shattered shell of Malkan’s Folly.
‘You’ve come to see the result of the battle for the Empress?’ Roder hazarded.
For a moment the helm turned towards him. In the failing light there was the suggestion of a ghostly pale face beneath the raised visor, and the man’s stare had a cold force that sent Roder back a step.
Then the Mantis was striding forwards, towards the edge of the camp and then beyond it, heading for the fallen fortress, and for its hidden defenders waiting in the darkness below.
That night, some of the sentries reported hearing screams.
Twenty-Two
‘She certainly makes a good show,’ Colonel Harvang commented. For once he was not eating, although his fleshy lips twitched and moved when he was not speaking, as though still savouring something.
The senior members of General Brugan’s conspiracy were meeting in the palace itself, a room buried deep in the cellars, one of a complex of chambers that the Rekef traditionally used for storing useful prisoners and parting them from their secrets with the aid of machinery. It said a great deal about the Empire that such concerns were already in the architects’ minds when the edifice was first planned.
General Brugan grunted. He had been with the Empress last night, during another of her debauches. He felt physically drained now, as he always did, and the blood that so obviously fed her seemed only to leach something vital from himself. He had tried, so very hard, to see it all as just the ruler of the Wasps exalting in her power, but he knew that it was more, and that he would never understand.
He shuddered, visibly enough that Harvang raised an eyebrow.
‘These tapes…’ Colonel Vecter was poring over his reports, and had not noticed. ‘These cloth things the halfbreed makes…’ If a machine was not intended for excruciation, he had little time for it. ‘They take her voice all over the Empire, inspirational messages to the troops. I have good reports — morale and fighting spirit all kept high. The personal touch.’ He tutted. ‘General, I was unsure why you were so insistent on keeping her, rather than simply replacing her, but I think I understand. It is a bitter thought but the Empire does need her.’
Brugan stared at him. Oh, you do not understand. The intrinsic division within him warred constantly. He hated Seda, he feared her: she was unnatural, terrifying, something from the old stories. Yet he could not live without her. The best compromise he could make was to possess her, control her. He could diminish her into a proper example of Wasp-kinden womanhood, and so regain some vestige of control over himself.
They had not brought many of their confederates here; this was Rekef territory after all, and outsiders were seldom welcome. Only Harvang’s man, Ostrec, was here to listen in, and that only because the conversation would eventually turn to his orders.
‘We have our people mostly in place,’ Vecter continued. ‘The palace is under our control, and we have Colonel Sherten in the city garrison. There’s Major Hasp of the Slavers, and Knowles in the Consortium. No serious inroads into the Engineers, but then they’re not a political force yet.’ He looked up brightly. ‘Time to sound the advance?’
‘We still haven’t touched her,’ Brugan said. The others looked at him blankly, but he knew he was right. Seda seemed to move in another world, a different medium. She had her dubious advisers: the old Woodlouse, passing Moth ambassadors, odd slaves and servants who came and went and disappeared, so that even the Rekef could not keep track of them. The conspirators could control all the soldiers they wanted, but they would not even approach Seda’s secret world.
He could not explain this to them. He could barely explain it to himself. He knew, though, that if he was to triumph over her, if he was to become Seda’s master, then he must strip her of that orbit of counsellors, those frauds and shysters who whispered mysticism into her ears.
‘Ostrec,’ he growled, and the major started in surprise. ‘Your work.’
‘I have been in her presence two or three times, sir,’ Ostrec reported. ‘I have seen her notice me, perhaps more than notice, but.. nothing more. I have felt myself on the point of some breakthrough for a tenday or more.’
‘Your breakthrough has come,’ Brugan told him flatly. ‘She has sent for you.’
This was news to everyone and that in itself was a sour point. Ostrec was ostensibly from the Quartermaster Corps, but Seda had given the command to Brugan himself. So does she know he’s Rekef, or not? And such an offhanded command it had been. ‘She said she wants to see more of you. At night.’ The words were painful to spit out, and his manner was putting the two colonels on edge. ‘The museum, you know it?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve not visited but I know where it is.’
‘You’ll go?’
Ostrec frowned, the perfect picture of a dutiful Wasp. ‘If you so order it, of course, sir.’
Harvang made a noise, more of hoarse breathing than anything else, but enough to draw their attention. ‘Sometimes men go to visit the Empress there and never leave. Just as sometimes slaves — or those of a higher station — are summoned to her at the palace and likewise are not seen again.’
‘The servants…?’ Ostrec ventured.
‘Oh someone must be doing it — taking away the bodies, cleaning up the mess, after whatever it is that actually goes on,’ Harvang said heavily, and his glance towards the general was keen: I know that you know more than you let on. ‘There seems to be a hidden cadre within the palace, and we have not been able to infiltrate it — we cannot even see what to infiltrate. Is it just those cursed Mantis bodyguards doing all the work? Who else does she use? She’s called you, my boy, and either you’ll die of it or you’ll find out something useful. You understand?’
‘I believe I do, sir,’ Ostrec replied calmly.
He was a handsome young man, Brugan thought sourly. Was the Empress motivated by something so commonplace? He thought not, but he could never be certain. I hope he dies.
‘I feel,’ said Seda, ‘like a child who has only just learned to read — so very late! — and now they tell me all the libraries burned down before I was born.’
The book beneath her hands was ancient, pages of cracked and tattered vellum on which the faded ink was barely legible, scuffed and rubbed away, and in places there were the tracks of beetle larvae and the blackened edges of old burns. Of the original text perhaps only half remained intact.
‘I have come into my inheritance. I have gone to the ancient wardens of the beginning times and exacted tribute from them. I stride into the sunlight to enter into my kingdom and… dust and ashes. Where has it gone? ’
‘Five hundred, hm, years, your Imperial Majesty,’ came the soft, careful voice of old Gjegevey. Pale in the lamplight, the gaunt and hunchbacked Woodlouse-kinden loomed behind her. Grey-skinned and tall, at least a hundred of the years he spoke of weighed on his shoulders, but his were a long-lived kinden. And even he could not remember the real days of magic that had passed away so long ago, and so completely.
The shutters were drawn, and Seda had ordered servants to nail blankets up across them, sealing out the sun. The fragile Moth-kinden text that she was trying to piece her way through seemed merely blank in daylight. Only guttering flames would reveal the faint scratching of its secrets.
‘The Moths themselves,’ Seda murmured, ‘they come to my court from Tharn, and think to teach me. I would learn, truly I would, but either they are too close-handed with what they know or… Gjegevey, they speak mostly politics, no different to any ambassador or courtier. What of their great plans for the world?’
‘They are what the times, ah, have made of them,’ he ventured. ‘And their great magics perhaps come at too great a price, hm? Majesty, you have no doubt heard the same, hrm, rumours from Tharn as I. The magic they raised to, ah, evict your brother’s troops, it has, hm, left a stain. Deaths, madness… I gain the impression that many of their Skryres did not, hm, survive the experience. And this was the greatest magic our times have seen, undertaken by some of its, hem, most skilled practitioners.’
‘So I should think smaller?’ she snapped over her shoulder, scathingly. ‘I should content myself with their scraps?’
‘If that were my, hm, advice, would you follow it, Majesty?’
The look she gave him was answer enough. ‘It cannot all be gone.’ The book was a history, but the ancient
