And of course, someone had stood up to voice the obvious criticism — why was Eujen suddenly advocating the fight, when his voice was normally heard speaking against it? What was going on?
‘Do you think,’ Eujen had remonstrated, ‘that I would not defend our city? Do you think I would not shed my blood for my people? I will take up arms against the Wasps, if they come here. I would do the same against the Vekken or the Spider-kinden or the Sarnesh.’ He left a precisely calculated pause. ‘I will fight just as hard against those within our city that have guided us towards this war, for I do not believe it was inevitable. I believe that, if we can forge a peace with Vek, then we could have done so with any nation in the world. But now we are at war, and I can’t change that. Let us instead work to bring this war to the swiftest close, and seek a true peace thereafter, not merely a period in which to brew up the next conflict.’
He’d had them then, not just by the words but the raw sincerity in his voice, and the first few had come forward to put their names down for his Student Company.
Averic had signed, too. He had not thought he would, and he knew he had done the wrong thing, but he had been carried along on the tide of Eujen’s voice. In that moment everything had made so much sense.
His lodgings were not located in the usual student area — at first because he had not known that when choosing them, but later because it was sometimes convenient to escape the attention of his peers. Instead, his neighbours were the poorer class of tradesmen, factory workers and the like, and many of them were out working most of the night and sleeping during the day, especially now, when every workshop was working around the clock. They did not like him, but he had grown adept at avoiding them. Entering the slightly leaning four-storey house, he heard no sound from any living thing, only silence, as if he was the last man in Collegium.
Except someone was there, quietly waiting for him, like a spider in its web. When he unlocked his door and pushed it open, a Beetle-halfbreed woman sitting on his bed regarded him with a hard smile.
Instantly he had a hand out, palm towards her, ready to demand some explanation, and in the back of his mind the knowledge that the door had been secured with the lock he himself had installed.
She met him with a similar gesture, and the words, ‘I wouldn’t.’
For a long time Averic stared at the palm she was training on him, then at her face, the dark skin, something of the features of a Beetle-kinden, but then they were a variable breed, and what other heritage could he discern there…?
He went cold all at once, for she was a Wasp. Not a Beetle at all, not even a little of one, but pure-blood Wasp. He would not have believed it possible. Some sort of dye had been used to colour her skin a deep, rich brown, painstakingly applied so that the palm she showed him was paler, but not as pale as a Wasp’s should be. She had padded out her cheeks a little, applied some manner of tape to flatten her nose. She must have walked past hundreds of Collegium citizens to get here, without one of them seeing her as he now did. Who looked closely at halfbreeds, after all?
Had she been a man, she could probably not have done it, but everyone knew that the only Wasps for export were men. The idea of a Wasp woman infiltrating the city went against all the carefully hoarded stereotypes that the Collegiate citizens were so fond of.
‘Averic, isn’t it?’ she noted. ‘You can call me Gesa. Glad to meet you. You’ve done a great job here, I’m sure.’
He could not stop staring at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Here you are, in the heart of Collegium, a student at their vaunted College. Have you any idea how hard it’s been to get agents entrenched in this city recently, with Stenwold Maker on the war path?’
He felt as though a hammer blow had struck him, inside. ‘I’m- I’m not an agent.’
‘Of course you are.’
She said the words with such assurance that he needed a moment to regroup his own certainties.
‘No.’ He was aware that she might kill him — her hand was still up, while his had fallen to his side — but he could not allow her to redefine him in such a way. He could not let her remake him so casually into the thing the Collegiates already muttered that he was.
She was now smiling broadly. ‘But, of course, you understand that a deep cover agent must live his cover, Averic. It works best of all if he does not know it himself. Why do you think you were sent here, if not for that?’
The hammer fell once again. ‘No, my parents…’ And the words were damning, treasonous, but he was under attack, with only the truth to defend himself with. ‘They sent me here because they believe we can learn from the Collegiates — and more in peace than in war.’
