‘Helmess Broiler?’ Serena appeared all bafflement. ‘Why would he be here?’
‘Why the piss would I know?’ the sergeant demanded. ‘Have you seen him or haven’t you? He came this way, for sure.’
‘Not a sight of him,’ Serena insisted and, at the man’s suspicious look, added, ‘What?’
He moved in closer, forcing her to skitter back a couple of paces. ‘You’re lucky one of yours is being trusted like he is. If he’s been cooking up some business with you here, then you’ll be having a Wasp as the Speaker of your whatever-it-is, and no mistake.’
Serena’s incredulity was unfeigned. ‘Believe me, we’re not covering up for Helmess Broiler. He’s not popular around here.’
That last sounded altogether too heartfelt for Gorenn’s liking, especially given that Broiler’s mortal remains were still suspended from a beam inside, but the sergeant seemed to take it in good humour.
‘Sounds as it should be. You see him, tell his sergeant to get the man straight back to command. I imagine you’ll be glad to be rid of him, to hear you.’
Serena nodded. ‘You know how it is, Sergeant,’ and he certainly seemed to, and Gorenn saw Serena’s wings flicker into being to carry her back to the wall. But there were more Wasps suddenly, a half-dozen running out of the machine shops down Faculty Row, and Gorenn could hear a noise — a sort of liquid, rumbling sound — that at first she did not realize emerged from human throats.
‘Sergeant, trouble!’
‘Report like a soldier!’ the sergeant snapped back. He had forgotten Serena but she lingered down there beside him, because this was obviously news.
‘Looks like some of the locals are having a go, Sergeant. There’s a mob — maybe two score — and it’s all artificers’ workshops down there, so who knows what they’ve got.’
The sergeant swore. ‘Go, contain the situation if you can, pull back to here if you can’t. I’ll fetch more some men.’ At his brief gesture, the soldiers were hurrying back the way they had come, the sergeant’s four alongside them. Left alone, the Wasp’s own wings flicked out and. .
Gorenn shot him. Coming up from behind the cover of the wall in one smooth motion, she lanced an arrow straight through his open mouth, then dropped back on one knee to fit another shaft to the string.
‘You. . what. .?’ Serena turned a pale face up towards her, showing a spatter of blood across one cheek. ‘We were just-’
‘Go tell the War Master they’ve started without him,’ Gorenn ordered her, even though the diminutive woman had been an officer not long before. ‘They’re all still inside there. Beetles, always talking at the wrong times. Go tell them it’s started.’
‘You think Helmess Broiler has started a rebellion?’ Tynan demanded.
Colonel Cherten shook his head hastily. ‘It’s the last thing I’d believe. . but the fact remains that we can’t find him, and our men have just been thrown out of everywhere within three streets from the College library — with casualties. There are Beetles out in force, and most of them armed — not with snapbows, mostly, but they don’t lack for crossbows, and some have worse.’
‘You’ve sent in enough men to form a perimeter?’
‘General, yes, but it may not be enough. We’ve seen this sort of thing before in cities throughout the Empire. The next insurgence could come anywhere across the city.’
Tynan considered this information. ‘Around the College, you say?’
‘From the Airborne reports, some of the College buildings are at the heart of it. They are at least passably defensible.’
‘Get some artillery in, including some of the wall engines we took from the Collegiates. Push in and break it open.’
‘General, we can’t,’ Cherten protested.
Tynan fixed him with a cold stare. ‘Justify yourself, Colonel.’
‘We have orders to retrieve certain texts from the library. The Empress herself has given me a list of topics. . It’ll mean a month’s work or more for the new governor, but it’s imperative that-’
Cherten was babbling too quickly, too nervously, and Tynan silenced him with a look.
‘Cherten, we were bombing this place from the air not so long ago. What would have happened if the College had caught a charge and burned to the ground?’
The intelligence officer swallowed. ‘Then perhaps we’d have found ourselves on crossed pikes. I don’t know, General, but these orders came via Captain Vrakir, after you were ordered to press forwards. The Empress. .’ He glanced around, but the two of them had Tynan’s recently appropriated quarters to themselves. ‘Her orders are. . difficult, inexplicable sometimes. The privilege of her exalted position, no doubt. But they’re clear, in the main. Even if we can contain the fighting to the College, if we can disperse the troublemakers on the streets, then we will have to storm the place in the old way, with soldiers forcing the entrances.’
Tynan growled, deep in his throat, but nodded. ‘Mycella has gone to mobilize her people. She reckons they might be better at street-to-street skirmishing than ours — certainly come nightfall I reckon they’ll play all sorts of games with the locals. But for our initial response. . Collegium has such good wide-open streets.’
Cherten regarded him steadily. ‘I see, General. How many?’
‘Three Sentinels should make them think again. I heard good reports of their effectiveness in Myna, when the Eighth was pushing into the city. Get me grenadiers and nailbowmen as well, and we can make best use of our snapbows if they’re short of them. Men on roofs, men in windows — make every street a killing ground. Anyone who isn’t fleeing when they see the black and gold, they’ve earned themselves a death. Who’s this?’
‘General.’ Captain Vrakir pushed inside, looking pale enough that Tynan fully expected the news that half Collegium was up in arms with a Sarnesh relief force coming over the horizon.
‘Speak, man.’
‘Orders from the Empress, sir.’ Vrakir thrust a folded scroll forwards, its seal broken.
‘Just in?’
‘No, sir, I’ve had them with me since I first came to you, but not to be delivered to you unless. .’ And there Vrakir faltered for a moment before regaining his composure. ‘They are relevant now, sir.’
Tynan looked ready to question that, but Cherten cleared his throat to forestall him. ‘General, he is Red Watch. He is the mouthpiece of the Empress.’
The general frowned. ‘I know that, but-’
‘General, these things happen now. Check the seals on the orders if you doubt them, but this isn’t the first time the Red Watch have suddenly brought new orders despite. . Despite.’
Vrakir was still proffering his scroll, and Tynan snatched it from him irritably, opening it and carefully checking the seals and signatures. True enough, it had all the marks of the Empress’s own hand, and from the look of it, it must have been drafted when she was still with the Eighth Army.
He read the contents.
Cold silence followed.
Cherten was watching him, he knew. Vrakir’s eyes were practically lancing into his face, but then the man already knew what these orders were. Beyond them both waited the Second Army, Tynan’s people, thousands of loyal servants of the Empire. Of the Empress.
He could decode the tension in Vrakir now: not at the orders themselves, or however they had come to him, but waiting for Tynan’s reaction. And the general wondered idly what precautions the man had taken, for surely he must have taken them.
Who has he turned against me?
He re-read the orders carefully, even though their wording was brief and plain and clear, admirably so given their sudden and inexplicable appearance.
‘The Empress orders. .’ And there he stopped. Am I not permitted to ask why? Can I not question this? It is madness. It is insane.
But of course it made perfect sense, even the timing, save for their current complication involving the Collegiates. There were wider currents of Imperial foreign policy than he was aware of, after all. And if he had been thinking more clearly before now, he might even have expected something like this.