Seal of the Worm

Sixteen

Reinforcements, the word arrived in Collegium, but only a handful of orthopters had come buzzing from the east – certainly not the garrison force that many were still hoping for. Instead, there was a band of engineers, quartermasters and Consortium men come to take stock, and a visitor for the general.

Major Oski, highest-ranking Engineer in the Second Army and highest-ranking Fly-kinden in the Engineers, was there to greet the newcomers, a smart exchange of key words and salutes before he took them somewhere out of the way. He was not a man who readily delegated, was Oski. Instead, he and his assistant tended to turn up all over the Wasp quarter of Collegium and beyond, making themselves useful. Recently he had even been assisting the locals with the reconstruction, although his method of press-ganging them into work details to rebuild their own homes was not earning him much love amongst the populace.

He was very plainly in charge and, as a Fly giving orders to Wasps and other larger kinden, he had cultivated a large voice and an impressive selection of insults. He made himself very much the centre of attention and fervently hoped that any watchers would not notice that his visiting band of artificers and merchants was unusually diverse – only a single Wasp amongst them, nor that they themselves were paying far more attention to his assistant, Captain Ernain.

Ernain and Oski went way back, and were most certainly both in the same degree of trouble if anyone decided to start asking pointed questions, which was the sort of trouble that won a man the exclusive attention of the Rekef interrogators for as long as he could hold out. So far, Oski reckoned that their little sideline had evaded official attention, but he was unhappily aware that the pilot, Bergild, had begun to suspect something. He liked Bergild: she was good, refreshing company in a job where, all too often, you heard the same half-dozen stock opinions do the rounds of every single conversation. So much for that, though, and now he was putting as much distance between them as possible.

Otherwise, if she would not take the hint, he would have to arrange an accident for her. With him as an artificer used to sneaking right up to the enemy to look over their siege artillery, and her as a pilot absolutely dependent on the proper workings of her Farsphex, he knew he could get rid of her with pitiful ease. He very much did not want to have to do it.

He got them all into a Collegiate taverna, then cleared out the locals and the staff until he and his fellows had sole possession of the place. With one keen-eyed Fly sergeant on watch, the rest of them settled in with a few liberated bowls of wine and waited for Ernain to begin.

‘Any luck getting Oski transferred back east with me?’ was his first question. A man for practicalities, was Ernain. He was Bee-kinden from Vesserett, that grand old city that had just been winding itself up to become a power in the world when it had clashed with the nascent empire that the Wasp tribes had put together. Nobody had known it at the time, but history should have been holding its breath. There could easily have been a Bee empire locking horns with the Lowlands right now, if things had gone differently.

Or perhaps trading peaceably with the Lowlands, all sweetness and light, Oski considered, though personally he didn’t believe it.

‘Not a hope just now,’ a Beetle-kinden put in, a captain in the Consortium wearing informal robes with only a rank badge to separate him from the civilians. ‘Believe me, something weird’s going on back home. Trying to get any odd orders stamped is almost a lost cause. The Empress . . .’

There was a general mutter around the room, from men who all knew the same story.

‘Anyway, the upshot is that a Captain-Auxillian can probably move about, but the Second’s chief engineer? Stuck here for now, looks like.’

‘The situation here is still strong,’ Ernain told them. ‘No doubt that’s the official line, too, but this time it’s true. I hear that the southern front against the Spiders is stalling, though?’

‘Just so,’ confirmed their one Wasp, garbed as a lieutenant of the Engineers. ‘The usual – ambush, assassination, mass poisoning and broken supply lines. The whole business was stupidity from the start.’

‘But a gift to us,’ Ernain pointed out. Capital treason uttered, then and there, and they absorbed it and nodded cautiously. ‘We’ll get our moment,’ the Bee went on, ‘and we’ll get it soon, I hope. Sarn will break out, or else the Spiders. But we need to be ready, have everything in place. Tell me we’ll be ready.’

Some strong nods, some awkward expressions.

‘We’re still testing the water in Slodan and Dekiez, and there’s simply no ready way to interest the Delves,’ the Beetle started to summarise. ‘The Grasshoppers are all for it but basically don’t understand what we’re trying to achieve.’

‘And some of us aren’t convinced it can work,’ added another Bee, an older artificer also from Vesserett. ‘This is the Empire we’re talking about. It’ll end in blood, no other way.’

