The Empress is coming to Khanaphes.
In fact, the Empress had been on her way for several days, but the news had been carried only a half-day ahead of her, in case some enemy of the Empire might choose to take it as a challenge. The news the colonel had brought him was that the Empress would be arriving in Khanaphes by noon.
And now Ethmet looked up at this descending airship – the world of the now descending to destroy thousands of years of carefully husbanded history – and he felt like weeping.
There had been a Rekef mission to Khanaphes which had gone painfully awry, that much Seda knew. The few survivors who made it back to the Empire had not been Rekef people but Engineers, and so, instead of the secret service keeping its errors secret, matters became widely known in a variety of circles.
Seda knew that nobody had expected her to take much interest in this business. It had been meat and drink for General Brugan’s enemies, ammunition for their broadsides at him, when her advisers met. She was their grand figurehead, the beautiful, whimsical Empress, and they knew she left the minutiae of government to them. She made a great show of acceding to their requests, validating their decisions, making herself the unchanged catalyst by which every other thing happened, but she left them to get on with their areas of expertise, which they appreciated.
But when Khanaphes had been mentioned, as a ranging shot aimed at General Brugan’s high standing in her eyes, she had announced, ‘We will go there.’
There had been silence amongst her advisers then, and they glanced at each other uncertainly. Her brother, the late Emperor, had kept to their ridiculous tribal custom of leader and advisers all sitting in a line, not facing one another. That did not suit her, though, so she had changed it effortlessly, without anyone being able to muster an argument against her decision. Now the Empress would meet with her advisers outside on a sun-warmed balcony, sitting or even reclining on comfortable couches in the Spider style, while plied with food and drink by the palace servants.
‘There is nothing there,’ had ventured Colonel Thanred, an old soldier who was the nominal governor of Capitas. ‘Just a backward Beetle city full of simpletons.’
‘The Rekef clearly believed there was something there worth seeing,’ a Consortium magnate had suggested snidely.
‘Lowlander agents were present in the city, so it was our duty to ensure they did not secure a base from which to strike at us.’ General Brugan had retained his composure magnificently, for which Seda indulged him with a small smile of approval that did not go unnoticed by his peers. He lies so well, she had thought, almost proudly.
‘We have quelled the rebel governors and generals, have we not?’ she had asked them, affecting a slightly bemused smile. ‘Our Empire is whole once more, thanks to your efforts. Our wounds are healed.’ She included them all in the smile, even those who had patently done nothing but stand on the sidelines and wait to see how matters would turn out. She had then locked eyes with the old Woodlouse-kinden, Gjegevey, adviser to her brother and their father before him, a man whose counsel was more valuable to her than any dozen Wasp-kinden dignitaries.
‘You word it perfectly, of course,’ a second Consortium man had observed, fat, old and ugly, but a man endowed with a rare sense of art and poetry. While her duller brother had demanded blood-fights in the arena, this man had been quick to arrange more refined entertainment for her, and thus won himself a place amongst her favourites – for now. ‘Empress, you should know that some of the Consortium have been considering a move eastwards. There are cities across the Jahalian Rift that our factors claim show great promise.. .’
‘But if we do head east, who would know of it?’ she had asked him pleasantly, and he was shrewd enough to remain silent and wait for her to elaborate. She was positively beaming now, letting them bask in her radiant expression. ‘We must not forget that we are no longer a solitary power surrounded by small cities who barely feel our approach before we snap them up. We now stand amongst those who think themselves our equals; even if we still stand head and shoulders above them, we must not forget that we are watched. We must remind them what it means to be an Empire.’
She had gauged their expressions in turn, reading worry, anticipation, a certain dormant bloodlust coming to the fore again.
‘We shall break no treaties,’ she had declared, ‘and so the Lowlander city-states will merely fret and protest. Yet we can extend our protective hand to a neighbour in need, a neighbour who is just within their sight. A city of Beetles, sorely oppressed by Scorpion barbarians, shall come to see the wisdom of sheltering beneath the black and gold flag. And their kin in Collegium will wring their hands and tell each other how terrible it is. And do nothing.’ Her smile, as it toured the balcony, had been sharp as a razor. ‘Or not, perhaps. Maybe it is just a fancy of mine, this thought of Khanaphes. What think you, my advisers?’
She had them immediately, of course. It was a perfect plan, bold and cautious in equal measures. It would remind the world of the Empire’s power but, more than that, it would remind the Empire’s own soldiers and citizens.
Two days later saw completion of the debriefing of those Engineers who had survived the Rekef fiasco. It had been assumed that they would be punished for their failures, but something very strange had happened during their interrogation, for their leader had produced a remarkable report. Suddenly a colonel in the Engineering Corps, the highest-ranking Imperial artificer there was, was also trying to promote the possibility of an Imperial expedition to Khanaphes, not realizing that his Empress had already pre-empted him. The idea had gathered momentum fast, until…
Until here I am, Seda thought. The army had gone in first, of course, and her airship had departed Capitas only after the expedition leaders had confirmed their control of the city. Such control had come about swiftly, for there had been no resistance from the Khanaphir, and she had her own good reasons to be glad about that.
Her reasons presented to her advisers for this expedition had been lies – just as much lies as Brugan’s dissembling about why he had sent men here originally. The Engineers’ quest here was a useful sideline, one that she did not understand but was prepared to indulge.
She had come to Khanaphes for her own private reasons. She had come here seeking power.
‘It’s a woman!’
For a moment Praeda held the telescope steady, expecting the honour guard and dignitary that had disembarked from the airship to be merely some vanguard for an even greater potentate, but it was plain that this slight-framed girl who had stepped down the ramp from the gondola was the whole and purpose of what was going on. She seemed a mere slip of a Wasp-kinden female, for all that she was dressed with an elegance any Spider might envy. She was clearly precious to the Empire, though, for as well as a dozen Sentinels in the heaviest armour, and a further dozen of the Imperial Light Airborne, Praeda’s glass identified the four warriors closest to the woman as Mantis-kinden, decked out in black and gold as though they had surrendered a thousand years of heritage in exchange for Empire coin.
‘What is so remarkable about that?’ rumbled her companion.
Praeda Rakespear gave him a quizzical look, but then nodded. ‘I suppose you’ve no reason to know of the shameful way in which the Empire treats its womenfolk.’
‘She must be the Empress,’ Amnon declared. He was squinting at the far spectacle from the rooftop they had commandeered, hidden in the shadow of a row of statuary.
Praeda laughed harshly. ‘Oh, of course,’ she said sarcastically. ‘First place she’d stop, here, on her journey to the moon.’
‘Why not? The Dominion of Khanaphes has influence yet,’ Amnon said, obviously chastened but being stubborn. In his mind, no doubt, his home city did still have some shred of the power that it once had wielded, a thousand years ago and more.