'And what's their business?' the Dragonfly countered, pointing at Thalric with one end of his bow.

'Oh, traders,' was Varmen's explanation. 'Merchants, you know.'

Thalric winced, because traders would be travelling with a great deal more baggage than Varmen's little pack-beetle could accommodate. The Dragonflies seemed to be of the same mind, for they closed in a little, and the arrowheads were wavering upwards along with the level of their suspicions.

'Traders?' their leader spat disbelievingly.

'You know, fresh out of Capitas,' Varmen continued, for all that Thalric was on the point of telling him to shut up. 'Long way, you know, from Capitas, but they're very keen to, you know, trade.'

It was as if there was some mindlink between Varmen and the people out of Solamen, because one by one they clearly leapt to some conclusion that his words alone could not account for. There was a nervous shuffling amongst them.

Fear? Thalric wondered, but there was more than simple fear there.

'Capitas, is it?' the leader asked cautiously.

'Oh, there are plenty of traders out of Capitas who want to know this part of the world better. News of your princes has reached them there, and they see a lot of, you know, profit in making deals over here, if you see what I mean.'

The Dragonflies apparently did see what he meant, for all that Thalric did not.

'We should . . .' one of them began, as their leader actually looked plaintively at Varmen for guidance.

'Best not to trouble your chief. It's all a little quiet, you know trading on the sly, if you see?' Varmen was studying his dirty fingernails with exaggerated unconcern.

'I see,' the Dragonfly chief confirmed. 'You should pa.s.s through swiftly. I'm sure the Colonel would agree.'

At the mention of that Imperial t.i.tle, Thalric almost choked, but he held it in and kept it there whilst the Dragonflies rose aloft and flew back towards Solamen.

'Glad you're with me now?' Varmen asked them, grinning broadly.

'What was that?' Thalric demanded. 'For that matter, why in the pits were they dressed like that? And a colonel? Has Solamen been taken over by madmen?'

'Not just Solamen, the whole of the Princ.i.p.alities all the land the Empire bit out of the Commonweal during the war,' Varmen explained. 'You've got to think this was all Imperial until the Alliance cities kicked us out, and the Commonweal never actually took them back.'

'But why?' Che demanded. 'Surely they're free now?'

'Oh, free,' replied Varmen dismissively. 'Free for what? Free to wait until the Empire comes back? Look, most of the n.o.ble families that were lording it over places like this got wiped out, right? Down to the last little snapper among them, is what I heard.'

Thalric nodded, lips pressed together, but Varmen failed to notice his reaction.

'So who takes over? Some peasant farmer? Who else knows how to run things, 'cept us?'

'And so they let us through because we were Wasps?' Thalric demanded. 'What was all that about merchants?'

'Well, you know . . . merchants,' Varmen echoed, with a peculiar emphasis.

'Explain,' Thalric insisted, but at his side Che was laughing. She was doing her best to contain it, but it was leaking out all over: her shoulders shaking, m.u.f.fled snorting noises from behind her hand.

'Well, come on,' Varmen said, 'what would you think: two people who really, honestly aren't merchants come in, and they'd come from the capital, and they had, you know, secret business to attend to, all hush-hush, you know?'

'Oh, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, they thought we were Rekef,' said Thalric, finding himself momentarily unable to know how he should feel about that.

Varmen shrugged. 'They know about the Rekef here. They know how the Rekef killed off all their old n.o.bles, and they know they don't exactly want a new crop coming in from the Commonweal just yet, given how badly the old lot did. So, yeah, Rekef. Why not?'

Thalric gave in, and a moment later, catching Che's eyes, he gave out a bleak laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

'All right, all right,' Varmen said, slightly put off now. 'It's not that funny.'

'Oh, it is,' Thalric told him. 'Believe me, it is.'

That night, when they were well past Solamen and after Che had gone to sleep, Varmen said, 'I've got to ask. You and her, what's going on?'

Thalric stared at him coldly. 'None of your business, Sergeant.' He had guessed the man's rank within minutes of meeting with him in Myna.

Varmen held his closed hands up before him, a gesture of appeas.e.m.e.nt. 'It's just that, I reckoned you were in charge, and she was your woman, you know or your slave, or maybe a scribe or something. But this is her journey, isn't it? And you're tagging along.'

