War Master's Gate sota-9 Read online

  She was expecting a personal challenge, even an assault, but when the Moth spoke it was to jab a finger back towards the forest and demand, ‘Is this your doing?’

  She held his blank gaze, replying, ‘The Mantis-kinden killing each other? No.’ And then she continued to face him down, feeling his magic scrabble at her, feeling his Art trying to dominate her. He was no Skryre, though, no grand master of sorcery. She shrugged him off when he came with strength, and matched him move for move when he tried to creep past her guard. At last he took a step back, baffled and looking almost vulnerable.

  ‘I am not your enemy,’ Che assured him. ‘I am a daughter of Collegium who has been given an unexpected gift, that is all.’

  ‘That is not all,’ he hissed, but more to himself than to her. ‘You arrive here from — from where? — just in time for all my work to go suddenly awry.’

  ‘I have been in the Commonweal, and if my time there taught me anything it is that, amongst the Inapt, matters such as chance and coincidence are seldom entirely trustworthy,’ Che declared. She was aware of the subtext within her words: this was not how the Apt spoke, certainly not how any Beetle-kinden he had met would speak. She was presenting her credentials and showing him she was part of his world.

  His feet did not move, but she sensed a second mental step backwards, another concession granted her. She was sizing him up now, trying to place him and then — almost vertiginously — she thought she might even have met him before. She had once been in Sarn on her uncle’s orders, contacting the Moth-kinden secret service known as the Arcanum, and there had been one brief meeting. . She could not say, so long after, whether this man had been present, but she thought he might have been — and not as their leader. A magician, perhaps, but an intelligencer first, and from his presence at this meeting of powers it took no great leap of the imagination to see what his work here had been. He had been supporting the alliance of the Treaty of Gold, and now something had gone wrong amongst the Mantis-kinden.

  ‘You are Cheerwell Maker, so they say,’ he observed, and even this was him trying for power over her, the power of names that his people put such stock in.

  ‘And you?’ The unthinkable question, to a Moth, but she sensed that she had the authority to ask and she was damned if she would give him any more of her time if he would not expose himself to that small extent.

  She saw his throat working, as though he were choking on something, and then he spat out, ‘Terastos.’

  It was a useful weather-gauge both of his low station and her apparent standing in the eyes of the Inapt. He did not like her but he could not deny her.

  ‘So tell us what’s going on,’ she invited, sitting back down, cutting the tension from the moment by sidestepping it. ‘We’re none of us friends of the Empire here — no, not even Thalric. We know the Wasps are on the move again, and they must have taken control of the Alliance cities and Helleron fast, to get here so quickly. Perhaps we can even be of some help. So tell us.’ Following her lead, her companions had also sat back down at the tent’s mouth, and Terastos shifted from foot to foot, uncertain and ignorant, the worst thing for a Moth. At last the spy’s practicality overcame the magician’s pride, and he sat down.

  ‘It is no secret that the Wasps are very near, their Eighth Army with all its machines. They have destroyed the Ant fortress that lay east of here, and beaten a field army too. The Sarnesh had hoped that speed would be their ally. Now they admit that they need real allies to carry the day. They have called on the Ancient League.’

  ‘I remember when the Ancient League was formed. I spoke to your people in Sarn itself before the last war,’ Che recalled.

  Terastos blinked. ‘That was not you.’

  She gave him a small smile. ‘Oh, it was. I was different then. I had not. . lost touch. But it was me.’

  ‘And here you are now.’ He was shaken more than suspicious. She guessed that a very emphatic coded missive would soon be winging its way to the Skryres of Dorax, or perhaps he would send the news using his magic, if he was capable. No doubt the next Moth who came to confront her would be made of sterner stuff.

  ‘The Ancient League. .’ he went on, glancing from her to her comrades and Balkus.

  ‘Is not ancient,’ Che finished for him. ‘The Moths of Dorax and the Mantis-holds of this forest here might be united in their traditions, but there was never a league until the Wasps came last time. I can guess that, once the Wasps had gone, the League ceased to be, each of you back to your solitary pursuits?’

