. The other two were also on their feet now, waiting for his report.

‘Relax, I’ve found the building,’ the Fly assured them. ‘Private collection? Barred and bolted, more like. No simple job to get in. Briskall, the old hoarder, he’s obviously gone to ground with all his treasures. Won’t come out until the siege is over, or the Vekken come to break down his doors.’

‘Can we break through his doors?’ Eriphinea asked doubtfully. ‘These Beetles and their locks. ’

‘I’m the knees with locks,’ Kori told her. ‘I’m the utter knees. I’m more worried about finding our trinket once we get in there.’

‘Don’t forget,’ Scyla said disdainfully, ‘we can’t miss it. That’s an imperial guarantee.’

‘Oh sure, sure.’

‘We’ll have no difficulties locating it,’ the Moth insisted flatly. That silenced them, and they stared at her. Her blank eyes gave them nothing back.

‘Would you care to qualify that, Phin?’ Gaved asked her.

‘Not in any way that you could comprehend,’ she said, not harshly but as a simple statement of fact. ‘He knows.’ She pointed at Scyla. The Spider, finding their attention on her, scowled.

‘She’s right,’ Scyla said shortly. ‘We’ll know it. Her and me.’

‘Well whatever,’ said Kori. ‘You sniff it out, and I’ll get us in, and the Wasp here can watch the door. We have the place and the means.’

‘Let’s go, then,’ Gaved said.

‘Let’s wait till dusk, shall we, so people don’t see us housebreaking,’ Kori suggested.

‘There’s a war on! Who’s going to care?’ the Wasp demanded.

‘Night-time is always better,’ Scyla said. ‘In war they kill looters out of hand, in my experience, which is just what we’d look like.’

‘Darkness is always best,’ Eriphinea confirmed.

The Wasp threw up his hands. ‘Nightfall it is,’ he said. ‘Always assuming we can even get the thing out of the city.’

‘Neither Ants nor Beetles fly, so they seldom watch for fliers,’ Scyla reminded them. ‘We got in. We can get out.’

‘Unless what they say about Ant women is true,’ Kori said.

‘And what is that?’ Phin asked him archly.

‘That they can fly non-stop for a whole night the first time you knock them up.’ The Fly grinned lewdly.

‘And you believe that?’

‘No, but I could have a lot of fun putting it to the test.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘And we’ve got a few pleasant hours to wait, assuming the Vekken don’t kill us. Anything to eat around here?’

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ Stenwold asked.

‘Yes, yes,’ Doctor Nicrephos insisted. ‘You cannot understand, but I am driven — drawn — and I know not by what, but this is definitely the place.’

‘Keep calm, Doctor,’ Stenwold advised him, but Nicrephos was obviously anything but calm. Something had a hold of the old man, something that was now shaking him to his very bones.

There were four of them there loitering outside in the street and looking suspicious. Stenwold had brought Balkus, of course, and because he had gone home first to wash, because he could not bear the thought of Kymon’s blood on him, Arianna had joined them and was here too. He was not sure whether she entirely understood what was going on here but, when Stenwold had left for this errand, she had been tagging along behind him.

He spared her a fond smile, and resisted the urge to reach for her hand. ‘This is Master Briskall’s place,’ he said, belated recollection coming to him. ‘I knew I recognized it. He used to be an archivist at the College, but there were questions as to where some of the exhibits were disappearing to. ’

‘We have to go in,’ Nicrephos insisted. ‘Please, Master Maker.’

‘Are we expecting trouble here?’ Balkus hefted the nail-bow. ‘Want me to send Master Briskall a warning shot?’

‘No!’ Stenwold snapped. He did not understand why this whole venture felt like something criminal, but maybe Doctor Nicrephos’s furtive manner was beginning to infect all of them. ‘I am a Master of Collegium, therefore we’ll knock.’ He turned to say more to the Moth, but the grey-skinned old scholar was wringing his hands and silently baring his yellowed teeth.

‘Well if you want to do things the hard way,’ Balkus muttered, ‘I’ll get them out of bed.’

