Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  And beyond him rose another face, like a brother to his own, and twisted with its own individual rage. Another Scarred One.

  Che was moving in that instant, barging past the Hermit, almost knocking him into the pit where the soulless things below would surely have torn him apart and devoured him. Her sword cleared its sheath with the effortless ease she always imagined Tynisa must feel when her rapier leapt to her hand. She was inspired, driven. She had purpose.

  The cicatrized priest had his mouth open, the first howl against blasphemy escaping his lips. The enormity of what he saw had rooted him to the spot. He made no attempt to defend himself or step clear of her lunge. She killed his voice within his throat, all the force she could muster driving that sharp point up to the hilt in his neck, seeing that pallid face contort with agony and outrage, and for a moment attain a sort of humanity.

  The Scarred One staggered and dropped, twitching, but now she became aware of a wider disturbance that centred on herself.

  The Worm was awakening to her presence.

  All around her, all throughout the city, the warriors, the segments, had stopped their concerted bustle. They stood like men waking from a dream, and then their heads began turning towards her. The same eyes looked out from a hundred faces, a thousand, searching for this imperfection in the heart of the Worm.

  She caught her breath, the Scarred One’s blood on her sword, because what could follow now but utter extinction?

  Then the Hermit had seized her wrist, hauled her towards him, and in his other hand was his long knife. For a moment she thought he had suffered some change of heart, fallen victim to the Worm once more, abandoned Orothellin and humanity in one brief step. Then the blade licked across her forearm, scoring a twisting line of pain and blood, a jagged spiral to join the blood-matted gouge on her upper arm.

  For a moment after that, absolutely everything in that city of the Worm was still.

  The multitude of the warriors blinked, all at once, as though caught in mid-thought and forgetting what they had been doing. They then returned to their busy labours, and she saw that more and more of them were joining that great spiral – that it was growing to encompass the whole city around them, thousands of the Worm’s bodies threading through the streets, marching inexorably on that vanishing centre.

  Clawing their way towards the sun.

  ‘We must go,’ the Hermit insisted. ‘More Scarred Ones will come. They will know something is wrong. We must escape.’

  This time she did not resist him.

  When they had put the city behind them, with its buried god and its child pits, he turned to her. ‘You regret now, do you not? You wish you had never asked.’

  ‘I do not.’ She faced up to him without flinching. ‘Because I know more than ever that it must be destroyed, all of it. You have given me purpose, Hermit.’ Perhaps this buried chasm was no proper soil for hope to grow in, but that did not preclude a purpose. She defied anyone to see what she had seen and not take purpose from it. She felt herself on fire with a rage that burned as bright as the writhing silhouette of the Worm had been obscure.

  And in the back of her mind she explored what had been returned to her when she had got far enough from the city to escape the deadening hand of the Worm: some faint recollection of magic had crept back into her. She had felt that bond, that tenuous link to the outer world that had always been there, but so faint that only by having it taken away and then restored could she know it was real.

  Are you seeing this, Seda? she demanded silently. Do you understand now what you have done?

  Twenty-One

  She awoke thrashing at her sheets, eyes open but seeing only that dark place and stark grey images of horror torn from another woman’s eyes.

  Seda had ridden the waves of Che’s own despair and it had infected her, but it was not the children of the dark world that had touched her. The breeding of slaves was beneath her; let them live or die as they chose.

  She had seen through Che’s eyes, but her mind had remained her own. She tore herself from sleep with a true understanding of what would happen to the world – her world! – and of the rules the Worm was breaking just by existing.

  A vast void in the shape of a centipede. Kinden blurring into other kinden. A homogenized world contained within the freezing guts of a mindless ignorant god, forever and forever.

  That was the future.

  Morning in Capitas. As she stepped onto the floor of her chamber, she thought she could feel the ground tremble slightly, even from so many storeys up. The armies of the Worm were coming. There was no way of knowing where they would strike next. Nobody was safe, and there was no way to retaliate.

  Seda could only close the door on them, leave them to their obscenities. Let them practise their rites on their slaves in the darkness. Let them scrape to their god, only let them not open the way for it to come here, and devour the sun.

  For a moment, a great wave of hopelessness threatened to overwhelm her: the thought that none of it would be enough, that her painstaking calculations were wrong, that the entire concept was misguided. How do I know this will work? And, of course, she could never know, not until she had done it and seen the results. And there would only ever be one chance for her to stopper this bottle, to bury the Worm forever.

  Because it’s my fault. I let them out. I must force them back.

  But I must be right. I must be sure. Better to go too far than not far enough. I have no time for subtlety.

  From the corner of the room, Tisamon watched her impassively, and she strode over to him, trying to read condemnation in his face – trying to read anything in his face. His pale dead features regarded her and did not judge. He was her creature, and he was the only one she could rely on. The rest – her generals, Brugan, all of them – they were mortal, fallible, weak. She must make use of them, for want of any better, but they were all poor tools. How is it that my people have come to this?

