There it was ahead of them, the place that the Empress was being led to. The icon was composed of a patchwork of rotting wood, a great mantis sculpture eight feet tall, with its crooked arms outstretched for its next victim. The creatures of decay, and those that fed upon them, were busy about it, and the Nethyen would be constantly adding fresh wood to the feast. The idol lived through its own corruption, and in that it was part of the forest itself. Mantis magic is such a crude and single-minded pursuit, but sometimes one gains a little satisfaction in descending to their level.
Now the Empress stood directly before the icon, and still she did not fear. Is that Wasp arrogance or Wasp ignorance, I wonder? To Yraea, the mood of the Nethyen was quite plain. They were here for blood shed in the prescribed manner, and the forest had not seen a sacrifice such as this in a long time. Let all your sweet power, Empress, become my weapon to put Argastos back in his place.
‘You know why you are here.’ It was the voice of the Loquae.
‘Of course.’ Seda’s prompt response.
Yraea gathered herself, took a deep breath, and cried out, ‘Take them!’
There was a confusion of motion. Gjegevey was seized at once, incapable of offering harm even if he meant to. Two of the Nethyen staggered back from Ostrec, to Yraea’s surprise – and she saw blood here, but none of it the Wasp’s. A circle had formed about Tisamon and Seda, and she saw that the Mantids’ old fear of magic – her own kinden’s eternal hook in them – was working against her.
She spat out a word, fingers pointing towards the armoured form, and Tisamon fell still, shackled within his own steel. Pathetic .
Seda herself watched it all with an utter, regal calm, not even deigning to notice Ostrec when the Red Watch officer moved up to put his back to hers.
‘Did you really think toys such as this were new?’ Yraea asked the Empress, moving to touch Tisamon’s breastplate. ‘Did you think any true magician would fear them? Why do you think we had Mantis-kinden as our soldiers all those years, if such constructs of magic had been of use against our enemies?’
She knew that, magic aside, the Art contained within the Empress’s very hands was dangerous enough, but she wanted the Wasp girl to recognize her own hubris before the end. She wanted to finally breach that reserve. I want her to beg.
‘You have come far, for one of your kinden, but no further than this,’ Yraea told her. ‘You have discovered enough of the old ways to be useful to me, but no more.’
‘Oh, quiet,’ Seda told her. ‘Do what you must.’
Yraea drew a sharp breath, but realized that the words had not been meant for her. Hands were laid on her before she could evade them: Mantis hands, wrenching her arms back, holding her tight. Her head whipped round to look for the Loquae. ‘You!’
‘I did all that was in my power to speak to my people,’ the old Mantis woman said sadly. ‘I told them to wait. I invoked the Masters of the Grey, our leaders since the dawn of time. I told them what they must do.’
Yraea was hauled forwards towards the icon, seeing Seda’s slight smile pass her by. ‘Release me! You traitors! Servants of the Green, release me!’
‘They want more than you can offer,’ Seda’s light tones drifted over to her, whilst Tisamon stepped to her side, breaking Yraea’s chains in the instant that he moved. ‘And I have promised them so much more: Servants of the Green, Masters of the Black and Gold. This is a new world, Moth, and they do not understand it, and they do not like it. But one thing they do understand is that your people abandoned them long ago, after the revolution. You left them simply to fade away.’
‘Lies!’ Yraea shrieked, but the Mantids were ignoring her, and a moment later she was within the arc of those wooden limbs, and they were bringing forwards stakes and mallet to secure her.
‘No,’ she whispered. It had taken her that long for her to understand that the world had turned.
She looked round for the Loquae again, more than ready to beg, but the old Mantis herself had been seized by her own people.
‘I gave all that I had for your words,’ the Loquae stated flatly, without acrimony. ‘I told them that they must follow me, or cast me down. They have made their choice. I have sought the future, seer, and I have found none. None for me, none for any of us. Let me die now.’
Yraea opened her mouth to call out, but then the first stake was rammed home into her palm and she screamed.
