War Master's Gate

Thirty

In the air hung curtains of dawn mist and Che could hear, all around, an army standing quietly, so absurdly quietly. She heard the creak of leather and the scrape of metal, the stamp and snort of horses and the click of chitin. Such small noises, and yet she knew that there were thousands assembled here, a great war-host gathered on a strange, sparsely wooded hillside in the half-light, waiting to fight the greatest battle of their lives. They had come here to save the world.

‘History will sing of this day for all the centuries to come,’ said a voice from beside her, almost conversationally. ‘We will be heroes, every one of us.’

‘Let us hope history has the chance,’ from another voice, but receding, and she hurried after it, into the mist that was even now beginning to thin. The shadows of the soldiers all around her were filling out with details. Mantis-kinden, she saw, rank on rank of them, and all clad in intricately crafted mail of chitin and steel. She cowered before their massed regard, expecting any moment for one of them to call her out. She did not belong here, that much was plain, and Mantis-kinden were notorious for their intolerance of intruders.

But they ignored her, as if beneath their notice, and yet, as she stepped amongst them, she felt there were memories submerged somewhere in her mind. . Had she not had dealings with the Mantids only recently, and from a position of strength?

The realization that she was dreaming came creeping on her, not quite confirmed yet but well on its way. She had been through too many visions and wonders to be held in ignorance for too long. For now, though, she followed the two speakers through the Mantids’ silent ranks, because they were her only point of reference.

‘We have driven them this far,’ said that the first voice, so rich and smooth, a voice of character and power. ‘Across the world, we have driven them. They have brought all their armies together to face us, in their last stand. When we break them now, they must come to terms. Even a hate as mad as theirs must know limits.’

‘Must it?’ The other voice was female, older and more melancholy, and Che had caught up with them now, stepping absurdly close because now she had understood that nobody here would notice her. She was inviolate because she was only an afterthought, a spectator to someone else’s thoughts.

When she saw him, that first speaker, she knew whose thoughts they were. He was a Moth-kinden, but nothing like the breed she knew from Tharn or Dorax. Tall and broad-shouldered from a life of action, with a long sword hanging low and horizontal behind him, everything about him spoke warrior. His white stare was fierce and proud, and when it turned on her she felt a jolt of contact even though he was gazing straight through her. His features sent a shiver through her, too: something in them of Achaeos, her dead lover. Here were the grey skin and blank eyes of his kinden, yes, but more than that. Here was the face of a man who had lived and fought, known triumph and defeat, and had conquered both. Infinitely human, fallible and yet a man who had faced his own failings.

He was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. Perhaps only Salme Dien had been a more beautiful specimen of humanity.

He wore a hauberk of chitin scales that fell to his knees, with a loose, open robe slung over it, and in the crook of his arm rested a high, crested helm set with glittering iridescent wings, the very picture of a warrior prince from the distant past, back when even the Days of Lore were young. And he was a magician, too, for she could smell it on him.

Argastos in life, seen through his own recollections.

The woman beside him was taller, hunched and bald, her pasty skin banded with grey: a Woodlouse-kinden but a warrior as well. Che had never seen the like, for she was encased in great articulated lames of bronze, a metal carapace that must weigh two hundred pounds or more, and yet the woman moved easily inside it, for all her apparent years.

And now the mist was blowing away.

‘We must triumph today,’ Argastos declared. ‘There must be an end to it.’

The army took shape about them, in between the scattered trees, and Che caught her breath. She had never seen such a sight, nor had anyone else for a thousand years.

The Mantis-kinden were all around them, and she realized that these were Argastos’s personal guard, all five hundred of them; and beyond them were ranged the other war bands, together making up a host of the Inapt such as she had never seen. She saw more Mantids, and groups of Moth-kinden in leather and chitin mail, with arrows to their bows. There was the glittering finery of Dragonfly nobles on horseback, lifting their long swords towards the ascending dawn and shouting out their battle cries. She saw whole blocks of armoured Woodlouse-kinden bristling with pikes and halberds, and knots of large-framed Scorpions trailed by packs of their beasts, claws agape. Haughty Spider-kinden in bright silks stalked forwards with bow and spear, giving the Mantids a wide berth. And there were more, too: here was a score of lean, lightly armoured men and women she knew for Assassin Bugs, and there — she shuddered to see them out in the morning light, but there was no mistaking those red eyes set in pallid faces — Mosquito-kinden, armed and armoured for battle, standing almost shoulder to shoulder with a dozen kinden who hated them with a passion.

And, as she kept looking, she saw the others as well: less bright, less magical, less prominent, but gathered in numbers nonetheless. Ant-kinden with wooden shields and leather armour; Beetles — her own ancestors — in bronze mail of a style that recalled Khanaphes; Great Mole Crickets; the darting forms of Flies. Here was the whole world, and it had come to do battle.

And now there was a great woman striding between those war bands, tall as a Mole Cricket but of a less massive build, robed and partly armoured in chitin plate, pointing a staff down the hillside and calling out to Argastos, ‘War Master! They come!’

The huge woman’s helm was open, and Che looked upon her face and knew her name. Elysiath Neptellian, Lady of the Bright Water, She whose Word Breaks all Bonds, Princess of the Thousand. Last seen by Che in the catacombs beneath Khanaphes, a millennium later, but here she was young and far from the great city of her people — a people who must already be in decline — and she had come to fight. They had all come to fight.

And Che could see, further down the hill, another host that seemed to be forming out of the very earth itself: a vast horde of armoured figures. A fear arose at the sight of them — the fear of all about her regarding that terrible enemy. She understood — because Argastos understood — that many of those out there had been their kin, somehow, before falling into darkness. For this was the army of the Worm that sought to make everything like itself.

