For a moment Tynan thought he saw uncertainty in the other man — a second of wondering, Where did I get all that from? But then his mask was back in place and Vrakir was taking a step back. ‘Captain Nistic,’ he stated. ‘Make what preparations you need.’
‘I’ll have orders for the quartermasters right enough, and the engineers,’ the Hornet-kinden officer pronounced. His expression was still weirdly distant, as if the sparring match between Vrakir and the general had passed him by.
‘And, Major Oski, before you leave, I want to have your brightest artillerist brief me on our best approach to damage Collegium’s walls and engines,’ Tynan instructed, mentally adding, what little we have left. ‘Get me one of the Sentinel handlers, too. It’s about time they started to earn their keep.’
‘So,’ Oski ventured, as the group of officers set about their individual orders, ‘your ’thopter’s bomb hold, or whatever, can it fit me and a Bee-kinden?’
‘Your captain?’ Bergild asked, a little amused. ‘It’d be cosy. You’d not keep many secrets from each other, but yes.’ As they headed off towards the nearest band of engineers, who had gathered to inspect some damage to one of the remaining greatshotters, she levelled a shrewd stare down upon him. ‘Are you and he. . Ant-lovers?’
Oski stopped and stared up at her. ‘It’s nothing like that,’ he snapped. ‘We’ve just been through a lot and, the way things are going around here, I don’t want to get back and find something’s happened to him.’
She spread her hands. ‘It’s no big deal to me, Major. I know they’re meant to whip you for it, the rules say, but I grew up amongst soldiers and I know it goes on.’
‘Well, you think whatever you want, Captain,’ Oski replied pointedly, before hailing one of the engineers. ‘Lieutenant Brant, compile a report on precisely what engines we can still field for the general, will you? With special reference to the fact that we won’t stand a hope against Collegium’s bloody walls.’
The man he had singled out looked mutinous, but saluted, and Oski spared no more time on him, already setting off on his next errand. Bergild saw the way the other engineers stared at his departing back, then hurried to catch up.
‘Always angling for the love of your subordinates?’
‘I’m a Fly-kinden and a major, and they’re never going to swallow that one easily. If I was regular army, I’d have been stabbed in the back during action by now. But it’s different in the Engineers: if you’re good at your job, then they have to respect you. A strong grasp of artifice is too precious to waste. How’d you think the old Colonel-Auxillian got away with it?’ Oski grinned. ‘Curse me, but he was a fine man to learn the trade under. A real bastard, but you could pick up more just by walking in his shadow than sitting in any classroom back in Capitas. And now he turns up again on the Exalsee, Lord of the Iron Glove, eh?’ He chuckled. ‘I like that. Man’s done well for himself.’
Bergild made a noncommittal noise, but by then they had reached two of the great articulated shells belonging to the Sentinels — the new war-automotives built for the Empire by that same Iron Glove Cartel. Even at rest they looked imposing, segment after overlapping segment of formidably durable armour making that high-prowed woodlouse shape with its single blank eye that served as the cover for a leadshotter barrel. Twin piercers, mounted low at the front, gave the impression of blunt and vicious mandibles, and the whole was mounted on ten jointed legs controlled by a ratiocinator that translated the driver’s controls into smooth, almost organic motion.
Though not ‘driver’, for the term used was handler, as if the Sentinels had crossed some fine line from mere metal into something that lived and thought.
‘Hoi, you two!’ Oski called. The handlers turned to him in unison: a pair of Bee-kinden from some lengthily named city on the Exalsee, with closed, dark faces. Unsurprisingly, they did not mix with the Imperial forces, and the Wasps did not come near them out of respect for the murderous devices they commanded. The distance that surrounded them was more than that, though, for they almost never spoke even amongst themselves. They had no dealings with anyone save to draw rations, and seemed barely more approachable than the machines that they tended.
‘General wants to see one of you, don’t care which,’ Oski told them. ‘I reckon he’s going to put you through your paces, so maybe you’d better think about what your toys can do when we reach the Beetle city, hm?’
The two men gave him identical stares, then one of them nodded and marched off without a word.
Oski shrugged. ‘I’ll go get Ernain.’
Bergild nodded; the flat regard of the remaining Sentinel handler did not encourage her to linger. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she decided. ‘They’re already refuelling my ’Sphex, so I’m just baggage until we set off.’
As they left the shadow of the Sentinels, Oski jerked a thumb backwards. ‘You’ve worked it out, surely — what’s up with them?’
She nodded soberly. ‘I’ve heard that mindlinking turns up in Bees about as often as with Wasps — which is to say, not often. The Iron Glove was obviously thinking along the same lines.’
‘And if we managed to spot it, then it’ll be common knowledge back at Severn Hill,’ Oski agreed, naming the headquarters of the Engineering Corps. ‘The Colonel-Auxillian’s name is on more than a few people’s lips since he came back from the dead, and not in a good way, either. I hope he knows what he’s doing. . Hoi, Ernain!’
Midway into a hand of cards with some of the Quartermaster Corps, the Bee-kinden looked up.
‘Finish up,’ Oski told him. ‘We’ve got a flight to make.’
Twenty-Two
‘She’s alive.’
The silence within the ruined airship had grown and grown, as the light outside waned, and Maure’s words, quiet as they were, made everyone start. For some time the halfbreed woman had been sitting cross-legged, eyes closed and oblivious, whilst the other three took wordless watches at the hatch in case the Nethyen decided that waiting until morning was not the Mantis way.
Thalric’s immediate reaction was to demand how she knew, but fighting that sort of question back was almost automatic now: he had gone off the edge of his map a long time before. Instead he just waited, leaving it to Tynisa to ask, ‘Where?’ From her sharp tone, Che’s foster-sister was plainly ready to mount a rescue attempt the moment she knew where to go.
‘Not that, not yet.’ Maure shook her head. ‘But she is out there, alive. . not in pain, I think, or great fear.’
Tynisa stared at her angrily. ‘Then magic harder!’ she got out, before rounding furiously on Thalric when he snorted. ‘You think this is funny?’
He met her stare levelly. ‘I think it’s completely nonsensical, but telling someone to “magic harder” is surely not going to help.’
Amnon, standing at the hatch, shifted a little, and for a moment they thought he had something to add. Then he just shook his head and concentrated again on his watch. No doubt things had been done differently in Khanaphes.
‘Is there anything more?’ Thalric asked carefully. Questioning a magician was not unlike dealing with a particularly secretive agent, he decided: you didn’t know where they got their information from, nor would you ever understand their networks or their sources, but that did not mean that they could not tell you things. After that it was just a matter of weighing the information and sifting it for truth.
‘I. .’ Maure’s eyes remained closed, her entire body very still, but her tone was conversational. ‘I am not a great seer: my training lies elsewhere. Still, I have some of the craft and I am trying to find where the web centres. .’
‘Surely you can just cast about until you find her — or a trail leading to her, or something?’ Tynisa complained.
‘It’s not like that. Tracking someone, from their past steps to their present location, well, there are trades to help you there, but magic is by no means a good one. From the present to the future, though, where Che is going to be. .’