After Nero had gone, Teornis returned to the reports his agents had brought him. They were penned in elegant hands, a collection of polite nothings, niceties, social calendars and fashions. It took a true Spider-kinden Manipulus to pierce through the nothings and decode to the steel core of information within. It is all coming together, which meant that it was all falling apart. Teornis read and read.
I have to assume, he thought, that there will come a time when the coming-together and the falling-apart converge.
Distant news informed him that two Wasp armies were marching on Sarn and its allies, but he was barely interested in that. The Ants now had their chance: they would grasp it or fail. If the worst came, then the northern half of the Lowlands was expendable. That it would complicate the defence of Collegium was the only way in which it mattered to him. Collegium he wished to keep free. Its value as a grateful tool of the Spiderlands was too high to neglect. He had not gone so far to lift the siege the previous year, just to have the Wasps taking the place now.
Even if it lost eventually, Sarn would occupy its Wasp tormentors for many tendays before they occupied it, and after Sarn the mopping-up of the so-called Ancient League would take even longer. Teornis was meanwhile more concerned about local conditions.
The Wasp army that had left Tark so recently had set course directly for the Fly warrens of Merro and Egel. True to form the Fly-kinden had surrendered without even drawing a blade, swearing fealty to the Empire from a distance of many miles, just as they would happily swear to the Spiderlands or the Tarkesh or whoever else came against them. Such fealty would, of course, last only as long as there was sufficient strength to enforce it, but the Wasp possession of the two interconnected Fly warrens was a fact he had to live with.
From Egel and Merro the going got tougher for the Empire as their supply lines became increasingly stretched, by then conveniently close to the Spiderlands border and wanting but a knife to cut them. Beyond the Fly-kinden territories was the island city-state of Kes, a formidable investment for any besieger, especially with the new weapons that the Kessen had taken away from Sarn. Down the coast from Kes was the Felyal, whose Mantis-kinden were still bloody-handed from their destruction of the Imperial Fourth.
The imperial strategists must surely have a plan for Kes and for the Mantids, but as yet Teornis’ agents had not uncovered it. He suspected that the general of this latest army was keeping it mostly within his head, where it could not be easily spied upon.
There was also the problem of the fortified garrison that the Wasps had left north of Seldis, and the Eighth Army waiting in nearby Tark. The Spiders still controlled the sea, as the landlocked imperials did not seem to recognize how useful it might be as a means of attack down the coast, but if Teornis wanted to move soldiers north by land to support the Lowlands, then he would have to fight them for every inch of ground.
Well, it may come to that, he decided. His family, the Aldanrael, was already gathering its allies and forces in Seldis and Everis. House-guards from a dozen of the noble Aristoi families were jostling shoulders in the streets and challenging each other to duels, whilst mercenary and Satrapy companies were either shipped in or marched up the Silk Road past Siennis. More than half of the contributions had been made by Spider families that would have marked the Aldanrael down as their bitter foes not long ago. The imperial capture of Solarno had damaged Spider pride, and Teornis was making good use of the backlash.
Solarno, of course: another angle to consider. Solarno, the renegade city that declined to be part of the Spiderlands, instead enmeshing itself into the provincial politics around the watery expanse of the Exalsee. Easy to see why the Wasps had thought they could take it, although, as in so many things, they failed to understand. Solarno was a renegade, yes, but it was the Spider-kindens’ own pet renegade. It was the little political backwater where a Spider Aristos could go and paddle about, and not worry too much about who they upset or fret over any repercussions. It was the manipulus’ seaside resort. A great many influential families had a fondness for Solarno.
Not so the Aldanrael, but the family had seen just how useful a banner the invasion of Solarno would provide. Teornis thought about the Fly girl, Taki, how dreadfully serious and earnest she was. Well, good luck to her. Whether she liberated the city or if not, either outcome would serve.
He turned to the next report, from an agent within Kes, and tried to measure how long it would be before the Wasps were, one way or another, at the gates of Collegium.
Subterfuge and distraction. That was the Solarnese game, of course: the very board on which he had just placed his ignorant agents. Nero seemed a capable, if uninspired, choice and Teornis always preferred Fly-kinden tools where Spiders could not be risked. The aviatrix, though, was an unknown quantity. She could be dangerous. She could also be invaluable. I hope she’s as good as she thinks she is. His mind focused on Taki, already far ahead of his airship in her refurbished flier. Save your city if you can, girl, he thought, but, above all, give the Wasps something still more to think of. If you can manage that, then let Solarno burn to the ground for all I care.
Taki made the flight from Seldis to Porta Mavralis by coasting on the updraughts above the Silk Road that skirted the edge of the Dryclaw. From there her last chute wound the engine enough to bring her into the Mavralis airfield.
Nero would be following by whatever means he could. He had even exacted from her two-thirds of a promise to stay there until he joined her.
‘Just wait for me,’ he had requested her. ‘I won’t be long. You don’t want to go off half-ready, so why not taste the air, scout about, but wait for me.’
