Stenwold lifted his head with visible effort, and a shudder went through him, a sign of the physicians’ serums still at work within his body, either to mend or to ruin him.
Jodry’s eyes flicked to Helmess Broiler once more. The man was keeping a keen eye on proceedings, but still he made no sign that he intended to speak. Instead another man stood up, across the gathering, some merchant magnate from the look of him, and he was speaking before Jodry could invite him to.
‘Speaker, War Master.’ No ranting agitator this, just a sad, worn-down man on the wrong side of middle age. ‘We know this. We all know the stakes. You put this war before us, and we went into it with our eyes open. I voted for it myself. And we’ve accomplished so much. We broke their air power, and we cast them back the first time. We fought them on the field, and we’ve made their lives miserable all the way back here. And yet they’re here. We’ve done everything, and they’re still here.’
He had the whole Assembly listening, and Eujen wondered whether this man had ever before enjoyed such a rapt audience.
‘I lost a warehouse to their bombs,’ the Assembler continued. ‘Others lost their homes, their workplaces. Many lost their lives. And when we went out to meet them on the field. . well, there were plenty who didn’t come back. And how many young men and women have gone up in one of those Stormreaders, never to land safely?’ The tremble in his voice, valiantly fought down, spoke of some personal loss. ‘There are no Felyen left. None. An entire culture, yet they broke against the Second Army, and now they’re no more — not their home, nor any of them, not a one. And the killing at the wall just today, my friends, my children. .’ For a moment he did lose control, his voice cracking and the raw, molten grief glaring out from within it. But then he paused for breath and was his own man again, forcing all that terrible depth of loss away, holding it at arm’s length. ‘And, yes, we can make them pay for every street. We can fight them for each house. But they will destroy those streets and those houses, just to take them from us. They will destroy the whole city, if they must, if we will not give it to them. Look at what they have done so far, and look at everything they have taken from us. Masters, we do not have so much to lose, now. The men and women whose lives we would throw at them, there are not so very many of them left. Please. .’
‘What are you saying?’ Jodry demanded, but the man was already breaking down, sitting with his face in his hands, no more words left in him. The Speaker looked about, trying to assess the mood of his fellows. ‘Listen to me. Listen!’
‘A vote!’ A new voice, crisp and clear and hard-edged.
Jodry turned to face his old enemy. Helmess Broiler had chosen his moment.
‘A vote!’ the man repeated, now standing. ‘Come, you’ve had your say, Jodry, and the War Master has had his, by surrogate. And we’ve all heard what Master Wisden has had to say. Furthermore, we’ve all been out there! We’re seen it, the war and its leavings. So let’s bring this to a close and vote. Do we take what mercy General Tynan has offered us? Choose wisely, or you may not get another chance to wear these robes.’
There were many there who looked to Stenwold, but the War Master just stared at the ground, and the Fly-kinden beside him stood mute, and at the last Jodry could put it off no longer.
Before nightfall the Assembly of Collegium, by a reasonable majority, had agreed to accept what terms the Empire might offer, word to be sent to General Tynan at first light. The war was over.
Part Three
‘Through the Gate’
Thirty
In the air hung curtains of dawn mist and Che could hear, all around, an army standing quietly, so absurdly quietly. She heard the creak of leather and the scrape of metal, the stamp and snort of horses and the click of chitin. Such small noises, and yet she knew that there were thousands assembled here, a great war-host gathered on a strange, sparsely wooded hillside in the half-light, waiting to fight the greatest battle of their lives. They had come here to save the world.
‘History will sing of this day for all the centuries to come,’ said a voice from beside her, almost conversationally. ‘We will be heroes, every one of us.’
‘Let us hope history has the chance,’ from another voice, but receding, and she hurried after it, into the mist that was even now beginning to thin. The shadows of the soldiers all around her were filling out with details. Mantis-kinden, she saw, rank on rank of them, and all clad in intricately crafted mail of chitin and steel. She cowered before their massed regard, expecting any moment for one of them to call her out. She did not belong here, that much was plain, and Mantis-kinden were notorious for their intolerance of intruders.
But they ignored her, as if beneath their notice, and yet, as she stepped amongst them, she felt there were memories submerged somewhere in her mind. . Had she not had dealings with the Mantids only recently, and from a position of strength?
The realization that she was dreaming came creeping on her, not quite confirmed yet but well on its way. She had been through too many visions and wonders to be held in ignorance for too long. For now, though, she followed the two speakers through the Mantids’ silent ranks, because they were her only point of reference.
‘We have driven them this far,’ said that the first voice, so rich and smooth, a voice of character and power. ‘Across the world, we have driven them. They have brought all their armies together to face us, in their last stand. When we break them now, they must come to terms. Even a hate as mad as theirs must know limits.’
‘Must it?’ The other voice was female, older and more melancholy, and Che had caught up with them now, stepping absurdly close because now she had understood that nobody here would notice her. She was inviolate because she was only an afterthought, a spectator to someone else’s thoughts.
When she saw him, that first speaker, she knew whose thoughts they were. He was a Moth-kinden, but nothing like the breed she knew from Tharn or Dorax. Tall and broad-shouldered from a life of action, with a long sword hanging low and horizontal behind him, everything about him spoke warrior. His white stare was fierce and proud, and when it turned on her she felt a jolt of contact even though he was gazing straight through her. His features sent a shiver through her, too: something in them of Achaeos, her dead lover. Here were the grey skin and blank eyes of his kinden, yes, but more than that. Here was the face of a man who had lived and fought, known triumph and defeat, and had conquered both. Infinitely human, fallible and yet a man who had faced his own failings.
He was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen. Perhaps only Salme Dien had been a more beautiful specimen of humanity.
He wore a hauberk of chitin scales that fell to his knees, with a loose, open robe slung over it, and in the crook of his arm rested a high, crested helm set with glittering iridescent wings, the very picture of a warrior prince from the distant past, back when even the Days of Lore were young. And he was a magician, too, for she could smell it on him.
Argastos in life, seen through his own recollections.
The woman beside him was taller, hunched and bald, her pasty skin banded with grey: a Woodlouse-kinden but a warrior as well. Che had never seen the like, for she was encased in great articulated lames of bronze, a metal carapace that must weigh two hundred pounds or more, and yet the woman moved easily inside it, for all her apparent years.