Out there to the east, the Second Army was growing close. Taki’s pilots had done their level best to slow them down, striking blow after blow against them, killing their soldiers, smashing their machines, and yet still they came, and soon there would be a reckoning. Stenwold did not want Paladrya to be in the city when that day came.
She saw it in his face. ‘It’s time, then?’
‘Wys is waiting.’ Tomasso spoke for him. ‘I mean, she’ll wait but. .’
‘Your enemies. .?’ Her eyes would not leave Stenwold’s.
‘We’ve beaten them back twice before. We’ll do so again, and maybe this time they’ll get the message,’ Stenwold told her. It was the same bluff sort of speech he had been using to assure Assemblers and magnates for the last couple of tendays. ‘But you’ve seen what they do, the damage they can cause.’ The city bore plenty of scars from the Imperial bombing raids. ‘I don’t want you here where you could get hurt.’ I don’t want to have to worry about you.
She nodded, ever the practical one. That was one more thing about her that tugged at his feelings.
She went with him to the docks, and stepped along one particular rickety pier that they both remembered from past adventures.
‘I know your first duty is to your city,’ she said, standing there and looking out across the limitless sea. ‘I know that if I place an obligation on you, to keep yourself safe, then that will come second. But even so. .’ Her smile was hesitant. ‘And when your people are safe, will you still. .?’
‘I will.’ With that dark, fathomless sea so plainly in evidence he had not thought he would have the courage to affirm his promise, but he found a curious weight was gone from him. All the crushing waters of the deep seemed a small thing, and he could picture the radiant light that was her home of Hermatyre. And simply the relief of not having every cursed man and woman in the city thinking I’m personally responsible to them for every little thing. No more committees. No Assembly. Seen like that, he was amazed he hadn’t already jumped into the water and started swimming.
Something was hanging there in the dark water, just visible as a great shape of coiled segments, large enough to scrape at the bottom, and with its rounded bulk almost breaking the waves. It was the Sea-kinden submersible run by Wys, Tomasso’s wife: their vital link between land and sea.
Paladrya leant towards Stenwold and kissed him almost chastely. ‘Cast off your enemies soon,’ she whispered, hanging there close to his ear for a moment longer, which told him she wanted to say more. He clasped her to him, suddenly aware of how delicate she was, feeling her wince as he touched her sunburned shoulders.
Then she stepped back and off the pier, plunging straight into the water like a knife, her Collegiate robes swirling about her. Anyone watching must think this some bizarre suicide, but of course her Art could draw life from the water as easily as from the air.
He watched the Sea-kinden vessel manoeuvring clumsily about, and then coast out into deeper water, sinking away until he could not make out any trace of it.
Then he turned back to the city, to his city, with its myriad demands.
There was a fair crowd of people waiting to see him when he arrived at the College. Some would have vital business about the war, others would have petty personal issues that were not worth his time, and often there was no way of telling between the two in advance. He noted a few faces that he knew he needed to speak to, made a mental list with them at the top, knowing that there would always be time-wasters who got through his guard and important people too modest to get themselves noticed. Shouldn’t Jodry be dealing with most of these? But that was unfair. The Speaker for the Assembly would have just as many suitors at his door. It was a by-product of Collegium’s participative government that everyone expected their voice to be heard. I’ll bet the Empress doesn’t get this.
He pushed through them, fending them off, telling them all in good time, asking for their patience; and they allowed him sufficient space to shoulder into the small study room he had commandeered. His careful list went to pieces then. Someone was already inside.
He noticed the woman only as he was sitting down. She had been standing very still, Art-shadowed: if she had been an assassin he would be a dead man. As it was, he froze halfway onto the chair seat, heart abruptly lurching as she made herself apparent to him.
He knew her, he realized. Her name was Akkestrae and she was one of the Felyal Mantids, their official spokesperson — Loquae as they called it. She wore an arming jacket and breeches, but they had been machine-made in the city, and the savagery in her had a near-transparent veneer of Collegiate urbanity, for all that she had come close to killing Stenwold once, under other circumstances. She was not one of the many refugees from the coastal hold that the Empire had destroyed, but had lived in Collegium for years, as leader of the little colony of expatriates that the city had accumulated. Now, though, she found herself responsible for a swollen community of angry, bitter exiles. She had stood alongside the Mynans and the Merchant Companies and the Vekken — the Vekken, for the world’s sake! — before Collegium’s concerned citizens, to demonstrate that the Felyen were committed to the defence of the city that had taken them in, but Stenwold was well aware that the Mantids in his city were an unhappy, unruly lot. He had been expecting something like this.
‘Come on, then, out with it,’ he invited, sitting down at last. It was hardly a diplomatic opening but these days he was too tired for pleasantries, and she would not have appreciated it anyway.
‘The Empire is nearing the city,’ she told him, which was nothing he did not already know. At his nod, she continued, ‘My people are going to attack them.’
No surprises there. ‘I know it’s hard for you to be patient, but you’ve seen the work we’ve put into fortifying this city, making the approach hazardous for them-’
‘War Master, we are not asking your permission. We are informing you.’
He nodded more slowly. ‘What will you achieve, precisely?’
‘We will shed the blood of our enemies,’ she explained simply. ‘We will kill Wasps and Spiders.’
‘And your people have tried to attack the Second Army twice, and each time-’
‘War Master.’ The words fell from her mouth like lead weights: just his title, but enough to silence him. She paused for a count of three, but he found nothing to say that would brave that quiet.
‘War Master,’ she said again, more gently, ‘we are not fit for fighting behind walls. It is not our way. It is without honour. We do not defend. We attack. We bring the fight to the foe. And if we die, then that is also our way. There is no better ending for my people than in blood, and with the blood of enemies on our blades. Your people have your patience and your preparations, your walls and excavations and engines. I respect all you have. I do not belittle it. I have seen your city and its marvels. You are building a future here that will be the envy of the world.’ He had not heard such words from her kinden ever before. There was a surprising passion in her voice, a bitterness that made a mockery of her words. ‘But it is not our future,’ she continued. ‘If my people, in pursuit of our own ways, can rid you of some of your enemies, then that is good. But we will attack. We will not die behind walls.’
‘When do you intend to-?’
‘Soon, very soon. Perhaps today we will march.’
‘Will you wait just a day?’ His mind was working very fast now. ‘I need to speak to Jodry. If you’re set on this course, then. . Will you wait?’
‘One day,’ she confirmed.
He came out of his office with her, to the perplexity of his suitors, and found a messenger to take word to Jodry, top priority. In the intervening time he began filleting through the mob, trying to separate wheat from chaff before the return message arrived.