Soldiers and the lower ranks could afford to let loose their anger occasionally – earning a flogging perhaps, but little more. Those who sought promotion must learn to curb their excesses, though. The Empire had no use for a colonel or a general who could not keep a level head, no matter what.
And what of an Empress?
She had been so careful. All those years spent in the executioner’s shadow during her brother’s reign, and then the careful – oh, so careful – conspiracy to bring him down. And then the frustrations of the war against the traitor governors who would not accept her rule, and her discovery that her privileged position as Great Magician amongst the Apt had to be shared . . . her quest to the broken hold of Argastos, her contests with Cheerwell Maker, her unwanted sister . . . None of these had sufficed to breach her calm.
And then it had seemed that her rivalry with the Beetle girl might become something else, that Seda could now live in peace with her, that they could even combine their strengths. She had entertained such hopes.
It had been that, she thought, that had broken her resolve. Not the betrayal itself, for under other circumstances she would have been expecting it, ensuring her response was deadly but proportionate. She had laid herself open, though, cast off her armour. She had fallen victim to hope, and then the girl had turned on her.
And Seda had struck back, with all the might that she could muster. She had broken the Great Seal beneath them all and condemned Cheerwell Maker to the cold dark below. And all the Seals, all those locks that chained the Worm down in its light-less prison, they had cracked across in that same moment, and she had doomed the world.
Not all at once, not a sudden pent-up flood of squirming evil vomiting forth onto the world’s surface, but the Worm was now pushing at the gates, squeezing loops of its substance through the cracks and forcing them wider with its blind persistence. It struck in darkness and left no trace behind, nor path whereby it could be followed. It was growing bolder and it was strong in some way that Seda could not fathom. She knew what it was that had destroyed the remnants of the Eighth Army, but she did not know how. Her attempts to scry or divine the truth encountered only a fog.
The Worm, the Centipede-kinden of old, had been magicians, but this was something other. They had transformed themselves into something even worse during the long ages of their banishment.
And she could not forget what she had done. Every night was a reminder. When she could cling to wakefulness no longer, when sleep rose from the stone darkness to claim her, that link opened up once more. The same bond with Cheerwell Maker that had led Seda to the Masters of Khanaphes, and thus to power, was a constant fount of nightmares. In her sleep, Seda saw the domain of the Worm, suffering through it as Che suffered. She would wake screaming out, ‘Just die! Leave me alone and die!’ because that was surely the kinder path, for the girl to meet a swift extinction in that terrible place.
But Beetles endured. Even that fate, they endured. Somewhere in that cold prison, Cheerwell Maker struggled on, her enemy and her sister.
‘I’m sorry!’ Seda had heard the echo of her own voice, as she started awake. And now, back in Capitas and with her arch-rival consigned to the pit, she truly was sorry. I would bring you back if I could, but she knew the girl could never hear her.
If only she could drag Che Maker from that fate, then perhaps, just perhaps, the two of them together could have repaired the Seal.
Now she could look out over her city, her Empire, her world, and know that it was ending. The attacks of the Worm were slow and tentative still, but she knew that their numbers were vast and they were getting bolder.
They seek to make everything like them: that had been poor dead Gjegevey’s belief. A world of the homogeneous, an endless writhing carpet of the Worm.
In locking the Worm away those centuries ago, the powers of the ancient world had only bequeathed a worse terror to their descendants. Now Seda was desperately trying find some way to follow in their footsteps, because that was all that was left to her. The Moths and their allies had performed a ritual not seen before or since; it had been the highest and most terrible moment of the Bad Old Days. They had possessed a skill and understanding that Seda had not been given the opportunity to develop. She could only rely on what she had.
So what do I have? What can I do that will put things right? What is my magic good for?
Each night, each morning, the same questions. She was the Empress of the Wasps. Every difficulty would yield to her will, to the might of her armies, to the strength of the magic she had been an unwilling recipient of. I will not accept that I am helpless.
All the while she gave those orders that she saw might help, she could not waste her precious attention on trivial matters. Her Red Watch carried out her bidding but understood nothing. Her soldiers and her citizens were growing worried, this she knew. They could not see what she had seen, and if they could only know, how thankful they would be that the horrors that visited her were hers alone. She was the shield between them and her people.
Only she could save the world.
She mourned the loss of her Woodlouse adviser Gjegevey. The old man had infuriated her but, now that he was dead, his absence hurt her more than she could bear, and his guidance was what she now needed most. But he was gone, and the turncoat Tegrec was gone – the only other Wasp magician that she knew. She had only her limited understanding of magic to call upon.
She had dredged up all she had read, all she had seen or been taught. Everything the old Woodlouse had patiently explained to her, everything she had sieved from decaying Moth records. Everything vouchsafed to her by her original master and co-conspirator, Uctebri the Sarcad.
He had been a man who had known the uses of power. His people had a rare and terrible understanding, honed over those long years of hiding after the Moths brought them low. Denied their place as rulers, they had learned how to gather power in other ways. They would not have dared to attempt what was in her mind now, though. The sheer scale would defeat them. Gjegevey would have begged her to find another way.
But there was no other way, and there was so little time. Somebody had to save the world from the Worm. With Che lost, there was nobody else but herself.
Nine
In the absence of clear direction from the throne, the Imperial forces fought on as best they could. Armies marched south down the Silk Road against the Spiderlands, to be met by inexhaustible enemy troops, treachery, poison and falsified orders. Tynan held Collegium and ground his teeth in frustration, whilst Colonel Brakker held his ground east of Sarn as he waited for the Ants to stir from their city.
And yet around the Exalsee there might as well not have been a war on.