‘The blood of a magician,’ Seda pronounced. ‘Not as valuable as the blood of an empress, but enough to open the door for me and mine.
Yraea barely heard her, as the world before her shuddered and swam. Seda’s polite smile passed before her eyes; Gjegevey shaking his head miserably; Ostrec—
She saw Ostrec, but in that same moment she also saw beyond him. Is that . . .? Does Seda know what that is that wears her colours? Might I be avenged, still?
And then pain, only pain.
Seventeen
To his credit, what with a hundred other pressing matters tugging at his elbow, Stenwold sat for twenty minutes and listened to the impassioned Fly’s complaint. Laszlo told him everything, including many important facts about his Solarnese posting that Stenwold had only been able to infer from the Fly’s official report – as, apparently, had Milus.
Stenwold had never met this Lissart girl back then, for she had fled the Collegiate army before its clash with the Wasps. He did, however, vaguely recall a Fly woman who had accompanied Tactician Milus when the Ant had come to Collegium, but no more than that.
And now Laszlo had finished his account, right down to Milus’s parting words, and was waiting expectantly for Stenwold Maker, the War Master of Collegium, to jump into an orthopter and go and castigate the leader of the Sarnesh military. Because there was a girl that Laszlo was besotted with, who was now a Sarnesh prisoner.
The man’s a pirate. How can he be so naive? But Stenwold had met the Tidenfree crew, after all, and realized that piracy was a great refuge of the innocent, in a curious sort of way. It was a simple way of life made entirely from ignoring other peoples’ rules, and Laszlo’s only idea of authority was the avuncular hand of Tomasso and the necessity of a ship’s routines.
I should never have sent him to Solarno. But it had seemed harmless at the time – even a kind of reward. The proximity to the Spiderlands should have kept the Empire away. Yet another thing I didn’t see coming.
He found it surprisingly hard to say: ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Tell him to let her go,’ Laszlo replied earnestly.
‘I cannot tell the tactician anything. And he’s right – you know he’s right, and you’ve admitted it yourself. She’s an Imperial agent.’
‘Was.’ Laszlo scowled mutinously. ‘She left them.’
‘And then she left us and, again by your own admission, signed up with the Sarnesh under false pretences. And can you say with absolute certainty that the Empire did not send her there to inveigle her way into the Sarnesh councils?’
He could see that Laszlo wanted to swear to that, but the Fly could not quite look him in the eye.
‘Mar’Maker, please,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m . . . afraid for her. That Milus, I don’t like him. He doesn’t care about anything except his own city.’
‘Nor should he,’ Stenwold stated shortly. ‘Just as I must have the same single-minded devotion to mine. This war has become a chain of terrible things, Laszlo, and some of them have been my doing, and there will be more to come.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The most I can do is sent him a message politely asking that this woman of yours be kept in once piece. If she’s sensible, and if she’s clever, she can keep herself off the rack until the war’s ended, and then the Sarnesh will have no more use for her, and probably they’ll hand her over. I can do no more.’
‘I’ll take the message myself,’ Laszlo declared.
‘You will not. I don’t need you stirring up trouble with our closest allies. I need the Sarnesh, and it doesn’t matter how unpleasant their leader may
be. ‘ Stenwold stood up laboriously. ‘The war comes first, Laszlo, and what we ourselves want comes a distant second. You know that I’ve more cause to say it than most.’
The Fly nodded unhappily. ‘You’re for the docks now, are you?’
Stenwold mentally reviewed the many tasks that awaited him, and made exactly the sort of decision he had just advised against. But they will not wait forever, and what would I seem, if I did not say goodbye?
‘Coming with me?’ he asked.
‘Don’t know.’ But when Stenwold strode from his office, the Fly went tagging along behind, still sulking a little, addressing the back of Stenwold’s belt. ‘Tomasso will just find something for me to do.’
‘What if I found something for you to do?’ Stenwold offered. ‘If you’re interested, that is? I need a liaison with the Tseni, for when their ships arrive.’
‘Would it help?’ Laszlo demanded, meaning, shamelessly, Would it help me?
