Gannic had come here for a very specific mission, so the current state of Solarno should only have been of incidental interest to him. The officer overseeing this operation had hinted at some fairly expansive fallback options, though, and to utilize them he needed to work out the true story. The situation here might serve him, if only he could master it.
Once he was sure he had thrown off any pursuers, he followed a roundabout and careful route back up to the Imperial half of the city, seeking out a Consortium factorum, where a man was waiting to hear his report. Despite the trappings, this operation was not being run by the Empire’s mercantile arm, and nor was it a job for their secret service, the Rekef – just as Gannic was a capable agent but also something more: a true specialist.
The officer he reported to was a small man with a little patch of beard on his chin in the Spider style. His name was Colonel Varsec, and he was either the rising star or the scapegoat for the Engineering Corps, depending on whether it was praise or blame that was going around. He had come close to execution more than once, Gannic knew. Perhaps this assignment would see both of them on the crossed pikes.
‘Let’s have it.’ Varsec was uncomfortable, unhappy with what they were trying to achieve here, and the range of means that had been given him.
Gannic made his report: the truth behind the impossible stalemate between Empire and those Spiderlands Aristoi who had inherited the Aldanrael conquests. ‘What nobody realizes back home, sir,’ he explained, ‘is just who the power ended up with when the Aldanrael went down – after the Second Army killed their woman in Collegium. There were all sorts of little families who hadn’t or couldn’t abandon the Aldanrael and, so far, us being here has stopped any of the big boys moving in. So you’ve got the Arkaetiens and the Melisandyr and the like, who were just hangers-on, and now they’re basically running things here in Solarno, and maybe Tark and Kes and points west too.’
‘How are the Solarnese taking it?’ Varsec prompted him.
Gannic considered what he had seen: the locals going about their business cautiously, with that same hammer hanging impossibly above each of them. ‘Cautiously optimistic, I’d say,’ he conceded. ‘They know there’re wheels turning, and that something’s got to give, but this place is used to Spiders – meaning there’s always some bad news behind the scenes somewhere. They reckon it won’t necessarily touch them, if they keep their heads down and get on with it.’
He had been very carefully chosen for this assignment, had Gannic. He was an unusual man. He had slipped through the slums and the tavernas on both sides of the city, listening more than talking, overhearing more than being seen. So far he had not misstepped, as evidenced by his continued good health.
Lieutenant Gannic’s rank badge pinned his fortunes to those of the Engineering Corps, the coming power in the Empire, who were just as wary about competition as any Consortium magnate. He was no artillerist or automotive driver, though. He was a sneak for the artificing age. Saboteur was the official label, and there were few enough of them – men with a formidable understanding of artifice, an easy manner and a soft tread.
One other thing, of course, as his mirror reminded him every morning when he shaved: Wasp features in a darker, rounder face, the gift of his Beetle mother. Rough with the smooth, he thought, as he wielded the razor. He had the world’s two most Apt kinden as parents, and he made a natural agent, for everyone knew how much the Empire loathed halfbreeds. More than that, though, this job – this very particular job – recommended itself to a man of a certain heritage like himself.
‘Sir, did you get word back – from the top?’
Varsec’s expression was hooded. ‘Just two words: “Do it.”’
Gannic made an appreciative whistle. ‘You want me across the water, or . . .’
‘Not yet. Unless our target in Chasme is going to suffer a sudden change of heart, we need to have our backup plan ready to go. General Lien’s getting impatient. Enough eavesdropping and talking to sneaks. Time to act.’ Varsec looked anything but enthusiastic about that. This is going to end very badly, his expression said. ‘Just be careful not to end up like the last man.’
‘The last man’ had been a Captain Carven – not part of Varsec’s operation but a Rekef agent bringing orders from the Imperial governor here: Start the fires, drive the Spiders from Solarno. Varsec and Gannic had discussed those words in detail, and were unanimous in their opinion that they were stupid orders. There had been a great deal of pressure from conservatives in Capitas to strike at the Spider-kinden, though, and somehow nobody up there had considered that Solarno was rather closer to Spider reinforcements than it was to any aid the Empire could give it.
Supposedly, this Captain Carven had never arrived. The Spiders had been playing espionage while the principal Wasp entertainment had been living in hill forts and stealing the neighbours’ women. Back home the conclusion had been swiftly reached that Carven had been done away with before ever getting in sight of the governor’s townhouse.
Except that, according to the Fly woman, his body had been dragged out of that same house and dumped in the bay, to be picked over by fish and water beetles and dragonfly nymphs.
Varsec had guessed that there was a good reason why Solarno had not been riven by civil war: it was not an Imperial city at all, no matter whose flag waved over the high ground. So was that the plan all along, he mused, or did Governor Edvic and his wife look at the odds and start a little dance of their own?
‘Personally, I’d rather do without the lot of them and leave the city to stew, sir,’ Gannic stated. It was unforgivably familiar before a superior officer, but he knew by now that Varsec didn’t care.
‘From everything you’ve learned, that doesn’t sound like an option,’ Varsec replied. ‘We’re going to have to get our hands dirty here in Solarno before we can move on.’
We – meaning me, Gannic realized. And nothing’s ever simple where Spiders are involved. At least by now he’d acquired a good idea of what the Spiders wanted here, too. The little families that had their hooks into this place wanted to keep what they had – which meant avoiding a fight with the Empire, and avoiding calling in the bigger Spider clans.
Between the governor’s wife and the local Aristoi, a rather remarkable piece of diplomacy had grown up, or that was what Varsec believed, and what Gannic’s investigations seemed to confirm.
‘Time to go pay a visit, then,’ he decided, and he would just have to do his best to avoid ending up like the late Captain Carven.
Three
The Ant-kinden found it baffling, infuriating and hilarious by turns, Straessa understood. Needless to say, very little of that showed on their faces, but there was always one who stopped to watch whenever the Collegiates were drilling, and with them you only needed a single pair of eyes for the whole city to be spying. She had the impression of being surrounded by gales of unheard laughter at every move, every step out of place, every stumble.