‘In that case, a great deal of what we’ve worked for will come to nothing, Tiberan,’ Ernain replied. ‘But, if you’re right, we need to have the sword ready to draw. We don’t bluff. I know you think this must end in violence,’ he remarked to his kinsman. ‘And I know that some of you don’t believe it ever will –’ and this time a look at the Beetle – ‘but the truth is, we must all be ready to fight, and not to fight. We must be ready for opportunity. When we make our move, the next pages of the history books will be blank, awaiting our writing. If we try to scrawl them out ahead of time, we’re fools and likely we’ll fail. Here, try this. The final version, I hope.’ He threw over a scroll to Tiberan, who ran his eyes down it, frowning.

‘I don’t like it,’ Tiberan grumbled. ‘Same reasons as before.’

‘I know. Are you still with me, though?’

The older Bee sighed. ‘You know I am, Ernain.’

‘And the rest of you?’

‘If we had to go today, just march up to the throne and throw down the gauntlet,’ the Beetle said, ‘then we’d have a chance of getting out with our skins. If we did the same next month then I think we might be just about as ready as we’d ever be.’

‘Margraf,’ Ernain addressed the Wasp, ‘are we still quiet?’

‘There’s nothing in my papers or the rumours I hear that suggests otherwise,’ the man replied. ‘Still, as we all know, things are on the move back home. Right now, it’s not my lot you should be looking over your shoulder for. This Red Watch, that’s the new name, and where it gets its information from, I have no idea.’ My lot meant the Rekef, and Margraf held a lieutenant’s rank in the Inlander service as well as his Engineer’s post. He was regarded nervously by the rest, but he had proved invaluable so far.

Ernain took a deep breath. ‘You’re the third group of our people I’ve met with now. I’ve met with men who were scared of the consequences. I’ve met with those who were too keen for blood. I’ve met with Inapt men who told me their omens said the time was right. I’ve met with those who thought that I was trying to raise the power of old Vesserett from the ashes. All these different people I have talked to, and secured their agreement. People from all across the Empire. People who have been talking and planning since the end of the last war with the Lowlands, since the time of the traitor governors. I want you to go back to your own cities, to your own followers. Tell them it will happen. Every day brings it closer: our new dawn. We’re all together in this.’

‘So long as we’re not together in the Rekef cells at the end of it,’ old Tiberan growled, but the mood in the room remained fierce, determined. Oski looked from face to face and hoped that he was seeing the future.

Tynan wondered if this was how a spy felt every day. For an Imperial general it was certainly a novel and unpleasant experience. Here he was, in the city he nominally controlled, creeping about like a conspirator.

Getting the message had thrown him: the name was one he knew, and there were certain words and references there that convinced him of the hand behind it. Still, a lot of time had passed since then. The instant thought: was this a trap, a prelude to assassination? No great imagination was needed to suspect it – lure the general off to a secluded spot, and next moment Vrakir is in complete control of Collegium and the Empress’s supposed will is being done without hesitation.

But here he was, nevertheless, and he knew himself well enough to understand that this lack of caution was a result of a dozen different caustic experiences wearing him down – Mycella’s death, the unwanted demands of governing, the friction with Vrakir. He was a blunt, plain-speaking man denied the chance to act like one.

So an old friend called, and here he was. He had brought a dozen of his most trusted men who had drawn sword alongside him for over a decade in the Second’s campaigns. Choosing them, aware that they were none of them now as close to him as they should have been, he had come to the painful recognition of how his rank and the toll of the years had distanced him. He had no colonel to rely on, no real old friends. I should bring that Collegiate Fly woman with me; she would serve just as well.

In this brooding ugly mood he had come to this taverna, cloaked like a stage villain and trailed by a belligerent retinue.

On seeing that it was the man himself, he felt less relief than he had expected. Perhaps he would have preferred a betrayal, if only to give him the moral high ground.

‘Marent,’ he acknowledged.

‘Tynan.’ This general of the Third Army had no business being in Collegium, still less sneaking in incognito aboard a messenger orthopter, but here he was. He was younger than Tynan, and when he had done his stint in the Second he had only been a major, but he was a soldier’s soldier through and through, a man who won his wars on the battlefield, not behind closed doors.

In his eyes for just a moment, but there for all to see, was a spark of surprise at how old Tynan now looked.

‘Do I take it the Third isn’t about to relieve us?’ Tynan tried to make it sound light, but in truth he wished there was some chance it was true.

‘The Third is stuck in Capitas,’ General Marent replied disgustedly. ‘I’ve decided that I’ve received nothing personally nailing me to the spot, but you’ll appreciate why I’ve not turned up here with a standard and a proclamation.’

‘Why are you here, Marent?’ Tynan asked and, seeing the taken-aback look in the younger man’s eyes, held up a finger. ‘Not that I wouldn’t welcome the chance to talk but, in the Emperor’s name, man, you’re a general now!’

