The Air War (8 page)

Corog Breaker regarded her, and she was surprised to see something other than hostility in his face: understanding, she realized, even agreement. Soldier and artificer, he had fought in the war,
and against the Vekken before that when they had come to lay siege to Collegium. Of course, he knew she was right and that this anachronism would not see anyone safe through the next conflict,
whenever that might be.

Neither rhetoric nor reality was going to win this contest, though. He was already shaking his head, and she turned to her fellows, Eujen and Gerethwy, holding her hands wide to show that she
had done what she could, which was mostly to make a bad situation worse.
Play to your strengths, that’s what I say.
Still, many of the spectators were discussing her technique, and she
reckoned that she might cover the month’s rent by teaching a little fencing in the evenings, after this. It was the Spider part of her nature:
Losing with flair is something better than
winning without.

They had called their team ‘the Dregs’, and Eujen Leadswell was their tenuous link with the general populace, being Beetle-kinden born and bred in Collegium, a young son of a
brewer-turned-soldier, and a figure of notorious energy in the debating chamber. Gerethwy, on the other hand, seven feet tall, robed and hooded, had been put in the world purely to make honest
halfbreeds like the Antspider feel normal.

‘You!’ Breaker suddenly spat out, the word shot through with loathing. ‘Out!’

And then there’s that
: a pale young man had just appeared in the doorway, late and yet still managing to pick his moment.

‘What does
that
think it’s doing?’ Corog Breaker, veteran and conservative, had been given a target for his temper.

Is it me again? Do I get to do my usual grand job of salvaging the situation?
the Antspider was thinking. But Eujen was already standing up to receive the brunt of Corog’s wrath.
‘Master Breaker, this is our fourth.’

‘I will not have it in the Forum.’ Breaker’s voice came out dangerously low.

‘Master Breaker, Averic has been accepted as a student of the College,’ Eujen pressed on, all formal politeness.

‘I’ll not have a Wasp in the Forum.’

‘What authority have you?’ Eujen Leadswell managed, in the face of Breaker’s wrath.

‘I am Master Armsman of the College,’ Breaker thundered. ‘If I say he’s not to set
foot
on these tiles, he’s banned. Bring your complaints to the Masters,
do. Let’s see how many of them have any cursed sympathy with you. Or don’t you think they were up on the walls doing their piece when that lad’s Empire came?’ The last words
saw Breaker’s face rammed close to Eujen’s. ‘Just you think, boy, about what your choice of friends says about you.’

With that, Breaker had clearly had enough. He stormed out, choosing the doorway that Averic had been hovering in, forcing the young Wasp to back out quickly to avoid being knocked aside. The
brief quiet that Breaker had been speaking into degenerated almost instantly into a storm of gossip, much of it derogatory and aimed at the Dregs.

Eujen looked over at Averic. The young Wasp had his fixed smile on, the one he used whenever his kinden became an issue. He had not taken one step forward.

‘Leadswell!’ It was one of the opposing team, a burly man named Hallend, shouldering his way through the crowd that was already breaking into clumps spread out across the fighting
ring. ‘What were you thinking, bringing one of
them
? You think that
they
understand any kind of fighting but the real thing?’

‘You think he’d beat you to death with a wooden sword?’ Eujen asked witheringly.

‘I think I know his lot’s temper,’ Hallend spat back. ‘And if not now, then later – a knife in some dark alley, or that sting of his. We all know how they like to
win.
I lost an uncle to his kind in the war,’ Hallend persisted. ‘My parents fought his people to keep our city free. And now their spies are walking about in daylight, students
at the College.’

‘My father died in the Vekken siege,’ Eujen snapped, ‘and now the Vekken are our new great friends and allies. How was that achieved, save that Maker’s party reached out
to them? Two generations ago we counted Sarn a great threat to our north, but then we went to them with open hands.’ He gave Hallend the chance to draw breath for a rebuttal, and then spoke
over him fiercely. ‘But every Makerist agitator in the Assembly tells us there must be war with the Empire. We must not trade with the Empire. We must be on our guard against the
Empire’s spies. Is there some moral difference between Vek and the Wasps? No, it is just the fact that the Empire is far away, and so the Makerists can rail at it with impunity. It is because
the Empire is large, and so they see too great an effort in converting it to our philosophies, so they do not try. It is because the Empire seems set to last, and it is convenient for some men to
have a strong enemy abroad. What other tyrannies are hidden at home when all eyes look over the wall for an army? What taxes, what confiscations, what laws are passed? Does the Empire hate us more
than Vek has hated us? No. Is the Empire the unrelenting, irredeemable evil that the Makerists paint it? No. The distinction is not one of morality but one of convenience.’

