'Master, I await your "however",' said Achaeos. 'Or are all of these to be our a.s.sa.s.sins?'

Scelae smiled at that, and Che saw that she must have been murderess for the Arcanum in her day. The spymaster glanced at her, and then back.

'We had considered it, but we would not have called you to a meeting for the purpose.' The shadow of humour twitched over his face. 'We are not so procedural as that. So here is our "however", Achaeos. Matters have changed. Information has come to us that has forced our hand, however much we resent it. I have spoken, by our traditional ways, to the Skryres of Dorax. They have called me home to take fuller counsel with them. They have said that we must do what can be done, against these Wasp-kinden for now, until the circ.u.mstances change.'

'Thank you!' Che burst out, and he fixed her with a withering stare.

'Do not presume,' he told her, 'that we have any new affection for you or your people. It is the mere chance of our times that we stand together. No more.'

'Chance or fate,' she said, and knew immediately that she had overstepped the mark. For a second there was a tension about Scelae that was likely to become an attack, but the spymaster was not so much angry as shaken.

'Fate,' he echoed. 'Fate's weave has been unclear . . .' His composure seeped back and he shook his head. 'Scelae shall lead the Arcanum here when I am gone, and what can be done shall be done. Tharn has no armies to set against this Empire, but there is little that eyes that know no darkness cannot see. For the moment, while this lasts, those eyes shall be used to see in your cause.'

It was two days before they discovered what had changed the Arcanum's mind. Achaeos and Che came back from an errand in the foreigners' quarter to find a sense of utter despair. Scuto was sitting at the large table in the common room of the taverna they were staying at, with his papers strewn utterly unheeded all about it, and some even on the floor. Beside him was Sperra, looking so ashen that Che thought at first her wounds must have reopened. She was trembling, and if Scuto had been less th.o.r.n.y it seemed she would have been clinging to him. Behind them both, Plius sat like a dead weight in a chair. He had a pipe out and was vainly trying to light it, but his hands shook so much that the little steel lighter kept going out.

'What's happened?' Che asked, and then a terrible thought struck her. 'Uncle Stenwold! The Vekken? Is he-?'

'No,' Scuto said hoa.r.s.ely. His eyes were red, she saw, and his hands had clasped each other close enough to pinp.r.i.c.k bloodspots with his own spines, the only time she had ever seen him injure himself. 'No fresh news from Collegium.' In truth news from Collegium was coming in all the time. All day great slow-moving rail automotives had been dragging themselves in at the depot with all those residents of Collegium who could not stay to defend their home. Che had expected people from all walks of life, and indeed there were many foreigners, whose lives in the College City had been measured in a few years only, but most of the refugees were children. They arrived with small bags of food, books, a writing kit and spare clothes, and with little notes telling the Sarnesh who they were. The Queen of Sarn was honouring her city's ally in its time of need. With typical efficiency the homeless and the lost, all these displaced children, were found lodgings amongst the Ant families of the city.

But today at the depot had come a messenger from a different direction.

'Sperra, she . . .' Scuto took a deep breath and tried to stop his voice shaking. 'She was at the palace, so she heard it right there, when the Queen did. h.e.l.leron has fallen.'

Che gaped at him. 'h.e.l.leron fallen?'

'A Wasp army turned up at their doorstep. Not even the ones fighting Tark, but a whole other army. They've put the city under martial law and commandeered the foundries. h.e.l.leron is now part of the Empire.'

'Hammer and tongs,' whispered Che. She glanced at Achaeos. His face was closed, expressionless, and she knew he would be thinking of his own mountain city, h.e.l.leron's close neighbour.

'They knew,' he said. 'This is the information the Arcanum had received. This is the threat to our people that has made them join us.' He bared his teeth, abruptly feral. 'We warned them that the Wasps would come. An army on the wing, come to Tharn to finish what your people started. The final end of the Days of Lore.'

'That isn't fair,' Che protested.

'Nothing's fair,' he said bitterly.

'But your people, they're magicians. They can see the future. They must have seen some way out of this.'

Achaeos would not meet her eyes. 'You have more faith in them than I do.'

Che embraced him, and he let himself be clasped to her, laid his head on her shoulder. She looked over at Scuto's dull countenance.

'What does it mean?' she asked him. 'What now?'

'It changes everything,' Plius said from behind. He finally had his pipe lit and now did not know what to do with it.

Scuto shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said miserably. 'I don't know what to think. None of you understand. h.e.l.leron . . . filthy place. Corrupt, hypocritical. But it was my city my city. I was born in the Empire, you understand, and never stayed two nights in the same place till I was ten. h.e.l.leron was the only place that ever took me in. And I had to fight for elbow room even there. I had to break heads and cut throats in my time. But it had a place for me that I could carve out. Founder's Mark, even when the Wasps razed my place and scattered my people, I was always going to go back back.'

