The Air War

Seven

‘You’re ready?’ the Antspider asked.

‘I’m watching,’ confirmed Eujen Leadswell, and he was, keenly, measuring his reach against hers, sword tips even, arms parallel, shoulders almost touching.

‘And lunge,’ she instructed, and they took a simultaneous step and, without seeming to stretch, her blade point’s lead had become the best part of a foot. ‘You see it?’

‘I see it but I don’t see how,’ Eujen complained, dropping from his swordsman’s stance. Around them, the clear airy space of Mummers’s studio picked up their every sound and murmured it about the paper-covered walls.

‘She’s rolling her shoulder back as she stands ready,’ came Gerethwy’s measured tones, the cadence of an old man behind the lighter tones of a young one. ‘Her arm’s longer than yours, and when she lunges, she’s casting her shoulder forward as well as her arm. Her joints must be as freakish as the rest of her, in my opinion.’ He moved a piece on the board in front of him, then glanced blithely at the Antspider, waiting for a challenge. He was by far the most outlandish figure in the room, and perhaps in Collegium. Most people had never so much as seen a Woodlouse-kinden before, but certainly nobody had ever seen a young one.

Averic, across from him, made a quick counter-move. He played chess, even this outrageously chaotic version that only he and Gerethwy knew how to play, as though he was being timed. He was a strange sight in Collegium, this lean Wasp youth: not the hulking brute that most Collegiates imagined or remembered from the war, but a quiet, studious figure who wore eyeglasses to read, with sandy hair of a conservative length for a College student, but that the Antspider had taken for the height of rebellion in an Imperial. When she had confronted him with that thought, he had patiently explained that, no, the height of rebellion for an Imperial was setting yourself up as the Emperor. That was when she had decided she liked him.

He had turned up at the city’s gates in company with Gerethwy, not from the same starting point but from the same point of the compass. Averic was all the way from the Empire — where else were Wasps from? — and Gerethwy from some unimaginable place north or east even of that. The joke ran that the cartography department had offered to pay for his tuition if the Woodlouse only filled in the blank spaces on their maps. He was hairless, gaunt-faced, light grey skin marked with dark grey bands running up over his scalp and down his back. Gerethwy was the only one of their little circle who could give the Antspider an even fight. He was close on seven feet tall, even with the slight bunching of his back and shoulders, and his reach was prodigious. What he lacked in speed he made up for in precision, and he would lead her on and lead her on, defence and defence, until her temper gave out and she did something incautious, which inevitably resulted in an immediate victory for one or the other of them.

‘I still can’t see it,’ Eujen complained, ‘even if you do have trick shoulders.’

‘I wish the crowd at the Forum had your eyes,’ she remarked lightly. The disqualification had been a shame, but notoriety was hard currency even in Collegium, and especially amongst the students. Besides, odds were that Averic’s late arrival would have seen them lose anyway, and if it was a choice between a mundane loss and a flamboyant one, then the Antspider knew which one she would take every time.

Averic had been late, it turned out, because the city militia had stopped him in the street no fewer than three times on his way to the Prowess Forum.

‘Pose, please,’ came the voice of Raullo Mummers, whose studio they were cluttering up. He was a stocky Beetle-kinden a few years senior to any of them, a professional artist trying to clinch some manner of deal with one of Collegium’s galleries, and sketching anatomy and engineering designs for the College to pay the rent. The single long room he lived and worked in filled the entire lower storey of a ramshackle house near the College, with one wall mostly given over to a grand circular window, intricately leaded in the Spider style some decades ago, and now boasting some half a dozen missing panes covered up with wood. All the rest of Mummers’s walls were covered with his sketches, the work of a decade plastered and overlapping, the inspiration from them constantly feeding back into his work.

The Antspider sighed and adopted her ready pose again, although this time Eujen decided not to join her, instead drifting over to speculate on the chess game.

‘Next year, do you think, for the Forum?’ she asked.

‘Oh, certainly,’ Eujen replied over his shoulder, but his voice carried an uncertain tone.

‘It’s a wise man who knows tomorrow,’ said Gerethwy, making another move after some thought, and watching Averic respond with instant certainty.

‘Talk, all talk. Will Collegium be here next year? Yes. Will we be students at the College? Yes,’ Eujen said defensively.

