Seal of the Worm

Twenty-Two

‘Instructions are simple,’ Sperra confirmed. ‘Stay in your houses. No grand uprising.’

Poll Awlbreaker shook his head. ‘Makes no sense.’ He looked about the circle of his friends for support, the little band of revolutionaries gathered in the back room behind his workshop.

To Sartaea te Mosca it seemed there were few there as dedicated to action as he was. Raullo Mummers the artist shrugged unhappily, and the Spider, Metyssa, put a hand on Poll’s arm.

‘I’m not exactly keen about being penned up in your cellar for months at a time,’ she told him, ‘but taking to the streets will get messy.’

Poll stared at her. ‘It’ll be war. What were you expecting?’

‘I’m expecting the Sarnesh or someone to have a plan that won’t get everyone killed.’

‘Poll, have faith,’ said te Mosca. ‘And, believe me, I’ve seen the Empire close up recently, and things are as taut as a bowstring. The first sign of an uprising, and Tynan will give the order to shoot everyone who takes to the streets.’

‘And here you were saying he’s a reasonable man,’ Poll grumbled.

‘For what it’s worth, I think he is,’ she confirmed. ‘But he’s a reasonable Wasp with an army, and that would be the reasonable response to a mass revolt by the people he’s been set to watch over.’

Poll stood up abruptly, frustrated aggression making him clench his fists over and over, unable to be still. ‘Have you seen how many the Sarnesh have brought? It’s a joke, a glorified lorn detachment, a suicide detail! Even with the Vekken and that handful who’ve supposedly sailed from Tsen, it’s not enough to take the city unless we rise up.’

‘By your own logic,’ Metyssa observed, ‘that means that, if we do, the Wasps can hold off the Ant-kinden with just a small force on the walls and turn most of their weapons against us. Is this that Apt logic you’re so proud of?’

‘Sit tight,’ Sperra confirmed. ‘That’s all they ask of you.’

‘They who?’ Poll demanded angrily.

‘Laszlo,’ Sperra announced proudly. ‘I met with him only yesterday. He says he got the orders from . . .’

The others waited, watching her fight over whether to say it or not.

‘Stenwold Maker,’ Raullo Mummers finished for her, in mock-prophetic tones.

Sperra deflated somewhat. ‘Yes, that is what he said, actually.’

‘Maker’s dead,’ Poll said dismissively.

‘He’s not,’ Sperra insisted. ‘Laszlo said.’

‘I rather fear that if I was writing a story intended to inspire the people of Collegium, I wouldn’t admit to the man being dead, either,’ Metyssa noted drily. ‘What say you, Sartaea?’

The Fly magician hunched in on herself. ‘I would like to believe . . .’ she said slowly, ‘but I very much fear—’

The crash of the front door being kicked in seemed appallingly loud. Poll had a solid door but, when the wood failed to yield to the first impact, there was an explosive splintering as an impatient hand simply blasted at the hinges with a sting.

‘Metyssa, get under cover!’ he shouted, lunging across his back room for the nearest available weapon, one of his heavy hammers. The others were on their feet now, and Metyssa was dragging a dagger from its sheath.

‘No! Hide!’ Poll got out, and then the Wasps were swarming into the room, palms out ready to sting. He launched himself at them, the hammer catching one on the shoulder, sending the man staggering and denting his mail. Then, three against one, they were on him, not stinging but punching and kicking, beating him to the ground with brutal efficiency.

The rest of the Wasps were still ready to sting, fully half of them wearing the closed helms of the Slave Corps.

‘Sartaea te Mosca,’ one of them announced, staring at the Fly-kinden. ‘Your presence is requested.’

‘Is it the general?’ she asked in a hushed voice.

‘“Is it the general?”’ he echoed, mocking. ‘My, what airs you have. Turns out someone has a use for a few Inapt like yourself, and Major Vrakir was kind enough to put your name forward especially. Been making friends, you have.’

‘What is this about, please?’ te Mosca asked, her voice quavering slightly, and the lead Wasp punched her hard, a straight downward blow that knocked her flat to the floor to cradle her bruised face.

‘Slaves don’t get to ask questions,’ he spat – and then Raullo hit him with a chair.

For a moment there was chaos, and Sartaea remained curled into a ball, terrified of being stepped on but unable to scramble out from between that tangle of legs. Poll was trying to get upright or to drag Wasps down to his level, and Metyssa was in there with her dagger. Then there was a flash of stingshot, and abruptly all was quiet. The Slave Corps was well used to keeping its inferiors in line.

From her vantage point on the floor, Sartaea te Mosca stared over into the face of Raullo Mummers her friend, gone ashen now and quite still. His hands were crooked like claws about the charred crater in his chest.

She, who had always been so mild, let out a howl of loss that surprised her. If she had been some great magician of olden days then she would have summoned a spell to wipe the lot of them off the face of the earth in that moment. She was barely even a magician of the current age, though, and a Fly-kinden to boot, and all she could do was beat at them with her tiny fists as they laid hands on her. Then they hauled up Metyssa and bound her for transport as well.

