The Air War

Four

The Antspider was stepping into the ring of the Prowess Forum, in her first showing at a formal contest, and a murmur of interest passed through the spectators.

The Master Armsman officiating was a sour-natured Beetle-kinden named Corog Breaker, who had been souring still further throughout the proceedings. He held out the swords, wood sheathed in bronze, and she took one lightly and her opponent, a sturdy Beetle youth, took the other. Having second choice, he looked at her suspiciously, as though she had somehow tampered with the sword she had left him, but that was the price of having a reputation.

She was a lean, compact woman with snow-pale skin whose tan mottling could, with a dash of cosmetics, be formed into striking darts at her brow and cheekbones. She presented a most martial image, her features fierce, pale hair cut short as a soldier’s, her stance making the blade in her hand a natural part of her, the point into which the rest of her was focused. In contrast, the Beetle opposite her held his sword first like a hammer and then, as she directed her weapon at him, like a shield.

The Prowess Forum was more popular now than ever before. The College’s students had lived through war with Vek and the Empire, so that matters martial were on everyone’s mind. Four new departments had been created on the back of the war, and every student was expected to be able to acquit him- or herself with a sword. The Apt had a chance to learn the crossbow and the snapbow as well, training alongside Collegium’s Merchant Companies.

‘Salute the book!’ Corog Breaker growled, and the two of them duly raised their blades to the Forum’s emblem — a brass sword within the open pages of a wooden tome — which had become the city’s own martial symbol during the war.

‘Distance,’ the Armsman snapped. This instruction was new, born from a combination of the pastime’s popularity and peacetime’s renewed drive amongst the sponsoring magnates to count victories over sportsmanship. There had been, a half-year ago, a spate of unsatisfactory contests, with one duellist rushing the other in a frantic exchange of blows. The difficulty of adjudication had led to the introduction of a more formal start. The Antspider and her rival touched blade points, arms extended, each out of reach of the other, each theoretically just as ready.

‘Clock!’ called Breaker, and in that moment’s echo she struck, sword nipping past her enemy’s to poke him in the upper arm. The Beetle-kinden swore, then put his hand to his mouth and looked guiltily at the Master Armsman.

Breaker’s eyes flicked suspiciously between them. ‘First strike to the halfbreed,’ he said, with heavy disgust on that last word. ‘Second pass. Distance! Clock!’

And she was in again, a seemingly impossible lunge that caught the Beetle youth in his already bruised arm, making him drop his sword with a yelp. The commentary amongst the spectators was now running rife. The Antspider had not even moved her feet, only leant in a little, weight on the front foot ready for a quick retreat.

She gave Breaker a silent count of twenty before suggesting, in a breach of manners beyond enduring, ‘If you wish, I’ll play the point again, Master Breaker.’ She needed to win, and her two team-mates needed to win as well, because the fourth of their number was inexplicably absent. It was just possible, at that point, that she could talk Breaker into simply declaring that bout a lost match, rather than ruling that their team had forfeited, whereupon they would win the contest three-one. The four of them had worked very hard indeed even to get as far as being allowed to compete.

Corog Breaker stared at her without any love. ‘Play the point again,’ he directed, but now she didn’t like his tone. He was sounding like a man looking out for something specific, which might be bad news. Still, retaining an unassailable confidence in the face of bad odds had got her this far, and it might get her much further if she didn’t acknowledge the chasm yawning at her feet.

‘Distance,’ Breaker snapped, and she lined up with her opponent, their blades touching at the very tips. The Beetle youth had a look of tremendous concentration on his face, as though trying to catch out a street conjuror.

‘Clock,’ said the Master Armsman, and she hit her opponent on the arm, lightly this time for mercy’s sake.

‘Excuse me, Master Armsman!’ one of her rival’s team-mates piped up. ‘The Antspider’s cheating, Master.’

Breaker’s eyes were flicking left and right like flies in a bottle. The Antspider held herself very still. Would the Armsman stoop to admitting he had not seen it? Would his dislike of her — and, she had to admit, his preference for people actually playing the idiot game properly — overcome his oft-acknowledged pride?

‘Show me,’ he growled, and her stomach plunged.

