‘We have very little time.’
‘Then let me speak to them.’
‘Hard to think that from this dismal ruin ruled the power that might once have challenged the Empire,’ General Tynan observed. Around them extended the broken teeth of the Amphiophos: half-crumbled walls, caved-in domes, a maze of back rooms mostly roofless, everywhere tumbled, fire-blackened stones.
‘They probably think it still is,’ Mycella remarked, standing at his elbow. There was a cordon of Wasp soldiers strung about the place, looking out for any Collegiate citizen showing an unhealthy amount of civic pride, but Tynan had little fear of that.
He was here, at last, in the heart of the enemy’s city. After so long, he had broken them.
‘I know you were here before, with your fleet — sorry, your armada is the term in the Spiderlands, isn’t it? I know that they’ve wounded you — and I can’t even guess at the situation back home that forces you to be here. Even though you’ve told me about it, I still can’t really guess.’ He smiled at her, and some of her Fly servants appeared with a decanter and small glasses and set them up on one of the toppled stones, casting a cloth down first so as not to contaminate the vintage with the dust of Collegium’s fall. ‘What you may not understand, though, is what this means to me to be here at last. Three times, I’ve marched against this city. Three times I’ve taken the road from Tark, fought the bloody Felyen, got right to their walls, and. . the Emperor dies, or we lose our Air Corps and I give the order to fall back, because maintaining a siege in such conditions would be suicide. And then the Empress tells me, no, straight back in you go. And we rewrote the textbooks when we took that gate: Light Airborne and the Sentinels and no real artillery? They’ll be saying we set the science of war back twenty years. But we did it, my boys and your followers.’ He chose a piece of overturned Collegiate government to sit on and received his tiny glass with its oil-black contents. ‘Here we are,’ he concluded.
Mycella was regarding him with a curious expression, but it was mostly fond. Of course, he had to remind himself, what are such expressions worth? But that was only form, for he had relaxed with her in slow stages, and now he wanted to interpret the outer show for the inner thought.
‘Is Aldanrael honour now avenged?’ he asked her.
At that, her face lifted slightly. ‘Thank you for believing that we have any. The Mantids would tell you we’ve none — the Collegiates too, most likely. Treachery and deceit are bred into our bones, they say. But, yes, here I stand, joint mistress of all I survey, and the voices of my slain son and niece are quieted for me. And when I return home again it shall be as a conqueror, with my power and influence restored. I shall have redeemed my family with a currency my people must recognize: success.’
‘And the alliance with the Empire?’
‘That also. Given the mess that came out of our states actually locking swords last time, I think it’s in everyone’s interest, except the rest of the world’s.’ And she raised her glass and rolled the contents over her tongue, savouring the liquid. Tynan did likewise — finding it was something like sweet vinegar, far beyond his normal taste and yet he knew it was a vastly expensive delicacy for her people.
An acquired taste, but I am fast acquiring it.
‘There is an occupation force mustering — perhaps already on its way,’ he remarked. ‘Then some lucky colonel will be made governor of this place. And the Second will resupply and reinforce and set off towards Vek, assuming Roder can do his job up north. And you?’
She gave a delicate little one-shouldered shrug. ‘If you’d asked me that a month ago, I’d have said the Spiderlands for sure, but who knows. . it would be stretching credibility to say that I’d heard Vek was lovely at this time of year, or at any time, but perhaps I’ll see its walls with you, nonetheless.’
When he placed a hand to her chin, the better to admire her, he heard the slight shift of her bodyguard, Jadis. But the man was not close by, and Tynan could virtually plot the intimacy of his relationship with Mycella on a graph by assessing the distance off that Jadis stood over time, each day a little further away.
Then there was a new Fly-kinden at her elbow, slipping in so swiftly and suddenly that half the Airborne there were still trying to take aim at him even as he got too close for them to do so. He was dressed in a tunic of Collegiate fashion, but he knelt before Mycella nevertheless.
‘General, one moment.’ There was a shadow of worry on her face as she stepped aside.
The report her agent made to her was brief and to the point, murmured low enough that Tynan caught none of it. But the moment the man had finished, she returned to his side.
‘We may be a little premature, it seems. My man has received details of some considerable unrest near the College. He thinks that your soldiers might have some work to do there yet.’
Tynan wanted to scoff, because the city was his, and in his hands, and he had known himself to be the master of it. He had not come this far, though, without discovering that her sources of intelligence — and her instincts — were superior to his own. A gesture, and he had a soldier before him, ready for orders.
‘Get me Colonel Cherten, and I don’t care what he’s doing,’ he commanded. ‘He needs to hear this.’
Castre Gorenn, Commonweal Retaliatory Army and currently feeling every inch of it, crouched atop the courtyard wall, keeping an eye on the street below. To her left was Officer Serena, formerly of the Fealty Street Company before it was disbanded, with another Fly-kinden to her right. Both had snapbows, held out of sight, and both were out of uniform and doing their level best to appear simply interested in the view. Gorenn herself was sufficiently foreign that, though she kept her bow below the level of the wall top — with a half-dozen arrows lying ready on the stonework for swiftness — she had kept her buff coat and sash on, because it hardly seemed that they would make much of a difference.
And still the Wasps did not arrive. She had assumed that there would be a patrol, or a fly-over, or even just someone putting their Wasp-kinden head around the corner, but her sharp eyes had seen none of that, though by now everyone in the district must be aware that something had happened. After all, there had been a lot of shouting and dying only two hours ago, and even these lumpen Beetle-kinden had ears.
But nothing, and she began to wonder about the turncoat Beetle nobleman — or however the hierarchy worked here — who had turned up with those soldiers in tow. Could it be that he hadn’t told anyone he was coming here?
The Wasps wouldn’t just overlook a dozen missing soldiers when they were tallying up their troops — she knew enough about how they did things — but what if they had no clues, what if. .?
Then some Wasps arrived just as she was pondering this, a little squad of five, and she froze, one unseen hand reaching deftly for her first arrow. But the Wasps were approaching without any overt caution, so maybe in their minds missing had not yet become dead. Even so, the moment they drew near, surely everything was going to go to the black pit, because none of these Beetle-kinden could dissemble worth a damn.
‘Good day, soldier. . Sergeant?’ Serena’s high, clear voice sang out, and she projected just the right combination of nervous good humour and concern. ‘Can we. . can we help you?’
The lead soldier stared up at her, and then made a short, ugly gesture to beckon her down. For a second Serena hesitated, hands still on her snapbow below the wall’s lip, but then she silently set it down and hopped over the edge, drifting down on her Art wings.
Gorenn crouched even lower and listened intently.
‘I’m looking for your chief, Boiler the Speaker,’ the sergeant stated. ‘He’s somewhere around here with a dozen soldiers he’s not entitled to. You seen him?’