Stenwold thought that he should feel triumphant, that his warnings had finally been heeded, that Collegium was at last committed openly to opposing the Empire. Instead he just felt tired, heading back with Balkus and Arianna to speak once again to Thalric — to interpret the foreign script of his prisoner’s face and try to master its grammar.
‘Good speech,’ Balkus rumbled beside him. ‘Of course, I’m not really Sarnesh any more. I did wonder why they wanted me up there.’
Stenwold was about to reply when he saw a young Beetle waiting to see him as he approached Thalric’s suite.
‘Master Maker!’ he got out. ‘There’s someone to see you. Says it’s urgent!’
Then a Fly-kinden had bolted past him, virtually bouncing off from Stenwold before she had come to a halt.
‘What’s-’ Stenwold started, but Balkus got out, ‘Sperra!’
Stenwold stared at her, seeing a thin and grubby Fly woman who looked as though she had neither eaten nor slept for days.
‘But you were in Sarn. ’ he said stupidly.
Balkus knelt quickly towards her, and Sperra leant against him gratefully. She looked half-dead with exhaustion.
‘The Sarnesh have fought the Wasps. field battle,’ she got out. ‘They lost, pulled out. when the train got us back to Sarn we had news from here that the Vekken had been turned. I got on a train to get here right away — didn’t stop for anything. I brought the Moth-boy. He got himself hurt. They put him in a Wayhouse hospice nearby.’
Something in her manner, in the words left unsaid, had crept up on Stenwold, and now he said softly, ‘Slow down now. What about Cheerwell?’
‘Master Maker, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Che was supposed to be in the last automotive off the field, only. it never made it back to the city. I’m so sorry.’
Forty
It was the greatest magic, from the very ebbing shores of the Days of Lore.
Here, within these close-knit tree trunks, treading ancient paths through the forest, they came on a moonless night. Tramping lines of grey-robed figures made their unfaltering way through the pitch-dark with their heads bowed. There was a sense of desperation about them, of tattered pride held up like a standard. How much had already been lost, to have brought them to this state?
Watch closely, little acolyte.
There were lamps ahead, though dim: wicker baskets crowded with fireflies lending an underwater radiance to the tree boles, and not even touching the shadows between them. Figures waited there, tall and stark. There was black metal there, scale armour, spearheads. This grove was sacred, and the idol to their Art that they kept here was a mere stump, the relic of a thousand years of rot and busy agents of decay. Around it the Mantis-kinden stood, like statues themselves, and with some were the great hunched forms of their insect siblings, their killing arms folded as if in silent contemplation.
Watch closely, little neophyte.
In solemn procession the robed men and women wound their way between the trunks to them. Night was all around them, yet a dawn had come to the world that no shadows could resist. This was the end of the Days of Lore, and across the Lowlands their dominion was shrinking by the day. Their ancient cities were overthrown: Pathis, Tir Amec, Shalarna and Amirra had fallen as the slaves rebelled, and not all their craft, not all the killing steel of their Mantis soldiers, could stem that tide. The slaves, the dull-witted and the ugly, the graceless and the leaden, had cast them off. They had made themselves armour and terrifying new weapons, and they had declared themselves free.
Pathis, Tir Amec, Shalarna, Amirra.
And Achaeos’s mind called up the counterparts: Collegium, Tark, Sarn and Myna. And how many more had been the haunts of his own Moth people, that none now even remembered?
And when unity was most needed there had been schism. Centuries of strife had held the Moth-kinden together. They had raised armies against the Centipede-kinden who had erupted from the earth. They had staved off or defeated the machinations of all the other sorcerous powers: Spiders and Mosquitoes, the sly Assassin Bugs and the ancient buried kingdoms of the Slugs. The revolt of the slaves had struck at their very being, and they had flown to pieces. Some counselled peace, some retreat and isolation. Factions and parties grew, and when blades were raised they fell brother on brother, and all the while the inexorable tide of history was sweeping them aside, leaving little sign that they had ever existed.
You have seen some of our stones in Collegium that still stand, and the sewers at Myna that the Mole Crickets built for us. What else remains?
