Possibly more serious a loss was the discovery that one of the Sentinels had been left near that fuel store, and the explosion had tipped the machine entirely over and damaged its underside, wrecking several of its legs. Tynan’s immediate plans for the Felyal, thankfully, allowed time for repairs.
Casualties had been moderate, the Aldanrael forces bearing the brunt of it as they contained the Mantis offensive. Tynan recorded a formal vote of thanks to their Spider allies.
Regarding two errant Fly-kinden, nobody had the time to spare a thought.
Looking over the Felyal, with the old burn scars of his last visit still plainly visible and the fresh wounds of the night attack in his mind, Tynan gave his orders.
‘Burn every home, kill everyone who resists, take prisoner everyone who doesn’t. Wherever they make their stand, make it a wasteland of ash. Set the Sentinels on them. Bring explosives, firethrowers, everything we have. They’ve shown us how they won’t learn. Leave nothing behind us that will ever again dare raise a hand against the Empire.’
Twenty-Five
‘Well now, about time,’ Banjacs Gripshod ground out through gritted teeth. ‘I wondered which of you lazy, self-obssessed midgets would finally dare speak to me.’
He had been bearded in his own bedchamber, where house arrest had confined him because the Company men guarding him did not dare let him loose at the machinery that took up so much of his home. The sight of him was not encouraging: skinny, ancient and unwashed, he glowered out at Jodry Drillen as if imprisoned between his fierce eyebrows and wild beard.
‘If we can spare the pleasantries-’ Jodry began, then stopped. ‘ Midget? ’
‘Intellectual midget,’ Banjacs spat. ‘I always knew you’d never amount to anything, Drillen, and now you’re the man who does the Assembly’s dirty work, eh?’
‘I am the Speaker,’ Jodry said, wounded pride replacing his usual composure.
‘Who’d vote for you?’ the old man demanded.
‘You know I’m the Speaker, Banjacs, and this sort of behaviour isn’t helping your case.’
‘Case?’ As if Banjacs had never heard the word before.
‘You murdered Reyna Pullard,’ Jodry reminded him hotly.
‘She was a spy!’ the old artificer hissed.
‘She was my spy, spying on you because you were doing something that might endanger the city. Did you think all those materials and parts you were buying didn’t raise a few eyebrows?’
‘Jodry,’ a new voice came from outside the room, ‘this isn’t achieving anything.’
Jodry sagged massively. ‘Right, well,’ he said, awkwardly. ‘I have been asked to at least give you a hearing.’
‘Well, isn’t that large of you,’ Banjacs snarled. ‘So you drag your carcass over here past midnight because speaking to me’s plainly at the top of your list. Who interceded anyway? Who still cares? Why should I deign to speak with you?’
‘Banjacs, be quiet.’ Another old Beetle man emerged from Jodry’s prodigious shadow. He was at least a decade Banjacs’s junior, but there was a certain resemblance in their faces, had Banjacs only been clean shaven. His presence chastened the older man instantly, the artificer having the grace to look a little shamefaced.
‘Berjek,’ he noted.
‘Banjacs,’ said Berjek Gripshod, his brother. ‘Believe me when I say that Master Drillen has very long list these days. However, he has granted me a favour and come to speak with you. Don’t waste the time.’
Jodry looked about for a chair, and slumped into it with a creak. ‘Right, then, here I am,’ he announced. ‘The city’s fallen down about my ears, the Empire’s fliers are expected with the dawn, there’s an army that’s probably got as far as the Felyal and is now headed right here. What else, Banjacs? What am I supposed to do with you? I’m told you want to help.’
Apparently this was the wrong thing to say. ‘ Help? ’ Banjacs cursed. ‘I won’t waste my time with whatever wretched plan you have, Drillen. You should be helping me! Give me command of the city’s defences, let me complete my machine, and you’ll never worry about anything again, believe me!’
‘I fear that may be true,’ Jodry managed to keep a level tone. ‘As for your machine, well-’
‘Did you truly think I didn’t see it coming?’ Banjacs almost shouted over him, his sudden vehemence rocking Jodry backwards in the chair. ‘From the moment that Lial Morless showed us what was possible, this day has been coming… has been inevitable! But nobody thought it through! Nobody looked ahead! Only me, me! You’ll give me what I want, Drillen, because there’s nobody else. Only I can save the city, but it’s men like you, cowardly men without vision, who stand in my way!’ He had his hands extended, as though trying to strangle Jodry at a distance.
‘Banjacs!’ Berjek snapped and, into the silence that followed, added, ‘Jodry, do you hear…?’
They felt as much as heard the impact, the rumble of it from outside the window, the shudder beneath their feet.
‘They — ah — munitions testing? Over at the College?’ Jodry stammered.
A second blast reached them, more distantly. Berjek was at the window. ‘Jodry,’ he said, his voice abruptly hollow, ‘I see flames.’
Jodry shouldered his way to the window, looking out and seeing a red edge to the night, hearing faint cries, shrieks and a familiar — all too familiar — sound: engines over the city, but in darkness, invisible.
‘No,’ he got out. ‘It’s not dawn yet — only just midnight — I won’t have it!’
But the third booming echo put paid to such illusions, and a moment later he was forcing his bulk out of the room, thundering down the stairs to get out of the mad artificer’s house and go… who knew where?
Behind him the shrill tones of Banjacs Gripshod followed him down the street, ‘Coward! Run, why don’t you! You need me! You need me!’
Straessa — Subordinate Officer Antspider to her troops — was already on the streets with as many of her followers as she could muster in a minute and a half. Thankfully, Chief Officer Marteus had insisted that the members of the Coldstone Company sleep in barracks like soldiers. The others, Maker’s Own and Outwright’s, went home to their own beds like proper Collegiate citizens, but the renegade Ant was used to armies, not civilian militias and, now there was a war on, he expected his followers to act like an army too.
This meant that, in the moments after the first explosion, individual members of the other two Companies were still stumbling out of bed, pulling on their clothes, pausing to see if they had imagined it, trying to find their armour, then ending up in the streets and searching for an officer, an armoury, a purpose. By that time the Coldstone Company, through the intractability of their leader, was already out in force.
But not to fight, of course. They had their snapbows, their pikes and most, like the Antspider, had swords at their hip, but they had nothing that would touch an Imperial orthopter. Their city was at war, the civilian casualties already in their scores and Collegium’s army had not so much as loosed a shot in anger.