Blood of the Mantis

Eighteen

There seemed to be a Wasp soldier on every street corner, as though they had already occupied Solarno without the courtesy of letting anyone know. In the open-fronted tavernas the conversation hovered about them like a fly over fruit, but never quite touched on the awkward questions.

Che, Taki and Nero had gone out into the market district to see the true scale of the problem, with the Dragonfly Dalre and a couple of others shadowing them in case of trouble. It was hard to judge accurately, though, as the Wasps were spread out in groups of no more than two or three, but it seemed impossible to go anywhere without at least a glimpse of their black-and-yellow presence.

Nero had left them a short while ago, to undertake some aerial surveillance, and they had taken a table at a taverna to hear what the Solarnese themselves were saying. The uneasy local consensus seemed to be that one or other of the political parties had invited them in, or was even hiring them as mercenaries. That was the only way the locals could account for such an influx of foreigners in their midst. The idea that the Wasps might have an agenda of their own was not spoken about.

‘The problem is,’ Taki said, ‘it’ll become true. One of the parties will decide to make a deal with them, and that’s just the start of the downward slope. The Wasps will keep that party strong, and the same party will rely on the Wasps all the more.’

‘I don’t think the Wasps are likely to wait that long,’ said Che. ‘They’ll soon be making demands to whichever party looks most gullible. Will that be yours, do you think?’

‘I don’t have a party,’ Taki reminded her. ‘I’m not into politics. All I want to do is fly.’ She considered the thought further. ‘But it could be the Destiavel’s party, the Satin Trail, that I’ll grant you – or else the Crystal Standard lot. The Crystals are in the Corta Obscuri now, and they might risk a lot to stay on there. If they don’t alter their fortunes, word is there’ll be a new Corta soon enough, and then they’ll be out.’

‘What about the other cities of the Exalsee?’ Che asked. ‘Will they step in?’

Taki looked almost horrified. ‘That pack of pirates and lackeys interfere with Solarnese politics? If Princep and Chasme and the rest turned up here protesting against the Wasps, the only thing it would do is have every local inviting Wasps to marry their daughters and take over the family businesses. No, this is a Solarnese problem.’

‘Then we have to talk to Genissa.’

‘Domina Genissa is not happy with the Wasps,’ Taki agreed. ‘She just doesn’t like the look of them, and with her that counts for a lot. Mind you, she’s generally a good judge from first impressions, and like a lot of the Dominas she doesn’t want something new coming in and changing the mix. Actually, the only people who would really welcome that happening would be the Path of Jade crowd, and that’s because at the moment they’re in danger of dying out altogether. Mind you, they’re in for all sorts of odd ideas, like banning slavery and the like. Not the sort of thinking your Wasps will want to encourage.’

Che was about to reply when she noticed a pair of Wasp soldiers approaching, their attention clearly fixed on either her or Taki. She felt for her sword-hilt, loosening it in its scabbard. Taki moved away from the table a little, allowing herself room to fly.

The lead Wasp, obviously the one in charge, was both shorter and leaner than most of them, but he bore himself with an air of arrogant confidence that made up for his lack of stature. His barred cuirass was fashioned of leather, not the metal bands the imperial soldiers normally wore. His hair was still tawny but he was older than Che had first thought, with a little burn-scarring evident about his chin and neck. As he arrived at their table he nodded to Taki, ignoring Dalre and the other Destiavel men, who had stood up warningly as he approached.

‘Do I address the Bella te Schola Taki-Amre of the Destiavel?’ he said, fumbling slightly over such unfamiliar names.

‘What of it?’ Taki asked him suspiciously.

‘My name is Lieutenant Axrad of the Aviation Corps,’ he said. ‘I have sought you out to congratulate you on your flying.’

Taki stood too, sizing him up. ‘And what would you know about my flying, Sieur Axrad?’

