Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Inapt slaves, Brugan,’ she told him.

  He glanced up briefly with red-lined eyes. He was drinking more than before, too. Really she should have found a replacement, but there was no time now. His lips moved, and she heard, ‘I will have some brought to you.’

  ‘You will,’ she confirmed. ‘You will set your Rekef Inlander in motion with one aim only, General. I want Inapt slaves. I want every Inapt slave in the Empire. Have them confiscated from their owners. Have the Slave Corps deliver all they can find. All the prisoners we’ve taken in the fighting with the Spiders – have them brought to me. And take more prisoners, far more. Live prisoners, Brugan. Those cities in our Empire that are Inapt, have them deliver up one in five – no, one in four – and let’s hope we don’t need to go back for more.’

  Brugan was staring openly at her now. ‘What . . . Majesty, you can’t mean all . . . that’s thousands, tens of thousands. . .’

  ‘That is what I mean.’

  ‘What will you . . .? How could we even manage so many together?’

  ‘I leave that to the ingenuity of the Rekef and the Slave Corps, but it will be done. Set up depots for them; bring them all together near Capitas. I have need of them.’

  He must have now guessed something of her purpose, for it took a lot to shake a Rekef man like that. He had no capacity left to argue, though, merely bowing meekly to her wishes.

  And just hope that it will be enough, was her sober thought. Because although the deaths of the Apt are worth less, I will use them if I need them. The Worm must be stopped.

  He was not sure how far he had come, or even of the number of days that had passed since that great ruin that had taken away so much of his life.

  It seemed to Totho that he had barely seen a familiar sight since then, as he made his stumbling way along the edge of the Exalsee with no clear destination in mind. He had slept beneath the stars, and when he had grown hungry he had shown himself at villages or farms, and the mere sight of him had prompted offerings of food. Go away, had been the clear implication and, as the inhabitants did not feel that they could force him, they bribed him. Go away, and he had gone, onwards like a clockwork thing, aimless and disconnected.

  He had no idea where he was. He felt almost as if he had stepped into some other world, where all the landmarks were changed. He was far enough now that the smoke of devastated Chasme could no longer be seen. Tired, he sat with his back to a tree, staring out over the great expanse of water. There was not a boat, not an airship or orthopter to dot the sky. It was as though he had turned back time to before the revolution, some ignorant, barren world bereft of Aptitude.

  He still had his armour, the elegant work of scientifically derived alloys and shapes that would turn snapbow bolts and weighed him down so very little. He had his snapbow and three magazines of ammunition, and no way ever to find more – unless the Empire was able to reverse-engineer the design. He had his belt of drawstring grenades. That was all that Totho now had in the world.

  He did not have the Iron Glove. He did not have Drephos, whose loss – to him and to the world – ached and gnawed at him, alongside all those other losses that seemed to have defined his life.

  He did not have a purpose, and his past was ash.

  Collegium, perhaps? He could not even say in which direction it lay, save that his home was far, far away, both in distance and in time. What has the Empire left of it? He waited for the urge for revenge to surface in him: Go and fight the Wasps! Avenge your master! But it never came. His loss was so total that it would achieve nothing, and he was a rational man, an Apt man. He was no hero of the old stories, destined to fall beneath a wave of enemies and count it meaningful. Leave that sort of thing to old Tisamon.

  Sitting there in full armour, his helm in his hands, the snapbow leaning beside him like a lance, he could not know how he looked: exactly like some storybook warrior defeated in his last battle, scorched and bruised and alive beyond his time.

  That was how she found him.

  He looked up to see her: a woman in a long, tattered coat, a cowl up to shadow her face, staring at him from the lakeside as though she had somehow emerged, quite dry, from the water. She had a sword hanging at her side, but there was nothing about her to suggest any threat other than her simple presence and the fact that she was staring at him so intently. Even so, his hand drifted to the snapbow.

  ‘What do you want?’ His own voice sounded hoarse with disuse, as though his throat was still coated with smoke.

