The Air War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Heroes?’ Roder burst out, raising angry scowls from all three Rekef men and a raised eyebrow from Bellowern of the Consortium. Even facing the Empress’s cool regard, the former general could not keep the words in, though: ‘But we failed!’

  Tynan had not realized that the man had taken it so seriously, but his failure to capture Seldis was writ large on his half-paralysed face.

  ‘You obeyed. In the final analysis, what else is there for a soldier?’ Seda asked him, forgiving his outburst implicitly. ‘Who could blame you for following orders?’ Hanging in the air was the common knowledge that there were plenty who had been blamed for just that, at the throne’s convenience, but apparently this was not one of those cases. ‘No,’ Seda continued, ‘you are heroes, for you are the Empire’s generals who were never defeated.’

  Tynan risked a sidelong glance at Roder, and caught the man looking back at him. Well, there’s a novel turn of phrase.

  ‘You must know that our Empire is under threat,’ Seda informed them earnestly. ‘Collegium will not raise a flag against us directly, but their agents have worked against our reunification, their weapons flood into hands of the Three-city Alliance, our closest enemies. They would have war, if only others will fight us in their stead. We see what they mean plain enough. General Tynan.’

  He snapped to attention without thinking about it, for a moment just the parade-ground lieutenant he had once been.

  Seda smiled to see it. ‘We are re-forming the Second Army, your beloved “Gears”, along with some elements of the Fifth. You are hereby restored to your position, and we send you south to meet up with your men. You carried the war to the gates of Collegium once before, General. Now you will fulfil your destiny and make that city ours.’

  ‘Majesty,’ Roder addressed her, voice hoarse with emotion, ‘I shall take Seldis for you. I shall take the whole Spiderlands, if you ask it.’

  She turned her benevolent regard on him. ‘No, no, General, that is in hand. General Brugan and his Rekef tell me that arrangements have already been made for the Spiders, starting with a timely resolution to the Solarno situation. I have other tasks for you. We have been gathering troops near the Mynan border for some time now, in order to fend off their raids and skirmishes. The bulk of your old Eighth is marching to join them even now, along with some new toys for the Engineers. You will return our rebellious neighbours to the Imperial fold, General Roder: first Myna, Szar and Maynes, and then on to Helleron.’

  She looked about brightly. ‘Colonel Bellowern has made the logistical arrangements personally, and General Lien and his associates will ensure you lack for nothing in the field of artifice, and of course the Rekef Outlander is already working to smooth your way. The Empire has too long been sick and at the mercy of its enemies. Now we look to you all to put the world to rights, to restore us to our proper place in the world.’ Abruptly her eyes were steel, and there were fluttering banners of black and gold in her voice, and a thousand marching feet, and great engines. ‘You know your duty, all of you, for your love of the Empire, and for me.’

  Seven

  ‘You’re ready?’ the Antspider asked.

  ‘I’m watching,’ confirmed Eujen Leadswell, and he was, keenly, measuring his reach against hers, sword tips even, arms parallel, shoulders almost touching.

  ‘And lunge,’ she instructed, and they took a simultaneous step and, without seeming to stretch, her blade point’s lead had become the best part of a foot. ‘You see it?’

  ‘I see it but I don’t see how,’ Eujen complained, dropping from his swordsman’s stance. Around them, the clear airy space of Mummers’s studio picked up their every sound and murmured it about the paper-covered walls.

  ‘She’s rolling her shoulder back as she stands ready,’ came Gerethwy’s measured tones, the cadence of an old man behind the lighter tones of a young one. ‘Her arm’s longer than yours, and when she lunges, she’s casting her shoulder forward as well as her arm. Her joints must be as freakish as the rest of her, in my opinion.’ He moved a piece on the board in front of him, then glanced blithely at the Antspider, waiting for a challenge. He was by far the most outlandish figure in the room, and perhaps in Collegium. Most people had never so much as seen a Woodlouse-kinden before, but certainly nobody had ever seen a young one.

