He wants me to betray Willem, she had thought instantly, gripped rigid by terror. What will he do? What will I do?
He thrust a scroll at her. ‘Here is a list of works known to be in your collection somewhere.’ His other hand encompassed the entire library, the gesture of a man who had no patience with her elaborate cataloguing systems. ‘You will find them quickly and present them to the main barracks.’
She cast an eye down the list, then looked up at him, frowning. ‘You’re sure? Only these are-’
‘You will address me as sir!’ he snapped. ‘And you will not question me. This is the Empress’s will. These volumes are to be shipped to Capitas immediately.’
The sacrilege of that, to remove such volumes from the library, from the very city, almost had her protesting, but she realized just in time how close he was to violence. And, besides, these titles were mouldering tomes of ancient lore, worm-eaten histories of the Bad Old Days. Considering the alternative, she could almost convince herself that she would not be betraying her trust by letting them go to the Wasps. Odds were that they probably had not been read at all in living memory.
But nonetheless it was wrong, though she knew she had no choice but to comply. Amid the shock of carving off pieces of the College’s collection at the whim of a Wasp, the question of why the Empress should require such reading matter wholly passed her by.
Bergild
With Collegium finally secure, the Second Army settled into what was anticipated to be a temporary custodianship of the city until the newly appointed governor and his occupation forces arrived.
Save for Wasp forces, the streets of the city were dead for the first tenday after the fighting finally ended. The locals stayed inside, and hoped that the next door to be kicked in would not be theirs. Imperial soldiers were out on the streets, trying to search the entire city for Spider-kinden and suspected insurgents. There were some executions, but surprisingly few by Bergild’s reckoning. Still, everyone knew the Collegiates were soft, so they would probably never realize the disconcerting leniency with which they were being treated.
As the pilot understood it, the problem lay at the top. General Tynan, who had been expected to mastermind whipping the Empire’s new possession into line, was ill. Or some said not ill but just brooding. His officers and men waited for him to let them off the leash, but such orders as did come simply reined them in. Even now, there were probably rebellious students and fugitives hiding in the garrets and the cellars of the city, yet Tynan would not give the requisite orders. Bergild had heard that, after setting out the limits of the army’s conduct prior to the students’ revolt, he had given relatively few orders since. She had also heard he was practically at war with Captain Vrakir of the Red Watch. She had heard far too many things for them all to be true. Her pilots, with little enough to do, were getting restless and uneasy, well aware of how they were regarded by the regular army as something of a necessary freakshow.
So it was that she had been deputized by her followers to go and seek out her best source of information within the army: Major Oski.
The little engineer was remarkably difficult to track down, but she eventually found him sitting outside a taverna near the Gear Gate — as the Second now called the entrance to Collegium which it had forced. She recalled the place had been damaged in the fighting and then sacked by soldiers after the surrender, and certainly the taverna was no longer opening its doors in any meaningful sense. And yet here was Oski sitting on a folding stool outside it as though he was enjoying the weather, a bottle of wine beside him.
‘Captain,’ he remarked, as she approached.
‘You seem to have time on your hands,’ she noted.
‘I’m making vital Engineering Corps calculations,’ he told her, and took up the bottle with both hands to offer her some. ‘Anyway, last I heard, nothing needs fixing or blowing up, so here I am.’
‘Tynan doesn’t need you?’ she ventured.
‘Don’t know what the man needs, but it’s clearly not me,’ he confirmed. ‘That’s all, is it?’
‘We want to know what’s going on,’ she ventured.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’ As he spoke, she became aware of a faint murmur of voices from inside the taverna. She leant closer to eavesdrop, but abruptly Oski rose before her, wings flickering.
‘So let’s go and discuss,’ he said, a little too loudly. ‘I’ll wager I’ve got something for your pilots to chew on.’
‘Oski, what is going on?’ she asked, not moving.
‘Nothing, Captain. Engineering Corps business, therefore none of yours.’ He was right up close to her, forcing her to step back out of instinct, for fighting room.
‘Major-’
‘Bergild,’ he told her. ‘Never you mind. Not your concern. You know what your lads want to hear? About how Sarn kicked the arse of the Eighth Army all of a sudden. About how our pissing relief column, Collegiate governor and all, is now stuck out at Malkan’s Stand to keep the Ants pinned down. Meaning we’re not going anywhere, and Tynan’s acting governor — which you can be sure he’s just mad about.’
And that was what her people wanted to know about and, of course, if a superior officer said it was none of her business, then that was true. Yet something in his manner, some furtive guilt, had communicated itself to her, so as she stepped aside with him, she was already detailing one of her pilots to get a glass and keep a more distant eye on the derelict taverna.
She was not disappointed. A half-hour later, as she saw it through her man’s eyes, a unusual half-dozen crept out of the place, one by one, and headed off in separate ways. She recognized Ernain the Bee-kinden, and there was a Beetle there, and another couple of Flies, and all of them in uniform, though she suspected few were actually attached to the Second. The last one out was a Grasshopper-kinden, though, and that set the seal on her suspicions, because she was sure enough that the Engineers weren’t recruiting from the Inapt these days.
A conspiracy, she decided, but that thought she kept to herself.
Sartaea te Mosca
Nobody was entirely sure who had dared go to General Tynan and ask if they could resume lectures at the College. Had it been someone possessed of great courage, or with a keen eye as to the mood of the reclusive acting-governor? Or had it simply been one of those academics so wrapped up in their studies that the perils of the world beyond their books failed to register?
But General Tynan had taken a moment away from his introspection to give the proposal the nod, and a tenday later there were students cautiously creeping into the College’s halls once again.
Of course, things were not the same. How could they be? Even with Tynan himself practically a recluse, Collegium had a new administration. All the Consortium factors and clerks and bureaucrats that the Empire had sent to take over the running of Collegium had arrived on schedule, and the Imperial machine had long experience of taking conquered cities in hand with brutal efficiency. What had not arrived, of course, was the garrison that had been due to take the weight of Collegium off Tynan’s shoulders. Instead it — and the colonel originally awarded the governorship — had been diverted in order to counter any move by the Sarnesh, and to reinforce the surviving strength of the Eighth Army, and so Tynan had been denied his chance to march away towards Vek and leave this city he plainly detested behind him.
The classes were now smaller: this was te Mosca’s unavoidable observation as she moved through the College. There were missing faces — dead or fled — and everyone was quieter. Where before those students out of lectures had been raucous in their debate and merriment, now they went about their business with a soft step and whispered voice, because nobody wanted to be noticed any more.