Blood of the Mantis (40 page)

‘No,’ she said. ‘More than like – you
loved
.’

Why is she doing this?

‘I don’t know.’ Honesty prompted him to add. ‘I thought I did. Perhaps I did, but I don’t know.’

‘You let her go.’

He said nothing.

‘You made a deal with Drephos. You gave him something in return for this girl’s freedom,’ she persisted. It was not true, of course, but not so very far off.

‘He . . .’
Why not let her in on the madness?
‘Drephos wanted the snapbow plans spread further, for his wretched march of progress. So he had Che . . . had the girl take them to the Sarnesh.’

All quite back to front, but it almost made more sense that way. He saw it was something she had never even considered, and he could hardly blame her for that.

‘So Drephos, he trusts you,’ Kaszaat remarked.

‘Does he?’

‘No,’ she told him. ‘I know, because he came to me. He told me to get what I could from you. To sleep with you, bind you to close me. He knows sex, knows how it is used. He does not understand, but he knows the purposes.’

He may not have the equipment left
, Totho thought, considering the terrible accident that had stripped Drephos of so much. The notion that the man might have found a mechanical replacement was so horrifyingly incongruous that Totho nearly choked on it.

‘So, so why are you telling me this now?’ he asked her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why am I? Perhaps because of what they brought out of Drephos’s factory today – you have heard about that? The twins told me. They are cold, those two. They talk almost never, save to each other and Drephos. Yet they talked to me, then. They had to. It was too much to bear in silence.’

‘The corpses? I heard there were bodies.’

‘Forty-five dead, prisoners, all of them, from the fief-battles,’ Kaszaat whispered. ‘I heard their faces were black, with eyes popped almost out. Poisoned, that means – but that makes no sense.’

Totho felt something twist in his stomach, some artificer’s inner instinct trying to speak to him.

‘He has a new weapon,’ Kaszaat said softly. ‘Something even better than the snapbow, to use against the Sarnesh.’

They lay together for a long while, Kaszaat sliding off him to nestle under his arm, with her head resting on his chest.
Would it feel like this with Che?
He realized that he would never know. So Drephos had found a new way of killing people. Did it matter, though? Could Totho criticize, having done his own work so well?

‘What are we doing here?’ he murmured. ‘Why don’t we just leave?’

‘Because there is a sword,’ she told him, ‘And here we are on the right side of the guard . . .’ Her voice shook and she stopped.

‘What is it?’

She would not say, but she clung to him closer, she who had always seemed the more experienced of them, in all walks of life, older and wiser in so many things.

‘Kaszaat, please,’ he said. ‘I promise you I’m not spying on you for Drephos, or the . . . the Rekef, or whoever else you think.’

‘I don’t think that. Not
you
.’ She made a single painful sound of amusement. ‘Who would trust you to do that? You have only recently turned your back on the Lowlands, turned your weapons on your friends. You’re a spinning wheel and nobody knows where you’ll stop. Why else would Drephos point me at you?’

The cruelty of it cut him. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.

‘Oh Totho, I’m sorry,’ she said after a moment. ‘I’m sorry, but I am frightened – who can I trust? What do you think of me, you, who love this other?’

‘I don’t know. I . . . I like you a great deal . . .’

‘Totho . . .’

‘What? Tell me, please. I need to know—’

There was something cold now at his throat. A blade? It was the work-knife he had left beside the bed, as sharp as any artificer could desire.

He felt no fear at all.

‘Are you going to kill me, then?’ he asked her. ‘For what reason?’

Her hand was shaking, which worried him more than the knife itself. ‘How could you turn yourself on your own people?’ she asked.

‘You mean the Battle of the Rails? They weren’t my people. They were Sarnesh,’ he said, almost without thought, but the subsequent response he came up with was hardly better:
I have no people.
In the end he just continued, ‘You’ve worked with Drephos for how long, now? You can’t say you didn’t know what he was doing. You were up there with him – with me – watching them bombard Tark into ash. What did you imagine he wanted your skills for?’

He was getting angry, which was unwise considering the knife, but he could not see what the problem was, why she had suddenly broken out of her shell like this.

