The Air War (58 page)

It was no answer, but he had no answers. He turned away from them and stomped off down the corridor, unwilling to stay there and look his own weakness in the eye.

Helmess Broiler was under scrutiny, he knew.

He was a well-to-do merchant magnate of Collegium, an Assembler, and also an avowed political foe of Stenwold Maker and Jodry Drillen. More than that, he had been taking the pay of the Empire
for years, starting way back when nobody but Maker ever imagined that the Wasps would get to this point. And by the time the Imperial Second did come ravening up the coast during the last war,
Broiler’s existing misdeeds had been enough for the Empire to keep him squarely under its thumb, their man in Collegium.

Stenwold knew all this, as had been brought forcibly to Helmess’s attention not so long ago. Helmess himself was only alive and free because Stenwold had a use for him back then, and
because it was convenient for Maker to know just who the Empire’s current man was, rather than have to hunt down the next one. Since the bombing had started, Helmess had been under
observation, with Maker’s spies, both hidden and in plain sight, watching for his methods of smuggling information to the city’s enemies. It was a waste of time for all concerned
because Helmess no longer had any such methods at his disposal. Since the last piece of business, when the Empire’s agents had been apprehended neatly before they could take advantage of the
oncoming Spider armada – which itself had come to nothing, with the abominable Maker turning them away with apparently nothing more than a harsh word or two – the Empire had ceased to
include Helmess Broiler in its plans, squarely blaming him for the failure. Fair enough in a way, because Broiler had given Maker the information that saw the Imperial agents arrested, but it
rankled nonetheless because the
Empire
didn’t know that.

Right now, Helmess was living a somewhat fraught life. His double loyalties – if he had any loyalties to anything aside from his own best interests – were not public knowledge, but
there was an odour about him, nonetheless, of a man in disfavour with those in power. That meant he had few visitors, and fewer opportunities to profit. The Merchant Company soldiers troubled him
at his house, tramping through his rooms occasionally for no reason other than to annoy him, and Maker’s watchers were looking constantly for heliograph flashes, message-bearing insects and
hand signals out of the window, or however they might think he would inform the Empire of whatever knowledge he was supposed to possess. The rare guests at his house were searched aggressively for
messages when they left, and probably followed subsequently themselves.

Two nights ago, an Imperial bomb had even landed outside his townhouse during a tense half-hour when the Farsphex seemed to be trying to attack Collegium society from the top down by targeting
large houses. He had lost part of his wall, leaving that entire corner of the structure dangerously unsound. Needless to say, nobody was remotely bothered, or called to give their condolences, and
he had to send his staff into the city to pay ruinously high prices to secure workmen to impart at least a stopgap stability to his home. By this time, any thought that he might still be on the
Empire’s books was long gone, and the Empire itself seemed to be rather trying to wipe him out of existence altogether. Certainly his contact – or perhaps his handler – Honory
Bellowern had got out of the city without a parting word immediately after the first aerial raid.

When the foreman of the work crew insisted on sorting out payment face to face, Helmess resigned himself to being robbed in broad daylight, possibly to being insulted as well. He received the
man in his study, noting a lean Beetle with a badly burned face, the scars looking recent. Of course, that was quite the fashionable look in Collegium just then.

‘All right, then, what ludicrous figure–?’ he began, and the foreman said, ‘Send your servants out, Master Broiler.’

Helmess made another few false starts at the same sentence, feeling the world realign itself around him vertiginously. After a pause, he nodded, waving his retainers away.

‘Can I hope, at least, that you’ve made a genuine job of repairing the house?’ he enquired, fighting for calm.

‘Oh, the lads are all the real deal, if not exactly masters.’ The burn-scarred Beetle sat down across the desk from him, with casual insolence. ‘I was lucky. There
weren’t many people keen to do your dirty work – it was easy to get the contract. I’d probably find a choosier crew to go over the work in a month or so, if I were you. Now,
let’s get this done with. You’ve a list?’