And so this. At last, this. This last attempt to summon the guttering forces of the old magic that the Moths had once lived and breathed — this most ambitious of all rituals. They were renegades, of course. Even those in Tharn or Dorax who advocated war and bloody retribution would have nothing to do with this. These outcasts had vowed to risk anything, to use up all the credit their kinden had amassed. They had come to the Mantis-kinden with stories of revenge, and the warrior-race had listened to them. Thus they had come here.
To Darakyon.
To the Darakyon, Achaeos thought. The Darakyon is a forest. ‘Darakyon’ alone would be a Mantis hold, and there is no such hold there.
But there was.
Here was the hold of Darakyon, seen in brief glimpses in the darkness between the trees, and here was its heart, its idol, once as sacred as that of Parosyal, a place of pilgrimage, of reverence.
They were gathered about it now, those robed shadows, and the Mantis-kinden stood proud and strong, their beast-allies beside them, and waited for the might of the Days of Lore to smite the unbelievers, to fragment their minds and terrorize them.
It was the darkest and the greatest magic ever plotted, to put a shadow on the Lowlands that would last a hundred years, to shatter the spirits of the people of the daylight and drag them down into slavery. A spell to taint the whole world and wash away the revolution, even down to the ideas that had fermented it. A spell that would sicken the world to their children’s children’s children, or for ever.
It was the greatest magic, the darkest magic, and it went so terribly wrong.
I do not want to see this, Achaeos pressed, but the whispering chorus of voices was unmoved.
You could not understand, little seerling, so we must show you.
And he watched, without a head to turn aside, without eyes to close, as the ritual reached its bloody peak and the magic began to tear apart. He saw the deed that wiped the hold of Darakyon from all maps and made the forest of that name into the place of dread that even the lumberjacks of Helleron or the Empire would not approach, and he screamed, but chill hands held him and forced him to see it all, every moment of its demise.
And he saw what was done to the men and women of Darakyon, and how they were made to linger beyond time in that place, forever hating, forever vengeful and in pain.
But most of all he saw what they made of the rotten idol, and all the unfathomable power and evil that their ritual released. He saw it, small and deeply carved and potent beyond the dreams of Skryres, and knew that it was abroad in the world again, a tool for whatever evil hand should find it.
In the form of the Shadow Box. The soul of the Darakyon.
‘So tell me,’ Stenwold said, ‘why I should take the appalling risk of keeping you close, or even keeping you alive.’
Thalric smiled, reclining easily behind the table as though he were back in his own study. ‘You should start thinking like a man of your profession, Master Maker, and not just a Lowlander. I was a spymaster once. We both know the value of an enemy agent turned.’
‘I couldn’t trust you.’
‘You have the craft to weigh what I tell you. I can be of more value to you than ever your Spider girl turncoat is.’
‘No, you cannot,’ Stenwold said flatly.
Thalric raised an eyebrow. ‘Is it like that, then? Well then, do you want me to tell you about her? The truth? You must be still wondering whether the subtle Spider has spu
n a straight line?’
‘Thalric,’ Stenwold said warningly, and found his hand at his sword-hilt, and the Wasp’s gaze followed it.
‘I did not take you for a killer of unarmed prisoners.’
‘You’re Wasp-kinden,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘Therefore you’re never unarmed. What do you want, Thalric?’
Thalric stood up from the table, a little of his casual ease sloughing off him. ‘I have been alone before, and hunted, but never so much of both at once. There was always the Empire. Now I find that the Empire I knew is a hollow egg. The insides are rotting with factions and I, who have disdained them, have become a casualty of politics. You believe, Stenwold, in something beyond yourself?’
‘I believe that it is the duty of the strong to help the weak, and of men and women to live in peace and to build together,’ the Beetle said, without even thinking. That was the doctrine so much of Collegiate thought was based on.
‘I believe in the Empire, but it did not bear the weight of my belief,’ Thalric said.
‘So you’re more imperial than the Empire now, is that it?’ Stenwold shook his head. ‘I can’t see you as such a thorough turncoat.’
