The Air War

Thirty-Three

Eujen Leadswell lodged over a bookbinder’s in a well-appointed room that just about scraped a view of the College rooftops, and which he tended to forget was paid for by the stipend he received each moon from his parents, merchants in the beer trade. He was back late tonight, having spent the last hour wrangling with a Master of the social history faculty who had taken issue over his Student Company. Their meeting had not gone well. She had ordered him to dissolve the force, and he had outright refused, and now the matter would apparently go before the head of faculty, or possibly the administrator. Eujen rather suspected that the promised reprimand would arrive some time after the war finished, and at that late point he would be glad to receive it.

He stomped up the stairs to his room — he had his own outside door, more for the convenience of the bookbinder than Eujen’s — and shouldered his way in, feeling disgruntled and angry. A moment’s fiddling with the gaslamps turned up a rosy glow — and Averic.

Eujen started back with a choked-off cry of alarm, finding his friend standing in the darkness of his own room, unbidden and unlooked for. His first thought, and he was ashamed by it, was Wasp assassin.

And Averic’s manner, quite aside from this trespass, was not reassuring. The Wasp stared at Eujen as though he had never quite seen him before. The intruder’s hands were empty, open, hanging by his side, but Eujen was suddenly aware of the danger that Averic represented, simply by virtue of his kinden. Killing hands. No wonder, his traitor imagination informed him, they were feared so, having taken the advantage of their Art and become…

‘Averic?’ he asked, his voice creditably calm. For a moment, a silence stretched between them, and then the Great Ear began its monotonous wail outside, and they both looked to the window.

‘Here we go again,’ Eujen’s words came out automatically, disassociated from any part of the awkward space between him and the Wasp. And Averic’s followed: ‘They’re going to kill you.’

Eujen couldn’t quite understand what had been said, and just made a questioning grunt.

‘The Rekef — or Army Intelligence — the Empire wants to kill you.’

Then Eujen understood that the ‘you’ was singular, not plural. Not the Beetle-kinden, not the people of Collegium, but him.

But why…? But what…? ‘But how do you know?’

‘Because they told me to do it.’

The moment teetered between them, and every intellectual instinct but one demanded that Eujen flee or fight. The war was here in his room. The war had come to him. The man before him was not Averic. He, Eujen, had been wrong.

‘But you’re not going to,’ he said, and this time his voice finally shook, but he had cast the die. Live by the sword. All that time claiming that the Empire — that the Wasps — were redeemable, and he would trust it with his weight now, though the fall would kill him if he was wrong.

‘For you,’ Averic said simply, ‘I betray my people — my family, my kinden — for you.’

The first explosion struck five streets away and still made the windows rattle, both of them starting at the flash and the roar.

‘Eujen,’ Averic insisted. ‘There are Imperial killers in the city. They are going to be targeting people — we need to tell someone. They gave me some names, but there’ll be others. I made a list, everyone I could think of.’

Eujen had opened his mouth, trying to fit all that into his head, when the next bombs struck, one after the other, ten or twelve of them, killing all words, rattling the walls, each slightly quieter than the last as the barrage tracked across the city. Even as Eujen tried to reply, a further bombardment followed, the retorts overlapping so that it was plain that several of the Imperial machines were unleashing their fury all at once.

‘Eujen!’ Averic repeated, ‘We have to tell someone! The Speaker, Corog Breaker, anyone!’ The subtext was clear: Don’t let my choice be in vain.

But Eujen wore a strange expression as he turned from the window. He spoke several times before a gap in the explosions allowed his words out: ‘They’re not launching.’

‘What?’

‘None of our machines are in the sky. The Hiram Street airfield is in sight of here, and there’s nobody there. It’s completely empty. What’s going on?’

‘Eujen, we have to tell somebody. The Empire’s people will be working tonight.’ Averic almost shouted it, and at last the Beetle was with him.

‘Yes, yes you’re right. We have to…’ He grimaced. ‘Stenwold Maker. We have to find Stenwold Maker.’

