Ten

Stenwold felt numb when they reached daylight again, leaving the dimly lit cavern of Albinus the spy behind them. Aldanrael. The thought made him feel ill. For a moment he wished, he really wished, that Rones Failwright had brought his wretched papers to someone else. Anyone else.

But, of course, I suppose Rones Failwright was killed on his orders. The Aldanrael were as well loved in Collegium as ever a Spider house had been. Were they not friends and heroes? Had they not fought against the Vekken and the Empire, to keep the city free?

And now this: piracy and plunder. A secret war against our shipping. But why? He saw Teornis’s face, handsome and laughing, in his mind’s eye. Never trust a Spider, they say, but surely . . . He tried to tell himself that he was a fool to take the word of some strange washed-out Ant-kinden speaking against a man he had known for years, but something leaden inside him seemed already to know the truth.

I cannot just accept this. I must be sure. The implications, the delicate relationship Collegium had built with the Spiderlands, the cities of the silk road, there was so much to lose.

Almost crashing into Tomasso, he looked up.

A dozen men and women had taken possession of the street in front of them. Most of them were Spiders, armed with long knives and rapiers, and a couple of others with bows. One man stood in the centre, prudently keeping further away from the Flies and Stenwold. He was an elegant, slender figure in a heavy greatcoat that seemed too big for him. He wore his hair long, as many Spiders did, but it was combed forward so as to cover half of his face. The burns were still visible beneath his fringe. On either side of him stood two huge Scorpion-kinden men in chain hauberks, shields and axes at the ready.

‘Look who we happen to have bumped into,’ the Spider-kinden leader called out. Stenwold was aware that the street was fast emptying around them, leaving only Tomasso’s small party confronting their antagonists. ‘Little Skipper,’ the Spider went on, ‘you have plotted a poor course, to bring you here.’

‘Ebris,’ Tomasso named him, ‘you’re looking well.’

‘Seas curse me when I ever want the opinion of a Fly on how I look,’ Ebris spat.

Tomasso had his hands on both his knife-hilts, standing feet apart, smiling calmly at the Spider captain but appearing tense as a drawn bow to his own companions. ‘You should know, Ebris, you’ll now have these waters to yourself. I’m setting sail for the south. We need never meet again.’ Stenwold saw that Piera had her bowstring half drawn back, and Laszlo’s hooked blade was in his hand, the rope already loosened from his waist. Carefully, without any eye-catching movements, Stenwold unshouldered his piercer, running a quick eye over it to be sure it was still charged and loaded.

‘We need not meet?’ Ebris echoed. ‘Oh, Skipper, you underestimate my sentimental attachment to you. I’d not dream of letting you breeze away without a keepsake or two.’

‘Be careful what you dream of,’ Tomasso replied levelly.

The Spider’s face twisted, baring the livid, shiny skin where the flames had caught him. ‘You burned my ship!’ he spat.

‘I hear you have a new one,’ said the Fly, still quite steady.

‘You burned my ship! ’

‘You were robbing mine at the time, Ebris,’ Tomasso snapped at last. ‘And if I happened to pop a couple of pots of firepowder and a fuse in amongst the cargo you stole, well, it was your own choice to rob your brother thieves.’

‘You stain my family to three generations, if you call yourself my—’ Ebris started and, even as he was speaking, Tomasso’s fingers flicked out. His hands had left his dagger hilts, and two throwing blades were in the air even as the Spider spoke. One of the Scorpions twitched his shield up before his master’s face at the last second and, on the other side of Ebris, a Spider-kinden woman’s head snapped back with the small, hiltless knife in her eye.

Stenwold heard Piera’s bowstring twang, and Laszlo was abruptly airborne, slinging his blade in a wide arc. A couple of Ebris’s crew rushed Tomasso, but the Fly had his fighting knives out now, catching their rapier blades and turning them aside, fighting half on the ground and half in the air, his lack of height and reach becoming an irrelevancy. Ebris was meanwhile shrieking at his people to kill all of them.

The Tidenfree crew had seized the initiative, but the numbers were against them, and Stenwold saw that, had he not been there, they would surely have taken to the skies and fled for their ship.

Up to me to finish it, then, he said to himself.

