The Air War

Twenty-Seven

Jodry was late, keeping them waiting almost an hour before he heaved his frame into view, sweating from the modest flight of steps leading to this out-of-the-way room in the College. Another meeting, yet another day in the attempts of the Collegiate government of academics and merchants to understand and master the war.

The written rule was still that a full complement of appointed experts and representatives was required to carry any significant motion, but in truth that ideal had barely survived the start of the conflict. The people called to these meetings were also those whose hard work was directing the defence, and by now most simply stayed away, without even the time to read the subsequent minutes. The key decisions were passed on directly by messenger. Collegium was evolving a chain of command, whether it wanted one or not.

So, here was Stenwold Maker, spymaster-turned-spy-hunter. Here was Janos Outwright, Chief Officer of Outwright’s Pike and Shot, and nominally in charge of the city gates. Here was Jodry Drillen, the Speaker, even now sinking into his chair, with his man Arvi bustling up behind him with a flask of something restorative. Here was a tall, lean Mantis-kinden woman, a stranger to most of them and looking as though she would rather be slitting throats than talking across a table. That she had sat waiting for an hour showed her to be something more than a savage killer, however, as did the sash she wore, displaying the wheel of Outwright’s Merchant Company.

‘Jodry,’ Stenwold acknowledged his arrival gratefully, then indicated the woman. ‘This is Akkestrae, the-’

‘She’s the spokeswoman for the Collegiate Mantids. Yes, I remember.’ Jodry knocked back the contents of the flask, coughed violently, and gasped for breath. ‘Where’s Dulci Broadster?’ referring to one of the College’s social history masters.

‘Too busy with the refugee business to come and actually talk about it,’ Stenwold informed him. It was a complaint more and more familiar as the war escalated. ‘It’s just us, Jodry. We’ll have to do.’

‘But what can we…?’ Jodry looked at the walls as though expecting more advisers to creep out from between the brickwork. ‘Is anything we agree here even valid?’

‘I don’t know,’ Stenwold said tiredly. ‘I’m sure your man can round up an extra voice if you think one more would give us any authority. Or we can swear in Akkestrae for the day, if you prefer. Let’s just get this done. The Felyal, Jodry…’

‘Yes.’ Jodry took a moment to compose himself. ‘So, tell me what happened?’

‘From what I hear, they’re burning it, all of it,’ Stenwold said grimly. ‘What Tynan’s Second started in the last war, they’re finishing up in this. They must be losing I don’t know how many days in order to eradicate the place, burning out every hold, killing everyone they can get their hands on, sacking every logging camp and village. Perversely, that’s actually bought us time. Tactically, it seems insane, but-’

‘But you insist on saying that this Tynan is your enemy,’ Akkestrae interrupted. ‘The Spiders have done this. Out ancient enemies have had their revenge.’

Normally this would be taken as the usual Mantis rhetoric, but this time her assertion seemed no more than the simple truth. The Felyal had forever been a predator on Spider shipping, a constant thorn in the side of any Spider-kinden that ventured along the Lowlands’ south coast. No more, it seemed.

‘The refugees are still coming in, and Janos’s people are still recording accounts,’ Stenwold added. ‘There was an attack on the Wasp camp, apparently, by just about everyone from the Felyal who would take up a sword, plus a hundred or so itinerant Mynans who somehow ended up there.’ He paused, teeth bared unhappily. ‘They were expecting help from us.’

‘Then they should have asked for it. How were we supposed to know?’ Jodry demanded.

‘Well, arguably we should have had people there at the Felyal, because we knew the Second would be marching through there,’ Stenwold said wearily. ‘However, they did ask. Moreover, they were told we were coming. They believed, when they attacked the Wasps, that Collegium would pitch in.’

Jodry stared. ‘What?’

