Seal of the Worm

Five

The wife of the governor of Solarno had been out the whole day, and the evening too, and Gannic’s informers strongly suggested that she had been meeting covertly with agents of . . . well, his spies weren’t that good but he’d bet that it was certain of the local Spider Aristoi. They would be constantly weaving, daily patching the accord that they had secretly stitched together to keep Solarno out of the war.

As for the governor himself, he was a Consortium man, a merchant and not a soldier – but either he was the most blinkered buffoon ever to get a colonel’s rank badge or he had the rare attitude in a Wasp of being prepared to let his wife get on with things. After all, Spiders would always have more respect for a woman across the negotiating table.

Insane that we ever allied with them, even for as long as we did, Gannic reflected, and not for the first time, but the cautious détente here in Solarno showed that anything was possible.

Since just before sundown, Gannic had been an unannounced guest in the governor’s townhouse, hiding from the servants and settling in while the place turned in for the night around him. He was amused to discover that Edvic and his wife occupied separate rooms, but then perhaps that was part of the unique way that they worked together, and certainly it seemed to have served them well so far.

So, time to kick over the barrel. After all, he had his instructions from Colonel Varsec, who was keen to meet the woman who had bridged the Wasp–Spider gap, that everywhere else had ripped apart into open warfare.

The house as a whole had gone to bed by the time the governor’s wife got in. Gannic held very still as he listened to her dismiss the last few servants who had waited up for her return, and then she entered her chambers. It was late, she was tired, and Gannic hid himself well. She considerately lit only a single candle before casting off her robe, obviously worn out by the diplomatic demands of her day.

Time to introduce myself. Gannic had inherited the dark-seeing Art of his Beetle mother, and he had to admit that Merva was a fine piece of work, as tall and elegant as any Spider woman, hair of gold and skin perhaps paler than he liked it, but he could imagine her matching the Aristoi pose for pose as they trod their diplomatic tightrope together.

‘Now there’s a sight,’ he said – and watched her freeze, naked before an unseen enemy, exposed and vulnerable. Then she had collected herself, the shift dropping from her fingers and her palms coming up ready to sting.

‘I’d keep those hands down, woman,’ he told her, and by then she knew exactly whereabouts he was. ‘Was it you that killed Captain Carven?’

‘Remind me, who was Carven?’ she asked, and he watched each muscle tense as she braced herself for the moment of violence, ready to snap out an arm and unleash her Art.

‘Firstly, and as a point of etiquette,’ he told her calmly, ‘my sting’s probably a bit on the feeble side but I’ve a snapbow on you right now, one of the little ones, but good enough at this range. Secondly, I love a show as much as the next man, but how’s about you get your kit back on and then we can talk about why there’s at least one dead Imperial messenger in the bay – and a Rekef man at that – who I know walked into this house alive.’

He saw her consider her options calmly. He had considered having her remain unclad to intimidate her but, even standing naked before a stranger, she seemed far too self-possessed, and he felt that he would just push her towards a violent retaliation which could lead anywhere – but probably nowhere useful to Gannic.

Slowly she took up her shift again and pulled it over her head, for all the barrier it provided. When her head emerged, her eyes glinted like steel.

‘The governor’s a lucky man, I’ll say that,’ Gannic put in. ‘But you’re playing a dangerous game when you cross the Rekef. That’s better, now. Sit down, and keep your hands out flat on the sheets there.’

‘So what does the Rekef suggest happens next?’ she enquired coldly, waiting for that moment of divided attention when she could go for him.

‘Sod the Rekef,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘I’m none of them. If you hadn’t done for Carven, I might have had to do him myself.’ A pause followed for that to sink in. ‘Peace in Solarno, eh? Who’d have thought it? But it turns out that suits my superiors just fine. They’ve a use for a Solarno that’s not demolished and on fire. Captain Carven’s current watery grave tells me that so do you – you and your man here.’

She took a deep breath. ‘And if we do?’

‘Fellow who gives me orders is very keen to talk about how you’re keeping this particular plate spinning.’ He stepped forwards at last to let her get a look at him. He saw her take in his features, wrinkling her nose at the very thought of being outmanoeuvred by a halfbreed. But she saw the snapbow as well and passed no comment.

‘So who gives you your orders?’ she asked him cautiously. If not the Rekef, was the obvious subtext.

‘I am Lieutenant-Auxillian Gannic, lady,’ he introduced himself. ‘Engineers, believe it or not. Take it from me, a lot of eyes are pointed at Solarno right about now. I’d say you’d be surprised, but I’m not sure you would – not you. So let’s get some ground rules straight. Yell out, and I’m going to shoot you. Maybe not to kill, but who can say how good my aim is? And if you or your servants or your man do get the better of me, and I don’t show up safe in the morning, then my chief will make sure word is on its way to Capitas by an hour past dawn, to tell them just how you’ve been playing them. So I suggest you behave.’