The big Ant went up to the reinforced door and his fist descended, a single booming thud that had the door already swinging open on its hinges. The others crowded forwards instinctively.

‘Oh-’ the big man said, and then swept back one arm, knocking all three of them, even Stenwold, off his feet. A second later there was a flash, and Balkus staggered back, tripped on Stenwold and sprawled out in the street.

‘That was a Wasp sting!’ Arianna cried out. Nicrephos was desperately trying to get up.

‘Balkus?’ Stenwold called in dismay.

The Ant sat up, a patch of his chainmail now fused together over his chest. ‘Bastard!’ he shouted, and unslung his nailbow.

‘They are trying to steal it!’ Nicrephos shouted in alarm. ‘We must stop them! Please, Stenwold!’

‘All right!’ Stenwold drew his sword, took a second to steel himself, and then flung himself in. The expected bolt sizzled past him and he hit the floor awkwardly, trying to roll away. A moment later the very floor seemed to shake as Balkus discharged his nailbow three times through the doorway, and then moved in to take cover behind a side-table whose exquisite vase he had just shattered. They were in an entrance hall with a door at the far end, and another in each of the long side walls. Stenwold saw movement ahead as the unknown Wasp drew back, and he took advantage of this. All of a sudden he was no longer tired, no longer the War Master, but just Stenwold Maker and free to make his own mistakes, with his own life as the only stake.

The Wasp, out of uniform in a long coat, reappeared with his hand spread, but Stenwold was already far too close and moving too fast for that to work. He had knocked the arm up before the man loosed his sting, and cannoned into him with enough force to send them both sprawling. Stenwold had the better of the collision and already had his sword stabbing down at his opponent. The Wasp twisted agilely out from under him so that the point of the descending blade chipped the floor tiles, but Stenwold managed a quick reverse and caught the man under the chin with his pommel as he tried to rise, sending the Wasp reeling backwards.

‘Beware!’ he heard Nicrephos croak. ‘Someone here has power!’

Stenwold smacked the Wasp across the back of the head with his sword-hilt, sending him back to the ground, and then something snaked past him and caught about his throat. Its claw hooked sharply into his armpit, dragging him off balance.

A grapple! he realized, before seeing a stocky Fly-kinden across the room holding the other end of the rope he was just about to pull. Trying to brace himself, Stenwold got one hand on the rope about his neck, so that he was only pulled off his feet and not strangled with it. Then Balkus burst in with the others right behind him.

The rope tightened, the barbed tines digging into him, and then the Fly had a shortsword drawn and was flying straight towards him, even as Stenwold choked and tried desperately to dislodge the hook. Balkus was.

Balkus was staring strangely, his nailbow hanging loose in his hands. Stenwold shouted at him for help, but his face had gone slack, utterly devoid of expression.

The Fly was abruptly crouching on top of him, his sword clutched in both hands like an outsized dagger. Stenwold groped for him, seeing only a careful concentration on the man’s flat face. With one hand still on the entangling hook, Stenwold got his other hand on one of the Fly’s wrists. For a moment the man was pushing down against him, the tip of the sword descending until it touched Stenwold’s chest.

There was a woman pointing at Balkus, a Moth woman. She was approaching him with a dagger in one hand, but her other was directed at him, so that the power of her Art held him immobile as she approached. She was speaking words that Stenwold could not hear and the big Ant just stared back at her with a glazed expression. In the Moth woman’s hand the dagger’s glistening blade was smeared with something black. She was smiling all the while.

With a supreme effort Stenwold halted the sword’s further descent, locking his own arm and pushing up against the smaller man’s wrist whilst still hauling at the hook with his free hand. The Fly-kinden’s teeth were bared in a snarl and he was remarkably strong for one of his small kind. Suddenly he grinned and simply took up the sword one-handed, leaving Stenwold clutching the useless wrist of an empty hand. Stenwold yanked at it furiously, putting the man off his stroke so that the sword just clipped his ear, but then the Fly’s wings flashed out to steady him, and he drew the blade back for one final strike.

