appearing tense as a drawn bow to his own companions. ‘You should know, Ebris, you’ll now have these waters to yourself. I’m setting sail for the south. We need never meet again.’ Stenwold saw that Piera had her bowstring half drawn back, and Laszlo’s hooked blade was in his hand, the rope already loosened from his waist. Carefully, without any eye-catching movements, Stenwold unshouldered his piercer, running a quick eye over it to be sure it was still charged and loaded.
‘We need not meet?’ Ebris echoed. ‘Oh, Skipper, you underestimate my sentimental attachment to you. I’d not dream of letting you breeze away without a keepsake or two.’
‘Be careful what you dream of,’ Tomasso replied levelly.
The Spider’s face twisted, baring the livid, shiny skin where the flames had caught him. ‘You burned my ship!’ he spat.
‘I hear you have a new one,’ said the Fly, still quite steady.
‘You burned my ship! ’
‘You were robbing mine at the time, Ebris,’ Tomasso snapped at last. ‘And if I happened to pop a couple of pots of firepowder and a fuse in amongst the cargo you stole, well, it was your own choice to rob your brother thieves.’
‘You stain my family to three generations, if you call yourself my-’ Ebris started and, even as he was speaking, Tomasso’s fingers flicked out. His hands had left his dagger hilts, and two throwing blades were in the air even as the Spider spoke. One of the Scorpions twitched his shield up before his master’s face at the last second and, on the other side of Ebris, a Spider-kinden woman’s head snapped back with the small, hiltless knife in her eye.
Stenwold heard Piera’s bowstring twang, and Laszlo was abruptly airborne, slinging his blade in a wide arc. A couple of Ebris’s crew rushed Tomasso, but the Fly had his fighting knives out now, catching their rapier blades and turning them aside, fighting half on the ground and half in the air, his lack of height and reach becoming an irrelevancy. Ebris was meanwhile shrieking at his people to kill all of them.
The Tidenfree crew had seized the initiative, but the numbers were against them, and Stenwold saw that, had he not been there, they would surely have taken to the skies and fled for their ship.
Up to me to finish it, then, he said to himself.
‘Ho, Spider!’ he bellowed, and levelled the piercer. The two Scorpions obediently clumped before their captain, bracing their shields. It was clear that none of them had any idea what Stenwold was holding, beyond that it was a weapon.
‘And who are you to address me, slave?’ Ebris of the Ganbrodiel demanded.
‘The future,’ said Stenwold, and pulled the trigger.
The sound alone stopped the fight, sent the Spiders reeling back, virtually knocked the Flies from the air. What kept the fight stopped was what those four long metal bolts had accomplished. The Scorpions had been faithful bodyguards, but the piercer had struck through their shields, splintering the wood like kindling, ripped open their mail and torn their bodies up so that they looked as though some wild beast – a mantis or a hunting beetle – had been at them. Their last service had been in vain. Two of the bolts had retained enough force to take Ebris squarely in the chest. Now they stood proud of his body, as though waiting for someone to run a flag up them.
For a moment, everybody just stared. Stenwold calmly put the piercer down and reached for his belt. He might be a long way from home, but he knew people – people of any kinden – and there was always one.
A scarred Spider-kinden, older than Ebris had been, probably a loyal family retainer, yelled something wordless and went for Stenwold with his sword. Before Tomasso could get in the way, Stenwold had loosed both barrels of the little snapbow Totho had made. True, one bolt flew straight over the man’s head, but the other one caught him beneath the collarbone and stopped him in his tracks. He dropped to his knees with a disbelieving look, and keeled over onto his side.
‘Anyone else?’ Stenwold demanded, brandishing the weapon. The piercer was discharged, the snapbow empty, but his Inapt adversaries had no idea of that. Keep your superstitions, he found himself thinking. Leave to me the foundry and the forge, and we shall see who carries the day.
