Nine

‘Who else is aware of this?’ asked Alvdan, revealing just a hint of uncertainty that was unbecoming in an Emperor. The news had shaken him a little.

‘The servants within the harem, and of course the other concubines,’ General Maxin said. ‘Two other servants from the palace proper. They are presently being held to my order.’

‘Let it be known they have incurred our displeasure,’ said Alvdan, which meant death, of course: he had taken a liking to the phrase recently. ‘General, this could have just as easily been our throat laid open.’ He splayed his hands anxiously, feeling the charge of his sting build in them. The news was so fresh that he was still in his nightshirt, alone with General Maxin in his bedchamber, even his personal body servants having been dismissed.

‘The chief of the harem guards shall be disciplined, your Imperial Majesty,’ said Maxin smoothly.

‘She shall be more than disciplined, General!’

‘Your Imperial Majesty, we must not draw unnecessary attention to this.’

Alvdan looked at him, narrow-eyed. ‘You mean the situation in Szar?’

‘I do.’ General Maxin’s mind was spinning, laying the pieces of his plan into place. Another step intervening between the Emperor and his Empire. Another few bricks in the wall he was building around the man, until it was General Maxin who would have sole access to the throne – and thus become the power behind it. ‘The Bee-kinden of Szar are extremely important to the war effort. You must know how much we rely on their foundries and forges. The presence of their queen here has so far guaranteed their loyalty. As a result our Szaren garrison is currently one of the lightest in the Empire.’

‘Have it strengthened then, and damn their suspicions,’ Alvdan snapped. ‘Who would inherit now? How do the Bee-kinden manage their idiot succession?’

‘By simple primogeniture in the female line. There are two princesses and a prince, my records tell me.’ Maxin said. He had known of Tserinet’s death for less than an hour but he had the most efficient clerks in the world within the Rekef’s administration. ‘Maczech, the eldest princess, is currently a house-guest of the garrison commander, Colonel Gan, treated with all honour but still a hostage to her mother’s good behaviour. The prince, her junior and not eligible by their customs anyway, is an Auxillian captain garrisoning Luscoa near the Commonweal border. The younger girl is about twelve and lives in Szar with her family. She is not of the direct royal lineage but a niece to the late queen. We must move carefully, your Majesty, and meanwhile I will ensure that Maczech is kept secure.’

‘Do so,’ Alvdan agreed, ‘and think up some excuse for tripling the garrison at Szar. Tell them we are suspicious of another Mynan rebellion or something.’ He sighed. ‘It seems today shall no longer be mine to dispose of. The Sarcad was to examine my sister once more, was he not? Let him know he should proceed in my absence, because I shall not have time to indulge myself.’

As if suddenly struck by a thought, or hearing a voice otherwise unheard, Uctebri grinned to himself, needle teeth stark white against withered lips. He was such a repulsive little man when he was not concentrating on impressing her, she decided, with his head bald and veiny, and his scant, lank hair thin and grey. His features were hollow, his lips wrinkled and the few fangs they concealed were like needles of bone or the lancing teeth of fish. On his forehead, beneath his translucent skin, was a red patch that constantly shifted and squirmed, and his eyes . . . his eyes were evil. Seda had not believed in evil before she met him. His red and piercing eyes seemed to stare into her very being, flaying her layer by layer.

But he claimed to be on her side, so that must be all right.

Seda, youngest and sole surviving sibling of the Emperor, did not trust Uctebri the Sarcad one fraction, yet still he was more on her side than anyone else she knew. He had a use for her, clearly, while to the rest of the world she seemed simply to be filling space. Or at least until Alvdan had decided on the succession, whereupon she would finally incur his displease, as her brother was now phrasing it. She would be then seen no more in the world of men, which was Uctebri’s phrase, and one she marginally preferred.

Uctebri called her Princess sometimes, too, a Commonwealer title she had no right to, but that was pretty enough. In truth she could not even claim to be a Chattelaine, the half-derogatory term for an influential Wasp’s wife. She had neither husband nor household. Her life, her bloodline, had left her nothing but fear as an inheritance.

Seda had never known her grandfather, and her father had spared no time for her, but here was a surrogate relative of an older generation for her: Uncle Uctebri of the fabled Mosquito-kinden that they frightened children with. When he made the effort, he showed her exactly how his grotesque kind had survived so long. When he put his mind and his Art to it, he could show himself so engaging and compelling that she found herself forgetting his grotesque appearance and provenance.

