Stenwold surveyed it all, and knew that it was all for something — not just a madman’s insane assembly of parts, but a working machine, almost finished according to its creator, ready to… to do what?
Banjacs claimed it would save the city but, if it was a weapon, there was no suggestion that it could even be aimed. The old man had been desperate to convince, spitting out sincerity and conviction. Stenwold had read no falsehood in him, but Banjacs was plainly partway mad, even if he was telling the truth — perhaps especially then — and Stenwold could not rule out the possibility that his machine would be more of a terror than the Wasps to the city Banjacs plainly felt betrayed by.
Stenwold had called therefore for the College’s most theoretical artificers to come and take their best guess, but in the end the decision would rest on his shoulders as much as anyone’s, and they had so little time.
By that evening the artificers’ reports were in. Stenwold had them on the table in front of him, sitting in a disused office in the Amphiophos. Words such as ‘colossal discharge of lightning energy’, ‘near-perfect light conductivity’ and ‘requiring flawless vertical channelling’ were underlined, alongside complex calculations comparing volumes of space with assessments of the stored power that Banjacs had accumulated. One artificer had even sketched a plan of the city in profile, lines and arcs above and around, to outline the potential for disaster.
Or for victory.
‘Or for victory,’ Stenwold murmured, forcing his own thoughts into words, and at that moment Jodry came in, and stopped. Stenwold had not been entirely sure the man would even turn up when asked. Certainly he did not look best pleased to be alone in a room with Stenwold Maker.
‘So,’ said the Speaker for the Assembly. ‘Here you are. You were looked for, when the Companies departed. You might at least have been there for your Own.’
‘I offered to march with them. They turned me down.’ Stenwold bit back on his words. ‘No, wait, Jodry: this isn’t what I wanted to talk about.’
‘What then?’ Jodry was still standing in the doorway, unwilling to commit to staying. ‘Some new way of treating prisoners? Should Spider-kinden and Wasps have to wear-’
‘Jodry!’ Stenwold snapped. ‘Listen, it’s nothing of that, I don’t want to open that wound right now. Time enough after — drag me before the Assembly, as you said. I’ll answer to anything you put before me, I swear. For the good of the city, though, I have something new and I need your help.’
For a moment Jodry looked about to go, and Stenwold said, ‘For old times’ sake, Jodry, please.’
The fat man gave a sigh every bit as big as himself, and stepped in, hauling a chair out and slumping into it. ‘Be quick.’
‘I don’t know if I can. Read these.’
Jodry glanced down at the reports. ‘I’m no artificer.’
‘Neither am I, any more. The important parts are written in language plain enough for the Inapt, so just read.’
And for almost twenty minutes, Jodry proceeded to read: first dismissively, then absorbedly, then with wide-eyed alarm. At the end he looked up at Stenwold and said, ‘Madness.’
‘And yet?’
‘Stenwold, what’s proposed here… Even if we had the time and resources to build something like this, I’m not sure that-’
‘We already have one, or as good as,’ Stenwold told him. ‘It’s built, Jodry.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. Where…?’ Jodry’s face greyed with sudden realization. ‘Founder’s Mark, this? This is Banjacs Gripshod’s device?’ At Stenwold’s nod, he returned to the reports. ‘And it does..?’ For a moment he was very still, not seeing anything outside his own head. ‘Stenwold, what are you proposing?’
‘That we can’t go on like this. That was what Taki said to me. We need to win the air war, or we won’t be able to win the war at all. And we’ve tried it all, Jodry — you know we have. We’re turning out pilots and orthopters as fast as we can, we’ve applied every innovation our artificers have come up with, yet we’re losing. Losing machines and losing the city.’
‘But, Stenwold, you’ve seen what they’ve written here. This isn’t just a bow to aim at the enemy: this is a bomb. Once we release all that lightning he’s got stored away, it’s not as though we can keep popping away at them whenever they show themselves.’ In the shadow of Banjacs’s machine, and all that it implied, Jodry’s animosity had drained away.
