The Seal of the Worm (21 page)

I remember the last war
. The Empire had stretched itself too far, fought on too many fronts, then the Alliance cities had risen up . . . and then the Emperor had died. Leave it to the historians to untangle that mess, but it certainly seemed to Bergild that they were fighting at least one enemy too many, right now.

Always the same question: why did we turn on the Spiders?
And Vrakir, who had borne that order, wasn’t talking about it. He was just giving erratic instructions to pilots:
Search here! Search there!

I know, I know
, came the thoughts of her wingman into her mind, and she realized that she had been sending at least some of her opinions across their mindlink.

He sent Halden and Lidrec out to sea a tenday ago, as if there was an army just treading water out there. Someone needs to do something.

She conveyed her agreement, but added,
Except ‘someone’ means Tynan, and enough people believe this ‘Empress’s voice’ business that, if Tynan and Vrakir go head to head, it’ll be unhealthy for pretty much everyone else in the city.

You reckon he’s going soft?

She paused before answering, turning that thought over in her mind. Her wingman meant the general, of course, and he wouldn’t be the first to suggest it. Most of the Second were still fiercely loyal to their general, and some were even trying to match the tentative manner in which he was governing Collegium – treading around the locals as though they were as brittle as eggs
. Do the Beetles even realize how pissing
nice
we are being to their snobby, jumped-up city?
The muttering dissent was steadily increasing, though. There were always those who felt the hand of restraint as an unbearable weight on their shoulders.

But that sent them off toadying to Vrakir instead and, whilst Tynan might sit around moping, the Red Watch man was as crazy as a Moth mechanic.

None of that talk
, she cautioned, aware that her long pause would lead the wingman to draw his own conclusions.

It’s because of that Spider he was poking
, the man opined knowledgeably.

I said, shut it – look out!
And she was sliding sideways in the air because suddenly she was under attack.

She had a brief glimpse of the orthopters as they dropped on her. They moved like lead in the air: bulky boxy machines with repeating ballistae spitting out bolts. There were four of them and, even with the advantage of perfect surprise, they had not touched her. She reached out for her wingman, found that he had been clipped but was still airworthy. Then the two of them were coordinating courses, outrunning the sluggish enemy, which had split up to follow them.

And yet she tracked their lines and saw how they worked together, pushing the limits of their technology, coordinating in the air as well as Bergild and her wingman.

Ant-kinden
, she decided.

Sarnesh?
asked her wingman.

If these are the Sarnesh, then we seriously over-estimated the threat their pilots pose. Those machines are ridiculous . . . and what would the Sarnesh be doing this far west along the coast? . . . Oh . . . oh stab me . . .

For a moment she and her wingman coasted in silence, after seeing what was below, matching it up with where they were.
Oh, you can’t be serious! Vrakir was
right
?

Orders, sir?

We get out of here immediately, lose our Ant friends and get back to Collegium. Things just got interesting.

They kept te Mosca under lock and key for a tenday, confined down in the cellars of the counting house that the Rekef had appropriated for its own use.

They fed her erratically. They did not torture her, but sometimes she was taken out and up to the ground floor, where the business of interrogations and confessions had shouldered out that of money-changing and loans at interest. Shackled across her back to clamp down on her Art wings, she was left in a guard’s custody for up to an hour before being taken back down again, as though some missing piece of vital paperwork had inadvertently gifted her with another few hours of pain-free existence. She was wise enough to know that this was all part of the game to her captors: their standard procedure, without meaning and almost without malice.

She was not the only guest of the interrogators. She heard some of the others, for whom that piece of paperwork had most definitely come. Yes, the Imperial hand lay light on Collegium, by the standards of Myna or the half-ruin that was Tark. That meant that fewer were taken up, and perhaps even that more of those put under the machines had done something to occasion it. It did not excuse the methods that the Wasps had built into their culture for rooting out those they believed were their enemies.

