Blood of the Mantis sota-3

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The Wasps were now staring at her, quite blankly. She bared her white teeth at them, shaking constantly with fear and desperation and sheer frustration.

  ‘To this horrible place!’ she suddenly cried out, words long held trapped below now forcing their way to the surface. ‘To this horrible empty place! This open place where there is no end to it, and no walls, and where everything weighs me down! And the surface is too far away overhead and too great, so great, and the light of it burns my skin by day! And my throat and eyes hurt all the time, and… and… and… They will catch me eventually and kill me with the long, slow death, and it would have been better if Master Saltwheel had killed me with his machines than I ever came out here.’ Her hands balled into fists that were pressed close to her face, a face contorted with an uncontrollable horror of everything within her sight and knowledge.

  ‘Saltwheel,’ Gaved repeated. Amidst this madness it was such an ordinary-sounding Beetle name that it chilled him all on its own.

  ‘Weapons testing?’ Thalric pointed out. ‘If any of this is true, how could they be Apt, operating underwater? You can’t have any artifice without something so basic as fire, surely?’ His eyes narrowed at Sef, who had fallen into a crouch, hands still raised to her face. ‘Answer me, slave!’

  ‘We have fire,’ Sef replied, sounding almost proud. ‘We have fire. We fill our cities with air. But the masters, they have engines that need no fire, no air.’ She inhaled a long breath. ‘I have told you all now. They will hunt me down and they will kill me, but I have told you.’

  Gaved glanced at Thalric again, seeing that the other man’s scepticism was almost entirely shattered. No doubt he was thinking like a Rekef again, thinking about a possible future threat to the Empire he had supposedly turned his back on.

  Lake Limnia is out there. Gaved could feel it, its watery chasms, its unplumbed mystery. If only I could see! He would never see it, of course – even if it was anything more than Sef’s imagination.

  Best to hide her, though, just in case. He and Nivit could do that, if only he could convince Nivit to help. Best to hide her, whether this Saltwheel she mentioned was a Beetle of land or water.

  The door rattled then and they all jumped, even Thalric. It was just Tisamon and Tynisa returning, though, pausing in the doorway at the sight of the pale and worried faces of the two Wasp-kinden within.

  Seventeen

  The key to this venture was calm, and Lyrus embraced calmness as a constant companion. Here he was in the Queen’s chosen audience chamber, which he and two other servants had set up and prepared not long before. Before fetching Maker he had held back to give the room one more look over. That was all the time he needed to ensure that the crossbow was properly hidden within the sombre drapes hanging to one side of the room’s two lofty windows. He had unbarred the shutters on the windows themselves, and he knew that nobody would check them. Even with the Empire now looming so large in their mind, his kin here still did not think in three dimensions. Within the Lowlands the military threat to an Ant city-state was from other states of their own kind.

  It was now all in readiness, with Maker and his entourage waiting in the antechamber. Lyrus took his place at the back of the room, knowing that he would be easily overlooked, seen as part of it. To the visitors he would be merely a servant, possessing a servant’s customary invisibility, and to the Queen and her staff just one of their own people doing his job.

  The Queen came in first, with only two guards. She would thus be making a show of her trust, as leverage for whatever she wanted from the Collegium ambassador. Lyrus caught the edge of the thoughts she conveyed to her warders, counselling patience but urging them to be ready if she decided to make her move.

  For Lyrus it was a good sign. The more tension there was between Sarn and Collegium, the better this scenario would look.

  The Queen stood waiting now: no round-the-table conference this. She had decided to try a new tactic. There was a fire burning in the grate as she stood there in her gleaming armour and long dark cloak, waiting for the Beetle to be summoned. This would be a heartfelt appeal, then, Lyrus judged.

  The two guards had taken up position on either side of the door, and it occurred to him that he could kill her right now. The thought made his heart race and he fought to keep it out of his mind, so that not even a hint of his intentions might be picked up. This would be the culmination of his career. True, it could also be the end of him, but at least they would remember him. He would split Sarn asunder, one way or another. To kill the Queen! His masters would then admit that there was better blood in him than just tainted Sarnesh. The annals of the Rekef, the secret history of the Empire, would record him as a faithful son.

