The Air War

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Was the last clash between you and Collegium so personal that you had to see the business ended yourself?’ he pressed.

  She glanced from her wine over to their subordinates. Colonel Mittoc was explaining something to the others in his rough voice, some detail of how to transport his new artillery toys, no doubt, and the two Spiders were listening with some interest.

  ‘General, you were closer to the mark before,’ Mycella said softly.

  Tynan raised an eyebrow, not committing himself, and she went on, ‘To lead an army is no honour in our culture. Yes, the duty would normally devolve on some son or nephew.’ When he made no comment she let her expression fragment a little, so that he could see behind it. ‘There was a trade dispute, nothing greater than that. Collegium killed a niece of mine, and then a son. I led an armada against it, more ships than have sailed from the Spiderlands in generations, the grandest venture of the modern age. We turned back. Can you imagine? We were not even defeated. The defences of the Beetles were such that we had no option but to turn back or lose everything. Even now, we will be marching the long coast with you, rather than taking to the waves. What does this suggest to you?’

  ‘That you were not well received when you returned home,’ Tynan suggested. ‘But you are the head of your family, are you not? Who could discipline you?’

  ‘I am the Lady of the Aldanrael,’ she confirmed, ‘but I am sure that your people are no more tolerant of public weakness and failure than are mine. So it is that my house is laid low, our holdings stolen, our name a jest on every lip. So it is that, to preserve my family’s very existence, I have chosen this path: the path of the Lady Martial. No great triumph amongst my kinden, no great standing, and yet honour enough, and that you will understand. There is honour in taking the sword by the blade when it is presented.’ At last she smiled, and he almost felt he had been holding his breath for it. ‘Beware me, General, for I am a desperate woman. I have so very little left to lose.’

  Seventeen

  The fixed-wing Sweet Fire had stopped for fuel on a Helleren airfield, and Stenwold had taken the chance to sample the mood of the city, while other Mynan stragglers arrived and joined up with Kymene.

  He found little to surprise him, and much to disappoint. Nobody cared about the fall of the Three-city Alliance. Indeed, many of the merchants were already rubbing their hands over simpler access to Imperial markets. There were plenty of Wasps on the streets, mostly Consortium men. The road for the Empire’s return had been well and truly paved.

  He returned to find Kymene taking reports. Some dozen or so pilots had dropped down onto the Helleren airfield now, with more expected, their scatter of ungainly and damaged craft drawing derisive comments from the locals.

  ‘It sounds as though those of our soldiers who got out have headed for Maynes,’ she told him.

  ‘You’ll join them?’ Stenwold asked.

  ‘I’ve sent word to them to get clear of Alliance lands altogether if they can. If we can’t stand, Maynes won’t. They were prouder than us about buying in outside weapons and machines. They have almost nothing to put in the air.’

  ‘Come to Collegium,’ he suggested.

  She looked at him levelly, a half-circle of airmen watching this exchange silently. ‘Will your people fight again, Maker?’

  ‘If they will not, then I’ll go with you to Sarn, or wherever else we must, until we find someone who will.’

  ‘Satisfactory,’ she agreed.

  Another orthopter skimmed overhead, making the Mynan airmen jump and twitch for the safety of their machines. It was Taki’s Esca Magni, though, looking decidedly more chipped and battered than when Stenwold had seen it last. The Fly-kinden herself looked dead on her feet as she levered herself from her cockpit.

  A ragged cheer went up, for the Mynan airmen had all seen her efforts in the skies over their city, and the sound of their applause transformed Taki from a weary refugee into some shadow of her past self: the Solarnese air-duellist. She managed a grin for them, and then was striding forward to clasp hands first with Edmon, then the short Bee woman beside him, then going round the circle, dismissing Kymene almost as an irrelevance.

  ‘Someone get me wound again,’ she called out to nobody in particular. ‘Or are we putting down roots here?’ Stenwold could see how tired she must be, but either she was putting on a brave face or her pride would not let her acknowledge it.

