Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Czajkowski

  ‘And Solarno hasn’t torn itself to pieces yet, either. Everyone was saying it would. Everyone was saying we’d have our own little war around the Exalsee: Spiders and Wasps. There are plenty of troops within an easy sail. So what, I wonder . . .?’

  It sounded like a non-sequitur, but Drephos’s words always had a logic to them, the trick being to reverse-engineer the unspoken links of the chain.

  ‘They may want an anti-Sentinel weapon, of course,’ came Totho’s absent-minded reply. ‘The Sarnesh captured a few after they defeated the Eighth.’

  He read on for another few lines, but Drephos remained silent, and at last Totho glanced up.

  ‘You’re concerned over something. Not about their man who had the accident, surely?’

  ‘There won’t have been time for that news to have prompted anything,’ Drephos said dismissively. ‘But something . . . I think our new visitors will be speaking the same old words, however they disguise them.’

  ‘The Bee-killer,’ Totho identified.

  Drephos let a long pause slide by before he confirmed that, and then only with the briefest grunt. Totho heard his metal hand – that wonder of artifice – scrape on the balcony rail.

  ‘So give it to them.’

  That got the man’s attention. Drephos turned sharply, stalking back to hunch in the balcony archway, a stark silhouette against the sunlit sky. ‘You think so, do you?’

  Totho put down his reports. ‘In truth? No. But I’m not sure why you don’t.’

  ‘I’m undecided.’

  ‘Drephos . . .’ Totho stood up and crossed the room to him, trying to make out the man’s expression. ‘The march of technology, the inevitable broadening of the scope and purpose of warfare . . . Every invention that leaves our foundries has only made your words more true. I confess, the Bee-killer is still too much for me, especially since I was the one who . . . deployed it, that one time. But I’ve been waiting for you to talk me round. So, what is it?’

  The master artificer took a deep breath and returned to the balcony rail, forcing Totho to join him.

  ‘We’ve worked wonders here, haven’t we? With this place?’ And now surely Drephos was prevaricating, and that was not like him. Beneath them, Chasme was a sprawling blot on the landscape: workshops and factories; piers and docks; two airfields crowded with a bizarre assortment of fliers; tavernas and boarding houses and brothels. Actual room to live was fitted around all the rest, in alleys and cellars or crammed between buildings.

  All of it was lawless. Chasme had always been a pirate town, a pirate artificer town, long before Totho and Drephos had arrived. It had been fertile soil for them, though. The rabble of Chasme appreciated good workmanship, and although there were no definite leaders amongst them, the Iron Glove’s word spoke loudest. What Drephos wanted, Drephos got.

  ‘What are you thinking? You want this new lot to disappear? I can give the word,’ Totho suggested.

  ‘And word would then get back to the Empire,’ Drephos noted.

  Totho had never been good at talking to people, but then Drephos had never been good at listening, so they were well matched there. Eventually he went with: ‘All right, what?’

  ‘There they are.’ Drephos’s real flesh hand jabbed out towards the docks, but there was such a bustle of business there that Totho could not make out what he had spotted. Since the double invasion of Solarno, many merchants had gone elsewhere around the Exalsee with their wares or their orders, and nowhere had benefited more than Chasme.

  ‘I know you still keep spies in the Lowlands . . . in Collegium.’ Another non-sequitur, another twist of Drephos’s mind as it gained purchase on the problem.

  The stab of guilt he felt at that surprised Totho. ‘I don’t. Not like that. But I pay for news from there, certainly. Well enough that I’ve a few who go out of their way to get it to me.’ He shrugged, failing at nonchalance. ‘What of it?’ In the face of Drephos’s scrutiny he hunched his shoulders defensively. ‘It’s not . . . it’s not her. I’m not . . . for news of her. Just . . . I used to live there . . .’

  His words dried up as he realized that his evasions were pointless. Drephos’s mind had already moved elsewhere.

  ‘Perhaps,’ the Colonel-Auxillian murmured, ‘you should listen to spies from closer to home. You’ve seen how much gold is coming into our coffers?’

