War Master's Gate

Five

‘General, she’s on her way in.’

General Roder glanced up, seeing one of the watch captains hovering at the door of his tent.

‘Report,’ he grunted.

‘Airship and escort spotted by our scouts, General,’ the officer informed him. ‘Signals say it’s her.’

Roder’s expression still pinned him. He was famous for his hard stares, which owed a great deal to the paralysis that had locked half his face following a Spider assassin’s poisoned strike. ‘By airship? She must be mad,’ the general muttered, half to himself. One adventurous sortie by Sarnesh orthopters and the Empire’s looking for a new ruler. .

‘She’s got some of the new fliers with her,’ the captain added, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Enough to throw back anything the Sarnesh could put in the air, sir. Maybe she’ll hand them over to us.’

‘Get the men turned out,’ Roder snapped at a nearby lieutenant. ‘If it is her, she’ll see us at our best. And double our scouts, ground and air; this would be a very bad time for the enemy to find some gap in our perimeter. Oh, and get hold of that long streak of jerky she calls an adviser. She’ll want him, I’d guess.’

‘He’s already out there,’ the captain informed him. ‘Even before our pilots reported back.’

Roder gave him a sour face. ‘No mystery there: he knew when she’d be arriving all along, just decided that an Imperial general wasn’t trustworthy enough to be told. Just goes to show, Captain, there are too many hands pulling in too many directions, back home, and precious few of them Wasp.’ He stepped out of his tent and scowled at the daylight. ‘Sends us headlong for Sarn, lets us smash them in the field, keep them off balance. . and then what? Some ancient, dried-up freak turns up waving her writ and has us kicking our heels for tendays while the Sarnesh get their nerve back and build their strength. If you’ve some way to make sense of that, I’d welcome it. It makes none to me.’

The object of his ire was standing out in the centre of the camp, gazing up at the sky as though the sparse clouds held an inordinate fascination. The old creature was hunchbacked, though still absurdly tall, gaunt and withered and bald like an unearthed corpse. His grey skin was banded with white and he wore a shabby robe of halved black and gold. He was the Empress’s slave, they said, and her adviser on unusual matters. He had been flown here by a Wasp belonging to something called the Red Watch — some new crowd of the Empress’s favourites — and with enough seals and recommendations to set his word as law over even an Imperial general. That he had failed to make a friend of Roder was understandable.

His name was Gjegevey, which Roder seldom bothered to even attempt. Now the general stomped over to the man with a simple, ‘Hey, you!’

The long face turned towards him, eyes glinting within their wrinkled sockets. ‘General?’

‘Your mistress is coming,’ Roder told him. ‘Now maybe we’ll get to the bottom of this nonsense.’ The placid gaze of the old slave made him angrier, and he had to bite off the other words that rose into his mouth. Even so — as always — Gjegevey seemed to hear them.

‘Yes, General, if I have, hm, somehow misunderstood my orders, and held your Eighth here unnecessarily, I am sure that you’ll have the pleasure of, ahm, stringing this old frame up on the crossed pikes. I would assure you that you were right in following my, mmn, advice, but you will have your confirmation soon enough.’

Even the slave’s meandering speech was like nails on a chalkboard to Roder, but he gritted his teeth and bore it.

Another wing of Spearflights powered into the air, more security in case the Sarnesh got lucky, or in case Imperial intelligence had been compromised. The old Emperor — Seda’s brother — had never left the capital and, for all that everyone admired this new girl’s courage and enterprise, no general wanted the ruler of all the Empire actually looking over his shoulder, especially when faced with such nonsensical orders as had left the Eighth sitting idle for so long.

He spent some minutes inspecting his troops, stalking along the ranks and making his displeasure known if any officer’s charges were found wanting. Save for those already out on patrol, here was the glorious Eighth, the Empress’s Hammer: its legion of Light Airborne, the infantry, the Engineers, as well as a neat block of Auxillian Ants from Maille. They were a skilled and proven fighting force, and they were being wasted.

The Empress’s airship was lowering itself, holding steady in the light breeze whilst its Farsphex escort flew in wide circles. The treasonous thought crossed Roder’s mind that, were he an ambitious man, a little artillery accident might go a long way here. His current circumstances had bred a fair amount of resentment in him, but he had not been pushed anywhere near so far as treason, nor was he sure that his men would follow him. She put on a good show, did the Empress.

