‘Oh, count on me, Chief,’ the Antspider told him, already turning to go. Gerethwy threw Eujen a nod of affirmation as he followed at her heels.
‘Anyone who wants to have not been here can go now,’ Eujen told the assembly. ‘And I mean that. We’ve a short breathing space before the Wasps come to investigate.’ He gave a nod of acknowledgement towards Castre Gorenn, who had been quick to cut off any chance of the alarm getting out. ‘But they’ll be here soon enough, and this could go any number of ways. None of you asked to be party to this, so go now, and I only ask you keep your mouths shut.’
And some went, only a handful, with averted eyes and muttered apologies, but he would remember just how few they were, remember this with bafflement and pride for the rest of his life.
‘Get the Wasp dead taken away. . one of the cold rooms in the cellars should do. Officers, I want people stationed at every window.’ The old Moth architecture rose above them, built at the command of a race who thought in terms of entry by air, and therefore how best to deny it. There were a handful of balconies and windows big enough to be forced by determined opposition, but not so many, and not so hard to hold. ‘I want a few fast fliers up on the courtyard wall, to keep watch and let us know the moment things turn bad.’ Castre Gorenn, already in position, signalled her approval, and a couple of Fly-kinden were already winging up to join her.
‘And as for me,’ Eujen finished, ‘I need to speak to Stenwold Maker.’
‘And what about this turncoat here?’ Raullo Mummers demanded, and Eujen followed the direction of his finger to see Helmess Broiler slowly uncurling, his eyes on the weapons of the students around him.
‘Now listen,’ the new Speaker of the Assembly said. ‘You’ve all just signed your death warrants, you must know that — unless I somehow plead mitigation to the general on your behalf. If you want to get out of this with anything, then you have to listen to me very carefully and do everything I say.’
He was standing up, hands held out for calm, and that damnable smile creeping back on to his face, not a sign that he saw the bodies around him, the soldiers who had died in his defence. Eujen, mildest of men, who had spent the last however many years preaching peace to a world on the brink of war, felt that gate in his mind lock tight. If I had to choose between you and the Empress, to speak on my behalf, then I’d place my faith in her before I ’d trust it to you.
‘Averic,’ he said. ‘We have all seen just how Speakers of the Assembly are served by the new administration.’ He could not believe it was his voice, saying such things, but the words came out regardless. ‘Find some room with a sufficiently robust ceiling, and serve Master Broiler just the same.’
Thirty-Four
‘We’re at the crossroads of history, you know?’ Tactician Milus remarked softly. It was dark here, in the cell, but he knew her eyes were better than his for such gloom, just like the Fly she resembled. ‘The Empire. . it’s like some new treatment for a formerly incurable disease. Either it kills us, or. . or our future becomes something. . different.’
There was a single high window, just a handful of inches across and set at what was ground level outside. The grey light filtering through it was continually crossed and recrossed by shadows as people moved past, all of them at a smart pace. Sarn was mobilizing, and if Milus let his mind out, he would feel it, the immaculate perfection that was an Ant city-state going to war. But he chose not to. His plans made, his orders given, he permitted himself to sit down here with his prisoner, only to be disturbed if some lightning move of the Empire broke through the confines of his expectations.
He could feel the woman who called herself Lissart staring at him and, if he deigned to glance her way, perhaps he would see the light glinting in her eyes. She was well secured — a dangerous creature, for sure, because of the Art she could call upon. Valuable, though. Precious, even.
‘But your city is strength eternal, surely,’ she whispered. ‘What possible disease could the Wasps be coming to cure?’
He chuckled indulgently. Because here he could talk rather than just share thoughts that ceased to be his in the moment of their thinking. Here he could say words and get a reaction, and hear words that originated from outside, from another, separate mind. And if the result of those words was that she was sent back to the questioners, to be reminded of their deal, then so be it. They both knew the game by now.
‘Stagnation is the disease that kills cities. It’s killed Tark and Kes, and came close to killing Vek. Collegium saved us once, although they hardly meant to, by teaching us their ways: no slaves, tolerance of foreigners, and of course the tide of trade and technology that comes gushing in once you open your doors to Beetles. There must have been a lot of resistance at the time, but the queen back then was truly a visionary. Change and growth: just what the Ant-kinden city-states of the Lowlands haven’t experienced for centuries. We’ve sat and fought each other, without any great gain or loss, and we’ve been in a rut, ground deeper and deeper year to year. And now the Empire. Thanks to Collegium enlivening us a generation ago, we have a chance. And if we can beat the Eighth back, then. .’
‘Then what? What do you imagine you’ll achieve, even if you can? Which you won’t,’ she hissed, but he let her have her little tantrums: it made her easier to work for information. These days she hardly needed encouragement.
Once the interrogators had confirmed that there seemed to be no practical upper limit to her tolerance for heat, it would have been down to the knives and the rack, under normal circumstances. A shame, Milus had thought. Ruin someone irrevocably and you start the sands running on their usefulness as a resource,
Collegium had come to the rescue once again, though. Their clever academics had long before devised a way to make things cold, so as to assist them in their researches, and Sarnesh artificers had been able to apply this to the case in hand. Milus supposed that what they had ended up with was the reverse of a branding iron, but with the additional advantage that, no matter how excruciating the pain it inflicted, the icy blue-white marks it traced about the woman’s body faded after a tenday or so, leaving a blank slate for further inscription.
