War Master's Gate (Shadows of the Apt)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  He knew the other gates to the city were already blockaded by Imperial and Spider troops, and anyone trying to escape the city would get a snapbow bolt for his pains – as some had already found out.

  Laszlo slumped into the automotive as the driver called, ‘Where next?’

  Where indeed? He met Stenwold’s eyes, hearing his short, painful words.

  ‘Get us back to the College,’ Laszlo translated. Where else was there?

  He had kept watch through the last hour of the night from the roof of this rundown little house. Not his own grand townhouse, close to the College, which everyone knew as the home of Jodry Drillen. This ramshackle place, kept in careful disorder, which he disappeared to when he was ducking official business or keeping clandestine assignments. Or he had done, when he was younger, and less a prisoner of his own sagging flesh.

  Now he stood up and went downstairs into the house itself, calling for his secretary.

  Arvi appeared, looking as though he was already attending Jodry’s funeral, and the Speaker for the Assembly scowled at him. ‘Nobody has any faith,’ he muttered. ‘Get my Assembly robes, will you? Might as well make a good impression.’ And that was not just provincial Lowlander thinking, either. The robes of an Imperial diplomat might be edged in black and gold, but even they were modelled on the Collegiate Assembly’s particular style. We have led the world in times of peace, he reflected. Could we have done more with that influence? He thought of Eujen Leadswell, unregarded demagogue and chief officer of the Student Company. He would say yes to that, and perhaps he was right, after all. Our chosen path doesn’t seem to have brought us anywhere useful.

  By that time, Arvi had attired him as a man worthy of his position, every fold and drape immaculate, Jodry was embarrassed to hear the normally unflappable little man snivelling as he did so.

  ‘Now get off to your family,’ he directed.

  ‘My mother died two years ago, Master,’ Arvi reminded him in a shaky voice.

  ‘Of course she did, I’m sorry. Get to . . .’ Jodry found that the world had become a place short of safe harbours. ‘I don’t know. You’ll be all right. Even the Wasps value a good secretary.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ the Fly-kinden hissed, horrified.

  Jodry didn’t have the energy to argue with him. ‘I’d write you a reference, but I don’t imagine that would do much good. For what it’s worth, you’ve been a useful fellow to have around.’

  Arvi had stepped back, and was staring at his feet, as if not trusting himself to reply, whereupon Jodry gave a great sigh and stepped out of the house, into the grey dawn air.

  The walk, the few streets to the gate, seemed the longest of his life. Emerging from the buildings out onto that square was almost too much for him. The bodies of the previous day’s fighting had been taken away, but three Sentinels kept silent watch, like monumental effigies in steel. Above them, the top of the wall was now lined with Wasp-kinden soldiers, snapbows at the ready, hundreds of them, and all with their eyes fixed on him. There were more at ground level, men in heavier armour, with spears shouldered, stepping out from the gate’s shadow cautiously, to watch this one fat old Beetle-kinden man approach them.

  Jodry fought to retain his dignity, that smooth progress that was the mark of a confident, self-contained man. He kept his head high, meeting their massed gaze as best he could. For all that his feet wanted to slow down as he neared the Sentinels, he kept up a steady but unhurried pace.

  Then the leftmost Sentinel moved, just a fluid, irritable shifting of its legs. He jumped back with a brief cry of alarm, and a ripple of derisive jeering coursed across the wall top.

  The armoured infantry had meanwhile formed two lines, an honour guard of sorts, funnelling him into the gatehouse. With a deep breath, Jodry approached them, feeling his heart knocking harder and harder in his chest, his guts turning to water. They had such hard, pale faces! Surely even the Felyen had been gentler of aspect when they marched off to their deaths.

  He halted. He could not help himself. He could see through the gate now to the far side, to the camp of the Second Army, the thousands that backed up the hundreds already on the wall. His eyes sought some sign from the soldiers beside him, but they seemed to be staring past him, waiting for him to step within.

  I could just walk away. But he felt they would shoot him for cowardice if he did.

  Mustering his courage, gathering great handfuls of it and clutching it to him, Jodry walked through the gate of his own city, and into the enemy’s camp.

  Some manner of officer approached him, and he called out, ‘I bring the word of the Assembly!’ The Wasps all around him seemed so different from his own people, such a fierce warrior breed, that he almost felt that they would not understand human speech.

  ‘With me,’ the officer said. ‘You’re expected.’ And he was already marching off at a pace that made Jodry hustle to keep up, out of breath after only half a dozen steps.

  General Tynan met him in a tent, perhaps the finest that Jodry had ever seen, multi-roomed, its heavy fabric woven with gold thread. It seemed more opulent by far than the house he himself had spent a sleepless night in. Possibly it was worth more, too.

  The Wasp general wore armour, and presented a surprisingly down-to-earth figure: just a bald, ageing soldier after all, with a few scars and a steady gaze, sitting on a camp stool. Before him was a folding table on which paperwork sat half completed, reservoir pen only now laid down, as though the master of the Gears was just some quartermaster’s clerk. Or, perhaps, the Speaker for the Assembly.

  The woman beside him provided all the glamour he lacked, elegantly beautiful in armour of white-dyed leather ornamented with gold arabesques, and Jodry knew that this must be Mycella of the Aldanrael, the Spiderlands Arista. A heavily armoured Spider man stood at her shoulder, staring at Jodry as though his bulk hid a team of assassins. At Tynan’s shoulder was another Wasp officer, a colonel but with some corps insignia that Jodry could not place.

  ‘My name is Jodry Drillen,’ he began, keeping his voice admirably calm. ‘I am the Speaker of the Assembly, duly elected by the will of the people of Collegium, and come here to answer your demands.’

  ‘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 o
f 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-cherished 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 atte
ntion 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.