He claimed he was preparing her for the ritual that her brother so much desired, a ritual that would gift Alvdan with eternal life. She believed none of it. What she did believe, though, was that Uctebri did not trust her brother. It was a sentiment she easily concurred with.

And so, by delicate stages, they had become conspirators.

She was supposed to be strapped to a couch, laid out for him to hunch over and probe and touch. When her brother was watching they would play the charade out. In his absence, however, Uctebri would use his Art to muddy the mind of her guard, then she could be unstrapped and sit up for a more civilized encounter.

‘Your brother needs more to think about,’ the Mosquito informed her. His voice was a soft rustle.

‘If he is growing impatient, surely you can baffle him, O Sarcad,’ she challenged. She liked to play at games of strength with Uctebri, and he gained a distant enjoyment from them that he would never draw from any experiment upon her body. Despite her royal bloodline that all but touched the throne, she was in fact alone and had nothing. He enjoyed seeing her test herself against him. In fact he encouraged it.

He had plans for her.

‘Yes, he will grow impatient if my anticipated services are all he can expend his thought on,’ the Mosquito admitted. ‘I will have the Shadow Box soon but, until that oaf Maxin has recovered it for me, I shall attempt no ritual, either for you or for him. Until my wages are paid I shall have to take his mind off things.’

‘What do you propose?’ she enquired.

He gave her a smile, a quick flash of those needle teeth. ‘Would your brother be distressed to discover one of his concubines was dead, do you think, Princess?’

‘No, why would he care?’ she almost laughed at the thought. ‘I can’t think of a single man, woman or child whose death would discomfort him. Not even that bastard Maxin’s.’

Uctebri steepled his delicate fingers. ‘You do him an injustice, for at this moment he is particularly distressed. The death of one of his harem has just upset many of his plans.’

She stared at him. ‘Explain yourself, Sarcad.’

He drew close, raising one cold hand to softly touch her face. ‘I have known both kings and queens in my time, and in my long experience they are quite unsightly. What a bloodline you have! Your brother, so regular of feature, handsome and well proportioned – quite the hero-king of legend. And you, my dear princess, what a queen you might make.’

She shivered because, although the thought was not new to her, it was still the worst treason to express it. ‘The Empire has no queens. No woman can inherit.’

‘So says a history all of merely three generations old.’ Uctebri’s lips twitched. ‘I am older than your Empire, and I know how these things can change. Maybe, if a certain bold young woman should begin to unfurl her wings . . . especially with her brother so distracted.’

‘Distracted by what? Tell me plainly, will you?’

‘The Queen of Szar killed herself last night.’ His protuberant red eyes glinted, bleakly pleased. ‘She had been oppressed by dark thoughts for night after night. It was inevitable, really.’

‘You are a monster,’ Seda chided him.

‘You disapprove, O Queen-in-waiting?’

She realized that, beneath it all, she did not. It meant so little to her, the fate of some woman she had never met. How like him I am, at heart. ‘Speak on.’

‘Naturally, the news is confined to the harem, and it is your brother’s intention that it should stay there.’

‘I understand the nature of the hold we have on Szar and the Bee-kinden.’ She forced herself to look into those bloody eyes, but his Art had started working on her now, so that they appeared almost benign – the malice in them dissolving before her gaze.

‘I rather think the sad news may become known in Szar sooner than might otherwise be expected,’ Uctebri said, delicately.

‘You can . . . But of course you can. But this will damage the Empire.’

‘Which is a merely a weapon in your brother’s hands at present. Time enough later to whip your subjects back into line,’ he told her. ‘For now, I think it best that your brother finds himself ever more deeply involved in matters both within the Empire and without. It is only to your benefit, Princess, because you will need all the space for manoeuvre that you can muster. You have a great deal of work to do, I believe.’

‘And should I start by granting the boon I see you about to request of me?’

Her remark left him absolutely silent, his red eyes gleaming as he examined her.

‘I read it in your face, monster,’ she said softly. ‘Have I not done well?’

He suddenly bared his teeth in a smile of true approbation. ‘Oh, well done, Princess. My kind are not so easily read, after all. Your skills are impressive, but then you have survived by them these last several years, have you not?’

‘Oh, I have, at that.’