'My home too,' Sperra said quietly. 'More than Merro ever was.'

'It's all falling apart,' Scuto whispered. 'Collegium under siege, Tark falling. h.e.l.leron taken. Where next? What happens now? Can we ever pull it back from the edge?'

The question hung in the air. n.o.body had any answers.

Twenty-Five.

Salma awoke because it was cold, the night cloudless above, and he fought to recall where he was, and then realized that he did not know.

Where is this place? The gloom of the tent of the Mercy's Daughters had become the dark of night, the stars visible above him. He lay on sandy ground with only a thin blanket. The gloom of the tent of the Mercy's Daughters had become the dark of night, the stars visible above him. He lay on sandy ground with only a thin blanket.

Where is she? Grief in Chains, or Aagen's Joy, or . . . no, it was coming to him. Grief in Chains, or Aagen's Joy, or . . . no, it was coming to him.

They had been moving him. Night, again, and it must have been earlier this same night or last night, was it? But he had been taken from the Daughters' huge tent.

She had been there. He recalled her face, her eyes, radiant. Moth eyes knew no darkness, but hers could stare straight into the sun. She had touched his hand as they took him out. She had said . . . what had she said?

He could not recall it. It was stripped from him along with his health and his strength. The bandages were still tight about his chest, the line of the wound, that she had sealed with her fingers, pulled tautly as he moved, now secured with compresses and surgical silk.

He looked around. There was a sc.r.a.p of waxing moon up there, enough for his eyes, and there was a fire nearby. They were in a hollow but the warmth was fast leaching out from it, so the cold had sunk into his bones. He made an attempt to crawl closer to the fire, and found he could do that, just. He was capable of it.

He saw Nero, curled up like a child, and indeed looking very like a child bundled in his cloak. A bald child, yes, and to be frank an ugly one, but even his belligerent features attained a kind of innocence in sleep.

Beyond Nero's sleeping form there were two Wasp soldiers in armour. Salma felt his world drop away from him, and he was instinctively groping for a sword that was not there. He sat up, too fast, and hissed in pain, and they looked over at him. One was young, perhaps even younger than he was. The other was greying, forty at least in age, a peer for Stenwold.

'Easy there,' the younger one said. 'How much do you remember?'

'Who are you?' Salma demanded, although he knew he could make no demands that he could enforce.

'My name is Adran,' said the younger of the soldiers. 'This is Kalder.'

'Lieutenant Kalder,' the older man rumbled in a particularly deep voice. 'We're still in the army, boy.'

'You're Salma, right?' Adran nodded absently. 'So what do you remember?'

Salma acknowledged the point. 'a.s.sume I remember nothing.'

'Then you're out,' Adran told him. 'They got you out.'

'They?'

'The halfbreed artificer did it,' said Lieutenant Kalder. 'Arranged for it, anyway. He's got some pull, that one, for all that he's just a piebald b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'Halfbreed?' Totho? Totho? And it came back to him then, what Totho had done for him, the price that had been paid for Salma's life and liberty. So the artificer Kalder meant was the other one, the man who had wanted to keep Totho as his slave. And it came back to him then, what Totho had done for him, the price that had been paid for Salma's life and liberty. So the artificer Kalder meant was the other one, the man who had wanted to keep Totho as his slave.

'So why are you . . . ? What are you going to do with us?'

'You don't need to worry,' Adran said, but Salma shook his head.

'What is going on? I see Wasp soldiers before me. Look at me, I'm in no position to cause you any trouble, so at least tell me the truth.'

Adran and Kalder exchanged looks.

'You probably think we're all monsters in the Empire,' said the younger man.

Thinking of Aagen, Salma said, 'Not necessarily, but until proved otherwise.'

'Right.' Adran poked at the fire. 'Have you heard of the Broken Sword?' Kalder started to speak, but Adran continued, 'He might have done, if he was in the Twelve-Year War.'

'He's too young for that,' Kalder objected.

'I've never heard of any Broken Sword,' Salma told them.

'It's . . . We're a group within the Empire, who don't altogether agree with what it's doing. Don't get me wrong. I'm proud to be Wasp-kinden. But things are changing, and never for the better. We've always fought. We're a martial people, just like the Ant-kinden or the Soldier Beetles of Myna. Back before the unification and the Empire, though . . . we might have lived in hill-forts and stolen each other's daughters and cattle, but it was different then. It was . . . natural, almost.' His halting way of exploring what he was trying to say reminded Salma unbearably of Totho.

'The Empire, though, it's wrong. The way it works now, the way it has to keep expanding, further and further, just to stop everything collapsing. You might not realize it, but every Wasp-kinden freeman past thirteen is in the army, and has a rank, and can be sent hundreds of miles away from home because the Emperor wants to bring some foreign city under his control. n.o.body gets to choose otherwise. And then there are all the Auxillians, who have it even worse.'

