come round to the same point a few years later? Do we carry the war past their borders? Do we end up enslaving or eradicating Averic’s people so we can be safe from them? Is that all there is?’
All eyes turned to the Wasp-kinden youth, marking the distance that seemed to have grown between him and them. Averic’s face was expressionless, save for a tightness at the jaw, a token of his self-control. ‘Next time, or the next,’ he murmured and, if there was an edge of desperation buried somewhere in his voice, it seemed more that he was desperate to console his friend Eujen rather than over any fears for his own fate or that of his kin. ‘There are those in the Empire who see the world as more than just something to be conquered, or why was I sent here at all? There will come a time when those people will make their voices heard.’
‘If the Empire can be driven from Myna, perhaps,’ the Antspider suggested. ‘A quick defeat might bring the Empress to her senses. If the Assembly can grasp the idea of being gracious in victory.’ She was wearing her Company sash still, and Eujen’s initial horror at it had been dulled, first by familiarity and then by recent events.
‘The Coldstone Company’s set to go, are they?’ he asked her.
‘So they tell me. First into the breach — that sort of stuff. Maker’s Own are ready, as well. Outright’s lads are staying home to help raise fresh companies.’
‘Where do I go to sign up?’ Eujen asked her.
For a moment she just stared at him in silence while, across the room, Raullo Mummers dropped his pipe, grinding hurriedly at the embers as they spilled out.
‘Don’t,’ said Straessa the Antspider.
Eujen’s expression was hurt. ‘You have. Even Gerethwy has.’ He indicated the lanky Woodlouse-kinden bent silently over some sort of schematic, glancing up only as his name was mentioned. He, too, wore the Coldstone Company sash.
‘I don’t want you to, Eujen,’ she insisted.
For a long while, he stared at her. ‘You think I’m a coward, too?’
‘Idiot.’ She was across to him quickly, laying a hand on his arm, but he flinched away angrily, then rounded on her again, his mouth open for some angry retort. In a movement like a fencer’s lunge she had kissed him, once but firmly, letting his words drop into the abyss of it. ‘You’re brave enough to say what you believe in every day, Eujen, but if you’re there when we go to Myna, I won’t be able to fight, because I’ll always be worrying about you. Collegium’s going to need you, but later, when we really do have a chance at peace, not now when all we’ve got is war. Join one of the new companies, if you like. Form a student company, even. Please, not the warfront.’
He stared at her for a long, stretched moment, conflicting emotions fighting beneath his skin. ‘And Gerethwy?’ he said at last.
‘As if she cares what happens to me,’ the Woodlouse intoned, and the painfully tense mood was broken.
‘Besides, Averic needs you here,’ Straessa added. ‘He’s not exactly going to sign up to slaughter his own people.’
‘Unless you’re leaving?’ te Mosca put in, as she passed the Wasp a fresh bowl. ‘Nobody’d blame you.’
Averic regarded them all coolly and, for a long while, it seemed as if he had metamorphosed, since Eujen’s reading, into something else, something foreign and hostile. The enemy.
Then something twitched, a muscle tugging in his throat. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said softly. ‘If I go… I’m army age. It’ll be straight into the Light Airborne, and up against the snapbows of Collegium, most likely. I’ve had all the training before I came here. All I need’s the uniform. If I stay… then am I a traitor? Or will your people just decide that I’m a spy?’ He said the words without much emotion, but his casual arms-folded pose had tightened, hands clutching at his own flesh.
‘You’re a student of the Great College,’ Eujen said. ‘That gives you all the rights of a Collegiate citizen except the vote. You’re one of us for as long as you care to be.’
Only the set of Averic’s eyes showed how much he desperately wished that to be true but, despite Eujen’s reassurances, everyone there was thinking how, in the final analysis, his future was unlikely to be his to choose.
The next day the first news, contradictory and unclear, began to filter into the city from Solarno.
Eighteen
‘This is it,’ Gizmer told them, flitting into the Fly-kinden common room at head height.
There were a dozen or so sitting about the floor, Pingge and Kiin amongst them. They had not flown in three days, the routine of their training abruptly broken without explanation. Everyone had felt change on the wind.
‘How do you know?’ someone asked, but Pingge’s question overrode it. ‘Where?’
‘Myna,’ one of the Flies said immediately, but Gizmer shook his head irritably.
‘Myna’s gone,’ he told them. ‘Who’ve you been listening to, that you don’t know Myna’s gone? Szar as well, by now, I’d lay money on it. Maybe we fly against Maynes. Ant-kinden are stubborn.’
‘The Eighth Army has the Spearflights,’ Kiin said quietly. ‘That’s not what we’re trained for.’
‘Then what are we for?’ Pingge demanded. ‘Sitting about and getting fat, right now? Who’d have thought life in the army would be as grand as this?’ It was true, they ate well, had more time to themselves, slept better and drew more pay than they ever had in the factories. There was respect, too: they were with the army, and that meant something — even for Flies.
‘When they’re not chaining us inside the fliers,’ Gizmer muttered darkly, dropping down close to her.
‘Who’s even seen a pilot these last three days?’ Kiin asked.
There was a mutter of discussion: nobody had.
‘Final testing,’ someone put in. ‘I heard talk — some other hoop they wanted to jump the machines through.’
‘The machines aren’t at the airfield, either. They’ve taken them elsewhere, or they’ve flown them off without us,’ Gizmer put in. Of all of them, the yoke of the army chafed him the most. He was forever sneaking off and poking his nose into things, getting where he shouldn’t be and gleaning scraps of information.
‘Three days is a long time to be testing anything,’ Pingge observed. ‘Unless they failed the test and all crashed or something.’
This spurred a general ripple of laughter, but Kiin said, ‘Don’t.’
‘What? Sentiment, for the master race?’ Pingge jibed her. ‘Big bald Aarmon got to you, has he?’
‘Shut up, Pingge,’ Gizmer hissed. A moment later and the Fly-kinden fell silent as Aarmon himself walked into the room. He was wearing his aviator’s uniform, black insulated leathers with gold flashes at the shoulder, a chitin helm and goggles dangling by their straps from one hand. His clothes were creased, the tunic beneath sweat- stained where his cuirass was open down the front. Probably he had not been back in the capital for longer than it took to quit the airfield and march here.
‘Up, all of you,’ he ordered them. If he had heard Pingge talking, he gave no sign of it. As always — and as with all the pilots — his words were sparing, given only grudgingly. ‘Sergeant Kiin, rouse the others. All bombardiers to assemble in the quad, ten minutes.’ His soulless eyes raked across them, but paused on nobody. Then he ducked out of the room, leaving them to follow orders — and trusting them to do it. It had been a long time since the Wasps had needed to guard them.
‘Sergeant now, is it?’ Gizmer observed acidly.
Kiin shrugged desperately. ‘It’s just because I fly with him, it must be.’
Pingge smirked. ‘Oh, he likes you, that one. You always did go for the emotionless, goggle-eyed type.’
‘Come on, you heard him,’ Kiin said. ‘Up.’ She was already on her feet, and there was a general mutinous mutter as most of the Flies followed suit.
‘Going to make me call you “sir” now?’ Pingge goaded her.
‘Look, he’ll take it out of my hide if we’re not formed up within whatever time we have left,’ Kiin pleaded. ‘Come on, set an example.’
‘Right you are, sir.’ But Pingge got to her feet, and then hauled Gizmer up after her. ‘Drill and parades. I could get used to all of it but the standing about.’
Kiin headed into the sleeping quarters and managed to jolly along those Fly-kinden who had been taking the
