Totho was silent for several foot-dragging seconds, no doubt weighing the odds in his mind: what could be gained where, and what were the percentages in trying to play both ends. The eyes of the Empress brooked no equivocation, however, fixing him like a specimen skewered on a pin until he finally nodded.
‘Of course,’ he got out. ‘It shall be as you say.’
‘It always is,’ she said sweetly. ‘And now I shall not keep you further. I will let my artificers and Consortium factors manage the details, but you may tell your master he shall have the pardons signed by my own hand. He cannot ask for any greater surety than that.’
After the Iron Glove people had departed, the Empress turned to Lien.
‘They will be gone by dusk tomorrow. The day after, you shall commence your work.’
‘If they keep their word, Majesty,’ Lien muttered darkly.
‘Do you doubt me, Colonel?’ The words were said quite pleasantly, but a deadly silence descended instantly upon the Scriptora’s echoing hall.
Lien shook his head convulsively. ‘Majesty, of course not.’
She nodded, easily satisfied, it seemed. ‘These are the men you spoke of?’ And to Angved’s alarm she was looking in his direction. He missed Lien’s confirmation, his heart hammering, as she stared at him. He found himself terrified, out of all proportion even to the temporal power she wielded, and yet at the same time a shock of attraction surged through him as their eyes met, a physical desire such as he had not felt in a decade.
‘This man is Varsec, from the Solarnese expedition,’ Lien explained distantly. ‘While in prison pending trial, he wrote the book you saw, about a new model air force, and how it might be accomplished, the adjustments, the Art . . .’
The Empress waved a hand. ‘The technical details I leave to you, Colonel. It is enough that you have confidence in it. That is, after all, your role. I understand that this Varsec’s proposals are drastic, and I approve the measures required. The Empire must move forward. We cannot cling to the past.’
‘And this is Angved, of the . . .’ Lien paused awkwardly, because of course the Empress had publicly denied any responsibility for the mission that had sent Angved to Khanaphes the last time. ‘Who was in the Nem recently,’ the colonel finished lamely. ‘You recall his reports on the Nemean rock oil and its properties.’
She nodded, it being clearly another matter she was happy to rely on her artificers for. ‘Proceed in all things as you have described to me,’ the Empress instructed. ‘The work in the desert and the adjustments back home. The Empire will make use of every tool to hand, whether it be the discoveries of these men or the inventions of the Iron Glove. We will be strong and we will break down the walls my brother balked at. We have a future to claim, Major Angved, Major Varsec.’
There was a moment of silence before the two men realized what she had just said, and after that Angved could have wept: not a prisoner now, not even an over-age lieutenant. I’ve done it. I’m made. He saluted, catching sight of Varsec copying the gesture from the corner of his eye.
‘There will be an expedition heading into the Nem. You have seen the machinery we have brought here. You know the operation you must begin. Before you return from the desert, matters must be well in hand,’ Colonel Lien reminded him. ‘You have seen the trust the Empress has personally placed in you and you can imagine your fate if you get this wrong, Angved.’ It was plain that Lien would rather see him rot than profit like this, but the man was an artificer, as pragmatic as that trade demanded. He would use what tools he had. ‘Varsec, you’ll accompany him while measures are put into place back home – factories converted, the recruiting sergeants briefed. You’ll be sent for when they’re ready for you. Expect to see Capitas in two months, at the latest, but until then I’ll leave you with Angved. You’ve witnessed, how his oil will solve some of your problems.’
Varsec nodded thoughtfully. ‘I have that, Colonel. I’ve a new sheaf of notes to send on to Capitas already, for the attention of the factory foremen.’
Lien turned away from them and saluted the Empress. ‘Your Majesty, you have shown a faith in the Engineering Corps that your brother, whose loss we mourn, did not. With your support, we shall build for you the future that you have envisaged. I am only glad that you understand our craft so well.’