‘Ho, Spider!’ he bellowed, and levelled the piercer. The two Scorpions obediently clumped before their captain, bracing their shields. It was clear that none of them had any idea what Stenwold was holding, beyond that it was a weapon.

‘And who are you to address me, slave?’ Ebris of the Ganbrodiel demanded.

‘The future,’ said Stenwold, and pulled the trigger.

The sound alone stopped the fight, sent the Spiders reeling back, virtually knocked the Flies from the air. What kept the fight stopped was what those four long metal bolts had accomplished. The Scorpions had been faithful bodyguards, but the piercer had struck through their shields, splintering the wood like kindling, ripped open their mail and torn their bodies up so that they looked as though some wild beast – a mantis or a hunting beetle – had been at them. Their last service had been in vain. Two of the bolts had retained enough force to take Ebris squarely in the chest. Now they stood proud of his body, as though waiting for someone to run a flag up them.

For a moment, everybody just stared. Stenwold calmly put the piercer down and reached for his belt. He might be a long way from home, but he knew people – people of any kinden – and there was always one.

A scarred Spider-kinden, older than Ebris had been, probably a loyal family retainer, yelled something wordless and went for Stenwold with his sword. Before Tomasso could get in the way, Stenwold had loosed both barrels of the little snapbow Totho had made. True, one bolt flew straight over the man’s head, but the other one caught him beneath the collarbone and stopped him in his tracks. He dropped to his knees with a disbelieving look, and keeled over onto his side.

‘Anyone else?’ Stenwold demanded, brandishing the weapon. The piercer was discharged, the snapbow empty, but his Inapt adversaries had no idea of that. Keep your superstitions, he found himself thinking. Leave to me the foundry and the forge, and we shall see who carries the day.

They melted away, the remnants of Ebris’s crew. By that time Laszlo was calling for aid, and Stenwold turned to see that Piera had taken an arrow in the belly, even during that short moment of skirmish.

They rushed her back to the Tidenfree, convulsing and weeping in Stenwold’s arms. As the ship cast off, Despard and Fernaea both tried all the tricks of modern and ancient medicine to keep some life in her, but before Kanateris had reached the horizon she was gone.

Jodry Drillen employed three secretaries now, with standing instructions to take away and deal with anything that did not require his specific and valuable attention, yet still each morning there appeared a neat pyramid of scrolls on his desk: petitions, proposals, complaints, agendas, reports from his own people or invitations from the high-placed. Why did I want this, precisely? It seemed out of all proportion to the effective worth and influence of his new position. Locals had great difficulty persuading foreign visitors that the Speaker did not actually rule the Assembly or the city. His role was just that of a glorified bureaucrat. Collegium was ruled by the vote of the Assembly as a whole, not by the word of one man, just as the Assembly and Speaker both were selected through the casting of Lots by the citizens at large. Visitors found it an astonishing system. Jodry had seen them walking about the streets of Collegium with a nervous, expectant air, as if waiting for the howling mobs of anarchy to descend at any moment.

So why would any sane Beetle want to be Speaker, one might ask? Oh but, of course, there were perks. The Speaker was the city’s face when it came to foreign diplomacy. The Speaker met ambassadors and hosted gatherings. The Speaker was not expected to raise motions himself before the Assembly, but he drew up the list of who spoke and when. It was not in Jodry’s power to ban any Assembler from making a speech or putting a matter to the vote, but his whim determined whether a petitioner had the midmorning hours, when the Assemblers were sharp, or the early-morning slot when they were half-asleep, or later when their minds were on which chop house would receive them for lunch. Or else the next day, if there were enough wanting to be heard. In its own strange way the influence of the Speaker was as great as any Spider Aristos, and perhaps only the Spiders truly understood its implications.

Still, he had perhaps underestimated the baggage entailed. Here he was, scarcely an hour into the morning – on a day when the Assembly was not even in session, yet! – and already the business was piling up.

‘Ambassador Aagen wants to talk with you about the next games,’ said Arvi, and the position of his finger along the scroll he read from showed that he was barely halfway through. The Fly-kinden was all immaculate perfection, giving the impression he could waste Jodry’s time all day, if he needed to.

‘Don’t we have a committee ruling on the games?’ Jodry complained. ‘I’d swear we gave old Nemmie Linker some money for it.’

Arvi’s nose wrinkled. ‘Aagen’s a Wasp, Master. He’s used to a single person being in charge, and usually a man.’

