Blood of the Mantis sota-3

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘I have made my decision concerning the Spiders,’ Alvdan remarked. A frisson of interest passed through the assembled tacticians, for this was news. ‘We must assume that they have played a part in the destruction of the Fourth,’ the Emperor continued. ‘So I have instructed General Maxin here to have his agents destabilize the local cities of the Spiderlands. We intend to sow sufficient disruption at their borders to ensure that they shall not trouble our Lowlands campaign.’ He smiled at them. ‘The rest is a Rekef matter, and in General Maxin’s capable hands, but no doubt the Second or Eighth can spare time to burn the Spiders’ webs, if the Rekef so wish. Continue.’

  The slaver major gestured towards the map. ‘You have already heard how the Sixth and Seventh Armies will be approaching the city of Sarn, but agents in the Rekef Inlander inform us that Sarn is currently allied with a number of lesser cities in that area, making any advance into contested territory dangerous.’ He glanced at Maxin. ‘General, perhaps I range into your territory now?’

  Maxin stepped forward to the map, tapping the shining disc that represented Sarn. ‘The mixing of kinden that the Lowlanders are currently engaging in, in their attempts to find an alliance against us, allows our agents much more freedom to act than before. We are well placed to shatter this alliance of theirs by removing key figures and playing on their suspicion of each other. At that point, when the season turns, General Malkan will advance overland and by rail and destroy Sarn before heading north to mop up the primitives living there. Collegium will then fall either to the Seventh coming south from Sarn, or to the Second coming east along the coast, whichever seems most convenient at the time. So ends the war with the Lowlands.’

  ‘Not another Twelve-Year War then, we hope,’ said Alvdan.

  ‘We cannot promise on our lives that your Imperial Majesty’s flag shall fly over Collegium this summer,’ said one of the older generals, ‘but the Lowlands, though they have pockets of mechanical knowledge that matches our own, lack the unity and spirit of the Commonweal, or the reserves of manpower. We cannot but think that, by next summer at the very latest, all the Lowlands shall be yours.’

  ‘The Lowlands shall be yours,’ Uctebri murmured to himself derisively. He had not been present at the war council, but that was no barrier to him, for his mind gnawed through the fabric of this palace like a grub. Nothing ever escaped him, and meanwhile the Wasps remained so sure of their material world, so ignorant of the reality that moved invisibly behind it. He was back in his new chamber again, the one with the opening roof. He was allowed outside it only in the company of General Maxin or the Emperor, though he believed that, if need be, his own powers would secure his release. Again that blurring of boundaries and outlines, the hedging over questions of fact. Questions such as: Do I do this for himself or for my kinden?

  Originally, of course, the secret masters amongst the Blooded Ones had set him on this path, yet now he had developed a personal stake, a chance to grasp power with his own hands rather than simply bow to the will of his betters. His kinden had never been a unified race. They were individualists one and all. It was why they were now so few.

  He ordered his guard to winch the ceiling hatch open for, though it was a simple mechanical operation, he could not master it. The chill air fell into the room and made the fire tremble in the grate. Uctebri saw his own breath, and that of the guard, plume in the sudden cold.

  There were no clouds blotting the heavens tonight, but he would not have cared if there were. He could read the clouds as easily as the stars hiding behind them.

  He had dreamt long last night, seen many things. Now he stared up at the order of the heavens in order to help thresh through those visions and cast out the chaff of mere fancy.

  There had been Mantis-kinden in his dream, and many others of the Lowlands peoples. A man who fought under the badge of the old Weaponsmasters… and a woman whose banner changed and changed, a spy in the way that the old races recognized that word. She was the holder of the Shadow Box.

  Last night had been full of faces and blood. He had seen the figure of Emperor Alvdan II cast in gold, presiding over the beginning of a new world. Perhaps he should tell the man of that vision, and whet his ego still further.

