Dragonfly Falling (38 page)

‘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.’

Stenwold nodded,
watching him through hooded eyes.

‘We have been deliberating
ever since, it seems,’ the old man said. ‘Every member of the Assembly had some
contribution to make, and most of it nonsense, of course. Some were for the
Wasps, saying that here was a people we could learn from. Some were for you,
echoing your assessment of the evils of their Empire. Some others were for you
for entirely the wrong reasons, in my view. They were advocating the purity of
the Lowlands and the fight against
any
outside
influence, malign or beneficial. And some, no doubt, were for the Empire for
the wrong reasons as well, because of personal profits to be made, or perhaps
even in return for some prior arrangement.’

‘Bribes, do you think?’

‘I cannot think
otherwise. If even a lowly market trader thinks to grease some Assembler’s palm
to favour his suit, then why not an Empire? That seems to be the way of the
world. However, I know a good number of the Assembly who would not take bribes,
and I suppose we should hold that up as virtue, in this grimy world.’

‘Master Thadspar—’

‘Stenwold, I think after
your performance today you have earned the right to call me Lineo.’

‘Well, then, you came
here for a reason, Lineo,’ Stenwold said. ‘You came here with soldiers, I am
told. I am wholly at your disposal.’

Lineo Thadspar sighed.
‘So it is come to this at last, has it? Stenwold, you have set in motion a
machine that no lever can stop or even slow. More, you have gone about it in an
entirely reprehensible manner. You have been agitating amongst the students,
you have been brawling in the streets. You have gone out and found an ugly,
violent piece of the world, and – hammer and tongs! – you have transplanted it
here, where it does not belong.’ He grimaced, showing teeth that were white,
even and artificial. ‘This situation gives me no pleasure, Stenwold, and I
regret that I have lived to see it.’

Stenwold nodded, still
waiting.

‘The Assembly of
Collegium concurs with you. It is our duty to resist the Wasp Empire.’

The words, spoken in
that tired, dry voice, meant nothing at first. Only as he passed back over them
did Stenwold understand what had just been said.

‘We have no right to set
ourselves up as guardians of the Lowlands,’ Thadspar continued, ‘but it seems
that is what we have become. All through Master Bellowern’s speech, his telling
us who we were and what we stood for, many of us began to wonder just where he
derived his mandate, to limit and define us in such ways. We had slept, I
think, for many years, and he was now telling us to turn over and continue
slumbering, while meanwhile you were shouting at us to wake up. And in the end,
the picture of Collegium that Master Bellowern drew was not entirely to our
liking. We have always regarded ourselves as the paragon of the Lowlands,
looking down on the Ant-kinden and the others because they lack our moral
sensibility. We pride ourselves in how well we treat our poor, our halfbreeds,
the disadvantaged of all kinds. And yet we have thereby devised for ourselves a
mantle that is heavy with responsibilities. If we truly stand for what we
believe is good, the betterment of others, the raising up of the weak and the
lowly, then we must take a stand against those with opposing philosophies. In
Collegium, we are of a unique calling. There are members from all the Lowlander
kinden amongst even our ruling body. Our perspective is broad. We are not the
richest of merchants, and yet our inventions keep Helleron’s forges busy. We
are not great soldiers, and yet we have conquered Sarn with our creed, and won
a friend there. We are Collegium, College and Town both, but what are we, if we
do not speak out against things we know are wrong?’ He shook his head. ‘We have
therefore informed Master Bellowern that we consider the Empire to have broken
the Treaty of Iron by marching on Tark. We were never party to
that
travesty they made the Council of Helleron sign. We
have made our stand.’

‘But this is marvellous,
Lineo,’ Stenwold said, but the old man shook his head.

‘It is terrible,
Stenwold. It means a change that we will never put right. We will look back in
future years, if we are so fortunate as to see them, and recognize the moment
that you stepped before the Assembly as the beginning of the end of a world,
just as the revolution was the end of the reign of the mystics. We have just
made history, Stenwold, and I find that I prefer to teach it than to create
it.’ Thadspar sighed, sipped at the wine that he had not, until that point,
touched. ‘I should tell you, however, there are some conditions attached to
this.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘First, as I mentioned
to your delightful ward, there has been an embarrassing number of bodies
turning up in certain rougher quarters of the city, and I rather think that you
yourself may in some way be responsible. If it was you killing Wasp-kinden
agents, in self-defence or defence of the city, then all well and good, but our
poor guardsmen are going frantic over the matter. I would rather appreciate
some clarification in due course.’

‘Of course,’ Stenwold
assured him.

‘And second, Stenwold .
. . Collegium is going to war. I know that is a very dramatic way of putting it
but it is nevertheless true. We are putting ourselves in opposition to the
Wasp-kinden and their Empire and, whether it is by words or deeds, that means
war. To prosecute this war the Assembly requires a division of labour, and so
it has been agreed to appoint certain men and women Masters – War Masters, I
suppose, would be the rather unpleasant-sounding term. We have precious few
volunteers, and many only willing to put forward the names of others, but, as
you have brought this plague down on us, almost everyone is most especially
agreed that you should do your fair share. The Assembly wishes to make you a
War Master, and if you will not take the post and thus stand by your
principles, then I doubt anyone else will.’

‘Then I accept, of course,’
Stenwold said, ‘and I’ll do whatever I can. I have some recommendations for
others, as well.’

‘In good time,’ Thadspar
said. ‘This is quite enough history for one day. My hands are rubbed raw with
the making of it.’ He drained the bowl, and then poured himself another,
looking older now than Stenwold had ever seen him. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘when
the Wasp-kinden came to join in the games, I was delighted: a delegation from a
savage nation coming to pay its respects. I foresaw Wasp students at the College
and Wasp traders in the market. I saw the Lowlands expanded, by a manageable
degree, to embrace seven kinden rather than six.’ He rubbed at his forehead,
stretching the lines furrowed there. ‘Why could it not have been as it then
appeared, Stenwold? How much easier life would have been.’

Stenwold was about to
say something consoling, when they heard the door slam open and both men jumped
to their feet, the aged Thadspar just as swift as Stenwold. Into the room came
a bundle of visitors, but Tisamon was at their head. He was dragging a girl and
Stenwold’s heart leapt, to his own great embarrassment, to see it was Arianna.
At the rear followed three or four of Thadspar’s guardsmen, who had obviously
been trying to stop Tisamon barging in, with so little success that he had
barely noticed them.

‘Tell them!’ Tisamon
snapped and, whipping out his arm, threw Arianna forwards. He had no doubt
intended to cast her at Stenwold’s feet, but instead Stenwold found himself
stepping forwards to catch her. For a second, the entire room was still, with
Arianna trembling against his chest and Thadspar blinking at the Mantis-kinden.