Today they had come by air. Vekken orthopters flapping thunderously over the walls as their artillery started launching once again, dropping explosives on the men on the wall, masking the oncoming rush of the infantry. The aerial battle had been as bloody as any other. Stenwold had stood impotently and watched as the Ant fliers had duelled laboriously with Collegium’s own, that were more numerous and more varied. The Ant machines had flamethrowers and repeating ballistae, and of course they never lost track of their comrades in the confusion of the skies. The defenders had been joined by a swarm of aid from the city: Fly-kinden saboteurs, Joyless Greatly’s cadre of one-man orthopters, clumsy Beetle-kinden in leaden flight, Mantis warriors attacking the armoured machines with bows and spears. Because he was War Master now, Stenwold had forced himself to watch, and he had no excuse to turn his head when Fly-kinden men and women were turned into blazing torches by the Ant weapons, or when flying machines spiralled from the sky to explode in the streets of his city.
It had made him ill. He had barely eaten these last days. He felt that he had brought this down on them, for all he knew that it would have happened anyway, whether Wasps or Vekken.
Joyless Greatly was dead. He had died in the fighting that day, unseen and uncounted until a reckoning could be made later, just one more mote falling from the sky. He had been a genius artificer and a pilot without equal, and the thought that he had died as he would have wished was no counterbalance to the loss that Collegium had suffered in his death. Joyless Greatly was dead, and Graden had killed himself, and Cabre the Fly artificer had died defending the last remaining harbour tower, even after she had so narrowly escaped from the other. Hundreds on hundreds of other people of Collegium had fallen in the air and on the walls or out over the sea.
And now Stenwold sat with his head in his hands after the War Council had adjourned, and there was a long-faced Beetle youth waiting to see him.
‘What is it?’ he demanded at last, because this young man was another of the lives in his hands and he had no right to ignore him.
‘Master Maker — excuse me, War Master, you should see this. In fact, you have to.’
Stenwold stood up, seeing that the youth was torn between emotions, unable to know what to think next. Stenwold had seen him before, but could not place him.
‘Take me, then,’ he said, and the young man darted off.
‘It’s Master Tseitus, War Master,’ the youth explained, and Stenwold placed him then: an apprentice of the Ant-kinden artificer.
‘What does he want?’ Stenwold asked.
‘He has. he. I’m sorry, Master Maker-’
Stenwold stopped him. ‘Just tell me. It has been a long day. I have no time.’
‘He made me promise to say nothing, Master Maker,’ the youth blurted. ‘But now he’s gone and-’
‘Gone?’ Stenwold demanded. ‘Gone where?’
‘You have to come and see!’ And they were off again, and the youth was definitely heading for the blasted wastes of the docks.
‘He was desperate to do something,’ the youth explained. ‘The bombardment was all around here. So he took her out.’
‘Her? What? You mean the submersible?’
‘An hour ago, Master, only we didn’t know if there was enough air. enough range. We never had a chance to properly test her.’
What he had to show Stenwold was an empty pool with access to the harbour. A lack of submersible.
‘What has he done?’ Stenwold asked, and the apprentice spread his hands miserably.
It became apparent the next morning, when Stenwold was dragged from his bed by an excited messenger who pulled him all the way back to the charred docks.
The Vekken flagship was sinking. It was sinking slowly, but by the dawn a full half of it was below the waves, despite all the pumps the Ants could lay on it. Supply ships and tugs were taking on men and material as fast as they could, but the vast vessel itself was foundering, slipping beneath the waves, heeling over well to one side so that the water was grasping at the closest of its great catapults that had wreaked so much damage across the harbourside of Collegium.
Of Tseitus and his submersible there was no sign. Whether he simply had not had the stocks of air, or had been destroyed by the Ants, or whether he had become locked to the metal hull of his victim and gone with it to the bottom, it was impossible to say.
Doctor Nicrephos was an old man, and very badly in fear for his life. He had listened for days now to the stories from the wall, about the patience and gradual Ant advance, the implacable faces of the Vekken, the diminishing resources of the city. He had lived in Collegium for twenty-five years. He knew no other home. For twenty of those years he had been the College’s least regarded master, clutching to the very periphery of academia, teaching the philosophy and theory of the Days of Lore to a handful of uninterested and uncomprehending students each year. Magic, in other words: something in which Collegium, as a whole, did not believe. There had always been calls to remove his class from the curriculum. It was an embarrassment, they said. There were always those Beetle scholars who believed that the past should stay buried, and that it was an insult to the intelligence of their people that a shabby old fraud like Doctor Nicrephos should be given his tiny room and his pittance stipend.
And yet it had never happened. There was too much inertia in the College, and he still had a few friends who would speak up for him. He had clung on, year in, year out, in this nest he had made for himself, and expected to die in office and then never be replaced. For a man who did not love the company of his own kinden, that would have been enough. His business was the past. He had no care for posterity.
And now it was all falling down. He would suffer the same fate as all the others if the Vekken breached the wall, either put to the sword or sold into slavery, and who would buy such a threadbare thing as he?
