‘Well that’s what we’re waiting for, isn’t it?’ Stenwold demanded.
‘We want
‘I won’t believe it.’
‘Believe it!’ she yelled at him. ‘You have to leave, now!’
‘I won’t!’ He clenched his fists before him. ‘This is my city, and if they will not help me, then there is nothing I can do on my own. I do not value my freedom so very much. Even imprisoned by the Assembly, I may be able to talk them round. I will not leave, Tynisa. But
‘Not a chance,’ she told him. ‘Will you at least arm yourself? If things have gone really badly, they may not be coming just to arrest you.’
‘I won’t believe it,’ he said again, but he turned back to his room and took up his baldric, slinging it over his shoulder. The weight of the sword was a comforting burden at his hip.
Balkus and Tynisa were waiting for him below with rapier and nailbow at the ready, as strange a pair of honour guards as he had ever known. He stood between them with hand to sword-hilt and awaited his fate.
Tynisa met them at the door. There were a dozen Collegium guardsmen in chainmail and breastplates, looking uncomfortable and awkward, and in their midst a grey-haired old man in formal robes. After a moment’s pause she recognized him as the Speaker for the Assembly, Lineo Thadspar. She supposed this was meant to be an honour, to be personally arrested by the top man.
‘What do you want?’ she asked him. She had the rapier in her hand but was hidden behind the door. Her tone made the guardsmen tense and she saw a few lay hands on their sword-hilts or mace-hafts.
‘Excuse me, what do you want, Master Gownsman Speaker Thadspar?’ she corrected, realizing that she had not been helping the situation.
‘I had rather hoped to speak with Master Maker, my child,’ Thadspar said, seeming utterly unperturbed.
‘Then your men can wait in the street, Master Thadspar. I trust that will be agreeable.’
He smiled benignly. ‘I can think of no reason why I should need them.’ One of his men tugged at his sleeve worriedly but Thadspar waved him away. ‘I shall be quite safe. Trust must start somewhere, after all. Now, my child, would you convey me in?’
She stepped back, managing to scabbard her sword without showing the men outside that it had been drawn. Thadspar noticed, though, and raised an eyebrow.
‘There have been all manner of affronts done on the streets of Collegium in recent days,’ he said mildly. ‘Some of which I rather think you were involved in, my dear child. We will have to sort through them at some point. After all, Collegium is a city under the rule of law, yet.’
‘Any blood I have shed I can account for,’ she told him. ‘And don’t call me that — I am not your child.’
‘I suppose you aren’t.’ A smile crinkled his face. ‘There was some considerable debate, at the time, as to whose child you were. Stenwold was mute on the matter, of course, but as you grew it seemed clear enough to me whose you were. By the time you were twelve years, there were few who recalled Atryssa — but I did, and I knew.’
Caught off-guard, Tynisa paused. ‘You knew my mother?’
‘I taught her logic and rhetoric for a year. She was an impatient student, a strange trait for a Spider-kinden woman.’
Tynisa would have asked him more, but they had come to the doorway of Stenwold’s parlour. Stenwold himself was seated behind the table, waiting with all apparent calm, but Balkus loomed at his shoulder with his nailbow not quite directed at Thadspar.
‘Master Maker,’ the old man said, and ‘Master Thadspar,’ Stenwold acknowledged formally, followed by, ‘Will you sit?’
Thadspar sat gratefully as Tynisa fetched a jug of wine and a couple of bowls. Balkus was still eyeing the old man suspiciously, as though he might be some kind of assassin in cunning disguise.
Stenwold himself poured the wine. ‘I take it you’ve not come here to discuss next year’s curriculum, Master Thadspar.’
Thadspar shook his head. ‘You have caused us all a great deal of trouble, Stenwold, and I really rather wish that you had never come back to Collegium to lay this business before us. We will all have a great deal to regret before this is over.’
‘So you have come here to do something you regret,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘And what would that be?’
‘You heard Master Bellowern speak, of course,’ Thadspar continued.
‘Yes, he spoke well.’
‘And he reminded us of who we are. He reminded us that Collegium is a centre of thought, of peace, and of law. You would now make us into some desperate mercenary company, springing about the Lowlands in search of a war that is not ours. That was his main point, I think.’
Stenwold nodded, watching him through hooded eyes.
‘We have been deliberating ever since, it seems,’ the old man said. ‘Every member of the Assembly had some contribution to make, and most of it nonsense, of course. Some were for the Wasps, saying that here was a people we could learn from. Some were for you, echoing your assessment of the evils of their Empire. Some others were for you for entirely the wrong reasons, in my view. They were advocating the purity of the Lowlands and the fight against
‘Bribes, do you think?’
‘I cannot think otherwise. If even a lowly market trader thinks to grease some Assembler’s palm to favour his suit, then why not an Empire? That seems to be the way of the world. However, I know a good number of the Assembly who would not take bribes, and I suppose we should hold that up as virtue, in this grimy world.’
‘Master Thadspar-’
‘Stenwold, I think after your performance today you have earned the right to call me Lineo.’
‘Well, then, you came here for a reason, Lineo,’ Stenwold said. ‘You came here with soldiers, I am told. I am wholly at your disposal.’
Lineo Thadspar sighed. ‘So it is come to this at last, has it? Stenwold, you have set in motion a machine that no lever can stop or even slow. More, you have gone about it in an entirely reprehensible manner. You have been agitating amongst the students, you have been brawling in the streets. You have gone out and found an ugly, violent piece of the world, and — hammer and tongs! — you have transplanted it here, where it does not belong.’ He grimaced, showing teeth that were white, even and artificial. ‘This situation gives me no pleasure, Stenwold, and I regret that I have lived to see it.’
Stenwold nodded, still waiting.
‘The Assembly of Collegium concurs with you. It is our duty to resist the Wasp Empire.’
The words, spoken in that tired, dry voice, meant nothing at first. Only as he passed back over them did Stenwold understand what had just been said.
‘We have no right to set ourselves up as guardians of the Lowlands,’ Thadspar continued, ‘but it seems that is what we have become. All through Master Bellowern’s speech, his telling us who we were and what we stood for, many of us began to wonder just where he derived his mandate, to limit and define us in such ways. We had slept, I think, for many years, and he was now telling us to turn over and continue slumbering, while meanwhile you were shouting at us to wake up. And in the end, the picture of Collegium that Master Bellowern drew was not entirely to our liking. We have always regarded ourselves as the paragon of the Lowlands, looking down on the Ant-kinden and the others because they lack our moral sensibility. We pride ourselves in how well we treat our poor, our halfbreeds, the disadvantaged of all kinds. And yet we have thereby devised for ourselves a mantle that is heavy with responsibilities. If we truly stand for what we believe is good, the betterment of others, the raising up of the weak and the lowly, then we must take a stand against those with opposing philosophies. In Collegium, we are of a unique calling. There are members from all the Lowlander kinden amongst even our ruling body. Our perspective is broad. We are not the richest of merchants, and yet our inventions keep Helleron’s forges busy. We are not great soldiers, and yet we have conquered Sarn with our creed, and won a friend there. We are Collegium, College and Town both, but what are we, if we do not speak out against things we know are wrong?’ He shook his head. ‘We have therefore informed Master Bellowern that we consider the Empire to have broken the Treaty of Iron