‘What about this one?’ One of them indicated Poll, hanging between a pair of Wasps, his face bruised and bloody. ‘Doesn’t look Inapt to me.’

‘So they’ll get some gold amongst the dross, and who cares?’ the lead slaver replied carelessly. ‘Bring him along. We’ve got a quota to hit.’

She did not look at the corner where Sperra had been sitting, knowing only that the woman was neither a living prisoner nor a corpse. One of them, at least, had possessed the sense to duck for cover when the Wasps burst in.

Then the slavers were hauling Sartaea away, wrenching her head around when she tried for a final glimpse of Raullo’s still form.

All over Collegium the same scene was being played out. Anyone even suspected of being Inapt was sought by the slavers, and soon they simply ceased discriminating, used as they were to fulfilling orders of quantity rather than quality. After all, the Empire had an inexhaustible need for slaves of all types, and they had the Empress’s writ. Besides, as a number of Tynan’s officers agreed, Collegium was well overdue for a humbling.

Bergild found Major Oski supervising a team of sweating Engineers as they manhandled a leadshotter down the streets of Collegium towards the docks.

‘Shipping out?’ she called over to him.

He gave her a filthy look, then a second glance. ‘You look wrecked.’

‘Two straight sorties against the Stormreaders.’ She had seen her own face in a dented mirror not long ago: grey with fatigue, as dark about both eyes as though she had some possessive husband to beat her. Perhaps the war’s my husband.

‘Get some sleep,’ the Fly advised her curtly, then turned to yell at his charges as the bulk of the leadshotter threatened to crash into a shop front.

‘Tried that. No good,’ she muttered. ‘Where’s your man Ernain, anyway. Don’t think I’ve seen you without him tagging at your heels before.’

‘Elsewhere. Engineer business.’

‘Air Corps is still engineers, Major.’

He scowled at her. ‘My apologies, Captain. Should have said “terrestrial engineer business”.’

For a moment she was just about to go, but she needed to be taken out of herself; the company of pilots, the same constant round inside her head over and over, was anything but that. Oski was the only company she knew outside her comrades. She settled on, ‘Keep your secrets, then.’

‘No secrets to keep,’ he replied, before the business at hand claimed his attention. ‘Piss on the lot of you, do I have to—? All right, I’m going to—’ And his wings took him over to stand on the leadshotter’s barrel. ‘Now you steer this thing straight or I will kick each one of you in the head!’ A little man, half the size of the Wasps he was abusing, but how else was a little man to get things done?

‘You’re a funny man, Major,’ she called to him.

‘What can I say? It’s a funny war.’

Then they were in sight of the docks and she swore outright. ‘What the pits is this?’

‘Oh, this?’ He turned around on the trundling leadshotter, wings glimmering in and out of being as he caught his balance. ‘This is the old man and Major Vrakir having another pissing contest, only I guess this time Red Watch pissed higher, because we’re moving all these sodding engines off the walls – y’know, where they’re going to do us any good – to the seafront. And why not? Artillery crews need a bit of sea air, just like every man, right?’

The docks of Collegium had become a siege front waiting to happen. Bergild watched as several hundred of the Second’s soldiers dragged out furniture from every nearby building, to pile it into barricades, whilst leadshotters and other engines were wheeled into position as if to repel an armada. On the rooftops overlooking the docks there were soldiers with piercers and nail-bows and repeating ballistae, whilst a pair of huge, articulated Sentinels picked their way between the labouring men with absurdly dainty movements.

‘All I can say is,’ Oski shouted over the noise, ‘that if those couple of hundred Tseni marines out there try sailing in, they’re in for one pissing enormous surprise!’

‘This is insane!’ she yelled back, unable to take it all in.

‘You’re going to tell that to the Red Watch?’ Then he was bending down and, pointing, directing his men to where the leadshotter needed to go.

Bergild opened her mouth, about to embark on a sentence that started with, ‘But why don’t you . . .?’ and had no conceivable ending, then she shrugged.

‘Exactly,’ Oski confirmed, hopping down. ‘That’s fine there. Make sure it’s braced.’ He swung through the air back to her. ‘Got just about all my boys here in full clank. Got the artillery we hauled all the way to Collegium. Got a load of stuff like that heavy bastard that the Collies helpfully left on the walls for us, including some real special toys and games. I almost want the Tseni to make a go of it now, just for the laughs.’ He looked her over again. ‘Seriously, Captain, get some sleep.’

‘Tried.’ She shrugged. ‘They broke out the Chneuma five nights ago, and now we’re all buzzing about inside our own heads like flies in a bottle. None of us can get our heads down.’

He shrugged. ‘I know what that’s like, though for me it’s more as if there’s only one of me but enough engineering work for three majors and a colonel.’

‘So ask for a promotion.’

With that, she raised a smile from him. ‘Yeah, well . . .’ He glanced over the line of artillery, the soldiers camped out in all the dockside buildings. ‘“Fear death by water.”’

‘Say again?’

‘Supposed to be what Red Watch said.’

After that the two of them just stared across the unquiet sea.

‘I dreamt of Che last night,’ Totho said.