Axrad smiled bleakly. ‘I flew against you, Bella Taki-Amre, over the Exalsee only yesterday. You downed several of my comrades, and damaged my flier enough that I could not continue our duel.’

Taki glanced at Che, and then turned back to him, obviously re-evaluating the situation. ‘You’re a pilot?’ She remembered the one Wasp machine she had not been able to pursue, just taking a single shot at it before heading for home. ‘That’s not a title to lay claim to lightly, in this woman’s city.’

‘I am aware of that,’ Axrad said. ‘While I consider myself the best of the imperial fliers in this region, I admit to having nothing but admiration for your skills, Bella Taki-Amre. I know it is likely that we shall cross swords once more, but I wish you to know I bear you no ill will, and if it is your fortune to send me to the waters I shall consider it an honour.’

Che had been waiting for the catch here, the threat that the man’s words must surely be leading to, but she saw now there was none. It was just a normal exchange in a world she was not part of. She glanced at the other Wasp soldier, and saw him looking bored and shuffling, and no more included than she was.

‘Well, Sieur Axrad,’ said Taki slowly, ‘I think you understand our customs better than most. You also flew well. Tell me, do many of your – what was it, Aviation Corps? – think as you do?’

‘Not so many, but I am not the only one. For my people, to fight is to live and to excel is to succeed. We are a warrior kinden not without honour on the field or in the air, though I am aware that some of my kin do not show the nobility of spirit that befits them. I wished to speak with you in order to redress this.’

He was standing so stiffly, so awkwardly, that Che finally realized that he was actually frightened. He was a newcomer petitioning for membership to a club, and with no guarantee of receiving it. He wanted acknowledgement.

A flick of Taki’s wings took her up on to the tabletop, and matching his eye level. ‘You’ve surprised me, Sieur Axrad, and I think we have something we can talk about. Would you join me?’ She indicated a table further across the Taverna’s courtyard. Che opened her mouth to protest, but Taki’s warning look told her that this was not a matter for her to interfere in or eavesdrop on.

‘I must warn you right away, that my respect for you does not compromise my loyalty to the Empire,’ Axrad announced.

‘I would not expect it to,’ Taki said, and with that, the two of them moved out of earshot, heading to the other table.

Che caught the look of the other Wasp soldier, now consigned to standing out in the street while his superior amused himself, and she almost felt a kindred spirit there. Then Nero returned, pausing to hover in mid-air as he spotted Taki’s new companion.

‘Apparently he’s a pilot or something,’ Che explained dismissively. ‘So what did you see?’

‘Enough to guess at a little secret the Wasps have here,’ Nero said grimly, keeping his voice low. ‘They’re scattered all over the city, but they’re working in cells, each group of them checking in with a single soldier over and over. Not an officer, mark you, or at least not always – mostly just an ordinary soldier. I think they’ve got a mindlink between about a dozen Wasp-kinden across Solarno, just close enough together to stay in contact. They can do that, a few of them, though as far as I know it’s a rare Art among their kinden. It means they’ll be able to act all together, however separated they are.’

Che nodded, her eyes fixed on Axrad’s back. The news was not getting any better.

Instead of the dingy confines of the Clipped Wing, it was an elegant drawing room, its high-arched ceiling supported by seemingly too-slender pillars with gilded capitals, and whose expanse was painted with a scene of aquatic creatures engaged in improbable play together: fish, water-beetles, insect nymphs and the like. Che had exchanged her audience as well. Instead of half a dozen aviators intent on her words, there was nearly a score of Solarno’s great and good here, Spider-kinden all, and some with red cravats for the Satin trail, others with green and gold sashes for the minority Path of Jade, and a single old Spider who wore purple satin about his brow and draped over his shoulders in a kind of scarf, representing Che knew not what.

The grander surroundings, the most prestigious company, none of it changed the speech she delivered, which mirrored the words she had given the pilots: this is the Empire.

