‘Your brother needs more to think about,’ the Mosquito informed her. His voice was a soft rustle.
‘If he is growing impatient, surely you can baffle him, O Sarcad,’ she challenged. She liked to play at games of strength with Uctebri, and he gained a distant enjoyment from them that he would never draw from any experiment upon her body. Despite her royal bloodline that all but touched the throne, she was in fact alone and had nothing. He enjoyed seeing her test herself against him. In fact he encouraged it.
He had plans for her.
‘Yes, he will grow impatient if my anticipated services are all he can expend his thought on,’ the Mosquito admitted. ‘I will have the Shadow Box soon but, until that oaf Maxin has recovered it for me, I shall attempt no ritual, either for you or for him. Until my wages are paid I shall have to take his mind off things.’
‘What do you propose?’ she enquired.
He gave her a smile, a quick flash of those needle teeth. ‘Would your brother be distressed to discover one of his concubines was dead, do you think, Princess?’
‘No, why would he care?’ she almost laughed at the thought. ‘I can’t think of a single man, woman or child whose death would discomfort him. Not even that bastard Maxin’s.’
Uctebri steepled his delicate fingers. ‘You do him an injustice, for at this moment he is particularly distressed. The death of one of his harem has just upset many of his plans.’
She stared at him. ‘Explain yourself, Sarcad.’
He drew close, raising one cold hand to softly touch her face. ‘I have known both kings and queens in my time, and in my long experience they are quite unsightly. What a bloodline you have! Your brother, so regular of feature, handsome and well proportioned – quite the hero-king of legend. And you, my dear princess, what a queen you might make.’
She shivered because, although the thought was not new to her, it was still the worst treason to express it. ‘The Empire has no queens. No woman can inherit.’
‘So says a history all of merely three generations old.’ Uctebri’s lips twitched. ‘I am older than your Empire, and I know how these things can change. Maybe, if a certain bold young woman should begin to unfurl her wings . . . especially with her brother so distracted.’
‘Distracted by what? Tell me plainly, will you?’
‘The Queen of Szar killed herself last night.’ His protuberant red eyes glinted, bleakly pleased. ‘She had been oppressed by dark thoughts for night after night. It was inevitable, really.’
‘You are a monster,’ Seda chided him.
‘You disapprove, O Queen-in-waiting?’
She realized that, beneath it all, she did not. It meant so little to her, the fate of some woman she had never met. How like him I am, at heart. ‘Speak on.’
‘Naturally, the news is confined to the harem, and it is your brother’s intention that it should stay there.’
‘I understand the nature of the hold we have on Szar and the Bee-kinden.’ She forced herself to look into those bloody eyes, but his Art had started working on her now, so that they appeared almost benign – the malice in them dissolving before her gaze.
‘I rather think the sad news may become known in Szar sooner than might otherwise be expected,’ Uctebri said, delicately.
‘You can . . . But of course you can. But this will damage the Empire.’
‘Which is a merely a weapon in your brother’s hands at present. Time enough later to whip your subjects back into line,’ he told her. ‘For now, I think it best that your brother finds himself ever more deeply involved in matters both within the Empire and without. It is only to your benefit, Princess, because you will need all the space for manoeuvre that you can muster. You have a great deal of work to do, I believe.’
‘And should I start by granting the boon I see you about to request of me?’
Her remark left him absolutely silent, his red eyes gleaming as he examined her.
‘I read it in your face, monster,’ she said softly. ‘Have I not done well?’
He suddenly bared his teeth in a smile of true approbation. ‘Oh, well done, Princess. My kind are not so easily read, after all. Your skills are impressive, but then you have survived by them these last several years, have you not?’
‘Oh, I have, at that.’
‘You are perfect,’ he observed, with such utter sincerity. He was grotesque and hideous of spirit, and she was just a tool to him, but she was an implement that he valued and even had care for. It was a bitter truth that the Princess of the Empire had no other who showed her any greater regard than that, but it was a truth nonetheless.
