No time for such philosophy now, old man.

‘So the enemy have a way to kill people faster than they could manage before. You will say that we should have it, too, and I cannot say no to that. My own people, all our people, will soon become the targets of this weapon. Therefore we cannot cripple ourselves by casting it aside.’

They watched him narrowly.

‘So what, you say? What is the answer, then? I have only one, and I cannot force it on you. Collegium possesses the plans for this weapon, but there will be other chances soon for all of you who are capable of the artifice to copy and design your own. My current monopoly is almost fictional: it exists only in a saving of time. But we have so little of that left, and therefore I have something to bargain with.

‘I will give these plans to the Sarnesh,’ he told them, seeing already the beginnings of their anger. ‘I will give them to the Kessen,’ he added. ‘I will give them to Teornis of the Spiderlands. I would give them to the Ancient League, if they would accept them. I would give them even to the Vekken, if they were here. I will give them to anyone and everyone who will sign a written oath.’

That caught them unawares, even Teornis. They waited, and he happily let them wait a little longer before he enlightened them.

‘An oath, I mean, that these weapons will be used against the Empire only. I know all too well that knowledge cannot be destroyed. They are therefore here to stay, these monstrous devices. An oath, all the same, that they will not be used against any other cities in the Lowlands, or against the Spiderlands. And an oath that you will take up arms against any city that does.’

They clearly did not understand. He put his staff flat on the table, leaning forward. ‘Whoever breaks this oath will have more enemies than they know what to do with, and in this way those of our allies – our allies, you understand, who have given of their own resources already to defend us – those of our allies who cannot use this weapon are thus still protected from it. An oath of cities. An oath of alliance.’ He looked from face to face and heard his voice shake as he continued, ‘Trust, you see. Without trust we cannot succeed. Without trust we cannot stand together.’

‘And will you sign this oath, for Collegium? We understand that Collegium is even now raising an army equipped with such devices,’ the Sarnesh woman said.

Stenwold gave her a flat look, then delved in his pocket and brought out the much-creased oath he had laboured over. Before their eyes he unfolded it and signed it with his reservoir pen.

‘It is done,’ he told them. ‘Who will be the next?’

They watched each other now, not him, and he feared they would not. At least I can go home, then, was his only thought.

‘I shall sign next.’ Teornis took the oath from him and signalled for a servant to bring him pen and ink. ‘I know there are those who will not trust me, but I shall bind the Aldanrael by my mark, nonetheless. If they believe themselves to be so much more trustworthy, I invite them to place their own marks beside it. After all, the new-woven Ancient League lies a long way from my lands. I do not believe this new weapon has sufficient range that my anticipated treachery might endanger them.’

He pushed the document across the table towards the Skryre from Dorax, ignoring the hostile glares of the two Mantis women who flanked her. The Moth-kinden, looking old and very small, looked at the paper and those two fresh signatures.

‘We have nothing to pledge. We shall never use this deadly toy,’ she said. ‘We are at the mercy of all of you. This weapon shall likely be the death of us.’

‘Will the League draw back even now?’ Stenwold asked her. ‘I do this to protect you, for what protection it can offer. Nothing we do or say will prevent the snapbow coming into general use here, as it already is in the Empire.’

‘Do not presume to lecture us, Beetle,’ she said, but she was tired, defeated. ‘It means nothing. However, the Ancient League shall put its mark to this.’

After that, the oath passed about the table until it landed before the Sarnesh Tactician, who had no doubt been communicating with her king and her entire city all this time.

When she signed, there was no great upsurge of relief in Stenwold, just the thought that he could leave this wretched city at long last and see his beloved Collegium once more. He forced himself to wait, even as the dignitaries filed out with their various expressions of suspicion and dissatisfaction, forced himself to remain the impeccable diplomat to the last. When Teornis appeared at his elbow, as silently and familiarly as his own shadow, he was not surprised.

‘Masterfully done,’ the Spider said. His smile, as always, looked as genuine a smile as Stenwold had ever seen, and more practised than any.

‘I am not meant for this,’ Stenwold sighed.

Teornis shook his head, seeming amused. ‘I only hope that we always remain allies, Master Maker, for you would be a formidable foe.’

‘High praise from the Lord-Martial?’

‘And well deserved.’ Teornis’s smile twitched broader, and even that reaction, seeming so spontaneous, could just as easily have been deliberately contrived. With these Spiders I truly cannot ever know. The thought turned him to reflect on Arianna, and he dismissed the association quickly.

‘You should listen for news from the east, War Master,’ Teornis advised him. ‘It is at least passably pleasing this season.’

‘There is some new winter fashion, is there?’

‘A new fashion in warfare, indeed. One hears on the wind that a certain protege of yours has been causing the Imperial Army some degree of embarrassment.’

Where the Seventh Army had come to rest after the Battle of the Rails there had once stood a Beetle-kinden farmstead. That was gone now, and in its place was a series of wooden fortifications that the Winged Furies had put up during the winter, in anticipation of retaliation from Sarn. They were Wasp field fortifications, though, nothing the Ant-kinden would have recognized: slanting walls and overhanging ledges, bristling with sharpened stakes, to make the camp as difficult to attack, from ground or air, as the Wasp mind could devise.

But there were still losses the walls could not guard against. There always were. Scouts went missing; foraging parties sometimes failed to return. The land beyond the fort was the hunting ground of Sarnesh rangers, of bandits, brigands and desperate refugees. This, though… this latest news had brought General Malkan out to see for himself. He required the evidence of his own eyes to understand the true scale of the attack.

There had been a troop transport coming down the track from Helleron, packed with men and supplies, going at a speed that only well-maintained rails could allow. Three miles from the fort, there had been a series of explosions that ripped apart the engine automotive and suddenly the tracks had been gone, hurled aside into splayed and coiling shapes, and the entire convoy had come off the rails, carriages shunting into carriages, the straight line of the transport’s passage thrashing suddenly like a whip.

The corpses had gone by the time he reached the site. Travelling with a guard of 600 men was time-consuming but Malkan was not a rash sort. He was the youngest general the Empire had and he fully intended to become the oldest, in good time.

‘One hundred ninety-seven men died in the initial impact,’ one of his aides was recounting without emotion. The man was his intelligence officer, almost certainly Rekef, and probably did see this number as nothing more than that. ‘Over four hundred injured, best count.’

‘And then?’ Malkan prompted, though he knew already. The word had run quickly through the entire Seventh.