Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  After that, it was a brief clasp of hands with Balkus, for Princep Salma, and then Kymene, here on behalf of the Alliance. The Mynan veteran had lasted a year in heading her city’s new consensus before she had become sick of the bickering and factions. Her diplomatic style was scarcely less aggressive than her war record, and Eujen hoped she would be able to keep herself in check.

  ‘Nobody’s here from the Second Empire yet,’ Arvi noted.

  ‘I think we won’t hear from them,’ Eujen confirmed. Those Wasps who had been unable to abide the new order within the Imperial Republic – a label that was giving the College’s historians conniptions – had mostly ended up in that slice of the Commonweal that was still nominally under Wasp occupation, and where they lived in daily terror that the Dragonflies would come and take it off them once and for all. That their expatriate leadership consisted of former men of the Red Watch who claimed still to speak for the long-lost Empress Seda was a concern to more than a few in both Collegium and the Empire they had fled.

  But they had stayed away, to nobody’s great regret, and instead there were more, far more delegates for Eujen to meet: a lean grey Woodlouse-kinden who reminded Eujen of his friend Gerethwy; the jovial corpulence of the Helleren magnates; Spider-kinden representatives from at least four of the factions in what nobody was quite calling a Spiderlands civil war just yet, despite the number of desperate refugees washing into Collegium harbour every day; even a silvery-pale Beetle-kinden in pearlescent armour who refused to shake hands or have any physical contact with anyone, and apparently came from the depths of some lake in the North-Empire. There is not time, Eujen thought regretfully. Give me a day with each of them in turn before we have to get down to business. But, looking across that gathering, he knew that business was already well underway. Just by bringing all these disparate faces together, Collegium had achieved something.

  We were once so inward-looking. Now we send out invitations and the world comes.

  ‘What about the Wasps?’ Eujen asked, and then corrected himself hastily. ‘The Republic?’

  ‘They have arrived, but they wanted to speak with you before they make their formal entrance. I suspect they’re aware of just how many old enemies are gathered here.’

  ‘And when were you going to tell me this, Arvi?’ Eujen asked him.

  The little man gave him a condescending look. ‘If I’d told you earlier, you’d not have taken the time to be seen here shaking hands with other people, Master Speaker, which is quite necessary for any man seeking re-election. Master Drillen—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Eujen cut him off. ‘But now I know, so you’d better take me to them.’

  ‘I believe there was something about a gift, also. Bonds of trade and diplomacy and the usual,’ Arvi added airily. ‘Your bodyguard was dealing with it.’

  ‘She’s not my bodyguard.’

  Straessa, who was emphatically not Eujen’s bodyguard, and who had refused to be made War Master of the Merchant Companies, was waiting for him in one of the Amphiophos’s meeting rooms. Eujen still found that he expected her to be wearing the old uniform, the Company sash and the buff coat. She sported her formal robes, though: the Master Armsman of the Prowess Forum had to know how to dress for the occasion, after all. Looked at like that, the rapier at her side became merely part of the costume, the eyepatch just the same.

  She hugged him very close for a moment, almost to the point of pulling him off balance, then set him straight. It was to remind him that she owned him in a way that the Assembly never could, despite all its demands.

  Beyond her, and obviously slightly thrown by this familiarity, was a handful of delegates from the Imperial Republic, and Eujen recognized three out of four of them: Colonel Vorken, formerly of the Slave Corps, General Varsec, head of the Engineers, and Honory Bellowern, a diplomat and no stranger to Collegium’s streets. The fourth, a Wasp woman, was a stranger, although something about her seemed maddeningly familiar.

  ‘Arvi said something about a gift?’ Eujen murmured.

  ‘Look up,’ Straessa told him. ‘Imperial artists have been busy.’

  Hearing that, Eujen feared the worst. A lot of what the Wasps had produced in the last three years had been a fascinating insight into a culture trying to come to terms with what it had become. He knew that there was still a strong nationalistic undercurrent in Republican culture, which all too often surfaced in angry, ugly work trying to portray the Wasps in their supposed pre-eminent place amongst the kinden of the world, fallen only as a result of some imagined conspiracy.

