Seal of the Worm

Forty-Nine

Epilogues

The camps emptied, one by one, those where the Empress’s will had been thwarted. Imperial citizens returned home to cities that were suddenly more than mere vassal states. Slaves returned to slavery, because change comes gradually and unevenly, and three generations of Imperial history cast a long shadow. Spiders were sent back in long chains to their southern cities. They were all of them currency and bargaining chips in the delicate game of diplomacy that the nations of the kinden were playing in order to extricate themselves from a war that none of them abruptly had the desire for; in order to step back from the brink.

And a band of Collegiate prisoners was eventually remembered and permitted to board an airship to head for home.

In those camps where the orders had been obeyed, where the Empress had been granted her harvest of lives, the burial details waited for the poisonous haze of the Bee-killer to recede. So closed an episode of Imperial history that nobody living now understood, but everyone would remember.

Sitting at the end of a pier on Collegium docks, Laszlo sat staring out to sea, his feet swinging over the water. Looking down, he could see the great metal carcass of an Imperial Sentinel that had been dragged into the water during the retaking of the city, now nothing more than a hazard to shipping.

A great many things were happening in the world, but relatively few of them held any interest to him just then.

Lissart had gone, of course.

She had thanked him. He had saved her from Milus’s clutches, and then he had given her the opportunity to have her revenge. He had somehow thought that would bind her to him, that she would look at him and see something similar to what he saw, when he looked at her.

‘There’ll be another time,’ she had assured him, but when he had begged her to tell him where she planned to go, she had demurred. ‘That would spoil the surprise,’ had been what she told him, but he’d known that she had not wanted him coming after her, just as he had known that he would not have been able to stop himself from doing so, if she had given him any hint.

She was at large somewhere in the world, that duplicitous, untrustworthy arsonist of a girl, and here he sat staring out at the sea and mourning her already.

‘Hey, loser.’

He looked up irritably, not feeling in the mood for Despard’s jibes. The Tidenfree’s chief artificer had always possessed an abrasive sense of humour.

‘Gude wants to know,’ she insisted. ‘We can’t just sit around at anchor here forever.’

‘Go away.’

‘Let me put it another way, Laszlo. The Bloodfly wants to know. You’re going to tell her to go away?’

‘If I have to.’

Despard uttered a derisive noise and lit off again for the ship along the quayside. It looked just like a swift little merchantman, but it had been one of the most notorious pirate vessels of its day, and would be so again. With or without him.

Stenwold Maker, Laszlo’s friend and patron, was dead. Why would he stay in this war-bruised city? And yet he had no other destination. Liss had not given him a hint of one.

‘Laszlo?’

Another voice. He looked up to see Sperra, the woman from Princep. She was regarding him uncertainly but, before he could turn away, she had sat beside him, in the manner of someone conquering their own fears.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked her. ‘I thought . . .’

‘Princep can manage without me,’ she said, desperately trying to appear casual. ‘I just wanted to see how you were doing.’

He studied her for a long time. He knew full well that she had taken a shine to him, and he also knew that, on occasion, he had taken advantage of that to get her and her Ant friend to do things for him. He was not proud of that.

But, still, here she was and with an obvious purpose, for all that she would not speak it. One word from him and he would be rid of her, and he could see her bracing for it, ready to risk the hurt, but hoping for the small chance that he might say something different.

‘What next for you?’ he asked her, instead.

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What about you?’ Relentless in her willingness to be put on the rack.

He glanced over at the Tidenfree again. ‘You know, I was thinking of a spot of piracy.’ He took a deep breath, aware that he was doing something right for the wrong reasons – or perhaps the other way around. ‘How about you? Only Despard’s always after more help with the engines, and I think you know some medicine too . . .? Always handy, that.’

There was such naked hope in her expression that he felt wretched for her, and, yet, who knew? There might be no Lissart in his future, or he might rid himself of his longing for her, and a man at his time of life should be realistic. There came a day when you had to stop chasing dreams.

‘Come on,’ he suggested, ‘I’ll introduce you to the crew.’

‘Willem,’ Eujen said, reaching for his stick.

