Sometimes he saw Tisamon, and the man was actually there. Sometimes the man was not there, but Brugan peopled the shadows with him anyway. ‘More light!’ he insisted, and his servants would run to light lanterns and candles for him, but the shadows only multiplied.
He stared at the reports, fighting against the encroaching darkness to read them. Here was matter that any Rekef officer should be gripped by: detailed movements of slaves, Auxillians, unauthorized meetings and journeys, gatherings of men who had no business being together save to plot treason.
His eye settled on one name: Captain-Auxillian Ernain of the Engineers, attached to the Second Army, but whose recent activities should be sounding the alarm even now, however much the man had tried to hide them. And that attempt at concealment was itself the action of a criminal or a traitor.
Brugan stared at the reports. He must act, of course. He must tell the Empress. He must send out his agents to have these people arrested and questioned.
But his hand shook, and the darkness only gathered closer about him, and he saw the gleam of Mantis steel in the corner of his eye, and he did nothing. He was lost in the night, and he could not find his way back to a place where any of his life made sense. He scanned the reports but saw only words, and the more he read, the less anything connected to anything. If the Empress could do those things he had seen her do, if she had become the impossible, then how could he trust any chain of logic? How could any of these suspicions bear the weight of his belief?
He swept the papers from his desk and called again for more light.
General Lien was lean and bald, and a man loyal to the Engineers first and foremost. His recent promotion, and the general advancement of his beloved corps, had bought his almost unquestioning support for the throne. He was one of the few who came promptly and gladly when called before the Empress.
Seda had caught him off guard, however. He had not expected to be quizzed on matters technical.
‘There are ways . . .’ he started, and then stopped again, and she could see him thinking the matter over as an artificer should, breaking down the problem into manageable pieces: the little cogs of mass destruction.
‘You have engines, surely?’ she prompted. She did not want to know the details, and indeed she could not have understood them if he had told her, but she wanted to know for sure that the Apt had advanced so far in this specialist field to be of use to her.
‘They could be devised, Majesty,’ Lien told her, and he was still elsewhere in his head, even in the presence of his Empress. He was a leader of engineers rather than a grimy-handed mechanic, but she had brought out the craft in him with her question. ‘What timescale . . .?’
‘Now, General,’ she told him. ‘Or very soon. I cannot wait for inventions and drawings and tests. Surely your engineers have something for me?’ She was thinking of all the work that lay ahead, the slaves, the cities, the unthinkable harvest that she must needs reap in order to reforge the Seal of the Worm.
At that, he looked up with a speculative expression.
‘Majesty,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘have you heard of the Bee-killer?’
Twenty-Two
‘Instructions are simple,’ Sperra confirmed. ‘Stay in your houses. No grand uprising.’
Poll Awlbreaker shook his head. ‘Makes no sense.’ He looked about the circle of his friends for support, the little band of revolutionaries gathered in the back room behind his workshop.
To Sartaea te Mosca it seemed there were few there as dedicated to action as he was. Raullo Mummers the artist shrugged unhappily, and the Spider, Metyssa, put a hand on Poll’s arm.
‘I’m not exactly keen about being penned up in your cellar for months at a time,’ she told him, ‘but taking to the streets will get messy.’
Poll stared at her. ‘It’ll be war. What were you expecting?’
‘I’m expecting the Sarnesh or someone to have a plan that won’t get everyone killed.’
‘Poll, have faith,’ said te Mosca. ‘And, believe me, I’ve seen the Empire close up recently, and things are as taut as a bowstring. The first sign of an uprising, and Tynan will give the order to shoot everyone who takes to the streets.’
‘And here you were saying he’s a reasonable man,’ Poll grumbled.
‘For what it’s worth, I think he is,’ she confirmed. ‘But he’s a reasonable Wasp with an army, and that would be the reasonable response to a mass revolt by the people he’s been set to watch over.’
Poll stood up abruptly, frustrated aggression making him clench his fists over and over, unable to be still. ‘Have you seen how many the Sarnesh have brought? It’s a joke, a glorified lorn detachment, a suicide detail! Even with the Vekken and that handful who’ve supposedly sailed from Tsen, it’s not enough to take the city unless we rise up.’
‘By your own logic,’ Metyssa observed, ‘that means that, if we do, the Wasps can hold off the Ant-kinden with just a small force on the walls and turn most of their weapons against us. Is this that Apt logic you’re so proud of?’
‘Sit tight,’ Sperra confirmed. ‘That’s all they ask of you.’
‘They who?’ Poll demanded angrily.
‘Laszlo,’ Sperra announced proudly. ‘I met with him only yesterday. He says he got the orders from . . .’
The others waited, watching her fight over whether to say it or not.
‘Stenwold Maker,’ Raullo Mummers finished for her, in mock-prophetic tones.
Sperra deflated somewhat. ‘Yes, that is what he said, actually.’
‘Maker’s dead,’ Poll said dismissively.
‘He’s not,’ Sperra insisted. ‘Laszlo said.’
‘I rather fear that if I was writing a story intended to inspire the people of Collegium, I wouldn’t admit to the man being dead, either,’ Metyssa noted drily. ‘What say you, Sartaea?’
The Fly magician hunched in on herself. ‘I would like to believe . . .’ she said slowly, ‘but I very much fear—’
The crash of the front door being kicked in seemed appallingly loud. Poll had a solid door but, when the wood failed to yield to the first impact, there was an explosive splintering as an impatient hand simply blasted at the hinges with a sting.
‘Metyssa, get under cover!’ he shouted, lunging across his back room for the nearest available weapon, one of his heavy hammers. The others were on their feet now, and Metyssa was dragging a dagger from its sheath.
‘No! Hide!’ Poll got out, and then the Wasps were swarming into the room, palms out ready to sting. He launched himself at them, the hammer catching one on the shoulder, sending the man staggering and denting his mail. Then, three against one, they were on him, not stinging but punching and kicking, beating him to the ground with brutal efficiency.
The rest of the Wasps were still ready to sting, fully half of them wearing the closed helms of the Slave Corps.
‘Sartaea te Mosca,’ one of them announced, staring at the Fly-kinden. ‘Your presence is requested.’
‘Is it the general?’ she asked in a hushed voice.
‘“Is it the general?”’ he echoed, mocking. ‘My, what airs you have. Turns out someone has a use for a few Inapt like yourself, and Major Vrakir was kind enough to put your name forward especially. Been making friends, you have.’