‘I think that it is our duty as Collegiate men to do all we can to change the Empire, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell shot right back, and Padstock tensed, for the lad was abruptly leaning over Jodry’s desk towards him, all awe at the office of Speaker forgotten. ‘But I think that if we treat them as nothing but a threat, then we shall create our own future. Also, I know him. He is my friend. I choose to trust him. He is no spy.’
Averic’s face was very set, but Jodry wondered if he detected some suppressed emotion there, even if only the eyes were a party to it. ‘And when the Empire comes to us with armies and not with words?’ he asked. ‘How will you meet them, then?’
Leadswell stepped back, his face bitterly displaying the thought, So, you think I’m a traitor, too. ‘As I did last time they came, Master Drillen. When Tynan’s Second was at our gates, I was loading artillery on the wall.’
‘And you?’ Jodry’s gaze swept towards Averic, meeting that lack of expression head on. Before the Wasp’s silence became awkward, Arvi opened the door with another Fly accompanying him, a woman in a grey robe that was decidedly not Collegium standard.
‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry observed. He had wanted this interview but, now it was cut short, he found that he was relieved. For Leadswell is right, of course, from a certain point of view — right and yet too late. That ship sailed before the Wasps put us to the siege the last time.
‘Master Drillen.’ Sartaea te Mosca was not a full Master of the College, but a mere associate. Still, she had been hired to head a department left vacant, and one that nobody else wanted. She taught Inapt studies, as the College preferred to refer to the mysticism and flummery that surrounded the ways of the old Moth-kinden. She was a young lecturer, but a few decades amongst the Moths at Dorax had given her a curiously ageless air, which in Jodry’s experience persisted even after she had downed close on her bodyweight in imported spirits. She had also taken a keen interest in Averic and Leadswell and all their little clique, and was sociable enough to have garnered a certain fondness amongst the College Masters.
‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry repeated. ‘These two lads appear to have found their way to my study. Would you perhaps ensure they reach their lodgings?’
She studied him, testing her Moth-taught inscrutability against his professional regard, and breaking first, into a slight, submissive smile. ‘I’d be delighted to, Master Speaker.’
She turned to go, the two students lagging behind, and Jodry tapped his pen on the desk for their attention. ‘One more thing, young Leadswell. I know it is always a fine thing to imagine yourself the rebel, fighting for a grand cause against the ignorance and prejudice of many. Believe me, Stenwold Maker traded on that for decades, and you might want to think about that. However, I trust that in your social history classes they still teach the rivers hypothesis? That no society travels all one way, dances to a single tune, but there are mingled flows, so on, so forth? Did you see the play The Officer’s Mistress?’
Leadswell frowned at him, shaking his head, knowing the trap was there, but unable to see where Jodry was going with this.
‘Too late now, then. It closed after four nights. Full houses, too. A grand shame. Set during the war, don’t you know? Some piece of business about the Empire in the second and fourth acts.’
‘I don’t understand, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell admitted.
‘The theatre owner brought the curtain down,’ Jodry explained gently. ‘Not healthy, you see, to be associated with something that’s making fun of the Empire, for all that the commons rush to laugh. After all, you never know who your patrons might be next year. You never know who’s making a list right now. You might want to think about that.’
Arvi would, left to his own devices, have escorted the two students from Drillen’s chambers coldly and without ceremony, to let them know just what the establishment of the Assembly thought of them, as interpreted by himself, the Speaker’s secretary. However, they were accompanied by Sartaea te Mosca, who was a Fly-kinden teaching at the College, and Arvi had an entirely intentional double standard when it came to his own people. Those who had made enough of themselves to become respectable always found a friendly reception at the Speaker’s offices. Besides, Arvi was now, in his own estimation, sufficiently advanced in society to start casting around for his own dynasty, and attractive and influential Fly women were always worth keeping on the right side of.
The two youths looked shaken, as well they might, but te Mosca’s admirable presence was calming them, and Arvi indicated to her, by a careful nod and a twitch of an eyebrow, that he would give them all a moment to settle themselves before turning them out of doors. Her smile, in return, was small but elegant, and Arvi made careful adjustments to the mental list of eligibility that he carried constantly in his mind. He considered whether offering a little warmed-over wine might be appropriate, but no doubt the students would want some too, in which case the only appropriate offering would have to be an insultingly poor vintage. Associating with the student body at all, in fact, seemed to indicate a flaw, in this woman’s judgement. He frowned to himself and annotated his list further.
At that moment a Beetle-kinden woman burst in, the doorman actually running after her in an attempt to restrain her.
‘I need to see the Speaker right now!’ she snapped, heedless of the other visitors. Even as Arvi rushed at her, hands up to implore discretion, she was saying, ‘No! Get out of my way, you bloody functionary. That maniac Gripshod is going to blow up the whole city if somebody doesn’t stop him…’
Something in Arvi’s demeanour communicated itself because the woman turned round and saw a Wasp staring at her with some interest. She stuttered to a halt.
Arvi sighed, but this sort of thing was happening all the time. One could not get efficient enough door staff, and some day he would have to speak to the artifice department and get them to automate the process somehow. He managed it all without Jodry ever knowing, shuffling the Beetle woman — a regular informant — into a side room, and then gently decanting te Mosca and her charges onto the street with a kind word, ensuring by looks and manner that the woman understood how he was going out of his way and beyond the call of duty for her. Then he returned and gave Jodry sufficient warning for him to receive his next guest in his customary fashion, even tweaking his master’s robes into a suitably picturesque dishevelment.
At last the informant was ushered in with whatever alarming news she had about Gripshod — and what a name that was to conjure with, Arvi thought — and he could now take a moment for a sit-down and a fortifying sip of brandy from the flask he kept in a holster under his armpit.
Just as he was stowing the covert article away, another Fly-kinden burst in, this time so far ahead of the doorman that Arvi could only hear his running feet.
‘Need to see the Speaker,’ she got out. She was still wearing the light canvas overalls of an aviatrix, and Arvi guessed she had flown here straight from the airfield with the stink and oil of the orthopter still on her hands.
‘Mistress te Schola,’ he greeted her, because this woman also taught at the Assembly — and she was a beauty, too, for all that she was Solarnese and therefore somewhat eccentric of manner.
‘Taki,’ she corrected him absently, and only raised an eyebrow when he kissed her hand, a greeting he fervently hoped was appropriately Solarnese. ‘Look, seriously, I need to see Drillen right now.’
She was still out of breath from the flight, her chestnut hair flattened by the imprint of the flying helm she had only just removed, tracking grease on to the carpets and with her clothes dirty and unchanged for too long. Arvi almost proposed there and then. However, his spine was an iron rod of duty and he could only force out the reluctant words, ‘I’m afraid the Speaker is in a meeting, but if you would wait…’