The Air War (23 page)

Three bolts punched splinter-edged holes in his right fore-wing and another clipped his left shoulder, the pain brief and fierce, his teeth clenching. He tried slowing to make them overshoot,
but they matched him speed for speed, and they could go slower than he could without stalling and dropping from the sky. Desperately he sent his vessel over the wall, dropping into its shadow for a
brief respite, expecting to see the Imperial Light Airborne and ground forces already on the move.

They were not. They still sat well out of the reach of the Mynan wall engines, letting their machines carry the fight to Myna.

The shock of no army at the gates left him numb: the utter contempt for it, and all it said about the way the Wasps saw the attack, and his people.
Not even worth drawing a sword over.
Fury seized him and shook him in its jaws, and he fought the
Pacemark
round, believing in that moment that sheer anger would overcome aerodynamics to bring him face to face with the
Spearflights. They stayed nimbly behind him, though he lost them their line on him, bolts flying wide as he threw his orthopter about the sky.

Then there was another flying machine cutting across him, not a Wasp craft, nor any he knew from Myna’s airfields. He had a brief glimpse of a small hull, a solitary pair of wings blurring
about the hunch of its engine housing, and then one of the pursuing Wasp Spearflights jolted in the air, shuddering under piercer bolts, before coming apart as though someone had magically removed
half the screws, as fragments of wing and body became a shattered cloud beneath the pounding.

The remaining two split up, one following Edmon relentlessly, the other rising to meet this new challenger. The little two-winged flier slid sidelong in the air, deft as a rapier, and the
Spearflight that had been so agile behind Edmon now seemed to lumber past it like a fat man.

Then a scatter of bolts struck about the
Pacemark
, at least one holing the main hull before bounding from the engine housing to ricochet about inside. Edmon lost a few yards of height
without meaning to, his wings stuttering awkwardly before finding their rhythm, and the Spearflight was stooping on him, driving him into the city wall, not letting him get clear.

For a moment, he and his antagonist were enveloped in fire and stone shards and acrid smoke as they ran the gauntlet of the Imperial artillery’s assault on the wall, cutting through it so
fast that the dust scratched Edmon’s goggles, scored his skin raw and blasted the paint from his orthopter’s hull. Then he was out again and skimming the very top of the wall, the
lancing silver lines of piercer bolts dancing back and forth as the Spearflight tried to pin him to the stones.

He saw what was ahead and yanked on the stick, feeling a juddering of new impacts, trusting to the
Pacemark
’s robust hull to weather it.

Some Mynan artillerist was awake and ready. As Edmon hauled himself out of the way the wall engine he had nearly flown into had come about and, immediately behind him, the Wasp orthopter flew
into a wall of scrapshot, disintegrating instantly and utterly.

Free for a moment, Edmon turned the
Pacemark
back over Myna, trying to encompass all that he was seeing. There were isolated fires across the city, some in strategic areas, most others
simply strewn randomly by inaccurate or capricious Wasp pilots. The walls and gate were under a solid, continuous pounding, but some of the Imperial siege engines had now started throwing
incendiary shells deeper into the city.

Moments, it’s only been moments since the attack started. We’ve already lost.

He could feel the
Pacemark
’s clockwork slowing, too many tight turns meeting damaged gear trains, and he knew he would have to find somewhere to set it down that was not on fire. In
that moment he saw the strange orthopter again, coming in ahead and to the right, slowing to match his speed. He caught the brief flash of a heliograph, but had to wait for the message to be
repeated before he saw the pilot was signalling a need to land as well.

But the Wasps . . .
He looked around him, but the skies were almost clear. The Wasp pilots had taken their craft back to camp for refuelling, he guessed. The artillery was keeping their
work warm for them while they rested.

He did not want to land. He did not want to face the enormity of what was happening to his city, to find out how many of the faces he had seen only this morning were lost forever. The mechanical
demands of the
Pacemark
were becoming more insistent, however, and he let the orthopter drop lower, heading for whichever airfield seemed the most intact.