‘Is that what they told you?’ Her expression was pitying. ‘As I say, how better to place you in the bosom of the Beetles?’ She shrugged. ‘Or perhaps you’re right, but then we would have to make sure something happened to your oh-so-prestigious family, wouldn’t we? You won’t know this, but the actual truth is always an abstraction in my game. What’s important is that you’ll do what I want. You don’t need to decide whether it’s because your people sent you here as an agent, or because they didn’t, and they’ll suffer for that unless you obey me.’
I’m agreeing to nothing. Just saying the words does not make me theirs. I… ‘What do you want from me?’ I should kill her now, the moment she turns, loses focus. One sting and she’s dead and nobody need know…
Despite his basic army training, Averic had never killed anyone: not an enemy of the Empire, not even a rebellious slave. She was right when she said his family had wealth and power, and as a result he had never been required to use his Art or a blade against a living target. And, if I killed her I would be a traitor to my people.
So what am I if I disobey her?
‘I want you to be ready, Averic. I want you to get over all your little qualms and become a man at last, and do a man’s work when it’s asked of you. I’m here now so you can get your angst and agonizing out of the way, and remind yourself what kinden you belong to. When the orders come to you, you’ll execute them swiftly and efficiently. And when you report to General Tynan, he’ll clap you on the shoulder and tell you that you’ve done well. Or else you’ll die trying to further the Empire’s cause — the only death a Wasp-kinden should aspire to.’
He formed the question, What if I tell them? but he could not force the words out. Yet she read it on his face as if she was a magician.
‘Tell them you’re a traitor to them, after all this time? And become a traitor to us at the same time? Oh, Averic, I’m not sure how far you’d have to run to escape the landslide, if you did that.’ Her look could almost be construed as kindly. ‘Grow up, Averic, and put aside childish things. Remember who you are.’ She stood up. Her palm was no longer directed at him but he had no ability to act on that, stepping back like a good subordinate as she walked to the door.
‘You’ll be hearing from us,’ she told him. ‘Just be ready.’ Then she was gone.
Gesa, who normally went by the name of Garvan, was cautiously satisfied with her work so far. She was playing a dangerous game, and all the more so for the disguise she had chosen. Her great secret, her vulnerability, her own private treason flaunted so openly. It wound her up inside like a clock, tenser and tenser, but the Collegiates did not care, and she made sure not to meet face to face with the other Imperial agents here, simply to leave them messages at the agreed-on drop points. She should have felt freer, here, walking as a woman even if she was forced to hide her kinden, but the habit of secrecy was so deep ingrained in her that she lived every moment on a knife edge, waiting for someone to decry her, not for her race, but for her gender.
Averic would serve, she judged, and he was well placed. The Empire had never tried to infiltrate the College before, but to Gesa that was a grievous omission that had been amended just in time. One could get up to so much mischief in those halls of academe.
The Rekef had been broken against the walls of Collegium more t
han once. During the brief conflict with the Spider-kinden, an entire Rekef operation had been uncovered and sent home to face disgrace and punitive interrogation, leaving behind barely a trace of Imperial influence in the city. If the Empire had not been able to borrow some intelligence from its new Spider allies, then the war would have been considerably more difficult — and who wanted to have to rely on Spiders?
For that matter, who wanted to have to rely on the Rekef? Army Intelligence was now suddenly at the cutting edge of the agent war. Her heart swelled with pride to think that her mocked and abused corps was suddenly at the core of things, and so was she.
But there was so little time. The insertion of her people had come late in the day, only the influx of refugees from the Felyal giving sufficient cover to accomplish it. She and her fellows now had a great deal of work to do, and precious little time. She was having to allow her subordinates more independence than she liked, as there simply wasn’t enough time for her to mastermind everything properly. She had to trust in her peers, and trust was not something that came naturally to her.
It was worth it, though, for this chance to outshine the Rekef. There were Army Intelligence colonels back in Capitas who would salute her with a tear in their eyes, when she came back from winning Collegium for the Empress. Army Intelligence would succeed where the Rekef had only chalked up repeated failure.
