The Air War

Twenty-Eight

Helmess Broiler was under scrutiny, he knew.

He was a well-to-do merchant magnate of Collegium, an Assembler, and also an avowed political foe of Stenwold Maker and Jodry Drillen. More than that, he had been taking the pay of the Empire for years, starting way back when nobody but Maker ever imagined that the Wasps would get to this point. And by the time the Imperial Second did come ravening up the coast during the last war, Broiler’s existing misdeeds had been enough for the Empire to keep him squarely under its thumb, their man in Collegium.

Stenwold knew all this, as had been brought forcibly to Helmess’s attention not so long ago. Helmess himself was only alive and free because Stenwold had a use for him back then, and because it was convenient for Maker to know just who the Empire’s current man was, rather than have to hunt down the next one. Since the bombing had started, Helmess had been under observation, with Maker’s spies, both hidden and in plain sight, watching for his methods of smuggling information to the city’s enemies. It was a waste of time for all concerned because Helmess no longer had any such methods at his disposal. Since the last piece of business, when the Empire’s agents had been apprehended neatly before they could take advantage of the oncoming Spider armada — which itself had come to nothing, with the abominable Maker turning them away with apparently nothing more than a harsh word or two — the Empire had ceased to include Helmess Broiler in its plans, squarely blaming him for the failure. Fair enough in a way, because Broiler had given Maker the information that saw the Imperial agents arrested, but it rankled nonetheless because the Empire didn’t know that.

Right now, Helmess was living a somewhat fraught life. His double loyalties — if he had any loyalties to anything aside from his own best interests — were not public knowledge, but there was an odour about him, nonetheless, of a man in disfavour with those in power. That meant he had few visitors, and fewer opportunities to profit. The Merchant Company soldiers troubled him at his house, tramping through his rooms occasionally for no reason other than to annoy him, and Maker’s watchers were looking constantly for heliograph flashes, message-bearing insects and hand signals out of the window, or however they might think he would inform the Empire of whatever knowledge he was supposed to possess. The rare guests at his house were searched aggressively for messages when they left, and probably followed subsequently themselves.

Two nights ago, an Imperial bomb had even landed outside his townhouse during a tense half-hour when the Farsphex seemed to be trying to attack Collegium society from the top down by targeting large houses. He had lost part of his wall, leaving that entire corner of the structure dangerously unsound. Needless to say, nobody was remotely bothered, or called to give their condolences, and he had to send his staff into the city to pay ruinously high prices to secure workmen to impart at least a stopgap stability to his home. By this time, any thought that he might still be on the Empire’s books was long gone, and the Empire itself seemed to be rather trying to wipe him out of existence altogether. Certainly his contact — or perhaps his handler — Honory Bellowern had got out of the city without a parting word immediately after the first aerial raid.

When the foreman of the work crew insisted on sorting out payment face to face, Helmess resigned himself to being robbed in broad daylight, possibly to being insulted as well. He received the man in his study, noting a lean Beetle with a badly burned face, the scars looking recent. Of course, that was quite the fashionable look in Collegium just then.

‘All right, then, what ludicrous figure-?’ he began, and the foreman said, ‘Send your servants out, Master Broiler.’

Helmess made another few false starts at the same sentence, feeling the world realign itself around him vertiginously. After a pause, he nodded, waving his retainers away.

‘Can I hope, at least, that you’ve made a genuine job of repairing the house?’ he enquired, fighting for calm.

‘Oh, the lads are all the real deal, if not exactly masters.’ The burn-scarred Beetle sat down across the desk from him, with casual insolence. ‘I was lucky. There weren’t many people keen to do your dirty work — it was easy to get the contract. I’d probably find a choosier crew to go over the work in a month or so, if I were you. Now, let’s get this done with. You’ve a list?’