‘I know, Jodry. That’s why I need you. I…’ Stenwold rubbed at his eyes, tired beyond belief, but sick at himself even beyond that. ‘You don’t like my ideas, I know. Well, I have one more for you to hate, Jodry. The worst one of them all, the most terrible… Let’s get Taki in here.’
‘You scare me, Stenwold,’ Jodry said quietly, and he looked as if he meant it.
‘Not as much as I frighten myself.’
Taki did not want to be there at all, and she made that plain. She wanted to be in bed or, if that was not an option, she wanted to be in with her fellow pilots waiting for the inevitable sound of the Great Ear amplifying the engine drone of approaching Farsphex.
‘We’ll be quick,’ Stenwold told her, and she glanced between him and Jodry, noting how they were on the same side again, and plainly disliking the idea from base instinct.
‘The Wasp orthopters are coming every night now,’ Jodry started and, before any sharp retort, ‘and I don’t need to tell you that, obviously. We all know how the proximity of the Second is allowing them to land and rest up within easy reach of the city. Does that mean we’re facing all their airpower every night?’
Stenwold guessed Jodry already knew the answer, but Taki was plainly relieved to be asked a sensible question. ‘No, sieur, in fact I’d guess that we see about a third of their pilots each night. We’re getting to recognize a fair number of them by the way they fly — the veterans mostly. They add new blood just like we do. They’re taking it easy, rotating their aviators, giving themselves time to rest so that they stay sharp when they fight us. We’ve bought Collegium that, at least. I think that, when the Second start their artillery assault, we’ll get a much more sustained air attack.’ She managed the words without a tremor.
‘And can we hold that off?’ Jodry asked, the patient lecturer.
‘No, sieur, we cannot. But we’ll try.’
‘They’re holding back at the moment, though?’ Jodry pressed, and a twitch of irritation showed on the Fly-kinden’s face.
‘That’s what I said, sieur.’
‘And…’ Even though he knew the question was coming, Stenwold felt a lurch in his stomach as Jodry spoke the words, ‘If our aerial resistance decreased, they’d be in a position to take advantage, I imagine.’
Taki just glanced from Stenwold to Jodry and then back, looking unhappy and uncertain.
‘After all, if they committed even two-thirds of their strength, they could cause appalling damage in a single night.’ Jodry was almost whispering now.
‘Are you… you’re sending us off to…?’ Taki frowned. ‘We’re going to attack the Second while they’re over the city? Sieur — Stenwold, Jodry, listen. We are holding them at bay. We’re showing them we can bite, just enough that they’re wary of putting their hand into our mouth. You can’t take us away from defending the city! Take advantage? They’ll flatten every building in the place! What have we been fighting and dying for, if not to stop that happening?’
‘And yet we can’t stop that happening,’ Stenwold said flatly. ‘We can only stave it off.’
‘Then we stave it off!’ she snapped. ‘What are you… this isn’t even my city! What are you thinking?’
‘Thank you, Mistress Taki,’ Jodry said heavily.
‘We can hold them!’ the little pilot insisted. ‘Listen to me: we’re doing our best-!’
‘Nobody doubts you, any of you. You’ve worked wonders,’ Jodry assured her, but his voice offered no comfort. ‘That’s all, thank you. You can go.’
When Taki had gone, shaking with bewilderment and i
njured pride, he gazed at Stenwold across the table.
‘We can’t do this.’
‘What we can’t do is tell anyone — anyone — what we are going to do. We give the orders to the pilots only on the night itself, and on the day after I will do everything in my power to bottle any word up. Secrecy is paramount, Jodry. The knowledge will be ours to bear,’ Stenwold told him. ‘Yours and mine. No other.’
‘I am not strong enough,’ Jodry protested, but then: ‘I will try.’
Thirty-One
Gjegevey had been told that the Great College of Collegium, that city of revolution which had thrown off its Moth-kinden overlords almost five and a half centuries earlier, maintained an Inapt studies department where the intrepid could still go to learn about the old ways, the ancient times and magic. The Wasps, of course, had nothing of the sort. To them the past was dead, the present and the future the only prizes worth studying.
