‘This could get ugly,’ he murmured.
‘They want to speak with you, sir,’ the scout reported.
‘No doubt. You are dismissed, soldier.’ As the scout’s wings ignited into life and he kicked off from the automotive, Alder was already gesturing to a Fly-kinden messenger.
‘Get me Major Maan,’ he instructed, because he urgently needed to know imperial policy regarding the Spiders, and it was an ill-kept secret that Maan was Rekef Inlander. ‘And get me any Scorpion-kinden we’ve still got with us. I want to talk to them.’
After two hours in further conference he felt no wiser. Major Maan had simply emphasized that all travellers’ reports confirmed that the Spiderlands were very extensive, that they were varied in geography and peoples, and that the chief interest of their rulers seemed to be in conspiring against one another. The Lowlands had never presented a threat to the Spiders, as the Lowlanders were also notably self-involved and divided. There was a brisk trade along the Seldis road to Tark, Merro and Helleron, but beyond that it was remarkable how little reliable information could be found.
‘They’re subtle, sir,’ Maan had warned, as if that explained everything.
And so here he was now, General Alder of the Barbs, with his own retinue of two hundred Wasp soldiers and, nearby, another five hundred of the light airborne ready to move in on his signal if things got as ugly as he feared. He had Maan with him, for all the good it would do, while behind him the main army was setting up temporary camp under Carvoc’s command.
And ahead were the Spiders. The ground here was hilly, and patchily wooded, and the Spider commander or lord or whatever he might call himself had chosen a little dell to pitch his tent in. It was barely a tent, by Alder’s standards, just a peaked roof of silk held up on poles, tugged lightly in the wind. A small knot of people were gathered beneath its shade, and the rest of the retinue were at military attention, waiting for him in immaculate parade-ground fashion. It was, he admitted, a clever piece of theatre.
At least half of them were bronze-skinned Kessen Ants in gleaming chainmail and helms of like colour. Their shields bore a device of abstract flourishes that Maan loudly informed him was the crest of Seldis.
Some of the others were Flies, and most of those seemed to be nobles or wealthy citizens, as richly clad in felt and silks as many a magnate of the Consortium of the Honest. Others there were Beetle-kinden soldiers with heavy crossbows. An honour guard of a dozen hulking Scorpions, stripped to the waist, leant on swords almost as high as they were. Then there were the Spiders themselves.
There were almost a score of them, and they seemed all elegance and poise, each one regarding the approaching Wasps with a slight and individual smile. If the Flies had been dressed well, these were magnificent, and yet they trod a thin line between the ornate and the excessive. They were, Alder had to admit, the very soul of taste, wearing their fine silks and gold, their embroidered brocades and their jewels, as though the garments were simply casually thrown on for no special occasion. Himself an old soldier who had never cared for gaud and glitter, Alder found himself momentarily dowdy, travel-stained and awkward, but he thrust the thought away angrily.
It was clear to see who the leader was, and to Alder’s surprise it was a male: a further victory for Major Maan’s intelligence because Alder had been assured that they were always led by their womenfolk. This particular Spider-kinden lord reclined languidly in a solid-looking gilt chair, high-backed and fantastically carved. A couple of young women of his own race sat at his feet, and the others stood around him, not as a formal court, but in little groups and cliques. They were all beautiful, men and women alike. Even the oldest amongst them possessed an austere handsomeness, while the youngest glowed with the fruits of youth. Some were pale, others tanned, and their hair was fair or red or dark, more varied than most other kinden ever were, but all with the same ineffably delicate sophistication about them.
The soldiers arrayed behind the Spiders tensed slightly, waiting to see if the armed men coming towards them meant mischief. Alder turned to his troops and signalled for them to take their ease.
‘Major,’ he said. Maan glanced from one Spider-kinden to the next, swallowing awkwardly.
‘Remarkable, General. One does hear—’
‘Just listen, Major. Only speak when I consult you.’ Alder went forward, with Maan dogging his heels, followed by two sentinels for bodyguards and a scribe to make records.
