Seal of the Worm

Thirty-Six

The Red Watch man – he never revealed his name – entered the governor’s residence in Myna as though he owned it.

In truth, just getting here had been a struggle. Myna itself was in chaos, the streets fiercely contested between the Wasp garrison and the local forces. It’s as though they know what we’re about to do, Gannic thought. The reality of what they were planning – what his vaunted technical expertise would propagate – was something he was doing his best not to think about.

There were lines drawn now. The governor had been sent his orders, and the garrison forces had done their best to corral the bulk of the Mynans into a single district, pushing them up through the tiers of the city until they were crammed into its highest areas. By then, there were no intact flying machines left in native hands, and the Imperial Spearflights and Farsphex could drop incendiaries on the locals to their heart’s content. Except that orders forbad it.

In actuality, a great part of the city was not safe for either side. Insurgents were constantly breaking out and setting traps and ambushes for Wasp forces, or being caught and killed in turn. Keeping the Mynans bottled up was a constant struggle.

The great governor’s palace, which had once dominated the city for more than a decade, had been torn down by the ingrate locals after they had driven the Empire out during the last war, but they had yet to replace it with anything else. Their interim government had been keeping the Empire’s seat warm in a structure still only half complete when the Wasps returned, and that building had been methodically destroyed during the retaking of the city. Instead, the garrison had fortified its own district, turfing out all locals and barricading all the streets. In between those two districts of concrete loyalty, the Wasps had a fair run of the streets, but their control was piecemeal.

The airship, with its lethal cargo, had been shot at by ballistae when it arrived over the city – and Gannic was by no means sure that all those incoming bolts had been Mynan. It was a fearful chaos down there, and the thought of what might have happened, had some explosive cracked open the hull, did not bear thinking about. When at last they had the vessel anchored to the ground, he breathed a sigh of relief.

He had thought, without much hope, that he might be able to hand over responsibility to the local engineers. The Red Watch man kept close to him, though, leaving the airship under heavy guard and snapping at any of the garrison men who tried to get in his way. Gannic remembered the way the Rekef had always worked. Yes, the name had inspired fear, but its presence had been subtle – everywhere and nowhere: could be your superior officer or the man next to you on parade, or even your own slave. The Red Watch was nothing but a fist backed by the Empress’s writ. It was great power given to little men. Gannic, a little man himself, knew how that would feel. Oh, what I’d do if only I . . .

The Mynan governor was an old soldier with grey in his hair and a jagged scar on his face, seconded out from the army as a reward for long service, but given the poisoned chalice of this city because he was a warrior still.

‘So, what have you brought me?’ he demanded. He seemed less awed by the Red Watch than the rest were.

‘Orders, Colonel,’ the Red Watch man told him. ‘The Empress’s voice. May we speak in private?’

The colonel’s expression was wary, but a flick of his fingers sent his junior officers out of the room. ‘This Myna business, it’s absurd,’ he commented. ‘They’re fighting like madmen. The whole city’s up in arms, all of a sudden. I don’t have the forces to keep them bottled up. I’ve sent to the Szaren garrison for reinforcements. I sent to Capitas, too. Apparently you’re who they sent in response.’

‘It seems that way,’ the Red Watch man confirmed. ‘Other reinforcements will not be necessary. The Empress has decided to settle the Mynan question once and for all.’

Gannic had thought the colonel would take this as typical Capitas bombast, but the man looked thoughtful. ‘My men say you’ve a whole load of metal barrels on that boat of yours.’

‘Yes, Colonel.’

‘I was fighting near here in the last war, you know. Some bad pieces of business in this region. You hear all sorts. Some kind of madness-weapon in Tharn, they say. And then there was the Szaren garrison. What was it they called that stuff the Colonel-Auxillian had?’

The name made Gannic start guiltily, and the Mynan governor did not seem surprised, only disappointed. ‘So you’re here with orders for me to win the war that way, are you?’

‘No, Colonel. My orders are to relieve you of your position and have you return to Capitas.’