'The people you go and fight don't exactly have a good time of it either,' Salma said weakly.

'No, they don't,' agreed Adran. He had a tremendous sincerity about him, and that in turn reminded Salma of Che, when she was on some moral mission or other. What Adran was saying really mattered mattered to him. to him.

'The Empire imposes its will on dozens of other kinden, and it destroys them by making them behave like us. And that's wrong. It's evil, in fact, and by making us do its work, it makes all of us evil.' He glanced at Kalder. 'Or that's what I think, anyway.'

The expression on the older man's face said so clearly, These young soldiers today These young soldiers today that Salma had to smile. 'As for me,' Kalder took over, 'I just got sick of it. I fought your lot, right? And before that it was putting down insurrections amongst the Hornet tribes. And before that I was a sergeant fighting the Bees at Szar. And I did garrison duty at Jerez even before that. I had a family, once, but I haven't seen them more than six months in twenty years. And now we've just taken Tark, and no sooner have the fires burned out than they're marching us out again, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, for some other forsaken place. It never ends. They just grind you down and abandon you when you drop. So what the Broken Sword is really about rather than what it means to idealists like young Adran here is men like me, soldiers who just want the fighting to stop. We want to go home to our wives, our farms. But even if we could, some of us, we wouldn't, now, because by staying put we get to help others who think the same way, help them to get out and away. And it's not just Wasp-kinden. Soldiers are soldiers, whether they're imperial, Auxillian, or whichever poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds we might be fighting.' that Salma had to smile. 'As for me,' Kalder took over, 'I just got sick of it. I fought your lot, right? And before that it was putting down insurrections amongst the Hornet tribes. And before that I was a sergeant fighting the Bees at Szar. And I did garrison duty at Jerez even before that. I had a family, once, but I haven't seen them more than six months in twenty years. And now we've just taken Tark, and no sooner have the fires burned out than they're marching us out again, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, for some other forsaken place. It never ends. They just grind you down and abandon you when you drop. So what the Broken Sword is really about rather than what it means to idealists like young Adran here is men like me, soldiers who just want the fighting to stop. We want to go home to our wives, our farms. But even if we could, some of us, we wouldn't, now, because by staying put we get to help others who think the same way, help them to get out and away. And it's not just Wasp-kinden. Soldiers are soldiers, whether they're imperial, Auxillian, or whichever poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds we might be fighting.'

'But what if they find out?'

'Then they take us apart an inch of skin at a time,' Kalder said. 'Because the Empire, the Rekef especially, hates none more than quitters like us.'

'But we're safe,' Adran broke in. 'We're scouting, you see. Or that's what they think. Drephos the artificer, he arranged for people to be looking the other way, but it was the Daughters' Eldest, Norsa, who knew who we were and called us. The Daughters and the Broken Sword see eye to eye, and Norsa's a favourite of the general.'

'We can take you another day out from here,' Kalder added. 'After that you and your Fly friend are on your own. You'll be far enough from the army to be as safe as anyone can be, but I don't know where you can go next.'

'If we were closer to home then we'd have safe-houses, Wayhouses and the like,' Adran said. 'We're at the edge of the Empire, though. Just don't head south and don't head east.'

'Or north,' Kalder said slowly, 'from what I hear. So I suppose you don't have many options.'

The scout touched down virtually on the bonnet of the transport automotive, startling the driver, who cursed him. The scout made no reply but caught his balance quickly and saluted General Alder.

'Report on the soldiers ahead, sir.'

Alder rose from a cramped conference he had been having with Major Grigan of the engineers and Colonel Carvoc, in the narrow s.p.a.ce right behind the driver and ahead of the freight.

'Tell me,' he demanded. He had been informed earlier that an advance scout had spotted a force about two hundred strong encamped right in the path of the Fourth Army, and maybe it was about time someone told him what they intended. 'It's the Tarkesh fugitives, yes?'

'No, sir. I've made contact with them, sir,' the scout reported.

Alder's one hand grasped a strut to keep him standing as the automotive lurched over some difficult ground. All around him, before and behind, the mighty strength of the Imperial Fourth Army was on the move. There were automotives and pack animals, horses, giant beetles and even desert scorpions, all moving in great columns that probably still stretched most of the way back to Tark. The infantry marched in shifting blocks, while the officers and artificers rode. Sometimes heliopters thundered overhead, sweeping the terrain to watch for ambushes, and a mult.i.tude of the light airborne performed the same function, squads of them jumping forwards half a mile and then waiting for the army to catch up.

'Tell me what's going on, soldier,' Alder demanded. The scout saluted him again.

'It's an emba.s.sy, sir.'

'You spoke with them?'

'They hailed me as I pa.s.sed over, sir, so it seemed reasonable.'