  He was tired of living amongst these alien people who shared his face and skin, but the only way he could leave their house was through its rubble.

  He found his fingers itching for the crossbow, but he stilled them. It must happen only with the Collegium man present. When he eventually made his move, anything might happen but, with only two guards to deal with, it seemed more than possible that Lyrus could be the only Sarnesh witness to the deed left alive, and who would the city more readily believe? If it was swift enough then even the last thoughts of the Queen and her escort could be extinguished before they betrayed him.

  The Queen must have already sent the call, for the door opened and the fat Beetle came in, with a Fly-kinden and a Spider woman in tow. Lyrus scowled inwardly. This retinue complicated matters but Maker took his servants everywhere. They were all, of course, unarmed, for even her most honoured guests did not come into the Queen’s presence with their weapons still at their belts. The burly Beetle clutched a cloth-covered bundle, though, and Lyrus guessed this to be the new device recently stolen from the Empire.

  Responding to an unspoken thought, Lyrus came forward with a tray of wine decanted into Spider-made glass goblets. The Beetle and the Queen both took one and, before Lyrus could snatch the tray back, the Spider servant had helped herself as well. Acting every bit the contemptuous Sarnesh faced with foreign impudence, he returned to the window drape and set down the tray.

  ‘Master Maker, this is no good,’ the Queen said. The Beetle made a show of eyeing the wine in surprise, but this touch of humour vanished into the ether. The Queen’s face remained stern.

  ‘It is a complex situation, your Majesty,’ Maker admitted. ‘I am sure, with time-’

  ‘What time do you think we have?’ the Queen cut him off. ‘How long now, before the war is upon us? This matter of these weapons, these snapbows, dominates us. You can afford to procrastinate no longer.’

  The Beetle grimaced, glancing sideways at his servants. The Spider stood there looking enviably relaxed, the Fly-kinden shuffling nervously.

  ‘I will not send my soldiers to their deaths simply because you and your scholars do not believe we can be trusted with… this thing.’ The Queen gestured at the slender weapon in the Beetle’s hands. ‘Make your choice, Master Maker, and make it now, for your time is up.’

  Quite, thought Lyrus and, though he would have liked to see the Collegium man squirm a little more, it was clear that his own cue was fast approaching. He reached into the drapery, grasping the stock of the crossbow. It was already loaded with a full magazine containing a dozen bolts. He had earlier tested the action, and it was as smooth and powerful as he could wish.

  ‘Which would your Majesty rather have?’ Maker was saying. ‘The snapbow or the Ancient League? The snap-bow or the cooperation of the Kessen? That is the choice you are making.’

  Lyrus’s Fly-kinden associates were waiting outside the unbarred windows, ready to burst in at the first sound of affray. Lyrus brought up the crossbow in a smooth and practised motion, and loosed.

  The Queen of Sarn’s lips moved to speak, and Sperra shrieked like a madwoman and dived at her. Stenwold, with reflexes he had not known he possessed, threw himself after her, seeing only that his single chance for a grand alliance was about to be inexplicably
sabotaged.

  The crossbow bolt lanced his thigh, right up to the fletching, the tip of it piercing Sperra’s foot. They both cried out and then were both falling on top of the Queen, who had a sword half-drawn, her eyes wide with shock. Her two guards drew simultaneously, running forward, and the shutters above them slammed open. All in that same moment.

  The two Fly-kinden who hurtled in from above were wrapped up in dark cloth. One held a long dagger, dropping down on to the Queen and her assailants; the other simply flung out his hand and one of the Ant guards reeled backwards with a blade in his throat.

  Lyrus recocked and loosed the crossbow again and again. As the second guard moved in, he let the man reach down to haul Stenwold off the Queen, let the man jab at the Beetle with his sword, running a shallow line across his ribs, and then he shot the guard in the face. Lyrus himself would be the only remaining Sarnesh witness now, and he knew the guards had called for aid but had relayed crucially false facts about who was attacking. The Queen herself had not realized the source of the betrayal. The foreigners are attacking the Queen! Lyrus cried out into the ether. Protect the Queen from these foreign assassins!

