The soldier before her looked about sixteen and bore the sash of the Students. ‘Can you fly?’ he demanded, without introduction.
The impact of her ordeal showed in her initial assumption that he was referring to her Art, but who would be asking after that? ‘I can pilot a Stormreader, if that’s what you mean.’ She got her legs over the side of the bed, feeling each muscle and joint resist her, and hoped her words were true.
‘Then you’re needed,’ the boy continued, and she was struck by the discontinuity of him speaking to her as if he was a blunt veteran.
‘The Farsphex are back? They’re bombing the city? What’s the situation there?’
Something in his face caved then, under the weight of everything she did not know. He had not expected to be the one to tell her.
He told her it all, and she just sat there, aghast. All around her, the news was spreading through the infirmary — and through the city, no doubt. How many would refuse to believe it? How many would be secretly relieved?
‘So what the piss do you want from me?’ she spat bitterly. ‘You want me flying loop-the-loops over the Second Army’s triumphant entry into the city?’
‘We want you out of the city, because your name is included on their list as an enemy of the Empire,’ the student told her flatly. ‘And we want you flying escort for if they come after.’
‘After? Look, did nobody tell you how to put your thoughts in order over at the College?’ But she was already scrabbling for her clothes and not finding them, standing wearing nothing but a shift before this adolescent, and she did not care, and he did not even blink at it. ‘Piss on it, get me some artificer’s overalls, at least. And some sort of goggles. What time is it?’
‘Three past midnight, and a half. There are Farsphex over the city, but we’ve a flight of Stormreaders ready to go up, enough to shield an airship. Everyone who we reckon’s on the Empire’s list, we’re trying to get them to Sarn.’
‘One airship?’
‘We have eleven Stormreaders able to fly, all with the new clockwork so they can last to Sarn,’ he told her. She did the calculations herself and nodded. Touch and go, if the Farsphex were up for it. Two airships would be indefensible, just handing the Empire an easy kill.
‘I’ll fly,’ she told him. ‘Get me something to wear and get me to an orthopter.’
Space aboard the Windlass had already run out. Jons Allanbridge had emptied his hold of everything but the water barrels in order to stuff people in, calculating weights and flight tolerances with each new passenger. His vessel was larger than its predecessor, but even so it had never been intended for bulk. He traded in small-volume valuable goods.
He had some of the Assemblers on board — a fraction of the number who had actually wanted to come, and only those who had played a significant part in the city’s defence. He had a similar slice of the College’s staff, mostly those who possessed artificing knowledge that nobody wanted the Empire getting hold of. The number turned away by the Company soldiers was large, so there was still an angry, frustrated crowd of the great and the good and the learned milling around the airfield, getting in everyone’s way.
The next figure was ascending, just as Jons guessed he had got as many down below as he could. The woman clambering up the rope ladder now — rather than waiting for the airfield’s hoist crane to swing up its platform — was well known to him.
‘Commander Kymene,’ he noted.
The Mynan leader did not refuse his hand, once she got to the rail, although he had thought she might. Now he saw her close up, she appeared as though she had already been under the Wasp interrogators for a week, bruised and tired and drawn.
‘My people.’ Her voice came in a rasp.
‘All on board, those who’ve come to me.’ There had been an outcry amongst those denied passage when they found that every surviving Mynan was getting out of Collegium on the Windlass, a substantial proportion of Allanbridge’s living cargo, standing virtually shoulder to shoulder below and a good dozen above decks still. It had been the whispered words of Stenwold Maker, Jons had heard, that had settled the matter. He had observed that, to the Wasps, Mynans were rebellious slaves, and that meant the crossed pikes for every single one — and probably worse for Kymene herself. Had anyone else advanced this argument, Jons guessed the Mynans would have been told to take their chances, but Maker’s will still bore just enough weight to carry the vote.
And where the pits is the man himself? For the War Master’s name most certainly headed up the list of passengers, but still he stayed away. False heroics, or. .? Not something Jons wanted to think about, but he’d heard how Maker was playing cards with death just about now, winning some hands and losing others.
Kymene stomped past him, then halted. ‘How long?’ she demanded.
‘Ask the Empire,’ Jons replied shortly. ‘Once they start paying notice, then we get the Stormreaders in the air and get moving. Or a single incendiary could end all our plans, right off.’
Her curt nod told him that she understood him perfectly.
And here was another row erupting on the approaching hoist platform — someone trying to bully their way on to the ship, no doubt, with their money or their College accredits or. .
The crane swung the hoist round, with them still arguing loudly, and Jons saw it was a small Beetle man in artificer’s canvas that looked as though he had been toiling in it for two days straight, and a woman with him holding a girl of no more than ten in her arms.
Willem Reader, Jons identified the man as the aviation artificer. How tired must I be that it even took me that long?
Reader had been arguing, but not on his own behalf, for he was very plainly marked as a man to be kept out of the Empire’s hands. Instead, he had been trying to get away from the Windlass, and indeed the two Company soldiers on the hoist alongside him seemed more a guard than an escort.
It was the woman’s voice that Jons heard most clearly, as the hoist reached the deck.
‘You’ll go,’ she told him. ‘Will, it’s not me the Engineering Corps will be hunting, to get at what’s in your head. It’s not me that the Sarnesh will need to modernize their air power. We’ll stay here, and we won’t even look the Wasps in the eye, and I’ll tell her every night that you’re coming back, and bringing an army with you. Look at me, Will!’
The Windlass was already groaning at the seams with its cargo, and all the Collegiates below decks had loved ones that they had been forced to part from. No exceptions, Jons knew, and he shook his head shortly when Reader looked to him.
‘Jen. .’ Reader managed.
‘Go,’ she told him, clasping him tightly, and then giving him a shove that propelled him onto the deck of the Windlass.
‘Get below, Reader,’ Jons snapped at the artificer, wondering if even one more man would fit. But then Kymene was shouting a warning, just as the hoist platform began to swing away.
Jons’s head snapped up. Engines — orthopter engines, but the Stormreaders’ clockwork didn’t make anything like so much noise.
‘Empire!’ Kymene was now yelling.
Oh, hammer and tongs. Jons found he could not move, hearing only the diving descent of the Farsphex, hearing the sudden panic in the crowd, waiting for the bombs.
The roaring sound peaked, and he saw sparks fly, heard screams from the crowd, the angry stammer that was a rotary piercer spun up to full speed. Then splinters flew from the deck, and one of the Mynans jerked and pitched over the rail.