The Beetle-kinden diplomat, who had been nodding pleasantly up until ‘mealy-mouthed’, looked sharply at the general. ‘These are Her Majesty’s orders, nonetheless.’
‘Time was,’ Tynan spat, ‘when a general took orders from the Empress’s own hand. No lesser person sufficed. No more: I see the seal of the Red Watch. We all know,’ and his sarcasm was heavy and unmissable, ‘that they are the Empress’s voice. Tell me, Bellowern, is she even still in Capitas? I hear rumours otherwise.’
Honory Bellowern, one of the highest-ranking Beetles in the Empire now that he had somehow secured a colonel’s badge, put on a stern demeanour. ‘Those are dangerous rumours to voice, General.’ He cast his eyes about Tynan’s staff room, which had once been some Collegiate merchant’s ground floor before the Engineers had kicked through a few inessential walls. A dozen officers of the Second Army were easily in earshot.
‘Colonel, if you wish me to directly order you to answer my question, I will do it.’ Tynan had made no secret of his disgust at Bellowern’s promotion. The antagonism was not because the man was Beetle-kinden – or not only that. Rather, it was that Bellowern had headed the Imperial diplomatic staff within Collegium prior to Tynan’s arrival, and so might have been of considerable use as an intelligencer and liaison when the Second Army appeared at the city’s gates. Instead the man had made sure he was out of the city long before the fighting started, returning only now that it was safe to do so and somehow bearing a portion of the glory, which Tynan felt entirely unearned.
‘Of course she is in Capitas, General. I saw her myself. Where would she be else?’
Tynan glowered at him, and the first hint of uncertainty entered Bellowern’s manner. Tynan had not spoken with a governor or a general’s formal cordiality. The Wasp’s hostility was palpable.
‘Might I ask,’ the Beetle ventured, ‘whether I have in some way offended?’ His change of manner was pointed, as if he had suddenly considered that if Tynan had him shot, he might be unable to raise his objections back at Capitas later.
‘You went to Captain Vrakir first,’ Tynan pronounced.
Bellowern blinked twice, mastering any surprise he might have felt. ‘As it happened, I had orders for Major Vrakir, and he crossed my path on my way to you. It seemed an economic use of my time.’
‘Which orders included a promotion,’ Tynan noted.
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘Which promotion also bore a Red Watch seal.’ No suggestion in the general’s tone of whether it was a question or a statement.
Bellowern was obviously playing it safe. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘So he’s a major now. So when’s his colonel’s badge due to arrive?’
‘I have no idea, General. You can imagine that such matters are not within my compass—’
‘I can imagine many things that may or may not be true,’ Tynan told him flatly. ‘But thank you kindly, Colonel, for coming so very far just to give me no news worth the hearing. No doubt you’ll want to take up your residence from before we took the city.’
‘Actually, General, after a little more time with our new . . . with Major Vrakir, I must be moving on. After all, Collegium is an Imperial city now, expertly pacified. I could hardly come here and be ambassador to myself.’
‘You are a diplomat. You know these people. I am a general, a battlefield commander.’
‘I have my orders. You’re welcome to peruse them.’ Now even professionally phlegmatic Bellowern was a little sharp. ‘They do bear the Empress’s own seal. You are to hold the city, as you are plainly doing most capably. I have my own concerns.’
Tynan stared at him for a long time, and at last voiced one of those questions that nobody was supposed to ask. ‘What is she up to?’ And, when Bellowern stuttered and stumbled over an answer, ‘You don’t know. I thought men like you were supposed to know everything.’
After the Beetle had gone, Tynan brooded a while, and his officers knew enough not to approach him. The taking of Collegium had been hard but swift, flawlessly executed. The reputation of the Gears, the Imperial Second Army, was secure. And yet Tynan brooded and mourned.
It was not the taking of the city but its aftermath. He had not been alone as he rode an automotive through Collegium’s gates. The Spider-kinden army of the Aldanrael had spilt its share of blood to take this prize, and its leader, the Lady Martial Mycella, had been close to Tynan. Far closer than was wise.
And of course the order had come, from the Empress via the Red Watch officer Vrakir: Kill all the Spiders.
Tynan had obeyed faultlessly. He himself had executed Mycella, his co-commander, his lover. He had torn out his own heart to do so, but he had orders. Orders had been his life to that point.
If he had been sent on westwards for Vek and beyond, allowed to do what an army general should, then perhaps he would have soon put it behind him and recovered. The Eighth Army had been broken by the Sarnesh, though, and the garrison force intended for Collegium had been hastily re-routed north to prevent the Ant-kinden from taking the initiative. And Tynan had been told to hold and govern Collegium, and wait.
Sitting there, in the city that to him still reeked of his own betrayal, his soldiers had watched him sink into himself, gnawing on his own regrets. A bitter silent war had sprung up between him and Vrakir, bearer of those fatal orders. Neither man could bear to be in the other’s company for more than a few minutes, and the Imperial administration of Collegium virtually existed in two camps because of it: the voice of the general against the transmitted voice of the Empress.
And in the middle were the citizens themselves, at the mercy of a general’s depression and the increasing restlessness of his soldiers.
On the far side of the Gear Gate from Tynan’s headquarters was the townhouse commandeered by the Red Watch man, Major Vrakir.
He had fewer staff to wait on him than the general. General Tynan commanded the Second Army and governed Collegium for now, but there were many who were waiting for the orders to come that might change that. Anyone who had contacts back home had heard of the Red Watch: its unpredictable, unaccountable habits; the way even the Rekef had to bow the knee to it.
Vrakir had been a regular army officer before the Empress had chosen him. She had taken him to the Imperial Museum in Capitas. She had led him to that hidden room at its heart where she kept the Mantis-kinden idol. She had bid him kill, and then offered him a goblet filled with the victim’s blood.
She had asked him if he had not always felt different, detached from those around him. He had not been able to deny it. She had told him the truth. He was Apt, as all Wasps were Apt save her. Some quirk of his inheritance, though, some muddying of his blood, had left him with a holdover from the old days. She could make use of him. He was not different, but superior.
And he had believed her, and drunk. And so had begun his long road to the edge of sanity.
He was Apt. He understood machines, even if he was not quite comfortable with them – no artificer he – and of course he had never believed in magic. Now, though . . .
He dreamt, and the dreams had meaning. The Empress’s will made itself known to him – by nothing so arcane as her words in his mind, but he still knew. It was as though he had been told long ago, in childhood, all the demands of state that she burdened him with, and each was only recalled at the proper time.
He had brought Tynan the orders to turn on the Spiders, to murder the man’s Aldanrael lover. Only he and the general knew that the supposed betrayal of the Empire by its allies had never happened. But it would have happened, he sincerely believed. The Empress had foreseen it.