‘You are perfect,’ he observed, with such utter sincerity. He was grotesque and hideous of spirit, and she was just a tool to him, but she was an implement that he valued and even had care for. It was a bitter truth that the Princess of the Empire had no other who showed her any greater regard than that, but it was a truth nonetheless.

‘We shall meet again tonight. I shall have them bring you to me. My invention is limitless when it comes to finding excuses to enjoy your company. So you shall come to me tonight, and we shall enact a little ritual all of our own. It is time you were tested.’

She dressed for him carefully. She wore a gown of red, in respect for his overriding obsession, that was worked with black in complex patterns at the hems. It was some Dragonfly war loot that had eventually found its way into her wardrobe, never worn before.

She sat before her mirror, with her body servants, and had them tend to her make-up as though she was to be flaunted before generals.

A test, she thought, and what if I fail? If she failed then, at least, when the worst came, she would look a true princess. In the Commonweal, where her dress came from, the women wore swords. She would have girded on a blade too, if custom had permitted. She still had her sting, of course, although she had never had cause to turn it on another human being. Knowing Uctebri’s passions, perhaps I shall have cause to turn it on myself.

I am so alone that I must find this repulsive monster my ally, putting my life in his thin hands.

She stood up, seeing in the mirror a reflected Seda of the might-have-been. For a moment she could not quite recognize herself in that image. There was pride there, and strength, and a cruelty that had graced the eyes of her father and now her brother. A moment later she was clutching at the shoulders of her servants, dizzy with it, for she thought she had seen, behind that silvered doppelgänger, the flames of battle, countless airborne war-machines and a thousand soldiers marching against a reddened sky.

The guard had arrived to fetch her. She noticed him start slightly at the sight of her, trying to match this formidable image with the princess he had seen last.

The room she was brought to was lined with black stone as a result of the vanity of some courtier of her late father. She guessed that, over the last few days, the servants had been kept busy polishing, so that floor, walls and even ceiling all gleamed. In the centre stood Uctebri, surrounded by a ring of tall iron candelabra. Each candle-flame that he had lit was doubled and redoubled by the polished walls, until it seemed she and the Mosquito stood in a gloom pierced by a hundred guttering stars.

‘You are on edge, creature,’ Seda observed. ‘More than usual I think. What has caught you by the hair this time?’

Uctebri showed his teeth, either in grimace or grin. He had little enough hair, in truth, and his scalp gleamed in the candlelight.

‘Or have you decided to support my brother after all? It wouldn’t surprise me, given that he is Emperor already. What can I offer against that? Perhaps this has been his game to tempt me into treason.’

‘On his slightest word, you would die, Princess,’ Uctebri said. ‘Games, he might play, but he has no need to see any proof of your perfidy. It is not as though his fraternal love for you restrains him.’

‘That it does not,’ she agreed. ‘So what, magician? What has got into you?’

He said nothing for a moment, just went on lighting candles. Then: ‘You make a remarkable show tonight, Princess. I had not asked it of you.’

‘Should the spirits of fate not see me at my best? You have prodded and pried and measured me all this while, but now you say there are tests still to come.’

‘It is now time to make my real test,’ Uctebri said, as he lit the final flame. His expression, shifting and flickering with the light, looked doubting as he turned it on her. ‘All this time I have informed your brother of the tests I have conducted on you, some of it true, some false, but for me this is the real test – and you must pass.’

She felt a sinking in her heart. That was what was now different about the man: he was, for once, entirely serious. Gone were the coy insinuations, the mockery, even the grotesque flirtation he seemed to indulge in. Now he had become Uctebri the Sarcad, a magus of the legendary Mosquito-kinden, and he was about to determine her future.

‘And if I fail?’ she asked. She was used, through long experience, to appear calm in these times of trial. Her brother had put her through enough practice already.

‘Then you will be of no use to me. We will be of no use to each other. I shall instead make what I can out of your brother’s inferior clay.’ She thought she heard genuine regret in his tone. He would far rather it was me. Can I take comfort from that? She could not because, in her prolongedly precarious state, there was no comfort to be had from any source.

‘Make your test, then,’ she told him. ‘What must I do? Run? Jump? Do you wish me to sing to you, monster?’

‘My test has already begun. I simply require you to watch me and listen. I will know, after I am done, whether you are my suitable material or not.’

‘But all you’ve done so far is light candles . . .’ she observed.

