And so the moment of truth narrowed to a single point in time, and the Red Watch man snarled, ‘You do it, then. I give you the honour. Fire the detonator, the Empress commands you.’
The lead slaver kept staring at him for a few heartbeats, and then sloped over to the detonator, scattering the engineers. ‘What is this for?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve carried the whip for twenty years. I know my trade. What could this possibly be for?’
‘When you donned that uniform,’ the Red Watch man told him flatly, ‘you swore to obey. I am the voice of the Empress. You do not get to pick and choose which orders you follow because you disagree or do not understand. Now make it happen!’
And te Mosca was struck by a strange certainty that he himself could not work the machines – that the fog of the Inapt mind was on the Red Watch man. Which meant that all of this was magic: not Metyssa’s petty little magics of wasted words, but the greatest magic of all.
She could almost see it in her mind, what they would all be a part of: just as the fuses led to the cannisters, so this and a host of other massacres led into the Empire, to fuel . . . to fuel . . .
She supposed that it did not really matter to her, what it went to fuel. Her consent was not being asked.
And yet she was not dead, and the detonator had not been triggered, and when she looked again at the lead slaver, he was staring at the Red Watch man and saying something. Behind the mask of his helm there were no lips visible to be read, but it might have been as simple as, ‘No.’
The Red Watch man went storming over, shouting at him, ‘I am the voice of the Empress!’ over and over, bringing his hands up to unleash his sting. The slaver ducked away and a scatter of gold fire danced about the detonator, catching one of the cords and sending it flaring and crackling, a trail of sparks snaking away towards the lip of the pit.
Then one of the engineers lunged forwards and drove a dagger down past the Red Watch man’s collarbone with a strangled cry, forcing him to his knees. And once he had stabbed, the engineer stabbed and stabbed again, his face a mask of hate and despair.
With a distinct and solitary bang, one of the canisters sprang open, slave to that single lit fuse, and a seeping yellow death began to unfurl lazily into the pit. In moments people were choking and retching, scrabbling over each other to get away from it.
The lead slaver lost one second of contemplation staring at them all before he gave the order.
‘Get them out! Get them all out!’
Seda stood in her throne room, preparing to muster her power. Poor cowering Brugan would be the sole uncomprehending witness to the greatest act of magic of the post-revolution age.
In a way, it was an unparalleled act of self-sacrifice as well as the far more overt sacrifice of so many others that she had planned and partly accomplished. She had felt the billowing surge of magic after the Seal finally gave way, and knew that the unravelling of that monstrous knot in the silk of the world had gifted back so very much. She, Seda the Empress, could be the foremost magician in a second dawn, challenging the Moth Skryres in their mountain halls, beating the old world at its own game. She was weaving all that power back into its knot. She was tying it where neither she nor Che, nor any other magician, might unpick and steal it. She was dooming herself to be no more than Seda the Empress, the Inapt ruler of an Apt nation, whose magic amounted to a scattering of tricks and sleights of hand.
But she knew her duty – both to her people and to the world. She would relinquish her bright future to accomplish that task, and she would extinguish the futures of as many others – Apt and Inapt, slaves and free – as it took.
Tisamon had gone stalking off to kill the latest band of conspirators to rise against her. She was used to that – ask Brugan if she was not used to that! – and if Tynan was a tool that had broken in her hand this last time, well, the Empire had got its full use out of the man. She was tempted to spare his family, after his death, but that would send a poor message to other would-be rebels. There would be no insurrection of the traitor generals, and Tynan’s blood, and that of all who got in her way, would feed her grand ritual.
Speaking of which, now was her time. She could feel the Worm closing in on the world, with all its stolen numbers. Time to put you in your place.
All around her, her plan was falling into ruin, her subjects rebelling against her use of them, even the reviled Slave Corps shying back from what she needed them to do. For every faithful servant, another handful were betraying her commands. Did they not understand that she was trying to save the world?
It was no good: she could not do it alone. Perhaps she could not do it at all, but there was that one faint last chance.
Che, she called out.
A resigned reply came back: I am here. Poor idealistic Beetle girl, but at least she had recognized the way of the world at this late stage, when Seda needed her.
We must be strong now, Che. We must be strong together.
I know. The girl sounded so sad that it physically hurt Seda.
You would have killed me once, the Empress reflected. I would have killed you, too, if I could. Before Argastos . . . There had been that brief, utterly unexpected, handful of moments when the two of them had joined forces against the old Moth sorcerer. For Seda it had been a revelation. Her siblings had all died years before, save for her tyrant of a brother who had threatened her with execution every tenday until she and her Mosquito magician had done away with him. She had not expected to find a living sister so late. Che had been her rival, her opposite. Who could have known that, now the girl was lost to the underworld, Seda would miss her?
I wish it could be different, came the faint whisper of Che’s thoughts. There were a number of things she might have been referring to, but Seda chose to believe that the Beetle’s thoughts ran along the same lines as her own.
Me too. Are you ready?
I am.
I will remember you, when this is done.
I don’t have much time. Make the connection.
Seda could sense a battle unfolding behind Che’s thoughts, the sort of fight for survival that could not be won, which was being waged only because the drive to live was stronger than reason.
She reached out, drawing up the power that Tisamon had already reaped for her. Other atrocities were being enacted across the Empire – far fewer than she had wanted, but when she had Che’s power, the other half of her whole, perhaps she could still accomplish what she intended, despite the treason of the white-livered Slave Corps, despite Tynan and Marent, despite all of them.
She drove through to Che, past the layers of earth and magic and impossible geometries, and made the link.
Forty-One
Straessa glanced out of the open window of the leading Collegiate carriage. It was a difficult choice – either stifle in the dark with the shutters closed, or choke in the dust with them open. The Sentinel attack had decided her, though: she wanted to see what was coming and to have as much warning as possible.
Next to Straessa, Castre Gorenn sat hunched over her knees and looking ill, because the Inapt never did travel well by machine. Recently, when the Dragonfly was still well enough to hold a conversation, she and Straessa had been talking about the fight to come and what might follow: whether victory at the gates of Capitas would indeed bring down the Empire, or whether Milus would want to press on and stamp his mark on every corner of the Wasps’ domain. Straessa was aware that her people were losing their stomach for a prolonged campaign. Going on the offensive into enemy territory was very different to defending your own city, both logistically and philosophically. The Collegiates were inevitably thinking of the home that so badly needed them.