‘A list?’ For a moment, cut off for so long, Helmess didn’t know what he meant. Then old conversations came back to him, words shared with the Imperial diplomat Honory Bellowern (when he was still rattling around in the embassy, minus one ambassador, and pointedly not enquiring after Helmess’s health). Of course there was a list: the list of the key people, the influential, the anti-Imperial, all those that might serve as rallying points to resistance. In long bitter nights of wondering where it had all gone wrong, adding names to that list had become a mean-spirited joy for Helmess Broiler.

‘You came in with the refugees,’ Helmess guessed. ‘Fake burns from the Felyal rather than from the incendiaries here.’

‘I don’t do fake,’ the man told him. His eyes were very calm, Helmess saw, without in any way being calming. There was a fanatic immobility to those eyes, and he fought away an image of this man applying a blazing branch to his own skin, without so much as a flinch.

‘I had thought there was some investigation, quarantine or something, Maker’s work,’ Broiler deftly opened the shallow hidden drawer in his desk, and leafed through the few papers there.

‘Good thinking that came too late,’ the spy told him. ‘I’d already got clear of the rest. Now I’m at large in the city, just another Beetle. I helped the fire crews last night.’

‘The Rekef-’ Helmess started and, when the man raised a cautioning hand, ‘If you’re worried about being overheard, that ship has sailed.’

‘Piss on the Rekef,’ the burned agent said levelly. ‘They’ve fallen over their own feet each time they’ve tackled this city. Army Intelligence gets a go.’ He watched for a reaction and saw none. ‘We’re not so fancy as the Rekef,’ went on the man who had crept in pretending to be a refugee and was already establishing himself in the city of his enemies. ‘We’ll go at this like soldiers.’ He looked down at the list Helmess handed to him. ‘You don’t do this by halves.’

‘I assure you, those names-’

‘We’ll take it under advisement.’ There were plenty of names on that list that simply represented Helmess’s personal dislikes, and the other man was openly sneering as his eyes flicked down it. ‘We have other lists, you can be sure. We’ll cross-reference. Your continued loyalty will be noted, I’m sure.’

Helmess raised an eyebrow, still holding to his composure by his fingernails. ‘I take it this means bloodshed. May I assume that Stenwold Maker’s name will top everybody’s list?’

The agent rose abruptly, rolling up the list tightly, then leaning against the chair back to remove his sandal. The crumpled scroll found a new home in its hollow sole. ‘You just sit tight, Master Broiler. The Second’s on its way, our glorious Gears, and this time they’ll chew this city up a treat. I’m to tell you that you’ll be remembered when the time comes, and that’s straight from my chief here in the city. As for the list, you just keep an ear open and you’ll hear the news. Now, we’ve haggled enough about that slipshod piece of negligence we did on your house, so hand over the coin for my lads and I’ll be on my happy way.’

Once the man — not even a name, this time, see how they regard me? — had gone, Helmess remained at his desk, staring at the scratched wood of its surface. You’ll be remembered when the time comes, he considered. As promises went it was not reassuring.

‘I trust our intelligence was useful?’ The voice of Mycella of the Aldanrael drifted from behind the curtain, along with the steam. General Tynan, who had expected to find her waiting for him, glanced about at the handful of Fly-kinden servants. None of them seemed to find it unusual that their lady was receiving an Imperial general while still in her bath. He was acutely aware of his own appearance — as rough, unshaven and unwashed as any of his soldiers. The Spider-kinden seemed to be able to transport civilization around as though it were a boxable commodity, to be dipped into at need.

‘I would have preferred to know more about it beforehand,’ he grumbled, just to keep his mind focused.

‘And am I to believe the Empire has no secrets from its allies?’ came her amused response. ‘In matters of espionage, especially, it is best to keep one’s cards close.’

