Choices beyond that had proved harder. He had Laszlo — a strong and resourceful flier, if getting swift word back to Collegium became vital. Not Jodry. Not Kymene, for the same reasons. Not Balkus, either, because the man had not so much as spoken to Stenwold since their last argument. The remaining three places were two soldiers of the Maker’s Own, and the Coldstone officer known as the Antspider, included at Leadswell’s request. Eujen had wanted to bring along that gangling Woodlouse friend of his, but the man lacked half a hand and, although by all accounts this had only spurred on his artificing, he could not shoot straight. Stenwold, conversely, had wanted to bring Eujen’s Wasp friend Averic, as an object lesson, but the man had been so manifestly unwilling that he had relented.
‘They’re coming by automotive,’ the pilot announced, and Stenwold hung halfway out of the hatch to look. True enough, the Imperial delegation was taking this opportunity to test out the ground, as their eight-legged machine slowly navigated the uneven terrain. General Tynan was clearly going to wring every drop of advantage out of this meeting.
And on that subject. . Holding on with one hand, Stenwold thrust the other towards Padstock, who snapped out a telescope and passed it to him. As steadily as he could, Stenwold trained it on the approaching machine, which was obligingly open-topped.
He counted eight passengers plus a driver: six Wasps and two Spiders. He could still his view enough to see the bald crown of General Tynan himself, which he recognized well enough. He knew the woman beside the general, too: Mycella of the Aldanrael — whom he had last seen on the deck of her flagship, watching her fleet start to sink.
Troubles are like feckless children, went the saying. Send them into the world, they’ll be back at your door soon enough — and they’ll bring friends.
The Collegiates had settled down by the time the Imperial automotive finally found its way, with their orthopter close enough to take cover inside it, and angled so as not to block any line of sight from the city walls. Its wings were folded vertically upwards, and it would need only the throw of a single lever to engage the gear train, and have the machine thundering upwards.
But, despite all that and despite planning against one, Stenwold did not expect a trap. He remembered General Tynan, and had a good idea of the Empire’s position, and he knew that killing the Collegiate War Master would not take Collegium, any more than killing Tynan would change the Second Army’s orders. And he’d thought of it, of course, because this was war, after all, but it seemed plain to him that having a living Tynan he could talk to was better than a dead Tynan, and some newly vengeful colonel sitting across the table. That was the problem with the Imperial chain of command. You couldn’t kill it with a beheading.
The enemy formed up opposite him, their positioning and deployment as careful as any strategist’s. The general took the centre, and there was a colonel to his right — intelligence officer probably — and a captain, with some red badge Stenwold didn’t recognize on his left. Mycella demurely took the general’s far left flank, backed by a solidly built man in immaculately shining mail, and there were three heavy infantry on the right — not the sort of men to cut and run, but to hold the enemy while more important lives than theirs were saved. Tynan mopped his brow briefly — the sun was past its zenith but there was no cover out there, and Stenwold was hoping that the general was thinking about that discomfort as well.
‘General.’
‘War Master. I’m glad it’s you speaking for your city. I wasn’t sure who I’d get.’ Tynan was sizing him up, even as he himself was sized up in turn. ‘You’ve not brought your Spider girl?’
For a moment Stenwold thought that was deliberate, like a bully’s kick, but there was no suggestion of such in Tynan’s face. ‘She’s dead,’ he answered bluntly.
‘I’m sorry.’ And the Wasp was, just in that moment, but in the next it was all wiped away. ‘Business, then.’
‘You asked to talk. So talk,’ Stenwold invited.
‘My orders are to take your city, War Master,’ Tynan told him. ‘No surprise for you, I’m sure, but non-negotiable. However. .’ He took a deep breath. ‘Nobody in the Empire would ever have thought that Collegium could fight as it has done, Maker. After all, look how we took Tark, look how Helleron practically begged us to take the city over. The Exalsee is in awe of us, and we’ve whipped the Mynans and their friends back into the fold. And Sarn will fall, and we both know it. And we expect a tough fight, when it’s with Ants — after all, we’ve been winning wars against Ants for generations. But you people. . There are a lot of gambling officers in Capitas who’ve lost their fortunes on Collegium. Who could have thought that Beetle-kinden had it in them to fight so!’ He shook his head wonderingly. ‘My people respect that, War Master. We respect a valiant adversary, even if their cause is hopeless in the long run. Collegium will fly the Black and Gold sooner or later.’
