‘Let us hope it’s more than just my business,’ Stenwold said, and at that moment an Ant functionary was at Salma’s elbow. The two old friends clasped hands, and Stenwold said, ‘Good luck,’ before returning to Arianna.
She raised the wrapped bundle questioningly, but he shook his head at her, relieved to be out of here without having to unsheathe it. She kept her questions to herself until they were well clear of the royal palace and pacing back through the well-ordered streets of Sarn proper towards the Foreigners’ Quarter.
‘So I carried this along for nothing then?’ she said eventually.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘We knew they knew that we knew how to make it, so to speak, but the Queen is not going to be derailed from her intentions.’ He grimaced about him at the perfectly grid-patterned streets, at the silent Sarnesh going about their lives without fuss or haste, at soldiers trooping past them carrying material to the walls. ‘I suppose I can’t blame them, given that they were on the receiving end, but they really, fiercely want Totho’s invention. I’m starting to worry about precisely what they’ll do if I don’t willingly give them the plans.’
‘The Assembly opinion seemed to be fairly unified on that point,’ she noted.
‘The Assembly of Collegium, lucky fellows, aren’t here facing the Queen of Sarn.’ He sighed. ‘I know it’s an artificial situation. Old Thadspar wanted to keep it out of the wrong hands, and yet the Wasps already have it. And, anyway, the Sarnesh will capture one eventually, build their own copy, and then they’ll have it too, and they’ll only remember that we didn’t want them to get it. And they want it now. They want to be able to put it to use against the Wasps next spring, and for the short term, of course, that’s the best idea.’
‘And for the long term…’
‘They will turn it against the world, sooner or later. No doubt about that. The temptation to win a few battles over their old enemies will prove too much. This weapon is dangerous enough in Wasp hands, but in Ant hands the possibilities are even worse.’
Now they were securely inside the Foreigners’ Quarter, approaching the elegant Beetle-style two-storey that was the Collegiate embassy. Once inside, past the guards and the functionaries, Stenwold retired to the suite of rooms that had been made available to him.
And there’s the joke because, a month before, Collegium’s
own diplomatic staff wouldn’t have let me in the door. ‘You were right,’ he told Sperra. ‘She’s a tough one.’ The Fly nodded. ‘Rather you than me, chief.’
‘I take it not so good, Sten?’ This came from the last man there, a fleshy creature with pale, bluish skin – an Ant from some western city-state at the fringes of the Lowlands proper. His name was Plius and he was nominally Stenwold’s man here in Sarn. Stenwold had been in the game a long time, cutting his teeth on agent-running in a half-dozen cities, and way back when he had first recruited Plius, Stenwold had taken him for what the world usually saw: an outcast trying to make his difficult way in a hostile city. Now, his customary pipe in his hands, Plius managed a wan smile at Stenwold, who smiled back and nodded.
With his extra years of experience, Stenwold had known as soon as he reacquainted himself with the man. He knew the telltale signs now of a man with divided loyalties. Either he had been blind to it before, or Plius had been turned fairly recently. They were still both playing the game as though it was not so but, somewhere along the line, someone else had put their mark on Plius, and Stenwold knew he could not trust the man any more, only keep him close and wait.
Who is this man? the Queen asked, and this time the silent answers came more hesitantly.
– A nobleman from the northlands. He has been a student at the College.
– Reports suggest he was at Tark during the siege.
– He may be a spy.
– We have heard unconfirmed reports of irregular resistance to the imperial advance being linked to his name.
– Our knowledge of the Commonweal is almost nonexistent.
– Save that they, too, have fought the Wasps.
With no clear vision from her Tacticians, she used her own eyes, seeing a young man, too young to be standing before her in this weighty role. He wore a long leather hauberk reinforced with metal plates that would ill become the worst of her own soldiers, and yet he carried himself with a casual authority. Apart from that he was golden-skinned, handsome, clear-eyed, and he stood before her war council as though he was the lord of a realm and not just the chief of a ragged pack of bandits and refugees.
‘Prince Salme Dien,’ she said, pronouncing the foreign name carefully. She was aware that he was studying her in return, unsurprised at seeing nothing but a woman of Sarn of middling years, with the same close features, brown skin and short-cut dark hair as all her kin. No doubt the lords in his homeland wore gaudy flowers of gilt and gems, compared with the token regalia she bore to identify her. Her look told him flatly that in Sarn they valued other things.
‘Your Majesty.’ He sketched a bow that was obviously a shadow of something more formal.
‘Your name is known to us, to my council and myself,’ she told him. ‘It has therefore won you this time, when our time is precious to us. Who are you, Dragonfly, and why should we heed you?’
‘In the Commonweal it is customary to bring gifts when currying the favour of great men and women,’ Salma declared. ‘I have something you should appreciate, and also may serve as your answer.’
She sent out a query, but discovered no aide awaiting him with bundles in the antechamber. ‘Speak clearly,’ she advised.
‘In the Foreigners’ Quarter I have, under lock and key, three Wasp scouts my men have caught. I have questioned them all I need to. They are now yours.’
There was a murmur in her head, a sound of cautious re-evaluation. ‘You are in the habit of catching Wasps without being stung?’ the Queen asked.
– This may yet be a trap. Misinformation is easy to plant. – Wasps are hard to take alive. They are more mobile than our own scouts.
‘There is,’ said Salma, ‘a knack to it.’
The Queen frowned at him. ‘And who are your men, exactly? Do you hold yourself a tactician now?’ She said it with a glance of mockery at his travel-stained dress, the stitched repairs to his armour.
‘Yes,’ Salma replied, quite seriously.
That stilled the voices in her head for a moment, and he let his voice step into the breach.
‘The Empire has wrought a great change east of here. They have displaced hundreds, thousands, from their homes: people from Tark, from Helleron, from all the little communities between there and here. The roads are full of refugees, escaped slaves, wilderness folk: a great tide of humanity that the Wasps have driven before them, to shiver and starve through the winter. Now the Wasps have halted their advance so that they can accumulate more reserves of men and weapons, and we have regrouped too. We are the dispossessed, your Majesty, and we fight.’
‘You fight the Empire.’
‘We turn upon our creator.’
– This is preposterous.
– There is no precedent for this.
– He is no more than a brigand with ideas above his station.
Because she was Queen of Sarn, one mental word silenced them. ‘And what are your plans, this winter, Prince Dien?’
He smiled at her. It was a smile baked hard and sharpened to an edge. ‘We are attacking the Wasps, your Majesty. We are attacking them, even as I speak, in all the little ways we can. My soldiers have disrupted their supply lines. My artificers have broken up the rails between their camp and Helleron. My Fly-kinden pass over their camp and lure out their soldiers into ambush or capture. My foragers take everything from the land before the Wasps can harvest it. My spies become their slaves in order to discover their plans. Can you say as much of your own people, your Majesty?’