He had not been given much time, what with his principal work devoted to slowing the Eighth Army’s advance as much as possible, but he had been present when they had first broken her, searing coldly through her remarkable reserves of strength and leaving her twitching and sobbing, begging for release.
Then had come the questions, with the machine ever on hand to remind her to tell the truth. But then again, how else were Ant-kinden to have any chance of believing a hostile outsider?
‘I’ll have to leave you,’ he told her. ‘It won’t be for long.’
‘I’ll be waiting for you.’ He liked the fact that at least a ghost of her defiance came back to her so readily. It was the reason he came down here to talk to her on the rare occasions the war could spare him. And he knew he could crack her wide open just by bringing the machine back, just by letting her look at it. Such was the game they played.
She had not known much about the Eighth Army itself, but there was no reason why she should. He already knew she had been stationed in Solarno, a different operation altogether. In fact she turned out to know relatively little even about the Second Army that had set off from there — and only from her time spent hiding amongst them.
But she had been questioned for hour after long hour about Imperial Intelligence: everything she knew about their methods, their agents, their means of communication. She had not understood at first, because — like so many — she had not realized the scope of Milus’s ambitions, which were the ambitions of Sarn itself.
Milus was planning for the battle against the Eighth, certainly, but more than that he was planning for a war against the Empire, and he intended to take that all way to the gates of Capitas itself.
If Thalric had been plunged into this place during the last war, as the man he had then been — the hard-minded Rekef killer — he would surely have br
oken before now. It was the greatest expression of his not being the same man, that he could be surrounded by so much smoke and shadow, so little that made sense, and retain his mind intact. Not easy, no, but his world had been sliding away from the rational and the sane for long enough that he could keep his balance on the slope. Seda and her unwholesome appetites; the catacombs beneath Khanaphes; the Commonweal; Che.
That had been his first glimpse of Argastos but he had not doubted for a moment who the man was. The warlike Moth-kinden had appeared there without warning; just as suddenly he was gone, and where the gloom-hung wall had stood behind him, now there was a ragged, shroud-hung corridor that they were plainly intended to walk along. Thalric’s disbelief was in suspension, awaiting some more stable time when he might make use of it to begin covering over these memories and restoring his world view, but for now he was deep in the nightmare and clinging on.
And Seda. There had been a shock he was not prepared for. The woman he had fought so hard to get clear of, and who he had irrevocably made his enemy when he threw his lot in with Che, and yet he had not been able to kill her when given the chance, and now here she was again.
When she had found him, in this dark, shifting place. When she had found him, not Che, he had been ready for the explosion, the lash of vengeance. In the time since he had left her, surely the rapacious Empress would have driven out any sign of the girl he once knew, that fading spark in Seda’s eyes that had spoken of when she had been vulnerable, merely a pawn of her brother.
But she was still there, that girl. Her expression, when she found him, had been fond. There had been no recriminations, and for a moment he had been about to go to her as though he had never left, as though she had never become the creature she now was. The traitor thought had been there in his mind: How simple life would have been if only. .
For all that he had bitten it back, fought it down, it was there still. He had lived a long time as a servant of the Empire, and here was the Empire itself in human form.
He was therefore very glad when Che had turned up soon afterwards. Seeing the Beetle girl, almost absurd in her lack of the majesty and threat that practically radiated from Seda, grounded him back in reality, reminded him where his loyalties — and his affection — now lay.
‘Who’s that?’ Seda demanded sharply, and Thalric snapped back to the here and now. They had been making a cautious progress through the tunnel that Argastos had revealed, but now there was someone ahead of them, plainly visible despite the darkness, as though a lamp were shining only on her.
‘Is that. .?’ Tynisa murmured.
‘Mistress Bartrer?’ Che exclaimed.
Thalric looked again. Was it? He realized he had not paid much attention to the academic, but this apparition did seem to bear her face. She had shed her Collegiate robes, though, and was wearing something simpler but of an antique cut, a long sleeveless brown tunic, ornamented with delicate black stitching at every edge. There was also some lavish piece of gold at her throat, perhaps a torc.
Not a torc: a collar.
‘I’ve seen depictions of clothes like that in old books,’ Che said softly. ‘Slaves’ garments, from long before the Revolution. Maure, what are we looking at?’
‘Some trick,’ Thalric tried, but not sure whether he believed it.
‘No image, no ghost, just the living woman,’ Maure confirmed.
‘But how can she be here? How can you. .?’ Che walked forward to stand before the other woman. ‘Helma, can you hear me?’
The eyes swivelled to follow her, and abruptly Helma Bartrer’s face assumed an unexpected expression: pure spite. ‘Oh, I hear you, Maker,’ she acknowledged. ‘The master has sent me to bring you to his table.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ Che insisted. ‘Why are you here? How did you even get here?’
‘By hard work, by guessing, by faith in my master,’ Bartrer hissed. ‘By knowing my place and staying true to our betters.’