  She took a step closer, staring at his face. She was a half-breed, he saw, some tangle of Inapt ancestries and, now he thought about, it there was something of the charlatan about her, or what the Inapt would have called a magician.

  ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ he heard her say.

  ‘I don’t know you.’ I have no interest in you. Go away.

  ‘Your name is Totho, of Collegium.’

  Immediately he had the snapbow levelled at her. Nothing good could come of anyone around here knowing his name. ‘And just who are you?’

  She did not react to the weapon. ‘My name is Maure,’ she told him. ‘We have a friend in common.’

  Sixteen

  Reinforcements, the word arrived in Collegium, but only a handful of orthopters had come buzzing from the east – certainly not the garrison force that many were still hoping for. Instead, there was a band of engineers, quartermasters and Consortium men come to take stock, and a visitor for the general.

  Major Oski, highest-ranking Engineer in the Second Army and highest-ranking Fly-kinden in the Engineers, was there to greet the newcomers, a smart exchange of key words and salutes before he took them somewhere out of the way. He was not a man who readily delegated, was Oski. Instead, he and his assistant tended to turn up all over the Wasp quarter of Collegium and beyond, making themselves useful. Recently he had even been assisting the locals with the reconstruction, although his method of press-ganging them into work details to rebuild their own homes was not earning him much love amongst the populace.

  He was very plainly in charge and, as a Fly giving orders to Wasps and other larger kinden, he had cultivated a large voice and an impressive selection of insults. He made himself very much the centre of attention and fervently hoped that any watchers would not notice that his visiting band of artificers and merchants was unusually diverse – only a single Wasp amongst them, nor that they themselves were paying far more attention to his assistant, Captain Ernain.

  Ernain and Oski went way back, and were most certainly both in the same degree of trouble if anyone decided to start asking pointed questions, which was the sort of trouble that won a man the exclusive attention of the Rekef interrogators for as long as he could hold out. So far, Oski reckoned that their little sideline had evaded official attention, but he was unhappily aware that the pilot, Bergild, had begun to suspect something. He liked Bergild: she was good, refreshing company in a job where, all too often, you heard the same half-dozen stock opinions do the rounds of every single conversation. So much for that, though, and now he was putting as much distance between them as possible.

  Otherwise, if she would not take the hint, he would have to arrange an accident for her. With him as an artificer used to sneaking right up to the enemy to look over their siege artillery, and her as a pilot absolutely dependent on the proper workings of her Farsphex, he knew he could get rid of her with pitiful ease. He very much did not want to have to do it.

  He got them all into a Collegiate taverna, then cleared out the locals and the staff until he and his fellows had sole possession of the place. With one keen-eyed Fly sergeant on watch, the rest of them settled in with a few liberated bowls of wine and waited for Ernain to begin.

  ‘Any luck getting Oski transferred back east with me?’ was his first question. A man for practicalities, was Ernain. He was Bee-kinden from Vesserett, that grand old city that had just been winding itself up to become a power in the world when it had clashed with the nascent empire that the Wasp
tribes had put together. Nobody had known it at the time, but history should have been holding its breath. There could easily have been a Bee empire locking horns with the Lowlands right now, if things had gone differently.

  Or perhaps trading peaceably with the Lowlands, all sweetness and light, Oski considered, though personally he didn’t believe it.

  ‘Not a hope just now,’ a Beetle-kinden put in, a captain in the Consortium wearing informal robes with only a rank badge to separate him from the civilians. ‘Believe me, something weird’s going on back home. Trying to get any odd orders stamped is almost a lost cause. The Empress . . .’

  There was a general mutter around the room, from men who all knew the same story.

  ‘Anyway, the upshot is that a Captain-Auxillian can probably move about, but the Second’s chief engineer? Stuck here for now, looks like.’

  ‘The situation here is still strong,’ Ernain told them. ‘No doubt that’s the official line, too, but this time it’s true. I hear that the southern front against the Spiders is stalling, though?’

