Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Yes!’ Marent agreed heatedly. ‘Yes, it is pissing insane, and it’s happening, and anyone who looks sideways at the orders gets that “Voice of the Empress” business from the Red Watch, or gets arrested by the Rekef. Yes, it is insane, Tynan. Just like everything in Capitas these days. The whole city’s working on nothing but habit, and every day another piece grinds to a halt. There’s been a mass confiscation of slaves – and which slaves? Grasshoppers, Dragonflies, creatures of no use to anyone! Menials and cleaners and pissing musicians rounded up for her private use. They’re sending to the Principalities, even, offering to buy anyone they want rid of. I was planning to make this trip anyway, back when things were just peaceably mad, but just as I was about to set off, all of this started. Nobody knows what’s going on back home, Tynan.’

  ‘Why tell me this?’

  Marent stared at him for a long time. ‘Because I trust you. Because you’re a man of honour, with the Empire’s best interests at heart.’

  ‘And I’m a man stuck here in Collegium, where there’s nothing I can do, even if it was in my power to help. And even suggesting something should be done is a form of treason. We can’t have another civil war, Marent.’

  ‘You tell me that? They’d never have won the last one if it wasn’t for me!’ Marent insisted. ‘But what was that for, the traitor governors and all that fighting? And now . . . it’s as if we went off to put them down, and we got lost on the way home and found ourselves in some other Empire.’

  ‘And I ask again, why tell me?’ Tynan insisted. ‘Because if you are suggesting that I, a man of honour with the Empire in his heart, would take some stand against the rightful Empress . . .’

  ‘Would you?’

  In the silence that followed, Tynan could feel the thump of his own heart. I don’t believe he actually said it.

  ‘I’m not talking treason—’ Marent started.

  Tynan cut him off furiously. ‘How can you not be talking treason?’

  ‘If there were enough of us – army generals, senior men in Capitas – if we stood before her and said, This is wrong, this isn’t the way, she’d have to listen to us.’

  ‘And if she didn’t?’

  ‘We’d have to hope she did.’

  ‘And you’re a better tactician than to plan a fight that’s all based on bluff,’ Tynan pointed out.

  Marent scowled stubbornly but had no answer.

  Taki landed the Stormreader neatly, letting the machine hover for longer than was strictly necessary, just because it was so good at it. The Sarnesh had only just produced the first of their new air force, but Willem Reader had made a few small but significant changes to the design while they were readying their factories.

  At last Taki let the orthopter touch down and threw up the canopy as the first mechanics arrived. The expeditionary force had a score of flying machines with it, but only three of the new Stormreaders, the rest being either Collegiate fliers rescued from the conquest or older Sarnesh craft that she would frankly not be found dead in.

  ‘Get him rewound and ready to go right out again.’ For a moment she almost told them she would be right back, but she had to report in, and she had already flown double duty after specifically being told not to. Rebellion had its limits. ‘Next pilots up – let’s have an all-Sarnesh scout team this time – and someone show me where the big noises are.’

  The force that was marching south had the sort of loose command structure that Beetles seemed to gravitate to inexorably, but that sent Ants into fits. Arguably it had three leaders, and Taki normally reported to the most junior of them, dropping out of the sky with a flick of her wings to land on the woman’s blind side, virtually on her feet.

  Straessa – known as the Antspider – swore at her tiredly. They were waiting for a team of artificers to repair the rails, as the grand idea for a swift move on Collegium was to have the soldiers march unencumbered while supplies were brought down the rail line. On various occasions, though, both sides had been fairly determined that the line would not benefit the enemy, so their progress had been somewhat haphazard. Fortunately the Sarnesh had devised an automotive that repaired and replaced the rails as it travelled on them, but even that ingenious machine ran into impassable sections on a depressingly frequent basis.

  Give me some way of getting an army on an orthopter, was Taki’s only thought in reaction to that.

  ‘Chief!’ She saluted cheerily, because the Antspider was always fair game to annoy.