Servants — male servants — stepped behind the curtain bearing towels and robes. Tynan shook his head. The Imperial line had always been that Spiders were a decadent people, but out there in the dark there were thousands of their warriors living in the same muddy fields as the Wasps, eating the same food, soldiers no more nor less than their Imperial counterparts. They had fought in the Felyal with less discipline but an equal spirit, and they had spilt blood, their own and their enemies’, to bring the Mantis-kinden to heel. True, their mercenaries had been in the forefront of the fighting, but the Spiders themselves had not stinted. Many was the Spider-kinden warrior, maid or man, now buried on Mantis soil to prove it.

The friction that had plagued the army since leaving Solarno was mostly gone now, as more and more of the Wasps began to see things the same way. It was awkward, since the Empire had no ready category for free allies — meaning something less than Imperial but more than Auxillian. The men of the Second were having to expand their world view to accommodate the Aldanrael troops. The fighting in the Felyal had cemented it, though, and the two forces had begun to work together, shielding each other’s weak points.

Mycella stepped barefoot from behind the curtain, her hair glistening wet and her body swathed in a silk robe of pale green printed with twining white leaves. Tynan felt a tug within him that he fought down. Her Art, of course. He told himself it was her Art, at least, because that gave him something to fight against. Beyond that emotional reaction was a purely physical one, a gathering lust that he thought time had extinguished, but was now rising spectacularly from the grave. The look she gave him suggested that she was well aware of it.

‘In truth, my intelligence network in Collegium is operating by itself, as intended. I have no convenient way of reaching them with new orders. However, we believe in autonomy in our senior agents. Once they had confirmed the Aldranrael’s diplomatic position with the Empire, they have been improvising most successfully, providing you with information for your aerial forces, and infiltrating the Felyal alongside those who were returning there to rebuild. A shame they could not give us warning of the attack on our camp, I know, but I suspect they felt it best not to risk their cover. So, secret from both of us, in a way, but they have sufficed to get your own agents into the enemy city.’

‘Let us hope so.’ Tynan could not dispute anything she had said, but the speed and elegance of the Spider agents had been daunting. Let us hope they don’t turn on us one day. ‘I trust your people are ready for the next leg of the march?’

‘Was that truly what you came here to speak of?’ she asked him with an arched eyebrow. ‘Some muttering about our spies, and then a question to which you already know the answer?’ Abruptly she had moved almost within arm’s reach. ‘We are both too old to waste our time with such matters, General.’

She was mocking him, of course, for she had planted her barbs in him, by Art or by who knew what other means. She was now waiting for the venom to drive him to something further. In truth he could feel the urge within him: an Imperial soldier’s simple response to a woman of a lesser kinden: Take her! And what a piece of diplomacy that would make!

He wanted to say something dismissive and turn away, to assert himself in some way that would not cripple the war effort, but part of him was unwilling to take his eyes from her.

‘General…’ came the call from behind him, and he whirled instantly, the spell broken, becoming once again the stolid old campaigner. Mittoc, his colonel of Engineers, stood holding open the tent flap, with a large man looming behind him.

‘What is it, Colonel?’ It was said with the strong implication that he, Tynan, was busy with some important military business, but Mittoc’s expression was a full-blown leer as he eyed Mycella, simple soldier through and through, despite all the artificers’ training in the world.

‘Well, General, you said to tell you when the pilots got in. Got their Major Aarmon here just landed, wants to talk strategy.’

Tynan felt sure that, when he had met this Aarmon a few days before, the man had been a captain, but then the air force was expanding at quite a rate. ‘Colonel, it’s well into the night. Have Major Aarmon and his crews billeted, and I’ll see him at sun-up.’

‘Right you are, sir.’ Mittoc stole another rapacious glance at Mycella, and skulked away.

Tynan turned back to the woman, meeting a complex and layered expression. Here was the face of the military commander, untouchable and pristine; behind that the temptress who knew that such a mask on a woman would fire him; behind that the woman who was too old for such games, mocking herself for trotting out such worn-out gambits and inviting him to laugh along with her. We are too old, she had said and, though she looked so much younger, he felt they were a match in years.

