Two streets away, in a little square within sight of the Corta chambers, Laszlo and the others alit on the rooftops to watch a hanging.
Hanging was for traditional Spider-kinden executions, and Solarno was a Spider city at heart: a dozen militia in their plated white leathers had strung up a halfbreed in plain view. Spider-kinden, of course, could not fly, but it turned out that their victim could, and in the end the spectators were treated to the hideously incongruous spectacle of three soldiers hanging off the wretch’s legs like men trying to wrestle a kite down in strong winds. Their weight told, though, and abruptly the man’s wings were gone, and the snap of his neck was audible across the square.
Breighl was bold enough to make enquiries, trusting to his militia contacts to shield him. The dead man had been a spy, he was told. A spy for whom? Nobody seemed to know.
The crowed was dispersing rapidly, most especially those who had come out from the taverna. The square seemed an unhealthy place to be, and Laszlo looked about for te Liss, reaching for her arm. ‘Come on,’ he told her, envisaging a quick jaunt back to his lodgings: wine and safety and an attempt to forget.
That distance between them was still there, though, and a moment later she was inexplicably with te Riel: on his arm, an inseparable part of him, as the man looked smugly over at Laszlo.
The Empire, Laszlo thought numbly. The Empire’s coming. A city-wide tragedy for Solarno, a personal tragedy for himself. Liss, like all freelancers, wanted to end up on the right side, after all.
Six
There was a wayhouse west of Skiel that was more than it seemed – not one of those disapproved-of-but-tolerated places run by the Way Brothers, but a proper army place, a regular stopover for soldiers and messengers and Imperial officials. Since the place had found its new purpose, just before the war with the Lowlands started, hundreds of Wasp-kinden had passed through and never realized that it was a trap.
The trap had remained unsprung all those years, until now.
When the Empire had mounted its invasion of the Commonweal it had gained the attention of the Moth-kinden in a distant kind of way. Most of the Skryres, the arch-magicians who ruled the Moths, cared nothing for the newly ascendant Apt race, but there had been a few concerned enough about the future to begin planning. Commonweal slaves had flowed into the Empire by the thousand, and some were recruited by the Arcanum, and some had already been agents, willing to risk the brutal life of a slave out of loyalty to their shadowy masters.
Before the war, Xaraea had worked tirelessly to prepare a few fallback places like this, taking her masters’ vague mandates and making them into hard reality. It had been foreseen, for example, that the Moths might one day need to capture an Imperial officer of some standing.
Esmail had made good time from the mountains of Tharn. He had not travelled like this for many years, but the habit had not left him. He passed through the countryside – whether Lowlander or Alliance or Imperial – like a ghost, taking what he needed, sleeping unnoticed in sheds and barns and warehouses, or out under the stars. The spring was cool, but the mountains had been colder.
He rode on an army automotive for much of the way once he had crossed the Imperial border: nothing but a ghost, unseen, unsuspected, listening to the idle chatter of the Consortium merchants and their slaves. They spoke of prospects and ambitions, the fortunes of common enemies, the free men and the slaves exchanging banter with a familiarity that they would have curbed instantly had any officer come near. They spoke of home and families, too, and when they did, Esmail stopped listening.
He did not know whether the Moths would keep their promise, to preserve his wife and children. He did not even know if they were capable of it but, if they had the power, they were still a subtle and treacherous people. They would dredge up crimes of his ancestors a thousand years old and call any punishment they exacted on him mere justice.
No choice, though. Not with her turning up without warning like that. Had he known what was coming, he might have risked the cold and the hunters to try and get his family away, but he had never been a seer. His magical talents lay in other directions.
The wayhouse in question, like most of them, was owned and run by the Consortium. The Beetle-kinden lieutenant in charge never guessed that five of his slaves had been suborned. Indeed, he was daily impressed by their efficiency. They had lived to please him for years, and solely for this moment.
