‘What next for you?’ he asked her, instead.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What about you?’ Relentless in her willingness to be put on the rack.
He glanced over at the Tidenfree again. ‘You know, I was thinking of a spot of piracy.’ He took a deep breath, aware that he was doing something right for the wrong reasons – or perhaps the other way around. ‘How about you? Only Despard’s always after more help with the engines, and I think you know some medicine too . . .? Always handy, that.’
There was such naked hope in her expression that he felt wretched for her, and, yet, who knew? There might be no Lissart in his future, or he might rid himself of his longing for her, and a man at his time of life should be realistic. There came a day when you had to stop chasing dreams.
‘Come on,’ he suggested, ‘I’ll introduce you to the crew.’
‘Willem,’ Eujen said, reaching for his stick.
Willem Reader, aviation artificer, made a hurried gesture. ‘You needn’t get up.’
‘I’m going to, though.’ Eujen felt the gearing of his supports finally engage and, with a little help from his stick, he was standing within a relatively short period of time. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘I was beginning to wonder if the Sarnesh would let me leave,’ Reader agreed. ‘There were quite a few of us, in the end, who were asking just who the enemy was, that we were still helping them get ready to fight. I know it’s thanks to you and everyone else here, putting on the pressure, that they finally decided to act like civilized human beings again.’
‘In all honesty, it was your wife leading the charge.’ Eujen nodded at Jen Reader, who hadn’t let Willem out of her sight since his return. The Beetle woman gave him a tired smile, which Eujen returned with, ‘And, of course, congratulations on your election, Madam Assembler.’
Jen shrugged. ‘I decided that if they still weren’t going to give the chief librarian a seat by right, then I’d cursed well earn one the hard way. And, believe me, Master Leadswell, I’m not just going to sit back and cheer while in the Assembly. There’s plenty I think needs changing around here.’
‘But perhaps not the surroundings?’ Eujen suggested. Around them stretched the ruins of the Amphiophos, the shattered wreck of Collegium’s seat of government. Here the bombs had fallen, in that terrible night of fire that had led to the Imperial air force’s undoing. Here the neutered Assembly had met under Wasp rule, to be dictated to by their conquerors. Grass was beginning to grow between the stones. ‘I think we should keep it like this. An aid to the memory, so to speak.’
‘Well, Master Leadswell, the man of the hour!’ Without warning, Sartaea te Mosca was there at his elbow. She was still painfully thin from the camps, but being back in Collegium had gone a long way to restoring her. ‘What a grave face, Eujen. Are you tired of your honours already, the very same day as the Lots voted you in?’
He grimaced with embarrassment. ‘I’m not the only one who . . .’
‘Oh, yes, certainly yes.’ The Fly-kinden woman grinned shyly up at Jen. ‘Quite the new broom. A whole new Assembly, so many fresh faces.’
‘Well, those who did get elected are going to have to do some work for once,’ Jen pointed out. ‘That probably put off some of the old faces. Did Awlbreaker stand, in the end?’
‘Poll? No,’ te Mosca confirmed. ‘He said he would rather fix machines than cities. They voted in Metyssa, though. Plenty of people remember her stories, from when they were stuck in Sarn waiting to come home, and from when . . .’ For a moment she faltered, then hoisted her smile back up with a visible effort. ‘Let’s just say she’s remembered. Willem, the College Masters are now gathering. Shall we go and join the Gownsmen?’
The artificer grimaced. ‘What’s left of them.’ Replacing vacant College posts was proving more difficult than voting in the elected members of the Assembly. ‘We’re not quite back the way we were, are we?’
Eujen shook his head. Across what had once been the Assembly hall, the new government of Collegium – magnates, veterans, adventurers and mavericks – was finding itself a place where it could gather: on the broken tiers of the old seating, on the rubble, on the ground, under the sky.
‘Time to put the world to rights,’ he decided.
Te Mosca smiled slightly, watching the Readers part company: he heading for the College seats, she for the Townsmen’s. The Fly’s expression was thoughtful, philosophical, a mirror to all the turmoil and change that these last years had witnessed. Then she looked up brightly. ‘I suppose I should follow my own advice and take my place. Oh . . . and, Eujen?’
‘Hm?’
‘Congratulations, Master Speaker.’
The young scholar managed a pained smile. ‘Given the work ahead, I can’t imagine what I can have done to deserve such a fate, but we’ll have to make the best of what we’ve got.’
This had been an arena once, a place for gladiators and wild beasts to tear each other apart to sate the bloodlust of the mighty.
How appropriate, Tynan considered.
Looking around him, all he could see was division. Here, closest to him, were men representing the armies and garrisons and barracks – mostly junior offices, for many of the generals and colonels were sufficiently unsure of how this might play out that they were keeping tight to their little fiefdoms and preparing for the worst.
Beyond, he could see little knots that represented the various corps, each with their numbers prescribed by Ernain’s cursed declaration – Slavers, Engineers, Quartermasters and more, plus a big crowd representing the various factora of the Consortium. The majority of those were Beetle-kinden, and mostly under the domination of the Bellowerns.
And beyond them, thronging the raked seating, were the others: the unthinkable; those he had let in to sully the wheels of government.
He broke away from the army seats and strode in their direction, scanning that offensive variety, seeing them as all the Wasps must see them. Here were representatives from every city in the Empire, and plainly many of them not at all sure that they hadn’t been lured here only to be murdered. He saw Grasshoppers and Bees, Ants and Mole Crickets, Flies and Beetles, even a couple of skinny little Skater-kinden from Jerez who somehow now had a say in the future of the state. We must be mad. We must all be completely mad. And yet, even on those seats, there were some Wasps: men – and a very few women – who had somehow won over the very people that they had ostensibly been oppressing. It was a new world of opportunity, and simply for that reason it was the anathema of the old regime.
Another man was coming to meet him halfway. Ah, symbolism.
‘Ernain,’ he nodded. ‘Is it Captain, still?’
‘Just not “Captain-Auxillian”, General,’ the Bee-kinden agreed. ‘Second thoughts?’
‘More than you can believe.’ Tynan looked past the other man to the little band of Spider-kinden who had come in from Solarno and points south. The word was that the Aldanraic States – as the new term went for the land between Kes and Solarno – were still somewhat undecided as to what nation they belonged to, but then that was typical Spider-kinden for you. The thought brought a slight, sad smile to Tynan’s lips.
The various families controlling those cities had sent mostly women to this gathering, he noticed, and to Tynan that showed that they were serious. In their midst he caught Merva’s Wasp features as she nodded soberly to him. Whoever would have thought it would go this far? she seemed to be saying.