‘Yes, sir,’ Oski said, without a great deal of hope in his voice.
‘Sir!’ A soldier skidded in, one arm bound up in bandages already leaking blood. Any of the lightly wounded who could still fly were running word between Tynan and his officers. ‘Messenger, sir.’
‘Well, out with it.’
‘Sir, I mean a messenger from the enemy.’
The room went silent. Tynan took a deep breath.
‘And what power does this messenger purport to bear word from, soldier?’
‘War Master Stenwold Maker, sir.’
All eyes were on the general now. The name, the dead man’s name, was like another presence in the room.
‘And what,’ Tynan asked at last, ‘does War Master Stenwold Maker have to say?’
‘That he wishes to meet with you. That he has an offer for you and the Second, sir.’
Oski was watching his superior’s face carefully, and he saw the slight quirk of the man’s mouth, a bleak moment of something close to humour.
‘I’ll bet he does,’ said Tynan quietly and, against the wave of objections that it must be a trap, that he should send someone else or nobody at all, he raised his hands for quiet.
‘Where and when?’ he asked.
They met after the eastern sky had greyed towards a sullen, red dawn, less of a promise of another day than a threat. The venue was a market square, now clear of stalls, and of bodies, too. Imperial scouts could not swear that it rested quite on the boundary between ‘what we have lost’ and ‘what we have yet to lose’, but it was close. Tynan’s troops had seized every house on his side, turfed the locals out onto the street, put soldiers at each window. There was a Sentinel a street away and some Farsphex ready to launch.
When he stepped out into that grey light, into that open space, he did so alone.
The enemy had set out lanterns, or some sort of globes that would pass for such – half a dozen bruise-coloured lamps that gave the square the air of some malevolent Inapt festival.
A single figure had broken from the far side of the square, striding forwards like Tynan’s reflection. Behind him, the windows did not throng with troops, but with citizens, those whose homes overlooked the square – dark Beetle faces of men and women and children, wide-eyed, fearful. They don’t know if they’re being liberated or invaded, Tynan decided.
His opposite number was not familiar: a Beetle by his frame, certainly, but clad in such armour that Tynan had never seen, looking as though it had been grown more than made. Proof against a snapbow, though? It did not seem of a heft and bulk to match the shock troops that his men had faced so far. Will we get to find out? There’s the question.
Tynan himself was wearing only light armour. Heavy mail would not stop a well-aimed bolt, and he wanted the use of his wings if he needed them.
The man across from him removed his helm with a slight awkwardness that suggested that the armour was not second nature to him, and for a moment Tynan let the unclean, ugly light play across those features, seeking recognition. It was surprisingly slow in coming: this man had been wounded, driven into the sea and spent the intervening months who knew where. He was thinner now, his face written over with new experience in a script Tynan could not read.
But it was him. In the end, that conclusion was unavoidable.
‘So, it’s true. Here you are, at last,’ the general grunted. ‘Stenwold Maker, no less.’
‘General.’ Maker nodded.
‘War Master.’ Tynan’s eyes flicked behind Maker to the hulking shapes lurking between buildings. ‘New friends, then?’
‘Old friends,’ Stenwold replied calmly. ‘General Tynan, meet the Sea-kinden.’
‘In truth?’
‘Very much so. Collegium has always been good at finding allies in times of need.’
‘Sea-kinden . . .’ Tynan wasn’t sure he believed it, for all that it seemed to explain a great deal. ‘Since when have there even been . . .?’
‘For longer than our histories record, and yet they have been little more than a myth since the end of the Bad Old Days. I feel that is likely to change, after this.’
‘And they’ve given up a thousand years of secrecy just to help you out, have they?’
‘They pay their debts,’ Maker confirmed.
For a moment, Tynan just stared at him, unwilling to proceed, with all the lost ground that would entail. Then: ‘I have snapbowmen ready to bring you down, War Master. One gesture from me and you’re a dead man.’
‘As would you be, and the bulk of your army.’
‘Probably. What do you want, Maker?’
‘We’ve been here before, you and I.’
Tynan just nodded sullenly.
‘When you came to me, outside the gates of my city, you gave Collegium the chance to surrender then and there, and we refused you. I made a speech that was very self-righteous and far too long. Your offer was not accepted, and we fought you at the wall.’
‘And you lost.’
‘And we lost,’ Stenwold agreed flatly. ‘And a great many men and women died – yours as well as ours – for nothing. Had we accepted reality and taken your deal, we’d have been no worse off.’
‘That speaks of a great deal of faith in myself and my soldiers,’ Tynan pointed out with a bleak smile.
‘Do you think I haven’t heard the details of your time as governor? I have seen many Imperial administrations. Yours is hardly the worst, not by a long reach. And you forget – we have met twice now. I have a sense of the kind of man you are.’
‘I used to think the same.’ Tynan grimaced. ‘So, go on, Maker. Tell me.’
‘You and your soldiers leave the city. You give the order now. You’re gone by midday, all of you. You surrender control of Collegium peaceably, without reprisals. We let you leave. “We” meaning the Sarnesh and the Vekken as well as my forces here within the city.’
‘You think I set the honour of the Empire so cheaply?’
‘I hope you set the lives of your soldiers so dearly, General. I have thousands of Ant-kinden outside who can storm the walls, or else we can just take a gatehouse and open the city to them. I have an army of Sea-kinden who are used to very different standards of mercy and warfare from ours. I, on the other hand, speak for Collegiate enlightenment.’
‘And you don’t want to have to destroy half your city in order to save it, or have my soldiers butcher your people in the streets, or use them as shields against your shot.’
Stenwold nodded. ‘Of course I don’t. And you? You want to do this? You want to make my city hurt for the crime of wanting to be free, and you’re willing to keep putting out our fires with the blood of your soldiers until you have nothing left? I have known men who thought like that – and not just Wasp-kinden either – but I had not picked you as one of them.’
‘I am a man who obeys orders,’ replied Tynan, although the words tasted like bile.
‘General,’ the War Master snapped out flatly, ‘I will return to my forces now, and await your word. If it has not arrived within the hour, then we will take the rest of the city from you, with the aim of exterminating every soldier of the Second who does not take to the skies and flee.’
‘Duly noted.’ Tynan’s hand twitched, and he saw Maker’s face harden, thinking that the general has been about to use his sting. The Beetle would never realize that the reflexive gesture, inexplicable, humiliating, had been a strangled salute.