‘The Fourth Iteration?’ Praeda pressed, for it was the name the Glove had given to their ingenious ship that had taken such a toll of the attacking Scorpions, until the Imperial artillery had finally silenced it.
Emon nodded. ‘A lovely craft it was, too, but in the end it was swim or fly, when sailing couldn’t keep us afloat any more. Not that many of us made it to shore.’
The Solarnese merchant had called for more wine, and the Bee accepted a jug gratefully. ‘So I can see why you’d think I was tempting fate by sitting here, but it’s not so. We’re just arrived, and here because we’re invited.’
That brought all the others leaning closer, waiting for the catch. A trap? was the plain thought on their faces, as if the Empress herself would go to such lengths to punish a cartel of weapons traders.
‘Himself’s shadow is here,’ Emon murmured darkly. ‘He’s not exactly talked it over with the crew, but word is that the Glove is about to shake hands with the Empire, after all this time. Over in Chasme, we’ve made some remarkable advances, they tell me,’ meaning the squatting little artificer town on the Exalsee that the Glove virtually owned these days. ‘A poor sailor-engineer like myself wouldn’t know where to start second-guessing Himself and his adopted son, but the Empire’s the biggest market in the world. Makes sense that we’d want to set things straight and makes sense that the Wasps would want to let us. Nothing but the best for the army, after all, and we surely do make the best.’
Himself’s shadow? Praeda wondered. ‘But what if the Empire won’t talk . . .?’
‘It’s like I said,’ Emon explained, ‘the Empire asked first. I reckon we probably sent them a catalogue, like merchants do sometimes, when they have special goods for sale. I reckon the Imperial artificers just about must have had a fit when they saw what we’ve cooked up.’ He gave a crooked smile. ‘I reckon the world’s about to change in all manner of directions, I do.’
To Angved’s surprise, Varsec had proved surprisingly good company. The Engineer was used to always having to compete with other officers, and all too used to failing at it, too. He and the aviator were still prisoners, and yet still being treated in a curiously tentative manner by their captors, who were all from the Engineering Corps themselves. Angved had meanwhile got a look at the machinery that had travelled the dusty road south to Khanaphes ahead of them, and he now felt cause to be hopeful.
Of course, they might have decided they don’t need me to make it work, but why bring me along at all, in that case? And if they needed Angved, having decided to roll the dice and gamble on his discovery, then the same seemed to be true of Varsec, who was housed in the same cell and given the same uncertain treatment.
Of course the Khanaphir expedition didn’t have a direct bearing on Varsec’s particular work, but he and Angved had already got past their initial caginess regarding their plans, and it was clear to both that the one could help the other. Aboard the airship – the Empress’s own airship! – they had taken every piece of paper they had been given and begun scrawling schematics and plans, diagrams of force and tension . . .
There had come a moment, far into the morning hours of a night that had slipped past almost unnoticed, when the two men had suddenly stared at one another, the plans spread out between them. Their shared gaze had spoken eloquently of a small part of the world changed for ever, the toothed wheels of progress moving on a notch.
They had called for the guard and demanded access to a messenger. The Fly-kinden who arrived was on the Empress’s own staff, as he informed them in extreme annoyance at having been woken at the whims of prisoners. He then refused to take their messages until Colonel Lien had been summoned and shown the schematics.
The Fly was on his way north almost immediately after that, dropping from the airship and speeding for the factories of Sonn, where some of Varsec’s initial ideas were already being worked into reality. It must change. It must all change. It will be better.
Now the two of them had been transferred to a room inside one of the embassies, still not considered quite as dignitaries but not quite as prisoners either, without rank and yet treated with cautious deference. Varsec was sketching again, drawing wing joints in delicate detail. He had kept the beard, trimmed down neatly now that they had given him a razor, but still a departure from the Imperial norm, and if his clothes were the simple tunic and sandals of a slave, at least they were clean and intact. He seemed at peace with it, too, their curious half-life. Angved himself still felt the pinch of ambition, of his additional years and his lack of success. I must be close, though, now. Close to an end or a new beginning, anyway. Khanaphes again, and I didn’t even need a leadshotter to get within the walls.