When the Great Ear had started to sound, the men and women of Taki’s airfield already knew they would not be running straight for their machines. Corog Breaker had passed on the order, and Taki, Edmon and the others assumed that other fields would be launching, hunting out the incoming Farsphex raiders. Nobody asked questions. Everyone knew the drill. If — when — a detachment of the enemy fought past the loose blockade, everyone on duty would go rushing for the airstrip: another night’s savage work.

They waited tensely, knowing their moment would come. The Mynans joked, with that hard, calloused humour they had evolved. A couple of the Collegiates were still trying to persevere with their studies, bent close to the lamps with their books.

Then the first bomb hit the city, and they were up on their feet, within moments of each other, looking to Breaker, who stood at the door.

‘Not yet,’ the old man told them. ‘Specific orders tonight. Not our turn.’

The pilots’ barracks was sunk low into the earth — using a converted storeroom from when the airfield had serviced only civilian fliers. The small, high-up windows were close to ground level, and Taki had found a perch there, looking out at the dark city with Fly-kinden eyes that could unpick the night.

Who’s launching? she wondered, for she knew plenty of the pilots from other fields, and wanted to watch out for them. She had seen machines put out from Sarse Way, no more than a few, but the other airfields were further and she could not expect to spot every Stormreader they put in the air.

Another sequence of explosions rocked them, closer and then further as the Farsphex passed by. In its echo they heard more, further off still, but a constant pounding. One of the Collegiate pilots, a girl of no more than eighteen, swore into the moment’s quiet that followed.

‘Our turn now, eh?’ Edmon suggested, shifting from foot to foot and eyeing the door.

‘Not yet. Hold fast,’ Corog advised implacably.

Taki was peering up, craning her neck to see the skies. She could pick out the Farsphex clearly, if only for the way they reflected the ground fires they were starting. They seemed to be taking their time tonight, giving the city a virtuoso performance. She blinked into a long bloom of fire that must have taken out that little street three roads away where there had been a taverna and a bakery and a… Even as she thought it, another sequence of precise explosions rocked its way closer, so that she saw nearby roofs shudder and crack. A Farsphex passed overhead, almost leisurely. Unopposed.

‘Sieur — Master Breaker,’ she called down. ‘Who’s out there for the defence?’ And when no answer came: ‘I can’t see any of ours up there, Corog. We need to put more wings in the air.’

They were all looking at Breaker now, as the rolling thunder of the bombardment went on and on.

‘I have orders,’ declared Corog Breaker. ‘We’re not going out.’

‘What do you mean, we’re not going out?’ demanded Edmon, after a pause to digest this statement. A close strike swallowed half his words but his meaning came through.

‘Orders,’ Corog repeated. ‘We’re sitting tight. We’re not going out tonight at all. Someone else’s problem.’

‘Corog, there’s none of ours up there,’ Taki insisted. ‘Orders don’t survive contact with the enemy, Corog. Let’s go.’ She hopped down and headed for the door, because it was all so obvious. Somebody had tried to be clever in the Amphiophos, and now it was up to the pilots to clear up the mess.

She was half-flying as she reached him, so that Corog’s hand, intended just to stop her, almost swatted her to the ground, her feet skidding as they touched down. ‘Corog-?’

‘What’s going on?’ Edmon’s eyes darted from Corog to the window, red-lit, moment to moment, with the flash of the bombs.

‘Orders!’ the old Beetle snapped. ‘Nobody goes out tonight. Specific orders, right from the top.’

‘Then they’re the wrong orders!’ Edmon shouted into his face. ‘It’s a Rekef trick. Let me past.’ He pushed, but Corog pushed back. Outside the barrack room, the pair of Merchant Company soldiers on guard were paying close attention.

‘I got this from Master Maker himself,’ Corog snapped. The next blast was so close that they all ducked, dust filtering from the stonework of the ceiling.

