Blood of the Mantis

Four

The ruddy-skinned Ant, who had seemed on the defensive for the last few passes, suddenly came out with an explosive punch through the guard of his opponent, hammering into the man’s jaw. The bone blade of his Art tore bloody gashes and his victim was spun to the ground, only to be up on his feet a moment later. The two of them, both Ant-kinden but of different cities, circled, and then closed again. As they both tired, more blows got through their defences, more blood was shed.

The crowd loved it. Not just any crowd, of course. This was an assembly of the great and the good: generals, high-placed mercantile officers from the Consortium, men of good family and great wealth. They stood and shook their fists and roared when the blood flew, howling and chanting and urging on the combatants, who needed no such encouragement.

There were only two islands of quiet in this bloodlust. Uctebri was one.

What a spectacle, he thought drily. What wasted blood. The scent of it was in the air, tweaking his senses in a way no other smell could. No Spider harlot’s perfume could touch him like this. To his mind, the odour drowned out the crowd itself.

He sat behind the man who now believed himself Uctebri’s master. They had taken Uctebri’s old dark robe from him and given him another that was quartered, black and gold. It was to show that he was a better degree of slave than he had previously been: a privileged slave. He was valued enough to be finally allowed out of his cell. Or perhaps the Emperor just wanted to keep him close.

The Emperor himself was staring coldly at the fighting Ants. This fight, the whole series of brutal matches the evening had in store, was being thrown in his honour by some favour-seeking family. All around him the lucky invitees were baying for carnage and here sat the Emperor, not missing a moment, not enjoying a move. He never did, Uctebri knew. It was not that the spectacle was lost on him. He had no conscience to stain with the blood of these pugilists, nor high ideals that soared above them. He was a man on whose word 100,000 soldiers would butcher towns and villages. He could have his household slaves gutted before his eyes, his armies raze cities, his Rekef assassins slay monarchs and, knowing he could do all this without effort, he took no pleasure from it. Such ambitions were too petty to hold his interest, and so it was with all his pleasures. He lay with his concubines and ate his fine meals, ordered his subjects and counted his wealth, and it jaded him, day by day, whilst the burdens and fears of his state only preyed ever more on his mind.

Burdens such as the succession, of which there was none clear. An Emperor must have a successor, as Alvdan knew, and yet he took no wife, legitimized no offspring. Any child of his would inevitably become a threat, a tool for the power-hungry. That threat was now contained in the form of his one surviving sibling, Seda, whose death warrant he daily considered. She lived only because, whilst she was under his control, so was that threat of overthrow. A son would change all that, of course. So it was that the Emperor of the Wasps, most powerful man in the world, lived in an agony of fear and suspicion, the food ashes in his mouth. Until, that is, a certain Mosquito-kinden was brought before him to make a remarkable, indeed impossible, offer. For if an Emperor were to live for ever, why should issue, so to speak, continue to be an issue?

Such dangerous games we play. Uctebri, within the shadows of his cowl, permitted himself the shadow of a smile. Was he merely the prisoner and slave of the Wasps, or were they doing his bidding? It was a question worthy of a magician, because magic dealt in the gaps between certainties, and the truth of his status would only be resolved into fact once he tried to change it. Until then, he and the Emperor held to their opposite opinions. His were a scarce kinden, never numerous but now rare indeed, surviving as little more than the folk-tales of peasants warning their children: Go to sleep or the Mosquito-kinden will come and drink your blood. Sometimes, in remote places, they did.

Emperor Alvdan II had never quite asked what Uctebri intended to gain for himself from his planned ritual, though. He was so used to people offering him things in return for his favour.

The fight was apparently over, although Uctebri had not been watching it and had not noted which Ant had won. As people turned to talk to their neighbours, of sport or business or both, the Emperor leaned back. ‘Well, monster?’ he asked. ‘Do you appreciate the honour we have bestowed on you?’

Uctebri sucked a deep breath in through his pointed nose, savouring the last of the shed blood. ‘Indeed, your Imperial Majesty.’

‘Displease us, creature, and we may yet see you too in the pits.’

‘I fear, your Imperial Majesty, that I would make a poor spectacle.’

