revere the old days when magic had walked freely over the world – before the Apt revolution.
Still, after she had returned from Khanaphes with the invisible brand on her brow, the mark of the Masters, they had given themselves over to her, heart and soul.
One of them knelt before her, presenting the object she had called for: a battered leather gauntlet with a short, vicious blade jutting from between the second and third finger, connected to a metal bar the wearer would grip, able to flex its killing point in and out: now standing straight, now folded back. The archetypal Mantis weapon, lethal beyond swords in the hands of a master, laughable when wielded by the untrained. But she had seen what it could do. She had been given a detailed and graphic lesson on just what carnage a man could wreak with such a thing.
She nodded, and the Mantis-kinden secured the glove to the armour’s empty cuff. She put a hand on the elegantly spined pauldrons, feeling the emptiness, a vacancy that went beyond a simple, unoccupied suit of mail, as though the breastplate enclosed a vast lonely abyss, and in its depths…
She sipped from the chalice, tasting Karrec’s blood. His life of small cruelties and petty selfishness had given it a bitter flavour, but there was a rich aftertaste there, his unknown heritage that she had parsed out. It was not that the Imperial bloodline was special in some objective way that an artificer could discern through analysis in glassware and measurement, but so long as an emperor or empress held sway, commanded the terror and the adoration of a hundred thousand and more, as long as the citizens of the Empire believed that blood and destiny rode side by side, then the blood of emperors was a power and currency in the magical realm of symbols and significances. It was a trick the Commonwealers, too, had mastered an age before, and then forgotten.
Almost gently she touched the lower rim of the Mantis-crafted helm and tipped it back, the empty visor staring at the ceiling. With a smooth motion, she emptied the chalice of Karrec’s blood into the helm, hearing it gush down into the further reaches of the armour.
No words, at first. She reached out, still reinventing the discipline she practised moment to moment. Had anything such as this been attempted for five hundred years? She felt not. Something urged her on, though, some spirit of the magical traditions she had been unwillingly initiated into: the twisted darkness of the Mantis-kinden leaching from the shattered Shadow Box of the Darakyon, and the blood and hatred of the Mosquito-kinden from her late mentor Uctebri, combining in her now, funnelled into her until she became something quite new: a walker between two worlds, a thing from another age.
And far away, in a direction that had nothing to do with the compass, she felt him answer.
‘Come to me,’ she whispered into the blood-spattered helm. ‘Come now to me, great killer. I, Seda, call to you. I have your blade, your Weaponsmaster’s blade that is more a part of you than it is the smith’s art. I have your heritage embodied in this shell of steel and chitin. I have the blood of royalty for you to drink. Come to me, speak to me. Serve me.’
The armour moved and, despite herself, she took a quick step back. At first it was a subtle shifting of the plates that could have simply been the old metal settling on the stand, but then, and without any definite, identifiable motion, something about it had changed irrevocably, and it was no longer a lifeless object but a man standing, faceless behind the helm.
She was very aware of the blade, the same blade that had shed the blood of so many of her father’s soldiers, that had broken the Shadow Box and killed Uctebri, and condemned her to be what she was now.
‘Look upon me,’ she instructed it. ‘See what I am. I am the heir to the old ways. I am the successor to the Masters of Khanaphes. I am old magic’s envoy in the world.’
Its reply chilled her when it came, in a voice like the rustling of old leaves, the creaking of branches.
One of them. You are the second I have met, to bear that mark.
Something hard crystallized in Seda, a seed of anger and jealousy. ‘Do not fear that. It will not be for long. So, the Beetle girl has sought you also? Well, no matter. She is not so free with the blood of others as I am. She lacks the qualities to command one such as you. Serve me, Mantis-kinden. Tisamon of Felyal, I name you, Weaponsmaster, gladiator, slave and killer. Serve me, be mine.’
And why? came that cold voice once again.
‘Because where else would you find a fit mistress for one such as you, save in me?’ she replied. ‘Because I shall let you fight, and I shall give you blood. Because you shall be the champion of an Empress, her executioner and her blade. But, more than this, you shall serve me for the same reason your living kin here also serve me.’
And what is that?
‘Because I shall bring them all back, those days that you yearn for, the elder days of magic. I am the immortal magician-queen of the Empire, and I shall remake the world in my image, the Apt and the Inapt both. Where your kind’s old masters, the Moth-kinden, have tried for five centuries to turn back the clock with spells and potions, I shall usher in a new age with armies and conquest. The Days of Lore will return, the days of darkness and fear, and I shall rule over them, and you shall be my right hand. Serve me.’
She watched and waited, and saw his blade quiver and flex. Eyes glittered suddenly in the empty night of the helm.
Tisamon nodded.
Glossary
Characters
Aarth – Wasp merchant in the Principalities
Achaeos – Moth-kinden, Che’s lover, killed in a ritual
Alvdan II – former Emperor of the Wasps, Seda’s brother, killed by Uctebri’s magic
Alvric – first Emperor of the Wasps, Seda’s grandfather
Amnon – Beetle-kinden, former First Soldier of Khanaphes
Angved – Wasp engineer
Ang We (‘Angry’) – Grasshopper bandit chief
Avaris – Spider fraudster and bandit
Barad Ygor – Scorpion bandit
Brugan – Wasp general of the Rekef
Cheerwell Maker (‘Che’) – Beetle-kinden, Stenwold’s niece, now Inapt
Chevre Velienn – Dragonfly noblewoman
Dal Arche – Dragonfly bandit chief
Dariandrephos (‘Drephos’, ‘the Colonel-Auxillian’) – halfbreed Master Artificer, leader of the Iron Glove
Emon – Bee artificer with the Iron Glove
Ethmet – Beetle First Minister of Khanaphes
Feass – Grasshopper bandit
Felipe Shah – Dragonfly Prince-Major of the Principality of Roh
Felise Mienn – Dragonfly duellist, killed with Tisamon in Capitas
Gaved – Wasp mercenary, Sef’s lover
Gjegevey – Woodlouse-kinden, Imperial adviser and slave
Gramo Galltree – Beetle-kinden, self-styled Collegiate ambassador to the Commonweal
Gryllis – Spider-kinden, business partner of Hokiak
Halter – Wasp slaver in the Principalities
Hardy Fordwright – Beetle scholar and alchemist
Hokiak – Scorpion black-marketeer in Myna
Isendter ‘Whitehand’ – Mantis Weaponsmaster
Jons Allanbridge – Beetle aviator
Karrec – Wasp Consortium officer
Kymene – Soldier Beetle-kinden, Mynan stateswoman and former resistance leader
Lien – Wasp colonel of Engineers
Lioste Coren – Dragonfly-kinden, seneschal to Felipe Shah