  They flew east next, not straight for Collegium as only Taki could have managed the journey in one leg, but navigating for Malkan’s Folly, the new fortress that marked the most westerly point that the Imperial Seventh Army had reached in the last war. Stenwold needed to warn the Sarnesh.

  Malkan’s Folly had been the project of the Sarnesh since shortly after the war because they, like Stenwold, had known the day would come when the black and gold would look westwards once again. The Ants lacked something of Collegium’s ingenuity, but they were united in a way their Beetle allies were not. When the King of Sarn and his tacticians set their minds on a project, then progress would be rapid, all hands turning to the task.

  The fortress was a great slope-walled monster of black stone, rising to a jagged crown of towers. There had been some talk of raising a series of smaller edifices, as a line to cut across the path of any Wasp advance, but the cost would have been great, the utility small. The Ants knew that it would be impossible physically to stop an enemy force with fortifications, given how mobile Imperial armies were. The impediment that Malkan’s Folly offered was logistical. A whole army of Ants could be stationed there, well provisioned, unassailable, sallying forth at will to disrupt enemy supply lines or to attack the Wasps in the flank or the rear, coordinating with the main Sarnesh army with that impeccable ease that only Ants, with their interlinked minds, could muster. With that plan, Malkan’s Folly became an obstacle no general could afford to circumvent.

  Taking the fortress was reckoned to be near-impossible, according to the Sarnesh engineers. All four faces of it were studded with leadshotter emplacements, and angled so that the weapons’ arcs overlapped and covered every inch of ground. Windows were narrow – enough for a snapbowman to shoot out, but not enough to allow ingress to the Light Airborne. Beneath the building itself was a network of tunnels and cellars containing ammunition and provisions enough to last out a siege. Beyond the fortress, if an army hoped to rush past the position and leave it behind, was land watched over by the Mantids and Moth-kinden of the Ancient League, other allies from the war who were more than capable of tying down an Imperial force with skirmishing, ambush and assassination until the Ant forces closed from behind.

  The welcome the Ants gave to the fugitive Mynan air force was cool and businesslike. They provided food and drink, fuel and the use of winding engines, and they listened calmly to the news of Myna’s fall, making notes. None of the visitors was allowed within the fortress, however, and everything was conducted out under the sky. The Sarnesh did not want any outsider knowing the secrets of their new stronghold.

  ‘We can expect them here within perhaps a month,’ estimated the Ant commander who took their evidence.

  ‘Much less,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘Their force is now far more mechanized than General Malkan’s Seventh was. Even if you break up the rails leading from Helleron, I’d guess they’ll have enough automotives to get their siege engines here quickly.

  ‘Their siege engines,’ said the Ant impassively, and Stenwold experienced a sinking feeling, wondering if the man – and, by extension, all of the Ants at Malkan’s Folly – actually believed those stories from Myna. He had met that problem before with Ant-kinden. They lived in a world of absolute veracity when it came to their own people, and by contrast they found all outsiders unreliable and duplicitous.

  ‘There will be Mynan soldiers as well,’ Kymene spoke up. ‘Some may come here. Will you let them fight alongside you?’

  The Ant commander made a discouraging noise. ‘I am not happy about asking my men to fight here alongside peopl
e who cannot follow our orders. Malkan’s Folly is a machine, efficient and carefully calibrated. Any fleeing Myna will be permitted to resupply here, then pass on westwards. Our fortress is for Sarn alone to defend.’ His almost uninflected tone concealed whether he meant this as an insult or not. ‘Collegium need not fear enemies from the north,’ he added, for Stenwold’s benefit. ‘Tell your Assembly that much.’ For a moment a measure of real disdain flickered across the man’s face. ‘We take it that you will fight?’

  Stenwold was uncomfortably aware of Kymene’s eyes fixed on him too, but all he could do was nod and hope that his people would see things the same way.

  Jodry Drillen had not seen his day going like this. He was the Speaker for the Assembly, after all, and it was hard to explain to those around him why he had decided to grace the scene of a particularly unpleasant-looking murder.

