War Master's Gate

Twenty-Eight

His was a kinden steeped in treachery and cunning from the very dawn of history. To those Inapt scholars who knew of the Assassin Bug-kinden legacy, his kin were a byword for duplicity — and they had paid the price, but the Moths still shuddered to think how close they had come to ruling the world. His Art made even his hands into killing weapons that could shear through steel.

He was of a profession, an old and honoured profession, that made deception its watchword, that wore the faces — the minds even — of others as easily as another might put on a coat. And he was a veteran who had honed his magical and his physical skills over decades.

And, beyond that, he was learned. He had been a parasite within the archives of the Moth-kinden, who had kept him half prisoner and half guest, as a tool to be used in dire need only. More recently, he had worn an Imperial rank badge and seen how the gears of the Empire turned.

All Esmail knew now was that he was woefully out of his depth, meddling in — no, not even meddling but being dragged into — matters that no sane man would ever want anything to do with.

He should have backed out when he first met the Empress. . or perhaps followed his orders and tried to kill her — tried, he suspected, being the relevant word. Instead he had listened to her golden words, her promises; he had studied her and seen the bewildering potential that chance and fate had somehow hatched within her. A queen amongst magicians, the inheritrix of the ancient world: what could such a woman not achieve?

And he had been a fool, an overawed fool.

And too late the Worm had been mentioned, and he had understood the flaw in that plan, just as had old Gjegevey. He had previously counted himself lucky that Seda was power without finesse — for how else could he have hidden from her, after all? But that same power, yoked to the driving acquisitiveness of an Empress, lacked the discernment to know what to reach for, and what to hold back from. And she knew about the Worm, and she saw there just power, because they had been powerful.

And it was here her feet had led her — or the idiot Gjegevey had led her — to the Master Seal, the keystone in the edifice that had rid the world of the Worm.

And still he had held back because of that promise, that potential. . for when would the world see such a chance to restore the balance of history, but in her?

He could still hear the conflict as he moved through the mist-shrouded forest, and a little focus sufficed to gain a hazy picture of it. He sensed Tisamon hard pressed, being forced to give ground to keep between his increasingly mobile enemies and his mistress.

Everything had changed.

He was keeping his mind tight shut now. It had been a shock when that other voice had bludgeoned its way in, with the same raw, clumsy power as the Empress. More of a shock had been the understanding behind it, which had caught him unprepared and seen what he was — cracking Ostrec’s stolen shell by elegant and unconscious intuition. As she did so, he had seen small shards of her, too: yes, she knew of his profession and had faced such spies before. Yes, she knew of his kin, even. That same power as Seda’s, but yoked to a very different and more contemplative mind.

The Empress had spoken about her, the hated Beetle girl, who had somehow assumed the same mantle: her sister, her joint heir. Esmail had not understood until now.

And he had a terrible, seductive thought, Perhaps something may be saved? Perhaps this girl, this Cheerwell Maker, might be manipulated. Surely easier than trying to steer the Empress?

And another thought — one that no man in his position ought to allow himself: Perhaps she would not even need manipulating.

And she had survived. The Empress’s minions had gone for her, and had fallen one after the other, until now only Tisamon barred the way.

And here stood Esmail, between them and the Empress, using all his craft to cloak himself from anyone’s attention.

If he returned to Tharn right now, or somehow found a way to share thoughts with one of their Skryres, what orders might he be given? Depends on which Skryre, arose the depressing thought. He was on his own now, as a spy always was in the end: cut off from his masters and with only his faltering judgement to rely on.

And here was the Empress herself, just ahead, with that fool old Woodlouse and the turncoat Wasp in Moth’s robes, brought to bay at last. Any moment now, Tisamon must surely give way, and then the Beetle girl’s followers would break through and kill the Empress themselves, and what would Esmail have gained?

He found inside himself an unending supply of fear. The Empress terrified him. To take action and lose his cover terrified him. To do nothing terrified him even more. He stepped forwards.

Seda’s head swung towards him almost blindly, and he braced himself for an assault, magical or physical. He underestimated his spycraft and her own distraction, because her expression revealed only relief.

‘Ostrec, get over here!’ she snapped. ‘Tisamon can’t hold them off for long.’

And indeed he could hear the clatter of steel, and imagined the followers of the Beetle girl twisting and turning, and Tisamon giving ground step after step.

‘Majesty,’ he said heavily.

‘Draw your sword,’ she instructed him, and he did so, to allay her suspicions. He was more dangerous without it, with both hands free. He closed the distance between them in three easy strides.