Arianna’s knife flashed, and the Fly-kinden arched backwards, the weapon spinning from his hands. She struck again and again in fierce desperation as he screamed and bucked, knocking himself off Stenwold’s chest. For a moment he was scrabbling about on the floor to retrieve his dropped sword, his back now a welter of red, and then finally she drove her blade into his side up to the hilt with a cry of revulsion.

Stenwold was aware of Doctor Nicrephos shouting something, and he felt a wave of cold surge through him that had every hair on his body standing on end. The Moth woman cursed in frustration, and lunged her dagger forwards just as Balkus snapped out of his trance. It was a hasty blow she delivered that skittered harmlessly from his mail, and in automatic response the nailbow boomed, sending her flying backwards with a bloody hole punched all the way through her.

‘Stenwold!’ the old Moth cried. ‘Help me!’ Stenwold staggered to his feet, looking around for the old man. For a brief moment he saw Doctor Nicrephos wrestling with a shadowy figure, and then a blade flashed and the Moth was reeling back, his robe bloodied. Stenwold had a brief glimpse of a Spider-kinden man — no, a Spider-kinden woman? It was impossible in that moment to tell. He roared out a challenge, and Balkus shot another bolt at the same time, but the Spider dodged nimbly, running for the open door with something under his — or her — arm. As Stenwold charged, she — it was definitely a she — turned and flung something at him that struck him in the chest and instantly he was falling, tangled and stuck in strands of fine, sticky silk. A moment later, the Wasp-kinden man was running after the Spider, slipping through the door just before Balkus’ nailbow destroyed the doorframe in three separate places.

Arianna crouched by him, her eyes wide. ‘Who was that?’ she gasped. ‘What is going on?’ Only Doctor Nicrephos knew that, Stenwold thought painfully, for he could still see the old man from where he lay, and there was no doubt that the Moth was dead. As for who that was, though. surely it can’t be. It could not be, he decided. It must be some other of the same order, for Achaeos had sworn that he had killed the face-shifting spy who had plagued them in Helleron.

A spy in Helleron. A spy in Myna. Now a spy in Collegium. The coincidence was there already, so how much further for it to have all been the work of one man — or one woman? And how difficult was it for a master of disguise to play dead?

Arianna was patiently disentangling him from the Art-made web, and after a moment Balkus joined them, slotting a fresh magazine into his nailbow.

‘Any idea what they got away with?’ he asked.

‘None,’ said Stenwold helplessly. ‘And no understanding of this at all.’ He took a good long time to recover his breath, leaning back against a wall of Briskall’s entrance hall, staring mournfully at the body of Doctor Nicrephos, whose last desperate request had cost the old man his life — and achieved nothing. Arianna crouched beside him protectively, her head on his shoulder. She had saved his life, he realized. He had hardly noted it in all the confusion, but the Fly-kinden would have had him if she had not stabbed the man first. Spiders played deep games, but he allowed himself to hope that this was it, this was all, and at last the womanly concern she presented to him was the Arianna that really was.

He was unspeakably grateful for her company at that bleak moment.

There was the dead Moth woman to consider, as well. This mixed bag of raiders had all the hallmarks of a mercenary team. The presence of a Wasp did not guarantee they were imperial, nor did it seem likely they were Vekken.

It was all rather more than he could disentangle.

He heard Balkus’s clumping tread, and then the big Ant was back with yet another body slung over his shoulder. As he lowered it to the floor Stenwold saw an elderly Beetle-kinden who had been killed by a single knife-blow to the back of the neck.

‘Master Briskall was at home then,’ Stenwold said weakly. ‘What else did you see through there?’

Balkus shrugged. ‘Bit of a mystery, Master Maker. There’s a nice big lock on this door, and all manner of stuff behind it that any thief would go out of his mind to steal. Some of it’s in locked cages or behind glass, but there’s plenty there just for the grabbing, only they didn’t.’

‘We interrupted them?’ Stenwold suggested.