They melted away, the remnants of Ebris’s crew. By that time Laszlo was calling for aid, and Stenwold turned to see that Piera had taken an arrow in the belly, even during that short moment of skirmish.
They rushed her back to the Tidenfree, convulsing and weeping in Stenwold’s arms. As the ship cast off, Despard and Fernaea both tried all the tricks of modern and ancient medicine to keep some life in her, but before Kanateris had reached the horizon she was gone.
Jodry Drillen employed three secretaries now, with standing instructions to take away and deal with anything that did not require his specific and valuable attention, yet still each morning there appeared a neat pyramid of scrolls on his desk: petitions, proposals, complaints, agendas, reports from his own people or invitations from the high-placed. Why did I want this, precisely? It seemed out of all proportion to the effective worth and influence of his new position. Locals had great difficulty persuading foreign visitors that the Speaker did not actually rule the Assembly or the city. His role was just that of a glorified bureaucrat. Collegium was ruled by the vote of the Assembly as a whole, not by the word of one man, just as the Assembly and Speaker both were selected through the casting of Lots by the citizens at large. Visitors found it an astonishing system. Jodry had seen them walking about the streets of Collegium with a nervous, expectant air, as if waiting for the howling mobs of anarchy to descend at any moment.
So why would any sane Beetle want to be Speaker, one might ask? Oh but, of course, there were perks. The Speaker was the city’s face when it came to foreign diplomacy. The Speaker met ambassadors and hosted gatherings. The Speaker was not expected to raise motions himself before the Assembly, but he drew up the list of who spoke and when. It was not in Jodry’s power to ban any Assembler from making a speech or putting a matter to the vote, but his whim determined whether a petitioner had the midmorning hours, when the Assemblers were sharp, or the early-morning slot when they were half-asleep, or later when their minds were on which chop house would receive them for lunch. Or else the next day, if there were enough wanting to be heard. In its own strange way the influence of the Speaker was as great as any Spider Aristos, and perhaps only the Spiders truly understood its implications.
Still, he had perhaps underestimated the baggage entailed. Here he was, scarcely an hour into the morning – on a day when the Assembly was not even in session, yet! – and already the business was piling up.
‘Ambassador Aagen wants to talk with you about the next games,’ said Arvi, and the position of his finger along the scroll he read from showed that he was barely halfway through. The Fly-kinden was all immaculate perfection, giving the impression he could waste Jodry’s time all day, if he needed to.
‘Don’t we have a committee ruling on the games?’ Jodry complained. ‘I’d swear we gave old Nemmie Linker some money for it.’
Arvi’s nose wrinkled. ‘Aagen’s a Wasp, Master. He’s used to a single person being in charge, and usually a man.’
‘Well, put him off.’
‘Very good.’ The Fly made a small cross on the scroll. ‘Master Outwright came with a delegation about the future of the Companies. They know that there’s a motion to disband them, and now they’re spitting teeth about it.’
‘Did you mention that the war is over? Perhaps he hasn’t heard,’ Jodry muttered.
‘I suspect he would reply that it was not as simple as that, Master,’ said Arvi smartly. He was quite the most humourless Fly that Jodry had ever known, but also the most efficient.
‘I’ll see them this afternoon.’ Jodry paused to think for a moment. ‘Have my gorget and sword fetched and polished, or whatever they do to them to make them look good. I might as well look the veteran myself.’
‘Very good.’ Arvi’s finger moved on. ‘A delegate from the Council of Thirteen in Helleron wants to talk about the railroad. It’s Jandry Pinhaver, so-’
‘So I can’t very well ignore him. Well, invite him for drinks this evening. He should appreciate that. Take up two bottles of the ’500 Seldis Glorhavael. I hear Pinhaver knows his wine.’
‘Very good. Then we have another thirteen personal petitions for justice.’
‘Look through them yourself. If there’s anything that looks as though it’s genuine, bring it back on tomorrow’s list.’
‘And the two genuine petitions from yesterday?’
