His rattling laugh came again. ‘Forgive me, Highness. I am an old man, but appetites die slowly in my tribe and you Wasp-kinden are a comely enough people – for an Apt race. You, especially, are a remarkably pleasing specimen of Wasp-kinden womanhood.’
‘And this is what it is all about, is it?’ She tugged at the straps of the chair, which was a futile enough struggle. ‘Or is this just some chance gift to you?’
‘Fear not, Your Highness. Your chastity is quite safe from me. The appetites I refer to are not sexual.’
‘Blood? Your people really drink the blood of others?’
‘As our namesakes do,’ he said, ‘and I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Royal blood, especially. Although I understand it is in short supply. Your father died not young but not old, yes?’
‘That is true.’
‘And there was suspicion at that?’ He was moving around the back of the chair, she sensed.
‘I would not pursue that line of enquiry, Uctebri, lest the guard report your words.’
‘Ah yes, the guardsman. Perhaps you could call on him.’
She frowned in the darkness. ‘For what purpose?’
‘As one ever calls on unknown powers, simply to see if they will come.’
‘You have…?’
‘He hears nothing, my lady, because I have put a magic on him. He sees nothing, and he hears nothing. Light and darkness, and of these two, darkness has the power. Your brother feared your father was killed. He feared even more being blamed for that death, and therefore no investigation, no suggestion was ever allowed to be raised. Your people’s empire is young, its succession untried. Your brother decided that to secure his position he would take drastic measures. He was advised in this by Colonel Maxin – as he then was.’
‘Maxin killed my brothers and sisters,’ Seda confirmed. There was still no sound from the guard. She knew it was impossible but, in this darkness, with that scratchy voice behind her, she found she could believe Uctebri’s claim to magic entirely. ‘He only left me alive because, so long as I live, he knows exactly where the threat will come from. If I die, any number of others might rise to be his chief enemy – or all combine against him. My brother feels so secure on his throne that people say he ties himself to it sometimes, lest he slide off in a moment of weakness.’
Uctebri chuckled. ‘And your brother has many concubines but, I understand, no children. Not even bastards. Remarkable.’
‘He has all of his issue killed at birth,’ she said, ‘or so I have heard. Bastards have no standing, but even so he will not take the risk of one growing up to be used against him.’
‘And no lawful mate. No legitimate issue. A man concerned about his own longevity, should any child grow to manhood. You are his prisoner, but no more than he is his own. Ah, the foolishness of it all.’ His voice seemed to be drifting further away. ‘Still, you must see why he has, in the end, come to consider my proposal.’
‘And what is that?’ she asked. ‘What is your proposal? You may as well tell me. What am I able to do about it?’
‘I have told your brother I can allow him to live far beyond the few years normally allowed to your kinden. Perhaps even for ever? An immortal Emperor of the Wasp-kinden, for ever wise and loved by his subjects. He rather likes the idea, however much he doubts its possibility. He likes it enough to have me try.’
‘And should he ever believe he is immortal, I will die that very day,’ admitted Seda.
‘Ah, alas, your demise would come some moments sooner than his ascension.’ He was now speaking right in her ear. ‘My people understand blood, for blood is the darkness within our veins. Blood has power. Especially the blood of our kin. Sister and brother, close as close, Your Highness.’
She stiffened as she felt something sharp at her neck, like the razor edge of a tiny blade. She closed her eyes, clenching her fists, and willed it over soon.
There was the slightest arrow of pain, a tiny cut, and then the blade was gone, and for a short while Uctebri remained quiet. Then he said, ‘You have quite the sweetest blood I have tasted for some considerable time, great lady.’
‘My brother is mad to believe you,’ she spat at him. ‘You are mad to tempt him with it. After living in fear for eight years I am to be killed on this lunatic’s errand?’
‘Oh that is a shame, Your Highness, that you should believe it impossible.’ Uctebri whispered, still at her very shoulder. ‘You see, I have my own doubts about your brother’s patronage.’
With a start she felt the buckles over her wrists loosen, first one and then the other, and after that he was crouching at her ankles, still speaking. ‘I rather suspect that he would be a dangerous man to have around for ever. Or even for much longer. My concern, you see, is for my own kinden and their future, and I cannot say that it would be best served by the Emperor Alvdan. He strikes me as a man neither gracious nor grateful towards those who have helped him ascend to power.’
She was free of the chair now, so at any moment she could leap from it, but she stayed there, transfixed by his words. ‘Just what are you saying?’
‘Treason,’ he explained, and she knew he was standing right before the chair, as if a supplicant. ‘Or it would be if I were actually a subject of His Imperial Majesty. You may quibble that I am his prisoner, but ask yourself how long that state of affairs might persist if I did not wish it. No, rather the crown is currently serving me, in requisitioning some piece of desiderata that I have long coveted. What I am proposing is that, whilst I am quite capable of delivering what I promise, the crown of immortality would find a fitter home on another brow than your brother’s.’
She did not believe, for a moment, that he could do any such thing. He was a prisoner, and was bargaining for his life with these dreams of longevity. It could even be a trap set by her brother, save that he needed neither excuse nor pretext to have her killed. But possibly, just possibly, it meant that Uctebri the Sarcad represented both an ally and an opportunity.
‘I find your words favourable,’ she said, and extended her hand into the darkness. When he kissed it, she felt his sharp teeth scratch her skin.
I cannot believe this.
And yet her life had always been bound, not to her own world-view, but that of her brother. If his beliefs led him to the conclusion that she presented a threat, her life would be cut short on the instant. If his beliefs were that she was better off alive, then she would live another day, but only each day at a time. So why should what I believe matter, in this? When has it ever mattered?
After Uctebri was done with her she had considered his madness very carefully, while she sat before the glass and repaired her face. This was a whole gaping abyss of madness, like nothing she had ever experienced. Like all the other madness that had so far dominated her wretched life she had to understand it, though. She needed to speak to someone, and that could be no Wasp-kinden. It was not merely a matter of trust, but because her own people could not have advised her, in this. She was beyond all maps.
There was only one name, an old slave of her father’s, that she could call upon, so she did so.
He came almost timorously to her room: a lean, grey-skinned man with a long-skulled bald head, his cheeks lined and his head banded with pale, slightly shiny stripes. He always wore such an attitude of melancholy, as though the woes of all the world had come to him. When she was a child he used to make her laugh, when once she had still laughed.
‘May I enter, madam?’ he asked, his voice quavering. Seda could not suppress a smile at his hesitancy.
‘I sent for you, Gjegevey,’ she acknowledged, ‘so please come in.’
Her prison was a grand one. She had her own chambers decorated with whatever she could get, whatever she could cajole and plead for. There were threadbare tapestries blocking off the blank stone of the walls. She had some plants arranged before the narrow window, in Spider-kinden fashion. Two couches faced one another across a ragged rug of uncertain origin. She had two rooms, this one for receiving guests and, through a doorway guarded only by a hanging cloth, her bedroom. This was the extent of the Empire that Alvdan had left to his sister. His other siblings had fared worse.