With Balkus lumbering behind him he set off back for the College. The big Ant was something of a mystery to him, being Scuto’s man, not Stenwold’s own. He knew him for a mercenary and yet the man had asked for no payment. That was either a happy turn of events or a suspicious one.
‘Tell me, Balkus, what’s in it for you?’ he asked boldly.
‘Don’t trust me, is it?’
Without even glancing around, still presenting his broad back to the theoretical knife, Stenwold shrugged. ‘It’s not a trusting business.’
‘That it’s not,’ the man agreed. ‘Look, I’m no hero, right? I plied my trade from Helleron down to Everis, and I must have signed on with everyone from crooks to Aristoi at one time or another. It’s a fine stretch of land thataways, so between Helleron and the Spiders there’s always work for a man like me. Wasps will change all that. A man like me under their shadow is either a slave waiting for the chains or he gets slapped with rank and papers and made to do their dirty work for them. If I’d wanted that I’d have stayed in Sarn.’
‘There are always frontiers,’ Stenwold pointed out. The white spires of the College were visible ahead now. ‘You could have just moved on.’
‘You’re trying to get rid of me?’
‘I’m curious, Balkus. If I’m going to rely on you, I need to know you. I know Scuto trusts you. So that’s a good start.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Stenwold heard an awkwardness in the Ant’s voice. ‘Scutes and me go way back. We used to take turns bailing each other out. This is . . . what, almost before you knew him. And some of the lads and lasses with him, they were fellows of mine, and a lot of them are just ash and dirt now. And you get to wondering how it’s going to be, you know.’
‘I do,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘Well don’t think you’re not appreciated. I saw you fight before the Pride. You did good work there.’
‘So did you, and your niece and a whole lot of them,’ Balkus agreed. ‘And some that didn’t leave that field alive either.’
They passed by the twin statues of Logic and Reason that adorned the east gate of the College. Stenwold paused a moment to rest a hand on Logic, carved as a female Beetle of mature years wielding a metal rod marked with the gradations of an artificer’s rule. The Great College was where learning was to be had here for the youth of all kinden and, while the rich paid their way, there were scholarships for the poor as well. The Moths might keep their secrets in the dark of their mountain fastnesses, but here learning was light to be spread to all corners of the world. There was nowhere else like it, and there never had been. And now the Wasps wanted to destroy it.
At the gates he turned to the Ant-kinden. ‘I have work for you. An opportunity.’
‘Name it,’ Balkus told him, and Stenwold did. From the man’s expression the duties outlined did not suit him, and it was a test, in a way, to see whether he would accept it. In the end he nodded, perhaps just because Ant-kinden were bred to take orders. With a final grimace and a shake of his head Balkus set off, heading away from the College.
Stenwold saw knots of students point him out as he entered. He was aware that, all unsought, he had a reputation within these grounds. He was considered a freethinker, apparently: he dared to teach that which the orthodox Masters of the College would not touch. He had been warning of the Wasp Empire for a decade now, and this very year they had finally come to the Lowlands. First they had competed at the Great Games, taking a pointedly diplomatic second place in any contest they chanced their hand at. Now the news was seeping in of armies on the move, the drums of war sounding from the east. Stenwold the panic-monger had become Stenwold the prophet.
There was a far greater murmur now as he crossed the College grounds, and all of a sudden he realized what it must mean. Concrete report must have come to Collegium that Tark had been attacked, that the invasion had actually started. He turned to look at all those young faces, and he saw hope and fear, doubt and admiration, all mixed in. Seeing him stop, many of them approached him, calling out questions.
‘Master Maker, where will the Empire go when Tark throws them back?’
‘Master Maker, how do they fight? Do they use auto-motives?’
‘What happens if they smash down the walls of Tark?’
This last question silenced them. It was something most of them had never considered, for a dozen Ant-kinden expeditions had been turned back by that city’s defences. The political balance of the Lowlands had been stagnant for generations. Change, on such a scale, was unthinkable.
‘If they take the city of Tark,’ Stenwold said, speaking quietly enough, but the silence hanging over the students was eerie, ‘they will come west.’ He knew that his words would be taken as truth by them, simply because he spoke them, but he knew that they were indeed true and so did not care. The girl who had asked the question pushed forward from her fellows.
‘But they can’t, surely? What do they want?’
He tried to place her. She had attended some of his history classes earlier that year. ‘Power. Control. Their Empire is like a spinning top that must keep moving lest it falls.’
‘But can’t we do anything?’ she asked. She was a young Spider-kinden, pretty without the cutting beauty that some of them possessed.
Achaeos’s words recurred to him. ‘What can be done, will be done,’ he said, and in that moment he placed her – placed her name, Arianna. A promising student, one with a lot of potential.
Four
The main difference between Wasp hospitality and Ant hospitality, Salma decided, was that Wasps could fly. When he had been locked up by the Wasps in Myna they had wrenched his arms behind his back and tied his elbows together with Fly-manacles so that he could not have manifested his Art-wings even if he had somewhere to go.
By contrast the Ants had now bound his hands before him and then slung him into a windowless, pitch-dark cell, and left him for what seemed like a day and a half.
