Adrian Tchaikovsky - Dragonfly Falling

Though the Ants had tried, they could not adapt to this new warfare. They had been fighting the same set-piece war against their neighbours for centuries. Now the Empire had reinvented the word: ‘war’ no longer meant what they thought.

‘That may be necessary,’ Drephos said, evidently none too interested. ‘But unless the Tarkesh are very different from the Ants of Maynes, it will not be. You see, they are a pleasingly logical breed, Ant-kinden, and there is an inevitable conclusion bearing down on them: that if they wish to save anything of their people, anything at all, then they must lay down their arms and accept what treatment the Empire gives them. A third of their city is already in ruins, and it will mean years to rebuild what these few days have taken from them. They will realize, eventually, that their destiny as slaves offers them more of a future than their destiny as martyrs. Then they will surrender. Because they are a rational people — an Apt people — they understand the numbers, you see.’

Totho was feeling very cold all over. The logic was icy and unassailable. ‘But they are soldiers — every one of them. Surely. ’

‘They are soldiers who cannot fight back. They will eventually realize this. Their civic pride will be heated and cooled, heated and cooled, until it is at last thrust into the waters one time too many, and it breaks. A month to take Maynes?’ Drephos clenched his gauntleted hand. ‘Now I have given them Tark in a tenday. For that, they will give me whatever they want. Including you.’

‘I cannot-’

‘You cannot accept it, of course. You would rather be returned to their hands, to be questioned as they call it, or tortured, as I would say. You would rather be a menial slave than an artificer. Morality is not something that has overly plagued me, but I respect it in others. It is your choice, but delay a little before you make it. Once that decision is made you cannot change your mind.’

There was a rapid hammering on the door of his room and Stenwold pushed himself from his bed and went to answer it. For the first time in a long while he had been doing nothing except stare at the ceiling and brood. No plans, no action or mental juggling of his contacts and agents. He felt depressed, powerless, now that he had finally gone before the Assembly. It was all out of his hands.

He opened the door on Tynisa, who looked agitated. Her sword was already drawn, he saw with a sinking heart.

‘What is it?’

‘You had better get your gear together,’ she told him. ‘Arm yourself and go out the back way.’

‘Is it the Wasps?’

‘No,’ she told him. ‘Your own people.’

She was off down the stairs, but he bellowed after her, ‘What do you mean, my people?’ He stomped out, barefooted, and wearing nothing but a tunic.

‘Balkus has just got in,’ she told him, halfway down. ‘He says there’s a squad of Collegium’s militia on its way here with one of the Assemblers.’

‘Well that’s what we’re waiting for, isn’t it?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘We want word from them, not a whole armed guard. Why would they bring a guard here, if not to arrest you?’

‘I won’t believe it.’

‘Believe it!’ she yelled at him. ‘You have to leave, now!’

‘I won’t!’ He clenched his fists before him. ‘This is my city, and if they will not help me, then there is nothing I can do on my own. I do not value my freedom so very much. Even imprisoned by the Assembly, I may be able to talk them round. I will not leave, Tynisa. But you should go — you and Balkus.’

‘Not a chance,’ she told him. ‘Will you at least arm yourself? If things have gone really badly, they may not be coming just to arrest you.’

‘I won’t believe it,’ he said again, but he turned back to his room and took up his baldric, slinging it over his shoulder. The weight of the sword was a comforting burden at his hip.

Balkus and Tynisa were waiting for him below with rapier and nailbow at the ready, as strange a pair of honour guards as he had ever known. He stood between them with hand to sword-hilt and awaited his fate.

Tynisa met them at the door. There were a dozen Collegium guardsmen in chainmail and breastplates, looking uncomfortable and awkward, and in their midst a grey-haired old man in formal robes. After a moment’s pause she recognized him as the Speaker for the Assembly, Lineo Thadspar. She supposed this was meant to be an honour, to be personally arrested by the top man.

‘What do you want?’ she asked him. She had the rapier in her hand but was hidden behind the door. Her tone made the guardsmen tense and she saw a few lay hands on their sword-hilts or mace-hafts.

‘Excuse me, what do you want, Master Gownsman Speaker Thadspar?’ she corrected, realizing that she had not been helping the situation.

‘I had rather hoped to speak with Master Maker, my child,’ Thadspar said, seeming utterly unperturbed.

‘Then your men can wait in the street, Master Thadspar. I trust that will be agreeable.’

He smiled benignly. ‘I can think of no reason why I should need them.’ One of his men tugged at his sleeve worriedly but Thadspar waved him away. ‘I shall be quite safe. Trust must start somewhere, after all. Now, my child, would you convey me in?’

She stepped back, managing to scabbard her sword without showing the men outside that it had been drawn. Thadspar noticed, though, and raised an eyebrow.

‘There have been all manner of affronts done on the streets of Collegium in recent days,’ he said mildly. ‘Some of which I rather think you were involved in, my dear child. We will have to sort through them at some point. After all, Collegium is a city under the rule of law, yet.’

‘Any blood I have shed I can account for,’ she told him. ‘And don’t call me that — I am not your child.’

‘I suppose you aren’t.’ A smile crinkled his face. ‘There was some considerable debate, at the time, as to whose child you were. Stenwold was mute on the matter, of course, but as you grew it seemed clear enough to me whose you were. By the time you were twelve years, there were few who recalled Atryssa — but I did, and I knew.’

Caught off-guard, Tynisa paused. ‘You knew my mother?’

‘I taught her logic and rhetoric for a year. She was an impatient student, a strange trait for a Spider-kinden woman.’

Tynisa would have asked him more, but they had come to the doorway of Stenwold’s parlour. Stenwold himself was seated behind the table, waiting with all apparent calm, but Balkus loomed at his shoulder with his nailbow not quite directed at Thadspar.

‘Master Maker,’ the old man said, and ‘Master Thadspar,’ Stenwold acknowledged formally, followed by, ‘Will you sit?’

Thadspar sat gratefully as Tynisa fetched a jug of wine and a couple of bowls. Balkus was still eyeing the old man suspiciously, as though he might be some kind of assassin in cunning disguise.

Stenwold himself poured the wine. ‘I take it you’ve not come here to discuss next year’s curriculum, Master Thadspar.’

Thadspar shook his head. ‘You have caused us all a great deal of trouble, Stenwold, and I really rather wish that you had never come back to Collegium to lay this business before us. We will all have a great deal to regret before this is over.’

‘So you have come here to do something you regret,’ Stenwold suggested. ‘And what would that be?’

‘You heard Master Bellowern speak, of course,’ Thadspar continued.

‘Yes, he spoke well.’

‘And he reminded us of who we are. He reminded us that Collegium is a centre of thought, of peace, and of law. You would now make us into some desperate mercenary company, springing about the Lowlands in search of a war that is not ours. That was his main point, I think.’