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right,’ Stenwold agreed, and then he was clumping down the stairs, with Laszlo buzzing at his shoulder.
    At the west wall of Collegium, Jodry Drillen watched the approaching force, and all around him were the city’s Merchant Company soldiers, very pointedly not doing
anything about it but plainly wishing that they could.
    ‘Brings back memories,’ someone could be heard to say, even as Stenwold stomped his way up the steps to the summit of the wall.
    ‘Where’s their representative?’ he demanded.
    Jodry turned and inclined his head to indicate a silent, dark figure standing at the battlements, given a wide berth by the locals.
    ‘I hope you’re sure of what you’re doing, is all.’ The Speaker for the Assembly was still a fat man, but the stresses of recent events had made all that weight hang on
him as though it was sloughing off, from the pouchy bags under his eyes to the way his clothes all seemed ill-fitting. He and Stenwold had clashed a few times during the Wasps’ last
offensive, but now they were friends again, just about.
    Stenwold made his way along the parapet to the Ant that stood alone there: short, ebony-skinned, and armoured against the world in a mail hauberk.
    ‘Termes,’ he named him, and the Ant nodded.
    ‘War Master.’
    Together they looked out at the Vekken army.
    The last time a force from that Ant city had come to Collegium, it had been for conquest, and the time before that, as well. The Ants had been the city’s enemies for most of
Stenwold’s life, certainly far longer than the Wasps had. It was a matter of scale, though. Vek was only one city, the Empire was many. Stenwold had worked extremely hard to bring the Vekken
to a point where they might consider their Beetle neighbours as something other than a threat or a prize. He had worked even harder to convince his own people that such a change of heart in their
old foes was even possible. Now here were the fruits.
    ‘How many?’ he asked.
    ‘Eight hundred,’ Termes told him. ‘That was thought reasonable.’
    Not enough for an invasion, but enough to be useful.
The Vekken had considered their gesture seriously. They had no love for the Wasps and they knew that, if Collegium fell, the Empire
would be outside their gates soon enough.
    ‘They’ll camp . . .?’
    ‘Outside the city,’ Termes confirmed. He did not say,
As we did last time
, but Stenwold almost heard the echo of the words.
    ‘There are boats from Tsen on their way, I’m told.’
    ‘We are aware of that.’ Termes’s face revealed nothing. Tsen was another Ant city, further west still, and no friend of Vek’s save that both cities now found themselves
friends of Collegium. ‘We suggest they stay on the water. We will keep to the land.’
    ‘It might be for the best.’ Stenwold nodded and returned to Jodry’s side. ‘We’ll need them, if the worst comes to the worst,’ he pointed out, watching the
immaculately disciplined Ants break their column and begin to pitch camp tactfully outside artillery range. But, then, the Vekken would have no fond memories of the effectiveness of Collegiate
artillery.
    ‘We’ve Sarnesh in the city also,’ Jodry informed him. ‘I thought it best not to invite them up onto the wall. More Ants around than we know what to do with, these
days.’
    ‘A messenger?’
    ‘More than that – a full-blown tactician, as I understand it. I think our northern neighbours want to make a move. After this business at Malkan’s Folly, I think the Sarnesh
are starting to hate the Wasps more even than you do, Sten.’
    There were still plenty of soldiers left on the walls as Jodry and Stenwold descended. They had not been posted there, and each would have given some humdrum excuse for his presence, but they
were keeping an eye on the Vekken, and no mistake. It took no great leap of imagination to envisage those enemies of recent memory being in league with the Wasps, forming part of some grand
betrayal. Stenwold could