She helped Averic to his feet. ‘What’s Eujen doing?’
‘Sending me to help you, last time I saw him,’ the Wasp student replied with a bleak, brief smile. ‘The Student Company is the front line now. No idea what Fealty Street are doing, but Maker’s Own and the Vekken took the worst of it. I need to get back to Eujen.’
‘If I know him, he’s watching us right now,’ Straessa remarked. ‘And you need a surgeon.’ She sounded so very calm, and inside her something was yammering, We’ve lost the gate, we’ve lost the wall!
Down at the foot of the wall, her soldiers broke quickly across the open ground, before reforming between the buildings across the square. Straessa was one of the last down, running alongside Kymene and her Mynans, as snapbow bolts lanced past them. Once in cover, they could look back and see the Wasps and their Spider allies claiming the wall a slice at a time, descending on any remaining defenders and routing or killing them. Four Sentinels stalked in through the gateway and created a cordon between them that no Collegiate felt ready to brave, whilst behind them soldiers fortified their position, erecting temporary barricades out of the material of the gates themselves.
Straessa and the others waited and watched, and above them Eujen’s Student Company watched too, waiting for the inevitable moment when the Wasp tide rolled forwards and swept into the streets, and the real battle for Collegium would begin. But the Second Army simply secured its entry to the city, thronged the wall-top with its soldiers, and waited, too.
Then, with evening beginning to veil the sky in the west, a lone Fly-kinden in Imperial uniform stepped forth, somewhat hesitantly, from the newly established Imperial lines and walked out, closed fists held up, with a message for the Assembly.
They convened in the ruins of the Amphiophos, as before, but in sparser ranks. Some had fallen on the wall or at the gate, no doubt. Others perhaps did not want to be noted as a member of that august body, in case there should be some Imperial scrutiny of the minutes of this latest gathering.
Jodry Drillen, a great, baggy weight of a man, robes awry and dirty, eyes shadowed by lack of sleep, stood up before them, a neat little slip of paper in his hand, barely large enough to be called a scroll. He was scanning the faces of the attendees, as if seeking allies.
Eujen Leadswell watched him. Unlike the elected representatives of the city, who had mostly bowed to protocol sufficiently to make some attempt at robing up, he remained in his armour, buff coat and breastplate, with his helm tucked beneath his arm. Beside him was Remas Boltwright of the Fealty Street Company, who had somehow failed to lead his soldiers into battle at all, waiting in reserve all that time for a call to arms that, he said, had never come. The two of them — and neither of them exactly veterans — were here representing the armed might of Collegium. Kymene had refused to attend;Taki, spokeswoman for the pilots, was in the infirmary; and the rest of the Company chief officers were dead, as was Termes of Vek.
Eujen saw Jodry’s lips move, as though the man was rehearsing, but someone shouted out, ‘Can’t hear you!’ — an echo of the old Assembly, if there ever was one — and the Speaker’s head snapped up. For a moment his eyes darted about, and Eujen knew exactly who he was looking for, and which notable absence was weighing on everyone’s minds. But finally he spoke.
‘General Tynan of the Second has sent us an ultimatum,’ he explained. ‘We are to surrender, he demands.’
He did not seem inclined to elaborate, but his eyes kept sliding off to one figure out of many, a man Eujen recognized as Helmess Broiler, ever Jodry’s political opponent. Broiler was sitting quite peaceably, however, making no attempt to leap up and rouse the rabble.
‘Terms, Drillen!’ someone else called from the back. ‘What terms?’
‘Does it matter?’ Drillen challenged the questioner. ‘Surrender our city, really? Are we countenancing such a thing?’
‘Speaker, at least tell us what the Wasp wrote,’ said a woman Eujen recognized from the Artificing faculty of the College.
Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘If we surrender now, then our soldiers will be allowed to lay down their arms and return to their trades without sanction, nor will there be repercussions against ourselves — us Assemblers — save for some small list of names who are counted enemies of the Empire.’ He smiled weakly. ‘I am proud to find my own name there. My mother once said I would amount to nothing.’
Some three or four raised a smirk at that. No more.
‘Added to this, the Assembly will be permitted to advise the new governor. . the usual assurances that Collegium will become a valued part of their Empire, and. . that Imperial rule will be imposed on our streets with no more force than proves necessary.’ As he uttered the words, his voice shrank until it seemed just a ghost of itself, but his gaze, shifting about him at his peers, was firm. ‘Do I need to recount to you what they say will happen if we resist? I’m sure you can imagine their threats — to our soldiers and our citizens and ourselves.’
Several Assemblers had stood, wishing to speak, and Jodry’s thick finger had picked out one — one of his allies perhaps — but two or three others were already speaking over the top of each other, demanding that Jodry tell them everything, demanding that the Empire come and speak in person, one even swearing defiance. Eujen looked from face to face, and abruptly it seemed that everyone there was talking together — trying to hush each other or shouting at each other, or most of them shouting at Jodry. Suddenly they all seemed to be on their feet — with even a scuffle between two elderly Assemblers on the far side of the ruin. There was a kind of chorus, amidst the chaos, that came to Eujen’s ears. It was a tally of grief and human cost. He heard people demanding if Jodry knew how many had died, how much had been destroyed — their levelled surroundings were suddenly no longer a warning to never forget, but a reminder of just how much the Empire had made them pay already. Jodry had his hands extended for calm and his lips moved, but not a word reached Eujen’s ears intact.
And then, finally, he could be heard. ‘Please, Masters, please!’ A ripple of silence passed over the face of the ruin, touching each in turn, until only Jodry’s voice troubled the quiet.
Stenwold Maker had arrived.
He was supported by two members of Eujen’s own Student Company, and they were making a crippled snail’s pace of it. He looked as ghastly as an exhumed corpse — not just from the mass of bandage swathing his chest and shoulder, but there were livid, angry spots like plague-marks blotching his skin. The Faculty of Medicine had been working on him as recently as an hour ago, and Eujen knew they had been trying all manner of serums and alchemy on the worst injured, where experimental failure would be unlikely to make things worse. Eujen had heard of a few notable successes out of their treatments, and the fact that Stenwold Maker was here, however close to death he looked, seemed proof of that.
All eyes were on him as he shuffled forwards and was lowered onto a tumbled stone, where he sat like a dead weight, staring at the ground. A Fly-kinden man — Eujen recognized Laszlo, whom he had encountered briefly during the battle — dropped down to stand beside him, looking the worse for wear himself, bruised and dirty and deathly weary.
‘We cannot give up our independence,’ the Fly spoke into the silence, and Eujen could just see Stenwold’s lips moving and prompting him. ‘Mar’Maker says — listen to me! — what you’ve lost up till now is nothing. . Yes, they have killed your people and destroyed your homes but, if you let them, they will destroy your freedom. Collegium was a slave city once, he says. . slaves of the Moths, before the revolution. For five centuries this city’s been free, the jewel of the world. . in trade, in learning, in the philosophy of its government,’ he stumbled a little over the words, but his voice sounded strong and clear. ‘Give in to the Wasps, he says, and you will end that era. You will close that book of history, and you’ll let the Wasps write the next.’