Stenwold was about to make some bravado comment then, some ‘Then let it be later,’ or, ‘Not while I live’, but Tynan forestalled him.
‘I will offer terms for Collegium’s surrender, War Master, and they are terms that will see me brought before the throne to explain myself, but I am a general, and my word will hold.’ At this mention of the throne, the captain with the red badge twitched, staring pointedly at Tynan, who ignored him. Stenwold read that exchange easily enough: Rekef or something like it, whatever that badge means.
‘Maker,’ Tynan went on, ‘let Collegium lay down its arms with no further bloodshed and I will grant an amnesty to all its citizens, its fighting men, its pilots — all those who have opposed us. I will give orders that my soldiers must not harm its populace — no nights of rape and plunder — and believe me I will have to promise them gold from my own coffers, for they will want their reward, after what you’ve put them through, every step and every mile. When the new governor arrives, he will rule with the advice of your Assembly, just as our man in Helleron does with the Council there. Your merchants will have their chance to join the Consortium and profit thereby. Collegium shall become the new jewel of the Empire, valued and made to shine.’
From the expressions of Tynan’s Wasp subordinates — however they fought to hide them — Stenwold could see that these terms were beyond reason as far as they were concerned, which convinced him of the general’s intentions. There was something unsaid, though, and he could divine well enough what it was.
‘And Collegium’s leaders?’ he asked.
‘Taken to Capitas in chains,’ Tynan confirmed. ‘But who knows who your city’s leaders are, War Master? You govern in such an upside-down way that it could be anyone. Except that one name is of course known even in the Imperial court.’
Stenwold nodded. No need to ask whose. ‘I expected that.’
‘You’ll put this to your Assembly?’
‘No need.’ Stenwold managed a tight smile. ‘We covered this possibility when we met earlier today. Even on the generous terms you propose, General, we will not yield our freedom to the Empire.’
Tynan had not expected his request to have been rejected even before it was made, and into that gap Stenwold pressed determinedly on.
‘Instead I have an offer for you, General Tynan, and I will ground it in facts, show my reasoning just as you did. You say you are surprised at our success in resisting the Empire? We are, after all, a city of thinkers and builders, not warriors such as yourself. You say you respect our new-found martial prowess? Well, then, know this: we do not respect you as an enemy.’ He watched a ripple of anger pass through the Wasps gathered there, though Tynan himself remained unmoved. ‘We do not respect our enemies; we despair of them. Your struggle, your fierce will to prevail in spite of all, we do not admire this. We see only a terrible, senseless waste of life — both ours and yours. We see murdered potential, young men and women who might have become anything becoming only corpses through one woman’s dreams of conquering a city she has not even seen. Because we will not be owned or dictated to. Because we will not be slaves an
d bare our backs to the lash. And all because your Empress cannot bear there to be some empty name on a map somewhere that is not hers. She must be insane.’
That certainly struck fire in the Wasp faces there, the red-badge man especially, and still Tynan remained calm.
‘All emperors and empresses must be insane,’ Stenwold explained to them. ‘Anyone who looks out towards the horizons and says, ‘All this must be mine — and more, until there is no more.’ What sort of overweening arrogance is it, to have thousands and tens of thousands of her own people march and die, to destroy the cities and cultures and ways of life of dozens of other kinden, to trample and to pillage, sack and rape, butcher and enslave all within reach, just to indulge some inner weakness that fears whatever it cannot control? Look at what has brought us to this!’ These words were not the ones that Stenwold had planned. He was off his script, now, and travelling through the wilds of his own mind. ‘Look at what your own people have endured and inflicted, Tynan! From the deaths at Helleron, when they tried to take the Pride, the losses at Tark, the Fourth Army obliterated by the Felyen, all the dead at the Battle of the Rails, Malkan’s Seventh smashed by the Sarnesh — and now you’re back, and the Eighth is probably locked in a death struggle with Sarn even now, and we have destroyed your Air Corps and bludgeoned you and bombed you and strewn your path with thorns all the way from the Felyal to here. And here we are. Chief Officer Leadswell, forward, please.’