‘Yes, so many candles.’ He moved about the room, seemingly aimless. The myriad darts of light confused her eyes. It was impossible to even tell where the walls were now, such was the multiplication of reflections. Surely he had stepped beyond this room somehow, she kept thinking, but then he would turn, and she had to take it on faith that there was a wall there that had turned him.

He was reflected alongside the constellations of candle-flames, of course, but as she watched she felt her stomach start to turn, because she could not quite match them to him, some were too far, others too near. ‘Sarcad . . .’ she whispered, ‘what are you doing?’

‘Magic,’ and he continued his pacing. ‘Do you hear me?’

‘Of course I hear you,’ she said, and felt that, even as she spoke, her words were covering some other voice that had given answer to the same question.

‘We are at the crux,’ Uctebri said, and she was surer than ever that he was not actually talking to her. ‘Come now. Make yourselves apparent.’ His tone was still low, almost conversational. Shrouded in his dark robe he seemed to appear and disappear as he turned towards and away from her, his face pale in the candlelight, until she had lost track of which was the real Uctebri, and which were merely the reflections.

The reflections . . .

She concentrated her gaze on the marble of the floor beneath her because it was the one keepsake left of the room she had walked into. She had only the hard sense of it beneath her feet, for her eyes now saw just a distant perspective of lights and darkness and the scrawny faces of the Mosquito-kinden, and her ears told her that the space about her was vast, with distant, forlorn winds channelling forever through twisted passages . . .

The reflections were all solely of him. There were none of her at all.

‘Be not shy,’ Uctebri murmured. ‘We must risk much so as to gain more. Come to me. Come now.’

The nearest reflection turned to regard her, and she realized that it was not Uctebri at all. The neck was thinner, and there was a wisp of beard on its wrinkled chin. An older man of the same race, with the same blood-red and protuberant eyes. Some others lacked Uctebri’s blotchy birthmark, and some, she saw, were haggard old women, as vile and balding as their menfolk. One by one they had all turned, and now every face there was staring at her, and she could not have picked Uctebri out from among them. The massed malevolence of that gaze, a score of desiccated, red-eyed monsters, rocked her and chilled her to the bone, but still she faced up to them. She stood her ground. If she fled now, she would, she knew, find herself beyond the stone room’s vanished walls, never to be seen again.

‘She sees us,’ one of the Mosquitoes declared.

‘Yes,’ said another, one that she recognized a moment later as Uctebri himself. ‘Yes, she does.’ His tone was one of relief, and she knew then that she had passed his test.

‘What . . . ?’ Her voice came out as a croak, so she swallowed and spoke again. ‘What does this mean?’

‘That you have entered our world,’ said another voice. Between the flickering light and the sheer number of them she could not discern who had spoken. ‘That we can make use of you.’

‘I have no wish to be made use,’ she told them. ‘I am no tool of yours.’

‘Yes, she will do well,’ said one of the women. ‘Your judgment is sound as ever, Uctebri.’

‘What does she know? How much have you told her?’ asked another, suspiciously.

‘Enough. Only what she needs to know,’ Uctebri said. ‘I intend to show her more, though. She can do more of her own will than when forced, but for that we must allow her a freer rein.’

‘You have the ear of their Emperor,’ said one, using the word with outright derision.

‘And I know what sound will best reach it,’ Uctebri said drily, from wherever he was. ‘I have an errand for some servant of ours, whoever is best placed to travel to Szar.’

‘The Bee-kinden city? Why should those primitives concern us?’

‘Oh, no great matter,’ Uctebri said, and at last Seda saw him clearly amongst the ranks of his peers, ‘save that there is some small piece of news they had best know.’

*

The messenger almost fell from his horse as he reached the Skiel barracks. Guards were already moving in on him, shouting out challenges. He tumbled to his knees, one closed hand out to forestall them. He had been riding for days and nights.

‘Identify yourself!’ the watch sergeant snapped again – but now he was close enough to add ‘Sir,’ on seeing a lieutenant’s insignia.

The messenger fumbled inside his tunic, coming out with a folded paper, thrusting it at the sergeant. The man took it wordlessly, beckoning a lantern over to read it by. A moment later he swore to himself and hurriedly handed the paper back. The lieutenant nodded, swaying slightly with fatigue.

