He regarded her for a second solemnly and raised a hairless brow quizzically. ‘The Mosquito-kinden, madam? You must think me very, hmm, credulous.’ And yet as he spoke he nodded once, holding her eye.
So, he believes us overheard, though not overseen. ‘So some myths are really no more than myths,’ she said, feigning disappointment. She had heard that the Spider-kinden had some Art by which they could spin strands of web from their fingers, that they formed these into words and shapes of secret import, while all the time talking about mundane things. She wished she had some similar skill.
‘Alas so, madam,’ Gjegevey said. ‘However, let me alleviate your sorrow at this discovery. Shall I, mmm, show you a little harmless magic?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You can do this?’
‘I would not like to put your hopes too high, and it is some long time since I attempted any such thing. However . . .’ He looked down at his hands, grey and long-fingered, and clasped them together, and when he pulled them apart . . . something came with them, something stretching and twisting between his fingers, flashing and flaring with colours.
It is a trick, she thought instantly. Some chemical or such. It was pretty enough, for a piece of foolery, and the old man was staring at her so very seriously. She opened her mouth to say something properly polite, and his voice came to her, very clear, without his lips moving or her ears hearing it, the words forming of their own accord in her mind.
The Mosquito your brother keeps, I know of him. Do not trust him. He is very old and wise.
She stared at his face, mouth open. Something lurched inside her. She had the horrible feeling that, in dealing with Uctebri the Sarcad, in coming to an agreement with him, she had stepped slightly out of the world she knew, into a world where things like this could happen.
He is wise, madam, but he is powerful. What he seeks to do is for himself, and not for your brother. Gjegevey’s tired old eyes suddenly flashed, throwing briefly into the air the cunning he kept hidden behind them. And you, Your Highness, may yet find a way to benefit from it. Only do not trust him. Do not trust him unless you have no other choice.
Nineteen
It was almost true that you could never get a decent spy placed in an Ant city. Ants were fanatically loyal or else they were outcasts with no civic standing. The best any spymaster could do was place a few men in the foreigners’ quarter or suborn a few slaves. Even the slaves of the Ants tended to acquire something of their masters’ civic pride, though. It seemed incredible to Thalric but, after a generation or so, those born into such captivity seemed to believe that a slave in their city was better than a freeman elsewhere.
He had made good time along the coast to Vek, paying a Collegium sailing master over the odds to catch the wind night and day and thus get him there by the second dawn, so that the rising sun glittered against the great grey seawall that sheltered Vek Anchorage as he arrived. He saw the spidery shapes of trebuchets and ballistae positioned upon it, while reports from the delegation had mentioned that there were fire-projectors built into the wall itself.
Behind the sea-wall, his boat was towed the length of the stone-lined canal until it reached the city proper. Docked, and his transport paid for, Thalric made his way through the subdued streets of the foreigners’ quarter, following the map he had memorized a tenday earlier. The imperial delegation had made a favourable impression on the Vekken Royal Court, he understood, and a two-storey building had been cleared of a consortium of Beetle importers and assigned for their use. He saw it ahead of him now, the typically spare Ant architecture of flat roof, unadorned walls and small, defensible windows, with a pair of Wasp soldiers standing guard outside. They crossed lances before him, but they could see his race and thus it was just a formality.
‘Captain Thalric to see Captain Daklan,’ he announced, and they let him through. His name would be familiar, and on being relayed would be translated as Major Thalric of the Rekef.
Inside, they had slaves offer him fruit and some brackish local wine. He barely had time to taste either before they came for him.
Captain Daklan of the army, who was also Major Daklan of the Rekef Outlander, was a short, broad-shouldered man a few years Thalric’s junior. His dark hair was receding and he had a lined face and a mobile mouth that made him look humorous and easygoing, which was in fact anything but the case. He had entered with two others, a taller Wasp in a uniform tunic who had a writing tablet crooked in his arm, and a strange-looking woman. She must have been close to Thalric’s age, and she was a halfbreed, her dark skin swirled in strange patterns of grey and white like water-damaged cloth. The effect was disturbing and intriguing at once.
