This was different, though. Halfway over to greet the ambassadors, Eujen stopped to gaze at the broad canvas mounted on the far wall.
‘They call it The School of Artifice,’ Straessa explained. ‘It’s . . . I think it’s where they see we have something in common.’
The canvas showed a gathering within an open chamber that resembled the ruins of the Amphiophos that Eujen had just left. The figures depicted were engaged in earnest discussion, with boards and charts and half-assembled machinery providing the focus of their interest. There were a lot of Wasps amongst them, but no more than half. The artists had been generous and diplomatic.
Many of the people there he could not identify, but the man with the one armoured glove was surely Dariandrephos, and the other halfbreed with a snapbow partly disassembled was that second-in-command of his, who had been a student at the College in his time. There was Varsec himself – given some prominence and depicted in spirited debate with fellow aviators Taki and Willem Reader. There was a selection of other College men and women as well – people whom Eujen had known, and who were mostly dead now. He saw Rakespear, Greatly, Tseitus, and the madly bearded man towards the back gesturing at the stormy sky beyond must be intended as Banjacs Gripshod, for all the likeness was poor. At last Eujen’s attention was drawn to a figure sitting by itself in one corner, though: a Woodlouse-kinden youth with a complex gear train anatomized in his lap. It was uncanny how they had captured the likeness of Gerethwy.
‘You had them do this,’ Eujen accused.
‘I had them add him, yes,’ Straessa confirmed, looking up at the likeness of their fallen friend. ‘I sent them Raullo’s sketches. He deserved to be in that company, I think.’
Eujen nodded soberly and squeezed her shoulder, then turned a bright smile on the patiently waiting delegation.
‘Welcome to Collegium,’ he addressed them. ‘As you see, I’m somewhat speechless at your gift. It’s remarkable. Would you like me to make introductions, out in the Amphiophos?
To his surprise, it was the woman who stepped forwards. ‘That would be much appreciated, Master Leadswell,’ she told him. There was an awkward pause then, words that she was slow in saying, and with the other three eager to move on, but at last she got out: ‘I believe you knew my son.’
He placed the resemblance then, just too late for it to do any good. ‘Averic, yes,’ he agreed. ‘He was a good friend to me.’ A sudden rush of emotion passed over him, aroused by faces and voices now wholly consigned to time. ‘Averic came here because he believed that our people could learn to meet in friendship, not in war,’ Eujen went on, for all of their benefits. ‘I came to believe the same thing. Come, let’s meet the others now, and talk about the future.’
Later, much later: it was past midnight after a long day of small matters. Arvi had set out the agenda himself – the finicky little power behind the throne, Eujen reflected meanly – and the first day’s business had been neither weighty nor contentious: minor trade business, the College making places available for more students from beyond Collegium, the Republic asserting a right to send its spare military men to serve as peacekeepers in the Spiderlands, which nobody was going to contest. After all, if they were over there, then they wouldn’t be sitting idle and getting ideas over here . . .
Until the city’s clocks had struck twelve, Eujen and Straessa had been exchanging anecdotes with General Varsec and that Spider Arista from the Aldanraic States. But, now that it was just the two of them and half a bottle of wine, Eujen was beginning to think about that walk home, and how much easier it would be with Straessa to keep him company.
Then Arvi burst in on them, or as close as he ever came to doing so. He knocked, but only in passing as he barrelled in through the door.
‘Master Speaker!’ he exclaimed.
‘What are you even doing up?’ Eujen demanded of him, earning a reproachful look that eloquently conveyed the message, Do you not know how hard I work on your behalf?
‘There are some new delegates arrived,’ the Fly reported. ‘Or they claim they’re delegates.’
‘Can you not find rooms for them and let it wait until morning?’ Eujen asked plaintively.
‘Well, left to my own devices I certainly could, Master Speaker, no matter who they say they are,’ Arvi said primly. ‘However, the Chief Officer of the Coldstone Company says, no, you must come see them immediately.’
‘Gorenn?’ Straessa demanded. ‘What now? Does she think they’re Wasp spies or something?’
‘Please, Master Speaker?’ Arvi pressed, and Eujen nodded and began the difficult process of getting to his feet.
He found them in one of the smaller clerk’s rooms, watched over by a couple of Company soldiers and the Dragonfly, Gorenn, for whom the war, Eujen sometimes thought, had never quite finished.
He saw three visitors there, looking like beggars dusty from the road and wearing just coarse, heavy garments of crude cut. Nothing about them said ambassador, except . . .
One was a Wasp man, broad shouldered, scarred, bearded, perhaps forty years or so but still strong. Beside him there was a Beetle woman, a few years Eujen’s senior at least, her hair cut unfashionably short, and there was something about her he could not place – more in the way that Gorenn was keeping her distance than anything Eujen himself could see.
The third stranger had no eyes. Eujen blinked, seeing a leathery face without even sockets, and yet plainly he had the man’s focused attention.
‘Good evening to you all,’ he managed politely. ‘Welcome to Collegium. I am Eujen Leadswell, Speaker for the Assembly.’ The Collegiate Assembly, I should say. We’re not the only one, after all.
‘You seem very young for it,’ the Beetle woman remarked frankly.
Eujen spread his hands, conceding the point. ‘These are unusual times,’ he told her. ‘Now, I was told that you are delegates . . . Don’t I know you?’ It must be my day for women who look slightly familiar.
‘Master Leadswell, my name is Cheerwell Maker. This is Thalric, my husband, and this man is Ambassador Messel of the Underworld Assembly. I understand that you are holding a meeting of powers here. He has come to take his place amongst your guests and to speak for his people – all his many people. And I have come home.’
Glossary
Characters
Aagen – renegade Wasp, now of Princep Salma
Alysaine – servant of Auder Bellowern
Argastos – ancient Moth mystic
Arvi – Fly-kinden secretary to Jodry Drillen
Atraea – Moth-kinden leader of Cold Well
Auder Bellowern – Imperial Beetle Consortium magnate
Averic –Wasp student at Collegium
Balkus – renegade Sarnesh Ant, now of Princep Salma
Bergild –Wasp Air Corps captain with the Second Army
Brakker – Wasp colonel with the First Army
Brugan – Wasp general of the Rekef