In response to that, something about the Empress’s face struck a momentary wrong note, revealing some bitterness that Angved could not account for, but then she was smiling again. ‘I shall hold you to your promises,’ she told Lien. ‘The dreams of my grandfather and my father and my brother are relying on you, General Lien. It is time that the Engineers took their proper place within our Empire.’
Fourteen
As the weather grew colder and the snow began to flurry, Varmen earned his keep, guiding them safely to empty little crofter’s huts or searching out tiny hamlets, no more than three or four shabby hovels occupied by the most dismal-looking peasants Che had ever seen. These people were terrified enough at the sight of Wasps to abandon entire dwellings to give them shelter, and Che would never know if that was because of the past war or the current regime.
When there was no village or hut available, Thalric and Varmen showed her an old soldier’s trick by heading for the nearest copse of trees. There would almost always be a hollow somewhere amongst the roots, which they would curtain off with a cloak to create a little pocket of body-heat against the cold outside. Che was uncomfortably aware that she was surviving through the skills of the Imperial army, learned through bitter trial and error during the first few winters of the Twelve-year War.
Some time later, they had stopped in a town that Thalric remembered: it had been marked as Lans Stowe on the Imperial maps during the war. He had not seen its capture personally, for there had been a great deal of ground to cover for an agent of the Rekef Outlander. The defenders here had held off the Empire for a long time – long after the land on all sides had fallen under the black and gold flag. The town was large, and built into the steepest side of a high hill, topped by one of the Commonweal’s most defensible castles. It had been a low, solidly built, crown-like affair and, uniquely, the castle walls themselves had extended to encircle the entire town, sloping inwards to a height of twenty-five feet, then shelving outwards, at a sharp angle, to support roofed walkways, nests of arrowslits and a barrier of wooden spikes. Many of the buildings in the town had been similarly fortified, and Lans Stowe had boasted a great many archers and arrows. Had the place been more tactically essential at the time, it would have fallen far sooner, but a combination of its strength, the defenders’ prudence in laying down supplies, and a lack of any pressing need to do anything about it had left Lans Stowe standing, besieged and surrounded, to within two years of the war’s end.
They had brought in the artificers, Thalric recalled, and used this place as an experiment in new artillery, for the maverick halfbreed Dariandrephos had then been forging his reputation. Imperial soldiers had never needed to charge the strong walls of Lans Stowe. The Light Airborne had never risked themselves against the wings or arrows of its defenders. Instead, the artillery, far out of bowshot from the walls, had begun levelling the place systematically. The ingenious architecture, which had held off the Empire’s desultory efforts for years, was as ancient as any other stonework in the Commonweal, the product of long-dead masons who had seemingly not passed their skills on to any worthwhile apprentice.
After a tenday of ruinous bombardment that had given Drephos the opportunity to experiment with various solid, explosive and incendiary missiles, the surviving defenders had sallied forth: all the glorious chivalry of the old Dragonfly-kinden with their glittering nobility and massed spear-levy. The Wasps had been ready for that, indeed it would be safe to say that the besieging forces had been ready for several years. By all accounts there were few survivors, the Wasps working out their long-harboured frustration on the city to such a degree that the Slave Corps raised an official complaint at the meagre pickings.
In the centre of the town there rose a ziggurat in the Wasp-kinden fashion. It was, in its own way, a triumph of design. The lower two tiers were formed from blocks of broken stone mashed together, caged in wire and wood and then mortared in place. Had the upper reaches been of the same construction, then the whole edifice would have crumbled under its own weight, but they had presumably run out of suitable stone around that point, so had continued their work in cane and wood, the Commonweal’s traditional building materials. The shape, however, was wholly Imperial.
Of the rest of the town, perhaps half the buildings followed the local pattern: the slanting roofs and, presumably, twin-walled interior. The rest of it, which Thalric guessed was put up to replace structures Drephos had beaten down, was devised to the Imperial pattern: solid, low buildings, often with a second floor smaller than the first; flat roofs and little walled compounds. A surprising amount was constructed of the same salvaged stone, the rest of wood.