‘The messengers they sent to Collegium plainly never arrived. The messages of support they received were false. They’ve been played for fools, and so have we. Our best chance to delay the Second has been lost, and it sounds as though only Spider-kinden grudges have bought us any time at all. For now, we have hundreds of people seeking shelter within our walls — not just Mantids but all those who were making their living around the Felyal, and we’re starting to get the first runners from other villages along the way, too.’ He gestured to Akkestrae. ‘As you see, the Mantis-kinden still want to fight, and we’re convincing them to sign up and work with us, rather than just taking off on their own the moment a Spider standard clears the horizon. But, well… I’ve failed the city, Jodry, starting from ten years ago. I’ve just not been ready for this.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jodry asked, although something in his tone suggested he already knew.

‘Wasp spies, Jodry. I’ve been hunting Wasp spies in this city for at least ten years, and I’ve been good at it,’ Stenwold reported tiredly. ‘With that mob we cleared out when the Spider fleet was on its way, we probably did just about strip the Rekef of its presence in our city, so I thought I had achieved something. But I was never looking for Spider-kinden, agents of the Aristoi. Even when I knew that the Aldanrael had turned against us, that their agents were watching our merchantmen put out so that they could signal their pirates to attack, I never quite understood what that meant, for a war. The Spiders are subtle, and have had a long time to hide. I am doing what I can, but I don’t know if I can unearth their agents in time to do any good.’

‘More,’ Akkestrae snapped, ‘of those refugees you allow within your walls, some will be spies — of the Spiders perhaps, of your Empire, even. If they have no agents in your city, then hiding some Beetles or Flies within those hundreds will be easy. You are compromised by your own kindness.’

Jodry met her glare levelly. ‘What do you expect us to do? Take these frightened, dispossessed people and put them in camps outside our walls? Only let in those with family inside the city?’

‘Yes,’ the Mantis said simply. ‘Better that than let your enemy in and welcome her with open arms. Trust none but my kinden. Only we can be relied on for our loyalties. Only we will not be in the pay of the enemy.’

‘We can’t do that.’ Jodry gave a shuddering sigh. ‘Stenwold, you’ll just have to do what you can. Put your own people in amongst the refugees. I think they’re all being sent off to the same district, to hostels there. Collegium cannot turn away from those in need, especiaslly not from our own people — but perhaps the genuine refugees can pick out the fakes; I don’t know. Just do something, Sten. Make up your lost ground.’

‘And do I have your authority, then?’ Stenwold asked him flatly. ‘Can I have the militia make arrests, wherever there is suspicion, even if it means detaining innocents?’

Jodry regarded him warily. ‘What will you do with those innocents?’

‘I will question them. I will have logicians from the College take their stories apart. If we find that they are hiding something, if their evidence does not pass muster, then perhaps you would at least let me have them exiled from the city, whether spies or a criminals or perhaps just very unreliable witnesses.’

Jodry opened his mouth a couple of times, his thoughts plain on his face: how far did he trust Stenwold on this? What might Stenwold’s interrogation include, what threats, what intimidation? How high would Stenwold set the bar, to catch his spies, and how many others would be cast out unjustly? He met Stenwold’s eyes, and a mute entreaty for mutual trust passed between them.

‘Do what you must,’ the Speaker said at last. ‘But, Sten… if need be, you’ll stand before the Assembly to justify whatever you do.’

‘Gladly,’ Stenwold confirmed, and sat back. ‘Well, then-’

‘There’s one more thing,’ Jodry said, sounding even more wretched. ‘We… have a prisoner.’

Stenwold stared at him. ‘Since when?’

‘Since their last air attack. It’s one of their aviators.’

‘Hand him over,’ was Stenwold’s prompt response and, at the same time, Akkestrae hissed, ‘Give him to us.’ Her intentions were absolutely plain in the tone of her voice.

That at last gave Stenwold pause. The Mantids, of course, would not be interested in intelligence or strategic advantage. They wanted nothing but blood and revenge, and yet his voice had echoed hers so perfectly.

‘He’s been in the infirmary since they dragged him from his vessel, but I’m told he’s well enough to face… whatever now,’ Jodry told them. ‘Sten…’

‘A Wasp-kinden, an enemy combatant. Surely you can’t object to my questioning him,’ Stenwold protested.

