War Master's Gate (15 page)

So she had cast an eye over Ostrec, the duplicitous, and seen that spark strong within him, and made him hers, and never realized that here was a creature cunning enough to hide his true nature
from her. She had never realized that Ostrec, the Quartermaster lieutenant and Rekef major, had been dead for tendays, and that the man she had taken into her closest circle was a spy and a killer
of a very different kind.

His name was Ostrec. His name was Esmail. He was one of the very few left of his kinden, the Assassin Bugs who had fought and lost an ancient war against the Moth-kinden in ages forgotten to Apt
history. He had been sent to the Empire by Moths of Tharn, but it was plain to him that those Tharen sages who had briefed him had lost out to bolder spirits, for Tharn was allied with the Empire
now. He would be getting no further instructions.

They had briefed him to investigate the Empress, to find out what she was. More, they had briefed him to kill her.

He would be able to manufacture the opportunity, he knew, for Ostrec was trusted by the Empress. If he had been unconcerned with his own survival, then he could have done it already, but he had
left family behind near Tharn, and he was not quite ready yet for the ultimate sacrifice.

More, he was not sure that he would do it, even if he could be sure to walk away from the deed. The frightening revelation was that the Empress
was
Inapt, and held a great deal of
magical power, and if she was also capricious and wicked and ruthless, so what? These were not solely Wasp virtues, after all, and could be claimed by many of the great magicians of old. Looking on
Seda, Esmail was only struck by how much the current crop had
lost
of their inheritance. For her part, she was young and vital and strong, and she did not hesitate to use her power. She
had bound Mantis-kinden to her, destroyed her rivals and roused an Empire to war, and all this from being a timid girl living in the shadow of her brother’s displeasure.

She claimed that she would bring back the old days. Esmail, whose heritage and training were sunk deep in those lost times, reckoned that, if anyone could do it, Seda could.

He was having a difficult time working out where his true loyalties should lie, and in the meantime the Empress was not standing still. Here they were at the gates of the Mantis dream, and
tomorrow the Wasps would march in to support their Nethyen allies, and Seda would march along with them to secure . . .

He was not sure what, for she did not confide in anyone save the crooked Woodlouse-kinden Gjegevey. Power would be involved, though, that seemed beyond doubt. Something buried in the Mantis wood
was calling to her. The thought of Seda with yet more power in her hands filled him with fear, and yet quickened his blood.
What might she not do? What might she not bring back from those dead
ages?

He would go with her into the trees tomorrow, he knew. He would go, and her Mantis bodyguards, and that creature Tisamon, which Esmail knew was no living man – another feat from the old
stories that Seda had somehow recreated! With them would go the Empire’s best, the most skilled Pioneers that General Roder could lay his hands on. Behind them would come the scouts and
trackers and Light Airborne of the Eighth Army, those soldiers best suited to fighting in such a dark and twisted place.

I will bring it all back
, she had said, and the prospect of killing her was receding, day by day. Even though she did not really know him, he was becoming her creature every bit as much
as Tisamon was.

She will destroy us all
, he warned himself, yet there was much of him that could not make himself regret it.

When Seda emerged from her tent, General Roder was waiting for her and had been for some time. She could read a great deal in his half-crippled face about just how well
that
sat with him.

She noticed his eyes register Tisamon, and saw him master an instinctual flinch away – such good instincts he had. Still, here he was, so plainly something important was gnawing at the
general – or at least something that he considered important.

‘Your Imperial Majesty.’

‘Ah, General.’ She favoured him with a smile. ‘I hope you are not here hoping to dissuade me from my jaunt?’ He had certainly tried to argue against her entering the
Mantis wood, with fistfuls of reasons that to the Apt were entirely logical and persuasive. If that was his tune still this morning she would not be pleased, but she sensed something else had sunk
its jaws into him.

‘I have received word from the Second Army, Majesty,’ Roder reported, holding out a scroll.

She waved it away. It would be in some Apt code, illegible to her even if she had been taught the cipher. But then, as Empress, she had people to read things for her. In such a fashion her Inapt
nature went undiscovered even in the heart of the Empire. ‘Tell me,’ she instructed.

