War Master's Gate (69 page)

There was the dark chainmail of Sarnesh Ants, too, a variety of designs as though this was some armourer’s museum. He saw Collegiate robes draped slack and empty, now they were gutted of
their Beetle owner, and aviator’s canvas, helm and goggles and all. And of course there were the Wasps, for the Seventh Army had been this way in recent memory. A handful of the Light
Airborne, some heavier infantry plate, the light mail they had distributed to Imperial pilots during the last war, so that he thought of that downed airship they had taken refuge in.

Che gave a shuddering breath, and he spotted it just as she did. Here was a Collegiate Company soldier’s armour built for a massive frame, and around it the others: the loose, discarded
gear of Seda’s Pioneers. The Empress’s eyes were fixed on a ragged old robe, scarcely worthy of a stand of its own.

‘I have had many visitors over the years,’ Argastos intoned. ‘They are no more than memories now, my trophies. But you! You are special. You have come to bring me my revenge,
the two of you. Such strength you possess, and yet so little idea how to use it, and here I am, with a millennium’s experience, just waiting for that burst of power to set me free.’

He was standing now, leaning forward over the table.

‘And, believe me, when I am free the world shall know it. Between us, we three shall shake it to its foundations. We shall cast down my kin, and right all wrongs, and all things that
displease us shall be banished from this world, even as the Worm was. No mercy! You, the inheritors of the old days, you shall be my brides, my lovers, and we shall use your power to remake the
world in our image.’

And surely Che or Seda were bound to laugh at him then, or at least slap him down somehow, and yet the two of them seemed to be paying Argastos far too much heed. And so Thalric decided to play
to his own strengths and puncture the man’s expanding self-esteem.

‘Revenge on the Moths? A bit late, no? And if anything you Inapt were capable of could achieve anything, why wouldn’t they have done it already? It’s not for want of trying
that they’re next to extinct.’

He succeeded in getting Argastos’s attention then, which was the most he could claim. The Moth was suddenly staring at him as though one of the chairs had piped up of its own accord. And .
. .

With a single crash, in perfect unison, every suit of armour, every set of garments there had taken a step forward, raising dust from the floor which had gone undisturbed since the start of
time, and they were now all occupied, every one. Thalric froze in place, his further words dying inside his mouth. A grey face in every helm, curdled eyes staring out at him. Lean, sharp Mantis
faces, the brown of Beetles’ skins now charred to coal, the brother-sister likenesses of Ants and the death-pallor of his own kinden, and all staring out at him with expressions of such
hopeless, terrifying misery that it shook him, it shook everything he called his own.

He met the gaze of the nearest Wasp, a man in the armour of the Airborne, and saw the man’s lips moving over and over:
Help me, help me, help me . . .

And Thalric felt his innards turn to water, a fear twisting inside him that was as old as his kinden, as old as the darkness itself, and he said no more.

Che could not bring herself to look at Amnon’s armour, not now that he would be occupying it once again.
Trapped here like all of them, so many, I had not thought . .
.
Was this what the ancient Skryres had intended, when they had devised this place? That it should be a pitcher plant trap for the ghosts of all who came here during the years to come?

She decided that they had. She knew that much at least about the Moth-kinden. And she could even appreciate why, for below her, directly below her, was the Great Seal, the capstone of
Argastos’s grand plan, which kept the Worm trapped in whatever half-world had been curled about it. Argastos had wrought it, using all the might of the Inapt, and then his own people had
doomed him to guard it forever, and she did not know whether that was justice or not. His followers had come, too, in their loyal, unthinking ranks, his Mantis war band taking their place for all
eternity at their master’s side, likewise everyone else who had been drawn here, and died here . . .

She looked at Maure, and found the woman staring out over that dead host, the tears running down her face, and she understood. Not just cast-off shells, not just left-over cocoons where the real
occupant had fled. Like Argastos himself, these were the true minds and essences of the dead.

And his fate was not just. He was right about that. But surely he was part of this injustice, the disease and not the remedy.

But he was staring at her and at Seda, and his attention, his strength of personality, was all around her, and she found she could not venture to speak.