  The death of the mighty… that was something best left unsaid, but it had been clear last night, and was clear in the stars now. The fall of cities and armies marching. One did not have to be a seer to foresee such things in the future. The Empire had grown great, its borders overflowing with armed men. All the independent powers still left in this tract of world would be troubled by this next season of campaigning. He had seen last night the sails of the Spider-kinden; the white eyes of the Moths who had driven his own people into the wastes; a lame halfbreed crushed stone in a hand of steel; a dead man arose to rule over the lost, with the sun as his queen. Uctebri made his notes and observations, but so much of what he had seen was still shrouded in darkness, even to his penetrating eyes.

  He signalled to the guard and the shivering man gratefully winched the shutters closed. Even as he did so, Uctebri saw one last piece leap out at him. Blood, of course. Blood, which was the tide the world ebbed and flowed on, but blood particularly tonight.

  He gave a thin and lipless smile just at the thought. There were many traditions of the old magic, Moth-kinden and Spider and more, old and lost and abandoned. Only the Mosquito-kinden understood the true value of blood, and when to reach deep into the minds of others and lay their hands on the knife.

  Alvdan had spent the day unsatisfied. The mosquito slave constantly prevaricated and whined for his precious box. General Maxin counted over his agents and imagined that Alvdan did not notice the power games he played with the other two Rekef generals. He was getting ahead of himself, that one, taking imperial favour for granted. Perhaps it would soon be time for Maxin to discover, as so many others had, why the throne’s benevolence should not be presumed on.

  But if Maxin died, of course, his name could no longer be used to frighten Seda. Alvdan’s sister had now lived in Maxin’s shadow for eight years, after the general had disposed of all their other siblings. No, better to keep Maxin alive for now. Where else could such a convenient stick be found, to beat little Seda with?

  And the military, his ingenious strategists! I have an entire Empire to choose from, and this is what they give me! True, the Slave Corps man had seemed fairly competent, but what true soldier had ambitions as low as commanding the slavers? Profiteers and brigands, the lot of them, though necessary, of course. The Empire would always need slaves, and it ground them up at such a rate that it seemed impossible there could always be more. There were always more, though: prisoners of battle, criminals and cullings from the provinces or raids against savage peoples living beyond the borders. The Slave Corps did a fine job, really, for all that it was inferior work for a soldier.

  My generals just talk and talk. If there was no progress this spring then Alvdan would take his pleasure in devising torments for those men. For now he must take his pleasures elsewhere. He had eaten some small amount, drunk a little wine, his servants hovering around anxiously for his orders. Now he could at least slake his physical needs, though his mind would continue to worry and tug at all of his problems even then. With his entourage of guards and menials, he swept through the halls of his personal chambers and entered the rooms allotted to his concubines.

  Only the Emperor kept concubines. Other Wasps might have their women, their slave girls, whoever took their fancy, and he knew that some foreign kinden such as the cursed Spiders delighted in great slave seraglios where one of their noble ladies might rut every night for a year and not see the same body beneath her twice, but the imperial concubines here were something different to that. The Emperor could call upon any woman within the Empire, of any kinden, of any station, slave or free, married or not, and yet here he kept a collection of women for his personal use only. That use was partly for the physical satisfaction, but more for political ends. They were all highly important
to him, because they were hostages of a sort.

  Most were Wasp-kinden, daughters of powerful families, governors, colonels; men whose loyalty to the Empire was paramount and yet not entirely guaranteed; men who commanded large armies out on the marches, beyond the close scrutiny of the throne, or Consortium merchant barons whose hands were often dipped in the imperial coffers – all had been required to contribute some close female blood-kin to the Emperor’s harem. It was a hard-edged honour but, still, the truly loyal gave without question, and for the rest there was always the fearsome spectre of the Rekef.

  And, of course, General Maxin’s own middle daughter was here. Alvdan had slept with her only once. In fact he slept with them all at least once. He knew Maxin was notoriously unsentimental but still he felt that, if it came to that, the death or disfigurement of his daughter might at least bruise the man’s iron self-possession.

  What am I in the mood for tonight? Alvdan asked himself. Something unusual, he decided.