Willem Reader, aviation artificer, made a hurried gesture. ‘You needn’t get up.’

‘I’m going to, though.’ Eujen felt the gearing of his supports finally engage and, with a little help from his stick, he was standing within a relatively short period of time. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘I was beginning to wonder if the Sarnesh would let me leave,’ Reader agreed. ‘There were quite a few of us, in the end, who were asking just who the enemy was, that we were still helping them get ready to fight. I know it’s thanks to you and everyone else here, putting on the pressure, that they finally decided to act like civilized human beings again.’

‘In all honesty, it was your wife leading the charge.’ Eujen nodded at Jen Reader, who hadn’t let Willem out of her sight since his return. The Beetle woman gave him a tired smile, which Eujen returned with, ‘And, of course, congratulations on your election, Madam Assembler.’

Jen shrugged. ‘I decided that if they still weren’t going to give the chief librarian a seat by right, then I’d cursed well earn one the hard way. And, believe me, Master Leadswell, I’m not just going to sit back and cheer while in the Assembly. There’s plenty I think needs changing around here.’

‘But perhaps not the surroundings?’ Eujen suggested. Around them stretched the ruins of the Amphiophos, the shattered wreck of Collegium’s seat of government. Here the bombs had fallen, in that terrible night of fire that had led to the Imperial air force’s undoing. Here the neutered Assembly had met under Wasp rule, to be dictated to by their conquerors. Grass was beginning to grow between the stones. ‘I think we should keep it like this. An aid to the memory, so to speak.’

‘Well, Master Leadswell, the man of the hour!’ Without warning, Sartaea te Mosca was there at his elbow. She was still painfully thin from the camps, but being back in Collegium had gone a long way to restoring her. ‘What a grave face, Eujen. Are you tired of your honours already, the very same day as the Lots voted you in?’

He grimaced with embarrassment. ‘I’m not the only one who . . .’

‘Oh, yes, certainly yes.’ The Fly-kinden woman grinned shyly up at Jen. ‘Quite the new broom. A whole new Assembly, so many fresh faces.’

‘Well, those who did get elected are going to have to do some work for once,’ Jen pointed out. ‘That probably put off some of the old faces. Did Awlbreaker stand, in the end?’

‘Poll? No,’ te Mosca confirmed. ‘He said he would rather fix machines than cities. They voted in Metyssa, though. Plenty of people remember her stories, from when they were stuck in Sarn waiting to come home, and from when . . .’ For a moment she faltered, then hoisted her smile back up with a visible effort. ‘Let’s just say she’s remembered. Willem, the College Masters are now gathering. Shall we go and join the Gownsmen?’

The artificer grimaced. ‘What’s left of them.’ Replacing vacant College posts was proving more difficult than voting in the elected members of the Assembly. ‘We’re not quite back the way we were, are we?’

Eujen shook his head. Across what had once been the Assembly hall, the new government of Collegium – magnates, veterans, adventurers and mavericks – was finding itself a place where it could gather: on the broken tiers of the old seating, on the rubble, on the ground, under the sky.

‘Time to put the world to rights,’ he decided.

Te Mosca smiled slightly, watching the Readers part company: he heading for the College seats, she for the Townsmen’s. The Fly’s expression was thoughtful, philosophical, a mirror to all the turmoil and change that these last years had witnessed. Then she looked up brightly. ‘I suppose I should follow my own advice and take my place. Oh . . . and, Eujen?’

‘Hm?’

‘Congratulations, Master Speaker.’

The young scholar managed a pained smile. ‘Given the work ahead, I can’t imagine what I can have done to deserve such a fate, but we’ll have to make the best of what we’ve got.’

This had been an arena once, a place for gladiators and wild beasts to tear each other apart to sate the bloodlust of the mighty.

How appropriate, Tynan considered.

Looking around him, all he could see was division. Here, closest to him, were men representing the armies and garrisons and barracks – mostly junior offices, for many of the generals and colonels were sufficiently unsure of how this might play out that they were keeping tight to their little fiefdoms and preparing for the worst.

