The Air War (64 page)

‘Ambassador Tegrec, thank you for, ah, joining me.’

The newcomer was a Wasp-kinden but robed in the Moth style. He had once been an army major who had schemed his way into being made the governor of the Moth city of Tharn which the Wasps had
taken over almost as an afterthought, owing to its proximity to Helleron. Covertly, as Gjegevey knew, he had also been a magician, Inapt as Seda was, although Tegrec had been so from birth. In
Tharn he had turned his coat and aided the Moths in performing the ritual that had driven out their conquerors, as well as inflicting madness and death upon many of the locals, as Gjegevey
understood. Despite his treason, he had been permitted to return to Capitas as the Moths’ own ambassador. His position in the Empress’s court was an uncertain one, both a diplomat from
a neutral power – if the Moths even counted as such – and one of the Inapt who had in recent times found a tenuous new home in the Empress’s shadow. He entered the room
cautiously, as he did every room in the palace, not sitting down when Gjegevey offered the solitary free chair. In appearance he was a soft man, without a soldier’s hard physique, but if he
could live alongside the Moths, his mind must be sharp as a dagger.

He would also be as close-mouthed as his Moth-kinden masters, Gjegevey knew, and there was no time to woo him subtly to the cause. Only a direct approach would serve.

‘The Empress is seeking to break the Seal of the Worm.’

The words hung between them like a corpse, and Gjegevey left them turning there for a long while before continuing.

‘I am, hm, telling this not to the Tharen ambassador, but to a fellow magician who must
know
’ – and it was plain from Tegrec’s pale face that he did –
‘how unwise this might, ahm, turn out to be.’

Tegrec took the offered seat after all. Gjegevey wondered what the man really knew, for surely he had only been allowed to burrow shallowly into the Moth mysteries. Enough to know of the Worm,
apparently, and the danger it represented.

‘Why would she do that?’

Gjegevey sighed, seeming just the doddering old scholar, his fingers pattering idly on the desktop. ‘Oh, well, she is, ah, responsible for her people. She seeks to defend them from all
dangers and, hm, now that her eyes have been opened to our wider world, she wishes to be able to protect them from such threats as might be brought by the, hrm, Inapt, even as she does threats from
the Apt.’ It was a necessary equivocation. ‘She sees the Seal as the means to that end. I, hm, have taken it upon myself to find her an alternative.’

Tegrec’s look suggested that he did not envy Gjegevey this role. ‘What is this to me, in whatever capacity? What do you ask for?’

‘Knowledge,’ Gjegevey said simply.

‘Not something freely given, anywhere.’

‘Then consider me in your, hrm, debt, if that helps. Or perhaps consider just what might be waiting behind the Seal, if she goes ahead with her plans.’

‘Perhaps nothing.’ Tegrec tried a flippant shrug, and did not quite manage it.

‘You don’t believe that,’ Gjegevey observed. ‘I have combed every scrap of old Lowlander lore that I can lay these old, ahm, hands on. I have listed each fount of power,
each totemic site, each haunt of, hem, ritual, but we both know that your adopted people are unreliable in what they, hm, commit to paper. Help me, Ambassador: guide my hand.’

For a long moment Tegrec looked at him, his expression as arch and distant as any Moth’s, but then he rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s hear your list,’ he said.

And Gjegevey took him through it, some nineteen leads teased from the appendices of history, each one seeming a flower waiting to be plucked by one of sufficient pedigree and will, and each time
Tegrec shook his head, sometimes dignifying the suggestion with a terse dismissal, sometimes not even that. The situation was worse than Gjegevey had thought.

The Tharen Moths themselves would have their secret caches of strength, of course, if their ritual against the Imperial occupiers had left them any, but Tegrec was hardly about to assist him in
that direction. For the rest . . . the golden history of the pre-revolution Lowlands was merely fool’s gold, it seemed nowadays, and he should have known not to trust his sources. The Moths
did not set down their losses, as the tide of history turned on them. Oh,
they
would know what to credit and what to discount in their writings, a secret code that must have misled and
bewildered a hundred scholars and fortune hunters prior to poor Gjegevey, but, as their influence had shrunk, their glorious places of power grown dim or built over by the Apt, they had simply not
updated the maps and gazetteers that showed their world. To put such matters in writing would have been a symbolic concession of a defeat that even now they refused to admit. Tegrec’s
knowledge might only be limited, but it was enough to snuff out each item on Gjegevey’s list in short order, leaving the two men staring glumly at each other.