  Averic, across from him, made a quick counter-move. He played chess, even this outrageously chaotic version that only he and Gerethwy knew how to play, as though he was being timed. He was a strange sight in Collegium, this lean Wasp youth: not the hulking brute that most Collegiates imagined or remembered from the war, but a quiet, studious figure who wore eyeglasses to read, with sandy hair of a conservative length for a College student, but that the Antspider had taken for the height of rebellion in an Imperial. When she had confronted him with that thought, he had patiently explained that, no, the height of rebellion for an Imperial was setting yourself up as the Emperor. That was when she had decided she liked him.

  He had turned up at the city’s gates in company with Gerethwy, not from the same starting point but from the same point of the compass. Averic was all the way from the Empire – where else were Wasps from? – and Gerethwy from some unimaginable place north or east even of that. The joke ran that the cartography department had offered to pay for his tuition if the Woodlouse only filled in the blank spaces on their maps. He was hairless, gaunt-faced, light grey skin marked with dark grey bands running up over his scalp and down his back. Gerethwy was the only one of their little circle who could give the Antspider an even fight. He was close on seven feet tall, even with the slight bunching of his back and shoulders, and his reach was prodigious. What he lacked in speed he made up for in precision, and he would lead her on and lead her on, defence and defence, until her temper gave out and she did something incautious, which inevitably resulted in an immediate victory for one or the other of them.

  ‘I still can’t see it,’ Eujen complained, ‘even if you do have trick shoulders.’

  ‘I wish the crowd at the Forum had your eyes,’ she remarked lightly. The disqualification had been a shame, but notoriety was hard currency even in Collegium, and especially amongst the students. Besides, odds were that Averic’s late arrival would have seen them lose anyway, and if it was a choice between a mundane loss and a flamboyant one, then the Antspider knew which one she would take every time.

  Averic had been late, it turned out, because the city militia had stopped him in the street no fewer than three times on his way to the Prowess Forum.

  ‘Pose, please,’ came the voice of Raullo Mummers, whose studio they were cluttering up. He was a stocky Beetle-kinden a few years senior to any of them, a professional artist trying to clinch some manner of deal with one of Collegium’s galleries, and sketching anatomy and engineering designs for the College to pay the rent. The single long room he lived and worked in filled the entire lower storey of a ramshackle house near the College, with one wall mostly given over to a grand circular window, intricately leaded in the Spider style some decades ago, and now boasting some half a dozen missing panes covered up with wood. All the rest of Mummers’s walls were covered with his sketches, the work of a decade plastered and overlapping, the inspiration from them constantly feeding back into his work.

  The Antspider sighed and adopted her ready pose again, although this time Eujen decided not to join her, instead drifting over to speculate on the chess game.

  ‘Next year, do you think, for the Forum?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ Eujen replied over his shoulder, but his voice carried an uncertain tone.

  ‘It’s a wise man who knows tomorrow,’ said Gerethwy, making another move after some thought, and watching Averic respond with instant certainty.

  ‘Talk, all talk. Will Collegium be here next year? Yes. Will we be students at the College? Yes,’ Eujen said defensively.

  ‘So sure?’ the Antspider demanded, her straight arm beginning to tremble as she held her pose for Mummers.

  ‘The alt
ernative is too dire to think about, Straessa,’ Eujen declared. ‘Look at where everyone stood after the last war, the loss of life, the chaos and disruption, missed harvests, civil strife . . .’

  ‘You don’t have to do the grand speeches with us, Eujen. We’re your friends,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re very quiet, Averic.’

  The Wasp looked up from the board for a moment, and then seemed to become utterly absorbed in the position of the pieces. Eujen had been the only student willing – or daring enough – to approach the College’s new Imperial recruit, beginning an unlikely friendship born of curiosity and cultural differences. Averic avoided contradicting or arguing with Eujen whenever possible. For a Wasp he seemed remarkably tactful. Patient, too. For a long time Straessa had thought he was simply devoid of the ugly temper that three generations of his kinden had made notorious. Then, once, she had seen him off guard for a moment: not in defence of himself but when some magnate’s son decided to call Eujen a coward. Averic’s hands had clenched into fists – a gesture of peace amongst his violent kinden – but she had caught an expression on his face, visible only for that single moment, and she had understood. It was not patience, but sheer bloody-minded willpower. He was constantly restraining himself, every day, through every barb of provocation and frustration, holding in check that reflexive retaliation his kinden would normally resort to.