‘Get the horse stabled,’ the sergeant called out. ‘Get this man somewhere to sit down, something to eat and drink. Send a message to the colonel – the new colonel, you know who I mean – and tell him there’s word for him.’

The messenger let himself be escorted to the barracks mess hall, empty at this hour. He took a bowl of the wine they offered, ignored the lukewarm stew. These had been the worst few days of his life: not the ride itself, since he was trained for that, but there had been those who had done their best to stop him in the surest way. He was bringing word that they had tried to keep secret, and here he was, at last, in the same building as the man they were trying to keep it secret from.

A soldier clattered in, saluting him. ‘The colonel will see you right away, sir.’

The messenger nodded, drained his bowl and slapped it down on the table. He was about to be let into the presence of a great man, a man he had worked for most of his professional life, and never seen. Dire times made for great opportunities. He followed the soldier out of the room and upstairs into the officers’ quarters, and deeper in still, up through the ranks, up the ladder of prestige.

He was finally led in. Before him, at the desk, sat the man he had never met before, and unmistakable for all of that: a thin man fit for a harsh season.

The guest quarters in the garrison barracks of Skiel were warm enough, a fire banked high and shutters closed against the cold. A meal was already spread out for the man, cooling slowly, the food barely sampled and the wine untasted. From the look of him, though, one would think him cold and starved. He sat in a high-armed chair, at a desk on which four pieces of paper were laid out neatly one beside the other. He could have been a clerk, perhaps, some mere servant or functionary.

Save that these were the quarters reserved only for the garrison commander’s most honoured guests – honoured, in this case, meaning most powerful.

His face was lean as a hatchet-blade. Men had dreaded that face, in their time. Some still did. In the past, dread was simply something that it inspired, but just now, there was a hint of the emotion on those same lean features.

He was a general, after all, and there was a war on – but there was always a war on. The Empire was forever expanding, or consolidating, but that was not the struggle that concerned him. The Empire was young, therefore its hierarchies and loci of power were not quite settled. By the end of the reign of Emperor Alvdan II, long might he last, they would be finally determined, and either this man would then stand beside the throne or his enemies would.

Currently his enemies seemed to have the upper hand, so he would have to do something about that. In fact he was journeying to Capitas for that very purpose. This was General Reiner of the Rekef, and his enemies were General Maxin and General Brugan, also of the Rekef. It had become increasingly clear, ever since Alvdan II had ascended to the throne, that the triumvirate system of the Rekef could not continue. Since then there had been a polite little war going on: a war of allegiance mostly, as each general did his best to put his own men into positions of power and dethrone the favourites of the others. There had been the odd man left dead as well, because recently General Maxin had gone a step further than his opponents had dared.

There was a respectful cough nearby. Reiner and the waiting messenger both glanced over at Reiner’s second, Colonel Latvoc, a grey-haired Wasp who had served him more than fifteen years.

Reiner raised an eyebrow, gave a gesture of one narrow hand, inviting Latvoc to report.

‘This is Lieutenant Valdred, sir,’ Latvoc began, ‘one of my men in Capitas. He has . . . news.’

The pause left no doubt as to the news’ character. Reiner took note of the young lieutenant’s pale face, and the hollow eyes that suggested this man had not slept in his determination to bring him this word. He nodded.

‘Sir . . .’ Valdred said. His uneven voice suggested he had obviously never been in the presence of a Rekef general before. ‘Sir, in Capitas, at the palace . . . They say the orders came from General Maxin, sir—’

Something impatient in Reiner’s eyes brought him up short. He glanced at Latvoc, who was carefully expressionless, and then swallowed nervously.

‘Colonel Lodric is gone, sir – replaced. And Major Tanik and Major Skan as well.’

All men Reiner had put in place. The general’s lips tightened fractionally.

‘The orders had the Emperor’s own seal, but the men that have replaced them, sir, are all Maxin’s men. I know it.’

Reiner looked at him bleakly. So that was eight years’ work at Capitas undone, all the men personally loyal to him thrown out of office at a stroke.

‘But there’s worse, sir,’ Valdred continued. He plainly did not want to say it, but his sense of duty forced it out of him, and Reiner respected that. ‘General Maxin is waiting for you to come, sir. He knows that you are planning it. He will have a reception planned for you. That is what I have heard, sir.’

‘The lieutenant here is in the Messenger Corps, sir,’ Latvoc explained. ‘A great deal of news travels through there, both official and unofficial.’

