War Master's Gate

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

For some reason he had expected General Tynan. That bald, stocky old man, seen only once, had become the face of the Wasp command for him. Instead the officer he found there was a little younger, taller, vaguely familiar from that meeting outside the walls.

  ‘You are not Stenwold Maker, I see,’ were the first words out of the man’s mouth. Apparently he had been labouring under a similar misapprehension.

  ‘My name is Eujen Leadswell, Chief Officer of the Student Company.’

  ‘I am Colonel Cherten of Imperial Intelligence,’ the Wasp told him. He glanced briefly at Eujen’s two followers, eyes lingering on Averic. ‘Tell me, before we start, do you have Stenwold Maker, back there?’

  All Eujen could think at first was, Curse me, it really is all about him. But, of course, it was just as the man himself had said. There was a list, but his name topped it. And I have his permission to conjure with that name. Eujen had thought long and hard about that, before embarking on this foolishness.

  ‘We do not,’ he replied, with the utter candour of the student debater. ‘I thought he had escaped the city.’

  If he was expecting Cherten to fly into a rage at being thus thwarted, he was disappointed. The man simply nodded curtly. ‘Very well.’ Barely a moment’s more consideration on the colonel’s part, then: ‘Take them.’

  Eujen’s mouth was still open to speak when three soldiers grabbed him and slammed him to the ground hard enough to rattle his teeth. He heard Averic snarling, had brief glimpses of scuffling feet. A sting went off – he heard the crackle but saw barely a flash of it – but then the Wasp beside him was down, his hands pinned behind his back.

  Eujen gave a great wrench and half threw off the men leaning on him. It was then he saw Serena drive a knife into the leg of the man who had laid hands on her, and a moment later she was in the air, wings driving her as hard as they could back towards the barricade and the College beyond.

  He heard a sharp retort, without seeing the shooter, but Serena’s scream was unmistakable. And then Eujen was shouting, fighting, throwing awkward punches at everyone within reach, clutching for a sword already taken from his scabbard. A Wasp punched him in the face, the Art-grown bone spike jutting from the edge of the man’s hand laying open Eujen’s cheek, and then he was being forced to his knees, arms twisted back as far as they would go, looking up at Colonel Cherten.

  ‘We came to talk!’ he spat, aware of how weak the words sounded. ‘We came to make a deal.’

  Cherten’s face succumbed to contempt. ‘The Empire may negotiate honourably with enemy combatants, boy, but your city has surrendered. That makes this a rebellion. That makes you all traitors to the Empress’s rule. No negotiation, no mercy. Now get them back to the gatehouse. I have questions to ask.’

  Thirty-Eight

  Helma Bartrer came from an old, old family.

  Of course, everyone came from an old family: nobody’s family was older than anyone else’s, but hers was superior to the rest, she knew. Her family had remembered the traditions and remained true. Generation to generation they had told the stories of their own heritage, all through the time of forgetting that followed the revolution in Pathis and the breaking of the Days of Lore.

  Collegium, Pathis-that-was, had forgotten, but she remembered, as did some very few families else. Down through the harsh, bright centuries they had not abandoned their purpose or their faith.

  And all it said in the Collegiate history books was that the Beetles had been slaves once, and the Moths had been their masters. They made that sound like such a bad thing. They compared it with being a slave for the Ants, for the Wasps, just hard drudgery in service of the uncaring, of the banal. They had forgotten how it was.

  But Helma knew better, for the secret annals of her family made it plain. Perhaps even the Moth-kinden these days did not know the truth, mired as they were in their inward-looking squabbles. But there really had been a golden age: a golden age of night.

  True, the Moths of Dorax did send word now and then, praising Helma’s kin for their ongoing service, offering some scrap of lore in return for intelligence on the internal workings of Collegium. She was cynical enough to recognize that for what it was: mere espionage, the regular business of modern nations. In itself that was an admission of failure: confession that their ancient skills had withered to the extent that they had to ask, and could not simply know. Helma’s kin remembered what they had once been, better than the Moths did themselves.