‘No, you didn’t.’ Maure barely glanced up from the fire. He had found out that her woodscraft was significantly better than his after they had struck out away from the lakeshore, in case anyone else came looking for refugees from Chasme.

Her reply made him angry. ‘So you know what I dream now, do you? That’s another Inapt lie you want me to believe?’

She had frozen in place – obviously she was still wary of him. He found his anger came almost without warning after Drephos’s death, a roiling well of frustration and impotence constantly churning inside him. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘No, I understand.’ He stood up abruptly, eyes darting to his armour laid out on a cloak as though they were mourners at its funeral. His snapbow lay alongside. ‘So the Apt aren’t allowed to dream, is that it? Our humdrum lives don’t qualify.’

She had heard the fire ebbing in his voice as bitterness crept in to steal away his genuine aggression. ‘Actually, that is what I meant, only not quite, and I spoke hastily. When I would talk about dreams, though . . . my dreams mean something. Inapt dreams do, if they can only be interpreted.’

He snorted. ‘Dreams mean nothing. They’re just our minds stirring all the thoughts we’ve had. So you come to me babbling about Che, so I dream of her.’

‘Just so.’

Her dismissal only aggravated him more, although even he was asking himself, What do I possibly want out of this conversation? Where am I trying to take it? ‘I wouldn’t have—’

‘If I hadn’t come along to bother you, yes,’ she finished. ‘And I’d tell you I didn’t ask to and that I’m only here because you’re still connected to Che, because she’s still in your mind like a ghost. But you don’t believe any of that, so why are we going over this again? Let’s get to this Spider place of yours and then you can go . . . wherever, and I can go wherever else.’

‘And where would you go?’ he demanded of her.

She looked up at him with those pale, irisless eyes. ‘North. If I head north for long enough, I don’t think I can fail to hit the Commonweal.’

‘Hundreds of miles.’

‘Hence “for long enough”.’

‘You’ll be dead or a slave or raped before you even hit the Lowlands.’

For a moment she stared into the fire, breathing deeply, and he thought she was pondering those fates, but belatedly realized that she was summoning her composure to deal with him without losing her own temper.

‘What do you suggest I do, Totho? Why are you trying to bind me to you?’

‘What? I’m not—!’

‘Everything you’ve said has “Stay with me!” shouting out loud between each word. Only I didn’t think I was such a catch.’

He knew that should only make him angrier but, confronted with that, the rage refused to venture forth. His own knowledge of how unreasonable he was being caught up with him, and he was suddenly out of easy explanations, vacillating, opening his mouth, then shrivelling before her cool, shrewd stare.

At last she said, ‘Che. It’s Che, then.’

‘You think that, just because you—’

‘I’m a link to Che, yes. Or isn’t that it? Tell me what, then.’ And, when he wouldn’t answer, ‘What did you dream?’

He blinked at this sudden turn. ‘She was in a dark place,’ he said.

‘Well, that’s true. Congratulations, you’re obviously Inapt and a prophet.’

‘I’ve been a lot of bad things in my time, but Inapt isn’t one of them.’ At last he sat back down, feeling somewhat more collected. ‘Just that: a dark place. Like when I found her in the farmhouse cellar after the Battle of the Rails. Got herself into trouble again, and it was down to me to save her.’

‘And you did.’

‘I thought I had, at the time.’ He tested his fragile composure and found that it would take his weight. ‘But she was playing me, all along. The Moth bastard had her, and she loved him, but it didn’t stop her leaning on me when it suited her.’

‘Perhaps she thought you were a friend.’ Maure poked the fire speculatively.

‘A friend. Right.’

‘I couldn’t even say that much for myself, I don’t think,’ she said softly. ‘Just some hireling magician who did her a favour once, but she got me out of there. And all the country between here and the Commonweal will be a joy to cross, believe me, if I never see the Worm again. Although, if I understand correctly, that’s no guarantee.’

‘Because this Worm has a way out.’

‘Right.’

A long pause followed. Totho took a swig from his water skin, and Maure chewed on some hard biscuit they had acquired.

‘If you could help her . . .?’ he began eventually.

‘I owe her a great deal,’ Maure told him. ‘If it meant something as simple as me sticking my hand out and hauling her from a hole, I’d not hesitate. Though I’d like to think I’m a decent enough type that I’d do that for most people. ‘

‘But if you could—?’

‘No.’

‘But—’

‘I will not go back to that place, Totho, not even to help Che. You don’t know. You can’t know what it was like. I don’t even know how long I was down there, without the sun, surrounded by the earth, and without my skills – and with all that I ever made myself into just stripped away. I was going mad, Totho. Not even for Che, no.’

‘But you could.’

She rounded on him furiously, demanding, ‘Are you judging me?’ and froze, staring at his face. ‘You’re not, are you?’

‘No,’ he confirmed.

‘I’m not talking about this any more.’

‘Fine.’

She turned her back on him, almost theatrically, shoulders hunched as though awaiting a blow.

‘She was in a dark place in my dream,’ Totho repeated. ‘She was in pain, in fear. She was calling out.’

‘Your name?’

He stared murderously at her back. ‘No,’ he spat, at last. ‘Not my fucking name. Of course not my name. Why ever should she call for me?’