‘Eujen, quiet,’ the Antspider hissed in his ear, but he was getting into his stride now.

‘But I ask you this,’ Eujen went on with a grand gesture. ‘Is the Empire truly as vast and powerful as the Makerists say? Is it truly as warlike? Yes, of course it is. We have
seen ample evidence in these last few years. What, then, do you think the wages of Makerism will be? If we daily speak of war waged by the Empire, of the threat of the Empire, of the unending
hostility of the Empire, then what possible alternative do we give the Wasps, but to become the monsters we cast them as? If the only hand we show to them has a blade in it, what response will we
receive? And, when that war comes, where will our moral high ground be when we have so long invited it? We are Collegium, and we have stood for ethical enlightenment for five centuries. We cannot
govern our state on principles of convenience.’

‘Eujen, shut up now,’ the Antspider urged again; everyone else was quite silent. Hallend, sensing something was up, glanced over his shoulder and then squeaked in alarm and scrambled
out of the way, exposing Eujen to the full glowering regard of the man standing there.

Eujen was not tall for a Beetle, and this man had a good few inches on him, and a good few decades too, and he was broader at the shoulder than the young student, but he had the fierce, brooding
presence of a much larger man, even so. His reputation towered above him, and threatened to crush Eujen Leadswell flat.

A current of whispers danced about the Forum, speaking the name,
Stenwold Maker.

Eujen swallowed, seeming smaller and smaller, but never quite backing down, weathering the fire of the old statesman’s scorn, as though staring into the sun.

The older man said one word: ‘
Makerist
?’

Eujen was going to keep standing there, Straessa realized.
He’s going to argue with Stenwold Maker!
She did not know if Maker, like the theoretical Wasp, would have his enemies
killed in dark alleyways, but she was certain that making a scene just now would do no favours for Eujen’s academic career, and so she kicked him sharply behind the knee, so Eujen found
himself sitting down abruptly with the breath knocked out of him.

‘Mouth shut,’ she snapped.

It was as though Eujen no longer existed, but then she realized that Maker had not really been staring at him at all. It was just that Eujen had been standing between him and the Wasp,
Averic.

She saw Averic’s fingers twitch, the Art in his hands being kept on a tight leash. One of Maker’s own hands was at his belt, she saw, and with a swooping lurch she spotted the butt
of a weapon there.
Only Stenwold Maker could bring a snapbow into the Prowess Forum
, and on the back of that thought her prediction changed from
Stenwold Maker is going to beat Eujen to
death with his bare hands
, to
Stenwold Maker is going to shoot Averic dead right in front of us.

But Averic was holding very still, giving no excuse, making no trouble, and at last Stenwold Maker turned away and stomped heavily out of the Forum, sheer murder evident in every step.

‘Since when did we have Wasp-kinden students at the College?’ Stenwold demanded as his opening salvo as soon as he was through the door of Jodry’s office.

Jodry Drillen, Speaker for the Assembly of Collegium, cast a tolerant eye over him. ‘Since start of autumn, I think. Averic, his name is. He turned up with money and sat the entrance exams
and came with a commendation from the Imperial cartel thing, the Consortium.’ He had obviously been in the middle of some papers, but he leant back in his overstuffed chair, gesturing for
Stenwold to sit down.

Stenwold remained standing. ‘And you let him in?’

‘I? I haven’t been a Master of the College for more than a decade, and the right of the College to do just about whatever it pleases without interference from the Assembly is the
first thing both of us learned when we were studying for our accredits, eh? I recall a certain lecturer in modern history who made considerable use of that freedom to preach all manner of truths
that the Assembly would rather were kept quiet.’