‘It might,’ Stenwold cast back. ‘If you’re part of the Collegium military in some way, doing your bit for the defence of the city, that’s likely to make you more of a consideration in Milus’s eyes, anyway.’
‘Then I’ll do it.’
Oh, to be so young that you can make decisions just like that – with not a committee in sight. Stenwold sighed.
They made for the docks, near empty of ships, with only Tomasso’s Tidenfree and a couple of others rocking at anchor. The old pirate’s clinging on, then. The old wayhouse that had been Tomasso’s base of operations this last half-year had been pulled down within the last tenday, another page of Collegium’s history overwritten to deny the Empire cover for its artillery. Tomasso had taken it philosophically.
But he will not stay when the Empire gets closer, and I don’t blame him.
Tomasso and half his crew were meanwhile infesting the Port Authority, occupying a set of rooms given over to them partly because they had Stenwold’s favour and partly because the dock clerks were afraid of them. They had become considerably more respectable since Stenwold had first seen them, transforming themselves into citizens and merchants, yet never quite losing their piratical edge. Their new domain was cluttered with crates and sacks and boxes, the salvage from their clifftop retreat, and Tomasso was sitting on one pile as though it was a makeshift throne.
Fly-kinden, all of them there, save one.
She rose when Stenwold ducked into the room. He had spent as much time as he could with her, and she had stayed far longer than he had hoped, but now it seemed to him as though she had arrived only yesterday, and he had barely managed to spare her a moment.
‘Paladrya.’
She went to him and clasped his hands. The sun had burned her pale skin in some places, and her eyes were very red with drying out, and most of the food that land-kinden took for granted remained anathema to her, and yet she had dragged out her stay this long, and in the end he had been forced to set the date of her repatriation.
Out there to the east, the Second Army was growing close. Taki’s pilots had done their level best to slow them down, striking blow after blow against them, killing their soldiers, smashing their machines, and yet still they came, and soon there would be a reckoning. Stenwold did not want Paladrya to be in the city when that day came.
She saw it in his face. ‘It’s time, then?’
‘Wys is waiting.’ Tomasso spoke for him. ‘I mean, she’ll wait but . . .’
‘Your enemies . . .?’ Her eyes would not leave Stenwold’s.
‘We’ve beaten them back twice before. We’ll do so again, and maybe this time they’ll get the message,’ Stenwold told her. It was the same bluff sort of speech he had been using to assure Assemblers and magnates for the last couple of tendays. ‘But you’ve seen what they do, the damage they can cause.’ The city bore plenty of scars from the Imperial bombing raids. ‘I don’t want you here where you could get hurt.’ I don’t want to have to worry about you.
She nodded, ever the practical one. That was one more thing about her that tugged at his feelings.
She went with him to the docks, and stepped along one particular rickety pier that they both remembered from past adventures.
‘I know your first duty is to your city,’ she said, standing there and looking out across the limitless sea. ‘I know that if I place an obligation on you, to keep yourself safe, then that will come second. But even so . . .’ Her smile was hesitant. ‘And when your people are safe, will you still . . .?’
‘I will.’ With that dark, fathomless sea so plainly in evidence he had not thought he would have the courage to affirm his promise, but he found a curious weight was gone from him. All the crushing waters of the deep seemed a small thing, and he could picture the radiant light that was her home of Hermatyre. And simply the relief of not having every cursed man and woman in the city thinking I’m personally responsible to them for every little thing. No more committees. No Assembly. Seen like that, he was amazed he hadn’t already jumped into the water and started swimming.
Something was hanging there in the dark water, just visible as a great shape of coiled segments, large enough to scrape at the bottom, and with its rounded bulk almost breaking the waves. It was the Sea-kinden submersible run by Wys, Tomasso’s wife: their vital link between land and sea.
Paladrya leant towards Stenwold and kissed him almost chastely. ‘Cast off your enemies soon,’ she whispered, hanging there close to his ear for a moment longer, which told him she wanted to say more. He clasped her to him, suddenly aware of how delicate she was, feeling her wince as he touched her sunburned shoulders.