  And true also that Helma was Apt, and her family had been Apt for many generations, though the secret histories suggested that their Inaptitude had survived at least a century beyond the Revolution. There were wonders written there that Helma could not truly understand, just as she could not quite grasp the meaning of the old Moth scrolls in the College library, but that had not stopped her trying. She had steeped herself in Inapt lore from an early age, thus becoming, almost incidentally, one of the College’s great scholars of history. She had even sought to take the chair for Inapt studies, but her Aptitude had shackled her, and even the halfwit Fly they had brought in for the post had that crucial advantage over her.

  But she had learned, even if only by rote and in ignorance, and thus been vindicated spectacularly. She had come here to the forest with only the dusty old tatters of understanding and the name of Argastos, a great name from the Days of Lore.

  And she had shed Moth blood, and so she had got in. It was her crowning achievement, to mimic Inaptitude with such sincerity that she had crossed the line, that once. She had become a fit servant for her masters.

  Rather, for her master. Because whatever the Moths of today had devolved into, Argastos represented that kinden at its height, a man – and such a man! – who had strode a world that knew nothing of Aptitude, a world in which great things were still being done.

  And she had come to him here, in his place, and knelt before him, and sworn to be his right hand, his servant, his ambassador, whatever he required of her. This was the culmination of centuries of familial ambition.

  And now she stalked through the cramped, buried chambers of his home, the very surface layers of his mind, and experienced discontent.

  Yes, she now had what she wanted. No, it was not what she had wanted, after all. She did not mind the darkness, having never much cared for the sun. What irked her was that she had worked so hard and come so far, and yet others were set over her who had done nothing, who had been handed the world on a plate. Others who knew less than she, whose kin had not kept the dark flame burning for so many generations, were valued more than she was.

  It was not fair. It ate at her like a grub.

  Argastos had gone to play with them again – to woo them, as he termed it. She was here, willing and ready, and he had gone in search of younger flesh to taste. Younger and more ignorant.

  She could feel him at the heart of things, and she wanted to go to him, but he had forbidden it. Await my commands, he had told her, and she would be so happy to do just that if only she felt valued and appreciated.

  And, as she brooded on that a while, a new wave of thoughts seemed to insinuate itself into her mind. He does not deserve me.

  That was a shocking thought. She froze as it came to her, as surprised as if it had issued entirely from outside her. Yet did it not mesh with the gears of her own train of thoughts so perfectly?

  This thought of gears, so ugly and inappropriate, threw her. That was why he did not value her, because her Aptitude clung to her like a stench. She was not worthy of Argastos, and yet he had taken her in . . .

  Because he had no other servants. What sort of a master lives like this?

  Again that intrusion into her mind, and yet was it not true?

  You are Helma Bartrer, Mistress of the Great College, after all. You are a rare gem, one to be valued, and he does not appreciate you. You have been deceived in him. He is not worthy of a servant such as you.

  She shuddered, feeling for a moment that her thoughts were not her own. But surely her own thoughts had be
en leading her in just such a direction ever since she had come here. It was just the speed and the distance she had travelled that had startled her.

  There are other masters, if you must have one, she found herself considering. But Argastos is a broken thing. You must confront him.

  Now she was frightened. Confront Argastos? The thought of his wrath was terrifying. He could destroy her, unmake her. He would hang her grimy robes among his trophies and forget her. No, no, she was his servant, and lucky to be that. She could not ask for more. She was not fit to be more.

  And for a moment there was a new voice in her head, sharp as the smell of acid, and it said, Oh, give it up. You don’t have the faintest idea how to go about this.

  She froze, in that half-place, in that half-light, thinking, Am I going mad now? And this was her own thought, beyond contest. And even after that: Would that make me more what he wanted?

