‘Well, you think whatever you want, Captain,’ Oski replied pointedly, before hailing one of the engineers. ‘Lieutenant Brant, compile a report on precisely what engines we can still field for the general, will you? With special reference to the fact that we won’t stand a hope against Collegium’s bloody walls.’
The man he had singled out looked mutinous, but saluted, and Oski spared no more time on him, already setting off on his next errand. Bergild saw the way the other engineers stared at his departing back, then hurried to catch up.
‘Always angling for the love of your subordinates?’
‘I’m a Fly-kinden and a major, and they’re never going to swallow that one easily. If I was regular army, I’d have been stabbed in the back during action by now. But it’s different in the Engineers: if you’re good at your job, then they have to respect you. A strong grasp of artifice is too precious to waste. How’d you think the old Colonel-Auxillian got away with it?’ Oski grinned. ‘Curse me, but he was a fine man to learn the trade under. A real bastard, but you could pick up more just by walking in his shadow than sitting in any classroom back in Capitas. And now he turns up again on the Exalsee, Lord of the Iron Glove, eh?’ He chuckled. ‘I like that. Man’s done well for himself.’
Bergild made a noncommittal noise, but by then they had reached two of the great articulated shells belonging to the Sentinels — the new war-automotives built for the Empire by that same Iron Glove Cartel. Even at rest they looked imposing, segment after overlapping segment of formidably durable armour making that high-prowed woodlouse shape with its single blank eye that served as the cover for a leadshotter barrel. Twin piercers, mounted low at the front, gave the impression of blunt and vicious mandibles, and the whole was mounted on ten jointed legs controlled by a ratiocinator that translated the driver’s controls into smooth, almost organic motion.
Though not ‘driver’, for the term used was handler, as if the Sentinels had crossed some fine line from mere metal into something that lived and thought.
‘Hoi, you two!’ Oski called. The handlers turned to him in unison: a pair of Bee-kinden from some lengthily named city on the Exalsee, with closed, dark faces. Unsurprisingly, they did not mix with the Imperial forces, and the Wasps did not come near them out of respect for the murderous devices they commanded. The distance that surrounded them was more than that, though, for they almost never spoke even amongst themselves. They had no dealings with anyone save to draw rations, and seemed barely more approachable than the machines that they tended.
‘General wants to see one of you, don’t care which,’ Oski told them. ‘I reckon he’s going to put you through your paces, so maybe you’d better think about what your toys can do when we reach the Beetle city, hm?’
The two men gave him identical stares, then one of them nodded and marched off without a word.
Oski shrugged. ‘I’ll go get Ernain.’
Bergild nodded; the flat regard of the remaining Sentinel handler did not encourage her to linger. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she decided. ‘They’re already refuelling my ’Sphex, so I’m just baggage until we set off.’
As they left the shadow of the Sentinels, Oski jerked a thumb backwards. ‘You’ve worked it out, surely — what’s up with them?’
She nodded soberly. ‘I’ve heard that mindlinking turns up in Bees about as often as with Wasps — which is to say, not often. The Iron Glove was obviously thinking along the same lines.’
‘And if we managed to spot it, then it’ll be common knowledge back at Severn Hill,’ Oski agreed, naming the headquarters of the Engineering Corps. ‘The Colonel-Auxillian’s name is on more than a few people’s lips since he came back from the dead, and not in a good way, either. I hope he knows what he’s doing. . Hoi, Ernain!’
Midway into a hand of cards with some of the Quartermaster Corps, the Bee-kinden looked up.
‘Finish up,’ Oski told him. ‘We’ve got a flight to make.’
Twenty-Two
‘She’s alive.’
The silence within the ruined airship had grown and grown, as the light outside waned, and Maure’s words, quiet as they were, made everyone start. For some time the halfbreed woman had been sitting cross-legged, eyes closed and oblivious, whilst the other three took wordless watches at the hatch in case the Nethyen decided that waiting until morning was not the Mantis way.
Thalric’s immediate reaction was to demand how she knew, but fighting that sort of question back was almost automatic now: he had gone off the edge of his map a long time before. Instead he just waited, leaving it to Tynisa to ask, ‘Where?’ From her sharp tone, Che’s foster-sister was plainly ready to mount a rescue attempt the moment she knew where to go.
