Read War Master's Gate for Free Online

all that he was close to Stenwold’s age. His eyes roamed the walls, finding only absences there, for
his crew had already passed through the lighthouse and stripped it of everything when the Wasps had got close to the city.
    ‘The factora in the city is acceptable?’ Stenwold asked him.
    ‘Will do nicely until we chase the Jaspers away,’ Tomasso agreed. ‘This place started looking a bit exposed when their lads from the Second began setting up.’ He
grimaced. ‘I’m no engineer, but you may have to pull the old place down. Gives too much of a vantage over the city.’
    ‘Not that the Imperial artillery needs that, nowadays, but yes, it’s been thought of. We’ve engines in the city that have calculated the range.’ Stenwold was still
staring out to sea as though trying to divine the future from the surging waves. ‘She knows . . .?’
    ‘. . . Not to come here,’ Tomasso finished for him. ‘Or anywhere, right now. I hear Despard’s just back from down there, probably has letters for you even. But they know
the score, the Sea-kinden. If the Wasps were coming by boat, your lad Aradocles would be sending up his monsters by the dozen, but I reckon the Spiders haven’t forgotten the last
time.’
    Stenwold nodded. The Spider-kinden – many of whom were now marching alongside the Wasp Second Army – had tried to send a fleet against Collegium, but Stenwold and Tomasso’s
newfound friends beneath the waves had dissuaded them. The tentative, secretive arrangements put in place between land and sea that rested so much on Tomasso and his opposite number below had been
bearing fruit and working better than anyone had anticipated. If the Wasps had not revived the war, a whole new age of enlightenment might be dawning. Instead of which, Stenwold’s city was
scarred with bomb craters, his people turned into soldiers, and three dozen military decisions were currently prowling about the streets, waiting for him to return and put them out of their misery.
Simply to avoid them, he had come out here, perhaps for the last time, to stare at the sea.
    Paladrya, her name was. Every old man needed some romance in his life, and Stenwold’s was separated from him by a barrier neither of them could cross for long. The land was too harsh and
hostile for her, the sea a place of nightmares for him. Even their letters were cast in foreign alphabets.
    ‘I hear the Wasp lads are keeping their distance, since you took the air from them,’ Tomasso noted. As a Fly-kinden, control of the air was something he thoroughly approved of, and
the Collegiate orthopters were currently the undisputed masters of the skies above the city.
    ‘Still,’ Stenwold observed, ‘they’re not going away.’ At last he dragged his eyes away from the waves. ‘What will you do, if it comes to that?’
    Tomasso shrugged easily. ‘The sea’s an open road. We’ll ship out when the time comes, and no hard feelings. You’re welcome to take a berth with us. We’ve space for
you.’ Even as Stenwold opened his mouth, the Fly held his hands up. ‘I know, I know, your place is here – noble War Master and all that. I’m just saying, though. The crew
wouldn’t begrudge the room if your Assembly decided to give you a kick.’
    ‘It’s kind of them,’ Stenwold allowed, and then a scuffle sounded from somewhere below and a younger Fly burst into the room.
    ‘Mar’Maker, there you are!’
    ‘Laszlo,’ Stenwold acknowledged him, abruptly tense. ‘What news?’
    ‘Oh, they need you right now back in the city, Mar’Maker. It’s not the Wasps but, from the look on half the faces there, it might as well be.’
    Stenwold nodded heavily, knowing immediately who the Fly meant. ‘They’ve made good time then, but Ants always could march.’
    ‘There’s an automotive waiting to get you to the city, and I really think you should be there before this mob arrives. Otherwise someone’s going to do something
stupid.’
    ‘Almost certainly