The Air War (14 page)

Then Padstock lowered the snapbow with a sound of disgust. ‘Fine. come with us. See what Drillen makes of you, Wasp-lover. Just you, though. The rest of your menagerie stays here.’
Her eyes flicked across Gerethwy and the Antspider, and then settled on Raullo Mummers. ‘Quite the nest of dissension you keep here, Master Mummers. An artist should have a better feel for
the mood of his public. Now, let’s move. And you can leave the toy sword here. I doubt you’ll find a use for it where we’re going.’

Eujen cast the Antspider a familiar look – she knew it well from his turns in the debating circles, or stepping into the ring at the Prowess Forum. She had to tell herself, over and over,
that this was Collegium, after all. People did not get
vanished
in Collegium. They did not die at the whims of their betters. That was reserved for the Spiderlands or the Empire, or for
foreigners in an Ant city-state. The whole point of Collegium, which had drawn her across half the Lowlands with nothing but a haphazard education, a pocket of stolen gemstones and a cocky attitude
to recommend her, was that its people lived in peace, free from fear and oppression.
Eujen must be the future, not Padstock. If Padstock is the future of this city then there will be nothing
left recognizable. Like Eujen says, we can’t kill all of what we are just to survive.

Then they were gone, the soldiers, Padstock, Eujen and Averic, marching off into the night, and Gerethwy was relaxing by careful degrees, releasing all that stored power that his lanky frame hid
so well, and Mummers was hunching over, muttering to himself and peering at the door to see what damage had been done to it.

Jodry Drillen was found sitting at his desk, some unfinished document of state beneath the nib of his reservoir pen, a bowl of wine half-finished at his left hand, and still
wearing the creased robes that he had worn to that day’s session of the Assembly. He was to be found thus so often that a number of his associates had compared notes and knew full well that
it was a studied pose that he adopted quite deliberately: the elder statesman at work for the city’s good at all hours. If he had a great many visitors of an evening, then the half-bowls of
wine he was required to drain left him positively light-headed towards midnight.

Mere students were not privy to the higher echelons of rumour, of course, and so he cut a suitably grave figure as the Wasp boy was led in by Jodry’s Fly-kinden secretary, Arvi. There was
another youth tagging along, but Jodry was hardly surprised. The student body tended to form close-knit factions at a moment’s notice – good practice for a life of politics – and,
in all honesty, half of Jodry’s visitors arrived with some unwelcome hanger-on.

‘Young Averic,’ he noted, ‘and I believe it’s Leadswell, is it not?’

The Beetle boy nodded, and Jodry saw that, although much of him looked soft, like most Beetle lads whose families had a certain income, his eyes and the set of his jaw were solid.
Very much
Assembler material
, Jodry considered, an assessment backed by what he already knew of the young man. ‘Come in, both of you. Chief Officer Padstock, thank you for your assistance. Speed
and discretion as standard.’ The words were clearly a dismissal to the woman who loomed in the doorway behind the two students, her snapbow shouldered, but she did not go.

‘Master Speaker, I must advise you, it is not safe to be in a room with one of his kinden. They are never unarmed.’

Jodry opened his mouth to wave her concerns airily away, but an odd feeling down his back stopped him. The Wasp’s expression was as bland as a statue’s, but of course his provenance
was in question, and what if all this was some Rekef scheme after all, to get a man close enough to kill the Speaker for the Assembly?

Would they? Am I so important?
He had planned to make this a comfortable, avuncular interview, a word from the wise to young Averic, a gentle sounding-out. To ask Padstock to stay would
be to show weakness. To command her to go had an outside chance of being fatal.

‘For your peace of mind, then, Chief Officer,’ he tried, magnanimously, and she took up a post in the corner of his study, beside the comfortable chair he kept for College Masters
and merchant magnates. Needless to say, neither Averic nor Leadswell took a seat there.

Eujen Leadswell looked as though he wanted to make some angry statement, no doubt about rights, but the fact that this was the actual
Speaker
for the Assembly before him had apparently
gifted him with a little uncharacteristic caution, instead yielding the floor to their host. Jodry allowed himself a grand sigh, a busy man with the presence of mind to attend to small things
himself.

