And the forest did not care, of course. Blood was blood, and if she fell to this man’s steel claw, that would also be fitting.
She exerted herself, however, focusing her attention on him in the brief second before he reached her. Fear me, worship me, adore me. Time slowed about her, and she wrestled with the arrowhead of his mind even as her palm spread, sting heating in her fingers.
Or am I too slow? As if in a dream, she saw him falter but not stop. The claw was drawn back, ready to drive itself down into her, and still she had no belief in it. I am Seda, Empress of the Wasps. I cannot die.
Then Ostrec was there, ducking in low under the Mantis’s guard with shocking speed: no sting, not even a sword, but ramming a dagger home to the hilt, sending the Mantis staggering, keeping him just out of blade range of the Empress. The man refused to fall, but by then it was too late because Tisamon had caught him up, that one second making all the difference, and Seda let her sting cool again as her armoured ghost opened the silver-haired Mantis’s throat with a hooking strike.
It was over by then. She had lost three soldiers and two of her six bodyguards, a steep price to pay. The small band of Etheryen had gambled all they had on killing her, on excising her from their world.
I am here to stay, and this is my world now. She hurled the thought out into the forest, and felt its answering response: approving, darkly amused and greedy for blood. She knew then that it would do its best to kill her, by the blades of its people, by the hooked arms of its monstrous beasts, by its sheer darkness — but it would do so with love. It would gather her to it, if she let it, and perhaps in a hundred years someone would come questing here to find her ghost.
But she was Seda the Empress, and she would master it, and make it hers, to enjoy or destroy as she saw fit. Here she had come at last into her true kingdom.
And, somewhere out there, Argastos.
There were few non-Ants in Sarnesh service, the lack of a mind-link proving an insurmountable failing for most. Ants could not fly, though, and whilst that link allowed them the coordination to move without error through the semi-dark of the Mantis forest, their vision could not pierce it the way those of the natives could. In their logical way, therefore, even the Ant-kinden kept a few outsiders on the payroll.
It must be hard, Che decided, as she stepped carefully through the tangled undergrowth. There’s nowhere in which to be an outsider quite like an Ant city-state.
The chief scout’s name was Zerro, and he must have lived amongst the Ants a long time, for he even had their look: that closed-mouthed, hard-eyed Ant expression that told of an untouchable internal world. No such world, of course, for a Fly-kinden like Zerro, but he almost acted as if there was, reading the thoughts of his comrades from their stance, from the minute traces of expression even Ants were prone to. As a scout, he led a weird backwards existence, creeping ahead of the line, but putting as much effort into remaining in sight of the Sarnesh as he did in keeping hidden from the enemy. If something happened to him, it was imperative that the Ants had warning, and being seen was the only way he could communicate that to them.
They had outstripped the main body of the Sarnesh — who were making a steady and careful advance behind them, meeting up with the Etheryen and skirting the locals’ concealed tree-villages, trying to create an expanding frontier to force the Nethyen back. The Ant commander, Sentius, had been at absolute pains to work with the Mantis-kinden, to humour them and to respect their wishes. No Beetle diplomat could have done a better job, Che thought, and it was all just another facet of Ant-kinden efficiency, the easiest way for them to achieve their goal.
Zerro and his Sarnesh scouts were meanwhile already past all of that and into contested territory, though Che had witnessed no fighting yet. The Fly had not been at all happy about bringing her and her followers along with him, seeing them as a noisy, clumsy liability. She thought that his opinion might have changed by now. With the exception of Helma Bartrer, who was still stumbling along at the back even though she had changed her Collegiate robes for a tunic and cloak of muted brown, the rest of them moved through the forest with surprising ease. Oh, no surprise that Tynisa was at home here, or even the Moth, Terastos; and Che supposed that Thalric had done enough sneaking about in his time, and Maure too. Even big Amnon had always had a smooth grace about him, whether hunting the Jamail delta of his homeland, or here so many miles away from it. I suppose it is just me that actually surprises me; Beetle stealth was the butt of a hundred Fly jokes. How do you know a Beetle’s breaking into your house? He knocks first. Here, though. .
The forest was a dark, cruel place, stained with old blood, but it knew her. ‘Welcomed’ would be a step too far, but the anointing she had received in Khanaphes was good currency here. The forest might kill her, in the end, but it would do so with respect, and she moved through the chest-high ferns and briars with a dancer’s step, and her eyes knew no darkness.
The Sarnesh around them stopped, not a sudden jolt but a collective fading into stillness at some signal sent from ahead. Che closed her eyes and let herself take in the rhythms of the trees about her, the forest’s slow old heartbeat. There were Nethyen hunting parties out there, she knew. She could not have told Zerro quite where they were, but she felt them impinge on her mind like tiny thorns. None so close as to be a threat, although there was already blood on the air from skirmishes and brief flashes of violence between the trees.
It had been a long time since there had been so much killing within this wood, she discerned, and she could feel the whole place waking up by increments, something primitive and sluggish gathering its wits.
For a moment her mind touched something else, and in a start of panic she thought it must be the Empress, but the texture of the mind that she sensed was not Seda the Wasp’s. It lacked her fierce fire, but there was a great wellspring of power there nonetheless. Then it was gone in an instant, unlocatable, just a chance brushing of consciousness, but Che formed the name Argastos in her mind. And if I know your name, old Moth, does that give me power over you? Or have you transcended that?
She had asked Maure what might be left of this ancient Moth hero-sorcerer by now. The halfbreed necromancer had just shaken her head. ‘This whole place is just built of ghosts,’ had been her response. ‘I’d say “all of him” but I’ve a feeling that there might be more of him, now, than there ever was when he was alive. Just because we get to him first doesn’t mean that we’ll enjoy it a moment later. Maybe better to let the Wasp woman have that honour?’
But Che knew Seda’s strength and indomitable will. I cannot let her have Argastos — or whatever he left behind him. If that means I must take the risk myself, then so be it. And, in the wake of that, she reflected: I am thinking like a magician now. Where did all this ambition come from?
They were moving again, heading off at an angle, very slowly, and she tried to work out what was going on. At first she used her mere eyes, as any slave of Aptitude might, and there was nothing. Then the Ants had frozen again, and she saw them readying their weapons, crossbows mostly because those were quieter than snapbows. What is it? Tell me. .