  ‘Enough,’ she told Mummers. ‘Or I’m going to strain something. Do you pay me to be your model?’

  ‘Do you pay me rent to sit around my studio?’ he returned, looking sullen. Because he was, at least notionally, a productive member of society, she sometimes forgot he was only a few years older than her.

  ‘Wasn’t te Mosca coming tonight?’ Gerethwy observed, staring at the board.

  ‘Trying to pin down Mistress te Mosca is like trying to stop the sun,’ Eujen observed, and then the door slammed open suddenly and a half-dozen soldiers spilled in. They were Merchant Company men and women, solid Beetle-kinden in barred helms and breastplates over buff coats, each sporting a blue sash with a gold portcullis emblazoned on it. They all carried snap-bows.

  In the initial confusion, the crash of the door still echoing, the Antspider had traded her wooden sword for the narrow-bladed steel weapon that was lying by the chessboard, the move from play to real following an instinct that had come with her from her childhood in Seldis amongst the full-blooded Spider-kinden. Gerethwy had taken up his staff in a single understated gesture, the weapon and his long arms giving him an improbable amount of reach. Eujen had brought up his practice blade into line as though he was in the Forum. Only Averic had no weapon and, although he stood up immediately, he kept his arms by his side, no expression on his face.

  ‘You,’ the leader of the soldiers, a tough-faced woman, picked out Averic, ‘you’re wanted.’

  ‘What is this?’ Eujen demanded, advancing with his wooden blade still in hand. ‘What right have you to just burst in here?’

  ‘Civic security,’ the woman told him curtly.

  ‘Where is the law?’ he demanded, and there was no admission in his face that her snapbow was now directed at him. Straessa sensed rather than saw Averic tense – not a threat to him but this one to Eujen eating away at his control.

  ‘Officer Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company,’ the Antspider declared brightly, drawing everyone’s attention. ‘Everyone knows Officer Padstock wouldn’t go breaking down doors without good authority.’ Straessa’s sword went back on the table, a plea for a moment’s calm.

  In truth, everyone knew nothing of the sort. Elder Padstock, chief officer of the Maker’s Own, was as much Stenwold Maker’s creature as the company name suggested, and she was known for enforcing his perceived wishes with utter conviction.

  Padstock regarded all of them without love. ‘The Speaker for the Assembly wishes to see the Wasp-kinden. Is that sufficient authority?’ She tried to lock eyes with Averic but he was having none of it.

  Eujen was gathering himself for another outburst, but now the Wasp stepped forward, one finger flicking over a chessman to signify surrender. ‘Of course, I would be honoured to meet with Master Drillen,’ he observed mildly.

  ‘Not alone,’ Eujen insisted. ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘That’s not in my brief,’ Padstock snapped.

  ‘I’m going with him to Drillen. What are you going to do?’ Eujen put himself right in front of her, making himself impossible to ignore.

  She put the barrel of her snapbow to his chest, finger on the trigger, and Straessa found herself thinking, This is it. This is when Collegium went mad. Probably Padstock had looked Eujen over and seen only a posturing academic whose wars were fought on paper, but one thing he had never lacked was courage. Too much courage for his own good.

  Straessa could almost hear Averic winding up until he was tense as a bowstring, with fingers pressing into his palms until they were bloodless. Somewhere out of her eyeline, Gerethwy changed his grip on the staff slightly. We’re going to get into a fight with the Merchant Companies. We’re going to get shot. She now wished she had not put her sword down, especially as the move had bought her nothing. This is the night that they started shooting students. The thought went round and round in her head.

  Then Padstock lowered the snapbow with a sound of disgust. ‘Fine. come with us. See what Drillen makes of you, Wasp-lover. Just you, though. The rest of your menagerie stays here.’ Her eyes flicked across Gerethwy and the Antspider, and then settled on Raullo Mummers. ‘Quite the nest of dissension you keep here, Master Mummers. An artist should have a better feel for the mood of his public. Now, let’s move. And you can leave the toy sword here. I doubt you’ll find a use for it where we’re going.’