The Spider leader stood up as they approached. He looked younger than thirty years, and he wore a crimson shirt with ballooning sleeves beneath a green jerkin filigreed in gold thread, and loose-fitting dark breeches above knee-high boots that sported silver spurs. He made a flourishing gesture of welcome that was part wave and part bow, rings glittering on his fingers. His neat, dark beard made his smile flash all the more.
‘Do I have the honour of conversing with a general of the Wasps?’ he asked. ‘That is the title, is it not?’
‘General Alder of the Imperial Fourth Army, known as the Barbs,’ Alder replied, restraining an urge to salute.
‘The Barbs? Charming. I am the Lord-Martial Teornis of the Aldanrael and I am delighted to make your acquaintance, General Alder.’
The second name meant, Alder recalled from his briefing, that this man was of the Aristoi – from one of their ever-feuding noble families. The name itself meant nothing to him though, and he had no clue as to how the Aldanrael might rank in the grander scheme of things.
A couple of the well-dressed Flies came forward at this point, and Alder turned to them to greet them formally, before seeing that they were bearing a flask of wine and a large platter of honeyed meat, shredded and laid out like unreadable script.
Servants? he wondered, noting their finery, and then, slaves? Major Maan had stressed how the Spiders had a thriving slave trade, but these little attendants were more richly dressed than most Wasps of good family at the imperial court.
He allowed a goblet to be pressed into his hand, with that, his thumb feeling idly at the small gems that encircled its stem.
‘You are here as an embassy from the Spiderlands?’ Alder enquired, determined to regain the initiative.
‘From Everis, Siennis and Seldis, certainly,’ Teornis said, ‘but it would be somewhat presumptuous of me to speak for the Spiderlands entire. Yes, General. We have been watching your Empire with some approbation recently. Our agents have reported on your conquest of Tark, and it seems you have done the impossible with embarrassing ease.’
Alder allowed himself to nod. ‘The Emperor commands and the Empire obeys, Lord . . . Martial,’ he said, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar title.
Teornis permitted himself a wry smile. ‘You are a military man, General. A direct man.’
‘I try to be. So I will ask again, what is the purpose of your embassy?’
‘We are concerned, General.’ Teornis signalled for a chair to be brought forwards for Alder and, with that politeness accomplished, slouched back into his own. Alder decided that standing would give him the advantage, but then changed his mind when he saw how Teornis took his ease, and found to his embarrassment that it was inexplicably too late to sit. He felt surrounded by an invisible net of unfamiliar manners.
‘We have no quarrel with your Empire,’ Teornis went on, regardless. ‘We wish you well, in fact, should you decide to sack any other Ant-kinden cities. We are certain, from our intelligence gathered, that you will make us better trading partners than the Tarkesh ever did. I only wish to make sure you understand our position.’
Alder nodded. Matters were falling at last into a recognizable pattern. ‘You want to be sure we’re not coming for you and yours.’
‘Precisely, General.’
‘Well then that’s simple,’ Alder said, now anxious to conclude the interview as quickly as possible. ‘The Empire wishes the Spiderlands nothing but peace. Our business is with the Lowlands only.’
‘Splendid.’ Teornis smiled dazzlingly. ‘I thought
as much, but our women back home insisted I put together this expedition and talk to you about it directly.’
Alder allowed himself the smallest answering smile. ‘I had expected to be dealing with a female of your kind, Lord-Martial.’
‘They have better things to do,’ said Teornis, ‘than play soldier.’ It was only later, much later, that Alder recognized this as an insult. At the time Teornis’s tone and expression suggested only one man joking with another. Then the Spider continued, ‘So I anticipate Kes will be your next conquest.’ Alder glanced at the Ant soldiers behind him, but Teornis waved his concerns away. ‘Mercenaries, General, worry not. I am afraid we are a terrible influence on the young men and women of Kes. They see, you understand, that even a servant of ours lives better than a lord of theirs.’
