But it is essential, because of the Empire: the Wasp Empire, which had not been standing still since the inconclusive end to the war. Latest news from Stenwold’s agents said that all of the renegade Imperial governors had been pacified and that, of the lands in Imperial hands before the war, only the Three-City Alliance and the Border Principalities remained unbowed. And when they come for us, we must not risk having an enemy to our west.
‘I have Stenwold Maker,’ Partreyn got out, forcing his voice over the hubub. There were some cheers, some groans, for Stenwold had never been shy of forcing his company on these men and women. Stenwold pushed himself to his feet, ready to descend and take the floor. Someone else was shouting, though, voice rising high over the general din.
‘No! No! This is quite intolerable!’ It was a bony Beetle-kinden man who looked slightly Stenwold’s senior, sitting near the front row of seats. Several of the men and women beside him began adding their voices to his. He clearly seemed to be the spokesman for some small faction of his own, but Stenwold could not place him.
Partreyn’s reply was entirely unheard by anyone further back, but the bony man caught it.
‘Three days!’ he shouted. ‘On the list, three days running, and no time to hear me speak! Do you think my business is not already so injured that I can spare time from it? Hammer and tongs, but you’ll hear me speak!’
‘Master Failwright!’ Partreyn’s ragged voice rose in pitch. ‘I cannot guarantee-’
‘Where’s Maker’s name on yesterday’s list, eh?’ Failwright, whoever he was, had a fine screeching voice for such debate. ‘Nowhere! Mine’s there, not his. Let him wait for the morrow then! Let me speak and be done! Is it so that just because a man goes to the wars, he must always have his way? Are we an Ant-kinden state now? I have business that the Assembly must hear!’
Partreyn looked up and down his list as though he were a seer consulting omens. Stenwold glanced back, and saw Drillen making motions that he should start his speech. And I could. I could just start shouting with the rest of them, until people started to listen – if they ever did. There were some others, mostly those who saw Stenwold or Drillen as rivals, who were now calling on Failwright to be given the floor. More though, whom Stenwold guessed as merchants and magnates who, presumably, opposed Failwright, were demanding that Stenwold speak. A few opportunists were now trying to demand that they speak instead. Had there been an elected Speaker, this would never have happened, but Partreyn had neither the formal nor the personal authority to control it.
At last the wretched Administrar looked towards Stenwold with a despairing expression, and Stenwold sat down, sparing his voice the battle. Drillen shot him an interrogating glance and Stenwold leant back to say, ‘There’s nothing that can’t wait for tomorrow, and I’d rather not lose what I have to say in the backbiting that’ll follow this. It’ll keep.’
Failwright, having abruptly been ceded the floor, seemed uncertain of what to do with it. He glowered defensively at the Assembly from beneath bushy eyebrows. The hum of conversation waxed.
‘So who is he?’ Stenwold asked.
‘Shipping, must be,’ Drillen decided. ‘That’s Ellan Broadrey and old Moulter on either side of him, and they’re both dock-merchants.’
Stenwold settled back, preparing himself for a piece of mercantile tedium. The commercial activities of Collegium’s magnates had always left a sour taste in his mouth, since there were enough of them who had made a fine profit from the Empire before the war.
Failwright glared around him with a belligerent scowl, as though expecting to be evicted at any moment. Stenwold could not recall ever seeing him before, and guessed he was that kind of Assembler who, once elected, never came to the Amphiophos unless his own interests were threatened. As they were under threat now, apparently.
‘Look at you all!’ Failwright snapped at the Assembly. His voice carried well, but it set Stenwold’s teeth on edge just to listen to it. ‘Playing at tacticians and diplomats, as if anyone honestly cared what Maker has to say about the abominable Ant-kinden.’
That caused a scatter of laughter, mostly forced from Stenwold’s opponents. For I have opponents, he admitted. It was another foot in the mire of politics, and currently it was Helmess Broiler and his adherents who led the chase. Broiler had been one of Jodry Drillen’s main opponents for the speakership until recently, when a series of debates and a scandal over cartography had set the man seriously back in his peers’ estimation.
‘What this city lives on is trade!’ Failwright went on. ‘We’re not Ant-kinden to march, or Spider-kinden to plot. Trade, curse you all! And we must act to protect our trade. Are you blind to what has been happening?’
‘What has been happening?’ Stenwold hissed back at Drillen.
The fat man shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said frankly. ‘Probably someone’s elbowing in on one of his monopolies.’
‘The wealth of Collegium is under threat!’ Failwright declared dramatically.
‘I’m doing fine, thank you!’ someone heckled from near where Helmess Broiler sat, to general amusement. Failwright spat out a few half-formed words, furiously, before regaining control of his tongue.
‘Oh, yes!’ he choked. ‘The rail-trade is very well indeed. The airships to Helleron, yes, yes, also well.’ His hands clutched and clawed. ‘Nobody even asks us how things go for us at the quays!’
‘Serves you right for hanging around the docks!’ another anonymous wit interjected.
Failwright was flushed with anger. ‘Two ships I’ve lost!’ he shouted. ‘And in the last three months, eleven merchantment out of Collegium, attacked or disappeared! If you want war, what of the war that pirates have declared on us?’
‘Pirates or the weather?’ someone from near Broiler called. Had old Thadspar still been Speaker, none of them would have dared, but the absence of his firm hand had given all the malcontents licence to jeer.
‘It is an attack aimed at our very heart!’ Failwright protested. ‘I have papers! I have documented it all precisely. Ships that are robbed. Ships that have been loosed upon by pirate vessels. Ships that simply vanish, no man knows where, with not a single living sailor left to speak of the lost cargo, the ruined investments.’ His eyes raked the uninterested Assembly. ‘It’s Master Maker you call for? Well let him apply himself to some matter of real import for a change!’ he shrilled. ‘I call on Master Maker to answer this! He who has been so loud in advertising his own imagined threats! What does he say to this?’
The Assembly virtually exploded in a mix of laughter and shouting, some telling Failwright to go away, others calling on Stenwold to stand. The idea of a clash between two firebrands obviously appealed to them.
Partreyn kept waving his hands, mouth open as he shouted inaudibly for quiet. At last the roar died down and left him rasping wretchedly. ‘You cannot demand answer from an individual,’ he croaked. ‘Only if he consents to answer, on behalf of the Assembly… Is that not so?’ The list of causes was wrung between his hands. ‘Master Maker?’
Stenwold took pity on him, standing up to declare, ‘I am no expert, save that I defended Master Failwright’s docklands from the Vekken, and-’
‘And saw most of it burned!’ Failwright yelled at him.
Stenwold found himself smiling despite himself at the man’s sheer persistence. ‘I would more readily answer questions on the Vekken, whether war or peace, than on this, but I’ll make a reply if Master Failwright wishes it,’ he said, and most of the chamber quietened enough to hear him. ‘We are a city of merchants, as Master Failwright observes. We are also a city of scholars. The two complement each other, in fact. We in this hall are gownsmen and townsmen magnates both. The distinction has always been there. We of the College hold our seats here through long tradition that holds that men wise enough to teach are also wise enough to govern. You of the town are elected by our citizens, and thus represent those men and women whose business and practice is successful and notable enough that you can gather the followers and spare the time to play your parts here. And, believe me, the burden of time never seemed to weigh as heavily as this afternoon.’