But when Khanaphes had been mentioned, as a ranging shot aimed at General Brugan's high standing in her eyes, she had announced, 'We will go there.'

There had been silence amongst her advisers then, and they glanced at each other uncertainly. Her brother, the late Emperor, had kept to their ridiculous tribal custom of leader and advisers all sitting in a line, not facing one another. That did not suit her, though, so she had changed it effortlessly, without anyone being able to muster an argument against her decision. Now the Empress would meet with her advisers outside on a sun-warmed balcony, sitting or even reclining on comfortable couches in the Spider style, while plied with food and drink by the palace servants.

'There is nothing there,' had ventured Colonel Thanred, an old soldier who was the nominal governor of Capitas. 'Just a backward Beetle city full of simpletons.'

'The Rekef clearly believed there was something there worth seeing,' a Consortium magnate had suggested snidely.

'Lowlander agents were present in the city, so it was our duty to ensure they did not secure a base from which to strike at us.' General Brugan had retained his composure magnificently, for which Seda indulged him with a small smile of approval that did not go unnoticed by his peers. He lies so well, she had thought, almost proudly.

'We have quelled the rebel governors and generals, have we not?' she had asked them, affecting a slightly bemused smile. 'Our Empire is whole once more, thanks to your efforts. Our wounds are healed.' She included them all in the smile, even those who had patently done nothing but stand on the sidelines and wait to see how matters would turn out. She had then locked eyes with the old Woodlouse-kinden, Gjegevey, adviser to her brother and their father before him, a man whose counsel was more valuable to her than any dozen Wasp-kinden dignitaries.

'You word it perfectly, of course,' a second Consortium man had observed, fat, old and ugly, but a man endowed with a rare sense of art and poetry. While her duller brother had demanded blood-fights in the arena, this man had been quick to arrange more refined entertainment for her, and thus won himself a place amongst her favourites for now. 'Empress, you should know that some of the Consortium have been considering a move eastwards. There are cities across the Jahalian Rift that our factors claim show great promise . . .'

'But if we do head east, who would know of it?' she had asked him pleasantly, and he was shrewd enough to remain silent and wait for her to elaborate. She was positively beaming now, letting them bask in her radiant expression. 'We must not forget that we are no longer a solitary power surrounded by small cities who barely feel our approach before we snap them up. We now stand amongst those who think themselves our equals; even if we still stand head and shoulders above them, we must not forget that we are watched. We must remind them what it means to be an Empire.'

She had gauged their expressions in turn, reading worry, antic.i.p.ation, a certain dormant bloodl.u.s.t coming to the fore again.

'We shall break no treaties,' she had declared, 'and so the Lowlander city-states will merely fret and protest. Yet we can extend our protective hand to a neighbour in need, a neighbour who is just within their sight. A city of Beetles, sorely oppressed by Scorpion barbarians, shall come to see the wisdom of sheltering beneath the black and gold flag. And their kin in Collegium will wring their hands and tell each other how terrible it is. And do nothing.' Her smile, as it toured the balcony, had been sharp as a razor. 'Or not, perhaps. Maybe it is just a fancy of mine, this thought of Khanaphes. What think you, my advisers?'

She had them immediately, of course. It was a perfect plan, bold and cautious in equal measures. It would remind the world of the Empire's power but, more than that, it would remind the Empire's own soldiers and citizens.

Two days later saw completion of the debriefing of those Engineers who had survived the Rekef fiasco. It had been a.s.sumed that they would be punished for their failures, but something very strange had happened during their interrogation, for their leader had produced a remarkable report. Suddenly a colonel in the Engineering Corps, the highest-ranking Imperial artificer there was, was also trying to promote the possibility of an Imperial expedition to Khanaphes, not realizing that his Empress had already pre-empted him. The idea had gathered momentum fast, until . . .

Until here I am, Seda thought. The army had gone in first, of course, and her airship had departed Capitas only after the expedition leaders had confirmed their control of the city. Such control had come about swiftly, for there had been no resistance from the Khanaphir, and she had her own good reasons to be glad about that.

Her reasons presented to her advisers for this expedition had been lies just as much lies as Brugan's dissembling about why he had sent men here originally. The Engineers' quest here was a useful sideline, one that she did not understand but was prepared to indulge.