  But then the assault of new thoughts resumed, and their tenor had changed. Yes, I am not worthy. I am a slave, Argastos’s slave. Yes, he does not value me, but I’m a slave and he’s my master. It’s not my place to complain. And it was as though there was some other voice inside her mind protesting this, but being overruled. But if I’m unworthy, what about the girl, hm? How much more is she undeserving of the honours he has given her? She doesn’t even want them! That idiot child Cheerwell Maker has done nothing in her entire life to earn his love, and yet he woos her, he offers her the world. More fool her if she won’t take it.

  I hate her. She realized this was true. In all the world I hate nothing more than I hate Cheerwell Maker, who has stolen Argastos’s affections from me. It was strange to hear herself lay out her thoughts so clearly, but it was true, so true. That loathsome girl who did not know her own luck, she was the undeserving one.

  She had come here to steal Argastos away.

  Yes, of course she has. Oh, she plays at being unwilling, but she’s a clever whore, that one. She will lead him on and lead him on, and then she’ll turn on him when she has run him ragged, strip him of his power and destroy him – and then waltz back to Collegium, never caring what she has destroyed. I have to save him from her. I have to make him understand what she is.

  She opened her eyes, having realized they had been closed. Everything was so very clear to her now.

  Slowly, step by step, she began navigating the buried maze towards Argastos.

  That’s it, her mind whispered to her. And when you have shown him what the Maker girl is, that scheming little witch, how he will reward you! How he will finally see you for what you are, for who else will his affections light on, if not you?

  A warm feeling suffused her, despite the chill of her surroundings. Argastos, broad-shouldered and brave, warrior-hero of legend, would look on her with his beautiful white eyes and finally know her for what she was. That image of him was strong in her mind, the war leader in his pale mail and dark cloak, the man who had fought back the Worm.

  Her feet led her without error, twisting and turning through the root-snarled tunnels of his barrow. She only half-saw the skulls embedded in the walls, eyes and mouths stopped with earth, the bones and rusted shards of armour underfoot. She had eyes only for the visions of her own mind.

  And she was suddenly before him, as he sat at the heart of his domain, and she let her eyes feast on him, strong and silent and wise, and then something wrenched within her mind, something seemed to fall from her eyes, and for a brief second she saw him as he really was.

  Not merely a corpse, but what a corpse would become if it were buried forever underground and not allowed to rot: a peat-black, bone-hard, withered thing, and yet those eyes, those white and living eyes, rolling in the gaping sockets . . .

  She screamed, recoiling, and something unfurled in her mind, striking at that withered thing from an ambush swift and fierce as any scorpion’s sting or mantis’s reach.

  Argastos was abruptly standing, dragging his facade of a living man about him, but reeling, hurt, furious, and yet he barely saw her. Even then, he hardly noticed her presence at all, save as he might notice a gnat singing past his ear.

  He lashed out. It was a reflexive gesture as much as anything. Even as he destroyed her, Helma Bartrer was wretchedly aware that this was not personal.

  And as she fell into darkness, as his ancient mind extinguished hers, she realized that they were no longer alone. The girl, that despised girl, was there with them, having appeared from nowhere, and the Wasp bitch was with her. And, even as the two of them attacked him, Helma’s last thought was that Argastos still valued them more than he had ever valued her.

  ‘This place was once the hub of my new trading cartel,’ the bearded Fly-kinden announced grandly. ‘I took the good stuff out when we set sail. The rest, the Wasps got.’

  Those words caught the notice of his audience, a couple of hundred pairs of eyes lifting towards him, if they had not been on him already.

  ‘Which means,’ he went on, ‘that they won’t be back soon to search it, I’m wagering. Eventually, yes, but not soon.’

  He was standing halfway up the steps that led to the upper level, in order to be better seen. The ground floor was not quite full, not quite standing room only, but it was close. When Tomasso had acquired the lease on this warehouse, he had reckoned that it included more space than his family would require in this generation. He had not planned on storing Spiderlands mercenaries, who took up more room than expected.

  Their leader was a pale, lean Spider in dark mail that Tomasso could tell was good quality, despite the battering it had taken. His name was Morkaris.