‘Well, put him off.’

‘Very good.’ The Fly made a small cross on the scroll. ‘Master Outwright came with a delegation about the future of the Companies. They know that there’s a motion to disband them, and now they’re spitting teeth about it.’

‘Did you mention that the war is over? Perhaps he hasn’t heard,’ Jodry muttered.

‘I suspect he would reply that it was not as simple as that, Master,’ said Arvi smartly. He was quite the most humourless Fly that Jodry had ever known, but also the most efficient.

‘I’ll see them this afternoon.’ Jodry paused to think for a moment. ‘Have my gorget and sword fetched and polished, or whatever they do to them to make them look good. I might as well look the veteran myself.’

‘Very good.’ Arvi’s finger moved on. ‘A delegate from the Council of Thirteen in Helleron wants to talk about the railroad. It’s Jandry Pinhaver, so—’

‘So I can’t very well ignore him. Well, invite him for drinks this evening. He should appreciate that. Take up two bottles of the ’500 Seldis Glorhavael. I hear Pinhaver knows his wine.’

‘Very good. Then we have another thirteen personal petitions for justice.’

‘Look through them yourself. If there’s anything that looks as though it’s genuine, bring it back on tomorrow’s list.’

‘And the two genuine petitions from yesterday?’

‘Bring them back tomorrow, too, and that one from the day before.’ Jodry sighed. And I imagined that I would have time for a few good causes. He had tried that, over the first few days, and not only because he knew Stenwold would have expected it. The problem was that, on digging deep enough, so few causes retained their virtue for long. ‘Come on, man, what else?’

‘Stenwold Maker stepped on to the docks this morning from the Tidenfree, a Fly-run vessel of no provenance,’ Arvi reported, before rolling the scroll up neatly.

Jodry stared at him, open-mouthed, before gathering himself enough to say, ‘And you couldn’t have told me that first thing? Seventeen days he’s been gone!’

‘Would you have wanted to deal with the rest, if I had started with Master Maker?’ Arvi raised one eyebrow.

Jodry gave him a sour look. ‘Don’t think that I can’t dismiss you, without references.’

‘But think of all the petitions for justice I would raise, Master,’ the Fly replied, deadpan.

Not humourless, Jodry conceded. If only. ‘Send for him. I want to see him the moment we’re both free. I’ll fit it in around anything else. Tell him I need him to help stop a third Vekken war, that should get the truant bastard’s attention.’

‘Very good,’ Arvi responded, and bowed his way out of the door.

He had gone to Arianna first, after he stepped ashore, but only because he had been making plans while aboard ship. The Tidenfree crew were fully briefed, and they would meet with him later.

All the way home a single thought: The Aldanrael had sat like a lead ball in his stomach. He had been trying to disbelieve Albinus’s words, through fog and wind and the Lash. I will have proof. Even if the pallid Ant had spoken the truth, it would be a grave step to point a finger at the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael. To jump to conclusions and mislay the blame, well . . . Teornis was popular amongst the citizens of Collegium, but peace was even more popular. Stenwold had no doubt that he would slide from war hero to warmonger in an eye-blink.

Arianna had been glad to see him, at least. She had held him long and hard, and he thought she might even have wept, although her eyes were dry when she finally let him go. It reminded him of how they had been during the Vekken siege, in the first flush of their relationship.

He had been going to tell her more, to ask her advice even, but in the end he found the words would not come. He simply did not want to lay this burden on her.

One of Jodry’s people had found him, soon enough, and called him to an urgent conference. Stenwold regarded the prospect sourly. Was it too much to hope that, by becoming Speaker, he would stand on his own feet and not treat me like his personal servant? He was being harsh, he knew, but Jodry’s dire warnings about the Vekken smacked of cheap sensationalism. I will see our new Speaker in my own good time.

Instead he had taken to his study and written a note, very carefully phrased, though it was not addressed to any particular name. In truth, Stenwold had three or four possibilities in mind for whom those same words would serve, as he was not sure who was in the city just now, or who would be most willing to oblige. That gap in his knowledge threw him, as though he had found one of the stair treads missing on his way down to breakfast. I’m losing my touch. I should know these things already. He wondered then, sitting in this study which had seen so many years of plots and agents, Am I still an intelligencer, a spymaster, in truth? Or am I just become another fat Assembler with a war record?

