‘Of course, your Imperial Majesty.’ Brugan bowed again and then departed smartly.
‘You appreciate why we are doing this, we are sure,’ Alvdan informed Maxin. ‘A sundering of the Rekef weakens us all. I have given you command because, now that you’ve forced matters to a head, who else is there?’
Maxin noticed the lapse into informal speech and relaxed a little. ‘Your Imperial Majesty,’ he acknowledged, to be safe.
‘I warn you, though,’ Alvdan said, ‘I want it all reined in. You’ve let it go too far in your seeking this. Szar is in open revolt now, and now I understand that the Mynans are bucking as well. I want troops into Myna, enough to crush the entire city. That is, if they’re still so interested in fighting after they see what we leave of Szar. Crush them, Maxin, swiftly and thoroughly. We must concentrate all our forces on the Lowlands campaign. I feel a need to expand the imperial borders.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’
Alvdan’s eyes narrowed. ‘And fetch me the Mosquito. All his wretched protests can go hang. I want to know when.’
‘I have told him that the ritual shall be performed after his coronation festivities,’ explained Uctebri dismissively. ‘He wanted something public, and so I explained why that would not be appropriate.’
‘And why is that?’ Seda asked him.
From beneath the cowl, Uctebri smiled slyly. ‘Well, now, the reason that I gave his Imperial Majesty was that his people would perhaps not readily accept a ruler seen to be dabbling in such arts as I can peddle. However, the reason that I now give you is that our own plans shall come to fruition quite publicly enough, and somewhat sooner.’
‘During the anniversary celebration itself.’
‘Precisely.’ The Mosquito steepled his bony fingers. ‘Timing will be essential, and I have a great deal left to accomplish if we are to succeed. Who would have thought that in just three short generations the Empire would have built up a tangle of politics quite so complex? Would you not agree, General?’
The third conspirator present in Seda’s chambers eyed the old man with patient loathing. General Brugan despised Uctebri as a slave and as a charlatan, and made no secret of that. He understood nothing of the arcane schemes that the Mosquito spoke of, only that it was treason. It was a treason he had cast his lot with, however, for Seda had wooed him, and he knew that it would be through Uctebri’s machinations that she triumphed over her brother. That Brugan would do his best to have this pallid creature killed thereafter was quite obvious. That Uctebri was blithely unconcerned by the threat was just as plain.
‘General,’ Seda addressed him. ‘I trust you are not having second thoughts.’ She already knew that he was not. Between Uctebri and old Gjegevey, she knew a great deal these days, both natural and otherwise. She wanted to give Brugan the chance to make his own decision, though. That way he would be less likely to change his mind later.
‘I have been told I’m passed over for Maxin,’ Brugan said flatly. ‘I know General Reiner’s dead, and it seems to me that I won’t live long when Maxin commands the Rekef.’ He shrugged, the bluff, honest soldier with the secret schemer plotting invisibly beneath. ‘I’m best served by making sure you succeed, and I have my people in place. They will be ready to move, assuming you can achieve all you boast of.’ This last remark was directed at Uctebri, who grinned at him with needle-sharp teeth.
‘The Emperor wishes a spectacle for the anniversary of his coronation,’ he said. ‘I can promise a show the like of which no one in the Empire has ever seen.’
In Uctebri’s mind, the pattern was coming together. He was a man lying in wait, seeing fate’s pieces pass back and forth, lunging suddenly to change a certain course, plant a thought, poison a mind. Still, as he had said, there was a great deal to do. He presented only certainty to Seda and her allies, but there were still gaps in his logic.
But here came a new part of the pattern, drifting into place with such neatness that he should have been suspicious. Still, he seized it, as a means to his end.
So little time now until the end of an Empire and the beginning of something new: the rise of the Mosquito-kinden, the first bloody ember of their new dawn.
It was just a matter of getting all the guests to the party.
* * *
Thalric’s transit had been swift. He had been out of Myna within two bells, leaving the racked city behind him. The automotive they had put him in was now making all speed to deliver the traitor into the Emperor’s own hands. For certain crimes, provincial justice was not enough. They therefore travelled all day, and some nights.