‘A Fly- kinden,’ Jodry corrected. ‘But an enemy combatant certainly. And if I’d objected, I’d not have told you just now. But, Sten… in Collegium, we are not simply judged by loyalty to our city. That is one of the reasons we fancy ourselves superior to the Wasps, after all. We have a whole faculty of humanists and philosophers who will apply an objective lens to the choices we make in this war. As I said before, do not do anything that you are not happy to account for, afterwards.’

The Esca Magni sped over the distant terrain, glimpsed only because the moon was bright tonight: not the cityscape of Collegium but the fields and scrub lying east of it. This was the new battleground that the aviators themselves had chosen.

The Imperials were only coming by night now, squeezing the utmost advantage from the mindlink that Taki had guessed at, but they had been coming more and more often. The Collegium pilots had been used to a couple of days’ rest at least, but after the first night attack that had narrowed to a day, and now they came almost every night. Their numbers varied each time, and if the Collegiates did particularly well one night, the next attack would be weaker, the enemy fewer and more cautious, but there always seemed to be more available, just as the Collegiates themselves were putting students into the air the moment that Corog Breaker judged them halfway ready. The one saving grace was that they were not short of volunteers, despite the toll the defence had already taken. To defend Collegium from the skies offered an almost supernatural allure to young ground-bound Beetle-kinden, compared to the dreary work of the Merchant Companies.

At last, the academics Stormall and Reader had cracked all the enemy secrets: as well as having the mindlink, the Wasps had created an engineering marvel in the Farsphex: barely less nimble in the air than the smaller Stormreaders, and carrying a Fly-kinden bombardier as well as the pilot. Beyond that was Willem Reader’s report on the fuel the Imperials were using, which had met with the derision and disbelief of his peers until he had shown them his tests. At last the Collegiates had been forced to admit that there was no hidden base nearby, allowing the Farsphex to strike at them. Instead they were casually exceeding the feat of long-distance flight that Taki had been so proud of. They had been flying in from airfields within the Empire itself, fighting over Collegium and then making their way home, all without needing to refuel. Where the miracle fuel oil came from, nobody seemed to know, but its effects were undeniable. Of course, as soon as the Beetles understood this, the Imperials changed their game again. The attacks came more frequently, and at last it was clear that these were not simply successive, overlapping waves. The Second Army, mopping up the last of the Felyal, was close enough for the Wasp aviators to use it as a safe base to refuel from. Taki guessed that they were now overnighting with the Second for two or three raids before taking the long leg back home.

The war had not all gone the Empire’s way, however. A few nights ago, Taki and Edmon and a couple of others had taken a flight past the Second Army’s camp and brought down two supply airships, which they hoped would set back the ground forces for a few days, putting them on short rations and depriving them of fuel and ammunition. The Farsphex had chased them off soon after, and no doubt there would be a standing force of orthopters running escort from now on, but Taki didn’t mind. That meant fewer to attack the city.

After that, one of the College artificers installed the Great Ear atop the loftiest dome of the College roofscape, and the game got really interesting.

The Great Ear — as well as little Ears that all the Stormreaders had been fitting out with — was just one of those branches of artifice that nobody had ever really had much use for previously. This was Collegium’s advantage, for academics of sufficient standing had always been allowed to pursue their pet projects, and at times such as these they came out of the woodwork with inventions that their peers had laughed to scorn only tendays before. The Great Ear had been tuned to the drone of the Farsphex engines, and pointed roughly eastward, and when the first far mumble of those machines came to it — long before any human ear could detect them — the Ear began to moan, emitting a distorted, amplified wail that sent people scattering from the streets into cellars and bunkers and the strongest-walled buildings. At the same time, Taki and her fellows went rushing for their machines, casting them off into the night, listening over the clatter of their clockwork for their fliers’ own little Ear, which caught the sound of the enemy and allowed the Collegiates to home in and tackle them away from the city, to deny the enemy the chance to drop their bombs.

Sometimes it worked, and they held the enemy off. More often, at least some of the Imperials got through, and Collegium would suffer another night of fire.