  ‘And now the Sarnesh have called on us, whereupon we, being the masters of the League, have called upon our servants. And something has miscarried, yes. And you know nothing of this?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Che admitted. ‘But we’ve only just arrived. What are the Wasps doing?’

  ‘Waiting, no man knows for what.’

  ‘What do you mean, waiting?’ Thalric demanded, leaning into the conversation.

  The Moth glowered at him. ‘They were advancing, sweeping all before them. Then they stopped. They have been still some tendays now. They keep their scouts ready, and prevent any others coming close, but they just wait.’

  ‘The cost of keeping an army in the field, at this distance from the nearest city, is enormous,’ Thalric pointed out. ‘Only orders from Capitas could allow it, unless someone’s playing some very complex game with them.’ His eyes slid aside from the Moth until they met Che’s.

  ‘Capitas,’ she echoed: heart of Empire and domain of the Empress Seda. Seda, who had been touched by the same ritual that had stripped Che of her Aptitude, who shared that intangible mark that Terastos and the Mantis-kinden perceived on Che. Seda, who had added a swiftly burgeoning magical skill to the vast breadth of her temporal might.

  Che stood up abruptly, tentatively reaching out. Seda scared her, and all Che’s newfound power and knowledge did not help — it simply meant that she knew precisely why the woman was to be feared. Last time they clashed, only Maure’s intervention had saved Che from being imprisoned forever within her own mind.

  Another newcomer was approaching: a young Roach-kinden girl, slender and white-haired. She came hurrying up, stopping for a moment when she saw how many guests Balkus had.

  ‘Syale, where have you been?’ the Ant demanded, his companions forgotten. ‘You’re the ambassador, life’s sake. You can’t just up and vanish. I thought something had happened to you. What would I have told old Sfayot?’

  The girl stood with arms folded, as if on the point of sulking. ‘Firstly, don’t you dare twit me with my father’s name. If he had faith enough to send me, then that’s all you need to know. Secondly, something very nearly did happen to me. I’ve news: the Mantis-kinden have gone mad.’

  ‘Madder,’ Balkus responded sourly. ‘Their Nethyen woman came out here and stabbed someone, in your absence, and now nobody knows what’s going on.’

  ‘I know,’ Syale told him simply. ‘Balkus, I was there in the forest when it happened. They’re fighting.’

  He opened his mouth, closed it, then said, ‘You don’t mean fighting the Wasps, do you?’

  The girl shook her head and, in that wordless moment, Che saw just how shaken she was.

  ‘The Mantis-kinden are fighting each other. Their two holds are at war.’

  And Che, whose magical sense had been stretching itself towards distant Capitas, snapped back into herself with a hiss, flinching as though she had burned herself.

  ‘What is it?’ Thalric was at her shoulder.

  ‘She’s here.’

  She heard questions, then: from the Moth, from Balkus, from Tynisa. Thalric had gone very still, though, because he understood all too well.

  ‘The Empress, she’s here now. She’s with their army. She has done this.’

  Five

  ‘General, she’s on her way in.’

  General Roder glanced up, seeing one of the watch captains hovering at the door of his tent.

  ‘Report,’ he grunted.

  �
�Airship and escort spotted by our scouts, General,’ the officer informed him. ‘Signals say it’s her.’

  Roder’s expression still pinned him. He was famous for his hard stares, which owed a great deal to the paralysis that had locked half his face following a Spider assassin’s poisoned strike. ‘By airship? She must be mad,’ the general muttered, half to himself. One adventurous sortie by Sarnesh orthopters and the Empire’s looking for a new ruler. .

  ‘She’s got some of the new fliers with her,’ the captain added, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Enough to throw back anything the Sarnesh could put in the air, sir. Maybe she’ll hand them over to us.’

  ‘Get the men turned out,’ Roder snapped at a nearby lieutenant. ‘If it is her, she’ll see us at our best. And double our scouts, ground and air; this would be a very bad time for the enemy to find some gap in our perimeter. Oh, and get hold of that long streak of jerky she calls an adviser. She’ll want him, I’d guess.’