Beyond, he could see little knots that represented the various corps, each with their numbers prescribed by Ernain’s cursed declaration – Slavers, Engineers, Quartermasters and more, plus a big crowd representing the various factora of the Consortium. The majority of those were Beetle-kinden, and mostly under the domination of the Bellowerns.

And beyond them, thronging the raked seating, were the others: the unthinkable; those he had let in to sully the wheels of government.

He broke away from the army seats and strode in their direction, scanning that offensive variety, seeing them as all the Wasps must see them. Here were representatives from every city in the Empire, and plainly many of them not at all sure that they hadn’t been lured here only to be murdered. He saw Grasshoppers and Bees, Ants and Mole Crickets, Flies and Beetles, even a couple of skinny little Skater-kinden from Jerez who somehow now had a say in the future of the state. We must be mad. We must all be completely mad. And yet, even on those seats, there were some Wasps: men – and a very few women – who had somehow won over the very people that they had ostensibly been oppressing. It was a new world of opportunity, and simply for that reason it was the anathema of the old regime.

Another man was coming to meet him halfway. Ah, symbolism.

‘Ernain,’ he nodded. ‘Is it Captain, still?’

‘Just not “Captain-Auxillian”, General,’ the Bee-kinden agreed. ‘Second thoughts?’

‘More than you can believe.’ Tynan looked past the other man to the little band of Spider-kinden who had come in from Solarno and points south. The word was that the Aldanraic States – as the new term went for the land between Kes and Solarno – were still somewhat undecided as to what nation they belonged to, but then that was typical Spider-kinden for you. The thought brought a slight, sad smile to Tynan’s lips.

The various families controlling those cities had sent mostly women to this gathering, he noticed, and to Tynan that showed that they were serious. In their midst he caught Merva’s Wasp features as she nodded soberly to him. Whoever would have thought it would go this far? she seemed to be saying.

‘The numbers are interesting,’ Tynan observed. There were still far more Wasps here than any other kinden, but the rabble of others could just about balance them, if they were all pointed in the same direction. And of course there’s no guarantee that we Wasps will all see things the same way, either. Chaos! Surely it will be chaos. ‘I think the Consortium bloc is going to be deciding a great many things.’

Ernain nodded. ‘Only if you’re thinking of us as your enemies, General. Who knows: maybe we both want to stick it to the Consortium.’

Tynan managed a brief, cut-off laugh and, in its wake, he saw a businesslike look in Ernain’s eyes.

‘Are you ready?’ the Bee-kinden asked him.

‘Why me, Ernain?’

‘Because I trust you, and the cities will follow my lead for now. Because your own people trust you – you’re the closest thing they have to a hero. You negotiated an end to the war: a graceful surrender that preserved their dignity and the lives of their sons. And because an Assembly needs a Speaker, even an Imperial Assembly.’

‘How can we be an Imperial Assembly without an Empress?’ Tynan demanded, knowing that this battle was already lost.

‘You yourself said that there was no actual body. The Empress is . . . gone. Not dead, but gone. In her absence, we shall govern in her name.’

‘Until she returns in our hour of need?’ Tynan asked sardonically.

‘Perhaps. It’s worked out well, don’t you think?’

Tynan looked out across the sea of faces, the sea of kinden, all those frightened people who wanted him to tell them how this was going to work. ‘Just so long as she never does come back,’ he remarked grimly.

Months after, in the remote reaches of the Tharen mountains, a cloaked figure struggled through the high passes to reach the door of a reclusive community that almost nobody knew of, even amongst the Moth-kinden.

The door was opened by a Wasp who had given up the life of a soldier a decade before. For a long time he stared at their visitor, not quite believing his eyes.

Soon after, he was conducting the visitor through the lamp-lit halls, past all those others who had turned away from a military life and sought the peace of the Broken Sword.

‘I must ask,’ the Wasp said finally. ‘Your . . . scars . . .?’

Esmail paused a long time before answering. ‘A small price to pay,’ was all he said, in the end.

Soon after, he entered a room where a Dragonfly-kinden woman waited, with three children gathered nervously about her skirts.

Esmail had come home.