Three days ago, a Wasp-kinden officer had arrived to spend the night on his way to the capital, and been detained. The slaves had taken him before he had ever reached the wayhouse, ambushing him on the road, and had kept him in the storage shed ever since. The Beetle-kinden lieutenant, of course, never needed to go into the shed, such was the efficiency of his slaves.
Those same slaves would be gone on the morrow, and their master would never understand why.
It did not escape Esmail’s notice that the capture of this man – this man who would be so extraordinarily important to the Assassin Bug’s immediate future – had happened after Esmail had left the phalanstery. One thing the Moths were good at was timing, arranging for the conjunction of what should have been unpredictable events.
The slave that approached him was a lean old Grasshopper-kinden, tall and cadaverous, his grey hair just a fringe about the back of his head. The other conspirators were staying out of Esmail’s way, in case the Moths had made some mistake, and he ended up helping the Rekef with their inquiries.
It was midnight now. The Beetle lieutenant and his guests were all abed, as were the rest of the staff, as Esmail was led into the storage shed. There, as promised, was a gagged and bound Wasp-kinden, his pack beside him lying open to display a sheaf of documents.
Esmail knelt next to him, seeing the Wasp’s eyes flare with hatred at this newcomer – Just some nondescript halfbreed, was the man’s first thought, no doubt. The prisoner looked to be a few years short of thirty, but his clothes were finer than mere army-issue would account for, and he had a couple of rings and a torc that all spoke of good family. It was his face that interested Esmail the most, though: high cheekbones, straight, dark hair worn a little longer than army standard, blue eyes set in that pale skin the Wasps had. Not a bad face, all told, and it could have been the setting for a great many virtues. Instead of which, of course, it was crawling with so much hate and loathing that there was no room at all for fear.
Esmail leafed through the papers, wondering what he would be taking to Capitas. They were trivial stuff, the sort of humdrum logistics reports that nobody would bother a man of the captive’s rank and station with: coded messages therefore, but that would not pose a problem.
The captive’s expression said plainly, I will tell you nothing, but he had not quite understood his situation or his purpose here.
Esmail took a deep breath, feeling rusty and out of practice. His training was no suitable pursuit for a family man, and he had not been sad to set it aside, either. In the back of his mind, however, he had always known that he would be calling on these hard-learned skills once again. Spies never really retired, they said, and it was true, whether talking of a Rekef man or a Lowlander agent or . . . what Esmail was.
The Wasp’s was a good enough face, he reflected again, and he should be grateful for that. It would be more familiar to him than his own soon enough, seen in every mirror, distorted in every polished piece of armour. He felt its contours, the straight nose, the slightly hollow cheeks, the squared-off chin, that slight nick beneath one ear that was probably a trophy of shaving rather than a duel. The prisoner had gone very still, and when Esmail reopened his eyes – blue eyes now, not his natural dark ones – the Wasp was trading fear and shock for all the other expressions he was capable of.
But Esmail was not finished yet. Some initiates of his mystery had to resort to crude torture to perfect their guises, or perhaps they chose to do so, but he had been trained in the higher arts of the spy, and had had his education finished off by the Moths themselves.
H
e put his hands either side of the man’s face and bent his head forward until their foreheads were almost touching.
Who? he asked, and the helpless, uncontrolled answer came back, Ostrec.
My name is Ostrec, Esmail told himself, knowing that he would answer to that name as swiftly as to his own – more swiftly even – as long as he wore this stolen face. Show me all that is Ostrec. Family, friends, contacts, rank, passwords, codes, missions.
The Wasp arched and twisted, the old Grasshopper leaning on him to hold him down, and his life began to tumble into Esmail’s mind in fragments and pieces, never to be quite assembled, never to be a complete whole, but with luck enough for Esmail to wear Ostrec’s shoes. After the initial incredulous horror, the Wasp was fighting him, an Apt mind forced into an Inapt arena and finding what defences it could. Ostrec hid his thoughts from Esmail just as he would keep them off his face before a superior officer, forcing the spy to hunt him through the rooms of his own mind, beating down doors, creeping through keyholes.