And then Tegrec said a name: ‘Argastos.’

Gjegevey frowned, ill-tempered after constant fruitless searching. ‘There is no mention of an Argastos anywhere I’ve looked.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Tegrec replied grimly. ‘I’ll bet there’s no mention of the Darakyon, either, but you can’t deny that place had power. The Moths do not openly
chronicle their failures.’ He smiled slightly at the Woodlouse-kinden’s expression. ‘Oh, you’re thinking along the right lines, but against the Worm, what can we do? He was
a Moth . . . warlord is perhaps the best word, if you can imagine that. He dwelt amongst the Mantis-kinden of the Etheryon and the Nethyon before they were two separate holds. He was a lord there,
and he led the Moth war-host, I think, but he was beholden to nobody.’

‘A magician of power?’

‘Oh, yes, one of the Great Names, and you know what weight my people place on names.’ And if the Moths were not genuinely “his” people, Gjegevey said nothing of it.

‘He left something of his power behind?’ the Woodlouse pressed.

‘Gjegevey, he’s still there, the way they tell it. There is a heart of the wood between Etheryon and Nethyon where the locals don’t go, where his stronghold stood, or stands
– or his tomb perhaps. They don’t write of it, but something happened: either the other Moths came for him, or he himself did something, but now . . . he is still there, in some manner.
You understand me.’

For a long while, Gjegevey considered this, and his face clearly indicated the thought,
But better than the Worm, surely.
Then he asked, almost brightly, ‘What is the attitude of
the, hm, Ancient League and Tharn, regarding this?’

He saw immediately that Tegrec had deliberately steered the conversation this way, and wondered just how much of a Moth the man had become. ‘Divided, old man, all of it: Tharn from the
League, Tharn within itself, the League within itself, and its attitudes to the Empire likewise not yet finalized. But becoming more united with the progress of the Eighth Army. Every step that
General Roder takes is turning them against you.’

‘Then . . . ?’

‘Are you asking for an intercession from Tharn? Are you asking the Moths of Tharn to assist you in this quest of yours? Then halt the Eighth while we negotiate or, Worm or no, she will not
get what she wants.’

Gjegevey regarded him with half-lidded eyes. ‘You are well appointed by your masters, Ambassador. They have a shrewd agent in you.’

‘I learned more of that right here in Capitas than I ever did in Tharn. So, can you do it?’

‘The Empress will trust my advice,’ Gjegevey declared, with all the confidence he could muster, before opening the door to usher Tegrec out. A knot of Wasp soldiers was revealed
beyond: hard, scowling men in the armour of the Light Airborne.

And Gjegevey thought only,
It’s happened at last
, then,
But not now!

There was an open palm aimed at him, and he retreated back into the study, the soldiers pressing in too, crowding the small room.

‘Well, now, two traitors,’ said their leader.

‘The Empress—’ Gjegevey got out, and then the open palm was suddenly in motion, slapping him hard enough to pitch him over the desktop, scattering fragile books and scrolls
onto the floor.

‘Take them both,’ the soldier said. ‘Show them the instruments, and then lock them up. Let them reflect on how the Rekef exists to protect the throne from creatures such as
them.’

‘A toast,’ proposed Colonel Harvang, ‘to governance guided by strength.’ He emptied his goblet, tossing the contents down his gaping throat and
spattering his tunic.

General Brugan nodded soberly, his own brandy untouched. All over the palace his men were in motion even now. All suspects were being rounded up for the Rekef cells, all the mongrels and lesser
races that the Empress inexplicably chose to associate with, taken to where they could do no more harm, and held ready for disposal later. The list had been surprisingly long, from long-time
advisers like doddering old Gjegevey all the way down to dubious servants, Commonwealer slaves.
It’s just as well we’ve stopped the rot here.

But, of course, that was barely the true reason, in his heart of hearts. He, Harvang and Vecter had just come from a full meeting of the conspirators. His collection of Consortium magnates, army
officers and Rekef men were now out doing his bidding, and they all believed that this was simply about building a wall between the Empress and such undesirables, with themselves installed as
gatekeepers of course.
But it’s not about that.
It was about control. Taking control of
her.
Taking back control of his own life.