A minute later and it was all over.

‘I have stretched the rules of the Forum and of polite society to accommodate you misfits,’ Breaker was complaining, giving the word a venomous twist. ‘You arrive one man short, I let you fight anyway, because you assure me he’s just on his way. Your sponsor is absent but I agree to accept her letter of commendation. But now I discover that you have found a way to break the rules, despite every measure we take. The last time a team was actually disqualified from a contest, Miss Straessa, was in the early stages of the Twelve-year War, so you may have some satisfaction in knowing that you have achieved at least a footnote in the histories of our duelling society. Do you have anything you wish to say about the matter? An apology would not be amiss.’

This is where my mouth is due to get me into trouble, considered Straessa, known by all as the Antspider. But she had dug a fair-sized well of trouble so far, so she might as well keep digging till she struck something useful. ‘Why, yes, Master Breaker. Take him out and bury him. That boy’s three times dead by now.’ She directed the wooden sword at her opponent, who started out of a conference with his friends and stared at her.

‘By the rules of the contest, one must stand at full extension, blade to blade, before the clock begins,’ Breaker told her sharply. ‘Your little tricks-’

‘Master, had I met him on the field, he’d be dead,’ she pointed out. ‘Do you think this game will help him if he joins the Merchant Companies? By rights I should be allowed every trick I have. I should be allowed to jump him from the rooftops on his way to the Forum. Rules, yes, but you know I won.’ Her smile was feral. ‘And you know what else? I killed him exactly the same way, three times. Cheating or not, what sort of swordsmanship is that?’

Corog Breaker regarded her, and she was surprised to see something other than hostility in his face: understanding, she realized, even agreement. Soldier and artificer, he had fought in the war, and against the Vekken before that when they had come to lay siege to Collegium. Of course, he knew she was right and that this anachronism would not see anyone safe through the next conflict, whenever that might be.

Neither rhetoric nor reality was going to win this contest, though. He was already shaking his head, and she turned to her fellows, Eujen and Gerethwy, holding her hands wide to show that she had done what she could, which was mostly to make a bad situation worse. Play to your strengths, that’s what I say. Still, many of the spectators were discussing her technique, and she reckoned that she might cover the month’s rent by teaching a little fencing in the evenings, after this. It was the Spider part of her nature: Losing with flair is something better than winning without.

They had called their team ‘the Dregs’, and Eujen Leadswell was their tenuous link with the general populace, being Beetle-kinden born and bred in Collegium, a young son of a brewer-turned-soldier, and a figure of notorious energy in the debating chamber. Gerethwy, on the other hand, seven feet tall, robed and hooded, had been put in the world purely to make honest halfbreeds like the Antspider feel normal.

‘You!’ Breaker suddenly spat out, the word shot through with loathing. ‘Out!’

And then there’s that: a pale young man had just appeared in the doorway, late and yet still managing to pick his moment.

‘What does that think it’s doing?’ Corog Breaker, veteran and conservative, had been given a target for his temper.

Is it me again? Do I get to do my usual grand job of salvaging the situation? the Antspider was thinking. But Eujen was already standing up to receive the brunt of Corog’s wrath. ‘Master Breaker, this is our fourth.’

‘I will not have it in the Forum.’ Breaker’s voice came out dangerously low.

‘Master Breaker, Averic has been accepted as a student of the College,’ Eujen pressed on, all formal politeness.

‘I’ll not have a Wasp in the Forum.’

‘What authority have you?’ Eujen Leadswell managed, in the face of Breaker’s wrath.

‘I am Master Armsman of the College,’ Breaker thundered. ‘If I say he’s not to set foot on these tiles, he’s banned. Bring your complaints to the Masters, do. Let’s see how many of them have any cursed sympathy with you. Or don’t you think they were up on the walls doing their piece when that lad’s Empire came?’ The last words saw Breaker’s face rammed close to Eujen’s. ‘Just you think, boy, about what your choice of friends says about you.’

With that, Breaker had clearly had enough. He stormed out, choosing the doorway that Averic had been hovering in, forcing the young Wasp to back out quickly to avoid being knocked aside. The brief quiet that Breaker had been speaking into degenerated almost instantly into a storm of gossip, much of it derogatory and aimed at the Dregs.