  ‘He’s already out there,’ the captain informed him. ‘Even before our pilots reported back.’

  Roder gave him a sour face. ‘No mystery there: he knew when she’d be arriving all along, just decided that an Imperial general wasn’t trustworthy enough to be told. Just goes to show, Captain, there are too many hands pulling in too many directions, back home, and precious few of them Wasp.’ He stepped out of his tent and scowled at the daylight. ‘Sends us headlong for Sarn, lets us smash them in the field, keep them off balance. . and then what? Some ancient, dried-up freak turns up waving her writ and has us kicking our heels for tendays while the Sarnesh get their nerve back and build their strength. If you’ve some way to make sense of that, I’d welcome it. It makes none to me.’

  The object of his ire was standing out in the centre of the camp, gazing up at the sky as though the sparse clouds held an inordinate fascination. The old creature was hunchbacked, though still absurdly tall, gaunt and withered and bald like an unearthed corpse. His grey skin was banded with white and he wore a shabby robe of halved black and gold. He was the Empress’s slave, they said, and her adviser on unusual matters. He had been flown here by a Wasp belonging to something called the Red Watch — some new crowd of the Empress’s favourites — and with enough seals and recommendations to set his word as law over even an Imperial general. That he had failed to make a friend of Roder was understandable.

  His name was Gjegevey, which Roder seldom bothered to even attempt. Now the general stomped over to the man with a simple, ‘Hey, you!’

  The long face turned towards him, eyes glinting within their wrinkled sockets. ‘General?’

  ‘Your mistress is coming,’ Roder told him. ‘Now maybe we’ll get to the bottom of this nonsense.’ The placid gaze of the old slave made him angrier, and he had to bite off the other words that rose into his mouth. Even so — as always — Gjegevey seemed to hear them.

  ‘Yes, General, if I have, hm, somehow misunderstood my orders, and held your Eighth here unnecessarily, I am sure that you’ll have the pleasure of, ahm, stringing this old frame up on the crossed pikes. I would assure you that you were right in following my, mmn, advice, but you will have your confirmation soon enough.’

  Even the slave’s meandering speech was like nails on a chalkboard to Roder, but he gritted his teeth and bore it.

  Another wing of Spearflights powered into the air, more security in case the Sarnesh got lucky, or in case Imperial intelligence had been compromised. The old Emperor — Seda’s brother — had never left the capital and, for all that everyone admired this new girl’s courage and enterprise, no general wanted the ruler of all the Empire actually looking over his shoulder, especially when faced with such nonsensical orders as had left the Eighth sitting idle for so long.

  He spent some minutes inspecting his troops, stalking along the ranks and making his displeasure known if any officer’s charges were found wanting. Save for those already out on patrol, here was the glorious Eighth, the Empress’s Hammer: its legion of Light Airborne, the infantry, the Engineers, as well as a neat block of Auxillian Ants from Maille. They were a skilled and proven fighting force, and they were being wasted.

  The Empress’s airship was lowering itself, holding steady in the light breeze whilst its Farsphex escort flew in wide circles. The treasonous thought crossed Roder’s mind that, were he an ambitious man, a little artillery accident might go a long way here. His current circumstances had bred a fair amount of resentment in him, but he had not been pushed anywhere near so far as treason, nor was he sure that his men would follow him. She put on a good show, did the Empress.

  He waited impassively for her, standing at the head of his army. This would be his chance, he knew. Once away from the men he would be able to impress upon the girl just what the Eighth should have been doing these last tendays, and how it should be best used from now on. His experience and rank carried a great deal of weight in the Empire. She needed him. She would have to listen.

  When she appeared at the top of the airship’s ramp, after the ground crew had tied the lines off tight to hold it steady, she seemed no more than a slip of a girl, barely more than a child: slender and vulnerable before the might of the Eighth. Beautiful, too, and Roder could well appreciate it. He was sure that every man in the Empire holding a general’s rank badge or the equivalent had entertained a thought that way before now. She had no husband, after all, and that no-pedigree outsider she had chosen as a regent had not been seen anywhere recently. Brugan of the Rekef was after her, Roder knew for a fact, but if she favoured the man, Seda had yet to recognize him formally.