It was hard to deny. ‘Then Kes it is,’ Alder admitted. ‘After we have secured Egel and Merro of course. There will be no forays further southwards, never fear.’
But Teornis’s smile had evaporated and a whole sea-change had blown across the entire Spider embassy, as though sudden winter had rushed in off the coast. ‘Pardon my impudence, General,’ Teornis said, ‘but you contradict yourself.’
Alder resisted the urge to check that his men were still close behind. ‘How so?’ he asked.
‘Egel and Merro are not part of the Lowlands. They are ours.’
Alder stared at him. ‘Not on my maps,’ he said.
‘Your maps aside, General, both Egel and Merro have been holdings of the Spiderlands almost since they were settled. Our own histories are very clear on that point.’
Alder risked a glance at Major Maan, who interpreted that as a chance to speak. ‘I am afraid,’ he said firmly, ‘that you are quite mistaken. Our agents have been informed by the very occupants of those towns that they are Low-landers.’
And Teornis laughed at him, not scornfully but so politely as to cut to the bone. ‘I am afraid that your agents have fallen victim to one of the local Fly-kinden pastimes, which is to playfully misdirect strange travellers. Let us hope that they did not also purchase any priceless gems or talented slaves at bargain prices. I am afraid that the Fly-kinden of these two towns, if indeed they are not simply one town with two names, find it convenient to claim themselves as either Lowlanders or subjects of my own people, depending on the asker. They are a duplicitous and untrustworthy people, and no doubt we would best be rid of them, but nonetheless they are our subjects. Any attempt to impose your Empire’s rule over them would amount to a declaration of war. I am no great strategist, but such a development would I think weaken your Empire’s position.’
‘War, is it?’ Alder growled.
‘I hope it need not come to that. Perhaps you would provide us with your maps and we can then correct them,’ suggested Teornis innocently.
‘You have a mere two hundred men here, Lord-Martial. What do you think would happen if I decided I should send a definite message back to your people?’
Teornis shrugged, slinging a leg up over the arm of his chair. ‘Oh, you’d send them my head in a box, no doubt, which is another reason I’m doing this thankless job and not, say, my sister or my mother. And we would then have to muster our armies, which is a tiresome enough proposal to make me glad that I would be dead by that point. And then we would fight, I suppose.’
Alder narrowed his eyes. ‘Perhaps you should be more concerned, Lord-Martial. I have automotives here, flying machines, artillery. Your people are Inapt. Will you bring bows and arrows against us?’
Teornis’s smile broadened. ‘It’s true,’ he replied, ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with a crossbow, if someone should thrust such a distasteful object into my hands. We do not trouble ourselves with all that greasy machine-fondling that some kinden seem to find so irresistible. No, we have – how shall I put it? – people to do that for us. We have plenty of Ant-kinden and Beetle-kinden hired with us, and many more within our satrapies further south. The Empire is not the only one to have subject peoples. Do not think, General, that we cannot field all that clanking metal palaver if we need to.’
‘So your position is clear,’ Alder said grimly.
‘It is, and it is one of the open hand of friendship – or, as you are Wasps, the closed hand, I believe, is more appropriate. We wish nothing but peace and trade with your mighty and admirable Empire.’ Teornis sprang from his chair effortlessly to look Alder in the eye. ‘But if your hand comes against Egel or Merro or any of our holdings, then you and I, General, shall be at war, and nobody shall profit from that in any way.’
Back in his camp, Alder called his officers together and gave them the situation.
‘I think they’re bluffing,’ he explained, but he saw from their faces he had few takers.
‘A war on two fronts would be disastrous, sir,’ Carvoc said. ‘To take Kes we will need to concentrate all our efforts.’
‘Even if we bypass the Fly townships,’ one of his field majors remarked, ‘they could attack anyway, cut our supply lines.’
‘And we just do not know what they can field,’ Major Maan added. Teornis’ people seemed to have particularly impressed him. ‘The Spiderlands are, we know, very large, and they could bring in troops by sea—’
‘Yes, Major,’ Alder interrupted heavily. Just this morning his world had been so simple. Now his conversation with Teornis had struck it a severe blow and crazed it with far too many complications. He was a soldier, not a diplomat, and he did not want to be the man to go to war with an unmeasured enemy nation.
