need more? You do not have here at your disposal all that you need.’
‘It is indeed so, great lord. I have not the power, within my own being, for a work so great as this.’
‘So your charlatanry needs fuel to make it go, does it?’
‘I do not recognize such terms, great one,’ Uctebri said, with unctuous humility, ‘but I am sure you are correct.’
‘Your magic box — that is what you need us to retrieve for you?’ the Emperor added derisively. ‘If it were so effective, would it be so easy to locate — or even possible to take?’
Uctebri gave a strange whistling sigh and pulled his enveloping hood halfway back to scratch at his head. His red eyes flicked from Alvdan to the general. ‘Ruins and ash, Your Imperial Majesty, are all that remains of my people’s power, but those who wrought our downfall are now little better. The old days are gone, and shall not come again. Those that were once enthroned on high are cast down, and that which was venerated is spurned in the dust.’ His slender fingers intertwined. ‘This thing that lords and Skryres and princes would have fought for, when its value was known, is now a curiosity in the hands of the ignorant: ignorant men who profess knowledge, and yet know nothing of what they possess. But it has power yet — power that I can use for your benefit, worshipful Majesty.’
‘And if that power is used to our detriment, you know that we shall drain from you each drop of blood that you have fed on, creature,’ Alvdan told him. ‘Succeed and you shall find yourself most honoured amongst our slaves, but do not dream of betrayal.’
‘I am your prisoner. your slave,’ the Mosquito repeated, ‘and you may destroy me with a word, now or later, or when my tasks are done. I am most dependent on your good will, mighty one. When I have proved myself by this great service, you shall think kindly of me, I hope, and know that I can do yet more.’
‘Perhaps,’ Alvdan said doubtfully. ‘I have sent the orders, and they should arrive at the city of Helleron even now. Do you know Helleron? We have no free agents nearer your toy, but Helleron has its store of clever folk who do our bidding. The order has gone out to them. If this Box of the Shadow exists, and is where you say it is, they shall capture it for us.’
They brought the lady Seda in within two bells, as Capitas told time, dragged without warning from her own more sumptuous prison. She tried to fight free when she saw the emaciated, robed figure awaiting her, but the guard forced her in without difficulty, bound her to a chair easily, and now stood behind her, always a shadow in the edge of her vision. The Mosquito-kinden squinted at her, long fingers touching at one another, then parting.
‘Light and darkness,’ said Uctebri the Sarcad. He moved about the room almost hesitantly. ‘That is what life is about: all existence strung between those two poles. Or that is the way that we all used to see it.’ Eventually he made his mind up. ‘Shutter the lanterns,’ he said, and the guard looked at him curiously.
‘Sir?’ Uctebri was a slave still, with no rank as yet, but he was a man who had spoken to the Emperor and so the guard felt it wise to address him thus.
‘I cannot do it,’ the Mosquito said irritably. ‘Draw the shutters almost all the way. It is too bright in here for what I plan. I trust this will not discomfort you overmuch, Your Highness.’
It was already gloomy in there and, from her vantage point, Seda could see Uctebri as a dark-robed shape that grew less and less distinct as the guard tugged on the cords that controlled the lamps’ shutters.
‘You needn’t call me that,’ she remarked drily. ‘Nobody else does.’
The last shutter was now drawn nearly closed. She heard the guard carefully finding his way back behind her chair, felt his hand brush her shoulder as he checked her presence.
‘And yet I do,’ the Mosquito’s voice came. When he moved she could just make him out. When he stopped he disappeared in the dark. ‘It is the correct form of address for a lady of your rank, I believe?’
She heard a scratching sound from his approximate direction. ‘What are you doing, Mosquito-kinden?’
‘Drawing. Marking my notes,’ emerged his voice. ‘Light and darkness, great lady, our whole world is built between them. There are things that can be accomplished in the dark of the moon which are quite impossible at noontime. But it is not the hour that matters, only the light. If I can make it midnight within your mind, then there is nothing I cannot do, but if you have the will to keep the sun burning, then you are quite proof against me. But that art is long lost amongst your people.’
