Ostrec wanted to beat him for his insubordination. Esmail could feel rage emanating from the image of the man he kept in his head, the source of his mimicry. ‘I came here to spy on a Wasp, one of the Apt,’ he said, in more measured tones. ‘An Empress, yes, and we all know the power that attaches to such symbols, but it’s not a power that she should be able to tap. I’ve never…’ He stopped, shaking his head. ‘I have never felt such a presence.’
Shoel Jhin was watching him, beady eyes nesting in wrinkles examining the spy’s false face. ‘Help you, they said. Educate you, no. They tell you what they tell you. Not my place, not my place at all.’
Esmail still held the man by his collar but now he let go, stepping back, suppressing Ostrec’s borrowed anger. It occurred to him that the old man did not know who he was, not really — oh, a spy, yes, and one of that very select and mercurial order, but no more than that. Just some Moth, probably, was Jhin’s guess.
Esmail stepped back from him. ‘Tell me,’ he urged softly.
Jhin actually cackled a little. ‘Not my place,’ he repeated, and made to walk past him.
He stopped, for Esmail had fixed him with a look, Ostrec’s pale eyes holding an expression neither Wasp nor Moth ever had. Esmail let the mask slip slightly, letting out some sense of what hid behind: the villain of ages, the murderer-kinden, the lost race.
The old Grasshopper stayed very still, on the brink of a revelation he plainly had no wish for. ‘You… you…’ he whispered. The assassins, the killers of the old times, but no, but surely no — they’re gone, all of them, and the Moths were ever their enemies… Esmail could all but read the thoughts coursing through the old man’s head.
‘They send who they send,’ he said, pointedly.
Shoel Jhin bared his yellowed teeth. ‘You think it will help, even that?’ he started to say, but Esmail hissed out, ‘Just tell me!’ forcing the man back with his stare until Jhin’s shoulderblades were against the cold wall again.
‘The Emperor… Alvdan…’
‘He died, yes,’ Esmail confirmed. And the circumstances of that seem confused, as well — far more going on than some Mantis slave getting lucky but, as with every other damned thing, the Moths never tell the whole story, even to their own agents.
‘She changed, after he died.’
‘She became Empress. That’s liable to change you,’ Esmail pointed out impatiently. ‘Give me specifics.’
Jhin closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. ‘The Emperor’s death.. a Mantis Weaponsmaster and a Mosquito-kinden Sarcad. You know these traditions? Shadow and blood. The Emperor died to magic, the first man in five hundred years to die in such a particular way. But it all went wrong. The power, the greatest ritual since the Days of Lore, all on her shoulders: the inheritrix of two traditions. Changed her? Oh it changed her all right, and she knew it full well. She must have learned too much from that Mosquito…’ Jhin’s eyes shone with an unhealthy light. ‘They began disappearing, soon after the coronation. Servants, mostly, some prisoners, some of the Wasps even. Nobody knew or nobody was telling, but I could feel it through the walls sometimes. The blood, the power.’
‘She’s Inapt,’ Esmail concluded. ‘She’s a magician even.’ Untutored, unskilled, newly come to some semblance of power? ‘No, that’s not it.’
Now it was him who was discomfited, by Jhin’s gaze. ‘So last year she went to Khanaphes. You know that city?’
An old name, old enough to make the clash between the Moths and Esmail’s people look like recent history. Khanaphes. There had been power there, but the Moths did not speak of the place much, which told Esmail volumes. Older and more powerful than their kinden, then. Their seniors, already gone senile and into decline as the Moths were climbing up. But not decayed quite enough, for the Empress Seda had gone there, added that backwater to her Empire, and there…
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘What did she do?’
But Jhin was grinning now. ‘She was crowned. Can you not see the mark on her? She was made their heir, and if she is crude with her power, just you wait and see! Don’t you understand? She’ll bring it all back, turn back the glass and give us everything we’ve lost.’
‘You’re mad,’ Esmail snapped at him.