  ‘Just “Officer”,’ the halfbreed woman growled. She was in charge of the Collegiate detachment, but plainly had not wanted to be. She was a victim of the tendency of Beetle leaders not to be soldiers themselves, so that Leadswell and Reader and the rest were all back in Sarn.

  ‘We had reports of fighting from you and yours, pilot,’ broke in Kymene, the Mynan commander and nominal overall tactician. ‘Report.’

  As Kymene was not on Taki’s annoy list, the Fly woman nodded more soberly. ‘If they didn’t know we were coming before, they surely do now. Three Farsphex came to check us out.’

  ‘You drove them off?’

  ‘Downed one, chased the others way. They’ve not lost any of their skill, but our new craft are the business, Commander.’

  ‘Good to hear it,’ Kymene nodded. She had brought with her just about every Mynan out of Sarn, all of them desperate to shed Wasp blood. For them, retaking Collegium was merely a link in the chain that would bring them home. Even Taki, whose interest in non-aviators was minimal, had marked that a fair number of Kymene’s followers were not soldiers by trade, just those who had been able to escape the Wasp assault on their city. Which is likely to make things messy if there’s a real fight.

  Again, that was not normally her department, but Taki was well aware that the Imperial Second could swallow up this expeditionary force and still be hungry afterwards. So let’s hope there’s a plan.

  ‘How are our pilots performing?’ This came from Commander Lycena, leader of the Sarnesh soldiers grudgingly released by Milus to march south. She was a reserved careful woman, plainly more concerned about keeping her own people alive than the eventual fate of the city they were marching on. Which probably helps balance out any excess enthusiasm on the part of the Mynans.

  ‘Good, Commander. They work together well. They need to think round the sky more, though. It’s hard, I know, with them not having the Art—’

  ‘Perhaps later for the details?’ Kymene interrupted. ‘What can we expect from their air power now?’

  Taki shrugged. ‘If word from Collegium still holds, they’ve not had much more delivered, which gives us parity, perhaps even the advantage. But we’ve no bombers, and they might have all sorts of other tricks, like those hornets they flew against us last time, so it’s going to be a ground war again. Or they might get another twenty Farsphex delivered tomorrow, in which case we have a problem.’

  ‘What other intelligence from Collegium?’ Kymene enquired.

  ‘Sperra was in yesterday,’ the Antspider confirmed, ‘and it sounds as if we’ve managed to get the Wasps wound up about us, no matter that we don’t have enough people here to . . . you know, actually take the walls.’ Taki heard the woman’s voice trail off pointedly. ‘I mean, there is a plan, right? We’re not just here because the Wasp artillery’s getting rusty?’

  Kymene’s smile in response was hard. ‘Yes indeed, there is a plan.’

  Straessa and Lycena exchanged glances, and the Mynan woman held her hand up.

  ‘Yes, there is a plan. No, it goes no further than the inside of my head right now.’

  ‘That’s a plan one assassin away from a shambles, then,’ Straessa muttered, loud enough for all to hear.

  ‘Then it’s lucky that it’s not my plan, and doesn’t need me to work,’ Kymene retorted. ‘Let us just get within sight of Collegium’s walls.’

  Seventeen

  They were heading upslope, struggling over ground riven with crevasses, littered with plates of shale that slid from
underfoot like the loose pages of stone books, a half-dozen suddenly shifting and clattering away to smash below, all hope of stealth gone. That was when the Worm found them.

  It was Messel who gave the alarm, Messel whose light tread, advancing on all fours as much as on his feet, had not dislodged so much as a pebble. Abruptly he was turning in the fickle light of Thalric’s torch and pointing behind them. ‘Beware!’

  Tynisa turned, catching her balance on the treacherous stone, and then having to drag her rapier from its scabbard. She had felt the minute twitch as the bond between them had reached to bring it to her hand, and then nothing, as the deadening air of the Worm descended on her.

  Thalric cursed nearby, casting his torch down to gutter on the canted stone, and lighting a second bundle of fungus with a flare of his sting. She had already lost sight of Esmail in the gloom.

  Orothellin’s voice boomed out, ‘We are almost there. Onward still!’ And Che’s reply: ‘What good will that do us, now they’ve found us?’