And, for one thing, they would kill Stenwold Maker. Of that she was absolutely sure.
Twenty-Nine
‘Aerial reconnaissance of the Second Army has become essentially impossible with our resources,’ Corog Breaker reported. ‘In all honesty it was hit and miss at the best of times, but now there seems to be a substantial aerial strike force accompanying the Second always. We’ve almost lost several spotters, and we simply don’t have the spare Stormreaders.’ He did not need to elaborate. Each nocturnal attack on Collegium was resulting in more Farsphex slipping through the fraying net of the defending pilots, more damage to the city, more deaths, more panic. And the Second Army was getting close now. The meeting that Breaker was addressing was specifically to determine the battle tactics of the ground force that would shortly be leaving the city.
‘We need to get out there now in order to have a chance of preparing a stand against them,’ said Marteus of the Coldstone Company. His face was as blank and closed as always, but there was a tightness in his voice that spoke of stress. ‘We’re not short of recruits, anyway. Seems like half the fugitives from the Felyal have signed up.’
‘Are they ready to fight?’ Jodry asked him.
‘They have no time left to be made more ready,’ Marteus stated flatly.
Jodry was chairing the council. On his left were Marteus and Elder Padstock, the two chief officers who would be taking the fight to the enemy. Corog Breaker slumped on his right, with the Mynan leader Kymene beyond him, head bowed in thought. Across the table from him was Stenwold Maker, no longer the Speaker’s great friend and ally. Hardly anyone actually knew what had caused the rift, but tension between them sang in the air like a razor.
‘How are the automotives?’ Jodry asked. These days that seemed to be his role in life, to stumble around between the people to whom the defence of the city had been delegated, asking them inane questions.
‘As ready as anything else,’ Elder Padstock confirmed. ‘We have quite a fleet of them now, certainly more than the enemy have of the Cyclops machines the War Master told us of, especially with the help from Sarn.’
‘Sentinels,’ Stenwold reminded her, citing the name that had come in Laszlo’s earlier note of warning delivered by the captain of a merchantman. Where Laszlo had got to was just one more worry for Stenwold right now. ‘And, armour them how we will, they are not a match for the Imperial vehicles. With the exception of the six Sarnesh automotives, not one of them was even built for war. Bolting some plates and a repeating ballista on won’t get us very far.’ The aid from Sarn had been an unexpected bonus: a half-dozen boxy, serviceable war automotives — lumbering tracked machines boasting turret-mounted nailbows and paired smallshotters to the fore. They were not Sentinels, but they were considerably more warlike than any of the makeshift contraptions that Collegium was intending to field. Stenwold sighed heavily. ‘I have asked some experts to join us,’ he told them. ‘They’re waiting outside. They’ve put together some idea of how we might win this fight.’
Jodry was too weary for surprise. ‘Well, send them in then. Let’s hear it.’
They were two more Beetle-kinden: a tall austerely handsome woman in a Master’s robes; and man head and shoulders taller than anyone else in the room, vastly broad across the chest, wearing a Company soldier’s buff coat that must have been made from two garments of the regular size.
‘Mistress Praeda Rakespear of the College faculty of artifice,’ Stenwold introduced them, ‘and Amnon, former First Soldier of Khanaphes.’
There was a reflective pause from around the table, especially from Jodry, who plainly had not received any forewarning, but then Marteus spoke up: ‘Is this a joke? I know this man. He’s a good fighter, but his city doesn’t even have automotives.’
‘Chief Officer Marteus,’ Praeda snapped, even as Stenwold opened his mouth, ‘I would point out that Collegium has no history of fighting wars with automotives either. However, for hundreds of years the Khanaphir have taken chariots to war.’
‘ Chariots? ’ Marteus demanded.
