Blood of the Mantis sota-3

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The news broke by evening that the Crystal Standard had apparently, possibly retrospectively, invited the Wasp-kinden in, ostensibly for the sake of Solarno’s stability given the riots and mobs so often afflicting the city.

  But stability was the last thing that such news brought. In all the tavernas and chocolate houses the gossips were soon abuzz with it, and opinions were stridently voiced. The grass-roots support for the Satin Trail and the Path of Jade were talking in hushed, angry voices, and for once they were not at each other’s throats. As long as the Wasps had just seemed unwanted foreigners lurking on every street corner, the Solarnese had been content to ignore them. Now they had been legitimized, local people suddenly knew whether to hate them or not. The Crystal Standard’s followers stood by uncertainly, finding their new allies coolly arrogant and disdainful of their company, whilst the two other main parties – and half a dozen lesser parties nobody normally bothered with – began to voice their opposition in stronger and stronger terms.

  The Crystal Standard recognized this as just the everyday Solarnese citizens’ participation in politics. The Wasps, however, did not.

  One squad of a half-dozen Wasp soldiers found itself taunted and threatened by a pack of locals, who waved their narrow swords and accused them of being filthy foreign mercenaries who should go back where they came from. The Wasps, of uncertain temper at the best of times, loosed their stings onto this mob, killing several men and women outright. When the crowd had recovered from its shock, it charged at the soldiers, who retreated to the rooftops still shooting in retaliation. All in all perhaps three Wasps and twelve locals were killed before the citizens turned and fled.

  The Wasps counted it as a great victory, but there was a hurried meeting between the Crystal Standard leaders and Captain Havel, who now found himself responsible for it all.

  ‘This must stop,’ he was told. ‘Your men must exercise control.’

  Captain Havel was not entirely sure that they were his men at all. He was still technically the Rekef officer in command of Solarno, but there was an army colonel, still currently north of Toek and the mountains, who had given these soldiers their orders and outlined their tactics, a man who had never been to Solarno nor ever wished to until he could claim governorship of the place. He had written to Havel and made that last wish very plain.

  Havel had lived comfortably here in Solarno for many years, and enjoyed a prosperous and hedonistic lifestyle while doing so. He was determined to cling on to that privilege, which meant no outright invasion, no bludgeoning use of Wasp power to inflame the city. He passed on his strict recommendations to the imperial forces, but with the knowledge that his kinden were never inclined to take insults meekly, while to the hot-headed Solarnese an insult was as common as a greeting, and therefore shrugged off as easily. It was a clash of cultures that could now go badly wrong very quickly.

  By nightfall there had been no buildings yet burnt, and only half a dozen more deaths, so he counted himself lucky. It would take many tendays for the Solarnese to adapt to this new power in their midst, and meanwhile that army colonel up north would not stop moving his troops in. The airships would already be on their way back to the city laden with full complements of fighting men.

  Havel felt his grip on the situation rapidly loosening. He needed to talk to Odyssa, he realized, for she would instantly understand the situation. After all, these native Solarnese might be mad for fighting, but it was Spider-kinden who actually ruled Solarno. Surely Odyssa could soon think of some way to appease them.

  He met her in a private room of an eatery called the Sawbouys, enjoying a view out over the water. He called up a bottle of the house’s best wine and the flank of freshwater shrimp that the place was famous for. The feeling of luxury, of living well, was soon calming to him, for it told him that he was keeping ahead of the rising wave of disaster that threatened to crash down on him,

  He ate with a fierce passion, while Odyssa merely picked at her food and eyed him with amusement.

  ‘I’m at my wits’ end,’ Havel confessed. ‘The situation is, as they say, deteriorating.’

  ‘But surely this was inevitable,’ Odyssa said. ‘Was this not the imperial plan all along?’

