Jodry glanced down at the reports. ‘I’m no artificer.’
‘Neither am I, any more. The important parts are written in language plain enough for the Inapt, so just read.’
And for almost twenty minutes, Jodry proceeded to read: first dismissively, then absorbedly, then with wide- eyed alarm. At the end he looked up at Stenwold and said, ‘Madness.’
‘And yet?’
‘Stenwold, what’s proposed here… Even if we had the time and resources to build something like this, I’m not sure that-’
‘We already have one, or as good as,’ Stenwold told him. ‘It’s built, Jodry.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. Where…?’ Jodry’s face greyed with sudden realization. ‘Founder’s Mark, this? This is Banjacs Gripshod’s device?’ At Stenwold’s nod, he returned to the reports. ‘And it does..?’ For a moment he was very still, not seeing anything outside his own head. ‘Stenwold, what are you proposing?’
‘That we can’t go on like this. That was what Taki said to me. We need to win the air war, or we won’t be able to win the war at all. And we’ve tried it all, Jodry — you know we have. We’re turning out pilots and orthopters as fast as we can, we’ve applied every innovation our artificers have come up with, yet we’re losing. Losing machines and losing the city.’
‘But, Stenwold, you’ve seen what they’ve written here. This isn’t just a bow to aim at the enemy: this is a bomb. Once we release all that lightning he’s got stored away, it’s not as though we can keep popping away at them whenever they show themselves.’ In the shadow of Banjacs’s machine, and all that it implied, Jodry’s animosity had drained away.
‘I know, Jodry. That’s why I need you. I…’ Stenwold rubbed at his eyes, tired beyond belief, but sick at himself even beyond that. ‘You don’t like my ideas, I know. Well, I have one more for you to hate, Jodry. The worst one of them all, the most terrible… Let’s get Taki in here.’
‘You scare me, Stenwold,’ Jodry said quietly, and he looked as if he meant it.
‘Not as much as I frighten myself.’
Taki did not want to be there at all, and she made that plain. She wanted to be in bed or, if that was not an option, she wanted to be in with her fellow pilots waiting for the inevitable sound of the Great Ear amplifying the engine drone of approaching Farsphex.
‘We’ll be quick,’ Stenwold told her, and she glanced between him and Jodry, noting how they were on the same side again, and plainly disliking the idea from base instinct.
‘The Wasp orthopters are coming every night now,’ Jodry started and, before any sharp retort, ‘and I don’t need to tell you that, obviously. We all know how the proximity of the Second is allowing them to land and rest up within easy reach of the city. Does that mean we’re facing all their airpower every night?’
Stenwold guessed Jodry already knew the answer, but Taki was plainly relieved to be asked a sensible question. ‘No, sieur, in fact I’d guess that we see about a third of their pilots each night. We’re getting to recognize a fair number of them by the way they fly — the veterans mostly. They add new blood just like we do. They’re taking it easy, rotating their aviators, giving themselves time to rest so that they stay sharp when they fight us. We’ve bought Collegium that, at least. I think that, when the Second start their artillery assault, we’ll get a much more sustained air attack.’ She managed the words without a tremor.
‘And can we hold that off?’ Jodry asked, the patient lecturer.
‘No, sieur, we cannot. But we’ll try.’
‘They’re holding back at the moment, though?’ Jodry pressed, and a twitch of irritation showed on the Fly- kinden’s face.
‘That’s what I said, sieur.’
‘And…’ Even though he knew the question was coming, Stenwold felt a lurch in his stomach as Jodry spoke the words, ‘If our aerial resistance decreased, they’d be in a position to take advantage, I imagine.’
Taki just glanced from Stenwold to Jodry and then back, looking unhappy and uncertain.
‘After all, if they committed even two-thirds of their strength, they could cause appalling damage in a single night.’ Jodry was almost whispering now.
‘Are you… you’re sending us off to…?’ Taki frowned. ‘We’re going to attack the Second while they’re over the city? Sieur — Stenwold, Jodry, listen. We are holding them at bay. We’re showing them we can bite, just enough that they’re wary of putting their hand into our mouth. You can’t take us away from defending the city! Take advantage? They’ll flatten every building in the place! What have we been fighting and dying for, if not to stop that happening?’
‘And yet we can’t stop that happening,’ Stenwold said flatly. ‘We can only stave it off.’
‘Then we stave it off!’ she snapped. ‘What are you… this isn’t even my city! What are you thinking?’
‘Thank you, Mistress Taki,’ Jodry said heavily.
‘We can hold them!’ the little pilot insisted. ‘Listen to me: we’re doing our best-!’
‘Nobody doubts you, any of you. You’ve worked wonders,’ Jodry assured her, but his voice offered no comfort. ‘That’s all, thank you. You can go.’
When Taki had gone, shaking with bewilderment and injured pride, he gazed at Stenwold across the table.
‘We can’t do this.’
‘What we can’t do is tell anyone — anyone — what we are going to do. We give the orders to the pilots only on the night itself, and on the day after I will do everything in my power to bottle any word up. Secrecy is paramount, Jodry. The knowledge will be ours to bear,’ Stenwold told him. ‘Yours and mine. No other.’
‘I am not strong enough,’ Jodry protested, but then: ‘I will try.’
Thirty-One
Gjegevey had been told that the Great College of Collegium, that city of revolution which had thrown off its Moth-kinden overlords almost five and a half centuries earlier, maintained an Inapt studies department where the intrepid could still go to learn about the old ways, the ancient times and magic. The Wasps, of course, had nothing of the sort. To them the past was dead, the present and the future the only prizes worth studying.
Seda herself had gathered a piecemeal library of old Moth and Dragonfly texts, and Gjegevey had sent members of her staff across the city to the collections of veteran officers and Consortium magnates, confiscating anything that might be of use. And he had read, and read. He was looking for anything that the Empress might accept as a substitute for the lure of the Worm. The Lowlands, after all, had a rich history of magic, for all that it was buried under so many years of Aptitude. There must be some survival there, some fount of power that the Moths jealously guarded, some other knot of old time, such as the Darakyon forest had been before it was laid to rest.
He would have given anything for even an hour’s communion with his own people’s great library, where such secrets were certainly held. He had even considered asking Seda for permission to return home for just that. Prudence had warned him off the idea, though. He was not one of his own people any more. For all that he had come to this city as their spy, disguised as a slave, now he was far more Seda’s slave, with no disguise needed. He suspected that he would not even be allowed into his people’s strongholds, and if he was… would the Empire itself be far away? Gjegevey’s Woodlouse-kinden lived on the Wasps’ very border, only their inhospitable rotting terrain and outsiders’ perception that they had nothing worth taking had kept them free from overlords, taxes and levies. If Seda ever found out what a wealth of knowledge they had hoarded in those swamps, then she would indeed have something other than the Worm to aim for.
So he had rooted and grubbed through ancient histories of the Lowlands, cracking, flaking parchments and vellums, dust-laden books and faded scrolls. As Seda had complained, the Moths never wrote anything the simple way, and the Dragonflies were just as bad in their own fashion, but he had bookmarks and notes now, signalling the possibility of survivals and hidden caches. Yet he needed help.
The knock sounded, as expected, for the man would have been too curious to stay away. At Gjegevey’s invitation, he entered the cluttered little storeroom that the Woodlouse had made his own, even as Gjegevey turned up the wick on a lamp to let the man see. Up until then, the crooked old Woodlouse had been reading in utter