‘So sure?’ the Antspider demanded, her straight arm beginning to tremble as she held her pose for Mummers.

‘The alternative is too dire to think about, Straessa,’ Eujen declared. ‘Look at where everyone stood after the last war, the loss of life, the chaos and disruption, missed harvests, civil strife.. ’

‘You don’t have to do the grand speeches with us, Eujen. We’re your friends,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re very quiet, Averic.’

The Wasp looked up from the board for a moment, and then seemed to become utterly absorbed in the position of the pieces. Eujen had been the only student willing — or daring enough — to approach the College’s new Imperial recruit, beginning an unlikely friendship born of curiosity and cultural differences. Averic avoided contradicting or arguing with Eujen whenever possible. For a Wasp he seemed remarkably tactful. Patient, too. For a long time Straessa had thought he was simply devoid of the ugly temper that three generations of his kinden had made notorious. Then, once, she had seen him off guard for a moment: not in defence of himself but when some magnate’s son decided to call Eujen a coward. Averic’s hands had clenched into fists — a gesture of peace amongst his violent kinden — but she had caught an expression on his face, visible only for that single moment, and she had understood. It was not patience, but sheer bloody-minded willpower. He was constantly restraining himself, every day, through every barb of provocation and frustration, holding in check that reflexive retaliation his kinden would normally resort to.

‘Enough,’ she told Mummers. ‘Or I’m going to strain something. Do you pay me to be your model?’

‘Do you pay me rent to sit around my studio?’ he returned, looking sullen. Because he was, at least notionally, a productive member of society, she sometimes forgot he was only a few years older than her.

‘Wasn’t te Mosca coming tonight?’ Gerethwy observed, staring at the board.

‘Trying to pin down Mistress te Mosca is like trying to stop the sun,’ Eujen observed, and then the door slammed open suddenly and a half-dozen soldiers spilled in. They were Merchant Company men and women, solid Beetle-kinden in barred helms and breastplates over buff coats, each sporting a blue sash with a gold portcullis emblazoned on it. They all carried snap-bows.

In the initial confusion, the crash of the door still echoing, the Antspider had traded her wooden sword for the narrow-bladed steel weapon that was lying by the chessboard, the move from play to real following an instinct that had come with her from her childhood in Seldis amongst the full-blooded Spider-kinden. Gerethwy had taken up his staff in a single understated gesture, the weapon and his long arms giving him an improbable amount of reach. Eujen had brought up his practice blade into line as though he was in the Forum. Only Averic had no weapon and, although he stood up immediately, he kept his arms by his side, no expression on his face.

‘You,’ the leader of the soldiers, a tough-faced woman, picked out Averic, ‘you’re wanted.’

‘What is this?’ Eujen demanded, advancing with his wooden blade still in hand. ‘What right have you to just burst in here?’

‘Civic security,’ the woman told him curtly.

‘Where is the law?’ he demanded, and there was no admission in his face that her snapbow was now directed at him. Straessa sensed rather than saw Averic tense — not a threat to him but this one to Eujen eating away at his control.

‘Officer Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company,’ the Antspider declared brightly, drawing everyone’s attention. ‘Everyone knows Officer Padstock wouldn’t go breaking down doors without good authority.’ Straessa’s sword went back on the table, a plea for a moment’s calm.

In truth, everyone knew nothing of the sort. Elder Padstock, chief officer of the Maker’s Own, was as much Stenwold Maker’s creature as the company name suggested, and she was known for enforcing his perceived wishes with utter conviction.

Padstock regarded all of them without love. ‘The Speaker for the Assembly wishes to see the Wasp-kinden. Is that sufficient authority?’ She tried to lock eyes with Averic but he was having none of it.

Eujen was gathering himself for another outburst, but now the Wasp stepped forward, one finger flicking over a chessman to signify surrender. ‘Of course, I would be honoured to meet with Master Drillen,’ he observed mildly.

‘Not alone,’ Eujen insisted. ‘I’ll go with you.’

‘That’s not in my brief,’ Padstock snapped.

‘I’m going with him to Drillen. What are you going to do?’ Eujen put himself right in front of her, making himself impossible to ignore.