  ‘Do you think they tell me anything?’ Havel said bitterly. ‘But, no it wasn’t, not to my knowledge. Not this soon, at least. It’s that cursed colonel out north of Toek, who just can’t wait to get his men moved in here. He’s going to end up unifying all of Solarno against us. All of the Exalsee, even. I wouldn’t have thought it could be done but, little by little, he’s managing it.’

  She shrugged. ‘So things are happening a little faster than planned.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Havel replied. ‘I had everything already in hand here, so it’s an insult to me and to the Rekef. I could have annexed Solarno virtually single-handedly, with no need for all this.’ And I could have made a fortune doing it. ‘Now the army will sack half the city because this colonel won’t keep them in check. Hundreds of our soldiers will die. It’s just… such a waste. You’re a Spider-kinden, so you’re used to doing things with a little intelligence. You must be able to see my point.’

  ‘I think I’m beginning to,’ she agreed. ‘I take it you want me to send a message to the colonel?’

  ‘Conveyed with the Rekef’s greatest displeasure. Just tell him whatever it takes to get him off my back,’ Havel almost pleaded with her. ‘He doesn’t understand how delicate the situation is here. He’s just a stone-headed soldier with no appreciation of politics. All he’s interested in is the governorship, and what good will that do him when his new subjects are bringing the place down around his ears?’

  ‘You might be best off resigning yourself to what is inevitable,’ Odyssa warned him. ‘I’d be surprised if you can stop it now.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll stop it all right, don’t you worry,’ Havel assured her. ‘I’ve been in this city a good while now. I know how things work. I know how to keep the pot simmering and yet never quite boiling over. You’ll see. Without any more provocation from that fool out in the desert, I’ll soon get Solarno settled again.’ He breathed a deep sigh. Now he had said it, it even sounded possible. ‘I can even use the men he’s already sent, make them a proper police force to back the useless militia the Solarnese have. They’ll come to see us as invaluable, you’ll see. We shall creep into their hearts. This town has its nobles and its councils, but really it’s ruled by the mob, as each fresh demonstration shakes up the Cortas and their magnates. We shall control the mob. We could even start our own party here.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ said Odyssa at last, as Havel took a swallow of wine. ‘You’re right, and it is almost a Spider-kinden way of doing things. Almost. Naturally we’d add a few layers of complexity to it, whether it needed it or not.’

  ‘I try to be as simple as I can, so that I won’t forget anything,’ Havel said.

  ‘And if the colonel wants his war anyway?’

  ‘Then let him go invade somewhere else, because Solarno is mine,’ Havel told her. ‘Surely the Rekef should be able to whip one over-ambitious officer into line.’

  ‘It should.’

  There was a reflective pause, both of them sipping at their wine. Eventually Odyssa continued, ‘I think you’re right.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘I think you could draw it back from the brink after all.’

  Havel nodded emphatically. ‘You’re cursed right I can. Just give me a tenday without this colonel breathing down my neck, and I’ll be back in control.’

  Odyssa considered him speculatively, noticing the sweat spring up on his forehead. ‘Yes, I think you could. You’re a clever man, for a Wasp-kinden.’

  ‘I’ll take that… for a compliment,’ he said, blinking at her.

  ‘There is one thing you’ve failed to consider, though, and I feel that I should warn you of it.’

  ‘What’s… what’s that?’

  ‘What if someone else wants the war
?’

  He goggled at her, mouth half open but no words forming.

  ‘Layers upon layers, you see, Captain, in interweaving strands. You really are quite good at this, for a Wasp, but I fear you’re no Spider-kinden.’

  She saw his hand twitch reflexively, but no flash of energy came from it. A moment later he had toppled sideways onto the floor.

  Odyssa stood up, brushing down her tunic, an old habit kept from after her first murder. She sometimes thought the Rekef had nothing to teach her that she had not been born with. She would now pay the Fly host of this eatery enough to forget who she was. She had two men close at hand of equally uncertain memory, ready to dump Havel’s body somewhere easily discoverable. Then she would put her Rekef hat back on, and run to the Wasp encampment at the oasis beyond Toek, and there tell the colonel, whom she had been steadily inflaming, that the Rekef officer in charge of Solarno had been murdered by the locals, and therefore the hour of his conquest and governorship was at hand.