‘In the Empress’s name,’ Marent corrected sourly. ‘And in her name my entire force is eating its way through the stores at Capitas whilst there’s fighting all down the Silk Road and Sarn readies to march.’

‘Sarn already marches,’ Tynan corrected him. At Marent’s raised eyebrows he nodded tiredly. ‘Not a full army, but a few thousands heading for us even now. You’d better not outstay your welcome here, or I’ll have to make you part of my staff.’

‘Just a few thousands, though?’ Marent asked him, shaking his head.

‘So it seems: maybe three, four at the most. But there’s more. There’s maybe twice as many marching east from Vek, down the coast, and I reckon we’re lucky they lost so many trying to take this place before the last war or there’d be more.’

Marent frowned, calculating. ‘Still not enough.’

‘We’re waiting to see where the rest are coming from, but it’ll be time to keep hold of this place the hard way, soon enough.’

‘Then it’s even worse madness to have me sitting idle!’ Marent spat. ‘Let me come against Sarn with a full siege train, and the garrison force that’s currently tying them up can relieve you, and you can kick in the Vekken’s teeth. Why can’t they see it?’

‘The Empress and her Red Watch,’ Tynan suggested.

‘Correct. For the longest time, no orders at all and now . . . now there’s orders all right, a pissing explosion of them, just not the right ones. Quartermaster orders, Consortium orders, but Slave Corps orders most of all.’

Tynan frowned. ‘Slave Corps?’

‘She’s sending them out all over the Empire and beyond. They’ve got airships now – the Slave Corps has an air wing, can you believe?’

‘What for?’

‘Cargo airships down the Silk Road to Seldis.’

‘The Empress has a yearning for Spider slaves?’ Tynan felt an odd, cold twist inside him.

Marent looked as though he felt the same way. ‘I saw the orders. Not just a few Spiders. The Slave Corps is to take a dozen big cargo airships south and load them up with . . . everyone.’

‘What do you mean, “everyone”?’

‘As much of Seldis’s population as they can cram into the bays, quality immaterial.’

‘That’s insane,’ Tynan murmured.

‘Yes!’ Marent agreed heatedly. ‘Yes, it is pissing insane, and it’s happening, and anyone who looks sideways at the orders gets that “Voice of the Empress” business from the Red Watch, or gets arrested by the Rekef. Yes, it is insane, Tynan. Just like everything in Capitas these days. The whole city’s working on nothing but habit, and every day another piece grinds to a halt. There’s been a mass confiscation of slaves – and which slaves? Grasshoppers, Dragonflies, creatures of no use to anyone! Menials and cleaners and pissing musicians rounded up for her private use. They’re sending to the Principalities, even, offering to buy anyone they want rid of. I was planning to make this trip anyway, back when things were just peaceably mad, but just as I was about to set off, all of this started. Nobody knows what’s going on back home, Tynan.’

‘Why tell me this?’

Marent stared at him for a long time. ‘Because I trust you. Because you’re a man of honour, with the Empire’s best interests at heart.’

‘And I’m a man stuck here in Collegium, where there’s nothing I can do, even if it was in my power to help. And even suggesting something should be done is a form of treason. We can’t have another civil war, Marent.’

‘You tell me that? They’d never have won the last one if it wasn’t for me!’ Marent insisted. ‘But what was that for, the traitor governors and all that fighting? And now . . . it’s as if we went off to put them down, and we got lost on the way home and found ourselves in some other Empire.’

‘And I ask again, why tell me?’ Tynan insisted. ‘Because if you are suggesting that I, a man of honour with the Empire in his heart, would take some stand against the rightful Empress . . .’

‘Would you?’

In the silence that followed, Tynan could feel the thump of his own heart. I don’t believe he actually said it.

‘I’m not talking treason—’ Marent started.

Tynan cut him off furiously. ‘How can you not be talking treason?’

‘If there were enough of us – army generals, senior men in Capitas – if we stood before her and said, This is wrong, this isn’t the way, she’d have to listen to us.’

‘And if she didn’t?’

‘We’d have to hope she did.’

‘And you’re a better tactician than to plan a fight that’s all based on bluff,’ Tynan pointed out.

Marent scowled stubbornly but had no answer.

Taki landed the Stormreader neatly, letting the machine hover for longer than was strictly necessary, just because it was so good at it. The Sarnesh had only just produced the first of their new air force, but Willem Reader had made a few small but significant changes to the design while they were readying their factories.