She put the barrel of her snapbow to his chest, finger on the trigger, and Straessa found herself thinking, This is it. This is when Collegium went mad. Probably Padstock had looked Eujen over and seen only a posturing academic whose wars were fought on paper, but one thing he had never lacked was courage. Too much courage for his own good.

Straessa could almost hear Averic winding up until he was tense as a bowstring, with fingers pressing into his palms until they were bloodless. Somewhere out of her eyeline, Gerethwy changed his grip on the staff slightly. We’re going to get into a fight with the Merchant Companies. We’re going to get shot. She now wished she had not put her sword down, especially as the move had bought her nothing. This is the night that they started shooting students. The thought went round and round in her head.

Then Padstock lowered the snapbow with a sound of disgust. ‘Fine. come with us. See what Drillen makes of you, Wasp-lover. Just you, though. The rest of your menagerie stays here.’ Her eyes flicked across Gerethwy and the Antspider, and then settled on Raullo Mummers. ‘Quite the nest of dissension you keep here, Master Mummers. An artist should have a better feel for the mood of his public. Now, let’s move. And you can leave the toy sword here. I doubt you’ll find a use for it where we’re going.’

Eujen cast the Antspider a familiar look — she knew it well from his turns in the debating circles, or stepping into the ring at the Prowess Forum. She had to tell herself, over and over, that this was Collegium, after all. People did not get vanished in Collegium. They did not die at the whims of their betters. That was reserved for the Spiderlands or the Empire, or for foreigners in an Ant city-state. The whole point of Collegium, which had drawn her across half the Lowlands with nothing but a haphazard education, a pocket of stolen gemstones and a cocky attitude to recommend her, was that its people lived in peace, free from fear and oppression. Eujen must be the future, not Padstock. If Padstock is the future of this city then there will be nothing left recognizable. Like Eujen says, we can’t kill all of what we are just to survive.

Then they were gone, the soldiers, Padstock, Eujen and Averic, marching off into the night, and Gerethwy was relaxing by careful degrees, releasing all that stored power that his lanky frame hid so well, and Mummers was hunching over, muttering to himself and peering at the door to see what damage had been done to it.

Jodry Drillen was found sitting at his desk, some unfinished document of state beneath the nib of his reservoir pen, a bowl of wine half-finished at his left hand, and still wearing the creased robes that he had worn to that day’s session of the Assembly. He was to be found thus so often that a number of his associates had compared notes and knew full well that it was a studied pose that he adopted quite deliberately: the elder statesman at work for the city’s good at all hours. If he had a great many visitors of an evening, then the half-bowls of wine he was required to drain left him positively light-headed towards midnight.

Mere students were not privy to the higher echelons of rumour, of course, and so he cut a suitably grave figure as the Wasp boy was led in by Jodry’s Fly-kinden secretary, Arvi. There was another youth tagging along, but Jodry was hardly surprised. The student body tended to form close-knit factions at a moment’s notice — good practice for a life of politics — and, in all honesty, half of Jodry’s visitors arrived with some unwelcome hanger-on.

‘Young Averic,’ he noted, ‘and I believe it’s Leadswell, is it not?’

The Beetle boy nodded, and Jodry saw that, although much of him looked soft, like most Beetle lads whose families had a certain income, his eyes and the set of his jaw were solid. Very much Assembler material, Jodry considered, an assessment backed by what he already knew of the young man. ‘Come in, both of you. Chief Officer Padstock, thank you for your assistance. Speed and discretion as standard.’ The words were clearly a dismissal to the woman who loomed in the doorway behind the two students, her snapbow shouldered, but she did not go.

‘Master Speaker, I must advise you, it is not safe to be in a room with one of his kinden. They are never unarmed.’

Jodry opened his mouth to wave her concerns airily away, but an odd feeling down his back stopped him. The Wasp’s expression was as bland as a statue’s, but of course his provenance was in question, and what if all this was some Rekef scheme after all, to get a man close enough to kill the Speaker for the Assembly?

Would they? Am I so important? He had planned to make this a comfortable, avuncular interview, a word from the wise to young Averic, a gentle sounding-out. To ask Padstock to stay would be to show weakness. To command her to go had an outside chance of being fatal.