  Still, the College Master who ran the department of justice was obviously flattered by his presence. The task of overseeing the law and order of the city had always been undertaken by the College, on the basis that those who formulated the city’s laws were best fit to enforce them, and investigating a crime was simply research in a different hat. Academically, however, it was not highly regarded, and so the Speaker’s personal attention was a much appreciated sign of support.

  ‘What’s it for?’ Jodry murmured.

  They were standing in the central room of Banjacs Gripshod’s townhouse, which took up all three floors and the cellar and was mostly filled with a . . . a machine, was as far as Jodry would commit himself.

  Standing beside him was a lecturer in artifice, a mechanic of fifteen years brought in to answer this precise question, and he just shook his head, eyes as wide as Jodry’s own. ‘I have not the first idea, Speaker, and that’s my educated opinion. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘It’s not just a . . . murder weapon, then?’ Jodry pressed.

  ‘Must have taken years to build. I know the Spiders say that revenge tastes better in the morning, but I reckon most people would’ve forgot why they wanted to kill someone by the time this thing got finished.’

  The mortal remains of Reyna Pullard were still being prised off the machine itself. There was not much left of her, and what survived was charred black. A discharge of lightning from the device had practically incinerated her. The thunderous discharge, and her scream, had been loud enough to alert people outside the building, and that had led to Jodry standing here, hoping that it had been quick and mostly painless, despite the evidence of his eyes.

  It might have been an accident, of course, save for Banjacs Gripshod’s own reaction. When the city watch had finally had to force their way into the house, he had practically assaulted them, screaming that the dead woman had betrayed him and making threats and demands . . . When they had shouldered their way into this room, he had become hysterical, taking them as more of the ‘enemies’ that he was apparently obsessed with, calling them traitors to their city. With due respect for his age, he had been confined to his personal chambers under guard. It seemed very likely that his mind had turned in on itself a long time before, and this regrettable business was just the final symptom.

  Except for the murderous machine, which was certainly intended for something, but was sufficiently complex – or possibly redundant – that a College artifice master had no idea what it was for. A little voice nagged in Jodry’s mind regarding Reyna Pullard’s warning: Banjacs Gripshod was going to blow up the city . . .

  Jodry did not believe in machines that destroyed cities but, if he did, they would probably look something like this.

  There was a small cough at his elbow and he glanced down to find his chief secretary, Arvi, attending on him. To Jodry’s knowledge, he had left the Fly-kinden back at his own house, but the man’s efficiency seemed not to acknowledge bounds of time or distance.

  ‘Master Maker to see you, Master Drillen.’

  Jodry stared at him. ‘Stenwold Maker?’ he asked, although he knew no others.

  ‘He arrived at the airfield with some numbers less than an hour ago, and he has been tracking you down ever since,’ Arvi reported smartly.

  ‘Some numbers . . . ? You make it sound as though he’s invading us.’ Jodry shook himself. ‘Send him in, for the world’s sake. I’m in need of a pillar of sanity to lean on.’

  But Stenwold, when he entered, did not look overly supportive. He was wearing somewhat tattered artificer’s canvas, streaked with soot and blood: not an Assembler of Collegium, but a man back from a war.

  ‘Jodry, I need to speak to the Assembly as soon as it’s in session,’ were the first words out of Stenwold’s mouth, not even a greeting for his old friend.

  ‘Granted, of course. You’ll be first on the list tomorrow morning.’ Because Jodry could see in his face that it was important, whatever it was. Then a memory shot through him, as shocking and terrible as the charge that must have killed Pullard: Stenwold had returned from Myna.

  ‘We’ve had no reliable news . . .’ Jodry breathed. ‘Sten . . .’

  ‘You have no idea, Jodry.’ Stenwold shook his head, his eyes haunted. ‘The city’s not going to like what I have to say, but it needs to listen. How’s it been here?’

  ‘Rough. Sufficiently on edge that I suspect your news is only what people have been waiting to hear for a tenday and more. What news we get . . . well, it’s plain that something’s happening in Three-city territory . . . Everyone’s going armed. Everyone’s looking for enemies . . .’ He gestured behind him at the towering glass and bronze and steel of Banjacs’s machine. ‘This . . . Banjacs Gripshod, you remember? He’s murdered his assistant. His reasons? He said she was a spy for the enemy. For the Empire, he said at one point. He even demanded to speak to you.’

