Cheerwell knew very little about her, other than she had worked for Scuto for years now. She was no artificer, but she was Apt and a good hand with a crossbow. She had some doctoring skills as well and a bag of salves and bandages, and so she must have trained a little. Fly-kinden got everywhere in the Lowlands and did all manner of work, legal or not, but Che realized that she had never really got to know one well. They tended to keep to their own kind and stay out of the way of larger folk. Sperra was about typical of her race: standing a few inches under four feet in her sandals, with a lean, spare frame. She kept her hair quite long but tied behind her, and she wore dark, una.s.suming clothes without any finery or ornament. Everyone claimed that Flies liked valuables, preferably those belonging to others. Whether they wore them openly in their own communities of Egel or Merro to the east, she did not know, but she could never recall seeing a Fly-kinden flaunting any such treasures.

To the east . . . Of course, if Tark fell, then Egel and Merro, those two Fly-kinden warrens in the Merraian hills, would lie in the path of the encroaching army. Would they merely hide in their homes? Would they take up what they could carry and flee? They were no fighters, certainly not before an army of such magnitude. She wondered whether this thought was at the back of Sperra's mind too. Of course, if Tark fell, then Egel and Merro, those two Fly-kinden warrens in the Merraian hills, would lie in the path of the encroaching army. Would they merely hide in their homes? Would they take up what they could carry and flee? They were no fighters, certainly not before an army of such magnitude. She wondered whether this thought was at the back of Sperra's mind too.

We are all at risk here: Achaeos's people, Sperra's and mine. Even Tisamon's precious Mantis-kinden cannot stay apart from this.

The sun was lowering in the sky and the gleam of Lake Sideriti grew duller, the beautiful allure of its waters dimming and dimming as the night loomed in the eastern sky.

Seven.

They called Capitas the City of Gold, but it was only at dawn that the name struck true. The tawny stone it was built from, which had gnawed up quarry after quarry in the hillsides to the north, took that moment's morning light and glowed with it. After that it was just stone.

This artificial flower of the Empire was young enough that old men could remember when the river wound untroubled past the hills and the homes of herdsmen. Alvdan's father had planned the city and seen most of it built before his death. Alvdan himself had let the architects and craftsmen follow the same plans, another binding promise he had inherited from his father's reign. Even now, if he chose to look for it, he would see scaffolding where the Ninth Army barracks were still being constructed.

But he liked the place at dawn. Now here he was, breakfasting on his balcony and looking down the stepped levels of the great palace and over the elite of his subjects. Capitas was a place that could never have grown naturally. The land was insufficient to support it. It was the heart of Empire, though, and the taxes and war plunder of the Wasp-kinden flowed relentlessly to it. If they did not then the Rekef would soon ask why.

The Emperor was breaking his fast in company today. Often he dined with concubines, sometimes generals or advisers that he wished to favour. Once in a tenday, though, he made a point of sending for his sister. She was installed in a palace of her own across the city that was as much a padded prison as anything else. He knew that to arrive here on time for a dawn breakfast she would be roused from her bed not long after midnight. After all, the daughter of the Empire must be correctly dressed and perfumed and painted.

As Emperor he took his victories where he wanted, so here she was.

They sat at a table, almost within reach of one another, and servants scuttled to serve them with seedcakes and new-baked bread and warm honeydew. The city beyond was waking up, a hundred dashes of glitter showing his subjects taking to the air. None of the airborne would approach the palace, of course. There were guards enough on the tier above them who would shoot any intruder without question.

And one more guard, of course, to stand uncomfortably close behind his sister, to remind her of her situation.

'Your name came up in council again,' he remarked, sipping his honeydew. He seemed all ease here, slouching in his chair, smiling at the servants. She, on the other hand, sat with a spear-straight back, eating little and delicately. Eight years his junior, barely a woman, she had been living in fear now for half her life.

'General Maxin wishes, I think, to be remembered to you.'

He was adept at reading her. Now, seeing her lips tighten, he broadened his own smile. There There was a name she was unlikely to forget. Three brothers and a sister that had separated the two of them in age had all fallen, if not to Maxin's knife then to his orders. was a name she was unlikely to forget. Three brothers and a sister that had separated the two of them in age had all fallen, if not to Maxin's knife then to his orders.