She had folded her arms. ‘If I learn that someone needs me back home, then I’m going. If Solarno needs me, or my friends need me.’ Seeing his pained expression, she had then relented a little. ‘But other than that, I’ll wait – so long as you don’t take too long catching me up.’ She regarded him dubiously. ‘I’m going to have to ask, though, why do you even care? It isn’t your fight, so why are you even here?’
And his smile had gone from brash to self-mocking to brash again. ‘Because I like you, girl, why else?’ A bald, knuckle-faced man twice her age, and not even of her profession.
She was still trying to work out what she thought of that. Still, he might be useful back in Solarno, if she could judge from how swiftly he had won over Domina Genissa, her previous employer.
The shock of the imperial invasion was still resounding through Porta Mavralis. Trade all about the Exalsee had been thrown into chaos, with the Wasps still trying to clench their fist on the city. They were turning most ships away from Solarno docks, impounding some, allowing a few others to trade freely, all decided apparently at random. Listening to this news, Taki formed the opinion that the Wasps themselves were divided, different officers ordering different strategies, and she further understood that the Crystal Standard party was still trying to assert itself as the new master of Solarno against the resistance of all the rival factions. There would be a reckoning for that pack of traitors, she knew, when they found out what kind of venomous creatures they had given their city over to.
Teornis had not sent her off with no help at all. He had given her a sealed introduction to his chief agent in Mavralis, and Taki met with her on the second day after her arrival: a lean, sly-looking Spider woman named Odyssa.
‘Refugees are still fleeing Solarno,’ the spy explained. ‘There’s almost a quarter of the Path of Jade’s members of the Corta Lucidi set up here in Mavralis, claiming to be a government in exile. Others have dispersed further around the Exalsee, to Princep Exilla, Ostrander, Diroveshni and Chasme. The Wasps are still fighting to lock down the streets and gain total control of the city. Their colonel has not even been able to proclaim himself governor and four or five of the top Crystal Standard collaborators are dead.’
‘By whose hand?’
‘Nobody knows,’ the Spider replied. Odyssa’s smile said that she had her own thoughts. ‘Ther
e’s enough general mistrust, though, that Wasp assassins are not so far from people’s thoughts.’
‘Good.’ Let them continue to fight amongst themselves, especially before their prize is secure. ‘I need to find out where certain individuals have gone, if you can help me.’
‘My Lord-Martial does not prohibit it, so give me a list of them and I will see what I can uncover.’ Odyssa slid a blank scroll over to her, with an inkpot and chitin quill balanced on it.
They may be all dead, Taki thought. Some of them will surely be dead. She was thinking of her fellows, her peers, the fighting pilots of Solarno and the Exalsee. My brothers and sisters of the air, my glorious enemies and closest friends. ‘What else are you allowed to give me,’ she asked, ‘or is it just information?’
‘By no means, for my Lord-Martial is not so parsimonious,’ Odyssa replied. ‘I myself am staying at the Cartel-House of the Craesandral family. Do you want to know who my fellow guests are there?’
Taki ground her teeth. ‘Forgive me, Bella Odyssa, but I am a pilot, not a game-player. My city is under the yoke, so please just say what you mean.’
Odyssa’s responding glance was pitying but Taki could live with that. ‘I have twenty Craesandral house-guards as company, and two hundred mercenaries from Iak.’
Taki blinked. ‘You will…?’
‘Make your plans, little one, and I shall help you as I may. When the time comes for blood-letting on the streets of Solarno, we shall be with you.’
Two hundred and twenty. Odyssa looked very pleased with herself but Taki was already seeing in her mind the mighty imperial airship Starnest and the hundreds of Wasp soldiers descending from it. And how many friends are left in Solarno that will fight? She needed her friends, her fellow pilots, and she needed a plan.
And she needed someone she could trust to go into Solarno on her behalf, and that someone was not Odyssa.
It would have to be Nero.
Six
There were certain businesses that did not stop even for the war. In fact there were some businesses that took on extra staff.
‘Small package work,’ the Fly-kinden smuggler had explained to Tisamon. ‘Messages in. Messages out. Weapons. People sometimes. Can fit a couple back there, at a pinch.’
The smuggling was accomplished via a single stripped-down automotive, with six high, narrow-rimmed wheels powered by an over-wound clockwork engine that ran almost silently, so that the vessel seemed to skate over the ground, and to fly when it vaulted a rise. The Fly-kinden drove it, and fixed it, and did his best to outrun any trouble, but now he kept a couple of guards on the payroll at all times, because he earned his high profit margins through danger and secrecy. The danger was attested by the vacancy that Tisamon had now filled.
It was as easy as that to get to occupied Helleron. Just short of two tendays, hanging from the scaffolding that was all the Fly had left of the automotive’s original shell, and they were then able to merge with the stream of travellers coming into Helleron from Tark and Asta, heading up the Silk Road from the south.
‘And from here on, we’re legal,’ the Fly-kinden had explained. ‘The Wasps might think they run the city, but it’s still a market and not a military camp. The Beetles know better than to turn people away, and there isn’t a magnate in the city who doesn’t make some coin for himself through the Black Guild. From what I hear, most of Wasp customs are on the take now, too. They learn fast, that lot.’
