The Vesseretti had not forgotten, though.
Ernain remembered finding his way to his home city during the reign of the traitor governors, when the whole Empire was teetering on the brink. There had been grand meetings, open demonstrations, stand-offs between the beleaguered Imperial garrison and the locals. It had then seemed as though the Bees would throw off their shackles and declare independence.
Ernain’s voice had been loud at those gatherings. He had argued against. Vesserett was not so very far from Capitas. Whether the Empress or her rivals prevailed, Ernain had seen clearly that his city would not be able to hold on to its freedom. It was too alone, too cut off. They were not ready.
Instead, the Vesseretti had put away their ambitions and stepped back from the battle line. The turmoil in the city had subsided, and it had been made plain to the Wasp governor that the Bees were – after some considerable thought on the matter – loyal.
That had been the moment Ernain had held his breath: would there be purges? Would the Rekef descend upon his people to punish them for what might have been?
But the governor had understood. He had seen, there and then, that the Bees could have torn down the black and gold flag, and that they had not done so. There were no reprisals. Indeed, after the Empress’s victory, in which Vesseretti Auxillian troops had played their part, a few new freedoms had crept into the city, for even slaves could be rewarded for their loyalty. Other city-states had made the same calculated decision, as Ernain was well aware.
The plan had arisen out of the ashes of that civil war. It was not Ernain’s plan, not quite, but he had contributed to it. It was the work of many hands, with more hands joining all the time.
In Capitas he presented himself at the house of a Consortium magnate, ostensibly in quest of missing deliveries. It was a flimsy enough ruse – for who would trouble a colonel over such things? – but there was a curious feel to Capitas just then. Great invisible wheels were turning, centred about the palace and the Empress. Nobody was inclined to question small matters such as this.
The man that Ernain met was an old Beetle-kinden, Auder Bellowern, the senior scion of that sprawling clan whose fingers were in just about everything the Consortium ever did. He was prosperously fat, his hair white and wispy against his dark skin. At his shoulder was his body servant, a Vesseretti girl less than half his age, whose company the man vastly preferred to that of his wife. The girl was Alysaine and she was Ernain’s introduction.
Around them, the magnate’s study was virtually choked with the collected trinkets of a lifetime of avaricious acquisition, a clutter matched in value only by the utter disorder of its display.
The Beetle looked him over, his face avuncular, his eyes all measurement and judgement. ‘You’re the fellow, then,’ he noted.
‘Sir.’
‘You don’t look completely mad. I’d expected you to come in foaming at the mouth and babbling Moth prophecies or something.’ At a gesture from the old man, Alysaine poured two bowls of wine. Ernain took his with a nod of thanks.
‘I wouldn’t have expected you to ask a madman into your home, sir.’
‘Nonetheless, you are quite mad, Captain. I’ve been let in on your plans to only a modest degree and I can still see that.’
‘Sir?’
‘I’m sure you have a great deal of support from . . .’ Auder’s hand flicked towards Alysaine. ‘For her sake, I’ve listened. Bold plans without any visible means of execution. Even with the support of myself, or a dozen men like me, you cannot win because your plan does not address the heart of the matter.’ He nodded towards one of his windows, and Alysaine hurried to unshutter it. Auder Bellowern’s house commanded a good view of the palace.
‘Matters are in hand, sir. It is simply a matter of awaiting the right opportunity.’
The old Beetle snorted. ‘No plan ever worked that relied on waiting.’ He shook his head against Ernain’s attempted reply. ‘Oh, you pin your hopes on the Lowlands, but you’ve no guarantees. What if the Empire crushed them tomorrow? Where would your plan be then?’
‘Intact, sir,’ Ernain told him, ‘because the Empire will not change unless change is forced on it. What will all those generals do without an enemy? They will find a new one, or they will fall upon each other. Now we are ready to exploit it, the Empire will give us our opportunity.’
‘You plan for the long term, then?’
‘What other plans are worth making? You know enough, sir. If you passed my name to the Rekef, then you have sufficient information to have me racked and executed, though the plan would persist and prevail even so. Or perhaps you think this is worthy of your support.’
‘Of my support – and so of Consortium support,’ Auder murmured. He glanced at Alysaine, and Ernain caught a brief sliver of emotion alien to his lined face, a moment of genuine affection. ‘I’ll not put my name to anything, you can be sure. No Rekef interrogation rooms for me in my old age. If your moment arrives, though . . . if you make your move, well . . . the Consortium will do well out of your new world, I feel. We’ve chafed at the shackles of the throne as much as any slave, believe me. I wish you luck, Captain, I truly do. May we meet again when you have some more concrete achievement to report.’
In the light of his study, the lamps turned up high, General Brugan of the Rekef studied the latest reports.
Outside his window, the world was fading to twilight and, though he had ordered the shutters closed, still the darkness seemed to creep in around the edges, to steal into his room and hang heavy about him, as though his eyes were failing before their time.
He ordered the lamps turned up, but his servant assured him they were as high as they could go.
‘Bring me more lanterns,’ he croaked. ‘More light.’ To his own ears his voice sounded as his ghost might. How long had it been since he had spoken? His mind raised the spectre of General Reiner, a long-dead rival for power. The man had ruled his agents and spies in near silence, weaving a mystique about himself by his unspeaking presence, but Brugan knew that Reiner’s closed mouth had hidden only weakness. And when the man had died – Brugan had not even needed to kill him – all that fraudulent inscrutability had died with him.
Now Brugan found his own voice drying up because silence was preferable to disclosing any of the thoughts that sat rotting in his mind. Thoughts about the Empress. Thoughts about the nature of the world. Thoughts about his own death. Sometimes he imagined taking his own life, because that would at least be a decision he himself could make, an attempt to exert some vestige of control over the world, even in that one small way. But always he failed to turn such thoughts into execution, and recently he thought that it was not fear of personal extinction that stayed his hand, but a fear that she would somehow prevent him from carrying the business through – that, in his final moment of action, he would discover he was even less his own man than he had thought. As long as he did not attempt it, he could persuade himself that the attempt was possible. He did not want to discover that even death was no release.
At other times he thought that she would have him killed. He would look up, and every shadow would carry its knife. He would see her dark bodyguard, the pale Mantis called Tisamon, lurking in his sight, cold eyes fixed on him, and never know if this was the moment that the Empress tired of him. He had long since tired of himself. He was drained, traumatized. The Empress, their couplings, her rule over him, the failure of his coup: she had left him nothing of the strong man he had once been.