He had been ready for some time, when the message finally came. For the last few hours both he and Varsec had sensed the approach of it. Whatever they were here for, death or glory, it was coming.
Dusk had come and gone, as the messenger arrived, and Angved caught himself wondering what precisely they were being called to that had to be done under cover of darkness. The bland-faced, efficient Wasp-kinden come to fetch them had brought uniforms with him: tunics in the black and gold. ‘We need to make a good show,’ he explained, and neither of the prisoners asked for whom.
They were taken to a vast mass of stone shot through with small windows, encrusted with glyphs and friezes, fronted by vast colonnades. ‘The Scriptora,’ Angved guessed aloud, obscurely proud of having amassed some little local knowledge, even if it had only been for the purposes of knowing which parts of the city to knock down. From this gigantic mausoleum of an edifice, the Ministers governed their backward city. There were no Khanaphir in sight, though, only some Wasps guarding the entrance. The city’s leaders and their staff had been given the night off, it seemed.
As he was about to enter, Angved glanced back. In the centre of the square fronting the Scriptora was a truncated pyramid topped with an uneven ring of statues that resembled no Khanaphir he had ever seen. In the torchlight, their white stone took on a ruddy glow, and they seemed to dance a little, and even watch him, the flickering flames lending life to both limbs and eyes. Angved shuddered, obscurely unsettled, and hurried inside.
Bald, stern Colonel Lien was waiting for them, staring at the pair as though they were some faulty mechanism that might or might not be worth the fixing.
‘Stay behind me,’ he instructed. ‘Watch and learn.’
Angved was already watching. There were a half-dozen soldiers inside the Scriptora’s grand hall, but it was plain to his eyes that they were not simply the Light Airborne that their armour denoted. The way they stood, the nuances of their physiques, their ages: these were Engineers, and most likely men who had outranked Angved even when he had still been a lieutenant. Whatever’s here, it’s not to be known outside the Corps, he thought, and in that he was at once quite correct, and quite wrong.
There was the scrape of armour, and a handful of newcomers came striding into the Scriptora as though they owned it. Not the Khanaphir Ministers, though, but four men and a woman wearing a badge that made Angved twitch. The last time he had seen that open gauntlet, grey on grey, these people had been his enemies.
Lien must have expected some reaction from him, because he cast a warning glance over his shoulder. Angved was calm, though. Artificers were a practical, pragmatic breed, and he had not been deaf to the Corps rumour mill, even after being stripped of his rank. A look from Varsec suggested that Angved’s fellow prisoner was thinking just the same thing. The Iron Glove cartel had been working some remarkable miracles of artifice down on the Exalsee’s southern shores. Who they were, who led them, was a matter of some debate and of considerably more lurid speculation, but their credentials as artificers could not be denied, for all the Corps might wish otherwise. The Empire had never been shy of borrowing the inventions of other states and kinden for its artificers and, whilst this process usually resulted from armed conquest, trade was also an option wherever force would not yield results.
&nbs
p; Still, what was this? The Glove and the Empire had been doing tentative business for a while now, but this piece of cloak-and-dagger promised rather more.
Four of the Iron Glove wore dark leathers, with blackened breastplates showing under their tabards, more like mercenaries than merchants. The woman and two of the men were Solarnese, the last man a thuggish-looking Bee-kinden. They were plainly no more than an honour guard, however, for the man in their midst was armoured head to foot in elegant, fluted plates – a perfectly machined carapace that looked as though it could withstand anything up to and including artillery. Angved held himself perfectly still, for he had witnessed just such armour in use, through a telescope, while he had watched the fighting on the bridge last time. It had been worn by the handful who had turned back the ambitions of the Many of Nem.
The armoured man took off his helm, and an uneasy ripple passed through the Wasp-kinden, for here was an insult, a slap in the face to Imperial doctrine – the Glove were being led by a halfbreed, a close-faced man who looked to be some mongrel of Ant and Beetle stock.