'Like I said, it's not your business to worry about. Just get us to the Commonweal.' Thalric was annoyed at how transparent the situation had become. Perhaps I should put a hand on the rudder of this little trip? As a Wasp-kinden man, he felt that he should be offended that a woman of a lesser kinden was expecting him to trail after her. If he worked at it, he could get up quite a head of self-righteousness, but he did have to work at it. To his surprise, he found that, left to his own devices, he wouldn't care much.

Of course, I have no idea precisely where we're going, or why, so a fine fool I'd look by demanding to take the lead and then having to ask the way. Che had decided that she had to save her foster-sister, Tynisa. Save her from what? Thalric had no fond memories of the half-Spider girl who had tried to kill him on two separate occasions. In his opinion, it was not saving that she needed, so much as putting out of her misery like a mad animal. She stabbed Achaeos, after all. Why doesn't Che want her dead, after that?

Unless the girl's playing her cards close, and that is what she does want after all . . .

His memories of that brief sequence of incomprehensible events was far clearer than he was comfortable with. They had all been in Jerez, and had just recovered that wretched piece of tat that Achaeos the Moth had called the 'Shadow Box'. Why the nasty little relic was so important, the Moth-kinden was never able to explain to Thalric's satisfaction, but then Thalric was in no position to make demands, being there on sufferance, nominally as their prisoner and still recovering from his wounds.

Anyway, they had got hold of the thing, and Achaeos had been fingering it avariciously and then, without warning, he and Tynisa and even Tynisa's murderous father Tisamon had just dropped as though simultaneously struck on the head.

I should have taken the opportunity to kill the lot of them and take the box myself, Thalric thought, but it was almost by rote, old motivations grown stale since he had abandoned his role as a Rekef officer. What had actually happened was that he and Gaved, the other Wasp present, had just goggled at one another uselessly, tried and failed to rouse the sleepers, and then Tynisa had jumped up and put her rapier into Achaeos very nearly a fatal wound there and then.

Thalric and Gaved had done their best to subdue her, but in the end only the intervention of one of Gaved's local cronies had managed that. It was a wonder she didn't kill the lot of us, Thalric admitted in the privacy of his own mind, where he could afford to be honest with himself.

And yet Che seems to want no kind of revenge, but instead seeks to save the b.l.o.o.d.y-handed halfbreed woman from some indistinct threat. Unwelcome memories stirred inside Thalric, and he fought them down. I have no idea what that threat is, he insisted to himself. He was not ready to face such thoughts, and he might never be.

He was, however, aware that Che did not seek revenge, because Che was not Wasp-kinden, or Mantis-kinden, or even Spider-kinden. Her people did not place such a premium on personal honour. Moreover, Che saw the world very differently even from the bulk of her own people, for she suffered under a peculiar curse that had fallen upon her at the end of the war.

When Achaeos died, Thalric reflected uncomfortably, trying to dismiss any possible connection between the two. Still, the thoughts hounded him: When Achaeos died, when Tisamon died . . . why do I believe there is a link?

Che had then lost her Apt.i.tude. She had lost that world of reason and mechanics and light that was her birthright, and instead she was groping through a new world of charlatanry and ignorance, living off sc.r.a.ps of esoteric knowledge left over from the Days of Lore. That Che's new viewpoint had saved both her and Thalric more than once was something he was unhappy to consider, but that he could not avoid acknowledging. This thought was a grain of sand in his mind that no amount of explanation could turn into a pearl.

There was only one other person that Thalric could name who had suffered the same reversal, and the fact that she had done so was a closely guarded secret. Seda, Empress of the Wasps, was likewise become Inapt, and on nights like these, when sleep kept its distance from him, he was forced to confront that curious web of interdependence: Che and the dead man Achaeos, Seda and the dead man Tisamon. Why do I feel they are linked? Why? There could be no connection, and yet some part of him remained sure of it, beyond any rational argument.

And now Che is asking me questions about the Empress? Thalric sat before their guttering fire, Che sleeping beside him, Varmen snoring gently on the far side of it. He felt as though the night was full of huge, monolithic things moving silently but ma.s.sively, coming together to built some terrible edifice that he would be afraid to look upon.

I should leave, he told himself, not for the first time. Che is not in her right mind. This entire business is madness.

But he made no move to go, just looked down at her face in the firelight. We have travelled a long road together, since my men caught you in h.e.l.leron, he considered. We shall walk a few miles more in each other's company. Why not?

She shifted and twitched in her slumber, and he felt an unplaceable sense of danger.

Be careful what you dream of, Che.

Thirteen.