‘We shall meet again tonight. I shall have them bring you to me. My invention is limitless when it comes to finding excuses to enjoy your company. So you shall come to me tonight, and we shall enact a little ritual all of our own. It is time you were tested.’
She dressed for him carefully. She wore a gown of red, in respect for his overriding obsession, that was worked with black in complex patterns at the hems. It was some Dragonfly war loot that had eventually found its way into her wardrobe, never worn before.
She sat before her mirror, with her body servants, and had them tend to her make-up as though she was to be flaunted before generals.
A test, she thought, and what if I fail? If she failed then, at least, when the worst came, she would look a true princess. In the Commonweal, where her dress came from, the women wore swords. She would have girded on a blade too, if custom had permitted. She still had her sting, of course, although she had never had cause to turn it on another human being. Knowing Uctebri’s passions, perhaps I shall have cause to turn it on myself.
I am so alone that I must find this repulsive monster my ally, putting my life in his thin hands.
She stood up, seeing in the mirror a reflected Seda of the might-have-been. For a moment she could not quite recognize herself in that image. There was pride there, and strength, and a cruelty that had graced the eyes of her father and now her brother. A moment later she was clutching at the shoulders of her servants, dizzy with it, for she thought she had seen, behind that silvered doppelgänger, the flames of battle, countless airborne war-machines and a thousand soldiers marching against a reddened sky.
The guard had arrived to fetch her. She noticed him start slightly at the sight of her, trying to match this formidable image with the princess he had seen last.
The room she was brought to was lined with black stone as a result of the vanity of some courtier of her late father. She guessed that, over the last few days, the servants had been kept busy polishing, so that floor, walls and even ceiling all gleamed. In the centre stood Uctebri, surrounded by a ring of tall iron candelabra. Each candle-flame that he had lit was doubled and redoubled by the polished walls, until it seemed she and the Mosquito stood in a gloom pierced by a hundred guttering stars.
‘You are on edge, creature,’ Seda observed. ‘More than usual I think. What has caught you by the hair this time?’
Uctebri showed his teeth, either in grimace or grin. He had little enough hair, in truth, and his scalp gleamed in the candlelight.
‘Or have you decided to support my brother after all? It wouldn’t surprise me, given that he is Emperor already. What can I offer against that? Perhaps this has been his game to tempt me into treason.’
‘On his slightest word, you would die, Princess,’ Uctebri said. ‘Games, he might play, but he has no need to see any proof of your perfidy. It is not as though his fraternal love for you restrains him.’
‘That it does not,’ she agreed. ‘So what, magician? What has got into you?’
He said nothing for a moment, just went on lighting candles. Then: ‘You make a remarkable show tonight, Princess. I had not asked it of you.’
‘Should the spirits of fate not see me at my best? You have prodded and pried and measured me all this while, but now you say there are tests still to come.’
‘It is now time to make my real test,’ Uctebri said, as he lit th
e final flame. His expression, shifting and flickering with the light, looked doubting as he turned it on her. ‘All this time I have informed your brother of the tests I have conducted on you, some of it true, some false, but for me this is the real test – and you must pass.’
She felt a sinking in her heart. That was what was now different about the man: he was, for once, entirely serious. Gone were the coy insinuations, the mockery, even the grotesque flirtation he seemed to indulge in. Now he had become Uctebri the Sarcad, a magus of the legendary Mosquito-kinden, and he was about to determine her future.
‘And if I fail?’ she asked. She was used, through long experience, to appear calm in these times of trial. Her brother had put her through enough practice already.
‘Then you will be of no use to me. We will be of no use to each other. I shall instead make what I can out of your brother’s inferior clay.’ She thought she heard genuine regret in his tone. He would far rather it was me. Can I take comfort from that? She could not because, in her prolongedly precarious state, there was no comfort to be had from any source.
