‘The Mantids did this?’ one of the Sarnesh demanded of them, indicating the Wasp camp.
‘They slew some,’ Syale agreed. What happened to the others, she did not say. Thalric’s best guess — or at least the most palatable possibility — was that the Wasps had killed each other in the darkness after the Mantids loosed a few arrows at them. The forest killed them, was a thought he drove from his mind.
Argastos. There were good reasons he was chained where he was.
The Empress’s party was at camp, having already outstripped the Imperial soldiers currently making their unhappy way through the trees. The Moth, Yraea, knew that their officers would be trying to treat the forest like a regular battlefield, to draw up their plans and maps, advance their troops to meet the Sarnesh, whilst the Mantids of both sides flowed about them like streams eroding sandbanks.
The Tharen Moth wondered if any of the military minds on either side had ever asked to see a map of the forest. Perhaps the Etheryen had even given one to the Sarnesh but, of course, the Ants would not be able to read it. The Inapt did not represent land and space in the way that simple Apt thinkers required. No measurements and topography, no precise relationships between landmarks: Inapt maps concerned themselves with paths, with significance, with the mapping of meaning rather than bland reality. There would be nothing in such a map that an Apt eye could recognize, just as Yraea herself would carry away little from the dry, annotated charts the Apt called maps.
She had in her mind a clear picture of the forest, though — not as a map but as a branching journey, spiralling inwards, station by station. And at its heart: Argastos.
And are you watching this, old man? Yraea knew he was. She could feel his stony presence observing her, his dead fingers brushing against her dreams. She knew all about him, far more than she would ever tell the Wasp girl. He had been laid down as a guardian, so long ago, as recognition of his achievements and in punishment for his hubris. Centuries had passed since the Skryres of the Moths had needed even to think of their errant son. But now the Empress had his name on her lips: it was evident Argastos had been stretching out his power, reminding the world of his presence. Whether the girl knew it or not, Yraea was sure that he had called the Empress to her — and probably this Beetle girl as well.
Time to go secure the cage, she knew. He belongs where he was set. We do not want any once-Apt fool to carry Argastos away from here. And for that she must now reach that hidden place that was Argastos’s domain and also his prison.
It should not be so hard, for Argastos himself is working to ease the way. We might be able to just walk in. It has been known. .
‘But I do not believe it is wise for Her Majesty to just walk in,’ she reflected aloud, letting her companion in on her thoughts. The woman was a Loquae of the Nethyen Mantids, a leathery old creature who was still a warrior despite her age, possessing a little of the seer’s talents also. Yraea had crept away from the Empress’s camp without difficulty — a combination of subtle magic and her dark-piercing eyes — to meet this woman out in the unpopulated night between the trees.
‘My warriors say she is powerful, that she carries a great authority,’ the Loquae mused. Her own eyes were nowhere near as keen, but she would be able to see the shadow that was Yraea.
‘But she knows nothing,’ the Moth insisted. ‘That power she has stolen is put at the whim of a spoiled child. She has no history, no provenance. She has done nothing to earn what has been given to her. She is a danger to all of us.’
‘She wishes to bring back the old days, she claims,’ the old Mantis murmured.
‘She lies. Her days are new and without honour. Her armies have destroyed your cousins of the Felyal, and signed treaties with the Spider-kinden. What she seeks here is power for herself. Most likely she will fail even in that, but cause great harm nonetheless, both to your people and mine. What we have laid down in ages past is not to be meddled with by some Wasp girl who knows nothing.’
Yraea could see the Mantid’s expression, unhappy and uncertain: a terrible look for one of her fierce kinden to wear. ‘Servant of the Green,’ the Moth hissed, using the old title that her people had given the Mantis-kinden, ‘the Wasp cannot give you what she promises. She will only take and take. It is all she knows. She must not be allowed to enter within the heart of the wood. She would defile all she found there. Instead, let her smooth my way, and thus she will be of use, but only for that. You must gather your warriors and bind them to this purpose. The Empress’s companions will need to be dealt with as well. You understand?’
‘And the Skryres of Tharn, this is their decree?’
‘Yes.’ Some of them. Perhaps. Tharen politics had always been fluid, and the Empress of the Wasps’ new status as a magician of power had divided the Skryres all over again. A majority had agreed to join with the Empire — better that than another costly occupation like before — but how far to tread along the woman’s path was another question. Out here, beyond the reach of her immediate superiors, Yraea had come to her own conclusions. Stop Seda, secure Argastos in his chains. Maintain the status quo.
‘Well?’ she pressed.
Again a long pause, the woman’s expression of uncertainty only deepening. Yraea hissed with exasperation. ‘Servant of the Green, do you turn against us now? Are you unfaithful after all this time? Is this what the Mantis-kinden have come to?’
In the darkness, the old woman’s eyes flashed. ‘Of course not, and you are right in all you say, and yet. . my people hear her words. None has spoken of a return to the old ways for generations. We begin to despair. The Wasp’s false hope is like a blade turning inside us. Yet it is better than your offer of no hope at all.’
The rebuke stung. ‘If it could be done, do you not think we would do so? She lies. She cannot give you what she promises. Do not be misled by her,’ Yraea repeated. ‘Do not betray me, Servant of the Green. Your place is to obey.’
At last, the Loquae nodded. ‘I will speak to my people,’ she said, almost in a whisper, with more than a hint of defeat about it. She slunk off into the forest, leaving Yraea wondering just what was left of the Mantis-kinden at this frayed and Apt-ridden end of time.
Desperate, she decided. Whilst her own people had retreated to their mountain homes and learned patience, the Mantis-kinden had merely diminished as the years had gnawed away at what they had once been, and they knew it. The Wasp Empire’s presence forcing them to resume dealings with the outside world served only as a jagged and unavoidable reminder that they had no real place in it any more. As long as they obey me in this, they shall have served their purpose.
That night, Seda saw the gates for the first time.
She dreamt, but ever since her conversion to the Inapt world, her dreams had become more than mere fancy. She had seen the depths beneath Khanaphes through Che Maker’s eyes, in those dreams, just as Che had seen them through hers when Seda trod those buried paths herself. Now it seemed she woke from each night knowing some further scrap of information, some shred of lost lore or a new understanding of those around her.
In her latest dream she was in some part of the forest she had not seen — yet! — and in her mind arose the thought, the Heart of the Green. Here the land sloped up to a hill — a mound, rather, since it was the work of hands rather than nature. A barrow, some lost thought informed her: the resting place of the ancient, honoured dead. It had been surfaced with slabs of stone, but now with grass and ferns thrusting from between the cracks. It looked to her like the carapace of some long-dead armoured beast, or perhaps a vacant compound eye.