  Nineteen

  It had been a tiring day. His new responsibilities were making demands on him he had not expected. Totho had never seen himself as a factory overseer.

  But that was not quite true, if he was being honest with himself. Every artificer who rose to the top of his trade should be guiding lesser craftsmen, having them work to his designs, delegating the burdens of his trade. Of course he had wanted that, but seen no chance of ever achieving it.

  He had not wanted this, though. Drephos, Colonel-Auxillian of the Wasp Empire, had taken him on eagerly as an apprentice, but the folk of Helleron were not so open-minded. It all seemed insane to him, but that was only because he had done his best to forget his childhood, even his studentship spent at the College. A halfbreed was never popular. A halfbreed was cursed by his mixed blood. Collegium was a cosmopolitan city and even there Totho had never been allowed to forget the stain of his birth that was so plain in his features.

  Here in Helleron, blood mattered greatly, and the local Beetles were hard on halfbreeds. People like Totho got given the worst jobs, or worked in the criminal fiefs, or else starved and begged. Then Drephos had come along and been made governor of all Helleron, and set Totho up as master of whole factories, giving orders to foremen and artificers who spat at him behind his back, and stared at him mutinously when he faced them.

  It had affected their work. They had dragged it out and dawdled, and even turned out shoddy pieces in the belief he was not artificer enough to know the difference. For a tenday he had agonized over it, trying to understand how he could make them see he was not a bad man: how could he win them over to his side?

  Today he had awoken with his answer: he could not. He could be the most generous and even-handed overseer the city had ever seen, and to them he would still be just a halfbreed.

  So today he had gone in with a squad of Wasp soldiers. The Wasps cared for halfbreeds even less, if possible, but Totho was Sergeant-Auxillian now and he simply gave them orders in a calm, clear voice that was obeyed. They all knew he had Drephos’s ear.

  He had not waited for the first slight to emerge. He knew just how it would have worked back at the College: the workers here would have behaved, good as gold, until the soldiers left. He had singled out three people that he hoped were the ringleaders.

  He had ordered the soldiers to drag them before him, and he had hoped even then that a few words of warning would be enough. Their expressions had remained mulish and sullen, however, promising further mutiny.

  They had been mulish and stubborn, he assured himself, in retrospect. It was not just my imagination.

  He had ordered them to be whipped. So the soldiers had whipped them, and gone on whipping them until he had spoken loud enough to stop them. From that he had gained a large degree of fearful obedience from the workers and a small amount of surprised respect from the soldiers.

  For the actual flogging they had been tied to machines inside the factory, where everyone could see. Totho had stood on the overseer’s gantry with the leader of the soldiers, gripping the rail and waiting for that wince-inducing moment when the lash came down.

  It never came: the lash rose and then fell, but the wince never manifested, and there had been something changing inside him, something born in him when the first cry came up. Not remorse and not regret, but something like satisfaction.

  You bastards have kept me down all my life, he had thought. Now see how you like it.

  Once the whip had stopped cracking, he had told the silent factory floor – silent save for the whimpering of his victims – that any future failings would be punished by death, and at the time he had meant it.

  Now he looked back on that, all of it, and tried to see it as Che would, tried to feel appalled by what he had done, but that was harder and harder the longer he worked for Drephos. He no longer asked himself what he was becoming, for he knew now that he had already become.

  Kaszaat came to him that night, as she often did, moving her smooth brown body over his in rhythms that were a language older than talking. He did not know it but she could read his mood and his history from his love-making: the more gloomy and the more grim his day, the tighter he clutched at her and the fiercer his passion, seeking in her body what he could not find in the shadow-world he had come to inhabit.

  This time, though, he found something different in her: a desperation and a need. She wept when the climax came, her nails biting into him, thighs locked about him in a furious grapple.

