War Master's Gate (81 page)

The interrogators were not at work – it would clearly take them a while to get back to routine without Cherten – and Tynan found he had the place to himself, his footsteps echoing
back from the stripped walls.

Probably I should keep a bodyguard about me
, he considered.
The situation remains fluid, after all, and you never know who might choose to have a go.

He glanced about the counting house’s interior, and reflected that he might almost welcome an assassin just about now.

But some great traditions could simply not be relied on these days.

He descended to the cellar, firing up a chemical lantern on the way, and casting a spitting white light ahead of him. Word had reached him just around dawn: there had indeed been an assassin,
just not a very good one.

She was now the sole resident, hunched in the corner of the furthest cell as though driven there by the intrusion of the light. The artificers’ work allowed her no privacy: just a set of
bars cordoning off one corner of the cellar, padlocked to eyebolts set in the stone walls on either side.

She was not a Spider, as he had been told, but a halfbreed with a lot of Ant blood in her as well, pale of skin and with dartlike blemishes on cheeks and forehead. She had been caught sneaking
across the rooftops by sentries from the Airborne, whereupon she had apparently put up a fierce struggle to defend herself. She had injured two men before they got her sword off her, and they had
not been gentle in subsequently expressing their grievances. He could see where her left hand had been stamped on, swollen and ugly, and the surgeon had merely knotted a strip of cloth over her
bloodied right eye after cleaning out the wound.

When the soldiers had taken her down, she had called out Tynan’s name, they claimed. That was the only reason she still lived: because it was personal.

‘You’re the best the Spiderlands could send, are you?’ he asked. ‘Did . . . did
she
send you?’
And what would I prefer to hear, precisely?
He
almost found he wanted her to say yes, to confirm that Mycella was still thinking of him, if only to dispatch this half-trained killer.

The prisoner mumbled something through bruised and bloody lips.

‘Louder!’ he snapped, not going closer to the bars, just in case.

‘Not Spiderlands,’ he made out. ‘Collegium.’

Tynan gave a surprised grunt. ‘Didn’t realize the locals did that sort of thing. Or maybe it’s just you, is it? Well you’re piss-poor at it, you know? Even as a murderer,
you fail.’

That got a reaction and she bared her teeth impotently at him, her one good eye staring wildly.

‘What did you hope to accomplish?’ Tynan asked her. ‘Killing me wouldn’t free your city, anyway. Unless you were going to work your way down the chain of command, from
the top.’

‘You killed Eujen.’

He frowned. The words made no sense to him.

‘He was my friend. He was the best man I knew. And when he came to talk to you, you took him and tortured him . . . and then you shot him.’ As she spoke, her voice was low and dull,
but her eye flashed fire when she looked up. ‘You killed my friend. You killed lots of my friends, but Eujen . . . Coming to kill you was easier than staying to watch him die.’

When he came to talk . . .?
‘This isn’t that student nonsense, is it?’

He could have put another knife in her, and it would have hurt less. The dismissal of everything there ever was about her cause and her friends, this man who would write the history books
deeming them a trivial irrelevance.

‘Well, never mind about them. We’ll wrap them up today,’ he told her, thinking it more to himself than to torment her. ‘As for you, though, I’ll give you a choice.
How much do you want to keep on living?’ Recognizing that traitor – hope – in her eye, he shook his head. ‘Oh no, don’t start down that road. There are two fates for
you, girl. One is that we gift you a pair of pikes of your own, and you’ll die today, eventually. The other’s if you think you know something that we might be interested in. That way
you live much longer, though, given the circumstances, you may come to regret it. That’s your choice, and that’s all of your choices.’ His voice had become rough and ugly, saying
it. ‘I’ve just had two hundred good soldiers executed, assassin. Their deaths were quick and underserved. At least when I see your corpse, I’ll know yours was neither.’

Stenwold was managing to walk more easily now, although occasional waves of dizziness still swept over him, so he kept his stick handy. He had even been out to climb the
courtyard wall at dawn, to look at the size of the problem.

It was a suitably large problem, too. There were plenty of Wasps out there, and some Sentinels, and it seemed likely that they would stir themselves soon, and then matters would get awkward.

