Seal of the Worm

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  He studied her for a long time. He knew full well that she had taken a shine to him, and he also knew that, on occasion, he had taken advantage of that to get her and her Ant friend to do things for him. He was not proud of that.

  But, still, here she was and with an obvious purpose, for all that she would not speak it. One word from him and he would be rid of her, and he could see her bracing for it, ready to risk the hurt, but hoping for the small chance that he might say something different.

  ‘What next for you?’ he asked her, instead.

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What about you?’ Relentless in her willingness to be put on the rack.

  He glanced over at the Tidenfree again. ‘You know, I was thinking of a spot of piracy.’ He took a deep breath, aware that he was doing something right for the wrong reasons – or perhaps the other way around. ‘How about you? Only Despard’s always after more help with the engines, and I think you know some medicine too . . .? Always handy, that.’

  There was such naked hope in her expression that he felt wretched for her, and, yet, who knew? There might be no Lissart in his future, or he might rid himself of his longing for her, and a man at his time of life should be realistic. There came a day when you had to stop chasing dreams.

  ‘Come on,’ he suggested, ‘I’ll introduce you to the crew.’

  ‘Willem,’ Eujen said, reaching for his stick.

  Willem Reader, aviation artificer, made a hurried gesture. ‘You needn’t get up.’

  ‘I’m going to, though.’ Eujen felt the gearing of his supports finally engage and, with a little help from his stick, he was standing within a relatively short period of time. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘I was beginning to wonder if the Sarnesh would let me leave,’ Reader agreed. ‘There were quite a few of us, in the end, who were asking just who the enemy was, that we were still helping them get ready to fight. I know it’s thanks to you and everyone else here, putting on the pressure, that they finally decided to act like civilized human beings again.’

  ‘In all honesty, it was your wife leading the charge.’ Eujen nodded at Jen Reader, who hadn’t let Willem out of her sight since his return. The Beetle woman gave him a tired smile, which Eujen returned with, ‘And, of course, congratulations on your election, Madam Assembler.’

  Jen shrugged. ‘I decided that if they still weren’t going to give the chief librarian a seat by right, then I’d cursed well earn one the hard way. And, believe me, Master Leadswell, I’m not just going to sit back and cheer while in the Assembly. There’s plenty I think needs changing around here.’

  ‘But perhaps not the surroundings?’ Eujen suggested. Around them stretched the ruins of the Amphiophos, the shattered wreck of Collegium’s seat of government. Here the bombs had fallen, in that terrible night of fire that had led to the Imperial air force’s undoing. Here the neutered Assembly had met under Wasp rule, to be dictated to by their conquerors. Grass was beginning to grow between the stones. ‘I think we should keep it like this. An aid to the memory, so to speak.’

  ‘Well, Master Leadswell, the man of the hour!’ Without warning, Sartaea te Mosca was there at his elbow. She was still painfully thin from the camps, but being back in Collegium had gone a long way to restoring her. ‘What a grave face, Eujen. Are you tired of your honours already, the very same day as the Lots voted you in?’

  He grimaced with embarrassment. ‘I’m not the only one who . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes, certainly yes.’ The Fly-kinden woman grinned shyly up at Jen. ‘Quite the new broom. A whole new Assembly, so many fresh faces.’

  ‘Well, those who did get elected are going to have to do some work for once,’ Jen pointed out. ‘That probably put off some of the old faces. Did Awlbreaker stand, in the end?’

  ‘Poll? No,’ te Mosca confirmed. ‘He said he would rather fix machines than cities. They voted in Metyssa, though. Plenty of people remember her stories, from when they were stuck in Sarn waiting to come home, and from when . . .’ For a moment she faltered, then hoisted her smile back up with a visible effort. ‘Let’s just say she’s remembered. Willem, the College Masters are now gathering. Shall we go and join the Gownsmen?’

  The artificer grimaced. ‘What’s left of them.’ Replacing vacant College posts was proving more difficult than voting in the elected members of the Assembly. ‘We’re not quite back the way we were, are we?’