‘If I were a younger man…’ he said, and stopped, because the words had been intended for himself only.

Her expression became transparent, shorn of subterfuge — or of any subterfuge that he could detect — leaving only a worldly fondness settling into near-invisible lines of humour and experience.

‘If either of us were younger, we’d not stand here in the same tent without being at each other’s throats, Tynan. So surely we’re old enough to know when we want something, and not to stand tongue-tied as though we were children of fifteen?’

He laid hands on her. It was the only way he could conceive of it. She was a Spider Aristoi, and her servants were all around, and it was an assault, a declaration of war, to take her by the shoulders and draw her close. His soldier’s spirit was up, ready for the fight.

And yet the servants were all gone, slipped out somehow, vanished into the weave of the tent canvas, and it was only her and him, and there was no fight at all.

It was after dark, and Averic made his way cautiously back to his lodgings. Cautiously not through fear of the aerial raids that were an almost nightly occurrence, but because a Wasp alone in Collegium could expect all manner of interesting reactions from people he met, especially soldiers of the Merchant Companies. The Antspider had made sure that the Coldstone Company knew he was no enemy of the city, but the populace at large was proving resistant to the idea. It was always easy to write off an entire kinden as the enemy, after all. If you allowed one of them to become human, that might affect your judgement of the rest. It was a lesson the Wasps themselves had taken to heart generations ago, but Collegium was a city of learning, and hating Wasps was on the modern curriculum.

Ironically, a Beetle on the streets of Capitas would have been safer, at least if he could produce his papers on demand.

Eujen Leadswell had held a meeting at the College, which Averic was returning from. The Beetle student had called together two score or so of his fellows, young men and women of all kinden who had not signed up with the Companies. Some were scared, Averic reckoned, and to him it was a strange world where mere cowardice would suffice to keep you from the war. Others had objections of various kinds, often moral ones like Eujen’s own. Still more had work that they could not give up, whether it was assisting the artificers of the College, looking after relatives or helping with the family business in place of others who were already preparing to march out against the Imperial Second. Many of them would not have counted themselves as Eujen’s friends, and some had been his avowed critics before the hostilities had commenced. It was hard for them to heckle him now, though: they who had lacked the courage of their convictions and not taken on the sashes of the Companies.

None of them had known what Eujen was going to say. Many probably came expecting some distilled manner of treason, anti-Makerist propaganda at the worst possible time. Some of those who had stayed away had probably not wanted to be implicated in any such talk.

Instead, Eujen had pitched to them the idea of a Student Company.

‘Let us hope,’ Leadswell had said, ‘that the Second is beaten in the field. What I’m proposing is something that we’re all better off not needing. But if the Wasps come to the walls, as they did last time, the city will need to rely on all hands. Look at us who, for whatever reason, have not taken up the snapbow and the buff coat. I ask nobody why, I accept all reasons as valid, as I ask you to accept mine, but what will we do when they’re at the walls?’

There had been more than a few glances at Averic just then, as he lurked at the back of the room like a shadow of the future. Averic knew, of course, that this all stemmed from Eujen’s arguments with the Antspider, but thankfully nobody at Eujen’s meeting had known that this entire venture was essentially to impress a girl.

‘We find what arms we can beg or borrow or make,’ Eujen had propounded. ‘We take up our own sash. While our field army is out of the city, we drill — alongside Outwright’s men if we can, as they’re staying behind. If the Wasps should come…’ and his voice faltered slightly because of what that might mean, ‘then there will be need of us. And perhaps we can put our scholarship to use, as well. Perhaps the war may benefit from soldiers that do not think like soldiers.’

And of course, someone had stood up to voice the obvious criticism — why was Eujen suddenly advocating the fight, when his voice was normally heard speaking against it? What was going on?