‘Then he’s mad! You’re mad!’ Edmon’s face was sheer bewilderment. ‘Let us through, you stupid old man. We want to defend your city, even if you don’t.’

Probably only Taki saw the tears glinting in Corog’s eyes. ‘And what the piss do Mynans know about actually defending a city?’

Edmon punched him in the face, a furious haymaker that he must have thought would floor Corog straight away. The old man was tough, even for a resilient kinden, and he came swinging straight back… and a moment later everyone was brawling. It was Corog and the two soldiers against Edmon’s Mynan airmen, and the local pilots pitching in on both sides, apparently at random. Taki staggered back, because being a Fly-kinden in a brawl in an enclosed space was never a good idea, fleeing back to the high window, wondering if she should just squeeze herself through it.

Out on the empty airfield, fire was walking towards her, beautiful and terrible, as an Imperial flier passed overhead.

Taki dropped to the floor, crying ‘Watch out!’ but nobody could possibly have heard her.

When the tail end of the strike hit, flames erupted through all the windows facing the airfield, and the thunder of it battered every ear, knocking many of them off their feet. The silence that followed made Taki wonder if she had been struck deaf.

Corog was still standing resolutely at the door, one eye already swelling up after Edmon’s blow.

‘I’m sorry,’ Taki heard him say, watching Edmon watch him in turn. ‘We don’t fly tonight. We watch, and we take it like a whore, but nobody flies.’

Outside, the assault on the city went on and on. It seemed impossible that the Empire had brought so many bombs.

‘Master Drillen,’ Arvi’s light voice came from the far side of the door.

Jodry shuddered. ‘Go away.’ He tried to bellow the words, but they came out merely as a rasp. He was into his third bottle, now, produce of his own family’s vineyards that had been growing superior grapes since before the revolution.

‘I have made you some tea, Master Drillen,’ came those respectful but inexorable tones.

‘Don’t want tea.’ Jodry’s first bottle had seen him move out of his offices at the Amphiophos. His initial way of dealing with the knowledge of what tonight must bring had been to remain at his post: Speaker for the city even in the face of annihilation. He had lasted less than an hour, leaving before the bombs had started to fall, and let them all think him a coward for it. Even now there would be a skeleton crew at the heart of Collegium’s governance, clerks and servants and a few diligent Assemblers, but Jodry himself could not stay. Every moment he had spent there, once the Great Ear had sounded, he had been clutching at his desk, gritting his teeth, forcibly restraining himself from leaping to his feet and pelting down the corridors of state shouting, ‘Get out! Get out of here! Out of the city! Tonight nothing will stay their hands!’

Or something like that. And, once the Imperial fliers began bombarding the city, he knew that he would not be able to restrain himself at all, that it would all come out, and then it would all be in vain.

He had gone home, to add shame to guilt.

‘Master-’ A particularly close blast rattled the shutters and briefly silenced even Arvi. ‘Are you well?’

At last Jodry shambled over and unbolted the door, flinging it open to glower down at the Fly-kinden, his eyes wild and red-rimmed. To Arvi’s credit, Jodry’s secretary displayed no emotion at all.

‘What do you want?’ Jodry demanded. ‘Have you nothing better to do tonight?’

At that, the Fly did blink. ‘There has been a warning that Wasp assassins may be on the prowl, master, targeting our leadership, you included. I took liberties with your name in dispatching some of Outwright’s Pike and Shot, just in case. The caution originates in the student body, master, so I suspect it to be nonsense, but even so.. ’

The thought of Wasp assassins tracking him down seemed almost like natural justice. ‘Good, whatever,’ Jodry grunted. ‘Arvi, you’re my secretary, so why are you even here? Have you nowhere, nobody, on a night like this?’ The crash of the bombs punctuated his words.

‘Master?’ At last the little man seemed perplexed. ‘Alas, I have not been fortunate enough to… No, master.’

‘Go home, Arvi,’ Jodry told him. ‘No, bring me more wine, then go home. Another bottle of the Dark Rose 525.’