How often have I travelled like this, and also had the chance to admire the scenery?
It was a strange thought, but Thalric had been given a lot of thinking time recently, and he was making full use of it. It seemed to him that he had spent all the years of his life chasing about the Empire, or to points beyond, and always with a timetable weighing on his back. His service to the Empire had involved a constant race from one town to another. When he had been alone, he had been running ahead of the tide of imperial expansion, preparing the way so that its wheels might roll smoothly over the foreigners. When he had been in company, he had been constantly hauling on the leashes of his underlings, packing them off to where they were supposed to be as if they were reluctant children.
But now he could sit back and relax. The road to Capitas provided a reasonable vantage point to watch the Empire go by, and it was only a shame that there were bars between him and the view. A further irony, for he had ridden with these prison automotives several times before – boxy, ugly, furnace-powered vehicles that jolted and juddered their way across the imperial roads on solid wheels – but he had never before been a passenger in the back.
Tonight they had stopped at a waypoint, one of the hundreds of little imperial outposts that existed solely as a place to rest for messengers and other individuals travelling on the Emperor’s business. From overheard conversations, old habits dying hard, Thalric knew that they were now only a day away from Capitas, since they had made swift time on the imperial roads, and those leading to Capitas were always kept in the best repair.
In truth all the days since Myna had been days he was not entitled to. He should have been executed out of hand, but he realized that his crime was so immense, so unthinkably bold, that someone more than a mere major – the highest-ranking officer left in Myna – would now have to deal with him.
And the chequered course of his career had given him insight into the might of Rekef politics, and General Maxin especially. Maxin would undoubtedly want to see the man who had removed General Reiner from the equation. There would be no handshakes or medals, however, and Thalric was under no illusions about that. He had done Maxin a greater service than perhaps any of the man’s actual underlings, but it was still not something that could be rewarded. Maxin would conveniently be able to wash his hands of the affair, luxuriate in the death of his enemy while condemning the executioner. Thalric guessed that this unexpected good fortune would put the man into a sufficiently indulgent mood to at least talk to him. Irony the third: If I had killed Reiner on Maxin’s orders, he would be forced to have me killed before I got back, in case I spoke aloud. There was absolutely no link between them though: no incrimination that Thalric could substantiate. Reiner’s death was a gift dropped unexpectedly in Maxin’s lap, and therefore so much the more to be relished.
I am at least still alive, so I have that much. And in the Rekef they taught you to be resourceful.
He became aware that a soldier was peering in at him through one of the barred windows.
Thalric stared right back. ‘What?’ he demanded. His escort had remained oddly coy with him, staying clear and never speaking. Thalric guessed that this one man left on guard had seized his moment to satisfy his curiosity unobserved.
‘They say you killed a general,’ the man said, so quietly that Thalric had to hunch forwards to hear him. That took him to the end of the chain that led from the locke
d shackles on his neck and wrists to the interior wall of the wagon.
‘And a colonel too,’ Thalric replied calmly, seeing the man flinch at the … at the what? The sacrilege of it? Had the imperial hierarchy become a form of sacred mysticism now, like the mad obsessions of the Moth-kinden?
What is a religion, after all, but blind faith in something entirely unproven? Yes, that theory seemed to fit.
The soldier was still staring at him as though he had two heads, so Thalric clarified: ‘A Rekef general and a Rekef colonel, to be precise. What of it?’
‘Why?’ the man asked him, horror-struck.
‘Well, I’m a Rekef major myself. Perhaps I wanted a quick promotion,’ Thalric drawled. The utter shock on the wretched man’s face was quite enjoyable. ‘Come now, soldier, have you never wanted to kill your sergeant?’
The sudden guilty flicker only betrayed what Thalric already knew, because of course every soldier in the Empire had thought about it, and no doubt others had put it into practice, but it was never admitted. The Empire had reserved a traitor’s death for any philosopher who pointed out that they were all still barbarians at heart, that the whole machinery of military hierarchy was not – as with the Ant-kinden – to complement their essential nature, but to restrain it.