If the Wasps were of a mind to break the building open, then a little artillery – perhaps even the leadshotters of the Sentinels – would suffice to do it, and then the
students’ defence would last only minutes under the descending host of the Light Airborne.

On the other hand, the Wasps had declined to do any such thing so far, although similar tactics had been used against entrenched insurgents elsewhere in the city, and so there seemed some chance
that the Empire might have to do things the old-fashioned way, and take the building by storm. In that case, it was possible that the students might still be in possession of it by dusk, for the
main door was the only real approach, and there were plenty of small windows overlooking it that student snap-bowmen might use. But the next day would probably see the end, Stenwold realized. They
were short of ammunition. The Empire was not short of men.

The Dragonfly Castre Gorenn was in charge up on the wall – any command structure had come down to strength of personality, and the Commonwealer had become a near-mythic figure amongst the
students owing to her feats of aim.

‘I want only people who can fly stationed on this wall,’ Stenwold told her. ‘So yourself, Flies, any Beetles who’ve got their wings. When their advance comes you need to
pull back to the main building in good time – get inside so we can shut them out. Or else, if you can’t get in, just take off, get clear of the fighting.’

Gorenn nodded coolly.

‘And no fool heroics. I mean in good time, Dragonfly.’ Stenwold had heard a great deal about the Commonweal Retaliatory Army.

She met his eye warily, as if ascribing some legendary characteristics to him herself. ‘Understood, War Master.’

Stenwold took another look over the wall, noticing movement about the Wasp lines, but a lazy sort of movement suggesting they had a little time in hand before any assault.

Then Laszlo landed close to him. ‘Mar’Maker, you need to come now.’

Trouble
, was his first thought, but Stenwold could read Laszlo well, and the Fly was excited rather than worried. Something had happened.

There was a gathering in one of the rooms off the infirmary – a band of about twenty, but they were the leaders. Stenwold marked Berjek Gripshod, now in a buff coat and carrying a snapbow,
and a couple of other College Masters. The rest were students wearing their purple sashes, save for Gerethwy the Woodlouse, who still wore the colours of the Coldstone Company.

And in the middle of all this, a newcomer. A Fly-kinden with a riot of black beard, whom Stenwold had assumed was long shipped out of the city.

‘Tomasso?’

‘And here’s himself!’ the ex-pirate declared. ‘Right then, let me speak my piece, for we’ve not much time.’

‘How did you get in here?’ Stenwold demanded.

Tomasso looked pained but said, ‘Your little windows here will fit one of mine, just about, Master Maker. And fear not, your lads and lasses had a bow trained on me as I came in.
They’re sharp enough. Now, time for you to be going, though, don’t you think? I can’t imagine what you’re waiting for, but it hasn’t appeared.’

‘That’s not much of a joke, Tomasso,’ Stenwold told him.

‘Nonsense. I’ve a distraction lined up. Your people here look light on their feet. They can nip out and lose themselves in the streets. Meanwhile, you can come with me.’

‘You obviously haven’t seen how things are looking on the ground out there,’ Stenwold replied flatly. ‘The Wasps have a cordon set about the entrance to the College, and
you’d need a remarkable diversion to stop them simply shooting us all down.’

Tomasso was nodding, a grin flashing from amidst his beard. ‘Oh, that you can bet on. You’ll all just need to be nimble in getting out.’

‘And the wounded?’ The voice came from the doorway: Sartaea te Mosca was standing there in a bloodied apron. ‘We have eleven who can’t walk, some who shouldn’t even
be moved.’

‘Better to move them than let the Jaspers have them,’ Tomasso pointed out.

‘Nobody’s nimble when they’re carrying a stretcher,’ she told him.

Tomasso looked exasperated, as though his audience didn’t quite understand what he was offering. Nobody actually voiced the idea of abandoning the wounded, although it must have done the
round of most heads there.

‘Excuse me,’ one of the students piped up eventually, a broad Beetle girl in chemical-stained overalls. ‘We can get out another way, I think.’

Everyone stared at her and she shuffled back a little, obviously not happy with being the centre of attention.

‘Cornella Fassen, isn’t it?’ Berjek Gripshod said kindly. ‘Tell us what you mean, please.’

‘Well, Master Gripshod, do you know the Cold Cellars?’