She had come to Khanaphes for her own private reasons. She had come here seeking power.

'It's a woman!'

For a moment Praeda held the telescope steady, expecting the honour guard and dignitary that had disembarked from the airship to be merely some vanguard for an even greater potentate, but it was plain that this slight-framed girl who had stepped down the ramp from the gondola was the whole and purpose of what was going on. She seemed a mere slip of a Wasp-kinden female, for all that she was dressed with an elegance any Spider might envy. She was clearly precious to the Empire, though, for as well as a dozen Sentinels in the heaviest armour, and a further dozen of the Imperial Light Airborne, Praeda's gla.s.s identified the four warriors closest to the woman as Mantis-kinden, decked out in black and gold as though they had surrendered a thousand years of heritage in exchange for Empire coin.

'What is so remarkable about that?' rumbled her companion.

Praeda Rakespear gave him a quizzical look, but then nodded. 'I suppose you've no reason to know of the shameful way in which the Empire treats its womenfolk.'

'She must be the Empress,' Amnon declared. He was squinting at the far spectacle from the rooftop they had commandeered, hidden in the shadow of a row of statuary.

Praeda laughed harshly. 'Oh, of course,' she said sarcastically. 'First place she'd stop, here, on her journey to the moon.'

'Why not? The Dominion of Khanaphes has influence yet,' Amnon said, obviously chastened but being stubborn. In his mind, no doubt, his home city did still have some shred of the power that it once had wielded, a thousand years ago and more.

From force of long habit, Praeda opened her mouth to make some scathing comment, and stopped herself when she remembered that Amnon sometimes took her vitriol to heart. Her gla.s.s was still trained on the mysterious Wasp woman, waiting for some clue as to her ident.i.ty. The old First Minister was bowing to her, but then the Khanaphir bowed a great deal, even their leaders.

The Wasp woman reached out and laid a hand on the First Minister's forehead, and Praeda's reaction was, She's going to kill him! because she knew that female Wasps could also use that stinging Art of theirs. The gesture was not a physical attack, but it seemed an attack nonetheless. Praeda watched the old Beetle man drop to his knees, swiftly enough for her to fear that he might not easily get up again. After a moment of uncertainty, the other Ministers present began following suit. The woman watched them with a proud air.

A proprietorial air.

'Fire and forge,' Praeda murmured, finding her view through the telescope suddenly quivering. 'Amnon, I'm a fool, and I should listen to you, because you see things more clearly than I sometimes. I think you're right. I think it's her.'

Amnon grunted, happy at the validation, and reached for the gla.s.s. He took it clumsily, but soon had it to his eye, twisting its sections to bring the view into focus. He would never make an artificer, but he had taken surprisingly swiftly to many of Collegium's innovations. His reverence towards the Masters of Khanaphes, pounded into him as a child, had been extended into a kindred awe of machines which Praeda, an artificer herself, found endearing and not a little gratifying.

'If only I had a snapbow,' Praeda breathed.

'I had not thought you had such unfond memories of my home that you would wish to complete its ruin,' Amnon stated mildly.

'Well, of course not,' she admitted. 'Still, she is very bold to expose herself to any public-spirited a.s.sa.s.sin who might come along. But you're right. I am no killer and your people would suffer.'

'I am glad you see matters so, for I have brought just such a thing with us,' Amnon continued, unperturbed.

'A snapbow?' she demanded.

'I thought it might be useful.'

'Maybe it will be, at that,' she allowed, retrieving the gla.s.s from him. 'So, what's the woman doing now . . .?'

Seda stood perfectly still, watching a score or so of old men and women, the pick of the Ministers of Khanaphes, bow their heads to her.

Of course, my brother never set foot out of Capitas, she reflected. Where our father and grandfather flew with the armies, he buried himself in the Imperial palace for fear of encountering the hatred of his subjects. How different a man might he have been, had he been welcomed like this in Szar or Myna or Vesserett. And was that so unlikely? If any city wished to avoid the Imperial scourge, how better to do so than with such a complete display of supplication as this? The Khanaphir government's public obeisance to her was a gesture to melt the heart of the harshest tyrant, and surely she was not the fear-ridden monster her brother had been.

