War Master's Gate sota-9

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Of course you are.’ Tynan did not seem surprised. ‘No War Master Maker this time?’

  Jodry shrugged. ‘The Assembly has voted to accept your generous offer, General. With no war, why would we need a War Master?’ He held his breath at his own flippancy, but Tynan grudged him a small smile.

  ‘We will begin moving our troops in to secure the city immediately, then. I trust that the Assembly’s decision has been fully communicated to your citizens? Anyone who decides that their personal war is still ongoing will find the repercussions wide-ranging. I’m glad,’ he added quietly. ‘I would rather lives had been spared by your accepting my offer before the walls, but this is better than nothing. You have spared your city a great deal.’

  And your army, too, Jodry thought but did not say. Does he know how I argued against it? He had a bleak certainty that the name of every speaker at that ragged Assembly was in the books of the Rekef already. ‘If I may speak, General. .’

  Tynan’s eyes slid over to the Aldanrael woman, and they obviously shared some understanding denied to him, before the general nodded for him to continue.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, irritated by the nervousness in his voice, which had never let him down before, ‘that I would offer myself as a go-between. Now you are masters of Collegium, after all, you will want someone. . who knows how it all works.’ His voice trailed off on seeing Tynan’s expression, and mostly because there was more pity in it than anything else. The general leant back to make some murmured enquiry of the colonel at his shoulder, but the Spider Arista was still studying Jodry carefully.

  ‘My son mentioned you in his last report, Master Drillen,’ she said briskly, and it took Jodry an unaccustomed moment to work out what she meant. But, of course, she was here to avenge both the turning back of her armada and the death of her child Teornis, whom Stenwold had killed in Princep.

  Jodry made himself lift a polite eyebrow. ‘And what did he write, my lady?’

  ‘He recommended keeping you alive, Master Drillen,’ Mycella explained. ‘I think he liked you. He was terribly sentimental, I’m afraid.’ She sighed. ‘The innocence of those days, had we only known.’

  Tynan had now heard his colonel’s reply and turned back, face expressionless. ‘Your services will not be required. The Empire has appointed a new officer to command your Assembly, to better advise and assist our governance of the city in line with Imperial policy.’ He stood up, and Jodry took an involuntary step back, as though the general himself was going to put a sword in him. His back struck against the unyielding chill of armour, and he whirled round to find that there were a half-dozen soldiers inside the tent now, whom he had not even noticed entering.

  He fought to recover his composure, but the same fear that had assailed him before the gatehouse was back with reinforcements. The faces of the soldiers, of the general and the Lady-Martial all seemed mere masks of human skin over something murderous. Or is it we in Collegium who have gone against human nature. Is their warlike drive the true humanity? Right now a single friendly Beetle face would be a blessedly welcome sight.

  ‘Cherten, let’s get this over with. Bring in the major,’ Tynan directed, and the colonel bowed and stepped past Jodry, heading out of the tent.

  What are you going to do with me? But to ask that question would be to invite the answer, and Jodry had no wish to hear it. Instead, he just stood there and fought to keep back the terror that was stealing over him.

  In almost no time, Colonel Cherten was back, followed by a man wearing the robes of the Empire’s Diplomatic Corps, that misleadingly Collegiate style recast in black and gold.

  ‘Why, hello, Jodry,’ said Helmess Broiler, with a smile that could cut glass.

  Jodry nodded to him, managing that same cordial coldness with which he would have greeted the man in the Assembly. ‘Broiler.’

  ‘Who would have thought it,’ Helmess mused. ‘The votes are in and I was made Speaker, after all. Fancy that, eh?’

  Tynan shifted slightly, and Jodry saw a moment of quickly stifled fright in Helmess’s eyes, before the man said, ‘Yes, General, you wished to see me?’

  ‘Major Broiler, a matter involving the Collegiate Assembly has come up,’ Tynan told him. To Jodry’s ear there was absolutely no liking for the turncoat Beetle in the general’s voice, but he knew that would not change anything. ‘Perhaps you have a solution?’