Seda herself had gathered a piecemeal library of old Moth and Dragonfly texts, and Gjegevey had sent members of her staff across the city to the collections of veteran officers and Consortium magnates, confiscating anything that might be of use. And he had read, and read. He was looking for anything that the Empress might accept as a substitute for the lure of the Worm. The Lowlands, after all, had a rich history of magic, for all that it was buried under so many years of Aptitude. There must be some survival there, some fount of power that the Moths jealously guarded, some other knot of old time, such as the Darakyon forest had been before it was laid to rest.
He would have given anything for even an hour’s communion with his own people’s great library, where such secrets were certainly held. He had even considered asking Seda for permission to return home for just that. Prudence had warned him off the idea, though. He was not one of his own people any more. For all that he had come to this city as their spy, disguised as a slave, now he was far more Seda’s slave, with no disguise needed. He suspected that he would not even be allowed into his people’s strongholds, and if he was… would the Empire itself be far away? Gjegevey’s Woodlouse-kinden lived on the Wasps’ very border, only their inhospitable rotting terrain and outsiders’ perception that they had nothing worth taking had kept them free from overlords, taxes and levies. If Seda ever found out what a wealth of knowledge they had hoarded in those swamps, then she would indeed have something other than the Worm to aim for.
So he had rooted and grubbed through ancient histories of the Lowlands, cracking, flaking parchments and vellums, dust-laden books and faded scrolls. As Seda had complained, the Moths never wrote anything the simple way, and the Dragonflies were just as bad in their own fashion, but he had bookmarks and notes now, signalling the possibility of survivals and hidden caches. Yet he needed help.
The knock sounded, as expected, for the man would have been too curious to stay away. At Gjegevey’s invitation, he entered the cluttered little storeroom that the Woodlouse had made his own, even as Gjegevey turned up the wick on a lamp to let the man see. Up until then, the crooked old Woodlouse had been reading in utter darkness, as comfortable with the pitch black as a Moth.
‘Ambassador Tegrec, thank you for, ah, joining me.’
The newcomer was a Wasp-kinden but robed in the Moth style. He had once been an army major who had schemed his way into being made the governor of the Moth city of Tharn which the Wasps had taken over almost as an afterthought, owing to its proximity to Helleron. Covertly, as Gjegevey knew, he had also been a magician, Inapt as Seda was, although Tegrec had been so from birth. In Tharn he had turned his coat and aided the Moths in performing the ritual that had driven out their conquerors, as well as inflicting madness and death upon many of the locals, as Gjegevey understood. Despite his treason, he had been permitted to return to Capitas as the Moths’ own ambassador. His position in the Empress’s court was an uncertain one, both a diplomat from a neutral power — if the Moths even counted as such — and one of the Inapt who had in recent times found a tenuous new home in the Empress’s shadow. He entered the room cautiously, as he did every room in the palace, not sitting down when Gjegevey offered the solitary free chair. In appearance he was a soft man, without a soldier’s hard physique, but if he could live alongside the Moths, his mind must be sharp as a dagger.
He would also be as close-mouthed as his Moth-kinden masters, Gjegevey knew, and there was no time to woo him subtly to the cause. Only a direct approach would serve.
‘The Empress is seeking to break the Seal of the Worm.’
The words hung between them like a corpse, and Gjegevey left them turning there for a long while before continuing.
‘I am, hm, telling this not to the Tharen ambassador, but to a fellow magician who must know ’ — and it was plain from Tegrec’s pale face that he did — ‘how unwise this might, ahm, turn out to be.’
Tegrec took the offered seat after all. Gjegevey wondered what the man really knew, for surely he had only been allowed to burrow shallowly into the Moth mysteries. Enough to know of the Worm, apparently, and the danger it represented.
‘Why would she do that?’
Gjegevey sighed, seeming just the doddering old scholar, his fingers pattering idly on the desktop. ‘Oh, well, she is, ah, responsible for her people. She seeks to defend them from all dangers and, hm, now that her eyes have been opened to our wider world, she wishes to be able to protect them from such threats as might be brought by the, hrm, Inapt, even as she does threats from the Apt.’ It was a necessary equivocation. ‘She sees the Seal as the means to that end. I, hm, have taken it upon myself to find her an alternative.’