Then she stepped back and off the pier, plunging straight into the water like a knife, her Collegiate robes swirling about her. Anyone watching must think this some bizarre suicide, but of course her Art could draw life from the water as easily as from the air.
He watched the Sea-kinden vessel manoeuvring clumsily about, and then coast out into deeper water, sinking away until he could not make out any trace of it.
Then he turned back to the city, to his city, with its myriad demands.
There was a fair crowd of people waiting to see him when he arrived at the College. Some would have vital business about the war, others would have petty personal issues that were not worth his time, and often there was no way of telling between the two in advance. He noted a few faces that he knew he needed to speak to, made a mental list with them at the top, knowing that there would always be time-wasters who got through his guard and important people too modest to get themselves noticed. Shouldn’t Jodry be dealing with most of these? But that was unfair. The Speaker for the Assembly would have just as many suitors at his door. It was a by-product of Collegium’s participative government that everyone expected their voice to be heard. I’ll bet the Empress doesn’t get this.
He pushed through them, fending them off, telling them all in good time, asking for their patience; and they allowed him sufficient space to shoulder into the small study room he had commandeered. His careful list went to pieces then. Someone was already inside.
He noticed the woman only as he was sitting down. She had been standing very still, Art-shadowed: if she had been an assassin he would be a dead man. As it was, he froze halfway onto the chair seat, heart abruptly lurching as she made herself apparent to him.
He knew her, he realized. Her name was Akkestrae and she was one of the Felyal Mantids, their official spokesperson – Loquae as they called it. She wore an arming jacket and breeches, but they had been machine-made in the city, and the savagery in her had a near-transparent veneer of Collegiate urbanity, for all that she had come close to killing Stenwold once, under other circumstances. She was not one of the many refugees from the coastal hold that the Empire had destroyed, but had lived in Collegium for years, as leader of the little colony of expatriates that the city had accumulated. Now, though, she found herself responsible for a swollen community of angry, bitter exiles. She had stood alongside the Mynans and the Merchant Companies and the Vekken –
the Vekken, for the world’s sake! – before Collegium’s concerned citizens, to demonstrate that the Felyen were committed to the defence of the city that had taken them in, but Stenwold was well aware that the Mantids in his city were an unhappy, unruly lot. He had been expecting something like this.
‘Come on, then, out with it,’ he invited, sitting down at last. It was hardly a diplomatic opening but these days he was too tired for pleasantries, and she would not have appreciated it anyway.
‘The Empire is nearing the city,’ she told him, which was nothing he did not already know. At his nod, she continued, ‘My people are going to attack them.’
No surprises there. ‘I know it’s hard for you to be patient, but you’ve seen the work we’ve put into fortifying this city, making the approach hazardous for them—’
‘War Master, we are not asking your permission. We are informing you.’
He nodded more slowly. ‘What will you achieve, precisely?’
‘We will shed the blood of our enemies,’ she explained simply. ‘We will kill Wasps and Spiders.’
‘And your people have tried to attack the Second Army twice, and each time—’
‘War Master.’ The words fell from her mouth like lead weights: just his title, but enough to silence him. She paused for a count of three, but he found nothing to say that would brave that quiet.
‘War Master,’ she said again, more gently, ‘we are not fit for fighting behind walls. It is not our way. It is without honour. We do not defend. We attack. We bring the fight to the foe. And if we die, then that is also our way. There is no better ending for my people than in blood, and with the blood of enemies on our blades. Your people have your patience and your preparations, your walls and excavations and engines. I respect all you have. I do not belittle it. I have seen your city and its marvels. You are building a future here that will be the envy of the world.’ He had not heard such words from her kinden ever before. There was a surprising passion in her voice, a bitterness that made a mockery of her words. ‘But it is not our future,’ she continued. ‘If my people, in pursuit of our own ways, can rid you of some of your enemies, then that is good. But we will attack. We will not die behind walls.’
War Master's Gate (Shadows of the Apt) Page 24