Eujen looked over at Averic. The young Wasp had his fixed smile on, the one he used whenever his kinden became an issue. He had not taken one step forward.

‘Leadswell!’ It was one of the opposing team, a burly man named Hallend, shouldering his way through the crowd that was already breaking into clumps spread out across the fighting ring. ‘What were you thinking, bringing one of them? You think that they understand any kind of fighting but the real thing?’

‘You think he’d beat you to death with a wooden sword?’ Eujen asked witheringly.

‘I think I know his lot’s temper,’ Hallend spat back. ‘And if not now, then later — a knife in some dark alley, or that sting of his. We all know how they like to win. I lost an uncle to his kind in the war,’ Hallend persisted. ‘My parents fought his people to keep our city free. And now their spies are walking about in daylight, students at the College.’

‘My father died in the Vekken siege,’ Eujen snapped, ‘and now the Vekken are our new great friends and allies. How was that achieved, save that Maker’s party reached out to them? Two generations ago we counted Sarn a great threat to our north, but then we went to them with open hands.’ He gave Hallend the chance to draw breath for a rebuttal, and then spoke over him fiercely. ‘But every Makerist agitator in the Assembly tells us there must be war with the Empire. We must not trade with the Empire. We must be on our guard against the Empire’s spies. Is there some moral difference between Vek and the Wasps? No, it is just the fact that the Empire is far away, and so the Makerists can rail at it with impunity. It is because the Empire is large, and so they see too great an effort in converting it to our philosophies, so they do not try. It is because the Empire seems set to last, and it is convenient for some men to have a strong enemy abroad. What other tyrannies are hidden at home when all eyes look over the wall for an army? What taxes, what confiscations, what laws are passed? Does the Empire hate us more than Vek has hated us? No. Is the Empire the unrelenting, irredeemable evil that the Makerists paint it? No. The distinction is not one of morality but one of convenience.’

‘Eujen, quiet,’ the Antspider hissed in his ear, but he was getting into his stride now.

‘But I ask you this,’ Eujen went on with a grand gesture. ‘Is the Empire truly as vast and powerful as the Makerists say? Is it truly as warlike? Yes, of course it is. We have seen ample evidence in these last few years. What, then, do you think the wages of Makerism will be? If we daily speak of war waged by the Empire, of the threat of the Empire, of the unending hostility of the Empire, then what possible alternative do we give the Wasps, but to become the monsters we cast them as? If the only hand we show to them has a blade in it, what response will we receive? And, when that war comes, where will our moral high ground be when we have so long invited it? We are Collegium, and we have stood for ethical enlightenment for five centuries. We cannot govern our state on principles of convenience.’

‘Eujen, shut up now,’ the Antspider urged again; everyone else was quite silent. Hallend, sensing something was up, glanced over his shoulder and then squeaked in alarm and scrambled out of the way, exposing Eujen to the full glowering regard of the man standing there.

Eujen was not tall for a Beetle, and this man had a good few inches on him, and a good few decades too, and he was broader at the shoulder than the young student, but he had the fierce, brooding presence of a much larger man, even so. His reputation towered above him, and threatened to crush Eujen Leadswell flat.

A current of whispers danced about the Forum, speaking the name, Stenwold Maker.

Eujen swallowed, seeming smaller and smaller, but never quite backing down, weathering the fire of the old statesman’s scorn, as though staring into the sun.

The older man said one word: ‘ Makerist?’

Eujen was going to keep standing there, Straessa realized. He’s going to argue with Stenwold Maker! She did not know if Maker, like the theoretical Wasp, would have his enemies killed in dark alleyways, but she was certain that making a scene just now would do no favours for Eujen’s academic career, and so she kicked him sharply behind the knee, so Eujen found himself sitting down abruptly with the breath knocked out of him.

‘Mouth shut,’ she snapped.

It was as though Eujen no longer existed, but then she realized that Maker had not really been staring at him at all. It was just that Eujen had been standing between him and the Wasp, Averic.

