The Air War (73 page)

Marteus nodded briskly. ‘That’s the plan. You’re not to engage their machines, just get out of the way of them if you can, but there will be infantry and airborne coming right
after them. They can’t take ground with just automotives. Their soldiers you
will
engage, and hold them off with pike and shot.’

‘And their . . . their automotives, Chief?’ Outside the tent she could hear singing, some of her people, no doubt, some filthy Fly taverna chant.

‘I’ve told you, don’t engage.’

But what about when they engage us?
She tried to prompt him with her eyes but he was all business, having none of it.

‘Go instruct your troops, Sub.’

She just stared at him, and for a moment almost wanted to laugh. It had, she discovered, all been some dreadful mistake. She was not a soldier, after all. She was just a student with delusions
of martial prowess – and what set of ridiculous circumstances had conspired to put her here, eh? Where was the department head now, so that she could apply to switch courses?

But Marteus’s level gaze had not wavered, and he was plainly expecting her to go and spread the word.

‘Chief, I don’t think you know what you’re . . . What do you think it’s going to be like when I tell them – my soldiers, my people – that we’re to be
where the metal meets? That we’re standing at the sharp end?’

His expression – or lack of same – did not alter. ‘I know what it’s like, Sub. Now get a move on. I’ve got plenty more of you to see.’

‘Tonight you’ll understand everything,’ said Stenwold. He had kept the two students, Eujen Leadswell and the Wasp Averic, under watch all morning, without
them showing any sign of suspicious behaviour. In the afternoon he had sent for them, and he was now heading for Banjacs Gripshod’s machine-gutted house, ready for the last act of the drama.
Last night they had seen an inexplicable failure or betrayal, as the city was laid bare before the knives of its enemies. Tonight, though . . .

Tonight will go down in history
, Stenwold thought unhappily.
One way or another
, and the ‘everything’ that the boys would understand might leave an altogether more
bitter taste.
If they see the reasons behind the sacrifices we have made then, if they understand nothing else, they will understand some of how difficult it is to lead. Let Leadswell choke on
that.

The citizens of Collegium they saw out on the streets were picking their way through the city as though already living in hostile territory. Stenwold had spent the morning with Jodry,
pointlessly going over and over each part of the plan, sending unnecessary orders to confirm to every well-briefed individual what he or she already knew. And each of them knew only their own small
part, of course. The grand design remained invisible to anyone but Jodry and himself. Everyone in the city must guess that
something
was going on, just as the Empire must, but Jodry and
Stenwold had kept their secret safe.

Stenwold thought back to his last look at the Speaker before he set out: the man had been haggard, that great weight of flesh hanging from him like chains, eyes red from drink and tears and lack
of sleep. Marching swiftly through Collegium’s streets, Stenwold felt a sudden rush of affection for the man. These were hard times to be Collegium’s Speaker, all responsibility and no
reward, but Jodry had risen to the challenge far better than Stenwold might have expected.

It all comes down, tonight. To win a war in one bold stroke, is that not the tactician’s dream? I’ll wager no war-leader ever foresaw the battle that we have planned.

‘Here,’ he snapped back at his two charges, nodding to the two Merchant Company soldiers on the door. They scowled narrowly at Eujen and Averic, but stepped aside to let them all
through.

Once inside, Stenwold passed through the entrance hall that was one of the few untouched rooms in Banjacs’s house, pushing on until he came to the vast chamber that housed the machine, the
mad artificer’s ultimate weapon. There were three of the College artificers there, along with Banjacs – the most that Stenwold and Jodry had felt they could trust without hestitation
– and they were all hard at work on the machine when he entered.

He had expected that, for Banjacs’s life’s work was a delicate beast, and they would have no opportunity for a proper testing before they used it. The lightning batteries in the
cellars beneath them would take tendays to recharge, according to Banjacs’s notes. That was why Stenwold and Jodry had taken the decision they had. That was why so much of Collegium had been
laid out as bait for the Farsphex bombs.