‘Their seers block ours,’ the Woodlouse woman announced. ‘We cannot know their full strength.’

‘They are many, what else do we need to know?’ Argastos asked her. ‘We have forced them to this battle. We can hardly leave them hungry now, can we?’

The host of the Worm was beginning to move, though Che could make out scant detail of them. She saw the war bands jostle amongst themselves, archers moving forwards and readying their arrows, and the others forming no real line, nothing like a modern battle order, each war band to its own. But she understood, having been in those same shoes, that there were magicians here — many, many magicians of all kinden. Each would direct a band, and speak to his or her fellows, for thus were the wars of the Inapt conducted back in the days of great magics.

And Argastos turned to her and smiled, lifting his helm to his head. ‘You do not want to see this,’ he told her. ‘What is a battle, after all? And this battle, above all others, with no quarter given, no mercy, no call to hold until we had driven the Worm entirely from the land. And even then, even then they would not yield, but massed in their underground fastnesses and swore vengeance. And try as we might. . what could we do, other than what we did?’

She found him again, seated on a fallen tree and staring at a hole in the ground.

A change had come over him in however long the battle had lasted. His armour was battered, scales cracked and lost, and his helm had lost its crest. His robe was torn, and she saw a wound in his shoulder, now patched over with a poultice in the style of Moth medicine. The real change was in his face, though, and she wondered how many years the battle could have taken, to leave him looking so drawn and lined.

But his pale eyes discerned her, despite the fact that she was not there. ‘What else can we do?’ he asked. ‘Even now, my fellow war leaders consider my proposal. But we must win. We must have outright victory, or what was it all for?’

The hole was ten feet across and rimmed with stone, she saw, and there were soldiers there — the mixture of kinden that she had seen before. Even as she watched, some were descending — flying or climbing as their Art permitted — and others were emerging. She knew, by that same dream logic by which all knowledge came to her here, that there was still fighting taking place below, that the Worm was holding out, just as Argastos had said, and planning its return.

‘They would make us all like them,’ Argastos explained. ‘That is what they want, just segment after identical segment of a single whole, until they become the entire world.’

A small group was approaching him now, and Che studied them. Leaders, warlords and great magicians, surely: a Moth woman in a silver skullcap who must have been a Skryre; a Dragonfly prince; a Spider Arista; a Mosquito with a fluid red birthmark blemishing his pallid forehead; a Mantis Weapons-master, with a brooch that would hardly have changed by Tisamon’s day, though everything else about them was made unfamiliar by all the years that stood between their time and hers. At the back, poling himself along with a staff, another of the ponderous Masters of Khanaphes, this one a stranger to her. The mighty and powerful of this early age, and yet their attitude to Argastos was one of wary deference.

‘War Master,’ said the Moth, ‘we have thought on what you say.’ Her face was twisted with uncertainty, doubts bubbling to the surface and about to be raised, but a hand raised by Argastos brought silence.

‘Give me another option,’ he challenged them. ‘Show me another way that does not leave the Worm free to return. I will not repeat the slaughter of this war, nor would I wish it on the future.’

‘The cost,’ the Dragonfly observed. ‘You do not just condemn the Worm. Think of their slaves — and those of our own people trapped below. .’

‘And yet the more we send to rescue them, the more we lose in trying to fight the Worm on its own ground,’ Argastos replied flatly. ‘I know. Nethonwy is down there, my closest counsellor, lost trying to free her kin from the yoke of the Worm. Do not think that I don’t know, but there is no other way — and now, whilst the magicians of the Worm are weak, and cannot prevent us.’ He stood up suddenly. ‘And they gain in strength even now. We all realize this.’

They were all of them unhappy, but Che could feel them yielding to his logic. In war, sometimes one must do terrible things, but she knew that what they would enact now would be the most terrible thing of all: a magical violation of the world never before seen, never attempted since, that would make the harrowing of the Darakyon seem like a handful of dust in comparison. In this age, with magic waxing at its highest and these great practitioners banded together — at no other time in history could such a thing have been done.

And, hearing her thoughts, Argastos looked from his allies back to her and said, ‘Be grateful, then, for that.’

The world around them was fading out, as though a curtain had been drawn over the sun. The others — those magicians of the elder days — withdrew into the gathering shadows, falling back into a history that had forgotten them, until she stood alone before Argastos in utter darkness, and her night-seeing Art could find nothing to relieve it.

‘You sealed them off,’ she accused him. ‘You stopped up their tunnels and buried them, is that it?’

He regarded her, at once imperious and tragic and damned. ‘Bury the Worm? Bury those that live in the earth? And how would that have helped? They were sovereign lords of their realm, as we discovered when we tried to bring the war to them. They knew that, even if we had defeated them beneath the sun, we could not hope to triumph below. They knew that all they had to do was wait. There would always be another chance.’

Che searched his face, trying to elicit some truth from it — from that image of himself that he chose to show her. Had he been a good man? He had been courageous and strong, she guessed, but those qualities were independent of vice or virtue. What alternatives did they actually try, before resorting to their ultimate sanction?

‘Oh, you censure me, Cheerwell Maker,’ he said softly. ‘You pass judgement on the victories that made your whole world possible. You cannot imagine the hate, though. You cannot know how they hated us — all of us, every kinden other than their own. Your Wasp Empire would seem a kindness compared to the Worm.’

‘And yet they were human, a whole kinden, men, women and children — and slaves, too. And you killed them all.’