They were a far from attentive audience, though. As she explained, as passionately as she could, about the scale, strength and danger of the Wasps, they talked in low voices amongst themselves or perused books taken from the shelves on the far wall or simply stared out of the windows. Even the servants that passed back and forth across the room seemed to pay more heed, as they offered food and drink in an unending supply. Some of those assembled here were doubtless in the pay of the Wasps, so it was a certainty that the imperial agents within the city would soon get to hear of this. As they had already tried to kill her twice, there seemed little point in hiding her opposition from them. Displaying it thus openly, however, seemed to be having little effect, for the nobles of Solarno, all members of the Corta Lucidi, and all gathered here for this one purpose, seemed barely to care. Even Genissa of the Destiavel, who had organized this entire venture after hearing Taki’s representations, seemed engrossed in talking gossip with her neighbour.

Che drew to a close, her final point petering out, feeling like an actor whose audience has seen better.

‘Any… questions?’ she asked, falteringly.

‘You’ve seen all this yourself, have you?’ a well-dressed, elegant man near the back enquired. ‘These armies and soldiers and machines?’

‘I’ve seen enough of them. I was involved in a field battle against them – a battle that they won.’

‘But why would they come here? It seems such a great deal of trouble,’ a woman observed. ‘Who says they aren’t here just as mercenaries? I’ve heard no proof either way.’

‘The Wasp Empire does not hire out its soldiers as mercenaries,’ Che insisted. ‘Those men out there are openly wearing imperial colours. They are here as an advance force, ahead of an invasion. They have already divided your people, it seems.’

‘My dear girl, we were quite divided enough before they ever showed their faces,’ Genissa remarked, prompting a polite ripple of laughter. ‘I think these Wasp-kinden could be useful to us. After all, they have rather polarized the common folk of the city.’

‘Please believe me,’ Che said. ‘You can’t use the Wasps, not like that. They’re not going to fit into your…’ she nearly said petty provincial politics, because that would have been true, but fortunately she held it back, ‘… into your parties and factions. They’re bigger than you and, if they want, they can field an army with more soldiers than Solarno has citizens. They don’t seek alliances and they don’t make deals. Their foreign policy consists of one objective only: conquest.’

‘That’s all very well, but I can hardly see an army bothering to come all the way through the Dryclaw and then over the mountains, just for Solarno,’ one of them said. ‘I really think you’re making far too much of this.’

‘But there is an army approaching even now,’ Che insisted. ‘They’re shipping soldiers over the mountains in airships.’

‘I think we’re missing the important point here,’ said one of the dignitaries of the Path of Jade, waving her hand languidly for attention. ‘All this Empire business is all very well, but nobody’s so much as mentioned a word about how we can turn this against the Crystal Standard!’

Che sagged in despair.

‘After all,’ the same woman went on, ‘these Wasp creatures are unpopular allies, and yet the Standard have embraced them. I’ll wager there have been more than a few seats shifted because of that. If the Trail will stand with us, we can call a Corta election and have the Standard thrown out of the Obscuri before you can say “done”.’

‘A Corta Obscuri run by the Path of Jade?’ someone scoffed.

‘Well, of course not,’ said the woman. ‘I’m simply suggesting that we will support you in return for a few concessions that should be easily sketched out…’

‘But what if the Standard won’t let go?’ Che demanded. ‘What if they call on the Wasps to keep them in power?’

There was a round of patronizing laughter.

‘My, how dramatic you foreigners are,’ said one of them. ‘We’re not going to put them into permanent exile, just take over for a year or two. You just don’t understand the way things are done here.’

Che gave up. They were right, of course, but the barrier to mutual understanding fell both ways. If she was to find help here, it would not be amongst Solarno’s rulers.

The news broke by evening that the Crystal Standard had apparently, possibly retrospectively, invited the Wasp-kinden in, ostensibly for the sake of Solarno’s stability given the riots and mobs so often afflicting the city.