‘Not that, not yet.’ Maure shook her head. ‘But she is out there, alive. . not in pain, I think, or great fear.’
Tynisa stared at her angrily. ‘Then magic harder!’ she got out, before rounding furiously on Thalric when he snorted. ‘You think this is funny?’
He met her stare levelly. ‘I think it’s completely nonsensical, but telling someone to “magic harder” is surely not going to help.’
Amnon, standing at the hatch, shifted a little, and for a moment they thought he had something to add. Then he just shook his head and concentrated again on his watch. No doubt things had been done differently in Khanaphes.
‘Is there anything more?’ Thalric asked carefully. Questioning a magician was not unlike dealing with a particularly secretive agent, he decided: you didn’t know where they got their information from, nor would you ever understand their networks or their sources, but that did not mean that they could not tell you things. After that it was just a matter of weighing the information and sifting it for truth.
‘I. .’ Maure’s eyes remained closed, her entire body very still, but her tone was conversational. ‘I am not a great seer: my training lies elsewhere. Still, I have some of the craft and I am trying to find where the web centres. .’
‘Surely you can just cast about until you find her — or a trail leading to her, or something?’ Tynisa complained.
‘It’s not like that. Tracking someone, from their past steps to their present location, well, there are trades to help you there, but magic is by no means a good one. From the present to the future, though, where Che is going to be. .’
Thalric found himself sharing a glance with Tynisa. ‘Explain, if you can,’ he prompted.
‘I never thought I’d be having this conversation with one of the Apt,’ Maure remarked drily. ‘But you’ve been in Che’s shadow long enough, and over in Khanaphes I think that not understanding and not believing are still two different things. Also. .’ But whatever she was about to say about Tynisa — Inapt but raised by the Apt — went unspoken. ‘I have a rock, say, and you know that I will throw it. Can you tell me where it will land? No. But you know it will come from my hand, so you could try predicting its future. But the further the rock travels away from me, the further from your prediction of its landing it is likely to end up. Well, then, try to turn that inside out and you have a magician predicting the future.’ At the pointed silence that followed she sighed again and went on, ‘I can find where Che is going to be — she is significant, and her actions will be significant. When she exerts her power the world bends around her, and I can pare down the future to that moment — where the likelihood is that Che will be, and where she will act. But I cannot tell you the path that will bring her there, so it is like the rock in reverse — I know where it will land, but not from where it is thrown. Perhaps on my best day I could track it back a little, but here. . the landscape is too heavily folded and twisted. More, whoever she is with has some magic and Art of their own that conceals them, and her. But I can see where they will take her in the end. . Soon, tonight.’
‘Where?’ Tynisa demanded, and it was plain that ideas of ambush were already in her mind.
There came a sound from Amnon, merely a wordless indication that he had seen something. Immediately afterwar
ds, Maure pointed. ‘There.’
‘What is it?’ Thalric demanded, ducking over to stand at the man’s shoulder.
‘Fire,’ Amnon said flatly, his snapbow resting on the hatch rim.
Thalric peered out into the darkness, where a burgeoning red glow was immediately evident, some distance away through the trees.
‘They’re burning the forest down?’ he suggested. Must be the Empire, surely.
‘Burning something,’ Amnon confirmed. ‘I don’t see it spreading.’
‘There,’ Maure said again, and Tynisa glanced back to her.
‘That’s where. .?’
‘It is a Mantis hold,’ Maure said firmly. ‘That is where Che will be.’
‘They’re going to burn her?’ Tynisa hissed.
‘They would not. She is not fit for that,’ Maure told her. Then added hurriedly, ‘It is the Mantis way. Fire is the warrior, destroyer and purifier. A fire such as that is meant only for their honoured dead. The Nethyen are holding a wake.’
‘A little premature when we’re not done fighting,’ Thalric suggested.
‘The Mantis-kinden are never done with fighting,’ she told him bluntly.
‘Of course, I forgot. If it involves Mantis-kinden, it’s all about death,’ he spat tiredly. Tynisa shot him an angry look, but he weathered it, unrepentant.
