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