‘Master Leadswell, I would ask you why you have honoured me with your presence but, to avoid mutual embarrassment, let us pretend that you have told me that you are so solicitous of your
Wasp friend, and so doubtful of Collegiate legal procedure, that you attend as an observer. Let us pretend that I have taken this in good humour.’

Leadswell opened his mouth, one hand making a half-gesture towards Padstock, which had her twitching to bring her snap-bow around. Jodry took a moment to adjust his mental picture of Padstock
inviting Averic to his office.
Did she read a little more into my instructions than I meant? Yes. Did I honestly think she would not, given who she is? Hmmm.

‘Averic, I understand that you are having a difficult time adjusting to our society.’ It was a neutral opening. ‘Reports of your academic record are mixed,’ because Jodry
knew well that certain teachers at the College had war records and too many memories, ‘and the College bailiff’s office has a number of reports that mention your name,’ notably as
the victim, although some of those bailiffs were similarly partisan.

‘Have you brought me here to expel me, Master Drillen?’ Averic asked quietly.

‘No doubt your friend Leadswell is about to insist that a vote of senior Masters is required for an expulsion, and I’ve not been amongst that number for a decade and more,’
Jodry corrected him, and caught an expression fleeting across the Wasp’s face: surprise. Of course, in the Empire, it was orders or nothing, and men lived or died by the whims of their
superiors. That was what Jodry had always understood, and it was interesting to see it confirmed in these present circumstances. ‘Look, boy, I admit that, since the war, the student body has
never been so diverse – Solarnese, Ancient Leaguers, Tseni, all manner of curios turning up at our gates looking for their accredits. Spies, some of them – but there is a school of
thought saying that showing a spy that we are a benevolent, humanistic society that believes in equality and opportunity for all is by no means a wasted practice. It worked with Sarn, after all.
However, and despite the recent alliance, no Vekken youth has applied to study here, and wisely so, for the wounds are still fresh from their most recent attempt to subjugate us. Not quite so fresh
as the wounds your Second Army made when they camped outside our walls.’

He looked from face to face: Leadswell’s dark features, Averic’s exotic pallor. Both were waiting for the strike, so that they could parry and riposte in kind.

‘I know a little about how matters work within the Empire. One central authority over corps, armies, Auxilians, slaves. A place for everyone, hm? So what am I to think? That you’re a
renegade or you were sent? You’ll appreciate how the situation out east makes the question pertinent, and I’m not surprised that you find it hard to walk down a street in this city
without being called out.’

Leadswell opened his mouth again, but Averic just said, ‘I was sent, sir. But I was sent by my family. Do you think nobody in the Empire looks over at Collegium and wonders,
What is
their secret strength?
But I am not a spy. There are those in the Empire who believe that the future may bring us to terms with the Lowlands – with Collegium therefore. What better
adviser and ambassador than one who has studied with you? Would you not have some scion of yours serve in the Imperial army, if he could?’ The boy’s voice was careful: not fierce with
sincerity, nor hesitant with doubt.

‘It’s a pleasant enough thought,’ Jodry allowed, bringing all his scrutiny to bear, but finding the Wasp’s features impossible to read. The boy’s hands were fists,
he saw, clenched tight, but none of that made it to his face. ‘You must admit that the future you describe seems unlikely just now.’

Averic shrugged. ‘I hope for better, sir. That the war between our peoples is not finished seems unarguable, but all wars eventually end. My family have made an investment. They are
soldiers, as all our people are, but they are merchants also.’

‘Leadswell, I recall you from the end-of-year debates,’ Jodry noted. ‘You spoke very well in favour of just such a future as young Averic describes. You lost, however. The
judges were unkind, perhaps.’

Eujen Leadswell took a steadying breath, neither of them feeling it necessary to mention that Jodry had been one of those judges. ‘Master Drillen, you asked why I came. Do I fear for my
friend under Collegium justice? No, for he has broken no laws. But any man may call him a spy, and I do not trust that the law would be swift enough to save him. You talk of our educating spies
about our cultural superiority. Averic has been shown precious little of that, Master Drillen. What report do you think he would give of us if he returned home now?’