‘Make your test, then,’ she told him. ‘What must I do? Run? Jump? Do you wish me to sing to you, monster?’
‘My test has already begun. I simply require you to watch me and listen. I will know, after I am done, whether you are my suitable material or not.’
‘But all you’ve done so far is light candles . . .’ she observed.
‘Yes, so many candles.’ He moved about the room, seemingly aimless. The myriad darts of light confused her eyes. It was impossible to even tell where the walls were now, such was the multiplication of reflections. Surely he had stepped beyond this room somehow, she kept thinking, but then he would turn, and she had to take it on faith that there was a wall there that had turned him.
He was reflected alongside the constellations of candle-flames, of course, but as she watched she felt her stomach start to turn, because she could not quite match them to him, some were too far, others too near. ‘Sarcad . . .’ she whispered, ‘what are you doing?’
‘Magic,’ and he continued his pacing. ‘Do you hear me?’
‘Of course I hear you,’ she said, and felt that, even as she spoke, her words were covering some other voice that had given answer to the same question.
‘We are at the crux,’ Uctebri said, and she was surer than ever that he was not actually talking to her. ‘Come now. Make yourselves apparent.’ His tone was still low, almost conversational. Shrouded in his dark robe he seemed to appear and disappear as he turned towards and away from her, his face pale in the candlelight, until she had lost track of which was the real Uctebri, and which were merely the reflections.
The reflections . . .
She concentrated her gaze on the marble of the floor beneath her because it was the one keepsake left of the room she had walked into. She had only the hard sense of it beneath her feet, for her eyes now saw just a distant perspective of lights and darkness and the scrawny faces of the Mosquito-kinden, and her ears told her that the space about her was vast, with distant, forlorn winds channelling forever through twisted passages . . .
The reflections were all solely of him. There were none of her at all.
‘Be not shy,’ Uctebri murmured. ‘We must risk much so as to gain more. Come to me. Come now.’
The nearest reflection turned to regard her, and she realized that it was not Uctebri at all. The neck was thinner, and there was a wisp of beard on its wrinkled chin. An older man of the same race, with the same blood-red and protuberant eyes. Some others lacked Uctebri’s blotchy birthmark, and some, she saw, were haggard old women, as vile and balding as their menfolk. One by one they had all turned, and now every face there was staring at her, and she could not have picked Uctebri out from among them. The massed malevolence of that gaze, a score of desiccated, red-eyed monsters, rocked her and chilled her to the bone, but still she faced up to them. She stood her ground. If she fled now, she would, she knew, find herself beyond the stone room’s vanished walls, never to be seen again.
‘She sees us,’ one of the Mosquitoes declared.
‘Yes,’ said another, one that she recognized a moment later as Uctebri himself. ‘Yes, she does.’ His tone was one of relief, and she knew then that she had passed his test.
‘What . . . ?’ Her voice came out as a croak, so she swallowed and spoke again. ‘What does this mean?’
‘That you have entered our world,’ said another voice. Between the flickering light and the sheer number of them she could not discern who had spoken. ‘That we can make use of you.’
‘I have no wish to be made use,’ she told them. ‘I am no tool of yours.’
‘Yes, she will do well,’ said one of the women. ‘Your judgment is sound as ever, Uctebri.’
‘What does she know? How much have you told her?’ asked another, suspiciously.
‘Enough. Only what she needs to know,’ Uctebri said. ‘I intend to show her more, though. She can do more of her own will than when forced, but for that we must allow her a freer rein.’
‘You have the ear of their Emperor,’ said one, using the word with outright derision.
‘And I know what sound will best reach it,’ Uctebri said drily, from wherever he was. ‘I have an errand for some servant of ours, whoever is best placed to travel to Szar.’
‘The Bee-kinden city? Why should those primitives concern us?’
‘Oh, no great matter,’ Uctebri said, and at last Seda saw him clearly amongst the ranks of his peers, ‘save that there is some small piece of news they had best know.’