Gathering information in Khanaphes was like reaching into briars, a delicate and unrewarding business. Amnon himself could have gone and spoken to a hundred people who would remember him as First Soldier, as saviour of their city, but each one of them was still tied by invisible, unbreakable strings of responsibility and duty that led all the way to the Ministers. That the Empress had been welcomed, and more than welcomed, suggested that a former First Soldier asking awkward questions might become an inconvenience. Without knowing precisely what game Ethmet and the others were playing, Amnon was loath to announce his presence in the city. It was not fear of the Wasps, Praeda knew, but fear of having to go up against his own people, those loyal servants of the city whom he had formerly led into battle.

Besides, the general feel about the city's populace was one of bafflement. Khanaphes' dealings with outsiders had not changed in centuries. Even the disastrous a.s.sault recently by the Scorpion-kinden had fitted a particular pattern: the Many of Nem had always been the city's enemies, after all, and it was only a matter of degree. The sudden imposition of an Imperial garrison on the city, the obeisance of the Ministers, the utter lack of reaction or statement from the Khanaphir administration, had left the people at large unsure of precisely what was happening. Patterns had been broken, but in a way that demanded no immediate reaction from them. Instead they were very pointedly going about their business as if nothing had happened, paying the Imperial troops as little notice as possible, and yet cooperating with them abjectly whenever they were forced to acknowledge the invaders' presence. Amnon and Praeda witnessed several examples of the Wasps taking their customary liberties with a subject population: goods taken from merchants, insults and beatings inflicted on locals who got in the way or looked at the soldiers too boldly, spontaneous and seemingly random arrests. Throughout it all, the Khanaphir simply bowed their heads, following the example of their Ministers and presenting their backs for the lash, as docile as broken slaves. This sheer calm acceptance of it all was plainly thwarting the Wasps' natural instincts. They had come here ready for a fight, a.s.suming that the Khanaphir would resist, however primitive their methods. Instead the city had fallen into their hands pre-subjugated. They did not know what to do, and their expressions, as they castigated some cringing, wretched porter or servant, were almost embarra.s.sed apologetic for the duties forced on them by Imperial policy.

If not from the Khanaphir themselves, Amnon and Praeda still needed some source of intelligence, and there remained a body of people in the city who were very keenly interested in what the Empire might be planning. In the inns and open houses by the Estuarine Gate, they found the foreigners: sailors, merchants, adventurers and mercenaries who had not been thrown out by the Wasps, yet, nor crept or bribed their way out of the city. They were waiting to see what happened, tied to the place either by their investments, their optimism or their curiosity. Praeda and Amnon's appearance in their midst raised no questions, and it was plain that, while asking questions about the Wasps was an accepted custom, asking questions about the questioners was not.

After trying a few places, with Praeda doing most of the talking, they fell in with the right kind of company, meaning people that no self-respecting scholar of the College would have had anything to do with back home. As evening fell, they found themselves sharing a table with a trio of reprobates all evaluating their current fortunes, namely the merits and drawbacks of being stuck in occupied Khanaphes. There was a battered and ill-used-looking Fly-kinden man, sun-beaten and balding, who never quite admitted that he made a living by robbing the ruins of the Nem, but Amnon plainly knew the type, and would have disapproved furiously had he been in any position of authority any more. A Spider-kinden woman was also some manner of adventuress, not young and yet somehow ageless, the worn hilt of the rapier at her hip testifying to her chosen method of resolving disputes. The third was a Solarnese man, a publicly declared trader in gems and jewellery, or a smuggler when read between the lines. The three of them were plainly well matched, with enough petty villainy between them to give any number of Wasp-kinden pause for thought. Worse, they were waiting for a fourth who must surely be even more of a rogue than themselves, but they were not averse to Praeda and Amnon's company while they pa.s.sed the time and drank and talked politics.

'It's the same every time,' the Solarnese merchant was holding forth. 'Must be standard practice for the Jaspers. As soon as they've seized a place they go into a frenzy of imposing laws, curfews, taxes, all that, but never reliably. Sometimes you can get away with murder; other times they'll throw you in a cell for sneezing. When Solarno fell, it was an absolute lottery: some real crooks were let in to moor at the high-end piers without bribes, too while respectable Spider-kinden traders got turned away as though they were plague ships.'

'Keeps people off balance,' the Spider considered. 'Makes them fear. Still, you can only do that for so long. At the start, if people are getting arrested for the slightest reason, or no reason, they'll toe the line. After a month, they'll just think they have nothing to lose.'

