‘Of course. General, we now intend to make an example of Szar,’ Alvdan explained. ‘We have sent for a very special man, an executioner. He shall teach the provinces that the Empire is to be obeyed in all things, meekly and instantly. There shall be no spreading of revolution. Every city in the Empire shall know the name of Szar. It shall be the key to unlock all future revolutions, the cure for the infections of rebellion for all time to come.’
‘But who have you summoned, Majesty?’ said Maxin, almost impatiently.
Alvdan uttered a name, and it was a moment before Maxin had rifled through his capacious memory, but then he understood.
Maxin was a killer, who had taken the life of others for his own advancement so many times, and had countless more killed on his orders, but when he now put the idea together, the latest reports, the results of the tests, he shivered a little.
Szar is about to enter the histories, he considered. In fact the histories may be the only place left for it, when this is done.
He said I would notice no change.
The mirror was a fine piece of work in the shape of an hourglass, with a frame wrought from gold and silver filigree within which the shapes of dragonflies and butterflies hung suspended on fine wires. This was some trophy from the Twelve-Year War which had ended up, when nobody else had wanted it, here in her chambers.
It showed Seda only what she had always seen: a pale-skinned and slender Wasp-kinden woman, hair coiled neatly atop her head, with a vulnerability in her gaze that had been bred by long exposure to death and the cruel whims of her brother. Seda brushed back a lock of hair, and tried to see in the glass any sign of the magic that Uctebri claimed to have imbued her with.
Magic is subtlety, he had explained. It is better to work with the properties that exist, than seek to create something that is not there. You are already an admirable specimen of your kinden, therefore I shall merely hone your beauty.
It struck her that nobody had ever used that word to describe her, and that it should be left to the decrepit, blood-marked Mosquito to speak it made her sad.
If Father had lived, where would I be now? Married, no doubt, though to no one of her choosing. Alvdan, her brother, had never considered matching her with anyone, not even with his closest lackey, Maxin. He feared the ambitions of any children she might produce, let alone the ambitions of any husband she took, which would grow just as inevitably.
The one blessing of the revolution, Uctebri had told her, is that it meant magic’s day had passed. Why a blessing, you may ask? You did not believe in magic before you and I met and, among your fellow Wasp-kinden, all the way through the whole Empire, there is no belief in it. Superstition, you say dismissively to yourselves: ancient myth and foolishness. Thus it is that the simplest tricks of any magician can blind all eyes, because you Apt all accept whatever happens to you as if it made some kind of mechanical sense. A man goes suddenly mad and slays his close friend and, where once he might have said, ‘I was enchanted,’ now he says, ‘He had it coming to him.’ He invents his motives after the event, and never thinks of the subtle influence that inspired him.
Seda shivered. Perhaps the look in her eyes had changed since she met Uctebri, whatever he said about her being unchanged. They now contained a knowledge and a worry more even than she remembered. He had opened doors that were better closed.
And yet he offered her escape, from her brother and from the death sentence that was ever stayed but always present. So she had made her compact with him, and now she could not turn back.
She had applied her make-up with a care and understatement that any Spider maid might be proud of. The gown she wore was pure white, and it cinched tight at her waist to emphasize the curve of her hips and her breasts.
Iam beautiful, she realized. Perhaps it was just Uctebri’s spell-weaving breaking through, but she saw her reflection and knew it to be true.
Her first suitor arrived shortly after: the lean and aged Gjegevey. The Woodlouse-kinden counsellor stopped in the doorway, seeing her reclining on a couch as if waiting for him. She saw that banded grey forehead of his lift in surprise.
‘Your, mmn, Highness,’ he murmured. His eyes had narrowed and she knew he must be sensing the enchantments that Uctebri had put on her. That was why she had summoned him first.
‘We have spoken before, Gjegevey,’ she began, ‘and I know you are no fool. I am sure, therefore, that you have heard rumours.’
‘Certain appointments have been, mmn, mentioned,’ the Woodlouse-kinden replied. ‘You know that I am, ah, fond of you. As a daughter, perhaps – or a great-granddaughter, might be, hmm, more appropriate. Yet I fear for you.’
‘The company I keep?’ she asked him.
‘Indeed. You have made, hrm, close association with a creature of more power and evil than you realize.’
‘You fear for my virtue?’ She gestured for him to sit beside her.
‘In a very real sense, your Highness.’ He poled himself across the room on his long legs, stilt-like with age, and lowered himself onto the couch.
‘Gjegevey,’ she continued. ‘I have been as good as dead for eight years. They might as well have buried me in my father’s coffin. But now I have a chance, and this man is my patron in that. If he possesses power, as you suggest, then at least he bends it to my advantage.’
‘And if he is evil?’ the Woodlouse enquired.
‘I am a princess of the Wasp Empire,’ she declared with pride. ‘My father made war on thousands and subjugated a dozen cities, and I am his daughter. What my brother has done, so would I, if I had seized the throne and not he. Let mystics plot and scheme, old man. Let it be the sacrificial knife or the sting of a common soldier, the victim makes no distinction.’
He remained silent for a long time, not looking at her, and any hint of his thoughts was lost in the eternal melancholy of his face.
‘Do you abandon me now?’ she asked gently. ‘Do you find yourself poised on the brink of a descent you had not meant to undertake? You have served the Empire since before I was born, and you cannot have been naive for so long.’
‘No, no,’ he admitted, his voice just a whisper. ‘Only that I had, mmn, thought perhaps that you… But you could not have lived in such innocence.’ He studied her closely then, watery eyes peering from a long, deeply lined face. ‘I came here to the Empire as a slave, but also as an agent for my, mmn, people, yes? I would thus act for my own people in guiding the Empire away from us… Not in these last twenty years have I so much as thought of that purpose. Whatever I might wish, I am as imperial now as any Wasp-kinden. No, I do not, hhm, abandon you. I shall serve you, if I can.’
‘Good. I am glad of that.’ And it was true. She liked Gjegevey, in a strange way. She did not think of him as a slave, barely even as a foreigner, for he had always been there. ‘I am to meet General Brugan shortly.’
Gjegevey nodded sagely. ‘A wise choice, if you can, hrm, win him over. He has never been one for allies, though. You will have to work carefully on him.’
With Uctebri’s help, I shall win him, even so, she thought, and shivered.
General Brugan had remarkable eyes. They were pale grey, so pale as to be almost colourless, like a clear sky reflected in steel. They were the only remarkable feature about an otherwise mundane-seeming man: his fair hair was cut short like a soldier’s above a heavy-jawed, brutal face, and his solid physique now running to fat about the waist. He strode in, clad in an edged tunic and leather arming jacket, and paused just inside the doorway, staring at her.
He did not look like a spymaster, but then she had met all three of the generals of the Rekef, and only Reiner did. She would soon need the Rekef, or at least some support within it. If the Rekef opposed her undividedly, then no amount of support from any other quarter would count. She could not woo General Maxin, and she had heard that General Reiner had gone to ground in the provinces, having lost out in the recent jostling for power. Her father had been careful to spread the weight of the Rekef across three separate pairs of shoulders but it was common enough knowledge that General Maxin, currently the Emperor’s favourite, was not the sharing sort.