Seal of the Worm

Forty-One

Straessa glanced out of the open window of the leading Collegiate carriage. It was a difficult choice – either stifle in the dark with the shutters closed, or choke in the dust with them open. The Sentinel attack had decided her, though: she wanted to see what was coming and to have as much warning as possible.

Next to Straessa, Castre Gorenn sat hunched over her knees and looking ill, because the Inapt never did travel well by machine. Recently, when the Dragonfly was still well enough to hold a conversation, she and Straessa had been talking about the fight to come and what might follow: whether victory at the gates of Capitas would indeed bring down the Empire, or whether Milus would want to press on and stamp his mark on every corner of the Wasps’ domain. Straessa was aware that her people were losing their stomach for a prolonged campaign. Going on the offensive into enemy territory was very different to defending your own city, both logistically and philosophically. The Collegiates were inevitably thinking of the home that so badly needed them.

‘I’ll put it to the vote,’ she announced, making Gorenn look up.

‘About leaving?’

‘We’ll do things the Collegiate way. If enough want to go, then once we’ve got Capitas, we’ll go.’ Straessa was aware that the nearby Company soldiers were taking an interest, which would mean the entire Collegiate contingent would know within the hour.

‘And you think Milus will let you?’ the Dragonfly asked darkly.

‘What’s he going to do? Kill us and prop us on sticks to keep the numbers up?’

Gorenn shook her head. ‘I am not sure just what Tactician Milus might do. There’s something wrong with him.’

‘He’s an Ant.’ Straessa shrugged. ‘There’s something wrong with all of them.’

‘That’s not what I mean. He’s not like the others. He’s a . . .’ The Commonwealer struggled with the concept. ‘He’s a wrong Ant.’

‘Surely you can’t be talking about our beloved tactician?’ another voice spoke.

Straessa started at the interruption, although Gorenn just looked up greenly. A slight, small figure had slipped into their carriage, stepping nimbly down the cluttered aisle, between the close-packed feet of the Collegiate soldiers. It was Laszlo, Maker’s friend.

‘What do you want?’ she asked him. She had been about to add ‘pipsqueak’ or some other derogatory comment about the Fly’s size, but he had a dangerous look to him and she felt an uncharacteristic attack of tact coming on.

‘Talk with you, privately, Officer Antspider.’

‘Find me “privately” anywhere on this thing,’ she complained.

‘Next car down’s mostly baggage and ammo,’ he replied immediately. ‘Let’s get going.’

It was easy enough for him, with his wings, but Straessa felt as if she stepped on every single individual foot on her way out of the carriage, collecting scowls and curses from her subordinates for every one.

On reaching the baggage car she found Laszlo flitting about the cramped space to make sure that nobody would be listening in. She watched him sceptically, wondering exactly what sort of bizarre secret agent business he thought he was about, now that Maker had left.

At last he turned to her. ‘You speak for Collegium, right? For the Collegiates here?’

‘Interesting philosophical point,’ she began but he stopped her with a look.

‘Stuff that. They look to you. You’re their skipper, right enough. So listen up. I’m calling in my marker.’

‘You’re doing what?’

‘You owe me.’

This conversation had gone in an unexpected direction. Straessa felt her footing shift, as though she was about to fight. ‘And how’s that, Master Laszlo?’

‘You know exactly what I’ve done for your city, while the place was under Wasp rule. I was Mar’Maker’s man, who came and went into the cursed sea for your lot. Take me away, and your city’d still be painted black and gold.’

‘As you say, you were Maker’s man,’ Straessa pointed out.

He shot her an appraising look. ‘Woman, I’m a son of the Tidenfree, a free corsair. My family cast their lot in with Collegium for gain, and we were paid. I didn’t put my life on the line for your philosophy, and my skipper, Tomasso, he didn’t get himself killed for it either. You remember him coming to save your own skin, back when the Wasps had your College surrounded? Well, that’s another weight on the scales, because he didn’t make it out – died getting Maker to the water. You owe me, halfbreed. Your city owes me. Like I say, I’m collecting.’

‘This is to do with Milus, isn’t it?’ She recalled how the Fly seemed to have some personal grievance with the tactician.

‘Up to him, that is. He wants to stay out of it, all the better.’

She hissed with annoyance, but this man plainly wasn’t going to go away, and she had an uncomfortable feeling that there was indeed a debt to be paid somewhere in the story he had told.

‘Look,’ she started, but he interrupted again.

‘You remember Sperra, the Princep girl?’ he prompted. ‘You remember she did her bit for your city, as well?’

Straessa nodded, on firmer ground now. Sperra had done the Sarn-to-Collegium run plenty of times, carrying information both ways.

‘This is her marker too. And it’s not such a grand thing. And maybe I was hoping that tweaking the tactician’s nose was something you mightn’t be averse to, after all.’

‘So tell me,’ she said at last. ‘What do you want?’

Balkus stared into space, his mind locking horns elsewhere, fighting to get past the wall of Sarnesh contempt that his former kinsmen had built to keep him out. One simple question, that was all he had, but they ran him around and fobbed him off and ignored him, over and over. His only weapon now was persistence.

Had they truly been united in their dismissal of him, then all the persistence in the world would get him nowhere. He was in a unique position, though, as a renegade travelling within an army of the loyal. He could see them with their own mind’s eye, but viewed from the outside. He could see the cracks. Not grand cracks, certainly – no sign of the Sarnesh falling apart because, of course, Ants didn’t do that. The hard hand of Tactician Milus had started some tiny, hidden murmurs of dissent, though. These were kept quiet, passed privately mind to mind, but they were spreading enough for Balkus to detect them.

