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.
‘So, tell me what a citizen of Collegium does,’ Stenwold snapped.
‘Well, for one, he doesn’t march into the office of the Speaker for the Assembly any time he likes, just to vent his spleen.’ As Stenwold rose to that barb, Jodry levered himself to his feet, abruptly becoming the man who swayed the city’s government, and not just a fat and idle wastrel. ‘Listen to me, Sten, and look at yourself. Your actions have been instrumental in putting us where we are now. In preparing for the next war, in devoting so much time and money to the aviators and the Merchant Companies, we have committed ourselves to a particular view of the world — of the Empire most especially. You will see it through. You will not leave me to parrot your words while you mope about like a sea-master’s widow.’
The words sparked a few uncomfortable memories of that student decrying ‘Makerist’ policies in the Forum. How earnest that young man had been, how passionate! Did Stenwold not recall another youth, not so very much older, debating in tavernas and on street corners, haranguing a hostile crowd to try and open their eyes to ideas they did not want to tolerate. Only, in Stenwold’s time, that idea had been the Empire’s hostility. And I won. I opened their eyes, after near on twenty years. The boy’s not the same. After all, I know the Empire, and he doesn’t.
‘Jodry,’ he said, a little subdued, ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
The other man’s first reaction was a shrug, as if to say that it was too late to change things now, but he plainly sensed that would not be well received, so put in hastily, ‘Oh, without a doubt. Come on, Sten, they were at the gates not so long ago, and if it wasn’t for your Mantis friend doing away with their Emperor, and all the chaos that caused, they’d have had us, too. And since they pulled themselves together, it’s been swords drawn all along the border, little skirmishes and raids, and a war looking for an excuse to happen. Of course you’re right, Sten.’
And Stenwold looked on his — what? Not quite old friend, so political ally, then — and realized that at last he could no longer read Jodry with utter certainty. He shook his head, giving up and conceding the point. ‘You bring me down to business, then.’
‘I thought I ought to add some structure to the debate, that being my job,’ Jodry agreed gravely. ‘So, speaking of skirmishes and borders, do I take it I can’t dissuade you from this little jaunt?’
‘The Mynan border situation is looking serious,’ Stenwold said. ‘It needs attention. The Three-city Alliance needs to know that we’re holding to our treaty, and they know me. And the Empire knows me, too. Maybe just turning up will get everyone to back off.’
Jodry looked at him doubtfully. ‘So this isn’t… it, then? Only, I’ve seen some of the reports, the sort of numbers massing at the border there.’
‘I wouldn’t think so,’ Stenwold assured him, with as much confidence as he could muster. ‘You, I and the Empire know that the peace can’t last, but we’ve time for a few more rolls of the dice yet.’
Five
Winter had brought fouler weather than normal, and every hand had been working day and night, slave and free, mending fences and clearing ditches ready for the growing season. Now the spring seemed to have come early, an unwanted stagnant heat that surely belonged to the depths of summer beating down oppressively on all and sundry, sapping strength and shortening tempers.
Still, the dry earth was beginning to submit to the plough. All those irrigation dykes they had so carefully re- dug were distributing the water neatly, only needing a little aid from the pumping well in order to reach every field. This was a dry land, south of Sonn, but his family had worked it for generations. They knew how to wrestle with it,