  ‘More than even we can use.’ Totho shrugged. It was not about the money, for either of them.

  ‘And how much of that is Imperial coin? Less than there used to be, and we’re selling much further afield. Even those who can’t afford us still send their little delegations. The whole world wants us to arm it. Anyone who we turn away knows that, wherever else they go – Solarno, Dirovashni – they’re getting second best. And those ports know it as well. Chasme’s growing power – our iron fist – has not gone unnoticed.’

  ‘Then perhaps we need to clench it. Or whatever you do with fists. We could outfit an army that could swallow up the Exalsee – if you wanted.’ Totho spread his hands. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing more than life has provided me with: the tools to move the world. So long as the rest of the world is content for me to move it . . .’

  ‘And the Bee-killer?’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound like the Empire.’

  ‘I want to understand,’ Totho pressed.

  Drephos took a deep breath. ‘If it were you asking for it, I’d hand over the formula. You would respect it, use it responsibly,’ he said, as if not speaking of an invention the only purpose of which was to massacre thousands. ‘The Empire . . .’ He shook his head. ‘But they are here, I think. Let us pretend they just wish to place orders and enquire after our latest devices. I tire of spies.’

  He led the way down, Totho tripping along in his wake, staring worriedly at the other man’s back. Drephos was not one for soul-searching: he was a creature of certainties. Now he was talking like an old man.

  The Bee-killer . . . Drephos had gifted war with countless inventions, from small devices for the more efficient aiming of bombs to grand projects such as the Sentinels or the greatshotter artillery. He had no family, nor love for any other being, no greed for coin for its own sake, only to feed the fires of his projects. Even for Totho, the closest thing to a kindred spirit that he had, he surely felt no more than the distant fondness a man might grant a pet.

  And yet his name was linked to one invention like no other, and that was the Bee-killer. The atrocity at Szar was laid at his door: a chemical devised by his underlings and used by Totho against the Empire had somehow become Drephos’s great work in the minds of many, many people. And now the Empire wanted to possess more of it.

  He wondered if that was it, the vice that Drephos found himself in: a man whose least-favoured child has become his heir apparent.

  Then they were stepping down into one of the workshops, with Iron Glove artificers and staff clearing out of the way, and the Imperial delegation was being ushered in. There were a dozen of them, and mostly the Wasps and Beetles that Totho had come to expect: not fighting men but Consortium merchants and factors not above a little snooping in their spare time.

  In the lead, though, was a different model of trouble. Totho had seen only a scant handful of halfbreeds allowed any authority by the Empire – one of whom was standing beside him. This new man looked to be in charge, though, and he saluted Drephos as though the other man’s old rank still held.

  ‘Good day, sir. It’s a pleasure finally to meet you,’ the Imperial halfbreed said with a bright, sharp smile. ‘Lieutenant-Auxillian Gannic at your service.’

  Six

  ‘I remain acting governor of Collegium,’ General Tynan summarized his newly received orders. ‘No new troops to garrison the city. No progress towards the western coast, Vek, Tsen . . .’ He stared at the scroll before him as though it was his own death warrant, but one that he had lost the strength to fight against. ‘A mealy-mouthed commendation that I have done well, and not even Her Majesty�
��s own seal.’

  The Beetle-kinden diplomat, who had been nodding pleasantly up until ‘mealy-mouthed’, looked sharply at the general. ‘These are Her Majesty’s orders, nonetheless.’

  ‘Time was,’ Tynan spat, ‘when a general took orders from the Empress’s own hand. No lesser person sufficed. No more: I see the seal of the Red Watch. We all know,’ and his sarcasm was heavy and unmissable, ‘that they are the Empress’s voice. Tell me, Bellowern, is she even still in Capitas? I hear rumours otherwise.’

  Honory Bellowern, one of the highest-ranking Beetles in the Empire now that he had somehow secured a colonel’s badge, put on a stern demeanour. ‘Those are dangerous rumours to voice, General.’ He cast his eyes about Tynan’s staff room, which had once been some Collegiate merchant’s ground floor before the Engineers had kicked through a few inessential walls. A dozen officers of the Second Army were easily in earshot.

