She tried to read his face, his posture, but there was nothing. ‘I won’t. .’ It was harder to say it than she had thought, with his threat still hanging in the air. ‘I won’t betray my uncle.’
‘Then simply sit and talk,’ he said. ‘A few words, a little wine perhaps. Let us find out where the borders of your betrayal are. Let us visit them together, look into that forbidden country.’
‘You think you can trick me,’ she said.
‘You think I can’t trick you,’ he countered. ‘Why should we not see who is right?’
She regarded him suspiciously, saying nothing, and he smiled. It was such a frank and open expression that it took her off her guard.
‘We tried to kill your uncle. We hunted you across the Lowlands. We tried to trap you in Helleron. We caught you. We enslaved you. We nearly raped you. We threaten you. With all of that on the account, some people might quite have taken against us.’
A strained laugh escaped her, his humour was so unexpected.
‘Perhaps tonight I should talk and you should listen, and tomorrow or the next night you may feel like talking to me,’ he suggested.
‘I–I don’t think that I’ll ever-’
‘Don’t. .’ His voice stopped her, in that one word was a world of warning. ‘Don’t say anything that you cannot take back. You think you’re special, yes?’
‘I. . Not so special your bully boys mightn’t have killed me just like anyone else, as one of their nasty little examples.’
The smile again. So very genuine and wry, and yet the things he smiled at would have appalled any rational person. ‘But you were in no danger, Miss Maker. I had already made sure that you would live through the experience. It was just an object lesson.’ He leant forward over the desk. ‘But if you are overly stubborn, then next time it may be for real. You think I am an evil man, yes?’
‘That we can agree on.’
He sat back, poured two goblets of wine as he spoke. ‘Taken as a whole, I would say that I am no more virtuous nor vice-ridden than any other, save for one overriding virtue. Do you know what that virtue is? True, it is a virtue rare in the Lowlands, in my limited experience. It is loyalty. I will do anything the Empire asks of me, Miss Maker, and I will do anything for the benefit of the Empire. I will destroy villages and lives, I will cross deserts, I will. . kill children.’ She noticed the minute hesitation there and filed it for later use. ‘I will do all of this, and I will account it no evil, but instead a virtue, the virtue of
She shook her head slowly.
‘It means that if the best use I can put you to is to offer you wine,’ and he did so, ‘and treat you kindly and have a conversation or two within this tent, then I shall serve the Empire that way. If the best use I find is to put you to the question, or gift you to Brutan, then I shall do that. It is nothing personal, Miss Maker. Do I make myself clear?’
‘I suppose you do.’ She took the wine cautiously, sipping. It had a dry, harsh taste, somewhat unfamiliar.
‘Then tonight I will talk to you, and thus try to make it easier for you to talk to me,’ he told her. ‘I will tell you about my people and my Empire, and in that way hope that you will understand why we do what we do.’
At that moment the most delicious aroma entered the tent, preceding a soldier bearing a platter. There was dried fruit on it, and nuts, and what must be honey, and a half-dozen slices of steaming meat that must surely be horse. She found that she had taken two steps towards the table as soon as it was set down.
‘Help yourself,’ he offered, as the soldier left. She was instantly on her guard, but he shrugged. ‘Or not? You will profit nothing from abstaining. A moral victory on this small point would be an empty one, would it not?’
And she had to concede that. She had to concede that, because she had eaten slave food for two days and she was unable to take her eyes off the plate. By awkward stages she sat and took up a piece of meat, bolting it even as it burned her fingers. She saw Thalric’s expression then, and recognized it as that of a man who had won the first battle of a campaign. She hated him for that, but did not stop eating.
‘You must have a very skewed picture of the Wasp-kinden,’ he told her. ‘If you think of us at all, you must think that we’re savages.’
She nodded vigorously, still eating.
‘Not so far from the truth,’ he admitted, and she raised surprised eyebrows. ‘The Empire is young. Three generations, three Emperors.’
She frowned at him.
‘No, we don’t live for hundreds of years. Nothing like that. Our Most Revered Majesty Alvdan the Second is not thirty years of age. His grandfather was one tribal chieftain in a steppeland full of feuding tribes, but he had, as the story goes, a dream. He took war to the other tribes, and he subjugated them. He brought all the Wasp-kinden together under his banner. It took a lifetime of bitter fighting and worse diplomacy. His son, Alvdan the First, built the Empire: city after city brought into the fold, the borders pushed ever outwards. Each people we made our own, we learned the lessons they taught us. We honed the tool of war until it was keen as a razor. Our Emperor now, Alvdan Two, was sixteen when he came to the throne, and since then he has not rested in furthering the dream of his father and his grandfather. We have fought more peoples than the Lowlands even knows exist. We have defended ourselves against enemies who were stronger than us, or wiser than us, or steeped in lore we could not guess at. We have conquered internal strife and we have done what no other has ever done before us. The Empire is physically near the size of the entire Lowlands, but all under one flag and all marching to one beat. The Empire represents progress, Miss Maker. The Empire is the future. Look at my people. They have a foot in the barbaric still. They must be forced into discipline, into control, into civilization! But they have come so very far in such a short time. I am proud of my people, Miss Maker. I am proud of what they have brought about.’
‘So why inflict their regime on other people?’ she demanded.
‘Because we must grow lest we stagnate,’ he replied, as though it was as very simple as that. ‘And because those who are not within the Empire remain a threat to it. How long before the Commonweal takes arms against us, or some Ant general similarly unifies the Lowlands? How
long before some other chieftain with the same dream raises the spear against us? If we were to declare peace with the world, then the world would soon take the war to us. Look at the Lowlands, Miss Maker: a dozen city-states that cannot agree on anything. If we were to invade Tark tomorrow, do you know what the other Ant- kinden cities would do? They would simply cheer. That is the rot of the Lowlands, Miss Maker, so we will bring them into the Empire. We will unite the Lowlands under the black-and-gold banner. Think what we might accomplish then.’
‘All I can think of is that you would turn my race, and all the Lowlands, into slaves within your Empire.’
‘There are many Beetle-kinden in the Empire, Miss Maker. They do very well. The Emperor trusts most of the imperial economy to them, as far as I can make out. The Empire needs slaves to do a slave’s work, but we would not enslave the Lowlands. The people of the Lowlands would simply discover that their best interests lie in working with us.’
‘Tell me, Captain, what is the Rekef?’
The question caught him quite by surprise, but in the next moment he was smiling again, as though she had, at last, proved a promising student. ‘Well, how has that word come to you?’
‘Brutan, amongst others.’
‘The Rekef, Miss Maker, is a secret society.’
She had to laugh at that. ‘But everyone seems to know you’re in it so how can it be secret?’
‘Well, that is rather the point.’ His smile looked a little embarrassed. ‘Why, after all, would you be part of a terrifying secret society that strikes fear into the hearts of men, if nobody even knows that you’re in it? In actual fact, if I was Rekef Inlander then the first anyone would know about it would be when they found themselves hauled in and being put to the question, with a list of their crimes before them.’ His smile became self-mocking. ‘To tell the truth they even frighten me. I, on the other hand, am Rekef Outlander. My place is dealing with people like you.’ He paused, searching her face. ‘Have I reached you, Miss Maker? Have you heard what I have said?’
‘You’ve given me a lot to think about.’
‘And?’
‘I remember. . when I was in Helleron with Salma — the Dragonfly-kinden, although I’m sure you know that
