She was the only one now, though — the only prisoner they had taken out of those that had failed and fallen in the Battle of the Rails.
When she had tumbled from the stalled automotive, she had her blade ready in her hand, certain that death was moments away. She had imagined herself then as a Tisamon or a Salma, ready to die striking a blow and enjoy a soldier’s honourable end.
But all around her the Wasps were swarming along the rails, blackening the sky above. These men, who had been fleeing so recently, were back, with a vengeance that could be sated only with blood. Everywhere, Wasp soldiers were stooping on the survivors to slaughter them. They hacked down the Sarnesh field surgeons whether or not they lifted blades against them. They killed the wounded, swiftly and brutally, just as their comrades were doing over all the battlefield.
She had felt the sword slip from her fingers, her mind filled with the horror of it, and she realized, then, that she had been lying to herself for a long time. This was the real face of war, and she could never be a true soldier.
Che had stood there motionless, unnoticed and unthreatened, with the Wasps massing back and forth all about her. It had been that total stillness that saved her, though her head had spun. The stillness, and her empty hands, until at last a Wasp had dropped before her, seeing a wide-eyed, unarmed Beetle girl, assuming her a slave, perhaps. He had called two of his comrades to wrestle her away, and she had not resisted them. A moment before, she had wanted to die as brave warriors died, but when she saw what that looked like, repeated over and over all around, she very much wanted to live.
She had not necessarily accomplished that, either. She had been confined in here more than a day, now, and they had given her water but no food. She could hear, from sounds above, that the Wasps were resetting their camp, and seemed in no hurry to chase the Sarnesh back to their city walls, but nobody had come to question her, or rescue her, or even to look at her.
Slavery, she told herself. Would it really be so bad? Perhaps some kind master would buy her. After all, she had a Collegium education. Perhaps she could teach Wasp children.
She knew that a life of slavery could be bad, and she knew equally that there were worse fates by far.
There was a rattle at the hatch above, chilling her heart, because her water bowl was still half-full.
There had been pitch-darkness in the cellar before, which would have been a terror to her if her Art had not penetrated it and allowed her to see. The sheet of sunlight that now splashed down the stone steps was a harsh glare at first, and she shaded her eyes. She heard sandalled feet descending and forced herself to look.
A Wasp soldier was peering doubtfully at her, by the bluish light of a mineral-fuel lantern.
‘This is her,’ he said, to someone standing above him, and then came all the way down to the cellar floor to make room.
The man following took the stairs awkwardly, limping and holding to the wall. He wore no Wasp uniform, being swathed instead in a hooded robe, and he seemed to need no lantern when he peered at her.
‘Just one prisoner,’ he said tiredly. ‘Well the intelligencers will suffer more than I. And she will be theirs, I suspect, unless I press my claim on Malkan. You say she had some tools on her?’
‘Only a few, sir,’ the soldier below him said, ‘not a full artificer’s set, but she is a Beetle, sir. They’re reckoned good with machines.’
‘Not without proper tools, they’re not,’ grumbled the hooded man. ‘She’s probably a worthless slave or something. Or did I hear that the Sarnesh keep no slaves?’ He glanced up at a third man who was standing higher on the steps, and obviously saw him shake his head. To Che this last imperial was just a slouching silhouette.
‘You don’t want her, then?’ the soldier pressed, and Che felt her throat go dry. She had little idea of what they were talking about, but she feared what any Wasp intelligencer might do with her.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she got out. ‘I am a scholar of the College. I know history, politics, economics-’
‘Are you an artificer?’ asked the robed man sharply, as though speaking to an idiot child.
‘I have studied mechanics a little. ’ She was crippled with honesty even at this moment.
For a moment he studied her. ‘No. Let them rack her for answers. I won’t deprive General Malkan of her.’ With halting steps he turned round and made his way back up towards the sunlight.
It was only when they had gone, and taken most of her hope with them, that she realized that they had not all been strangers.
Why here? It seemed impossible. The sight of her echoed in his mind. Che, down below behind the timber bars.
Oh, Totho could string a sequence of events together, surely. The horror of speculation was wondering what he did not know. Whose bodies now lay amongst the Sarnesh dead on the battlefield? Stenwold perhaps? Tynisa?
Perhaps the Moth Achaeos had perished too.
That thought sent an ugly little thrill through him. If Achaeos was dead.
But Che would be dead all too soon, once they had finished cutting and twisting her flesh. General Malkan’s interrogators would undoubtedly want to know everything she could tell them about Sarn, in preparation for his next campaign.
Totho stood and watched Drephos in conversation with one of Malkan’s officers. The general himself was conducting any communications through intermediaries at the moment. That was, Totho had realized eventually, because he was embarrassed. Anyone with eyes could see that Drephos had turned the battle for him, turned the iron tide at the point when Malkan’s men were at their weakest. Drephos had broken the Ant advance and given the Wasps new heart.
Or rather, Totho thought wryly, I did, and nobody knows.
How happy he was for that, and it was not that Drephos had snatched the praise from him, but Totho had hidden away from it, for he had witnessed as closely as he cared the monstrous effects that his inventions had on meat and metal.
Amongst primitive peoples, like the Mantis-kinden, contracts and agreements were sealed with a drop of blood. Well, his contract with Drephos and the Empire was well and truly sealed. He was wading in it, up to his waist already, and with further still to go. And here was Che, suddenly come like his conscience to remind him of all that he had betrayed.
It would serve her right. He hardened his heart. She had never taken the time to think about what she was getting into. Or perhaps it would be a form of justice on Stenwold for sending his own niece into the tempest. Or on the wretched Moth for luring her from safety into this dangerous place. Justice for someone, surely. And that would make some sense of it all.
‘Totho?’
He looked up sharply, seeing Kaszaat walking towards him with concern in her eyes.
‘You’re brooding more than usual. What’s wrong?’
Now here was a woman worth his attention, he told himself. Not too proud to lie with a halfbreed. And she obviously cared about him.
Because Drephos told her to.
‘Totho, what’s wrong?’
She reached out, and he flinched away without thinking.
The look of hurt on her face could have been genuine, and he realized how much he had been poisoned by Drephos, by the Empire, so that he would never be able to be sure with her — or with anyone else — what was real and what was feigned. He had been adopted into a world where everything was weighed in objective scales, valued coldly and then put to work. His credit here was his artificer’s skill and, though he had valued that more than anything, he found it was short measure for his whole life. He was now merely a pair of hands to make, a mind to create: not Totho of Collegium but some working annexe to Drephos’s ambition.