  Stenwold gazed up at the bewildering tubes and chambers of the device. ‘You’re so sure she wasn’t?’

  Jodry sighed, wanting very much to just sit down on the floor, and to the pits with the dignity of his office. ‘Oh, she was a spy all right. She was my spy, who was telling me that our most notorious failed artificer was plotting some sort of terrible revenge on the city. If the Empire’s hand is anywhere, Sten, it’s probably behind this . . . thing.’

  ‘Then have someone look at it.’

  ‘First, don’t you think I have? Second, the last person who touched it was Pullard and she’s charcoal. And Banjacs Gripshod is mad enough that we’d never work out if this is an Imperial plot or not until . . .’ He looked plaintively at Stenwold. ‘How bad, Sten? Is there an “until”?’

  Stenwold did not answer him, but kept staring up at the gleaming lines of Banjacs’s killing engine.

  It was a short enough speech. Men had taken up more of the Assembly’s time with complaints about the duties levied on beech nuts.

  ‘Masters, Gownsmen and Townsmen magnates of the Collegiate Assembly,’ Stenwold had addressed them. Almost the full house had been there, despite the short notice. Assemblers developed a certain instinct, and Stenwold had seldom tabled a motion himself since the war. It was almost as though every man and woman who had been voted in at the last Lots, and every College Master who sat in the Amphiophos by right of academic credentials, had been waiting for today, forever keeping a note in their diaries: Stenwold Maker to declare war.

  But, of course, Stenwold Maker could not declare war. That was not how Collegium was run. Stenwold Maker could only ask to speak to the Assembly, to propose a motion that they, in their wisdom, would accept or decline.

  ‘I am returned from Myna,’ he had told them. ‘You will have heard some news, conflicting accounts, rumours that are true and rumours that are misinformed, or lies planted by the Empire. I have seen what happened in Myna with my own eyes. The armies of the Empire have taken it swiftly and brutally, and despite all that its defenders could do to keep their freedom. The Treaty of Gold has been breached. I am sure that the Imperial ambassador will say that Myna commenced the hostilities, and has been complaining stridently about the aggressive at
titude of the Empire’s newly freed neighbours since the war. Myna is but one city, and backed by two more, all three still rebuilding and recovering from the effects of almost two decades of occupation. The Empire has tens of cities, armies of tens of thousands. You all know the chances of Myna initiating a war that it could not possibly win.

  ‘The Collegiate Assembly signed the Treaty of Gold, and in that treaty we agreed to raise a sword against any who breaks it by attacking another signatory state. The Empire signed. Myna and its allies signed.

  ‘We have the option to turn away now, to believe the claims that the Empire’s reconquest of its former slaves is just an isolated incident, just as they claimed when they took Tark in the last war. We will be less than we were, if we do that. The word of Collegium will never again carry quite the weight it did, our reputation will lose its shine, and our allies will look on us with a doubt that would otherwise have been unthinkable.

  ‘I am aware that Myna is far away, that trade with Myna is not as lucrative as trade with the Empire, that we have been sapped by war ere now, have lost family and friends to it, more than we can afford. I, of all people, know this.

  ‘But what we have never lost is what makes us ourselves: that nobility of purpose, that breadth of vision, that knowledge and understanding of the world that makes us Collegium. If we are over-proud sometimes of what we have built, then at least we have built something to take pride in. Has Helleron done so, with its weathervane loyalties? Have the Spiderlands, with their hollow promises?

  ‘My motion is this: that the Empire has breached the Treaty of Gold and, though that treaty be nothing more than paper, we are of Collegium and paper carries a weight here that it does not amongst the armies of the Wasps. In declaring war on the Three-city Alliance, the Empire has declared its intent to bring war to us all. I ask the Assembly to vote, for we cannot let this stand unopposed. We must set ourselves against the tide. War on every tyrant who would enslave the world. War on the Empress and her armies. I call for a declaration of war against the Wasp Empire.’