‘Major Thalric,’ Daklan said, giving him a cursory salute. ‘How is Collegium?’
‘Owed a beating,’ Thalric said, heartfelt. A slave came in with more wine, some bread and honey, and he topped up his bowl again. ‘How do we stand here, Major?’
‘Well enough. I’ve heard of some of your own exploits, Thalric,’ Daklan said. ‘Helleron was a botch, wasn’t it?’
Thalric frowned at him, caught with a slice of bread halfway to his mouth. ‘Are you authorized to question me about my past operations, Major Daklan?’
Daklan gave him a narrow look. ‘Just interested. Word spreads.’
‘Then it is your job to stop it doing so, not spread it further,’ Thalric said. ‘We have enough to concern us here in Vek.’ His orders had put him at the head of this operation, but Daklan was obviously an officer who chafed under anyone else’s control. Thalric took a chair and sat down, taking his time to finish the bread, smearing it thickly with honey, making Daklan wait. The scribe with the tablet remained impassive but the woman looked very slightly amused at the deliberate delay. Daklan meanwhile shuffled from one foot to the other.
‘Major Thalric—’
Thalric, mouth still half-full, held up a hand. ‘This honey is very good. Where does it come from?’ he asked the halfbreed woman, still chewing.
‘Bee-kinden traders bring it from the north, sailing down the coast,’ she explained. Her voice was husky for a woman’s.
‘Naturally,’ Thalric acknowledged, wiping his fingers fastidiously. ‘Now, Daklan, why not sit down and tell me just who your friends are and exactly how we stand.’ At the man’s bristling glance he added, ‘I’m not your enemy, and if you’ve heard anything about me it is that my underlings prosper, if they do well by me. I don’t care for petty politics within the Empire or within the Rekef. That’s why I’m Outlander branch, and I hope you’ll be of my mind for as long as you work with me. If you have some prize you hope to see from this operation, then I’ll help you towards it if you serve me well. But I have a bad history with uncooperative subordinates.’ He smiled, though the thought was painful, ‘I’ll make that clear to you now.’
Daklan took a moment to think through this, and then sat down, resting an arm on the table. It was not an entirely relaxed position, not for a Wasp whose hands were weapons at need. Thalric decided to overlook it.
‘Major Thalric, if we’ve started badly then I apologize,’ Daklan said, not sounding overly contrite. ‘This is Lieutenant Haroc, my aide and intelligencer.’ Daklan made a vague gesture towards the scribe. ‘And this here is our secret weapon. Her name is Lorica.’
Thalric nodded to the halfbreed woman. ‘What’s your heritage, Lorica?’ he asked her.
‘My father was a local, sir. My mother was Wasp-kinden. A slave bought from the Spiders, I understand.’
He nodded, digesting this. ‘And you can . . . ?’ Because there was only one reason that a halfbreed would be here, at this council.
‘The Ancestor Art has given me a link to the minds of the Vekken, sir, yes. I can hear them, and speak to them – not that they will acknowledge me.’
‘But they are very used to their privacy,’ Daklan said. ‘And much of what they say is not one to one, but one individual proclaiming to many. And Lorica can hear it, so in negotiations it’s of great use to us.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Thalric acknowledged. ‘So what has been negotiated?’
‘The usual preliminaries. A mutual recognition of power. A similarity of aims. They know that we are intent on taking Tark, and they approve. They have had their own designs on Collegium, and we approve. They want Sarn, but they know Sarn and Collegium stand together now, and it irks them.’ Daklan smiled. ‘May I take it, Major Thalric, that you are here to make the proposal to them?’
‘You think they are ready to accept?’
‘More than ready. They’ve not forgotten how Collegium defeated them before.’
‘As I understand it,’ Thalric noted, ‘Collegium simply held them off long enough for Sarnesh forces to reinforce, no?’
He looked to Lorica for a response and she said, ‘That is not how they see it, Major. They feel it as a defeat, and keenly so, because Collegium is a place of soft scholars, in their eyes, and they are soldiers.’
