‘Majesty,’ Roder addressed her, voice hoarse with emotion, ‘I shall take Seldis for you. I shall take the whole Spiderlands, if you ask it.’
She turned her benevolent regard on him. ‘No, no, General, that is in hand. General Brugan and his Rekef tell me that arrangements have already been made for the Spiders, starting with a timely resolution to the Solarno situation. I have other tasks for you. We have been gathering troops near the Mynan border for some time now, in order to fend off their raids and skirmishes. The bulk of your old Eighth is marching to join them even now, along with some new toys for the Engineers. You will return our rebellious neighbours to the Imperial fold, General Roder: first Myna, Szar and Maynes, and then on to Helleron.’
She looked about brightly. ‘Colonel Bellowern has made the logistical arrangements personally, and General Lien and his associates will ensure you lack for nothing in the field of artifice, and of course the Rekef Outlander is already working to smooth your way. The Empire has too long been sick and at the mercy of its enemies. Now we look to you all to put the world to rights, to restore us to our proper place in the world.’ Abruptly her eyes were steel, and there were fluttering banners of black and gold in her voice, and a thousand marching feet, and great engines. ‘You know your duty, all of you, for your love of the Empire, and for me.’
Seven
‘You’re ready?’ the Antspider asked.
‘I’m watching,’ confirmed Eujen Leadswell, and he was, keenly, measuring his reach against hers, sword tips even, arms parallel, shoulders almost touching.
‘And lunge,’ she instructed, and they took a simultaneous step and, without seeming to stretch, her blade point’s lead had become the best part of a foot. ‘You see it?’
‘I see it but I don’t see how,’ Eujen complained, dropping from his swordsman’s stance. Around them, the clear airy space of Mummers’s studio picked up their every sound and murmured it about the paper-covered walls.
‘She’s rolling her shoulder back as she stands ready,’ came Gerethwy’s measured tones, the cadence of an old man behind the lighter tones of a young one. ‘Her arm’s longer than yours, and when she lunges, she’s casting her shoulder forward as well as her arm. Her joints must be as freakish as the rest of her, in my opinion.’ He moved a piece on the board in front of him, then glanced blithely at the Antspider, waiting for a challenge. He was by far the most outlandish figure in the room, and perhaps in Collegium. Most people had never so much as seen a Woodlouse-kinden before, but certainly nobody had ever seen a young one.
Averic, across from him, made a quick counter-move. He played chess, even this outrageously chaotic version that only he and Gerethwy knew how to play, as though he was being timed. He was a strange sight in Collegium, this lean Wasp youth: not the hulking brute that most Collegiates imagined or remembered from the war, but a quiet, studious figure who wore eyeglasses to read, with sandy hair of a conservative length for a College student, but that the Antspider had taken for the height of rebellion in an Imperial. When she had confronted him with that thought, he had patiently explained that, no, the height of rebellion for an Imperial was setting yourself up as the Emperor. That was when she had decided she liked him.
He had turned up at the city’s gates in company with Gerethwy, not from the same starting point but from the same point of the compass. Averic was all the way from the Empire — where else were Wasps from? — and Gerethwy from some unimaginable place north or east even of that. The joke ran that the cartography department had offered to pay for his tuition if the Woodlouse only filled in the blank spaces on their maps. He was hairless, gaunt-faced, light grey skin marked with dark grey bands running up over his scalp and down his back. Gerethwy was the only one of their little circle who could give the Antspider an even fight. He was close on seven feet tall, even with the slight bunching of his back and shoulders, and his reach was prodigious. What he lacked in speed he made up for in precision, and he would lead her on and lead her on, defence and defence, until her temper gave out and she did something incautious, which inevitably resulted in an immediate victory for one or the other of them.
‘I still can’t see it,’ Eujen complained, ‘even if you do have trick shoulders.’
‘I wish the crowd at the Forum had your eyes,’ she remarked lightly. The disqualification had been a shame, but notoriety was hard currency even in Collegium, and especially amongst the students. Besides, odds were that Averic’s late arrival would have seen them lose anyway, and if it was a choice between a mundane loss and a flamboyant one, then the Antspider knew which one she would take every time.
Averic had been late, it turned out, because the city militia had stopped him in the street no fewer than three times on his way to the Prowess Forum.
‘Pose, please,’ came the voice of Raullo Mummers, whose studio they were cluttering up. He was a stocky Beetle-kinden a few years senior to any of them, a professional artist trying to clinch some manner of deal with one of Collegium’s galleries, and sketching anatomy and engineering designs for the College to pay the rent. The single long room he lived and worked in filled the entire lower storey of a ramshackle house near the College, with one wall mostly given over to a grand circular window, intricately leaded in the Spider style some decades ago, and now boasting some half a dozen missing panes covered up with wood. All the rest of Mummers’s walls were covered with his sketches, the work of a decade plastered and overlapping, the inspiration from them constantly feeding back into his work.
The Antspider sighed and adopted her ready pose again, although this time Eujen decided not to join her, instead drifting over to speculate on the chess game.
‘Next year, do you think, for the Forum?’ she asked.
‘Oh, certainly,’ Eujen replied over his shoulder, but his voice carried an uncertain tone.
‘It’s a wise man who knows tomorrow,’ said Gerethwy, making another move after some thought, and watching Averic respond with instant certainty.
‘Talk, all talk. Will Collegium be here next year? Yes. Will we be students at the College? Yes,’ Eujen said defensively.
‘So sure?’ the Antspider demanded, her straight arm beginning to tremble as she held her pose for Mummers.
‘The alternative is too dire to think about, Straessa,’ Eujen declared. ‘Look at where everyone stood after the last war, the loss of life, the chaos and disruption, missed harvests, civil strife.. ’
‘You don’t have to do the grand speeches with us, Eujen. We’re your friends,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re very quiet, Averic.’
The Wasp looked up from the board for a moment, and then seemed to become utterly absorbed in the position of the pieces. Eujen had been the only student willing — or daring enough — to approach the College’s new Imperial recruit, beginning an unlikely friendship born of curiosity and cultural differences. Averic avoided contradicting or arguing with Eujen whenever possible. For a Wasp he seemed remarkably tactful. Patient, too. For a long time Straessa had thought he was simply devoid of the ugly temper that three generations of his kinden had made notorious. Then, once, she had seen him off guard for a moment: not in defence of himself but when some magnate’s son decided to call Eujen a coward. Averic’s hands had clenched into fists — a gesture of peace amongst his violent kinden — but she had caught an expression on his face, visible only for that single moment, and she had understood. It was not patience, but sheer bloody-minded willpower. He was constantly restraining himself, every day, through every barb of provocation and frustration, holding in check that reflexive retaliation his kinden would normally resort to.
‘Enough,’ she told Mummers. ‘Or I’m going to strain something. Do you pay me to be your model?’
‘Do you pay me rent to sit around my studio?’ he returned, looking sullen. Because he was, at least notionally, a productive member of society, she sometimes forgot he was only a few years older than her.
‘Wasn’t te Mosca coming tonight?’ Gerethwy observed, staring at the board.
‘Trying to pin down Mistress te Mosca is like trying to stop the sun,’ Eujen observed, and then the door slammed open suddenly and a half-dozen soldiers spilled in. They were Merchant Company men and women, solid Beetle-kinden in barred helms and breastplates over buff coats, each sporting a blue sash with a gold portcullis emblazoned on it. They all carried snap-bows.
In the initial confusion, the crash of the door still echoing, the Antspider had traded her wooden sword for the