‘General Tynan informs me he is on the move, as per orders. The Second has resumed its march on Collegium.’

She had not doubted it. Tynan was a solid, reliable officer, experienced enough to cope with his recent reversals against the Beetles.
Nobody ever said that conquering Collegium would be
easy.
A lie: many back in Capitas had claimed the Beetles would fall before Tynan as swiftly as their kin in Helleron had capitulated, but they were fools who did not realize that a warrior
spirit was not the sole route to determined resistance. The Beetles were tough and ingenious and, even though Seda could no longer understand all their clever Apt ways, she was well aware that they
could still throw myriad problems at General Tynan’s feet. His war would be fought by artificers just as much as by soldiers.

‘He . . .’ A moment’s hesitation while Roder considered the words of a fellow general which had been meant only for him. ‘He is concerned about his air strength against
the Beetles. He has a great deal of respect for their pilots and machines.’ Had Tynan’s actual words expressed something stronger, something approaching criticism? No matter: Seda had
looked into Tynan’s face and soul. He would follow orders.

‘The issue is in hand, General,’ she told Roder, feeling a small degree of amusement that this part of Tynan’s fight – a key element of the Second’s strategy of
which even Tynan was ignorant for now – was something that she could understand.

Still Roder stood there with the burden of something unsaid weighing him down. Seda sighed, feeling the pressure of her station and majesty: how to inspire awe in your underlings without all
these awkward pauses while they searched their own words for treason? ‘Just speak, General. The forest awaits me.’

The general nodded. ‘It is a matter concerning the Second, Majesty.’ His gaze flicked to Tisamon, and then back to her. She found it remarkable that the eye in the paralysed half of
his face was perhaps his most expressive feature now. ‘Tynan has the Spiders as his allies.’

Ah, there we are
. ‘General, we are confident in our strategies and in those we send to war,’ she told him. ‘You should concern yourself with your own campaign.’
And she began to walk away.

‘No, Majesty!’ and he had put out a hand to physically stop her, whereupon Tisamon’s gauntlet blade was at his throat, and it was only because Seda had a swift enough mind to
rein her bodyguard in that she was not in need of a new general there and then.

‘Explain yourself,’ she snapped, staring at his frozen, outstretched hand.
Perhaps I do need a new general, after all.
She had thought she had the measure of Roder’s
rebellious thoughts and insecurities, but this was new.

‘Your Imperial Majesty,’ Roder said carefully, the razor line of steel still touching his neck, ‘do not trust the Spider-kinden. They
cannot
be trusted.’ His
eyes entreated her, afire with the need to communicate. ‘I fought them in the last war, barely three years ago. They were our enemies then and they are our enemies now – save that they
have a score to settle with Collegium. They were the Beetles’ allies once, remember! When Tynan and his Second are at their most extended, when the fight balances on a knife-edge, they will
betray him for the Beetles again. Or else, when he has won, his men depleted whilst the Spiders hold back, they will destroy him and claim the spoils that are ours. Majesty, Tynan has left a chain
of such conquests in his wake – Tark, Merro, Kes – and they are all gone over to the Spiderlands, not to the Empire.’

Seda stared into that half-mask face.
What does he gain from this? This is because the Spiders poisoned him, is it? He hates them that much? Where has this come from?

‘Majesty,’ Roder said again, and it was not the soldier that now spoke, but the plain man beneath. ‘Heed me on this, I beg you. They are no fit allies for us, and Tynan is in
danger every moment he marches alongside them. Ask
him
!’ Incredibly, he was pointing at Tisamon, driven to calling upon the least likely aid in his attempt to persuade her.
‘Ask your other bodyguards. Ask the Nethyen! The Mantids have known forever what the Eighth found out in the last war. I have seen my men poisoned and trapped, seduced from their duty, turned
against their superiors. I have fought a war against them, and there is nothing of the soldier in them, no honour, no heart, just masks and more masks!’ He was baring his soul now, and the
bitter venom in there startled her. She recalled how he had asked to be given the southern front, before the Empire had allied itself with the Spiderlands Aristoi.
And that would have gone even
more poorly than I thought, and we would even now be fighting around Solarno rather than most of the way to Collegium.
And yet, and yet . . .