Flying off into the vast trackless night to find and engage the enemy had seemed like a fool’s errand to Taki, but in practice it had proved more effective than it should have, the Imperial pilots’ pinpoint discipline losing its edge during their nocturnal battles, even if some flights of Farsphex were able to break to perform for their bombing run. After the third clash, Taki had realized an extra advantage that the Collegiate tactic had stripped from the enemy. They have maps, of course, to guide their bombardiers. They use the plan of our own city to coordinate with each other. Out over the open ground, they have only their relative positions in the air to rely on.

She was not sure when Collegium had become ‘our city’, but Solarno these days seemed only a distant dream.

The Esca Magni ’s Ear buzzed louder as Taki searched the skies, looking for moonlight on metal or shapes passing before the stars. There was a stuttering flash from her left — Edmon signalling Enemy sighted — and she trusted his judgement and followed as he changed course, passing on the signal to her right as she did so. With luck, most of the Stormreaders would keep up, especially her tyros. For all the excitement, for all the fact that her blood only sang in her veins this way when she was airborne and fighting, these battles killed. The Empire had lost its share of Farsphex, but the Collegiate pilots were still bearing more of the brunt, and both sides were surely having to bring up recruits who were not truly ready for the war. Some would be honed by such experience, others would falter, and some of those would die. The Wasps had their own support network, the touch of mind to mind to guide their newcomers. For the Collegiates, each experienced pilot was tailed by a pair of tyros who would do their best to stay with them, following their lead. It was an uncertain business, but it was all the nursemaiding that they could afford.

There. And she caught what Edmon had seen, even as her Ear’s buzz changed tone and grew in urgency, a language she had learned within a single night and precise enough to help her aim her weapons. Edmon was climbing, relaying no signals now in an attempt to remain unseen, but she could tell from their shifting formation that the Farsphex had already spotted at least some of the oncoming Collegiate orthopters. They scattered, spaced out in threes and fours, attempting to widen their formation into a trap for their enemies to fly into. Taki reached for height too, hoping to come down from above them. Each side tried to adjust to the adjustments the other was making, and neither had the advantage as their formations were abruptly passing through one another.

Taki let fly with her rotaries, spitting silver bolts into the darkness, trailing one target, then abruptly switching to lead the next, feeling in her gut that she had scored at least a few solid strikes, but with no evidence to back her up. Her tyros clung to her, shooting intermittently, and she only hoped that they wouldn’t get too keen and shoot her while they were at it. She had lost Edmon and his entourage, but to her right she had a glimpse of a wheeling shape turning too tightly to be the enemy, and she followed that turn, coming in to support whoever it was.

Somewhere up ahead there erupted a flash that hurt her eyes, the accompanying retort of it following a moment later. Then one of the Collegiate craft was on fire, instantly transformed into a blazing wreck and dropping into a steep dive, wings still battering even as they burned. Some new weapon. A numb thought: that the Imperial artificers still had more to give. Then something bright lashed past her, a miss by thirty yards but still feeling too close, and she turned towards its origin, opening up with a steady stream of bolts and seeing the Farsphex there trying to pull up above her aim, but too slowly, letting her latch on like a tick and bore away at it. Another bright flare, and she jerked aside instinctively, reflexes saving her as something blazed past her wingtips. Incendiary ballista set amidships, operated by the bombardier, registered briefly in her mind, filed for later consideration. No time now.

One of her tyros got ahead of her — the Beetle youth with the gap teeth whose name she could not recall. He was swinging hard to keep on the Farsphex’s tail, out of reach of its weapons, and she saw sparks fly where his shots hit their mark. Then the other Imperials struck, two of them stooping from the starlit sky. She flashed an urgent message, but fumbled the code, casting gibberish. At the last moment the Beetle pilot dropped away, falling sideways through the sky as he tried to evade the new enemy. They were onto him tight, though, not an inch of give in their manoeuvring as they tried to bring him down. Taki darted in after them, trying to return the favour, desperate to keep the Beetle alive, realizing that she had lost her other tyro somehow, and not even sure when that might have happened.

