So she had cast an eye over Ostrec, the duplicitous, and seen that spark strong within him, and made him hers, and never realized that here was a creature cunning enough to hide his true nature from her. She had never realized that Ostrec, the Quartermaster lieutenant and Rekef major, had been dead for tendays, and that the man she had taken into her closest circle was a spy and a killer of a very different kind.
His name was Ostrec. His name was Esmail. He was one of the very few left of his kinden, the Assassin Bugs who had fought and lost an ancient war against the Moth-kinden in ages forgotten to Apt history. He had been sent to the Empire by Moths of Tharn, but it was plain to him that those Tharen sages who had briefed him had lost out to bolder spirits, for Tharn was allied with the Empire now. He would be getting no further instructions.
They had briefed him to investigate the Empress, to find out what she was. More, they had briefed him to kill her.
He would be able to manufacture the opportunity, he knew, for Ostrec was trusted by the Empress. If he had been unconcerned with his own survival, then he could have done it already, but he had left family behind near Tharn, and he was not quite ready yet for the ultimate sacrifice.
More, he was not sure that he would do it, even if he could be sure to walk away from the deed. The frightening revelation was that the Empress was Inapt, and held a great deal of magical power, and if she was also capricious and wicked and ruthless, so what? These were not solely Wasp virtues, after all, and could be claimed by many of the great magicians of old. Looking on Seda, Esmail was only struck by how much the current crop had lost of their inheritance. For her part, she was young and vital and strong, and she did not hesitate to use her power. She had bound Mantis-kinden to her, destroyed her rivals and roused an Empire to war, and all this from being a timid girl living in the shadow of her brother’s displeasure.
She claimed that she would bring back the old days. Esmail, whose heritage and training were sunk deep in those lost times, reckoned that, if anyone could do it, Seda could.
He was having a difficult time working out where his true loyalties should lie, and in the meantime the Empress was not standing still. Here they were at the gates of the Mantis dream, and tomorrow the Wasps would march in to support their Nethyen allies, and Seda would march along with them to secure. .
He was not sure what, for she did not confide in anyone save the crooked Woodlouse-kinden Gjegevey. Power would be involved, though, that seemed beyond doubt. Something buried in the Mantis wood was calling to her. The thought of Seda with yet more power in her hands filled him with fear, and yet quickened his blood. What might she not do? What might she not bring back from those dead ages?
He would go with her into the trees tomorrow, he knew. He would go, and her Mantis bodyguards, and that creature Tisamon, which Esmail knew was no living man — another feat from the old stories that Seda had somehow recreated! With them would go the Empire’s best, the most skilled Pioneers that General Roder could lay his hands on. Behind them would come the scouts and trackers and Light Airborne of the Eighth Army, those soldiers best suited to fighting in such a dark and twisted place.
I will bring it all back, she had said, and the prospect of killing her was receding, day by day. Even though she did not really know him, he was becoming her creature every bit as much as Tisamon was.
She will destroy us all, he warned himself, yet there was much of him that could not make himself regret it.
When Seda emerged from her tent, General Roder was waiting for her and had been for some time. She could read a great deal in his half-crippled face about just how well that sat with him.
She noticed his eyes register Tisamon, and saw him master an instinctual flinch away — such good instincts he had. Still, here he was, so plainly something important was gnawing at the general — or at least something that he considered important.
‘Your Imperial Majesty.’
‘Ah, General.’ She favoured him with a smile. ‘I hope you are not here hoping to dissuade me from my jaunt?’ He had certainly tried to argue against her entering the Mantis wood, with fistfuls of reasons that to the Apt were entirely logical and persuasive. If that was his tune still this morning she would not be pleased, but she sensed something else had sunk its jaws into him.
‘I have received word from the Second Army, Majesty,’ Roder reported, holding out a scroll.
She waved it away. It would be in some Apt code, illegible to her even if she had been taught the cipher. But then, as Empress, she had people to read things for her. In such a fashion her Inapt nature went undiscovered even in the heart of the Empire. ‘Tell me,’ she instructed.
‘General Tynan informs me he is on the move, as per orders. The Second has resumed its march on Collegium.’
She had not doubted it. Tynan was a solid, reliable officer, experienced enough to cope with his recent reversals against the Beetles. Nobody ever said that conquering Collegium would be easy. A lie: many back in Capitas had claimed the Beetles would fall before Tynan as swiftly as their kin in Helleron had capitulated, but they were fools who did not realize that a warrior spirit was not the sole route to determined resistance. The Beetles were tough and ingenious and, even though Seda could no longer understand all their clever Apt ways, she was well aware that they could still throw myriad problems at General Tynan’s feet. His war would be fought by artificers just as much as by soldiers.
‘He. .’ A moment’s hesitation while Roder considered the words of a fellow general which had been meant only for him. ‘He is concerned about his air strength against the Beetles. He has a great deal of respect for their pilots and machines.’ Had Tynan’s actual words expressed something stronger, something approaching criticism? No matter: Seda had looked into Tynan’s face and soul. He would follow orders.
‘The issue is in hand, General,’ she told Roder, feeling a small degree of amusement that this part of Tynan’s fight — a key element of the Second’s strategy of which even Tynan was ignorant for now — was something that she could understand.
Still Roder stood there with the burden of something unsaid weighing him down. Seda sighed, feeling the pressure of her station and majesty: how to inspire awe in your underlings without all these awkward pauses while they searched their own words for treason? ‘Just speak, General. The forest awaits me.’
The general nodded. ‘It is a matter concerning the Second, Majesty.’ His gaze flicked to Tisamon, and then back to her. She found it remarkable that the eye in the paralysed half of his face was perhaps his most expressive feature now. ‘Tynan has the Spiders as his allies.’
Ah, there we are. ‘General, we are confident in our strategies and in those we send to war,’ she told him. ‘You should concern yourself with your own campaign.’ And she began to walk away.
‘No, Majesty!’ and he had put out a hand to physically stop her, whereupon Tisamon’s gauntlet blade was at his throat, and it was only because Seda had a swift enough mind to rein her bodyguard in that she was not in need of a new general there and then.
‘Explain yourself,’ she snapped, staring at his frozen, outstretched hand. Perhaps I do need a new general, after all. She had thought she had the measure of Roder’s rebellious thoughts and insecurities, but this was new.
‘Your Imperial Majesty,’ Roder said carefully, the razor line of steel still touching his neck, ‘do not trust the Spider-kinden. They cannot be trusted.’ His eyes entreated her, afire with the need to communicate. ‘I fought them in the last war, barely three years ago. They were our enemies then and they are our enemies now — save that they have a score to settle with Collegium. They were the Beetles’ allies once, remember! When Tynan and his Second are at their most extended, when the fight balances on a knife-edge, they will betray him for the Beetles again. Or else, when he has won, his men depleted whilst the Spiders hold back, they will destroy him and claim the spoils that are ours. Majesty, Tynan has left a chain of such conquests in his wake — Tark, Merro, Kes — and they are all gone over to the Spiderlands, not to the Empire.’