‘Me? You’re the one who’s going to try and stop her!’ And abruptly Shoel Jhin had a blade out, a wretched little knife that a servant might palm while passing through the kitchens. He was ancient, arthritic, no conceivable threat to Esmail or Ostrec, but he was laughing even as he lunged.
The spy slipped aside without effort, striking back barehanded along the length of the old man’s arm, his fingers shearing into the slave’s rib-cage, then ripping his heart apart at a touch. He could have stopped himself, but he made a considered judgement, in the fraction of a second given to him, that nothing more of value would come from Shoel Jhin.
Turned, he reflected thoughtfully. An Arcanum agent turned, and by the woman’s mere being. I am in a bad place, and I have not been told what I need to know in order to survive.
Still, that was all a part of the profession. The mystery of his trade included all such situations as this. He would watch. He would learn. He would put himself through the paces of Ostrec’s life, and await opportunity.
He disposed of the body carefully and removed every spot of Shoel Jhin’s blood from himself before returning to Ostrec’s rooms.
In the morning the summons came: not from the throne but the next best thing: he and Colonel Harvang were called before General Brugan.
Once upon a time there had been a princess, and she had lived in fear…
Seda smiled at the thought, although the expression was a little tight, a little forced. Fear of her brother, yes. Fear of the Rekef general, Maxin, who had waited with a knife, ready for the order to end Seda’s life. It would be far too easy to say that her brother had been mad. He had perhaps been too sane, instead. He had seen the world very clearly indeed, and his place within it, and had recoiled from both. Most of all, he had feared death, and that was a perfectly rational thing to fear. He had lived under the shadow of the throne that he was a tenant of and a slave to, all too aware that the Empire needed the office and not the man. Indeed, her brother Alvdan had possessed few personal qualities of any real value. For that reason he had ensured that only Seda, of all his family, had survived his coronation, and that any bastards he happened to sire were put to death. He had been terrified of becoming obsolete.
He had been given a chance at immortality by the Mosquito magician, Uctebri the Sarcad, but it had been a false chance. The Mosquito had engineered his death at the hands of some magical puppet, but then Uctebri himself had been slain by the Mantis slave Tisamon, who had been hacked to death before the vacant throne by the Emperor’s furious soldiers. The ritual that Uctebri had raised, which would have made Seda his creature and given him control of the Empire, had earthed in her, stolen her Aptitude, gifted her with an expanded understanding of the world — and won her a throne.
She had been so frightened, after that, of what she had become. The world had become a distorted place where nothing worked the way she remembered. Her own mind had owned to dark cravings and lusts. Fear? She had eaten and drunk it, and slept in its company every night.
Well, we all must pass our trials. It was a part of every magical tradition, in fact. No neophyte could become a true magician without being tested, and the core of the test was to establish control over the self, without which any other form of power was but an empty shell. If only her brother had understood that.
Her chambers were as richly furnished as the Empire’s vast wealth could afford, with gold and gems, silks and furs in extravagant profusion. She had a hundred servants within earshot to attend to her every need. Some had already been busy tonight.
Her bedchamber was swathed in drapes of red and gold and deep, smouldering purple, centring on the great pillared bed. She slept alone tonight, since her current partner was recuperating. Fear again: all the Empire feared him as
much as it feared her, perhaps more, but he feared her like no other thing on earth — feared and yet hungered for her, with a desire he could not stem. It amused her, but some part of her was disappointed in him. He had possessed such promise. He should have been stronger. He should have been strong enough to fight me, some small part of her whispered, to destroy me. Someone must..
Her original consort, the renegade Thalric, had been stronger, more secure in himself. She had never quite broken him, and he had fled her before she could manage it. Her thoughts still turned to him sometimes. One day you will be mine again.
In the room beyond her bedchamber lay what would seem, to the uninitiated, to be a scene of torture, the victim still fresh on the slab, pale and withered. Her appetites had been born of the powers that had transformed her. Mosquito magic was rooted in blood, physically and symbolically. She sipped at her goblet now, sampling the salt liquid as though it was a vintage, its colour smearing the red of her lips.