'I am sure,' she said, 'that I am grateful to the general for his concern.'

He laughed politely. 'Dear sister Seda, they are all so anxious that you find some direction in your life.'

'I am touched.' Seda took a minute bite of seedcake, her eyes never leaving his hands, watching for any signal to the guard hovering behind her. 'Although I can guess at the direction direction they have in mind.' they have in mind.'

'They don't understand how it is between us,' Alvdan continued. A servant brought him more bread and b.u.t.tered it for him.

'I am not sure that I do, Alvdan.' She sensed the guard shift behind her and added, 'Your Imperial Majesty.'

'They think I am so soft-hearted. They agonize over it, that the Emperor of the Wasps should have such a flaw in his character,' he told her.

'Then you are right that they clearly do not understand you.'

'Insolence, sister Seda, does not become one of our line,' he warned her.

She lowered her head but her eyes stayed with his hands.

'You and I understand each other, do we not?' he pressed.

'We do . . . Your Majesty.'

'Tell me,' he said. She glanced up at him, and he repeated, 'Tell me. I love to hear the words from you.'

For a second she looked rebellious, but it pa.s.sed like the weather. 'You hate and despise me, Majesty. Your joy is in my misery.'

'And an Emperor deserves all joys in life, does he not,' he agreed happily. 'My advisers and their plans! They do not understand your potential. Last year they were plotting to marry you off, to make an honest wife of you. They do not realize that you are not like other women of our race. You are no mere adornment for some man man. You are a weapon, and if your hilt were in a man's hand he would turn your edge on me. I think General Maxin would marry you himself, if I was mad enough to let him.'

She said something quietly, and he rapped his knife-hilt on the table impatiently.

'I said I would rather die, Your Majesty,' she answered him.

He smiled broadly at that. 'Well then perhaps I should hold the option open. I can always have Maxin slain on his nuptial night. That would be a fit wedding present, no?'

'Your Majesty forgets who he most wishes to hurt,' she said tiredly.

'Perhaps. But now they are trying to parcel you off to some order, so as to make an ascetic of you. As though you could not be recalled from there, once my back was turned. And that is the crux. Alive, you will always threaten me. Yet dead . . . My throne will always require defending and, with your blood staining my hands, who can say from where the next threat might come? So, alive and close you must stay, little sister.'

'You will keep me only until the succession is secured, Majesty, and then you will have me killed. Perhaps you will even wield the knife yourself, or break me in the interrogation rooms.'

'Do you tire of life, Seda?' he asked her.

She reached out for him, then, but the cold steel of the guard's sword touched her cheek before she could touch even his fingers. With a long sigh she drew back.

'I have had no life since our father died. What I have had since then is nothing more than a long descent, and every tenday the ground is moved one tenday further off, so that I drop and drop. But one day the ground will stay where it is, and I shall be dashed to pieces.'

'Beautifully said,' he told her. 'Your education has not been wasted after all. Seeing the good use you have made of it, I decide that I shall broaden it.'

This was a change from the usual routine. 'Your Imperial Majesty?' she enquired cautiously.

'A little trip to the dungeons, dear Seda,' he said and, when she sighed, he added, 'Not yet, dear sister. It is not your turn yet. Instead there is a most interesting prisoner that General Maxin has brought for me. I think you should see him. Furthermore, I think he is desirous of seeing you.'

The Wasp Empire was all about imposing order. Alvdan the Second's grandfather Alvric had forced it on his own people, who were a turbulent and savage lot by nature. The original Alvdan, first of that name, had then turned his need for order on the wider world and his namesake son had followed his lead. The imposition of order became all. The multiplicity of ranks and stations within the army, the precise status of the more powerful families, the honours and t.i.tles that were the gift of the throne, even the station and privileges of individual slaves everyone had a place, and those above, and those below.