The road from the Exalsee to the Commonweal was a long one, and Maure never made it back. Instead, misadventure took her into the Empire in all its turmoil, stepping between the gears of government even as men such as Tynan were trying to fit them into place. She fed herself and kept herself free through her old trade of necromancy, calling up the dead and laying them to rest, easing grief and sorrow at a time when there was more than enough of both.

What surprised her was how easily it came back to her. At first she thought herself mistaken – overestimating herself after that long spell in darkness when she had nothing at all – but in the end she had to conclude: No, this is real.

All over the Empire, the Lowlands and beyond, other magicians were waking up to the fact that the magic, all that magic that had been locked away to maintain the Seal, was slowly coming back.

As for Maure, she headed northwards every day that she could, and in the end crossed over the Empire’s far northern border to the rotting forests where the Woodlice live, those who had trained her, and who knew no strife, nor drew any great distinctions between Apt and Inapt, and who had the greatest libraries in the world, and there she made her home and lived for a long time.

A year after the war, and finding that life in both Collegium and Solarno was no longer to her taste, te Schola Taki-Amre took an experimental orthopter, powered jointly by Nemean fuel oil and new metal gearing, past the west coast of the Lowlands to brave the storms and the open sea in order to either discover new lands or, alternatively, to circumnavigate the world.

She never returned.

Three years later

They had left the broken Amphiophos forum just as it was, so that the city’s Assembly met under the open sky, and thus remembered, and managed to conclude its important business remarkably quickly when foul weather threatened. Around that open space, which had become known as the Assembly Gardens, the three years since the war’s end had cultivated the offices and staterooms and archives that the city could apparently not do without, under the firm guidance of Jen Reader as head of the restoration committee.

And there was still restoration to be done, for the war had left the city with plenty of scars. When people complained, Reader simply told them, Be glad you’re not living in Myna. Everyone knew how much work the Mynans still had ahead of them.

For the last few tendays the whole city had been alive with speculation. The recovery of Collegium – of the Lowlands as a whole – was sufficiently advanced that the Assembly had voted to hold the Games once more. The last time had been just before the first war, and the intervening years had burdened the Collegiates with other priorities that they were only now able to shed.

The Games themselves were still a tenday away, but today would be a test of Eujen’s abilities as Speaker. He was aware that he would need to do well. The Lots were not so very far off, and any embarrassment now would be raked up when the time came for people to consider whether they still wanted him around. The fact that he was thinking in such terms vaguely disgusted him, but at the same time he felt considerably more sympathetic to those who had gone before.

He lodged near the Amphiophos these days, but even the short walk still took him some time. He made it anyway, every working day. It was a point of pride for the only Assembler who had to remember to wind his legs up every evening. It reminded him, and all who saw him, never to take things for granted.

The offices of the Amphiophos were bustling today, filled not just with the city’s representatives and the host of clerks and bureaucrats and errand-runners who made the wheels of government turn, but with a glut of foreigners. Everywhere one looked there were strange faces, the diplomatic staff of a dozen states come to Collegium to discuss the world’s ills.

‘Master Speaker.’ A Fly-kinden man of middle years found him the moment he had stepped inside.

‘Arvi.’ Eujen had taken the previous Speaker’s secretary on because, he had reasoned, at least someone at the heart of government should know what he was doing. ‘Our delegates?’

‘Most of them already in the Gardens,’ the Fly confirmed with pride, as though he had personally herded them there.

Perhaps he did, Eujen mused. ‘I’ll rely on you to make the introductions.’

‘Of course.’ Arvi led the way, a little man with his head held high.

Stepping outside again, into that sprawling walled garden where the Assembly now met, Eujen had to stop and stare. He knew a fair few of the faces, of course, but never before had they all been together in one place.

He spotted the Vekken ambassador in deep conversation with a Sarnesh woman and the Tseni who spoke for the Atoll Confederation, or whatever that new business along the west coast was calling itself. Three Ants of different cities earnestly conspiring together, and Eujen wondered whether this would be the start of the united Ant nations that everyone was so worried about, and decided that he would bet against it. Not just yet, but who can say about tomorrow?