‘I am safe with Drephos,’ she whispered. ‘So long as I serve him, I shall never see his weapons turned against me. I need never fear.’

‘So?’ he prompted. Gently he reached up to take the knife but her grip on it was too tight.

‘They say there is trouble come to Szar,’ she said heavily. ‘They say the Queen is dead. They say there are soldiers now coming to my own city. They say that . . . there will be an uprising, and that it will be put down.’

‘And you think we’ll be sent there?’

‘I know it. I can feel it. Totho,’ she said. ‘But I can’t do it. Not my own. I’m not as strong as you.’

Strength? Is that what it was?

At last she released the knife, and he cast it aside, hearing it clatter against the wall.

‘Will you tell him about this?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said, shocked.
What does she think I am, some kind of traitor . . . ?

Quite.

‘Never,’ he insisted. ‘Trust me, please.’

‘Totho, I cannot find a way out,’ she whispered. ‘I have worked for him for too long. Now I will pay. He will kill me.’

He had nothing to say to that. He knew Drephos was a man devoid of most emotions, but that his march of progress was a mechanized inevitability whose wheels would grind up anyone who stood before it. Instead, he held Kaszaat close, wanting to reassure her that Drephos would not harm her, or that he, Totho, would protect her. Both statements stuck in his throat, and he could not get them out.

Colonel Gan was, by his own estimation, the luckiest man in the Empire. Not only had his family connections ensured him a colonel’s rank at a very young age, but, for the last seven years, he had revelled in the governorship of the most profitable yet docile city in the Empire.

The palace at Szar was magnificent, larger even than the great eyesore that the old governor of Myna had installed. As the local Bee-kinden built either single-storey or underground, it easily overlooked the entire city of Szar, and if the Bee-crafted architecture was more elaborately carved, every wall finished with intricate frescos and designs, then still Gan believed that the sheer scale of his palace showed his kinden’s superiority over them.

Colonel Gan made a point of taking his breakfast each morning on a different side of his great multi-tiered edifice, surveying his domain. Sometimes he entertained his officers there, or imperial dignitaries passing through, also Consortium factors or men of good family, but once a week he allowed himself a special treat. He had observed, when he last visited in the capital, that the Emperor Alvdan II – a man whom Gan admired above all others – ate breakfast with the rather pleasant-featured Princess Seda once a week. Such fraternal devotion was much noted and debated in the courtly circles Gan preferred to move in and, though Gan himself had no well-born sisters, the city of Szar had nevertheless provided him with a suitable alternative. He considered that he was bringing a very imperial touch of sophistication to this city when he dined each tenday with its native princess, Maczech.

Maczech herself was not exactly the most becoming of women. Compared with the Wasp women that Gan favoured, she was distinctly short and dark and round-faced. She was a genuine princess, though, adored by the local populace with that slavish devotion they awarded to all their royal family. In thus showing her to her own people, as a guest at the mercy of imperial hospitality, Gan was demonstrating his hold on their city. Not that they needed such a reminder, of course, the Bee-kinden being so wonderfully spiritless. Left on their own, they worked twice as hard as any Wasps would have done, hammering away at their forges, their furnaces and machine-shops, churning out armour and blades and machine parts that they then dutifully shipped off across the Empire. The final capture of Szar had been a considerable leap forward for the Empire’s industrial capability, and here was Colonel Gan looking out over the dawn-touched city and relishing the spoils of it. Who cared that he himself had neither lifted a blade nor shed one drop of blood in its capture?

And here now came the princess: these Bee-kinden had no idea of how to dress, not even their royalty: the dark-featured girl wore only a drab tunic with a black and gold gown open over the top. He insisted she dress in imperial colours on such visits. He knew it rankled with her, but it was important that there be no doubt about whose wishes were counted more important.