  Helmess smiled — not even an unctuous, favour-currying smile but his usual avuncular beam, which had served him so well in Collegiate politics. ‘Why, certainly, sir. As you know, Master Drillen is near the top of the list of the Empire’s enemies. Under other circumstances I would expect him to be passed over to the interrogators to be examined on the wider capabilities of Collegium’s allies, news from Sarn and all the rest. However. .’ He turned that smile now on Jodry, who remained very still and did not look him in the eye. ‘In all honesty the man’s little more than a figurehead, and there are wiser men who know far more and who are already on our list.’

  For a hollow moment Jodry found he had been given the unasked-for gift of hope. It was a poisoned gift, he knew, and yet he could not stop his heart leaping at it, just as Helmess must have expected.

  ‘I would suggest that Colonel Cherten’s staff turn their attention instead to his knowledge of those on our list whose whereabouts are unknown — a detailed and systematic inquiry as to who remains within the city, who has fled, and who was killed in the fighting. These details he will know, sir.’

  Tynan stepped forwards, close enough for Jodry to reach out and touch him if he dared. His eyes flicked sideways at Cherten, who nodded minutely.

  ‘And then?’ the general asked.

  Helmess’s face emptied of anything approaching common humanity. ‘Collegium needs to be sent a clear message, sir. I believe crossed pikes are traditional.’

  Tynan studied him for a long while, and Jodry had every chance to decipher the minutiae of the man’s expression, to see just how much loathing the soldier felt for this traitor, however useful that betrayal had been. If Helmess had not been Cherten’s man, then Jodry would not have given a stripped gear for his chances.

  At last: ‘Although their use has become somewhat widespread in recent years,’ the general declared, ‘the pikes are properly a punishment for those of the Empire who have turned against their masters: escaped slaves and rebellious generals alike.’ He looked Jodry in the eye. ‘But you’re right about sending a message. Some other means, then, quick but public.’

  Helmess kept his face carefully empty of disappointment. ‘The Lady-Martial’s people use just such a method to dispose of their criminals,’ he observed.

  Tynan nodded, still staring into Jodry’s face. His thoughts were plain: he respected Jodry’s coming in person to deliver the surrender, but he would do nothing to stop his people torturing and killing him. Indeed he would applaud it, because to him it was the right and necessary thing to do. Here was the Empire in miniature.

  ‘You’ll get nothing from me!’ Jodry bellowed, finding his voice at last as the soldiers took hold of him. Nobody was listening, though, as they hauled him out of the tent. Or perhaps only Helmess heard, as he followed the knot of men outside to watch Jodry depart, and stood grinning from ear to ear.

  And, towards evening the same day, Helmess stood on the wall above the north gate, watching the tail end of the Second Army march into the city. There were soldiers on every rooftop now, watching out for trouble, whilst elsewhere the Company soldiers were surrendering their arms, no doubt desperately hoping that the Empire would keep its word. While Cherten’s interrogators had put Jodry on the rack, Helmess had stood here and watched the Empire’s vanguard entering the city. There had been quite a few there to watch, displaying the traditional Collegiate inability to stay away from anything that was happening, however appalling. The silence of that crowd had been deafening, and Helmess had made quite a study of their expressions as his people had witnessed the boots of the Empire march over their much-c
herished freedoms.

  He was glad to have Jodry beside him now, for one last put-down, before his work began.

  ‘“You’ll get nothing from me”,’ he mimicked. ‘Oh, I’ll wager they’d never heard that one before. And you squealed, you fat bastard. You broke and blubbered and told them everything they wanted. Of course you did.’

  He took a deep breath, savouring the air. Tomorrow the Assembly would meet — his Assembly — and he would tell them how it was going to be. And there would be other duties, happy ones. He had some old friends to go and look in on, thanks to what Jodry had revealed.

