‘Now there’s a sight,’ he said – and watched her freeze, naked before an unseen enemy, exposed and vulnerable. Then she had collected herself, the shift dropping from her fingers and her palms coming up ready to sting.
‘I’d keep those hands down, woman,’ he told her, and by then she knew exactly whereabouts he was. ‘Was it you that killed Captain Carven?’
‘Remind me, who was Carven?’ she asked, and he watched each muscle tense as she braced herself for the moment of violence, ready to snap out an arm and unleash her Art.
‘Firstly, and as a point of etiquette,’ he told her calmly, ‘my sting’s probably a bit on the feeble side but I’ve a snapbow on you right now, one of the little ones, but good enough at this range. Secondly, I love a show as much as the next man, but how’s about you get your kit back on and then we can talk about why there’s at least one dead Imperial messenger in the bay – and a Rekef man at that – who I know walked into this house alive.’
He saw her consider her options calmly. He had considered having her remain unclad to intimidate her but, even standing naked before a stranger, she seemed far too self-possessed, and he felt that he would just push her towards a violent retaliation which could lead anywhere – but probably nowhere useful to Gannic.
Slowly she took up her shift again and pulled it over her head, for all the barrier it provided. When her head emerged, her eyes glinted like steel.
‘The governor’s a lucky man, I’ll say that,’ Gannic put in. ‘But you’re playing a dangerous game when you cross the Rekef. That’s better, now. Sit down, and keep your hands out flat on the sheets there.’
‘So what does the Rekef suggest happens next?’ she enquired coldly, waiting for that moment of divided attention when she could go for him.
‘Sod the Rekef,’ he told her cheerfully. ‘I’m none of them. If you hadn’t done for Carven, I might have had to do him myself.’ A pause followed for that to sink in. ‘Peace in Solarno, eh? Who’d have thought it? But it turns out that suits my superiors just fine. They’ve a use for a Solarno that’s not demolished and on fire. Captain Carven’s current watery grave tells me that so do you – you and your man here.’
She took a deep breath. ‘And if we do?’
‘Fellow who gives me orders is very keen to talk about how you’re keeping this particular plate spinning.’ He stepped forwards at last to let her get a look at him. He saw her take in his features, wrinkling her nose at the very thought of being outmanoeuvred by a halfbreed. But she saw the snapbow as well and passed no comment.
‘So who gives you your orders?’ she asked him cautiously. If not the Rekef, was the obvious subtext.
‘I am Lieutenant-Auxillian Gannic, lady,’ he introduced himself. ‘Engineers, believe it or not. Take it from me, a lot of eyes are pointed at Solarno right about now. I’d say you’d be surprised, but I’m not sure you would – not you. So let’s get some ground rules straight. Yell out, and I’m going to shoot you. Maybe not to kill, but who can say how good my aim is? And if you or your servants or your man do get the better of me, and I don’t show up safe in the morning, then my chief will make sure word is on its way to Capitas by an hour past dawn, to tell them just how you’ve been playing them. So I suggest you behave.’
Merva gave him a level stare. ‘What do you want me to do? Book your commanding officer an appointment?’
‘No need – he’s ready right now. So how about you get yourself a cloak and we’ll go out quiet, the back way. No need to trouble the staff.’
He saw her stiffen, considering the odds, and he lifted the snapbow a little to keep it in the forefront of her mind. ‘Let’s go now, and slowly – or I’ll have to say all this stuff to your widower husband tomorrow.’
He saw himself reflected in her eyes: the brutal halfbreed who might do anything. I’m not the one who killed the Rekef captain, lady, he reflected. Woman or not, I reckon you’re more dangerous than me, given half a chance.
He put the weapon up against the pale hollow of her neck as he bound her wrists, feeling the thought in her mind about whether she could sting without him killing her by reflex. He kept to one side, though, denied her the most obvious opportunities, and then he had her hands tied palm to palm.
They moved through the house like some strange dream, soft footed, an invisible thread linking the small of her back to the barrel of his snapbow. At any moment he was sure she was going to cry out or just run, but she retained a stately calm, as though she was merely sleepwalking.
The side door that Gannic had been shepherding her towards opened just as they got in sight of it, and Colonel Varsec appeared. Gannic stopped, staring at his superior in dumb amazement.
Am I betrayed? Was Varsec about to stage some heroic ‘rescue’ of Merva? Did that sort of thing even work?
Then Varsec stepped inside with a wry look at his subordinate. And behind the colonel was a Spider-kinden woman, a slight little thing with short, dark hair and the face of innocence, save that she had a long knife held to the colonel’s neck.
‘Good evening, Lady Merva,’ the Spider said politely.
‘Lady Giselle.’ The Wasp woman even managed a cordial nod.
‘Perhaps your over-enthusiastic slave will put away his device now?’ The Spider smiled at Gannic, who had the snapbow levelled at her face.
Merva did something complex with her hands and Gannic’s ropes fell away, leaving her palms directed straight towards him. ‘What’s the matter, Engineer? Are all your little cogs failing to mesh?’
‘Oh, very good.’ Varsec grinned at Merva over the knife blade. ‘Might I suggest that, since the underhand approach is apparently off the menu, you send for some wine and your husband?’
‘And why would I want to do that?’
‘Because, right at this moment in Solarno, I am the Empire, or a very large part of it, and the Empire has a deal to make. I want to talk about Solarno’s current détente, and after that I want to talk about Solarno and Chasme and the Iron Glove.’
‘Three days since the last delegation left, and here they are again,’ Drephos mused, watching the bustle of the Chasme docks, but with particular reference to the Solarnese sloop that word said had brought another batch of Imperials to their door.
‘Perhaps it’s just another order. They still have a few armies to outfit with Sentinels.’ Totho was away from the balcony, studying reports from some of the metallurgists by lamplight, despite the bright daylight he could have had for free if he moved his desk five feet over.
‘And Solarno hasn’t torn itself to pieces yet, either. Everyone was saying it would. Everyone was saying we’d have our own little war around the Exalsee: Spiders and Wasps. There are plenty of troops within an easy sail. So what, I wonder . . .?’
It sounded like a non-sequitur, but Drephos’s words always had a logic to them, the trick being to reverse-engineer the unspoken links of the chain.
‘They may want an anti-Sentinel weapon, of course,’ came Totho’s absent-minded reply. ‘The Sarnesh captured a few after they defeated the Eighth.’
He read on for another few lines, but Drephos remained silent, and at last Totho glanced up.
‘You’re concerned over something. Not about their man who had the accident, surely?’