The cell itself was too small to lie down straight in, also too low to stand up. He ended up hunched in one corner, trying to listen for any movement from without, but the cell was dug into the earth, with stone walls and a solid wooden door. Not an echo got through to enlighten him.
They gave him some water, stale-tasting, in a bowl he nearly upset trying to find it with his fingers. No food, though, which did not bode well. It suggested they were going to keep him around for a little while, but not for long.
He had protested, of course. The three prisoners had done their best to explain that they were not spies and that the Wasps were their enemies. The soldiers who had captured them had simply not been interested. They had a specific role and it did not include talking to prisoners. Nothing Salma or the others could say would make a dent in that.
He hoped that Totho and Skrill were doing better than he was, although it seemed unlikely.
Then he heard the hatch slide in the door, and he froze, wondering if there might be some opportunity here, but even if they opened the cell for him and he could somehow, with hands tied, overpower his jailers, then he would still be underground somewhere, and likely to be killed on sight after that.
Light beyond, dim lantern-light that seemed as bright as the sun to him, spilled across the cramped little space to climb the far wall.
There was the clank of a key in the lock and the heavy door was hauled open. Even as Salma got to his feet the world exploded, searing into his brain. He found that he had fallen onto his side, his hands up to shield his eyes. They had suddenly turned on some kind of lamp, some artificer’s thing, just as he had been looking straight at it. After so long in complete darkness his eyes burned and he felt tears course down his cheeks as two men lifted him to his feet and hauled him out of the cell.
By the time they found another place for him he could see again through watering eyes. He was in a starkly bare room, with a single slit window high up, illuminated by hissing white lamps burning on two walls. He turned to question one of the soldiers and the man punched him solidly belo
w the ribs, doubling him over. As Salma struggled to recover his breath, his wrists were hauled up and their bonds hitched over a dangling hook. He heard the rattle of chains and his arms were jerked abruptly over his head, yanking him onto his toes.
The two soldiers then stood back, clearly satisfied with their work. They could have been brothers to each other, and, equally, to the men who had captured him: short, solidly built types with flat, pallid faces and dark hair, dressed in hauberks of dark chainmail.
There was a single door to this room, and Salma eyed it as he waited for the interrogator to arrive, as he must. This position was intended to be painful, he guessed, but he could have stood on his toes for hours. His race owned a poise and balance that the Ants had never known. Salma allowed himself to relax into it, recovering from the knocks and scrapes of the last few minutes.
Lovely fellows, these Tarkesh. Remind me why we’re on their side again?
Of course that was the point. Nobody ever claimed the Lowlands were populated by paragons of virtue, only that the Lowlands free were of more service to the world than the Lowlands under imperial rule. This was doubly the case from Salma’s perspective, for if the Lowlands fell it would open to attack the entire southern border of his own nation, the Dragonfly Commonweal.
The door opened, at last, and a woman came in, a sister to the soldiers’ fraternity. She might have been some higher official than they but she wore chainmail just as they did, and carried no badge of rank. He supposed that they sorted all that kind of thing out in their heads, communicating it between their minds. Creeping in behind her was a Fly-kinden girl, no more than fourteen, who sat down by the door with scroll and poised pen. A scribe slave, Salma guessed.
‘Name,’ the interrogator said. Her tone gave the word no hint of questioning, just a flat statement.
Salma decided to be fancy. ‘Prince Minor Salme Dien of the Dragonfly Commonweal.’ The pen of the scribe scratched the words down without hesitation.
The Ant woman, however, looked unamused. ‘Do not play games with me. You must know that you are under order of execution.’
‘Because you think I’m a spy.’
‘You are a spy,’ she told him. ‘There can be no other reason for your skulking about to the north of our city where you were found. Tell us about your masters, then, their weapons and their military capacity, their tactics and weaknesses, and you might be allowed to serve Tark as a slave.’
‘I’m not with the Wasps,’ he insisted.
She pursed her lips and slipped something from her belt. It was a glove, he saw, with metal rivets studded across the knuckles, and she drew it on without ceremony.
‘I am indeed a spy, however,’ he said hurriedly and she raised an eyebrow, ‘but not for the Wasp Empire. But I do know something about them, and I’m more than willing to reveal to you all I know. They’re my enemies, too, and my people have fought them – I’ve fought them myself, been their prisoner, even.’
She seemed not to have registered most of what he said. ‘If not for the army currently beyond our gates, then which other city are you spying for? Kes would seem most logical.’
Salma had to think a moment before he recalled that Kes was yet another Ant city-state and the one closest to Tark.
‘I’m not spying for any of the Ant-kinden,’ he told her.
‘I fail to see any other option. Who else would profit from this situation?’
He looked into her bland, uninterested gaze. ‘I was sent here by Stenwold Maker: a Beetle-kinden, a Master of the Great College. He has been working against the Wasps for years, and he sent me and my companions just to observe and report back to him. His only interest – our only interest, is in stopping the Empire.’
‘We will stop this Empire,’ she replied, with a curl of contempt. ‘Why should some Beetle academic care?’