And they only gain more enemies from it.
Brave words, those, but they rang hollow in her head right then. Oh, she recalled the rhetoric of the College academics, about the inferiority of the Wasp way, how their violence would inevitably lead to instability and defeat, the uprising of their slave cities, the end of their oppression. A convenient line to take for those Beetle scholars not personally keen to cross swords with the Empire, but te Mosca had believed it. She had lived with the cold and distantly contemptuous Moths of Dorax, and she had seen the excesses of Beetle merchant magnates, but in her naivety she had fervently believed that the Empire was an aberration of history and thus could never last.

But here she was in Imperial Collegium, and the Empire’s rough vitality had survived civil war and insurrection and seemed only to grow larger and stronger, until she sat in her dark cell and wondered whether it was not Collegium itself that was the freak, the error that the Empire’s conquest was correcting.

At last they came for her and did more than just stand her about to watch the Rekef clerks mark up their scrolls. She was led across what she now thought of as the Imperial district, to where she had first stood before Tynan.

There were fewer officers in attendance there, and Tynan himself was not slouched and brooding, but on his feet and talking to a Fly-kinden officer wearing the insignia of one of their specialist corps. The trailing words of their conversation washed over her, technical details that she could not understand.

Tynan glanced around and saw her; a flick of his fingers dismissed the officer, who gave te Mosca a curious stare as he exited.

‘So, it’s you,’ the general grunted. His eyes passed over her, taking in the grime, the thinness of face, the eyes dark from lack of sleep.

‘Good morning, General,’ she responded politely. ‘I hope I find you well.’

He strode closer, searching for mockery. She was surprised to discover that she was not scared of him, nor of being thrown back in the cell, nor even of the Rekef’s machines. Instead she found, from somewhere, a mild and self-contained boldness that plainly baffled him. She had no idea where all that fear had gone.

Tynan opened his mouth, and just then another Wasp burst in, to the general’s obvious astonishment. The newcomer wore a uniform with red pauldrons and had some badge she didn’t recognize, but his mere appearance was nothing to the horrible feeling of wrongness that washed over her just to look at the man. With a small cry she stumbled away as he advanced on the general.

‘
Major
Vrakir, what can I do for you?’ Tynan growled.

‘I require a redeployment of the wall artillery . . .’ Vrakir trailed off under te Mosca’s horrified scrutiny. ‘Who is . . .? This is the seditionist, the Fly lecturer from the College.’

Tynan blinked slowly. ‘She’s being released.’

‘She’s been interrogated?’

‘She’s being released.’

Vrakir digested that, as Sartaea te Mosca shuffled back from the two men, lest the loathing between them cut her in half.

‘The Tharen believe—’

‘I don’t care what those dust-peddlers say. They can’t back it up with anything solid.’

‘General, since when—?’

‘And, unlike
some
, they can’t claim to be the voice of the Empress.’

In the silence that fell, Sartaea had her hands over her mouth to stop even a whisper escaping.

‘Well, then, the
Empress
commands—’ started Vrakir, but Tynan cut him off with an angry gesture.

‘Be
very
careful when you next play that card, Major. Be sure you mean it. Perhaps you should restrict the Empress’s wisdom to military matters such as the artillery, your recommendations for which you can bring to Major Oski, who knows more about such things than either of us.’

‘General Tynan, I am concerned that your personal dislikes are colouring your command of this city.’

Tynan regarded him with utter distaste. ‘Believe me, Major, you’ll be the first to know if I let my personal dislikes start influencing me.’

‘I am not responsible—’

‘Men like you never are. Go and seek out the engineers, Major. Don’t come here with your artillery.’

How is it they don’t kill each other?
Te Mosca knew that either man carried death in the Art concealed within his hands.
How is it that the entire Empire hasn’t torn itself apart over private squabbles like this?
And in that moment she saw it: how the Wasps had clawed their way up from chaotic barbarism to make their Empire; how they had taught themselves that iron self-control; how their strength had turned that rage and ability to kill on the rest of the world.