‘Your slave thinks I am deluded,’ he said, in almost a whisper. It was not clear to which of them he was attributing Thalric’s servitude. ‘But I am no fool, and I know
the world has moved on. I have my army here, my legion of the undying, but what would that count for against the wide Apt world?’ He really did have a very compelling smile. ‘But I will
not have to rely on anything so antiquated. You yourselves have shown me that.’ And he nodded companionably at Seda, who was staring at him with the same unwilling fixation as Che herself.
‘For I will have myself an Empire,’ Argastos breathed. ‘And I will have a city of the Apt to serve my will. And I do not
need
to understand it, so long as my slaves know
their trades – and so long as I have you as my consorts.’

Che tried to open her mouth to respond, but there was an invisible hand laid on her that stopped her words, censoring her very thoughts. She reached out for her power, but Argastos stood firmly
between her will and her ability. She was stronger than him, she knew, for she had been crowned in Khanaphes, and Seda too. But they were in Argastos’s realm now, and he had been working on
them, unthought-of and unsuspected, ever since they had come there.

And he really did have a presence about him, a strong, smooth confidence. She found herself staring into his face, marking those elegant Moth lines. Had Achaeos ever looked like that? She did
not think so. And Thalric? Thalric was some ugly Apt creature, a servant, a slave.
Not like us.
For of course the world was divided into Apt and Inapt for a reason, and she should simply
be grateful that she had somehow crossed onto the right side.

So when he said, ‘With your aid, I shall regain my proper place in the world,’ she found herself nodding along with it, even though a panicking undercurrent in her mind was
desperately trying to fight him off. He must have known that he had her in thrall, then, for his smile broadened as he declared, ‘All shall know that the War Master is returned.’

And Thalric snickered.

The world seemed to stop around them, and in this single moment Argastos’s self-control fractured. The one thing he had never been anticipating was mockery.

Then his minions came marching forwards, and they had blades in their hands, and Thalric was pinned to his seat by Argastos’s mere stare as they closed in. But Che felt that hand being
lifted from her, its grip broken during that one brief moment when someone had looked on Argastos and found him not terrible, but ridiculous. With enormous effort she clawed for her strength as the
blades went up . . . but it was Seda who got there first, casting enough raw, untutored force out to send the dead Mantis-kinden staggering.

Thalric’s eyes sought out Che’s. ‘Sorry,’ he managed. ‘I’m afraid the only War Master I know is your uncle, and I can’t quite see him saying any of that
stuff to the Assembly.’

It was not funny. Nothing about their situation was funny, but Che felt a near-hysterical laugh build up inside her nonetheless.

Argastos’s face was set in stone. No, it was as though he had simply abandoned it, its last expression just sitting there like a slack-stringed puppet, because whatever was behind it had
no further use for it. ‘You dare,’ he hissed, ‘to mock the War Master?’

It was the worst thing he could possibly have said, for Che burst out with a horrified whoop of laughter despite herself, despite everything. She caught a glimpse of Seda’s face, too,
bewildered but no longer bewitched.

And only then could she see, beyond that smoothly handsome exterior, that warrior’s frame in its archaic armour. Just for a second she saw the dried-stick thing that was Argastos, the
corpse a thousand years in the ground, decaying and renewed like one of those Mantis icons, until only some hideous stub of a man endured, leathery and preserved and barely larger than a child, its
face locked into the same expression of dismay that it must have worn as they sealed the man in his tomb, so very long ago.

And he shrieked, a high, inhuman sound, knowing that she had seen. Although she tried to muster her power to resist him, he was correct about his superior skill, for he cast her down with ease
and banished her into the far reaches of his nightmare.

That morning Captain Vrakir of the Red Watch awoke and finally understood the meaning of the insistent dreams he had been having.

With trembling hands he went and opened the orders that his Empress had given him before he set off to find General Tynan.

‘So you see, Master Maker, matters have advanced somewhat,’ Eujen finished.

Stenwold regarded him calmly, whilst all about them the business of the College infirmary carried on, just as it had to. The beds were close-packed here – a room designed to deal with a
handful of ill students now catering to some thirty injured soldiers, and even to the city’s War Master.