Gannic wasn’t sure whether he or the colonel was more startled by that statement.

‘Are you mad . . .?’ The governor – former governor – tailed off because the Red Watch man now had a hand directed towards him, palm outwards.

‘Effective immediately. Show him the orders, Gannic.’

Unwillingly dragged into the dispute, Gannic took the scroll from the man’s other hand and hurried over to the governor, making sure not to get between them.

The colonel pointedly ignored the threatening palm, breaking the seal on his orders and perusing them as calmly as he was able. ‘I see,’ he observed. ‘And Her Majesty’s commands will of course be obeyed.’ His eyes flicked up. ‘I shall depart for Capitas to clear this mess up myself. I note that, in my absence, you are acting governor. Congratulations.’ Gannic had never heard a more bitter word uttered. ‘One question,’ the colonel added. ‘Why?’

‘Because she knew you would not go through with it, in the end,’ the Red Watch man told him flatly. ‘Sometimes the Empire needs special servants to carry out special tasks.’

‘Is that what you are?’ The ex-governor’s tone was dripping with disgust.

‘This is insane. Why don’t they fight?’ Castre Gorenn complained.

The Lowlander army had reached Sonn, the predominantly Beetle city that was one of the Empire’s great centres of industry.

In actual fact, there had been fighting. The local garrison force, or whatever, had come out and destroyed the rails west of Sonn and then fortified themselves as best they could outside the city. They had fought doggedly and well, but the Lowlanders had outflanked and heavily outnumbered them. The Sarnesh had got in close because the Wasps had not been willing or able to retreat from their positions, and that had been that. At the time nobody had understood why they had not retreated back to the city.

Now it seemed that the good people of Sonn had ideas of their own.

The army of the Lowlands was currently mustering, division by division, in the city’s rail yards, embarking on the carriages of rail automotives about to head east with all the speed of the Apt age. The local Beetles had only seemed apologetic that the Empire had already stripped them of their great lifter airships.

‘You remember Helleron, Gorenn?’ Straessa enquired, watching the Collegium contingent begin to climb aboard.

‘Disgusting place,’ the Dragonfly spat. ‘But much like this one, yes. Like twins that were separated.’

‘Well, you might not know, but Helleron got a bit of a reputation after the first war,’ the Antspider explained to her. ‘Basically, for kissing the arse of whoever turns up with more soldiers. Now, I remember hearing that the Wasps were putting a lot into modernizing this place, Sonn – factories and the like, and all built with Helleren knowhow. Every tramp artificer from west of here was guaranteed a good salary, if the Rekef didn’t take them up and torture them to death, you know.’

Gorenn made a rude noise.

‘At the time, I remember, everyone was saying how this meant that Helleron wouldn’t even pretend to think about it when the Wasps came knocking again and, sure as death, that was the right call. But there was something Eujen said. He was all for the exchange. He said that whatever Helleron learned from the east, the Sonnen would learn just as much from the west.’ There had even been a rumour that the Sonnen had been ordered to destroy the rail line east of their city and had mysteriously failed to do so, as a gesture of appeasement towards Milus. In return, aside from some requisitioning of supplies and automotives, their city had been left almost unmolested.

Meanwhile the soldiers of the Coldstone Company were starting to file aboard, shouldering their kit. Gorenn looked around her, past the throng of soldiers, to the locals themselves. They were mostly Beetles, with some Flies and even a few Wasps standing in carefully passive poses. There was a remarkable lack of black and gold, as though everyone had been stockpiling spare clothes of neutral hues.

‘Thing is,’ Straessa went on, ‘the Wasps were basically as fed up with Helleron’s weathervane thing as everyone else, and so they wanted their own tame Helleron right here in the Empire. And that’s what they got, I reckon. Perfect in every detail – right up to the surrendering.’

Gorenn let out a brief yap of laughter at that but, when Straessa turned to nod her on to the carriage, the Dragonfly looked sad.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s . . . is this it? Is this the world, now, outside the Commonweal borders?’