‘Send the fastest messenger we have back to Asta,’ he said. ‘I need to know imperial policy on this.’
And in the meantime the Fourth Army would sit idle.
The Cloudfarer had reached Helleron through clement weather, but it was not the same city that Totho remembered. Not that he remembered it fondly, but the city that came to his mind instead was Myna, with Wasp soldiers and Auxillians everywhere on the streets, and a hunted look in the eyes of the locals.
General Malkan had come to meet them at the airfield in person, clasping Drephos’s gauntleted hand. Filled with enthusiasm, he seemed barely older than Totho himself.
‘Colonel Drephos, a pleasure,’ he said. ‘Since I heard you were expected here I have had clerks taking stock of every foundry and factory in the city.’
‘Most kind, General,’ Drephos said. ‘Have my people arrived yet?’
‘And your machinery. They all came in with the garrison force.’
‘Excellent.’ Drephos turned to Totho. ‘You have had a chance to consider the plans?’
‘I have, sir.’ In the freezing air that the Cloudfarer flew in, he had been hunched close by the windbreak of the clockwork engine, scribbling his alterations and additions. All for Salma he had reflected. I made this bargain, and now I must keep it. But beyond those sentiments his busy mind had been concerned only with the calculations, the mechanical principles.
‘Then let us unleash them on Helleron,’ Drephos said eagerly. ‘It’s not often I have a whole city to work for me. General Malkan, pray show me what you have for us.’
How long I have wished to see the factories of Helleron, was the ironic thought as Totho entered one. I had not thought it would be like this. He meant as an invader, an imperial artificer, but he also meant as a master rather than a menial. As he and Drephos, and Drephos’s ragbag of other picked artificers, came in, the factory work had been totally stilled. A great crowd of workers were gathered there, the staff of three factories waiting to receive their new orders. Malkan had been quick in providing Drephos with whatever he should need and Totho knew that the general was one of a new breed of Wasp officers. Malkan was not just a slave to maps and charts and the slow movements of troop formations. He actually liked artificers and the way they could win wars more efficiently, more quickly, than ever before. Drephos was the Empire’s most gifted artificer on the western front, and Malkan was keen to see that he was kept happy.
‘My name is Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos,�
�� the half-breed announced, his voice ringing from the gantry he stood on across the echoing factory floor. ‘You will refer to me as Master, or Sir. Most importantly, you will do what you are instructed without needless question, without debate, without retort. I want you to have no illusions about your situation here.’ He cast his narrow gaze over them, the working men and women of Helleron. He had his cowl thrown back leaving them no doubts about what he was.
‘These men and women with me,’ Drephos told the workers, ‘are my elite staff. You will address them as ‘sir’ and do exactly what they instruct you. In my absence, they are my voice.’
Totho could feel the resentment boiling up from these hard-working men and women whose lives had come under new management. It was not that this was a new factory owner telling them what to do, nor even that he was a foreigner. What rankled with them was that Drephos was a halfbreed and, worst of all, a Moth halfbreed, born partly from that superstitious, primitive tribe that raided their mine-workings north of the city. Here he was, claiming to be an artificer, and appalling chance had placed him as their superior.
‘I myself will have no illusions here. You hate and resent me,’ Drephos continued. ‘I, on the other hand, have no feelings whatsoever concerning you, collectively or individually. I wish you to think about precisely what that means. It means that if any one of you comes to my notice in a way that displeases me, or any of my people here, then that man or woman shall become my object lesson. Work hard and well and you shall escape my notice, which shall be best for all concerned.’
They still stirred rebelliously, and so he smiled at them lopsidedly. ‘You may have heard from your leaders that some amicable arrangement has been reached between your people and the Wasps of the Empire. It is not so. We own you. You work at our command. I invite any of you here to dispute it.’
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