Merva gave him a level stare. ‘What do you want me to do? Book your commanding officer an appointment?’

‘No need – he’s ready right now. So how about you get yourself a cloak and we’ll go out quiet, the back way. No need to trouble the staff.’

He saw her stiffen, considering the odds, and he lifted the snapbow a little to keep it in the forefront of her mind. ‘Let’s go now, and slowly – or I’ll have to say all this stuff to your widower husband tomorrow.’

He saw himself reflected in her eyes: the brutal halfbreed who might do anything. I’m not the one who killed the Rekef captain, lady, he reflected. Woman or not, I reckon you’re more dangerous than me, given half a chance.

He put the weapon up against the pale hollow of her neck as he bound her wrists, feeling the thought in her mind about whether she could sting without him killing her by reflex. He kept to one side, though, denied her the most obvious opportunities, and then he had her hands tied palm to palm.

They moved through the house like some strange dream, soft footed, an invisible thread linking the small of her back to the barrel of his snapbow. At any moment he was sure she was going to cry out or just run, but she retained a stately calm, as though she was merely sleepwalking.

The side door that Gannic had been shepherding her towards opened just as they got in sight of it, and Colonel Varsec appeared. Gannic stopped, staring at his superior in dumb amazement.

Am I betrayed? Was Varsec about to stage some heroic ‘rescue’ of Merva? Did that sort of thing even work?

Then Varsec stepped inside with a wry look at his subordinate. And behind the colonel was a Spider-kinden woman, a slight little thing with short, dark hair and the face of innocence, save that she had a long knife held to the colonel’s neck.

‘Good evening, Lady Merva,’ the Spider said politely.

‘Lady Giselle.’ The Wasp woman even managed a cordial nod.

‘Perhaps your over-enthusiastic slave will put away his device now?’ The Spider smiled at Gannic, who had the snapbow levelled at her face.

Merva did something complex with her hands and Gannic’s ropes fell away, leaving her palms directed straight towards him. ‘What’s the matter, Engineer? Are all your little cogs failing to mesh?’

‘Oh, very good.’ Varsec grinned at Merva over the knife blade. ‘Might I suggest that, since the underhand approach is apparently off the menu, you send for some wine and your husband?’

‘And why would I want to do that?’

‘Because, right at this moment in Solarno, I am the Empire, or a very large part of it, and the Empire has a deal to make. I want to talk about Solarno’s current détente, and after that I want to talk about Solarno and Chasme and the Iron Glove.’

‘Three days since the last delegation left, and here they are again,’ Drephos mused, watching the bustle of the Chasme docks, but with particular reference to the Solarnese sloop that word said had brought another batch of Imperials to their door.

‘Perhaps it’s just another order. They still have a few armies to outfit with Sentinels.’ Totho was away from the balcony, studying reports from some of the metallurgists by lamplight, despite the bright daylight he could have had for free if he moved his desk five feet over.

‘And Solarno hasn’t torn itself to pieces yet, either. Everyone was saying it would. Everyone was saying we’d have our own little war around the Exalsee: Spiders and Wasps. There are plenty of troops within an easy sail. So what, I wonder . . .?’

It sounded like a non-sequitur, but Drephos’s words always had a logic to them, the trick being to reverse-engineer the unspoken links of the chain.

‘They may want an anti-Sentinel weapon, of course,’ came Totho’s absent-minded reply. ‘The Sarnesh captured a few after they defeated the Eighth.’

He read on for another few lines, but Drephos remained silent, and at last Totho glanced up.

‘You’re concerned over something. Not about their man who had the accident, surely?’

‘There won’t have been time for that news to have prompted anything,’ Drephos said dismissively. ‘But something . . . I think our new visitors will be speaking the same old words, however they disguise them.’

‘The Bee-killer,’ Totho identified.

Drephos let a long pause slide by before he confirmed that, and then only with the briefest grunt. Totho heard his metal hand – that wonder of artifice – scrape on the balcony rail.

‘So give it to them.’

That got the man’s attention. Drephos turned sharply, stalking back to hunch in the balcony archway, a stark silhouette against the sunlit sky. ‘You think so, do you?’

Totho put down his reports. ‘In truth? No. But I’m not sure why you don’t.’

‘I’m undecided.’

‘Drephos . . .’ Totho stood up and crossed the room to him, trying to make out the man’s expression. ‘The march of technology, the inevitable broadening of the scope and purpose of warfare . . . Every invention that leaves our foundries has only made your words more true. I confess, the Bee-killer is still too much for me, especially since I was the one who . . . deployed it, that one time. But I’ve been waiting for you to talk me round. So, what is it?’

The master artificer took a deep breath and returned to the balcony rail, forcing Totho to join him.