‘That Spider had something with her when she ran off,’ Balkus pointed out, and he had obviously made his mind up about the sex of the escapee. ‘There’s one thing gone, something square and about so big.’ His hands made a shape no more than six inches to each side. ‘It was just out on a stand, though — nothing this old boy wanted locked away.’

‘Just an opportunistic grab, maybe,’ Stenwold suggested, but an odd thought came to him: Or something Master Briskall did not know the value of.

The three of them then carried the bodies of Briskall and Doctor Nicrephos to the nearest infirmary, although they were both beyond all healing. Stenwold told a reliable-looking soldier about the other bodies, and advised that Briskall’s house should be secured against thieves. Then the three of them returned to Stenwold’s home, to find a messenger waiting on his doorstep with even worse news.

Scyla realized, as she left, that her only regret was that Gaved had escaped. She worked alone for preference, so she had taken no joy in the company the Empire had forced on her.

And she had no intention of sharing a reward with anyone. If this box was so important, then the Wasps would just have to pay the full amount to her alone.

Within a street she had taken on the guise of a portly Beetle woman, easy enough to do under cover of darkness, and was heading towards the nearest city wall. Getting through the Vekken lines would be harder, but she was adept at her craft.

Though heavily carved, the box was otherwise as unassuming as she had been told, but she had been given no time yet to make a detailed examination. If she could find out what was so special about it, then maybe she could raise the asking price. The Empire had a lot of money to throw around, and with a thousand faces at her disposal she had no worries about making enemies. Perhaps she should even impersonate Gaved? Now that would be amusing.

She guessed that Gaved would now be circling the streets looking for her, but between her disguise and his pitiful Wasp eyes, he had no chance at all. He would give up in the end and get himself out of the city before dawn, heading back to the imperial masters he constantly disavowed but would never quite escape.

Some part of the back of her mind was aware that those who had originally taught her would despair at her behaviour. Theirs was a noble and ancient calling of spies, and now she was a mere profiteer prostituting the gifts they had awakened in her just for spite and for gold. She had long ago lost sight of any higher goals she might have had, any lasting achievement she could make. Now it was just the getting and the gaining and, most especially, the joy of outwitting — making bigger fools of all the fools out there, who looked no further than another’s face.

She reached the city wall and stood close to it, seeing no one around, no airborne shape hovering above. Calling on her Art she swiftly scaled the stonework, hands and booted feet clinging easily to its smooth stone. Flat against it, near the top, she waited as a sentry passed by, with eyes only for the Vekken camp beyond. She crawled onto the walkway and the battlements and, like a shadow, face downwards, to the earth below.

Now came the real challenge. She could have crept from darkness to darkness, and thus avoided the Vekken lanterns, but she wanted to complete her victory. She wanted to fool a whole army.

She focused her concentration and changed her face and form, taking on the obsidian hue of a Vekken Ant, even down to the dark chainmail and helm. Ants could not be fooled by mere appearances amongst their own kind, though, and she stretched her powers and gifts, feeling tensions and strains within her mind as she worked with it, reaching out towards something that was a distant and foreign concept, an ideal, a mere idea, but something that was the fount of Ant-kinden Art.

And the night was full of voices. She heard the rapidly passed reports of sentries, the chatter of artificers working on the artillery, questions from officers, and the complaints of a few who simply could not get to sleep, and she walked into it and, when she was seen, she simply greeted them, mind to mind, as any Ant would. If they had asked her questions it might have been difficult, in an army where any stranger could be identified so quickly, but it never even occurred to them to be suspicious, for she was doing the impossible, counterfeiting them so well that they could not conceive that she was not one of them.

Blithely and openly, she walked straight through the Vekken camp and out into the night.

By dawn she was far from the Vekken camp, back to the easy guise of a Spider-kinden man of younger years. When she had first called up this face he could have been her twin. Now he was a decade younger than she was.

The local people around here, solid farmers all, had heard about the siege of Collegium but had no idea what to do about it. They were simply awaiting the outcome, and if that meant Vekken soldiers coming down the road then they would take it as it came. Even the Vekken needed farmers to till the land, and Scyla suspected life as Vekken slaves would not change their rural ways so very much.