‘For your peace of mind, then, Chief Officer,’ he tried, magnanimously, and she took up a post in the corner of his study, beside the comfortable chair he kept for College Masters and merchant magnates. Needless to say, neither Averic nor Leadswell took a seat there.

Eujen Leadswell looked as though he wanted to make some angry statement, no doubt about rights, but the fact that this was the actual Speaker for the Assembly before him had apparently gifted him with a little uncharacteristic caution, instead yielding the floor to their host. Jodry allowed himself a grand sigh, a busy man with the presence of mind to attend to small things himself.

‘Master Leadswell, I would ask you why you have honoured me with your presence but, to avoid mutual embarrassment, let us pretend that you have told me that you are so solicitous of your Wasp friend, and so doubtful of Collegiate legal procedure, that you attend as an observer. Let us pretend that I have taken this in good humour.’

Leadswell opened his mouth, one hand making a half-gesture towards Padstock, which had her twitching to bring her snap-bow around. Jodry took a moment to adjust his mental picture of Padstock inviting Averic to his office. Did she read a little more into my instructions than I meant? Yes. Did I honestly think she would not, given who she is? Hmmm.

‘Averic, I understand that you are having a difficult time adjusting to our society.’ It was a neutral opening. ‘Reports of your academic record are mixed,’ because Jodry knew well that certain teachers at the College had war records and too many memories, ‘and the College bailiff’s office has a number of reports that mention your name,’ notably as the victim, although some of those bailiffs were similarly partisan.

‘Have you brought me here to expel me, Master Drillen?’ Averic asked quietly.

‘No doubt your friend Leadswell is about to insist that a vote of senior Masters is required for an expulsion, and I’ve not been amongst that number for a decade and more,’ Jodry corrected him, and caught an expression fleeting across the Wasp’s face: surprise. Of course, in the Empire, it was orders or nothing, and men lived or died by the whims of their superiors. That was what Jodry had always understood, and it was interesting to see it confirmed in these present circumstances. ‘Look, boy, I admit that, since the war, the student body has never been so diverse — Solarnese, Ancient Leaguers, Tseni, all manner of curios turning up at our gates looking for their accredits. Spies, some of them — but there is a school of thought saying that showing a spy that we are a benevolent, humanistic society that believes in equality and opportunity for all is by no means a wasted practice. It worked with Sarn, after all. However, and despite the recent alliance, no Vekken youth has applied to study here, and wisely so, for the wounds are still fresh from their most recent attempt to subjugate us. Not quite so fresh as the wounds your Second Army made when they camped outside our walls.’

He looked from face to face: Leadswell’s dark features, Averic’s exotic pallor. Both were waiting for the strike, so that they could parry and riposte in kind.

‘I know a little about how matters work within the Empire. One central authority over corps, armies, Auxilians, slaves. A place for everyone, hm? So what am I to think? That you’re a renegade or you were sent? You’ll appreciate how the situation out east makes the question pertinent, and I’m not surprised that you find it hard to walk down a street in this city without being called out.’

Leadswell opened his mouth again, but Averic just said, ‘I was sent, sir. But I was sent by my family. Do you think nobody in the Empire looks over at Collegium and wonders, What is their secret strength? But I am not a spy. There are those in the Empire who believe that the future may bring us to terms with the Lowlands — with Collegium therefore. What better adviser and ambassador than one who has studied with you? Would you not have some scion of yours serve in the Imperial army, if he could?’ The boy’s voice was careful: not fierce with sincerity, nor hesitant with doubt.

‘It’s a pleasant enough thought,’ Jodry allowed, bringing all his scrutiny to bear, but finding the Wasp’s features impossible to read. The boy’s hands were fists, he saw, clenched tight, but none of that made it to his face. ‘You must admit that the future you describe seems unlikely just now.’

Averic shrugged. ‘I hope for better, sir. That the war between our peoples is not finished seems unarguable, but all wars eventually end. My family have made an investment. They are soldiers, as all our people are, but they are merchants also.’

‘Leadswell, I recall you from the end-of-year debates,’ Jodry noted. ‘You spoke very well in favour of just such a future as young Averic describes. You lost, however. The judges were unkind, perhaps.’