  ‘Keep moving’ won’t suffice this time. Tynisa’s eyes had wrung all they could from Thalric’s light, and she spotted those scurrying forms rushing at them from the gloom, far faster and surer of foot than anyone not born down here could be.

  ‘We will hold them off,’ she declared, speaking for she knew not who.

  ‘If we can outdistance them . . .’ Orothellin tried, and then, ‘The Hermit, he will be able to lead them off, even make them forget, I swear it! Only . . . drive them back, slay such of them as are here, and we may find sanctuary! Cheerwell, please!’

  From that last plea, and the following shower of sharp-edged fragments, Tynisa realized her sister was descending to help – if help was the word.

  ‘Che, you get up there,’ she snapped over her shoulder.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Not this time, Che. We’ll deal with them and catch you up, but go!’ And then, to Thalric, ‘How many, do you think?’

  His own eyes had picked them out now, and the flash of his sting seared the corner of her eye. She saw one figure fall, burning, and then another stagger, armour glowing with its own molten fire. For a moment the Worm coiled about itself, and Tynisa remembered that she had not seen so much as a bow down here. Then one of them was whirling something about its head, and she cried, ‘Slings, Thalric!’

  He cursed, and then was gone, kicking off into the dark air to make himself a harder target. Which left only her.

  She reckoned there were between a dozen and a score of them, and a handful had held back to spin stones at her, too small and fast for her to see or react to in this gloom. The rest were surging forwards, fanning out. They carried shortswords, two apiece, and their pale, slack faces sent a shudder through her.

  Thalric’s sting exploded amongst them again, striking one down from their midst and momentarily lighting up the rest – and she leapt.

  Footing would have been a problem had she been aiming for those shifting plates of stone, but she struck with both heels against the chest of one of her enemy, sending the man skidding downhill on his back, legs kicking. Then she was following him, propped on hip and one arm, ripping her keen blade across two sets of hamstrings and bringing it up in time to fend off the single sword that was quick enough to reply.

  Their formation flowed and then they were after her, which was a relief as she had planned to stop there and hold them, but the flurry of broken shale was carrying her further down towards the slingers. Again Thalric’s sting lanced down, striking wide . . . then again, flaring at the stone.

  She fell into darkness, too far from the dropped torch to see, a drawback the Worm would not have.

  ‘Thalric!’ Most unlikely of allies, given their past enmity, but he was casting his second torch ahead of her so that she scrabbled to a halt in its pool of light, lurching to her feet, blade first, to meet them.

  A sudden movement at the back of that chain of bodies and their end segment was a corpse – all too fast for Tynisa to follow but she knew it must be Esmail. For a moment the Worm recoiled, its many bodies reforming, and then she had half a dozen pressing her, the rest hunting off into the dark.

  Thalric was overhead now, but his stings were lancing beyond her, trying to kill the slingers who remained the only threat to him. She was on her own.

  She had the advantage of reach, and it nearly killed her. She took the initiative, expecting defence, but killed one of them straight off and was immediately swamped by the rest – no holding back, no fear of death, and yet a mindless discipline to them, so that every set of blades sought to drive her onto the points of their comrades.

  In that moment she took a couple of cuts, shallow but survivable, and drew strength from her blade to ignore the pain, cutting another throat as she did so, falling back to keep them at the point of her blade.

  For a second they were stilled, as whatever mind lurked behind those faces readjusted, and then pain assailed her, got its jaws into her and would not let go.

  The crippling injury that she had taken in the Commonweal, which dropped from her as soon as she had need to draw her blade, was abruptly again an inseparable part of her, as impossible to deny as her Weaponsmaster’s magic was to believe. The hand of the Worm fell upon her, and she could draw no support from the blade in her hand. It was just a sword, a thing of craft and steel. She was just a swordswoman, and the badge she wore was just an ornament.

  She fell back a step and the tightness of that scarred wound caught at her, till she fell.

  They pounced on her, but the broken ground came to her rescue, sending her slipping and slithering away from the light faster than they could follow, hunched about the pain of her overstretched hip.

