General Brugan nodded soberly, his own brandy untouched. All over the palace his men were in motion even now. All suspects were being rounded up for the Rekef cells, all the mongrels and lesser races that the Empress inexplicably chose to associate with, taken to where they could do no more harm, and held ready for disposal later. The list had been surprisingly long, from long-time advisers like doddering old Gjegevey all the way down to dubious servants, Commonwealer slaves. It’s just as well we’ve stopped the rot here.
But, of course, that was barely the true reason, in his heart of hearts. He, Harvang and Vecter had just come from a full meeting of the conspirators. His collection of Consortium magnates, army officers and Rekef men were now out doing his bidding, and they all believed that this was simply about building a wall between the Empress and such undesirables, with themselves installed as gatekeepers of course. But it’s not about that. It was about control. Taking control of her. Taking back control of his own life.
She had called him to her, last night. He still felt the shudder inside him, recalling the blood she had offered him, in a goblet finer than the one holding his brandy. Then the sense of something vital being leached from him, as her skin met his… and yet he could not stay away from her. He wanted her, but he needed to redefine the terms on which he tasted her. He needed to make her his, for at the moment he was far more hers.
‘General?’ Harvang prompted, and he knew he had missed something — a bad failing in any high-ranking Wasp, and especially a Rekef general. He glanced from Harvang to neat little Vecter, and tried to recapture the echo of what had been said.
‘Ostrec,’ he agreed, almost heartily. It was a stab in the dark, but Harvang’s expression — a little too much relief for comfort — reassured him. The young major was lurking near the door, looking bland in his Quartermaster Corps uniform. He was quite the favourite with the Empress, Brugan knew, and that knowledge made him grind his teeth. Someone else for the cells, sooner or later. If only Harvang wasn’t so fond of him. There would be a time, though, when Ostrec slipped out of the greasy orbit of the colonel, and then he would disappear, sinking without trace.
‘We owe you a great deal, Major,’ Brugan declared, beckoning the younger man to approach. ‘You’ve managed to work up quite a list of names. The Empire thanks you, and so do I.’
‘Merely my duty, General,’ Ostrec replied smoothly.
Brugan suppressed a scowl. ‘All her mystics and hangers-on will be under lock and key before the day is out. The real test will come when we take her bodyguards. Mantis-kinden are too unpredictable. Having them within her presence is asking for trouble. After all, the Eighth is fighting the Mantis-kinden right now.’
‘The old Woodlouse was saying that we had to order the Eighth to hold its ground,’ Vecter observed, with a raised eyebrow.
Harvang snorted. ‘And why? Because the moon was in the wrong phase, or he’d seen a particularly foreboding shadow, no doubt.’
‘Something to do with worms.’ Vecter dismissed the thought with a flick of his hand.
Ostrec was still standing before Brugan, and for a moment his expression… no, not his expression, which was as placid as could be, but there was some shift, as though his face had been momentarily translucent, some other drowned features twitching beneath them. Brugan blinked, feeling ill with the dislocation of it. Nothing was amiss: it was Ostrec, nobody but Ostrec, now looking at him in concern.
‘General?’
‘That will be all,’ Brugan said, too forcefully. I have to get control before it’s too late. She’s ruining me, rattled through his head.
‘You, and me,’ Scain said, without warning. The Farsphex pilots and their bombardiers had been drawn up in neat ranks beside their machines on the makeshift field that the Second Army had cleared for them that day. Pingge jumped guiltily: there had been quite a long silence and her mind had wandered, and only now did she realize that the Wasps had been conferring.
‘What was that, sir?’ she whispered.
‘Going to talk with the general.’
‘ What, sir?’ Heads turned to look and she gritted her teeth.
‘We are mounting a delegation to General Tynan. He has some orders for us: a new phase of the war,’ Scain murmured. ‘We get to go.’
But I don’t want to meet a general, was a useless comment, and of course she did not say it. Pingge was nervous, though. A ripple of some kind of emotion had passed through the Wasp-kinden, one and all. Aarmon was doing something risky.
‘Come on.’ Scain stood forward, still just a gangling young Wasp-kinden, for all the flying and fighting experience he had lived through. Pingge saw Kiin pattering forward too, saluting at Aarmon’s beckoning gesture, and from further down the ranks came Sergeant Nishaana and her bombardier Tiadro.
‘ She’s coming too. Scain… I mean, sir?’
Scain looked back at her with a slight smile. ‘Aarmon says they can take us as they find us,’ he told her.
Six of them: two Wasp men, a Wasp woman, two Fly women and one Fly man, they marched smartly through the great sprawling camp that the Second Army and the Aldanrael forces had established between them. If it had not been for the Spiders, then Pingge guessed fingers would have been pointing from the first moment, but the brightly coloured variety of the Spiderlands troops provided a camouflage that almost anything could have hidden against. Nishaana drew a few glances from soldiers who had not seen a woman of their own kinden for some while who wasn’t a whore, but there was none of the comments, jeers and lewd suggestions that Pingge had been expecting. Compared with the Empire’s new allies, the aviators were positively normal.
Of course, Aarmon’s thunderous glower might have contributed to their reticence, she decided. For most of their way through the camp she could not work out what the man was up to. Only as they were practically at the general’s tent did she guess at it: their branch of the Engineers was both new and different, in a society that was suspicious of the first quality and outright hostile towards the second. A division of mind-linked soldiers using experimental machinery and taking on such an unprecedented selection of recruits would already have gathered many enemies back home, for no other reason than just how very new and how very different they were. Faced with that, Aarmon would have had two options: he could work to minimize the outward show, bow his head, hope to be overlooked, or he could look his detractors in the eye and dare them. And no prizes for guessing which way he’s jumped.
The welcoming committee within the tent was also some way from Imperial standard. General Tynan, nothing more than a bald and ageing Wasp with a fancy rank badge to Pingge’s eyes, stood with proper military decorum in the centre of the tent’s interior, an easel beside him with maps tacked on and annotated. Beside him, though, an elegant Spider-kinden woman reclined on a couch, attended by a couple of Fly-kinden men, while there were two more Spiders, both men and well armoured, right behind her. On the general’s other side were a pair of colonels, a thin one with the badge of the Engineers and a stockier one that she already knew as Cherten of Army Intelligence.
‘Major Aarmon.’ Tynan received Aarmon’s pinpoint salute, even as his eyes flicked over the aviators’ delegation. He nodded slightly, and Pingge saw the Spider woman smile a little in acknowledgement of the newcomers’ bravado. But, of course, the Spiders have women soldiers, more of them than the men, and they’ve been marching with the Second for tendays. This is probably the most receptive audience Aarmon’s likely to get.
‘Your people are winning a lot of credit for the Engineers, I understand,’ Tynan observed, ‘both for your machines and your training. You’ve made quite an impact. On the enemy as well, I’m sure.’ It was not a joke and nobody smiled. ‘I’m aware that you’re not a standard army detachment.’ His eyes made brief reference to the Fly- kinden and Neshaana. ‘If you’ve come here to fight that battle, then take it elsewhere. I don’t care. I have a city to capture, and the composition of your force is of no importance to me, so long as you do your job.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Aarmon, stiff-backed and outmanoeuvred.
‘What you need to know is that there have been developments back home regarding the engineers and your resources.’
‘Sir?’
Pingge could almost sense the words passing swiftly between Aarmon and Scain and Neshaana, and the other pilots back at the impromptu airfield.
‘Colonel Mittoc?’ Tynan prompted his underling.
‘Hm.’ the skinny engineer nodded rapidly, ‘General Lien has finally decided to trust us with a consignment of