His face was a cipher. ‘But we did not kill them, Cheerwell Maker. We rid the world of them, but we did not kill them. They are still there — or whatever they have become in their long centuries of exile. You cannot bury the Worm, so we enacted our ritual of last resort. We took their domain and everything in it — the Worm and their slaves and all those we had sent down and who could not return — and we excised them from the world entirely. We folded the weave of the cosmos around them and seared the join shut. And, as they had always wanted to be sole masters of creation, we gave them what they wished. We made their realm its own separate and sealed creation. We removed them from the world.’

Che felt that she should make some remark about how impossible that surely must be, but instead she found herself understanding the principle. The strength required to accomplish it, she could not guess at, but the magician in her recognized the theory behind it to be sound.

‘Such power it demanded, and the war itself had already cost so many lives, and our guilt regarding so many lost beneath the earth — lost through our own ritual. . Perhaps that was when the world began to turn, the magic to fade from it. The grand alliance between the great powers broke up almost immediately. Some never recovered: the Woodlouse-kinden abandoned their domains and retreated to their rotting heartland. The Khanaphir were already failing. There was civil war amongst the Spider-kinden. My people’s doom came slower, for they had taken upon themselves the mantle of protector of the world, and in that cause they would fight slow-burning wars against many of their erstwhile allies, confident in their vision of a better future. Except it was not their future they were fighting to bring about — it was yours.’ And he said this with no rancour, without any bitterness at all.

‘And you?’ she asked him. ‘Where were you in all this?’

He laughed, without much humour. ‘Watch.’

She was further off now, watching the next proceedings from the trees — not quite the tangled, knotted old woodland that the Nethyen and their neighbours called home in her time, but a younger, greener place, more innocent to her eyes. She wondered if all the world had been that way once, before the Inapt and later the Apt had come, to corrupt and to despoil it.

In front of her was a clearing, and she saw quite a crowd gathered about a mound. Ant-kinden workers were busy laying stone slabs over it, as though trying to armour the earth itself. She saw a gaping mouth there, a gap that was being turned into a door.

‘They tore down Argax, my beloved hall.’ The voice of Argastos sounded clearly in her mind, though he was nowhere near her. ‘They broke it apart, timber by timber, and they brought its golden gates here, where they had raised this abomination of a barrow over the Great Seal — the key Seal that kept the Worm forever elsewhere. It was necessary, they claimed. After all that had been lost, after all we had done, they could not risk some fool breaking the Seal and letting them out.’ His voice had changed, grown older, bitter and angry.

She saw them there: a score or more of Moths in their grey robes, and at least twice that number of Mantis-kinden. The latter were armed and armoured, just as they had been on the battlefield, and yet there was a terrible air of defeat hanging about them, also dread. Even as she watched, they were filing into the mound, one by one.

‘My people, my followers,’ Argastos whispered. ‘Betrayed, as I was betrayed, sacrificed to keep me company in my vigil. So necessary, they insisted, and all the while I looked into their minds and saw how they simply wanted rid of me, because of what we had done. I was too great a reminder of the lengths we had gone to, in order to win the war.’

And Che watched Argastos, in bright, unblemished mail, turn to face those other Moths, and she watched as his shoulders slumped, and then he turned and stepped into darkness.

‘They left me no choice,’ continued the voice in her mind.

She watched the great gates being raised, with their scales of gilded wood gleaming in the sun, and she knew that Argastos and his followers had been bound, within the heart of the hill, bound over the Seal of the Worm for all time. After that, the Moths had gone some way towards removing his name from any histories the outside world might uncover. And he was still there — still here — even in this late age when hardly anyone even remembered his name.

And the vision faded once more, leaving her again in that vacant blackness with Argastos.

‘And here you are,’ he remarked and, knowing what she did, she could read any amount of terrible intentions in those elegant features.

‘Do you mean to break the Seal, after all this time?’ she asked. It seemed the natural way for him to punish those that had turned on him.

‘No!’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Of all things not that — not after the cost that we all paid. Not after the friends I lost — the friends I had to abandon because they had gone below and never returned. But I will escape this place, believe me. I will be avenged.’

A sudden thought occurred to her. ‘And you’re showing all of this to her as well, aren’t you?’ There was no need to specify whom she spoke of.

Argastos’s smile should have pleasant, but it sent a shudder down Che’s spine.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘When wooing two sisters, it is not gallant to show a preference, after all.’

‘When what?’ she demanded, but he was already walking away, and she had no way of following him into the void.

‘We will speak again, in the flesh. You have seen what you must, in order to know the justice of my cause. Now I shall show you what they left me with!’

Then he was gone: a sudden flurry of robes and he had become part of the darkness. And, with a sudden start, Che awoke.

Thirty-One

She woke with a start just as someone virtually kicked in the door of the infirmary. All around her people were jolting awake, and those that could do so were already reaching for weapons that weren’t there.

‘Taki!’ Her name. There were other names, too — at least half a dozen Company soldiers had burst in, each seeking someone else, and she recognized most of those names because they were pilots — the ones who had escaped the swarm, either with their Stormreaders or without.

‘Here.’ She had been almost dead from exhaustion by the time she regained the city — her Art had not proved strong enough to carry her the whole distance and she had dropped to the ground virtually within arm’s reach of the walls. They had carried her in, and the time from then until now was a haze of half-waking, of doctors, of nightmares of tearing mandibles and thrusting stings.

The soldier before her looked about sixteen and bore the sash of the Students. ‘Can you fly?’ he demanded, without introduction.

