‘And you?’ The unthinkable question, to a Moth, but she sensed that she had the authority to ask and she was damned if she would give him any more of her time if he would not expose himself to that small extent.
She saw his throat working, as though he were choking on something, and then he spat out, ‘Terastos.’
It was a useful weather-gauge both of his low station and her apparent standing in the eyes of the Inapt. He did not like her but he could not deny her.
‘So tell us what’s going on,’ she invited, sitting back down, cutting the tension from the moment by sidestepping it. ‘We’re none of us friends of the Empire here — no, not even Thalric. We know the Wasps are on the move again, and they must have taken control of the Alliance cities and Helleron fast, to get here so quickly. Perhaps we can even be of some help. So tell us.’ Following her lead, her companions had also sat back down at the tent’s mouth, and Terastos shifted from foot to foot, uncertain and ignorant, the worst thing for a Moth. At last the spy’s practicality overcame the magician’s pride, and he sat down.
‘It is no secret that the Wasps are very near, their Eighth Army with all its machines. They have destroyed the Ant fortress that lay east of here, and beaten a field army too. The Sarnesh had hoped that speed would be their ally. Now they admit that they need real allies to carry the day. They have called on the Ancient League.’
‘I remember when the Ancient League was formed. I spoke to your people in Sarn itself before the last war,’ Che recalled.
Terastos blinked. ‘That was not you.’
She gave him a small smile. ‘Oh, it was. I was different then. I had not. . lost touch. But it was me.’
‘And here you are now.’ He was shaken more than suspicious. She guessed that a very emphatic coded missive would soon be winging its way to the Skryres of Dorax, or perhaps he would send the news using his magic, if he was capable. No doubt the next Moth who came to confront her would be made of sterner stuff.
‘The Ancient League. .’ he went on, glancing from her to her comrades and Balkus.
‘Is not ancient,’ Che finished for him. ‘The Moths of Dorax and the Mantis-holds of this forest here might be united in their traditions, but there was never a league until the Wasps came last time. I can guess that, once the Wasps had gone, the League ceased to be, each of you back to your solitary pursuits?’
‘And now the Sarnesh have called on us, whereupon we, being the masters of the League, have called upon our servants. And something has miscarried, yes. And you know nothing of this?’
‘Not yet,’ Che admitted. ‘But we’ve only just arrived. What are the Wasps doing?’
‘Waiting, no man knows for what.’
‘What do you mean, waiting?’ Thalric demanded, leaning into the conversation.
The Moth glowered at him. ‘They were advancing, sweeping all before them. Then they stopped. They have been still some tendays now. They keep their scouts ready, and prevent any others coming close, but they just wait.’
‘The cost of keeping an army in the field, at this distance from the nearest city, is enormous,’ Thalric pointed out. ‘Only orders from Capitas could allow it, unless someone’s playing some very complex game with them.’ His eyes slid aside from the Moth until they met Che’s.
‘Capitas,’ she echoed: heart of Empire and domain of the Empress Seda. Seda, who had been touched by the same ritual that had stripped Che of her Aptitude, who shared that intangible mark that Terastos and the Mantis-kinden perceived on Che. Seda, who had added a swiftly burgeoning magical skill to the vast breadth of her temporal might.
Che stood up abruptly, tentatively reaching out. Seda scared her, and all Che’s newfound power and knowledge did not help — it simply meant that she knew precisely why the woman was to be feared. Last time they clashed, only Maure’s intervention had saved Che from being imprisoned forever within her own mind.
Another newcomer was approaching: a young Roach-kinden girl, slender and white-haired. She came hurrying up, stopping for a moment when she saw how many guests Balkus had.
‘Syale, where have you been?’ the Ant demanded, his companions forgotten. ‘You’re the ambassador, life’s sake. You can’t just up and vanish. I thought something had happened to you. What would I have told old Sfayot?’
The girl stood with arms folded, as if on the point of sulking. ‘Firstly, don’t you dare twit me with my father’s name. If he had faith enough to send me, then that’s all you need to know. Secondly, something very nearly did happen to me. I’ve news: the Mantis-kinden have gone mad.’
‘Madder,’ Balkus responded sourly. ‘Their Nethyen woman came out here and stabbed someone, in your absence, and now nobody knows what’s going on.’
‘I know,’ Syale told him simply. ‘Balkus, I was there in the forest when it happened. They’re fighting.’
He opened his mouth, closed it, then said, ‘You don’t mean fighting the Wasps, do you?’
The girl shook her head and, in that wordless moment, Che saw just how shaken she was.
‘The Mantis-kinden are fighting each other. Their two holds are at war.’
And Che, whose magical sense had been stretching itself towards distant Capitas, snapped back into herself with a hiss, flinching as though she had burned herself.
‘What is it?’ Thalric was at her shoulder.
‘She’s here.’
She heard questions, then: from the Moth, from Balkus, from Tynisa. Thalric had gone very still, though, because he understood all too well.
‘The Empress, she’s here now. She’s with their army. She has done this.’
Five
‘General, she’s on her way in.’
General Roder glanced up, seeing one of the watch captains hovering at the door of his tent.
‘Report,’ he grunted.
‘Airship and escort spotted by our scouts, General,’ the officer informed him. ‘Signals say it’s her.’
Roder’s expression still pinned him. He was famous for his hard stares, which owed a great deal to the paralysis that had locked half his face following a Spider assassin’s poisoned strike. ‘By airship? She must be mad,’ the general muttered, half to himself. One adventurous sortie by Sarnesh orthopters and the Empire’s looking for a new ruler. .
‘She’s got some of the new fliers with her,’ the captain added, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Enough to throw back anything the Sarnesh could put in the air, sir. Maybe she’ll hand them over to us.’
‘Get the men turned out,’ Roder snapped at a nearby lieutenant. ‘If it is her, she’ll see us at our best. And double our scouts, ground and air; this would be a very bad time for the enemy to find some gap in our perimeter. Oh, and get hold of that long streak of jerky she calls an adviser. She’ll want him, I’d guess.’
‘He’s already out there,’ the captain informed him. ‘Even before our pilots reported back.’
Roder gave him a sour face. ‘No mystery there: he knew when she’d be arriving all along, just decided that an Imperial general wasn’t trustworthy enough to be told. Just goes to show, Captain, there are too many hands pulling in too many directions, back home, and precious few of them Wasp.’ He stepped out of his tent and scowled at the daylight. ‘Sends us headlong for Sarn, lets us smash them in the field, keep them off balance. . and then what? Some ancient, dried-up freak turns up waving her writ and has us kicking our heels for tendays while the Sarnesh get their nerve back and build their strength. If you’ve some way to make sense of that, I’d welcome it. It makes none to me.’
The object of his ire was standing out in the centre of the camp, gazing up at the sky as though the sparse clouds held an inordinate fascination. The old creature was hunchbacked, though still absurdly tall, gaunt and withered and bald like an unearthed corpse. His grey skin was banded with white and he wore a shabby robe of halved black and gold. He was the Empress’s slave, they said, and her adviser on unusual matters. He had been flown here by a Wasp belonging to something called the Red Watch — some new crowd of the Empress’s favourites — and with enough seals and recommendations to set his word as law over even an Imperial general. That he had failed to make a friend of Roder was understandable.