Three

Stenwold’s desk had moved house with him twice. It had been part of his life for twelve years, now, through all those hard years of struggle: his attempts to open the eyes of the Assembly to the threat of the Empire; his attempts to second-guess the Rekef; the deployment of his agents and his intelligence-gathering – all played out on this same scratched desktop.

He had returned to his trade, or never left it. It was not the Empire that obsessed him, nor even the Vekken. He was using his profession for ends as selfish and personal as those of any profiteering merchant. He was trying to find his own, but the world was large, and those in it so very small, and he knew now that she did not want to be found.

Tynisa, his ward – Tisamon’s child. He had no hold on her, no right to her, and yet he kept trying to find her. The longer he was left without news, the more he feared that she had succumbed to her bloodline; that she had followed her father towards the glorious, bloody end of a Mantis weaponsmaster.

He had letters in from this morning, two at once, and neither containing any comfort. The first was brief, made out in the blocky handwriting of an Ant-kinden who seldom committed his thoughts to paper.

Stenwold read through it once more. Another pair of eyes now on watch. He had hoped Tynisa might make for the new city, if only from some memory of Salma. She had been more than fond of Salma, he recalled, before the war and Salma’s affections elsewhere had broken them apart. He recalled their last meeting, in Salma’s brigand camp. Brief, awkward. It seemed Tynisa had, for once, not known how to act or what to say.

Balkus will find her if her feet should take her to Princep. And perhaps Stenwold should go himself. The city they were building west of Sarn was founded on all the principles that Collegium and Stenwold both upheld. He should go and see whether they were making good on their intentions, or whether the rot had crept in already.

My mind is dark this evening. But then that was hardly surprising, sitting here leafing through the notes of failed searches, while waiting for more bad news from his anticipated guests.

The second letter was written out in a neatly elegant hand, the slightly over-florid style of an educated Beetle mimicking the glorious calligraphy of the Spiderlands.

That last line, that personal voice behind the formal style, tugged at Stenwold: Greenwise Artector, one of Hel-leron’s guiding council, a wealthy magnate and unlikely ally. Nobody but Stenwold knew quite how much he had orchestrated things, behind the facade of public life, to assist the Lowlands in its war against the Empire, even from the heart of an occupied city. Everything Greenwise had seen of the Empire’s numbers and movements and capabilities had found its way to Stenwold, and to Salma too, who had used it to slow the Wasp advance until the Sarnesh army was ready for them. It was an achievement worthy of recognition, yet Greenwise had been explicit that it go unrecognized. Stenwold knew exactly why: the Empire still had its people in Helleron, and its ambitions beyond. There would come a time when the Imperial banner would once again come to that city. At which point, Greenwise’s fellow magnates would have him handed over without a second thought.

There was a delicate scratch at the door and Stenwold folded the two letters together and put them away, an old instinct he didn’t need just now, but might need to take up again soon – just like the sword that hung on the back of the study door.

‘You can come in,’ he announced.

‘You’ve closed the latch again,’ came Arianna’s voice, amused. Another old habit, for a spymaster, past or present, valued privacy. He got up and opened the door to her.

He always felt better for seeing her, no matter what the odds. She had sustained him through the Vekken Siege, and it was widely claimed that she and he together had sent the Imperial Second Army packing. Nonsense, of course, but Stenwold was all unwillingly attracting stories that would have done justice to a sorcerer-hero of the Bad Old Days. Having a pretty young Spider girl at his side seemed to coin only envy and admiration, however, rather than the looked-for scandal.

‘They’re here,’ Arianna told him, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Cardless is attending to them.’ Cardless was Sten-wold’s third servant since the war, and not given to the gossip and sloth that had seen his master dismiss the other two. He had been Arianna’s choice, of course. Stenwold was used to choosing spies and agents, which meant his eye was attuned for different qualities.

He took a deep breath, looking down at his hands. It was time now to resolve the rumours.

Cardless had transformed Stenwold’s homely kitchen table into something fit for an important Assembler hosting a Master of the College. There were candles in ornate Spider-kinden holders, and the wine was a good Merro vintage. His three guests held a bowl each already. Two were well known to Stenwold, members of the expedition that had gone under his name. The lean old man was the historian Berjek Gripshod. The younger woman, tall and straight, was Praeda Rakespear, teacher of artifice. There were lines on their faces that had not been evident at their departure. Although they both wore the crisp white robes of their office, the travel of many miles seemed to hang about them, so that Stenwold could almost taste the dust.