  Stenwold fell to the floor beside the dead guard, still unable to work out what was going on. Sperra was shouting something, crouching by the Queen, and then a Fly-kinden dropped on her, dagger raised. Even as Sperra saw him, and fell helplessly to the floor with her hands raised in feeble defence, Arianna had lunged forward, catching the Fly in the side with a blade Stenwold had not known she was carrying. The Fly assassin fell back, and she went with him, tumbling on to the floor as a crossbow bolt sped past them.

  The crossbowman! Stenwold looked around wildly, before seeing a Sarnesh Ant armed with the weapon standing at the far end of the room. It was only the bolt in his thigh that convinced him the man was an enemy.

  The main door was flung open, and more soldiers were pushing their way in, their swords drawn. The first man took a bolt in the chest, punching its way through his armour, and he fell back into the rest.

  Stenwold found his hands tightening about the snapbow he had brought with him. Fighting the pain in his leg, he reached into his belt pouch, where he had some nailbow bolts intended for demonstrating the weapon. With trembling hands he now slotted one into the snapbow’s breach.

  Sperra was covered in blood, he noticed, and a crossbow bolt had pierced the Queen’s body, just below her breast, and was quivering with the rhythm of her breathing. Sperra was trying desperately to get the woman’s armour off to reach the wound, then flinched back as a narrow blade flicked past her to dig itself into the floor.

  Stenwold raised the snapbow and loosed. It was clear the Fly killer did not possess the same Art that Sperra did, because he did not see the bolt until it had plucked him from the air, spinning him end over end to crash off one wall and drop to the floor.

  Arianna had meanwhile killed the other assassin, but now she was backing off frantically, with Sarnesh soldiers running towards her. Stenwold, hands already fumbling a second bolt into place, shouted for them to stop. The Spider had dropped her knife, had her empty hands raised, when the first soldier simply clubbed her down with the pommel of his sword. Another, tight-faced, ripped Sperra away from the Queen and himself knelt down beside the wounded woman.

  Stenwold turned to see the crossbowman level his weapon at the Queen again. He wore the faint smile of a man who might not survive the moment, but who would still win the game.

  Stenwold loosed just before the other did, seeing the bolt strike him not in the chest as he had aimed for, but in the shoulder, upsetting the man’s aim so that the crossbow quarrel went wide.

  Someone grabbed Stenwold by the collar and hauled him roughly to his feet, racking him with pain. He looked up into the face of a Sarnesh soldier, and started to say that the crossbowman must be stopped.

  He saw only a blur of movement as the man’s mailed fist struck him square on the nose, knocking him cold with professional ease.

  Stenwold came to slowly and reluctantly. Each further part of his body he became aware of made him regret his recovery. His head hurt abominably, his nose especially, though the pain in his back he attributed to the bare wooden boards they had laid him on. The crossbow-wound in his leg was just a dull ache by comparison, though his ribs burnt from that seemingly trifling flesh wound.

  On further discovery he found that the surface beneath him was a bed. It might simply have been the Ant-kinden idea of especial luxury, but this was more likely the kind of hospitality they extended to all of their prisoners. This room he was confined in was definitely a cell.

  There was a wan light filtering in through a very high-up window, or a window that seemed high relative to himself. The cell was shaped like a circular shaft, and he had the uneasy feeling that the window was actually at ground level, and that his prison was sunk deep in the earth.

  He sat up and groaned both at the pain and the sudden rush of memories. Following the assassination attempt, in the confusion, the soldiers had just struck out at all of them. His current residence suggested that confusion was ongoing.

  Surely they can’t think that we had anything to do with it?

  But what would the Ant soldiers have witnessed, after all? Their Queen badly injured, two of her guards slain, a rabble of foreigners running amok. The Sarnesh with the crossbow – the Sarnesh traitor! – could have subsequently told them anything.