He waited impassively for her, standing at the head of his army. This would be his chance, he knew. Once away from the men he would be able to impress upon the girl just what the Eighth should have been doing these last tendays, and how it should be best used from now on. His experience and rank carried a great deal of weight in the Empire. She needed him. She would have to listen.

When she appeared at the top of the airship’s ramp, after the ground crew had tied the lines off tight to hold it steady, she seemed no more than a slip of a girl, barely more than a child: slender and vulnerable before the might of the Eighth. Beautiful, too, and Roder could well appreciate it. He was sure that every man in the Empire holding a general’s rank badge or the equivalent had entertained a thought that way before now. She had no husband, after all, and that no-pedigree outsider she had chosen as a regent had not been seen anywhere recently. Brugan of the Rekef was after her, Roder knew for a fact, but if she favoured the man, Seda had yet to recognize him formally.

Then she locked eyes with Roder, as she stepped down the ramp, and something jolted in his mind, his thoughts all abruptly thrown out of alignment. His eyes were hooked on her, unable to look away. He barely noted her bodyguards: the half-dozen Mantis women in black and gold mail, and the looming figure behind them in all-encompassing Mantis-wrought armour.

She wore the slight smile of a well-born girl out for a stroll and enjoying the air, but he was sure, beyond all logic, that she could read every one of his thoughts of the last half hour written plain on his face; all the trivial little treasons that an ambitious man gives wishful indulgence to. She saw them, and she knew him, and he felt the force of her — the sheer strength of her will and personality — drive him to one knee as she approached.

‘General,’ she greeted him, eyes drifting across the great mass of military drawn up for her approval. Roder heard the subtle but unmistakable sound of countless soldiers pulling themselves up that little bit straighter, chests thrust out an extra fraction of an inch. Even the Auxillians, who had far less reason to love her, were straining to be worthy of her nod. Kneeling at her feet, almost as though he was beneath the radiating beam of her regard, he nearly panicked, seeing the effect she had on them and knowing that he had no way to explain it. Then she said, ‘Rise,’ just for him, and he could do nothing but stand up into that irresistible flow of her personality, and be engulfed.

‘Empress. .’ was all he managed.

‘No doubt you have questions,’ she observed wryly, but was walking away before he could ask any. In her wake stalked her Mantis-kinden, taut with suspicion and ready to take on the entire Eighth if needed. They might be elegant and poised, those women, but Roder had no doubts about their skill. To conquer nations, an army of the Apt was needed, but the old Inapt skills still had their place when things got personal.

The armoured form that came behind them was something Roder found himself averting his eyes from. That particular servant of the Empress had come to him before, arriving and leaving by its own means, hunting down the remnants of the Ant garrison at Malkan’s Stand after they had gone to ground. Roder found that, rationalize as he might, he could not bring himself to think of that shape of Mantis-crafted mail as a man at all. Whatever walked there was something that hurt Roder’s mind when he considered it too closely.

And there were others being disgorged by the airship, of course, for the Empress did not travel in a vacuum. There were air crew, servants, slaves, secretaries, a few of the new Red Watch and, no doubt, a Rekef agent or two here to check up on Roder’s Eighth. All business as usual.

Then Gjegevey, who had stayed with him, was moving towards the ramp, and Roder saw two strangers bringing up the rear of the procession. Their grey robes identified them as Moth-kinden, who seemed to hold being drably dressed as a sacred charge. One was tall and willow-slim, the other shorter and decidedly more heavily built, and they faced off against Gjegevey with an initial wariness, before allowing themselves to step from the ramp and become guests of the Eighth.

Roder watched them approach, noting that the taller of the two was a woman: grey face and white eyes and high cheekbones, young seeming. She would have turned many heads, no doubt, but Roder had sworn off Inapt women since the poisoning that had frozen half his face. Now the Empress had moved on, his thoughts were free enough to assess these newcomers as a sign of the general rot back home that he had heard about — the lesser kinden, the Inapt creatures like Gjegevey, who seemed to have secured the Empress’s ear so very easily.