The third visitor was a stranger who appeared to fill most of the room, stooping under the ceiling, the tiny bowl a toy in the palm of his hand: a Beetle-kinden, though taller than any man of Collegium Stenwold had seen, and he wore a tunic of a foreign cut, ornamented with gold at the neck and wrist. His bare arms were huge with muscle and traced with scars. He stood beside Praeda with a possessive enough air to be either her lover or a bodyguard. Arianna had met them at the door and then ushered them in to see Stenwold, the perfect Collegiate hostess.

‘Master Maker,’ said old Gripshod, by way of greeting.

‘Master Gripshod, Mistress Rakespear, and . . .’ Stenwold looked up at the giant cautiously. He felt that if the man straightened up and flexed his shoulders he would send the walls of Stenwold’s house tumbling outwards into the street.

‘Master Maker,’ Praeda said, ‘may I introduce Amnon, formerly the First Soldier of Khanaphes.’

Stenwold blinked at that, reflecting that Praeda had perhaps exceeded a scholar’s normal penchant for bringing back research material. ‘Well, I’m honoured,’ he managed.

The huge man regarded him with a slight, polite smile, the thoughts behind it well hidden.

‘Please, sit.’ Stenwold gestured to the table. Of course there were only four places set but, even as he noticed it, Cardless was seamlessly inserting a fourth before drifting back with a tray of fruit-bread.

They settled about the table. It was clear to them all that this was not just another case of a townsman greeting the returned explorers. They eyed each other like veterans who might or might not have fought in the same battles, or even on the same side.

‘What did you actually know, of what you were sending us into, Master Maker?’ Praeda asked him first. ‘Or what did Jodry Drillen know?’

‘What I knew, you knew,’ Stenwold replied. ‘And as for what Drillen knew, who can say? I’ll say that I don’t believe he was trying to stir up trouble anywhere but here in Collegium, but I have no window on his mind.’

‘They say he will be Speaker,’ Berjek murmured. ‘Did we bring that about?’

‘Yes and yes,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘But there were worse men for the job.’ And am I Drillen’s apologist now? ‘If I had thought he was sending you into danger, if I had thought that he was the kind of man to do so, then I’d have had no part of it.’

‘I believe you,’ Berjek acknowledged, although Praeda looked less certain. ‘I opposed you, you know, when you first started your ravings about the Empire. You were right then, so I’ll advance credit on your opinions now.’

‘Manny was killed,’ Praeda stated. ‘The Wasps killed him.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

She looked to Amnon then, and Stenwold placed his role as lover and not merely a guard. ‘If it hadn’t been . . .’ she began.

Berjek nodded. ‘And for the Vekken. It was your idea to have them with us, and I won’t say we weren’t ultimately grateful. You’ve spoken with them?’

‘As soon as they arrived. I’d left them time to report to their fellows but . . . Ant-kinden, of course – the Vekken here knew, as soon as your ship approached the harbour.’ They had told him little else, save that the Empire was there, and involved in an assault on the city, and on the embassy in particular. The interview with the returned Vekken ambassadors had been strange even by their standards. They had left so much out, and he had sensed that it was not just to spite him, but because they lacked adequate words to describe it. Whatever had motivated them to hold to their truce with Collegium, it was not accounted for in the little they had revealed.

‘Master Maker,’ said Gripshod, ‘we know why you’ve asked us here. It’s not merely to welcome the returning explorers and it’s not concerning city politics.’ He extracted a sealed and folded paper from within his robes, and Stenwold caught sight of the handwriting: his own name inscribed in that too familiar, desperately-trying-to-be-neat hand. He reached for it automatically, but Berjek held it back.

‘We need to explain first,’ Praeda said. Stenwold’s gaze flicked between the two of them, sliding past the chest of the huge Khanaphir soldier. ‘Whatever she’s written will be her own account but . . . it may not be as reliable as you’re used to.’

‘What do you mean?’ Stenwold was already on the defensive for absent Che without thinking.

The two academics exchanged glances. ‘Only that, on reaching Khanaphes, your niece’s behaviour was . . . erratic. Increasingly so,’ Berjek informed him, a man steeling himself for an unpleasant task. ‘She began acting oddly, absenting herself, avoiding engagements. She disappeared two or three times without warning or excuse. She kept odd company: foreign merchants, the Imperial ambassador.’ He saw Stenwold react to that last information, and nodded grimly. ‘Whatever was preoccupying her mind, it wasn’t official duties, Master Maker.’

