And of course Parops had been expected to kill the Fly on the spot, both by his mate and the city at large. Not from rage, for Ants were rarely given to it, but for the affront to his racial, civic and personal dignity. Instead, he had passed most of the night up on the roof by Nero’s side, looking out over the city and talking about other places.
Parops was a wild eccentric by Ant standards, which meant that he entertained unusual thoughts occasionally. His natural intelligence had brought him just so far up the ladder of rank and he knew that he would never receive further promotion. In the opinion of his superiors he was not wholly sound. So here he was, a tower commander on the walls of Tark, a position considered more bureaucratic than military until now. Now he stood at the arrowslit window of his study and looked down over the chequer-board of the Wasp army. The late sunlight played on his bleached skin.
‘How are the negotiations going?’ Nero enquired, for a Wasp embassy had been admitted to the city earlier that day. While Parops was not privy to their debate, news of its progress loomed large in the collective mind of the city, silently passed from neighbour to neighbour in rippling waves of information.
‘Still keeping them waiting,’ the Ant explained.
‘It’s their prerogative,’ Nero allowed. ‘So what are they doing meanwhile?’
‘There are some Spider-kinden slavers left in the city,’ Parops said, ‘and some of them have Scorpion-kinden on their staff. It seems that the Scorpions and the Wasps go way back, mostly in the same trade, so we have people paying the Scorpions for their recollections. The Royal Court is busy putting the picture together.’
‘How seriously are they taking it?’
‘There are thirty thousand soldiers at our gates,’ Parops pointed out.
‘Yes, but you know how politics goes. Everyone’s city is the greatest, and everyone’s soldiers are invincible, at least until they get vinced.’
Parops nodded. ‘They’re taking it seriously, plentifully seriously. They’ve gone to the tunnels and spoken to the nest-queen herself, woken up the flying brood. They’re putting in readiness every machine that can take to the air. Everyone who can pilot a flier or handle artillery is getting marching orders, and it’s crossbows for everyone else. It’s a flying enemy we face, and that much we understand. It’s something new.’
And Ants did not like new things, Nero reflected, but at least the complacency had gone. The ant nest beneath the city, which produced domesticated insects that laboured for their human namesakes, was a valuable resource. To utilize the winged males and females as mounts of war would kill off an entire generation of them, a tragedy of economics which meant they were only brought out in the worst of emergencies. The Royal Court of Tark had finally conceded that this was nothing less.
‘You’ve had some dealings with these Wasps,’ Parops noted.
‘As few as I could but, yes, a long time ago.’
‘Tell me about the other kinden they have in their army. Have they formed an alliance against us?’
‘The Wasp Empire doesn’t do alliances,’ Nero said with a harsh laugh. ‘Those are slaves.’
‘They arm their slaves?’ The Ants of Tark, as with Ant-kinden almost everywhere, kept slaves for the menial work and would not dream of putting so much as a large knife in their hands. It was not so much for fear of rebellion as pride in their own martial skills.
‘It’s more complicated than that. They deal in very large armies, and they swell their ranks with the conquered — Auxillians, they call them. They enslave whole cities, you see. Then they ship out fighters to some part of their Empire remote from their homes, and set them to it. It’s as though here you got sent out to. Collegium or Vek, or somewhere. I imagine sometimes it doesn’t work, but mostly the men sent out there will have family back home and they’ll know that if they run, or turn on their masters, then their kin will suffer. And so they fight. They’ll either be skilled help, artificers and the like, or just bow-fodder, first into the breach. It can’t be much of a prospect.’
Parops nodded again, and Nero felt a shiver as he realized that his words would be at large in the city now, darting from mind to mind, perhaps even reaching the Royal Court itself.
‘There are still some foreigners leaving by the west gate,’ the Ant said carefully. ‘In fact there are still foreigners coming in by the west gate — mostly slavers hunting a late sale. It’s probably time you made your move.’
‘I’ll stay a little while,’ Nero said casually.
‘I get the impression that when these fellows draw sword they’re not going to care what kinden you are, if you’re found inside the walls.’
‘More than likely true,’ Nero admitted.
Parops at last turned from the window and his obsessive scrutiny of the near future.
‘Why are you here, Nero?’ he asked. ‘Your race is hardly renowned for its staying power in the fray. You run further to live longer, isn’t that it? So why haven’t you done what any sensible human being would do, and run while you can?’
Nero shrugged. Partly it was due to his friendship with Parops, of course, but there was another reason, and it was such a personal, trivial thing that he was ashamed to admit it. ‘I’ve never witnessed a war,’ he said. ‘I’ve put a few skirmishes under my belt, over the years, but never a war. Not really. I did a study once, the Battle of the Gears at the Collegium gates, you know, and shall we say critical reception was lukewarm. That’s because it was beyond my experience, and I couldn’t capture it. And so that’s my reason, as good as any other — and it’s a poor one, I know.’
‘You are quite mad,’ Parops told him.
‘Probably. However, my own kinden are very good at squeaking out at the last minute, and there are still a few grains of sands in the glass. You never know, perhaps I’ll reclaim my heritage after all.’
‘Don’t leave it too long,’ Parops warned, and then some fresh word came to him, invisible through the crowded air of the city. ‘They have taken the ambassadors in, at last,’ he announced.
When Skrill came running back she was ducking low amidst the sprays of man-high sword-grass. Her progress involved a series of sudden dashes across less covered ground, moving with her long legs at a speed Salma knew he himself could not have matched. Then she would freeze into immobility, hunched under cover, an arrow already fitted to her bowstring. He and Totho were dug in together beneath one of the great knots of grass that arched over them with its narrow, sharp-edged fronds. They watched Skrill’s punctuated progress impatiently.
Then she had flung herself to a halt beside them, bowling into them in a flurry of loose earth. She was a strange creature, halfbreed of Mynan Soldier Beetle and something else, and with no manners or education to recommend her, but she had led them flawlessly to within sight of the Wasp army as if she knew every inch of the terrain.
‘What did you see?’ Totho asked her.
‘Did you see her — or the Daughters?’ Salma interrupted.
She gave him a wide-eyed, mocking look. ‘Did you perchance not notice those many thousand soldiers out there, Your Lordship? Wherever your glittery lady is, she ain’t paradin’ herself about their camp, now, is she? So no, I din’t happen to meet her and invite her over here for a pint and a chat.’ She shook her head, one hand coming up to tug at her pointed ears as though trying to make them longer. ‘I didn’t even get close to the camp because they got a thousand men on sentry duty, or that’s like it looked to me. A whole ring of them, and earthworks, palisade, even little lookie-outie towers. And the sky! Don’t even get me started. If you was thinkin’ about just swanning in with those wings of yours you best put that candle right out. They got men circlin’ and circlin’ like flies on a tenday-dead corpse. They plainly reckon the Ants’ll give ’em grief — and why not? I would, if I was runnin’ things at Tark Hall.’