‘There was more to their ways, in the past. In the Commonweal there still is. But when they are faced with doubt, with change, or with loss, it is the old certainties that they fall back on, and none more so than death,’ Maure pronounced. ‘They mourn a thousand years of decline. They have given up looking to the future, for they cannot find their way towards it. The coming of the Empire has only brought them sooner to a destination they have been approaching for centuries. So they burn their dead and sing their songs for the last time.’ Her voice had grown ragged and distant, and Thalric saw that she was shaking slightly.
‘Maure!’ he snapped, in his best officer’s voice, and she twitched and opened her eyes.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘The forest reeks of their despair. It can be. . hard to stay clear of it.’
Thalric wanted to say something like ‘I can imagine’, but it was so abundantly plain he could not, that any consolation would be absurd. ‘Well, we know something now that we didn’t before,’ he concluded brightly. ‘We know where they’ll bring Che tonight — guest of honour at a mass funeral.’
‘Fine,’ Tynisa agreed. ‘So that’s where we’ll go.’
The other three regarded her doubtfully, and she faced them down as though they were the enemy.
‘I am to fight their champion tomorrow. This badge and my sword have won that for us. Tonight, Che will be taken to their hold. Tonight we will meet her there, to get her out if we can, or to show her that we are there for her if we cannot. I will not sit out the night in this rotting coffin if we know where Che will be.’
‘They’ll kill us,’ Thalric insisted.
‘They will — tomorrow. After the duel they’ll kill us. Probably they’ll find some reason to try even if I win. So I’m going to walk into their hold and wait for Che, because I don’t see that there’s much to lose in doing so. You stay here if you want.’
‘Maure?’ Thalric pressed, because the magician seemed to have the best-honed survival instincts of anyone there, save for himself.
‘They will not kill us out of hand, I think. The duel is too important to them. But their despair is very heavy. It may make them act in strange ways. Mantis honour has not fitted in with the world well in living memory, and now they have to twist and strain it to breaking point to adapt to the events around them. It is hard to say what they might consider the honourable course of action.’
‘So you’re staying?’ Thalric confirmed.
‘I’m going,’ Maure said. ‘Because, once Tynisa leaves here, there is nothing stopping the Nethyen from killing the rest of us. She is our champion. They don’t need the rest of us.’
Tynisa’s expression was openly defiant. ‘Stand aside, Amnon. I’m going.’
‘We all are,’ the Khanaphir replied heavily, slinging his snapbow.
‘She is Amalthae,’ the Mantis-kinden answered.
Che nodded cautiously. It was not quite true to say that the great insect was looking at her — for its attention seemed entirely devoted to cleaning the razor-sharp barbs on its forelimbs, one by one. But its eyes were vast, all-seeing. There were few places in this little clearing where Che would not become an object of that peripheral scrutiny.
‘And who are you?’ she asked him. The Mantis frowned, as though surprised that anyone should wish to know. He was a long-boned man, perhaps ten years Che’s senior, or perhaps not even that. His face was as expressionless as an Ant’s, and for the same reason. He wore no armour, only loose garments dyed in forest colours, while a bladed gauntlet was folded into his belt.
‘Ceremon, I was called,’ he said, pausing over the name so that she wondered just how long it had been since someone had actually called him anything at all save for Amalthae’s. . what?
‘Her companion?’ she ventured.
‘Her consort,’ he corrected.
‘You have the Art of Speech?’ As well as being constantly under that faceted sight, there was no place in this clearing that would not be within the lightning reach of the creature’s arms. When those limbs had snatched her up from the ground and drawn her close to the mantis’s scissoring mandibles she had believed it was the end. Something other than hunger had been behind the strike, however — something other even than Mantis-kinden hatred of intruders, it seemed, for here she was, still alive.
Ceremon just nodded. Like Amalthae, he did not look at her directly much, yet was always aware of where she was and what she did. Every small move of hers froze the pair of them for the briefest moment as they recalculated the quickest way to catch or kill her if that proved necessary. So far, Che had given them no excuse.