Salma knew that his next words might not help him, would in fact hurt him, so he tried to find another way of putting it, but he could not paint Stenwold as a Tarkesh sympathizer any believable way.
‘Stenwold Maker firmly believes that the Wasps will not be halted at the walls of Tark,’ he said quietly, and waited.
One of the soldiers actually strode forward to strike him for his insolence, but some unheard command of the interrogator turned him back.
‘Explain yourself,’ she said, still expressionless.
Salma took a deep breath. ‘The Empire has been expanding rapidly for two generations,’ he said. ‘They have met Ant-kinden before, and triumphed over them. You have proof of this, if you’ve even looked over your walls at the enemy. We ourselves saw Ant-kinden amongst them before your scouts took us. Not as mercenaries or allies, mind, but as slave-soldiers.’
She remained quiet for a moment, and he wondered what was now passing between her and her kin. ‘They have fought Ants, yes,’ she agreed at last. ‘They have not fought Tark.’
Salma tried to shrug, but couldn’t. ‘Whatever. Perhaps. Maybe you’ll just kick the dung out of them and they’ll go limping back east dragging their dead with them. If that happens, no one will be happier than I. But Stenwold fears otherwise. What else can I say?’
He knew that there was now a mental debate going on. The soldiers were in on it too, for he could see the interrogator’s eyes flicking between them. Perhaps in time the whole city would be arguing the merits.
Then the interrogator turned and left him without warning, her slave scribe hurriedly following. The soldiers hoisted him off the hook, and it was downwards all the way from there, back to the pitch-darkness of his cell.
Some time later, the extent of which he found impossible to judge, he heard them coming for him once more. On seeing there was light, Salma hid his eyes quickly behind his bound hands, in case they tried the same trick again.
‘Come out here!’ one of his guards barked roughly.
‘Not if you’re going to blind me again.’
He heard them coming into the cell and backed off, finally dropping his hands. The time had almost come for an escape attempt, he was thinking, however doomed to failure.
‘Now calm there! No need to turn this into a diplomatic incident!’ It was not an Ant voice, not even a Tarkesh accent. The leading soldier stepped to one side to reveal the ugliest Fly-kinden Salma had ever seen. Bald and broken-nosed, the little man looked him up and down critically.
‘I see our hosts here have been their usual warm-hearted selves,’ he said.
‘Are you a prisoner, too?’
‘I’m your ticket out of here, son.’
Salma’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re a slave-buyer?’
The Fly laughed loudly at that. ‘If I had that kind of money I wouldn’t be where I am now. No, I’m your secret guardian, boy, and I’m getting you free. Or at least as free as anyone around here is right now.’ Something glinted in his hands, and with a single twitch he had cut the bonds about Salma’s wrists. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’
He turned and left and, keeping a suspicious eye on the guard, Salma followed. The Fly might be small but he walked fast, so Salma had to jog to keep up with him.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘I’ve never liked repeating myself, so just let me get us safely into this room up here and I’ll spill all.’
Without warning the Fly took a sharp left and pattered up a flight of stairs. Salma, following, found himself in an antechamber with two of the familiar high-up windows and, more importantly, with Totho and Skrill.
He almost knocked the Fly over in his haste to get over to them. Skrill looked decidedly weary, while Totho had a fistful of bruises about his face and a split lip.
‘What’s going on?’ Salma hissed.
Totho shook his head. ‘I think this fellow here is about to explain.’
Then Salma saw there was another Ant in the room, a man of middle years who was regarding the three of them dubiously.
The Fly jabbed a finger towards him. ‘First,’ he said, ‘this is Commander Parops, into
whose custody you’re now being put.’
‘I thought you said we were free,’ said Salma.
‘You are but, just so you know, this is the man who gets it in the neck if you turn out to be something other than what you claim you are.’ As the Fly was explaining, the Ant officer gave him a wry look.
‘So who’s you then, little feller?’ Skrill interrupted.
The Fly gave her a crooked smile. ‘My folks called me Nero on that most auspicious day whereon I was born – and that’s all the name I’ve ever needed.’
‘I know that name . . .’ Totho said, and paused, trying to bring it to mind. Then: ‘Are you an . . . do you draw pictures?’
‘No, I do not draw pictures, I am in fact a particularly talented artist,’ Nero said, somewhat sharply. ‘More than that, I’m an old drinking pal of Stenwold Maker, and when Parops told me that was a name being passed along the grapevine, I decided I had better spring you, if only to see what kind of kiddies ol’ Sten’s using these days.’
‘Well, Master Maker sent us here to witness what happened when the Wasps attacked Tark,’ Totho explained. ‘We need to get out of the city and find a decent vantage point.’
Nero and Parops exchanged glances. ‘Son,’ the Fly said, ‘you’ve got yourself the best vantage you’re ever likely to get. You’re inside the city, the siege’s already started and nobody’s getting in or out.’
‘Your man,’ the Dragonfly woman declared, ‘is late.’
The old Scorpion-kinden scratched his sunken chest with a thumb-claw. ‘First off, lady, he ain’t my man. He’s just this fellow what fitted your call. Second off, he ain’t late – not in this business anyway. We ain’t all got clocks and motors.’
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