  This was different, though. Halfway over to greet the ambassadors, Eujen stopped to gaze at the broad canvas mounted on the far wall.

  ‘They call it The School of Artifice,’ Straessa explained. ‘It’s . . . I think it’s where they see we have something in common.’

  The canvas showed a gathering within an open chamber that resembled the ruins of the Amphiophos that Eujen had just left. The figures depicted were engaged in earnest discussion, with boards and charts and half-assembled machinery providing the focus of their interest. There were a lot of Wasps amongst them, but no more than half. The artists had been generous and diplomatic.

  Many of the people there he could not identify, but the man with the one armoured glove was surely Dariandrephos, and the other halfbreed with a snapbow partly disassembled was that second-in-command of his, who had been a student at the College in his time. There was Varsec himself – given some prominence and depicted in spirited debate with fellow aviators Taki and Willem Reader. There was a selection of other College men and women as well – people whom Eujen had known, and who were mostly dead now. He saw Rakespear, Greatly, Tseitus, and the madly bearded man towards the back gesturing at the stormy sky beyond must be intended as Banjacs Gripshod, for all the likeness was poor. At last Eujen’s attention was drawn to a figure sitting by itself in one corner, though: a Woodlouse-kinden youth with a complex gear train anatomized in his lap. It was uncanny how they had captured the likeness of Gerethwy.

  ‘You had them do this,’ Eujen accused.

  ‘I had them add him, yes,’ Straessa confirmed, looking up at the likeness of their fallen friend. ‘I sent them Raullo’s sketches. He deserved to be in that company, I think.’

  Eujen nodded soberly and squeezed her shoulder, then turned a bright smile on the patiently waiting delegation.

  ‘Welcome to Collegium,’ he addressed them. ‘As you see, I’m somewhat speechless at your gift. It’s remarkable. Would you like me to make introductions, out in the Amphiophos?

  To his surprise, it was the woman who stepped forwards. ‘That would be much appreciated, Master Leadswell,’ she told him. There was an awkward pause then, words that she was slow in saying, and with the other three eager to move on, but at last she got out: ‘I believe you knew my son.’

  He placed the resemblance then, just too late for it to do any good. ‘Averic, yes,’ he agreed. ‘He was a good friend to me.’ A sudden rush of emotion passed over him, aroused by faces and voices now wholly consigned to time. ‘Averic came here because he believed that our people could learn to meet in friendship, not in war,’ Eujen went on, for all of their benefits. ‘I came to believe the same thing. Come, let’s meet the others now, and talk about the future.’

  Later, much later: it was past midnight after a long day of small matters. Arvi had set out the agenda himself – the finicky little power behind the throne, Eujen reflected meanly – and the first day’s business had been neither weighty nor contentious: minor trade business, the College making places available for more students from beyond Collegium, the Republic asserting a right to send its spare military men to serve as peacekeepers in the Spiderlands, which nobody was going to contest. After all, if they were over there, then they wouldn’t be sitting idle and getting ideas over here . . .

  Until the city’s clocks had struck twelve, Eujen and Straessa had been exchanging anecdotes with General Varsec and that Spider Arista from the Aldanraic States. But,
now that it was just the two of them and half a bottle of wine, Eujen was beginning to think about that walk home, and how much easier it would be with Straessa to keep him company.

  Then Arvi burst in on them, or as close as he ever came to doing so. He knocked, but only in passing as he barrelled in through the door.

  ‘Master Speaker!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘What are you even doing up?’ Eujen demanded of him, earning a reproachful look that eloquently conveyed the message, Do you not know how hard I work on your behalf?

  ‘There are some new delegates arrived,’ the Fly reported. ‘Or they claim they’re delegates.’

  ‘Can you not find rooms for them and let it wait until morning?’ Eujen asked plaintively.

  ‘Well, left to my own devices I certainly could, Master Speaker, no matter who they say they are,’ Arvi said primly. ‘However, the Chief Officer of the Coldstone Company says, no, you must come see them immediately.’

  ‘Gorenn?’ Straessa demanded. ‘What now? Does she think they’re Wasp spies or something?’

  ‘Please, Master Speaker?’ Arvi pressed, and Eujen nodded and began the difficult process of getting to his feet.