Now Banjacs and the artificers tinkered and adjusted, calibrating the machine, testing each individual component of it because they could not test the whole. The three College Masters clambered
over the brass and bronze and glass, toolbags slung over their shoulders as if they were just tramp artificers hired in for a construction project. Meanwhile the inventor himself was half-hidden
within the works of his machine, metal panels hauled off and discarded on the floor around him. The air in the tall chamber crackled and snapped with errant flecks of power, and from every side
there came a hissing and a humming as various parts of the colossal device were powered up for testing. Only when Stenwold called his name a second time did Banjacs push himself backwards out of
the monstrous mechanical innards to sit up and glower at him.

‘What?’

‘How is progress, Banjacs?’

‘It will be ready, yes. You doubt me, Maker? I’ll show you all just how ready I am once night comes. My life’s work, and you come looking to find me wanting now?’ When
Stenwold indicated the feverish artificers, Banjacs scowled furiously at him. ‘Go away. We must tune. We must adjust. Had you not imprisoned me then perhaps we might have time to sit about
drinking
wine
like Master the Speaker but, as it is, we must work. We must be perfect. You have no comprehension of the delicacy of my creation.’ Beneath wild eyebrows his eyes bored
into Stenwold. ‘All of Collegium shall know my name,’ he said, apparently not as a part of the conversation but just an externalized thought.

‘Master Maker,’ came Eujen Leadswell’s hushed voice, ‘what is going on? This is Banjacs Gripshod.’

‘So it is.’ Stenwold glanced back at him. ‘You see, Master Gripshod, how your fame is already spreading.’ The humour welled up in lieu of bleaker emotions, tainted by
Stenwold’s assessment of Banjacs’s character and sanity.
What frail things we put our faith in.

The Wasp, Averic, was staring at Banjacs, perhaps not recognizing the name.

‘Master Maker, you said we’d understand. I don’t.’

‘Tell them what your creation is for, Master Gripshod,’ Stenwold suggested.

Banjacs grinning was worse than Banjacs glowering. ‘With this, boy, I control the lightning – the greatest engine of its kind the world has ever seen. When active, it shall throw its
force straight upwards, charging the very skies over the city. Everything above us will face utter destruction.’

Eujen’s expression was familiar to Stenwold, because he himself had worn it when this idea had first been revealed to him. If he had not had artificers go over the plans, he would not have
believed it for a moment. He could see the student putting the pieces together steadily, and soon the boy would come to understand the chaos of the previous night, even if Stenwold suspected he
would never condone it.

Banjacs was already nodding: the old artificer had fully understood the absence of Stormreaders the previous night, without ever having to be told, and had accepted the decision automatically.
After all, it would give his machine a more suitable testing ground. ‘When the machines of our enemies have fully gathered over us, we shall annihilate them in a moment.’

Something was dawning on Eujen’s face, his mouth opening but the words slow to emerge, but even as he began, ‘Master Maker,’ in a strangled tone, Banjacs interrupted, hushing
him.

‘Stop! That sound is wrong! Cease work, you morons!’ the old man bellowed at some of the College’s most eminent artificers. ‘What . . . what is making that sound?’
He cast about, as though trying to sniff out the noise.

Stenwold could hear it too, something entirely discordant.
Not now! Don’t let the bastard machine go wrong now . . .
It was a great buzzing drone and, in the midst of all this
artifice gone mad, it seemed curiously familiar.

‘Master Maker,’ said Eujen, his face frozen, all condemnation vanished from it. ‘It’s the Ear.’

Stenwold blinked, his mind taking a moment to catch up on what the boy was saying. The Ear was sounding. The Great Ear, their warning mechanism, was calling out the city’s pain, as it had
during so many nights before. But outside, the sky was light, the sun still high over the west.

The enemy were coming. The enemy were coming
now.

‘Banjacs!’ Stenwold bellowed. ‘Get it working – all of it. Get it ready to loose!’

Banjacs goggled at him, hands describing the mess, the missing panels, all the little tasks the artificers were still engaged in.

‘Just
work
!’ Stenwold almost screamed at him. They were coming, all of them, the air-storm that he had called down upon his people, and he was not
ready.
The Empire had
out-thought him, in the end. In his mind he was calculating time and action, plans, orders . . . ‘Messenger!’

