Jodry flatly, and it was impossible to tell whether he intended humour by it.
The Tseni were not where they had been left. The elegant rooms found for them in the Amphiophos were not only untenanted but devoid of any sign that the Ants had even been there. Arvi, Jodry’s Fly-kinden secretary, eventually ran them down in the College’s workshops, where they had already started causing trouble.
Jodry and Stenwold arrived to find them dominating a machine room. A crowd of students had been summarily evicted, along with an elderly matriarch who had been teaching them. The three visiting Ant women now held sway over a half-dozen workbenches and a single young Beetle whom they had backed into a corner. He looked slightly familiar to Stenwold.
They had not drawn a sword, for in this place they hardly needed to. They were strung taut with violence in a way that Stenwold’s kinden were not. Once he laid eyes on them he found that he knew them, and that he had been expecting to. They were not much changed from when he had recently seen them aboard the Floating Game.
Sneaking into Collegium like brigands, he thought. No formal embassies, no welcoming parties, but three soldiers arriving under cover of a Spider pleasure barge. Even as he entered the room, careless that Jodry was hanging back, he could see the sense of it. I doubt Tseni ships would have much luck sailing past the harbourmouth at Vek, and the landward route’s hardly more appealing.
They turned even as he entered, noticing how he walked like a warrior, despite the robes. He had not brought his sword, but his stance implied it. He saw three women, alike as close sisters, mirrors of each other as the Vekken delegates were, and no doubt for the same reason. Their skin was like fresh ice, their faces strong- jawed and solid. They had put on a little ornament: simple bands of gold at the forehead, and something in steel and silver hanging about the neck that might be a medal. He assumed it must be a form of show for his benefit, since Ants had no need of insignia amongst their own.
‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded, and he made it an open challenge. He would get nowhere with these strange Ant-kinden unless he carried the full weight of Collegium invisibly with him into the room.
‘War Master, help me,’ the Beetle scholar got out. Although no blade had been drawn he was tucked into a corner as though he already had a point at his throat. Stenwold winced privately at the old title, but on the other hand it would do no harm.
‘What are you?’ one of the Tseni asked casually.
No avoiding it. ‘I am Stenwold Maker – lately called War Master – of the Assembly of Collegium,’ Stenwold told them. He met their eyes without wavering, giving not an inch. ‘You, I am told, are ambassadors from Tsen. You are not behaving like it.’
He felt Jodry shuffle in the doorway, as if to caution, Steady on
… There was a brief, blank moment in which the three must have been mentally comparing notes.
‘War Master, they’ve…’ the scholar choked out. Thin and gangling for a Beetle, he looked to be about eighteen, surely in his last year of studies. Any of the Tseni could have snapped him in half.
‘First things first,’ Stenwold decided. ‘You, come here and stand by me.’
The scholar hesitated, but the three Tseni obviously decided that maintaining a heavy hand was unlikely to work here. They allowed the boy room, and he fled to Stenwold’s side.
‘Now, who are you and why are they bothering you?’
‘Maxel Gainer, Master Maker,’ the scholar replied. ‘And they’ve come to steal-’
‘If you will talk of theft,’ said one of the Tseni, ‘then let us talk of theft.’ Her hand was on her sword-hilt. Always we get to this point, with Ant-kinden, Stenwold thought. It was like dealing with the Vekken all over again.
‘So talk then,’ Stenwold invited. ‘Explain yourselves. Why has Tsen sent the world’s smallest invasion force to take over Collegium one room at a time?’
To his surprise one of the Tseni’s lips twitched in a swiftly-suppressed smile. Ants did not smile amongst themselves, since they grew up sharing such nuances of thought and sensation invisibly amongst themselves. Therefore only contact with other kinden could start to teach them what varying expressions and intonation were for.
‘I knew a man of Tsen once,’ he said. ‘His name was Plius, and he turned out to be an agent of your city, although I didn’t know that for a long time. He sent for troops to fight the Wasp Empire, and he died bravely fighting alongside Ant-kinden of two other cities. History in the making. Perhaps we shall start again, and make a better job of it this time. I am Stenwold Maker, this lad is apparently Maxel Gainer’ – whose name is maddeningly familiar, but from where? – ‘and you…?’
‘Kratia,’ replied the Tseni who had done all the talking. She shared a moment with her fellows. ‘It appears we have not been correct in the manner of approaching our grievance,’ she said. ‘You will understand we are not much used to dealing with other kinden.’
The bald lie drew grudging respect from Stenwold. Used enough to sail all the way here in a Spider ship. Used enough to throw my kinden’s thoughts about Ants back in my face. ‘What do you want with young Gainer, Officer Kratia…’ Again there was that unexpected ghost of an expression that led him to correct himself. ‘Commander Kratia, then?’
She nodded curtly. Stenwold was reclassifying her and her companions already, not soldiers but spies, agents: the sort of people he had been dealing with most of his life.
‘This one is in possession of mechanical secrets belonging to our city,’ she said, ‘and that cannot be tolerated. As its former allies against the Empire, we are sure Collegium will make proper restitution.’
And I reckon the Vekken are lucky you’re not here to stir up a war against them, Stenwold thought. ‘Gainer, does this make any sense to you?’ he asked, mainly to give himself more time to think.
‘Master Maker, they want to take the Tseitan,’ Gainer replied. ‘All the plans and everything! Ten years of work!’
‘Our work-’ Kratia started, but Stenwold held a hand up.
‘Enough. Jodry?’
The Assembly’s new Speaker bustled forward. ‘Here.’
‘It is clearly an issue of considerable weight that has brought these three women so far. Therefore think of it as your first proper diplomatic spat.’
To his surprise Jodry made no complaint, or perhaps he was just trying to display solidarity before the Ants. ‘I’ll take it from here, Sten. It’s obviously nothing to do with the… with your friends. Thank you for your help. Good sailing, or whatever one says in such situations.’
Stenwold went home, and managed to finish off his packing whilst arguing once again with Arianna. She wanted to know why he couldn’t take her, and towards the end of the dispute he realized that it was not that he couldn’t, exactly, but that he wouldn’t. He could have talked her past Tomasso and his crew, and he was not expecting so much trouble during his absence that he needed her in Collegium. When he dug deep enough in his heart to find the real reason, it left him sad, and ashamed of himself.
And is having a young Spider mistress not enough to make me feel young, but I have to go mimicking the misadventures of my youth, charging about with nothing but a sword and my wits to rely on? Am I getting so old, in truth, that I have to prove my vigour even to myself? He had no answer to that, but he stuck to his position, leaving Arianna angry and unhappy behind him.
The Tidenfree had nudged its way in between merchantmen, sitting openly in Collegium’s harbour. It bore no overt sign of being a pirate ship and, in truth, it was not the Bloodfly of recent legend, instead a graceful single-masted slender thing that would have done a Spider proud as a yacht.
It was only as he set foot on board that the name ‘Tseitan’ abruptly made sense to him. Not a word he had heard before, but one derived from a name he should have remembered. The artificer Tseitus, who had died in the Vekken siege of Collegium; the Ant-kinden Tseitus, with his blue-white skin like Plius, like Kratia. Tseitus, whose submersible craft had sunk the Vekken flagship, and for whom the new model – Gainer’s improved prototype – was named.
Eight