‘Masters,’ Amnon rumbled, speaking softly and yet quietening the room. ‘It seems to me that your city is about to be attacked by enemies wielding new weapons that you have not faced before, and have no ready defence against. This I can understand.’ That reminder that his own city had suffered from the Empire, dragged roughly into the modern age when Wasp leadshotters knocked down its walls, caught their attention. ‘It is true your people have many wonderful inventions that mine lack. Every day there seems some new device to lighten the burden of life. However, Praeda has shown me these automotives of yours, and I understand they involve no beasts to fall to arrow or spear, that they are armoured so as to be more durable than our creations of wood but, still, a war with automotives is like a war with chariots, it seems to me. You have prepared your fleet of machines, and the Wasps already have these Sentinels the War Master has spoken of, together with many more vehicles, for the moving of their soldiers and supplies. What use will they put them to, however? What use will you make of yours?’
Marteus shifted restlessly, still less than convinced, and Jodry’s expression was doubtful as well, but nobody spoke.
‘Chariots — automotives — are in themselves only suited to one thing: attack. They cannot hold, they cannot defend. They must keep moving always to be effective, or they are no more than one more leadshotter, moved swiftly into place. Their strength is in their motion, and in attack.’
‘That is convenient given that the Empire will be attacking us,’ Marteus pointed out acidly.
‘They will not be,’ Amnon corrected him patiently, and a look passed between him and Praeda. She set out a long scroll and made some quick marks with a reservoir pen.
‘Collegium here,’ she noted. ‘Second Army’s line of approach from the north-east. Now, where is the attack?’
The others leant forward, and Jodry made a vague gesture towards the curved line that was Collegium’s wall.
‘You haven’t been listening to Master Maker, or to me for that matter,’ Kymene spoke up, barely glancing at the sketch. ‘These automotives did not bring my city’s walls down. They were used to break up our positions inside the city only.’
Jodry exchanged a glance with Marteus. ‘The artillery.’
‘These farshotters, or whatever they’re calling them,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘Amnon?’
‘The Empire will not be attacking. The Empire will be defending,’ the Khanaphir explained. ‘They need to bring their weapons into range, and then they need to prevent any harm befalling them. It is just as it was with my city. For this they must re
ly on the sort of makeshift fortification your people say they used around your forest Felyal. They will use their chariots — these automotives — to counter-attack your force, but if you can strike at their leadshotter weapons, you strip them of their chiefest advantage. Now do you see?’
This time Marteus was silent, and everyone else was nodding appreciatively.
‘So,’ Amnon continued, satisfied. ‘The novice chariot commander orders his vehicles straight for the enemy, against their shields. The Empire is yet a novice, so this is most likely what it will do. The wise charioteer brings his forces to the enemy’s flanks, even encircling to his rear, using his speed to the fullest, allowing him to strike at his enemy’s weakest point. I have seen maps of the land you are most likely to fight on — it is hilly, but flat enough to give you room to move — the path the enemy will attack along means nothing, for you have all the land you need to manoeuvre. You understand?’
After that the discussion became more technical, and Stenwold sat back and watched as the former First Soldier, whose introduction to modern artifice was only a few years old, now tutored those who had lived with it all their lives. This was a part of the war that Stenwold felt himself well rid of. Perhaps in his younger days he would have thrown himself into the planning of it. Now he felt just like the Khanaphir; time and progress moving at a pace that he could not keep up with. He could not do it all. He had to trust to people like Amnon, Marteus and Taki each to hold up their own corner of the war.
Afterwards, he let them drift away, Jodry, Kymene and the others. Night was drawing in. Already the Great Ear would be primed, the airmen and women waiting for the call, their machines wound and ready. Stenwold the historian had a great sense of history, not momentous but merely inexorable. Could we ever actually defeat the Empire? Should we have mobilized the Lowlands and struck at them while they dealt with their own internal problems, the ink on our treaty still wet? And then what? By the time we finished fighting them all the way across the Empire, what would we create? How many of those freed subject cities would be at each other’s throats, and blaming us. Or would we take the Empire’s place, forcing them to accept our grand enlightenment down the barrel of a snapbow?
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