But after all, Iam not a tyrant
, he reminded himself, and smiled at her. She smiled back, a little stiffly. She had learnt that her smile could be valuable currency, sometimes. He did not believe, of course, that she held any affection for him, but she needed things from him and she knew that she had to play the game to get them. If she kept him in a good mood, then she could ask him to intervene on behalf of her people, to lessen any punishments, lighten workloads, or even have messages passed on to her brother, who was off on Auxillian duty elsewhere in the Empire. She met a lot with her people, he knew, even the lowliest of them. She seemed to visit at random across the city, though dogged always by her imperial guards. Gan knew that such movements were guided by the thoughts of her fellows, for many of the Bee-kinden could speak mind-to-mind, as the Ants did. It was an Art even some Wasps could boast of, although Gan himself had never bothered to master it.

She demurely sat across from him, whereupon a Wasp came forward to pour some watered wine. Gan glanced up at him curiously.

‘Since when do those of my own kinden do such menial work?’ he asked, wanting to add the man’s name and then realizing he could not remember it. ‘When you’re finished here, go and get a local to serve us. I’m sure you must have other matters to attend to.’

The Wasp server hesitated, glancing at Maczech. She was watching him through half-closed eyes, but Gan had the odd feeling she was actually more alert than usual.

‘Well, speak, man. Is there something concerning you?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, Colonel,’ said the servant reluctantly. ‘I understand there is currently some disruption amongst the household servants, so I volunteered to serve you rather than force you to wait until they are put in order.’

‘I approve,’ Gan said and, as the man turned away from the table. ‘Disruption, you say?’

‘Yes, sir.’ The servant turned back and glanced at Maczech again but Gan waved him to continue. ‘Well, sir, they seemed . . . rather unruly this morning. Suddenly unwilling.’

‘Nonsense,’ Gan snapped, his good humour evaporating. ‘The Princess’s people are the most sweet-natured in the whole Empire. Why, I’ll wager that Colonel Thanred in Capitas does not have a city as well ordered as mine.’

‘Of course, sir,’ the man said, retreating.

‘I will have to review the service arrangements,’ Gan remarked. ‘Perhaps I have an overzealous overseer or some such problem.’ He turned to his guest. ‘Or perhaps you should speak to the staff here at the palace, as you often do to your people throughout the city, Princess.’

‘Perhaps I should,’ she agreed almost casually.

An officer came stepping out onto the balcony, not even pausing to glance at the view but stomping over to the table and saluting sharply.

‘Is this urgent?’ Gan asked him. His morning was being thoroughly spoilt, he decided.

‘Colonel,’ replied the officer, whose insignia proclaimed him a captain. ‘Orders directly from the Emperor.’

Gan froze, goblet halfway to his lips. If there was anything that could ruin his day it was a communication direct from the capital. The Emperor could strip him of everything he now enjoyed with a single word. He took the proffered scroll carefully, as though it might be venomous, and broke the seal. A moment later he glanced up at the captain and asked, ‘What in the wastes is this?’

‘A present from Capitas, sir,’ said the captain, with a hard smile. ‘Five hundred men for your garrison. I came ahead with my staff to prepare billets, because they’ll be marching into Szar any time now, sir.’

‘What am I supposed to do with another five hundred soldiers?’ demanded Gan. ‘Considering all the places in the Empire that surely need reinforcements—’

The captain actually had the gall to cut him off. ‘Not my business, sir. If you’ll excuse me, but I need to prepare lodgings for five hundred men.’

He saluted again, then turned and left without waiting for Gan’s say-so.

‘Someone at the capital has gone quite mad,’ Gan declared. ‘Perhaps they’re having another shot at the Commonweal, and need us as a staging post. Still, since the war pushed the borders further out, we’re a long way from anywhere troublesome.’

Princess Maczech was still looking after the captain thoughtfully.

When the five hundred soldiers finally arrived at the gates of Szar they did not find it the cheerful, hard-working city they had been led to expect. As they marched down the Regian Way towards the palace, they saw Bee-kinden come out of their little six-sided huts, or stop the hammers of their forging, and just stand and watch. The further they went into the city, the more the numbers of the watchers grew, until there were scattered groups of fifty or sixty men and women all standing, silent and surly-looking, to see them pass by.

There were no words uttered, no raised fists or shouts of defiance, just that eerie silence as though they had walked into an Ant city by mistake.

And the thought in the minds of all the citizens of Szar was,
So, it is true, then, what the strangers say.