There were only six of them but he doubted she would need more. Tall and slender, wearing armour of delicately crafted mail and leather that had been enamelled in black and gold. Each bore a narrow sword at the hip, a clawed gauntlet on his hand.
'How …?' he began, but was unable to say more.
'How can she be sure of them?' Tegrec asked, standing close enough that Thalric wanted to strike him. 'Why, they are sworn to her protection, dedicated wholly into her service by command of the Skryres of Tharn. I think you know how seriously the Mantis-kinden take their honour.'
They took their place and stood there, still as statues around her throne, their faces hidden in the shadow of their helms. In their midst the Empress Seda looked young and demure, dressed in the minimum of finery. Her own natural beauty was all the adornment she needed. She smiled warmly at Thalric and held out a hand. He made himself walk forward and take it, stepping within the Mantis circle to seat himself beside her. Her touch felt shockingly warm.
It was like sitting next to something venomous: a scorpion with sting raised. He sat there very still, tried to ignore the brooding presence of the Mantis-kinden who had been sold into her service.
'You will be joining me in my quarters later, of course?' she said.
'Of course, Your Imperial Majesty,' he replied, with a broad, despairing smile.
The next day he lay recuperating in her chambers, pale and feverish. The day after that, he made himself scarce from any public engagements, retreating to the palace storerooms to seek out Osgan.
Theirs was an unlikely association and it had come about through Thalric's desperation. Had he still been his own man he would have spared the wretched Osgan not a word, would as like as not have despised him.
This was not the first time his eyes had been opened to the sort of man he was. When he had been on the run from the Rekef, he had viewed his life from the outside and the world, he knew, held more pleasant sights. I was a model Imperial citizen, he reminded himself. Filtered through his experience, the thought was a painful one.
'You look like I feel,' Osgan remarked and it was broadly true. Mid-morning and Osgan was still unshaven, eyes redrimmed in a sagging grey face. Once a solidly built Wasp, he was now fast becoming simply heavy. There was already an open bottle on a crate beside him. The Rekef man behind Thalric's eyes looked at him and recognized a liability.
Images from the night before last still recurred to him as he sat down opposite. He and Osgan avoided each other's eyes, both of them men who had seen too much.
Osgan shook a pair of dice out of a leather bag, a handful of small coins from another. 'Might as well make use of the time,' he grunted. He was an appalling gambler, but Thalric made sure he did not lose too much. Only a year ago Osgan had been a rising star in the Consortium of the Honest: supply officer for the Ninth Army, stationed in Capitas, with his hands immersed in the stream of Imperial funds, even holding the favour of the Emperor, but now …
He held his current position among the steward's staff becauseThalric made it so. If not for that he would have been a debt-slave by now, meat for the fighting pits, conscripted into the Auxillians. It had all fallen down for Osgan, on the day the Emperor died.
It had fallen down forThalric: same day, different reasons. Thalric who had been a traitor, just as Tegrec had named him, who had killed a Rekef general, who had been brought to Capitas in chains. Thalric who had been saved from a bad fate for, he was discovering, a worse one. Thalric who found the Empress's court at Capitas that bit stranger each time he was dragged back to it. Thalric, who had grown used, in his career as a traitor, to having people around to talk to.
The Rekef man he had once been could not have cared less. That Rekef man had underlings and superiors and enemies. The traitor he became had stood alongside such as the redoubtable Stenwold Maker, the Mantis butcher Tisamon, the enigmatic Achaeos. They saw more of me than my own people were ever allowed to. It had seemed right, then, but he had not thought he would ever be coming back.
But I grew used to having someone to talk to. Well, now he had Osgan. He could say what he liked to Osgan. Nobody listened to a shaky supply officer who was drunk most of the time. Nobody cared about this man, except Thalric.
And who cares for me? The image of Seda's face came straight to mind. She must feel something to draw him back and back again, but he had no word for that emotion. She had summoned him to her chamber, where he had been bathed and readied by the slaves, dressed in Spider silks and then taken to her bed. He knew there were many who would give everything to swap places with him. He would give anything to oblige.
'So what's new, chief?' Osgan asked, making a cavalier throw of the dice that spilled them off the crate entirely. The bottle was near empty, and Thalric took it up and drained it until it was. The bitter soldier's beer Osgan had purloined tasted of honesty.
'Someone's trying to kill me,' Thalric said.
Osgan made a grotesque mime of surprise. 'News? Since when's that news?' He retrieved the dice. 'Give me a quill and a week, I'll draw you a list of them that want you dead. Lowlanders, Comm'wealers, even your own friends and neighbours. So what?'
'They had a solid try at it outside Tyrshaan.' Thalric frowned. 'Wasp assassins, so not Commonwealers. And the Lowlanders who know me wouldn't send assassins. Not since the Mantis died.' Osgan flinched at that. Thalric grimaced. 'Someone inside the Empire wants me dead,' he finished.
'Everyone wants you dead,' Osgan muttered. 'Everyone but me. And why not? If they hate Herself, then they hate you too. If they like Herself, then they hate you. Some of them probably just hate you anyway.'
Thalric nodded glumly, conceding the point. His position had endeared him to few. 'I would shed this role if I could.'
Osgan was sober enough to grimace at that. 'I know, I know,' he said, almost whispering, 'but don't say it. I don't want to hear it in case they come after me with their hooks to find out what I heard.' He fumbled out another bottle, drew the cork with his teeth.
When Thalric had entered her chambers two nights ago she had been waiting for him, wearing a dress of white silk that hung from one shoulder and followed to her body's every line. There was that happy glow to her that he had learned to recognize, just as he recognized the taste on her lips.
She had offered him a goblet.
Thalric grabbed the bottle from Osgan and took a great swallow, because that taste had suddenly recurred to him.
'I have to get out of here,' he said desperately.
Osgan shrugged. 'Door's right there, chief.'
'You know what I mean.'
'I know, but it's like the army, chief. You don't get out till it's had its full use of you.'
Thalric had looked into the red, red liquid in the jewelled goblet, and he had drunk deep of it, because she would accept nothing else. The taste of salt and rust had coated his throat. She had kissed him, drawn him towards the great bed.
How long can I survive? A lucky man could retire from the army, but there would be no quitting this post. She took me as a prisoner and a traitor. She saw just enough in me to be worth keeping. Now she devours me at her leisure.
She would ask for him again tonight. She always left him a day and a night to recover. He wondered what arrangements she made when he was absent.
The most terrible thing about it was that he thought she did feel something for him, some attraction, even some affection. She was cold, though, and everything new she learned from her select advisers was making her more distant still. She was different. Everything about her appearance suggested simply a young Wasp woman who was little more than a girl. Her beauty almost broke his heart, but only because he knew that under the skin some part of her had been stripped away.