Arvi’s eyes drifted to the cadavers of Jodry’s earlier drinking, but he just nodded. ‘It seems to be a tumultuous night, master.’

‘I shall make you head of the faculty of understatement at the College,’ Jodry declared, the humour laboured and failing. ‘Go home, find a cellar and hide.’

‘There is some filing at your office that requires attention, then-’

‘No!’ For a moment Jodry and his secretary stared at one another, Arvi patiently waiting for an explanation for his employer’s outburst. Jodry wanted to say, A cellar, a vault, anywhere sheltered from the sky tonight, but he could not, not even to his secretary, whatever bond of trust existed between them.

Competing shames warred in him then, and one won out. ‘Bring the bottle,’ he decided. ‘Bring the soldiers. We’ll go there together. A good night to clear my desk.’ And, as Arvi ducked down into the cellar, Jodry looked out of the window at the Imperial air force tearing into the city, and thought about his legacy.

Getting from Eujen’s lodgings to the College had been easy, although they had not realized it at the time. Collegium was under the hammer, but only the first few tentative beats, like a smith feeling out the flaws in his material. Eujen found people to pass his warning on to, to scribble down the names that Averic had come up with, so as to send word to everyone they could think of: Beware assassins. Too late, too early, false alarm? They could not tell. No doubt even assassins would find an aerial bombardment an impediment to easy movement.

When they set off for Stenwold Maker’s house, however, they realized that what they had taken for a downpour had only been a shower. Now the skies opened and the bloody deluge came. Looking up into a sky whose occupancy should have been contested by the fragile valour of the Stormreaders, they could see the Imperial orthopters plainly by moonlight, taking their own time over their runs, circling and bombing, and then pulling out to circle again. For a moment the two of them, Wasp and Beetle, just stared up into that blistering sky, at what the war between their kinden had come to.

Then a bomb dropped a street away: the thunderous, glass-breaking sound followed immediately by the killing blossom of an incendiary igniting. Eujen made to run towards the impact, but Averic dragged at his arm, shouting at him.

‘Stenwold Maker! We have to get to him!’

‘You fly to him, then!’ Eujen said desperately, his imagination filling in everything that must be happening just over the rooftops.

‘Not without you! I won’t leave you,’ Averic insisted. ‘Besides, he’d probably kill me.’

Almost certainly true, Eujen realized, and wrenched himself free of the grip of his instincts. ‘Then let’s go!’ he decided, as the next close blast savaged them with shards of stone, spraying the street with debris. He caught Averic’s eyes, found there a mutual understanding that simply getting across the city was going to kill them, odds-on, and then they were running off down the street. At first they tried to watch the skies, to divine safety and danger by the movement of the Farsphex, but there were too many, and from all angles, and any incoming machine might release its load at any time. Eujen was no more able to make sense of them than he would a Moth prophecy.

In the end, the two of them just ran.

Sometimes soldiers tried to stop them, ordering them off the streets into whatever dubious safety might be found. The homemade sashes of the Student Company let them pass on, as kindred spirits with important business. Nobody seemed to care that they were, by any daylit estimation, merely pretend soldiers. On the streets of Collegium that night, they were just as able to help as the professionals, meaning not at all.

The world seemed to detonate all around them — a determined bombing run coming unlooked-for from behind, smashing houses only two streets away — now one street. They fell into a doorway under a hail of splinters and broken bricks, the fierce wash of fire baking them as an apothecary’s workshop across the way erupted into coloured ribbons of flame.

And still the defenders of Collegium were absent, the skies surrendered. Sabotage? Treachery? Have they murdered all our pilots? Staring upwards at that hostile sky, Eujen could only think, Is it the end, right now? Are Straessa and the others dead already, or simply irrelevant? Will the Empire even need to bring its armies, after this?

It seemed like the city’s final night. Certainly it seemed that it could be Eujen’s.

