from the rooftops on his way to the Forum. Rules, yes, but you know I won.’ Her smile was feral. ‘And you know what else? I killed him exactly the same way, three times. Cheating or not, what sort of swordsmanship is that?’
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.