Stenwold glared at him, but conceded the point by sitting down across the desk from Jodry, his fervour ebbing a little. ‘Since autumn, though. Six months, then, and I never even knew. Why
wasn’t I told?’

‘Aside from the fact that the College is similarly not obliged to run its decisions past the War Master, you
were
told,’ Jodry pointed out. At that moment his Fly-kinden
secretary arrived, bearing a bottle of wine and a plate of honeycakes, probably less because his master had a guest than because his master tended towards gluttony. After he had put the tray down,
Jodry waved him away and then busied himself in finding a second bowl and decanting the wine. At last, under Stenwold’s stare, he was forced to add, ‘It may be that I didn’t
exactly take pains to draw it to your attention, but only because I knew you’d overreact.’

Stenwold took a bowl and stared at the dark contents. ‘He’s a spy.’

‘Probably is.’ Jodry stuffed an entire cake into his mouth and mauled it for a while. He had been an expansive man before winning the Speaker’s post, and success had added a
few handspans to his waist, and at least one additional chin. Stenwold was his contemporary, and not a slender man even now, but Jodry, some inches shorter, must have weighed half as much
again.

Seeing that Stenwold’s exasperated expression would outlast his mouthful, Jodry lost most of his geniality and added, ‘Or would you rather they just put some chit of a Spider-kinden
girl in under a false pretext, so we’d not know until she betrayed us?’

Stenwold put the bowl down on Jodry’s desk with a click of porcelain. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was a low blow.’

‘True, though, and the boy might actually just be a student, but if he’s a spy, at least he’s an obvious one. The College was divided about it, but in the end what I consider
to be sensible heads won out, and young Averic got his place. An adequate student, I’m told, artifice and history. And if you’d actually been to the College in the last few months, you
might know about it – or even if you’d turn up in the city for longer than it took to stoke the fires in the Assembly once every few tendays.’ Jodry looked sidelong at Stenwold,
as if estimating how far he could push his luck. ‘And he’s fitted in, in a way. What about that duelling clique of his, hm? Brings back a few memories: local boy of decent family, some
odd artificer, a girl who’s handy with a sword, round them off with an exotic foreigner – sounds a bit like . . .’

Stenwold was half out of the chair as soon as he caught Jodry’s meaning. ‘You—! Don’t you
dare
equate that pack of feckless conspirators with my
students!’

Jodry was unruffled, barely acknowledging the outburst. ‘I’m just saying, it’s a rich tapestry we have here at Collegium – threads of all colours.’

Stenwold sank back into his chair, feeling that he was becoming Jodry’s opposite. Two men of late middle age, the same dark skin and receding hair, both veterans of two conflicts and
innumerable debates, and yet the fat man grew fatter and happier in his role, increasingly comfortable with the subtle power of his position and the material benefits that came with it. Stenwold,
meanwhile, was growing leaner and more distanced from the very city he was working to save. Each time he came back here, the streets seemed a little stranger, a little less like home. When he
returned, it was less to a city and more to
absences
: the memories of those that time and war had taken from him.

‘Since when was I a political movement?’ he seized on as another ground for complaint. ‘Some student was bandying about the word “Makerist”, for grief’s
sake.’

Jodry took a deep
you only have yourself to blame
breath. ‘Stenwold, Losel Baldwen sets aside a month on Makerism in her social history class – has done since the
war.’

Stenwold stared at him, but Jodry met his eyes without flinching. ‘I refer you to my previous comment. If you actually spent a reasonable time in the city you’d know these things,
and have a chance to do something about them. Instead of which, you’re forever off about the Lowlands or to Myna, or at that retreat on the cliffs that you signed over to those
pirates.’

‘Sometimes it’s good to get out of the city,’ Stenwold replied, infuriated that he was now on the defensive, but unable to do anything about it.

‘Sten, I’m fat, not dead. I know you miss that’ – his voice dipped – ‘Sea-kinden woman. It’s a shame, I fully admit, but there it is. You need to start
living like a citizen of Collegium again.’ Jodry was one of the very few who knew even half of the secret alliance with the Sea-kinden that Stenwold had brokered. In fact he was one of very
few who even knew that Sea-kinden existed.