'Oh it calms down,' the Solarnese agreed. He was a pleasant, prosperous-looking man whom Praeda wouldn't have trusted an inch. 'Even Wasp-kinden can't maintain that level of arbitrary hostility for long. They'll get a basic administration in place, a governor and the like set above the Ministers here, and then things will find their own rut and stay there.'

The Fly spat. 'The Empire, stay here? What in the pits for?'

'Don't worry, little man. They won't cut into your sort of trade,' the Spider jibed.

'That's what you think.' The Fly bared yellow teeth. 'Scouts are already heading off into the desert, have been almost since the first soldiers arrived. What are they after, eh? Or is it to invite the Scorpions back?'

'That wasn't the Empire, they say,' the Solarnese opined, but rather uncertainly.

'It was the Empire,' Amnon declared. They glanced at him thoughtfully, and read a great deal of certainty on his face.

'You're local. You fought them?' the Spider asked. 'On the bridge, was it?'

'On the bridge,' Amnon agreed heavily, and the weight of memories bled into his words, lending them conviction that could not be denied.

'I was there too,' Praeda put in. 'There were Wasp-kinden directing the artillery, flying in with grenades. In the city, too Rekef, they said.' She did not mean to, but she gave that word a hushed and fearful emphasis. From the reactions of the others it was entirely appropriate.

'They're after Solarno, for sure,' said the smuggler-merchant savagely. 'Flanking us, that's what they're doing.'

'There's the whole of the Nem between Khanaphes and the Exalsee,' said the Spider woman dismissively. 'What sort of flanking manoeuvre sees half your army dead of thirst before it arrives? The Spiderlands is next on their menu, you take my word. They know that, if they want to push their ambitions anywhere south of Toek, they'll have to make a sustained a.s.sault on the Houses, and they're looking for a way in. Probably air armada over the Forest Aleth.'

The Fly-kinden shook his head. 'You're not listening. First thing when they got here, they're looking west. Not Solarno but the desert. They've had surveyors and artificers and wildsmen out there for days now. This isn't just a staging post. Solarno and the Nem are it.' The others stared at him, and he glowered right back.

'You think they're going to rob your tombs before you can get to them?' the Spider said somewhat disdainfully.

'Know what?' The Fly snorted. 'I don't know what in Waste's name they're after, but they're after it with all their b.a.s.t.a.r.d hearts. And while it won't be my business they're muscling in on, they won't want someone like me anywhere close by, I can tell you. Maybe it's time I went and followed up some leads down Tsovashni way.'

'And at last!' The Spider woman stood up, as their missing fourth had finally arrived. 'Someone who can give us the real story. Grab a chair, Emon.'

Praeda looked over, seeing a short, dark man, his greying hair cut almost to the skull: a Bee-kinden with an artificer's toolstrip slung over a dark tabarded breastplate. Only when she saw the symbol on his chest did she start. A grey gauntlet embroidered on grey cloth, yet some trick of the weave made it catch the light differently, making it clear and distinct and ominous.

'Iron Glove?' she exclaimed. 'I'd have thought you'd want to be well away from the city. Surely the Empire are shooting you people on sight.'

'And h.e.l.lo to you too.' The Bee, Emon, sat down and snagged a mostly empty jar of wine, draining the dregs of it. 'Who are these?'

'Travellers who want us to think they're locals. Or the other way round,' the Spider woman said wryly. 'Does it matter?'

'Perhaps not.' The Bee then squinted and appeared to change his mind. 'Or perhaps, yes. You're . . .' his eyes widened, staring at Amnon, and there was a tense moment in which revelations and violence hovered very close together. 'Never mind,' the Bee concluded. 'None of my business.'

'They fought on the bridge, they reckon,' the Fly explained, watching the Iron Glove man carefully.

'Oh, to be sure. I, on the other hand, fought on the river.'

'The Fourth Iteration?' Praeda pressed, for it was the name the Glove had given to their ingenious ship that had taken such a toll of the attacking Scorpions, until the Imperial artillery had finally silenced it.

Emon nodded. 'A lovely craft it was, too, but in the end it was swim or fly, when sailing couldn't keep us afloat any more. Not that many of us made it to sh.o.r.e.'

The Solarnese merchant had called for more wine, and the Bee accepted a jug gratefully. 'So I can see why you'd think I was tempting fate by sitting here, but it's not so. We're just arrived, and here because we're invited.'

