‘Was that truly what you came here to speak of?’ she asked him with an arched eyebrow. ‘Some muttering about our spies, and then a question to which you already know the answer?’ Abruptly she had moved almost within arm’s reach. ‘We are both too old to waste our time with such matters, General.’
She was mocking him, of course, for she had planted her barbs in him, by Art or by who knew what other means. She was now waiting for the venom to drive him to something further. In truth he could feel the urge within him: an Imperial soldier’s simple response to a woman of a lesser kinden: Take her! And what a piece of diplomacy that would make!
He wanted to say something dismissive and turn away, to assert himself in some way that would not cripple the war effort, but part of him was unwilling to take his eyes from her.
‘General…’ came the call from behind him, and he whirled instantly, the spell broken, becoming once again the stolid old campaigner. Mittoc, his colonel of Engineers, stood holding open the tent flap, with a large man looming behind him.
‘What is it, Colonel?’ It was said with the strong implication that he, Tynan, was busy with some important military business, but Mittoc’s expression was a full-blown leer as he eyed Mycella, simple soldier through and through, despite all the artificers’ training in the world.
‘Well, General, you said to tell you when the pilots got in. Got their Major Aarmon here just landed, wants to talk strategy.’
Tynan felt sure that, when he had met this Aarmon a few days before, the man had been a captain, but then the air force was expanding at quite a rate. ‘Colonel, it’s well into the night. Have Major Aarmon and his crews billeted, and I’ll see him at sun-up.’
‘Right you are, sir.’ Mittoc stole another rapacious glance at Mycella, and skulked away.
Tynan turned back to the woman, meeting a complex and layered expression. Here was the face of the military commander, untouchable and pristine; behind that the temptress who knew that such a mask on a woman would fire him; behind that the woman who was too old for such games, mocking herself for trotting out such worn-out gambits and inviting him to laugh along with her. We are too old, she had said and, though she looked so much younger, he felt they were a match in years.
‘If I were a younger man…’ he said, and stopped, because the words had been intended for himself only.
Her expression became transparent, shorn of subterfuge — or of any subterfuge that he could detect — leaving only a worldly fondness settling into near-invisible lines of humour and experience.
‘If either of us were younger, we’d not stand here in the same tent without being at each other’s throats, Tynan. So surely we’re old enough to know when we want something, and not to stand tongue-tied as though we were children of fifteen?’
He laid hands on her. It was the only way he could conceive of it. She was a Spider Aristoi, and her servants were all around, and it was an assault, a declaration of war, to take her by the shoulders and draw her close. His soldier’s spirit was up, ready for the fight.
And yet the servants were all gone, slipped out somehow, vanished into the weave of the tent canvas, and it was only her and him, and there was no fight at all.
It was after dark, and Averic made his way cautiously back to his lodgings. Cautiously not through fear of the aerial raids that were an almost nightly occurrence, but because a Wasp alone in Collegium could expect all manner of interesting reactions from people he met, especially soldiers of the Merchant Companies. The Antspider had made sure that the Coldstone Company knew he was no enemy of the city, but the populace at large was proving resistant to the idea. It was always easy to write off an entire kinden as the enemy, after all. If you allowed one of them to become human, that might affect your judgement of the rest. It was a lesson the Wasps themselves had taken to heart generations ago, but Collegium was a city of learning, and hating Wasps was on the modern curriculum.
Ironically, a Beetle on the streets of Capitas would have been safer, at least if he could produce his papers on demand.
Eujen Leadswell had held a meeting at the College, which Averic was returning from. The Beetle student had called together two score or so of his fellows, young men and women of all kinden who had not signed up with the Companies. Some were scared, Averic reckoned, and to him it was a strange world where mere cowardice would suffice to keep you from the war. Others had objections of various kinds, often moral ones like Eujen’s own. Still more had work that they could not give up, whether it was assisting the artificers of the College, looking after relatives or helping with the family business in place of others who were already preparing to march out against the Imperial Second. Many of them would not have counted themselves as Eujen’s friends, and some had been his avowed critics before the hostilities had commenced. It was hard for them to heckle him now, though: they who had lacked the courage of their convictions and not taken on the sashes of the Companies.
None of them had known what Eujen was going to say. Many probably came expecting some distilled manner of treason, anti-Makerist propaganda at the worst possible time. Some of those who had stayed away had probably not wanted to be implicated in any such talk.
Instead, Eujen had pitched to them the idea of a Student Company.
‘Let us hope,’ Leadswell had said, ‘that the Second is beaten in the field. What I’m proposing is something that we’re all better off not needing. But if the Wasps come to the walls, as they did last time, the city will need to rely on all hands. Look at us who, for whatever reason, have not taken up the snapbow and the buff coat. I ask nobody why, I accept all reasons as valid, as I ask you to accept mine, but what will we do when they’re at the walls?’
There had been more than a few glances at Averic just then, as he lurked at the back of the room like a shadow of the future. Averic knew, of course, that this all stemmed from Eujen’s arguments with the Antspider, but thankfully nobody at Eujen’s meeting had known that this entire venture was essentially to impress a girl.
‘We find what arms we can beg or borrow or make,’ Eujen had propounded. ‘We take up our own sash. While our field army is out of the city, we drill — alongside Outwright’s men if we can, as they’re staying behind. If the Wasps should come…’ and his voice faltered slightly because of what that might mean, ‘then there will be need of us. And perhaps we can put our scholarship to use, as well. Perhaps the war may benefit from soldiers that do not think like soldiers.’
And of course, someone had stood up to voice the obvious criticism — why was Eujen suddenly advocating the fight, when his voice was normally heard speaking against it? What was going on?
‘Do you think,’ Eujen had remonstrated, ‘that I would not defend our city? Do you think I would not shed my blood for my people? I will take up arms against the Wasps, if they come here. I would do the same against the Vekken or the Spider-kinden or the Sarnesh.’ He left a precisely calculated pause. ‘I will fight just as hard against those within our city that have guided us towards this war, for I do not believe it was inevitable. I believe that, if we can forge a peace with Vek, then we could have done so with any nation in the world. But now we are at war, and I can’t change that. Let us instead work to bring this war to the swiftest close, and seek a true peace thereafter, not merely a period in which to brew up the next conflict.’
He’d had them then, not just by the words but the raw sincerity in his voice, and the first few had come forward to put their names down for his Student Company.
Averic had signed, too. He had not thought he would, and he knew he had done the wrong thing, but he had been carried along on the tide of Eujen’s voice. In that moment everything had made so much sense.
His lodgings were not located in the usual student area — at first because he had not known that when choosing them, but later because it was sometimes convenient to escape the attention of his peers. Instead, his neighbours were the poorer class of tradesmen, factory workers and the like, and many of them were out working most of the night and sleeping during the day, especially now, when every workshop was working around the clock. They did not like him, but he had grown adept at avoiding them. Entering the slightly leaning four-storey house, he heard no sound from any living thing, only silence, as if he was the last man in Collegium.