‘She was engaged on some expedition of her own,’ Praeda confirmed. ‘We all witnessed it. When the attack on the city began she vanished entirely. Everyone thought the Wasps had ordered her killed . . . You do know about the Imperial involvement there?’

Stenwold nodded. ‘Word came to me that they were boiling the pot. I’m listed to challenge the Imperial ambassador over it soon, but no doubt he’ll say it was all down to rogue elements, therefore nothing to do with them.’

‘Who can say?’ Berjek said. ‘Frankly, I can’t see what possible advantage the Empire could have gained, even if they’d ground Khanaphes into sand and dust. Rogue elements would make as much sense as anything.’ He drained his bowl and Cardless was immediately at his elbow to refill it. ‘Well, you’re forewarned, Maker. Read it.’ He slid the letter across the tabletop.

Stenwold took a deep breath and broke the seal. That same script greeted him, that had always been a cause of concern for her tutors. The thought came to him of Che diligently practising her letters over and over, a dozen years gone, and he shut his eyes for a moment.

‘We should leave.’ It was the deep voice of Amnon. Stenwold looked up to meet the gaze of a private man who knew a need for privacy in others, unlike the Collegiates who thrived on the doings of their neighbours. He shook his head, aware that he was being remiss as a host.

‘No, no, please, help yourself to my table. I – I won’t be a moment.’ He should leave Che’s letter until they were gone, he knew, but he did not have that kind of strength, not in this.

He looked up from the letter to meet their eyes and there must have been a thunder in his expression that they had not expected. The two academics flinched, and Amnon squared his shoulders as though ready for an assault.

‘Who?’ was all he asked.

‘Master Maker?’ Praeda frowned at him.

‘Who was she travelling with? She says here, “No doubt the messengers have already told me”. So tell me, Masters, who is with my niece.’

‘I did not think . . .’ Berjek started, but Praeda’s eyes widened and she interrupted, ‘She must mean the Imperial ambassador.’

Stenwold went quite cold, the letter tearing slightly in his hands. ‘To the Empire? The little fool’s gone to the Empire?’

‘I very much doubt it,’ Praeda said. ‘Has her letter not told you where she was going? She didn’t tell us.’ At Stenwold’s stare she went on: ‘The Empire was trying to kill her, last we heard. I can’t think that she’d just walk into their hands.’

‘Then why is she with—?’

‘He’d gone rogue himself,’ Berjek said quickly. ‘Your niece said his own people were trying to kill him. Another reason the Empire isn’t likely to be their destination . . . We . . . ?’ For Stenwold had held up a hand. ‘Master Maker?’

‘Tell me his name.’ The foreknowledge, indeed the bloody-minded inevitability of it, made him feel ill and Praeda did not have to say it. He knew already. He knew.

His opposite number. His nemesis. His curse. Thalric.

‘I should have killed him when he turned himself in to me,’ Stenwold said, and the horrified looks of his Collegiate guests passed him by. ‘I should have let Felise gut him. I should have cut his lying throat myself.’ For a moment he was purely Stenwold the spymaster, whose history and conduct were not at all those of Master Stenwold the scholar and Assembler. In that same moment someone began pounding on his door, a voice distantly shouting his name, and he was reaching for the sword he no longer wore, even as Arianna went to answer it.

Stenwold heard the insistent voice as the door was opened, demanding loudly to see the ‘War Master’.

I am not in the mood. It was a voice he had heard enough of today already. He heard Arianna trying to put the man off, but for once her charm failed and the intruder had stormed into the room before she could divert him. Master Failwright, Assembler and shipping magnate, clutching a leather satchel stuffed full of documents to his chest.

‘Maker!’ he spat out, then saw Stenwold’s guests and a moment of confusion ensued, before Failwright blurted, ‘What’s going on here?’ as though he had uncovered some conspiracy against the sea trade. Arianna hovered in the doorway behind him with an apologetic expression, but Stenwold told her, by one small shake of his head, that he would deal with this.

‘Rones Failwright, isn’t it?’ Berjek Gripshod observed, in a voice lacking fondness.

‘I must speak with you, Maker.’ Failwright spoke as though Berjek and the others were just about to leave, as though Stenwold was at the Amphiophos and not in his own home. ‘You’ll see. You’ll see when I—’

‘I’ll see nothing,’ Stenwold said. His voice was leaden, the words like stones.

