‘Then…?’
‘Are you asking for an intercession from Tharn? Are you asking the Moths of Tharn to assist you in this quest of yours? Then halt the Eighth while we negotiate or, Worm or no, she will not get what she wants.’
Gjegevey regarded him with half-lidded eyes. ‘You are well appointed by your masters, Ambassador. They have a shrewd agent in you.’
‘I learned more of that right here in Capitas than I ever did in Tharn. So, can you do it?’
‘The Empress will trust my advice,’ Gjegevey declared, with all the confidence he could muster, before opening the door to usher Tegrec out. A knot of Wasp soldiers was revealed beyond: hard, scowling men in the armour of the Light Airborne.
And Gjegevey thought only, It’s happened at last, then, But not now!
There was an open palm aimed at him, and he retreated back into the study, the soldiers pressing in too, crowding the small room.
‘Well, now, two traitors,’ said their leader.
‘The Empress-’ Gjegevey got out, and then the open palm was suddenly in motion, slapping him hard enough to pitch him over the desktop, scattering fragile books and scrolls onto the floor.
‘Take them both,’ the soldier said. ‘Show them the instruments, and then lock them up. Let them reflect on how the Rekef exists to protect the throne from creatures such as them.’
‘A toast,’ proposed Colonel Harvang, ‘to governance guided by strength.’ He emptied his goblet, tossing the contents down his gaping throat and spattering his tunic.
General Brugan nodded soberly, his own brandy untouched. All over the palace his men were in motion even now. All suspects were being rounded up for the Rekef cells, all the mongrels and lesser races that the Empress inexplicably chose to associate with, taken to where they could do no more harm, and held ready for disposal later. The list had been surprisingly long, from long-time advisers like doddering old Gjegevey all the way down to dubious servants, Commonwealer slaves. It’s just as well we’ve stopped the rot here.
But, of course, that was barely the true reason, in his heart of hearts. He, Harvang and Vecter had just come from a full meeting of the conspirators. His collection of Consortium magnates, army officers and Rekef men were now out doing his bidding, and they all believed that this was simply about building a wall between the Empress and such undesirables, with themselves installed as gatekeepers of course. But it’s not about that. It was about control. Taking control of her. Taking back control of his own life.
She had called him to her, last night. He still felt the shudder inside him, recalling the blood she had offered him, in a goblet finer than the one holding his brandy. Then the sense of something vital being leached from him, as her skin met his… and yet he could not stay away from her. He wanted her, but he needed to redefine the terms on which he tasted her. He needed to make her his, for at the moment he was far more hers.
‘General?’ Harvang prompted, and he knew he had missed something — a bad failing in any high-ranking Wasp, and especially a Rekef general. He glanced from Harvang to neat little Vecter, and tried to recapture the echo of what had been said.
‘Ostrec,’ he agreed, almost heartily. It was a stab in the dark, but Harvang’s expression — a little too much relief for comfort — reassured him. The young major was lurking near the door, looking bland in his Quartermaster Corps uniform. He was quite the favourite with the Empress, Brugan knew, and that knowledge made him grind his teeth. Someone else for the cells, sooner or later. If only Harvang wasn’t so fond of him. There would be a time, though, when Ostrec slipped out of the greasy orbit of the colonel, and then he would disappear, sinking without trace.
‘We owe you a great deal, Major,’ Brugan declared, beckoning the younger man to approach. ‘You’ve managed to work up quite a list of names. The Empire thanks you, and so do I.’
‘Merely my duty, General,’ Ostrec replied smoothly.
Brugan suppressed a scowl. ‘All her mystics and hangers-on will be under lock and key before the day is out. The real test will come when we take her bodyguards. Mantis-kinden are too unpredictable. Having them within her presence is asking for trouble. After all, the Eighth is fighting the Mantis-kinden right now.’
‘The old Woodlouse was saying that we had to order the Eighth to hold its ground,’ Vecter observed, with a raised eyebrow.
Harvang snorted. ‘And why? Because the moon was in the wrong phase, or he’d seen a particularly foreboding shadow, no doubt.’
‘Something to do with worms.’ Vecter dismissed the thought with a flick of his hand.
Ostrec was still standing before Brugan, and for a moment his expression… no, not his expression, which was as placid as could be, but there was some shift, as though his face had been momentarily translucent, some other drowned features twitching beneath them. Brugan blinked, feeling ill with the dislocation of it. Nothing was amiss: it was Ostrec, nobody but Ostrec, now looking at him in concern.
‘General?’
‘That will be all,’ Brugan said, too forcefully. I have to get control before it’s too late. She’s ruining me, rattled through his head.
‘You, and me,’ Scain said, without warning. The Farsphex pilots and their bombardiers had been drawn up in neat ranks beside their machines on the makeshift field that the Second Army had cleared for them that day. Pingge jumped guiltily: there had been quite a long silence and her mind had wandered, and only now did she realize that the Wasps had been conferring.
‘What was that, sir?’ she whispered.
‘Going to talk with the general.’
‘ What, sir?’ Heads turned to look and she gritted her teeth.
‘We are mounting a delegation to General Tynan. He has some orders for us: a new phase of the war,’ Scain murmured. ‘We get to go.’
But I don’t want to meet a general, was a useless comment, and of course she did not say it. Pingge was nervous, though. A ripple of some kind of emotion had passed through the Wasp-kinden, one and all. Aarmon was doing something risky.
‘Come on.’ Scain stood forward, still just a gangling young Wasp-kinden, for all the flying and fighting experience he had lived through. Pingge saw Kiin pattering forward too, saluting at Aarmon’s beckoning gesture, and from further down the ranks came Sergeant Nishaana and her bombardier Tiadro.
‘ She’s coming too. Scain… I mean, sir?’
Scain looked back at her with a slight smile. ‘Aarmon says they can take us as they find us,’ he told her.
Six of them: two Wasp men, a Wasp woman, two Fly women and one Fly man, they marched smartly through the great sprawling camp that the Second Army and the Aldanrael forces had established between them. If it had not been for the Spiders, then Pingge guessed fingers would have been pointing from the first moment, but the brightly coloured variety of the Spiderlands troops provided a camouflage that almost anything could have hidden against. Nishaana drew a few glances from soldiers who had not seen a woman of their own kinden for some while who wasn’t a whore, but there was none of the comments, jeers and lewd suggestions that Pingge had been expecting. Compared with the Empire’s new allies, the aviators were positively normal.
Of course, Aarmon’s thunderous glower might have contributed to their reticence, she decided. For most of their way through the camp she could not work out what the man was up to. Only as they were practically at the general’s tent did she guess at it: their branch of the Engineers was both new and different, in a society that was suspicious of the first quality and outright hostile towards the second. A division of mind-linked soldiers using experimental machinery and taking on such an unprecedented selection of recruits would already have gathered many enemies back home, for no other reason than just how very new and how very different they were. Faced with that, Aarmon would have had two options: he could work to minimize the outward show, bow his head, hope to be overlooked, or he could look his detractors in the eye and dare them. And no prizes for guessing which way he’s jumped.