nothing irregular; in some cases reassignment had even come with a promotion attached. Only someone with a deep understanding of the hidden loyalties of Capitas would have understood that everyone coming in was Brugan’s man, while everyone going out was not.
The net was drawing tight, by the most delicate of stages. Esmail almost felt that he should hold his breath for it. Brugan was manoeuvring for a time when everyone around the Empress would be loyal to the general of the Rekef first, to the throne second.
Esmail-as-Ostrec was already standing to attention, but he — and every soldier there — still managed to straighten still further, shoulders back and brimming with Imperial pride, for the Empress had made her appearance, walking into the heart of Brugan’s net without seeming to notice.
To his eyes, she seemed to shine like the sun itself, the outpouring of her grand and unbridled power making him wonder that those others could simply stand so close without burning. Of course, they saw none of it: they were blindly Apt, and he must pretend to see none of it either, or else give himself away. Even so, he could not tear his gaze from her: Her Imperial Majesty Seda the First, Empress of all the Wasps, young and beautiful and commanding all eyes, all hearts. Esmail could almost hear the collective mental gasp of the soldiers all around him as Seda strode to the balcony rail and looked down on them. She wore a long gown of velvet, the sleeves loose so that they fell like wings and left her lower arms bare. Over this was buckled a cuirass and, although it was a fine piece of work, light and elegant, its resemblance to the banded mail of the Light Airborne was not by chance. She had a scabbarded sword at her side, such as no Imperial woman had ever openly worn before, and in her right hand was a slender lance, its narrow head a gilded dart. Her skin was like alabaster, her hair of gold. Esmail felt tears come to his eyes, seeing her, and did not know whether they were Ostrec’s or his own.
The building she had commandeered for this address was a flat-roofed, three-storey counting house of the Quartermaster Corps, previously just an abode of clerks and their numerate slaves. After today it would be known as the Little Palace, never again to be profaned by the murky business of commerce. The clerks would have to find themselves another haunt.
‘My people.’ Her voice was strong and clear, and the great mass of soldiers, almost two thousand of them all told, kept silent for her. Esmail was well aware that there must be at least another thousand in the buildings all around the square, looking out from windows and lesser balconies, or listening intently from within: Consortium merchants, craftsmen, the wealthy of good family, retired officers, slaves and the women of all of the above — here was the Empire in miniature.
‘I am to ask great things of you,’ Seda told them, as if she was speaking to each Wasp individually. ‘Our Empire has fought through many trying times, but our trials are not over; indeed, they are barely begun.
‘Your blood and sweat has recaptured the Empire and returned it to its rightful ruler,’ she told them. ‘You have held your loyalty firm, when a dozen voices tried to prise you away from your convictions. You have marched on the traitor-governors, who fancied themselves a dozen little emperors, and who would have diluted the grandeur of our state until we had become nothing better than the Lowlands: so many little cities fighting one another. I speak to you, therefore, as heroes of the Empire, saviours of its pride and peace. Do you ask: is my work not done?’
She actually paused for an answer, and Esmail felt it well up within him, despite himself. He opened his mouth, terrified by his loss of control, about to single himself out in all this great throng.
‘ No! ’ The shout arose from hundreds of throats all around him.
‘No,’ she agreed quietly, in the echo, but every man there heard her. ‘For there are those who look upon all we have built with envious eyes. There are those lesser kinden, little men, who know that they can never achieve what we have achieved, and whose only response is to try and tear down what we have made. They have worked against us, sometimes even amongst us, for many years. Perhaps there are even some here now whose loyalties are bought by the enemies of the Empire.’
Esmail quashed a sudden up-welling of panic, feeling the mood of the men around him respond to the Empress’s tone, ugly and fierce. He wondered if there would be another purge soon, people dragged from their homes and workshops and barracks, branded disloyal, traitors. The men who stood here would cheer that to the echo. Until their own time came.
‘Do you think the traitor-governors worked alone?’ Seda demanded of them. ‘No! For there are those beyond our borders who encouraged them, and gave them aid.’ She let the words ring off the walls for a moment before continuing. ‘Do you think that Myna and its allies would dare raid our borders without help? No! For they were armed and instructed by our enemies. And now, now that we have regained our strength despite all of their schemes and machinations, they have declared their intent to destroy us utterly. They cannot abide to live in a world where we are strong, and where we are not dependent on them, as they have made their neighbours dependent upon them. They cannot tolerate the fact that we are stronger than them, and prouder than them, that we are better than them. My people, Collegium and its allies have declared war.’
She left another pause there, but not for words, and the angry roar of the crowd sounded like thunder, like the leadshotters, like war.
‘So I must call upon you once again,’ Seda urged them, her clear voice cutting through the sound of their anger. ‘The Empire calls on you, for the Empire is beset on all sides by its enemies, by the envy of lesser kinden. The Empire must be defended, and there is only one way to defeat the Collegiate threat once and for all!
‘I call upon you, each and every one of you, to return to your armies, to your subordinates, to your fellows. Tell them that the Empress has need of them. Tell them that the Empire has need of them.’ She thrust her spear into the air, and the sun flashed on its gilded tip. ‘Either we must spread our wings over the Lowlands and bring them within our shadow, or everything we have worked for will be for nothing. Either they will destroy us, with their cunning and their lies, or we must conquer them. Every soldier must do his duty if the Empire is to survive. The Empire places its trust in each and every one of you and all your comrades. Will you stand?’
‘ Yes! ’ There was no hesitation. Every throat was shouting out the word.
‘Will you defend the Empire?’ Seda cried.
‘Yes!’
‘Will you take war to the very gates of Collegium?’
‘Yes!’
‘Then you are my heroes, and because of you the Empire shall last a thousand years!’ she declared. ‘Go from here now! March out and spread the word! You have a duty but, more, you have a destiny. The Empire cannot fall! The Empire will not kneel! The Empire shall prevail, and it shall prevail through you, its champions!’
The roar of approval that followed must have been heard all the way across the city, and Esmail cheered too and, in that moment, forgot that he was not one of them.
Part Two
Nineteen
The twin-rotored heliopter had been flying high, tilted nose-down at an unlikely angle as its pilot made the best of the headwind. It was an ungainly little craft, a wooden body like a squat teardrop with an outrigger either side for the blades and a box-kite tail. Someone had known a little about aeronautics when they built it, for it was swifter in the air than heliopters normally were but, when the Collegiate orthopter clipped past its nose to investigate, the visitor’s response was sluggish, lurching aside and then taking its own time to steady itself again in the air.
Taki watched from on high, in her Esca Magni. This was only a routine patrol, but the newcomer’s approach had seemed a good opportunity to set one of her students loose, so she had flashed the order. Now a young Beetle woman was guiding her flier past the visiting heliopter, before bringing herself level with it and matching course and speed. Taki nodded, satisfied.
