Twenty-Eight
His was a kinden steeped in treachery and cunning from the very dawn of history. To those Inapt scholars who knew of the Assassin Bug-kinden legacy, his kin were a byword for duplicity — and they had paid the price, but the Moths still shuddered to think how close they had come to ruling the world. His Art made even his hands into killing weapons that could shear through steel.
He was of a profession, an old and honoured profession, that made deception its watchword, that wore the faces — the minds even — of others as easily as another might put on a coat. And he was a veteran who had honed his magical and his physical skills over decades.
And, beyond that, he was learned. He had been a parasite within the archives of the Moth-kinden, who had kept him half prisoner and half guest, as a tool to be used in dire need only. More recently, he had worn an Imperial rank badge and seen how the gears of the Empire turned.
All Esmail knew now was that he was woefully out of his depth, meddling in — no, not even meddling but being dragged into — matters that no sane man would ever want anything to do with.
He should have backed out when he first met the Empress. . or perhaps followed his orders and tried to kill her — tried, he suspected, being the relevant word. Instead he had listened to her golden words, her promises; he had studied her and seen the bewildering potential that chance and fate had somehow hatched within her. A queen amongst magicians, the inheritrix of the ancient world: what could such a woman not achieve?
And he had been a fool, an overawed fool.
And too late the Worm had been mentioned, and he had understood the flaw in that plan, just as had old Gjegevey. He had previously counted himself lucky that Seda was power without finesse — for how else could he have hidden from her, after all? But that same power, yoked to the driving acquisitiveness of an Empress, lacked the discernment to know what to reach for, and what to hold back from. And she knew about the Worm, and she saw there just power, because they had been powerful.
And it was here her feet had led her — or the idiot Gjegevey had led her — to the Master Seal, the keystone in the edifice that had rid the world of the Worm.
And still he had held back because of that promise, that potential. . for when would the world see such a chance to restore the balance of history, but in her?
He could still hear the conflict as he moved through the mist-shrouded forest, and a little focus sufficed to gain a hazy picture of it. He sensed Tisamon hard pressed, being forced to give ground to keep between his increasingly mobile enemies and his mistress.
Everything had changed.
He was keeping his mind tight shut now. It had been a shock when that other voice had bludgeoned its way in, with the same raw, clumsy power as the Empress. More of a shock had been the understanding behind it, which had caught him unprepared and seen what he was — cracking Ostrec’s stolen shell by elegant and unconscious intuition. As she did so, he had seen small shards of her, too: yes, she knew of his profession and had faced such spies before. Yes, she knew of his kin, even. That same power as Seda’s, but yoked to a very different and more contemplative mind.
The Empress had spoken about her, the hated Beetle girl, who had somehow assumed the same mantle: her sister, her joint heir. Esmail had not understood until now.
And he had a terrible, seductive thought, Perhaps something may be saved? Perhaps this girl, this Cheerwell Maker, might be manipulated. Surely easier than trying to steer the Empress?
And another thought — one that no man in his position ought to allow himself: Perhaps she would not even need manipulating.
And she had survived. The Empress’s minions had gone for her, and had fallen one after the other, until now only Tisamon barred the way.
And here stood Esmail, between them and the Empress, using all his craft to cloak himself from anyone’s attention.
If he returned to Tharn right now, or somehow found a way to share thoughts with one of their Skryres, what orders might he be given? Depends on which Skryre, arose the depressing thought. He was on his own now, as a spy always was in the end: cut off from his masters and with only his faltering judgement to rely on.
And here was the Empress herself, just ahead, with that fool old Woodlouse and the turncoat Wasp in Moth’s robes, brought to bay at last. Any moment now, Tisamon must surely give way, and then the Beetle girl’s followers would break through and kill the Empress themselves, and what would Esmail have gained?
He found inside himself an unending supply of fear. The Empress terrified him. To take action and lose his cover terrified him. To do nothing terrified him even more. He stepped forwards.
Seda’s head swung towards him almost blindly, and he braced himself for an assault, magical or physical. He underestimated his spycraft and her own distraction, because her expression revealed only relief.
‘Ostrec, get over here!’ she snapped. ‘Tisamon can’t hold them off for long.’
And indeed he could hear the clatter of steel, and imagined the followers of the Beetle girl twisting and turning, and Tisamon giving ground step after step.
‘Majesty,’ he said heavily.
‘Draw your sword,’ she instructed him, and he did so, to allay her suspicions. He was more dangerous without it, with both hands free. He closed the distance between them in three easy strides.
‘This way.’ And she was off, and now he felt that pulling point, the centre of this place, so that Seda trod a spiral path towards it like a moth to a candle. Argastos. Of course, because if she could subvert and appropriate that power, she might still win,
Unless I stop her.
Gjegevey went labouring after her — she had surely stopped only to give the old man time to catch his breath — and his face wore the set and despairing expression of a teacher whose student had gone beyond him without learning important truths. Well, your fault, Woodlouse, if that is so. Tegrec had been helping him along, but now he was running after Seda too, and Esmail read in him the nervous gait of a man close to breaking. All the better.
‘Ostrec!’ Gjegevey wailed and, despite himself, he turned back, virtually hauling the old man’s arm up about his shoulders and hustling this wheezing, hunched encumbrance along. To get me closer to the Empress, he reassured himself, but just then his motives were so muddled as to be beyond divination.
Ahead. .
They were running short of trees, ahead, which meant he was running out of time. The ground suddenly rose there, forming a hill too rounded to be natural, faced and plated with slabs of grey stone: a piecemeal carapace whose gaping cracks sprouted weeds and briars and even stunted trees. There was a gate there, too, set into an outcrop of the hill and framed in stone, the doors themselves made of thousands of little flakes of wood, suspended off a frame, like the scales of a moth’s wing, wormy and blackened by age.