The impact of her ordeal showed in her initial assumption that he was referring to her Art, but who would be asking after that? ‘I can pilot a Stormreader, if that’s what you mean.’ She got her legs over the side of the bed, feeling each muscle and joint resist her, and hoped her words were true.

‘Then you’re needed,’ the boy continued, and she was struck by the discontinuity of him speaking to her as if he was a blunt veteran.

‘The Farsphex are back? They’re bombing the city? What’s the situation there?’

Something in his face caved then, under the weight of everything she did not know. He had not expected to be the one to tell her.

He told her it all, and she just sat there, aghast. All around her, the news was spreading through the infirmary — and through the city, no doubt. How many would refuse to believe it? How many would be secretly relieved?

‘So what the piss do you want from me?’ she spat bitterly. ‘You want me flying loop-the-loops over the Second Army’s triumphant entry into the city?’

‘We want you out of the city, because your name is included on their list as an enemy of the Empire,’ the student told her flatly. ‘And we want you flying escort for if they come after.’

‘After? Look, did nobody tell you how to put your thoughts in order over at the College?’ But she was already scrabbling for her clothes and not finding them, standing wearing nothing but a shift before this adolescent, and she did not care, and he did not even blink at it. ‘Piss on it, get me some artificer’s overalls, at least. And some sort of goggles. What time is it?’

‘Three past midnight, and a half. There are Farsphex over the city, but we’ve a flight of Stormreaders ready to go up, enough to shield an airship. Everyone who we reckon’s on the Empire’s list, we’re trying to get them to Sarn.’

‘One airship?’

‘We have eleven Stormreaders able to fly, all with the new clockwork so they can last to Sarn,’ he told her. She did the calculations herself and nodded. Touch and go, if the Farsphex were up for it. Two airships would be indefensible, just handing the Empire an easy kill.

‘I’ll fly,’ she told him. ‘Get me something to wear and get me to an orthopter.’

Space aboard the Windlass had already run out. Jons Allanbridge had emptied his hold of everything but the water barrels in order to stuff people in, calculating weights and flight tolerances with each new passenger. His vessel was larger than its predecessor, but even so it had never been intended for bulk. He traded in small-volume valuable goods.

He had some of the Assemblers on board — a fraction of the number who had actually wanted to come, and only those who had played a significant part in the city’s defence. He had a similar slice of the College’s staff, mostly those who possessed artificing knowledge that nobody wanted the Empire getting hold of. The number turned away by the Company soldiers was large, so there was still an angry, frustrated crowd of the great and the good and the learned milling around the airfield, getting in everyone’s way.

The next figure was ascending, just as Jons guessed he had got as many down below as he could. The woman clambering up the rope ladder now — rather than waiting for the airfield’s hoist crane to swing up its platform — was well known to him.

‘Commander Kymene,’ he noted.

The Mynan leader did not refuse his hand, once she got to the rail, although he had thought she might. Now he saw her close up, she appeared as though she had already been under the Wasp interrogators for a week, bruised and tired and drawn.

‘My people.’ Her voice came in a rasp.

‘All on board, those who’ve come to me.’ There had been an outcry amongst those denied passage when they found that every surviving Mynan was getting out of Collegium on the Windlass, a substantial proportion of Allanbridge’s living cargo, standing virtually shoulder to shoulder below and a good dozen above decks still. It had been the whispered words of Stenwold Maker, Jons had heard, that had settled the matter. He had observed that, to the Wasps, Mynans were rebellious slaves, and that meant the crossed pikes for every single one — and probably worse for Kymene herself. Had anyone else advanced this argument, Jons guessed the Mynans would have been told to take their chances, but Maker’s will still bore just enough weight to carry the vote.

And where the pits is the man himself? For the War Master’s name most certainly headed up the list of passengers, but still he stayed away. False heroics, or. .? Not something Jons wanted to think about, but he’d heard how Maker was playing cards with death just about now, winning some hands and losing others.

Kymene stomped past him, then halted. ‘How long?’ she demanded.

‘Ask the Empire,’ Jons replied shortly. ‘Once they start paying notice, then we get the Stormreaders in the air and get moving. Or a single incendiary could end all our plans, right off.’

Her curt nod told him that she understood him perfectly.

And here was another row erupting on the approaching hoist platform — someone trying to bully their way on to the ship, no doubt, with their money or their College accredits or. .

The crane swung the hoist round, with them still arguing loudly, and Jons saw it was a small Beetle man in artificer’s canvas that looked as though he had been toiling in it for two days straight, and a woman with him holding a girl of no more than ten in her arms.

Willem Reader, Jons identified the man as the aviation artificer. How tired must I be that it even took me that long?

Reader had been arguing, but not on his own behalf, for he was very plainly marked as a man to be kept out of the Empire’s hands. Instead, he had been trying to get away from the Windlass, and indeed the two Company soldiers on the hoist alongside him seemed more a guard than an escort.

It was the woman’s voice that Jons heard most clearly, as the hoist reached the deck.

‘You’ll go,’ she told him. ‘Will, it’s not me the Engineering Corps will be hunting, to get at what’s in your head. It’s not me that the Sarnesh will need to modernize their air power. We’ll stay here, and we won’t even look the Wasps in the eye, and I’ll tell her every night that you’re coming back, and bringing an army with you. Look at me, Will!’

The Windlass was already groaning at the seams with its cargo, and all the Collegiates below decks had loved ones that they had been forced to part from. No exceptions, Jons knew, and he shook his head shortly when Reader looked to him.

‘Jen. .’ Reader managed.

‘Go,’ she told him, clasping him tightly, and then giving him a shove that propelled him onto the deck of the Windlass.

