When the foreman of the work crew insisted on sorting out payment face to face, Helmess resigned himself to being robbed in broad daylight, possibly to being insulted as well. He received the man in his study, noting a lean Beetle with a badly burned face, the scars looking recent. Of course, that was quite the fashionable look in Collegium just then.
‘All right, then, what ludicrous figure-?’ he began, and the foreman said, ‘Send your servants out, Master Broiler.’
Helmess made another few false starts at the same sentence, feeling the world realign itself around him vertiginously. After a pause, he nodded, waving his retainers away.
‘Can I hope, at least, that you’ve made a genuine job of repairing the house?’ he enquired, fighting for calm.
‘Oh, the lads are all the real deal, if not exactly masters.’ The burn-scarred Beetle sat down across the desk from him, with casual insolence. ‘I was lucky. There weren’t many people keen to do your dirty work — it was easy to get the contract. I’d probably find a choosier crew to go over the work in a month or so, if I were you. Now, let’s get this done with. You’ve a list?’
‘A list?’ For a moment, cut off for so long, Helmess didn’t know what he meant. Then old conversations came back to him, words shared with the Imperial diplomat Honory Bellowern (when he was still rattling around in the embassy, minus one ambassador, and pointedly not enquiring after Helmess’s health). Of course there was a list: the list of the key people, the influential, the anti-Imperial, all those that might serve as rallying points to resistance. In long bitter nights of wondering where it had all gone wrong, adding names to that list had become a mean-spirited joy for Helmess Broiler.
‘You came in with the refugees,’ Helmess guessed. ‘Fake burns from the Felyal rather than from the incendiaries here.’
‘I don’t do fake,’ the man told him. His eyes were very calm, Helmess saw, without in any way being calming. There was a fanatic immobility to those eyes, and he fought away an image of this man applying a blazing branch to his own skin, without so much as a flinch.
‘I had thought there was some investigation, quarantine or something, Maker’s work,’ Broiler deftly opened the shallow hidden drawer in his desk, and leafed through the few papers there.
‘Good thinking that came too late,’ the spy told him. ‘I’d already got clear of the rest. Now I’m at large in the city, just another Beetle. I helped the fire crews last night.’
‘The Rekef-’ Helmess started and, when the man raised a cautioning hand, ‘If you’re worried about being overheard, that ship has sailed.’
‘Piss on the Rekef,’ the burned agent said levelly. ‘They’ve fallen over their own feet each time they’ve tackled this city. Army Intelligence gets a go.’ He watched for a reaction and saw none. ‘We’re not so fancy as the Rekef,’ went on the man who had crept in pretending to be a refugee and was already establishing himself in the city of his enemies. ‘We’ll go at this like soldiers.’ He looked down at the list Helmess handed to him. ‘You don’t do this by halves.’
‘I assure you, those names-’
‘We’ll take it under advisement.’ There were plenty of names on that list that simply represented Helmess’s personal dislikes, and the other man was openly sneering as his eyes flicked down it. ‘We have other lists, you can be sure. We’ll cross-reference. Your continued loyalty will be noted, I’m sure.’
Helmess raised an eyebrow, still holding to his composure by his fingernails. ‘I take it this means bloodshed. May I assume that Stenwold Maker’s name will top everybody’s list?’
The agent rose abruptly, rolling up the list tightly, then leaning against the chair back to remove his sandal. The crumpled scroll found a new home in its hollow sole. ‘You just sit tight, Master Broiler. The Second’s on its way, our glorious Gears, and this time they’ll chew this city up a treat. I’m to tell you that you’ll be remembered when the time comes, and that’s straight from my chief here in the city. As for the list, you just keep an ear open and you’ll hear the news. Now, we’ve haggled enough about that slipshod piece of negligence we did on your house, so hand over the coin for my lads and I’ll be on my happy way.’
Once the man — not even a name, this time, see how they regard me? — had gone, Helmess remained at his desk, staring at the scratched wood of its surface. You’ll be remembered when the time comes, he considered. As promises went it was not reassuring.
‘I trust our intelligence was useful?’ The voice of Mycella of the Aldanrael drifted from behind the curtain, along with the steam. General Tynan, who had expected to find her waiting for him, glanced about at the handful of Fly-kinden servants. None of them seemed to find it unusual that their lady was receiving an Imperial general while still in her bath. He was acutely aware of his own appearance — as rough, unshaven and unwashed as any of his soldiers. The Spider-kinden seemed to be able to transport civilization around as though it were a boxable commodity, to be dipped into at need.
‘I would have preferred to know more about it beforehand,’ he grumbled, just to keep his mind focused.
‘And am I to believe the Empire has no secrets from its allies?’ came her amused response. ‘In matters of espionage, especially, it is best to keep one’s cards close.’
Servants — male servants — stepped behind the curtain bearing towels and robes. Tynan shook his head. The Imperial line had always been that Spiders were a decadent people, but out there in the dark there were thousands of their warriors living in the same muddy fields as the Wasps, eating the same food, soldiers no more nor less than their Imperial counterparts. They had fought in the Felyal with less discipline but an equal spirit, and they had spilt blood, their own and their enemies’, to bring the Mantis-kinden to heel. True, their mercenaries had been in the forefront of the fighting, but the Spiders themselves had not stinted. Many was the Spider-kinden warrior, maid or man, now buried on Mantis soil to prove it.
The friction that had plagued the army since leaving Solarno was mostly gone now, as more and more of the Wasps began to see things the same way. It was awkward, since the Empire had no ready category for free allies — meaning something less than Imperial but more than Auxillian. The men of the Second were having to expand their world view to accommodate the Aldanrael troops. The fighting in the Felyal had cemented it, though, and the two forces had begun to work together, shielding each other’s weak points.
Mycella stepped barefoot from behind the curtain, her hair glistening wet and her body swathed in a silk robe of pale green printed with twining white leaves. Tynan felt a tug within him that he fought down. Her Art, of course. He told himself it was her Art, at least, because that gave him something to fight against. Beyond that emotional reaction was a purely physical one, a gathering lust that he thought time had extinguished, but was now rising spectacularly from the grave. The look she gave him suggested that she was well aware of it.
‘In truth, my intelligence network in Collegium is operating by itself, as intended. I have no convenient way of reaching them with new orders. However, we believe in autonomy in our senior agents. Once they had confirmed the Aldranrael’s diplomatic position with the Empire, they have been improvising most successfully, providing you with information for your aerial forces, and infiltrating the Felyal alongside those who were returning there to rebuild. A shame they could not give us warning of the attack on our camp, I know, but I suspect they felt it best not to risk their cover. So, secret from both of us, in a way, but they have sufficed to get your own agents into the enemy city.’
‘Let us hope so.’ Tynan could not dispute anything she had said, but the speed and elegance of the Spider agents had been daunting. Let us hope they don’t turn on us one day. ‘I trust your people are ready for the next leg of the march?’