The Antspider blinked. The Gorenn she knew was bright, hard, almost insanely optimistic. The Commonweal Retaliatory Army, she had called herself, and had appeared to believe it. Straessa had not seen this solemn Dragonfly face before.

‘We fought the Wasps,’ Gorenn said softly. ‘It was hopeless. We fought and we fought. My whole family . . . everyone I knew. But we fought, because that is what one does. That is how it is in the stories. That’s how it’s always been. And now you clever Apt have invented a new way of being invaded, a clever way that means you do not have to fight. Like all your Apt things –’ she waved a hand at the automotive that they were about to board – ‘it makes your lives easier and more comfortable, and at the same time it robs you of something of worth that you do not know enough to miss.’

‘We’re fighting,’ Straessa reminded her, giving her a shove to get the woman into the carriage.

‘Are we?’ Inside, Gorenn turned back to her. ‘I don’t know what the tactician is doing. Fighting is part of it, yes.’

There was one carriage reserved for Milus himself, guarded by his soldiers and only accessed with his direct orders. The tactician spent most of his time elsewhere, however, sitting amongst his troops, just one anonymous Ant amongst many. He would be able to receive reports from every soldier in his army, keep an eye on all the others – the Mantids and the Lowlanders and the like – and take reports from the scouts who were checking the integrity of the rail line ahead. Sometimes he spoke face to face with Ants of the other cities, such as Tsen and Vek. It was the first time that military leaders of different Ant-kinden city-states had done so in living memory.

The interior of Milus’s private carriage had been stripped bare – no comforts here, and certainly not anything too flammable. Some machinery had been installed – a few unique pieces brought by Milus himself, but also a good deal of equipment that had been freely available in Imperial Sonn. The artificers who tended it were specialists, equally at home with the anatomies of metal and flesh.

Lissart shivered. Her world was reduced to this. She had fought and fought to preserve her freedom, defying every master who would lay a hand on her. She had defied the Empire, and she had fled poor Laszlo, and all in the name of not being bound by the world or anyone in it.

The other tenet of her life – that she was cleverer than the rest – had been the one to break under her small weight and to land her here. She had hooked on to Milus as a useful source of amusement – why should she be not be able to play some dull Ant with titbits of knowledge about the Empire and the Inapt? Everyone knew that Ants were plodding unimaginative creatures, and that it took a dozen of them to have an idea between them. She had out-thought Wasps and Spiders and Fly-kinden. Ants should have been no challenge. She had not reckoned on Milus, however.

He had seen through her. He saw through most things. Having now had a proper opportunity to study him from the unenviable vantage point of being his prisoner, she knew what he was. Ant or not, he was a kindred spirit to her. He walked through the world as though he was the only solid thing in it, as though everything else was just a kind of mist that he could shape as he liked. She knew him better than the other Ants who shared his mind, because he never let them into the main parts of it. He was a singularity amongst his kinden: a man who could feign sharing and yet hold himself private and aloof.

He had got information from her, at first. He had found new ways to torture her – utilizing the cold machines that she was staring at even now. Then the information had run dry, the Sarnesh war effort expanding beyond her knowledge of the Empire. But the machines had not stopped. He had come sporadically, when his busy schedule allowed it, and made her scream for him. He had taught her what he wanted, what would spare her the worst – not complete acquiescence, but a carefully judged combination of defiance and surrender. He liked her to fight him.

Only because he thinks I can’t win.

But, right now, she could not win. They had long ago found the limits of her fiery Art, and now her hands were kept locked away in gloves, as her wings were suppressed by the Fly-manacles across her back.

When they moved her into this carriage, she had been desperately on the lookout for some sign of hope, but she had not even spotted Laszlo in the brief moments before she had been bundled in here.

She found she had faith left in him, though: that he had not forgotten her. It was a tenuous thread to cling to, especially as he was such a fool, but she had little else. Until now.

Now she had company. She might have preferred company that wasn’t a Wasp, but anyone was better than nothing.

He had been taken by force, judging from the bruises and the cuts, but he was wearing Lowlander clothes.