  ‘Colonel, if you wish me to directly order you to answer my question, I will do it.’ Tynan had made no secret of his disgust at Bellowern’s promotion. The antagonism was not because the man was Beetle-kinden – or not only that. Rather, it was that Bellowern had headed the Imperial diplomatic staff within Collegium prior to Tynan’s arrival, and so might have been of considerable use as an intelligencer and liaison when the Second Army appeared at the city’s gates. Instead the man had made sure he was out of the city long before the fighting started, returning only now that it was safe to do so and somehow bearing a portion of the glory, which Tynan felt entirely unearned.

  ‘Of course she is in Capitas, General. I saw her myself. Where would she be else?’

  Tynan glowered at him, and the first hint of uncertainty entered Bellowern’s manner. Tynan had not spoken with a governor or a general’s formal cordiality. The Wasp’s hostility was palpable.

  ‘Might I ask,’ the Beetle ventured, ‘whether I have in some way offended?’ His change of manner was pointed, as if he had suddenly considered that if Tynan had him shot, he might be unable to raise his objections back at Capitas later.

  ‘You went to Captain Vrakir first,’ Tynan pronounced.

  Bellowern blinked twice, mastering any surprise he might have felt. ‘As it happened, I had orders for Major Vrakir, and he crossed my path on my way to you. It seemed an economic use of my time.’

  ‘Which orders included a promotion,’ Tynan noted.

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  ‘Which promotion also bore a Red Watch seal.’ No suggestion in the general’s tone of whether it was a question or a statement.

  Bellowern was obviously playing it safe. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So he’s a major now. So when’s his colonel’s badge due to arrive?’

  ‘I have no idea, General. You can imagine that such matters are not within my compass—’

  ‘I can imagine many things that may or may not be true,’ Tynan told him flatly. ‘But thank you kindly, Colonel, for coming so very far just to give me no news worth the hearing. No doubt you’ll want to take up your residence from before we took the city.’

  ‘Actually, General, after a little more time with our new . . . with Major Vrakir, I must be moving on. After all, Collegium is an Imperial city now, expertly pacified. I could hardly come here and be ambassador to myself.’

  ‘You are a diplomat. You know these people. I am a general, a battlefield commander.’

  ‘I have my orders. You’re welcome to peruse them.’ Now even professionally phlegmatic Bellowern was a little sharp. ‘They do bear the Empress’s own seal. You are to hold the city, as you are plainly doing most capably. I have my own concerns.’

  Tynan stared at him for a long time, and at last voiced one of those questions that nobody was supposed to ask. ‘What is she up to?’ And, when Bellowern stuttered and stumbled over an answer, ‘You don’t know. I thought men like you were supposed to know everything.’

  After the Beetle had gone, Tynan brooded a while, and his officers knew enough not to approach him. The taking of Collegium had been hard but swift, flawlessly executed. The reputation of the Gears, the Imperial Second Army, was secure. And yet Tynan brooded and mourned.

  It was not the taking of the city but its aftermath. He had not been alone as he rode an automotive through Collegium’s gates. The Spider-kinden army of the Aldanrael had spilt its share of blood to take this prize, and its leader, the Lady Martial Mycella, had been close to Tynan. Far closer than was wise.

  And of course the order had come, from the Empress via the Red Watch officer Vrakir: Kill all the Spiders.

  Tynan had obeyed faultlessly. He himself had executed Mycella, his co-commander, his lover. He had torn out his own heart to do so, but he had orders. Orders had been his life to that point.

  If he had been sent on westwards for Vek and beyond, allowed to do what an army general should, then perhaps he would have soon put it behind him and recovered. The Eighth Army had been broken by the Sarnesh, though, and the garrison force intended for Collegium had been hastily re-routed north to prevent the Ant-kinden from taking the initiative. And Tynan had been told to hold and govern Collegium, and wait.

