chitin’s sparkling finish was resplendent in their colours: black and gold.
They had bunches of moth-antennae plumes, cloaks lined with butterfly scales, torcs of gold and mother of pearl. These Dragonfly-kinden had clearly gone to great pains to impress, unaware that in the Empire such excess would seem quaint and barbaric. As they progressed towards the throne, presenting a study in pride and defiance, they were followed by an undercurrent of derision and mockery. What did they think they were, these savages decked in the livery of Empire? Was this some kind of joke?
‘Speak.’ Seda’s voice rang out, halting them. ‘What do you bring before me?’
There was a small exchange of sidelong glances between the two at the rear, but their leader knelt without hesitation. His brow gleamed a little with sweat, and Seda saw him swallow away a dry throat before he announced, ‘Your Imperial Majesty, accept me as your servant General Torste Sain, here to bring you word of the Principalities.’
At his proclaimed rank, a tide of laughter welled up, and an eddy of angry calls for the crossed pikes, amid jeers and threats. Seda held the gaze of Torste Sain the Dragonfly general, noticing his jaw clench and his shoulders hunch, as though readying himself for the rod.
She stood up abruptly and the room went silent, waiting for the Imperial verdict and for the downfall of these strange visitors. Instead, she turned her gaze upon her own court, and few enough of them dared meet her eyes the way the Dragonfly had.
‘How dare you mock?’ she demanded, not loudly, but sharply enough to reach the back of the room. ‘What do you find here that is worthy of your humour? Is there a general of our Empire who would dare to stand thus in the heart of a foreign state, facing every expectation of a swift execution? Would any of you risk your lives in the halls of the Spider-kinden Aristoi, or the royal court of some hostile Ant city-state?’ Torste Sain was regarding her impassively, so she invited him, ‘General, speak to us of the Principalities.’
At her words the kneeling Dragonfly stood up in a single smooth motion. ‘Great Majesty,’ he announced, ‘I am sent from the Principalities as a humble messenger. Since the borders of Empire shifted, you must know how we have been beset on all sides by the Commonweal to the west, by Myna and its allies to the east. We have had to forge ourselves a new state from the pieces that were left to us, guided by those of your people who remained and being taught the ways of Empire by your former servants. It is with joy that my people have learned the power of the new, Highness. I am proud to bear the rank of general, for I am the first of my kinden ever to do so.’ And he was indeed proud, it was plain to see. Seda wondered if any Wasp-kinden within living memory had felt that honour quite so keenly.
‘And do you seek to rejoin the Empire, General?’ she asked softly.
Taking a deep breath, he braced himself. ‘Your Highness, no.’
There might have been a uproar then, but her outstretched hands rendered it stillborn.
The general’s two companions were standing markedly closer together now, but he himself had not moved. ‘We honour the Empire,’ he stated. ‘There is no need to take what can be freely given. We shall have tribute for your treasury, Highness. We shall have soldiers to fight alongside your armies. We ask only for recognition as your friends and protection against our mutual enemies.’
This time she let the protests run a little longer, because there were many traditionalists still in her court, and the Empire had always recognized only two classes of geography: those parts of the map already in black and gold, and those parts yet to be painted. That mentality had served well enough to let a single hill tribe swallow up its kindred neighbours, and then put a score of other cities in chains. But the times have changed.
‘The word you seek is “protectorate”,’ she declared, and her court quietened quickly, because speaking over the Empress was seldom forgiven. She looked around at them all, seeing plenty there of shock and outrage, with the old guard ready to decry the insurrection of the Principalities’ Wasp-kinden, and to call for the subjugation of pretenders such as this Torste Sain. There were other expressions to be read too, though. There were thoughtful Consortium merchants, calculating tacticians, scholars of recent history and politics, Beetle-kinden diplomats and agents of the Rekef Outlander. They were thinking as she was thinking, using a logic that had nothing to do with Apt or Inapt.