All around her, the Empire was on the move. Her orders had seen to that. She could not claim all the credit, though. If I went before them and preached peace, I would have another civil war on my hands. All the magic in the world could not prevent it. Her people needed to grow, and so they needed to conquer. The Consortium demanded the wealth of the Empire’s neighbours and control over their trade. Her philosophers set out their proofs that the way of the Empire was superior to that of its enemies, and that by bringing them to heel the cause of civilization would be advanced. Her armies grew sullen and restless and apt to mutiny now that the Empire’s internal conflict was done. There were a thousand reasons to go to war.
And she was proud. She would not deny that she felt a fierce love for her people and their relentless energy, the strength of their will. They had come so far, and they still had so far to go. Oh, certainly, the thinkers of Collegium, the merchants of Helleron, the artificers of the Exalsee — all of these had something to contribute to the world, but they would do so beneath a black and gold banner, in time.
She had her own reasons for conquest, though. She was Inapt. She was a magician. She had gone to Khanaphes and demanded the blessing of the ancient Masters there. She had planted her flag in a new arena, on whose sands the champions of other kinden had been fighting and dying for millennia.
Magic was not the force it once had been, atrophied and wan since the Apt revolution had overthrown or remade the old Inapt hierarchies. The Moths were now hermits in their mountain fastnesses, the Dragonflies a sprawling monarchy decaying from within, the Mantis-kinden warriors entering their twilight days, the Spiders setting aside their greater powers to rule their satrapies of slaves by manipulation and suggestion. The very Masters of Khanaphes themselves hid in the tombs they had built for themselves and there dreamt of a distant future. Only the Moths had ever sought to recreate the long-gone Days of Lore, and their attempts had ended in catastrophe.
Being reborn in blood and shadow, empowered by the might of Uctebri, by the breaking of the Shadow Box that had been the result of that failed Moth ritual, she had inherited a measure of power. Being crowned by the Masters of Khanaphes had made her a player in the old, old game of magic. Her raw strength as a magician — unearned, undeserved but undeniable — was a match for any that might challenge her, but now she found that it was not enough.
For, above and beyond the remnants of the old Inapt powers, there was always the other.
‘Tisamon,’ she called, and the faintest grating of metal announced that he was with her.
Mere strength would not bow the magical world to her will, nor would all the armed might of her armies. She could obliterate whole Inapt kinden if she wanted, and it would avail her nought if she had not exacted their recognition, their fealty, first.
He was her greatest triumph to date, Tisamon. Her court knew him only as the captain of her bodyguard — those half-dozen Mantis-kinden sent to her by the Moths of Tharn as a gift, who now served her with a selfless loyalty that the Tharen had never intended. They had originally been six, now they were seven, but it was unhealthy to comment on it, just as it was unhealthy for the overly informed to note that their new captain bore the same name as the Mantis slave that had figured so prominently in the former Emperor’s death.
What the old Inapt powers had lost in strength they had preserved in skill and application. All the power in the world was useless without precision. The Moths could use the little they had with a finesse that would outmanoeuvre her brute force. As her Empire needed to grow and develop, so did she.
She had called to him, to Tisamon, using his discarded blade as a focus, spilling the blood of a bastard cousin, building him a body of ancient Mantis armour. It had been her first true ritual, the greatest exercise of her nascent authority. She had sought out his ghost and bound it inside the metal, and exacted its oath. Now that tall figure of mail stepped towards her, halting at her elbow, not quite touching, and she felt the faint, cool breath from within his helm. And would any of those old powers have dared do what I have, to bring him back so? She had cast down the gauntlet, in her own mind at least.
She would not live in fear again, and for that she must become greater, more fearsome, than all others. Her armies and their machines would make her so in the world of the Apt, and she would hunt down the power of the Inapt, the relics of their lost world, and take everything to herself. Only then would she be safe. Only then could she be herself, and live free, and not fear. There will come a time when I am free and do not fear. I promise it. There will be an end to it. I am not my brother.