  And the Queen had been no great friend to him, over the snapbow business. Well, now they even possessed the prototype he had brought. Perhaps they had decided it best to lock him away somewhere safe where he could raise no fuss. The alliance could now be falling apart just above his head, and he would have no idea.

  Noticing that they had dressed the wound in his leg, he lurched over to the low door of his cell and began hammering on it, shouting for attention as loud as he could. Only silence followed, no running feet. He looked down at his hands, trying to think past the pain that held court about his broken nose, that was the loudest voice in his mind. What did he have left to bargain with?

  The Sarnesh needed Collegium, surely. A generation of history must have taught them that. So they could not simply discard him. Things could be a great deal worse.

  He tried to relax, but then realized he had not thought matters through. It was worse. For him, it was worse.

  He had no idea about Arianna and Sperra. He had no idea if either of them was even alive. He was the big College Master from Collegium, so maybe he was worth keeping, but they – a Spider agent with a chequered past and a grubby Fly woman?

  He hammered on the door some more. ‘Hoi, I have to talk to someone! I need to talk to someone, please!’

  Arianna… The thought made him weak. He had only recently gained her for himself, woven a relationship between them that almost anything could have broken apart: an old, fat Beetle spymaster and a Spider temptress, late of the Rekef. It could have ended in so many ways, but not like this, please.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted at the featureless door, even as the light from the window dwindled. ‘You must want to question me, at least? Talk to me, please!’

  He heard the bolt shoot back, and he stepped away hurriedly. The door swung open, revealing a gas-lit corridor, low-ceilinged enough that the man standing there had to stoop. The visitor was Sarnesh, and for a moment Stenwold thought he was the crossbowman, but then realized it was just the same features, revealing the family-close kinship all the Ant-kinden possessed. If Stenwold looked further, he could see big Balkus there in the man’s face – and even long-dead Marius, a friend from his student days.

  The man regarded him doubtfully. He was dressed in the same chainmail as any other Ant-kinden soldier, purposefully just another anonymous guard.

  ‘Well?’ Stenwold demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I thought you had something to say to us,’ said the guard, and began to shut the door.

  ‘Wait!’ Stenwold said. ‘Wait, you have to tell me – what is going on with
the Alliance? How long are you going to keep me in here? What about my companions? What’s going to happen to us?’

  The guard looked at him, expressionless, and Stenwold pressed on: ‘I am Stenwold Maker of Collegium. Look, there has been a mistake. A very terrible mistake. I was with the Queen, and-’

  ‘Yes, you are one of those who assaulted our Queen,’ interrupted the guard, now much more coldly.

  ‘I didn’t! I was there, but I was trying to save her! Please, my companions can-’

  ‘Questions are already being asked,’ the guard told him. ‘Your turn will come.’

  His tone made Stenwold falter. ‘Questions…’ Oh, we ally ourselves with them and we think that they are above all that, our friends the Sarnesh… There would be special rooms, he knew, for questions. Rooms and machines. ‘Please, if I could just talk to someone-’

  ‘Your turn will come,’ the guard said implacably, and then a new thought came to him, a message from elsewhere. ‘In fact it is here. How convenient.’ He regarded Stenwold thoughtfully, and then drew his sword. ‘You cannot escape, and if you attempt to attack me I will make you suffer for it, and my kin shall know of it.’

  ‘Yes, I understand, and I have no intention of making this mess any worse than it is already,’ Stenwold said tiredly.

  ‘That is good.’ The guard’s smile was thin and perfunctory. ‘Now exit your cell.’

  With a limping effort, Stenwold did so, moving slowly and carefully, keeping his hands always in plain sight. Beetle-kinden were physically tough, but a crossbow bolt through his leg would take more healing than simply a night in the cells.

  He was guided through a series of turns of these low-ceilinged passageways, noticing constant side-tunnels that he guessed might lead to the insect nest beneath the city. Certainly there were scuttlings down there from creatures that needed no light, and a bitterly acrid scent was evident. They were meanwhile progressing upwards on a noticeable gradient and soon enough he saw windows again, small and barred and near the ceiling, and some of them able to be reached by steps, where a crossbowman could crouch to defend this subterranean undercity.