‘It’s just the same,’ Thalric told the man. ‘It’s just a matter of scale.’
The soldier was already backing away, shaking his head, as though insane treason was a disease he might catch.
Thalric settled back. For a man with nothing but his continued existence to recommend him he felt curiously at ease, as though some old debt had at last been paid off, for all that it had taken up all the credit he had in the world.
Nineteen
Stenwold was unsure whether to be impressed by Collegium’s response or to laugh. Certainly it had all the hallmarks of people desperately doing the right thing without any real expertise, or even a clear idea regarding it. As the Buoyant Maiden drifted into the skies over the city, there arrived a succession of visitors to the airship: first a handful of Fly-kinden wheeling past it, ignoring Stenwold as he waved at them, and darting away to get out of range of any notional attack. But the customary curiosity of their race kept them in the air to watch, rather than returning to the ground to report, and so the next wave of airborne defence turned up spoiling for a fight. This was a dozen armoured Beetle-kinden with mechanical wings buzzing away in a blur, moving through the air with a surprising speed and grace. Stenwold recognized the design: namely Joyless Greatly’s one-man flying machines that had done such sterling service in the Vekken siege. At least one of them had survived the conflict, and Collegium artificers had since been industriously copying the design and improving on it.
The leader of the heavy airborne, as he proclaimed his troops to be, landed on the Maiden’s deck with a sword in one hand and a cut-down repeating crossbow in the other. He looked as ferocious a figure as any Beetle-kinden had ever cut, and instantly demanded to know who they were. Jons Allanbridge, who found this reaction from his native city somewhat galling, proceeded to get straight into a row with the man and the exchange became sufficiently heated for the passengers packed below to come up to see what was going on. Because they were who they were, and in a foreign land, they came up fully armed and expecting trouble. There was very nearly a diplomatic incident as a dozen of Collegium’s new heavy airborne faced off against a score and a half of Dragonfly-kinden warriors with every apparent intention of hacking fearlessly through them. It was then that Stenwold was able to intervene and, thankfully, at least one of Collegium’s defenders now recognized who he was.
Of course, in all the confusion, nobody had informed the city what was going on, and so Stenwold had just managed to make peace with the airborne when a long shape slid alongside the Maiden, and put it entirely into shadow. It was another airship, and not much smaller than the colossal Sky Without, but this one was brand new, coming straight from the Collegium foundries. Stenwold later discovered that the design of it had been kicking about Helleron for ten years, and had been repeatedly turned down on the basis that nobody in their right mind would have need for such a thing. It had finally been brought to Collegium by a Helleren exile, whereupon somebody had realized just what they were looking at.
They called it the Triumph of Aeronautics, and they called this type of vessel a Dreadnought. The craft’s individual name spoke truest, though, for the city’s chemists had needed to concoct an entirely new kind of lighter-than-air gas just to keep the weighty thing in the sky. It was an armoured dirigible, a great wood-reinforced balloon beneath which lay a long, narrow gondola plated with steel. From his privileged vantage point on the wrong side of it, Stenwold could see two dozen open hatches, with a lead-shotter behind each, and he guessed there were other hatches in the underside to bombard any enemy on the ground. Meanwhile the rail bristled with mounted repeating crossbows and nailbows. It was certainly a magnificent piece of engineering, and it sent a shiver through him to think that it was something his people had made.
By that time, the officer of the airborne had explained what was going on to the captain of the Triumph, and someone had the presence of mind to send a Fly-kinden messenger down to the city to stop them sending anything else up. It was in such august company that the Buoyant Maiden touched down.
The city walls were lined with engines, Stenwold observed, and everywhere they went, every step of the way from the airfield to the Amphiophos, there was armed militia evident in the streets. The same kind of people who had been sent off to help the Sarnesh were now distributed all over Collegium, and most especially on the walls.
She met him before he was three streets into the city: Arianna, rushing out of the crowd so swiftly that several of the Dragonflies drew their swords on her. Stenwold flung his arms about her, noticing her stricken expression.