‘This way.’ And she was off, and now he felt that pulling point, the centre of this place, so that Seda trod a spiral path towards it like a moth to a candle. Argastos. Of course, because if she could subvert and appropriate that power, she might still win,

Unless I stop her.

Gjegevey went labouring after her — she had surely stopped only to give the old man time to catch his breath — and his face wore the set and despairing expression of a teacher whose student had gone beyond him without learning important truths. Well, your fault, Woodlouse, if that is so. Tegrec had been helping him along, but now he was running after Seda too, and Esmail read in him the nervous gait of a man close to breaking. All the better.

‘Ostrec!’ Gjegevey wailed and, despite himself, he turned back, virtually hauling the old man’s arm up about his shoulders and hustling this wheezing, hunched encumbrance along. To get me closer to the Empress, he reassured himself, but just then his motives were so muddled as to be beyond divination.

Ahead. .

They were running short of trees, ahead, which meant he was running out of time. The ground suddenly rose there, forming a hill too rounded to be natural, faced and plated with slabs of grey stone: a piecemeal carapace whose gaping cracks sprouted weeds and briars and even stunted trees. There was a gate there, too, set into an outcrop of the hill and framed in stone, the doors themselves made of thousands of little flakes of wood, suspended off a frame, like the scales of a moth’s wing, wormy and blackened by age.

They had been gilded once, he understood. For this is Argax, seat of Argastos, greatest war leader of the ancient world. The knowledge came unbidden and unwanted. Not a barrow, but a hall once. Nobody builds doors into a barrow.

Gjegevey broke from him and actually outstripped him, hobbling frantically with his staff, ‘Majesty!’ he called out, and Esmail knew this was his moment — if moments existed for misbegotten creatures such as himself.

Seda turned, and on her face there was a strange mixture of elation and desperation. She had found Argastos’s lair and yet, at the same time, she had only moments left to discover how to draw power from it, and even Esmail himself could sense no obvious breach in the place’s armour. The undoubted magic was not simply for the taking.

Because it’s in someone’s hands already? But he was speeding up now, hard on Gjegevey’s heels, and cast that thought aside.

‘Help me, Gjegevey,’ the Empress commanded. ‘Quickly — they’re coming.’

And Esmail found it in his heart to pity her then, just a young Wasp girl risen higher than ever a woman of her kinden had before, but frightened, at the end of her resources. Who would not have done the same as she had, in her position.

Perhaps it was that pity that gave him away, for Ostrec had never allowed any for anyone save himself.

He was almost in reach of her when he saw her eyes widen. . and abruptly Ostrec was in tatters, the falseness of his guise showing through at every edge. Seda cried out in shock and Esmail lunged forwards — one Art-edged hand extended to cut her heart out.

It was the old man that got in the way. He had that much idiocy left in him, or perhaps it was courage. Whatever the Empress had been to him, he threw his tired bones before the Assassin’s stroke, so that Esmail’s hand cut his staff in two, and then sawed into his ribs, shearing them apart, opening his chest in a sudden rush of ruptured blood. Gjegevey collapsed like a bundle of sticks, and Seda screamed in rage and grief. Esmail, trying to close those last paces of distance, was braced for the magical lash of her temper, but the flash of light he saw was something far more prosaic than that. Her sting struck him about the shoulder and side, with a searing blow that staggered and stopped him, slapping him to the ground, and he knew he had failed.

Not dead, though — not dead yet. And he was lurching up on one elbow, knowing another sting must come, and desperate to live despite it all, even as Ostrec was sloughing off him like moulting chitin. And then he opened his eyes to see her standing there, a hand thrust out to kill him, but her temper restrained by reins of iron. Her eyes were the coldest things Esmail had ever seen.

‘Show me your true face, spy,’ she spat. ‘Before you die, let me see my enemy, I command it.’

And he felt her magic take hold of him with clumsy fingers, prising and straining, so that he screamed with the pain of violation that was worse even than the burning of her sting. But in the midst of it, a little jewel of calm remained, because resisting pain, staving off torture, was part of his training, and Seda was not skilled enough to break his mask with mere force alone.

But if he did not give her something, she would simply kill him, destroy his mind by trying to unlock it. He must choose a face for her.

He almost showed her the grey skin and white eyes of a Moth. It would have been appropriate, for it would have placed blame where it was due. He had no love for the people who had been his jailers for all those years, in all but name.

But his family, his wife, his children, they were still under the shadow of the Moths. Whatever else he might wish, whatever vengeance might be his due, he could not endanger them further.

When he gave her a face, just another face that was not his own, he saw Seda recoil, but she accepted it. It was one of the few options he had that would be believed implicitly, and he put all his skill into it, presenting such a perfect and polished likeness that it would have been accepted over the real thing. He gave her the lean and elegant features of a Spider-kinden.

