Adrian Tchaikovsky - War Master's Gate

‘Pass,’ he managed to explain. ‘Or you’d not get ten yards from here. But, more, you’re my messenger now. You’re going to Sarn — official Imperial courier.’

Sarn still stands? If there was ever a point in her life when she had needed the feeblest spark of hope, it was now.

‘Just go,’ Tynan gave her a shove towards the stairs. ‘Get out of my city before I change my mind.’

She went.

Jen Reader

The message had been written in haste, perhaps intended for the hand of some messenger already halfway out of the door on a greater errand.

Jen

Safe in Sarn and hoping against hope this reaches you. Sarn safe for now. Eighth Army driven off at cost. Another Wasp force somewhere out there, so no immediate chance of marching to liberate Collegium, but hold on! A lot of expatriates here, and Sarnesh must come south sooner than later, before Empire can reinforce. That’s my understanding, anyway. Meantime sorting out Ants’ air power, of course.

Any word of Stenwold Maker much appreciated. Lot of people say he is dead, like poor Jodry.

If you get this, tell little Jen I’m fine, and coming home as soon as I can.

Will send more word.

W.

The message had been slipped under the door of her store cupboard at the library, and she could only assume that a reply might be dispatched the same way. When she tried to put pen to paper, her hand shook too much. Willem was safe, and in Sarn! That was enough.

She had thought life in Collegium was settling down. Having destroyed all resistance, the Wasps seemed to be lapsing to a sullen, constant oppression. Those few who were still foolish enough to aggravate them paid the price, but the business of the city was slowly resuming, each move tentative and wary of repercussions. There had been some trade with Helleron, although the prices were horrendous. In the markets, traders set out their pitiful wares and charged the earth. The Wasps, who had initially just taken what they wanted, were now supplied by airship and seemed to have actual money to spend, becoming the clientele that every Collegiate business must be ready to cater to. The boldest restaurants and tavernas and even theatres had reopened their doors, gingerly sounding out the Wasps’ tastes. The city was not thriving, but it lived.

And she had returned to the College library, dreading what she might find there after the fighting, after its occupation by the city’s valiant, doomed defenders. The shelves and their precious burdens, the stacked cellars, all of them seemed intact, and she had been able to pass through all those familiar halls and turn a blind eye to the dark stains on the stonework, or the black charring left by stingshot.

The College itself would reopen soon, someone had claimed. She was not sure about that, but the library needed her.

Then, today, she had found an intruder there.

The fright had nearly killed her. She had been walking between the shelves, pushing a trolley of books that had needed filing since before the gates fell, and there he was: a tall, arrogant-looking Wasp soldier wearing red armour at his shoulders and neck.

‘You are the librarian?’ he demanded.

She had been about to give her name, but decided against it, settling for a nod.

‘I am Captain Vrakir, and I am the voice of the Empress,’ he told her, as a statement of fact. ‘You are in a position to serve my mistress. Rejoice, therefore. Your loyalty to the Empire will be noted.’

He wants me to betray Willem , she had thought instantly, gripped rigid by terror. What will he do? What will I do?

He thrust a scroll at her. ‘Here is a list of works known to be in your collection somewhere.’ His other hand encompassed the entire library, the gesture of a man who had no patience with her elaborate cataloguing systems. ‘You will find them quickly and present them to the main barracks.’

She cast an eye down the list, then looked up at him, frowning. ‘You’re sure? Only these are-’

‘You will address me as sir !’ he snapped. ‘And you will not question me. This is the Empress’s will. These volumes are to be shipped to Capitas immediately.’

The sacrilege of that, to remove such volumes from the library, from the very city , almost had her protesting, but she realized just in time how close he was to violence. And, besides, these titles were mouldering tomes of ancient lore, worm-eaten histories of the Bad Old Days. Considering the alternative, she could almost convince herself that she would not be betraying her trust by letting them go to the Wasps. Odds were that they probably had not been read at all in living memory.

But nonetheless it was wrong, though she knew she had no choice but to comply. Amid the shock of carving off pieces of the College’s collection at the whim of a Wasp, the question of why the Empress should require such reading matter wholly passed her by.

Bergild

With Collegium finally secure, the Second Army settled into what was anticipated to be a temporary custodianship of the city until the newly appointed governor and his occupation forces arrived.

Save for Wasp forces, the streets of the city were dead for the first tenday after the fighting finally ended. The locals stayed inside, and hoped that the next door to be kicked in would not be theirs. Imperial soldiers were out on the streets, trying to search the entire city for Spider-kinden and suspected insurgents. There were some executions, but surprisingly few by Bergild’s reckoning. Still, everyone knew the Collegiates were soft, so they would probably never realize the disconcerting leniency with which they were being treated.

As the pilot understood it, the problem lay at the top. General Tynan, who had been expected to mastermind whipping the Empire’s new possession into line, was ill. Or some said not ill but just brooding. His officers and men waited for him to let them off the leash, but such orders as did come simply reined them in. Even now, there were probably rebellious students and fugitives hiding in the garrets and the cellars of the city, yet Tynan would not give the requisite orders. Bergild had heard that, after setting out the limits of the army’s conduct prior to the students’ revolt, he had given relatively few orders since. She had also heard he was practically at war with Captain Vrakir of the Red Watch. She had heard far too many things for them all to be true. Her pilots, with little enough to do, were getting restless and uneasy, well aware of how they were regarded by the regular army as something of a necessary freakshow.

So it was that she had been deputized by her followers to go and seek out her best source of information within the army: Major Oski.

The little engineer was remarkably difficult to track down, but she eventually found him sitting outside a taverna near the Gear Gate — as the Second now called the entrance to Collegium which it had forced. She recalled the place had been damaged in the fighting and then sacked by soldiers after the surrender, and certainly the taverna was no longer opening its doors in any meaningful sense. And yet here was Oski sitting on a folding stool outside it as though he was enjoying the weather, a bottle of wine beside him.

‘Captain,’ he remarked, as she approached.

‘You seem to have time on your hands,’ she noted.

‘I’m making vital Engineering Corps calculations,’ he told her, and took up the bottle with both hands to offer her some. ‘Anyway, last I heard, nothing needs fixing or blowing up, so here I am.’

‘Tynan doesn’t need you?’ she ventured.

‘Don’t know what the man needs, but it’s clearly not me,’ he confirmed. ‘That’s all, is it?’