‘Master Achaeos of Tharn,’ the man said in a precise voice. ‘Mistress Cheerwell Maker of Collegium. Your recent careers have been quite remarkable. Do you know what we are?’
Che and Achaeos exchanged glances. ‘You represent the Arcanum, Master,’ Achaeos said.
‘We are the Arcanum, as far as its presence in Sarn now stands,’ the balding Moth explained. ‘This is all of us.’
The two newcomers exchanged glances, while the assembled agents watched them implacably.
‘You have come to us spreading warnings about the Wasp Empire. We are, of course, aware of those savages and we have no wish to involve ourselves in their affairs, either as allies or enemies. Still less do we wish to jump to the call of some Beetle magnate. We have retreated from the ugly and violent world that your kinden have built, and we would prefer that to be the end of it.’
And why get everyone together just to tell us this? Che felt her sword-hand twitch, but fought the instinct down. There was more to be said. There had to be.
‘You have no great reputation on Tharn, Achaeos,’ the Moth spymaster said, ‘and few friends either. Your choice of paramour has seen to that. We have no obligation to you, still less to this woman.’
A missed chance for an insult. Che found that she was holding her breath, and let it out carefully.
‘Master, I await your “however”,’ said Achaeos. ‘Or are all of these to be our assassins?’
Scelae smiled at that, and Che saw that she must have been murderess for the Arcanum in her day. The spymaster glanced at her, and then back.
‘We had considered it, but we would not have called you to a meeting for the purpose.’ The shadow of humour twitched over his face. ‘We are not so procedural as that. So here is our “however”, Achaeos. Matters have changed. Information has come to us that has forced our hand, however much we resent it. I have spoken, by our traditional ways, to the Skryres of Dorax. They have called me home to take fuller counsel with them. They have said that we must do what can be done, against these Wasp-kinden — for now, until the circumstances change.’
‘Thank you!’ Che burst out, and he fixed her with a withering stare.
‘Do not presume,’ he told her, ‘that we have any new affection for you or your people. It is the mere chance of our times that we stand together. No more.’
‘Chance or fate,’ she said, and knew immediately that she had overstepped the mark. For a second there was a tension about Scelae that was likely to become an attack, but the spymaster was not so much angry as shaken.
‘Fate,’ he echoed. ‘Fate’s weave has been unclear. ’ His composure seeped back and he shook his head. ‘Scelae shall lead the Arcanum here when I am gone, and what can be done shall be done. Tharn has no armies to set against this Empire, but there is little that eyes that know no darkness cannot see. For the moment, while this lasts, those eyes shall be used to see in your cause.’
It was two days before they discovered what had changed the Arcanum’s mind. Achaeos and Che came back from an errand in the foreigners’ quarter to find a sense of utter despair. Scuto was sitting at the large table in the common room of the taverna they were staying at, with his papers strewn utterly unheeded all about it, and some even on the floor. Beside him was Sperra, looking so ashen that Che thought at first her wounds must have reopened. She was trembling, and if Scuto had been less thorny it seemed she would have been clinging to him. Behind them both, Plius sat like a dead weight in a chair. He had a pipe out and was vainly trying to light it, but his hands shook so much that the little steel lighter kept going out.
‘What’s happened?’ Che asked, and then a terrible thought struck her. ‘Uncle Stenwold! The Vekken? Is he-?’
‘No,’ Scuto said hoarsely. His eyes were red, she saw, and his hands had clasped each other close enough to pinprick bloodspots with his own spines, the only time she had ever seen him injure himself. ‘No fresh news from Collegium.’ In truth news from Collegium was coming in all the time. All day great slow-moving rail automotives had been dragging themselves in at the depot with all those residents of Collegium who could not stay to defend their home. Che had expected people from all walks of life, and indeed there were many foreigners, whose lives in the College City had been measured in a few years only, but most of the refugees were children. They arrived with small bags of food, books, a writing kit and spare clothes, and with little notes telling the Sarnesh who they were. The Queen of Sarn was honouring her city’s ally in its time of need. With typical efficiency the homeless and the lost, all these displaced children, were found lodgings amongst the Ant families of the city.
But today at the depot had come a messenger from a different direction.
‘Sperra, she. ’ Scuto took a deep breath and tried to stop his voice shaking. ‘She was at the palace, so she heard it right there, when the Queen did. Helleron has fallen.’
Che gaped at him. ‘Helleron fallen?’
‘A Wasp army turned up at their doorstep. Not even the ones fighting Tark, but a whole other army. They’ve put the city under martial law and commandeered the foundries. Helleron is now part of the Empire.’
‘Hammer and tongs,’ whispered Che. She glanced at Achaeos. His face was closed, expressionless, and she knew he would be thinking of his own mountain city, Helleron’s close neighbour.
‘They knew,’ he said. ‘This is the information the Arcanum had received. This is the threat to our people that has made them join us.’ He bared his teeth, abruptly feral. ‘We warned them that the Wasps would come. An army on the wing, come to Tharn to finish what your people started. The final end of the Days of Lore.’
‘That isn’t fair,’ Che protested.
‘Nothing’s fair,’ he said bitterly.
‘But your people, they’re magicians. They can see the future. They must have seen some way out of this.’
Achaeos would not meet her eyes. ‘You have more faith in them than I do.’
Che embraced him, and he let himself be clasped to her, laid his head on her shoulder. She looked over at Scuto’s dull countenance.
‘What does it mean?’ she asked him. ‘What now?’
‘It changes everything,’ Plius said from behind. He finally had his pipe lit and now did not know what to do with it.
Scuto shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said miserably. ‘I don’t know what to think. None of you understand. Helleron. filthy place. Corrupt, hypocritical. But it was my city. I was born in the Empire, you understand, and never stayed two nights in the same place till I was ten. Helleron was the only place that ever took me in. And I had to fight for elbow room even there. I had to break heads and cut throats in my time. But it had a place for me that I could carve out. Founder’s Mark, even when the Wasps razed my place and scattered my people, I was always going to go back.’
‘My home too,’ Sperra said quietly. ‘More than Merro ever was.’
‘It’s all falling apart,’ Scuto whispered. ‘Collegium under siege, Tark falling. Helleron taken. Where next? What happens now? Can we ever pull it back from the edge?’
The question hung in the air. Nobody had any answers.
Twenty-Five
Salma awoke because it was cold, the night cloudless above, and he fought to recall where he was, and then realized that he did not know.