That brought all the others leaning closer, waiting for the catch. A trap? was the plain thought on their faces, as if the Empress herself would go to such lengths to punish a cartel of weapons traders.

'Himself's shadow is here,' Emon murmured darkly. 'He's not exactly talked it over with the crew, but word is that the Glove is about to shake hands with the Empire, after all this time. Over in Chasme, we've made some remarkable advances, they tell me,' meaning the squatting little artificer town on the Exalsee that the Glove virtually owned these days. 'A poor sailor-engineer like myself wouldn't know where to start second-guessing Himself and his adopted son, but the Empire's the biggest market in the world. Makes sense that we'd want to set things straight and makes sense that the Wasps would want to let us. Nothing but the best for the army, after all, and we surely do make the best.'

Himself's shadow? Praeda wondered. 'But what if the Empire won't talk . . .?'

'It's like I said,' Emon explained, 'the Empire asked first. I reckon we probably sent them a catalogue, like merchants do sometimes, when they have special goods for sale. I reckon the Imperial artificers just about must have had a fit when they saw what we've cooked up.' He gave a crooked smile. 'I reckon the world's about to change in all manner of directions, I do.'

To Angved's surprise, Va.r.s.ec had proved surprisingly good company. The Engineer was used to always having to compete with other officers, and all too used to failing at it, too. He and the aviator were still prisoners, and yet still being treated in a curiously tentative manner by their captors, who were all from the Engineering Corps themselves. Angved had meanwhile got a look at the machinery that had travelled the dusty road south to Khanaphes ahead of them, and he now felt cause to be hopeful.

Of course, they might have decided they don't need me to make it work, but why bring me along at all, in that case? And if they needed Angved, having decided to roll the dice and gamble on his discovery, then the same seemed to be true of Va.r.s.ec, who was housed in the same cell and given the same uncertain treatment.

Of course the Khanaphir expedition didn't have a direct bearing on Va.r.s.ec's particular work, but he and Angved had already got past their initial caginess regarding their plans, and it was clear to both that the one could help the other. Aboard the airship the Empress's own airship! they had taken every piece of paper they had been given and begun scrawling schematics and plans, diagrams of force and tension . . .

There had come a moment, far into the morning hours of a night that had slipped past almost unnoticed, when the two men had suddenly stared at one another, the plans spread out between them. Their shared gaze had spoken eloquently of a small part of the world changed for ever, the toothed wheels of progress moving on a notch.

They had called for the guard and demanded access to a messenger. The Fly-kinden who arrived was on the Empress's own staff, as he informed them in extreme annoyance at having been woken at the whims of prisoners. He then refused to take their messages until Colonel Lien had been summoned and shown the schematics.

The Fly was on his way north almost immediately after that, dropping from the airship and speeding for the factories of Sonn, where some of Va.r.s.ec's initial ideas were already being worked into reality. It must change. It must all change. It will be better.

Now the two of them had been transferred to a room inside one of the emba.s.sies, still not considered quite as dignitaries but not quite as prisoners either, without rank and yet treated with cautious deference. Va.r.s.ec was sketching again, drawing wing joints in delicate detail. He had kept the beard, trimmed down neatly now that they had given him a razor, but still a departure from the Imperial norm, and if his clothes were the simple tunic and sandals of a slave, at least they were clean and intact. He seemed at peace with it, too, their curious half-life. Angved himself still felt the pinch of ambition, of his additional years and his lack of success. I must be close, though, now. Close to an end or a new beginning, anyway. Khanaphes again, and I didn't even need a leadshotter to get within the walls.

He had been ready for some time, when the message finally came. For the last few hours both he and Va.r.s.ec had sensed the approach of it. Whatever they were here for, death or glory, it was coming.

Dusk had come and gone, as the messenger arrived, and Angved caught himself wondering what precisely they were being called to that had to be done under cover of darkness. The bland-faced, efficient Wasp-kinden come to fetch them had brought uniforms with him: tunics in the black and gold. 'We need to make a good show,' he explained, and neither of the prisoners asked for whom.

They were taken to a vast ma.s.s of stone shot through with small windows, encrusted with glyphs and friezes, fronted by vast colonnades. 'The Scriptora,' Angved guessed aloud, obscurely proud of having ama.s.sed some little local knowledge, even if it had only been for the purposes of knowing which parts of the city to knock down. From this gigantic mausoleum of an edifice, the Ministers governed their backward city. There were no Khanaphir in sight, though, only some Wasps guarding the entrance. The city's leaders and their staff had been given the night off, it seemed.