Outwright thrust in, before Jodry could continue. ‘He says he wants to fight the Wasps, too. Why not let him, rather that than waste people keeping him indoors, especially given the death machine or whatever that takes up half his house?’
Jodry made placating gestures. ‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to him myself. Whatever. Now, next on the agenda — by which I mean the list I have inside my head — news from Sarn.’
Nobody had been given the opportunity to sound out the Sarnesh messenger before the meeting. The young Ant had turned up at the gate only moments before and been ushered into this august company without introductions. It was a misstep that Jodry would not have made under normal circumstances.
The Ant-kinden looked as weary as they all felt, but he stood up stiffly to deliver his report. ‘Sarn sends to its allies in Collegium the news that the fortress at Malkan’s Folly has fallen to the Imperial Eighth Army, which has now continued its advance towards Sarn. The Empire has deployed various new weapons, the nature of which are not wholly understood. Sarn is not in a position to tender any substantial aid to Collegium in its time of trouble.’
The Collegiates absorbed this.
‘New weapons?’ Stenwold prompted. ‘You mean their orthopters? The artillery and the automotives we saw at Myna?’
‘No, Master Maker, we do not,’ the Sarnesh told him, and for a moment there was a slight uncertainty in the Ant’s level tone. ‘Some weapon was used to clear the survivors of the fortress garrison from the underground bunkers. Those that escaped make a… disturbing report. A new weapon, its nature unknown.’ The Ant spoke the words with his eyes fixed straight ahead, and Stenwold wondered what mental images he had inherited from those who had escaped the doomed fortress.
‘Well, the upshot of that is clear enough, anyway,’ Jodry rumbled. ‘We’re on our own. What else? Other business?’
‘Yes,’ Stenwold said flatly, as the Ant sat down. ‘Corog, may we take it that the ground damage from yesterday’s attack was similarly precise?’
‘They knew what they were doing,’ Breaker confirmed. ‘Several workshops were damaged, all of them contributing to our war preparations in some way. The packing plant on Stoner Street that was turning out rations is gutted entirely. Plus a number of private residences, probably simply bad luck, for the most part. The worst blow was the fuel depot. We’re lucky that our fliers are all clockwork, but we were relying on the fuel for our automotives, for when the Second get closer. Nobody knows if we can refine more in time.’
Stenwold nodded because all this was preamble, and he had already put plans in motion to deal with the problem. ‘I have sent to certain
… allies of mine who may be able to procure a supply,’ he said carefully, catching Jodry’s eye. ‘I’m not sure if it’s possible, but they have a sample of what we lack and, if they can produce it, they will.’ The Sea-kinden, his little secret, had some remarkable Art to produce both raw materials and finished goods, but mineral oil fuels might yet be beyond them.
There were plenty of questions about that, of course, but he waved them away. ‘Meanwhile we have a more pressing problem. It’s plain the Empire has spies aplenty in Collegium, despite all we’ve done in the past to thin their ranks. They’re feeding the Imperial air force information, telling them where to strike. So we need to take action.’
‘You’ve identified these spies?’ Stormall asked him hopefully.
Stenwold shook his head. ‘We are the victims of our own open society, and the industry that they prey on can hardly be kept a secret. We need to take a sterner line. I want every Wasp-kinden in the city under lock and key by tomorrow evening, first for questioning and then exile.’
There was a pause as the others considered this. Raking the table, Stenwold caught as many eyes as possible. You know I’m right, he thought, as though he was an Ant and could place the words in their minds.
‘Stenwold, you do know that most of their people will just be Beetle-kinden, or Flies — no shortage of either in the Empire,’ Jodry remarked mildly.
Stenwold shrugged. ‘The Wasps don’t trust “lesser races” as much as you think. Somewhere there will be a Wasp holding their leashes. We can cut the head off the Rekef operation in Collegium by this single step. We need to deny them every advantage we can.’
His gaze was fixed on Jodry now, but the Speaker for the Assembly was not discomfited.
‘Oh, no, I don’t think so,’ the fat Beetle replied, and then managed a wan smile. ‘That’s not the Collegiate way, Sten.’ He looked brightly about the table. ‘Any other business?’
‘I want a vote,’ Stenwold demanded flatly.
Jodry went quite still. ‘Now, come on, Sten.’
‘We are Collegium, and we are ruled by the vote, so let us vote, those of us here.’ Stenwold looked about the table, judging and measuring. ‘I say that our city will be safer if we rid it of Wasp-kinden. I say that questioning those same Wasps may even lead us to this cursed airfield. We can’t afford to ignore the opportunity. Put it to the vote.’
‘Stenwold, we cannot simply have people arrested — some of them citizens, even — without cause.’
‘We have cause,’ Stenwold retorted more sharply. ‘The Empire has given us that cause.’ He tried to make a sort of ghastly joke of it. ‘Are you worried this will cost you at the next Lots?’
‘No, Stenwold, I am not,’ Jodry snapped. Abruptly he heaved himself to his feet, jowls quivering. ‘I do, however, refuse to be the Speaker who opens that door.’
‘Then we can take it that you vote against.’ Stenwold was standing too, and the rest of the table just stared, seeing these two gears of state, which had run smoothly together for so long, abruptly clashing teeth. ‘I vote for.’ He turned to Corog Breaker. ‘You?’
‘For,’ Breaker said bluntly.
The merchant beside him looked from Stenwold to Jodry. ‘I abstain.’
Several others followed his lead, with one for and one against before the matter came to Bola Stormall, the aviation artificer.
‘War Master, I have followed your lead for a long time,’ she said, although there was no warmth in her voice. ‘I flew against Vek. I crewed on the Triumph when the Wasps came here last. I’ve worked to your plan now and, between me and Willem and Taki, we’ve got our orthopters off the ground. I will not be part of this.’
‘Bola-’ Stenwold started, but she held him off with a single gesture.
‘Do not, Stenwold,’ she warned. ‘I have relatives in Helleron who told me what life was like there under the Empire, during the last war, the imprisonment and disappearances.’
‘Yes,’ retorted Stenwold. ‘The Wasps torture people and impale them on spears. I’m talking only about arrest and exile. You can’t compare-’
‘The rule of just law makes us who we are, and I am not the only one who has been wondering if we might have made more ground with the Wasps had we not painted them as irredeemable villains.’
Makerist, Stenwold heard the word, from his memories. ‘You’ve been listening to students too much,’ he told her.
‘Well, perhaps they’re actually learning something useful for a change,’ she retorted. ‘Besides, you’ve heard yourself that half the army marching along the coast is Spider-kinden. There are perhaps two dozen Wasps at most within the city, but there are hundreds of Spiders, entire generations of them. Will you round them up as well, adults and old women and children, when the spying doesn’t stop? And what then?’
Stenwold stared at her, feeling his will strike hers, hammer to hammer. ‘That’s not what I’m proposing-’
‘-today,’ she finished for him. ‘Against, Stenwold.’
He took a deep breath. It doesn’t matter, he told himself, because now there were the three Merchant Company officers. ‘Elder?’
‘For.’ Elder Padstock of the Maker’s Own Company, her vote never in question.
‘Janos?’
The squat little Assembler looked from Maker to Jodry, his moustache quivering. ‘I, in all conscience…’ He had taken on his current mantle as one of a line of stunts intended to garner the popularity of the masses, and to ensure his own continuing good fortune. Now he looked as though he bitterly regretted it. ‘Abstain, I abstain.’
Stenwold nodded equably, because that didn’t matter either. ‘Marteus?’ he asked, with finality.
‘There is a Wasp-kinden in my Company,’ the renegade Tarkesh said quietly.