Sartaea te Mosca was someone who could not help but play hostess wherever she ended up. It seemed an odd trait to bring with her from the severe Moth-kinden who had trained her
in the ways of a seer, but the Antspider wondered if that was because they had treated her like a servant while she was there. Everyone knew a great deal about the standards of equality and the
social hierarchy amongst Beetle-kinden of various cities, or the Wasps of the Empire, or even the Spiders, or so they told themselves. The Moth-kinden, for all they had ruled this quarter of the
world some centuries back, were a stubborn mystery, and that was perhaps the one topic that te Mosca was never open about.

They were at Mummers’s studio again, and Raullo himself was having one of his bad days, meaning that it was past noon and he was still stuffed into the small alcove he slept in, sweating
and twitching and turning over fitfully, a shabby curtain serving to partition his little space of despair from the rest of the room and fend off the sun’s encroachment. He had been angling
for a big commission, the others knew, working night and day for it, repapering his walls with preliminary sketches and part-colour studies, but his patron had abruptly turned him down, or changed
his mind, or even left the city. This last month it had been hard for an artist to make any kind of living. People were clinging to their money, waiting to see which way the future would jump.
Besides, there was not as much money in Collegium as there used to be, after all the rebuilding following the last war. Nobody was going hungry, but everyone’s belt was just that little bit
tighter these days. Art was a luxury that fewer people could afford, and Raullo was suffering from it.

It had been a few days since Eujen’s meeting with Jodry Drillen, and he had carried away from it not the humility that had perhaps been intended, but a deep-seated annoyance. Most galling
had been the implication – as he perceived it – that his loyalty to his city was suspect. He had composed a long speech on the subject, going into some detail about how rattling sabres
in the direction of the Empire – or anybody else – did not constitute loyalty. Eujen’s dedication to finding a future where there would be no
need
of war with the Empire
– now
that
was loyalty, because it would provide far greater benefits for Collegium in the long term. The Makerist warmongering stance would only create a worsening spiral, a
degenerating pattern of mutual hostility that would end . . . where? Where would it end? Eujen had demanded, and nobody had an answer for him. Of course, they had heard the speech twice by
then.

‘If only I had contacts in the Empire,’ he would say sadly.

‘Then they could
really
call you traitor?’ Straessa needled him.

‘No! Then I could talk them round, influence them . . .’ Eujen’s hands clutched at the air.

The Antspider was herself not at all sure of that. The idea that there was a minority within the Empire who were whipping the rest to war rang false to her. The problem was the system as a
whole, or so her talks with Averic seemed to suggest. Those who might see eye to eye with Eujen were the minority – Averic’s own family included, apparently – and, if the majority
were to lurch into battle, those few would not be able to restrain them.

It had not been a month ago that Eujen had been claiming that war itself would not come. A tenday or so ago he had taken to stating that war would not come
soon
, that everyone’s
excitement about the subject was premature. Since meeting Drillen, however, he had stopped saying even that.

And he would fight it, she knew, for all the good it would do him. He was doomed, and he knew he was doomed. The weight of history was rolling down on Eujen like the studded wheels of a great
automotive, but he fought his battles regardless, because it was
right
. Of all his qualities, she loved him for that one. She herself came from a culture where doing what was right was a
luxury that even the rich could seldom afford. Seeing the sheer, glowing naivety of someone like Eujen Leadswell, setting out to change the world, gave her an almost vertiginous feeling.

For ten minutes Eujen had been pacing now, watched anxiously by everyone except the sleeping Mummers, and Gerethwy, who was carefully annotating a schematic. Eventually, though, Eujen’s
failure to conceive of some political master plan resulted in him rounding on them furiously, as though it was their fault. ‘And he’s not
doing
anything!’ he explained.
‘Jodry Drillen spends his time harassing students and listening to complaints about madmen like Gripshod, while we just slide onwards to . . .’ He would not utter the word
‘war’.

‘But Gripshod is the ambassador to Khanaphes, isn’t he?’ te Mosca asked him. ‘Surely that could be relevant?’

‘If only! It’s not even that Gripshod – it’s the artificer one, his brother.’

‘Banjacs Gripshod is still alive?’ Gerethwy raised his head.