It was a gamble now: go to Capitas, and who knew what Maxin might have in store for him. Maxin had grown so cursedly powerful, ever since the bloody work he had made of the Emperor’s relations in order to secure the succession, eight years ago. He had not rested since then, either, and now he knew Reiner was coming, and had let out the news that he was ready for his old adversary.

Reiner was not without power or supporters, and Maxin would have gathered a whole new crop of enemies since then. Would any of them stir themselves to help a Rekef general, though? The Rekef ruled by fear, and fear, unlike love, did not outlive the possession of power.

‘General Brugan has not responded to our messages, sir,’ Latvoc reported. ‘I do not think he sees General Maxin as the threat that he is. He seems to want no common cause with us.’

Reiner turned to his papers. If not home to Capitas, then where? The answer was obvious, if unsatisfactory: to the provinces. Maxin had all the power in the capital, but there were plenty of provincial governors who owed their position solely to Reiner’s favour.

The war was not over yet.

The man and woman standing at one end of the roof terrace were councillors of Helleron, Totho knew. He watched as the portly man, dressed in gold-embroidered robes of Spider silk, laughed and pointed something out to the woman – something in the city below them. The Consellar Chambers of Helleron made great use of this roof, running a railed walkway all the way round it. Fly messengers used it regularly to arrive and depart, and the great and the good of Helleron often came here to gloat over their civic holdings, surveying a roofscape of fine townhouses that gave way, after a few streets, to smog-hung chimneys and the bleak and featureless walls of factories.

Helleron was now a city under occupation, and what had surprised Totho was how very little it had changed. True, there was a garrison force in, now: Wasp soldiers on the streets and Ant-kinden Auxillians from some far corner of the Empire. True the council was merely advisory to the imperial governor, who was a man beyond the social pale as far as they were concerned. Still, Beetles always endured. Beetles flourished everywhere. Totho, half-Beetle himself, had never appreciated that so clearly before.

He was able to sidle close to the two councillors, so long as he did not stare at them openly. They took him for a servant and therefore overlooked him graciously. The woman was now pointing at some district across the city that was mostly shrouded in smoke. They were fighting there now, she declared. Fighting on the streets of Helleron! She seemed to think it was simply marvellous.

Totho knew what the fighting was about. A war was being won and lost on a daily basis in Helleron because, whilst the Council of Thirteen had meekly bowed the knee as soon as the Wasp armies had appeared on the horizon, there had been others who had been left out of the deal, and were now holding onto their power as tightly as they could. This winter, the imperial garrison was busily engaged rooting out the fiefdoms.

They were criminal holdings, areas of the city run by gangs comprising as varied a mix as could be imagined: home-grown Beetle toughs, magnates fallen on hard times, Spider manipuli, close-knit Fly-kinden families or knots of exotic killers like Mantids or Dragonflies. The Empire was not accustomed to sharing power with other authorities either legal or illegal, nor did the Consortium of the Honest wish for its profits to be diluted in any way. Some of the criminal fiefs had since fallen into line, paying their dues and taking their orders, whilst others had dug in and mobilized their fighters. Each tenday now the Empire took on another little band or alliance and smashed it.

Totho listened to the two councillors tell each other how wonderful it was, that their city was finally being rid of such trash. He noted that neither mentioned the secret deals they had undoubtedly made with those same fiefs, the profits they had squeezed from them or the commissions they had paid. It all made him feel ill.

He himself had betrayed his friends, turned his back on his whole previous life, but these rich and powerful councillors were a whole world of hypocrisy ahead of him.

The first few spots of rain started to fall, and he watched the superbly dressed councillors hurry inside. Totho chose to stay outside, as if the downpour could wash him clean of all his recent actions. After a short while, Kaszaat came and joined him.

For him the last month had brought and taken away many things, but it still had not taken her, though he had assumed, without even analysing why, that she would surely be long gone by now.

‘I just heard the news. Another two factories for you,’ she said. ‘I congratulate you now, yes?’

He shrugged. ‘You know his thinking better than I do. You tell me.’

‘I think yes – but not all the way.’ She leant on the rail beside him, tugging her peaked leather cap down a little to shield her face from the rain. He let himself study her, for him a new luxury. Here was a woman a little older than himself, shorter and with the stocky build and dark skin that reminded him of a Beetle-kinden, and yet subtly different in every way. Her face was flat and round, and he had at first thought it expressionless. Now he knew that impassive front was partly due to being one of a conquered race within the Empire, and the rest he could now read, from experience. He realized that his own habitual expression was not too dissimilar, for his mixed blood had taught him to keep his feelings inward.