  ‘Just so,’ confirmed their one Wasp, garbed as a lieutenant of the Engineers. ‘The usual – ambush, assassination, mass poisoning and broken supply lines. The whole business was stupidity from the start.’

  ‘But a gift to us,’ Ernain pointed out. Capital treason uttered, then and there, and they absorbed it and nodded cautiously. ‘We’ll get our moment,’ the Bee went on, ‘and we’ll get it soon, I hope. Sarn will break out, or else the Spiders. But we need to be ready, have everything in place. Tell me we’ll be ready.’

  Some strong nods, some awkward expressions.

  ‘We’re still testing the water in Slodan and Dekiez, and there’s simply no ready way to interest the Delves,’ the Beetle started to summarise. ‘The Grasshoppers are all for it but basically don’t understand what we’re trying to achieve.’

  ‘And some of us aren’t convinced it can work,’ added another Bee, an older artificer also from Vesserett. ‘This is the Empire we’re talking about. It’ll end in blood, no other way.’

  ‘In that case, a great deal of what we’ve worked for will come to nothing, Tiberan,’ Ernain replied. ‘But, if you’re right, we need to have the sword ready to draw. We don’t bluff. I know you think this must end in violence,’ he remarked to his kinsman. ‘And I know that some of you don’t believe it ever will –’ and this time a look at the Beetle – ‘but the truth is, we must all be ready to fight, and not to fight. We must be ready for opportunity. When we make our move, the next pages of the history books will be blank, awaiting our writing. If we try to scrawl them out ahead of time, we’re fools and likely we’ll fail. Here, try this. The final version, I hope.’ He threw over a scroll to Tiberan, who ran his eyes down it, frowning.

  ‘I don’t like it,’ Tiberan grumbled. ‘Same reasons as before.’

  ‘I know. Are you still with me, though?’

  The older Bee sighed. ‘You know I am, Ernain.’

  ‘And the rest of you?’

  ‘If we had to go today, just march up to the throne and throw down the gauntlet,’ the Beetle said, ‘then we’d have a chance of getting out with our skins. If we did the same next month then I think we might be just about as ready as we’d ever be.’

  ‘Margraf,’ Ernain addressed the Wasp, ‘are we still quiet?’

  ‘There’s nothing in my papers or the rumours I hear that suggests otherwise,’ the man replied. ‘Still, as we all know, things are on the move back home. Right now, it’s not my lot you should be looking over your shoulder for. This Red Watch, that’s the new name, and where it gets its information from, I have no idea.’ My lot meant the Rekef, and Margraf held a lieutenant’s rank in the Inlander service as well as his Engineer’s post. He was regarded nervously by the rest, but he had proved invaluable so far.

  Ernain took a deep breath. ‘You’re the third group of our people I’ve met with now. I’ve met with men who were scared of the consequences. I’ve met with those who were too keen for blood. I’ve met with Inapt men who told me their omens said the time was right. I’ve met with those who thought that I was trying to raise the power of old Vesserett from the ashes. All these different people I have talked to, and secured their agreement. People from all across the Empire. People who have been talking and planning since the end of the last war with the Lowlands, since the time of the traitor governors. I want you to go back to your own cities, to your own followers. Tell them it will happen. Every day brings it closer: our new dawn. We’re all together in this.’

  ‘So long as we’re not together in the Rekef cells at the end of it,’ old Tiberan growled, but the mood in the room remained fierce, determined. Oski looked from face to face and hoped that he was seeing the future.

  Tynan wondered if this was how a spy felt every day. For an Imperial general it was certainly a novel and unpleasant experience. Here he was, in the city he nominally controlled, creeping about like a conspirator.

  Getting the message had thrown him: the name was one he knew, and there were certain words and references there that convinced him of the hand behind it. Still, a lot of time had passed since then. The instant thought: was this a trap, a prelude to assassination? No great imagination was needed to suspect it – lure the general off to a secluded spot, and next moment Vrakir is in complete control of Collegium and the Empress’s supposed will is being done without hesitation.