She was aware of the damaged Farsphex coming back, her mind tracking its most likely approach even as she fought to focus the line of her bolts onto the vessels in front of her. She saw the pursued tyro’s Stormreader lurch in the air — how badly hit, she couldn’t say. Then shot was dancing past her like raindrops: the original target now trying to fall in behind her. Any moment and she would have to pull up, and then the Beetle was as good as dead.

Almost, almost… Trying to pin down at least one of the craft ahead of her, as the entire ensemble flashed through the air with all the speed their combined engines — fuel against clockwork — could give. If she hit one badly enough, it would break off to draw her away, and then she could switch to the other and maybe — maybe The Beetle’s orthopter abruptly changed direction, and for a moment her mind held only the thought: I don’t think I could have pulled that turn off, and she was impressed. But then he was dropping, nose down, and she realized that he had lost a wing at least. So get out, jump, jump! And impacts began along the length of the Esca, the original target coming in from above, a different line to the one that she had guessed at, even as her own bolts finally made a perfect line between her and her target, flaying it down the ridge of its back and then striking — how precise or how lucky? — into the piston chamber, the hammering heart that kept the Farsphex’s four wings moving. Abruptly its mechanisms were flying apart with the force of their own impetus, and the enemy was falling, falling…

She wrenched at the stick, casting herself sideways into the night, then upwards, feeling the hand of the enemy’s aim reaching for her again as she sought that tiny finger’s breadth of extra space to make a turn that would remake her from hunted into hunter.

No chance, not this time, for the enemy was on her like a lover, too close for manoeuvre. When Edmon’s Stormreader came plunging in, he was diving on both Taki and her enemy, his bolts within a hair of taking her out of the sky even as his piercers ripped across the sky around the enemy cockpit, the effect instantaneous.

The fight was now spread over several miles of open ground, and there had to be a limit to the enemy’s mindlink, each successive division and subdivision eating away at the Imperial advantage, even while it would allow some clutches of Farsphex free access to Collegium as they slipped past the blockade.

With Edmon following her up, Taki went hunting in the dark.

The Fly-kinden seemed a frail, small figure, dwarfed even by the small room he was confined to, guards at the door and the shutters locked despite the fact that he could barely walk, and certainly not fly. He had a lean face that spoke of a certain amount of privation even before his injuries had further hollowed his cheeks. His hair had been cut short, close to the skull, and was only just beginning to grow out again.

He had suffered a broken arm, several fractured ribs, a broken ankle. Half his face was one broad bruise. When Stenwold walked in, though, he forced himself to his feet, wincing as the cast took some of his weight, a brief ghost of wings about his shoulders as his Art adjusted his balance.

Outside the room, Stenwold knew, stood two of the Maker’s Own Company, Elder Padstock’s people, and with them was Akkestrae, newly in Outwright’s livery but Mantis to the core. He had only to call out and they would march in and explain to this small man just how some of Collegium’s citizens felt right now.

He folded his arms, a luxury not open to the Fly-kinden, but the little man instead put a great deal of work into returning his stare, meeting Stenwold’s eyes readily.

‘You have a name?’ the Beetle asked him.

‘Gizmer.’ The Fly’s light voice came out a little thickly around the bruising.

‘Rank?’

‘Pissing general. What about you?’

‘I’m Stenwold Maker, Master of the College.’

It was evident, beyond any possibility of acting, that the Fly had no idea who that was supposed to be. Inwardly Stenwold felt a flash of frustration — not wounded vanity, but at the wider ignorance it probably signalled. What, then, would an Imperial aviator know? What would a Collegiate pilot know, if captured? Precious little of any use to an interrogator.

‘You know why I’m here.’

‘Yeah, figured that.’ Gizmer’s gaze dropped at last. ‘And you can stuff it.’

‘Can I, now?’ Stenwold replied ponderously, dragging a chair from the corner of the room and reversing it, leaning against the back as he had seen Tisamon do once, although the wood had not creaked quite so alarmingly on that occasion. ‘You’re our prisoner now. What do we do with you?’