‘I didn’t know,’ she got out. ‘The news has been so bad, I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.’
As he looked at her face, Inaspe Raimm’s prophecy came back to him, and he said, ‘There are no certainties.’ There were a lot of people waiting for him to move on, but he did not care. ‘I’ve missed you. I have missed you, but I’m glad you stayed here, safe.’
‘War Master, the Assembly—’ interrupted the commander of the heavy airborne. Stenwold shrugged him off.
‘Safe?’ Arianna asked him, and laughed, a wretched and unwilling sound. ‘I’d ask you where you’d been, if I didn’t already know. Sten, there’s a Wasp army marching east of here. It’s no more than three days away.’
Passing into that familiar great chamber, he was at least relieved of one fear: there were not hundreds of Assemblers waiting there to pick his own news apart. That would come later, no doubt. In his mind, the Assembly of Collegium seemed a worse prospect even than the approaching Wasps. Instead there were only two people there, in that great amphitheatre: a fat Beetle man and a Spider-kinden Aristos.
‘Hello, Stenwold,’ said the Beetle, with a faint smile. His name Stenwold now recalled as Jodry Drillen, and instead Stenwold had expected to see the Assembly’s Speaker, old Lineo Thadspar. After a moment, Stenwold decided that question could wait.
‘Master Drillen,’ Stenwold said, and then, to the man next to him, ‘Lord-Martial Teornis.’
The Spider nodded. He was wearing sombre colours, his features drawn, as if that indefinable varnish of Spider grace and charm had rubbed off in places
‘May I introduce Paolesce Liam.’ Stenwold gestured at his companion. The bulk of the Dragonfly-kinden were, he hoped, being billeted even then, but he had brought their leader along with him. Paolesce was a tall, slender man whose age was hard to tell at a glance, but whom Stenwold had pinned, after speaking with him, as being around the Beetle’s own years. He wore his gleaming armour still, standing with feet apart, gazing about with apparent equanimity at a city that must seem overwhelmingly strange to him.
‘Master Liam is … ?’ probed Jodry Drillen.
&n
bsp; ‘Master Paolesce,’ Stenwold corrected, ‘is here as … as a gesture of solidarity. He has brought thirty soldiers. The Commonweal will, I hope, be raising a force to trouble the Wasps on their own border, but—’
‘But you thought we had more time,’ Drillen finished for him. ‘Didn’t we all.’
‘How … ?’ Stenwold looked from him to Teornis. ‘The Wasps have come by ship?’
‘They came by land,’ the Spider said. ‘They simply didn’t stop for anything. Egel and Merro rolled over, as we knew they would. Kes declared itself uninterested in war, and most of the surviving population of Felyal is here, within Collegium’s walls, or north with your Prince of the Wastes.’
‘And,’ Stenwold frowned at the Lord-Martial, ‘what about your own people? What about the Spiderlands?’
Teornis gave a smile, but it was painful. ‘Why, when their army was sufficiently far west, we sallied forth and attacked the garrison force they had left behind. We had a battle and, in short, we lost. We lost in a sufficiently flamboyant manner that enough of our army got back to Seldis to man the walls. Some of the mercenaries we hired fought a bloody enough rearguard that I managed to save my own hide. Seldis is currently under siege. We’re having our turn on the rack right now.’
‘The Sarnesh are probably fighting even as we speak,’ Drillen said softly. ‘If they fall, then the first we’ll know is another Wasp army marching south on us. We are now where the metal meets, Master Maker. The war, the real war, has finally come to us.’
‘And how far is this south-coast army from Collegium?’ Stenwold asked hollowly. ‘Three days? Is that accurate?’
Teornis’ smile was sad and genuine. ‘At the pace they are capable of, that may even become two. War Master, you have arrived just in time for the war.’
Stenwold stared down at his hands. It was something he had been doing a lot recently. He had always considered himself a practical man, a trained artificer who belonged to a kinden that made and built things, whether those things were machines or trade agreements. But he was beyond his range of ability now. He could not repair this crisis, or even patch it. Events had overtaken him, as he now sat at the bedside of a dying man, and waited.
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