‘Get below, Reader,’ Jons snapped at the artificer, wondering if even one more man would fit. But then Kymene was shouting a warning, just as the hoist platform began to swing away.

Jons’s head snapped up. Engines — orthopter engines, but the Stormreaders’ clockwork didn’t make anything like so much noise.

‘Empire!’ Kymene was now yelling.

Oh, hammer and tongs. Jons found he could not move, hearing only the diving descent of the Farsphex, hearing the sudden panic in the crowd, waiting for the bombs.

The roaring sound peaked, and he saw sparks fly, heard screams from the crowd, the angry stammer that was a rotary piercer spun up to full speed. Then splinters flew from the deck, and one of the Mynans jerked and pitched over the rail.

‘Jen!’ Reader was shouting, and Jons bellowed at him to get below, He was calling to cast off before feeling the lurch of the deck beneath his feet — comforting even as it sent him staggering — knowing that someone on the ground had had the sense to cut the mooring ties. He had a brief glimpse of the hoist platform as it slipped past, Jen Reader standing there with the two Company soldiers flanking her, her daughter in her arms, watching the airship swiftly ascend.

The first Stormreader skittered past, looping about the Windlass’s envelope to engage the Farsphex — And how many holes did they punch in the canvas, eh? He thrust the thought away and bent to his task, gauging the wind and bringing his ship around on a course that would take them to Sarn. More of the orthopter escort were lifting past him now, and he could see flashes out in the night as they threw themselves at the handful of Farsphex that had located them. Kymene and a few of her Mynans had even taken to the Windlass’s rails with snapbows, providing a desperate last line of defence if it was needed.

Jons looked back, and down, seeing his city diminishing and becoming something less, until the night had swallowed it entirely.

Three streets away stood the wall, where the black and gold flag was already raised, indicating that segment of Collegium’s shell that was already claimed by the Empire. The nearest buildings had rapidly been abandoned by their owners: the merchants, artisans and their families fleeing the reach of the Wasps. Now only soldiers of the Fealty Street Company kept watch, awaiting dawn and the formal surrender.

And there remained one other man, on the roof of this one townhouse: a poor and ill-kept building, the shame of the neighbourhood, the dilapidated exterior of which bomb scars had barely managed to disfigure.

The battered little automotive pulling up outside it had a clockwork engine badly in need of maintenance, the gear trains clattering and ratcheting against one another, sounding on the point of working loose. The driver in his open cab was a Sarnesh in a Student Company sash. Behind him was a tailgated flatbed, hooded with canvas stretched over a looped metal frame.

As the engine was hacking to a halt, Laszlo put his head out and glanced around. There had been a rumour of Wasp death-squads stalking the streets, winged soldiers creeping into the city to kill anyone they found. Or else Spiders with their stealthy blades, come to exact a final price before the surrender. The city was alive with fear tonight.

He hopped over towards the peeling door and hammered on it, keeping one eye still on the sky. On the second repetition another Fly appeared in the doorway, brandishing an uncocked crossbow and looking furious. ‘What is this riot? Are we come to this already? Be off with you!’ His clothes were plain but impeccably neat, his face blotchy and red-eyed.

‘Where’s Drillen?’ demanded Laszlo. ‘We’ve got an airship to catch, and he’s supposed to be on it.’

The Fly at the door stared at him for a moment. ‘You’re Maker’s man? Laszlo?’ His eyes flicked towards the automotive. ‘Oh, no. .’ In a moment he was out into the street, wings taking him to the covered rear of the automotive, peering into the gloom until he locked eyes with the half-supine form of Stenwold Maker.

‘War Master? You must get yourself to the Windlass!’ he exclaimed.

Stenwold hissed in frustration and rasped out. ‘And so must your master, Arvi. Where the pits is he?’

Jodry Drillen’s secretary shook his head. ‘You can’t be here! I sent the message myself! Please, just go!’

‘I’ve had no message. I’ve been to every place Jodry owns in the city, save this,’ Stenwold rasped. ‘He’s here, isn’t he? Then go and get him. We can still get aloft.’

‘War Master,’ Arvi told him solemnly, ‘he’s not going.’

There was a ghastly, strained silence, and then a sudden clang as, with one convulsive movement, Stenwold kicked the tailgate open.

‘Mar’Maker, no. He’s right, we’ve got to go,’ Laszlo insisted, but Stenwold heaved and dragged himself to the edge. His Ant-kinden driver had dashed round the side by then to support his weight, so that he ended up on his feet at the back of the automotive, gasping, clutching at a stout stick to steady himself but plainly only held up by the Art of his helper.

‘If he won’t come. . to me,’ he wheezed out, ‘then I will. . go. . to him.’

Arvi watched him, aghast, as he lurched through the door and inside, leaning on stick and driver at every heavy step.

‘Where?’ came the War Master’s whisper, with a frustrated sigh when Arvi indicated the stairs. Before Stenwold could brace himself for the climb, though, the ponderous figure of Jodry Drillen began descending, regarding his old friend and ally with inordinate sadness.

‘Stenwold, get to the airship.’

Stenwold’s reply was lost, but Laszlo translated: ‘Soon as you get in the automotive, he says.’

Halfway down the stairs, Drillen sat. ‘I’ve given it some thought, Sten. It’s not going to happen. I’m Speaker, after all. I brought us all to this, as much as anyone did. . yes, don’t flatter yourself, just as much as you. When the word of our surrender goes out to the Wasps at dawn, I’ll take it myself.’

Stenwold’s spitting remonstrance was all but inaudible, but it needed no translation.