Alvdan snorted at that, and then turned to his left to relay the Mosquito’s words to his neighbour. The man sitting there was the influential General Maxin, who thought he was using Uctebri to court the Emperor’s further favour, just as Uctebri thought he himself had used Maxin to secure access to the Emperor.

Doubt and shadows, the very drink of magicians. Uctebri settled back, hearing someone above him say that the next fight would pitch a predatory beetle against a half-dozen slaves, and would therefore be good sport and worth watching.

After the entertainment was done it was for Alvdan to rise first, which he did without even a glance at the night’s anxious sponsors. The Wasp hegemony amused Uctebri. They set their Emperor up as inviolable and so far above them. Everyone else, officers in the army, scions of rich families or factors of the Consortium, all of them were within merely a pace of each other, and thus they jostled and fought for place. After the Emperor and his immediate retinue had gone, Uctebri knew there would be all kinds of elbow-jogging over who should follow next.

He had cast several narrow glances meaningfully at General Maxin as they left, and now the burly, grey-haired Wasp dropped back a pace to walk beside him.

‘You honour me with your attention, O General,’ said Uctebri with a sly smile.

‘You forget your place, slave,’ Maxin told him coldly. ‘What do you want?’

‘But you know what it is I want, General,’ Uctebri said humbly. ‘What I need, in fact, to bring his Great Majesty’s plans to fruition.’

‘Your box,’ Maxin snarled contemptuously. ‘I have my men travelling to Jerez even as we speak. You’ll soon have your trinket.’

‘However, General, so that I may be sure of it, I have asked a kinswoman of mine to attend at that place, and bend her own efforts to the same goal.’

‘You’ve had no chance to ask anything of anyone, slave,’ Maxin said, but there was no certainty in his voice.

‘Nonetheless, such a request has been conveyed.’ Uctebri watched the man’s face twitch uncomfortably. Was this not the most exquisite of pleasures? A general of the Rekef, whose spies and informers held the whole of the Imperial Army in terror for any question of their loyalty, and yet his heart trembled in facing a tired old slave. You have your host of agents, General, yet you cannot guess at mine.

‘Your kinswoman had best stay out of the way,’ snapped Maxin, bluffing unconcern. ‘My men do not know to expect her, so she is likely to get hurt before she can properly introduce herself.’

‘Why, General,’ Uctebri said, ‘what makes you think that they will even notice she is there, unless she wishes it?’

The Emperor still convened with his regular advisors as tradition demanded, but a new elite had now arisen. War was the word that buzzed through the chambers of power in Capitas. War was the meat and drink of the Empire. It was war that made careers and secured futures, that greased the wheels of commerce and reaped wealth and power for those who could ride on its swelling tide.

The Lowlanders did not understand, and could never understand, that the invasion of Tark, the Battle of the Rails, none of this actually constituted war. Skirmishes and expansion comprised the day-to-day business of the Empire, but it took resistance, a line drawn that the Imperial Army had to cross, to make it count as truly war.

The Lowlanders had now drawn that line: it ran crookedly from Merro to Collegium, from Collegium to Sarn. The Empire had engulfed almost half of the Lowlands before it had even become a war worthy of the name.

The Emperor walked amongst his generals, viewing the great map they had commissioned, first from this side, then from the other. It was a piece of art, that map, carved by the most accurate slave craftsmen. The mountains and the ridges, the rivers and the forests, they had all been laid in veneers of coloured woods, while the cities were bronze medallions cast especially, embossed with the name and emblem of each. Wooden blocks and little parchment flags showed the disposition of known forces currently under arms across the Lowlands.

General Maxin watched Alvdan give the entire affair his blessing, pleased to see an expression of keen knowledge on the Emperor’s face, which boosted morale. Standing respectfully back from the table, as the Emperor made his inspection, were the chief strategists of the Empire: two retired generals, a senior factor of the Consortium, a field colonel attached to the Eighth Army, which was currently in its barracks in Capitas awaiting assignment, a major in the Engineering Corps and yet another in the Slave Corps.

‘This is our Winged Furies?’ asked the Emperor, pointing at the army located on the silver thread representing the rail line between Helleron and Sarn.

‘The Seventh Army, exactly, your Imperial Majesty,’ one of the old generals replied. ‘Here at Helleron is the Sixth, which is waiting for new troops before reinforcing General Malkan. Malkan himself is being resupplied and rearmed even as we speak.’