‘How is the new project?’ he asked her. His current duties meant that he was committed to actual manufacture, and had lost touch with the research and design that artificers coveted so much.

‘You don’t miss much,’ she told him. ‘You keep with your snapbows. The new work? He doesn’t even let me see it. Only him and a few others, all day and all night in that factory, three, four days at a time. Then they come out and they sleep, and he gets his back seen to. You know how it is with his back, when he works too long.’

Totho did indeed. Not so long ago he had found out why their master, the Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos, suffered as much as he did. It was a revelation personally horrifying but professionally intriguing.

‘So you’re all just kicking your heels waiting?’ he asked, quite relieved. He was not on the team for the new project. Instead, Drephos had given him oversight of the snapbow factories, and a strict quota to be met. When the Wasp army took the field against Sarn in the coming spring, it could be a new dawn for warfare, although Drephos alternated his enthusiasm with damning doubts about the imperial generals’ capacity to actually make use of what they had been given.

‘You want to go see?’ Kaszaat asked, and he glanced at her in surprise. Hidden somewhere in her closed expression was something close to mischief.

‘You’re not one to go against orders,’ he said.

‘No orders. Nobody has said, “Stay out while we’re gone.”’

‘He’s come out of there today, has he?’

She nodded. ‘You’re not curious?’

He realized he was, as he followed her down through the Consellar Chambers and onto the street.

Drephos had been the first ever Colonel-Auxillian. In fact they had created that rank purely for the benefit of Dariandrephos, the maverick half-breed master artificer. Endowed with that authority he had taken the imperial armies on to win wars and conquer cities. Totho had been impressed enough within days of meeting the man, but now, after seeing the fall of Tark and the routing of the Sarnesh army, he was convinced that Drephos could be the greatest artificer there ever was.

It was because he cared for absolutely nothing but his craft, Totho was sure. Drephos did not care about rank, save that it helped get his work done quicker. Similarly, they had chosen him as the first ever Auxillian to be named an acting-governor, but he had only pressed for that position because, as Governor of Helleron, he could turn the city’s industrial might to his own ends.

He had then brought his hand-picked team of artificers to Helleron to assist him. Totho was one of that team and so was Kaszaat, but there was only a single Wasp-kinden amongst them, and that was a moody old outcast who had spent more than ten years as a debt-slave. Drephos collected minds that could think in different directions. He had no need for time-servers and conventionalists.

‘This is the one,’ Kaszaat said. ‘Three days solid, nobody seeing any of them all that time. Came out this morning only.’ By now the oily rain was sheeting down on them, so they ran from overhang to overhang, trying to dodge the worst of it. Ahead of them was the factory she had pointed out, although it did not seem particularly remarkable to Totho.

‘Who has he taken in there with him?’ he asked, as they came up against the factory’s wall, taking what shelter they could.

‘The twins,’ she said, meaning the two Beetle-kinden in their team, who kept no company save each other, ‘And Big Greyv.’

‘The Mole Cricket?’

She nodded. Totho had never spoken to the man. That pitch-skinned giant had a sour look to him that did not encourage conversation.

Kaszaat unlatched the factory door, which was not even locked, and they quickly stepped inside.

Most of the interior was bare, which was the first surprise. The workbenches, the machines, all the paraphernalia of manufacture had mostly been stripped out, save for a series of complex presses intended to test the durability of materials under stress. Aside from that, at the far end of the empty space, there stood two great machines. Totho and Kaszaat approached them cautiously. The sound of the city was faint in here, for all the high windows were propped wide open to let the oil-pungent air in.

‘We must have the wrong factory,’ Totho decided, looking up beyond the machines towards an observation gantry. Had Drephos and the others been standing up there to watch . . . what exactly?

‘Fans,’ said Kaszaat wonderingly. ‘Just fans.’

That was all they were: huge-bladed fans positioned at one end of a great open space but, on looking at them, Totho suddenly experienced a shiver of unease. He did not believe in magic, he was no Moth seer to brag of visions, yet some part of his artificer’s being shuddered momentarily on seeing those stilled fans, and the emptiness all around them.