  This isn’t how I die! But, amid that agony, she could only wonder how she had lived so long. The blackness around her was almost total. She could hear the quick patter of their feet but realized she would never see the killing stroke.

  Then there was a flash, like lightning, imprinting those rushing figures on to her eyes – Thalric’s sting, gone very wide but still a moment’s vision for her, and she cried out, ‘Again!’

  He obliged, the flash and flare of his stingshot dancing about the oncoming soldiers of the Worm as though he were an artillerist trying to find the proper range. In the second of those brief gifts of light, she saw Esmail in the midst of them, bare-handed, the severed halves of a sundered sword blade spinning away to either side of him as he plunged his fingers through one enemy’s breastplate as though it was not there.

  Another ran straight onto her blade, and then she was moving and scrabbling as best she could to get out from underneath their blows, but there seemed only a handful now, and at last Thalric was catching them, using each blast to light the way towards the next, missing Esmail by inches.

  And they were gone. No more Worm, and she heard Thalric hiss her name as he landed, all three of them once more utterly blind.

  ‘We must move now. Those that came for me are still out there somewhere,’ Esmail stated calmly. ‘Take my hand.’

  She expected to feel something edged and deadly, but when his fingers found her they were flesh and blood, and she leant heavily on him as he hauled her up.

  ‘You’re hurt?’ from Thalric, hearing her curse.

  ‘I’ll live. But what now?’

  ‘Look up,’ Esmail told them.

  Far above them, across an insuperable void of darkness, was one of Thalric’s dropped torches.

  ‘We go up,’ Thalric agreed, and then the two of them were helping her as they all clambered desperately for the higher ground.

  It fell to Messel to lead them to where the others were: Che, Orothellin and the Hermit, and none of those three needed a glimmer of light. Tynisa allowed herself one uncharitable thought: If her eyes were like mine, then she’d be out under the sun and Maure’d still be here.

  ‘This Hermit, or Cursed One, or whatever,’ she heard Thalric growl. ‘What is he? Why’s he so important. Why do we trust him?’

  ‘I
do not trust him,’ was Messel’s reassuring reply, and then, ‘but we are here.’

  ‘Last torch,’ the Wasp remarked philosophically, ‘and I don’t reckon this Hermit has the makings of a fire.’

  ‘I’ll find something for you to burn,’ the blind man offered immediately, and then he was gone, leaving them in the utter dark before anyone could call him back.

  ‘What . . .?’ Thalric asked plaintively.

  ‘I suspect not because he suddenly feels the cold,’ was Esmail’s dry observation.

  ‘He is right not to trust me.’

  A lot of silence followed the sound of that new voice.

  ‘How are we supposed to take that?’ Tynisa enquired levelly. ‘Che, are you there?’

  Her sister answered, but Thalric spoke over her. ‘Now for the torch.’ And then his sting flashed and flared.

  Tynisa’s eyes were only for Che, seeing her safe there with the towering presence of Orothellin behind her. Thalric saw the new addition first, and he dropped Tynisa instantly, springing backwards into the air with a hand extended.

  ‘Thalric, wait!’ Che told him.

  ‘He’s one of them!’ he yelled back.

  Tynisa was leaning heavily on Esmail, gingerly feeling out how much weight her hip could take. She could stand again, now, but lodged like a splinter in her mind was the understanding that her body could fail her at any moment.

  She looked at the apparition before them. Thalric was right: he was of the Worm.

  She saw that same pallid skin and grey-shaded eyes they all possessed. He was old, though, and he bore those spiralling scars she had seen on the Worm’s spokesman at Cold Well. His colourless hair was long and dirty, hanging past his shoulders, and he wore a ragged robe of many stitched-together pieces of hide and fur and chitin, its poor fit making his body shapeless. Moreover, a human animation possessed his face, though in a weak and sickly way. He looked ill, like a man pining for some drink or drug.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Tynisa asked. Their shadows swooped around them as Thalric touched down behind her, no doubt his hand still directed at the stranger.