‘Rearmed? Is this the new master-weapon we have been told of?’

‘The so-called snapbow, your Imperial Majesty,’ the engineering major agreed. ‘Results in combat against the Sarnesh suggest that it is effective enough, but I fear reports may be greatly exaggerated-’

There was a look of mischief in Alvdan’s eyes that the major missed. ‘Remind me again who is responsible for this new toy.’

‘It is the work of the outcast, Drephos the halfbreed.’ The major’s voice rang with disdain. ‘Amusing, no doubt, your Majesty, like all of his diversions, but no substitute for crossbow and automotive.’

The Emperor smiled at him, and the retired general prudently stepped back, being wiser in the ways of rulers. ‘Major, we appreciate your professional opinion,’ continued Alvdan. ‘Therefore we have requested a sample of this new weapon to be brought to Capitas for our own amusement.’

‘I am sure that it will amuse you, Majesty.’

‘Excellent. Do you own a suit of armour, Major?’

‘I fail to understand…’

‘You dismiss this new thing so lightly, therefore you will surely stand by your own words.’ Alvdan was still smiling, as pleasantly as ever. ‘We shall therefore look forward to pitting the halfbreed’s craft against your professional opinion and, yes, Major, we do anticipate some amusement.’

As the engineer stepped back, pale and shaken, Alvdan passed his gaze over the rest of them, and Maxin could almost read his mind: It does them good to remember what ‘Emperor’ means.

‘We are not pleased with progress in the Lowlands. We wish to spend the coming summer amongst our new subjects in Collegium. We trust this desire is clear.’

There was a murmur and a nodding.

‘Explain to us where our armies shall assault,’ Alvdan directed, picking out the Slave Corps major to reply. The man was an old campaigner who approached with the proper mix of deference and confidence. Few career soldiers stayed in the slavers to reach his rank, and he had long carved his niche in the human trade that war turned up.

‘Your Imperial Majesty, we are facing a three-sided defence. You have been told, of course, that General Alder and the Fourth have been repulsed by the Lowlander savages along the coast. We have the Second Army marching to Tark from Asta, so as to set out along the coast once spring comes, thus making the best time overland. The Eighth is also listed to march to Asta, for deployment then where it is best thought fit. We plan to sweep down the coast as rapidly as possible, but at the same time we face the problem of the Spider-kinden.’

‘I have made my decision concerning the Spiders,’ Alvdan remarked. A frisson of interest passed through the assembled tacticians, for this was news. ‘We must assume that they have played a part in the destruction of the Fourth,’ the Emperor continued. ‘So I have instructed General Maxin here to have his agents destabilize the local cities of the Spiderlands. We intend to sow sufficient disruption at their borders to ensure that they shall not trouble our Lowlands campaign.’ He smiled at them. ‘The rest is a Rekef matter, and in General Maxin’s capable hands, but no doubt the Second or Eighth can spare time to burn the Spiders’ webs, if the Rekef so wish. Continue.’

The slaver major gestured towards the map. ‘You have already heard how the Sixth and Seventh Armies will be approaching the city of Sarn, but agents in the Rekef Inlander inform us that Sarn is currently allied with a number of lesser cities in that area, making any advance into contested territory dangerous.’ He glanced at Maxin. ‘General, perhaps I range into your territory now?’

Maxin stepped forward to the map, tapping the shining disc that represented Sarn. ‘The mixing of kinden that the Lowlanders are currently engaging in, in their attempts to find an alliance against us, allows our agents much more freedom to act than before. We are well placed to shatter this alliance of theirs by removing key figures and playing on their suspicion of each other. At that point, when the season turns, General Malkan will advance overland and by rail and destroy Sarn before heading north to mop up the primitives living there. Collegium will then fall either to the Seventh coming south from Sarn, or to the Second coming east along the coast, whichever seems most convenient at the time. So ends the war with the Lowlands.’

‘Not another Twelve-Year War then, we hope,’ said Alvdan.

‘We cannot promise on our lives that your Imperial Majesty’s flag shall fly over Collegium this summer,’ said one of the older generals, ‘but the Lowlands, though they have pockets of mechanical knowledge that matches our own, lack the unity and spirit of the Commonweal, or the reserves of manpower. We cannot but think that, by next summer at the very latest, all the Lowlands shall be yours.’