‘My name is Aagen,’ he explained to her. ‘I come from Princep Salma.’

She was enough of a rumour-gatherer that this name rang bells. There had been a Wasp who was ambassador to Collegium, but had perhaps been killed or perhaps deserted, and perhaps was right here in front of her.

‘That didn’t work out, then?’

‘It did until the Sarnesh walked in.’ He was bound as well, hands behind his back and strapped together to stifle his sting. ‘Who are you?’

‘Te Liss.’ She wasn’t sure why she had fallen back on her Solarnese name, but telling her real one never felt right.

‘You were . . . what? Why are you here?’

The official answer was, Because I was an Imperial agent. But she went with, ‘Because Milus is a bastard,’ which seemed truer.

‘I was supposed to be assisting the tactician. I told them that I did not flee to Princep because I wished to betray the Empire. I simply wanted . . . I wanted out. I wanted to be . . . somewhere they wouldn’t make me choose sides,’ Aagen told her.

‘Well, I know what that’s like,’ she agreed. ‘Just like I know that people like Milus don’t see things that way, whatever side they’re on.’

‘We’re on the Sonn–Capitas rail now,’ Aagen said softly. ‘That’s my home, ahead of us. A huge Lowlander army, moving east as fast as the automotives can haul them, a string of carriages a mile long, with thousands of soldiers, supplies, munitions, this deep into the Empire . . . It’s unthinkable. Where can this lead?’

‘I assume your presence here means that Milus wants your help with that question,’ she observed.

‘They just came and took me from the Princep camp . . . just grabbed me and marched me off. Nobody stopped them – it’s not as though the Ants have much use for us in Princep. I think Balkus would have . . . but he would have died. I’m amazed they didn’t take him as well, but Ants follow orders, and maybe Milus didn’t think to give that one yet. I didn’t think that Milus would . . .’

‘I think he’d do any cursed thing he wants,’ Lissart said. She was thinking rapidly, trying to find some use she could put this man to. If she used her Art to heat her gauntlets up, could they burn through the straps that secured his hands? Could he use his sting, then, to free her? Could she get out, with or without Aagen? Once she had regained the skies, the bulk of the Sarnesh army would cease to be relevant.

Then the carriage door opened, and Milus and a handful of his specialist artificers stepped aboard.

‘Now, Aagen,’ the tactician said mildly, ‘we were discussing the defences of Capitas. You’re an engineer, after all, so I’m sure you’ve got a useful professional viewpoint on them. Special focus on weak points, if you please.’

The Wasp took a deep breath. ‘I will not betray my own people.’

‘You already have, plenty of times,’ Milus told him. ‘This is no different.’

‘To me it is, Tactician.’

Milus smiled. Lissart recognized that smile, and in fact he glanced at her at the same time, as though automatically linking her with what he was about to do.

‘You’ll tell me,’ he said pleasantly to Aagen. ‘You’ll see that we Sarnesh are the coming kinden. Just as you Wasps picked up so much from your conquests, so we’re learning from you now.’ He patted the nearest machine, which was an interrogation rack taken straight from the Rekef chambers in Sonn. ‘It’ll be a taste of home for you.’

Paladrya was suffering from the sun, therefore spending most of her time below decks. Stenwold had been surprised that Rosander’s Onychoi soldiers could weather the land as well as they did. He remembered his first excursion with Paladrya and the Sea-kinden into Collegium and Princep. They had complained about everything – the food, the cold, the heat, the dry air.

Or, no, she had not complained, but she had suffered, just as she suffered now, her white skin reddening and cracking where the light caught it, so that she went about veiled and cloaked like a theatrical ghost.

Rosander’s people seemed far better able to cope, and eventually the Nauarch of the Thousand Spines had explained that their armour had been specifically designed for the land campaign. Stenwold had thought about that, and about how much warning the Sea-kinden had honestly received, after he had made his unexpected arrival at sunken Hermatyre to plead for their help.

