Blood of the Mantis

*

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.