There were plenty of soldiers out on the streets, and Thalric felt instinctively at home. It had the feeling of any occupied town in the Empire, with a good garrison on hand in case of trouble. The soldiers wore black and gold, in varying degrees, through most of them were Dragonfly-kinden. Perhaps one in five was a Wasp, with a scattering of other Imperials, mostly Beetle-kinden and Flies.
There was clearly a stratification at work here amongst the townsfolk, and again one that was innately familiar to Thalric. There was a definite ruling class composed of Dragonflies and Wasps, well dressed and armed, often with retinues of followers. Then there were the Grasshopper-kinden making up the majority of the town’s populace who, by contrast, were poorly clad, and they worked. Some were chained.
Their masters, especially the Dragonflies, made a point of naming their home Landstower, as the occupying Imperial forces had done before the Empire’s borders had retreated so violently – after the death of the Emperor and the liberation of the Alliance cities. Thalric and Varmen were nodded to on the street, as though they had become people of consequence here purely because of their kinden.
‘This is insane,’ murmured Che. ‘It’s like they’re putting on a play, or we’re in . . . some kind of hallucination. A warped reflection.’
‘What are we doing here, Varmen?’ Thalric asked of their guide.
‘Taking another sounding,’ the big Wasp explained. ‘Believe it or not, the Principalities aren’t exactly the most stable of places. If there’s fighting westwards of here, I want to know about it. Also, we need supplies, and personally I could use a proper bed for just one night.’
Che caught Thalric’s gaze and her expression said clearly, I don’t want to stay here, but she voiced no actual objection.
‘So there’s an inn?’
‘Wayhouse,’ Varmen explained. ‘I like Wayhouses. Best thing the Lowlands ever exported.’
‘What on earth are the Way Brothers doing out here?’ demanded Che, still staring about them at this Empire in miniature.
‘Keeping a Wayhouse,’ Varmen replied, and then grinned at her exasperated expression. ‘I’m not saying the Empire was ever full of the little fellows, but they were always there. Beetles mostly, but a few of them were offshoots of decent family, enough clout to stop the places getting burned down. And the soldiers liked them ’cos, when you got to stop at a Wayhouse, you knew they wouldn’t rob you blind. ’Course, some of them got burned, all the same. You know how the army always is with cults and the like.’
Thalric nodded, remembering.
‘But they were like the Daughters – you know, those healer bints that always went trailing the pike. The men liked them and so the high-ups tended not to notice them so much, you see?’
The Wayhouse itself was one of the flimsy-looking Commonweal structures, to their surprise, and quite a sprawling one, clearly having been extended recently. The four Beetle-kinden men running the place wore the comfortingly familiar brown habits of the Way Brothers. That they had a staff of a dozen slaves was jarring to Che, but she decided, unhappily, that being a slave to the Way Brothers was probably doing relatively well, as a slave’s lot went.
The common room was already busy with travellers, and all of them sitting on the floor or on cushions – none of the tables and chairs that a Lowlander or a Wasp would have set out. Aside from a family of white-haired Roach-kinden bundled close together in one corner, the rest all seemed relatively well-to-do. There were several merchants – a Beetle, a Wasp and three Dragonfly-kinden – and one striking Dragonfly woman with a guard of four Mantis warriors. Then there were two important-looking Wasp-kinden with an entourage of a dozen men apiece, taking opposite ends of the room and pointedly keeping a no-man’s-land of strangers between their respective followers. In the Lowlands a Wayhouse catered to all travellers, down to the very poorest, but Che guessed that the truly poor in these parts did not get to travel very often.
‘Let me go and ask some questions,’ Varmen suggested. ‘Someone’s bound to have come from the west.’ He paused, considering. ‘Or else, you know, if nobody has, then we can probably guess it won’t be an easy road.’
Left to their own devices, Thalric and Che studied the varied throng.
‘We should do a little information-gathering of our own while we’re here,’ the former Rekef man decided. ‘No real news of this place was reaching Capitas when I was still there. The Principalities must be changing every day, and I want to know how this place has turned out like it has.’ Che could only nod.