Eujen Leadswell took a steadying breath, neither of them feeling it necessary to mention that Jodry had been one of those judges. ‘Master Drillen, you asked why I came. Do I fear for my friend under Collegium justice? No, for he has broken no laws. But any man may call him a spy, and I do not trust that the law would be swift enough to save him. You talk of our educating spies about our cultural superiority. Averic has been shown precious little of that, Master Drillen. What report do you think he would give of us if he returned home now?’

‘That we were more like his people than he had thought,’ Jodry snapped, nipping the oratory in the bud. ‘Do you envy the lot of an Imperial’s life — and I mean that of our kinden there, who do well enough as the Empire goes? Do you think it is some grand lie that suggests the Empire is a cruel regime that makes cities into slaves and slaves into corpses?’

‘I think that it is our duty as Collegiate men to do all we can to change the Empire, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell shot right back, and Padstock tensed, for the lad was abruptly leaning over Jodry’s desk towards him, all awe at the office of Speaker forgotten. ‘But I think that if we treat them as nothing but a threat, then we shall create our own future. Also, I know him. He is my friend. I choose to trust him. He is no spy.’

Averic’s face was very set, but Jodry wondered if he detected some suppressed emotion there, even if only the eyes were a party to it. ‘And when the Empire comes to us with armies and not with words?’ he asked. ‘How will you meet them, then?’

Leadswell stepped back, his face bitterly displaying the thought, So, you think I’m a traitor, too. ‘As I did last time they came, Master Drillen. When Tynan’s Second was at our gates, I was loading artillery on the wall.’

‘And you?’ Jodry’s gaze swept towards Averic, meeting that lack of expression head on. Before the Wasp’s silence became awkward, Arvi opened the door with another Fly accompanying him, a woman in a grey robe that was decidedly not Collegium standard.

‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry observed. He had wanted this interview but, now it was cut short, he found that he was relieved. For Leadswell is right, of course, from a certain point of view — right and yet too late. That ship sailed before the Wasps put us to the siege the last time.

‘Master Drillen.’ Sartaea te Mosca was not a full Master of the College, but a mere associate. Still, she had been hired to head a department left vacant, and one that nobody else wanted. She taught Inapt studies, as the College preferred to refer to the mysticism and flummery that surrounded the ways of the old Moth-kinden. She was a young lecturer, but a few decades amongst the Moths at Dorax had given her a curiously ageless air, which in Jodry’s experience persisted even after she had downed close on her bodyweight in imported spirits. She had also taken a keen interest in Averic and Leadswell and all their little clique, and was sociable enough to have garnered a certain fondness amongst the College Masters.

‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry repeated. ‘These two lads appear to have found their way to my study. Would you perhaps ensure they reach their lodgings?’

She studied him, testing her Moth-taught inscrutability against his professional regard, and breaking first, into a slight, submissive smile. ‘I’d be delighted to, Master Speaker.’

She turned to go, the two students lagging behind, and Jodry tapped his pen on the desk for their attention. ‘One more thing, young Leadswell. I know it is always a fine thing to imagine yourself the rebel, fighting for a grand cause against the ignorance and prejudice of many. Believe me, Stenwold Maker traded on that for decades, and you might want to think about that. However, I trust that in your social history classes they still teach the rivers hypothesis? That no society travels all one way, dances to a single tune, but there are mingled flows, so on, so forth? Did you see the play The Officer’s Mistress?’

Leadswell frowned at him, shaking his head, knowing the trap was there, but unable to see where Jodry was going with this.

‘Too late now, then. It closed after four nights. Full houses, too. A grand shame. Set during the war, don’t you know? Some piece of business about the Empire in the second and fourth acts.’

‘I don’t understand, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell admitted.

‘The theatre owner brought the curtain down,’ Jodry explained gently. ‘Not healthy, you see, to be associated with something that’s making fun of the Empire, for all that the commons rush to laugh. After all, you never know who your patrons might be next year. You never know who’s making a list right now. You might want to think about that.’