Eujen started in surprise, then took a small step forward.
‘This man has suggested that we might have made some lasting peace with the Empire, after the last war — that we might have found enough common ground to prevent this new conflict coming to pass. I admit I was too busy preparing for this day to even consider it, but he’s right. A lasting and honest peace between our people could accomplish great things, and the world would be so much the richer. Leadswell has overlooked one thing, however. He believes that your people are men as deserving as any to enjoy life and happiness, but he forgets that your own leaders do not share that belief. If they did, none of this could come about. To your Empress and her court, you and all your soldiers are nothing more than a sword to strike out at the world with, and keep striking until either the world or the sword breaks. Until your Empire is ruled with some acceptance that human life has a value — irrespective of whether that life is Imperial or Collegiate or your poor bloody Auxillians — then all this man’s good intentions will go to naught, and we will continue to resist you. We cannot be slaves, and under Imperial rule, everyone is a slave, bar one.’
Mycella of the Aldanrael was smiling slightly, and the Wasps were clearly at the very limits of their patience, but Tynan still regarded the War Master without obvious emotion. Stenwold thought, He knows. I tell him the Empress is insane, and it’s no news to him.
‘We should destroy the Second,’ Stenwold declared, ‘to the last man, if we can. We should take away the Empress’s sword, because at least there will be a pause before she forges a new one. Nevertheless, I am authorized by the Assembly to make you an offer, General. Walk away. We both know the losses your army has suffered in getting here, and now we are in the same position as we were when you fell back the last time. We have the advantage in the air and in artillery, and we still have our walls. You cannot sustain a siege long, and we can prevent supplies coming to you by air or sea — whilst the Tseni navy will ensure that food and ammunition keep coming in for us. Go now and, so long as you keep retreating, Collegium shall not harass your forces. But keep on retreating, for we are coming to liberate Tark and Myna and those other places that you have shackled. Go now, for if you try to take our city, you can be sure that the skies will never be clear for whatever is left of your army, all the way back to Capitas.’
Tynan nodded slightly, and for a long moment there was quiet. Reading the expressions of the other Wasps, it was plain that they were concerned what Tynan’s response might be. The man with the red badge kept shifting restlessly, as though reminding the general of his presence, and of his invisible authority. Typical Rekef — or whatever he is.
‘This will not seem a compliment, to you,’ Tynan said at last, ‘but the Empire has never had a Beetle-kinden general — not artificer, diplomat, merchant or soldier. If you had been born under the Black and Gold, I think that things might have been different. I think that matters might have fallen out in very different way, had you been in a position to advise the Empress, or advise the Emperor before her. The world might be a better place.’
All eyes were fixed on him, and the convulsive jerk that ran through the man with the red badge almost seemed like a spasm. It was, Stenwold realized a moment later, a man at the extremes of self-restraint, fighting down the impulse to sting his own general. Treason, he thought. Was that treason we heard, from General Tynan? Does he doubt his Empress? And it was plain that he did, and that Tynan knew that everything Stenwold said was true, yet. .
‘I have my orders,’ the Wasp stated. ‘I have never disobeyed an order from the crown. That same quality took my Second away from your gates the first time. It will keep me here now. I thank you for your offer, but I cannot accept.’
Twenty-Four
She had sold him her story, just as she had sold it to the Nethyen, and for a while she had convinced him, even though she must have been unaware just who it was she was convincing.
Esmail had been sent by the Tharen to the Empress’s court as a spy and assassin, the one by training, the other supposedly an inalienable quality of his blood.
