He saw what was ahead and yanked on the stick, feeling a juddering of new impacts, trusting to the Pacemark ’s robust hull to weather it.
Some Mynan artillerist was awake and ready. As Edmon hauled himself out of the way the wall engine he had nearly flown into had come about and, immediately behind him, the Wasp orthopter flew into a wall of scrapshot, disintegrating instantly and utterly.
Free for a moment, Edmon turned the Pacemark back over Myna, trying to encompass all that he was seeing. There were isolated fires across the city, some in strategic areas, most others simply strewn randomly by inaccurate or capricious Wasp pilots. The walls and gate were under a solid, continuous pounding, but some of the Imperial siege engines had now started throwing incendiary shells deeper into the city.
Moments, it’s only been moments since the attack started. We’ve already lost.
He could feel the Pacemark ’s clockwork slowing, too many tight turns meeting damaged gear trains, and he knew he would have to find somewhere to set it down that was not on fire. In that moment he saw the strange orthopter again, coming in ahead and to the right, slowing to match his speed. He caught the brief flash of a heliograph, but had to wait for the message to be repeated before he saw the pilot was signalling a need to land as well.
But the Wasps… He looked around him, but the skies were almost clear. The Wasp pilots had taken their craft back to camp for refuelling, he guessed. The artillery was keeping their work warm for them while they rested.
He did not want to land. He did not want to face the enormity of what was happening to his city, to find out how many of the faces he had seen only this morning were lost forever. The mechanical demands of the Pacemark were becoming more insistent, however, and he let the orthopter drop lower, heading for whichever airfield seemed the most intact.
Twelve
Sartaea te Mosca was someone who could not help but play hostess wherever she ended up. It seemed an odd trait to bring with her from the severe Moth-kinden who had trained her in the ways of a seer, but the Antspider wondered if that was because they had treated her like a servant while she was there. Everyone knew a great deal about the standards of equality and the social hierarchy amongst Beetle-kinden of various cities, or the Wasps of the Empire, or even the Spiders, or so they told themselves. The Moth-kinden, for all they had ruled this quarter of the world some centuries back, were a stubborn mystery, and that was perhaps the one topic that te Mosca was never open about.
They were at Mummers’s studio again, and Raullo himself was having one of his bad days, meaning that it was past noon and he was still stuffed into the small alcove he slept in, sweating and twitching and turning over fitfully, a shabby curtain serving to partition his little space of despair from the rest of the room and fend off the sun’s encroachment. He had been angling for a big commission, the others knew, working night and day for it, repapering his walls with preliminary sketches and part-colour studies, but his patron had abruptly turned him down, or changed his mind, or even left the city. This last month it had been hard for an artist to make any kind of living. People were clinging to their money, waiting to see which way the future would jump. Besides, there was not as much money in Collegium as there used to be, after all the rebuilding following the last war. Nobody was going hungry, but everyone’s belt was just that little bit tighter these days. Art was a luxury that fewer people could afford, and Raullo was suffering from it.
It had been a few days since Eujen’s meeting with Jodry Drillen, and he had carried away from it not the humility that had perhaps been intended, but a deep-seated annoyance. Most galling had been the implication — as he perceived it — that his loyalty to his city was suspect. He had composed a long speech on the subject, going into some detail about how rattling sabres in the direction of the Empire — or anybody else — did not constitute loyalty. Eujen’s dedication to finding a future where there would be no need of war with the Empire — now that was loyalty, because it would provide far greater benefits for Collegium in the long term. The Makerist warmongering stance would only create a worsening spiral, a degenerating pattern of mutual hostility that would end… where? Where would it end? Eujen had demanded, and nobody had an answer for him. Of course, they had heard the speech twice by then.
‘If only I had contacts in the Empire,’ he would say sadly.
‘Then they could really call you traitor?’ Straessa needled him.
‘No! Then I could talk them round, influence them…’ Eujen’s hands clutched at the air.
The Antspider was herself not at all sure of that. The idea that there was a minority within the Empire who were whipping the rest to war rang false to her. The problem was the system as a whole, or so her talks with Averic seemed to suggest. Those who might see eye to eye with Eujen were the minority — Averic’s own family included, apparently — and, if the majority were to lurch into battle, those few would not be able to restrain them.
It had not been a month ago that Eujen had been claiming that war itself would not come. A tenday or so ago he had taken to stating that war would not come soon, that everyone’s excitement about the subject was premature. Since meeting Drillen, however, he had stopped saying even that.
And he would fight it, she knew, for all the good it would do him. He was doomed, and he knew he was doomed. The weight of history was rolling down on Eujen like the studded wheels of a great automotive, but he fought his battles regardless, because it was right. Of all his qualities, she loved him for that one. She herself came from a culture where doing what was right was a luxury that even the rich could seldom afford. Seeing the sheer, glowing naivety of someone like Eujen Leadswell, setting out to change the world, gave her an almost vertiginous feeling.
For ten minutes Eujen had been pacing now, watched anxiously by everyone except the sleeping Mummers, and Gerethwy, who was carefully annotating a schematic. Eventually, though, Eujen’s failure to conceive of some political master plan resulted in him rounding on them furiously, as though it was their fault. ‘And he’s not doing anything!’ he explained. ‘Jodry Drillen spends his time harassing students and listening to complaints about madmen like Gripshod, while we just slide onwards to…’ He would not utter the word ‘war’.
‘But Gripshod is the ambassador to Khanaphes, isn’t he?’ te Mosca asked him. ‘Surely that could be relevant?’
‘If only! It’s not even that Gripshod — it’s the artificer one, his brother.’
‘Banjacs Gripshod is still alive?’ Gerethwy raised his head.
‘ Banjacs Gripshod?’ Straessa asked incredulously. ‘Unfortunate name for an artificer…’
‘No, no,’ Gerethwy waved the idea away. ‘Artificers say that about a thing because of old Gripshod. Something of a legend, if you talk to the older artificing staff. I thought he must be dead, the way everyone talks about him-’ Then he was cut off by a hammering on the door.
‘He’s not in,’ the Antspider said, with a gesture towards Mummers, because they had all come to the immediate conclusion that one of the artist’s creditors was trying his luck, but then came a voice calling ‘Mistress te Mosca, are you within?’ With a worried glance at the others, the Fly woman flitted over to the door and unbolted it.
A young Beetle-kinden man was revealed, whom they recognized vaguely as one of the College’s older students researching something in such and such department. The post-accredit students often found casual employment with the College Masters and the Assembly as a way of making ends meet.