Tegrec was kneeling by Gjegevey’s side, but his expression showed Seda plainly that the ancient man was past any help that magic or surgery might offer. When the turncoat Wasp stood up, he was backing away, retreating from her, fear and misery running rampant across his face.

Seda stared at the assassin now revealed to her: ‘Ostrec’ had been a Spider all this time, and it made sense. It made far too much sense. Oh, she had read about the old Inapt spies and their face-changing magic, although she had never thought to encounter one. Whilst they were not an exclusively Spider elite, it was from that kinden that most of them derived. And here she was, with her armies marching alongside the Spiders, and surely she had known there would be a betrayal, a reckoning at some time. And, of course, General Roder had warned her: never trust a Spider. Everyone knew they were treacherous.

And so, after Roder’s advice, she had made provision for that. She had given special orders to Captain Vrakir, sending the man off to keep an eye on General Tynan and the Second, had she not? And, with that, a thought went out to the Red Watch, who were bound to her in blood. Vrakir would know what to do.

But as for this traitor before her, who had killed her beloved slave and who had come so close to killing her-

And Tisamon came bursting backwards into the clearing, and she realized that she had allowed herself to be distracted, perhaps fatally, for here were her other enemies.

It was a Spider girl that the revenant Mantis was duelling with, and Seda saw, with a lurch of her heart, that she was somehow managing to hold Tisamon off, landing no blows but keeping him at bay with the blurring passes of her rapier, and there, breaking away from the fight in a brief flurry of wings, to drop down ten feet behind Tisamon, was-

She froze. She had not known.

‘Thalric?’

Of course she knew that he had not died in Khanaphes, as General Brugan had tried to claim, but she had not tried to find him. She had thought that he would come back to her of his own accord. He had been her consort, after all, when she had needed one. He had shared her bed. .

And he had a hand out towards her, palm open, and she looked him in the eye and waited, but his sting never came. He was just staring at her, and she wondered how he might remember those nights spent together. She saw his jaw clench.

Somewhere beyond their collective notice, Tegrec found the very limit of his courage, and a moment later he was running for the trees, and nobody even spared him a glance.

Then she was there, the loathsome Beetle girl, dark and squat and ugly, blundering out from the trees with some ragged half-breed as her handmaiden. And, at Seda’s merest thought, Tisamon had broken from his opponent and gone for her, in a frantic attempt to rid the Empress of her most pressing problem.

Thalric kicked back into the air immediately, and his sting-shot punched the armoured revenant in the side, sending Tisamon off balance for two seconds. Long enough for the Spider woman to catch him and force him to face her. Long enough for Thalric to drop between him and his prize, defending the Beetle girl with his own life.

‘Thalric!’ Seda shouted in rage and despair, seeking out the magic with which the Beetle had bound him to herself, but unable to grasp it. How has she done this?

In a lightning rush, Tisamon disengaged and fell back towards her, putting himself between her and her enemies. Seda’s eyes found the Beetle girl’s — Cheerwell Maker’s — and the hate crackled and spat between them. And yet only one way: her own spite breaking against the girl’s placid resistance. Beetles endured, was that not what they said? Oh, she could sense that the girl had grown as a magician, just as much as she herself had, but in different directions: less suited to attack, more to defence.

And still an impasse, but Seda already knew what she could do about that. Right here, within that mound, there was as much power as she could ever want, ready for her to overwhelm the Beetle girl entirely, destroy her, destroy her followers, destroy Thalric if she so chose.

She reached out and began gathering that power, dipping into that well beneath them, drawing it out to herself as though she was hauling up an endless bolt of cloth. As Tisamon turned and readied himself, as Thalric and the Spider girl spread out, slowly stalking in, Seda stood quite still and drew it all to herself, pulling and pulling and. .

And she met resistance, and in a fury she dragged harder and harder at it, aware only that at any moment the Beetle girl would realize what she was about and step in to stop her, and so she hauled and hauled, with all the might the Khanaphir had endowed her with, and then, abruptly, there was no more resistance and, had it been a physical struggle, she would have fallen backwards like a fool. As it was, she found herself reeling, unsure what had happened, until she realized there was someone new amongst them, someone who demanded the attention of everyone. A dark figure with pale eyes and a thin smile like a razor blade.

Argastos.

And all the power she had thought she was gathering to herself was still attached to him and under his firm command, far stronger than she had thought. This was no treasure to be pillaged, but a weapon in hands that still knew how to use it, no matter how many centuries had gone by since they had possessed life.

And Argastos laughed, and the world fell away.