‘We’ve worked wonders here, haven’t we? With this place?’ And now surely Drephos was prevaricating, and that was not like him. Beneath them, Chasme was a sprawling blot on the landscape: workshops and factories; piers and docks; two airfields crowded with a bizarre assortment of fliers; tavernas and boarding houses and brothels. Actual room to live was fitted around all the rest, in alleys and cellars or crammed between buildings.

All of it was lawless. Chasme had always been a pirate town, a pirate artificer town, long before Totho and Drephos had arrived. It had been fertile soil for them, though. The rabble of Chasme appreciated good workmanship, and although there were no definite leaders amongst them, the Iron Glove’s word spoke loudest. What Drephos wanted, Drephos got.

‘What are you thinking? You want this new lot to disappear? I can give the word,’ Totho suggested.

‘And word would then get back to the Empire,’ Drephos noted.

Totho had never been good at talking to people, but then Drephos had never been good at listening, so they were well matched there. Eventually he went with: ‘All right, what?’

‘There they are.’ Drephos’s real flesh hand jabbed out towards the docks, but there was such a bustle of business there that Totho could not make out what he had spotted. Since the double invasion of Solarno, many merchants had gone elsewhere around the Exalsee with their wares or their orders, and nowhere had benefited more than Chasme.

‘I know you still keep spies in the Lowlands . . . in Collegium.’ Another non-sequitur, another twist of Drephos’s mind as it gained purchase on the problem.

The stab of guilt he felt at that surprised Totho. ‘I don’t. Not like that. But I pay for news from there, certainly. Well enough that I’ve a few who go out of their way to get it to me.’ He shrugged, failing at nonchalance. ‘What of it?’ In the face of Drephos’s scrutiny he hunched his shoulders defensively. ‘It’s not . . . it’s not her. I’m not . . . for news of her. Just . . . I used to live there . . .’

His words dried up as he realized that his evasions were pointless. Drephos’s mind had already moved elsewhere.

‘Perhaps,’ the Colonel-Auxillian murmured, ‘you should listen to spies from closer to home. You’ve seen how much gold is coming into our coffers?’

‘More than even we can use.’ Totho shrugged. It was not about the money, for either of them.

‘And how much of that is Imperial coin? Less than there used to be, and we’re selling much further afield. Even those who can’t afford us still send their little delegations. The whole world wants us to arm it. Anyone who we turn away knows that, wherever else they go – Solarno, Dirovashni – they’re getting second best. And those ports know it as well. Chasme’s growing power – our iron fist – has not gone unnoticed.’

‘Then perhaps we need to clench it. Or whatever you do with fists. We could outfit an army that could swallow up the Exalsee – if you wanted.’ Totho spread his hands. ‘What do you want?’

‘Nothing more than life has provided me with: the tools to move the world. So long as the rest of the world is content for me to move it . . .’

‘And the Bee-killer?’

‘You’re beginning to sound like the Empire.’

‘I want to understand,’ Totho pressed.

Drephos took a deep breath. ‘If it were you asking for it, I’d hand over the formula. You would respect it, use it responsibly,’ he said, as if not speaking of an invention the only purpose of which was to massacre thousands. ‘The Empire . . .’ He shook his head. ‘But they are here, I think. Let us pretend they just wish to place orders and enquire after our latest devices. I tire of spies.’

He led the way down, Totho tripping along in his wake, staring worriedly at the other man’s back. Drephos was not one for soul-searching: he was a creature of certainties. Now he was talking like an old man.

The Bee-killer . . . Drephos had gifted war with countless inventions, from small devices for the more efficient aiming of bombs to grand projects such as the Sentinels or the greatshotter artillery. He had no family, nor love for any other being, no greed for coin for its own sake, only to feed the fires of his projects. Even for Totho, the closest thing to a kindred spirit that he had, he surely felt no more than the distant fondness a man might grant a pet.

And yet his name was linked to one invention like no other, and that was the Bee-killer. The atrocity at Szar was laid at his door: a chemical devised by his underlings and used by Totho against the Empire had somehow become Drephos’s great work in the minds of many, many people. And now the Empire wanted to possess more of it.

He wondered if that was it, the vice that Drephos found himself in: a man whose least-favoured child has become his heir apparent.

Then they were stepping down into one of the workshops, with Iron Glove artificers and staff clearing out of the way, and the Imperial delegation was being ushered in. There were a dozen of them, and mostly the Wasps and Beetles that Totho had come to expect: not fighting men but Consortium merchants and factors not above a little snooping in their spare time.

In the lead, though, was a different model of trouble. Totho had seen only a scant handful of halfbreeds allowed any authority by the Empire – one of whom was standing beside him. This new man looked to be in charge, though, and he saluted Drephos as though the other man’s old rank still held.

‘Good day, sir. It’s a pleasure finally to meet you,’ the Imperial halfbreed said with a bright, sharp smile. ‘Lieutenant-Auxillian Gannic at your service.’