Tegrec’s look suggested that he did not envy Gjegevey this role. ‘What is this to me, in whatever capacity? What do you ask for?’
‘Knowledge,’ Gjegevey said simply.
‘Not something freely given, anywhere.’
‘Then consider me in your, hrm, debt, if that helps. Or perhaps consider just what might be waiting behind the Seal, if she goes ahead with her plans.’
‘Perhaps nothing.’ Tegrec tried a flippant shrug, and did not quite manage it.
‘You don’t believe that,’ Gjegevey observed. ‘I have combed every scrap of old Lowlander lore that I can lay these old, ahm, hands on. I have listed each fount of power, each totemic site, each haunt of, hem, ritual, but we both know that your adopted people are unreliable in what they, hm, commit to paper. Help me, Ambassador: guide my hand.’
For a long moment Tegrec looked at him, his expression as arch and distant as any Moth’s, but then he rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s hear your list,’ he said.
And Gjegevey took him through it, some nineteen leads teased from the appendices of history, each one seeming a flower waiting to be plucked by one of sufficient pedigree and will, and each time Tegrec shook his head, sometimes dignifying the suggestion with a terse dismissal, sometimes not even that. The situation was worse than Gjegevey had thought.
The Tharen Moths themselves would have their secret caches of strength, of course, if their ritual against the Imperial occupiers had left them any, but Tegrec was hardly about to assist him in that direction. For the rest… the golden history of the pre-revolution Lowlands was merely fool’s gold, it seemed nowadays, and he should have known not to trust his sources. The Moths did not set down their losses, as the tide of history turned on them. Oh, they would know what to credit and what to discount in their writings, a secret code that must have misled and bewildered a hundred scholars and fortune hunters prior to poor Gjegevey, but, as their influence had shrunk, their glorious places of power grown dim or built over by the Apt, they had simply not updated the maps and gazetteers that showed their world. To put such matters in writing would have been a symbolic concession of a defeat that even now they refused to admit. Tegrec’s knowledge might only be limited, but it was enough to snuff out each item on Gjegevey’s list in short order, leaving the two men staring glumly at each other.
And then Tegrec said a name: ‘Argastos.’
Gjegevey frowned,
ill-tempered after constant fruitless searching. ‘There is no mention of an Argastos anywhere I’ve looked.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Tegrec replied grimly. ‘I’ll bet there’s no mention of the Darakyon, either, but you can’t deny that place had power. The Moths do not openly chronicle their failures.’ He smiled slightly at the Woodlouse-kinden’s expression. ‘Oh, you’re thinking along the right lines, but against the Worm, what can we do? He was a Moth… warlord is perhaps the best word, if you can imagine that. He dwelt amongst the Mantis-kinden of the Etheryon and the Nethyon before they were two separate holds. He was a lord there, and he led the Moth war-host, I think, but he was beholden to nobody.’
‘A magician of power?’
‘Oh, yes, one of the Great Names, and you know what weight my people place on names.’ And if the Moths were not genuinely “his” people, Gjegevey said nothing of it.
‘He left something of his power behind?’ the Woodlouse pressed.
‘Gjegevey, he’s still there, the way they tell it. There is a heart of the wood between Etheryon and Nethyon where the locals don’t go, where his stronghold stood, or stands — or his tomb perhaps. They don’t write of it, but something happened: either the other Moths came for him, or he himself did something, but now… he is still there, in some manner. You understand me.’
For a long while, Gjegevey considered this, and his face clearly indicated the thought, But better than the Worm, surely. Then he asked, almost brightly, ‘What is the attitude of the, hm, Ancient League and Tharn, regarding this?’
He saw immediately that Tegrec had deliberately steered the conversation this way, and wondered just how much of a Moth the man had become. ‘Divided, old man, all of it: Tharn from the League, Tharn within itself, the League within itself, and its attitudes to the Empire likewise not yet finalized. But becoming more united with the progress of the Eighth Army. Every step that General Roder takes is turning them against you.’
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