‘Colonel Lien, I take it?’ the halfbreed nodded to the lean, bald Wasp. ‘Here we are, as ordered.’
The chief of the Engineering Corps visibly steeled himself, before stepping forward to face the Iron Glove’s spokesman. ‘You have authority to negotiate for your cartel’s leader?’
‘You have the same for the Empire?’ the halfbreed shot back.
‘Believe me, what’s said here will bind the Empire. Of that you can be sure,’ replied Lien, with a heavy emphasis that caught both Angved and the Iron Glove man off guard.
What don’t I know? Angved asked himself and then, quickly after that, Who else is with us?
The halfbreed glanced about the hall, the same thoughts clearly on his mind, but then shrugged his armoured shoulders. ‘Then let’s get to it. Let us be blunt. We have what you want. We had a delegation from your Consortium guesting with us last month, and they made plenty of notes on what they saw. The Empire has completed its reunification, and you’re casting your eyes towards your neighbours again.’ He held up a hand even as Colonel Lien opened his mouth. ‘I’ll say no more. Feel free to pretend that I mean you’re concerned about their territorial ambitions. Maybe Myna’s going to make a strike for Capitas? Who knows? However, the sort of thing that your buyers want isn’t our normal stock in trade. We save that for special customers – so special, in fact, that we’ve yet to sell them to anyone. And then the Empire pays us a visit.’
‘And you start thinking of a price,’ Lien interrupted. ‘And you agree to meet us here, not quite Empire yet, and therefore safer for you, because you mistrust us. So tell me your price.’ The current of dislike in his voice could not be hidden, but both he and the halfbreed plainly understood that personal feelings – or even the prejudices of whole kinden – could not be allowed to get in the way of business.
‘Oh, money – lots of money,’ the halfbreed agreed. ‘You’ve seen the greatshotters in action, and your Consortium men took away with them the cost of those per unit. More, the artificers in that delegation were asking a lot of questions about improved war automotives and, after we’re friends again I’ve some plans to show you that will have you sending to the treasury all over again. But we have a few additional concerns – and that part about being friends again is one of them.’
‘You’re merchants,’ said Lien carefully, ‘isn’t that so?’
‘We’re being honest with each other. We’re artificers, we deal with realities. Let’s leave the pretences and the lies to the Inapt, Colonel.’
For a moment it seemed that Lien was going to press on with his prepared position, but then his narrow shoulders rose and fell. ‘Well, then . . . is it true?’ In that last word there was almost a note of pleading, although it was not clear whether he was seeking the halfbreed’s confirmation or denial.
‘Our first condition is a pardon,’ the halfbreed announced, ‘for the Colonel-Auxillian.’
Angved choked, loud enough to draw all eyes towards him. But he’s dead! he wanted to shout. The Colonel-Auxillian was the only man to bear a rank that they had invented specifically for him, for he was the genius halfbreed who had captured cities for the Empire in a dozen ingenious ways before falling victim to his own devices at Szar. The master artificer, Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos, was most certainly dead – except that his name was revived by Engineering Corps rumour-mongers almost every tenday, and recently more and more of those murmurings had also mentioned the Iron Glove. Angved would rather that creature was dead, but he sensed relief in the way that Lien stood.
So the genius outweighs the man’s tainted blood, the arrogance, the apparent desertion and betrayal? Angved considered. Those Consortium artificers guesting with the Glove must have been extremely impressed.
Colonel Lien glanced aside, seeking guidance from the shadows. ‘Dariandrephos wishes to return to the Empire?’
‘He wants the air cleared, no more than that. We’re happy there in our workshops in Chasme, thank you,’ the halfbreed stated flatly. ‘A public pardon, retirement with honours, and no reason for any Rekef man or ambitious Slave Corps officer to get ideas about him. Unambiguous and exact, just as we artificers like it.’
‘It may not be out of the question,’ Lien hedged, before another voice took the initiative.