‘I had my chance to die for my beliefs, Master Maker,’ Thalric said with surprising emotion, ‘but when they came for me, at the last, I fought them. I made my decision then. I can no longer claim now to be a loyal son of the Empire, having failed to follow its last command. I have to live, Maker, and you know as well as I the fate that awaits an agent cut loose by either side. He falls, Maker. He falls and is gone. So employ me, make use of me, while you still have me.’
‘Sit down again,’ Stenwold said, and then, ‘Let’s talk.’
Thalric returned to the table, glancing up at Arianna’s hostile gaze. ‘She would still see me dead, I observe.’
‘Perhaps she has more sense than I do,’ Stenwold said. ‘What do you know of the forces currently marching on Sarn?’
Thalric raised his eyebrows. ‘From what I recall, the Seventh had the honour set aside for it — General Malkan’s Winged Furies. Malkan is the Empire’s youngest general, and very ambitious.’
‘What is the Empire’s attitude to taking prisoners after a field battle, Thalric?’
The question was obviously not one the Wasp had expected. ‘It depends on the battle. A battle against Ants would see few prisoners taken. If the fighting was bitter then the soldiers may leave none alive to be taken, whether they have surrendered or not.’
Stenwold found himself gripping the table, imagining Che surrendering with hands out in supplication, yet the swords still coming down.
‘So the Sarnesh have lost a battle,’ Thalric mused. ‘Who did you have with them, Master Maker?’ When Stenwold did not reply, he said, ‘Not your niece?’
There was no mockery in his tone, so Stenwold nodded.
‘I am sorry,’ said Thalric, and when the Beetle glared at him he continued, ‘She impressed me as a woman of intelligence and resource.’ He seemed to brace himself before adding, ‘Do you want me to go and find her for you?’
‘You?’ Stenwold demanded, puzzled.
‘With appropriate help,’ Thalric said, and it was clear that he was wrestling the idea into shape even as he spoke. ‘I might be able to achieve it, for I am at least of the right kinden, and among the thousands in Malkan’s army, I could appear just one more foot soldier, one more of the light airborne.’
‘I must think,’ Stenwold said, standing.
‘At least consider the offer.’
‘I must think,’ the Beetle repeated, and left the room. Arianna sent Thalric a last poisonous glance before she followed.
No more bad news, please. No more messengers. Stenwold was still haunted by the stricken look on Sperra’s face, when he had told her of Scuto’s death. Home, now. No more war business. No more shaking hands. Home, was the plan. No more of the heavy marble halls of the Amphiophos. Home and try to find a path to save Che. Any path that does not involve me placing trust in Thalric. It might be that there was no such alternative. And how to keep him mine, once he is loose? If the Empire would accept him back then he would betray me without a thought.
He stomped wearily down the steps of the Amphiophos, hearing a ragged cheer as some late celebrants recognized him.
‘This won’t go away, will it?’ he said gloomily.
‘My kinden scheme all their lives for such recognition,’ Arianna said.
His sharp glance left her instantly contrite. ‘I’m sorry, I know that’s not what you want to hear.’
‘It’s what I am, though, isn’t it,’ said Stenwold. ‘I’m as much of a web-spinner as Teornis. The difference is that the people who get caught in my webs are my own. My own friends, my kin.’
The frightened expression appearing on her face had his hand to his sword instantly, turning and drawing. He froze, then, hearing two or three people cry out in shock at the bared steel.
‘So they’re still calling you War Master,’ said that oh-so-familiar voice, that twenty-years-familiar voice, and Stenwold sheathed his sword numbly, noting that neither father nor daughter had so much as flinched at the threat of it.
He put out his hand, noticing it tremble slightly, and clasped arm to arm with Tisamon, feeling the man’s spines flex. ‘You’ve no idea how good it is to see you,’ he said. I’ve missed having a mad killer by my side. The thought made him laugh out loud, and he went to embrace Tynisa like a true father. But she took a step back, and then he noticed the sword and circle brooch she bore — saw in her haggard features the cost of that honour.
‘Tynisa. ’
‘I live,’ she told him flatly.
‘The Mantis-kinden?’
‘I live,’ she said again.
Stenwold felt Arianna flinch at the thought. A nation of Tisamons, how could that ever work?