She glanced over her shoulder into the visor of Tisamon’s helm, into the darkness beyond. When first she had called him, there had been nothing but night within, but the more she employed him, the more blood she had given him and — most of all — the more she had thought of him, the more real he had become. Now, she lifted the faceplate, and saw those pale, dim features that no lamp could light: severe, handsome in a cold and arrogant way, but his eyes were for her, only for her. He was a man who had lived and died for love, but that meant other things to Mantis-kinden. Now he gave her what jagged love he had left, and it was an icy and barbed thing indeed.
But he was deadly and savage and hers, and sometimes she wondered what it would feel like to kiss those dead lips. Would I be mad then, truly, if it comes to that? Surely a woman in my position could be excused some madness.
She passed him the goblet — there was plenty more, after all, and the future held so many exciting new vintages: Mynan, Solarnese, Collegiate…
‘I shall have work for you soon,’ she whispered, and she felt his anticipation like a tension in the air. He was death and she was his mistress, and the world would soon know all the fear that she denied in herself.
Eleven
Kymene stood on the wall at Myna, staring eastwards, and her scouts came and went in a constant flurry of arrivals and just as swift departures. She gripped the crenellations, straight as a spear shaft, her cloak of half black and half red gusting in the wind.
All around her, her city prepared for war. The walls were bustling with soldiers, and the sight was far different from when Myna had first been taken by the Empire. Then they had a little simple artillery up here and, other than that, just a host of soldiers, swords and shields and crossbowmen to face down the Wasp host. Any army marching up to Myna today would meet a more modern response. The walls themselves were essentially the same — the Empire had made no changes during the occupation, and the liberated Mynans had not had the time — but artillery emplacements were set all along the line of the wall, in fortified positions that gave cover against attack from below and above. The machines themselves included the Sarnesh-designed rackthrower ballistae and scrapshotters, designed to fill the air before them with spears or jagged metal, tearing up the Imperial Light Airborne even as it tried to gain the walls. Snapbows were much in evidence, too, swifter and more accurate than crossbows, which went some way to counterbalance the Wasp-kinden’s superior mobility.
>
We have given them all we could, Stenwold assured himself.
‘Commander.’ A Fly-kinden dropped down almost at Kymene’s feet, wearing the colours of Myna on a sash about his chest. ‘They have completed setting up their artillery on the far side of the Antosine hill country.’
Kymene frowned. ‘But that’s out of sight of the city. Do they expect us to come to them?’
‘The artillery is guarded, but separate to their main force. We’ve not been able to get a good look at what their army is bringing with it, Commander, but spyglass reports suggest there are automotives and other machines there. Perhaps the hill artillery is to cover a retreat.’
Kymene nodded briefly, dismissing him. There was a lull then, perhaps because most of Myna’s scouts had already reported, or were not coming back.
‘Maker,’ she said, descending the stone steps from the wall, and he followed after her, almost walking into her when she stopped.
‘You do not believe that the Wasps have taken such precautions to cover their retreat.’ It was a statement, not a question, and he realized that she had stepped down from the wall so that her soldiers would not overhear her.
‘I cannot think it,’ he agreed. ‘All reports suggest that they have the forces for a serious attack — and to keep an army that size on the field is costly if you don’t intend to use it.’
She looked away from him, and he could almost sense the wheels turning in her mind, plots and counterplots. ‘They wish us to strike the first blow, to break the treaty? Are they mounting their artillery there to provoke an attack, a sally to destroy it?’
‘Possibly.’ But the idea did not feel right to Stenwold. There were better, more tempting places to flaunt those siege engines, if that had been the plan.
‘The Szaren relief column will be with us in a day’s time. More troops are expected from Maynes. The longer the Empire waits, the greater our defending force will be. Their own reinforcements seem to have slowed to a trickle. Perhaps they have been testing our will to fight.’
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