The maxim applied even to prisoners. There had developed a whole imperial art to the treatment of prisoners how often they were fed; whether they had a cell a man could stand in, or even lie straight in; whether they were kept damp, kept cold; whether they were dragged out to lie on the artificer-interrogator's mechanical tables for no other reason than it was their turn, their lowly contribution to the Empire's sense of order.

Such prisoners as had something to offer the Empire, they could do well for themselves. They could even make the leap, eventually, from prisoner to slave just as the threat of becoming a prisoner kept the lowest slaves in line.

Judging by such exacting standards, this man her brother had found must have a great deal of potential, for his cell lay on the airiest level of Capitas's most accommodating prison. He had two rooms to himself, and an antechamber, and the guards even rattled the barred door in advance to announce that he had visitors. In the antechamber there sat three young pages, two boys and a girl, presumably to run errands for the prisoner's needs. As she considered that, Princess Seda noticed how pale and drawn they all were, and that one was visibly trembling.

She was not really a princess, of course. That was a Commonwealer t.i.tle that one young officer, desperately gallant and politically nave, had once given her. What fate had befallen him since she did not know, but he had been a brief ray of sun through the clouds that perpetually clogged her life.

The prisoner's reception chamber was lit by great windows, latticed with metal bars, that extended across almost an entire wall, and opened up part of the ceiling as well. There were no curtains, she saw. The sun flooded unopposed across the floor until it met the doorway into the sleeping chamber. That room was quite dark, m.u.f.fled in drapes, and impenetrable to her gaze.

'Your Emperor is here,' one of the guards announced. 'Present yourself!'

For a moment it seemed that nothing would happen, and then Seda heard a shuffling from within the darkness, and at last a hooded figure in tattered robes came forward tentatively to the brink of the dazzling light. One hand, pale as death and thin as bone, was raised against the sun.

'Come forward, we command it,' Alvdan instructed, and Seda saw how he was enjoying himself, watching the wretch quail before the sunlight.

The guard began uncoiling a whip from his belt and, with a shudder, the slender creature crept forwards, head turned away from the windows. She could see nothing of him yet but those two delicate hands, long-fingered and sharp-nailed.

'We have brought our sister to you, since we thought that you might be of interest to each other,' Alvdan sounded pleased with himself no end. The cowl shifted and sought her out, and she imagined watery eyes within were trying to focus on her.

'Introduce yourself, creature,' Alvdan said. 'Have your kinden no manners?'

The robed thing gave a long, tired hiss and crept closer, until it was almost within arm's reach. There were blue veins prominent against the translucence of its arms, and something about the creature sent a deep shiver through Seda.

'This is Seda, youngest of our father's line, as we are oldest,' Alvdan announced. 'Name yourself.'

The voice was hoa.r.s.e and low. 'Uctebri the Sarcad, Your Imperial Majesty and honoured lady.' It was a man's voice, as accentless as though he had been born here in Capitas city.

'And is it good-mannered to conceal yourself behind a cowl?' Alvdan demanded. 'Surely my sister deserves better than that? Come, unmask yourself, creature.'

The figure that called itself Uctebri shuddered again, one hand gesturing vaguely towards the windows. The voice murmured something that might have been a plea.

The crack of the guard's whip made Seda start. Uctebri flinched back from it, though it had not touched him. She feared that, had the lash struck his wrist, it might have snapped his hand off.

Trembling, those hands now rose to draw back the cowl.

The sight was not so bad, at first. An old man, or an ill one. A pale veiny head with a little lank hair still clinging behind it. A thin, arched neck bagged with wrinkles. The lips were withered, his nose pointed, and there was a florid bruise on his forehead.

Shading them with both hands, he painfully opened his eyes to stare at her. They were protuberant, with irises of pure red, and they stared and stared at her face despite the glaring daylight. Seeing those, she saw also that the mark on his brow was not a bruise after all, but blood, a clot of blood constantly shifting beneath his waxy skin.

'I don't understand,' she said to her brother. 'Who is this old man?'

'Do you hear her, Uctebri?' Alvdan smirked, as though he and the withered thing were sharing some joke at her expense. 'Well even we were unsure when first we looked upon you. Even with General Maxin's urgings, we were slow to believe and yet here you are.'