  ‘Bring me Tserinet,’ he instructed the Warden of the Concubines, an elderly woman who had served in the post since his father’s time. There were no male servants allowed within the harem, and here, in their armour and with spears to the ready, were the only fighting women in the Empire, a dozen hand-picked female Wasp-kinden who were rumoured to be the equal of any elite duellist serving in the Imperial Army.

  When the woman was brought out, Alvdan nearly reconsidered. She was no great beauty, Tserinet. Short and dark, with a flat face and a lean body, he had lain with her four times and each experience had been the same: passionless, without any sign of emotion from her. She had let him stamp himself upon her, and clearly willed it to be brief. Even when he had struck her in frustration she had not reacted.

  Still, she now looked as forlorn as he could wish. When she met his gaze briefly there was something wretched and terrible in her eyes. Yes, she would do.

  He owed it to his Empire, after all, to visit every part of it, at least vicariously. That accounted for all his concubines of other races: women of importance from the Empire’s subject cities, serving as hostages to their families’ good behaviour. At the moment, none was more important than Tserinet.

  He wondered what news she had gleaned of her own city. The local governor worked them hard there, and work they did, each long day become a grind to produce food for the Empire, or armour and weapons and machines. Since its conquest, after the end of a long siege, Szar had become quite a pillar of the Wasp Empire, a city that practically ran itself for the Empire’s good – and more loyal than the Emperor’s own people because here was its queen: Tserinet, the ruler of Szar, adored of her subjects, queen of the Bee-kinden.

  Yes, tonight he would stamp his rule upon Szar once again. Those Bees should be honoured by the attention.

  He had been expecting the usual passionless and unresponsive coupling, but this was different. Tonight she met his attentions with a desperate fire, grappling with him like a real lover, locking her legs about him, moving with him as though she had a thirst only he could quench. He wondered at it, even as he thrust and gasped atop her, how this woman could have thus metamorphosed from the affectless creature he had known previously. When she grasped him now it was as though she was taking some great leap into an unknown and unplumbed void.

  She left him quite spent and, when he rolled off her, she stared at the ceiling with tears in her eyes. He did not understand her at all but he had no urge to scry into the minds of all the subject peoples of his Empire. Well satisfied, he left her, still trembling, for his own bed.

  It had been a farewell of sorts, that final act of hers, and not to the man she hated most in the world but to the world itself. For the next morning they found Tserinet dead. During the night, she had taken a broken shard of pottery and gashed at her own wrists, bleeding slowly to death. Tserinet, Queen of Szar and hostage for the obedience of her people, was no more.

  Five

  When Solarno came into sight it was as though a second sun had risen in the north. Che caught her breath and held onto the rail, seeing that field of white bloom and glow on the horizon, amongst the surrounding green hills.

  So much else she had seen: the familiar streets of Collegium, where she had grown up; the avaricious energy with which Helleron’s grime and vice trampled over its own poor; the stark simplicity of Myna, bitterly waiting for its revolution; the steadfast order of the Ants of Sarn. She had even seen the Spiderlands: the walled elegance of Seldis and the sprawling, unbounded luxury that was Siennis: its wood-framed spires and minarets defying the laws of architecture to soar into the sky, its bazaars roofed with a fortune in silks. Seeing this city for the first time, though, she decided that Solarno was the most beautiful place she had ever laid eyes on.

  ‘I never grow tired of it.’ The Fly aviatrix, Taki, was at her elbow. ‘I’ve seen places, you know. I’ve travelled all about the Exalsee, and there’s nowhere to match her.’

  The northern shore of the great lake was a gentle slope that plunged into the waters without beach or foreshore, and Solarno had been cut into it, tier upon tier, a broad but shallow band of the work of man extended against the rolling green of fields and pastures that rose steadily behind the city itself. Solarno was predominantly white stone with roofs of red and orange tiles, like surmounting flames, and it was brilliant wherever the sun struck it. Looking at it now, from the water, Che could discern its hierarchy at once: the great villas ranged closer towards the hills’ crests and the commercial district lining the waterfront. She could see the sprawling west side of the city, where the houses were smaller and shone less brightly, and the compact east where rose the stacks of factories that hugged the waterfront along the lines of two rivers, turning the great water-wheels that drove the machines inside.