  Then she locked eyes with Roder, as she stepped down the ramp, and something jolted in his mind, his thoughts all abruptly thrown out of alignment. His eyes were hooked on her, unable to look away. He barely noted her bodyguards: the half-dozen Mantis women in black and gold mail, and the looming figure behind them in all-encompassing Mantis-wrought armour.

  She wore the slight smile of a well-born girl out for a stroll and enjoying the air, but he was sure, beyond all logic, that she could read every one of his thoughts of the last half hour written plain on his face; all the trivial little treasons that an ambitious man gives wishful indulgence to. She saw them, and she knew him, and he felt the force of her — the sheer strength of her will and personality — drive him to one knee as she approached.

  ‘General,’ she greeted him, eyes drifting across the great mass of military drawn up for her approval. Roder heard the subtle but unmistakable sound of countless soldiers pulling themselves up that little bit straighter, chests thrust out an extra fraction of an inch. Even the Auxillians, who had far less reason to love her, were straining to be worthy of her nod. Kneeling at her feet, almost as though he was beneath the radiating beam of her regard, he nearly panicked, seeing the effect she had on them and knowing that he had no way to explain it. Then she said, ‘Rise,’ just for him, and he could do nothing but stand up into that irresistible flow of her personality, and be engulfed.

  ‘Empress. .’ was all he managed.

  ‘No doubt you have questions,’ she observed wryly, but was walking away before he could ask any. In her wake stalked her Mantis-kinden, taut with suspicion and ready to take on the entire Eighth if needed. They might be elegant and poised, those women, but Roder had no doubts about their skill. To conquer nations, an army of the Apt was needed, but the old Inapt skills still had their place when things got personal.

  The armoured form that came behind them was something Roder found himself averting his eyes from. That particular servant of the Empress had come to him before, arriving and leaving by its own means, hunting down the remnants of the Ant garrison at Malkan’s Stand after they had gone to ground. Roder found that, rationalize as he might, he could not bring himself to think of that shape of Mantis-crafted mail as a man at all. Whatever walked there was something that hurt Roder’s mind when he considered it too closely.

  And there were others being disgorged by the airship, of course, for the Empress did not travel
in a vacuum. There were air crew, servants, slaves, secretaries, a few of the new Red Watch and, no doubt, a Rekef agent or two here to check up on Roder’s Eighth. All business as usual.

  Then Gjegevey, who had stayed with him, was moving towards the ramp, and Roder saw two strangers bringing up the rear of the procession. Their grey robes identified them as Moth-kinden, who seemed to hold being drably dressed as a sacred charge. One was tall and willow-slim, the other shorter and decidedly more heavily built, and they faced off against Gjegevey with an initial wariness, before allowing themselves to step from the ramp and become guests of the Eighth.

  Roder watched them approach, noting that the taller of the two was a woman: grey face and white eyes and high cheekbones, young seeming. She would have turned many heads, no doubt, but Roder had sworn off Inapt women since the poisoning that had frozen half his face. Now the Empress had moved on, his thoughts were free enough to assess these newcomers as a sign of the general rot back home that he had heard about — the lesser kinden, the Inapt creatures like Gjegevey, who seemed to have secured the Empress’s ear so very easily.

  Then the other figure turned his way, mid-word to Gjegevey, and Roder saw the flash of a pale face there — not a Moth after all, but a Wasp in their robes. A traitor, therefore, save that he had evidently bought the Empress’s forbearance somehow.

  And they call us off the Sarnesh, and have us sit here instead, in the shadow of this cursed forest, the Mantis heartland. His uneasiness was growing moment by moment. Was this it? Was he seeing here some great betrayal of the Empire, watching Seda led astray by the wicked old powers that had once owned the world before the rise of the Apt?