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only hope that he had done his work well enough or, at worst, that the Vekken also hated the Wasps more than they hated their traditional foes.
    The customary place to meet with foreign dignitaries was the Amphiophos, of course, but where those hallowed halls of white stone had once stood was now just one of the city’s many new
scars, bombarded by the Imperial air force into a warren of rubble and broken walls. Instead, a lecture hall at the College served, and it was there that Stenwold and Jodry, and a handful of other
Beetle-kinden who had become Collegium’s de facto high command, met with Milus of Sarn.
    The Sarnesh tactician looked close to Stenwold’s own years, belonging to that generation that, on all sides, was determining the course of the war. He had a small staff with him: three
close-featured Ants of his own city and a pale Fly-kinden girl with gleaming red hair.
    ‘You’re making a mistake, of course,’ Milus told the Beetles, even as they came in through the door.
    ‘You mean the Vekken?’ Stenwold looked him straight in the eye.
    ‘I do, and you’ll regret it in time. For now . . . who knows? The times are certainly unprecedented.’ He made a grand gesture with his hands, just one shade from being
spontaneous. Ants had little use for body language or expressions amongst themselves, which made them both hard to read and hard to relate to, but Milus had obviously learned a stock of
conversational tools for occasions such as this. The fact that he was not making more capital out of the Vekken arrival was also telling. Here was a new sort of Sarnesh leader.
    ‘Tactician,’ Jodry addressed him, ‘you have us here, the best of us. I assume you don’t want the full Assembly convened? It’s been a while since we last did that,
and we’re short of somewhere to put them. It’s just the War Council making most of the key decisions at the moment.’
    Milus nodded approvingly. ‘I have official business to discuss but, before that, I want to give you my personal congratulations. You’ll be well aware that, while my people value our
friends in Collegium for many reasons, your martial prowess has never been one of them. Yet you’ve scored more victories against the Empire than we have, of late, and I hear their Second Army
is still hiding from your orthopters. Well done. Sarn takes great heart from your successes.’ It was a prepared speech, but it was not what one expected, from Ant-kinden, and the Collegiates
exchanged glances, reconsidering.
    ‘You’re kind,’ Jodry spoke for them. ‘We’re left in the same position as you, though, with an army on our doorstep that is just not attacking
yet.
Do we
take it that your presence here indicates a shift in Sarnesh tactics?’
    ‘We’re gathering our forces and we’ll strike soon. Why the Eighth is just sitting there at the wrong end of the Nethyon, we don’t know, but we intend to throw everything
we have at them – our soldiers, our machines, our allies and all the tricks we can come up with,’ Milus announced, raising a hand to forestall any comment. ‘And I realize that you
will not be able to lend substantial aid to us, just as we could not aid you. We each have our own worries, right now. However, I invite you to send some of your people to our councils, so that at
least you know what we intend.’
    ‘You will be directing this assault yourself, Tactician?’ Stenwold asked him.
    ‘I will.’
    ‘You did not need to come in person simply to invite us to your conference.’
    Milus smiled, with that same slight edge of formality. ‘But I did to offer my plaudits, War Master. Some things can only be said in one’s own voice.’
    ‘So, aren’t we the fast mover?’
    The red-haired Fly-kinden woman froze in the midst of unpacking her satchel, kneeling on the bed the Collegiates had found for her at the College. For a second she was motionless, and Laszlo
recognized that coiled-spring quality to her, ready for betrayal, for