Edmon found his line, feeling himself drawn into place by sheer rage and hatred and desperation, and his piercers hammered back and forth, silvering the air between him and the Wasp with a lancing train of bolts. The Spearflight was more sluggish than he recalled them being, weighed down by the load of death it was carrying, and although its pilot tried to pitch it sideways to avoid his shot, Edmon held his place beautifully, neater than he ever had in training, seeing his bolts flay the enemy orthopter’s hooked tail, and then smash one of the wings to splinters, the Spearflight abruptly falling into a spin, out of control and plummeting.
He was already hauling back on the stick, forcing the Pacemark into a reluctant climb out of the sights of a notional enemy that turned out to be a real one. He felt a single solid impact somewhere behind him, the robust barrel of his craft’s hull earning its keep, and gyred his orthopter back across the breadth of Myna, avoiding shot and seeking a new target all at the same time, hoping that one of the others would spot his pursuer and put enough pressure on so that Edmon could escape. Bolts zipped past him to the right, and then above, so that he dropped from the climb, veering steeply right and downwards, then pulling up almost immediately, hoping to fool the Wasp into overshooting.
He glimpsed brief, mad snatches of the sky over Myna, the circling dots of other machines, more trios of Spearflights trailing their fiery cargoes. Some of the machines he spotted must have been Mynan, fighting as he was fighting. He had no idea how many had even made it into the air.
Another bolt struck, feeling as if it had come from directly behind, but he was casting the Pacemark about randomly enough for only the odd shot to reach him, not any kind of sustained burst. Even so, the Wasp was relentless, refusing to be thrown off. Edmon swung his orthopter back towards the Robannen Square airfield, in the hope of picking up reinforcements there. Even as he did, another Spearflight crossed his view ahead, and he managed to rake a dozen bolts across its hull as he fled onwards, seeing it falter but not quite fall.
The airfield was now completely ablaze, even the stone seeming to crackle furiously. The only Mynan machines were on the ground and half consumed. Another bolt clipped him, striking splinters from the rip of the cockpit.
He threw a lever to fold the Pacemark ’s hindwings down along the tail and dropped.
Follow me, will you, you bastard?
The wooden forewings were labouring, making heavy work of keeping the machine in the air at all. Abruptly his world was a hot glare, the air about him turned instantly to choking smoke.
The Spearflights used wood-framed silk for all four wings, that much he knew. Wood burned, but silk practically disintegrated in a flame.
He dropped, craning back for a second, looking for his enemy.
There! The Wasp was pulling out already, not so brave now he had an enemy he could not hide behind. Edmon closed his eyes for a second against the smoke, against the thought of burning to death, and pulled back hard, the forewings’ clatter reaching a new strained pitch. He was slow with just two wings, so slow he thought he might fall from the air entirely. Slow enough that the Wasp passed overhead and into his sights despite everything the Imperial pilot could do to try and prevent it.
Edmon released the Pacemark ’s hindwings and felt the sudden leap as his flier regained full use of the air, his piercer strafing across the Spearflight’s belly and tail, punching holes but striking nothing vital. Even so, the game had been turned right round, and now it was the Wasp’s turn to flee across the city, with Edmon in fierce pursuit.
The Pacemark ’s wings and body were smouldering, and it was touch and go whether the rush of wind would fan them or put them out. Then the other Spearflights were diving on him, and he had other worries.
Bolts skipped and danced all about him, as though he was flying through rain, and he tipped the Pacemark sideways, turning on the point of one wing just ten feet over the rooftops, then slinging the orthopter back towards the gates. The manoeuvre caught some of the Wasps off guard, or perhaps they simply had other priorities, but there were still three jostling behind him as he broke away across the city.
He felt at least two more impacts, but still the killing scythe of shot never quite found him. Had there been only two of them then he might not have lasted, but they were getting in one another’s way, coming perilously close to clipping each other from the sky in their eagerness to be the one that downed him. His mind was racing, seeing flashes in the corners of his eyes that could only mean more incendiaries falling on his city while he was harried out of the way, unable to defend his people.