‘So. . when do the rest get here?’ she tried.
‘No others. Just us.’ Amalthae went entirely still, even her antennae barely swaying, and Ceremon was suddenly motionless too, fading deeper into himself so that Che’s sense of his presence — for all that he stood right before her — almost vanished. Had she come walking into the clearing just then, she would have noticed neither man nor insect.
And died, probably. She tried to project her own mind. What is it they’ve heard? Tynisa? Thalric? But she found no resonance of her friends, no minds at all nearby, only the convoluted density of the forest itself.
Something moved, beside and behind her. Another mantis? But she had a feeling she would not have heard it, if it was. Despite herself, she flinched, retreating towards the known killer and away from the unknown.
She saw something glitter, a black carapace and busy legs, as a beetle pushed itself between the close-grown trees, half scuttling, half climbing. It had large, round eyes and jaws like twin blades, a world away from those patient draught animals she had seen working on Collegiate farms as a child. Longer than she herself was, and a hunter in its own right, it regarded her fiercely, working through the small number of choices its mind allowed it.
Had she the Speech-Art she could have calmed it and turned it aside. As it was, she thought she might find some way to accomplish the same result through magic, but she knew that she had no need. She was watched over by something more terrible than this armoured beast.
It went for her, breaking into a run that would have covered the ground in seconds save that, barely halfway towards her, it was gone. Che, who had been expecting the move, was still surprised by it, the beetle barely seeming to exist in the space between the ground and the mantis’s closed arms, before Amalthae’s mouthparts sawed neatly into the insect’s head and stilled its frantic struggles with surgical grace.
Ceremon took a deep breath, releasing his Art and returning to the foreground of her attention. Che had formerly understood that the Speech Art fell mostly one way: commands iss
ued and very little save for basic impulses communicated in return. She felt that between this man and his consort there existed a more profound connection.
‘You haven’t killed me yet,’ Che observed, as calmly as she could after that predatory display.
‘No.’ Ceremon stared into the forest. ‘But you are right to think it. My people would have killed you if they had caught you. Either your blood on the forest floor there and then, or a proper bloodletting to strengthen the forest, at one of our places.’
‘But not you? Are you waiting till your consort gets hungry enough?’
‘Amalthae. .?’ Ceremon frowned for the first time. ‘Because of her, I am not as my people are. It is difficult to. .’ He cocked his head, so plainly listening to the beast beside him that Che looked up, expecting to meet a sentient gaze, but Amalthae continued to eat daintily, and spared her no direct attention.
Ceremon nodded as if conceding some unheard point. ‘All kinden derive from their totem,’ he explained. ‘Each has its mystery, some easy to follow, some not.’ He glanced up at the feeding beast again, then down at the ground. ‘To the Beetle: endure. To the Ants: hold to one another. To the Moths: mastery of the mysteries of the dark. And so. . our own path. . To the Mantids: fight. It sounds simple, surely?’ He spread his hands. ‘And yet we have fought and fought since the very first of us, unyielding — proud and bloody — and where are we? It would have served us better if our mandate had been to win.’
‘I’ve never heard a Mantis speak like this,’ Che admitted.
‘Nor will you. These are her thoughts,’ he said sadly. ‘I only couch them in a way you may understand. We have fallen short, always, of our ideals, and now time has become an enemy we cannot fight, and in their desperation my people have come to the last twist on the Mantis path.’
‘Becoming allies of the Wasps,’ Che observed.
Ceremon shrugged. ‘The Lady of the Wasps came to my people and promised a return to the old dark times, the simple times when what we were was sufficient; when what we were meant something. Some of my people believed her, or at least held to some small hope that she spoke true. And others. . more knew that we would never receive our birthright from the hands of the Wasps, but that the simple fact of her standing there and making such an offer showed how the world had truly turned, once and for all, and that we had outlived our time in it. These, too, counselled that we should join with the Wasps, but not for any silver future. We should join with the Wasps so that we might make the world run red — or some small part of it — a final battle, a struggle to the death. And afterwards. . for us? Nothing afterwards. No Nethyen, no Etheryen. . Even as the Felyen to the south have passed from this world, so we would follow-’
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