  Sitting there, in the city that to him still reeked of his own betrayal, his soldiers had watched him sink into himself, gnawing on his own regrets. A bitter silent war had sprung up between him and Vrakir, bearer of those fatal orders. Neither man could bear to be in the other’s company for more than a few minutes, and the Imperial administration of Collegium virtually existed in two camps because of it: the voice of the general against the transmitted voice of the Empress.

  And in the middle were the citizens themselves, at the mercy of a general’s depression and the increasing restlessness of his soldiers.

  On the far side of the Gear Gate from Tynan’s headquarters was the townhouse commandeered by the Red Watch man, Major Vrakir.

  He had fewer staff to wait on him than the general. General Tynan commanded the Second Army and governed Collegium for now, but there were many who were waiting for the orders to come that might change that. Anyone who had contacts back home had heard of the Red Watch: its unpredictable, unaccountable habits; the way even the Rekef had to bow the knee to it.

  Vrakir had been a regular army officer before the Empress had chosen him. She had taken him to the Imperial Museum in Capitas. She had led him to that hidden room at its heart where she kept the Mantis-kinden idol. She had bid him kill, and then offered him a goblet filled with the victim’s blood.

  She had asked him if he had not always felt different, detached from those around him. He had not been able to deny it. She had told him the truth. He was Apt, as all Wasps were Apt save her. Some quirk of his inheritance, though, some muddying of his blood, had left him with a holdover from the old days. She could make use of him. He was not different, but superior.

  And he had believed her, and drunk. And so had begun his long road to the edge of sanity.

  He was Apt. He understood machines, even if he was not quite comfortable with them – no artificer he – and of course he had never believed in magic. Now, though . . .

  He dreamt, and the dreams had meaning. The Empress’s will made itself known to him – by nothing so arcane as her words in his mind, but he still knew. It was as though he had been told long ago, in childhood, all the demands of state that she burdened him with, and each was only recalled at the proper time.

  He had brought Tynan the orders to turn on the Spiders, to murder the man’s Aldanrael lover. Only he and the general knew that the supposed betrayal of the Empire by its allies had never happened. But it would have happened, he sincerely believed. The Empress had foreseen it.

  Even then, with that responsibility on him, he had retained his control. He had faced off against General Tynan with utter confidence in the Empress’s orders. Then the Empress had returned to Capitas, though, and she had changed.

  There was something terribly twisted, now, in that link he shared with his mistress. Whatever had happened, whatever she had done in the Mantis forest
to the north, it had marked her. She had nightmares, and Vrakir shared them helplessly. She tormented herself. She feared.

  In her dreams she was beneath the earth, and things moved there. They crawled and burrowed, they scratched and dug, fighting ever closer to the surface. And it was her fault, he knew, experiencing her dreams. The Empress was to blame, and she had lost something, left something behind, when she fled to Capitas. She was not whole, and she could not escape her bonds to that lost part of her.

  From the earth, such fear, so that Vrakir found himself steadying himself as if the ground beneath him would suddenly betray him. And, worst of all, this was no irrational fear, but very real. The Empress understood entirely what there was to be scared of.

  And he sent word for the army’s scouts, and he heard their reports: there were isolated farms and mills found empty, only the ground around them disturbed. One entire village had been abandoned, no sign of where its hundred or so inhabitants had gone. The ground was marked with spiral patterns and some of the buildings were cracked as though they had been undermined.

  Vrakir fought against sleep, awake even past midnight alone in the empty house he had seized, and still the Empress’s nightmares howled in the hollow spaces of his mind.

  ‘I don’t understand. Who is it you’re meeting here?’ Raullo wanted to know.

  ‘No idea.’ Sartaea te Mosca sipped at her wine, holding the bowl in both hands. She had brought the Beetle artist to a taverna near the College: the Press House on Salkind Way. The place was still a student haunt, and there was a passage that ran to one of the dormitories, meaning that curfew was negotiable. The windows were even now being shuttered against the dusk, and soon the landlord would lock the Wasps out and pretend to be shut.

  Sartaea was an occasional visitor to the Press House in any case, but tonight she had a purpose: word had come that she should meet someone here, no more detail than that.