snapped at her to leave it alone.
‘Just get your job done,’ he told her. He sounded sick. For the next few passes, he was throwing their vessel jaggedly about so as to lose whatever was tracking them, or to give Aarmon or one of the others the chance to cut in. She lost her target over and over, and was on the point of shouting at him to hold a level course when she thought that through and decided she would rather he threw them all across the Collegiate sky, after all, and she’d just have to make do.
The minimal air resistance — pilots no doubt woken in a panic, hurling themselves desperately into the sky, in their ones and twos, against an overwhelming force — soon passed, leaving her to get on with her job. That would have been fine, except Scain was talking again.
‘It’s vile,’ he muttered, and she had no idea whether he was talking to her or not. But then: ‘When we fly against their machines, that’s war. What’s this?’ And she realized she was hearing his side of a mental conversation with the other pilots.
‘I know,’ he said, and ‘I know that, too. They say we’re saving lives for the Second, that we’re crushing their will to fight. Is that true? Have we seen any evidence that they’re losing will, as opposed to machines and pilots and civilian lives?’ And: ‘I know! But what are we, if this is all we’re for?’ His voice sounded raw, shouting without realizing he was making a sound.
‘I want it to end,’ he told whoever was on the receiving end of this. He suddenly sounded so lost that Pingge wanted to reach out to him, but she thought that, if he knew he had been heard, he would kill her.
Then they were under attack again, and Scain cut them loose, reaching for height as the city diminished below them. She guessed that the Collegiate attackers that had tried to bottle them up beyond the city’s walls had finally realized their error and come back with a vengeance. Then the Farsphex were regrouping, turning to head for the Second Army camp, wherever that had crept to by tonight.
We can’t go on like this.
The words were Taki’s, and the end of her mumbled report to Stenwold before shunning the grey light of dawn for her bed. The sentiments could have been anyone’s of a certain level of seniority within Collegium — those who sat on the right committees and could piece together all the disparate facts.
The foundries of Collegium were still constructing Stormreaders as swiftly as they could, although only as a result of of fresh shipments of raw materials from unexpected quarters — the first ever Vekken trading cog had turned up with a hold full of metal ingots, and the Tidenfree had arrived with superior alloys supposedly from across the sea but in reality from beneath it. Still, the pilots that were putting out in those craft were younger and less experienced each time — if the average age of a flying combatant had been plotted by some scholar on a graph, the downward curve would be steep — which meant that the investment in each orthopter was correspondingly riskier. The rooftop artillery was another drain on resources, and had struck down only two enemies, and those in the first salvo. Stenwold had to hope that the simple existence of such a defence might at least complicate matters for the Wasp pilots, putting them off their aim and resulting in fewer bombs dropped, or in bombs dropped less accurately. But of course ‘less accurately’ meant little consolation to the family whose home was destroyed by a bomb falling wide.
And the Second Army was near. The ground forces — Coldstone Company and Maker’s Own and all the automotives the city had been able to furnish — were marching out any day now, as ready as they would ever be, and another drain on the city, in materiel and in lives.
If the Empire get its artillery set up within range of the walls, then we’re done for. And, competing with that, If the Empire wears down our air defences, then we’re done for, too.
So why am I here?
Ahead of Stenwold rose the imposing edifice of Banjacs Gripshod’s townhouse, and it was impossible to know from the facade that the artificer’s killing machine had eaten away so much of its innards.
He was here because Praeda had asked him, but, more than that, he was here because there was no need for him anywhere else, which was a bitter realization. Matters had advanced sufficiently that there was no more need for the grand plan. He had sat on his last committee, he knew, and the work was now in the hands of the specialists: Corog Breaker, Taki, Marteus, Kymene, even Amnon. Statesmen such as Stenwold and Jodry Drillen had spoken their piece and taken their final opportunity to adjust the rudder of history. The future would judge them, but their decisions had finally acquired sufficient momentum to break free of the earth and fly, and there would be no calling one word of it back.
The most galling moment had been when he had requested — practically insisted — that he be allowed to accompany the Merchant Companies as they marched out, and Marteus had politely told him that he was ‘needed’ in Collegium. He just didn’t want me underfoot, questioning his orders, complicating matters. And Marteus had been right, of course, which was worse.
So he had come here instead, to the home and prison of the madman Banjacs Gripshod, seemingly the one duty left to him.
The man looked even older than Stenwold had imagined: rake-thin, wild-haired and bearded. If the War Master did not know better, he might have imagined that Banjacs had been starved and deprived of all civilized niceties until a minute before Stenwold set eyes on him. When he recognized Stenwold he leapt from his desk and lunged forward so fast that Stenwold instinctively plucked his little snapbow from inside his tunic.
‘At last!’ Banjacs exclaimed. ‘I knew you’d come! Of all the people in this city, Maker, you have to understand me.’
Those were depressingly familiar words to hear. Having once been an outspoken maverick in the Assembly, Stenwold had attracted a variety of lunatics over the years, each of them counting on his sympathy just because the same people had laughed at them both. Sadly, in almost every case, they were genuinely laughable.
Stenwold almost turned to go, bitterly aware of the sidelong looks from the two of Outwright’s men who had drawn the short straw to guard the door. One thought stopped him for, just once amongst those other deluded babblers, he had turned away an excitable conspiracy-finder only to have the man end up dead at the hands of a very real conspiracy. A flicker of memory tugged at his conscience, and he sighed.
‘Master Gripshod, let’s make this quick.’
He followed the man back into his room, noting that although Banjacs was being kept under house arrest, there was no comfort involved. The room was bare of ornament, the furniture unkempt and old: only a bed, a desk, a chair, a few shelves of books. Pale outlines on the walls suggested that it had once been a more congenial place. Apparently, Banjacs had been steadily selling off the family chattels for decades.
‘You,’ the old man was muttering. ‘Of all of them — you look ahead. I look ahead, you see. I saw it all, just like you did — but before you were born even! How’d you like that, then, Maker? Before you were ever born I saw where we’d come to!’ Without warning he was jabbing an accusing finger at Stenwold. ‘Oh, you’re the War Master, but I was there first and I warned them.’
‘Before I was…?’ Stenwold was already regretting not leaving immediately. ‘You saw what, Master Gripshod? What did you warn them about?’
‘Why, this.’ Banjacs’s hands embraced some all-encompassing whole. ‘What I see from my window every night: the city on fire, death from the air. This. ’
Ah well, just lunacy after all. ‘You foresaw the Wasp Empire’s attack before I was born? Of course you did.’
‘Don’t patronize me, Maker! The Wasps? Who cares about the Wasps? It could have been anyone, you hear me? But I knew from the start that it would come to this. I stood there at Clifftops, barely more than a boy and already with my College accredits. I saw Morless’s Mayfly over the city, do you understand? And what I could never understand was why nobody else grasped it. Once you have that then it will lead to this. ’
‘Hold on, slow down.’ Stenwold looked the wild old man in the eyes and was about to take advantage of the ensuing pause to dismiss him utterly, when something lodged in his head. ‘Clifftops? Morless? ’ Names from the history books, but Banjacs was old, and a trip back in time of sixty years would leave him about the age that he claimed, and …
Every student knew that Lial Morless had piloted the first heavier-than-air flying machine in the world, right here in Collegium. Stenwold crossed wordlessly to the window and stared out. Down the street was a house with buckled walls, the upper storey having half-tumbled into the street, courtesy of the Empire’s Farsphex.
‘Master Gripshod,’ he began, and then, ‘Banjacs, if I may, tell me what you mean.’
‘We were never meant to fly,’ Banjacs told him softly, unexpectedly close by his shoulder. ‘We were never