‘Do you think,’ Eujen had remonstrated, ‘that I would not defend our city? Do you think I would not shed my blood for my people? I will take up arms against the Wasps, if they come here. I would do the same against the Vekken or the Spider-kinden or the Sarnesh.’ He left a precisely calculated pause. ‘I will fight just as hard against those within our city that have guided us towards this war, for I do not believe it was inevitable. I believe that, if we can forge a peace with Vek, then we could have done so with any nation in the world. But now we are at war, and I can’t change that. Let us instead work to bring this war to the swiftest close, and seek a true peace thereafter, not merely a period in which to brew up the next conflict.’

He’d had them then, not just by the words but the raw sincerity in his voice, and the first few had come forward to put their names down for his Student Company.

Averic had signed, too. He had not thought he would, and he knew he had done the wrong thing, but he had been carried along on the tide of Eujen’s voice. In that moment everything had made so much sense.

His lodgings were not located in the usual student area — at first because he had not known that when choosing them, but later because it was sometimes convenient to escape the attention of his peers. Instead, his neighbours were the poorer class of tradesmen, factory workers and the like, and many of them were out working most of the night and sleeping during the day, especially now, when every workshop was working around the clock. They did not like him, but he had grown adept at avoiding them. Entering the slightly leaning four-storey house, he heard no sound from any living thing, only silence, as if he was the last man in Collegium.

Except someone was there, quietly waiting for him, like a spider in its web. When he unlocked his door and pushed it open, a Beetle-halfbreed woman sitting on his bed regarded him with a hard smile.

Instantly he had a hand out, palm towards her, ready to demand some explanation, and in the back of his mind the knowledge that the door had been secured with the lock he himself had installed.

She met him with a similar gesture, and the words, ‘I wouldn’t.’

For a long time Averic stared at the palm she was training on him, then at her face, the dark skin, something of the features of a Beetle-kinden, but then they were a variable breed, and what other heritage could he discern there…?

He went cold all at once, for she was a Wasp. Not a Beetle at all, not even a little of one, but pure-blood Wasp. He would not have believed it possible. Some sort of dye had been used to colour her skin a deep, rich brown, painstakingly applied so that the palm she showed him was paler, but not as pale as a Wasp’s should be. She had padded out her cheeks a little, applied some manner of tape to flatten her nose. She must have walked past hundreds of Collegium citizens to get here, without one of them seeing her as he now did. Who looked closely at halfbreeds, after all?

Had she been a man, she could probably not have done it, but everyone knew that the only Wasps for export were men. The idea of a Wasp woman infiltrating the city went against all the carefully hoarded stereotypes that the Collegiate citizens were so fond of.

‘Averic, isn’t it?’ she noted. ‘You can call me Gesa. Glad to meet you. You’ve done a great job here, I’m sure.’

He could not stop staring at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Here you are, in the heart of Collegium, a student at their vaunted College. Have you any idea how hard it’s been to get agents entrenched in this city recently, with Stenwold Maker on the war path?’

He felt as though a hammer blow had struck him, inside. ‘I’m- I’m not an agent.’

‘Of course you are.’

She said the words with such assurance that he needed a moment to regroup his own certainties.

‘No.’ He was aware that she might kill him — her hand was still up, while his had fallen to his side — but he could not allow her to redefine him in such a way. He could not let her remake him so casually into the thing the Collegiates already muttered that he was.

She was now smiling broadly. ‘But, of course, you understand that a deep cover agent must live his cover, Averic. It works best of all if he does not know it himself. Why do you think you were sent here, if not for that?’

The hammer fell once again. ‘No, my parents…’ And the words were damning, treasonous, but he was under attack, with only the truth to defend himself with. ‘They sent me here because they believe we can learn from the Collegiates — and more in peace than in war.’

‘Is that what they told you?’ Her expression was pitying. ‘As I say, how better to place you in the bosom of the Beetles?’ She shrugged. ‘Or perhaps you’re right, but then we would have to make sure something happened to your oh-so-prestigious family, wouldn’t we? You won’t know this, but the actual truth is always an abstraction in my game. What’s important is that you’ll do what I want. You don’t need to decide whether it’s because your people sent you here as an agent, or because they didn’t, and they’ll suffer for that unless you obey me.’