  He found them in one of the smaller clerk’s rooms, watched over by a couple of Company soldiers and the Dragonfly, Gorenn, for whom the war, Eujen sometimes thought, had never quite finished.

  He saw three visitors there, looking like beggars dusty from the road and wearing just coarse, heavy garments of crude cut. Nothing about them said ambassador, except . . .

  One was a Wasp man, broad shouldered, scarred, bearded, perhaps forty years or so but still strong. Beside him there was a Beetle woman, a few years Eujen’s senior at least, her hair cut unfashionably short, and there was something about her he could not place – more in the way that Gorenn was keeping her distance than anything Eujen himself could see.

  The third stranger had no eyes. Eujen blinked, seeing a leathery face without even sockets, and yet plainly he had the man’s focused attention.

  ‘Good evening to you all,’ he managed politely. ‘Welcome to Collegium. I am Eujen Leadswell, Speaker for the Assembly.’ The Collegiate Assembly, I should say. We’re not the only one, after all.

  ‘You seem very young for it,’ the Beetle woman remarked frankly.

  Eujen spread his hands, conceding the point. ‘These are unusual times,’ he told her. ‘Now, I was told that you are delegates . . . Don’t I know you?’ It must be my day for women who look slightly familiar.

  ‘Master Leadswell, my name is Cheerwell Maker. This is Thalric, my husband, and this man is Ambassador Messel of the Underworld Assembly. I understand that you are holding a meeting of powers here. He has come to take his place amongst your guests and to speak for his people – all his many people. And I have come home.’

