After that there was a string of other visits, a score of patrols dodged or hidden from as Sartaea skipped through the night-blanketed streets of Collegium, striking her tiny blow against the Empire. Last on her list was the home of Tsocanus, an Ant-kinden merchant who lived above his workshop, where he had previously run a brisk trade as a wholesaler to the airship trade. Now he sold, at the poverty-level mandated prices, to the Empire’s engineers and Consortium, and even sent his prentices to fix their machines when the Wasps themselves could not be bothered. Like Poll, though, he did it with apparent willingness. His cellars had a hidden room, and there would usually be a handful of Spiders there, or others seeking to evade the Rekef, ready to be smuggled out as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
She arrived there just in time. Had she turned up any earlier, she would have been inside when the Wasps broke in; any later and there would have been no witnesses to what happened.
When she turned the corner she saw the door was already smashed, and her instincts – good Fly-kinden instincts, those – had her back pressed to a wall, frozen in place, her grey cloak pulled about her.
She could hear fighting, inside – or panicky sounds that were probably a handful of civilians who didn’t have the wit simply to surrender. Tsocanus was an Ant, though, and even a renegade Ant who hadn’t picked up a sword in ten years still had some fight in him. If he fought, so would his prentices, the half-dozen Beetle-kinden who lived under his roof. And then there were the Spiders . . .
For a moment Sartaea te Mosca made a dreadful miscalculation about the odds, thinking, If there are that many of us, surely . . . Then Tsocanus himself stumbled out through the shattered door, grappling with a Wasp, hurling the man away with Art-boosted strength before raising what was surely a kitchen knife.
Te Mosca shrank back as the stingshot found Tsocanus, the flash and glare of golden fire that slammed into the Ant half a dozen times making his body dance with the force of it before he dropped.
There was quiet then, and she had a horrible thought that the Ant had been the only survivor. Next they were bringing the rest out: some of the prentices and a bruised and battered trio of Spider-kinden. Sartaea’s headcount came up three short, meaning that Tsocanus wasn’t the only one who had tried to make a fight of it, and failed.
They were led away, cuffed sharply when they slowed, or just when the Wasps felt like it, and through it all she did nothing, nothing whatsoever. She was one small Fly-kinden woman, and barely a magician at all, and she crouched there, unseen and castigating herself for having only one unworthy thought: that she was lucky that Tsocanus was now dead, as otherwise her name would shortly be on Imperial lips.
‘You’re off to see the Bastard, then?’ asked Balkus, with that irritability that had hung about him ever since he had been unwillingly repatriated to Sarn.
‘Want to come along?’ Sperra cocked an eye at him. ‘It’s about the only time I could put you in front of him without you throwing a punch.’
Like so many others, the Ant-kinden Balkus had been injured in the Collegiate fighting, evacuated at the last moment from the city after the student insurrection failed. The physicians had not dared try him with Instar – they saved that for those with a Beetle’s sterner constitution. Even now he was weak, shaking if he walked too far. He did walk, though. Sperra knew that he was determined to wrest his strength back from the bolt-wounds that had drained it from him. A full confrontation with Tactician Milus – ‘the Bastard’ as he and Sperra had renamed the man – was likely to finish him before a sword was drawn. Even now, just back from a few turns about the Foreigners’ Quarter, he looked exhausted as he slumped in a chair.
Balkus was a renegade from this very city, which would normally have made his return a death sentence. However, he was also a citizen of Princep Salma, the new city lying half-built in Sarn’s shadow. Even though Princep’s military assistance had been provided under Sarnesh duress, Balkus’s status there lent him some protection.
Sperra was likewise a Princep citizen and former tenant of a Sarnesh inquisition room, the two of them united in their dislike and distrust of their hosts. Whilst Balkus was nominally the military commander of the Princep forces – whatever that was worth – she was just a Fly-kinden, a foreigner in Sarn, someone who at any time could be suspected of knowing too much. The Sarnesh had run her through their machines before, on the off-chance that she knew more than she was telling, and then they had done it again just to be sure. If it wasn’t for Balkus, nothing would keep her in this city: Balkus, and the need to keep her adopted city of Princep free.
Right now, the best chance for Princep to have any voice in the war was to link arms with the Collegiates. Whilst Balkus was recuperating, Sperra had been busy winning Beetle-kinden affections. She was one of the regular couriers, making the hazardous trip between Sarn and the conquered city to pick up news and intelligence. She had enough artifice in her to pilot a flying machine, and she was quick, quiet and had a nose for danger.
‘Let the fighting belong to the Ants and the Wasps,’ she had said. ‘Right now, it’s a Fly-kinden war.’
‘The Bastard won’t listen,’ Balkus told her. ‘I catch just enough, for all they try to keep me out. He’s fighting a Sarnesh war for Sarn. He’ll keep the pot boiling in Collegium, ’cos it bottles the Second Army up there, but why should he want the place free? The city would be half-smashed in the fighting or by the Wasps when they pulled out, and then what? He has half an Imperial army at large, probably, and all his willing Beetle soldiers and artificers want to go home and pick up the pieces. He’s got everything where he wants it, believe me.’
Sperra shrugged. ‘He’ll push them too far.’
Balkus snorted. ‘The Beetles?’
‘You haven’t seen them. And it’s the Mynans as well – and our lot.’ She shrugged again, abruptly defeated by the ability of the Sarnesh to prevaricate. ‘But you’re probably right, this time.’
‘And the next, and the next.’
‘Maybe not.’
His head had been sagging but it jerked up at that. ‘What news? Something you didn’t tell the others?’
‘I don’t peddle false hope to the Collegiates. I’ve not said anything, because I wasn’t sure. Rumours, though. Rumours out of nowhere.’
‘So tell me!’
‘Can’t. Have to go now. Off to see the Bastard, don’t you know?’ And she skipped back to the doorway of his room. To her delight, he lunged out of the chair after her with a shout – for a moment the two of them again as though the war had never come. Then he was steadying himself with a hand against the wall, but standing, even managing a grin.
‘Go tweak the Bastard’s nose,’ he directed. ‘But after that you’d better tell me what’s up.’
The delegation was five in number, a bizarre cross-section of Sarn’s unruly allies. It was accepted that Eujen would take the lead, even though they would have to wheel him there in a chair. Kymene herself would stand for the Mynans, a good number of whom had congregated in Sarn. Sperra represented Princep Salma, and the artificer Willem Reader had broken from his work to accompany them. His services were crucial enough to the Sarnesh that any delegation including him could not simply be turned away. Finally, appearing uninvited at the last moment, the Dragonfly named Castre Gorenn would stand for the Commonweal Retaliatory Army, which was to say, herself.