Still, he let his eyes move over the document, until the symbols there, the words and their component letters, became drained of all meaning, just scribbles on a page.
I cannot give this order.
He was finding it hard to draw breath.
I will kill Vrakir. The Second will follow my lead. Anyone who doesn’t. . and when they hear of it, back in Capitas. . I will. . I will. .
It felt like a blow, deep inside him, to know that he would do none of that. He was General Tynan, and he had ended wars and begun them at his Empire’s behest, and now he would do worse. He would do just as he had been ordered.
‘Cherten.’ He shoved the paper towards his colonel, heard the choked exclamation as the man read it. ‘This calls. .’ Tynan’s voice shook, and he took a deep breath and started again. ‘This calls for a redeployment. We will need all able-bodied men mobilized immediately, and we will have very little time before they realize what we’re about. Have the Sentinels move against the Collegiate-held streets as planned, backed by your current forces there and by a further five hundred Light Airborne. Use the Air Corps as well. If we can’t bomb the library we can still bomb the rest. Everyone else. .’
‘I understand, General.’ There was relief in Cherten’s voice, and it told Tynan two things: firstly that, having seen the orders, he had obviously considered Tynan’s response to them in doubt, and secondly, that his own loyalty to Tynan was plainly not strong enough to survive such a shift. ‘Shall I take command of. .?’ he held up the scroll with its broken seal.
Tynan took it back from him. ‘No, it’s my responsibility. You’re in command of putting down the insurgents — or at least containing them until this other business is done. Vrakir, with me.’
And Tynan stormed out, and the orders clutched in his hand seemed to burn his skin: Destroy the Spider-kinden forces of the Aldanrael, their mercenaries, their Auxillians and allies, to the very last. Eliminate all Spider-kinden from Collegium. Do not spare a single one.
At the College, matters were now moving sufficiently fast that Stenwold felt his ailing body could not keep up with them. Up on the wall overlooking the street, he just sat and let the tide of news wash over him.
‘They’ve got Shod Street and Marley Row,’ Serena was reporting, breathless but still forcing the words out. Sartaea te Mosca was bandaging a gash across the woman’s arm even as she spoke, a close encounter with a snapbow bolt.
‘What about beyond?’ Eujen demanded. Stenwold let him take the lead — partly because these were his people, partly because Stenwold himself was still suffering moments when his strength would just evaporate — and other moments when he would be suddenly filled with an angry, burning energy that he could not dissipate.
‘Some sign of something off towards the manufactories, or maybe those fancy townhouses on the other side.’
Eujen looked out from the courtyard wall, as if he could somehow comprehend all of Collegium at once. The sound of fighting was not close, but it was there — most of the Student Company was out on the streets, adding their discipline and armament to the local resistance, but there were houses within a hundred yards that had changed hands two or three times already, and the Wasps would bring in more men, hour by hour. The rest of the city was key, and he had hoped that revolt would spread like a flame across the city once the streets beside the College went up in arms, but so far a lot of people were keeping their heads down.
‘Eujen, hoi!’
Leadswell’s head snapped down, and Stenwold craned over to see the ragged band of re-armed Coldstone Company soldiers that Serena had nominally been spotting for. The Antspider was waving up at him, looking exasperated at having to shout her report. She had her one-handed Woodlouse and that Dragonfly woman and a couple of others with her, none of them particularly recovered from losing the gate, and yet all of them running to Eujen’s orders.
‘Come on up,’ Leadswell called down, then glanced at Stenwold.
‘You’re doing well,’ the War Master wheezed.
‘I’m doing all I can,’ Eujen said shortly. ‘I don’t need you-’
‘Then why look at me as if you expect me to grade you?’ Stenwold snarled back.
For a moment Eujen’s expression was caught between a number of conflicting emotions, and Stenwold was reminded just how young he was — and how young were most of the Collegiate soldiers who had been left under arms. Then the Antspider woman came pounding up the steps.
‘Good news and bad!’ she announced. ‘Don’t know what the Jaspers are doing, but they’re not reinforcing properly. We’ve won back Marley Row already, and we’re still pushing. Gereth wants to get hold of something heavier to have a go at them. Gorenn needs more arrows.’
‘Arrows? Do we even have arrows?’
‘Apparently we do,’ Straessa confirmed. ‘But, look, they’ve one of those big bastard machines coming in there as well — and that’s going to be as good as a whole load of actual soldiers, unless we can stop it. We need some grenades, little ones preferably.’ She was talking very fast, obviously fighting to seem offhand about the whole business, but there was an unhealthy tremble about her eyes, like a woman holding her composure together with both hands. ‘Eujen, I don’t know what they’re doing. Makes no sense to me. You need to look out for-’
‘In case they come from elsewhere, yes,’ Eujen finished up, plainly trying to sound businesslike.
Stenwold shied away from the weight of unsaid words between the two of them. I should have some counsel to offer. I should tell them to speak to each other now, because later may be too late. But that’s hardly advice I ever heeded myself.
‘Chief!’ A student came bursting out of the building behind them with a box under her arm. Wearing an ink-smudged smock, she virtually vaulted the stairs up towards them, slamming her burden down on the wall’s edge with pride. It contained a stack of papers, the sort of polemic familiar to Collegiate citizens from a score of Assembly elections. The text was bold, simple: RISE UP, CHILDREN OF COLLEGIUM! NOW IS YOUR CHANCE! LIBERTY TODAY, OR SLAVERY FOREVER! Then there was an image, simply delineated, yet with a kind of dynamic power to it: a Beetle man brandishing a hammer out towards the reader, his face a picture of grim determination — and not entirely dissimilar to Stenwold’s own.
‘Raullo did this?’ Eujen asked, and Stenwold recalled the artist who had surely been too inebriated to achieve any such thing. The printer was nodding enthusiastically, though, and Eujen locked eyes with Stenwold, who had the grace to shrug.
‘It will serve. He’s done us proud.’ Eujen thrust the box at Serena. ‘Can you fly with this?’
She weighed it up, winced at her newly bandaged arm, then nodded.
‘Good. Get out past their blockade. Drop these on the far side, those districts that haven’t risen yet.’
‘I went to the same classes as you, Chief. I know what we’re about,’ she confirmed.
Then Laszlo dropped down on the very brink of the wall, feet skidding for a moment before he righted himself.
‘They’re fighting!’ he announced.
‘That’s hardly news,’ Eujen objected, but Laszlo gave him the cold shoulder and addressed Stenwold directly.
‘Mar’Maker, they’re fighting each other!’
There was a heartbeat of stunned silence, and then Stenwold nodded stiffly to Eujen. ‘Report to the chief officer.’
The Fly looked put out, but complied. ‘Over that way, you’ve got a row of big warehouses or factories or something, where we thought they were mustering. . well they’re not. They’re in and out of every building there, and they’re killing each other.’