The Spiders were an old Inapt power, and they had held onto that power when most of their peers from the Days of Lore had fallen into ruin. They controlled vast territories, cities of the Apt
and the Inapt both, and just like Seda herself they made use of all the artificers’ machines without needing to understand them. A jolt of uncertainty shot through her.
What have I
overlooked?
Overconfidence was always the scourge of rulers.
Of course, the Spiders are clever – they have been playing for centuries the game I have invented for myself. So what is
the true plan that the Aldanrael have hatched? Is Roder right?

She could not say, and that gaping chasm in her knowledge came close to frightening her. But Roder
was
right in one thing: she could not be certain of the Spider-kinden as allies. They
were treacherous, and she must remember that, and take steps to protect the Empire from them should they turn.

‘General Roder,’ she began, and her very tone was enough to retract Tisamon’s blade and to dispel the tension that their little confrontation had been spreading throughout the
camp. ‘You are a good and loyal servant of the Empire,’ she continued, ‘and I hear your words. Our allies in the Spiderlands have been true to us so far, but there will come a
time when we will not need them, or they will not need us. It is well to be watchful, and perhaps Tynan is indeed too trusting.’

She saw him relax, and at last glimpsed the spark of motive there. Yes, he hated the Spiders for the injuries of the last war – both to him and to his army – but there was more. His
concern was for the Empire and for its greater war. True, if Tynan fell, then Roder would find himself caught between Sarn and the Collegiates, but it was more than that. Roder wanted the Empire to
win
. She realized, then, how close she had been to turning him away, how her own exalted station, her personal ambitions, could have compromised the war.
And they will do so, still,
for I will brook no barriers, but I am Empress – as well as heiress to the Days of Lore. I must remember my people.
She had a hollow, unhappy feeling that this would be harder and harder
to achieve, in the days to come.
I will be Empress and magician-queen both. I will rule as the Spiders rule. And if the Spiders challenge me, then . . .

‘Captain Vrakir,’ she snapped, and one of her Red Watch came rushing over to do her bidding. He had been listed to accompany her into the forest, but now she had another task for
him. ‘Commandeer an orthopter and fly to join the Second,’ she told him. ‘I will have sealed orders prepared for you. You are to act as adviser to General Tynan, with my full
authority. Ostrec alone will suffice to represent the Red Watch in my escort.’

Vrakir saluted. He was a serious, intelligent man, formerly a lieutenant in the Fourth Army, one of the survivors of the Felyal massacre early in the last war. More, he was gifted: some
great-grandparent had adulterated the Wasp blood within him, and she knew he had proved deficient with machines and maps, a poor representative of the Apt. He was no magician, of course –
none of her Red Watch could have mastered the simplest magic – but he made a good vessel. There was just enough vestigial affinity within him that she could work through him, speak to him,
even see through his eyes if she used all her strength. It would be like trying to force herself through the tiny holes of a sieve, but that was better than the solid wall presented by most
Wasps.

‘I will have orders drawn up by the time you are ready to leave,’ she told him and, as Vrakir ran off, she turned her attention back to Roder. ‘Now,’ she said,
‘show me my escorts, your picked men.’

Seda knew that Ant-kinden armies were built about their famed heavy infantry, blocks of supremely disciplined, mindlinked men and women who had mail and swords, shields and
crossbows that made up the grand majority of every Ant army the Empire that ever faced – for all that the individual city-states were usually at each other’s throats. They were slow to
innovate, the Ants. All that intermingling of thoughts, which might have been a well-spring of invention, instead seemed to suppress any individuals with new ideas. Seda suspected that on the rare
occasions an Ant with a different way of thinking was allowed any power, the world became aware of it rapidly. For that matter, she had been receiving some disturbing reports concerning the new Ant
general opposing the Eighth.