I’m agreeing to nothing. Just saying the words does not make me theirs. I… ‘What do you want from me?’ I should kill her now, the moment she turns, loses focus. One sting and she’s dead and nobody need know…

Despite his basic army training, Averic had never killed anyone: not an enemy of the Empire, not even a rebellious slave. She was right when she said his family had wealth and power, and as a result he had never been required to use his Art or a blade against a living target. And, if I killed her I would be a traitor to my people.

So what am I if I disobey her?

‘I want you to be ready, Averic. I want you to get over all your little qualms and become a man at last, and do a man’s work when it’s asked of you. I’m here now so you can get your angst and agonizing out of the way, and remind yourself what kinden you belong to. When the orders come to you, you’ll execute them swiftly and efficiently. And when you report to General Tynan, he’ll clap you on the shoulder and tell you that you’ve done well. Or else you’ll die trying to further the Empire’s cause — the only death a Wasp-kinden should aspire to.’

He formed the question, What if I tell them? but he could not force the words out. Yet she read it on his face as if she was a magician.

‘Tell them you’re a traitor to them, after all this time? And become a traitor to us at the same time? Oh, Averic, I’m not sure how far you’d have to run to escape the landslide, if you did that.’ Her look could almost be construed as kindly. ‘Grow up, Averic, and put aside childish things. Remember who you are.’ She stood up. Her palm was no longer directed at him but he had no ability to act on that, stepping back like a good subordinate as she walked to the door.

‘You’ll be hearing from us,’ she told him. ‘Just be ready.’ Then she was gone.

Gesa, who normally went by the name of Garvan, was cautiously satisfied with her work so far. She was playing a dangerous game, and all the more so for the disguise she had chosen. Her great secret, her vulnerability, her own private treason flaunted so openly. It wound her up inside like a clock, tenser and tenser, but the Collegiates did not care, and she made sure not to meet face to face with the other Imperial agents here, simply to leave them messages at the agreed-on drop points. She should have felt freer, here, walking as a woman even if she was forced to hide her kinden, but the habit of secrecy was so deep ingrained in her that she lived every moment on a knife edge, waiting for someone to decry her, not for her race, but for her gender.

Averic would serve, she judged, and he was well placed. The Empire had never tried to infiltrate the College before, but to Gesa that was a grievous omission that had been amended just in time. One could get up to so much mischief in those halls of academe.

The Rekef had been broken against the walls of Collegium more than once. During the brief conflict with the Spider-kinden, an entire Rekef operation had been uncovered and sent home to face disgrace and punitive interrogation, leaving behind barely a trace of Imperial influence in the city. If the Empire had not been able to borrow some intelligence from its new Spider allies, then the war would have been considerably more difficult — and who wanted to have to rely on Spiders?

For that matter, who wanted to have to rely on the Rekef? Army Intelligence was now suddenly at the cutting edge of the agent war. Her heart swelled with pride to think that her mocked and abused corps was suddenly at the core of things, and so was she.

But there was so little time. The insertion of her people had come late in the day, only the influx of refugees from the Felyal giving sufficient cover to accomplish it. She and her fellows now had a great deal of work to do, and precious little time. She was having to allow her subordinates more independence than she liked, as there simply wasn’t enough time for her to mastermind everything properly. She had to trust in her peers, and trust was not something that came naturally to her.

It was worth it, though, for this chance to outshine the Rekef. There were Army Intelligence colonels back in Capitas who would salute her with a tear in their eyes, when she came back from winning Collegium for the Empress. Army Intelligence would succeed where the Rekef had only chalked up repeated failure.

And, for one thing, they would kill Stenwold Maker. Of that she was absolutely sure.