There was a murmur of bafflement and even laughter at that, as though she had told a joke just to defuse the tension. Those cold, slick, allegedly haunted chambers had been a part of student
folklore for many years.

Even Berjek raised half a smile. ‘What of them?’ He remained painfully polite and correct, for all that there was an army gearing up outside even as he spoke.

‘Last year, some friends of mine worked out that it’s just . . . they’re adjacent to the Natural History vaults underneath the Living Sciences faculty. That’s where they
keep the samples, and where all the preservatives tanks . . . and the cooling machinery.’

Stenwold and Berjek exchanged glances.

‘What are you saying?’ the War Master asked.

‘For the last day we’ve been working on the wall there. We reckon there can’t be that much that separates the two cellars. We had acids on it, and we were chipping away. If we
could just get into Living Sciences, we could come out through the Old Workshops, and that means outside the Wasp cordon. We thought it would be useful, but we didn’t seem to be getting
anywhere. But this morning there’s a crack . . . In the wall, Masters. I think we must be almost through.’

A shudder went through them on hearing that. It meant the insertion of hope, like a needle.
A way out?

Almost immediately there was shouting upstairs, and moments later a Fly skidded down, calling out to them, ‘They’ve started! They’re moving for the wall!’

‘Get through to Living Sciences any way you can!’ Stenwold almost shouted at Fassen, who was out of the door the next instant. ‘Everyone else . . .’ Wheels spun in his
mind. ‘I need a detail to man the windows – cover for the wall guards. And then . . . and then . . .’
And then hold your ground until they kill you
, he thought, as he
realized what he was asking.

‘I’ll take volunteers for that,’ Berjek said calmly.

‘No—’

‘Oh, shut up, Maker. Give someone else a chance.’ The old man smiled wanly. ‘Less to lose here, and less of a loss. Who needs one more historian, eh?’

Stenwold took a deep breath. ‘I need a detachment ready to go through the breach in the wall as soon as it’s made. We don’t know who might be on the far side – the place
could already be packed with Wasps.’

‘I’ll sort that,’ someone volunteered, and Stenwold nodded in gratitude. ‘Te Mosca, ready the wounded for movement. Yes, I know you don’t want to move them, but you
must. Tomasso’s right. And, as for your distraction . . .’

‘You make the call,’ Tomasso told him, ‘and I can signal them, no problems.’

‘What are we talking about?’

‘Suicidal counter-attack on the Wasps. Spider-kinden lorn detachment.’

Stenwold shook his head, impressed despite himself. ‘We will have to talk about how you managed that.’

‘Well, on the same subject, I have a whole bunch of former Spiderlands mercenaries hiding out with some trading friends of mine, at great expense, who will be getting themselves out of the
city as soon as the Wasps open the gates to trade. I recommend you get your wounded, and anyone on the Empire’s lists, to hook up with them. Best chance they’ll get, believe
me.’

‘And me?’

‘Master Maker, you’re with me and Laszlo. We’ve got a boat to catch.’

‘General!’

Tynan found that he had been expecting it, even as he sat taking reports and checking over the seemingly endless details of the Second’s assimilation of Collegium. He looked at the
sergeant who had burst in on him, here on the second floor of some ousted magnate’s townhouse.

‘An attack?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The sergeant took a deep breath. ‘Best guess, about four hundred, sir. They must have been sneaking as close as they could, but as soon as we spotted them, they
formed up. Sir . . . my lieutenant said you’d want to see.’

Did he, now?
But Tynan put down his pen and shoved his chair back.
Four hundred, formed up, and I have a thousand snap-bowmen right here, right now, and so many more ranged across
the city. Is this all you could manage?

‘Send out orders – to keep all eyes out for lone archers and assassins,’ he instructed, though if none was found it would not surprise him. An attack of any kind was madness.
Surely she could have escaped over the walls? We can’t watch everything all of the time. Did I not leave even that much of a gap for you?
In his heart he felt he knew. What would she
be returning home for, if she escaped? Already in disgrace in the Spiderlands, her family humiliated and brought low, this campaign had been her last chance to redeem herself in the eyes of her
peers. Tynan had crushed that hope – Tynan and his orders.