He was a sailor by training: he knew the seas and, more, he knew how sailors thought. Kes was not just a military power: it lived on trade, and there would be those sea-traders who would want to avoid the reach of the Aldanrael, for whatever reason.
Three times he let his wings carry him off the cliff, scouring the seas for sight of a sail, battling gusting wind and sudden squalls of rain before clawing his way back to land, before his strength failed. On the third venture, pushing himself further, risking more, he was lucky. A little Beetle-kinden steamer was out there on the waves, stolidly making its way towards Kes. He dropped down on to its deck, sending its crew scrabbling for swords and crossbows, and demanded, between gasping breaths, to speak to their master.
He had only moments to explain himself, but the news that the Aldanrael held Kes soon had the Collegiate skipper’s full attention. Every Beetle-kinden sailor knew how the Spiders’ tame pirates had been preying on the sea trade until Stenwold Maker put a stop to it.
The ragged message Laszlo delivered was wild, out of order, everything he could dredge from his mind about Solarno, Tark, Merro, Kes. He could only hope that it was enough, and would reach Stenwold in time to do some good.
Then, after a wistful thought about simply remaining on board, he took wing again and returned, dodging sentries and searchlamps, to get back to Liss’s side. He could not leave her, and there would be more to learn and to report on, before he was done.
He slept not at all that night, holding Liss close to him, feeling the terrible fragility of her and, beyond the wagon’s cloth walls, the commensurate fragility of everything else.
Twenty
‘You must do something to control your Mynans,’ Jodry said, around a mouthful of honeybread. Although most of his face was engaged in eating, his eyebrows contrived to glare at Stenwold meaningfully.
‘They’re not my Mynans.’ Stenwold had no appetite, as he stood by the window of Jodry’s office and stared out at the city, trying desperately to calculate rates of advance. He had received a message by ship from Laszlo, at last, which meant that he could at least assure the man’s extended family of rogues and pirates that he was still alive. The contents of the message more than offset the relief, though, for General Tynan’s Second and his Spider allies were practically tearing up the coast towards Collegium.
At the same time, he had received word that the Eighth Army, which had taken Myna, was already past Helleron, meaning all chance of stoppering the bottle on the Empire was already gone while the Assembly debated and the Merchant Companies recruited. The Sarnesh had sent ambassadors to Collegium, but not to debate. Malkan’s Folly was manned and ready for the Empire, with a Sarnesh army already mustering in the city to mount an attack as soon as the Eighth got bogged down in besieging the fortress. The Sarnesh had told the Assembly, somewhat patronizingly, that this was a soldier’s war, and real soldiers would deal with it.
And then there were the Mynans…
‘Well, you brought them here,’ Jodry pointed out.
‘Speak to Kymene.’
‘ You speak to her. She scares the sandals off me,’ Jodry muttered. ‘Looks at me like she’s trying to work out what possible good I am. Murderer’s eyes, that one.’
‘Her city’s back under the black and gold,’ Stenwold pointed out, somewhat testily. ‘It’s not a situation to inspire levity.’
‘But if she wants to work with us to liberate the place, she has to work with us, and so do that rabble of pilots you pulled in, and all their soldiers who’ve turned up at our gates. Little Mistress Aviator’s been training our fliers to work together: formations, tactics, all that sort of thing. She seems to think that’s all very important. Now your Mynans are on the scene and, yes, they have more flying experience than our lads and lasses, what with all that scrapping about on the border over the last year, but they won’t do what they’re told, and Mistress Taki, for reasons of her own, won’t tell them either, and our own pilots are frankly scared of being in the air with them because nobody knows what they’ll do next. And while we’re trying to train them to work alongside our people, they’re trying to wing off to hunt Wasps that, frankly, aren’t even here yet. Either they’re flying off without orders or authorization, or they’re bullying our ground crew into keeping their personal Stormreaders wound and ready, as if the Empire’s already at the gates.’
‘Jodry, if you’d seen Myna, you wouldn’t want to be caught unprepared either, believe me.’
‘Oh, I know, but then you don’t have to listen to Corog Breaker moaning about how it’s impossible to get them even to march in step.’
‘Why would they…? What’s Corog Breaker got to do with it?’ Stenwold pictured the Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum. ‘He’s a pilot?’
‘Well actually he is a pilot, thankfully, but mostly he’s a disciplinarian,’ Jodry said primly. ‘And he’s trying to make your Mynans part of a team.’
‘They’re not-’
‘They are. I’m making them yours. You’re now official liaison with the Mynan exiles. I, as Speaker, command this. There, it’s done.’
Stenwold looked at him as mutinously, no doubt, as the Mynan pilots were even now looking at Corog Breaker. The man’s logic was faultless, however. ‘Do you have any idea how much else I have to do?’ he complained, somewhat wretchedly. ‘The committees, the engagements, the planning? I’d forgotten how this city runs its wars on bureaucracy.’
‘Yes, I know,’ the Speaker’s calm slipped a little, ‘Stenwold the martyr. You’ll never know the problems of yours that I’ve solved without your ever hearing of them, because you were in Myna or off mooning over that Sea-kinden woman of yours. But now you’re the War Master, whether you like it or not. During peacetime I could keep you on a long leash because you’d done good work for the city, sterling work, and you’d earned the right to thumb your nose at our committees and our paperwork. Now it’s war again, and you yourself proposed the vote, and you will not simply stride about in a breastplate and leave all the organization to me. I need you, and Collegium needs you. And that means at all hours…’ Jodry’s words ground to a halt, for Stenwold was no longer listening to him. ‘What?’
‘Quiet,’ Stenwold told him, already at the window and throwing the shutters open.
Jodry goggled at him. ‘Stenwold, what-?’
‘You hear it?’
‘I don’t…’ Jodry lapsed into silence, and the two men waited. In the air was a distant, ever-increasing drone. ‘They’re training in the Stormreaders…?’
‘Clockwork engines don’t sound like that,’ Stenwold said quietly, as the sound built — still far off but not as far as it had been a moment ago. The buzz of engines on the air: many engines.
A moment later and Stenwold was bolting from the room, the door slamming open as he shouldered into it, leaving Jodry staring after him, his mouth working soundlessly.
‘Advance! Advance! Forward! Form shooting lines, two… no.. ’ Chief Officer Marteus swore under his breath, holding on to his calm by the slenderest of threads. ‘Two lines, one shooting over the other. You — Fly-kinden — get to the front. What’s the point of you standing there when the Beetle kneeling in front of you’s still taller?’
The shooting line had dissolved into chaos, and Marteus felt that same anger rising in him that had seem him leave Tark so ignominiously, years before. It had served him well enough when the Vekken had come to Coldstone Street, or when the Wasps’ Light Airborne were jumping the walls, but training his new recruits was rubbing his temper raw, and any moment now he was going to explode in a wholly unprofessional manner.