‘And yet it happened . . .’ Thalric frowned, a new thought presenting itself. ‘Are we sure that, once this operation commences, these people will be able to capture Collegium? It would not serve the Empire if they failed.’ He corrected himself. ‘It would serve the Empire, by weakening both cities, but it would not serve them as well as breaking Collegium’s walls and scattering its people.’
‘It is simply a matter of time, Major Thalric, and of preparedness,’ Daklan explained. ‘The Vekken forces have had a long time to consider that defeat, and learn from it.’
‘I suppose even Ants can innovate,’ Thalric said, ‘given sufficient incentive.’
‘You can be sure that they have a plan, sir,’ Lorica confirmed. ‘Taking Collegium has become their prime civic ambition.’ She said it sourly, and he guessed that the civic pride of Vek was something far from her own heart. Halfbreeds were even less welcome amongst Ants than elsewhere.
‘Well, then,’ Thalric said, ‘let us go and make our bid. You can arrange an audience with the Royal Court?’
‘Tomorrow evening at the latest,’ Daklan confirmed. ‘It would not surprise me if they will be marching east in three days’ time.’
Oh, it was a difficult enough time to be a Rekef lieutenant. The Fly-kinden te Berro was finding his race’s gift for survival becoming strained. Rekef captains tended to have their own followers, their own networks and operations to fall back on. Sergeants and agents were considered just tools, seldom important enough to make the death-lists of those on high. Lieutenants, on the other hand, seemed to have the worst of both worlds.
He had been working in the west-Empire these last few years, even in the borderlands during the preparation for the Lowlands invasion. He had straddled the line, with his diminutive stride, something between Outlander and Inlander. He had hoped to be useful enough to all, and not too vitally useful to any. That line had since become impossible to walk.
All these years he had been General Reiner’s man. It had seemed the safest bet. It had got him his lieutenant’s bars, some good appointments, neither too dangerous nor too dull. Then things had started going subtly awry. An intelligent man with an inquiring mind, he soon realized that the problem lay within the Rekef itself. The secret service was honing its knives, but its eyes were turned inwards. Two cells of agents that te Berro had worked with had been wiped out by men that should have been their allies. General Reiner was now fighting a war, and that war was not against Lowlanders or Commonwealers but against elements of the Rekef itself.
Then there had been Myna, that gloriously bloody excursion undertaken by Major Thalric, another of Reiner’s men. Te Berro’s name had been commended in the reports. He had been very proud at the time, but not so long after he had realized that his time was up. The clock of his career in the Rekef had struck, and he was a dead man unless he slid down the pendulum soon and made his goodbyes. He was suddenly a somebody, and Reiner’s enemies were using his name in pointed ways. He made his researches and his plans, and determined that General Reiner was not in the best position, just now, that there were other men with more promise that a Fly-kinden agent could cling to.
Even before he had been briefing Thalric in the Cloud-farer, he had made his contacts, put out tentative feelers. He had got in touch with the agents of General Maxin, Reiner’s chief competitor, and offered to defect.
Te Berro was an experienced agent, a useful man, and besides, he had a lot to say about Reiner’s people and their operations. He had spent almost a tenday talking to his new friends, until his narrow throat was hoarse with it, and they had written down every word. At the end, knowing that he had nothing left to give, he had cast himself on their mercy.
‘Let me serve you,’ he had begged Maxin’s people. ‘Make use of me, for anything.’ But do not cast me away. Do not make of me just one more vanished name from the Rekef books.
Whether it was this particular mission they had in mind, or whether his breadth of experience recommended him for it, he would never know. A day later they had packed him off to Helleron with his orders, and the implicit understanding that it was his success in this venture that would determine his ultimate longevity.
He had been at pains to show how professional he was. They had told him to recruit agents and he had done so, reviving old contacts with ease to pluck four capable mercenaries from the city’s stews and bring them to this private room in a good Fly-kinden taverna. His only problem was in the nature of his instructions and, seeing their hard, professional faces regarding him, he felt that they might tear him apart, or merely laugh at him. They must not laugh, at this. It had been impressed on him that, no matter how bizarre the task seemed, it was in deadly earnest. A great deal hung on his small efforts here.