  Once she stepped from her chambers, her anguish and desperation were left behind. She was the Empress; people bowed before her and feared her.

  In her throne room she dismissed the waiting suitors and advisers and petitioners, all the detritus of state. She spared time only for her Red Watch, spread as it was across the Empire and beyond. In her mind she moved it as she would chess pieces, each member with its particular instructions and mandates coming to its mind inexplicably but irresistibly. It was her voice. That was no idle boast.

  After that she summoned a handful of Consortium officers, men of the Quartermaster Corps and veteran slavers, those to whom she had entrusted the minutiae of her plan. None of them truly understood what this was all for and, though of course they did not question her, she suspected they did not even ask questions of themselves. If the Empress wanted an unprecedented concentration of slaves, whole camps crammed full of the luckless Inapt, then why should that raise an eyebrow, beyond the intellectual exercise of arranging the logistics?

  They reported to her patiently and carefully, checking their numbers with each other. They confirmed that every airship of any size that the Empire could make use of had been diverted; that vessels crammed with the spoils of the war with the Spiderlands were coasting north up the Silk Road; that the Principalities were selling off their Dragonfly serfs with an open hand; that the Grasshopper-kinden of Sa had been culled, a full one in four currently on forced march towards Capitas. They spoke dispassionately about death rates: those who would not make the camps because of the pace or the overcrowding. They were regretful but only because such waste diminished the value of their service to her.

  And she sat and listened to those dry voices, these men whose only war had been fought on paper, or against an enemy already in chains, and she felt a spasm of revulsion go through her that she should need such men, and that she should need this venture.

  They will remember me as the mad Empress. History will never forgive me. Even though we win, history cannot condone what it is we do here. But I pay that price, and
I make all these others pay that price. To save the world.

  Put in those words, it sounded almost convincing.

  ‘It’s not enough.’

  The words were hers. She could not deny them.

  To save a world from the Worm, great sacrifices would have to be made. The Inapt made better gifts to oblivion, but she could not afford to restrict her ambitions. The Apt were still valuable to her, and she had far more of them still at her disposal. Entire cities full of them, if need be. Even if it took ten Apt deaths to equal one of the Inapt, why then, she would just find some place with Apt to spare, and have ten times as many killed.

  ‘Your Imperial Majesty,’ one of the Consortium men began, ‘forgive us. There are limits to what even the resources of the Empire may accomplish in so short a time. And there is the matter of feeding the slaves at the camps, keeping them alive for . . .?’ His small eyes searched her face for some indication of that ‘for. . .?’

  And indeed, although she herself knew what for, how could she possibly accomplish it? She could hardly haul each one in turn to the museum for a ritual bloodletting. Could she ask Tisamon to pass amongst so many thousands to cut their throats? Even he – even being what he now was – would take too long about the task. And that was just the camps themselves. She had heard their reports regarding the numbers they were gathering. Surely that would not be enough, for the colossal hubris of the ritual that she was planning. Even the ancient Moths would not have dared what she was intending. The power she would require was unprecedented. Only an unprecedented toll would pay for it.

  I could have my soldiers shoot them. Why not turn to the weapons of the Apt one last time? The blood would still flow, and it would be quicker. It could be effected with all the efficiency of these modern times.

  But even then . . . and how many am I relying on to follow such orders? Too many, surely. And they would fight back, the Inapt slaves, and a city of the Apt even more so. Can I be sure that such bloodletting is possible, even with every soldier in the Empire at my bidding?

  Do I even need the blood? Is that not simply an antiquated concept of savage peoples? What is blood, after all, but a symbol for the real power: death.

  Death is all I need.

  She dismissed them, the entire pack of them, exhorting them to double their efforts, and for a while she brooded, seated on the throne with only Tisamon for company.

  Then she beckoned a servant close.

  ‘Bring me General Lien,’ she directed.

  The Engineers had done so much for the Empire in recent years. Perhaps they would come to its rescue again.

  When General Marent returned to Capitas from his unexpected trip to Collegium, he could readily ignore all those questions that inferior ranks dared ask of an army general. The only voices he would truly have to answer to were the Rekef and the Empress, and neither sent for him. General Brugan was seen less and less at the palace, so that some were beginning to say he was a spent force, and the Empress . . . The Empress was fixated on her own concerns, rumour of which was now rife across Capitas. She had a grand project, it seemed, but the more her people found out about it, the less they understood.

  What could she need so many slaves for? Most assumed there would be some elaborate entertainment once the war was done, though even the optimists murmured that surely victory was not so imminent as all that. Others wondered at the creation of some new all-Auxillian army to throw against the Lowlanders, some hundred-thousand-strong suicide detachment in a vast war of attrition.

  Marent waded through the questions of his inferiors without deigning to engage, brushing them aside before returning to his troops. Against the fact of a general jaunting across half the world without orders, nobody bothered enquiring as to why he had brought a Captain-Auxillian of Engineers back with him.