  But here he was, nevertheless, and he knew himself well enough to understand that this lack of caution was a result of a dozen different caustic experiences wearing him down – Mycella’s death, the unwanted demands of governing, the friction with Vrakir. He was a blunt, plain-speaking man denied the chance to act like one.

  So an old friend called, and here he was. He had brought a dozen of his most trusted men who had drawn sword alongside him for over a decade in the Second’s campaigns. Choosing them, aware that they were none of them now as close to him as they should have been, he had come to the painful recognition of how his rank and the toll of the years had distanced him. He had no colonel to rely on, no real old friends. I should bring that Collegiate Fly woman with me; she would serve just as well.

  In this brooding ugly mood he had come to this taverna, cloaked like a stage villain and trailed by a belligerent retinue.

  On seeing that it was the man himself, he felt less relief than he had expected. Perhaps he would have preferred a betrayal, if only to give him the moral high ground.

  ‘Marent,’ he acknowledged.

  ‘Tynan.’ This general of the Third Army had no business being in Collegium, still less sneaking in incognito aboard a messenger orthopter, but here he was. He was younger than Tynan, and when he had done his stint in the Second he had only been a major, but he was a soldier’s soldier through and through, a man who won his wars on the battlefield, not behind closed doors.

  In his eyes for just a moment, but there for all to see, was a spark of surprise at how old Tynan now looked.

  ‘Do I take it the Third isn’t about to relieve us?’ Tynan tried to make it sound light, but in truth he wished there was some chance it was true.

  ‘The Third is stuck in Capitas,’ General Marent replied disgustedly. ‘I’ve decided that I’ve received nothing personally nailing me to the spot, but you’ll appreciate why I’ve not turned up here with a standard and a proclamation.’

  ‘Why are you here, Marent?’ Tynan asked and, seeing the taken-aback look in the younger man’s eyes, held up a finger. ‘Not that I wouldn’t welcome the chance to talk but, in the Emperor’s name, man, you’re a general now!’

  ‘In the Empress’s name,’ Marent corrected sourly. ‘And in her name my entire force is eating its way through the stores at Capitas whilst there’s fighting all down the Silk Road and Sarn readies to march.’

  ‘Sarn already marches,’ Tynan corrected him. At Marent’s raised eyebrows he nodded tiredly. ‘Not a full army, but a few thousands heading for us even now. You’d better not outstay your welcome
here, or I’ll have to make you part of my staff.’

  ‘Just a few thousands, though?’ Marent asked him, shaking his head.

  ‘So it seems: maybe three, four at the most. But there’s more. There’s maybe twice as many marching east from Vek, down the coast, and I reckon we’re lucky they lost so many trying to take this place before the last war or there’d be more.’

  Marent frowned, calculating. ‘Still not enough.’

  ‘We’re waiting to see where the rest are coming from, but it’ll be time to keep hold of this place the hard way, soon enough.’

  ‘Then it’s even worse madness to have me sitting idle!’ Marent spat. ‘Let me come against Sarn with a full siege train, and the garrison force that’s currently tying them up can relieve you, and you can kick in the Vekken’s teeth. Why can’t they see it?’

  ‘The Empress and her Red Watch,’ Tynan suggested.

  ‘Correct. For the longest time, no orders at all and now . . . now there’s orders all right, a pissing explosion of them, just not the right ones. Quartermaster orders, Consortium orders, but Slave Corps orders most of all.’

  Tynan frowned. ‘Slave Corps?’

  ‘She’s sending them out all over the Empire and beyond. They’ve got airships now – the Slave Corps has an air wing, can you believe?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Cargo airships down the Silk Road to Seldis.’

  ‘The Empress has a yearning for Spider slaves?’ Tynan felt an odd, cold twist inside him.

  Marent looked as though he felt the same way. ‘I saw the orders. Not just a few Spiders. The Slave Corps is to take a dozen big cargo airships south and load them up with . . . everyone.’

  ‘What do you mean, “everyone”?’

  ‘As much of Seldis’s population as they can cram into the bays, quality immaterial.’

  ‘That’s insane,’ Tynan murmured.