  Tonight, though, he would spend in the Empire’s camp, because the Wasp soldiers had fought hard to capture this city, and this was their night. Woe betide the taverner who tried to charge them for their wine. Woe to any woman who wanted to say no. Woe to Collegium, really, but hadn’t Helmess been warning them not to fight, all this time?

  ‘Just think if I had won at Lots and been made Speaker, how much of this could have been avoided?’ he asked Jodry aloud. ‘Just think how many of our people you got killed — you and Maker between you — just to bring us to this point after all.’

  Beside him, with a tortured creaking, the massive corpse of Jodry Drillen revolved and swayed on the gibbet.

  Thirty-Two

  Tegrec had been running for longer than was good for him. He had never been a man who had taken to exercise, the prestige of his family propelling him just far enough up the ranks that he could delegate the running around to others. Now he ran as he had never run before, and at the same time he was drawing on all the magic he had ever learned, with just one end in mind:

  Find a way out of this place.

  The domain of Argastos pressed all around him, that grey, gnarled shadow of the forest without, but its master’s attention was most decidedly elsewhere. Tegrec, a minor distraction at the most, had some small space of time to get clear before the place noticed him again and made him pay.

  He could sense all around him the spirits of the imprisoned dead. Argastos’ home was like a pitcher plant, and all those who ever entered had neither left nor truly died. The agonized remnants of them were impaled on the trees surrounding him, writhing and screaming. If he came to their attention, he would join them in short order.

  And not just death but a living death, as a slave of Argastos. He saw it all so clearly now.

  He had not wanted things to turn out like this, but that was hardly worth saying. Born a Wasp without Aptitude, he had lived his whole life as an impostor amongst his own people. He had learned magic in scraps and tatters, leaching what little could be had from the spoils of the Twelve-year War and carefully playing his political games until a golden opportunity had come his way: when the Empire took Tharn, home of the Moth-kinden. He had been sent there as governor, and he had sold out his own people in return for knowledge and power, and he had given himself over to the Moths.

  And they had given him back, in a way, so that he had ended up at the Imperial court as Tharen ambassador, brokering an alliance between his surrogate and his birth kinden that the Moths would never have considered had the Empress not been who — or what — she was.

  So far, so good, but then everything had fallen apart. He had never wanted to come to this terrible place, in the Empress’s entourage; to see the murder of his fellow Moth ambassador; to see that other impostor, the assassin, suddenly spring out from behind the guise of dull Major Ostrec. .

  He was not a man temperamentally suited to such events, and so he ran, hoping that he could outdistance the reach of both Argastos and Seda before he was noticed again.

  All around him he could feel this horribly dead place waking up. Its attention had contracted towards its centre, dragging in its chosen victims — the Empress and her opposite — but now the tendrils of its thought were flexing and twitching, its trap was setting itself again, and he was still within its range; he could not find the way out.

  Fear endowed him with a sudden surge of strength, increasing his stumbling pace as he battered at the fabric of Argastos’s realm like a man clawing through cobwebs.

  And it gave way, and the forest he found himself staggering through was no less dark and grim of aspect, but at least it was real and physical.

  He paused, and leant against a tree, fighting to get his breath back. Clear, I’m clear! Even the murky forest air seemed sweet to him.

  Something moved close by, and he felt a chill pass through him. Did something else come with me?

  He looked about and realized that he was surrounded. There was a score of Mantis-kinden shifting in and out of sight amid the trees, with bows and spears. Nethyen or Etheryen? He could not tell.

  ‘Servants of the Green,’ he croaked, using the ancient Moth greeting to their followers.

  For a long moment those words hung in the air, testing their power against the Mantids, while the world itself seemed to hold its breath.

  Then one of them shook her head. ‘No masters,’ she said. ‘Not any more. Seize the trespasser.’

  ‘No!’ Tegrec gasped. Not after all I’ve been through. And he began backing away, seeing some of them drawing back their bowstrings, others spreading out. They were not moving towards him, though, even as he took step after step away. Their attention, hungry for blood, was focused elsewhere.

  And at last he turned to see another Mantis behind him, a weathered-looking man with his long hair unbound.