‘The Lowlands shall be yours,’ Uctebri murmured to himself derisively. He had not been present at the war council, but that was no barrier to him, for his mind gnawed through the fabric of this palace like a grub. Nothing ever escaped him, and meanwhile the Wasps remained so sure of their material world, so ignorant of the reality that moved invisibly behind it. He was back in his new chamber again, the one with the opening roof. He was allowed outside it only in the company of General Maxin or the Emperor, though he believed that, if need be, his own powers would secure his release. Again that blurring of boundaries and outlines, the hedging over questions of fact. Questions such as: Do I do this for himself or for my kinden?

Originally, of course, the secret masters amongst the Blooded Ones had set him on this path, yet now he had developed a personal stake, a chance to grasp power with his own hands rather than simply bow to the will of his betters. His kinden had never been a unified race. They were individualists one and all. It was why they were now so few.

He ordered his guard to winch the ceiling hatch open for, though it was a simple mechanical operation, he could not master it. The chill air fell into the room and made the fire tremble in the grate. Uctebri saw his own breath, and that of the guard, plume in the sudden cold.

There were no clouds blotting the heavens tonight, but he would not have cared if there were. He could read the clouds as easily as the stars hiding behind them.

He had dreamt long last night, seen many things. Now he stared up at the order of the heavens in order to help thresh through those visions and cast out the chaff of mere fancy.

There had been Mantis-kinden in his dream, and many others of the Lowlands peoples. A man who fought under the badge of the old Weaponsmasters… and a woman whose banner changed and changed, a spy in the way that the old races recognized that word. She was the holder of the Shadow Box.

Last night had been full of faces and blood. He had seen the figure of Emperor Alvdan II cast in gold, presiding over the beginning of a new world. Perhaps he should tell the man of that vision, and whet his ego still further.

The death of the mighty… that was something best left unsaid, but it had been clear last night, and was clear in the stars now. The fall of cities and armies marching. One did not have to be a seer to foresee such things in the future. The Empire had grown great, its borders overflowing with armed men. All the independent powers still left in this tract of world would be troubled by this next season of campaigning. He had seen last night the sails of the Spider-kinden; the white eyes of the Moths who had driven his own people into the wastes; a lame halfbreed crushed stone in a hand of steel; a dead man arose to rule over the lost, with the sun as his queen. Uctebri made his notes and observations, but so much of what he had seen was still shrouded in darkness, even to his penetrating eyes.

He signalled to the guard and the shivering man gratefully winched the shutters closed. Even as he did so, Uctebri saw one last piece leap out at him. Blood, of course. Blood, which was the tide the world ebbed and flowed on, but blood particularly tonight.

He gave a thin and lipless smile just at the thought. There were many traditions of the old magic, Moth-kinden and Spider and more, old and lost and abandoned. Only the Mosquito-kinden understood the true value of blood, and when to reach deep into the minds of others and lay their hands on the knife.

Alvdan had spent the day unsatisfied. The mosquito slave constantly prevaricated and whined for his precious box. General Maxin counted over his agents and imagined that Alvdan did not notice the power games he played with the other two Rekef generals. He was getting ahead of himself, that one, taking imperial favour for granted. Perhaps it would soon be time for Maxin to discover, as so many others had, why the throne’s benevolence should not be presumed on.

But if Maxin died, of course, his name could no longer be used to frighten Seda. Alvdan’s sister had now lived in Maxin’s shadow for eight years, after the general had disposed of all their other siblings. No, better to keep Maxin alive for now. Where else could such a convenient stick be found, to beat little Seda with?

And the military, his ingenious strategists! I have an entire Empire to choose from, and this is what they give me! True, the Slave Corps man had seemed fairly competent, but what true soldier had ambitions as low as commanding the slavers? Profiteers and brigands, the lot of them, though necessary, of course. The Empire would always need slaves, and it ground them up at such a rate that it seemed impossible there could always be more. There were always more, though: prisoners of battle, criminals and cullings from the provinces or raids against savage peoples living beyond the borders. The Slave Corps did a fine job, really, for all that it was inferior work for a soldier.

