canvas, streaked with soot and blood: not an Assembler of Collegium, but a man back from a war.
‘Jodry, I need to speak to the Assembly as soon as it’s in session,’ were the first words out of Stenwold’s mouth, not even a greeting for his old friend.
‘Granted, of course. You’ll be first on the list tomorrow morning.’ Because Jodry could see in his face that it was important, whatever it was. Then a memory shot through him, as shocking and terrible as the charge that must have killed Pullard: Stenwold had returned from Myna.
‘We’ve had no reliable news…’ Jodry breathed. ‘Sten…’
‘You have no idea, Jodry.’ Stenwold shook his head, his eyes haunted. ‘The city’s not going to like what I have to say, but it needs to listen. How’s it been here?’
‘Rough. Sufficiently on edge that I suspect your news is only what people have been waiting to hear for a tenday and more. What news we get… well, it’s plain that something’s happening in Three-city territory… Everyone’s going armed. Everyone’s looking for enemies
…’ He gestured behind him at the towering glass and bronze and steel of Banjacs’s machine. ‘This… Banjacs Gripshod, you remember? He’s murdered his assistant. His reasons? He said she was a spy for the enemy. For the Empire, he said at one point. He even demanded to speak to you.’
Stenwold gazed up at the bewildering tubes and chambers of the device. ‘You’re so sure she wasn’t?’
Jodry sighed, wanting very much to just sit down on the floor, and to the pits with the dignity of his office. ‘Oh, she was a spy all right. She was my spy, who was telling me that our most notorious failed artificer was plotting some sort of terrible revenge on the city. If the Empire’s hand is anywhere, Sten, it’s probably behind this… thing.’
‘Then have someone look at it.’
‘First, don’t you think I have? Second, the last person who touched it was Pullard and she’s charcoal. And Banjacs Gripshod is mad enough that we’d never work out if this is an Imperial plot or not until…’ He looked plaintively at Stenwold. ‘How bad, Sten? Is there an “until”?’
Stenwold did not answer him, but kept staring up at the gleaming lines of Banjacs’s killing engine.
It was a short enough speech. Men had taken up more of the Assembly’s time with complaints about the duties levied on beech nuts.
‘Masters, Gownsmen and Townsmen magnates of the Collegiate Assembly,’ Stenwold had addressed them. Almost the full house had been there, despite the short notice. Assemblers developed a certain instinct, and Stenwold had seldom tabled a motion himself since the war. It was almost as though every man and woman who had been voted in at the last Lots, and every College Master who sat in the Amphiophos by right of academic credentials, had been waiting for today, forever keeping a note in their diaries: Stenwold Maker to declare war.
But, of course, Stenwold Maker could not declare war. That was not how Collegium was run. Stenwold Maker could only ask to speak to the Assembly, to propose a motion that they, in their wisdom, would accept or decline.
‘I am returned from Myna,’ he had told them. ‘You will have heard some news, conflicting accounts, rumours that are true and rumours that are misinformed, or lies planted by the Empire. I have seen what happened in Myna with my own eyes. The armies of the Empire have taken it swiftly and brutally, and despite all that its defenders could do to keep their freedom. The Treaty of Gold has been breached. I am sure that the Imperial ambassador will say that Myna commenced the hostilities, and has been complaining stridently about the aggressive attitude of the Empire’s newly freed neighbours since the war. Myna is but one city, and backed by two more, all three still rebuilding and recovering from the effects of almost two decades of occupation. The Empire has tens of cities, armies of tens of thousands. You all know the chances of Myna initiating a war that it could not possibly win.
‘The Collegiate Assembly signed the Treaty of Gold, and in that treaty we agreed to raise a sword against any who breaks it by attacking another signatory state. The Empire signed. Myna and its allies signed.
‘We have the option to turn away now, to believe the claims that the Empire’s reconquest of its former slaves is just an isolated incident, just as they claimed when they took Tark in the last war. We will be less than we were, if we do that. The word of Collegium will never again carry quite the weight it did, our reputation will lose its shine, and our allies will look on us with a doubt that would otherwise have been unthinkable.