A pale woman, heavily cowled, took his hand, nodding formally. She seemed a Spider-kinden save for the colour of her eyes. Arvi made the introductions a moment before Eujen could recall her name. ‘Paladrya of Hermatyre.’

‘Welcome again to Collegium,’ Eujen addressed her graciously, before his eloquence fell flat with ‘I hope it’s not . . . I hope it doesn’t bring back too many bad memories.’

Her smile was private, solemn, and said nothing of her lost link to this city. Arvi had already scheduled a meeting between herself, Eujen and the head of the Helleren Mint to talk about the currency problem. Shortly after the Lowlander cities became aware of the existence of the Sea-kinden, they became aware that the Sea-kinden could essentially produce enormous quantities of one hundred per cent pure gold, and the College economists were predicting the collapse of the mint unless somebody thought of something spectacular. Tomorrow’s problems . . .

Passing on, Eujen exchanged curt, standoffish nods with the Moth delegate from Tharn. The Moths were a great deal more outgoing these days, seeming to have regained a drive and purpose that they had long been lacking. Eujen was not sure this was a good thing. Nobody wanted Collegium’s former masters raking up ancient history, and surely ancient history was what the Moths were good at. And yet, at the same time, it was becoming fashionable amongst the broader-minded Collegiate magnates to put a Moth on the payroll as a kind of oracular consultant. Alarmingly, there were even claims that this was money well spent.

So who is Tharn speaking to these days? Eujen saw the Moth turn back to his conversation with the somewhat shabby-looking, greying Dragonfly – that princeling from the Commonweal who had supposedly been some sort of brigand not so long before. Beside them stood a lean, elegant Spider-kinden Arista who was probably from the so-called Aldanraic States that somehow managed to involve themselves in Lowlander, Spider and Wasp politics without ever committing themselves to anyone.

‘Master Speaker, this is Master Ceremon, translator to the Netheryen ambassador,’ Arvi announced, before Eujen could think too much about that.

‘Translator to the . . .?’ Eujen blinked at the Mantis-kinden man before him. ‘Ah, yes, of course. And is your . . .?’

A slight shift in Ceremon’s stance, a slight motion of the eyes, led Eujen’s attention up to the thing that lurked behind him, half lost against the greenery and fallen stone, and standing so still as to be nearly invisible. Eujen managed a stiff, startled nod towards it, seeing the same motion mirrored into the hungry intent of those faceted eyes. He wasn’t sure whether sending a man-eating predator along to a conference of powers meant that the Mantis-kinden hadn’t quite understood modern diplomacy or that they understood it all too well.

After that, it was a brief clasp of hands with Balkus, for Princep Salma, and then Kymene, here on behalf of the Alliance. The Mynan veteran had lasted a year in heading her city’s new consensus before she had become sick of the bickering and factions. Her diplomatic style was scarcely less aggressive than her war record, and Eujen hoped she would be able to keep herself in check.

‘Nobody’s here from the Second Empire yet,’ Arvi noted.

‘I think we won’t hear from them,’ Eujen confirmed. Those Wasps who had been unable to abide the new order within the Imperial Republic – a label that was giving the College’s historians conniptions – had mostly ended up in that slice of the Commonweal that was still nominally under Wasp occupation, and where they lived in daily terror that the Dragonflies would come and take it off them once and for all. That their expatriate leadership consisted of former men of the Red Watch who claimed still to speak for the long-lost Empress Seda was a concern to more than a few in both Collegium and the Empire they had fled.

But they had stayed away, to nobody’s great regret, and instead there were more, far more delegates for Eujen to meet: a lean grey Woodlouse-kinden who reminded Eujen of his friend Gerethwy; the jovial corpulence of the Helleren magnates; Spider-kinden representatives from at least four of the factions in what nobody was quite calling a Spiderlands civil war just yet, despite the number of desperate refugees washing into Collegium harbour every day; even a silvery-pale Beetle-kinden in pearlescent armour who refused to shake hands or have any physical contact with anyone, and apparently came from the depths of some lake in the North-Empire. There is not time, Eujen thought regretfully. Give me a day with each of them in turn before we have to get down to business. But, looking across that gathering, he knew that business was already well underway. Just by bringing all these disparate faces together, Collegium had achieved something.