‘That we were more like his people than he had thought,’ Jodry snapped, nipping the oratory in the bud. ‘Do you envy the lot of an Imperial’s life – and I mean that
of our kinden there, who do well enough as the Empire goes? Do you think it is some grand lie that suggests the Empire is a cruel regime that makes cities into slaves and slaves into
corpses?’

‘I think that it is our duty as Collegiate men to do all we can to change the Empire, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell shot right back, and Padstock tensed, for the lad was abruptly
leaning over Jodry’s desk towards him, all awe at the office of Speaker forgotten. ‘But I think that if we treat them as nothing but a threat, then we shall
create
our own
future. Also, I know him. He is my friend. I choose to trust him. He is no spy.’

Averic’s face was very set, but Jodry wondered if he detected some suppressed emotion there, even if only the eyes were a party to it. ‘And when the Empire comes to us with armies
and not with words?’ he asked. ‘How will you meet them, then?’

Leadswell stepped back, his face bitterly displaying the thought,
So, you think I’m a traitor, too.
‘As I did last time they came, Master Drillen. When Tynan’s Second
was at our gates, I was loading artillery on the wall.’

‘And you?’ Jodry’s gaze swept towards Averic, meeting that lack of expression head on. Before the Wasp’s silence became awkward, Arvi opened the door with another Fly
accompanying him, a woman in a grey robe that was decidedly not Collegium standard.

‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry observed. He had wanted this interview but, now it was cut short, he found that he was relieved.
For Leadswell is right, of course, from a certain point
of view – right and yet too late. That ship sailed before the Wasps put us to the siege the last time.

‘Master Drillen.’ Sartaea te Mosca was not a full Master of the College, but a mere associate. Still, she had been hired to head a department left vacant, and one that nobody else
wanted. She taught Inapt studies, as the College preferred to refer to the mysticism and flummery that surrounded the ways of the old Moth-kinden. She was a young lecturer, but a few decades
amongst the Moths at Dorax had given her a curiously ageless air, which in Jodry’s experience persisted even after she had downed close on her bodyweight in imported spirits. She had also
taken a keen interest in Averic and Leadswell and all their little clique, and was sociable enough to have garnered a certain fondness amongst the College Masters.

‘Mistress te Mosca,’ Jodry repeated. ‘These two lads appear to have found their way to my study. Would you perhaps ensure they reach their lodgings?’

She studied him, testing her Moth-taught inscrutability against his professional regard, and breaking first, into a slight, submissive smile. ‘I’d be delighted to, Master
Speaker.’

She turned to go, the two students lagging behind, and Jodry tapped his pen on the desk for their attention. ‘One more thing, young Leadswell. I know it is always a fine thing to imagine
yourself the rebel, fighting for a grand cause against the ignorance and prejudice of many. Believe me, Stenwold Maker traded on that for decades, and you might want to think about
that
.
However, I trust that in your social history classes they still teach the rivers hypothesis? That no society travels all one way, dances to a single tune, but there are mingled flows, so on, so
forth? Did you see the play
The Officer’s Mistress
?’

Leadswell frowned at him, shaking his head, knowing the trap was there, but unable to see where Jodry was going with this.

‘Too late now, then. It closed after four nights. Full houses, too. A grand shame. Set during the war, don’t you know? Some piece of business about the Empire in the second and
fourth acts.’

‘I don’t understand, Master Drillen,’ Leadswell admitted.

‘The theatre owner brought the curtain down,’ Jodry explained gently. ‘Not healthy, you see, to be associated with something that’s making fun of the Empire, for all that
the commons rush to laugh. After all, you never know who your patrons might be next year. You never know who’s making a
list
right now. You might want to think about that.’

Arvi would, left to his own devices, have escorted the two students from Drillen’s chambers coldly and without ceremony, to let them know just what the establishment of
the Assembly thought of them, as interpreted by himself, the Speaker’s secretary. However, they were accompanied by Sartaea te Mosca, who was a Fly-kinden teaching at the College, and Arvi
had an entirely intentional double standard when it came to his own people. Those who had made enough of themselves to become respectable always found a friendly reception at the Speaker’s
offices. Besides, Arvi was now, in his own estimation, sufficiently advanced in society to start casting around for his own dynasty, and attractive and influential Fly women were always worth
keeping on the right side of.