Gizmer blinked. ‘I heard they ran things like a madhouse over here, but shouldn’t you already know that?’

‘Why? We’re not used to having enemy soldiers at hand,’ Stenwold told him. It was true. When he had dismantled the Rekef presence in Collegium on the eve of the Spider armada’s appearance, the spies had been detained for a time, while detailed sketches and descriptions were made, and had then simply been thrown on a rail automotive to Helleron. During the Vekken siege, any enemy still living had been swiftly butchered by the Tarkesh and Spider soldiers — also by some of the residents of Coldstone Street, which had borne the brunt of their incursion, it was true. The Wasps had not got inside the city, and had taken their wounded away with them. ‘What would the Empire do, I wonder?’ Stenwold added, and then, before Gizmer could respond, ‘Interrogation machines and crossed pikes, I know.’

The Fly looked up again, eyes blazing, but said nothing.

‘I know you think we’re soft here in Collegium. I’m sure it’s preached to you by the Wasp-kinden, how they’re the superior race, and you’re better serving them than living free over here. But, believe me, I can’t ignore the likelihood that you possess knowledge that will save Collegiate lives. Knowledge about your masters, their plans, their machines. You’re an artificer, I’d guess, if they put you in one of those flying machines.’

‘What are you asking?’ Gizmer enquired bleakly.

‘I’m asking for your help, given willingly,’ Stenwold told him. ‘Yes, because otherwise I will have to find some other way of securing your help. But that’s not our way; it’s not what Collegium is built on. Our strength is elsewhere. If you want, I’ll get you out into the open air and you can see for yourself the city the Wasps are trying to destroy, see the people who live here. I’ve seen the Empire myself. Life here may surprise you. There are ways to be strong other than by military force.’

The Fly was nodding, and for a moment Stenwold thought that it might truly be that simple, but then Gizmer’s lip curled, and he said, ‘Yeah, well I can’t help noticing whose city is on fire most nights.’ When Stenwold made to speak, he butted in, ‘Oh, yes, I see what you’re after. You’re all really nice over here, and I should be glad to drop everything and come and be a part of this wonderful thing you’ve got going on here.’

Stenwold took a breath, adopting a philosophical expression. ‘I understand you were manacled into your ship. Am I not allowed to draw conclusions?’

‘Was to stop me falling out, wasn’t it?’ Gizmer spat, but this time he couldn’t meet Stenwold gaze. ‘So that was the Rekef,’ he conceded at last. ‘They don’t trust us, so what? But it was the Rekef, not my people.’

‘I don’t see that your people were doing much to stop it,’ Stenwold remarked mildly, feeling the conversation falling under his control once more. ‘But they’re the ones who you’re protecting.’

Gizmer limped over to the barred shutters, turning his back on the Beetle. ‘But even if I had something to say that you could use, it wouldn’t be helping you kill the Rekef. It’d be my people.’

‘The Fly-kinden.’

‘No!’ Gizmer rounded on him furiously. ‘The aviators. The soldiers. My people. So forget it. You know, back there, I grumbled with the rest of them at what we had to put up with, what they made us do. Odd what it takes to make you realize you’re loyal after all, ain’t it?’ And when Stenwold tried to speak, the Fly almost shouted him down. ‘And you know what? Stuff your so-bloody-superior Lowlands. You know, I do have something to tell you, and use it how you will. I never told this, not even to my people. I’ve got a cousin lives with his kin in Helleron, right? He thought the way you seem to reckon I should, went looking for a better life. Every sixmonth or so I hear some word from him, whenever the messengers get through. I hear how it is, how he lives, working in the factories there, just like I did in Capitas before all this. In the Empire my kinden are citizens — not Wasps, but citizens still. We get rights. We get respect. I hear how my cousin lives — they work him like the worst slave in the world, only he has to find food, pay for a roof over his head. He gets nothing from them. When there’s no work, he starves. Slaves have it better.’

‘Collegium isn’t Helleron,’ Stenwold snapped, sounding harsh because he had harboured similar thoughts about that other Beetle city himself.