Arvi would, left to his own devices, have escorted the two students from Drillen’s chambers coldly and without ceremony, to let them know just what the establishment of the Assembly thought of them, as interpreted by himself, the Speaker’s secretary. However, they were accompanied by Sartaea te Mosca, who was a Fly-kinden teaching at the College, and Arvi had an entirely intentional double standard when it came to his own people. Those who had made enough of themselves to become respectable always found a friendly reception at the Speaker’s offices. Besides, Arvi was now, in his own estimation, sufficiently advanced in society to start casting around for his own dynasty, and attractive and influential Fly women were always worth keeping on the right side of.

The two youths looked shaken, as well they might, but te Mosca’s admirable presence was calming them, and Arvi indicated to her, by a careful nod and a twitch of an eyebrow, that he would give them all a moment to settle themselves before turning them out of doors. Her smile, in return, was small but elegant, and Arvi made careful adjustments to the mental list of eligibility that he carried constantly in his mind. He considered whether offering a little warmed-over wine might be appropriate, but no doubt the students would want some too, in which case the only appropriate offering would have to be an insultingly poor vintage. Associating with the student body at all, in fact, seemed to indicate a flaw, in this woman’s judgement. He frowned to himself and annotated his list further.

At that moment a Beetle-kinden woman burst in, the doorman actually running after her in an attempt to restrain her.

‘I need to see the Speaker right now!’ she snapped, heedless of the other visitors. Even as Arvi rushed at her, hands up to implore discretion, she was saying, ‘No! Get out of my way, you bloody functionary. That maniac Gripshod is going to blow up the whole city if somebody doesn’t stop him…’

Something in Arvi’s demeanour communicated itself because the woman turned round and saw a Wasp staring at her with some interest. She stuttered to a halt.

Arvi sighed, but this sort of thing was happening all the time. One could not get efficient enough door staff, and some day he would have to speak to the artifice department and get them to automate the process somehow. He managed it all without Jodry ever knowing, shuffling the Beetle woman — a regular informant — into a side room, and then gently decanting te Mosca and her charges onto the street with a kind word, ensuring by looks and manner that the woman understood how he was going out of his way and beyond the call of duty for her. Then he returned and gave Jodry sufficient warning for him to receive his next guest in his customary fashion, even tweaking his master’s robes into a suitably picturesque dishevelment.

At last the informant was ushered in with whatever alarming news she had about Gripshod — and what a name that was to conjure with, Arvi thought — and he could now take a moment for a sit-down and a fortifying sip of brandy from the flask he kept in a holster under his armpit.

Just as he was stowing the covert article away, another Fly-kinden burst in, this time so far ahead of the doorman that Arvi could only hear his running feet.

‘Need to see the Speaker,’ she got out. She was still wearing the light canvas overalls of an aviatrix, and Arvi guessed she had flown here straight from the airfield with the stink and oil of the orthopter still on her hands.

‘Mistress te Schola,’ he greeted her, because this woman also taught at the Assembly — and she was a beauty, too, for all that she was Solarnese and therefore somewhat eccentric of manner.

‘Taki,’ she corrected him absently, and only raised an eyebrow when he kissed her hand, a greeting he fervently hoped was appropriately Solarnese. ‘Look, seriously, I need to see Drillen right now.’

She was still out of breath from the flight, her chestnut hair flattened by the imprint of the flying helm she had only just removed, tracking grease on to the carpets and with her clothes dirty and unchanged for too long. Arvi almost proposed there and then. However, his spine was an iron rod of duty and he could only force out the reluctant words, ‘I’m afraid the Speaker is in a meeting, but if you would wait…’

‘Get me Maker, then,’ she told him. ‘Stenwold Maker, the War Master.’

‘Alas, Master Maker is out of the city.’

Taki stared at him. ‘He’s what?’

‘He set out for Myna, I believe.’ Probably that was a state secret, but this woman was one of Maker’s associates, and anyway, in that moment, Arvi would have found it hard to deny her anything.

‘But I was flying over Myna just now!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve flown from Capitas to Collegium and now I have to go most of the way back?’

‘I could perhaps inform the Speaker that you are here…’ Arvi stretched his duty to the snapping point.

‘Forget it. I need to get a night’s sleep, get my Esca rewound and tuned up, and I need to drop some sketches into the aeronautics department just as soon as I’ve actually made them. Tell Drillen I’ve headed for Myna.’ And she was gone from the room and from Arvi’s life, as abruptly as she had appeared.