Then the other figure turned his way, mid-word to Gjegevey, and Roder saw the flash of a pale face there — not a Moth after all, but a Wasp in their robes. A traitor, therefore, save that he had evidently bought the Empress’s forbearance somehow.

And they call us off the Sarnesh, and have us sit here instead, in the shadow of this cursed forest, the Mantis heartland. His uneasiness was growing moment by moment. Was this it? Was he seeing here some great betrayal of the Empire, watching Seda led astray by the wicked old powers that had once owned the world before the rise of the Apt?

What can I do? And he knew that the moment the Empress called, or even turned her attention his way, he could do nothing. And no officer or agent or assassin he might draw on would be any more proof against her charms than he.

‘Tonight,’ Gjegevey declared, as the three of them neared the general.

Roder started from his inward-turning thoughts. ‘What?’ He tried to make it a demand, but it came out almost as a plea for help.

‘She will make it clear to you tonight. All will be, mmn, understood.’ Behind the tall, crooked slave, the Moth and the robed Wasp watched Roder thoughtfully.

Roder knew full well that Seda had not so much as exchanged a word with Gjegevey — had barely even glanced his way since her arrival — and yet here was the old man relaying her words. Worse, Roder found within himself no doubt at all that these were the Empress’s intentions.

‘And in the intervening time you should perhaps consider which of your soldiers are best placed for fighting within, ahm, challenging terrain,’ Gjegevey suggested softly, his yellowed eyes flicking towards the forest. ‘You have, hmm, Pioneers, are they? A list of suitable individuals and squads would impress her.’

Roder confined himself to a curt military nod.

‘And you should withdraw your scouts from the forest edge all the, hm, way back to the camp.’

That was too much. ‘That would leave us open to Mantis attack,’ Roder snapped. And is that the plan? Is that what happened to the Fourth Army when the Felyal Mantids wiped them out, betrayed from within before they could ever be destroyed from without?

He thought he had broken away then — broken free of whatever madness had been quietly taking hold of the whole camp. He would call out for his men, and they would obey him. The traitors and lesser kinden surrounding the Empress he would put on crossed pikes, and she. . she herself would listen to him. He would reclaim her from their evil influence and save the Empire. .

Not for a moment did he think of actually turning on Seda herself. Later, thinking back, he wondered if that was what ultimately saved him.

There was a subtle shifting of the three of them, eyes focusing on something at his shoulder. Gjegevey himself just seemed resigned but the other two flinched away, and the woman — perhaps because she knew more than her Wasp convert — just kept backing off, as though the Eighth Army around her was safer company than what loomed behind the general.

Roder could not help himself. He turned to see.

It stood there, the Empress’s own monster: the hulk of Mantis mail that had made the Sarnesh scream. It was tall, faceless within the darkness of its helm, each plate of its enamelled mail forged into elegant spines and curves. One gauntlet was just of leather, with a short, curved blade projecting from the fingers, the infamous Mantis fighting claw. Not long ago, a slave had killed the Emperor with just such a weapon, and now the Empress’s very bodyguards carried them. For a moment Roder felt himself teetering on the brink of some chasm of revelation, but his mind could not stretch so far — his Aptitude pulling him back from the brink.

‘Tisamon,’ Gjegevey addressed it, ‘the general knows his duty.’ And even the old man’s voice, usually filled with mild assurance, sounded a little ragged.

There was no movement in the thing — it could have been a statue from some Mantis ruin — and yet every instinct in Roder’s mind shrieked: It’s going to kill me!

When he looked it in the visor and said, ‘I do,’ it was the hardest act in his career of war, but he was an Imperial general and he managed it. ‘Until tonight, then.’ And if his walk was brisk in departure, well, he was a busy man.

This could have been a fool’s errand. Empress Seda the First almost wished it had been.

This had begun because she had been hungry for a sort of power that mere armies and conquest could not bring her. She had been adopted as a scion of the old times, gifted with a magical strength she could still only use haphazardly, and she had simultaneously been given a rival whose strength was as great and who would surely come to destroy Seda if the Empress did not overpower her first. For the Beetle Cheerwell Maker is like me, at heart. The magic makes us so. If I cannot abide to see her face in the mirror, no more can she stand mine. Only one of us can prevail: the stronger sister shall live.