Surely, surely? She knew what they said about her: her servants, her advisers, her generals. Those near to her had heard the rumours by now, for all that she had done her best to keep the knowledge contained: the Empress has strange tastes. Missing slaves caused no great comment, but there would inevitably be some palace steward who had done the relevant arithmetic to work out just how many were vanishing, and other servants of her private chambers who had to deal with the detritus . . .

But that is for a reason, she a.s.sured herself. It is not like my brother's pointless cruelties. I need . . . And she did need, and she could feel that need within her even now, which would have to be slaked sooner rather than later.

Behind her, Gjegevey the Woodlouse was picking his way down the airship ramp, leaning heavily on his staff. He paused to see the Ministers in such submission.

'Ah, remarkable,' he murmured, and she knew from the faint unsteadiness in his voice that he, too, suspected it was more than diplomacy that had brought them to their knees.

'Rise,' Seda commanded. 'The Empire thanks you for your reception, and it knows that you will have prepared suitable chambers for us.'

There were Khanaphir servants scurrying away even as she spoke, and she had no doubt that the city's bounty would be laid bare for her by the time she reached the Imperial emba.s.sy, or wherever it was they chose to receive her. She tried to focus on the political and material matters in hand, while keeping at the back of her mind her very personal reasons for demanding to come here.

Still, some instinct she could not name had prompted her to touch the First Minister's brow like that, and she would swear that, as she did so, she had heard a distant voice echo from out of the very earth itself, and it said: Kneel.

Kneel.

And Che awoke to see the first pale skies of dawn, her heart hammering in her chest as though she had been running, clutching at the very ground itself to remind herself of where she was.

Twelve.

They stopped briefly in Szar, just a night's rest, while Varmen spoke to some Way Brothers about the road ahead. Che had not been happy about their guide going off on his own. It seemed easily possible to her that he could be going to meet with brigands, to arrange an ambush. She expected Thalric to dismiss this idea, given how well he and the other Wasp seemed to be getting along together. Even before she mentioned her fears, though, she found Thalric already setting out to keep an eye on the man.

'And I thought you liked him,' she accused him.

Thalric laughed bleakly. 'Let's just say I've lost faith in my ability to judge my own kinden.'

The Wayhouse had been vacant for several years during the tail end of the Imperial occupation, and inviting the Brothers back had been one of the first moves of the Szaren Bee-kinden. The Brothers themselves were all Lowlander Beetles, for the sect had originated in Collegium as a charitable organization providing board and lodging for poor travellers.

Small wonder the Empire didn't approve of it, Che reflected. Sitting downstairs in the Wayhouse's common room, she watched the Brothers curiously. It was not unknown for men and women with dubious pasts to seek the absolution of anonymity wearing the plain brown robes of a Way Brother the t.i.tle was used by both genders within the order. Certainly, several of the Brothers she could see looked as though they would know what to do in a fight, for all that their order was ostentatiously pacifist. She wondered about the nature of the individuals Varmen was meeting with upstairs, and hoped that Thalric would find a good vantage point from which to spy on them.

Szar itself had surprised her. She had already heard a certain amount about the place: ground under the Imperial boot for a decade and a half after the Empire had taken the Szaren queen into custody. She had heard a great deal more about the circ.u.mstances of the city's liberation a Wasp secret weapon had been triggered within the governor's palace, wiping out thousands of soldiers, servants and slaves at a stroke, in an action now notorious wherever Szar was spoken of. She had expected to find the city wounded, half broken, grim and drab and as bitter as Myna. Instead the native Bee-kinden had since been working hard to reverse all those years of Imperial domination. Szar was becoming green. The local buildings were all low, little hexagonal cells, with far more investment in cellars than rooms above ground. Under the Wasp rule that was all there had been, but now they were planting again, and each little dwelling had its garden border, each roof its bright bursts of transplanted foliage. This greenery made the whole city seem lighter and more s.p.a.cious, and Che knew that the place's true glory would reveal itself only with the spring.

Thalric returned shortly, with time only for a nod of rea.s.surance before Varmen himself rejoined them.

'We'll be heading south of Maynes,' their guide explained. 'The Ant-kinden are worse than the Mynans barely any time for their own allies, let alone strangers. Let alone Wasps, 'spe-cially.'