‘A list?’ For a moment, cut off for so long, Helmess didn’t know what he meant. Then old conversations came back to him, words shared with the Imperial diplomat Honory
Bellowern (when he was still rattling around in the embassy, minus one ambassador, and pointedly not enquiring after Helmess’s health). Of course there was a list: the list of the key people,
the influential, the anti-Imperial, all those that might serve as rallying points to resistance. In long bitter nights of wondering where it had all gone wrong, adding names to that list had become
a mean-spirited joy for Helmess Broiler.

‘You came in with the refugees,’ Helmess guessed. ‘Fake burns from the Felyal rather than from the incendiaries here.’

‘I don’t do fake,’ the man told him. His eyes were very calm, Helmess saw, without in any way being calming. There was a fanatic immobility to those eyes, and he fought away an
image of this man applying a blazing branch to his own skin, without so much as a flinch.

‘I had thought there was some investigation, quarantine or something, Maker’s work,’ Broiler deftly opened the shallow hidden drawer in his desk, and leafed through the few
papers there.

‘Good thinking that came too late,’ the spy told him. ‘I’d already got clear of the rest. Now I’m at large in the city, just another Beetle. I helped the fire crews
last night.’

‘The Rekef—’ Helmess started and, when the man raised a cautioning hand, ‘If you’re worried about being overheard, that ship has sailed.’

‘Piss on the Rekef,’ the burned agent said levelly. ‘They’ve fallen over their own feet each time they’ve tackled this city. Army Intelligence gets a go.’ He
watched for a reaction and saw none. ‘We’re not so fancy as the Rekef,’ went on the man who had crept in pretending to be a refugee and was already establishing himself in the
city of his enemies. ‘We’ll go at this like soldiers.’ He looked down at the list Helmess handed to him. ‘You don’t do this by halves.’

‘I assure you, those names—’

‘We’ll take it under advisement.’ There were plenty of names on that list that simply represented Helmess’s personal dislikes, and the other man was openly sneering as
his eyes flicked down it. ‘We have other lists, you can be sure. We’ll cross-reference. Your continued loyalty will be noted, I’m sure.’

Helmess raised an eyebrow, still holding to his composure by his fingernails. ‘I take it this means bloodshed. May I assume that Stenwold Maker’s name will top everybody’s
list?’

The agent rose abruptly, rolling up the list tightly, then leaning against the chair back to remove his sandal. The crumpled scroll found a new home in its hollow sole. ‘You just sit
tight, Master Broiler. The Second’s on its way, our glorious Gears, and this time they’ll chew this city up a treat. I’m to tell you that you’ll be remembered when the time
comes, and that’s straight from my chief here in the city. As for the list, you just keep an ear open and you’ll hear the news. Now, we’ve haggled enough about that slipshod piece
of negligence we did on your house, so hand over the coin for my lads and I’ll be on my happy way.’

Once the man –
not even a name, this time, see how they regard me?
– had gone, Helmess remained at his desk, staring at the scratched wood of its surface.
You’ll be
remembered when the time comes
, he considered. As promises went it was not reassuring.

‘I trust our intelligence was useful?’ The voice of Mycella of the Aldanrael drifted from behind the curtain, along with the steam. General Tynan, who had expected
to find her waiting for him, glanced about at the handful of Fly-kinden servants. None of them seemed to find it unusual that their lady was receiving an Imperial general while still in her bath.
He was acutely aware of his own appearance – as rough, unshaven and unwashed as any of his soldiers. The Spider-kinden seemed to be able to transport civilization around as though it were a
boxable commodity, to be dipped into at need.

‘I would have preferred to know more about it beforehand,’ he grumbled, just to keep his mind focused.

‘And am I to believe the Empire has no secrets from its allies?’ came her amused response. ‘In matters of espionage, especially, it is best to keep one’s cards
close.’

Servants –
male
servants – stepped behind the curtain bearing towels and robes. Tynan shook his head. The Imperial line had always been that Spiders were a decadent people,
but out there in the dark there were thousands of their warriors living in the same muddy fields as the Wasps, eating the same food, soldiers no more nor less than their Imperial counterparts. They
had fought in the Felyal with less discipline but an equal spirit, and they had spilt blood, their own and their enemies’, to bring the Mantis-kinden to heel. True, their mercenaries had been
in the forefront of the fighting, but the Spiders themselves had not stinted. Many was the Spider-kinden warrior, maid or man, now buried on Mantis soil to prove it.