  She saw domes rising above the roofline, supported on so many arcades of columns that some lofty buildings seemed to have no solid walls at all. The markets were all crowded into warrens of streets, the awnings of stalls forming a second roof layer, whilst the open spaces were parks or, on the higher tiers, airfields.

  From the waterfront that ran the entire length of the city, a network of piers and promenades reached out onto the lake, and she now felt the ship’s engine change pitch as it turned to move in on its dock. There were men there already waiting to receive them, more of the sandy-skinned Soldier Beetle-kinden, and also some Flies. Solarno was a Spider city, she had been told, but she saw precious few of their kind to begin with. She tried to remember what Stenwold had told her about the place, from what little information he had coaxed from Teornis. Solarno was not actually part of the Spiderlands, for only the western shore of the Exalsee had that honour. The rest of the littoral was split between the half-dozen communities that ringed the great lake, each supposedly independent. And yet Solarno was intrinsically a Spider city.

  ‘I’ll meet you on dry land shortly, Bella Cheerwell,’ Taki told her. ‘Only, if I don’t now send ahead for a hauler, then my poor Esca’ll sit on deck until morning, and we’re due rain before then.’

  Che looked into the sky, seeing that there were indeed a few clouds gathering but nothing that would suggest a downpour. The winter chill of her journey eastwards had been left behind, and the Exalsee seemed to be basking in last summer’s warmth.

  Taki’s wings blurred into sight and she lifted from the deck with a nimble control Che could only envy, skimming across the water towards the city, almost low enough to touch the waves. A flurry of motion beside her told of the arrival of Nero.

  ‘Keeping your distance?’ Che asked him.

  ‘She bites, that one,’ he grumbled. ‘Still, I’m not done with her, you’ll see.’ He displayed a ragged piece of paper for Che’s approval. It was a sketch, in charcoal and graphite, of none other than te Schola Taki-Amre, executed deftly and with the minimum of shading, and yet a match close enough that someone bearing only this picture could have picked out the pilot from a throng of other Fly-kinden.

  ‘For her?’ Che aske
d him, puzzled.

  ‘Nuts to her. For me.’ Nero looked at the bustle of the approaching wharves, and past it to the citizens taking their ease on the promenade. ‘This place isn’t quite what I guessed at, but I like it.’

  With the engine backing up, the trade ship ground to a halt, and the dockhands began to moor it. Nero flew over the rails to hover over the quay, feasting his eyes on these new surroundings. Che herself waited until the gangplank was lowered, and then again until the Spider slaver, Miyalis, had assumed his due precedence and strode down onto the dockside to find his factor and consign his cargo. It gave her a chance to study the crowd some more, to pick out the different faces and kinden.

  Che was soon trying to decide what a typical Solarnese looked like, but the dock, as with docks anywhere, was a bustle of different races, so that was no easy task. The sand-coloured Soldier Beetle-kinden seemed most prevalent, resembling the people of Myna in feature, though so different in skin-tone. They dressed mostly in white, from the plain sleeveless tunics of the dockers unloading ships to the dazzlingly clean loose shirts and trousers of the men and women strutting along the promenade with curved swords at their waists. A few wore dark armour and stood about in bands like mercenaries, with small crossbows hanging from straps at their belts. Others advertised the fact that they were of higher class by dressing in Spider-fashion coloured silks, though never quite pulling it off. For each of the natives she examined, though, there were two others awaiting her inspection. The few genuine Spider-kinden progressed like aristocracy through the crowd, but without the effortless detachment of their western kindred whose every step was smoothed for them by the sweat of a host of slaves they seemed barely to notice. There were Fly-kinden too, a multitude of the little people. In the Lowlands they dressed soberly, but here their garments were gaudy and bright, and phenomenally tasteless, each one a riot of silks and sashes.