She saw Averic’s fingers twitch, the Art in his hands being kept on a tight leash. One of Maker’s own hands was at his belt, she saw, and with a swooping lurch she spotted the butt of a weapon there. Only Stenwold Maker could bring a snapbow into the Prowess Forum, and on the back of that thought her prediction changed from Stenwold Maker is going to beat Eujen to death with his bare hands, to Stenwold Maker is going to shoot Averic dead right in front of us.

But Averic was holding very still, giving no excuse, making no trouble, and at last Stenwold Maker turned away and stomped heavily out of the Forum, sheer murder evident in every step.

‘Since when did we have Wasp-kinden students at the College?’ Stenwold demanded as his opening salvo as soon as he was through the door of Jodry’s office.

Jodry Drillen, Speaker for the Assembly of Collegium, cast a tolerant eye over him. ‘Since start of autumn, I think. Averic, his name is. He turned up with money and sat the entrance exams and came with a commendation from the Imperial cartel thing, the Consortium.’ He had obviously been in the middle of some papers, but he leant back in his overstuffed chair, gesturing for Stenwold to sit down.

Stenwold remained standing. ‘And you let him in?’

‘I? I haven’t been a Master of the College for more than a decade, and the right of the College to do just about whatever it pleases without interference from the Assembly is the first thing both of us learned when we were studying for our accredits, eh? I recall a certain lecturer in modern history who made considerable use of that freedom to preach all manner of truths that the Assembly would rather were kept quiet.’

Stenwold glared at him, but conceded the point by sitting down across the desk from Jodry, his fervour ebbing a little. ‘Since autumn, though. Six months, then, and I never even knew. Why wasn’t I told?’

‘Aside from the fact that the College is similarly not obliged to run its decisions past the War Master, you were told,’ Jodry pointed out. At that moment his Fly-kinden secretary arrived, bearing a bottle of wine and a plate of honeycakes, probably less because his master had a guest than because his master tended towards gluttony. After he had put the tray down, Jodry waved him away and then busied himself in finding a second bowl and decanting the wine. At last, under Stenwold’s stare, he was forced to add, ‘It may be that I didn’t exactly take pains to draw it to your attention, but only because I knew you’d overreact.’

Stenwold took a bowl and stared at the dark contents. ‘He’s a spy.’

‘Probably is.’ Jodry stuffed an entire cake into his mouth and mauled it for a while. He had been an expansive man before winning the Speaker’s post, and success had added a few handspans to his waist, and at least one additional chin. Stenwold was his contemporary, and not a slender man even now, but Jodry, some inches shorter, must have weighed half as much again.

Seeing that Stenwold’s exasperated expression would outlast his mouthful, Jodry lost most of his geniality and added, ‘Or would you rather they just put some chit of a Spider-kinden girl in under a false pretext, so we’d not know until she betrayed us?’

Stenwold put the bowl down on Jodry’s desk with a click of porcelain. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was a low blow.’

‘True, though, and the boy might actually just be a student, but if he’s a spy, at least he’s an obvious one. The College was divided about it, but in the end what I consider to be sensible heads won out, and young Averic got his place. An adequate student, I’m told, artifice and history. And if you’d actually been to the College in the last few months, you might know about it — or even if you’d turn up in the city for longer than it took to stoke the fires in the Assembly once every few tendays.’ Jodry looked sidelong at Stenwold, as if estimating how far he could push his luck. ‘And he’s fitted in, in a way. What about that duelling clique of his, hm? Brings back a few memories: local boy of decent family, some odd artificer, a girl who’s handy with a sword, round them off with an exotic foreigner — sounds a bit like…’

Stenwold was half out of the chair as soon as he caught Jodry’s meaning. ‘You-! Don’t you dare equate that pack of feckless conspirators with my students!’

Jodry was unruffled, barely acknowledging the outburst. ‘I’m just saying, it’s a rich tapestry we have here at Collegium — threads of all colours.’