Helleron, a city devoted to the eternal cycle of building and decay, where today’s grinding wheel erased the tracks of yesterday: a city of machines that took in and spat out a hundred men and women a day who had come there to make their fortunes, feeding them to its furnaces. This was where he had come before, after Atryssa’s betrayal of him, after his own betrayal of her. This was Helleron, where he had been able to forget, in the unqualified shedding of blood, what had first driven him there. In a twisted, bitter sense he had fond memories of Helleron.
It had been only a short space of absolution, between his leaving this place and his return to it. Stenwold’s call had summoned him out of his exile, away from his meaningless round of street-fighting and the settling of quarrels. It was Stenwold who had given him the chance to redeem himself, to make himself the man he should be. For a brief span – fighting the Wasps here and in Myna, training his daughter, questing in Jerez – it had seemed that he would succeed in rediscovering himself.
Weak at heart. He should have stayed in the Felyal, remained true to his kinden, but he had betrayed them for a Spider woman, and thus had begun the road of failures which had led him here. Looking about him at the grimy bustle of Helleron, he smiled thinly. What better tomb for one such as he than this filthy warren of blackened metal.
The building he sought had not changed, the door’s plaque almost unreadable beneath the dirt of a year: ‘Rowen Palasso: Factor’. Once inside Tisamon gave his name and had no more than a minute’s wait before being shown to the third-storey office of the proprietor herself.
Rowen Palasso was a Beetle-kinden woman of middle years, probably not far from Tisamon’s own age. Her hair had been dyed red not too recently, and her face was baggy and lined. She was one of the middle-merchants of Helleron, who had worked at her trade all her life and never quite made the fortune and the success of it that she had planned, a type the city was full of. Her trade was a liaison for men and women of undoubted but clandestine skills: housebreakers and thieves, thugs and strong-armers, duellists and killers. In defiance of the darkened-corner conventions of her associates, her office was as domestic a place as Tisamon had ever seen, with cushions on the chairs and little embroidered pictures on the walls with homely mottos. In fact, it was calculated to put her patrons and her clients off their stride with its cosy banality.
‘Tisamon of Felyal, as I live and breathe,’ Rowen exclaimed. ‘And here was I thinking you’d given us the slip. They always come back to Helleron, though.’
‘It seems that way,’ he said quietly.
‘And here you are, looking for a little work to tide you over?’
‘I want to fight,’ he told her.
‘Of course you do. It’s what you’re good at. Carpenters want to make things out of wood, and artificers want to tinker with machines, and you want to kill people. Why not? Go with your talents, that’s what I say.’
It was indeed what she said. He had heard it a dozen times before, at least. ‘What do you have for me?’ he asked.
‘It isn’t as easy as that, dear blade, not at all,’ she told him. ‘City’s under new management now.’
‘I refuse to believe the Wasps have put your trade out of business.’
She gave him a bleak smile. ‘Not quite, Tisamon, not quite. Your old stamping grounds have mostly gone, though. It’s like the end of an era. All that gang-fighting, street-fighting, where you made your name: gone now, the lot of it. The Empire has been rooting out any fiefs that won’t bow the knee. The only work I could get you in that direction would be signing up for your own suicide with those few still holding out.’
Tisamon nodded, thinking.
‘On the other hand, if you were interested in something a little different…’ Her bright smiles were less convincing than her bleak ones.
‘Tell me.’
‘The Wasps have brought in a new kind of entertainment. They’re very keen on it, and so all the locals who want in with them are keen on it too, though it’s a little… gauche.’
‘Prize fighting,’ Tisamon filled in.
‘It’s not like the skill-matches the Ants have,’ Rowen warned. ‘Bloodsports – men against animals, or a duellist against a pack of unarmed slaves or prisoners. Nothing honourable, Tisamon. Not your line, I’d have thought.’ She watched him keenly. ‘But if you were interested, I could make the arrangements. It’s very new, and anyone can put up a fighter. Slaves get entered, mostly, but there’s no law about it…’
And so you have found your new place in the order, Tisamon considered
, and did not know if he meant the woman or himself.
‘Arrange it,’ he told her.
* * *
Seda had never before seen the Mosquito in anything other than robes of black, or the imperial colours her brother sometimes dressed him in, but now she had discovered him, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the mirror room, surrounded by a glitter of candles. He was swathed in pale clothing that was as tight on his limbs as bandages, secured by ribbons of red tied at his elbows, wrists and knees. His otherwise uncovered head had a band of dark cloth circling his brow, making the white flesh of his skull look more corpse-like than ever.
‘What are you dressed as, sorcerer?’ Seda asked acidly, once the guard had left. That she was now allowed to be alone and unwatched with Uctebri was a recent occurrence, and she did not know whether it was down to her brother the Emperor’s preoccupations elsewhere, or to Uctebri’s subtle influence.
When he lifted his head to look at her, she took an automatic step back, because there was something in that skull-face that she had never seen before.
Satisfaction, she realized: naked, gloating satisfaction. His bloody eyes, that raw, shifting mark half-covered by his headband, pulsed scarlet and wild. His lips pulled back into a grin that showed her every pointed, fish-like tooth in his head.
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