‘Oh, maybe, maybe,’ the Speaker for the Assembly confirmed tiredly. ‘But maybe not, after all. And if I go myself, and give myself into their hands, then perhaps it will soften the blow for the rest of the city. Perhaps I’ll be able to achieve something that way.’ He shook his head, his jowls quivering. ‘There’s always a first time.’

Stenwold looked up at him, fighting for breath. ‘You utter fool,’ he got out.

‘That’s just the standard of debate I should expect from a firebrand like you.’ Jodry forced a smile. ‘Now get gone. We don’t know what they’ll do with me, but you’ve been on the Rekef’s list since before the first war. Get out of my house, Sten. Get out of my city, for that matter. Piss off to Sarn, why don’t you?’

‘Come on, Mar’Maker,’ Laszlo insisted. ‘You know he’s right.’

Stenwold’s face twisted for a moment, but it was not clear whether it was sentiment or the continuing effects of the physicians’ alchemy that was responsible. ‘See you again, Jodry,’ he managed, as the Ant-kinden began to manhandle him back towards the door.

‘Of course you will,’ Jodry agreed hollowly. ‘Go carefully, Sten.’

They were halfway to the airfield when they heard the Farsphex engines, but none of them drew the right conclusion until the driver ground the automotive to a skidding halt. There, lifting from the city ahead, was the grey shadow of the Windlass, the fleeter shapes of the Stormreaders wheeling all around it. Gone, and already drawing the notice of the Empire with its departure.

Stenwold drew a ragged breath when the driver told him. Other than that, the news seemed unable to injure him more than he was damaged already.

Laszlo, ever resourceful, was leaning over beside their driver, giving urgent directions.

‘We’re getting clear, Mar’Maker!’ he shouted. ‘Never you worry.’

They rattled through the dark streets of Collegium, away from the Empire-held gate, for the harbour, with Laszlo all the while flitting from Stenwold back to the driver, babbling reassuring optimism whilst trying to calculate just what decisions might have been made in his absence, especially once the Farsphex started flying.

And when they reached the docks, and when the driver had brought them to a stop, Laszlo dropped out from the automotive and simply stood there, looking out to sea. Not a ship was in, not a single one. Most certainly not the Tidenfree.

For once in his life, Laszlo had no words, and he felt tears welling up — not adult tears but those of a child abandoned. He folded slowly to his knees, fighting to keep a hold on himself. The orthopters. . He had known that attack from the air was what Tomasso had feared most, and that the Tidenfree would be easy prey for incendiaries from above. He had known all that and, when he had gone to help Stenwold, he had been warned of just that. And he had ignored it because, of course, they would not go without him.

If he squinted, he could make out a sail far out on the waves. Maybe he could fly the distance, if they were making poor headway. Maybe he could chase after them and call them back. Maybe he could make everything right again. Even as he had the thought, the Tidenfree slipped further and further away.

He knew the other gates to the city were already blockaded by Imperial and Spider troops, and anyone trying to escape the city would get a snapbow bolt for his pains — as some had already found out.

Laszlo slumped into the automotive as the driver called, ‘Where next?’

Where indeed? He met Stenwold’s eyes, hearing his short, painful words.

‘Get us back to the College,’ Laszlo translated. Where else was there?

He had kept watch through the last hour of the night from the roof of this rundown little house. Not his own grand townhouse, close to the College, which everyone knew as the home of Jodry Drillen. This ramshackle place, kept in careful disorder, which he disappeared to when he was ducking official business or keeping clandestine assignments. Or he had done, when he was younger, and less a prisoner of his own sagging flesh.

Now he stood up and went downstairs into the house itself, calling for his secretary.

Arvi appeared, looking as though he was already attending Jodry’s funeral, and the Speaker for the Assembly scowled at him. ‘Nobody has any faith,’ he muttered. ‘Get my Assembly robes, will you? Might as well make a good impression.’ And that was not just provincial Lowlander thinking, either. The robes of an Imperial diplomat might be edged in black and gold, but even they were modelled on the Collegiate Assembly’s particular style. We have led the world in times of peace, he reflected. Could we have done more with that influence? He thought of Eujen Leadswell, unregarded demagogue and chief officer of the Student Company. He would say yes to that, and perhaps he was right, after all. Our chosen path doesn’t seem to have brought us anywhere useful.

By that time, Arvi had attired him as a man worthy of his position, every fold and drape immaculate, Jodry was embarrassed to hear the normally unflappable little man snivelling as he did so.

‘Now get off to your family,’ he directed.

‘My mother died two years ago, Master,’ Arvi reminded him in a shaky voice.

‘Of course she did, I’m sorry. Get to. .’ Jodry found that the world had become a place short of safe harbours. ‘I don’t know. You’ll be all right. Even the Wasps value a good secretary.’

‘I wouldn’t,’ the Fly-kinden hissed, horrified.

Jodry didn’t have the energy to argue with him. ‘I’d write you a reference, but I don’t imagine that would do much good. For what it’s worth, you’ve been a useful fellow to have around.’

Arvi had stepped back, and was staring at his feet, as if not trusting himself to reply, whereupon Jodry gave a great sigh and stepped out of the house, into the grey dawn air.

The walk, the few streets to the gate, seemed the longest of his life. Emerging from the buildings out onto that square was almost too much for him. The bodies of the previous day’s fighting had been taken away, but three Sentinels kept silent watch, like monumental effigies in steel. Above them, the top of the wall was now lined with Wasp-kinden soldiers, snapbows at the ready, hundreds of them, and all with their eyes fixed on him. There were more at ground level, men in heavier armour, with spears shouldered, stepping out from the gate’s shadow cautiously, to watch this one fat old Beetle-kinden man approach them.

