‘And you?’
Stenwold was silent for a long while. ‘Perhaps this is what my life has been leading to. If I was a Wasp commenting on the life of Sten Maker, I’d say it was a fitting end.’
‘This isn’t just about you,’ Eujen pointed out, clearly nettled.
Stenwold leant heavily on his stick, hearing it creak. ‘I’m glad I can walk with some confidence now,’ he remarked.
‘Well, I’m happy for you, Master Maker,’ Eujen replied acidly.
‘It means I could walk out of the College doors and hand myself over to the Wasps.’
The silence between the two men dropped like a curtain, and held for some time,
‘I’m right there at the top of their list,’ Stenwold observed. ‘I’ve earned that, frankly. I know there are others within these walls they want — probably everyone by now — but I’m the man whose name has been on the lips of the Rekef for ten years. I’m the notorious War Master. And our one bargaining counter is that, if they want to come and get me, they know full well my loyal followers will make them pay in bodies. And the Wasps are not quite so heedless of their lives that they would welcome the chance to cover every inch of this building in blood when there is another way.’
Eujen’s expression was almost frightened, as he looked on Stenwold. ‘And when the Rekef get you?’
‘Then I’ll regret we ever had this conversation. If I don’t get the chance to do myself in first, of course. I’ve not had the chance to find out how quickly I can open my own veins, but there’s always a first time. But if taking me alive will buy anything for everyone here, then I will go, Eujen. Because I am responsible.’
‘Again, it’s not just about you-’
‘Eujen.’ A reprimand within the utterance of the name, not War Master to soldier but College Master to student. ‘I have been fighting the Wasps for more than a decade, and I have been inciting my city to fight them, also. I believed that it was the right thing to do. I am the man who built the Lowlands’ resistance to the Empire. And, you know, it seemed to work. It seemed. .’ His arm was shaking, with the effort of just standing there, but he took a deep breath and calmed it. ‘But they came back, despite everything. They kept coming, swarm after swarm. And I can’t imagine how it must be to be General Tynan, just throwing an army at a problem over and over, machines and men and all the bloody waste of it, until you win. And if I’d known that before, known what an Imperial general — an Imperial army — was really like, then what would I have done?’
He looked at the silent Eujen and managed an ashen smile.
‘And some idiot student was saying only recently, should we not have been treating with the Wasps, working on them, trying to work with them, to change them from within rather than resisting them from without. Maybe someone should have listened, eh?’
‘Master Maker,’ Eujen said, almost a whisper. ‘I don’t know. I no longer know what’s right.’
‘I think we can both drink to that.’ Stenwold took a shuddering breath. ‘You yourself have to bargain with them, Eujen. Tell them they can have me. If they. . any concession is better than none. Tell them I’ll come out alive, if they let everyone else just go home. I don’t know. . Tell them something.’
Eujen stared at him for a long time, and then looked away. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘You need to go sit down now, War Master.’
The sky was already heavy with evening when Serena dropped back into the College courtyard. She had been gone the best part of an hour and Eujen had been as taut as a wire every minute of it, wondering if he had sent her to her death.
‘Right, Chief,’ she said to him, sounding shaky. ‘Well, that went about as well as it was ever going to.’
She had not been the first to volunteer as messenger to the Empire. Castre Gorenn had put herself forward, but Eujen reckoned the Wasps would shoot a Dragonfly far quicker than they would a Fly-kinden and, besides, the Commonweal Retaliatory Army was nobody’s idea of diplomatic.
‘Report,’ he told her, fully aware that these might be some of the last words he ever spoke as chief officer of the Student Company.
‘Their officer in charge will meet with one of our leaders, Chief. To talk terms.’
It would not be fair to say that a great weight fell from Eujen’s shoulders, but at least it shifted position. ‘Now?’
‘Well, I don’t think they’re going anywhere until dawn, you know, but I reckon they’re expecting you sooner than that,’ Serena observed.
Eujen nodded. He wished now that he presented a better image: a breastplate that was clean and undented, a buff coat that wasn’t holed and stitched. Perhaps a more heroic physique. Perhaps a better man entirely, to handle this more adeptly.
But there was only him.
‘Then I think it’s time I went. Get ready to open the gates. Close them the moment I’m through.’
‘Eujen!’
He closed his eyes. He had hoped to avoid this moment.
The Antspider stormed across the courtyard towards him. ‘Have you been avoiding me, you child? What are you doing out here?’
He just looked at her. In fact he drank her in, those halfbreed features that were beautiful, to him, even flushed with annoyance, and the way she carried herself, the long-limbed grace of her.
‘I’m going to talk to the Wasps. I won’t be long.’
She made a strange noise that had probably started off as a word.
‘I’m going to see what can be salvaged. I’ve got a few things to bargain with. Otherwise nobody’s going to do well out of tomorrow, but least of all us here.’
He saw the sea-change pass across her face, Straessa automatically reaching for antagonism, because that was how she dealt with the world when she caught it cheating. ‘You’re doing what, now? Tell me I misheard you, Eujen, because that sounds about the most stupid thing I ever heard said on College grounds — and, believe me, that’s including the entire philosophy department.’
He did not smile. He denied her that. ‘The city hasn’t risen, Straessa. The Wasps are mopping up the Spiders right now and, even without that, they’ve got the men and the machines to beat us. It hasn’t worked.’ He said it softly, reasonably. He knew it would provoke her but he could not help that.
‘And you putting yourself in the hands of the Wasps will make everything all right, will it?’
‘Of course not, but it might help. There are lives at stake. If I can do anything. . They made me chief officer, Straessa. You remember, you brought me the note yourself. I’m responsible.’
She bit at her lip, and he thought she would break, but then she spat out, ‘You intellectual cripple, Leadswell. You self-righteous turd. And it’s all about you, is it? You nobly sacrifice yourself, and that somehow helps, does it?’
‘I’m not sacrificing-’
‘Bollocks, you aren’t.’ Her fists were clenched, perhaps to keep her hands from straying to her sword. ‘Anyway, I’m coming-’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s an order, Officer Antspider. From your Chief.’
She looked at him as though he had stabbed her. ‘You think I’m soldier enough for that to work?’
‘Straessa, don’t take this the wrong way, but what would I do with you there? You’d stab the first Wasp you saw of major or above, and piss on the whole thing. Look at you. I can’t rely on you. You stay here.’ Sorry, I’m so sorry, but you’re not coming with me, not this time. Forgive me later, but believe me now.
She was trying to speak, and failing, the intended words just coming apart in her mouth, and he saw her shaking, shoulders, hands, all of her. In the lamplight her eyes were bright and shining.
‘Open the gates,’ Eujen ordered, and he heard the bars lifted off, the creak of reinforced wood. Stepping through them was a hard thing, perhaps the hardest thing he had ever done.