‘You think . . . the Wasps . . .?’ Straessa breathed in disbelief.
The Sarnesh officer shuffled uncomfortably. It was plain he very much wanted to be able to blame the Empire.
‘Not the Wasps,’ Gorenn whispered. ‘Not the Wasps.’ She was already backing out of the room, out of the building, arrow still held to the string, but her hands shaking far too much to have aimed it.
‘We withdrew when the Sarnesh arrived, sir,’ the scout reported. ‘We got the chance to lay some traps on the rails for their baggage train, though.’
‘Given current progress, I’d guess they’ll find and disarm them quickly enough,’ Tynan decided, because the Collegiate artificers had proved quite capable of that so far. ‘They’re camped within sight of the walls?’
‘Yes, sir, but out of effective artillery range.’
If we still had the big greatshotters . . . But, like respectable air reinforcements, replacement artillery had not been forthcoming. Tynan guessed that, as he was already on the right side of the walls of his city, he was not considered a priority.
‘General, the village . . . it was cleared of its occupants when we arrived,’ the scout added. ‘Signs of a struggle, but we saw no bodies. Just like . . .’
Tynan held a hand up. ‘I know.’ I know, and I don’t want to think of it, because we’ve all seen too much of that – even inside the city, that once! – and still nobody has any answers for me. ‘And the Vekken?’ he enquired, because that was something military and comprehensible.
‘At a similar distance to the west, General, and a good space between them and the Sarnesh. The Collegiate orthopters are still providing air cover for them.’
But not the Sarnesh fliers. Although the Ants and the Beetles flew the same model of craft, Bergild’s Farsphex pilots could tell whose hands were on the stick just from the flying styles.
‘Fine, back to your squad.’ He dismissed the scout because his headquarters was crowded at the moment, with friends and enemies both. ‘They can only be waiting for an uprising from the populace,’ Tynan decided. ‘Double patrols, no exceptions to the curfew, and break up any gatherings of more than a dozen. Let’s have some keen-eyed lads up on the roofs as well, to keep a lid on it. Prepare a sally force of about a third of our strength. We’ll hit the Vekken first.’
‘General, no.’
Tynan’s head snapped round, to see the eternal thorn in his side.
‘Major Vrakir, you have something to say?’
‘Do not dilute our forces within the city, sir. They will be needed.’
Vrakir had that curiously set look to his face that Tynan had learned to expect, as though the man was trying to disassociate himself from his own mouth.
‘No doubt this is the Empress’s wisdom we’re hearing?’
Vrakir locked eyes with him. ‘Her own words, General. Our forces will be called upon to defend Collegium. There must be no sorties. You’ve said yourself that they have neither the numbers nor the engines to take the walls.’
‘Unless some concerned citizen opens the gates to them, and the longer they sit out there unchallenged, the more chance there is of that happening,’ Tynan shot back.
‘Even so, General.’
Each time this happened, each time Vrakir came out with some new proclamation, Tynan braced himself, wondering if this was the moment that he would break loose from these ridiculous shackles and call the man’s bluff. But then came the thought, always: Remember what it is you have already done. And, in the echo of that, he just nodded and gritted his teeth. Bend over for Vrakir and the Empress.
He put a hand to his forehead. He had been drinking last night, when the dreams had got too much for him, and the aftereffects were proving stubborn.
‘So our ground forces sit still, and yet you want most of our air cover pissing off east to escort who knows what, leaving us open to their orthopters?’
‘Yes, General. It is necessary.’
‘What does she tell you, Vrakir?’ he asked roughly. ‘Why can’t we just smash the Vekken and the Sarnesh, given they’ve delivered themselves up to us in such convenient numbers?’ He had long since given up questioning how it was that the Empress’s words reached this man. Secret agents, messenger insects, some tiny ratiocinator engine surgically implanted in Vrakir’s skulclass="underline" all of these he might believe.
Vrakir swallowed, and Tynan raised an eyebrow, seeing that even he was having difficulty forcing the words out.
‘Fear death by water,’ was all he had in reply.
After dismissing the lot of them, Tynan returned to his quarters in disgust, to meet with his guest.
When she had been brought in – not long before the scouts returned – he had assumed this was the herald of some great insurgency amongst the Collegiates. After all, the Fly Sartaea te Mosca was reckoned to be some manner of agitator by the Moths.
She had denied that, and so he had her placed under guard while he went to deal with more important matters. He had left her food and wine, though, and refrained from putting her in a cell or binding her. He felt that she had become one of those curious unknown quantities – not one of ours, and yet perhaps not one of theirs either, someone who might prove useful. Tynan was no intelligencer, but governing a city was fast turning him into one.
‘Now,’ he addressed her, as he strode in, ‘what was it?’
She had been sitting at his table and pouring the last of the wine, and now she started guiltily. ‘General, no doubt you’re wondering what’s about to happen with the Sarnesh and the Vekken.’
‘Forgive me if I don’t actually believe you’re going to tell me.’
‘I don’t know, not exactly, but I know that they have come to retake the city, General. I’ve come here to give you some advice, if you will take it.’
He stared at her for a moment. ‘Is that advice to leave the city?’
‘It is, I’m afraid.’
‘Then that’s not an option. I have my orders.’
‘General, I . . .’ She bit at her lip. ‘I’d be getting nowhere if I said that I was a magician, would I?’
He laughed at her although, by the time he had sat across from her, the sound had something broken about it. ‘Is that something you’re likely to tell me? Are you the Empress’s voice, too?’ Even as he said it, he knew that those words should sound like some wild non-sequitur, but instead they seemed to follow on perfectly naturally.
‘General—’
‘Listen to me, Fly-kinden,’ he told her, harsher than he had intended, simply to cover up his unease. ‘Your Ant friends are too few to help you, and they can’t even join forces to work together against us. Vekken and Sarnesh, they hate each other worse than they hate us! They’ll be at each others’ throats within a tenday, if we don’t destroy them first.’ Which we can’t, because Vrakir says that the Empress says . . . That curious tone in which the Red Watch man uttered, Fear death by water, as though he could not believe his own mouth, as though he was a prisoner to some barbed thing inside his head, which was making him say such things.
‘They will not fight each other,’ te Mosca told him. ‘Your scouts will tell you soon, if you have not heard already.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Stenwold Maker has been seen in the Ant camps. He will keep them in line.’