Jodry fought to retain his dignity, that smooth progress that was the mark of a confident, self-contained man. He kept his head high, meeting their massed gaze as best he could. For all that his feet wanted to slow down as he neared the Sentinels, he kept up a steady but unhurried pace.

Then the leftmost Sentinel moved, just a fluid, irritable shifting of its legs. He jumped back with a brief cry of alarm, and a ripple of derisive jeering coursed across the wall top.

The armoured infantry had meanwhile formed two lines, an honour guard of sorts, funnelling him into the gatehouse. With a deep breath, Jodry approached them, feeling his heart knocking harder and harder in his chest, his guts turning to water. They had such hard, pale faces! Surely even the Felyen had been gentler of aspect when they marched off to their deaths.

He halted. He could not help himself. He could see through the gate now to the far side, to the camp of the Second Army, the thousands that backed up the hundreds already on the wall. His eyes sought some sign from the soldiers beside him, but they seemed to be staring past him, waiting for him to step within.

I could just walk away. But he felt they would shoot him for cowardice if he did.

Mustering his courage, gathering great handfuls of it and clutching it to him, Jodry walked through the gate of his own city, and into the enemy’s camp.

Some manner of officer approached him, and he called out, ‘I bring the word of the Assembly!’ The Wasps all around him seemed so different from his own people, such a fierce warrior breed, that he almost felt that they would not understand human speech.

‘With me,’ the officer said. ‘You’re expected.’ And he was already marching off at a pace that made Jodry hustle to keep up, out of breath after only half a dozen steps.

General Tynan met him in a tent, perhaps the finest that Jodry had ever seen, multi-roomed, its heavy fabric woven with gold thread. It seemed more opulent by far than the house he himself had spent a sleepless night in. Possibly it was worth more, too.

The Wasp general wore armour, and presented a surprisingly down-to-earth figure: just a bald, ageing soldier after all, with a few scars and a steady gaze, sitting on a camp stool. Before him was a folding table on which paperwork sat half completed, reservoir pen only now laid down, as though the master of the Gears was just some quartermaster’s clerk. Or, perhaps, the Speaker for the Assembly.

The woman beside him provided all the glamour he lacked, elegantly beautiful in armour of white-dyed leather ornamented with gold arabesques, and Jodry knew that this must be Mycella of the Aldanrael, the Spiderlands Arista. A heavily armoured Spider man stood at her shoulder, staring at Jodry as though his bulk hid a team of assassins. At Tynan’s shoulder was another Wasp officer, a colonel but with some corps insignia that Jodry could not place.

‘My name is Jodry Drillen,’ he began, keeping his voice admirably calm. ‘I am the Speaker of the Assembly, duly elected by the will of the people of Collegium, and come here to answer your demands.’

‘Of course you are.’ Tynan did not seem surprised. ‘No War Master Maker this time?’

Jodry shrugged. ‘The Assembly has voted to accept your generous offer, General. With no war, why would we need a War Master?’ He held his breath at his own flippancy, but Tynan grudged him a small smile.

‘We will begin moving our troops in to secure the city immediately, then. I trust that the Assembly’s decision has been fully communicated to your citizens? Anyone who decides that their personal war is still ongoing will find the repercussions wide-ranging. I’m glad,’ he added quietly. ‘I would rather lives had been spared by your accepting my offer before the walls, but this is better than nothing. You have spared your city a great deal.’

And your army, too, Jodry thought but did not say. Does he know how I argued against it? He had a bleak certainty that the name of every speaker at that ragged Assembly was in the books of the Rekef already. ‘If I may speak, General. .’

Tynan’s eyes slid over to the Aldanrael woman, and they obviously shared some understanding denied to him, before the general nodded for him to continue.

‘I thought,’ he said, irritated by the nervousness in his voice, which had never let him down before, ‘that I would offer myself as a go-between. Now you are masters of Collegium, after all, you will want someone. . who knows how it all works.’ His voice trailed off on seeing Tynan’s expression, and mostly because there was more pity in it than anything else. The general leant back to make some murmured enquiry of the colonel at his shoulder, but the Spider Arista was still studying Jodry carefully.

‘My son mentioned you in his last report, Master Drillen,’ she said briskly, and it took Jodry an unaccustomed moment to work out what she meant. But, of course, she was here to avenge both the turning back of her armada and the death of her child Teornis, whom Stenwold had killed in Princep.

Jodry made himself lift a polite eyebrow. ‘And what did he write, my lady?’

‘He recommended keeping you alive, Master Drillen,’ Mycella explained. ‘I think he liked you. He was terribly sentimental, I’m afraid.’ She sighed. ‘The innocence of those days, had we only known.’

Tynan had now heard his colonel’s reply and turned back, face expressionless. ‘Your services will not be required. The Empire has appointed a new officer to command your Assembly, to better advise and assist our governance of the city in line with Imperial policy.’ He stood up, and Jodry took an involuntary step back, as though the general himself was going to put a sword in him. His back struck against the unyielding chill of armour, and he whirled round to find that there were a half-dozen soldiers inside the tent now, whom he had not even noticed entering.

He fought to recover his composure, but the same fear that had assailed him before the gatehouse was back with reinforcements. The faces of the soldiers, of the general and the Lady-Martial all seemed mere masks of human skin over something murderous. Or is it we in Collegium who have gone against human nature. Is their warlike drive the true humanity? Right now a single friendly Beetle face would be a blessedly welcome sight.