  Eujen cast the Antspider a familiar look – she knew it well from his turns in the debating circles, or stepping into the ring at the Prowess Forum. She had to tell herself, over and over, that this was Collegium, after all. People did not get vanished in Collegium. They did not die at the whims of their betters. That was reserved for the Spiderlands or the Empire, or for foreigners in an Ant city-state. The whole point of Collegium, which had drawn her across half the Lowlands with nothing but a haphazard education, a pocket of stolen gemstones and a cocky attitude to recommend her, was that its people lived in peace, free from fear and oppression. Eujen must be the future, not Padstock. If Padstock is the future of this city then there will be nothing left recognizable. Like Eujen says, we can’t kill all of what we are just to survive.

  Then they were gone, the soldiers, Padstock, Eujen and Averic, marching off into the night, and Gerethwy was relaxing by careful degrees, releasing all that stored power that his lanky frame hid so well, and Mummers was hunching over, muttering to himself and peering at the door to see what damage had been done to it.

  Jodry Drillen was found sitting at his desk, some unfinished document of state beneath the nib of his reservoir pen, a bowl of wine half-finished at his left hand, and still wearing the creased robes that he had worn to that day’s session of the Assembly. He was to be found thus so often that a number of his associates had compared notes and knew full well that it was a studied pose that he adopted quite deliberately: the elder statesman at work for the city’s good at all hours. If he had a great many visitors of an evening, then the half-bowls of wine he was required to drain left him positively light-headed towards midnight.

  Mere students were not privy to the higher echelons of rumour, of course, and so he cut a suitably grave figure as the Wasp boy was led in by Jodry’s Fly-kinden secretary, Arvi. There was another youth tagging along, but Jodry was hardly surprised. The student body tended to form close-knit factions at a moment’s notice – good practice for a life of politics – and, in all honesty, half of Jodry’s visitors arrived with some unwelcome hanger-on.

  ‘Young Averic,’ he noted, ‘and I believe it’s Leadswell, is it not?’

  The Beetle boy nodded, and Jodry saw that, although much of him looked soft, like most Beetle lads whose families ha
d a certain income, his eyes and the set of his jaw were solid. Very much Assembler material, Jodry considered, an assessment backed by what he already knew of the young man. ‘Come in, both of you. Chief Officer Padstock, thank you for your assistance. Speed and discretion as standard.’ The words were clearly a dismissal to the woman who loomed in the doorway behind the two students, her snapbow shouldered, but she did not go.

  ‘Master Speaker, I must advise you, it is not safe to be in a room with one of his kinden. They are never unarmed.’

  Jodry opened his mouth to wave her concerns airily away, but an odd feeling down his back stopped him. The Wasp’s expression was as bland as a statue’s, but of course his provenance was in question, and what if all this was some Rekef scheme after all, to get a man close enough to kill the Speaker for the Assembly?

  Would they? Am I so important? He had planned to make this a comfortable, avuncular interview, a word from the wise to young Averic, a gentle sounding-out. To ask Padstock to stay would be to show weakness. To command her to go had an outside chance of being fatal.

  ‘For your peace of mind, then, Chief Officer,’ he tried, magnanimously, and she took up a post in the corner of his study, beside the comfortable chair he kept for College Masters and merchant magnates. Needless to say, neither Averic nor Leadswell took a seat there.

  Eujen Leadswell looked as though he wanted to make some angry statement, no doubt about rights, but the fact that this was the actual Speaker for the Assembly before him had apparently gifted him with a little uncharacteristic caution, instead yielding the floor to their host. Jodry allowed himself a grand sigh, a busy man with the presence of mind to attend to small things himself.

  ‘Master Leadswell, I would ask you why you have honoured me with your presence but, to avoid mutual embarrassment, let us pretend that you have told me that you are so solicitous of your Wasp friend, and so doubtful of Collegiate legal procedure, that you attend as an observer. Let us pretend that I have taken this in good humour.’