*
The messenger almost fell from his horse as he reached the Skiel barracks. Guards were already moving in on him, shouting out challenges. He tumbled to his knees, one closed hand out to forestall them. He had been riding for days and nights.
‘Identify yourself!’ the watch sergeant snapped again – but now he was close enough to add ‘Sir,’ on seeing a lieutenant’s insignia.
The messenger fumbled inside his tunic, coming out with a folded paper, thrusting it at the sergeant. The man took it wordlessly, beckoning a lantern over to read it by. A moment later he swore to himself and hurriedly handed the paper back. The lieutenant nodded, swaying slightly with fatigue.
‘Get the horse stabled,’ the sergeant called out. ‘Get this man somewhere to sit down, something to eat and drink. Send a message to the colonel – the new colonel, you know who I mean – and tell him there’s word for him.’
The messenger let himself be escorted to the barracks mess hall, empty at this hour. He took a bowl of the wine they offered, ignored the lukewarm stew. These had been the worst few days of his life: not the ride itself, since he was trained for that, but there had been those who had done their best to stop him in the surest way. He was bringing word that they had tried to keep secret, and here he was, at last, in the same building as the man they were trying to keep it secret from.
A soldier clattered in, saluting him. ‘The colonel will see you right away, sir.’
The messenger nodded, drained his bowl and slapped it down on the table. He was about to be let into the presence of a great man, a man he had worked for most of his professional life, and never seen. Dire times made for great opportunities. He followed the soldier out of the room and upstairs into the officers’ quarters, and deeper in still, up through the ranks, up the ladder of prestige.
He was finally led in. Before him, at the desk, sat the man he had never met before, and unmistakable for all of that: a thin man fit for a harsh season.
The guest quarters in the garrison barracks of Skiel were warm enough, a fire banked high and shutters closed against the cold. A meal was already spread out for the man, cooling slowly, the food barely sampled and the wine untasted. From the look of him, though, one would think him cold and starved. He sat in a high-armed chair, at a desk on which four pieces of paper were laid out neatly one beside the other. He could have been a clerk, perhaps, some mere servant or functionary.
Save that these were the quarters reserved only for the garrison commander’s most honoured guests – honoured, in this case, meaning most powerful.
His face was lean as a hatchet-blade. Men had dreaded that face, in their time. Some still did. In the past, dread was simply something that it inspired, but just now, there was a hint of the emotion on those same lean features.
He was a general, after all, and there was a war on – but there was always a war on. The Empire was forever expanding, or consolidating, but that was not the struggle that concerned him. The Empire was young, therefore its hierarchies and loci of power were not quite settled. By the end of the reign of Emperor Alvdan II, long might he last, they would be finally determined, and either this man would then stand beside the throne or his enemies would.
Currently his enemies seemed to have the upper hand, so he would have to do something about that. In fact he was journeying to Capitas for that very purpose. This was General Reiner of the Rekef, and his enemies were General Maxin and General Brugan, also of the Rekef. It had become increasingly clear, ever since Alvdan II had ascended to the throne, that the triumvirate system of the Rekef could not continue. Since then there had been a polite little war going on: a war of allegiance mostly, as each general did his best to put his own men into positions of power and dethrone the favourites of the others. There had been the odd man left dead as well, because recently General Maxin had gone a step further than his opponents had dared.
There was a respectful cough nearby. Reiner and the waiting messenger both glanced over at Reiner’s second, Colonel Latvoc, a grey-haired Wasp who had served him more than fifteen years.
Reiner raised an eyebrow, gave a gesture of one narrow hand, inviting Latvoc to report.
‘This is Lieutenant Valdred, sir,’ Latvoc began, ‘one of my men in Capitas. He has . . . news.’
The pause left no doubt as to the news’ character. Reiner took note of the young lieutenant’s pale face, and the hollow eyes that suggested this man had not slept in his determination to bring him this word. He nodded.
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