  ‘What do you want?’ Tegrec gasped.

  ‘No masters,’ the man echoed. ‘Amalthae?’ Something in the way he stood led Tegrec’s gaze sideways and upwards, until at last he saw the colossal beast towering by the Mantis’s side.

  Tegrec lashed out with all the force of his magic, but the mind he encountered was more than his equal. Then those dread killing arms were reaching for him.

  Che awoke into darkness, but this was no new thing for her. She found herself standing, with walls pressing close on three sides.

  Argastos’s domain.

  And she was a daughter of Collegium, whether Apt or Inapt, and she had been raised to question. First she called on her Art, and found that the gloom about her was not dispelled, but hung before her eyes all the more. So, nothing as mundane as mere darkness, then. This is what Argastos wants me to see.

  Not utterly dark, either — because Argastos wanted her to see just enough and no further. Enough to see that the indistinct walls around her comprised a dead end in what must be a maze. She remembered reading about Moths and mazes in a book, while she had been looting the College library for anything that might help her with her newly imposed Inaptitude. It had been a favourite pastime of Moth Skryres to trap their enemies in mazes of the mind. Che herself had nearly become lost in one through Seda’s doing, snared in her own memories. Until Maure walked into my mind to rescue me.

  And did that mean Maure was just as capable of rescuing herself, or was she also a prisoner elsewhere in this labyrinth, or in some other cell altogether?

  What does Argastos want? Is this a test? She stepped forwards and began to try a handful of turns, leftwards always. Her hand found the wall’s surface weirdly discontinuous, metallic and lanced with spines, nothing that matched what the eye could make out.

  She had every expectation of the maze’s configuration shifting around her, because why should Argastos play fair? If there was a test here, it was not of her ability to solve a physical maze, after all.

  She closed her eyes, seeking strength within her, before applying it carefully to the walls all around her, and making them creak. It seemed possible that sheer force might suffice, to break this place asunder, but what if that was something Argastos had foreseen? Would it leave her in an even worse position?

  Instead, she let her mind flow out from her, twisting and turning over the contours of the maze, appreciating its nuances all at once and giving it no chance to change behind her back. She had not realized that she was capable of such concentration, and perhaps it was only here, in this pit of o
ld magic, that she could have done it, but soon she had the entire maze in mind, and still her senses drifted outwards, calm and curious, until she found Maure.

  Che?

  Are you well?

  I’m surrounded by the dead. There came sense of Maure’s bleak amusement. I won’t say it’s pleasant but it is what I trained for.

  Is Argastos dead? Che asked her.

  Interesting question. He’s not merely a ghost, anyway. There’s no cast-off image of him here, because the core of him never moved on. It was bound here, trapped in this place over the centuries.

  So what does that make him, and what can we do about him?

  There was an almost academic quality to Maure’s response. He is a man, still, but one who has been held in a place of great magic — dark Moth magic — for a very long time. Is he dead? Probably. Does he know it? Possibly. Is he powerful? Certainly. He’s been steeped in power for centuries.

  More powerful than me?

  A long pause before Maure answered that. Perhaps not, but more skilled. He was a strong and experienced magician before this happened to him, and he won’t have grown rusty.

  Che nodded to herself, and stepped out of the maze. It only needed that one step, now that she had plumbed its every twist and turn. A moment later there was no maze, and she was in a cavern, its ceiling dimly knotted with roots, the air hazy with half-glimpsed forms. More games?

  Then another real mind, for a moment, and the touch of it startled her. A trick, a deception? I must be mistaken, but she had the sense of someone staring right back at her. Hello, Cheerwell Maker. And a most uncharacteristic malice: Enjoying yourself?

  Che recoiled, and then the fleeting touch was gone, as if it had never been. But was that really. .? She could not bring herself to believe that it had actually been the Collegiate scholar Helma Bartrer. .

  Using her power as a light that burned the darkness like cheap oil, she came upon Maure, finding her surrounded by nebulous phantoms that fled at Che’s approach.