machines. It was Taki’s Esca Magni, though, looking decidedly more chipped and battered than when Stenwold had seen it last. The Fly-kinden herself looked dead on her feet as she levered herself from her cockpit.
A ragged cheer went up, for the Mynan airmen had all seen her efforts in the skies over their city, and the sound of their applause transformed Taki from a weary refugee into some shadow of her past self: the Solarnese air-duellist. She managed a grin for them, and then was striding forward to clasp hands first with Edmon, then the short Bee woman beside him, then going round the circle, dismissing Kymene almost as an irrelevance.
‘Someone get me wound again,’ she called out to nobody in particular. ‘Or are we putting down roots here?’ Stenwold could see how tired she must be, but either she was putting on a brave face or her pride would not let her acknowledge it.
They flew east next, not straight for Collegium as only Taki could have managed the journey in one leg, but navigating for Malkan’s Folly, the new fortress that marked the most westerly point that the Imperial Seventh Army had reached in the last war. Stenwold needed to warn the Sarnesh.
Malkan’s Folly had been the project of the Sarnesh since shortly after the war because they, like Stenwold, had known the day would come when the black and gold would look westwards once again. The Ants lacked something of Collegium’s ingenuity, but they were united in a way their Beetle allies were not. When the King of Sarn and his tacticians set their minds on a project, then progress would be rapid, all hands turning to the task.
The fortress was a great slope-walled monster of black stone, rising to a jagged crown of towers. There had been some talk of raising a series of smaller edifices, as a line to cut across the path of any Wasp advance, but the cost would have been great, the utility small. The Ants knew that it would be impossible physically to stop an enemy force with fortifications, given how mobile Imperial armies were. The impediment that Malkan’s Folly offered was logistical. A whole army of Ants could be stationed there, well provisioned, unassailable, sallying forth at will to disrupt enemy supply lines or to attack the Wasps in the flank or the rear, coordinating with the main Sarnesh army with that impeccable ease that only Ants, with their interlinked minds, could muster. With that plan, Malkan’s Folly became an obstacle no general could afford to circumvent.
Taking the fortress was reckoned to be near-impossible, according to the Sarnesh engineers. All four faces of it were studded with leadshotter emplacements, and angled so that the weapons’ arcs overlapped and covered every inch of ground. Windows were narrow — enough for a snapbowman to shoot out, but not enough to allow ingress to the Light Airborne. Beneath the building itself was a network of tunnels and cellars containing ammunition and provisions enough to last out a siege. Beyond the fortress, if an army hoped to rush past the position and leave it behind, was land watched over by the Mantids and Moth-kinden of the Ancient League, other allies from the war who were more than capable of tying down an Imperial force with skirmishing, ambush and assassination until the Ant forces closed from behind.
The welcome the Ants gave to the fugitive Mynan air force was cool and businesslike. They provided food and drink, fuel and the use of winding engines, and they listened calmly to the news of Myna’s fall, making notes. None of the visitors was allowed within the fortress, however, and everything was conducted out under the sky. The Sarnesh did not want any outsider knowing the secrets of their new stronghold.
‘We can expect them here within perhaps a month,’ estimated the Ant commander who took their evidence.
‘Much less,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘Their force is now far more mechanized than General Malkan’s Seventh was. Even if you break up the rails leading from Helleron, I’d guess they’ll have enough automotives to get their siege engines here quickly.
‘Their siege engines,’ said the Ant impassively, and Stenwold experienced a sinking feeling, wondering if the man — and, by extension, all of the Ants at Malkan’s Folly — actually believed those stories from Myna. He had met that problem before with Ant-kinden. They lived in a world of absolute veracity when it came to their own people, and by contrast they found all outsiders unreliable and duplicitous.
‘There will be Mynan soldiers as well,’ Kymene spoke up. ‘Some may come here. Will you let them fight alongside you?’