  Eujen shook his head. Across what had once been the Assembly hall, the new government of Collegium – magnates, veterans, adventurers and mavericks – was finding itself a place where it could gather: on the broken tiers of the old seating, on the rubble, on the ground, under the sky.

  ‘Time to put the world to rights,’ he decided.

  Te Mosca smiled slightly, watching the Readers part company: he heading for the College seats, she for the Townsmen’s. The Fly’s expression was thoughtful, philosophical, a mirror to all the turmoil and change that these last years had witnessed. Then she looked up brightly. ‘I suppose I should follow my own advice and take my place. Oh . . . and, Eujen?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Congratulations, Master Speaker.’

  The young scholar managed a pained smile. ‘Given the work ahead, I can’t imagine what I can have done to deserve such a fate, but we’ll have to make the best of what we’ve got.’

  This had been an arena once, a place for gladiators and wild beasts to tear each other apart to sate the bloodlust of the mighty.

  How appropriate, Tynan considered.

  Looking around him, all he could see was division. Here, closest to him, were men representing the armies and garrisons and barracks – mostly junior offices, for many of the generals and colonels were sufficiently unsure of how this might play out that they were keeping tight to their little fiefdoms and preparing for the worst.

  Beyond, he could see little knots that represented the various corps, each with their numbers prescribed by Ernain’s cursed declaration – Slavers, Engineers, Quartermasters and more, plus a big crowd representing the various factora of the Consortium. The majority of those were Beetle-kinden, and mostly under the domination of the Bellowerns.

  And beyond them, thronging the raked seating, were the others: the unthinkable; those he had let in to sully the wheels of government.

  He broke away from the army seats and strode in their direction, scanning that offensive variety, seeing them as all the Wasps must see them. Here were representatives from every city in the Empire, and plainly many of them not at all sure that they hadn’t been lured here only to be murdered. He saw Grasshoppers and Bees, Ants and Mole Crickets, Flies and Beetles, even a couple of skinny little Skater-kinden from Jerez who somehow now had a say in the future of the state. We must be mad. We must all be completely mad. And yet, even on those seats, there were some Wasps: men – and a very few women – who had somehow won over the very people that they had ostensibly been oppressing. It was a new world of opportunity, and simply for that reason it was the anathema of the old regime.

  Another man was coming to meet him halfway. Ah, symbolism.

  ‘Ernain,’ he nodded. ‘Is it Captain, still?’

  ‘Just not “Captain-Auxillian”, General,’ the Bee-kinden agreed. ‘Second thoughts?’

  ‘More than you can believe.’ Tynan looked past the other man to the little band of Spider-kinden who had come in from Solarno and points south. The word was that the Aldanraic States – as the new term went for the land between Kes and Solarno – were still somewhat undecided as to what nation they belonged to, but then that was typical Spider-kinden for you. The thought brought a slight, sad smile to Tynan’s lips.

  The various families controlling those cities had sent mostly women to this gathering, he noticed, and to Tynan that showed that they were serious. In their midst he caught Merva’s Wasp features as she nodded soberly to him. Whoever would have thought it would go this far? she seemed to be saying.

  ‘The numbers are interesting,’ Tynan observed.
There were still far more Wasps here than any other kinden, but the rabble of others could just about balance them, if they were all pointed in the same direction. And of course there’s no guarantee that we Wasps will all see things the same way, either. Chaos! Surely it will be chaos. ‘I think the Consortium bloc is going to be deciding a great many things.’

  Ernain nodded. ‘Only if you’re thinking of us as your enemies, General. Who knows: maybe we both want to stick it to the Consortium.’

  Tynan managed a brief, cut-off laugh and, in its wake, he saw a businesslike look in Ernain’s eyes.

  ‘Are you ready?’ the Bee-kinden asked him.

  ‘Why me, Ernain?’

  ‘Because I trust you, and the cities will follow my lead for now. Because your own people trust you – you’re the closest thing they have to a hero. You negotiated an end to the war: a graceful surrender that preserved their dignity and the lives of their sons. And because an Assembly needs a Speaker, even an Imperial Assembly.’