But stability was the last thing that such news brought. In all the tavernas and chocolate houses the gossips were soon abuzz with it, and opinions were stridently voiced. The grass-roots support for the Satin Trail and the Path of Jade were talking in hushed, angry voices, and for once they were not at each other’s throats. As long as the Wasps had just seemed unwanted foreigners lurking on every street corner, the Solarnese had been content to ignore them. Now they had been legitimized, local people suddenly knew whether to hate them or not. The Crystal Standard’s followers stood by uncertainly, finding their new allies coolly arrogant and disdainful of their company, whilst the two other main parties – and half a dozen lesser parties nobody normally bothered with – began to voice their opposition in stronger and stronger terms.

The Crystal Standard recognized this as just the everyday Solarnese citizens’ participation in politics. The Wasps, however, did not.

One squad of a half-dozen Wasp soldiers found itself taunted and threatened by a pack of locals, who waved their narrow swords and accused them of being filthy foreign mercenaries who should go back where they came from. The Wasps, of uncertain temper at the best of times, loosed their stings onto this mob, killing several men and women outright. When the crowd had recovered from its shock, it charged at the soldiers, who retreated to the rooftops still shooting in retaliation. All in all perhaps three Wasps and twelve locals were killed before the citizens turned and fled.

The Wasps counted it as a great victory, but there was a hurried meeting between the Crystal Standard leaders and Captain Havel, who now found himself responsible for it all.

‘This must stop,’ he was told. ‘Your men must exercise control.’

Captain Havel was not entirely sure that they were his men at all. He was still technically the Rekef officer in command of Solarno, but there was an army colonel, still currently north of Toek and the mountains, who had given these soldiers their orders and outlined their tactics, a man who had never been to Solarno nor ever wished to until he could claim governorship of the place. He had written to Havel and made that last wish very plain.

Havel had lived comfortably here in Solarno for many years, and enjoyed a prosperous and hedonistic lifestyle while doing so. He was determined to cling on to that privilege, which meant no outright invasion, no bludgeoning use of Wasp power to inflame the city. He passed on his strict recommendations to the imperial forces, but with the knowledge that his kinden were never inclined to take insults meekly, while to the hot-headed Solarnese an insult was as common as a greeting, and therefore shrugged off as easily. It was a clash of cultures that could now go badly wrong very quickly.

By nightfall there had been no buildings yet burnt, and only half a dozen more deaths, so he counted himself lucky. It would take many tendays for the Solarnese to adapt to this new power in their midst, and meanwhile that army colonel up north would not stop moving his troops in. The airships would already be on their way back to the city laden with full complements of fighting men.

Havel felt his grip on the situation rapidly loosening. He needed to talk to Odyssa, he realized, for she would instantly understand the situation. After all, these native Solarnese might be mad for fighting, but it was Spider-kinden who actually ruled Solarno. Surely Odyssa could soon think of some way to appease them.

He met her in a private room of an eatery called the Sawbouys, enjoying a view out over the water. He called up a bottle of the house’s best wine and the flank of freshwater shrimp that the place was famous for. The feeling of luxury, of living well, was soon calming to him, for it told him that he was keeping ahead of the rising wave of disaster that threatened to crash down on him,

He ate with a fierce passion, while Odyssa merely picked at her food and eyed him with amusement.

‘I’m at my wits’ end,’ Havel confessed. ‘The situation is, as they say, deteriorating.’

‘But surely this was inevitable,’ Odyssa said. ‘Was this not the imperial plan all along?’

‘Do you think they tell me anything?’ Havel said bitterly. ‘But, no it wasn’t, not to my knowledge. Not this soon, at least. It’s that cursed colonel out north of Toek, who just can’t wait to get his men moved in here. He’s going to end up unifying all of Solarno against us. All of the Exalsee, even. I wouldn’t have thought it could be done but, little by little, he’s managing it.’

