Quick and easy lessons on how to kill your own kin, Straessa thought. But, if he thought about it that way, Averic was letting nothing out.
‘And the range is nowhere near that of a crossbow or a snapbow,’ Averic went on, stalking about in front of them. ‘And you see — it’s scorched the wood and you must have felt how it’s not just flame but a real physical force there. Nevertheless, the shield has held, and good armour such as we’re issued with will hold as well, most of the time. That’s the sting of my people, and don’t forget it. But don’t forget that Aptitude has given you better weapons.’
‘He’s good at this,’ the Antspider admitted.
‘He hates it.’ Eujen was standing beside her in his purple sash, as chief officer of the Student Company. She had barely seen him these last few days, what with her shifts and his meetings, and now, having sought him out, she found instead someone she did not quite know.
Averic was going on to explain about the composition of an Imperial army, the likely tactics of the Light Airborne and infantry. Straessa shook her head.
‘It doesn’t feel right somehow,’ she said.
‘He told me that he’s made his stand now,’ Eujen murmured. ‘I think he wants to prove himself to. . to them. To show them he’s on their side.’
‘I think that’s a losing battle.’
‘Oi, Antspider!’
A loud, slightly slurred voice had cut across Averic’s patient lecturing, drawing all eyes. A gaunt Ant-kinden was striding over to them, seemingly on the point of lurching off balance at every step, and yet making swift progress despite it. Chief Officer Madagnus of the Coldstone Company was paying a visit.
Straessa shot an apologetic look at Eujen.
‘Whose eyes did you inherit, halfbreed?’ Madagnus demanded.
Straessa found herself stiffening in outrage, biting back hasty, angry words. Oh, surely she had come in for that sort of abuse before, and worse, and told herself none of it mattered, but she had been in Collegium for over a year now, and if people looked down their noses at miscegenation, still they practised what they preached enough not to give rein to their inner bigots. Madagnus was drunk, though, and more so than usual.
With an exercise of will she restricted her response to, ‘Chief?’
He stopped in front of her. ‘See in the dark much, Antspider?’
‘Some, Chief.’
‘Madagnus, what do you want?’ Eujen demanded and Straessa flinched inwardly, waiting for an explosion. But she was thinking of her friend as being no more than he had been when a vociferous student. Of course, now, Eujen ranked alongside the man, one chief officer to another, and a shifty, shamefaced look came over the Ant’s face.
‘Looking for my officer here, Leadswell,’ he explained, a little steadier. ‘Got some work for her.’
‘I’m off duty, Chief,’ Straessa put in, but he spoke over her.
‘Nobody’s off duty, right now — not even me. Ma Padstock herself slapped me awake and hauled me out of bed to tell me that. You see in the dark? Good for you. They’re wanting volunteers like you from all Companies. Going to make a go of it by night, Padstock says. She’ll come for you, too, Leadswell, you just mark me.’ He found a crate of armour that Eujen had wheedled out of the armouries and sat down on it in a mess of angular shoulders, knees and elbows. ‘Go find the Company, Antspider. Go fish for volunteers who can see in the dark. Have them ready by the third hour after noon, urgent as urgent. You see in the dark, Leadswell?’
Eujen shook his head wordlessly.
‘Me neither.’ Madagnus levered himself upright and turned about, before striding off with as much dignity as he could muster.
‘How did your lot ever come to choose him?’ Eujen wondered aloud, even as Averic came over to join them.
‘He’s a good artificer even when drunk. A really good one if you can get him sober. And brave, too. Besides he was one of the few who would stand.’ Straessa felt abruptly angry with herself for defending the man. ‘Anyway, I didn’t cast my lot for him, but he’s the one we’ve got.’
‘A night attack?’ Averic pondered, and then, ‘Will you. .?’
‘I can’t. .’ She felt Eujen’s hand on her shoulder, and leant herself against him despite all the Student Company gawking. ‘I can’t ask people to volunteer if I won’t go myself. I just can’t.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘How about you, Gereth? You see in the dark.’
‘Better than a Moth,’ the Woodlouse replied.
‘And you can spare time from your whatever that you’re working on?’
‘The rational bow?’ He shrugged his hunched shoulders. ‘You think I’d let you go off and get yourself lost in the dark?’
She reached out and squeezed his arm. ‘Thought not. So, let’s go and find the troops and see who’s up for it.’ She kept her voice deliberately light, but it was a long moment before she would shrug off Eujen’s hand.
The darkening sky was crowded with slow-moving, rounded shadows, as though all the Masters of the College had come together to construct the world’s grandest orrery. Watching those vast shapes circle and glide lazily was a curiously awe-inspiring sight, even for Collegium. Straessa had never before seen so many airships together.
‘Of course, they’ve rather overdone it,’ she pointed out. ‘Unless we get one each or something.’
She exaggerated but, even so, the Company volunteers would have fitted easily aboard one of the larger dirigibles. The great passenger liner the Sky Without, for example, could have held every one of them in high style until it was time to fight.
‘Forty-three Mynans, all explosives-trained I think,’ Gerethwy confirmed. ‘And I make it two hundred and forty-seven Company soldiers.’
‘The Empire must be shaking in its sandals,’ the Antspider remarked, desperately trying to be droll. They had gathered in the broad square that had once fronted the Amphiophos, Collegium’s seat of government, before the Imperial bombs had turned the place into a sea of rubble, toppled columns and walls rising like broken teeth.
A strange cross-section of the city’s defenders, this. It was the requirement to be able to fight at night that had winnowed them down to this few, rather than any lack of courage. Here was a good number of Fly-kinden, who made small targets but could pull a trigger as well as anyone. Here were Spider-kinden renegades and the odd urbanized Mantis. Here were Moths who had evidently turned their backs on their heritage; two Roaches, three Scorpion-kinden, the Dragonfly Castre Gorenn. The rest were Beetles, the lucky or unlucky few, who had manifested the rare Art of shrugging off darkness entirely to see the midnight world in shades of grey.
They were all armed and armoured as best their city could equip them: buff coats stuffed with rags to slow a spinning snapbow bolt, overlain with breastplates and lobster-tail helms now being enthusiastically blacked up to stop the wan moonlight glinting on them. The Apt amongst them carried snapbows, the more skilled amongst the Inapt bore bows, and the rest made do with spear and sword.
‘Here you are.’ Suddenly, from nowhere, a small figure tugged at Straessa’s belt, making her twitch: Sartaea te Mosca, Fly-kinden lecturer in Inapt studies, possible magician, and healer. ‘How did I know I’d find you here?’
‘Eujen told you?’ Straessa suggested. She had a momentary surfacing of unbidden memories: nights spent in Sartaea’s rooms, their diminutive hostess filling each glass as it was emptied; evenings at Raullo Mummers’s studio — burned out now — back when the war was just a thing that people talked about; te Mosca, after the battle, frantically trying to save as much as possible of Gerethwy’s maimed hand.
‘What’s going on?’ Gerethwy asked. ‘Or is this it? Are we so desperate that we’re going to send a handful of soldiers off against the Second, travelling in technology that the last war showed us was useless?’