The man stared at him. ‘Maker, they told me you were a man of honour.’

‘And?’

‘And they sing your bloody praises on every street throughout this town. You have to help me. They call you War Master, don’t they? Well, we’re at war, Maker! Not with your precious Empire, but war nonetheless. Our ships are under attack. More and more of them boarded or fired, robbed or sunk, or simply lost without trace where no storm ever was.’ He slammed the bulging satchel down on the dining table. A wineglass jumped from the far side with the impact but Amnon caught it almost without looking. He was merely waiting, Stenwold realized, for his host’s request to evict Failwright by force.

‘It’s all here!’ Failwright was leafing through a bundle of dog-eared scrolls. ‘It’s not piracy, but outright war! I tried to tell Broiler’s lot, but they’re up to their armpits in the Helleron trade. If we go under, they’d do nothing but get richer. Everyone knows he hates you, so you’re the only person I can turn to.’

‘No,’ said Stenwold. The single heavy word halted Fail-wright’s train of thought.

‘But everyone—’

‘I don’t care what people say of me, I was never the champion of one merchant or a hundred. All that I did, I did for my city and the Lowlands. I never asked to be War Master, and if I had, do you imagine a real warlord would care a jot about your disputes?’

‘No, no, now look . . .’ Failwright took a scroll from his satchel, seemingly at random. ‘The ships, I’ve itemized them all: their cargoes, the men who invested in them, and their fates!’

‘Get out of my house.’ Stenwold’s tone was still calm, but laden with threat.

‘Maker, you have a duty—!’

‘Yes, I have a duty!’ Something broke in him, some barrier that had separated the wartime man from peaceful matters. In that same moment Stenwold wished that he possessed that trick of Tisamon’s: the inexplicable sleight that put a blade in his grasp at the merest thought. At the same time he realized that, had he possessed it, Failwright would have died there and then. There was no sword, of course, but Failwright saw it in his eyes. He was still gabbling away, telling Stenwold how it was his responsibility, but in a voice of thunder Stenwold overrode him.

‘I have duties to my family, I have duties to my College and my city, but I have no duty to be every man’s hired hand. I am not for sale or rent or lease, nor shall I take up your grimy little banner out of public love. I have a ward and a niece lost to me, and friends dead in the war, and an Assembly of men who think that the war was won instead of merely postponed, and yes, I have duties, and you now stand between them and me.’ He was forcing Failwright back towards the door without touching him, sheer restrained fury boiling off him like steam. ‘And if you are still in my sight one minute from now then I swear I will no longer be answerable for my actions.’

Failwright actually tried to thrust the scroll at him, but fell gibbering back when Stenwold raised a hand. Not striking the wretched merchant took more control than not having Thalric killed during the war, when the defecting Wasp was at Stenwold’s mercy.

Arianna had reopened the door, and Failwright stumbled backwards through it, still stuttering sounds that were no longer words. The door slammed after him, leaving a moment of blessed silence.

Stenwold turned to his guests, then, and remembered where he was and what he had been doing. ‘I . . .’ he said uncertainly, still seething with anger that had nowhere else to go.

‘I think we should make our exit,’ Praeda decided. ‘Master Maker, please call upon us if you wish to know more, but it seems there is much your niece told none of us.’

I should tell them to stay. I am a poor host. They were right, though. Che’s news had broken the back of the evening and it would not recover.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘this has not gone as I’d hoped.’ Even as he said it he was thinking, Has it not, though? Aside from Failwright’s intrusion, did I not honestly expect this after Che failed to come back?

‘We understand,’ Berjek reassured him, and they left, quickly making their farewells. Amnon was the last to go, his gaze suggesting he had weighed up Stenwold Maker, and found something there of worth. Stenwold had understood that Khanaphes had little in common with Collegium, which suggested that the man must have been doing a great deal of catching up.

Arianna went over to Stenwold, her slender arms wrapping about one of his. ‘For the morning, all of it,’ she told him. ‘Enough of them, enough of all of them. Put down your duties, warrior, and come to bed.’

That reminded him of the actual war, when his duties could not be put down, when he had burned the oil night and day to save his city. And, even then, did I save it? The Imperial Second left us because Tisamon finally honed his gift for killing into regicide. What part did I play?

But the war was currently in abeyance, and long might it remain so. The duties could wait.

On his way to the stairs, he saw that Failwright had been evicted so fast that one of his scrolls lay part-unravelled on the floor near the door. Of all the competing claims on his attention, that was surely the least.