  Up top, on the roof, Despard was keeping watch, hidden as best she could and relying on her good night vision in the encroaching darkness to warn of approaching Wasp patrols. The fighting itself was not close, now. Morkaris and his people had broken away from the main Spiderlands contingent early, and moved from cover to cover until Tomasso had spotted them and brought them here.

  They looked at him with naked distrust, which was understandable in the recently betrayed. They were beaten and bloodied – Morkaris himself had a bandage about his forehead which was dark with drying blood. Many of his followers looked worse off.

  Hard men, though. Tomasso knew the type, for he had done business along the Spiderlands coast for years and, with a Fly-kinden crew, he had hired muscle often enough.

  ‘You want thanks, or you want paying?’ the Spider leader asked him. The ragged pause before he said it showed just how tired he was. ‘Or you want to see how much you can get for us from the Wasps?’

  ‘I have a modest proposal.’ Tomasso put his hands on his hips, surveying the mercenaries proprietorially. ‘It’s not much, I warn you, but in this market a handful of beans makes a wealthy man, as they say. You’re for hire, or you were. And you signed on with the Aldanrael to come and sack Collegium.’

  ‘Not Collegium, specifically,’ Morkaris answered, mangling the name slightly. ‘But, yes, what of it?’

  ‘And because you’re for hire, rather than sworn to the Aldanrael, when everything turned inexplicably to turds you got right out and left your paymaster mistress to it.’

  The Spider shrugged, while his men remained silent, listening to every word and watching their chief for a lead.

  ‘And you’re in Collegium still, but they’re rounding up all the Spider-kinden they can get their hands on – not just your lot either, I saw men and women who’ve lived here all their lives getting grabbed on sight. So you’re well and truly pissed on, and no mistake.’

  ‘Is this going anywhere?’ Morkaris demanded sharply.

  ‘Yes, it’s going as far as this: I can’t help you. The Wasps are going to get you sooner or later.’ Tomasso shrugged. He registered the impact of his words on many faces. ‘I think your men are loyal to you, Morkaris. They’re still by your side, rather than just each man for himself. Are you as loyal to them, I wonder?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Tomasso clasped his hands together whi
ch, in much of the Spiderlands, was the archetypical gesture of a merchant putting forward a deal. ‘I said I can’t help you, Morkaris. Them, I can help. Maybe, I hope.’ His gesture took in the far end of the warehouse, where certain groups of the mercenaries had set themselves up. Tomasso was used to quick counts, and he reckoned he had two hundred and sixteen Spider-kinden here, with thirty-nine Scorpions and a score of other assorted miscellany. ‘No Spider within these walls is safe, but what about the rest? I’ve spoken with a merchant of the city whom I deal with. He runs big overland caravans – good stuff, lots of guards – and it’s a dangerous time. No surprise he’d have a lot of guards on his payroll. Naturally, the Wasps won’t want a large private militia of sellswords in the city, so our man will agree to get shot of them, kick them out of the city quick as you like. Of course, we’ll get you out of that Spiderlands kit and into something a bit more local. We can sort that.’

  Morkaris’s expression was eloquent on the subject of how uncertain this plan sounded.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Tomasso admitted. ‘But it’s that or – what? Maybe you tell me your own plan, and we can compare notes?’

  He sensed the mood, having been a leader for a long time. The non-Spiders had suddenly been given the gift of hope where they had none before. The rest . . .

  Looking at those faces, pale, bruised, lean, yet drawn in every line with the elegance that Spiders took for granted: men and women in equal number, and all of them hearing that death sentence confirmed, it was an effort of will for Tomasso to face them with equanimity.

  And Morkaris asked, ‘What do you want, Fly? What do you want from the rest of us?’

  Tomasso smiled slightly. ‘Nothing but what you make a living at. I need you to fight – fight the Wasps specifically. Does that sweeten the deal?’

  Morkaris glanced back over the disparate mercenaries, his followers. No doubt his mind was working hard, trying to prise more options out of their situation, but in truth Tomasso wasn’t sure there were any.

  ‘You want us to die for you,’ the Spider leader said bitterly.