Esmail was an old hand at this, and at last he had enough: there were gaps still, odd holes and voids in his internal picture of Ostrec, but he knew that he could scavenge nothing more from the picked-out interior of the Wasp’s brain. He nodded at the Grasshopper: not a cut throat, with all the mess that would make, but a narrow stiletto rammed into the ear, neat and lethal and swift. The body would be disposed of far from here, never to be found again, if the Moths’ agents were any good.
Esmail straightened up, waiting for his joints to creak, but of course he was younger now, stronger and more vital. He ran a hand across his face, and it felt entirely familiar to him, as though he had been wearing it his whole life. He had put on Ostrec as a man donned a coat, taking up the Wasp’s memories, prejudices and loyalties, holding them at a slight distance so as to remain Esmail, and yet having nothing of himself showing to the world that was not Ostrec. The dead man’s own mother would not have known otherwise.
They were building a railroad depot at Skiel, but it would not be finished for months, so Ostrec was travelling by horse, with Esmail letting his natural skill decline to the basic competence of the Wasp-kinden. Because he could, and because Ostrec would have done so, he imposed himself on Skiel’s governor enough for a change of mount, so that he could make up for lost time on his way to Capitas. A lamed horse left behind on the road had already been concocted to explain why he was behind schedule, should anybody care to ask. Esmail lived out Ostrec’s pasts and futures in his head, even waking from black and gold dreams in the morning, weaving a web of anticipation to cover whatever he should encounter in Capitas.
The Moth Skryres had chosen well with this man. They could not have known the precise details of the victim they were offering up to Esmail, but their divinations had guided their hands to someone perfectly suited to the task at hand. Outwardly he was a lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps, but his Rekef rank was major, and he had spent the war travelling between armies and conducting purges of other Rekef men who had backed the wrong general. He had spent a lot of time in Capitas since, and been rewarded for his successes. He was returning now after digging out – and Esmail was startled to discover it – a cell of the Broken Sword that had established itself near the Mynan border. In the coded papers in his pack were confessions extracted on the artificers’ tables that implicated another three Broken Sword groups, for Ostrec had been a thorough man. Esmail knew that he should leave the entire business as it was, for meddling would only endanger his role and his mission. One night out from Skiel, though, he rewrote one page of the report, in Ostrec’s handwriting and using Ostrec’s codes, omitting all mention of such discoveries. He owed the Sword that much, and he had his own family to think about.
He had seen Capitas in Ostrec’s head, but the Wasp, a wellborn native, had a very skewed picture of it: all politics and hidden rooms, brothels, clandestine meetings, the houses of the wealthy. Seeing it with his own eyes, for all they had taken on Ostrec’s lighter colours, Esmail was taken aback. So large! And so foreign. The sky over Capitas buzzed with tiny machines, and the roads into it likewise; then he drew nearer, and the city only grew, and perhaps the machines were not so tiny, and then another shift of perspective, and yet another, until he realized that the stepped pyramids that dominated Capitas were far grander than he had thought, the surrounding crush of flat buildings far wider, everything about the place bloated and expanded beyond reason, and heaving with more human beings than he had ever seen before in one place.
Only Ostrec saved his composure, for, to the stolen Ostrec in his head, it was a sight of no great consequence: just another view of his home city which was commonplace to him. Guiding his horse between the stinking, grinding, rattling and stomping – automotives, Ostrec knew them to be – Esmail could only cling to his borrowed memories, using the Wasp’s jaded recollections to cut the looming threat of the city down to size.
Ostrec knew his way around, too. He had superiors waiting for his reports, and even if his parents had been on their deathbeds, that duty would have come first. It had not been loyalty with him, but ambition, for Ostrec knew who his future depended on. So it was that Esmail guided his horse to the stable yard of the Quartermaster Corps, leaving it unhobbled there without a word, knowing that the slaves would scurry out to take care of everything and that he, as a Wasp of some import, did not need to spare the animal another thought.