‘And Collegium is still standing,’ Tisamon observed. ‘You Beetles will always surprise me.’
‘I am told,’ Stenwold said, ‘that you are not entirely free of guilt in that.’
That dragged a smile from Tynisa. ‘We didn’t know if Teornis would get here. We didn’t know if he would even try.’
‘I am surprised,’ Tisamon admitted. ‘And at what cost is the city saved?’
Stenwold nodded. ‘At least we are here to pay it. The Spider Aristos has saved Collegium, as much as anyone has, and we cannot deny him that.’
‘The world,’ Tisamon declared, ‘has turned upside down.’ His gaze sought out Arianna, recognizing her for the first time beyond the College student’s robe. The claw was on his arm, as simple as that.
Stenwold put a hand on his shoulder as though he had not seen it, facing the man’s hostility head-on. ‘She has stood by me,’ he said. ‘She has saved my life and fought for my city, and she could have betrayed or killed me at any time. She is’ — Mine, she is mine — ‘loyal,’ he finished, at last. ‘And she did warn us of the Vekken, and we put that time to good use.’
‘Trust comes slowly,’ Tisamon agreed as Arianna regarded him cautiously.
‘I see you didn’t trust them enough to sail here with them,’ Stenwold observed.
‘As to that. ’ Tisamon looked sidelong at Tynisa, ‘we had other engagements.’
‘A little job to do,’ Tynisa confirmed. ‘We’ll know, soon enough, if it has worked.’
Haldred was a Wasp of good family, a captain in the imperial army and a man whose preferred career path would have placed him securely in the imperial city of Capitas all his life. For a rising star in General Maxin’s retinue, however, there came some tasks that could not be avoided. A great deal hung on this, he had been told, and success in achieving it would be remembered. His name would be commented on to the Emperor himself.
He had passed the camp of the Fourth Army with a brief word to General Alder, and now he was flying with his escort of soldiers over the scrubby terrain, looking for the camp of the Spider-kinden. He had a mouth full of fine words for them, and a pouch full of documents f
or alliance and mutual benefit. The Empire and the Spiderlands were two giants only just met, and still testing each other’s strengths. This was one of only two places where they could now see directly eye to eye. Given a choice, Haldred would have preferred the city of Solarno, with all the decadence of the Spiderlands ranged beside a vast and beautiful lake stretching beyond the horizon, but instead he had been sent out here into the wilderness, and he had to make do with what orders came his way.
Dusk was closing on him, though, and he had yet to find the Spiders. It seemed impossible, in this barren country, for two hundred men to hide so effectively, but he had been searching for some time without success.
One of his men suddenly called out something, pointing, and Haldred saw what could be a group of men sheltering within a copse of trees. This must be them, he decided, and began to descend.
He and his men landed before the trees, and approached it cautiously. There was no fire alight, no obvious splendour of tents. He stepped within the shadow of the branches, still seeing nobody and nothing there.
‘I speak for the Wasp Empire,’ he called out. ‘I have an embassy to the Spiderlands.’
‘Do you indeed?’ said a voice softly, almost in his ear. He jumped back — looking up into a pale, fierce face.
They were not Spider-kinden, after all. He was in a different net altogether.
In his tent, General Alder looked over the most recent numbers reported from his quartermasters by lanternlight. The supply situation was growing desperate. The Scorpion-kinden were slow in bringing supplies across the desert, and those caravans the Wasp-kinden themselves sent out were plagued by bandits, who were most likely the selfsame Scorpions. Wretched barbarians, Alder sneered inwardly. Give me the order and I’d have the lot of them in shackles. That order would not come in his lifetime, though, because the Dryclaw desert offered nothing the Empire wanted save a right of way, and even that meant just a quicker step than skirting it.
This interminable waiting was death to a fighting man: each long day not knowing whether the next day would see them finally march. His men had made their temporary night camp when the cursed Spiders had first been sighted. They had been here ever since, sending back to Tark for supplies over and over again. The soldiers were restive, fighting amongst themselves, grown complacent. It was very bad for discipline, but Alder was an army man to the core and he needed his precise orders.
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