‘And you, Sartaea te Mosca, why do you say you’re here?’
She mustered a fragile little smile. ‘I have been deputized by our citizens to bring a petition to you, General.’
‘Have you, indeed?’ And that statement marked her out as some sort of ringleader, and he could lock her up for less than that. ‘And what is it that your citizens are so unhappy about? I’ve reopened their precious College, have I not? My men keep order on the streets. I even have my chief engineer overseeing the rebuilding.’
Te Mosca cleared her throat. ‘Ah, well, there are just a few matters that people are curious about.’ The Moth was stalking about behind her, and she was doing her best to ignore him pointedly. ‘Such as, for example, the Spider-kinden.’
‘What about the Spider-kinden?’ Tynan asked flatly.
‘How long will an entire kinden be outlawed from our city, under threat of arrest?’ Abruptly there was a thread of bravery in her tone. The Moth stopped pacing, staring down at her.
‘We are at war,’ Tynan informed her dismissively. ‘Next matter.’
‘I beg your indulgence, General, but you are at war with a state, not a kinden. Collegium is – was – home to hundreds of Spiders who had fled their homeland, or who simply preferred to live here amongst the Beetles. So I . . . we were wondering . . .’
Tynan wondered if she knew his own past, how he had been close to the leader of the Spider-kinden before that inexplicable order had come through to turn on them. It was common knowledge amongst his men, but perhaps not in the city as a whole, and he could not imagine that this woman wanted to provoke him.
‘Send for Major Vrakir,’ he ordered, shocking the entire room into stillness.
‘Sir . . .?’ one of his aides queried nervously.
‘I think hers is a valid question, so we’ll go to the source.’ And it’s been too long since I hauled him from his pit to remind him of the chain of command. ‘Tell him he’s needed.’ Everyone knew the Red Watch was answerable to nobody, but ever since Vrakir had brought the order concerning the Spider-kinden, Tynan had been fighting the man at every opportunity. It was as if he had found the resolve to refuse the man, just one order too late.
‘What else?’ he demanded of the Fly woman, once the aide had set off.
‘I have a list, General,’ she said, a little more softly.
‘A list of demands?’
‘A list of names, I’m afraid.’
Something in her tone warned him he was not going to like this – not that he had liked much of it so far. He was already making the relevant adjustments for a fight with Vrakir. The Fly had given him that opportunity, and now he just wanted rid of her. ‘You understand that you’re going from here to the cells to await questioning, yes? There’s too much stink attached to your name to avoid it.’
‘It did seem likely, yes.’ Was that a faint tremor in her voice? He thought it was. Her veneer of calm was cracking, then, but she was still putting on a brave face. I’ve had soldiers who broke sooner. She’s doing well for a Fly-kinden.
‘Well, then, what’s this list? Perhaps it can be looked at while you’re otherwise engaged.’
‘I do hope so.’ This time there was a definite trembling. ‘Only . . . I am aware from what I’ve heard about Myna and other places that your administration here has not been heavy-handed, by Imperial standards . . .’
He nodded bluntly, accepting the praise to exactly the extent that it was intended.
‘Only, by Collegiate standards, it has still been something of a novel experience for us, and I was wondering . . . we were wondering . . .’
‘What’s your list, woman?’ Tynan demanded of her.
‘Everyone who has been arrested, taken away without charge or who has disappeared after being in the company of your soldiers, and who has not thereafter been seen, General,’ te Mosca declared. ‘All those sons and daughters of Collegium, Spiders and other kinden, whose fate remains unknown, and who have families and friends who desperately wish to know the truth.’
He found that, in the silence she left, he had stood up, staring down at this woman who dared to question Imperial practice. She met his eyes, this tiny thing that he could have struck down with a sting or broken with his bare hands.
‘Do you think that they will like the truth when they hear it?’ he demanded of her.
‘I suspect not,’ she replied quietly, ‘but they wish to know, nonetheless, because not knowing is worse.’
He closed his eyes, wavering on the point of violence, of some punitive order that would serve no purpose but to make him feel as though he was again in control of the situation. At the back of his mind: Is this really what I have become? He had been meant as an army commander, not to become mired in this civic morass.
‘Take her away,’ he snapped, and then, as they were marching the woman out, ‘Bring me the list.’
Captain Bergild of the Imperial Air Corps knew that most of the Second Army were getting restless. They were a battlefield force pressed to act as a city garrison, and she was frankly amazed that General Tynan was holding them in check as much as he did. She remembered, from her childhood during the Twelve-year War, just how soldiers could be.
Her own pilots were suffering in the same way. They were warriors of the air, and so far no aerial threat had come to attack the Second or its new possession of Collegium. The Sarnesh had yet to venture south, and who else was there?
Instead, Bergild and her people were flying endless long-range scouting missions, like this one, looking for an enemy that wasn’t there. Technically the orders were Tynan’s, but she had spotted Vrakir, the Red Watch man, about the airfields, insisting that they scout further and further, that a foe was out there, if they could only find it.
The man was going mad, by her reckoning, and, as he was in command whenever Tynan’s back was turned, that was a very bad thing indeed.
Then there was Oski, the major of engineers who had formerly been the one non-Air Corps soldier she could really talk to, but he was off doing some secretive business that he was evidently very keen for her not to know about. This left her and her pilots rattling about in their Farsphex orthopters, ranging out over ludicrous spans of ground, looking for . . . anything, really. Anything at all.
If there had been more of them, then perhaps they might have formed an effective scouting force, but the Imperial manufactories were still replacing the catastrophic losses that the Collegiates had inflicted on the Air Corps. And now, of course, there were multiple fronts to supply: both the fighting down the Silk Road and the force that was blocking the Sarnesh path eastwards. The Second Army had to make do.
I remember the last war. The Empire had stretched itself too far, fought on too many fronts, then the Alliance cities had risen up . . . and then the Emperor had died. Leave it to the historians to untangle that mess, but it certainly seemed to Bergild that they were fighting at least one enemy too many, right now.
Always the same question: why did we turn on the Spiders? And Vrakir, who had borne that order, wasn’t talking about it. He was just giving erratic instructions to pilots: Search here! Search there!