Kill her, they had told him. There had been more in terms of qualifiers and conditions, but it all boiled down to that. They had loosed him from the string, and, curve as he might, his course was intended to bring him point-first to the Empress.
Even when he read his orders, he had guessed that Tharn was riven with factions — and how true that had turned out to be — what with two Tharen emissaries actually accompanying the Wasp woman, and even those two splitting from each other, so that only one remained and the other had been sacrificed to aid their progress. He had no idea if the splinter faction that had given him his original orders still existed.
Since he had followed the Empress into the forest, he had thought a lot on his family: his Dragonfly wife, his pureblood children. He had thought about them deliberately, so that events could not push them from his mind. He was now in the rush of the game, after so long — and how the game had broadened. They had sent him to kill an Empress, and instead he had bent the knee. He had helped her against her enemies. He had been given the chance, more than once, to drive an Art-deadly hand straight into her heart, and he had failed.
She had not given him her speech about the renewed glories of the old days, nor had she needed to. Back in Capitas he had discerned it in her: the Inapt and sorcerous Empress of a great Apt nation. He had hidden long amongst the Moths, and his main impression was that they lived only in the past tense and that, protest as they may, some part of them had already given up the fight. They lived in their own shadows, fought their empty factional games, and did their best to pretend that the world beyond their grey halls did not exist. If anything of the gloried past was to return — or even survive — they would not be responsible. Empress Seda the First, however. .
That was the promise she had made by her mere presence, and he had drunk blood for her, and sworn allegiance to her, not from any compulsions she had laid on him — his kinden and his profession alike were skilled in slipping such chains — but because he had believed.
But he had forgotten that the past was not just the glories of Inapt rule — the age of magicians, wisdom and great deeds — and now, after hearing those words, he could not banish them from his mind.
The Seal of the Worm.
He could claim no great knowledge of his people’s lore, for the Assassin-kinden were scattered, their ways lost. He had lived and studied amongst Moths, though. That the Empress should seek the power hoarded by Argastos was no surprise. Esmail was no seer but hi
s senses were ever honed for the moment, and he could feel that dark, bloated knot of power ahead. If it was corrupt and decayed, well, find any great node of the old power that was not. The Moths had always loved darkness, and used fear as their weapon, and time would have rotted that into something worse. It was power, though, and he could not fault Seda for seeking it.
He could feel the Seal, however, and that was a different matter. The Seal, whose stony grey absence was pinned down by Argastos’s decomposing weight, and, beyond it. .
In truth, Esmail could not say what lay beyond it, but he knew the tales. That great war which had encompassed all the known world, just as the Empire’s current conflict seemed to. . That great foe which had united the powers of the day against it, so that deadly enemies could clasp hands and put aside their enmities in order to defeat this common adversary: the Worm. Call them that, and not by their true name, for names are power.
They had sought to make all other races the same as them, said the stories. Meaning conquest? Meaning the extermination of all other kinden until only they themselves remained? Not even that, the stories insisted: they sought to make all the same as them, and it was such a perversion of the fundamentals of nature that in the end all were united against them, and there followed a war the like of which the world would never see again.
And when they were defeated but not destroyed, when they were cast down into their subterranean lairs, the cost was so great that the Moths — the leaders of this great host, for even then the Khanaphir Masters were already in decline — knew that no repeat of this war could be allowed. The Worm must not be permitted to regain its strength and bring such horrors again. But the Moths and their allies could not purge that underground realm of them, though armies of thousands were sent down, never to return. So there had been a ritual, the Moths’ ultimate sanction, one of a power and a cost unprecedented. In its wake the ancient world was forever changed, some powers exhausted and near destroyed by the cost of the war. And it was a shameful victory, too — as Esmail had read in secret tomes the Moths had never intended him to find. The Moths had banished the Worm, and sealed the path of its return, but not only the Worm, Esmail discovered. The Moths had failed, in the end, and that ritual had been nobody’s first choice.
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