Now, crossing the crumbling quad that housed te Mosca’s rooms, along with some two or three other departments that nobody thought much of, she became aware of some shouting coming from the square beyond, the big Appellant’s Muster quadrangle that hosted most of the modern history departments.
She was ready for anything, for there had been a great deal of shouting in parts of Collegium of late and, at the same time, a great deal of conspicuous quiet. There had been rallies protesting against the Empire, and the few Wasps in the city had been staying indoors — especially when the rumour surfaced that someone had murdered the Imperial ambassador after his speech and disposed of his body in the bay. Averic had turned up one day with a black eye and a cracked rib, yet not a dent in his fanatical self-control.
But Straessa remembered what Eujen had reported of the Speaker’s words, representing the other side of the coin, and it was obvious to her now. Whilst they shouted, all the students and impoverished patriots and the immigrants who had given their loyalty wholehearted to their new home, there were plenty of the better-heeled quietly stepping back from the situation, withdrawing their support from those who spoke out, choosing their trading partners wisely. Those who had too much invested in Collegium just to run off and seek refuge in Sarn were quietly preparing for the worst.
The disturbance at Appellant’s Muster quad was something else again, though. When she arrived there she saw a dozen Beetle-kinden, dressed in the buff coats and breastplates of the Merchant Companies, standing idle with snapbow and pike while their chief called out to a scattering of students.
‘Do not think the Assembly will sit idle now that the Empire has made war on our allies!’ he declared, a pale Tarkesh Ant-kinden no doubt long renegade from his original city-state. ‘We’ve seen this before, have we not? Did not Master Maker warn of this the last time — and wasn’t he right? The Wasps cannot stand up against all the powers of the Treaty of Gold, and so they make their excuses to divide us, as they always did. Do you think Sarn will sit idle? Or the Spiderlands? No! And when they march to relieve Myna, Collegium’s brave soldiers shall go with them. We fought at Malkan’s Folly and we fought them from our own very walls. We’ll show them that our reach is as great as theirs. We’ll fight them wherever they bring their armies.’ His grey sash and those of his followers showed an Ant-kinden helm in profile and the motto, In Our Enemies’ Robes.
‘Come, then,’ he was saying. ‘Now the Assembly has given the Companies the right to recruit once more, who’ll stand beside Collegium’s allies? Who’ll march to give the Empire a taste of its own fire? For if we don’t stop them in their tracks they’ll be at our walls again, and then everyone gets to fight. So who’ll sign here for the Coldstone Company?’
Straessa watched the man’s audience with fascination, noticing Hallend there, who had been so vociferous about Averic at the Prowess Forum, and plenty of his fellows. Many here had been amongst the worst to victimize the Wasp student, to decry the evils of the Empire. Yet they were regarding the Ant as though he had the plague, and was trying to give it away for free. When the same man held out a snapbow for anyone to come and claim, she saw many of the most normally outspoken of them flinch away.
She slipped up behind Hallend’s little knot of followers, then loudly declared, ‘Why, which proud duellist here would not jump at the chance finally to take action against the Wasps, eh?’ They jumped, indeed, and rounded on her, facing the cruelty of her smile. ‘Aren’t they incurable bigots and villains, each and every man of them?’ she went on. ‘Why, I hear they even dare send their sons to be students here, to soil our pristine educations with their filthy minds. Sign up! Sign up, I say. Now that the liberty of the world truly is at stake, what red-blooded Collegiate would not?’
She wanted a battle, a real slanging match, as though the exchange of hot words would break the tension within the city like a storm, but instead she found Hallend’s face naked and terrible. Guilt was there, and shame and fear, and she remembered then that he was not quite twenty and had never left the city, and there was a blot of horror and loss in his recent history which was the last Day the Empire Came.
‘But…’ he managed to get out, ‘Eujen said… Eujen’s always saying, peace at any cost…’
Her sword had cleared its scabbard before anyone had seen her reach for it. ‘Wrong!’ she declared, aware that the Company snapbows were now drifting her way. ‘Make peace with me, Hallend. Go on, I dare you.’ Her rapier point danced before his eyes, ‘Can you?’ She backed him up three steps, unsure why she had not been stopped yet. ‘It’s not peace at any price; it’s a lasting peace. So it’s true, after all, that line of yours — not that they’re all evil, but that they need to be stopped. We can’t reach a lasting peace while we preach war against them, but we certainly can’t while they’re making war against us. They won’t ever start to change their ways until they respect us, and what they respect is strength. Come on, Hallend, you know I’m right.’ By the end her voice was tense and quiet, her eyes trying to hold Hallend’s, but his kept sliding away.
And Hallend followed the route of his eyes, edging back from her as though she was mad, and in the end it was just her and the recruiting officer staring at one another.
Which was why, when she arrived late for her lunch with Gerethwy and Eujen, the first thing the latter said was, ‘What is that you’re wearing?’
She could only pluck at the grey sash with its device and words and shrug, ‘Somebody had to,’ she said.
Thirteen
That he was unfit to be a spy was proved to Laszlo when he almost went back to his own rooms to get a look at the Solarnese city hangars they overlooked, only darting away from his window at the last moment to swing about a few streets’ worth of space before finding another rooftop to perch on. Aside from the unhappy corpse of Breighl, who could know what welcome was awaiting him within those bloodied walls?
Breighl dead. Te Riel dead. The dread was mounting higher inside his chest, threatening to choke him. Time to be gone. Time to be long gone. He could feel death approaching like a shadow in the water, vast and swift and inexorable.
What’s a spy supposed to do in this position? He knew that hanging on in this suddenly murderous city would gain vital intelligence for Sten Maker, if Laszlo could only live long enough to pass it on. So many of the familiar faces had gone already, though, and some that had lingered now plainly regretted it. I should be gone. It was not spycraft that kept him here, and his loyalty to Maker only went so far, despite all they’d shared. Liss, te Liss, don’t be dead. We can get out together. It’s not too late.
It hurt to think of her: each time like touching a broken tooth. He had never realized, as he drank with her or joked with her, even when he slept with her, that she had wormed her way into his heart so deeply. Only now, with no idea whether she was even still alive, did he recognize how far inside his defences she had pierced.
Then shouting broke out at the hangars, and he skipped across two rooftops to look.
There was a broad landing field before the hangar mouth, although all the Firebug orthopters were safely within caverns specially dug out of the rock by acid and engines. The lamps that gave onto this open space were harsh and uncompromising, the bright white glare of some chemical reaction that burned flamelessly with a constant hiss and crackle; open fire was not something anybody wanted close to all that fuel-powered machinery.
For some reason the great metal doors were already partly open, but there were more guards there than Laszlo had ever seen before, at least thirty of the city militia, so te Riel’s warning had plainly been one among many. They were under attack.