The Ant commander made a discouraging noise. ‘I am not happy about asking my men to fight here alongside people who cannot follow our orders. Malkan’s Folly is a machine, efficient and carefully calibrated. Any fleeing Myna will be permitted to resupply here, then pass on westwards. Our fortress is for Sarn alone to defend.’ His almost uninflected tone concealed whether he meant this as an insult or not. ‘Collegium need not fear enemies from the north,’ he added, for Stenwold’s benefit. ‘Tell your Assembly that much.’ For a moment a measure of real disdain flickered across the man’s face. ‘We take it that you will fight?’
Stenwold was uncomfortably aware of Kymene’s eyes fixed on him too, but all he could do was nod and hope that his people would see things the same way.
Jodry Drillen had not seen his day going like this. He was the Speaker for the Assembly, after all, and it was hard to explain to those around him why he had decided to grace the scene of a particularly unpleasant-looking murder.
Still, the College Master who ran the department of justice was obviously flattered by his presence. The task of overseeing the law and order of the city had always been undertaken by the College, on the basis that those who formulated the city’s laws were best fit to enforce them, and investigating a crime was simply research in a different hat. Academically, however, it was not highly regarded, and so the Speaker’s personal attention was a much appreciated sign of support.
‘What’s it for?’ Jodry murmured.
They were standing in the central room of Banjacs Gripshod’s townhouse, which took up all three floors and the cellar and was mostly filled with a… a machine, was as far as Jodry would commit himself.
Standing beside him was a lecturer in artifice, a mechanic of fifteen years brought in to answer this precise question, and he just shook his head, eyes as wide as Jodry’s own. ‘I have not the first idea, Speaker, and that’s my educated opinion. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘It’s not just a… murder weapon, then?’ Jodry pressed.
‘Must have taken years to build. I know the Spiders say that revenge tastes better in the morning, but I reckon most people would’ve forgot why they wanted to kill someone by the time this thing got finished.’
The mortal remains of Reyna Pullard were still being prised off the machine itself. There was not much left of her, and what survived was charred black. A discharge of lightning from the device had practically incinerated her. The thunderous discharge, and her scream, had been loud enough to alert people outside the building, and that had led to Jodry standing here, hoping that it had been quick and mostly painless, despite the evidence of his eyes.
It might have been an accident, of course, save for Banjacs Gripshod’s own reaction. When the city watch had finally had to force their way into the house, he had practically assaulted them, screaming that the dead woman had betrayed him and making threats and demands.. When they had shouldered their way into this room, he had become hysterical, taking them as more of the ‘enemies’ that he was apparently obsessed with, calling them traitors to their city. With due respect for his age, he had been confined to his personal chambers under guard. It seemed very likely that his mind had turned in on itself a long time before, and this regrettable business was just the final symptom.
Except for the murderous machine, which was certainly intended for something, but was sufficiently complex — or possibly redundant — that a College artifice master had no idea what it was for. A little voice nagged in Jodry’s mind regarding Reyna Pullard’s warning: Banjacs Gripshod was going to blow up the city…
Jodry did not believe in machines that destroyed cities but, if he did, they would probably look something like this.
There was a small cough at his elbow and he glanced down to find his chief secretary, Arvi, attending on him. To Jodry’s knowledge, he had left the Fly-kinden back at his own house, but the man’s efficiency seemed not to acknowledge bounds of time or distance.
‘Master Maker to see you, Master Drillen.’
Jodry stared at him. ‘Stenwold Maker?’ he asked, although he knew no others.
‘He arrived at the airfield with some numbers less than an hour ago, and he has been tracking you down ever since,’ Arvi reported smartly.
‘Some numbers…? You make it sound as though he’s invading us.’ Jodry shook himself. ‘Send him in, for the world’s sake. I’m in need of a pillar of sanity to lean on.’
But Stenwold, when he entered, did not look overly supportive. He was wearing somewhat tattered artificer’s