‘Of course, a pardon. The Empire can hardly reach agreements with those still considered deserters and criminals, after all.’ The new voice was a woman’s, and it echoed with peculiar impact between the carved walls of the Scriptora. There was the softest shuffle of footsteps and the speaker stepped into view, although later Angved was never sure quite where she had emerged from. The same went for her escort, a pair of armoured Mantis-kinden with the steel claws of their killing gauntlets very much in evidence. Everyone went absolutely still and silent, as she stepped into their midst – even Lien, who had plainly known she was watching.
It’s her! Angved had never seen the Empress before, yet he had no doubt whatsoever that this was really the mistress of the Wasp-kinden, the last scion of her Imperial bloodline. Where her youth and beauty had once made her seem vulnerable, she seemed to be gathering some invisible strength from the stone walls and endless hieroglyphs, growing in stature without ever growing taller, each footfall resounding with a thunder just outside hearing. Here, in this ancient, torchlit hall, even the shadows seemed to throng at her beck and call, and Angved felt her physical presence almost like a blow. In that moment he would have done anything for her, obey any command, fall on a blade for love of her. The next morning, such memories of this meeting would horrify and shame him, and all the more so because the chains forged this night would bind him also in sunlight. The thought of turning against this woman would be like a knife point pricking at his eye, making him wince away at the very notion.
For now, though, her attention was focused on the halfbreed, who swallowed convulsively, staring back. She gave a small, cruel smile as she advanced toward him.
‘Yes, a pardon for the Colonel-Auxillian, but more than that surely? What about a pardon for those of his followers who went with him into exile? Surely you are not throwing yourself on my mercy, Sergeant-Auxillian Totho?’
The halfbreed jerked as she spoke his name, and then she was abruptly very close to him, taking his chin in one hand before he could pull away, and studying his face. The Iron Glove people remained tense, confused, and her Mantis bodyguards were plainly ready for any kind of casual violence at any moment – but then Mantis-kinden were always like that. The situation was suddenly unreadable.
‘I am told by my artificers that the Iron Glove has great plans for machines and devices that they lust after,’ the Empress declared. For a moment she studied Totho’s expression, and he kept as still as if she had a sword to his throat, but then she let him go. ‘I am told that my own inventors would match them, in time, but history is pressing on us. The Empire has a destiny, and we cannot wait. I am no artificer, but I know sinc
erity when I hear it. So we are here. You shall have your pardon, and so shall your master and such other deserters as walk in his shadow. Any other Imperial subjects that might find their way to you subsequently are to be returned, however, or purchased for full value. Remember that you are merchants, and not some band of idealists like the Broken Sword.’ She had looked away, her keen gaze sweeping across Lien, Angved, Varsec, all the other artificers dressed as soldiers.
Now her eyes pinioned Totho again. ‘You shall have your money, but I leave the tawdry details to the Consortium. We shall have your machines, and moreover, we shall even let your master come and see them put to use.’ She grinned at Totho’s start of surprise, for a brief moment seeming her true age. ‘But that was your request to make, was it not, and I have answered it too early.’ And the steel was back in her gaze. ‘Tell your master that we understand him, even if we do not understand his machines. People are transparent to us, and he is no exception. He needs us more than we need him, because what point is there to his machines if they are never used, and who would ever use them properly if not the Empire? So when the armies march again, you shall march with us, not sporting your old ranks and titles, but doing the Empire’s work nonetheless. That was all your master sent you to ask for, was it not?’
Totho stammered, then nodded, words failing him, but she had not finished yet, had not dismissed him.
‘It is not all,’ the Empress continued. ‘There is one thing we will have of you. Khanaphir and the Nem belongs to the Empire now, whatever face we put on that fact for the rest of the world. From dusk tomorrow, the Glove is forbidden – and any other foreign influence will disappear into the sands, never to be heard from again. You shall remove your people from these walls. You shall retrieve all your expeditions and agents from the Nem, all those diggers and robbers that you think we do not know of. This is non-negotiable, and no pardon shall save any of you from retribution if you disobey. We shall wipe the whole of your Chasme off the map if we must, and you know how the rest of the Exalsee shall cheer us on. Do you understand?’
Heirs of the Blade (Shadows of the Apt 7) Page 17