‘So why inflict their regime on other people?’ she demanded.
‘Because we must grow lest we stagnate,’ he replied, as though it was as very simple as that. ‘And because those who are not within the Empire remain a threat to it. How long before the Commonweal takes arms against us, or some Ant general similarly unifies the Lowlands? How
long before some other chieftain with the same dream raises the spear against us? If we were to declare peace with the world, then the world would soon take the war to us. Look at the Lowlands, Miss Maker: a dozen city-states that cannot agree on anything. If we were to invade Tark tomorrow, do you know what the other Ant-kinden cities would do? They would simply cheer. That is the rot of the Lowlands, Miss Maker, so we will bring them into the Empire. We will unite the Lowlands under the black-and-gold banner. Think what we might accomplish then.’
‘All I can think of is that you would turn my race, and all the Lowlands, into slaves within your Empire.’
‘There are many Beetle-kinden in the Empire, Miss Maker. They do very well. The Emperor trusts most of the imperial economy to them, as far as I can make out. The Empire needs slaves to do a slave’s work, but we would not enslave the Lowlands. The people of the Lowlands would simply discover that their best interests lie in working with us.’
‘Tell me, Captain, what is the Rekef?’
The question caught him quite by surprise, but in the next moment he was smiling again, as though she had, at last, proved a promising student. ‘Well, how has that word come to you?’
‘Brutan, amongst others.’
‘The Rekef, Miss Maker, is a secret society.’
She had to laugh at that. ‘But everyone seems to know you’re in it so how can it be secret?’
‘Well, that is rather the point.’ His smile looked a little embarrassed. ‘Why, after all, would you be part of a terrifying secret society that strikes fear into the hearts of men, if nobody even knows that you’re in it? In actual fact, if I was Rekef Inlander then the first anyone would know about it would be when they found themselves hauled in and being put to the question, with a list of their crimes before them.’ His smile became self-mocking. ‘To tell the truth they even frighten me. I, on the other hand, am Rekef Outlander. My place is dealing with people like you.’ He paused, searching her face. ‘Have I reached you, Miss Maker? Have you heard what I have said?’
‘You’ve given me a lot to think about.’
‘And?’
‘I remember. . when I was in Helleron with Salma — the Dragonfly-kinden, although I’m sure you know that — when we were there, we saw a factory, and he said he had thought that we Beetle-kinden didn’t keep slaves. And I told him not to be so ridiculous, because they weren’t slaves. They were working for a wage. They were there of their own free will. But I couldn’t persuade him. Whatever I said, I couldn’t make him see that they were free. Perhaps that was because he was right.’
Thalric’s smile was still there, but bleak, very bleak. ‘Your point is elegantly made, Miss Maker.’
She put down her goblet, composed herself. ‘What will you do with me?’
He looked down at the scroll before him and ticked off a few items carefully with a scratchy chitin-nibbed pen. She thought at first he was only trying to make her squirm, but then realized that he really was thinking what might be done with her.
‘I will call you for another conversation — at Asta perhaps. Another chance for you to talk to me, before the artificers become involved, or your Dragonfly friend is hurt. Until then. . let us hope the dreadful reputation of the Rekef suffices to stave off Brutan’s advances.’
‘You’re. .?’ She didn’t want to ask it. She knew it would make her look weak. ‘You’re not going to. .?’
He looked up at her, face quite without expression. ‘Guards!’ he called suddenly, and then, more softly: ‘No, Miss Maker. I cannot see how that would serve any purpose. Not yet.’
He was so very smug behind that bland facade. He was so very in control that, as the soldiers came in, she did something very unwise, knowing it to be so even as she did it.
‘Whose children did you kill?’ she asked.
His nib snapped, its tip leaping across the tent. For a second he held himself very still, while she could see the great shadow of his anger pass across his face, and something else, too, some other emotion his features were not designed for. The soldiers had paused halfway towards her. She thought even they were holding their breath.
At last he let his anger out in a long sigh. ‘Take her back to the pens,’ he instructed, not looking at his men. The shadow of that other emotion was still there on his face.
Twenty
Stenwold walked carefully into the firelight, and let her see him coming. Totho was still clattering about beneath the automotive, and the Moth’s eyes were closed in what Stenwold hoped was sleep. He sat down, not across from her, not next to her, but at an angle, a no-man’s land. She stared at him sullenly.
‘I think it’s time,’ he said, ‘that I told you some things. About yourself.’
‘You obviously know nothing about me,’ she told him coldly, ‘or you would have realized that I would follow you — you and. . and him — when you went away to talk.’
The world seemed to die around him in that moment, like autumn arriving all in one day.
‘You followed?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you heard?’
‘Everything.’
‘This isn’t how I wanted it, Tynisa.’
‘I’m not sure you even know how you wanted it,’ she told him harshly. ‘Why, Stenwold? Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to find out this way? Why not ten years ago? Why not five years ago? Or even two?’
He felt terribly old now. ‘Tynisa, I didn’t tell you because I had not yet told Tisamon.’
‘But you. .’ Her face twisted. ‘So you’d rather. . So I. .’
He held his hand up, and to her credit she let him speak. ‘If I had told you at twelve or fifteen that your father was a Mantis-kinden hired sword working out of Helleron, then I know you would have wanted to meet him, even if it was just to see the man who abandoned your mother. I would have forbidden it, but I do know you, and I know you would have found a way. And if you had confronted him, looking like you do, so like her, he would have killed you. That is nothing more than the truth.’ He rubbed at his forehead. ‘And so I made the resolution to say nothing. I might have broken that resolve, but. . but you never asked. Never. You never asked who your parents were.’
Her expression showed pure betrayal. ‘I didn’t need to ask who they were. I thought. .’ Her voice was starting to shake. ‘I thought that you. .’
‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘you couldn’t have thought that.’ Because, of course, that was the gossip when he had arrived at Collegium with a motherless child in his arms: that she was the fruit of some indiscretion of his. It had been a minor scandal. The child’s pale skin had told its tale, though, and when the child grew, it became obvious to all that nothing so heavy and down-to-earth as Beetle blood was flowing in her, and the questions multiplied but the speculation died away, and he had thought that particular rumour must have been put in its grave long before now. But here it was again, and he was confronted with it from its very source.