‘Consider Collegium in the Lowlands,’ she urged her court. ‘How is it that Collegium is not beneath our flag already? Because Collegium never stands alone. When we fought Collegium, we were also fighting Tharn, the Spiderlands, the Sarnesh, Solarno and the Commonweal, not to mention the rebellions in Myna and Szar which Collegiate agents incited. That is how Collegium staved us off.’ She gifted them with a smile fierce as the sun. ‘You have all seen the statue that stands within the palace doors. Who are the defenders who stand at my back there? Soldier, artificer, merchant and diplomat. Wars are won by more weapons than swords and snapbows and artillery. General Torste, the Empire is glad to recognize its errant children, and to extend to them a hand of friendship and protection, and in return, and with our aid, you shall guard our border with the Commonweal, whose stratagems your people are best placed to understand. And when we march on the Lowlands once more, when we stand before the gates of Collegium, you shall be with us to see it, and this time we shall not turn away.’
Capitas: Now
There had been many changes in Capitas over the last few years. It was the Empire in miniature, and the Empire had been forced to deal with a great deal of turmoil since the strength of its armies had broken at Collegium and Sarn, Myna and Solarno and elsewhere. The ill-educated, within the Empire and without, claimed that the death of the Emperor had been the blow that rocked the Empire, but just as the death of a general would not halt an Imperial army, so the death of Alvdan II would have been nothing but a footnote in history, if only his armies and his battle plans had been sounder.
After the end of the external war had come the internal: renegade governors refusing to acknowledge Seda, setting themselves up as their own masters. The Empire had teetered on the brink of a disintegration that would have taken it back to its feuding tribal origins of three generations before.
That the Empire had survived to regain its territory and its strength was due to two saviours. One was embodied in Seda, her sharp mind and her adroit handling of both her allies and her enemies ensuring that she was never forced into a position from which only force could extricate her. The second saving factor was the other kinden, the Wasps’ second-class citizens.
There had always been a fair number of Beetle- and Fly-kinden in the Empire, and they were counted Imperials of a sort, not as good as Wasps but better than the rest. While the Wasp-kinden ran their armies, the Beetles and Flies tended to find work as clerks and merchants and administrators, and when the Empire had cracked apart, they had stepped into the breach. The efficiency of the Consortium of the Honest, of the Quartermaster Corps, the Engineers, the Capitas bureaucracy, had proved the glue that held the Empire together, and that was able to re-join each piece seamlessly. No demands were made, no threats, but by the end of the insurrection there was a notable number of influential Beetles and Flies who had found promotion and power, as well as the covert gratitude of the Empress.
But there was more than that. The doomsayers had predicted a hundred revolts, every enslaved city striving for its freedom. In truth, except for the cities of the West-Empire – Szar, Maynes and Myna in their new Alliance – the majority of the cities to rise up were those whose governors had forced the issue. The enemies of the Empress had turned out to be other ambitious Wasps rather than her subject peoples. There had been a few attempted rebellions, but most of the subject cities had otherwise simply gone about their business. In the aftermath, Seda made sure to reward both governors and slave-subjects for their loyalty, just as she had punished treachery without mercy or hesitation.
One result of this new mood within the Empire was that Capitas’s citizens were taking a keener interest in the subjects of their Empire, which in turn had led to the founding of the Imperial Museum. It was a Collegiate concept of course, though the Lowlander Beetles preferred exhibits representing the domains of the historian, naturalist or artificer. The Imperial Museum was just that: a museum of the Empire. The building itself was still being constructed, half of its halls and wings still just foundations surmounted by the skeletons of scaffolding, but the completed sections had already seen a brisk trade of fascinated Wasp-kinden come to learn more about their slaves and servants.
There was a Bee-kinden wing, where artefacts from the city of Vesserett were on display: their graceful yet functional carving, their elegant illustrated scrolls, all the trappings of their emergent power from the days in which they had been the nascent Empire’s first challenge. There was a hall of Grasshopper-kinden art from Sa, where slave musicians would play on certain days. There was a cellar tricked out to look like a Mole Cricket-kinden dwelling from Delve. There were three halls devoted to the Commonweal, one lined with the swords and armour of