At last Taki let the orthopter touch down and threw up the canopy as the first mechanics arrived. The expeditionary force had a score of flying machines with it, but only three of the new Stormreaders, the rest being either Collegiate fliers rescued from the conquest or older Sarnesh craft that she would frankly not be found dead in.

‘Get him rewound and ready to go right out again.’ For a moment she almost told them she would be right back, but she had to report in, and she had already flown double duty after specifically being told not to. Rebellion had its limits. ‘Next pilots up – let’s have an all-Sarnesh scout team this time – and someone show me where the big noises are.’

The force that was marching south had the sort of loose command structure that Beetles seemed to gravitate to inexorably, but that sent Ants into fits. Arguably it had three leaders, and Taki normally reported to the most junior of them, dropping out of the sky with a flick of her wings to land on the woman’s blind side, virtually on her feet.

Straessa – known as the Antspider – swore at her tiredly. They were waiting for a team of artificers to repair the rails, as the grand idea for a swift move on Collegium was to have the soldiers march unencumbered while supplies were brought down the rail line. On various occasions, though, both sides had been fairly determined that the line would not benefit the enemy, so their progress had been somewhat haphazard. Fortunately the Sarnesh had devised an automotive that repaired and replaced the rails as it travelled on them, but even that ingenious machine ran into impassable sections on a depressingly frequent basis.

Give me some way of getting an army on an orthopter, was Taki’s only thought in reaction to that.

‘Chief!’ She saluted cheerily, because the Antspider was always fair game to annoy.

‘Just “Officer”,’ the halfbreed woman growled. She was in charge of the Collegiate detachment, but plainly had not wanted to be. She was a victim of the tendency of Beetle leaders not to be soldiers themselves, so that Leadswell and Reader and the rest were all back in Sarn.

‘We had reports of fighting from you and yours, pilot,’ broke in Kymene, the Mynan commander and nominal overall tactician. ‘Report.’

As Kymene was not on Taki’s annoy list, the Fly woman nodded more soberly. ‘If they didn’t know we were coming before, they surely do now. Three Farsphex came to check us out.’

‘You drove them off?’

‘Downed one, chased the others way. They’ve not lost any of their skill, but our new craft are the business, Commander.’

‘Good to hear it,’ Kymene nodded. She had brought with her just about every Mynan out of Sarn, all of them desperate to shed Wasp blood. For them, retaking Collegium was merely a link in the chain that would bring them home. Even Taki, whose interest in non-aviators was minimal, had marked that a fair number of Kymene’s followers were not soldiers by trade, just those who had been able to escape the Wasp assault on their city. Which is likely to make things messy if there’s a real fight.

Again, that was not normally her department, but Taki was well aware that the Imperial Second could swallow up this expeditionary force and still be hungry afterwards. So let’s hope there’s a plan.

‘How are our pilots performing?’ This came from Commander Lycena, leader of the Sarnesh soldiers grudgingly released by Milus to march south. She was a reserved careful woman, plainly more concerned about keeping her own people alive than the eventual fate of the city they were marching on. Which probably helps balance out any excess enthusiasm on the part of the Mynans.

‘Good, Commander. They work together well. They need to think round the sky more, though. It’s hard, I know, with them not having the Art—’

‘Perhaps later for the details?’ Kymene interrupted. ‘What can we expect from their air power now?’

Taki shrugged. ‘If word from Collegium still holds, they’ve not had much more delivered, which gives us parity, perhaps even the advantage. But we’ve no bombers, and they might have all sorts of other tricks, like those hornets they flew against us last time, so it’s going to be a ground war again. Or they might get another twenty Farsphex delivered tomorrow, in which case we have a problem.’

‘What other intelligence from Collegium?’ Kymene enquired.

‘Sperra was in yesterday,’ the Antspider confirmed, ‘and it sounds as if we’ve managed to get the Wasps wound up about us, no matter that we don’t have enough people here to . . . you know, actually take the walls.’ Taki heard the woman’s voice trail off pointedly. ‘I mean, there is a plan, right? We’re not just here because the Wasp artillery’s getting rusty?’

Kymene’s smile in response was hard. ‘Yes indeed, there is a plan.’

Straessa and Lycena exchanged glances, and the Mynan woman held her hand up.

‘Yes, there is a plan. No, it goes no further than the inside of my head right now.’

‘That’s a plan one assassin away from a shambles, then,’ Straessa muttered, loud enough for all to hear.

‘Then it’s lucky that it’s not my plan, and doesn’t need me to work,’ Kymene retorted. ‘Let us just get within sight of Collegium’s walls.’