The Seal of the Worm (77 page)

She never returned.

Three years later

They had left the broken Amphiophos forum just as it was, so that the city’s Assembly met under the open sky, and thus remembered, and managed to conclude its important business remarkably quickly when foul weather threatened. Around that open space, which had become known as the Assembly Gardens, the three years since the war’s end had cultivated the offices and staterooms and archives that the city could apparently not do without, under the firm guidance of Jen Reader as head of the restoration committee.

And there was still restoration to be done, for the war had left the city with plenty of scars. When people complained, Reader simply told them,
Be glad you’re not living in Myna
. Everyone knew how much work the Mynans still had ahead of them.

For the last few tendays the whole city had been alive with speculation. The recovery of Collegium – of the Lowlands as a whole – was sufficiently advanced that the Assembly had voted to hold the Games once more. The last time had been just before the first war, and the intervening years had burdened the Collegiates with other priorities that they were only now able to shed.

The Games themselves were still a tenday away, but today would be a test of Eujen’s abilities as Speaker. He was aware that he would need to do well. The Lots were not so very far off, and any embarrassment now would be raked up when the time came for people to consider whether they still wanted him around. The fact that he was thinking in such terms vaguely disgusted him, but at the same time he felt considerably more sympathetic to those who had gone before.

He lodged near the Amphiophos these days, but even the short walk still took him some time. He made it anyway, every working day. It was a point of pride for the only Assembler who had to remember to wind his legs up every evening. It reminded him, and all who saw him, never to take things for granted.

The offices of the Amphiophos were bustling today, filled not just with the city’s representatives and the host of clerks and bureaucrats and errand-runners who made the wheels of government turn, but with a glut of foreigners. Everywhere one looked there were strange faces, the diplomatic staff of a dozen states come to Collegium to discuss the world’s ills.

‘Master Speaker.’ A Fly-kinden man of middle years found him the moment he had stepped inside.

‘Arvi.’ Eujen had taken the previous Speaker’s secretary on because, he had reasoned, at least someone at the heart of government should know what he was doing. ‘Our delegates?’

‘Most of them already in the Gardens,’ the Fly confirmed with pride, as though he had personally herded them there.

Perhaps he did
, Eujen mused. ‘I’ll rely on you to make the introductions.’

‘Of course.’ Arvi led the way, a little man with his head held high.

Stepping outside again, into that sprawling walled garden where the Assembly now met, Eujen had to stop and stare. He knew a fair few of the faces, of course, but never before had they all been together in one place.

He spotted the Vekken ambassador in deep conversation with a Sarnesh woman and the Tseni who spoke for the Atoll Confederation, or whatever that new business along the west coast was calling itself. Three Ants of different cities earnestly conspiring together, and Eujen wondered whether this would be the start of the united Ant nations that everyone was so worried about, and decided that he would bet against it.
Not just yet, but who can say about tomorrow?

A pale woman, heavily cowled, took his hand, nodding formally. She seemed a Spider-kinden save for the colour of her eyes. Arvi made the introductions a moment before Eujen could recall her name. ‘Paladrya of Hermatyre.’

‘Welcome again to Collegium,’ Eujen addressed her graciously, before his eloquence fell flat with ‘I hope it’s not . . . I hope it doesn’t bring back too many bad memories.’

Her smile was private, solemn, and said nothing of her lost link to this city. Arvi had already scheduled a meeting between herself, Eujen and the head of the Helleren Mint to talk about the currency problem. Shortly after the Lowlander cities became aware of the existence of the Sea-kinden, they became aware that the Sea-kinden could essentially produce enormous quantities of one hundred per cent pure gold, and the College economists were predicting the collapse of the mint unless somebody thought of something spectacular.
Tomorrow’s problems . . .

Passing on, Eujen exchanged curt, standoffish nods with the Moth delegate from Tharn. The Moths were a great deal more outgoing these days, seeming to have regained a drive and purpose that they had long been lacking. Eujen was not sure this was a good thing. Nobody wanted Collegium’s former masters raking up ancient history, and surely ancient history was what the Moths were good at. And yet, at the same time, it was becoming fashionable amongst the broader-minded Collegiate magnates to put a Moth on the payroll as a kind of oracular consultant. Alarmingly, there were even claims that this was money well spent.