Then Arianna had come in with a mug of chocolate for him. He hastily hid the letter away by instinct, beneath another sheet of parchment, then felt guilty for the action. She would work out soon enough that he was up to something. Meanwhile, she was waiting still to hear what had taken him off to sea for almost two tendays, and he did not want to lie to her. As she draped herself over his shoulder, he almost told her again, but bit back the words, found something pleasant and banal to say. The knowledge had already poisoned him. He did not want it to sicken her as well.

Later, after he had called up some Fly-kinden messengers to carry his letters, he and Arianna found other points of agreement, and his secrets were almost forgotten. Elsewhere, in the new Speaker’s townhouse, Jodry Drillen stewed and stamped and went without Stenwold’s company and, for him, Stenwold spared not a moment’s thought.

Jodry’s man was knocking at his door barely after dawn on the day after, though. Cardless diverted him, putting him off and sending him to walk about the streets for another hour or so, but by that time Stenwold knew that the Speaker, like a fly on old food, would not be swatted off without inevitably circling back.

He left the bed and, without waking Arianna, dressed in his best College robes, and headed off to the Speaker’s offices. Let’s get this over with. I have other things to do with my time.

The messenger caught up with him on the very steps of the Amphiophos, swinging through the air to match pace with him faultlessly: a young Fly woman, neat as a button, handing him a folded paper. The circular badge of her guild gleamed, freshly polished, on her chest.

Stenwold unfolded the paper, holding it close. His eyes flicked over the few words, before he enquired, ‘Who gave you this?’

‘Master Maker,’ the Fly told him, reproachfully, ‘this was left in our offices. Nobody saw by whom.’

Stenwold felt a worm of unease, for the paper had read, in stark, sharp letters, ‘Tell Maker I shall be there.’ Still, there’s nothing that can be done about that, until the time . . . He was about to move on but the Fly skipped in front of him, coughing politely.

‘Ah, so you’ve not been paid for it.’ He made a wry face and passed her a couple of coins. She bowed neatly, feet already leaving the ground, and was off and away over the city.

Jodry was to be found at his desk, and not alone. A young Beetle lad that Stenwold recognized as Maxel Gainer was sitting mournfully in a chair nearby, as though he was a student about to be disciplined. He looked up hopefully when Stenwold was ushered in.

‘What’s the emergency?’ Stenwold asked. He had not heard that Collegium was now at war with Tsen or Vek, or any Ant city-state, and he was sure that someone would have mentioned it.

Jodry raised his eyebrows. ‘Am I allowed to ask just where you’ve been these last two tendays?’

‘On a cruise for the good of my health,’ Stenwold replied curtly. ‘Jodry—’

‘I need your diplomatic acumen, Stenwold. You know these Ant-kinden better than I do.’

So I’m now Collegium’s special envoy to the entire Ant race am I? What a prime job that would be. He took a seat, with a sidelong look at Gainer. ‘What’s he done now?’

‘Nigh on started a war,’ Jodry said dismissively. When Gainer began to protest, he held up his hands. ‘Oh, not deliberately, and more down to old Tseitus than him, but, hammer and tongs, Stenwold! You’d not believe the tightropes I’ve been walking, and I’m not a man constitutionally suited for that, I can tell you.’

‘So how have things fallen out with the Tseni and their submersibles, then?’ Stenwold asked. The thought that submersibles might become useful in Collegium’s near-future had not passed him by. If the Spiders attack, they will come by sea again. The other thought, which he could not keep from his mind, was And how friendly is Jodry here with Teornis – with the Spiderlands? It had always been the Empire, with Stenwold. He had always been hunting for the Imperial agents and sympathizers, marking down men or women as hands that took Wasp coin. He had never stopped to think that others, too, might have designs on his city and on the Lowlands.

‘Their case is that the Tseitan is essentially a stolen design,’ Jodry explained. ‘They’re making a big deal of it, as though it’s going to be the next snapbow. Personally, I think it’s just about political leverage and that they want something else from us.’

‘Well, what exactly is the Tseitan?’ Stenwold pressed. ‘Is it ours or theirs or what?’

