‘Bring them back tomorrow, too, and that one from the day before.’ Jodry sighed. And I imagined that I would have time for a few good causes. He had tried that, over the first few days, and not only because he knew Stenwold would have expected it. The problem was that, on digging deep enough, so few causes retained their virtue for long. ‘Come on, man, what else?’
‘Stenwold Maker stepped on to the docks this morning from the Tidenfree, a Fly-run vessel of no provenance,’ Arvi reported, before rolling the scroll up neatly.
Jodry stared at him, open-mouthed, before gathering himself enough to say, ‘And you couldn’t have told me that first thing? Seventeen days he’s been gone!’
‘Would you have wanted to deal with the rest, if I had started with Master Maker?’ Arvi raised one eyebrow.
Jodry gave him a sour look. ‘Don’t think that I can’t dismiss you, without references.’
‘But think of all the petitions for justice I would raise, Master,’ the Fly replied, deadpan.
Not humourless, Jodry conceded. If only. ‘Send for him. I want to see him the moment we’re both free. I’ll fit it in around anything else. Tell him I need him to help stop a third Vekken war, that should get the truant bastard’s attention.’
‘Very good,’ Arvi responded, and bowed his way out of the door.
He had gone to Arianna first, after he stepped ashore, but only because he had been making plans while aboard ship. The Tidenfree crew were fully briefed, and they would meet with him later.
All the way home a single thought: The Aldanrael had sat like a lead ball in his stomach. He had been trying to disbelieve Albinus’s words, through fog and wind and the Lash. I will have proof. Even if the pallid Ant had spoken the truth, it would be a grave step to point a finger at the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael. To jump to conclusions and mislay the blame, well… Teornis was popular amongst the citizens of Collegium, but peace was even more popular. Stenwold had no doubt that he would slide from war hero to warmonger in an eye-blink.
Arianna had been glad to see him, at least. She had held him long and hard, and he thought she might even have wept, although her eyes were dry when she finally let him go. It reminded him of how they had been during the Vekken siege, in the first flush of their relationship.
He had been going to tell her more, to ask her advice even, but in the end he found the words would not come. He simply did not want to lay this burden on her.
One of Jodry’s people had found him, soon enough, and called him to an urgent conference. Stenwold regarded the prospect sourly. Was it too much to hope that, by becoming Speaker, he would stand on his own feet and not treat me like his personal servant? He was being harsh, he knew, but Jodry’s dire warnings about the Vekken smacked of cheap sensationalism. I will see our new Speaker in my own good time.
Instead he had taken to his study and written a note, very carefully phrased, though it was not addressed to any particular name. In truth, Stenwold had three or four possibilities in mind for whom those same words would serve, as he was not sure who was in the city just now, or who would be most willing to oblige. That gap in his knowledge threw him, as though he had found one of the stair treads missing on his way down to breakfast. I’m losing my touch. I should know these things already. He wondered then, sitting in this study which had seen so many years of plots and agents, Am I still an intelligencer, a spymaster, in truth? Or am I just become another fat Assembler with a war record?
Then Arianna had come in with a mug of chocolate for him. He hastily hid the letter away by instinct, beneath another sheet of parchment, then felt guilty for the action. She would work out soon enough that he was up to something. Meanwhile, she was waiting still to hear what had taken him off to sea for almost two tendays, and he did not want to lie to her. As she draped herself over his shoulder, he almost told her again, but bit back the words, found something pleasant and banal to say. The knowledge had already poisoned him. He did not want it to sicken her as well.
Later, after he had called up some Fly-kinden messengers to carry his letters, he and Arianna found other points of agreement, and his secrets were almost forgotten. Elsewhere, in the new Speaker’s townhouse, Jodry Drillen stewed and stamped and went without Stenwold’s company and, for him, Stenwold spared not a moment’s thought.
Jodry’s man was knocking at his door barely after dawn on the day after, though. Cardless diverted him, putting him off and sending him to walk about the streets for another hour or so, but by that time Stenwold knew that the Speaker, like a fly on old food, would not be swatted off without inevitably circling back.