  Ernain had orders signed by Major Oski to seek out parts and mechanical supplies because that had always been a beloved dodge of the Engineers to enable them to go wherever they liked at a moment’s notice. He would have preferred having Oski at his side as he stepped onto the Capitas airfield, but the Second Army’s chief engineer was not as free to skip about the world as General Marent.

  The Vesseretti Bee-kinden had been the Empire’s first major conquest. That meant that by now they were everywhere: Auxillian soldiers, house slaves, Consortium men, labourers. A sturdy-framed and hard-working people, with a good grasp of all the Apt world had to offer, they were valued by the Wasps for their skill and industry. They fetched high prices, and as soldiers were often promoted to the lower ranks. The Wasps had almost forgotten the savage struggle their grandfathers had gone through to subdue the Bee city.

  The Vesseretti had not forgotten, though.

  Ernain remembered finding his way to his home city during the reign of the traitor governors, when the whole Empire was teetering on the brink. There had been grand meetings, open demonstrations, stand-offs between the beleaguered Imperial garrison and the locals. It had then seemed as though the Bees would throw off their shackles and declare independence.

  Ernain’s voice had been loud at those gatherings. He had argued against. Vesserett was not so very far from Capitas. Whether the Empress or her rivals prevailed, Ernain had seen clearly that his city would not be able to hold on to its freedom. It was too alone, too cut off. They were not ready.

  Instead, the Vesseretti had put away their ambitions and stepped back from the battle line. The turmoil in the city had subsided, and it had been made plain to the Wasp governor that the Bees were – after some considerable thought on the matter – loyal.

  That had been the moment Ernain had held his breath: would there be purges? Would the Rekef descend upon his people to punish them for what might have been?

  But the governor had understood. He had seen, there and then, that the Bees could have torn down the black and gold flag, and that they had not done so. There were no reprisals. Indeed, after the Empress’s victory, in which Vesseretti Auxillian troops had played their part, a few new freedoms had crept into the city, for even slaves could be rewarded for their loyalty. Other city-states had made the same calculated decision, as Ernain was well aware.

  The plan had arisen out of the ashes of that civil war. It was not Ernain’s plan, not quite, but he had contributed to it. It was the work of many hands, with more hands joining all the time.

  In Capitas he presented himself at the house of a Consortium magnate, ostensibly in quest of missing deliveries. It was a flimsy enough ruse – for who would trouble a colonel over such things? – but there was a curious feel to Capitas just then. Great invisible wheels were turning, centred about the palace and the Empress. Nobody was inclined to question small matters such as this.

  The man that Ernain met was an old Beetle-kinden, Auder Bellowern, the senior scion of that sprawling clan whose fingers were in just about everything the Consortium ever did. He was prosperously fat, his hair white and wispy against his dark skin. At his shoulder was his body servant, a Vesseretti girl less than half his age, whose company the man vastly preferred to that of his wife. The girl was Alysaine and she was Ernain’s introduction.

  Around them, the magnate’s study was virtually choked with the collected trinkets of a lifetime of avaricious acquisition, a clutter matched in value only by the utter disorder of its display.

  The Beetle looked him over, his face avuncular, his eyes all measurement and judgement. ‘You’re the fellow, then,’ he noted.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘You don’t look completely mad. I’d expected you to come in foaming at the mouth and babbling Moth prophecies or something.’ At a gesture from the old man, Alysaine poured two bowls of wine. Ernain took his with a nod of thanks.

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected you to ask a madman into your home, sir.’

  ‘Nonetheless, you are quite mad, Captain. I’ve been let in on your plans to only a modest degree and I can still see that.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m sure you have a great deal of supp
ort from . . .’ Auder’s hand flicked towards Alysaine. ‘For her sake, I’ve listened. Bold plans without any visible means of execution. Even with the support of myself, or a dozen men like me, you cannot win because your plan does not address the heart of the matter.’ He nodded towards one of his windows, and Alysaine hurried to unshutter it. Auder Bellowern’s house commanded a good view of the palace.

  ‘Matters are in hand, sir. It is simply a matter of awaiting the right opportunity.’

  The old Beetle snorted. ‘No plan ever worked that relied on waiting.’ He shook his head against Ernain’s attempted reply. ‘Oh, you pin your hopes on the Lowlands, but you’ve no guarantees. What if the Empire crushed them tomorrow? Where would your plan be then?’

  ‘Intact, sir,’ Ernain told him, ‘because the Empire will not change unless change is forced on it. What will all those generals do without an enemy? They will find a new one, or they will fall upon each other. Now we are ready to exploit it, the Empire will give us our opportunity.’

  ‘You plan for the long term, then?’

  ‘What other plans are worth making? You know enough, sir. If you passed my name to the Rekef, then you have sufficient information to have me racked and executed, though the plan would persist and prevail even so. Or perhaps you think this is worthy of your support.’