Jodry signalled to Gainer, who cleared his throat. ‘The original submersible, my master’s old boat, was manufactured in Collegium, but Master Tseitus brought along a good half-dozen innovations with him – in his head but ready-made, if you see. I always reckoned they were his.’ The young artificer looked harassed, a man clearly out of his depth. ‘He could have learned them in Tsen, maybe. But we did a lot of our own work on her too, and the Tseitan throws out at least a couple of the ideas Master Tseitus came up with, for better ones. He kept improving the design all the time.’ He looked downcast. ‘Wish he was here with us now, I tell you that.’

‘So what do Kratia’s Tseni want?’

‘War with Vek,’ Jodry replied. Seeing Stenwold’s reaction, he smiled bleakly. ‘They haven’t said as much, but that’s what it is. As soon as they got wind that we were cosying up to the Vekken at last, they started to sweat about it. Vek’s armies have been pointing east a long time, so if they’re suddenly happy about relations in our direction, it makes sense that they might turn to Tsen for their next war games. After all, there are a lot more Vekken than there are Tseni.’

‘Well, they can whistle for their war,’ Stenwold said sourly. ‘I’ve spent too long building the peace.’

‘Ah, but these Tseni, I hate to say it, are clever bitches. They’re not like your average Ant-kinden ambassador. They’ve been going about the people, making themselves known. They’ve been guesting with Assemblers. They’ve been talking up Tsen’s role in the war: how they sent soldiers so many miles to fight off the Empire and die in front of Sarn. And Tseitus . . . Well, you’ll laugh.’

‘They’re saying he’s a hero,’ Gainer put in, sounding equally baffled and proud.

‘I thought they were saying he was a thief ?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘That’s what happens when you go off on a cruise for your health,’ Jodry observed pointedly. ‘The world doesn’t just wait. It turns out now that Tseitus was a hero of Tsen come to help his good friends in Collegium. I’ve already had one request that his work in the war be recognized officially, Sten. His work in sinking the Vekken flagship, of course.’

Stenwold nodded dourly.

‘And let’s face it, he did.’ Jodry threw up his arms. ‘And, yes, the Vekken were trying to kill us all, and that’s not exactly ancient history. So people are starting to mutter.’

‘I can imagine.’ For Stenwold, it was like feeling the leaden, icy waters close over his head. He was drowning in Collegium politics yet again. ‘Let me think on this. There must be a way.’

‘Take all the time you need – but not too much,’ Jodry said. ‘Master Gainer, at least, has profited from this. Not only is he seen as a hero’s apprentice now, but the donations towards the Tseitan project have now become almost adequate. Throwing good coin at a boat that sinks looks like madness to me, but you never can tell with people.’

‘I just want to continue Master Tseitus’s work,’ Gainer said stubbornly. ‘I don’t care about all this other stuff.’

‘My advice is to use it while you can,’ Jodry recommended. He turned back to Stenwold. ‘Now, are you glad I called you in so quickly?’ he gave a broad, sardonic smile.

‘No,’ Stenwold replied shortly. ‘But you were right to do so, curse you. The last thing we need right now is trouble with the Ants. With any Ants.’

Jodry nodded. ‘You’re probably also aware that those Wasp soldiers sitting near Myna’s borders haven’t gone anywhere. They’re saying the whole Eighth Army is marching up and down there like it’s the Empress’s birthday or something. War here in the Lowlands is probably just what they’re waiting for. If we have to look away for ten minutes, we’d probably find that the whole Three-City Alliance has vanished like a conjurer’s hat by the time we look back.’

And how much more true will that be if we end up crossing swords with the Spiderlands, Stenwold reflected. They’ll celebrate all over the Empire, if they find that their two great enemies have come to blows. And then they’ll march.

As he stepped out of the office, he paused to run over the conversation in his head, prying at the gaps. Any suggestion of betrayal there? Any hint of a Spider lurking behind the words? Perhaps Jodry’s just too accomplished a statesman. In truth his gut feeling was that Jodry had nothing to do with the piracy business, but he knew he could not take the chance of assuming so. Absolute secrecy, then: the knowledge, burning inside him like hot metal, would not be let out that way. And, in all honesty, if he is innocent of any complicity, he is better off not knowing, and Arianna the same. I will keep this between me and the Tidenfree until I know for certain.

Stenwold trailed his slow way home, still carrying the burden of knowledge he felt unable to vouchsafe to anyone.