He glanced from one to the other of the two influential-looking Wasps. The younger man looked like a merchant factor or quartermaster, the kind of Consortium type that Thalric had never much either liked or trusted. The older one still wore his Slave Corps tabard over his finery, as the badge of the Empire, no matter how debased, seemed to be a harder currency here than within the Wasps’ own lands.
In the end he chose the merchant, as the lesser of two evils. The thin-faced man looked to be about thirty, with a great deal of locally crafted gold about him. His retinue included a few Wasp guards, but they were outnumbered by the Commonwealer servants or slaves attending on him, including a pair of well-favoured Dragonfly women taking turns at feeding him sweetmeats.
‘May we join you, sir?’ Thalric asked. As he had guessed, the Imperial term of respect carried disproportionate weight here. The merchant, who would have been far from a ‘sir’ to Thalric back in the Empire, smiled as broadly as his narrow face would permit.
‘Well met, travellers on the road,’ he announced, indicating that Thalric should find a space of floor close by. ‘We have business together?’
‘We might, sir.’ Thalric was already fleshing out the details of his lie even as he spoke. ‘I’m but recently arrived here from Capitas, scouting for markets.’
The merchant raised his eyebrows. ‘A factor, then? Who for?’
‘Consortium,’ Thalric confirmed, but allowed the man’s sly smile to prompt an addition, ‘Horatio Malvern.’ The Malverns were well known as a powerful family in the Consortium, and Horatio as one of their aspiring sons. Thalric’s grasp of the intricate politics of the Imperial merchant clans did not run deep, but it was broad enough to fake a first meeting like this.
The Wasp merchant’s smile in response was knowing, and told Thalric a lot. ‘Well, the Malverns must know that we have all marked out our territories already, those of us Left Behind.’ He put a formal stress on the words. ‘If the Consortium wishes to run things here, then we may have difficulties . . .’
‘On the other hand, if my masters were simply looking for someone to deal with, for Commonweal goods . . .’ Thalric ventured. He was aware of Che, at his elbow, watching him with mixed amusement and fascination.
‘Then we will no doubt get on extraordinarily well,’ the merchant announced.
‘I am Merchant-Colonel Aarth, and we are clearly well met.’
Thalric was at pains to nod solemnly at the absurd rank. Clearly those ‘Left Behind’ by the Empire’s formal withdrawal from the Principalities had wasted no time in handing out the promotions. He guessed that, when the world around here had still been sane, Aarth had been no more than Thalric was currently pretending to be: a merchant family’s roaming factor, lacking in either power or respect.
‘Aulric, Consortium sergeant,’ Thalric replied humbly. For impromptu identities, best practice recommended a name close enough to the truth for him to respond to it without hesitation. ‘Tell me, Colonel . . . My masters told me that there were Wasps still in the conquered principalities, but I had expected to find . . .’
‘War?’ Aarth completed for him. ‘All of us holed up in castles and forts, surrounded by a besieging horde? Not at all. Oh, there were some that were worried. The top people, the magnates and generals and governors, they all got out as soon as the news came and left us to our fate. They’d been keeping well apart from the locals, see? They were expecting this to become another Myna.’ He smiled, not without a touch of self-mockery that made Thalric like him more. ‘I won’t deny that we were worried, but then we realized we weren’t the only ones. Everyone left alive here was looking at each other and seeing that the nobles are dead, the generals are gone . . . You might not credit it, but a lot of locals here were just as concerned about the Commonweal coming back and lumbering them with another pack of princes.’ A broad grin, from a man who plainly thought he had made the right choice back then. ‘So most of the enterprising Dragonfly-kinden, those who had been something better than dirt farmers, started to look for someone to lead them. Sometimes they chose locals, more often they picked us. We were used to leading them, see? The main thing they remember about us is that we won, that we’re stronger than they are. We’d won the battles and we still held most of the castles and defensible positions, even if we were short on men.’
Heirs of the Blade Page 18