But he could not take up arms and walk the wall. He was barely strong enough to fly and his eyes were weak save when the room was darkest. There was something he could do, however, or there might be something: to gather his pitiful philosophy with both hands and make a weapon of it, and brace himself for the inevitable disappointment. He had been a seer of Dorax once, but throughout his years of teaching it had been a rare thing to even attempt to pluck at the world’s weave. He feared that, after so long, true magic was beyond him.
‘Close the curtains,’ he said, and one of his students did so, drawing the patched blinds to cover the falling sun. He had four in his class now: one other Moth who had likewise found his home society unbearable, a cynical but gifted Spider girl, a dysfunctional Beetle youth who could never sit still, and a Fly who came every tenday but never seemed to learn anything. He would need them all now, for whatever faint help they could give.
‘We are going to embark on a ritual,’ he told them, when they were all seated on the floor of his room. Between the walls and his desk there was so little room that their knees were all touching in their circle. ‘This ritual is to attack the Vekken army in ways that the material and mundane defences of this city are incapable of. Precisely what effect we can manifest I am unsure but, as I have taught you, the power of magic stems from darkness, fear, uncertainty, ill luck. All those gaps between the lighted parts of the world.’
‘All things that can’t be tested,’ said the fidgeting Beetle youth. ‘That can’t be proved.’
‘That is so,’ Doctor Nicrephos agreed, ‘and very close to the heart of the mystery.’
‘Doctor, is this going to work? I mean, really?’ asked the Spider girl. She cared, he knew, more for her politics and her rumours than for her studies.
‘Yes, Doctor, because I was thinking about finding myself a sword and going onto the wall,’ the Fly added. ‘I don’t see we can do any good here.’
‘But that is the very attitude you must banish, if we are to do good,’ Nicrephos insisted. ‘Belief is what you require. If you go into this without belief then, yes, we will fail. You must open your minds to the possibilit
y, allow room for that uncertainty.’
That they looked doubtful was an understatement. With no other option, though, he pressed on. ‘Listen to me, close your eyes, all of you.’
With poor grace, they did so.
‘I require your help, your thoughts, your strength in this. It is a great magic that I intend, that I could not manage on my own. I want you to bend your thoughts on the Vekken camps. Many of you must have seen them from the walls, or from the air. Think of all the Vekken soldiers, hundreds and hundreds of them, with their tents all in lines so very exact, and inside those tents their palettes laid out just so. Imagine them going to sleep there at night, all at the same time, like some great machine. But they are not machines. They are men and women as we are. They have minds, although those minds bleed into one another. I want you to imagine that mind as though you could see it, the mind of all the Ant-kinden there, like a great fog hanging about their camp.’
He could see it himself, in his mind’s eye, a great shining jelly-like creature that squatted in and about all those orderly tents, the minds of all the Ant-kinden, touching and connecting.
‘We are going to insert something in that mind,’ he went on, after he had given them a good long chance to picture it. ‘We are going to put something dark in it. There are always areas of the mind that are ready to accept darkness. These Ants love certainty and order, and so they must fear doubt and chaos. You must think of all the doubt and chaos that you can, imagine taking it from your own minds and placing it within that great lattice-mind of the Vekken. All your fears, all your worries, all your pains and guilt, you must dredge these up for me and project them into the mind of the Ants.’
He stopped talking, feeling the pull of concentration build up between them. He was straining now, his heart knocking in his chest. It was so very long since he had done anything like this, and it was like trying to gather a great thing and push it up a steep slope. His students were little help, doubtful, embarrassed, reluctant to look at the darkness within themselves, and more than that, there was the great and overarching ceiling that was Collegium, city of progress and science, of merchants and scholars and artificers, and a hundred thousand people who did not believe.
It was no good, he realized. He had not the strength to force his own will out of the city, let alone onto the Ants. He was too old and had been too long amongst these people.
Now his one chance to aid in the defence of his home was faltering. His students were beginning to shuffle as the silence dragged.
He called out, in his mind, If there is some power that hears me, please help me, for I have not the strength! I will promise what you ask, but help me, please!
He heard one of them, the Spider girl, draw her breath in hurriedly, and then there was a sudden pain in his skull that made him arch his back and choke. It was cold, pure cold, reaching along his spine and prying its way into his eyes. He felt tears start and freeze on his cheeks. Something had grasped him with thorned hands that thrust into his mind.
And, despite all this pain he heard the words in his mind, a monstrous, mournful chorus that said: What is this that calls? What is this that begs of us?
I am Doctor Nicrephos of Collegium, he said desperately, because the pain and the pressure combined were on the point of stopping his heart. If you have strength then lend it to me, for my city is under threat and I would send my thoughts onto our enemy. Please, if you know any pity, lend me your strength!
How bold you are, the voices said. Old man, you have not so many breaths yet to draw. Why seek to save that which will so soon outlive you? We have no pity but we do have strength. What claim have you on us?
Ask what you will, Doctor Nicrephos promised. Please aid me, and I shall do as you ask.
He felt his request hang in the balance. He knew his students had all felt this change too, that the room was cold enough for frost to form on the curtains, and that their breaths were pluming visibly in the dim air.