  ‘How can we be an Imperial Assembly without an Empress?’ Tynan demanded, knowing that this battle was already lost.

  ‘You yourself said that there was no actual body. The Empress is . . . gone. Not dead, but gone. In her absence, we shall govern in her name.’

  ‘Until she returns in our hour of need?’ Tynan asked sardonically.

  ‘Perhaps. It’s worked out well, don’t you think?’

  Tynan looked out across the sea of faces, the sea of kinden, all those frightened people who wanted him to tell them how this was going to work. ‘Just so long as she never does come back,’ he remarked grimly.

  Months after, in the remote reaches of the Tharen mountains, a cloaked figure struggled through the high passes to reach the door of a reclusive community that almost nobody knew of, even amongst the Moth-kinden.

  The door was opened by a Wasp who had given up the life of a soldier a decade before. For a long time he stared at their visitor, not quite believing his eyes.

  Soon after, he was conducting the visitor through the lamp-lit halls, past all those others who had turned away from a military life and sought the peace of the Broken Sword.

  ‘I must ask,’ the Wasp said finally. ‘Your . . . scars . . .?’

  Esmail paused a long time before answering. ‘A small price to pay,’ was all he said, in the end.

  Soon after, he entered a room where a Dragonfly-kinden woman waited, with three children gathered nervously about her skirts.

  Esmail had come home.

  The road from the Exalsee to the Commonweal was a long one, and Maure never made it back. Instead, misadventure took her into the Empire in all its turmoil, stepping between the gears of government even as men such as Tynan were trying to fit them into place. She fed herself and kept herself free through her old trade of necromancy, calling up the dead and laying them to rest, easing grief and sorrow at a time when there was more than enough of both.

  What surprised her was how easily it came back to her. At first she thought herself mistaken – overestimating herself after that long spell in darkness when she had nothing at all – but in the end she had to conclude: No, this is real.

  All over the Empire, the Lowlands and beyond, other magicians were waking up to the fact that the magic, all that magic that had been locked away to maintain the Seal, was slowly coming back.

  As for Maure, she headed northwards every day that she could, and in the end crossed over the Empire’s far northern border to the rotting forests where the Woodlice live, those who had trained her, and who knew no strife, nor drew any great distinctions between Apt and Inapt, and who had the greatest libraries in the world, and there she made her home and lived for a long time.

  A year after the war, and finding that life in both Collegium and Solarno was no longer to her taste, te Schola Taki-Amre took an experimental orthopter, powered jointly by Nemean fuel oil and new metal gearing, past the west coast of the Lowlands to brave the storms and the open sea in order to either discover new lands or, alternatively, to circumnavigate the world.

  She never returned.

  Three years later

  They had left the broken Amphiophos forum just as it was, so that the city’s Assembly met under the open sky, and thus remembered, and managed to conclude its important business remarkably quickly when foul weather threatened. Around that open space, which had become known as the Assembly Gardens, the three years since the war’s end had cultivated the offices and staterooms and archives that the city could apparently not do without, under the firm guidance of Jen Reader as head of the restoration committee.

  And there was still restoration to be done, for the war had left the city with plenty of scars. When people complained, Reader simply told them, Be glad you’re not living in Myna. Everyone knew how much work the Mynans still had ahead of them.

  For the last few tendays the whole city had been alive with speculation. The recovery of Collegium – of the Lowlands as a whole – was sufficiently advanced that the Assembly had voted to hold the Games once more. The last time had been just before the first war, and the intervening years had burdened the Collegiates with other priorities that they were only now able to shed.

  The Games themselves were still a tenday away, but today would be a test of Eujen’s abilities as Speaker. He was aware that he would need to do well. The Lots were not so very far off, and any embarrassment now would be raked up when the time came for people to consider whether they still wanted him around. The fact that he was thinking in such terms vaguely disgusted him, but at the same time he felt considerably more sympathetic to those who had gone before.

  He lodged near the Amphiophos these days, but even the short walk still took him some time. He made it anyway, every working day. It was a point of pride for the only Assembler who had to remember to wind his legs up every evening. It reminded him, and all who saw him, never to take things for granted.