‘I am aware that Myna is far away, that trade with Myna is not as lucrative as trade with the Empire, that we have been sapped by war ere now, have lost family and friends to it, more than we can afford. I, of all people, know this.
‘But what we have never lost is what makes us ourselves: that nobility of purpose, that breadth of vision, that knowledge and understanding of the world that makes us Collegium. If we are over-proud sometimes of what we have built, then at least we have built something to take pride in. Has Helleron done so, with its weathervane loyalties? Have the Spiderlands, with their hollow promises?
‘My motion is this: that the Empire has breached the Treaty of Gold and, though that treaty be nothing more than paper, we are of Collegium and paper carries a weight here that it does not amongst the armies of the Wasps. In declaring war on the Three-city Alliance, the Empire has declared its intent to bring war to us all. I ask the Assembly to vote, for we cannot let this stand unopposed. We must set ourselves against the tide. War on every tyrant who would enslave the world. War on the Empress and her armies. I call for a declaration of war against the Wasp Empire.’
There was some debate. The usual voices struck up against Stenwold’s, Helmess Broiler taking the lead as he had ever done, but the ranks of the Empire’s champions had thinned, and sounded hollow amidst the echoes of Stenwold’s words. Honory Bellowern, speaking on behalf of the absent Aagen, rose to speak, but Stenwold had already robbed him of his arguments, and what he was left with sounded much like a threat.
At Jodry’s insistence, the vote was held at the end of the morning’s session, although, in truth, few enough felt moved to prolong the debate. The usual murmur and gossip that was a ubiquitous backdrop to most Assembly discussions was absent. The great majority of those present had no words to offer. Fear stalked invisibly about the chamber, stilling voices, leaving a trail of drawn, tense expressions. To speak into that silence would be to take a side publicly, to be noted down in the books of the Rekef or the Collegiate Merchant Companies for later investigation.
Almost four in ten of the Assembly did not vote, even though the ballot was a secret one. The weight of the decision was such that they did not wish themselves to be responsible for the result, whichever way it went.
Of votes against, there were barely two score. After the tally, Stenwold took the floor once more, and his few closing words would be rattling from every printing press in the city within the hour.
Before noon the criers were already out in the streets of Collegium, calling out the news. The three extant Merchant Companies put their recruiting officers at street corners, with a plan already being drawn up for more companies to be formed. Word came from the Sarnesh, by rail, that they would stand by their ally, that their own forces were already mustering.
Collegium was going to war once again.
‘“Let no man say that the eyes of Collegium are turned away from the world. Let history record we take upon ourselves this responsibility. Wherever the metal meets, there we will be.” Stenwold Maker has finally got what he wants.’
Eujen Leadwell’s voice, familiar from so many debates, remained steady throughout the reading: the printers had copies of Stenwold Maker’s speech and the Assembly’s decision for public purchase by mid-afternoon the same day. Now, with evening closing in outside Raullo Mummers’s studio, the little band of students listened as Eujen relayed their future to them.
Sartaea te Mosca circulated, bringing them bowls of hot Spider-kinden chocolate, an expensive luxury, but, then, she asked them, what was she saving it for?
At the last, Eujen set down the cheaply printed scroll, his shoulders slumped.
‘Founder’s bloody mark.’ Raollo Mummers lit his pipe with slightly shaking hands, letting the sweet smell of tallum pollen seep into the room.
‘Eujen,’ te Mosca said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘What was I thinking?’ Eujen asked them all.
‘You’re going to have to be more specific,’ the Antspider suggested. ‘You have all sorts of mad ideas.’
‘Peace with the Empire. Peace with the world. A tenyear going by without another ruinous war.’ He held up a hand to forestall argument. ‘And I’m not a traitor. I’m not even an Imperial sympathizer, and there are plenty of those in the Assembly! I just… must it come to this? And when we beat them back — if we do — what then? Do we