‘These are your orders and I make no apologies for them. They come from the capital itself, from the very palace, so make what you will of them.’ Te Berro shrugged, hands spread. ‘In Collegium, kept in a certain private collection, there is this item. A box, no more than six inches to a side. Unopenable, or at least you are apparently advised not to open it. A box worked with intricate carvings, vine-patterns and abstract foliage. No better description is provided, but unmistakable, or so they assure me. Given the location and the expertise required this is judged no matter for the regular army. Moreover, by the time you arrive the city may be in some considerable distress, so that your skills may well be tested simply in gaining access. So the Empire calls on you, as freelancers.’
‘Mercenaries,’ said Gaved. ‘Let’s wear no flags we’re not entitled to.’ He was the only Wasp-kinden amongst them and his skill in hunting fugitives had won him an uneasy separation from the Empire, so long as he would always come when they called him. The sting-burn above one eyebrow puckered his expression into a suspicious squint.
‘Whatever,’ te Berro conceded. ‘I have bartered for swift transport to take you to Collegium. The more enterprising gangs of Helleron have realized that the Iron Road is alive and well, so you can be in Collegium in under a tenday.’
‘Takes the fun out of the job, but whatever.’ The speaker, Kori, had a broad face that held a smile easily. He was Fly-kinden like te Berro, but a barrel-chested, wide-shouldered specimen. He was a treasure-hunter, a raider equally of ruins and of collections such as their current target. Like Gaved and the other two he had a reputation, and no qualms about taking imperial coin.
‘Phin?’ te Berro asked, and the Moth-kinden woman nodded sullenly. Her name was Eriphinea and she had been part of the Rekef operation in Helleron for some time, an outcast from her own people. What her crime had been she had never disclosed, but she was an assassin by training and more than happy to kill her own kin.
‘And you?’ te Berro asked of the final hunter. ‘It’s not quite your line, I realize, but I’ve read of your skills and achievements. You’d be an asset.’
The man he addressed was Spider-kinden, middle-aged and lean, with a deeply lined face – or that was what te Berro and the others now saw. His eyes narrowed, considering the proposition.
&
nbsp; ‘Master Scylis?’ te Berro pressed.
‘It sounds diverting,’ said Scylis – or Scyla, as she truly was. The name was no more genuine than the face she wore for them, but in dealing with the Empire a masculine visage gave her more of an edge. ‘I have some business of my own in that direction, Lieutenant, so while I am there, I may as well help recover your trinket for you.’ Scyla appeared elaborately casual but, inside, her mind was working feverishly because the description of the artefact that te Berro had given her rang bells. She now recalled stories and histories she had read decades back when she was still in training: in training as a spy, in training as a face-shifting magician.
Te Berro looked them over. Stocky, blocky Kori in his hardwearing canvas garb, a grappling hook hanging from his belt as the symbol of his trade; Gaved, scarred and lantern-jawed, leanly muscled beneath his long coat; Phin the Moth in her plain robes, grey-skinned and white-eyed, dark hair bound back; and Scylis, an ageless Spider in nondescript traveller’s clothes with a rapier at his side.
‘For recovery of that box, nine hundred Imperials each, or else the equivalent in Helleron Centrals.’ He saw appreciation of that sum register on all their faces save Scylis’s. ‘I wish you luck,’ he concluded. ‘If it’s worth that much, I suspect you’re going to need it.’
‘Have you ever seen a sight so splendid?’ The speaker was an officer in dark plate-mail, a helmet cupped under her arm, her greying hair stark against skin that gleamed like obsidian. From atop the gatehouse in Vek’s wall it was indeed a remarkable sight. Soldiers in perfect order trooped past in their hundreds, shields gleaming on their backs. They marched proudly as if they could march all day, which they could. Some small detachments of cavalry rode up and down this great column on either side, horsemen in light armour who would scout and run messages beyond the reach of the Ants’ mind-speech.
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