Che nodded. 'And yet here you are posing as our guide, Varmen.'

He gave her a big, uncomplicated grin. 'Trust me, you'll be glad of my services.'

Heading west, they merged with a respectable number of travellers going between Szar and its Ant-kinden allies in Maynes, despite Varmen's words. As soon as they turned off the Maynes road they were nearly alone, however, and making their own way across an unforgiving country, too uneven for agriculture and with patches of close-packed pine forest sending them miles out of their way. Once or twice, when stopping to camp, they saw the lights of other fires, but Varmen's advice was to avoid them. Travellers heading west from the Three-city Alliance seldom welcomed company.

Each night, Che hung up her little ring of copper, but her dreams were intermittent. Often there was no spider, and finding one and trying to coax it into place yielded no results. When she did recall her dreams, though, they were always of Khanaphes: not the place of her memories, however, but a city that time and the Empire had caught up with.

She had wanted to broach the subject of her dreams with Thalric, but she was not sure how much he would understand. He had seen plenty of the old magic of Khanaphes during the time the two of them had spent among the tombs beneath the city, but what would he admit to now, months after? Apt.i.tude divided them.

But tonight he turned to her even as she was stringing up the dream-catcher, and said, 'What is it?'

She tried to look baffled, but the look he gave her in response was just exasperation. 'Che, for a tenyear I ran agents for a living. You were twitchy when we were in Khanaphes, and you've been twitchy ever since, but since we left Myna something's changed.'

Varmen c.o.c.ked an uninterested eyebrow in their direction, then burrowed into his bedroll and turned over. He had already demonstrated a soldier's ability to find sleep at a moment's notice.

Che opened her mouth, but suddenly found the words hard to come by. Dreams? Thalric will care nothing for dreams. That was not what stopped her being candid with him, though. Some deeper prohibition was at work, one that she could not entirely identify. 'I was thinking about the Empress,' she said, hoping this half-truth would be enough for him.

Thalric's face darkened, as well it might. Of course, he had been Imperial Regent for a brief s.p.a.ce of time, an acceptable male face that Empress Seda had stood behind while she consolidated her power: someone to appease the traditionalists amongst her subjects who recoiled from the idea of being led by a woman. By the time Thalric had jumped ship yet again, however, the Empress Seda was firmly ensconced, combining charisma, ability and the support of the Rekef in an unshakeable combination.

On the back of that history, Thalric's reluctant, 'Why?' was hardly surprising.

'Because we are alike, she and I,' Che reminded him.

'You are not alike.'

'You know what I mean,' she pressed.

He glanced at Varmen, who appeared dead to the world, and then leant close to her, keeping his voice low. 'So you have lost your Apt.i.tude,' he told her, as though she might any day now rediscover it on the road. 'So the Empress has the same . . . condition. Believe me, you are not alike in any other way.' He did not voice his reasons, because she already knew them, but perhaps also because to give voice to them would be to somehow invite Seda's attention for all that Thalric was Apt and did not believe in such things.

Because of the blood, Che thought. He had told her, when they had been trapped in the tombs: how the Empress lived off the blood of others, mostly slaves. It was as if she had become, in her own body, a personification of the Empire's own creed of rapacious conquest. By Thalric's account, the Empress Seda drank and bathed in the spilt lives of others.

And draws power from them, came the thought to Che then. It seemed perfectly obvious to her that it was so, that such behaviour was not simply the excess of an absolute ruler whose Empire overflowed with expendable human property. When Che tried to examine her certainty regarding this, she could find no train of logic in it, and yet she knew it to be true. The blood itself is power. It is an old and evil magic.

'The old fortress at Solamen, or whatever the 'Wealers used to call it,' Thalric enquired, 'is that back in use now?'

'Surely,' Varmen replied. 'Crammed full of Princ.i.p.ality troops, more of 'em every month, seems like. Now, you said you had pa.s.s papers for the Three-city soldiers, that right?'

'Signed by the head of the Consensus, no less,' Che agreed.

'Makes it easier not to have to dodge them,' their guide allowed. 'In that case, if you're happy they're good, let's call in with the locals.'