She had called him to her, last night. He still felt the shudder inside him, recalling the blood she had offered him, in a goblet finer than the one holding his brandy. Then the sense of
something vital being leached from him, as her skin met his . . . and yet he could not stay away from her. He
wanted
her, but he needed to redefine the terms on which he tasted her. He
needed to make her
his
, for at the moment he was far more
hers
.

‘General?’ Harvang prompted, and he knew he had missed something – a bad failing in any high-ranking Wasp, and especially a Rekef general. He glanced from Harvang to neat
little Vecter, and tried to recapture the echo of what had been said.

‘Ostrec,’ he agreed, almost heartily. It was a stab in the dark, but Harvang’s expression – a little too much relief for comfort – reassured him. The young major
was lurking near the door, looking bland in his Quartermaster Corps uniform. He was quite the favourite with the Empress, Brugan knew, and that knowledge made him grind his teeth.
Someone else
for the cells, sooner or later. If only Harvang wasn’t so fond of him.
There would be a time, though, when Ostrec slipped out of the greasy orbit of the colonel, and then he would
disappear, sinking without trace.

‘We owe you a great deal, Major,’ Brugan declared, beckoning the younger man to approach. ‘You’ve managed to work up quite a list of names. The Empire thanks you, and so
do I.’

‘Merely my duty, General,’ Ostrec replied smoothly.

Brugan suppressed a scowl. ‘All her mystics and hangers-on will be under lock and key before the day is out. The real test will come when we take her bodyguards. Mantis-kinden are too
unpredictable. Having them within her presence is asking for trouble. After all, the Eighth is fighting the Mantis-kinden right now.’

‘The old Woodlouse was saying that we had to order the Eighth to hold its ground,’ Vecter observed, with a raised eyebrow.

Harvang snorted. ‘And why? Because the moon was in the wrong phase, or he’d seen a particularly foreboding shadow, no doubt.’

‘Something to do with worms.’ Vecter dismissed the thought with a flick of his hand.

Ostrec was still standing before Brugan, and for a moment his expression . . . no, not his expression, which was as placid as could be, but there was some shift, as though his face had been
momentarily translucent, some other drowned features twitching beneath them. Brugan blinked, feeling ill with the dislocation of it. Nothing was amiss: it was Ostrec, nobody but Ostrec, now looking
at him in concern.

‘General?’

‘That will be all,’ Brugan said, too forcefully.
I have to get control before it’s too late. She’s ruining me
, rattled through his head.

‘You, and me,’ Scain said, without warning. The Farsphex pilots and their bombardiers had been drawn up in neat ranks beside their machines on the makeshift field
that the Second Army had cleared for them that day. Pingge jumped guiltily: there had been quite a long silence and her mind had wandered, and only now did she realize that the Wasps had been
conferring.

‘What was that, sir?’ she whispered.

‘Going to talk with the general.’

‘
What
, sir?’ Heads turned to look and she gritted her teeth.

‘We are mounting a delegation to General Tynan. He has some orders for us: a new phase of the war,’ Scain murmured. ‘We get to go.’

But I don’t
want
to meet a general
, was a useless comment, and of course she did not say it. Pingge was nervous, though. A ripple of some kind of emotion had passed through
the Wasp-kinden, one and all. Aarmon was doing something risky.

‘Come on.’ Scain stood forward, still just a gangling young Wasp-kinden, for all the flying and fighting experience he had lived through. Pingge saw Kiin pattering forward too,
saluting at Aarmon’s beckoning gesture, and from further down the ranks came Sergeant Nishaana and her bombardier Tiadro.

‘
She’s
coming too. Scain . . . I mean, sir?’

Scain looked back at her with a slight smile. ‘Aarmon says they can take us as they find us,’ he told her.

Six of them: two Wasp men, a Wasp woman, two Fly women and one Fly man, they marched smartly through the great sprawling camp that the Second Army and the Aldanrael forces had established
between them. If it had not been for the Spiders, then Pingge guessed fingers would have been pointing from the first moment, but the brightly coloured variety of the Spiderlands troops provided a
camouflage that almost anything could have hidden against. Nishaana drew a few glances from soldiers who had not seen a woman of their own kinden for some while who wasn’t a whore, but there
was none of the comments, jeers and lewd suggestions that Pingge had been expecting. Compared with the Empire’s new allies, the aviators were positively normal.