But the secrets of the old days had been ebbing from the world for five centuries now, and she had ransacked all the crumbling histories she could find for some leftover worth the seizing. The one remnant she had found that had seemed promising was whatever had been locked away after the old powers’ war with the Worm, whatever kinden that had truly been. The prospect had so alarmed Gjegevey that she had challenged him to find an alternative, whereupon he and the Tharen ambassador had cooked up this nonsense instead. Some fading shadow of old night locked up in the heart of these Mantis trees? A name: Argastos. And precious little more than the name.

She had humoured him because he had been her first friend, and this was his last chance to prove his usefulness before she cast him off. Besides, her brother had spent almost all his life inside the palace, and kept her there too, as his perennial victim. Now she could travel, and she did so. Let General Roder grumble: his soldiers saw her gracing their lives with her presence here, and they loved her for it.

When she had set off from Capitas, she had no great hopes regarding Gjegevey’s find. Instead she had decided to make the best of it: to place some of her people close to Roder, to inspire the Eighth, weathering the queasy voyage inside the airship that all her Apt subjects would find smooth sailing.

But last night. .

It was tempting to think of it as a dream, but that was her Apt past speaking. Something had come to her. Argastos? She could not know for sure, but something.

A shadow barely visible, but a shadow with nothing to cast it, standing in her bedchamber unsummoned. Tisamon had not reacted to it, but she had sensed its presence as a magical pressure as well as simply a trick of the light. A tall, straight shadow of a cloaked man, his silhouette bulked out by armour.

There you are.

The words had come unbidden to her mind, but that was a parlour trick that no longer impressed her.

‘Give me your name,’ she had challenged, and heard the ghost of faint laughter inside her head.

I have been calling for such a long time, and who could have thought that, when you finally came, you would be beautiful?

She had folded her arms. ‘I have better flatterers at court. Give me your name.’

When we meet, you shall know me. When you come to me, I promise you such gifts as you cannot imagine, little Wasp girl. But you must make haste. I have been too long without company.

She had felt some faint glamour clutching at her, trying to hook her with an enchantment that would skew her judgement, compromise her defences, but she had shaken it off with contempt. Even as she did so, the shadow had faded, its presence waning into an absence. The visitation was gone.

She cared nothing for this clumsy attempt to ensnare her, robbed of any chance of success by distance and by her own strength of will. It was confirmation, though, that whatever relic of the old days lingered between Etheryon and Nethyon was worth her pursuit. There had been power there sufficient to reach out to her even though she was travelling by machine, and surrounded by the Apt.

Mine, she had decided, then and there. Gjegevey proves his worth at last. And I will need to prove my strength if I am to master this thing on its own ground, Argastos or no. But a woman who had made herself Empress of the Wasps was not one to shrink before a challenge.

She had sent one of her Red Watch to bring the last of the slaves to her chambers. The blood would help her think.

General Roder did as he was bidden, and even if thoughts of attacking this conspiracy of the Inapt crossed his mind twenty times before nightfall, he could never act on them. All too often he saw that armoured form when he glanced round, quite out of its expected place, until eventually he felt he was seeing it even when it was not there.

Then the old slave came for him, tracking him down amongst all the bustle of the camp, where Roder had tried to lose himself.

‘It is time, General,’ Gjegevey told him. ‘You will understand, now.’

Roder wondered if he would survive that understanding but, by then, dying with that knowledge seemed almost preferable to living without it.

‘Lead on, then.’ He glowered into that kindly old face, whose wrinkles no doubt hid sins that the Wasps did not even have names for.

Gjegevey began shuffling away, poling himself along with a staff, his old man’s pace unbearably slow to a man used to the fierce energy of a soldier’s stride.

‘You are, hm, suspicious, of course,’ Gjegevey’s voice drifted back to him. ‘There have been many changes in the Empire of late, I know. New machines, new institutions, a shift in the balance of power, the Rekef perhaps not what it once was, the Engineers more. .’

To hear that sort of sane and sensible talk, rather than a mystic’s babble, was something of a surprise, but Roder reminded himself that this old man had been a slave to the late Emperor, and to the Emperor before that, a tool long kept in Imperial service. No doubt he had talk suitable for all markets.