When Stenwold returned to his townhouse that evening, before the Ear sounded, he found a letter awaiting him.

He knew it at once, and it must have been delivered by one of the Fly-kinden privateers with whom he had a highly sensitive arrangement, and who represented Collegium’s trade contacts with the Sea-kinden, of whose existence the bulk of the Beetle-kinden had yet to learn.

It came on leathery parchment that they wove from seaweed somehow, so it would dry out and fragment within a few days. It would not relate to the closely guarded trade between the land and sea that had given Collegium its improved clockwork. This letter would be strictly personal.

This night of all nights. He dearly needed his mind taken away from what he and Jodry had done, the self-destructive trap they had baited for the Imperial air force — and here it was, just as ordered.

He unfolded the unsealed note, noticing the thick paper start to crack at the seams. The writing within was clumsy and childlike, the letters ill-formed. Just as he himself struggled to create the awkward glyphs that made up the Sea-kinden script, so Paladrya of Hermatyre wrestled determinedly with the alphabet of the land.

She was his Regret. Beetle-kinden were not supposed to have Regrets. Such foibles were for the Inapt in their stories of themselves. Spider-kinden had Regrets, where their webs of loyalties grew tangled. Stenwold’s friend, the Mantis Tisamon, had practically lived all his life in one Regret or another. Beetles were supposed to be more prosaic. In the isolation of his own home, though, Stenwold read the Sea-kinden’s letter, and relaxed enough to feel that lingering sadness at how the world had managed to separate him from such a remarkable woman.

Stenwold… he began to read, although he had to translate each word from the truly outlandish, phonetic spelling that Paladrya was prone to.

I am sending regards of the Edmir to your city

I am sending my own to you also your letters are much improved

I understand you fight with the colony of the wasps and that there is much fear the fly-kinden send word that blood will be shed soon

I am also afraid for you stenwold, I would be with you, if I could perhaps soon the edmir will no longer need any advice

I fear the land nothing would bring me to it but you the flies say I should wait until the war is done that you would not want me with you when you fight you know you have not left my thoughts since hermatyre is always open to you. distance only increases my heart when I think of you, and widens my mind.

This would be poetry, he knew, if she had written in her own script, and if he could have read it freely. As it was, it left him bitter at the vagaries of fate, and unsure how much she intended to say, or what was in his reading only.

Maybe, after all this is over and Jodry has me indicted, going back to the sea will be the best option for me. The old fear rose in him of the dark and hungry water, but it seemed less immediate, now, more amenable to negotiation.

For a long time Stenwold stared at the letter, and then he began to work on a reply, less concerned with content than clarity of expression, submerging himself in the scholarly. When the Great Ear sounded, even when the bombs began to fall, he hunkered down and concentrated, as though he was truly an academic again and the sounds outside only the noisy distractions of students. Time and again, he chased away the thoughts, What if I die tonight; what if Banjacs does? Can this be salvaged, or will the sacrifice of so many come to nothing? But the queasy feeling grew within him, the uncertainty of the gamble he and Jodry had taken, until he could no longer palm off his mind with Sea-kinden calligraphy, but only stare out of the window and realize that the war hung on tonight and tomorrow, and any misjudgement could lose everything for his people.

There was a knock at the door. He finally put the letter down.

He was not sure who he expected, but Janos Outwright was not the man. The portly little moustachioed Beetle, in pristine uniform with his own wheel of pikes and snapbows proudly displayed, beamed at Stenwold with his usual self-importance. There were two more of Outwright’s Pike and Shot standing behind him.

‘What’s happened?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘Nothing yet, apparently,’ Janos said pleasantly, although the crash and crump of the bombs nearly swallowed up his words. ‘Can we come in?’

When he had got under cover, with his men, and when Stenwold grudgingly found some mediocre wine for them, Janos deigned to explain further. ‘All very baffling, but there was rumour that the Empire was going to take a poke at some of the great and good, with you as top of the list. Soon as word came, I decided that you merited the finest in guardianship, so here I am.’