‘Cherten, let’s get this over with. Bring in the major,’ Tynan directed, and the colonel bowed and stepped past Jodry, heading out of the tent.

What are you going to do with me? But to ask that question would be to invite the answer, and Jodry had no wish to hear it. Instead, he just stood there and fought to keep back the terror that was stealing over him.

In almost no time, Colonel Cherten was back, followed by a man wearing the robes of the Empire’s Diplomatic Corps, that misleadingly Collegiate style recast in black and gold.

‘Why, hello, Jodry,’ said Helmess Broiler, with a smile that could cut glass.

Jodry nodded to him, managing that same cordial coldness with which he would have greeted the man in the Assembly. ‘Broiler.’

‘Who would have thought it,’ Helmess mused. ‘The votes are in and I was made Speaker, after all. Fancy that, eh?’

Tynan shifted slightly, and Jodry saw a moment of quickly stifled fright in Helmess’s eyes, before the man said, ‘Yes, General, you wished to see me?’

‘Major Broiler, a matter involving the Collegiate Assembly has come up,’ Tynan told him. To Jodry’s ear there was absolutely no liking for the turncoat Beetle in the general’s voice, but he knew that would not change anything. ‘Perhaps you have a solution?’

Helmess smiled — not even an unctuous, favour-currying smile but his usual avuncular beam, which had served him so well in Collegiate politics. ‘Why, certainly, sir. As you know, Master Drillen is near the top of the list of the Empire’s enemies. Under other circumstances I would expect him to be passed over to the interrogators to be examined on the wider capabilities of Collegium’s allies, news from Sarn and all the rest. However. .’ He turned that smile now on Jodry, who remained very still and did not look him in the eye. ‘In all honesty the man’s little more than a figurehead, and there are wiser men who know far more and who are already on our list.’

For a hollow moment Jodry found he had been given the unasked-for gift of hope. It was a poisoned gift, he knew, and yet he could not stop his heart leaping at it, just as Helmess must have expected.

‘I would suggest that Colonel Cherten’s staff turn their attention instead to his knowledge of those on our list whose whereabouts are unknown — a detailed and systematic inquiry as to who remains within the city, who has fled, and who was killed in the fighting. These details he will know, sir.’

Tynan stepped forwards, close enough for Jodry to reach out and touch him if he dared. His eyes flicked sideways at Cherten, who nodded minutely.

‘And then?’ the general asked.

Helmess’s face emptied of anything approaching common humanity. ‘Collegium needs to be sent a clear message, sir. I believe crossed pikes are traditional.’

Tynan studied him for a long while, and Jodry had every chance to decipher the minutiae of the man’s expression, to see just how much loathing the soldier felt for this traitor, however useful that betrayal had been. If Helmess had not been Cherten’s man, then Jodry would not have given a stripped gear for his chances.

At last: ‘Although their use has become somewhat widespread in recent years,’ the general declared, ‘the pikes are properly a punishment for those of the Empire who have turned against their masters: escaped slaves and rebellious generals alike.’ He looked Jodry in the eye. ‘But you’re right about sending a message. Some other means, then, quick but public.’

Helmess kept his face carefully empty of disappointment. ‘The Lady-Martial’s people use just such a method to dispose of their criminals,’ he observed.

Tynan nodded, still staring into Jodry’s face. His thoughts were plain: he respected Jodry’s coming in person to deliver the surrender, but he would do nothing to stop his people torturing and killing him. Indeed he would applaud it, because to him it was the right and necessary thing to do. Here was the Empire in miniature.

‘You’ll get nothing from me!’ Jodry bellowed, finding his voice at last as the soldiers took hold of him. Nobody was listening, though, as they hauled him out of the tent. Or perhaps only Helmess heard, as he followed the knot of men outside to watch Jodry depart, and stood grinning from ear to ear.

And, towards evening the same day, Helmess stood on the wall above the north gate, watching the tail end of the Second Army march into the city. There were soldiers on every rooftop now, watching out for trouble, whilst elsewhere the Company soldiers were surrendering their arms, no doubt desperately hoping that the Empire would keep its word. While Cherten’s interrogators had put Jodry on the rack, Helmess had stood here and watched the Empire’s vanguard entering the city. There had been quite a few there to watch, displaying the traditional Collegiate inability to stay away from anything that was happening, however appalling. The silence of that crowd had been deafening, and Helmess had made quite a study of their expressions as his people had witnessed the boots of the Empire march over their much-cherished freedoms.

He was glad to have Jodry beside him now, for one last put-down, before his work began.

‘“You’ll get nothing from me”,’ he mimicked. ‘Oh, I’ll wager they’d never heard that one before. And you squealed, you fat bastard. You broke and blubbered and told them everything they wanted. Of course you did.’

He took a deep breath, savouring the air. Tomorrow the Assembly would meet — his Assembly — and he would tell them how it was going to be. And there would be other duties, happy ones. He had some old friends to go and look in on, thanks to what Jodry had revealed.

Tonight, though, he would spend in the Empire’s camp, because the Wasp soldiers had fought hard to capture this city, and this was their night. Woe betide the taverner who tried to charge them for their wine. Woe to any woman who wanted to say no. Woe to Collegium, really, but hadn’t Helmess been warning them not to fight, all this time?

‘Just think if I had won at Lots and been made Speaker, how much of this could have been avoided?’ he asked Jodry aloud. ‘Just think how many of our people you got killed — you and Maker between you — just to bring us to this point after all.’

Beside him, with a tortured creaking, the massive corpse of Jodry Drillen revolved and swayed on the gibbet.