Rosander had been about to invade the land once. Stenwold did not dare ask whether this armour, with its internal pockets and channels of water, had been left over from that attempt, or whether the Thousand Spines had simply never forgotten that dream.

In which case I am very glad I gave you this outlet.

Right now he stood at the airship rail along with Rosander and a handful of his men, watching their little fleet scud across the sky towards Myna. This was another memory made flesh. ‘You remember . . .’ he said, and the huge Onychoi nodded vigorously.

‘Oh, I do. You took me up into the skies and showed me your land world and said, “Will you conquer all this?”’ He laughed. ‘And of course I was shocked – whoever thought there was so much land, eh? But I tell you this, Maker – once I went home, to where life is sane and nobody’s in constant danger of falling to their deaths, I never forgot. I dreamt of horizons, Maker.’ Rosander grinned into the wind, showing neat yellow teeth. ‘And so here we are.’ He did not seem to care about the web of politics that had diverted them here to Myna, so long as there was a fight at the end of it – and that Stenwold could certainly promise him.

The airships had come from Helleron. Stenwold had tried to obtain them by negotiation and credit, but his separation from the main Collegium force had been very quickly known – Milus’s work no doubt – and his personal credit was less than nothing. The Helleren merchants had not even taken the time to meet with him.

So he had taken his force, Collegiates and Mynans and Sea-kinden all, and simply appropriated what he wanted from the Helleren airfields, acquiring a small fleet of airships to carry the soldiers and their supplies and as much water as could be loaded aboard. He directed any objectors to take matters up with Rosander. It was not exactly the finest hour of Stenwold Maker, diplomat and scholar, but by then he had run out of patience with the entire city of Helleron. And was running out of time as well.

Leaving Rosander at the rail, the former War Master of Collegium retreated below to the shrouded undersea gloom of his cabin to find Paladrya.

‘Myna will be in sight soon,’ he told her. ‘We’re almost there.’

She smiled at him, though a little uncertainly. She had said before that she felt that the Stenwold she knew was just one of many sharing Stenwold’s skull. The War Master was an intractable, intimidating companion, far from the man she had met once in the cells of Hermatyre. I think I liked you better when you were a fugitive, she had joked – or half joked.

He took her hand. ‘This is almost over, but I cannot abandon Kymene and Myna.’

‘You’ve told me: this was where it all started,’ she confirmed. ‘Your friends are fortunate in you, Stenwold.’

He shrugged, sitting down beside her. ‘There have been plenty of my friends who wouldn’t say so. That makes the survivors all the more precious.’ He noticed her concerned look and shook his head. ‘But I won’t stay. I don’t think Collegium needs me any more . . . in fact, I think that having a relic like me stomping around and trying to run things will do far more harm than good. I’m not suited to peace. Or at least not peace on land.’

When he had returned to Hermatyre, he remembered how the two of them had hedged and edged about one another, neither quite sure where they were. Two veterans of different conflicts, both of them marked by their own privations and grown old in different worlds.

In the end, the ruler of Hermatyre, Aradocles, had summoned them to a meeting of his advisers at which nobody else had turned up, and they had found themselves alone, in the Edmir’s private chambers, with a banquet laid out. Paladrya’s young protégé had been wise beyond his years, apparently.

For Stenwold, the morning after that night had been one of terrible soul-searching, not because of anything so irrational as guilt, or because he had any regrets, but because he could no longer pretend that he did not love Paladrya. In the face of that, he very nearly abandoned Collegium and the dry land to its fate.

Duty, though – its cords still bound him. Even now he was doing what he knew needed to be done, paying his debts, severing his ties one by one. Myna, he felt, was the last of them. After that, everyone he owed anything to would be paid in full or dead.

For a long time they lay together quietly, Paladrya curled into his chest as though sheltering behind him from some great storm.

Later they sent for him, one of the Maker’s Own soldiers hammering at the cabin door. Myna was in sight, and the Mynan airmen in their Stormreaders were already fending off a questing band of Spearflights sent to investigate. The time had come to land as close to the walls as possible, and to disembark. Stenwold Maker was returning to Myna.