As if from nowhere, a Fly-kinden in Company sash dropped down beside him, a snapbow seeming over large in his hands.

‘Listen carefully: I need this taken to every airfield word for word.’ Stenwold felt out of breath, his heart painful in his chest. ‘Tell them this: they are to engage the
enemy . . .’

The Beetle-kinden man with the burn scar, Army Intelligence’s senior man in Collegium, had spent that day counting up the cost of the night’s work. That matters had
not gone according to plan was an understatement. The modest number of agents under his command had accounted for a mere handful of targets. Some teams had been cut down. Others had found their
subjects too well defended.

The aggrieved feeling hung heavy on him that he was labouring under someone else’s errors, but he himself had felt that the Wasp boy was securely under the Imperial colours, as had Garvan,
his superior. After all, Averic was a Wasp and of good family, and there was a natural order to the world that the burned man had learned long ago. Wasps
were
the Empire. That the boy might
have spat in the face of his proud heritage, rejected his own and betrayed his people to Collegium was repugnant to the Beetle with the burn scar. The irony was lost on him.

He still had a small but respectable team working with him, thanks to the prudence that Army Intelligence instilled in its people. Instead of Rekef men raised in a climate of fear and terrified
of the consequences of failure, most of his people had simply weighed up the odds and not chanced carrying out attacks. That meant they were still on hand for the night to come.

He had been waiting for contact from the Spider agents in the city, an uncertain prospect, but a lean Fly-kinden man had found them in the early evening in the working man’s taverna they
were holed up in. The building was missing most of a wall, and all the windows had been smashed, but the landlord was still serving.

They adjourned to an enclosed backroom, after slinging the landlord a few coins. The burned man expected the Fly to waste time and mince words, weaving a web of allusions and hints, as seemed
the Spider way, but instead the report was brutally direct.

‘Things have changed. You have a new priority target.’

The Beetle bristled. ‘You’re not in a position to dictate that.’

‘What if we told you that we’d overlooked something until now. Earlier, we’d report that to your general. Now there’s no time and we’re reporting it to
you.’

The burned man sat back, considering. ‘What is it?’

‘There was a man – he’s on your list, but far down it – who’s an artificer. There had been some official interest in him recently, but there was a murder; we
thought it was just internal Collegiate business carrying on despite the war, you know.’ The Fly shrugged. ‘We now think it’s not that. We think they’ve played
us.’

‘Why? Our orders are to kill Stenwold Maker above all others—’

‘Good. Fine. He’s there now with this man, Banjacs Gripshod. So’s your Wasp boy. You need to get out your knives and get moving.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘We don’t
know
,’ the Fly hissed, ‘but the patterns are all wrong. It’s something important, and it’s at Gripshod’s place it’s happening.
It’s . . .’ The difficulty of explaining screwed the little man’s face up. ‘We have our methods. We look for patterns, feel for the connections between people. But patterns
can be deceptive – look at them from a different vantage, you might see something entirely other. That’s what’s happened here. It wasn’t about the murder after all.
It’s all about the war. Whatever they’re doing there in that house is vital, and you need to stop it. I swear on my mistress’s honour you do.’

The burn-scarred man stared at him levelly. He had memorized all sorts of places in the city, the dwellings of potential victims amongst them. Part of him was already working out which streets
to lead his people down to so as get to Banjacs Gripshod’s place as soon as possible. ‘And you’ll help, will you?’

The Fly spread his hands. ‘That is not a part of our mystery,’ he said, with a tired smile. ‘Besides, surely you won’t need us?’

She was gone when Laszlo returned, her sleeping roll disordered, her few personal possessions just smaller absences about her larger one. None of the surgeons or nurses could
tell him just when she had slipped out, and he could not know whether she had been feigning her injury, or fooling herself, or whether she had simply been that desperate to be rid of him.

Lissart had vanished, abandoned him after all they had been through. Laszlo could only stare in utter disbelief, and then argue with everyone around him because there were few enough casualties
yet for the doctors that surely one of them must have noticed a badly wounded Fly or not-quite-Fly woman pack up her things and
leave.