He witnessed the moment that the enemy artillery found the walls.
He had lost track of the shelling, but abruptly the lone engine had found the range, and a moment later every one of the Empire’s far-off weapons had loosed. As he sent the Pacemark scudding along the line of the wall, there was an appalling series of cracks and flashes, stone-eater acid shells alternating with wall-cracker explosives. The Mynan defences held under the first thundering salvo, but Edmon knew that there were more coming, and the walls were old, still the same stones that had failed to keep the Empire out the first time.
Three bolts punched splinter-edged holes in his right fore-wing and another clipped his left shoulder, the pain brief and fierce, his teeth clenching. He tried slowing to make them overshoot, but they matched him speed for speed, and they could go slower than he could without stalling and dropping from the sky. Desperately he sent his vessel over the wall, dropping into its shadow for a brief respite, expecting to see the Imperial Light Airborne and ground forces already on the move.
They were not. They still sat well out of the reach of the Mynan wall engines, letting their machines carry the fight to Myna.
The shock of no army at the gates left him numb: the utter contempt for it, and all it said about the way the Wasps saw the attack, and his people. Not even worth drawing a sword over. Fury seized him and shook him in its jaws, and he fought the Pacemark round, believing in that moment that sheer anger would overcome aerodynamics to bring him face to face with the Spearflights. They stayed nimbly behind him, though he lost them their line on him, bolts flying wide as he threw his orthopter about the sky.
Then there was another flying machine cutting across him, not a Wasp craft, nor any he knew from Myna’s airfields. He had a brief glimpse of a small hull, a solitary pair of wings blurring about the hunch of its engine housing, and then one of the pursuing Wasp Spearflights jolted in the air, shuddering under piercer bolts, before coming apart as though someone had magically removed half the screws, as fragments of wing and body became a shattered cloud beneath the pounding.
The remaining two split up, one following Edmon relentlessly, the other rising to meet this new challenger. The little two-winged flier slid sidelong in the air, deft as a rapier, and the Spearflight that had been so agile behind Edmon now seemed to lumber past it like a fat man.
Then a scatter of bolts struck about the Pacemark, at least one holing the main hull before bounding from the engine housing to ricochet about inside. Edmon lost a few yards of height without meaning to, his wings stuttering awkwardly before finding their rhythm, and the Spearflight was stooping on him, driving him into the city wall, not letting him get clear.
For a moment, he and his antagonist were enveloped in fire and stone shards and acrid smoke as they ran the gauntlet of the Imperial artillery’s assault on the wall, cutting through it so fast that the dust scratched Edmon’s goggles, scored his skin raw and blasted the paint from his orthopter’s hull. Then he was out again and skimming the very top of the wall, the lancing silver lines of piercer bolts dancing back and forth as the Spearflight tried to pin him to the stones.
He saw what was ahead and yanked on the stick, feeling a juddering of new impacts, trusting to the Pacemark ’s robust hull to weather it.
Some Mynan artillerist was awake and ready. As Edmon hauled himself out of the way the wall engine he had nearly flown into had come about and, immediatel
y behind him, the Wasp orthopter flew into a wall of scrapshot, disintegrating instantly and utterly.
Free for a moment, Edmon turned the Pacemark back over Myna, trying to encompass all that he was seeing. There were isolated fires across the city, some in strategic areas, most others simply strewn randomly by inaccurate or capricious Wasp pilots. The walls and gate were under a solid, continuous pounding, but some of the Imperial siege engines had now started throwing incendiary shells deeper into the city.
Moments, it’s only been moments since the attack started. We’ve already lost.
He could feel the Pacemark ’s clockwork slowing, too many tight turns meeting damaged gear trains, and he knew he would have to find somewhere to set it down that was not on fire. In that moment he saw the strange orthopter again, coming in ahead and to the right, slowing to match his speed. He caught the brief flash of a heliograph, but had to wait for the message to be repeated before he saw the pilot was signalling a need to land as well.