  Glossary

  Characters

  Aagen – renegade Wasp, now of Princep Salma

  Alysaine – servant of Auder Bellowern

  Argastos – ancient Moth mystic

  Arvi – Fly-kinden secretary to Jodry Drillen

  Atraea – Moth-kinden leader of Cold Well

  Auder Bellowern – Imperial Beetle Consortium magnate

  Averic –Wasp student at Collegium

  Balkus – renegade Sarnesh Ant, now of Princep Salma

  Bergild –Wasp Air Corps captain with the Second Army

  Brakker – Wasp colonel with the First Army

  Brugan – Wasp general of the Rekef

  Castre Gorenn – Dragonfly archer with the Coldstone Company

  Ceremon – Netheryen Mantis, consort of Amalthae

  Cheerwell Maker (Che) – Inapt Beetle magician, niece of Stenwold Maker

  Chenni – Rosander’s chief engineer

  Dariandrephos (Drephos) – master artificer and leader of the Iron Glove

  Darmeyr Forge-Iron – Mole Cricket slave of the Worm

  Despard – Fly artificer, Tidenfree crew

  Edvic – Wasp governor of Solarno

  Ernain – Bee engineer captain, Second Army

  Esmail – Assassin Bug spy

  Eujen Leadswell – Beetle student and leader of the Student Company

  Gannic – Wasp lieutenant with the Engineers

  Honory Bellowern – Beetle diplomat

  Gerethwy – Woodlouse student at the College

  Giselle – Spider Arista of the Arkaetien

  Greenwise Artector – Beetle magnate of Helleron

  Gude – Fly helmswoman of the Tidenfree

  The Hermit – renegade Scarred Priest of the Worm

  Jen Reader – Beetle College librarian and wife of Willem Reader

  Kymene – Mynan commander in exile

  Laszlo – Fly agent and occasional pirate

  Lien – Wasp general of the Engineers

  Lissart – Firefly agent, prisoner of Milus

  Lycena – Sarnesh Ant commander

  Madagnus – Ant-kinden chief officer, Coldstone Company

  Marent – Wasp general of the Third Army

  Maure – halfbreed magician from the Commonweal

  Messel – Cave Cricket, renegade slave of the Worm

  Metyssa – Spider-kinden writer, in hiding in Collegium

  Merva – Wasp-kinden, wife of Edvic, governor of Solarno

  Milus – Sarnesh Ant tactician

  Nessen – Wasp colonel, governor of Helleron

  Orothellin – ancient Slug-kinden master, trapped by the Seal

  Mycella of the Aldanrael – Spider noblewoman, Tynan’s lover

  Oski – Fly engineer major, Second Army

  Paladrya – Kerebroi adviser of the Sea-kinden

  Poll Awlbreaker – Beetle artificer of Collegium

  Raullo Mummers – Beetle-kinden artist of Collegium

  Rosander – Sea-Kinden, Nauarch of the Thousand Spines Train

  Sartaea te Mosca – Fly lecturer and magician

  Seda – Empress of the Wasps

  Sperra – Fly of Princep Salma

  Stenwold Maker – Beetle-kinden, War Master of Collegium

  Straessa – the Antspider, officer of Coldstone Company

  Taki – Fly aviator of Solarno and Collegium

  Thalric – renegade Wasp, former servant of Seda, now lover of Cheerwell Maker

  Tisamon – dead Mantis Weaponsmaster raised by Seda

  Tomasso – Fly-kinden pirate and merchant, captain of the Tidenfree

  Totho – halfbreed artificer of the Iron Glove, second-in-command to Drephos

  Tynan – Wasp general, Second Army

  Tynisa – halfbreed Weaponsmaster, Tisamon’s daughter

  Varsec – Wasp colonel with the Engineers

  Vorken – Wasp major with the Slave Corps

  Vrakir – Wasp Red Watch major

  Willem Reader – Beetle Collegiate artificer

  Wys – Smallclaw artificer and trader

  Places

  Capitas – capital of the Empire

  Chasme – pirate city on the Exalsee

  Cold Well – Mining Community under the Worm

  Collegium – Beetle city-state

  Commonweal – Dragonfly domain north of the Lowlands

  Darakyon – Mantis forest, formerly haunted

  Dirovashni – Bee-kinden city on the Exalsee

  Dorax – Moth retreat

  Exalsee – large lake north-east of Spiderlands

  Helleron – Beetle city-state

  Hermatyre – Sea-kinden city

  Kes – Ant island city-state

  Khanaphes – ancient Beetle city-state

  Malkan’s Folly/Malkan’s Stand – battlefield, former site of Sarnesh fortress

  Myna – Beetle city-state, formerly part of the Empire

  Netheryon – Mantis hold

  Princep Salma – city founded by refugees of the last war

  Sarn – Ant city-state, ally of Collegium

  Seldis – Spider city

  Solarno – Beetle city on the Exalsee

  So
nn – Beetle city in the Empire

  Spiderlands – large domain south of the Lowlands

  Tark – Ant city-state

  Tharn – Moth retreat

  Vek – Ant city-state, recently at peace with Collegium

  Vesserett – Bee-kinden city in the Empire

  Organizations and Things

  Amphiophos – Collegiate centre of government

  Aldanrael – Spider Aristoi house

  Aristoi – the Spider-kinden ruling class

  Arkaetien – Spider Aristoi house

  Assembly – Collegiate ruling body

  Coldstone Company – Collegiate Merchant Company

  Consortium – Imperial mercantile arm

  Engineering Corps (‘the Engineers’) – Imperial army corps

  Farsphex – Imperial model of orthopter

  greatshotter – Iron Glove-developed artillery

  Imperial Second Army – ‘the Gears’, commanded by General Tynan

  Imperial Third Army – commanded by General Marent

  Iron Glove – artificing cartel led by Drephos out of Chasme

  lorn detachment – soldiers sent on a suicide mission

  Maker’s Own – Collegiate Merchant Company

  Prowess Forum – Collegiate duelling school

  Quartermaster Corps – Imperial army corps

  Red Watch – Imperial corps, the mouth of the Empress

  Rekef – Imperial secret service, divided into Inlander and Outlander

  Slave Corps – Imperial army corps

  Spearflight – Imperial model of orthopter

  Stormreader – Collegiate model of orthopter

  Tidenfree – Fly-kinden pirate ship

  Twelve-year War – Imperial war against the Commonweal

  Praise for Shadows of the Apt

  ‘A novel brimming with imagination and execution’

  SciFiNow

  ‘Epic fantasy at its best. Gripping, original and multi-layered storytelling from a writer bursting with lots of fascinating ideas’

  WalkerofWorlds.com

  ‘Superb world building, great characters and extreme inventiveness’