‘The Moth-kinden?’
‘Do you deny it now that you are here?’ Barter challenged her.
‘She’s Arcanum,’ Thalric guessed, speaking of the Moth intelligence service. ‘She has been all this time.’
‘More than that.’ Seda spoke from right beside him. ‘Your people were slaves once, Maker. Small wonder, then, if there’s some remnant cult who want those days back. Never underestimate how much some people want to be led.’
Helma Bartrer stared at the Empress. ‘Your kinden were slaves, too, Wasp girl, and they still are. It’s just that their taste in masters has deteriorated.’
‘Wait, you came all this way. . how could you even know this was going to happen?’ Che demanded of her.
‘Oh, I hoped.’ Again that ugly look. ‘Everything to do with the Moths, I tried to associate myself with. We have been faithful, generation on generation, waiting for this day when we could present ourselves to our masters. Perhaps all but I had given up any hope. But you!’ And the sudden venom was startling. ‘You had it all given to you, by mere chance! You’ve become something special, something that he’s interested in. . and how is that just, that you could blunder into such a thing when I’ve been loyal in my heart all my life?’ She would have gone on but something stayed her, a reprimand audible to her only snapping her head back. ‘Come with me,’ she muttered, and hurried off into the darkness, with that reflected light never quite leaving her, making the woman a beacon for them to navigate by.
It lit up nothing else, though, so they had arrived before they realized it. When the green-white lanterns sprang up around them, they all froze. Thalric felt meanly glad to see the same startled, fearful look on Che’s and Maure’s faces as he knew must have appeared on his own.
‘Please be seated,’ Helma Bartrer declared flatly.
There was a table there, its top a single slab of black-varnished wood, its edges uneven and ragged with the contours of the tree it had been hacked from. The chairs were little better, just slats and wands of wood twisted and grown together as though their maker, in striving to ape the natural, had finished up with something utterly unearthly. The walls pressed in on all sides, allowing barely room to drag the chairs back. Thalric could see them only dimly and, when he brushed one with his elbow, he felt angled metal there, and he shivered without quite knowing why.
It did not help that those corpse-light lanterns lacked sconces: just fitful, pallid flames guttering in the air.
At the head of the table, he saw one seat they were plainly not being invited to sit in. It was more a throne, intricately carved with intertwining briars, beetles and grubs, centipedes and woodlice and all things associated with decay, while its arms resembled the crooked claws of a mantis. As if that was not grand enough for their host, suspended behind it was the complete, hollow exoskeleton of just such a beast, battle-scarred and one-eyed, and long enough dead for the light to lend it a translucent glow.
Barbaric trophies, Thalric decided, and the gaudy ostentation gave him back some of his lost control, because here, at least, was a human thing, if only a desire to show off. Whatever Argastos now was, this was a part of him Thalric could relate to. He had seen similar trophies even in the possession of Imperial officers, and they had been mere bragging boasts of their owner’s self-importance.
Che’s hand found his arm and squeezed it slightly, and then she was sitting down, calmly and confidently, the first of them to do so. Seda followed suit a second behind, choosing a seat across the table from her, with Tisamon inevitably taking station at her shoulder. With that, there was nothing else but for Tynisa to do likewise, but Thalric was cursed if he was going to hover on his feet like a house-slave. Maure had already slipped in beside Che, and so he ended up at the end of the table facing that throne.
Their host arrived, just not all at once. Thalric had the best view of its progress, which he regretted. There was a scuttling and a massing within the intricate carving of the throne, and the things previously only represented there were now springing from the woo
d, a dusty swarm of empty shells, wing-cases, sightless eyes and hollow mandibles, the tiny bloodless cadavers of a thousand crawling things amalgamating and writhing, and growing ever greater until they had transformed into the slouching shape of a seated man. Thalric just stared, tightly motionless but unable to tear his eyes from the sight.
Then the scuttling dead things began disintegrating, a shedding rain of chitin flakes and segments drifting away, and revealed was Argastos, clad in his mail, with his easy, empty smile and those blank white eyes.
From somewhere inside him, a part of Thalric rose up and gave himself a slap, because he had been staring like some superstitious Commonwealer peasant at this show. And it was a show. What was the point of this, if not to play to the crowd? We’ve seen him pop in and out like a sergeant in a brothel. Why the grand entrance, if not to awe the newcomers? And with that thought he managed to muster a reasonable head of contempt sufficient to take the edge off his fear. Well, maybe you can still be taken down a step, Argastos.
There was a bowl in front of him. He assured himself it had always been there. In this bad light, who knew? Now Helma Bartrer, Mistress of the Great College, was fetching some sort of cauldron, and Thalric realized that, of all things, she was about to serve them.
But, of course, that’s her place in Argastos’s world.
What she decanted into his bowl looked, in the unhealthy light, like greasy grey dishwater tinted with rot.
‘You have no idea,’ Argastos stated, ‘how long I have been waiting for you. Long enough that I ceased searching the future for some hope of deliverance, centuries ago.’
Che and Seda exchanged glances and the Beetle inquired, ‘And who did you think you were waiting for?’
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