And is that it? Is that the secret? Will they consume all other cultures and never become other than they are? Or can there be some metamorphosis into something new? If it is too late for the Wasps, is also it too late for the world that they have set their sights on?

After Vrakir stormed away, Tynan’s gaze returned to her, and this time she could not keep away a shiver of fear – not for the man but for what he represented.

‘What did you see?’ he demanded. ‘You looked at Vrakir as though he was covered in blood.’

‘A fit image,’ she whispered. ‘I saw . . . something twisted, something wrong. I’ve never seen the like before.’

‘A singular man, is our Major Vrakir,’ Tynan agreed heavily. ‘Now get out of here, and if you come to someone else’s attention it’s the machines for you, you can be sure. Stay away from petitions in future. I’d thought only the Beetles were stupid enough to believe in them.’

She had already been backing away, but then she slowed, fighting off the fear, remembering her purpose.

‘General,’ she said, as steadily as she could, ‘on that subject, did you get a chance to consider the petition I brought you?’

He stared at her for a long moment, a sad old man with all the power in the world, or at least this corner of it. ‘Did you know, when you came, what was going on west of here? North of here? If you’re a seditionist, you should know.’

She was sure her face betrayed nothing, that it held only that mild and polite expression that had got her through Moth-kinden disdain and College meetings alike.
It’s started? It really has started! But, then, why . . .?

He took up a scroll, glanced at it once and then threw it towards her. It was her list, and there were notes against many of the names.

‘You won’t like it,’ he told her flatly.

Her eyes were telling her just that already, seeing those brief words:
dead
,
dead
,
slave
,
sent for interrogation
.

‘At least we will know,’ she told him softly. ‘Thank you.’

‘I choose to believe you’re a foolish philanthropist who will keep her head down in future, but if you meet anyone intent on sedition, you should tell them that the forces moving against this city are not sufficient to take it. Any citizens of Collegium who might be harbouring the misguided notion of rushing to the streets with sword and crossbow would do well to remember that.’

‘Of course, General,’ and knowing her luck was stretched as taut as a bowstring, ready to break under the slightest additional strain, she left it at that.

Fifteen

After it was done, and after they realized what it was she had done, Thalric left without a word, scrabbling outside into the cavernous blackness without even his torch.

He had not understood at first, none of them had. He had just put on a wry face and shrugged.

‘That didn’t work, then,’ he said. ‘What’s next?’

Che could not look at him, for he would read the truth in her face, and she was willing to buy more of his ignorance with any coin she had. Instead she glanced at Tynisa, who was looking more frustrated than anything else: a woman denied an enemy she could fight. Che had felt her trying to force the strength of her emotions down the narrow link that connected her to her sword, as though sheer determination could somehow be transformed into magic. Her contribution in truth had been pitiful. Tynisa would never be a magician.

But trusting, so very trusting.

Che’s eyes skipped to Esmail, his closed, narrow face, seeing him already picking apart what had happened, sieving it for meaning as any good spy would.

Then Orothellin; he met her gaze, and his own eyes spoke volumes:
he knew.
He had been with her, at the end. He had a thousand years of bitter life behind him, enough to understand the decision she had made.

And Messel . . . but of course she could not lock eyes with him. He had realized, though. He could not overlook absences as the others did.

Then, from Esmail: ‘The halfbreed’s gone. Maure.’

Che felt the realization reach the other two.

‘Where did she go?’ Tynisa was still working it out. ‘Did she . . .?’

‘She got out,’ Esmail stated flatly.

‘Yes,’ Che confirmed. ‘I got her out. There was only the chance for one. I only had a second to make the choice.’

A silence fell softly, in the shadow of her words.

‘But . . .’ Thalric said at last, ‘it
was
a choice.’

‘Yes.’