The Antspider sighed and adopted her ready pose again, although this time Eujen decided not to join her, instead drifting over to speculate on the chess game.
‘Next year, do you think, for the Forum?’ she asked.
‘Oh, certainly,’ Eujen replied over his shoulder, but his voice carried an uncertain tone.
‘It’s a wise man who knows tomorrow,’ said Gerethwy, making another move after some thought, and watching Averic respond with instant certainty.
‘Talk, all talk. Will Collegium be here next year? Yes. Will we be students at the College? Yes,’ Eujen said defensively.
‘So sure?’ the Antspider demanded, her straight arm beginning to tremble as she held her pose for Mummers.
‘The alternative is too dire to think about, Straessa,’ Eujen declared. ‘Look at where everyone stood after the last war, the loss of life, the chaos and disruption, missed harvests, civil strife.. ’
‘You don’t have to do the grand speeches with us, Eujen. We’re your friends,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re very quiet, Averic.’
The Wasp looked up from the board for a moment, and then seemed to become utterly absorbed in the position of the pieces. Eujen had been the only student willing — or daring enough — to approach the College’s new Imperial recruit, beginning an unlikely friendship born of curiosity and cultural differences. Averic avoided contradicting or arguing with Eujen whenever possible. For a Wasp he seemed remarkably tactful. Patient, too. For a long time Straessa had thought he was simply devoid of the ugly temper that three generations of his kinden had made notorious. Then, once, she had seen him off guard for a moment: not in defence of himself but when some magnate’s son decided to call Eujen a coward. Averic’s hands had clenched into fists — a gesture of peace amongst his violent kinden — but she had caught an expression on his face, visible only for that single moment, and she had understood. It was not patience, but sheer bloody-minded willpower. He was constantly restraining himself, every day, through every barb of provocation and frustration, holding in check that reflexive retaliation his kinden would normally resort to.
‘Enough,’ she told Mummers. ‘Or I’m going to strain something. Do you pay me to be your model?’
‘Do you pay me rent to sit around my studio?’ he returned, looking sullen. Because he was, at least notionally, a productive member of society, she sometimes forgot he was only a few years older than her.
‘Wasn’t te Mosca coming tonight?’ Gerethwy observed, staring at the board.
‘Trying to pin down Mistress te Mosca is like trying to stop the sun,’ Eujen observed, and then the door slammed open suddenly and a half-dozen soldiers spilled in. They were Merchant Company men and women, solid Beetle-kinden in barred helms and breastplates over buff coats, each sporting a blue sash with a gold portcullis emblazoned on it. They all carried snap-bows.
In the initial confusion, the crash of the door still echoing, the Antspider had traded her wooden sword for the narrow-bladed steel weapon that was lying by the chessboard, the move from play to real following an instinct that had come with her from her childhood in Seldis amongst the full-blooded Spider-kinden. Gerethwy had taken up his staff in a single understated gesture, the weapon and his long arms giving him an improbable amount of reach. Eujen had brought up his practice blade into line as though he was in the Forum. Only Averic had no weapon and, although he stood up immediately, he kept his arms by his side, no expression on his face.
‘You,’ the leader of the soldiers, a tough-faced woman, picked out Averic, ‘you’re wanted.’
‘What is this?’ Eujen demanded, advancing with his wooden blade still in hand. ‘What right have you to just burst in here?’
‘Civic security,’ the woman told him curtly.
‘Where is the law?’ he demanded, and there was no admission in his face that her snapbow was now directed at him. Straessa sensed rather than saw Averic tense — not a threat to him but this one to Eujen eating away at his control.
‘Officer Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company,’ the Antspider declared brightly, drawing everyone’s attention. ‘Everyone knows Officer Padstock wouldn’t go breaking down doors without good authority.’ Straessa’s sword went back on the table, a plea for a moment’s calm.
In truth, everyone knew nothing of the sort. Elder Padstock, chief officer of the Maker’s Own, was as much Stenwold Maker’s creature as the company name suggested, and she was known for enforcing his perceived wishes with utter conviction.
Padstock regarded all of them without love. ‘The Speaker for the Assembly wishes to see the Wasp-kinden. Is that sufficient authority?’ She tried to lock eyes with Averic but he was having none of it.
Eujen was gathering himself for another outburst, but now the Wasp stepped forward, one finger flicking over a chessman to signify surrender. ‘Of course, I would be honoured to meet with Master Drillen,’ he observed mildly.
‘Not alone,’ Eujen insisted. ‘I’ll go with you.’
‘That’s not in my brief,’ Padstock snapped.
‘I’m going with him to Drillen. What are you going to do?’ Eujen put himself right in front of her, making himself impossible to ignore.
She put the barrel of her snapbow to his chest, finger on the trigger, and Straessa found herself thinking, This is it. This is when Collegium went mad. Probably Padstock had looked Eujen over and seen only a posturing academic whose wars were fought on paper, but one thing he had never lacked was courage. Too much courage for his own good.
Straessa could almost hear Averic winding up until he was tense as a bowstring, with fingers pressing into his palms until they were bloodless. Somewhere out of her eyeline, Gerethwy changed his grip on the staff slightly. We’re going to get into a fight with the Merchant Companies. We’re going to get shot. She now wished she had not put her sword down, especially as the move had bought her nothing. This is the night that they started shooting students. The thought went round and round in her head.
Then Padstock lowered the snapbow with a sound of disgust. ‘Fine. come with us. See what Drillen makes of you, Wasp-lover. Just you, though. The rest of your menagerie stays here.’ Her eyes flicked across Gerethwy and the Antspider, and then settled on Raullo Mummers. ‘Quite the nest of dissension you keep here, Master Mummers. An artist should have a better feel for the mood of his public. Now, let’s move. And you can leave the toy sword here. I doubt you’ll find a use for it where we’re going.’
Eujen cast the Antspider a familiar look — she knew it well from his turns in the debating circles, or stepping into the ring at the Prowess Forum. She had to tell herself, over and over, that this was Collegium, after all. People did not get vanished in Collegium. They did not die at the whims of their betters. That was reserved for the Spiderlands or the Empire, or for foreigners in an Ant city-state. The whole point of Collegium, which had drawn her across half the Lowlands with nothing but a haphazard education, a pocket of stolen gemstones and a cocky attitude to recommend her, was that its people lived in peace, free from fear and oppression. Eujen must be the future, not Padstock. If Padstock is the future of this city then there will be nothing left recognizable. Like Eujen says, we can’t kill all of what we are just to survive.
Then they were gone, the soldiers, Padstock, Eujen and Averic, marching off into the night, and Gerethwy was relaxing by careful degrees, releasing all that stored power that his lanky frame hid so well, and Mummers was hunching over, muttering to himself and peering at the door to see what damage had been done to it.