His name was Gjegevey, which Roder seldom bothered to even attempt. Now the general stomped over to the man with a simple, ‘Hey, you!’
The long face turned towards him, eyes glinting within their wrinkled sockets. ‘General?’
‘Your mistress is coming,’ Roder told him. ‘Now maybe we’ll get to the bottom of this nonsense.’ The placid gaze of the old slave made him angrier, and he had to bite off the other words that rose into his mouth. Even so — as always — Gjegevey seemed to hear them.
‘Yes, General, if I have, hm, somehow misunderstood my orders, and held your Eighth here unnecessarily, I am sure that you’ll have the pleasure of, ahm, stringing this old frame up on the crossed pikes. I would assure you that you were right in following my, mmn, advice, but you will have your confirmation soon enough.’
Even the slave’s meandering speech was like nails on a chalkboard to Roder, but he gritted his teeth and bore it.
Another wing of Spearflights powered into the air, more security in case the Sarnesh got lucky, or in case Imperial intelligence had been compromised. The old Emperor — Seda’s brother — had never left the capital and, for all that everyone admired this new girl’s courage and enterprise, no general wanted the ruler of all the Empire actually looking over his shoulder, especially when faced with such nonsensical orders as had left the Eighth sitting idle for so long.
He spent some minutes inspecting his troops, stalking along the ranks and making his displeasure known if any officer’s charges were found wanting. Save for those already out on patrol, here was the glorious Eighth, the Empress’s Hammer: its legion of Light Airborne, the infantry, the Engineers, as well as a neat block of Auxillian Ants from Maille. They were a skilled and proven fighting force, and they were being wasted.
The Empress’s airship was lowering itself, holding steady in the light breeze whilst its Farsphex escort flew in wide circles. The treasonous thought crossed Roder’s mind that, were he an ambitious man, a little artillery accident might go a long way here. His current circumstances had bred a fair amount of resentment in him, but he had not been pushed anywhere near so far as treason, nor was he sure that his men would follow him. She put on a good show, did the Empress.
He waited impassively for her, standing at the head of his army. This would be his chance, he knew. Once away from the men he would be able to impress upon the girl just what the Eighth should have been doing these last tendays, and how it should be best used from now on. His experience and rank carried a great deal of weight in the Empire. She needed him. She would have to listen.
When she appeared at the top of the airship’s ramp, after the ground crew had tied the lines off tight to hold it steady, she seemed no more than a slip of a girl, barely more than a child: slender and vulnerable before the might of the Eighth. Beautiful, too, and Roder could well appreciate it. He was sure that every man in the Empire holding a general’s rank badge or the equivalent had entertained a thought that way before now. She had no husband, after all, and that no-pedigree outsider she had chosen as a regent had not been seen anywhere recently. Brugan of the Rekef was after her, Roder knew for a fact, but if she favoured the man, Seda had yet to recognize him formally.
Then she locked eyes with Roder, as she stepped down the ramp, and something jolted in his mind, his thoughts all abruptly thrown out of alignment. His eyes were hooked on her, unable to look away. He barely noted her bodyguards: the half-dozen Mantis women in black and gold mail, and the looming figure behind them in all-encompassing Mantis-wrought armour.
She wore the slight smile of a well-born girl out for a stroll and enjoying the air, but he was sure, beyond all logic, that she could read every one of his thoughts of the last half hour written plain on his face; all the trivial little treasons that an ambitious man gives wishful indulgence to. She saw them, and she knew him, and he felt the force of her — the sheer strength of her will and personality — drive him to one knee as she approached.
‘General,’ she greeted him, eyes drifting across the great mass of military drawn up for her approval. Roder heard the subtle but unmistakable sound of countless soldiers pulling themselves up that little bit straighter, chests thrust out an extra fraction of an inch. Even the Auxillians, who had far less reason to love her, were straining to be worthy of her nod. Kneeling at her feet, almost as though he was beneath the radiating beam of her regard, he nearly panicked, seeing the effect she had on them and knowing that he had no way to explain it. Then she said, ‘Rise,’ just for him, and he could do nothing but stand up into that irresistible flow of her personality, and be engulfed.
‘Empress. .’ was all he managed.
‘No doubt you have questions,’ she observed wryly, but was walking away before he could ask any. In her wake stalked her Mantis-kinden, taut with suspicion and ready to take on the entire Eighth if needed. They might be elegant and poised, those women, but Roder had no doubts about their skill. To conquer nations, an army of the Apt was needed, but the old Inapt skills still had their place when things got personal.
The armoured form that came behind them was something Roder found himself averting his eyes from. That particular servant of the Empress had come to him before, arriving and leaving by its own means, hunting down the remnants of the Ant garrison at Malkan’s Stand after they had gone to ground. Roder found that, rationalize as he might, he could not bring himself to think of that shape of Mantis-crafted mail as a man at all. Whatever walked there was something that hurt Roder’s mind when he considered it too closely.
And there were others being disgorged by the airship, of course, for the Empress did not travel in a vacuum. There were air crew, servants, slaves, secretaries, a few of the new Red Watch and, no doubt, a Rekef agent or two here to check up on Roder’s Eighth. All business as usual.
Then Gjegevey, who had stayed with him, was moving towards the ramp, and Roder saw two strangers bringing up the rear of the procession. Their grey robes identified them as Moth-kinden, who seemed to hold being drably dressed as a sacred charge. One was tall and willow-slim, the other shorter and decidedly more heavily built, and they faced off against Gjegevey with an initial wariness, before allowing themselves to step from the ramp and become guests of the Eighth.
Roder watched them approach, noting that the taller of the two was a woman: grey face and white eyes and high cheekbones, young seeming. She would have turned many heads, no doubt, but Roder had sworn off Inapt women since the poisoning that had frozen half his face. Now the Empress had moved on, his thoughts were free enough to assess these newcomers as a sign of the general rot back home that he had heard about — the lesser kinden, the Inapt creatures like Gjegevey, who seemed to have secured the Empress’s ear so very easily.
Then the other figure turned his way, mid-word to Gjegevey, and Roder saw the flash of a pale face there — not a Moth after all, but a Wasp in their robes. A traitor, therefore, save that he had evidently bought the Empress’s forbearance somehow.
And they call us off the Sarnesh, and have us sit here instead, in the shadow of this cursed forest, the Mantis heartland. His uneasiness was growing moment by moment. Was this it? Was he seeing here some great betrayal of the Empire, watching Seda led astray by the wicked old powers that had once owned the world before the rise of the Apt?