He had no militia, of course – the Merchant Companies were off with Stenwold Maker, what was left of them, and his own Straessa had gone with them. There was a contingent of Tseni Ant marines on the streets, though, and one day they just started doing what he said, their leader apparently recognizing in him some authority that was otherwise wholly fictitious.
Then the Spider ship had sailed into harbour, as civilized as anyone could have asked for.
There had nearly been a fight over that – not even involving the Tseni so much as the locals who remembered the Spiderlands’ armada and alliance with the Empire, however that had turned out. There was only one ship, though, and it put ashore a single ambassador, an elegant woman who wanted to speak to Stenwold Maker. Of course to Stenwold Maker, who else?
She would have to make do with Eujen Leadswell, she was told.
Their meeting was strained but cordial. Eujen the student had sat there, pretending to be the important Collegiate diplomat whilst wincing at the spasms of pain afflicting his back and legs, and the Spider woman had apparently pretended to take him seriously. There had been an offer, in the midst of all the talk, and Eujen’s scholarly mind had cut through the expressions of mutual need, of shared history, of regrettable recent developments, to see that the Spiders wanted a truce, a safe port, perhaps even an alliance in due course. He had heard that the fighting down the Silk Road was fierce, and more than that, he had heard that the vast reaches of the Spiderlands were beginning to show the strain of current times. There had been catastrophic earthquakes in Skaetha, the golden city at the heart of the Spiderlands’ web. He had heard of a high death toll amongst the highest echelons of the Aristoi, divisions between the families, an inability to address the Empire’s encroachments. Their pragmatism in coming to Collegium was almost disarming.
He would have to consult the Assembly, he had told her, and they both pretended that there still was such a thing, rather than merely a large group of people Eujen knew distantly who could each make small things happen. He would offer her and her crew accommodation in the city, but there might be some wait before she received word of any decision.
He saw the tiny wince in her expression, suppressed just a moment too late. Time was a precious commodity along the Silk Road.
Minutes after the meeting, Eujen was hurrying through a letter to Straessa because, resent it as he did, he really needed to know what Stenwold Maker thought.
His letter caught up with the Lowlander army at the gates of Helleron. The rail lines from Malkan’s Folly eastwards, which the Imperials had used to send in their reinforcements, were intact, and the entire force was able to close the remaining distance to the Lowlands’ eastern borders in remarkable time, using auto-motives rushed in from Sarn. Straessa had wondered if destroying those rail lines, if the worst came to the worst for the Wasps, should have been the job of the Auxillians whom Milus had apparently suborned. Certainly it seemed an obvious way to slow the Lowlands down and yet nobody had done it. More cracks were showing in the Imperial facade.
By the time they reached Helleron, the Empire had already abandoned the city, plainly all too aware of the place’s shifting loyalties. Everyone had been expecting sly Helleren merchant lords appearing to swear smoothly that the Wasps had been their guests under protest, but a whole district of the city was in ruins, and the faces of the citizens looked stunned, unsure whether this was liberation or just a new invasion.
When the magnates did come, Milus kept them waiting, and then presented them with his demands: ammunition, fuel, supplies, automotives – with no suggestion of paying for any of it. Those who demurred, he had arrested. At the same time, Stenwold was sending Collegiates into the city to make contact with lower-level merchants, men and women who would normally wait for the nod of their betters before dabbling in this sort of politics. Enough of them were sufficiently quick off the mark to ensure that supplies were quickly rushing in on credit, because on credit was still better than free, and because being friends with Collegium and Sarn suddenly looked good.
Even now, after a pause of just a few days, Milus’s people were getting ready to move out.
Eujen’s missive was carried there by a civilian pilot with a swift fixed-wing who had tracked the Lowlander army by simply following the rail lines. Finding Straessa in that throng should have been harder, save that – just like Eujen himself – she was looked on as the solution to every problem, large and small, and so everyone knew where to locate her.
She took the missive eagerly, because it gave her an excuse to shake off the little mob demanding her attention. About time, Eujen, she thought. Beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.
The seal broken, she found the contents were not exactly as personal as she had hoped, but still she found herself smiling fondly, skimming over Eujen’s patient setting-out of the Collegiate situation, as orderly and clear as if he thought he would be graded on it. Given that he had marked the contents for the urgent attention of Stenwold Maker, she wasn’t sure why he hadn’t simply bypassed her altogether. Perhaps he still felt too wary of the man to approach him directly, even in writing.
And then, just as she was despairing of Eujen entirely, came that last paragraph:
I badly want to hear the news that Maker and Milus, between them, have brought the war to some manner of satisfactory conclusion. Every child of Collegium, of whatever kinden, is badly missed and badly needed. I miss and need my Antspider most of all. I will muddle on here, and do what can be done, but I am waiting each day for the news that you are coming back to me, and most of all for you to bring that news in person.
And this letter is to go before Maker, apparently, she considered with a wry smile, picturing him losing his thread, forgetting the chief purpose of his writing. He never did remember to read things through.
She excised that last paragraph deftly and went in search of the War Master.
He was to be found with his pirates – or that was what Laszlo had claimed the pack of Fly-kinden were. Straessa had her doubts, principally because the thought of being cooped up on a ship with Laszlo for any period of time felt like the prelude to homicide. The pack of them had seemed just a vagrant band of travellers, save that they had the ear of Stenwold Maker. Now, as she approached, she saw them in a different light. Maker was sitting at their fire, discussing something in earnest, and there seemed no suggestion that he was just handing down orders to them. Instead, from their cautious nods, their thoughtful looks, it seemed they were assessing some sort of proposal he was putting forward – but something with no guarantee of acceptance. After that, she also noted just how well armed they all were, and began to wonder, Pirates, really? And if that was the case, what were they doing here?
And there were others, too, she saw. Sperra was there, whom Straessa had met before the liberation, and that big renegade Sarnesh from Princep as well, and that weird pale Sea woman who seemed to be at Maker’s elbow much of the time, and all of them apparently conspiring over something, thick as thieves.
She waited awkwardly at the edge of their circle of firelight – when she tried to take a step closer, which might have allowed her to make something of their low murmurs, one of the Fly women gave Straessa a filthy look and shifted a crossbow slightly, so that it was not quite directed at her. The message was clear enough.