But the Wasps… He looked around him, but the skies were almost clear. The Wasp pilots had taken their craft back to camp for refuelling, he guessed. The artillery was keeping their work warm for them while they rested.
He did not want to land. He did not want to face the enormity of what was happening to his city, to find out how many of the faces he had seen only this morning were lost forever. The mechanical demands of the Pacemark were becoming more insistent, however, and he let the orthopter drop lower, heading for whichever airfield seemed the most intact.
Twelve
Sartaea te Mosca was someone who could not help but play hostess wherever she ended up. It seemed an odd trait to bring with her from the severe Moth-kinden who had trained her in the ways of a seer, but the Antspider wondered if that was because they had treated her like a servant while she was there. Everyone knew a great deal about the standards of equality and the social hierarchy amongst Beetle-kinden of various cities, or the Wasps of the Empire, or even the Spiders, or so they told themselves. The Moth-kinden, for all they had ruled this quarter of the world some centuries back, were a stubborn mystery, and that was perhaps the one topic that te Mosca was never open about.
They were at Mummers’s studio again, and Raullo himself was having one of his bad days, meaning that it was past noon and he was still stuffed into the small alcove he slept in, sweating and twitching and turning over fitfully, a shabby curtain serving to partition his little space of despair from the rest of the room and fend off the sun’s encroachment. He had been angling for a big commission, the others knew, working night and day for it, repapering his walls with preliminary sketches and part-colour studies, but his patron had abruptly turned him down, or changed his mind, or even left the city. This last month it had been hard for an artist to make any kind of living. People were clinging to their money, waiting to see which way the future would jump. Besides, there was not as much money in Collegium as there used to be, after all the rebuilding following the last war. Nobody was going hungry, but everyone’s belt was just that little bit tighter these days. Art was a luxury that fewer people could afford, and Raullo was suffering from it.
It had been a few days since Eujen’s meeting with Jodry Drillen, and he had carried away from it not the humility that had perhaps been intended, but a deep-seated annoyance. Most galling had been the implication — as he perceived it — that his loyalty to his city was suspect. He had composed a long speech on the subject, going into some detail about how rattling sabres in the direction of the Empire — or anybody else — did not constitute loyalty. Eujen’s dedication to finding a future where there would be no need of war with the Empire — now that was loyalty, because it would provide far greater benefits for Collegium in the long term. The Makerist warmongering stance would only create a worsening spiral, a degenerating pattern of mutual hostility that would end… where? Where would it end? Eujen had demanded, and nobody had an answer for him. Of course, they had heard the speech twice by then.
‘If only I had contacts in the Empire,’ he would say sadly.
‘Then they could really call you traitor?’ Straessa needled him.
‘No! Then I could talk them round, influence them…’ Eujen’s hands clutched at the air.
The Antspider was herself not at all sure of that. The idea that there was a minority within the Empire who were whipping the rest to war rang false to her. The problem was the system as a whole, or so her talks with Averic seemed to suggest. Those who might see eye to eye with Eujen were the minority — Averic’s own family included, apparently — and, if the majority were to lurch into battle, those few would not be able to restrain them.
It had not been a month ago that Eujen had been claiming that war itself would not come. A tenday or so ago he had taken to stating that war would not come soon, that everyone’s excitement about the subject was premature. Since meeting Drillen, however, he had stopped saying even that.
And he would fight it, she knew, for all the good it would do him. He was doomed, and he knew he was doomed. The weight of history was rolling down on Eujen like the studded wheels of a great automotive, but he fought his battles regardless, because it was right. Of all his qualities, she loved him for that one. She herself came from a culture where doing what was right was a luxury that even the rich could seldom afford. Seeing the sheer, glowing naivety of someone like Eujen Leadswell, setting out to change the world, gave her an almost vertiginous feeling.