She found a barn where two placid draft-beetles were stabled, and climbed up to the hayloft. It was time to examine her prize.

Nothing but a box carved in wood — that was her first impression. The carvings were strange, though. They drew the eye in a way that seemed to ignore the angles and corners of the thing, as though whatever they truly encompassed had no real edges at all, and they led on and led on, and as she turned the thing over in her hands she could see no end or beginning to them, coiling and twining traceries of thorny vines and ragged-edged leaves that overlapped and overlapped and only emphasized the depths of the spaces in between them, depths that seemed, by some trick of light and shadow, to fall into recesses far further than the small box itself could readily accommodate.

In her intense concentration she did not notice the light wane within the stable, or hear the increasingly uncomfortable shuffling of the big insects below.

But how remarkable, she thought, that those lines split apart again and again, and yet whatever path she followed only turned and twisted, while all the others flourished with leaves, and carved insects, beetles and grubs and woodlice and other things that dwelled within rotten wood. Over and over she turned it, trying to unravel the essential mystery. A box it was, and light enough that it must be hollow, and yet there was no lid, no catch, no way of working her way into it, save to follow, follow, follow the carved patterns laid over and under one another, round and round the seemingly endless sides of the box.

There was a flickering within her mind, like shadows when the candle flame is blown, a flickering and a dancing, and at last she looked up, and saw shadows moving of their own accord across the walls of the barn, shadows that her eyes picked out of the darkness. Warrior shadows, with spined arms and stalking gait, the shadows of great clawed insects, forelimbs clasped in solemn prayer, robed men raising daggers to a shadow moon, and ever the interlacing, clutching branches of the encroaching trees. Shadows overlapping with yet more shadows, so that whatever was being enacted around her and within her mind was lost, save for the emotions that flooded and coursed through her, beyond her beck and call, as wild and furious as a storm tide: rage, betrayal, loss, a seething sense of bottomless hatred.

She was aware that she was holding her breath, and that seemed only wise because these shadows — or some at least — were Mantis-kinden who had no love for her kind, and she felt that she had no disguise sufficient to cloud their eyes to what she really was.

But too little, too late, for one such shadow had turned to her, if shadows could turn. There were no eyes, but as it gazed on her she was aware of a shadow thing part woman, part insect, part twining plant, but also the very shape that hate might take if some alchemist could distil it and then make it flesh.

She had a sense that this unfolding of power — this long-denied awakening that she had provoked — was not going unheard, and just as the things from the box stretched their serrated limbs, so distant minds that had been searching for this moment were sparked into wakefulness. The imperial contract, she thought, and in her mind was the instant image of a pale, emaciated man with bulbous red eyes, the skin above his forehead shifting with blood. One long-nailed hand was reaching for her, his face cast into a covetous scowl.

And she gasped in shock, and it was gone, they were all gone, and the sun was shining back through the hayloft hatch, and the beetles below were straining at their tethers, clawing at the walls, with oily foam welling between their mandibles, causing enough ruckus to bring the farmer. She ducked out of the hatch and climbed down the outside wall.

She was no true magician, no seer, but her people had their women and men of magic, just as the Moths did, and she had learnt a lot from them back when she was young and willing enough to subjugate herself to others. She had no idea what this box truly was, but she realized that it was powerful. The magic trapped within it, from the Days of Lore for sure, was of an order she had never encountered before. She had no idea what the pragmatic Wasp Empire could want with it, but one thing was clear: she was being offered only a pitiful fraction of the true value of the thing. More, the Empire, ignorant as it was, would never come forward with a fitting price.

She knew places she could take it where a proper buyer might be found. Once word was out, then there was still gold enough within Moth haunts, still collectors of the arcane, rogue Skryres, Spider manipuli, all willing to bid for what she possessed. To the wastes with the Wasps. She would go find her own buyers and name her own price.

She did not stop to ask herself where this thought of betrayal, so natural to her, had first sparked, and whether the idea was really hers at all.