With Balkus lumbering behind him he set off back for the College. The big Ant was something of a mystery to him, being Scuto’s man, not Stenwold’s own. He knew him for a mercenary and yet the man had asked for no payment. That was either a happy turn of events or a suspicious one.

‘Tell me, Balkus, what’s in it for you?’ he asked boldly.

‘Don’t trust me, is it?’

Without even glancing around, still presenting his broad back to the theoretical knife, Stenwold shrugged. ‘It’s not a trusting business.’

‘That it’s not,’ the man agreed. ‘Look, I’m no hero, right? I plied my trade from Helleron down to Everis, and I must have signed on with everyone from crooks to Aristoi at one time or another. It’s a fine stretch of land thataways, so between Helleron and the Spiders there’s always work for a man like me. Wasps will change all that. A man like me under their shadow is either a slave waiting for the chains or he gets slapped with rank and papers and made to do their dirty work for them. If I’d wanted that I’d have stayed in Sarn.’

‘There are always frontiers,’ Stenwold pointed out. The white spires of the College were visible ahead now. ‘You could have just moved on.’

‘You’re trying to get rid of me?’

‘I’m curious, Balkus. If I’m going to rely on you, I need to know you. I know Scuto trusts you. So that’s a good start.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Stenwold heard an awkwardness in the Ant’s voice. ‘Scutes and me go way back. We used to take turns bailing each other out. This is… what, almost before you knew him. And some of the lads and lasses with him, they were fellows of mine, and a lot of them are just ash and dirt now. And you get to wondering how it’s going to be, you know.’

‘I do,’ Stenwold agreed. ‘Well don’t think you’re not appreciated. I saw you fight before the Pride. You did good work there.’

‘So did you, and your niece and a whole lot of them,’ Balkus agreed. ‘And some that didn’t leave that field alive either.’

They passed by the twin statues of Logic and Reason that adorned the east gate of the College. Stenwold paused a moment to rest a hand on Logic, carved as a female Beetle of mature years wielding a metal rod marked with the gradations of an artificer’s rule. The Great College was where learning was to be had here for the youth of all kinden and, while the rich paid their way, there were scholarships for the poor as well. The Moths might keep their secrets in the dark of their mountain fastnesses, but here learning was light to be spread to all corners of the world. There was nowhere else like it, and there never had been. And now the Wasps wanted to destroy it.

At the gates he turned to the Ant-kinden. ‘I have work for you. An opportunity.’

‘Name it,’ Balkus told him, and Stenwold did. From the man’s expression the duties outlined did not suit him, and it was a test, in a way, to see whether he would accept it. In the end he nodded, perhaps just because Ant-kinden were bred to take orders. With a final grimace and a shake of his head Balkus set off, heading away from the College.

Stenwold saw knots of students point him out as he entered. He was aware that, all unsought, he had a reputation within these grounds. He was considered a freethinker, apparently: he dared to teach that which the orthodox Masters of the College would not touch. He had been warning of the Wasp Empire for a decade now, and this very year they had finally come to the Lowlands. First they had competed at the Great Games, taking a pointedly diplomatic second place in any contest they chanced their hand at. Now the news was seeping in of armies on the move, the drums of war sounding from the east. Stenwold the panic-monger had become Stenwold the prophet.

There was a far greater murmur now as he crossed the College grounds, and all of a sudden he realized what it must mean. Concrete report must have come to Collegium that Tark had been attacked, that the invasion had actually started. He turned to look at all those young faces, and he saw hope and fear, doubt and admiration, all mixed in. Seeing him stop, many of them approached him, calling out questions.

‘Master Maker, where will the Empire go when Tark throws them back?’

‘Master Maker, how do they fight? Do they use auto-motives?’

‘What happens if they smash down the walls of Tark?’

This last question silenced them. It was something most of them had never considered, for a dozen Ant-kinden expeditions had been turned back by that city’s defences. The political balance of the Lowlands had been stagnant for generations. Change, on such a scale, was unthinkable.

‘If they take the city of Tark,’ Stenwold said, speaking quietly enough, but the silence hanging over the students was eerie, ‘they will come west.’ He knew that his words would be taken as truth by them, simply because he spoke them, but he knew that they were indeed true and so did not care. The girl who had asked the question pushed forward from her fellows.

‘But they can’t, surely? What do they want?’

He tried to place her. She had attended some of his history classes earlier that year. ‘Power. Control. Their Empire is like a spinning top that must keep moving lest it falls.’

‘But can’t we do anything?’ she asked. She was a young Spider-kinden, pretty without the cutting beauty that some of them possessed.

Achaeos’s words recurred to him. ‘What can be done, will be done,’ he said, and in that moment he placed her – placed her name, Arianna. A promising student, one with a lot of potential.

A

Four

The main difference between Wasp hospitality and Ant hospitality, Salma decided, was that Wasps could fly. When he had been locked up by the Wasps in Myna they had wrenched his arms behind his back and tied his elbows together with Fly-manacles so that he could not have manifested his Art-wings even if he had somewhere to go.

By contrast the Ants had now bound his hands before him and then slung him into a windowless, pitch-dark cell, and left him for what seemed like a day and a half.

The cell itself was too small to lie down straight in, also too low to stand up. He ended up hunched in one corner, trying to listen for any movement from without, but the cell was dug into the earth, with stone walls and a solid wooden door. Not an echo got through to enlighten him.

They gave him some water, stale-tasting, in a bowl he nearly upset trying to find it with his fingers. No food, though, which did not bode well. It suggested they were going to keep him around for a little while, but not for long.

He had protested, of course. The three prisoners had done their best to explain that they were not spies and that the Wasps were their enemies. The soldiers who had captured them had simply not been interested. They had a specific role and it did not include talking to prisoners. Nothing Salma or the others could say would make a dent in that.

He hoped that Totho and Skrill were doing better than he was, although it seemed unlikely.

Then he heard the hatch slide in the door, and he froze, wondering if there might be some opportunity here, but even if they opened the cell for him and he could somehow, with hands tied, overpower his jailers, then he would still be underground somewhere, and likely to be killed on sight after that.

Light beyond, dim lantern-light that seemed as bright as the sun to him, spilled across the cramped little space to climb the far wall.

There was the clank of a key in the lock and the heavy door was hauled open. Even as Salma got to his feet the world exploded, searing into his brain. He found that he had fallen onto his side, his hands up to shield his eyes. They had suddenly turned on some kind of lamp, some artificer’s thing, just as he had been looking straight at it. After so long in complete darkness his eyes burned and he felt tears course down his cheeks as two men lifted him to his feet and hauled him out of the cell.