Stenwold sank back into his chair, feeling that he was becoming Jodry’s opposite. Two men of late middle age, the same dark skin and receding hair, both veterans of two conflicts and innumerable debates, and yet the fat man grew fatter and happier in his role, increasingly comfortable with the subtle power of his position and the material benefits that came with it. Stenwold, meanwhile, was growing leaner and more distanced from the very city he was working to save. Each time he came back here, the streets seemed a little stranger, a little less like home. When he returned, it was less to a city and more to absences: the memories of those that time and war had taken from him.

‘Since when was I a political movement?’ he seized on as another ground for complaint. ‘Some student was bandying about the word “Makerist”, for grief’s sake.’

Jodry took a deep you only have yourself to blame breath. ‘Stenwold, Losel Baldwen sets aside a month on Makerism in her social history class — has done since the war.’

Stenwold stared at him, but Jodry met his eyes without flinching. ‘I refer you to my previous comment. If you actually spent a reasonable time in the city you’d know these things, and have a chance to do something about them. Instead of which, you’re forever off about the Lowlands or to Myna, or at that retreat on the cliffs that you signed over to those pirates.’

‘Sometimes it’s good to get out of the city,’ Stenwold replied, infuriated that he was now on the defensive, but unable to do anything about it.

‘Sten, I’m fat, not dead. I know you miss that’ — his voice dipped — ‘Sea-kinden woman. It’s a shame, I fully admit, but there it is. You need to start living like a citizen of Collegium again.’ Jodry was one of the very few who knew even half of the secret alliance with the Sea-kinden that Stenwold had brokered. In fact he was one of very few who even knew that Sea-kinden existed.

‘So, tell me what a citizen of Collegium does,’ Stenwold snapped.

‘Well, for one, he doesn’t march into the office of the Speaker for the Assembly any time he likes, just to vent his spleen.’ As Stenwold rose to that barb, Jodry levered himself to his feet, abruptly becoming the man who swayed the city’s government, and not just a fat and idle wastrel. ‘Listen to me, Sten, and look at yourself. Your actions have been instrumental in putting us where we are now. In preparing for the next war, in devoting so much time and money to the aviators and the Merchant Companies, we have committed ourselves to a particular view of the world — of the Empire most especially. You will see it through. You will not leave me to parrot your words while you mope about like a sea-master’s widow.’

The words sparked a few uncomfortable memories of that student decrying ‘Makerist’ policies in the Forum. How earnest that young man had been, how passionate! Did Stenwold not recall another youth, not so very much older, debating in tavernas and on street corners, haranguing a hostile crowd to try and open their eyes to ideas they did not want to tolerate. Only, in Stenwold’s time, that idea had been the Empire’s hostility. And I won. I opened their eyes, after near on twenty years. The boy’s not the same. After all, I know the Empire, and he doesn’t.

‘Jodry,’ he said, a little subdued, ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

The other man’s first reaction was a shrug, as if to say that it was too late to change things now, but he plainly sensed that would not be well received, so put in hastily, ‘Oh, without a doubt. Come on, Sten, they were at the gates not so long ago, and if it wasn’t for your Mantis friend doing away with their Emperor, and all the chaos that caused, they’d have had us, too. And since they pulled themselves together, it’s been swords drawn all along the border, little skirmishes and raids, and a war looking for an excuse to happen. Of course you’re right, Sten.’

And Stenwold looked on his — what? Not quite old friend, so political ally, then — and realized that at last he could no longer read Jodry with utter certainty. He shook his head, giving up and conceding the point. ‘You bring me down to business, then.’

‘I thought I ought to add some structure to the debate, that being my job,’ Jodry agreed gravely. ‘So, speaking of skirmishes and borders, do I take it I can’t dissuade you from this little jaunt?’

‘The Mynan border situation is looking serious,’ Stenwold said. ‘It needs attention. The Three-city Alliance needs to know that we’re holding to our treaty, and they know me. And the Empire knows me, too. Maybe just turning up will get everyone to back off.’

Jodry looked at him doubtfully. ‘So this isn’t… it, then? Only, I’ve seen some of the reports, the sort of numbers massing at the border there.’

‘I wouldn’t think so,’ Stenwold assured him, with as much confidence as he could muster. ‘You, I and the Empire know that the peace can’t last, but we’ve time for a few more rolls of the dice yet.’