My generals just talk and talk. If there was no progress this spring then Alvdan would take his pleasure in devising torments for those men. For now he must take his pleasures elsewhere. He had eaten some small amount, drunk a little wine, his servants hovering around anxiously for his orders. Now he could at least slake his physical needs, though his mind would continue to worry and tug at all of his problems even then. With his entourage of guards and menials, he swept through the halls of his personal chambers and entered the rooms allotted to his concubines.

Only the Emperor kept concubines. Other Wasps might have their women, their slave girls, whoever took their fancy, and he knew that some foreign kinden such as the cursed Spiders delighted in great slave seraglios where one of their noble ladies might rut every night for a year and not see the same body beneath her twice, but the imperial concubines here were something different to that. The Emperor could call upon any woman within the Empire, of any kinden, of any station, slave or free, married or not, and yet here he kept a collection of women for his personal use only. That use was partly for the physical satisfaction, but more for political ends. They were all highly important to him, because they were hostages of a sort.

Most were Wasp-kinden, daughters of powerful families, governors, colonels; men whose loyalty to the Empire was paramount and yet not entirely guaranteed; men who commanded large armies out on the marches, beyond the close scrutiny of the throne, or Consortium merchant barons whose hands were often dipped in the imperial coffers – all had been required to contribute some close female blood-kin to the Emperor’s harem. It was a hard-edged honour but, still, the truly loyal gave without question, and for the rest there was always the fearsome spectre of the Rekef.

And, of course, General Maxin’s own middle daughter was here. Alvdan had slept with her only once. In fact he slept with them all at least once. He knew Maxin was notoriously unsentimental but still he felt that, if it came to that, the death or disfigurement of his daughter might at least bruise the man’s iron self-possession.

What am I in the mood for tonight? Alvdan asked himself. Something unusual, he decided.

‘Bring me Tserinet,’ he instructed the Warden of the Concubines, an elderly woman who had served in the post since his father’s time. There were no male servants allowed within the harem, and here, in their armour and with spears to the ready, were the only fighting women in the Empire, a dozen hand-picked female Wasp-kinden who were rumoured to be the equal of any elite duellist serving in the Imperial Army.

When the woman was brought out, Alvdan nearly reconsidered. She was no great beauty, Tserinet. Short and dark, with a flat face and a lean body, he had lain with her four times and each experience had been the same: passionless, without any sign of emotion from her. She had let him stamp himself upon her, and clearly willed it to be brief. Even when he had struck her in frustration she had not reacted.

Still, she now looked as forlorn as he could wish. When she met his gaze briefly there was something wretched and terrible in her eyes. Yes, she would do.

He owed it to his Empire, after all, to visit every part of it, at least vicariously. That accounted for all his concubines of other races: women of importance from the Empire’s subject cities, serving as hostages to their families’ good behaviour. At the moment, none was more important than Tserinet.

He wondered what news she had gleaned of her own city. The local governor worked them hard there, and work they did, each long day become a grind to produce food for the Empire, or armour and weapons and machines. Since its conquest, after the end of a long siege, Szar had become quite a pillar of the Wasp Empire, a city that practically ran itself for the Empire’s good – and more loyal than the Emperor’s own people because here was its queen: Tserinet, the ruler of Szar, adored of her subjects, queen of the Bee-kinden.

Yes, tonight he would stamp his rule upon Szar once again. Those Bees should be honoured by the attention.

He had been expecting the usual passionless and unresponsive coupling, but this was different. Tonight she met his attentions with a desperate fire, grappling with him like a real lover, locking her legs about him, moving with him as though she had a thirst only he could quench. He wondered at it, even as he thrust and gasped atop her, how this woman could have thus metamorphosed from the affectless creature he had known previously. When she grasped him now it was as though she was taking some great leap into an unknown and unplumbed void.

She left him quite spent and, when he rolled off her, she stared at the ceiling with tears in her eyes. He did not understand her at all but he had no urge to scry into the minds of all the subject peoples of his Empire. Well satisfied, he left her, still trembling, for his own bed.

It had been a farewell of sorts, that final act of hers, and not to the man she hated most in the world but to the world itself. For the next morning they found Tserinet dead. During the night, she had taken a broken shard of pottery and gashed at her own wrists, bleeding slowly to death. Tserinet, Queen of Szar and hostage for the obedience of her people, was no more.