Uctebri's head turned to squint at him, and then his crimson attention focused back to her. He would have been just some old man except for those eyes. They seemed to look through her. She could feel the force of that crimson stare as a queasiness in her stomach, an itch between her shoulder blades.

'Touch her,' Alvdan commanded. Seda drew back at once, but the guard, the man who had spent all morning at her shoulder, was now gripping her arms. Uctebri shuffled forwards, those unnatural eyes craning up at her, and she saw his tongue pierce between his lips, a sharp dart of red.

Something terrible was about to happen. She could not account for the premonition but she began to struggle as hard as she could, twisting and writhing in the soldier's grip as the old man approached her.

And then he was before her and she saw his mouth open slightly, the teeth inside sharp and pointed like yellow needles. One of those slender hands reached out to pincer her wrist.

He was not strong, but stronger than his frailty suggested nonetheless. She wrenched her hand from that cool touch, and Uctebri said, 'I must feel the blood, your great Majesty,' in that same calm, low voice.

She heard the whisper of Alvdan unsheathing his dagger, and then the cold steel at her throat. The old man raised his hands urgently.

'A point, the p.r.i.c.k of a pin only, Lord Majesty. Just for the savour of it. No more, not yet. All in good time.'

They had surely all gone mad. If there was any fraternal feeling in Alvdan's heart she would have pleaded with him. Instead she closed her eyes and turned her head away as he seized her hand and cut across a finger.

Uctebri grasped eagerly for the weapon, but Alvdan only presented the blade of it.

'Have no ideas above your station, creature,' the Emperor said. 'You know what you are. Now act as you should.'

The crabbed old man craned forwards, hands cupping beneath the stained blade to catch any drips, and then licked the steel, his sharp tongue cleaning her blood from it in scant moments. Even that small taste of her seemed to bring a new strength to him. His next glance at her was nothing other than hungry.

'Will she serve?' Alvdan demanded of him. 'Or must we mount a hunt for more distant relations?'

Uctebri smiled slyly. 'She shall more than serve, your worshipful Majesty. She is . . . perfect. A most delicate savour.'

'Brother-' Seda's voice shook but she did not care. 'What is this?'

'Some small diversion,' he told her. 'Merely an entertainment. Fear not, dear sister. You have your part to play, but need learn no lines or dance-steps. Come, bring her.'

She was bundled after him back into the antechamber, where the pale servants waited.

'What is he?' she stammered.

'Can you not guess, sweet sister?' Alvdan's smile was now broad indeed. 'Think back as far back as childhood, when we sat by the fire together and listened to stories.'

And it was worse that she knew what he meant, that he did not need to explain. 'He cannot be . . .'

'Quite a discovery by General Maxin's Rekef, is it not?'

They come at night for the blood of the living, the ancient sorcerers, the terrible night-dwellers, who steal bad children from their beds, never to be seen again . . .

'But there are no Mosquito-kinden. There never were. They were just tales . . . surely?'

But confronting that gleeful smile of his, she knew otherwise.

Eight.

Collegium was a city of laws. The underhanded could not easily purchase respectability, nor were they of great service or use to the a.s.sembly. Such businesses as Lieutenant Graf had been practising were therefore done by word of mouth and behind closed doors.

Graf's office sat behind a small-package exporter run by a copper-skinned Kessen Ant who had long been renegade from his native city. The exporter's own work was on the shady side of the legal line and he asked no questions nor answered them. Behind his store was the back room where Graf bought and sold the talents of swordsmen to whoever required them. He was well known. He had a good reputation amongst buyers and sellers of blades.

Regular business was now closed for the evening, though, and he set out five bowls, poured wine into only one. His true line of work was a more uncertain business. There was no telling which of the chairs would sit out the night empty.

Thalric came first, unpinning his cloak and casting it off. 'Concerns, Lieutenant?' he asked, straight away.

'All going like clockwork, Major,' Graf confirmed. Thal-ric took the bowl of wine he was offered and swallowed deeply.

'Local?' he asked, and when Graf nodded, remarked, 'They have good vineyards hereabouts.'