‘There were those in Capitas who doubted whose hand truly, hm, guided the Empire,’ the slave continued, not looking back at Roder.

Were. .? And yet there had been odd news from the capital of late. A spate of disappearances, certainly — and with the Rekef about that was not surprising, save that half the names had been men high up in the Rekef itself.

They were nearing the camp’s northern edge by now, and Roder keenly felt how exposed they were to anything that might have come creeping out of the forest that massed on the dark horizon.

‘Believe me in this, General,’ Gjegevey told him, slowing, ‘it is all to do with her. All of it is her. She moves us all.’ Almost a whisper, confidant to confidant.

There were figures up ahead, just a handful of them isolated beyond the bounds of the Eighth’s camp. In the poor light he identified them: Seda, of course, and her bodyguards, including that armoured form that made his skin crawl. A couple of the Red Watch stood at the group’s edge, and he saw the Moth woman was there too, and the traitor Wasp.

Is she mad? was all that Roder could think. That the Empress of all the Wasps, the most powerful, the most important woman in the world, was standing out here, prey for the first Mantis war band to come out of Nethyon, was inconceivable. Yet here she was, and he could not caution her or warn her, still less order her back to safety, as was surely his duty. A glance from her and his words of reproach were gone.

‘General, thank you for joining us,’ she acknowledged, a slight smile showing that she was well aware how little choice he had in the matter. ‘You know Gjegevey, of course, and perhaps you know Tegrec, the Tharen ambassador?’ This was the robed Wasp, once Imperial governor of Tharn and now employed as the Moth’s turncoat ambassador to his own people.

‘This is Yraea, also of Tharn.’ Seda indicated the Moth woman. ‘Gjegevey, perhaps some light?’

The old slave found an oil lamp on his person, and surprised Roder by flicking away at it with a steel lighter until the wick caught, rather than rubbing sticks together or however the Inapt might do it. The lamp itself, even just placed on the ground, was vastly reassuring. The darkness was still full of unseen assassins, but at least their imagined presence had been driven further away.

But then they arrived, stepping from that dark previously only peopled by Roder’s fears. He started away with a curse, hand coming up ready to sting, but a single gesture by Seda stopped him.

He knew them, these newcomers. His soldiers had felt their depredations ever since they came close to the cursed forest. The Nethyen Mantids had not been slow in taking advantage of every weakness in the Eighth’s security, so that Roder had been forced to make a new decision each day, weighing any progress against the lives he expected to lose. Their sporadic, savage raids on his forces had slowed him to a crawl, while all the scouts and Pioneers he could muster had netted but a fraction of the enemy. And here they were. The enemy.

He saw a half-dozen of them: Mantis men and women, tall and arrogant, with angular features and disdainful looks. They had come fully armed, with bows and spears, rapiers and claws, and they wore a mishmash of yesterday’s armour: scaled cuirasses, plates of chitin, moth-fur and the odd piece of fantastically wrought metal that was a match for anything the Empress’s mailed bodyguard wore.

Yraea the Moth went over to them straight away, and it was plain that she carried some weight with them. They at least paused to speak to her, though their arch expressions did not quite concede that she had power over them. Roder had heard how the Mantids used to be the Moths’ slaves, back when the world was young, but he guessed that time had rubbed the shine off that arrangement, judging from the way these warriors shuffled and glowered and stared at the Empress’s party.

Then the Moth woman was stepping aside — almost shouldered aside — and the Mantids were storming forwards. Roder tensed, and was not remotely reassured to find that the rest were bracing too — the Empress’s women bodyguards and Tegrec, even Gjegevey. Only the mailed form remained still, and Roder felt that it harboured a constant tension anyway, always just on the verge of violence.

From Seda’s manner, by contrast, she might be receiving a Beetle trade delegation in her throne room back at Capitas.

She opened her arms to the Mantids, displaying herself to them — and if her hands were spread to sting, well, amongst other kinden that was a gesture of friendship, was it not? If one of them jumped forwards with spear or rapier, then the Empire would be headless once again, and who knew what might follow?