For ten minutes Eujen had been pacing now, watched anxiously by everyone except the sleeping Mummers, and Gerethwy, who was carefully annotating a schematic. Eventually, though, Eujen’s failure to conceive of some political master plan resulted in him rounding on them furiously, as though it was their fault. ‘And he’s not doing anything!’ he explained. ‘Jodry Drillen spends his time harassing students and listening to complaints about madmen like Gripshod, while we just slide onwards to…’ He would not utter the word ‘war’.
‘But Gripshod is the ambassador to Khanaphes, isn’t he?’ te Mosca asked him. ‘Surely that could be relevant?’
‘If only! It’s not even that Gripshod — it’s the artificer one, his brother.’
‘Banjacs Gripshod is still alive?’ Gerethwy raised his head.
‘ Banjacs Gripshod?’ Straessa asked incredulously. ‘Unfortunate name for an artificer…’
‘No, no,’ Gerethwy waved the idea away. ‘Artificers say that about a thing because of old Gripshod. Something of a legend, if you talk to the older artificing staff. I thought he must be dead, the way everyone talks about him-’ Then he was cut off by a hammering on the door.
‘He’s not in,’ the Antspider said, with a gesture towards Mummers, because they had all come to the immediate conclusion that one of the artist’s creditors was trying his luck, but then came a voice calling ‘Mistress te Mosca, are you within?’ With a worried glance at the others, the Fly woman flitted over to the door and unbolted it.
A young Beetle-kinden man was revealed, whom they recognized vaguely as one of the College’s older students researching something in such and such department. The post-accredit students often found casual employment with the College Masters and the Assembly as a way of making ends meet.
‘Mistress te Mosca, you’re called to the Assembly. All the Masters are,’ he announced, slightly out of breath.
‘But I don’t even have a seat on the Assembly,’ Sartaea protested. ‘Really, I’m not a full Master of the College. I don’t feel that I should be involved in-’
‘All College staff, they said,’ the student interrupted. ‘Please, Mistress. The Imperial ambassador has asked for special dispensation to speak to the city.’
A dead silence fell across the studio, each and everyone there staring at the messenger. In the echo of that sudden quiet, Raullo Mummers hooked back the curtain of his alcove and looked out, blinking and unshaven, as though the news’ sheer significance had been enough to slap him into immediate wakefulness.
‘I see,’ said Sartaea t
e Mosca, with considerable self-possession. ‘Well, then, I suppose I should go and listen to what the ambassador has to say.’
The Imperial ambassador was named Aagen, and he was a complex man who had only ever wanted a simple life. He had been an engineer, once, just a lieutenant whose life was mostly shouting at other engineers to get things fixed and machines into the air or on the road. He had even been well liked. One of the people who had liked him had ended up sleeping with the Empress, albeit briefly, and in his brief moment of power he had got Aagen sent to Collegium as an ambassador. It had been intended as a reward.
True, Aagen had enjoyed his time here, up until now. The Beetles knew a great deal about artificing, and they were remarkably open about it, even to a Wasp, when that Wasp displayed the same childlike enthusiasm for the craft that they did. He had lived here a few years now, and had not done too badly from it.
Right now, he would take it all back to be a lowly lieutenant again, as he stood before the Assembly of Collegium, although the lowly lieutenant he had once been would have seen this task merely as a duty and blithely ignored the wider repercussions. The Aagen of today, Ambassador Aagen, could not close his eyes so easily.
He had fallen in love, that was the problem. Long before being posted here he had fallen in love with a dancing slave, and loved her enough to free her and send her out of his life. After that, nothing about the Empire or the rest of the world had ever looked quite the same to him.
He had been greeted just after dawn by Honory Bellowern, Beetle-kinden, Imperial diplomat and the man who held Aagen’s leash. The portly, avuncular man had beamed at him. ‘Big day today, ambassador.’ Aagen’s heart had sunk in direct proportion to the man’s cheer.
Bellowern had held out a scroll neatly tied with black tape, his habit for official Imperial statements. It had taken a few moments of blank staring before Aagen had been able to accept it from him.
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