‘Word from where?’

‘Some student,’ Janos said airily and then, just as Stenwold was preparing a brusque reply, ‘that Wasp one, apparently, though I didn’t hear it direct from him.’

‘The…?’ Stenwold tried to summon the Wasp youth’s name to mind, but couldn’t. ‘Where is he?’

‘Running around warning people, like I said.’ Janos sipped his wine and made a great show of appreciation. ‘You can arrest him tomorrow for it, if you want. Everything seems a bit busy tonight for that sort of thing.’ He waggled his eyebrows, as though the detonations so close by outside were just high spirits.

Stenwold did not even hear the next knock, but Janos plainly did. He went strolling over to the door as though he owned the place.

They shot him dead right on Stenwold’s doorstep, a snapbow bolt making a ruin of his throat above his gleaming breastplate and scarring the wall beyond, barely slowed. Then they were shouldering in: a half-dozen burly Beetle men, armoured piece-meal with leather and canvas and chitin plate, with knives and swords and two snapbows leading the charge.

Janos saved Stenwold’s life even so — both by being the man to answer the door and by bringing two Merchant Company regulars along with him. They were caught off guard, by surprise, and yet both managed to get a shot off, killing a snapbowman and a swordsman, and wounding one of the men behind as the bolt passed right through his comrade.

Then it was blade work. One of the soldiers got his sword clear, receiving a couple of strikes that his mail fended off. The second Merchant Company man had barely dropped his discharged snapbow when a dagger was rammed into his groin and he collapsed.

Stenwold had no weapons on him. Shouting for the sole remaining defender to hold, somehow, he rushed for the stairs. A snapbow bolt ploughed past his head into the wall, an opportunistic shot spoiled by the jostle of the melee inside the doorway.

Stenwold usually wore his sword, but not in his own house, and he had left it by the door — as unattainable now as if he had dropped it in the street. Upstairs, though, he had the collected works of a life lived at war with the Empire, if he only had time to deploy them.

There was a choking cry from below, and he guessed that the sole remaining soldier had fallen to superior numbers. Stenwold threw himself into his bedroom, flipping open a drawer of his bedside cabinet, and then hurled himself over the bed, clutching for what was mounted on the wall there. He heard feet thundering up the stairs.

The weight of the piercer fell into his hands, and he checked the weapon every tenday, keeping the monstrous instrument charged and loaded. It had saved his life more than once, a firepowder-charged bolt-thrower with four arm’s-length spears in its barrels.

Then the attackers were spilling in, or that was how he read the situation as he pulled the trigger. The first man had time to skid off his feet, falling flat on his back, and the third was still partway up the stairs, recharging his snapbow, so the luckless second man took three of the four bolts dead on, enough to render the bulk of him unrecognizable as human.

The piercer was useless now, and Stenwold leapt for the drawer even as the first man was lunging for him. A shortsword gashed his arm and then he had the little two-barrel snapbow out and tried to bring it to bear. For a moment he and the killer wrestled, each trying to wrench the weapon out of the other’s hand, Then there was a shout, and Stenwold’s opponent flung himself backwards. The snapbowman in the doorway had his weapon loaded and was frantically charging it.

Stenwold loosed, taking the swordsman in the chest with one barrel, not a tactical decision so much as sheer reflex. He had no time to take the other man, for there was a sizzling flash — a sound and sight odious and familiar to Stenwold from twenty years of personal war.

The third man’s snapbow discharged, the snap sounding a moment after the flare, but the wielder was already falling forwards, punched from behind, his weapon’s mouth jerking up. Stenwold felt a searing claw rake the side of his face, shooting pain through his head, but he was still standing afterwards, his right ear torn so that he could not tell what of the thunder came from outside, and what from within his head.

A Wasp appeared at the door and Stenwold made a strangled sound and jabbed the little snapbow forwards, There was a flicker of wings as the new arrival fell back, dragging the door closed after him, the bolt holing the wood effortlessly.