‘
Banjacs
Gripshod?’ Straessa asked incredulously. ‘Unfortunate name for an artificer . . .’

‘No, no,’ Gerethwy waved the idea away. ‘Artificers say
that
about a thing
because
of old Gripshod. Something of a legend, if you talk to the older artificing
staff. I thought he must be dead, the way everyone talks about him—’ Then he was cut off by a hammering on the door.

‘He’s not in,’ the Antspider said, with a gesture towards Mummers, because they had all come to the immediate conclusion that one of the artist’s creditors was trying his
luck, but then came a voice calling ‘Mistress te Mosca, are you within?’ With a worried glance at the others, the Fly woman flitted over to the door and unbolted it.

A young Beetle-kinden man was revealed, whom they recognized vaguely as one of the College’s older students researching something in such and such department. The post-accredit students
often found casual employment with the College Masters and the Assembly as a way of making ends meet.

‘Mistress te Mosca, you’re called to the Assembly. All the Masters are,’ he announced, slightly out of breath.

‘But I don’t even have a seat on the Assembly,’ Sartaea protested. ‘Really, I’m not a full Master of the College. I don’t feel that I should be involved
in—’

‘All College staff, they said,’ the student interrupted. ‘Please, Mistress. The Imperial ambassador has asked for special dispensation to speak to the city.’

A dead silence fell across the studio, each and everyone there staring at the messenger. In the echo of that sudden quiet, Raullo Mummers hooked back the curtain of his alcove and looked out,
blinking and unshaven, as though the news’ sheer significance had been enough to slap him into immediate wakefulness.

‘I see,’ said Sartaea te Mosca, with considerable self-possession. ‘Well, then, I suppose I should go and listen to what the ambassador has to say.’

The Imperial ambassador was named Aagen, and he was a complex man who had only ever wanted a simple life. He had been an engineer, once, just a lieutenant whose life was mostly
shouting at other engineers to get things fixed and machines into the air or on the road. He had even been well liked. One of the people who had liked him had ended up sleeping with the Empress,
albeit briefly, and in his brief moment of power he had got Aagen sent to Collegium as an ambassador. It had been intended as a reward.

True, Aagen had enjoyed his time here, up until now. The Beetles knew a great deal about artificing, and they were remarkably open about it, even to a Wasp, when that Wasp displayed the same
childlike enthusiasm for the craft that they did. He had lived here a few years now, and had not done too badly from it.

Right now, he would take it all back to be a lowly lieutenant again, as he stood before the Assembly of Collegium, although the lowly lieutenant he had once been would have seen this task merely
as a duty and blithely ignored the wider repercussions. The Aagen of today, Ambassador Aagen, could not close his eyes so easily.

He had fallen in love, that was the problem. Long before being posted here he had fallen in love with a dancing slave, and loved her enough to free her and send her out of his life. After that,
nothing about the Empire or the rest of the world had ever looked quite the same to him.

He had been greeted just after dawn by Honory Bellowern, Beetle-kinden, Imperial diplomat and the man who held Aagen’s leash. The portly, avuncular man had beamed at him. ‘Big day
today, ambassador.’ Aagen’s heart had sunk in direct proportion to the man’s cheer.

Bellowern had held out a scroll neatly tied with black tape, his habit for official Imperial statements. It had taken a few moments of blank staring before Aagen had been able to accept it from
him.

‘I’ve made all the arrangements. Of course the Speaker will make time for the words of the Empress,’ Bellowern had explained happily. ‘In fact, I rather think that there
will be more people there to hear you than have turned up since . . . oh, the last war, let’s say.’

Now, Aagen looked out at that sea of faces and knew that Bellowern had not been exaggerating. Surely the entire Assembly had jostled its way into the great amphitheatre of the Amphiophos, and
there were plenty standing at the back, too: senior scholars, Assembly clerks, servants. They were all unnaturally quiet. He had sat here before and listened to members of this politic host shout
themselves hoarse, while two-score separate conversations were carried on all around them. Now they just listened gravely, finally finding the decorum and dignity that their office should have
always borne, and never had until now.