Once Lieutenant Ostrec of the Quartermaster Corps had paid his minimal respects – to superior officers who, Esmail could see, were well aware that he lived a double life that made him dangerous to offend – it was time for him to attend his real masters. There were not so very many Rekef colonels in the world, perhaps a half-dozen at the utmost after all the infighting, and only half of those were in Capitas at one time. The hand holding Ostrec’s leash belonged to a corpulent, jowl-faced monster of a man named Harvang, who had tiptoed his decaying bulk through the web of Rekef politics, taking each general’s orders in turn, whilst reporting on the other two to General Brugan, the eventual victor. Now Brugan was sole general of the Rekef, and Harvang had been tentatively rewarded, becoming a kind of secretary and doorkeeper to the great man. Examining this arrangement, and how Ostrec felt about it, Esmail found that he agreed with his borrowed identity that Brugan was keeping Harvang at arm’s length and in sight, just in case the man’s treachery had one more turn to it.
Harvang was at dinner, but from Ostrec’s pilfered experience this was generally the case at any time of day. When he saw his protégé stride in, though, the fat man lurched to his feet.
‘Where the pits have you been?’ Spittle streaked the air between them. Even as Esmail opened Ostrec’s mouth to reply, his words were being waved away. ‘Never mind. Hungry? Sit. Eat. Brugan has me hopping to him every cu’sed moment this last tenday. All manner of stupid Outlander business. Could have used you yesterday.’
Esmail picked at a plate of crabs in wine, watching as this huge hulk of a man paced ponderously back and forth. A neutral ‘Sir?’ was what Ostrec’s experience recommended.
‘Had to bring some cu’sed tyro scribe with me. Stuff not fit for a junior’s ears. Have to have them cut off, eh? Need someone taking notes who won’t end up signing his own death warrant.’ The light tone always suggested that Harvang was about to laugh, and yet he never did. Esmail had to force himself not to stare at the man’s teeth, like black and brown grave markers cramming his cavern of a mouth.
‘Need rest? You’ve until the fifth hour. Eat, sleep, stick one up a whore, just be here and ready for the general by then.’ Without warning Harvang had turned on his heel and was retreating from the room, burrowing deeper into his offices like a beast into its hole. The meal, a fair-sized banquet by Esmail’s standards, was abandoned without a second thought. Harvang’s servants must eat well, and perhaps that helped make up for everything else they endured.
The fifth hour came, and Ostrec had already presented himself, early as was his custom with superiors. Harva
ng emerged from his rooms, wiping grease from his hands, but his uniform tunic was spotless: severe gold-edged black offset by the glitter of a few war decorations. The Rekef did not give itself medals, but Harvang had been a capable army officer before the years had so bloated him.
Their destination was the palace. Ostrec kept to Harvang’s heels briskly, but behind his new face Esmail was suddenly wary. He was too much in the thick of it, too fast. Only a day in Capitas and already going before the general of the Rekef? Was he discovered, somehow? Or had the old Moths wrought better than they knew? A glance around Capitas’s streets gave him some comfort, for it seemed that everyone was in the same state of agitation. There were soldiers and clerks and slave and goods wagons all around, and every one of them furthering the manifest destiny of the Empire. Esmail had passed through Helleron a few times, that churning hub of commerce, and he had not imagined that two such huge cities could be so different. Helleron was a puppet worked by a thousand different competing hands, its wheels working against themselves often as not. Capitas perhaps lacked the perfect smoothness of an Ant city-state, but it had the same unity of direction, and on a scale no Ant had ever dreamt of.
I’m here none too soon, he realized. Every single human being around him, every machine, all of it was the war effort. He was watching the little stones that brought the avalanche.
Official Consortium records listed the place as Factory Nine, Capitas, but its residents referred to it as the Colonel Valrec Street Place, after the thoroughfare that ran between their place of work and the tenements that most of them lived in. Capitas itself was not the centre of heavy industry that might be found to the west, in Sonn, but there was still a sizeable factory district: a large paperworks, the main Imperial mint, and various factory lines churning out uniforms and the sundry small items an army might need: pens, packs, boots, weighing scales, buckles, harness, all the tiny but essential pieces of a military machine.
The Air War Page 8