Trying to work out what was real, Stenwold stood in his own bedroom, three men in various extremities of death decorating his floor, his own blood flowing freely down the side of his neck and pooling at his collar. His hands, those past masters of necessity, found fresh bolts in the drawer, reloading and recharging the snapbow even as his mind reeled.

From downstairs, an uncertain voice called up, ‘Master Maker?’ He felt he should recognize it, but no name sprang to mind.

Stenwold took the bedside cabinet and moved it over to the door, kicking the dead snapbowman clear of its opening arc. His head was still ringing, and the house itself rang, too, the bombardment continuous and close. For a moment Stenwold balanced himself, one foot on the cabinet, a hand on the door, before flinging the door wide and kicking the cabinet out as hard as he could. He heard it reach the stairs, with surprised oaths from below.

Then he went after it, standing at the balcony rail with his snapbow levelled. ‘Weapons down!’ he yelled, murder in his voice,

There was a Beetle youth below him, also the Wasp, both with their hands held in sight, the Wasps’ clenched into fists. They wore some sort of Company sash, and the Beetle looked like a student. They both looked like students.

Eujen Leadswell and Averic, his errant memory recalled, and further reminded him that the snapbowman dead behind him had the charring of a Wasp sting in his back. There was a short-sword at Eujen’s feet that had blood on it, too, and that other body at the foot of the stairs had presumably supplied the blood.

For a moment Stenwold simply stood there, trapped in the moment, weapon levelled and listening to the sound of his city being destroyed, until chains of logic fell into place, and he jammed the snapbow in his belt.

Nine dead men downstairs, and Stenwold was shaken now to think how he might have been one more. Step by step, he stomped his way down the stairs. ‘What’s going on? Why are you here?’ he demanded. He could not find it within himself to thank them — not these two.

They exchanged nervous glances, guilty almost. He felt the screw turn within him at the unfairness, given what they had done, but he could not stoop. He found his pride would not let him.

Some consensus was reached, and Eujen spoke first. ‘Master Maker, Averic was approached by Imperial agents who tried to recruit him. They had a list of victims to kill tonight. We have passed on details, best guesses as to targets. But you were surely top of the list. We tried to get here sooner. The streets…’ By the end of his speech he had recognized the corpse of Janos Outwright and was staring at it in horrified fascination.

Thereby saving my life twice over. But still the gracious words would not come. ‘I need to know everything they told you,’ he snapped at Averic, making the Wasp twitch. ‘Come with me, both of you.’ He stomped past them, heedless of the blood underfoot, collecting his sword. He was in command, he assured himself. The roar and crash from without gave the lie to that thought, but he clung to it, building a self-righteous anger to defend himself, which led on to the words: ‘And Master Leadswell, I trust you have reconsidered your stance on the Empire.’

He was so much the mighty engine of state, right then, that he had stepped onto the street outside before realizing that the two students were not simply pattering in his shadow. He looked back, and the flash and gout of the next bomb showed Eujen Leadswell’s face all too clearly, standing motionless beside that small fragment of the Empire that had cast its lot in with Collegium this night.

‘Master Maker,’ Leadswell stated, ‘when this is done, I will put myself forward at the Lots and get myself made Assembler, however long it takes. And when I do, I shall fight you at every bloody turn.’

‘Let us hope you that have the opportunity. If the Wasps win I don’t imagine anyone will be casting Lots any time soon,’ Stenwold retorted instantly, even though part of him was listening to his own words and shouting, Give it a rest! Just unbend and put a hand out to them. Except that putting a hand out meant friendship only in Collegium. To a Wasp it was a prequel to killing.

Averic’s hand was out already, and Stenwold flinched, reaching for his snapbow. The Wasp was pointing, though, his face bloodless and horrified in the ruddy glare of flames.

Stenwold turned, without expectations, and the sight struck him like a blow. There was a colossal conflagration at the centre of the city. The Amphiophos was burning.