He was sitting up, at least, though he still felt leaden and tired. If he tried to do anything active, he ran out of strength pitifully fast, but he was alive and getting stronger. They called
the stuff they had pumped into him ‘Instar’, something concocted by the College chemists. They would not have dared trying it on humans save for the war, and even then it was
administered to those who would have died anyway, in the surgeons’ opinion.
Kill or cure
it most certainly was. They had even branded Stenwold on the shoulder, adding further injury
to injury, as the mark of someone who had received a dose of this Instar, to warn off future doctors. All indications suggested that two doses would be painfully fatal. Two doses in how long?
Stenwold had asked them. Tests on animals had not shown an upper limit, he was told. Two doses in a man’s lifetime was one too many.

Eujen stepped back to let the Fly-kinden nurse take a reading of Stenwold’s pulse. As she did so, her hard, accusing eyes lanced into her patient. Balkus lay in the next bed, sometimes
conscious, sometimes not, and Sperra plainly blamed Stenwold for his condition, perhaps not unjustly. The War Master was perhaps the only man who could now help Princep Salma, though, so she was
bitterly and ruthlessly doing her bit to keep him alive. Much more of that guilt-laden care, and Stenwold would force himself to get out of bed, even if it killed him.

‘Do you have anything resembling a plan?’ he wheezed at Eujen, already trying to think of how to salvage the current situation.
Was this why Jodry brought the war to a close,
just so some pack of students could go and poke the Wasps’ nest? And for what?

‘I do,’ Eujen confirmed, plainly nettled by Stenwold’s tone. ‘I have sent messengers to some of the major magnates and artisans of the neighbouring districts –
community leaders that my own people believe are loyal to the city. Some are here already, but they want to talk to
you
of course, not to me. The Wasps went on the rampage last night, and
there have been arrests all through today. Whole areas of the city are just off boiling point. They
hanged
Jodry Drillen, Master Maker. I wouldn’t have believed that his death would
spark such fires, but everywhere people are talking about it.’

Stenwold stared at him, thinking,
You bloody fool, Jodry
, and wanting to say something disdainful, to knock this arrogant young man back down.
He’s, what, eighteen years,
nineteen, and what does he think he knows? I remember him when he was saying we should be avoiding a war, and now look at him trying to start . . .

‘Revolt,’ he said, and then one of those irresistible spasms went through him and he wasted a valuable half-minute coughing up what felt like a whole lung. His eyes never left Eujen
Leadswell’s face, though, and this latest attack gave his thoughts the chance to turn the wheel once more.

Like
: What might have happened, if we had worked harder to avoid this war? Because it surely doesn’t seem to have turned out well for any of us
. And:
If any man should be
saying, ‘I told you so,’ it’s him.
But there was nothing but earnestness on Eujen’s face, a man determined to meet the challenge the world has burdened him with.

‘What news from Sarn, anyone?’ He tried to look around. ‘Laszlo?’

The Fly-kinden glanced up from his hushed conversation with Sperra. ‘Nothing, Mar’Maker. But I reckon they’re fighting about now, must be. Or maybe the Mantids have seen sense
and pitched in at last.’

‘If we can hold out until Sarn relieves us . . .’ Stenwold murmured, almost too quietly to be heard. ‘If the city is still up in arms, then Sarn
must
come to our aid.
Or even Vek.
Someone
.’ He was aware that his gaze fixed on Eujen was almost beseeching, but the student was nodding agreement.

‘We need the city, though. Not just us,’ he replied. ‘We need the whole city to rise. And the city needs the War Master.’

Stenwold took a deep breath. ‘Where the pits is my stick?’ he demanded.

Laszlo passed it over: a heavy length of wood bound in brass with a hooked head, as warlike a support as any War Master could require.

With a great effort, Stenwold levered himself to his feet, expecting Sperra to protest and try to stop him. She just stared, though, as if she would not be entirely unhappy to see him spilling
onto his backside. He managed to get upright, despite some trembling, and took another breath, conscious of its shallowness. The Instar was still working, but he was not sure that he would be the
same again, not ever.