So who is Tharn speaking to these days?
Eujen saw the Moth turn back to his conversation with the somewhat shabby-looking, greying Dragonfly – that princeling from the Commonweal who had supposedly been some sort of brigand not so long before. Beside them stood a lean, elegant Spider-kinden Arista who was probably from the so-called Aldanraic States that somehow managed to involve themselves in Lowlander, Spider and Wasp politics without ever committing themselves to anyone.

‘Master Speaker, this is Master Ceremon, translator to the Netheryen ambassador,’ Arvi announced, before Eujen could think too much about that.

‘Translator to the . . .?’ Eujen blinked at the Mantis-kinden man before him. ‘Ah, yes, of course. And is your . . .?’

A slight shift in Ceremon’s stance, a slight motion of the eyes, led Eujen’s attention up to the thing that lurked behind him, half lost against the greenery and fallen stone, and standing so still as to be nearly invisible. Eujen managed a stiff, startled nod towards it, seeing the same motion mirrored into the hungry intent of those faceted eyes. He wasn’t sure whether sending a man-eating predator along to a conference of powers meant that the Mantis-kinden hadn’t quite understood modern diplomacy or that they understood it all too well.

After that, it was a brief clasp of hands with Balkus, for Princep Salma, and then Kymene, here on behalf of the Alliance. The Mynan veteran had lasted a year in heading her city’s new consensus before she had become sick of the bickering and factions. Her diplomatic style was scarcely less aggressive than her war record, and Eujen hoped she would be able to keep herself in check.

‘Nobody’s here from the Second Empire yet,’ Arvi noted.

‘I think we won’t hear from them,’ Eujen confirmed. Those Wasps who had been unable to abide the new order within the Imperial Republic – a label that was giving the College’s historians conniptions – had mostly ended up in that slice of the Commonweal that was still nominally under Wasp occupation, and where they lived in daily terror that the Dragonflies would come and take it off them once and for all. That their expatriate leadership consisted of former men of the Red Watch who claimed still to speak for the long-lost Empress Seda was a concern to more than a few in both Collegium and the Empire they had fled.

But they had stayed away, to nobody’s great regret, and instead there were more, far more delegates for Eujen to meet: a lean grey Woodlouse-kinden who reminded Eujen of his friend Gerethwy; the jovial corpulence of the Helleren magnates; Spider-kinden representatives from at least four of the factions in what nobody was quite calling a Spiderlands civil war just yet, despite the number of desperate refugees washing into Collegium harbour every day; even a silvery-pale Beetle-kinden in pearlescent armour who refused to shake hands or have any physical contact with anyone, and apparently came from the depths of some lake in the North-Empire.
There is not time
, Eujen thought regretfully.
Give me a day with each of them in turn before we have to get down to business.
But, looking across that gathering, he knew that business was already well underway. Just by bringing all these disparate faces together, Collegium had achieved something.

We were once so inward-looking. Now we send out invitations and the world comes.

‘What about the Wasps?’ Eujen asked, and then corrected himself hastily. ‘The Republic?’

‘They have arrived, but they wanted to speak with you before they make their formal entrance. I suspect they’re aware of just how many old enemies are gathered here.’

‘And when were you going to tell me this, Arvi?’ Eujen asked him.

The little man gave him a condescending look. ‘If I’d told you earlier, you’d not have taken the time to be seen here shaking hands with other people, Master Speaker, which is quite necessary for any man seeking re-election. Master Drillen—’

‘Yes, yes,’ Eujen cut him off. ‘But now I know, so you’d better take me to them.’

‘I believe there was something about a gift, also. Bonds of trade and diplomacy and the usual,’ Arvi added airily. ‘Your bodyguard was dealing with it.’

‘She’s not my bodyguard.’

Straessa, who was emphatically not Eujen’s bodyguard, and who had refused to be made War Master of the Merchant Companies, was waiting for him in one of the Amphiophos’s meeting rooms. Eujen still found that he expected her to be wearing the old uniform, the Company sash and the buff coat. She sported her formal robes, though: the Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum had to know how to dress for the occasion, after all. Looked at like that, the rapier at her side became merely part of the costume, the eyepatch just the same.