We shall aid you, but you shall perform a task for us — and it may mean your death that much sooner.
He would have agreed, he was sure, but they were not seeking his agreement. The compact is made, the dirge of the voices continued, and he felt the cold, that had already tested the limits of his tolerance, double and redouble, flood into the room, through his students, and then out, across the city and the walls, to poison the minds of the Ants. It fought its way clear of the great mass of disbelief that cloaked Collegium, and set about the work he had planned for it, and he knew that the Ants would not sleep easily tonight, nor for many nights to come, because the nightmares that his new ally could bring forth were worse by far than the feeble horrors that he and his students could dream up.
Home at last. Stenwold made himself a cup of hot herb tea, hearing Balkus stomp into the spare room and collapse on his bedroll, probably still wearing his armour. He should have been bodyguarding all day, but Stenwold had told him to fight up on the wall, and Balkus — Sarnesh Ant-kinden at heart — had been only too happy to empty his nailbow at the Vekken. More than that, of course, as there had been savage close-quarters fighting there and Balkus had been in the thick of it, holding the line on the north wall. A head taller than almost all the other fighters, with a shortsword in one hand and a captured Vekken shield in the other, the man had provided a tower of strength for the defenders.
Stenwold sipped his tea, found it bitter, and poured more than a capful of almond spirits into it. He needed to sleep tonight, because tomorrow would be no more forgiving to his nerves. Perhaps Balkus would die, or Kymon. Perhaps he, Stenwold, would.
Tired as he was, he toyed with the idea of it actually being a relief. With Graden’s suicide, though, he could not fool himself that way.
He drained the cup. He knew he should be hungry, but he was too tired for it, too numbed by exhaustion.
I am not cut from this military cloth. The sight of the dead sickened him, whether their own or the enemy’s. Brave men and women all, doing what they were instructed was right, and Stenwold, of all people, knew how history wrote over such victims, and the truth of whether they had been right or wrong got washed away in the tide of years.
I hope Tisamon is doing better than I am. He felt the absence of the Mantis-kinden keenly. Yes, the man was intolerant, difficult and primitive in his simplistic concepts of the world, but he was loyal, and could be a good listener, and Stenwold had known him a long time.
He levered himself up and trudged his way up the stairs, kicking his ash-blackened boots off halfway, knowing that he would trip over them in the morning but too depressed to care. He left his leather coat hanging over the banister. His helm remained downstairs on the kitchen table.
He slogged on into the darkness of his room, unbuckling his belt, and stopped.
He was not alone.
In the darkness, with even the moon tightly shuttered out, he felt fear. A Vekken assassin? A Wasp assassin? Thalric, perhaps? He had been given no time, these past days, to brood on such danger. What better opportunity than this to do away with him? Stenwold reached for his sword and recalled that it was still with his coat, ten yards and as good as a thousand miles away.
And then another part of his mind whispered something. Was it a familiar sound, or a scent, that informed it?
‘Arianna?’ he said hoarsely. When there was no reply he fumbled for a lantern and lit it with three strokes of his steel lighter, his hands trembling.
She was sitting at the end of his bed, a young and slender Spider girl with ginger hair cut short, gazing at him with wretched indecision.
‘Did. they send you to.?’ he got out.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Stenwold, I. didn’t have anywhere else to go.’
Ludicrously, he felt his unbelted breeches slipping, and tugged them up hurriedly. ‘But. you could have escaped?’
‘The Vekken would have killed me if they caught me — all the more so because Thalric is with them now. And. I have nowhere to go, Stenwold. I am outcast from my ho
meland and a traitor to the Rekef. And to you, also. I have nobody left to turn to.’
‘Except me?’
She looked up at him. He momentarily thought that she might try to flirt with him, or speak of the connection they supposedly had shared, but there was now nothing but mute pleading in her eyes.
‘Arianna, I-’
‘You can’t trust me, I know. I could be an assassin. I could still be spying for the Rekef. Stenwold, I am at the end of everything now, and I have no more. Because I tried, in my stupid, small way, to save Collegium — and I got it wrong, just like everything else.’
He put the lantern on his reading table, words failing him. There was too much, far too much, going on within him. He no longer felt tired, but more wide awake than he had been in days. He was trying now to navigate through a maze of pity, caution and a lecherous recollection of their time together that shocked him with its potency. He had thought himself past such yearnings, and yet seeing her here, against all odds and beyond any common sense, was an aphrodisiac, a tonic to an aging man.
If she is my enemy, I cannot give in to these feelings. And if she was truly as desperate as she claimed, how wrong would it be to take advantage of that? Of Arianna the student of the College.
But, also Arianna of the Rekef, the imperial spy gone off the rails. Impossibly, the thought of the risk she could present only seemed to spur some part of him on.
She stood up abruptly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I–I thought. I have no right. ’
Without warning she was trying to dart past him, but he caught her by the shoulders and held her there, practically in the doorway. ‘Wait. ’ he began.
The lanternlight brought out the glint of tears in her eyes, and he knew that she could feign it all, being what she was, but his heart almost broke with the strain of it.
She stared up at him, the small breasts beneath her tunic rising and falling. ‘Stenwold. ’
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