She heard the soft shuffle of his feet, her ears sharpening as she abandoned any reliance on her eyes. When she had come here, she had expected further taunts and jibes from her brother, but he had not been present. Instead there had been this chair, which she recognized from visits elsewhere. They kept chairs like this in prisons, for questioning. There had been none of the other apparatus she associated with the interrogator’s art, but she sensed that the Mosquito’s desires needed none.
He was very close when he spoke again. ‘It escapes the attention of your own kinden — as of other upstart races — that all the great powers of the Days of Lore could see in darkness, to a greater or lesser degree. The Mantids, the Spiders, and of course, best of all, the Moth-kinden and my own people. To know the dark, and not to fear it, was to control the world.’
He was now right at her elbow.
‘And then, of course, the great old night ended, and another kind of sun dawned. A revolutionary sun of machines and artifice that burned us all back into our hollows.’
‘How bitter you must feel,’ she said without sympathy.
‘Bitter?’ A croaky little laugh. ‘My people had already lost our chance for greatness. We were never many, but we had power and a yearning to use it. We had secrets that the Skryres of the Moths have never learned, and some that they might have, but that they deemed us evil, and made war on us to wipe us out, along with everything we knew.’
She gave a little squeak of panic as his pale, cold fingers brushed her cheek, his nails unexpectedly sharp.
‘And we are few now, so very few,’ he continued. ‘And yet they did not completely succeed, for that knowledge is still with us — and your brother is very, very interested in it.’
She had the sense of his eyes fixed on her. They had brought her here unprepared from her chamber, and she wore only a silken gown to keep the night out, and now the night was irresistible. She felt the touch of his fingertips drifting idly down her neck.
‘You. ’ From somewhere she marshalled a little courage. ‘This is an elaborate scheme of yours, Sarcad, simply to inflict yourself on a woman. Are your own kind so very few, after all?’
His rattling laugh came again. ‘Forgive me, Highness. I am an old man, but appetites die slowly in my tribe and you Wasp-kinden are a comely enough people — for an Apt race. You, especially, are a remarkably pleasing specimen of Wasp-kinden womanhood.’
‘And this is what it is all about, is it?’ She tugged at the straps of the chair, which was a futile enough struggle. ‘Or is this just some chance gift to you?’
‘Fear not, Your Highness. Your chastity is quite safe from me. The appetites I refer to are not sexual.’
‘Blood? Your people really drink the blood of others?’
‘As our namesakes do,’ he said, ‘and I consider myself something of a connoisseur. Royal blood, especially. Although I understand it is in short supply. Your father died not young but not old, yes?’
‘That is true.’
‘And there was suspicion at that?’ He was moving around the back of the chair, she sensed.
‘I would not pursue that line of enquiry, Uctebri, lest the guard report your words.’
‘Ah yes, the guardsman. Perhaps you could call on him.’
She frowned in the darkness. ‘For what purpose?’
‘As one ever calls on unknown powers, simply to see if they will come.’
‘You have.?’
‘He hears nothing, my lady, because I have put a magic on him. He sees nothing, and he hears nothing. Light and darkness, and of these two, darkness has the power. Your brother feared your father was killed. He feared even more being blamed for that death, and therefore no investigation, no suggestion was ever allowed to be raised. Your people’s empire is young, its succession untried. Your brother decided that to secure his position he would take drastic measures. He was advised in this by Colonel Maxin — as he then was.’
‘Maxin killed my brothers and sisters,’ Seda confirmed. There was still no sound from the guard. She knew it was impossible but, in this darkness, with that scratchy voice behind her, she found she could believe Uctebri’s claim to magic entirely. ‘He only left me alive because, so long as I live, he knows exactly where the threat will