‘Lowlands is Lowlands,’ Gizmer shot back. ‘And what was it you said? I don’t see your people doing much to stop it, eh?’ He looked Stenwold in the eye, grinning. ‘Long live the Empress.’

Stenwold hit him then, clumsily, without plan or purpose, sending the little man flying off his feet and into the wall, wings unable to catch him. A moment later the Beetle was standing over Gizmer as the Fly tried to get away from him, cradling his splinted arm. The surge of violent fury in Stenwold seemed to be the culmination of all the fires, the deaths, the homeless, the grieving — all the scars of his city. He felt the raw edge of the sheer physical pleasure that would come from the use of his fists, his feet, on this tiny outpost of the Empire.

There was a thin thread of civilization that held him back for a moment, and some part of his mind was, even then, playing through what Jodry would say, what the Assembly might do. Nothing. They would do nothing. And Drillen might fret, but he was War Master Stenwold Maker and, in the final analysis, they would take what he said and not call him a liar to his face, not over just the death of a Fly.

Abruptly the drive for violence ebbed from him, leaving a sour residue in its wake, and he realized that he did not care about the Assembly, let them censure as they would. It was not fear of public disapproval that stayed his hand, but the personal understanding that he himself might be wrong.

I used to be so certain about things. Where did that go?

He was abruptly aware that the guards had burst in, perhaps somehow assuming that it was Stenwold himself who had been assaulted. He turned to face the two Maker’s Own soldiers and Akkestrae, and found not a shred of condemnation on their faces.

‘I’m finished here,’ he told them.

‘What about him?’ Akkestrae asked, with a predatory look.

‘I can’t see that he’d know much, in any event.’ That knife-edge of control was still there: another jab, another nudge, and he could see himself lashing out again, seeking some salve for himself by striking at the Empire in any way he could. ‘Leave him. Just hold him here.’

‘And feed him?’ the Mantis asked. ‘War Master, there will come a time when food is precious.’ The two Merchant Company soldiers stared with loathing at Gizmer as the Fly got to his feet, leaning against the wall for purchase. They would have been out on the streets most nights, Stenwold guessed. They had seen the full horrors of the aerial raids.

‘Just…’ and Stenwold shook his head and pushed past them, his main intent to put distance between himself and Gizmer, and not to reflect too much on what had just happened.

There was a sharp snapping sound that brought him up short.

When he turned, one of the soldiers was slipping a fresh bolt into the breach of his snapbow. The Fly-kinden lay in a crumpled heap against the wall.

‘He was going for you,’ the soldier said, quite matter of factly. ‘Rushing you. I thought he had a knife.’ The words were spoken as if in rehearsal.

‘He…’ Stenwold looked at the other two, unnameable feelings roiling inside him. The second soldier looked shaken, but was saying nothing. Akkestrae met his gaze with a slight raising of the eyebrows, as though not sure why he was bothering himself about the matter.

‘To die in battle is better than to live in chains,’ was all she said.

‘Would he have thought that?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘Plainly he did.’ There was no getting past her Mantis reserve.

Stenwold turned on the man who had loosed the shot, a Beetle youth who looked barely twenty and wholly unrepentant. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Jons Padstock, War Master,’ the soldier reported smartly. ‘ Maker’s Own Company.’

Padstock… and now that the name was out, Stenwold could detect the familiarity in the lad’s features. Her son, of course. And Elder Padstock, chief officer of the Maker’s Own, was his fanatic supporter, and no doubt she had steeped her family in the same doctrine.

But what can I do? He could have the youth arrested. At a time of war, he could have one of his own soldiers hauled before the Assembly for the murder of an enemy combatant, knowing all the while that Jons Padstock had done what he did out of hard loyalty to Collegium, to Stenwold himself. And some traitor part of Stenwold’s mind was glad that the decision had been taken from his hands, even pleased with the result. And this is war. Things happen in war that we would not countenance in peace.

It was no answer, but he had no answers. He turned away from them and stomped off down the corridor, unwilling to stay there and look his own weakness in the eye.