We were once so inward-looking. Now we send out invitations and the world comes.

‘What about the Wasps?’ Eujen asked, and then corrected himself hastily. ‘The Republic?’

‘They have arrived, but they wanted to speak with you before they make their formal entrance. I suspect they’re aware of just how many old enemies are gathered here.’

‘And when were you going to tell me this, Arvi?’ Eujen asked him.

The little man gave him a condescending look. ‘If I’d told you earlier, you’d not have taken the time to be seen here shaking hands with other people, Master Speaker, which is quite necessary for any man seeking re-election. Master Drillen—’

‘Yes, yes,’ Eujen cut him off. ‘But now I know, so you’d better take me to them.’

‘I believe there was something about a gift, also. Bonds of trade and diplomacy and the usual,’ Arvi added airily. ‘Your bodyguard was dealing with it.’

‘She’s not my bodyguard.’

Straessa, who was emphatically not Eujen’s bodyguard, and who had refused to be made War Master of the Merchant Companies, was waiting for him in one of the Amphiophos’s meeting rooms. Eujen still found that he expected her to be wearing the old uniform, the Company sash and the buff coat. She sported her formal robes, though: the Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum had to know how to dress for the occasion, after all. Looked at like that, the rapier at her side became merely part of the costume, the eyepatch just the same.

She hugged him very close for a moment, almost to the point of pulling him off balance, then set him straight. It was to remind him that she owned him in a way that the Assembly never could, despite all its demands.

Beyond her, and obviously slightly thrown by this familiarity, was a handful of delegates from the Imperial Republic, and Eujen recognized three out of four of them: Colonel Vorken, formerly of the Slave Corps, General Varsec, head of the Engineers, and Honory Bellowern, a diplomat and no stranger to Collegium’s streets. The fourth, a Wasp woman, was a stranger, although something about her seemed maddeningly familiar.

‘Arvi said something about a gift?’ Eujen murmured.

‘Look up,’ Straessa told him. ‘Imperial artists have been busy.’

Hearing that, Eujen feared the worst. A lot of what the Wasps had produced in the last three years had been a fascinating insight into a culture trying to come to terms with what it had become. He knew that there was still a strong nationalistic undercurrent in Republican culture, which all too often surfaced in angry, ugly work trying to portray the Wasps in their supposed pre-eminent place amongst the kinden of the world, fallen only as a result of some imagined conspiracy.

This was different, though. Halfway over to greet the ambassadors, Eujen stopped to gaze at the broad canvas mounted on the far wall.

‘They call it The School of Artifice,’ Straessa explained. ‘It’s . . . I think it’s where they see we have something in common.’

The canvas showed a gathering within an open chamber that resembled the ruins of the Amphiophos that Eujen had just left. The figures depicted were engaged in earnest discussion, with boards and charts and half-assembled machinery providing the focus of their interest. There were a lot of Wasps amongst them, but no more than half. The artists had been generous and diplomatic.

Many of the people there he could not identify, but the man with the one armoured glove was surely Dariandrephos, and the other halfbreed with a snapbow partly disassembled was that second-in-command of his, who had been a student at the College in his time. There was Varsec himself – given some prominence and depicted in spirited debate with fellow aviators Taki and Willem Reader. There was a selection of other College men and women as well – people whom Eujen had known, and who were mostly dead now. He saw Rakespear, Greatly, Tseitus, and the madly bearded man towards the back gesturing at the stormy sky beyond must be intended as Banjacs Gripshod, for all the likeness was poor. At last Eujen’s attention was drawn to a figure sitting by itself in one corner, though: a Woodlouse-kinden youth with a complex gear train anatomized in his lap. It was uncanny how they had captured the likeness of Gerethwy.

‘You had them do this,’ Eujen accused.

‘I had them add him, yes,’ Straessa confirmed, looking up at the likeness of their fallen friend. ‘I sent them Raullo’s sketches. He deserved to be in that company, I think.’