He left the bed and, without waking Arianna, dressed in his best College robes, and headed off to the Speaker’s offices. Let’s get this over with. I have other things to do with my time.
The messenger caught up with him on the very steps of the Amphiophos, swinging through the air to match pace with him faultlessly: a young Fly woman, neat as a button, handing him a folded paper. The circular badge of her guild gleamed, freshly polished, on her chest.
Stenwold unfolded the paper, holding it close. His eyes flicked over the few words, before he enquired, ‘Who gave you this?’
‘Master Maker,’ the Fly told him, reproachfully, ‘this was left in our offices. Nobody saw by whom.’
Stenwold felt a worm of unease, for the paper had read, in stark, sharp letters, ‘Tell Maker I shall be there.’ Still, there’s nothing that can be done about that, until the time… He was about to move on but the Fly skipped in front of him, coughing politely.
‘Ah, so you’ve not been paid for it.’ He made a wry face and passed her a couple of coins. She bowed neatly, feet already leaving the ground, and was off and away over the city.
Jodry was to be found at his desk, and not alone. A young Beetle lad that Stenwold recognized as Maxel Gainer was sitting mournfully in a chair nearby, as though he was a student about to be disciplined. He looked up hopefully when Stenwold was ushered in.
‘What’s the emergency?’ Stenwold asked. He had not heard that Collegium was now at war with Tsen or Vek, or any Ant city-state, and he was sure that someone would have mentioned it.
Jodry raised his eyebrows. ‘Am I allowed to ask just where you’ve been these last two tendays?’
‘On a cruise for the good of my health,’ Stenwold replied curtly. ‘Jodry-’
‘I need your diplomatic acumen, Stenwold. You know these Ant-kinden better than I do.’
So I’m now Collegium’s special envoy to the entire Ant race am I? What a prime job that would be. He took a seat, with a sidelong look at Gainer. ‘What’s he done now?’
‘Nigh on started a war,’ Jodry said dismissively. When Gainer began to protest, he held up his hands. ‘Oh, not deliberately, and more down to old Tseitus than him, but, hammer and tongs, Stenwold! You’d not believe the tightropes I’ve been walking, and I’m not a man constitutionally suited for that, I can tell you.’
‘So how have things fallen out with the Tseni and their submersibles, then?’ Stenwold asked. The thought that submersibles might become useful in Collegium’s near-future had not passed him by. If the Spiders attack, they will come by sea again. The other thought, which he could not keep from his mind, was And how friendly is Jodry here with Teornis – with the Spiderlands? It had always been the Empire, with Stenwold. He had always been hunting for the Imperial agents and sympathizers, marking down men or women as hands that took Wasp coin. He had never stopped to think that others, too, might have designs on his city and on the Lowlands.
‘Their case is that the Tseitan is essentially a stolen design,’ Jodry explained. ‘They’re making a big deal of it, as though it’s going to be the next snapbow. Personally, I think it’s just about political leverage and that they want something else from us.’
‘Well, what exactly is the Tseitan?’ Stenwold pressed. ‘Is it ours or theirs or what?’
Jodry signalled to Gainer, who cleared his throat. ‘The original submersible, my master’s old boat, was manufactured in Collegium, but Master Tseitus brought along a good half-dozen innovations with him – in his head but ready-made, if you see. I always reckoned they were his.’ The young artificer looked harassed, a man clearly out of his depth. ‘He could have learned them in Tsen, maybe. But we did a lot of our own work on her too, and the Tseitan throws out at least a couple of the ideas Master Tseitus came up with, for better ones. He kept improving the design all the time.’ He looked downcast. ‘Wish he was here with us now, I tell you that.’
‘So what do Kratia’s Tseni want?’
‘War with Vek,’ Jodry replied. Seeing Stenwold’s reaction, he smiled bleakly. ‘They haven’t said as much, but that’s what it is. As soon as they got wind that we were cosying up to the Vekken at last, they started to sweat about it. Vek’s armies have been pointing east a long time, so if they’re suddenly happy about relations in our direction, it makes sense that they might turn to Tsen for their next war games. After all, there are a lot more