The man had a sergeant's tabs on his shoulders, and presumably had been picked out from the crowd for some quality or other. Alder now hoped it was his sound judgement.

'Imperial intelligence says the Kessen won't meet us in the field,' Alder said. 'So what's going on?'

'It isn't the Kessen, sir. There are Ant-kinden amongst them, but they're mercenaries. It's the Spider-kinden, sir. Or at least, some Spider-kinden and their retinue.'

Alder's expression did not change but inside he felt uneasy. The Empire's stretching borderlands had only touched near the Spiderlands in the last year, and had no established relations. The Scorpion-kinden of the Dryclaw normally acted as go-betweens in any trade the Consortium conducted with the wealth of the Spiders. It was fabled, that wealth, though probably entirely fabulous. Certainly it was unsubstantiated at least. In fact, as he considered it, Alder realized that he knew almost nothing for certain about the Spider-kinden holdings situated south of the Lowlands. They were rich. They were clever. Their lands extended on beyond imperial maps. That was the imperial reservoir of knowledge on the subject.

'This could get ugly,' he murmured.

'They want to speak with you, sir,' the scout reported.

'No doubt. You are dismissed, soldier.' As the scout's wings ignited into life and he kicked off from the automotive, Alder was already gesturing to a Fly-kinden messenger.

'Get me Major Maan,' he instructed, because he urgently needed to know imperial policy regarding the Spiders, and it was an ill-kept secret that Maan was Rekef Inlander. 'And get me any Scorpion-kinden we've still got with us. I want to talk to them.'

After two hours in further conference he felt no wiser. Major Maan had simply emphasized that all travellers' reports confirmed that the Spiderlands were very extensive, that they were varied in geography and peoples, and that the chief interest of their rulers seemed to be in conspiring against one another. The Lowlands had never presented a threat to the Spiders, as the Lowlanders were also notably self-involved and divided. There was a brisk trade along the Seldis road to Tark, Merro and h.e.l.leron, but beyond that it was remarkable how little reliable information could be found.

'They're subtle, sir,' Maan had warned, as if that explained everything.

And so here he was now, General Alder of the Barbs, with his own retinue of two hundred Wasp soldiers and, nearby, another five hundred of the light airborne ready to move in on his signal if things got as ugly as he feared. He had Maan with him, for all the good it would do, while behind him the main army was setting up temporary camp under Carvoc's command.

And ahead were the Spiders. The ground here was hilly, and patchily wooded, and the Spider commander or lord or whatever he might call himself had chosen a little dell to pitch his tent in. It was barely a tent, by Alder's standards, just a peaked roof of silk held up on poles, tugged lightly in the wind. A small knot of people were gathered beneath its shade, and the rest of the retinue were at military attention, waiting for him in immaculate parade-ground fashion. It was, he admitted, a clever piece of theatre.

At least half of them were bronze-skinned Kessen Ants in gleaming chainmail and helms of like colour. Their shields bore a device of abstract flourishes that Maan loudly informed him was the crest of Seldis.

Some of the others were Flies, and most of those seemed to be n.o.bles or wealthy citizens, as richly clad in felt and silks as many a magnate of the Consortium of the Honest. Others there were Beetle-kinden soldiers with heavy crossbows. An honour guard of a dozen hulking Scorpions, stripped to the waist, leant on swords almost as high as they were. Then there were the Spiders themselves.

There were almost a score of them, and they seemed all elegance and poise, each one regarding the approaching Wasps with a slight and individual smile. If the Flies had been dressed well, these were magnificent, and yet they trod a thin line between the ornate and the excessive. They were, Alder had to admit, the very soul of taste, wearing their fine silks and gold, their embroidered brocades and their jewels, as though the garments were simply casually thrown on for no special occasion. Himself an old soldier who had never cared for gaud and glitter, Alder found himself momentarily dowdy, travel-stained and awkward, but he thrust the thought away angrily.

It was clear to see who the leader was, and to Alder's surprise it was a male: a further victory for Major Maan's intelligence because Alder had been a.s.sured that they were always led by their womenfolk. This particular Spider-kinden lord reclined languidly in a solid-looking gilt chair, high-backed and fantastically carved. A couple of young women of his own race sat at his feet, and the others stood around him, not as a formal court, but in little groups and cliques. They were all beautiful, men and women alike. Even the oldest amongst them possessed an austere handsomeness, while the youngest glowed with the fruits of youth. Some were pale, others tanned, and their hair was fair or red or dark, more varied than most other kinden ever were, but all with the same ineffably delicate sophistication about them.

The soldiers arrayed behind the Spiders tensed slightly, waiting to see if the armed men coming towards them meant mischief. Alder turned to his troops and signalled for them to take their ease.

'Major,' he said. Maan glanced from one Spider-kinden to the next, swallowing awkwardly.

'Remarkable, General. One does hear-'