Eujen nodded soberly and squeezed her shoulder, then turned a bright smile on the patiently waiting delegation.

‘Welcome to Collegium,’ he addressed them. ‘As you see, I’m somewhat speechless at your gift. It’s remarkable. Would you like me to make introductions, out in the Amphiophos?

To his surprise, it was the woman who stepped forwards. ‘That would be much appreciated, Master Leadswell,’ she told him. There was an awkward pause then, words that she was slow in saying, and with the other three eager to move on, but at last she got out: ‘I believe you knew my son.’

He placed the resemblance then, just too late for it to do any good. ‘Averic, yes,’ he agreed. ‘He was a good friend to me.’ A sudden rush of emotion passed over him, aroused by faces and voices now wholly consigned to time. ‘Averic came here because he believed that our people could learn to meet in friendship, not in war,’ Eujen went on, for all of their benefits. ‘I came to believe the same thing. Come, let’s meet the others now, and talk about the future.’

Later, much later: it was past midnight after a long day of small matters. Arvi had set out the agenda himself – the finicky little power behind the throne, Eujen reflected meanly – and the first day’s business had been neither weighty nor contentious: minor trade business, the College making places available for more students from beyond Collegium, the Republic asserting a right to send its spare military men to serve as peacekeepers in the Spiderlands, which nobody was going to contest. After all, if they were over there, then they wouldn’t be sitting idle and getting ideas over here . . .

Until the city’s clocks had struck twelve, Eujen and Straessa had been exchanging anecdotes with General Varsec and that Spider Arista from the Aldanraic States. But, now that it was just the two of them and half a bottle of wine, Eujen was beginning to think about that walk home, and how much easier it would be with Straessa to keep him company.

Then Arvi burst in on them, or as close as he ever came to doing so. He knocked, but only in passing as he barrelled in through the door.

‘Master Speaker!’ he exclaimed.

‘What are you even doing up?’ Eujen demanded of him, earning a reproachful look that eloquently conveyed the message, Do you not know how hard I work on your behalf?

‘There are some new delegates arrived,’ the Fly reported. ‘Or they claim they’re delegates.’

‘Can you not find rooms for them and let it wait until morning?’ Eujen asked plaintively.

‘Well, left to my own devices I certainly could, Master Speaker, no matter who they say they are,’ Arvi said primly. ‘However, the Chief Officer of the Coldstone Company says, no, you must come see them immediately.’

‘Gorenn?’ Straessa demanded. ‘What now? Does she think they’re Wasp spies or something?’

‘Please, Master Speaker?’ Arvi pressed, and Eujen nodded and began the difficult process of getting to his feet.

He found them in one of the smaller clerk’s rooms, watched over by a couple of Company soldiers and the Dragonfly, Gorenn, for whom the war, Eujen sometimes thought, had never quite finished.

He saw three visitors there, looking like beggars dusty from the road and wearing just coarse, heavy garments of crude cut. Nothing about them said ambassador, except . . .

One was a Wasp man, broad shouldered, scarred, bearded, perhaps forty years or so but still strong. Beside him there was a Beetle woman, a few years Eujen’s senior at least, her hair cut unfashionably short, and there was something about her he could not place – more in the way that Gorenn was keeping her distance than anything Eujen himself could see.

The third stranger had no eyes. Eujen blinked, seeing a leathery face without even sockets, and yet plainly he had the man’s focused attention.

‘Good evening to you all,’ he managed politely. ‘Welcome to Collegium. I am Eujen Leadswell, Speaker for the Assembly.’ The Collegiate Assembly, I should say. We’re not the only one, after all.

‘You seem very young for it,’ the Beetle woman remarked frankly.

Eujen spread his hands, conceding the point. ‘These are unusual times,’ he told her. ‘Now, I was told that you are delegates . . . Don’t I know you?’ It must be my day for women who look slightly familiar.

‘Master Leadswell, my name is Cheerwell Maker. This is Thalric, my husband, and this man is Ambassador Messel of the Underworld Assembly. I understand that you are holding a meeting of powers here. He has come to take his place amongst your guests and to speak for his people – all his many people. And I have come home.’