Roder was almost physically holding himself back, ready at the first wrong move to leap forwards and fight for her, and well aware that he would be too slow, even so.

And they knelt. All six of them went down on one knee, heads bowed, weapons on the ground, the killing tension vanishing without any explanation. The Mantids abased themselves before the Empress of the Wasps, when they had barely spared a kind look for the Moth Yraea.

Roder stole a glance at the other faces gathered there. Surely they had all been expecting this? But he saw writ plain on that rabble of mystics’ faces that they had not. They had expected terms, treaties, negotiations that they themselves could have meddled with — not this abject surrender.

‘Rise,’ the Empress said to them, just as she had to Roder earlier. ‘Rise and speak.’

The foremost of the Mantids, a cord-lean woman, ageless and scarred, tried twice before she could utter a word. Her eyes were young, struck with a sort of adulation that Roder had never seen before, ‘You will bring it back,’ she whispered hoarsely.

‘I will bring it all back, all that you once had,’ Seda told her gently. ‘Go and tell your people that their time is coming again. That I will do this thing, and none other, if they bind themselves to me.’

‘We shall,’ the Mantis woman whispered. ‘Empress, we shall.’

And they were padding off, the six of them stepping swiftly into the darkness, eager to spread the word, and Seda turned her smiling face on Roder and trapped him in the radiance of her regard.

‘You see, General? Even so simply does the Empire conquer. You understand all, now.’

‘I understand nothing,’ Roder frankly admitted, before he could stop himself. ‘I understand enough,’ he corrected himself.

‘The Nethyen are with us, as is Tharn. The Inapt that formerly declared for Sarn and Collegium are divided. Now your work begins. The hold of Etheryon has always been close to Sarn, and likely they will hold to the Ants, as will the Moth-kinden at Dorax. There will be fighting amidst the trees even tonight. You must arrange for your very best, your scouts and Pioneers and wildsmen, to enter the forest and fight alongside our new allies. You can be sure the Sarnesh will be doing the same. Whoever controls this forest controls our road to Sarn.’

Roder considered the list that he had drawn up, at Gjegevey’s urging. ‘It shall be accomplished, Empress.’

‘Of course it shall.’ She was turning back to head for the camp, but more words forced themselves from Roder’s lips.

‘Empress. . what you promised them. .?’

Her smile was still as sweet. ‘They feel betrayed, General. The Apt city-states of the Lowlands and their modern ways have made such inroads into the Mantis way of life, as the corruption of the Etheryen hold shows. Now the Nethyen will fight just for the right to be left to their own devices. Just as we do in the Empire, they value their traditions.’

Roder glanced at Seda’s armoured shadow, to find that faceless helm looking right back at him. He had an unhappy feeling that he was somehow looking right into the heart of those old Mantis traditions, but he would never be able to put it into words.

He was about to hurry back to camp and surround himself with men whose company he understood, but Seda herself had paused, and for the first time that night Roder sensed that she was in less than complete control of the world.

The Empress was looking towards the hostile west, where the skies were still faintly grey with sunset. ‘Gjegevey,’ she murmured.

‘Here, your, hm, Majesty.’ The old slave was at her elbow immediately.

‘Is it. .?’ A terrible, hard cast fell over the Empress’s face. ‘It’s her.’

Roder had no idea who ‘her’ might be, but whoever it was had better prepare herself for the end, for utter hatred was writ large in the Empress’s expression.

‘She’s here, here!’ Seda turned wild eyes on Gjegevey. ‘She is here for your Argastos, just as I am. She seeks to keep it from me.’

The slave spread long-fingered hands in demurral, but Seda would not be forestalled. ‘Then I cannot wait, nor will I be denied. General, have your soldiers ready to enter the forest tomorrow morning, in force. And have ready your very best Pioneers, your most skilled trackers and hunters and woodsmen. I will have work for them all.’

‘My Empress, no!’ Gjegevey started, showing more courage in the face of her anger than Roder himself could have mustered.

‘And wait for the leaden clash of armies while she steals what is mine?’ Seda demanded. ‘Only one of us can live, Gjegevey, the stronger of us. If she takes what is here, then it will be her. Is that what you want?’

‘Empress, no, but-’

‘Then prepare yourself, old man, for you’re coming too.’