An hour after that and they were being escorted through an armed camp amid Mynan soldiers in their black and red armour, and a small detachment of Szaren Bees who seemed to be engineers. Che caught the outlines of some manner of siege artillery but, in her present state of Inapt.i.tude, she was unable to identify what kind.

'They seem to be a little anxious about something,' she remarked to her companions.

'Oh, you'll see the reason soon enough,' Varmen a.s.sured her. 'I reckon they've got cause. Don't blame 'em at all, me.'

The Mynan in charge of the camp studied their papers lengthily enough for Che to begin wondering if Kymene had not betrayed them by some hidden message. Eventually the man reluctantly agreed that they could pa.s.s through, although he was clearly suspicious of anyone who might want to. He herded them out of his camp immediately afterwards, as if worried that they would be stealing secrets or counting the number of his soldiers.

'Friendly folk around these parts,' was all Varmen would say about that.

Solamen, which had been called Shol Amen before the war, held the only pa.s.s between the Barrier Ridge and this side of the mountains. For centuries it had marked the easternmost point of the Commonweal, denying the barbarous tribesmen the road to the wealthy and civilized lands beyond. Then, a few generations back, those same tribesmen had been united by a man who became their first Emperor, and proceeded to conquer a great many of their neighbours, absorb a great deal of artifice and military theory, and decide that the lands of the Dragonflies were ripe for conquest.

'It was the Sixth that captured this place, wasn't it?' Thalric asked, as they gazed up at it.

'None other,' Varmen replied, with such fierce and automatic pride that Che knew he must have been present when it happened.

Solamen had then comprised a grand castle built high up the mountainside, with a good view of the road. Che could imagine defending troops sallying forth , in the air and on horseback, to chase down any strangers trying to breach the Commonweal's veil of isolation.

Perhaps half of the original structure still stood, pocked by cracks and craters from the a.s.sault of the engines. Commonwealer architecture had never been intended to stand up against heavy siege, and such engines had not even existed when places such as Solamen were built, nor foreseen by even the greatest of sages.

There had been some new construction, to balance the damage: a stone-walled compound at the castle's base, within which less magnificent but more durable buildings had been installed. The Empire had used the place as a way station for its troops, but it had not been considered a fortress by the Wasps. The initial Imperial advance of the Twelve-year War had taken the battle far enough west for Solamen to have served no useful defensive function.

Since the Empire's hand had been lifted from these lands, however, it was clear that the old fortress had returned to its original purpose. Most particularly there were now dots circling the sky above, and as the three travellers drew near it was clear that Solamen's current masters had sent out a welcome for them.

Thalric watched the soldiers get closer, wishing he had invested in a telescope. Varmen had already halted the horses and climbed down, instructing his employers to let him do the talking.

'Is that . . .?' Che was squinting up. 'Do I see Imperial colours?' Her Art let her see in utter darkness, as Thalric had cause to know, but he was aware that her eyes were less acute than his own in daylight. All the same, he realized that she was right. There was definitely a touch of the black and gold to their welcomers.

But that's not right, he thought, still trying to discern the details. They're Dragonflies they must be. No Wasp flies like that.

There were half a dozen of them landing in a loose arc across their path, and Varmen need not have worried about his companions. Thalric and Che were too busy staring to have anything to say.

They were Dragonflies indeed, the same slender, golden-skinned breed that Thalric remembered well from the Twelve-year War, and that for Che presumably recalled her dead friend, the Commonwealer prince. Four men and two women, they held their bows at the ready, arrows nocked but not drawn back. All had armour of chitin and leather, except for one man who wore most of a full suit of proper Commonweal n.o.ble's mail: iridescent plates of insect sh.e.l.l over fine chain.

Each of them was decked out in black and yellow, but instead of the Empire's uniform stripes, the patterns varied wildly. Only the colouring was the same, dyed or painted on. Even the fletchings of their arrows followed the theme, and the man in fancy armour had half his face tattooed black.

As the Dragonflies inspected the three travellers, their look was not wholly that of suspicious border guards. There was a wariness there that Thalric could not immediately place.

'Why do you seek to enter the Princ.i.p.alities?' demanded their leader, he of the painted face.

'Me?' Varmen responded casually. 'Just a guide, me. Don't want any problems. Just paid to show these two the best roads.'