She shrugged. ‘So things are happening a little faster than planned.’

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ Havel replied. ‘I had everything already in hand here, so it’s an insult to me and to the Rekef. I could have annexed Solarno virtually single-handedly, with no need for all this.’ And I could have made a fortune doing it. ‘Now the army will sack half the city because this colonel won’t keep them in check. Hundreds of our soldiers will die. It’s just… such a waste. You’re a Spider-kinden, so you’re used to doing things with a little intelligence. You must be able to see my point.’

‘I think I’m beginning to,’ she agreed. ‘I take it you want me to send a message to the colonel?’

‘Conveyed with the Rekef’s greatest displeasure. Just tell him whatever it takes to get him off my back,’ Havel almost pleaded with her. ‘He doesn’t understand how delicate the situation is here. He’s just a stone-headed soldier with no appreciation of politics. All he’s interested in is the governorship, and what good will that do him when his new subjects are bringing the place down around his ears?’

‘You might be best off resigning yourself to what is inevitable,’ Odyssa warned him. ‘I’d be surprised if you can stop it now.’

‘Oh, I’ll stop it all right, don’t you worry,’ Havel assured her. ‘I’ve been in this city a good while now. I know how things work. I know how to keep the pot simmering and yet never quite boiling over. You’ll see. Without any more provocation from that fool out in the desert, I’ll soon get Solarno settled again.’ He breathed a deep sigh. Now he had said it, it even sounded possible. ‘I can even use the men he’s already sent, make them a proper police force to back the useless militia the Solarnese have. They’ll come to see us as invaluable, you’ll see. We shall creep into their hearts. This town has its nobles and its councils, but really it’s ruled by the mob, as each fresh demonstration shakes up the Cortas and their magnates. We shall control the mob. We could even start our own party here.’

‘I see what you mean,’ said Odyssa at last, as Havel took a swallow of wine. ‘You’re right, and it is almost a Spider-kinden way of doing things. Almost. Naturally we’d add a few layers of complexity to it, whether it needed it or not.’

‘I try to be as simple as I can, so that I won’t forget anything,’ Havel said.

‘And if the colonel wants his war anyway?’

‘Then let him go invade somewhere else, because Solarno is mine,’ Havel told her. ‘Surely the Rekef should be able to whip one over-ambitious officer into line.’

‘It should.’

There was a reflective pause, both of them sipping at their wine. Eventually Odyssa continued, ‘I think you’re right.’

‘In what way?’

‘I think you could draw it back from the brink after all.’

Havel nodded emphatically. ‘You’re cursed right I can. Just give me a tenday without this colonel breathing down my neck, and I’ll be back in control.’

Odyssa considered him speculatively, noticing the sweat spring up on his forehead. ‘Yes, I think you could. You’re a clever man, for a Wasp-kinden.’

‘I’ll take that… for a compliment,’ he said, blinking at her.

‘There is one thing you’ve failed to consider, though, and I feel that I should warn you of it.’

‘What’s… what’s that?’

‘What if someone else wants the war?’

He goggled at her, mouth half open but no words forming.

‘Layers upon layers, you see, Captain, in interweaving strands. You really are quite good at this, for a Wasp, but I fear you’re no Spider-kinden.’

She saw his hand twitch reflexively, but no flash of energy came from it. A moment later he had toppled sideways onto the floor.

Odyssa stood up, brushing down her tunic, an old habit kept from after her first murder. She sometimes thought the Rekef had nothing to teach her that she had not been born with. She would now pay the Fly host of this eatery enough to forget who she was. She had two men close at hand of equally uncertain memory, ready to dump Havel’s body somewhere easily discoverable. Then she would put her Rekef hat back on, and run to the Wasp encampment at the oasis beyond Toek, and there tell the colonel, whom she had been steadily inflaming, that the Rekef officer in charge of Solarno had been murdered by the locals, and therefore the hour of his conquest and governorship was at hand.