And died, probably. She tried to project her own mind. What is it they’ve heard? Tynisa? Thalric? But she found no resonance of her friends, no minds at all nearby, only the convoluted density of the forest itself.
Something moved, beside and behind her. Another mantis? But she had a feeling she would not have heard it, if it was. Despite herself, she flinched, retreating towards the known killer and away from the unknown.
She saw something glitter, a black carapace and busy legs, as a beetle pushed itself between the close-grown trees, half scuttling, half climbing. It had large, round eyes and jaws like twin blades, a world away from those patient draught animals she had seen working on Collegiate farms as a child. Longer than she herself was, and a hunter in its own right, it regarded her fiercely, working through the small number of choices its mind allowed it.
Had she the Speech-Art she could have calmed it and turned it aside. As it was, she thought she might find some way to accomplish the same result through magic, but she knew that she had no need. She was watched over by something more terrible than this armoured beast.
It went for her, breaking into a run that would have covered the ground in seconds save that, barely halfway towards her, it was gone. Che, who had been expecting the move, was still surprised by it, the beetle barely seeming to exist in the space between the ground and the mantis’s closed arms, before Amalthae’s mouthparts sawed neatly into the insect’s head and stilled its frantic struggles with surgical grace.
Ceremon took a deep breath, releasing his Art and returning to the foreground of her attention. Che had formerly understood that the Speech Art fell mostly one way: commands issued and very little save for basic impulses communicated in return. She felt that between this man and his consort there existed a more profound connection.
‘You haven’t killed me yet,’ Che observed, as calmly as she could after that predatory display.
‘No.’ Ceremon stared into the forest. ‘But you are right to think it. My people would have killed you if they had caught you. Either your blood on the forest floor there and then, or a proper bloodletting to strengthen the forest, at one of our places.’
‘But not you? Are you waiting till your consort gets hungry enough?’
‘Amalthae. .?’ Ceremon frowned for the first time. ‘Because of her, I am not as my people are. It is difficult to. .’ He cocked his head, so plainly listening to the beast beside him that Che looked up, expecting to meet a sentient gaze, but Amalthae continued to eat daintily, and spared her no direct attention.
Ceremon nodded as if conceding some unheard point. ‘All kinden derive from their totem,’ he explained. ‘Each has its mystery, some easy to follow, some not.’ He glanced up at the feeding beast again, then down at the ground. ‘To the Beetle: endure. To the Ants: hold to one another. To the Moths: mastery of the mysteries of the dark. And so. . our own path. . To the Mantids: fight. It sounds simple, surely?’ He spread his hands. ‘And yet we have fought and fought since the very first of us, unyielding — proud and bloody — and where are we? It would have served us better if our mandate had been to win.’
‘I’ve never heard a Mantis speak like this,’ Che admitted.
‘Nor will you. These are her thoughts,’ he said sadly. ‘I only couch them in a way you may understand. We have fallen short, always, of our ideals, and now time has become an enemy we cannot fight, and in their desperation my people have come to the last twist on the Mantis path.’
‘Becoming allies of the Wasps,’ Che observed.
Ceremon shrugged. ‘The Lady of the Wasps came to my people and promised a return to the old dark times, the simple times when what we were was sufficient; when what we were meant something. Some of my people believed her, or at least held to some small hope that she spoke true. And others. . more knew that we would never receive our birthright from the hands of the Wasps, but that the simple fact of her standing there and making such an offer showed how the world had truly turned, once and for all, and that we had outlived our time in it. These, too, counselled that we should join with the Wasps, but not for any silver future. We should join with the Wasps so that we might make the world run red — or some small part of it — a final battle, a struggle to the death. And afterwards. . for us? Nothing afterwards. No Nethyen, no Etheryen. . Even as the Felyen to the south have passed from this world, so we would follow-’
‘The Felyen?’ Che demanded. ‘They fought. .?’
‘They are gone,’ Ceremon confirmed softly. ‘No blood of theirs remains unshed. They have carved their own gate and stepped through it, and no more shall they be known. There are many of my people who would see that as a good thing, something to be desired.’
‘But not you?’
He met her eyes briefly. ‘If not for Amalthae, I might think it, but she. . she shows me that we have strayed from our path — no, that the path is too hard, and the ways we have fallen into are because we have strived and failed. That so many of us now see extinction as preferable to finding a new way is proof of that, she says.’
Che nodded carefully. ‘And where do I come in?’
‘You are able to speak with the same authority as the Lady of the Wasps. We know this, for Amalthae can see the brand upon you, even now. If you demand it, my people will listen.’
‘Your people will kill me.’
‘Perhaps, but first they will listen. Amalthae says speak with them. Guide them.’
‘To what end?’ This time Che was addressing the great mantis directly, and it paused in its devouring, only the abdomen of the beetle left intact.
‘She says. . she says she wishes you to save us. She says you are the only one whose words might be heard. She says. . she has lived long and I am her third consort. Her kind. . we are her children, and she fears for us.’ The man’s soft voice began to quaver. ‘She does not want us to go.’
Sergeant Gorrec of the Pioneers watched the Empress as she spoke with Tegrec the Turncoat and with that gangly old Woodlouse, noting all the signs — ones he was more than familiar with, of superiors in disagreement. Of all possible places, this is not the one for argument. Not that anyone would openly defy the Empress, of course, but she was asking questions they could not answer — or maybe she did not like the answers they gave her.
The other two Pioneers huddled close, Icnumon and Jons Escarrabin. The Beetle looked just about how Gorrec felt — namely miserable and lost and worried. He clutched his snapbow to him like a talisman. The halfbreed, though: Icnumon had changed when they. . well, Gorrec couldn’t say precisely what they had done, but things were definitely different.
They had passed through into what seemed somehow a different forest. The trees grew closer, were more gnarled, their branches a solid interlacing canopy ahead, whilst the undergrowth was now shot through with briars, making progress tiring and painful. There was almost no sign of animal life — Gorrec and his fellows were tried woodsmen and knew what to look for. They spotted only the occasional mark or track that Icnumon identified as the killer mantids. The air was dim and curiously obscuring as though some shreds of fog remained even at noon, and the colours. . nothing here was bright. Sounds were muted and, in the long silences, it seemed as if there were other noises just at the edge of hearing, a whispering and a murmuring.
Only one of the Empress’s female bodyguards had made it this far, the Sarnesh and the Etheryen having accounted for the rest. The woman sat by herself, withdrawn and wordless; the Wasp soldier, Ostrec, seemed little better. Even the armoured man that Seda called Tisamon seemed changed here, a troubled introspection evident in his immobile stance.