  The offices of the Amphiophos were bustling today, filled not just with the city’s representatives and the host of clerks and bureaucrats and errand-runners who made the wheels of government turn, but with a glut of foreigners. Everywhere one looked there were strange faces, the diplomatic staff of a dozen states come to Collegium to discuss the world’s ills.

  ‘Master Speaker.’ A Fly-kinden man of middle years found him the moment he had stepped inside.

  ‘Arvi.’ Eujen had taken the previous Speaker’s secretary on because, he had reasoned, at least someone at the heart of government should know what he was doing. ‘Our delegates?’

  ‘Most of them already in the Gardens,’ the Fly confirmed with pride, as though he had personally herded them there.

  Perhaps he did, Eujen mused. ‘I’ll rely on you to make the introductions.’

  ‘Of course.’ Arvi led the way, a little man with his head held high.

  Stepping outside again, into that sprawling walled garden where the Assembly now met, Eujen had to stop and stare. He knew a fair few of the faces, of course, but never before had they all been together in one place.

  He spotted the Vekken ambassador in deep conversation with a Sarnesh woman and the Tseni who spoke for the Atoll Confederation, or whatever that new business along the west coast was calling itself. Three Ants of different cities earnestly conspiring together, and Eujen wondered whether this would be the start of the united Ant nations that everyone was so worried about, and decided that he would bet against it. Not just yet, but who can say about tomorrow?

  A pale woman, heavily cowled, took his hand, nodding formally. She seemed a Spider-kinden save for the colour of her eyes. Arvi made the introductions a moment before Eujen could recall her name. ‘Paladrya of Hermatyre.’

  ‘Welcome again to Collegium,’ Eujen addressed her graciously, before his eloquence fell flat with ‘I hope it’s not . . . I hope it doesn’t bring back too many bad memories.’

  Her smile was private, solemn, and said nothing of her lost link to this city. Arvi had already scheduled a meeting between herself, E
ujen and the head of the Helleren Mint to talk about the currency problem. Shortly after the Lowlander cities became aware of the existence of the Sea-kinden, they became aware that the Sea-kinden could essentially produce enormous quantities of one hundred per cent pure gold, and the College economists were predicting the collapse of the mint unless somebody thought of something spectacular. Tomorrow’s problems . . .

  Passing on, Eujen exchanged curt, standoffish nods with the Moth delegate from Tharn. The Moths were a great deal more outgoing these days, seeming to have regained a drive and purpose that they had long been lacking. Eujen was not sure this was a good thing. Nobody wanted Collegium’s former masters raking up ancient history, and surely ancient history was what the Moths were good at. And yet, at the same time, it was becoming fashionable amongst the broader-minded Collegiate magnates to put a Moth on the payroll as a kind of oracular consultant. Alarmingly, there were even claims that this was money well spent.

  So who is Tharn speaking to these days? Eujen saw the Moth turn back to his conversation with the somewhat shabby-looking, greying Dragonfly – that princeling from the Commonweal who had supposedly been some sort of brigand not so long before. Beside them stood a lean, elegant Spider-kinden Arista who was probably from the so-called Aldanraic States that somehow managed to involve themselves in Lowlander, Spider and Wasp politics without ever committing themselves to anyone.

  ‘Master Speaker, this is Master Ceremon, translator to the Netheryen ambassador,’ Arvi announced, before Eujen could think too much about that.

  ‘Translator to the . . .?’ Eujen blinked at the Mantis-kinden man before him. ‘Ah, yes, of course. And is your . . .?’

  A slight shift in Ceremon’s stance, a slight motion of the eyes, led Eujen’s attention up to the thing that lurked behind him, half lost against the greenery and fallen stone, and standing so still as to be nearly invisible. Eujen managed a stiff, startled nod towards it, seeing the same motion mirrored into the hungry intent of those faceted eyes. He wasn’t sure whether sending a man-eating predator along to a conference of powers meant that the Mantis-kinden hadn’t quite understood modern diplomacy or that they understood it all too well.