  He thought she would turn away to sleep then, but still she lay upon him, trembling slightly, and he closed his eyes and let the sensation of his own skin explore the pressure of hers upon him.

  ‘Totho,’ she murmured at last, almost too softly for him to hear.

  He made a questioning noise.

  ‘After the battle, what happened between Drephos and you?’

  Immediately he tensed, feeling his stomach lurch. How he would like to forget what had happened then, his betrayal, and his later confusion in trying to work out just who exactly he had betrayed.

  ‘It was the prisoner girl, no?’ Kaszaat asked. ‘That Beetle girl they brought in. As soon as you heard of it, you were different.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Totho, I’m not stupid. You’re no Spider-kinden. I read you. You knew her.’

  He sighed, heavily. When she received no more answer than that, Kaszaat jabbed him in the shoulder. ‘Curse you, you bastard! Just speak to me.’

  ‘Yes, I knew her,’ he said.

  ‘More than that?’

  ‘What?’ He sat up, half-displacing her. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘The truth,’ she said. ‘Because I, too, have a truth. I want to tell you a truth, but I need to trust you. Can I trust you?’

  ‘Can you trust me?’

  Her eyes blazed. ‘Yes, Totho. You think you’re the only one with secrets? Nobody else has anything to hide?’

  Well, yes. ‘I… What do you want to hear? I knew her from the College. I… liked her. I liked her very much. Happy now?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘More than like – you loved.’

  Why is she doing this?

  ‘I don’t know.’ Honesty prompted him to add. ‘I thought I did. Perhaps I did, but I don’t know.’

  ‘You let her go.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘You made a deal with Drephos. You gave him something in return for this girl’s freedom,’ she persisted. It was not true, of course, but not so very far off.

  ‘He…’ Why not let her in on the madness? ‘Drephos wanted the snapbow plans spread further, for his wretched march of progress. So he had Che… had the girl take them to the Sarnesh.’

  All quite back to front, but it almost made more sense that way. He saw it was something she had never even considered, and he could hardly blame her for that.

  ‘So Drephos, he trusts you,’ Kaszaat remarked.

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘I know, because he came to me. He told
me to get what I could from you. To sleep with you, bind you to close me. He knows sex, knows how it is used. He does not understand, but he knows the purposes.’

  He may not have the equipment left, Totho thought, considering the terrible accident that had stripped Drephos of so much. The notion that the man might have found a mechanical replacement was so horrifyingly incongruous that Totho nearly choked on it.

  ‘So, so why are you telling me this now?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why am I? Perhaps because of what they brought out of Drephos’s factory today – you have heard about that? The twins told me. They are cold, those two. They talk almost never, save to each other and Drephos. Yet they talked to me, then. They had to. It was too much to bear in silence.’

  ‘The corpses? I heard there were bodies.’

  ‘Forty-five dead, prisoners, all of them, from the fief-battles,’ Kaszaat whispered. ‘I heard their faces were black, with eyes popped almost out. Poisoned, that means – but that makes no sense.’

  Totho felt something twist in his stomach, some artificer’s inner instinct trying to speak to him.

  ‘He has a new weapon,’ Kaszaat said softly. ‘Something even better than the snapbow, to use against the Sarnesh.’

  They lay together for a long while, Kaszaat sliding off him to nestle under his arm, with her head resting on his chest. Would it feel like this with Che? He realized that he would never know. So Drephos had found a new way of killing people. Did it matter, though? Could Totho criticize, having done his own work so well?

  ‘What are we doing here?’ he murmured. ‘Why don’t we just leave?’

  ‘Because there is a sword,’ she told him, ‘And here we are on the right side of the guard…’ Her voice shook and she stopped.

  ‘What is it?’

  She would not say, but she clung to him closer, she who had always seemed the more experienced of them, in all walks of life, older and wiser in so many things.

  ‘Kaszaat, please,’ he said. ‘I promise you I’m not spying on you for Drephos, or the… the Rekef, or whoever else you think.’