behind her.
She had done good work during the war, had contributed to the costly victory that had seen the Empire driven out of Tharn. The price had been high, though, and the architects of that freedom had found themselves under attack from their enemies within the city, and even from those who formerly had not been their enemies. Xaraea knew that her masters were on the defensive on the home front, but she knew also that their main focus had not wavered. As they wrestled with rival factions, in fierce debates that she would never be admitted to, they never lost sight of the enemy without. The Empire could come back at any time.
Xaraea had the sense that other factions were considering the Empire, too. She knew well that there was a surprisingly large Tharen diplomatic delegation at the Empress’s court. Wheels were in motion, and hers was the frustration of every intelligencer: that she could not know everything all at once. Sometimes she wondered if she knew anything at all.
Her orders still rang in her ears, though: clear, simple words from a cunning old man normally given to riddles and circumlocution. On no account must you be discovered. Nobody must know of what you have done. Implicit in the words was the knowledge that those he was warning her about were not foreign agents but others of her own people.
The phalanstery loomed before her without warning. It had been carved from the rock by her people long ago as a retreat, austere and understated, just a doorway and some narrow slits of windows cut into a span of rock that barely seemed the work of human hands. The door was new, though, crafted of heavy wood bound with metal, and with the look of being cut down from something larger. How the current occupants had hauled it all the way up here was beyond her, but then they were likely to feel the cold more than her mountain-loving kinden.
About to reach for the iron ring set into the door’s surface, she had a sudden moment of suspicion, looking about her in every direction. But she knew that, if she had been followed here, such caution came too late, and she had failed.
The place was a well-guarded secret, its very existence buried deep within the great libraries in the heart of the mountain, lost in plain sight as only the Moths could conceal their lore. Her masters had installed the current residents here a generation ago, and helped them become self-sufficient, teaching them all that the Moths knew about growing crops in the thin soil of the high fields. Those who lived here owed a great debt to her masters, and she had come to collect on it.
The door swung open, and she looked into the face of a Wasp-kinden.
She had been properly briefed and she did not even flinch. Fully three-quarters of the phalanstery’s residents were Wasps, and almost all of them former soldiers. That was essentially what this place was all about.
Perhaps he saw something in her face indicating the purpose behind her visit, for he hesitated before stepping back and letting her in. He wore a long robe, brown like a Way Brother’s, belted but without the sword that must have travelled with him most of his life. The calluses on his hands were born of the rake and hoe now.
‘Your name?’ she demanded of him. Names had power, everyone knew, except the Apt, and therefore perhaps the names of the Apt had no power after all. Still, old habits died hard.
‘Salthric,’ he told her flatly, not hostile but not welcoming either. ‘We were not expecting visitors.’
I should hope not. ‘Never mind that. I am here to see one of your people. Who must I speak to? Who is your… commanding officer.’ She pronounced the Wasp-kinden words precisely, and saw them strike him like a blow.
‘You may speak with me,’ Salthric said firmly. ‘I am Father here.’ In the Empire, his order organized itself into cells, brothers under the hand of a Father. She sneered inwardly at the patriarchy of it, but the Broken Sword cult was almost exclusively male. It was well known that the Empire did not tolerate societies, philosophical orders or sects within its hierarchy. No two masters: that was the Imperial creed. In reality a fair few were diplomatically overlooked, such as the Mercy’s Daughters, who trailed the armies and brought succour to the injured, or the Arms Brothers duelling societies that had such clandestine popularity amongst the Imperial officers. Of all the sects that the Empire hated, however, and rooted out wherever it was found, the Broken Sword was the most reviled. Its very existence was anathema to the Empire, for it dared to speak against war, the Empire’s lifeblood. Its members were mostly soldiers who had seen too much, done too much, lost too many friends, gone too long without seeing their families or homes. Most of them worked secretly within the Empire, within the very army, but one of their projects was to smuggle out those who had simply had too much of war, and this phalanstery in the mountains of Tharn was one such destination.
She faced up to Salthric, a slender, grey young woman against a strong-framed man whose very hands could kill. ‘Esmail,’ she said. ‘I’m here for him.’
His expression told her that he had been expecting something of the sort. He took a deep breath, and said, ‘No.’
‘It was not a request.’
‘No, he is at peace here. He does not deserve to have it taken from him,’ Salthric replied, with surprising vehemence.
‘You have no understanding of what he is,’ she told him flatly.
‘I may only be one of the Apt, but I know,’ he hissed. ‘I understand. I know how much he has lost — to your people. I will not let you have him.’
They were not alone now. Three other robed Wasps had heard their voices and drifted in: two were middle- aged, one old enough to have retired if he had still been with the army. They looked from her to Salthric warily, not sure what was going on.
‘You owe my people,’ Xaraea stated, staring Salthric in the eye. ‘Who brought you here? Who gave you this place? Who let you live unmolested in the mountains? Who taught you our ways so that you could survive?’
‘I know all this-’ he started, but she was not done.
‘And when the Empire came to Tharn with its machines and soldiers, who was it said nothing about our guests here in the phalanstery?’
Silence fell, her eyes boring into his.
‘The politics of Tharn are very fluid at the moment, Salthric — especially where the Empire is concerned. Who would you want to be the next visitor knocking at your door?’
In his face was not fear for himself, but fear for everything else there, for the other exiles, his precious order.
She had no time for respect or pity. ‘Take me to Esmail, if you please.’
She saw his hands twitch at his sides, fingers clawing as his stinging Art surged within him, and as he fought down generations of Wasp anger. He could kill her, without doubt, but then what? The Broken Sword’s existence here was precarious enough as it was. At last, he turned, storming off into the deeper halls, and she stepped lightly after him.
There was a little light within, from shafts sunk into the rock, but mostly they relied on torches and lanterns fixed to the walls. She suspected that the older residents no longer needed them, finding their way through the buried rooms by touch and memory. That Salthric took a torch with him was, she suspected, a wretched attempt to warn her target that they were approaching.
The faces she passed were almost universally Wasp men, but not quite all. Some were women; the luckiest escapees had managed to bring their families away with them. There were a few Ants as well, a Bee-kinden, the grey-blue of a Mynan Beetle. The Broken Sword was for broken soldiers, and they made no hard distinctions as to kinden.
Esmail, the man she had come to see, was no Wasp, and — despite Salthric’s words — Xaraea was unconvinced that the Broken Sword truly knew what his heritage was.
Salthric guided her to a doorway hung with a curtain, in the Moth style. For a moment he just glowered at her, then he stalked off, leaving her alone.
Perhaps he hopes Esmail will kill me, she considered. It was certainly a possibility.
She pushed aside the curtain and went in. There were two rooms beyond, square boxes of stone one after the other, and Esmail stood in the archway between them, ready to fight her if necessary.
Xaraea smiled, for she saw her path clearly now. They taught cruelty early, in the Arcanum.
He was a lean, poised man with a gaunt face and a high forehead, eyes deep as wells, dark enough to defeat even a Moth’s sight. His mouth was a narrow line. Not a Wasp, and yet most would find it hard to say quite what kinden he was. Some halfbreed, perhaps, save that he bore none of the signs of crossed heredity. His hair was the
