'Where is Tirado?' Meyr asked, the fifth and final bowl cupped in his hand.
'Your Fly-kinden sleeps like a dead man,' Teuthete said. 'You could launch him from one of the Scorpion war-engines and he still would not wake.'
'We'll save him some,'Totho decided, gesturing for Meyr to start decanting. The little barrel looked just like a cup in the Mole Cricket's broad hands. Teuthete slipped down to kneel beside him, looking childlike in comparison. Meyr passed the first bowl to her.
'My people are pragmatists: we do not acknowledge freedom,' Meyr said, pouring a bowl in turn for each. 'We were slaves of the Moth-kinden before we were ever slaves to theWasps. There is no one alive who is not a slave, we say: slave to city, slave to past, slave to feelings. Even the wild beast in the wastes is a slave to hunger.' He put the barrel down carefully, replacing the bung that he had dug out with one thick, square fingernail. His own bowl sat neatly in his palm. 'In all my life,' said Meyr, 'I have been no happier than in my servitude to the Iron Glove. Of all my slaveries it is the least onerous.'
'We do not admit to slavery. Where our respect has been earned we serve with honour,' Teuthete stated flatly. 'My people cannot be slaves.'
Except to that honour, Totho completed for her, but he left the words unsaid.
They drank. The Empire's purloined finest was smooth on the tongue, fiery in the throat, with an aftertaste of apricots.
'We have no illusions here about the morrow,' said Amnon. 'That is why I sent Praeda away. Not all battles can be won.'
Totho cast a look back at the monumental barrier that was slowly taking shape at the foot of the bridge. 'Amnon, about your plan…'
'You have a comment?' Amnon's smile was edged.
'Just to say… when the call comes for everyone to run for the east shore, well, I'll be right behind you.'
'Will you now?'
Totho shrugged. 'Well, it's true I've not got a woman or a city's love to live for, and it's true that the woman that I love has vanished, and is probably dead by Imperial hands. And that she'll never know what I've done here to try and make her approve of me. But even though you have so much to live for and I so little, yes, I shall be right at your back when the moment comes. You know what I mean.'
'I do,' said Amnon solemnly, 'and I am grateful.'
'And I shall be at your back,' Meyr told Totho.
'There's no need-'
'What? You can be an idiot, and not I?'
Amnon laughed quietly. 'We are four fools. No, three fools and one too honourable woman. What would anyone think of us, sitting and drinking like this?'
'Who cares what anyone thinks?' Meyr asked.
Totho smiled weakly. 'A man of Collegium once said that the only parts of us to dodge the grave are the memories we leave behind with others.' So if you live, Che, remember me this way: the man who tried to save a city, not the killer of thousands. There was a high, tooth-jarring buzz coming from one of the abandoned buildings that had been swamped by the Scorpion camp. It had begun around midnight and two hours before dawn it showed no signs of letting up. Most of the Scorpions nearby had been evicted by its constant irritation, shambling off to find somewhere else to sleep. Others had wanted to go and silence the noise. The problem was that, in the single lit window, they could see one of the foreigners crossing backwards and forwards. This noise was their doing, perhaps preparing some weapon to inflict on the Khanaphir. To interfere with them might bring down Jakal's wrath. Threat of superior force was one of the few strictures they held sacred.
Eventually they elected a spokesman, by democratic application of superior force. The man chosen was Genraki, most promising of the new-minted artillerists. His use of artillery to settle personal feuds had already been noted and approved of. It was therefore reckoned less likely that Jakal would have him killed if he did something wrong.
Genraki entered, stooping, through the building's kicked-in door. It was a decent-size two-storey, this one, where some Beetle family of means had lived, enjoying their view of the river. The thought amused him, for it was about time the Khanaphir knew fear and hardship. They had lived behind the safety of their walls for long enough. Genraki loved the Empire, for everything it had given his people. They had always possessed claws to cut flesh; now they had a fist to break stone.
The noise, that skull-boring sound, came from above, and he padded up quietly, taking a moment to peer around the corner, from the head of the stairs. There were two Wasps there, and one of them was Angved. They were hunched over some small mechanism, looking duly impressed.
Genraki cleared his throat and Angved glanced up.
'What is it?' he asked, speaking above the sound. 'Hrathen wants me?'
'What is this sound, chief?' Genraki asked him. 'Nobody else can sleep.'
Angved smirked at that. 'A little experiment of mine.'
This close, Genraki thought he could feel his ears shake under it, not particularly loud but terribly insistent. 'Must it go on so long, chief?' The title was based on the authority that the Warlord and the Wasp leader gave the old man, for he was clearly a chieftain of his own tribe of artificers.
'Well, that's the whole point. How long have we had so far?'
The other Wasp, also an artificer, checked some small device. 'Three hours fifty-seven minutes.'
'Shut it off at four hours,' Angved decided, to Genraki's relief. If he had retreated from this place without some result the others would not have been pleased with him. Angved was ushering him into the next room.
'Tell me, Genraki,' he said, 'this rock oil your people use, how common is it?'
'Not so common that it is everywhere, but we know all the places to find it. Where it is found, there is much of it. More than all the tribes need.'
Angved digested this. 'It burns for a long time, doesn't it?' he said.
'That is why we use it,' Genraki confirmed.
'It's been running that little makeshift engine for hours,' the artificer mused. 'Your people trade, don't they?'
Genraki shrugged. 'When we have the patience. We would trade oil for more leadshotters and weapons,' he added, with a fanged grin.
'You may just have got yourself a deal.'
Above their conversation, the whining buzz stopped, at long last. Genraki could almost feel the whole camp relax with it. Angved's expression was complex: one he could not entirely read but dominated mainly by greed.
There were swift footsteps on the stairs and one of the other Wasps came up, half running, half flying. 'Captain wants you, Lieutenant,' he told Angved. 'Khanaphir have been busy overnight. Time for us to match them.' Angved did not rush to attend on Hrathen. As soon as he presented himself, the tide of mundane war would descend on him, and he would have his hands full with jobs more befitting an apprentice than an experienced battle-artificer. Can't we just let the Scorpions get on with it?We've given them half the city, so surely they can take it from here. But Hrathen was in charge, and it was clear which of his bloodlines the halfbreed had chosen to support. I hear he's sleeping with that hideous Jakal creature. Angved shuddered. He himself had never been one to take advantage of the women of lesser peoples. Even if he had, he wouldn't have started with Scorpion-kinden. Only among Thorn-bugs are there any uglier people in the world, he decided, or more dangerous to sleep with. And the Captain definitely gets his looks from the wrong side of the family. Better, maybe, that the man forced himself on the fanged horrors here rather than good Wasp women back home.
Am I fooling myself about this rock-oil? The Nem was largely unexplored, unexploited. The Empire's internal squabbles had set back its timetable for subjugating the world, or there would have been black and gold all the way to Khanaphes by now, and Jakal's people would have become either Auxillians or history. And maybe I should be grateful that, with all the fuss back home, I'm the first serious artificer to come here and make this discovery. He was a man growing old for the army, yet still only a lieutenant. If he kept this all to himself, and if it was what he believed it to be, then 'Major Angved' had a nice ring to it. A comfortable retirement position running some research workshop in Sonn, perhaps? He could afford to be pushy, provided his new currency was as pure as he thought.