She hugged him very close for a moment, almost to the point of pulling him off balance, then set him straight. It was to remind him that she owned him in a way that the Assembly never could, despite all its demands.

Beyond her, and obviously slightly thrown by this familiarity, was a handful of delegates from the Imperial Republic, and Eujen recognized three out of four of them: Colonel Vorken, formerly of the Slave Corps, General Varsec, head of the Engineers, and Honory Bellowern, a diplomat and no stranger to Collegium’s streets. The fourth, a Wasp woman, was a stranger, although something about her seemed maddeningly familiar.

‘Arvi said something about a gift?’ Eujen murmured.

‘Look up,’ Straessa told him. ‘Imperial artists have been busy.’

Hearing that, Eujen feared the worst. A lot of what the Wasps had produced in the last three years had been a fascinating insight into a culture trying to come to terms with what it had become. He knew that there was still a strong nationalistic undercurrent in Republican culture, which all too often surfaced in angry, ugly work trying to portray the Wasps in their supposed pre-eminent place amongst the kinden of the world, fallen only as a result of some imagined conspiracy.

This was different, though. Halfway over to greet the ambassadors, Eujen stopped to gaze at the broad canvas mounted on the far wall.

‘They call it
The School of Artifice
,’ Straessa explained. ‘It’s . . . I think it’s where they see we have something in common.’

The canvas showed a gathering within an open chamber that resembled the ruins of the Amphiophos that Eujen had just left. The figures depicted were engaged in earnest discussion, with boards and charts and half-assembled machinery providing the focus of their interest. There were a lot of Wasps amongst them, but no more than half. The artists had been generous and diplomatic.

Many of the people there he could not identify, but the man with the one armoured glove was surely Dariandrephos, and the other halfbreed with a snapbow partly disassembled was that second-in-command of his, who had been a student at the College in his time. There was Varsec himself – given some prominence and depicted in spirited debate with fellow aviators Taki and Willem Reader. There was a selection of other College men and women as well – people whom Eujen had known, and who were mostly dead now. He saw Rakespear, Greatly, Tseitus, and the madly bearded man towards the back gesturing at the stormy sky beyond must be intended as Banjacs Gripshod, for all the likeness was poor. At last Eujen’s attention was drawn to a figure sitting by itself in one corner, though: a Woodlouse-kinden youth with a complex gear train anatomized in his lap. It was uncanny how they had captured the likeness of Gerethwy.

‘You had them do this,’ Eujen accused.

‘I had them add him, yes,’ Straessa confirmed, looking up at the likeness of their fallen friend. ‘I sent them Raullo’s sketches. He deserved to be in that company, I think.’

Eujen nodded soberly and squeezed her shoulder, then turned a bright smile on the patiently waiting delegation.

‘Welcome to Collegium,’ he addressed them. ‘As you see, I’m somewhat speechless at your gift. It’s remarkable. Would you like me to make introductions, out in the Amphiophos?

To his surprise, it was the woman who stepped forwards. ‘That would be much appreciated, Master Leadswell,’ she told him. There was an awkward pause then, words that she was slow in saying, and with the other three eager to move on, but at last she got out: ‘I believe you knew my son.’

He placed the resemblance then, just too late for it to do any good. ‘Averic, yes,’ he agreed. ‘He was a good friend to me.’ A sudden rush of emotion passed over him, aroused by faces and voices now wholly consigned to time. ‘Averic came here because he believed that our people could learn to meet in friendship, not in war,’ Eujen went on, for all of their benefits. ‘I came to believe the same thing. Come, let’s meet the others now, and talk about the future.’

Later, much later: it was past midnight after a long day of small matters. Arvi had set out the agenda himself –
the finicky little power behind the throne
, Eujen reflected meanly – and the first day’s business had been neither weighty nor contentious: minor trade business, the College making places available for more students from beyond Collegium, the Republic asserting a right to send its spare military men to serve as peacekeepers in the Spiderlands, which nobody was going to contest. After all, if they were over
there
, then they wouldn’t be sitting idle and getting ideas over
here
. . .