The friction that had plagued the army since leaving Solarno was mostly gone now, as more and more of the Wasps began to see things the same way. It was awkward, since the Empire had no ready
category for free allies – meaning something less than Imperial but more than Auxillian. The men of the Second were having to expand their world view to accommodate the Aldanrael troops. The
fighting in the Felyal had cemented it, though, and the two forces had begun to work together, shielding each other’s weak points.

Mycella stepped barefoot from behind the curtain, her hair glistening wet and her body swathed in a silk robe of pale green printed with twining white leaves. Tynan felt a tug within him that he
fought down.
Her Art, of course.
He told himself it was her Art, at least, because that gave him something to fight against. Beyond that emotional reaction was a purely physical one, a
gathering lust that he thought time had extinguished, but was now rising spectacularly from the grave. The look she gave him suggested that she was well aware of it.

‘In truth, my intelligence network in Collegium is operating by itself, as intended. I have no convenient way of reaching them with new orders. However, we believe in autonomy in our
senior agents. Once they had confirmed the Aldranrael’s diplomatic position with the Empire, they have been improvising most successfully, providing you with information for your aerial
forces, and infiltrating the Felyal alongside those who were returning there to rebuild. A shame they could not give us warning of the attack on our camp, I know, but I suspect they felt it best
not to risk their cover. So, secret from both of us, in a way, but they have sufficed to get your own agents into the enemy city.’

‘Let us hope so.’ Tynan could not dispute anything she had said, but the speed and elegance of the Spider agents had been daunting.
Let us hope they don’t turn on us one
day.
‘I trust your people are ready for the next leg of the march?’

‘Was that truly what you came here to speak of?’ she asked him with an arched eyebrow. ‘Some muttering about our spies, and then a question to which you already know the
answer?’ Abruptly she had moved almost within arm’s reach. ‘We are both too old to waste our time with such matters, General.’

She was mocking him, of course, for she had planted her barbs in him, by Art or by who knew what other means. She was now waiting for the venom to drive him to something further. In truth he
could feel the urge within him: an Imperial soldier’s simple response to a woman of a lesser kinden:
Take her!
And what a piece of diplomacy that would make!

He wanted to say something dismissive and turn away, to assert himself in some way that would not cripple the war effort, but part of him was unwilling to take his eyes from her.

‘General . . .’ came the call from behind him, and he whirled instantly, the spell broken, becoming once again the stolid old campaigner. Mittoc, his colonel of Engineers, stood
holding open the tent flap, with a large man looming behind him.

‘What is it, Colonel?’ It was said with the strong implication that he, Tynan, was busy with some important military business, but Mittoc’s expression was a full-blown leer as
he eyed Mycella, simple soldier through and through, despite all the artificers’ training in the world.

‘Well, General, you said to tell you when the pilots got in. Got their Major Aarmon here just landed, wants to talk strategy.’

Tynan felt sure that, when he had met this Aarmon a few days before, the man had been a captain, but then the air force was expanding at quite a rate. ‘Colonel, it’s well into the
night. Have Major Aarmon and his crews billeted, and I’ll see him at sun-up.’

‘Right you are, sir.’ Mittoc stole another rapacious glance at Mycella, and skulked away.

Tynan turned back to the woman, meeting a complex and layered expression. Here was the face of the military commander, untouchable and pristine; behind that the temptress who knew that such a
mask on a woman would fire him; behind that the woman who was too old for such games, mocking herself for trotting out such worn-out gambits and inviting him to laugh along with her.
We are too
old
, she had said and, though she looked so much younger, he felt they were a match in years.

‘If I were a younger man . . .’ he said, and stopped, because the words had been intended for himself only.

Her expression became transparent, shorn of subterfuge – or of any subterfuge that he could detect – leaving only a worldly fondness settling into near-invisible lines of humour and
experience.