And through that he had his answer, passed to him hurriedly by a woman who would not touch minds with him again. He opened his eyes, his expression bleak.

‘Aagen,’ he declared softly, ‘is dead. Died under interrogation, they said.’

Beside him, Sperra shuddered. Sarnesh torture was something she was no stranger to. ‘That’s it, then. We’re next.’

Balkus wanted to say, You can’t be certain, but he had a horrible feeling that she was right – the next time Milus wanted someone to take out his frustrations on, who would be better than a renegade like Balkus, after all? And as for Sperra . . . Sperra would probably end up in the same trap because she’d try to save her friend.

‘Makes you wonder whether helping the pirates is a good idea,’ he murmured, trying to pitch his voice so that the other Princep soldiers – or servants, as the Sarnesh treated them – wouldn’t hear.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ Sperra said, far too quickly. ‘We’re doing this. It’s not as if Milus needs an excuse, if he wants us.’

‘Sperra—’

‘Are you backing out on me now, Balkus? After all we’ve gone through?’

He looked down at her unhappily. What he wanted to say was some criticism of Laszlo – how it was plain that the pirate had his eye on that girl that Milus had hold of, and just as plain that Sperra seemed to have her eyes on Laszlo. But she would deny it hotly if he made such an accusation. She would deny both assertions at once, no matter how ludicrous that made her seem.

‘We should never have got mixed up in this,’ he said. ‘Once the Empire got past Malkan’s Folly, we should just have upped and headed west.’

‘To where?’

‘I hear the Atoll Coast is lovely.’

‘You don’t believe that. About heading out.’ She had her determined face on, her little fists clenched.

‘You know, I do, I really do, but I’ll admit it’s a tad late now, when we’re within spit of Capitas.’

Then Laszlo came, ghosting into the Princep carriage. Sperra stood instantly, grabbing for his hand.

‘It’s ready?’ she asked him eagerly. Balkus winced.

‘All ready,’ Laszlo confirmed. ‘The Collegiates are on board.’

Balkus grimaced. ‘You’re sure about this, are you? Not going to end up with a Sarnesh snapbow bolt in our ears for our trouble?’

‘Oh, we’ve given it a lot of thought,’ Laszlo confirmed. ‘Despard’s already got everything in place. Just make sure . . .’

‘I’ll tell our people how it’s going to be,’ Balkus insisted. ‘We’ll be ready, don’t you worry.’

The first explosion hit the track-laying automotive – just a flash within its workings, and then a gout of flame had sent it skidding off course, one wheel shattered, artificers jolting and tumbling out of it.

Instantly the Sarnesh were responding, ready for the Imperial attack that this must surely presage. The automotives spread out on either side of the rails picked up speed, the train itself slowed, all of this coordinated with perfect grace and not a word spoken aloud. Orthopters began to fly in widening circles, hunting out the enemy troops they knew were out there.

The next series of explosions coursed down the train itself: small, precise detonations targeting the couplings between carriages, going off singly or in strings. By now Milus was loud in the minds of his subordinates, tailoring the Sarnesh deployment, having the carriages brought to a standstill as quickly as possible. Even under his firm command, there was a great deal of confusion. The other contingents did not know what was going on and, rather than just sit tight and trust the Sarnesh, many of them were putting their own conflicting plans into action. The Vekken were stepping away from the rail line, forming up in a solid block of armoured soldiers bearing interlocked shields that would be utterly helpless against a good snapbow volley. The Collegiates had braked their own carriages and were spilling out with a typical lack of discipline. The entire army was spreading out, much to Milus’s frustration. Every so often another little charge would crack open, inflicting some more damage to yet another carriage. Nothing major but it would all need to be repaired.

Alarm calls kept going up all along the line, each new explosion spurring yet more of them. Some of the non-Sarnesh were occupying valuable Ant time by demanding to know what was going on, which was apparently a question they were incapable of simply answering through the use of their own senses. Milus brought more and more of his soldiers into active service, forced to waste them in corralling and keeping tabs on the various other groups of soldiers who were apparently set on making his life as difficult as possible.

One voice seemed particularly loud in calling out such alarms, and though this fact bypassed him at that time, it lodged somewhere in his mind for later analysis. Not a voice that should be drawing attention to itself, that was certain.

He had his artificers busy already: repairing the track-layer, replacing the couplings, checking for other explosives. It was routine work, and it would all be fixed with the efficiency he would expect of his fellow Sarnesh. But it was lost time: time given as a gift to the mustering Imperial forces at Capitas.

Then one of his artificers managed to see far enough beyond the repair work to report: Tactician, this was not a trap set by the Wasps on the line.

Explain, Milus directed.

Those devices were set on our own machines. It would have been extremely difficult to sabotage the carriages without being aboard the train itself.

Immediately Milus brought more of his soldiers into the plan, having them search for strange faces: Imperial agents. Unless it’s someone we brought from bloody Collegium . . . But then came a fresh report, Tactician, your carriage is on fire.

For a moment he did not quite make the connection. He had been moving forwards towards the track-layer, his eyes watching them winch it up for a new wheel whilst his mind saw fragments of a dozen different perspectives. Then he registered the image: the prison carriage was ablaze, gutted from within. The fire had started whilst the explosives were going off. It had gone unnoticed for vital minutes while his people were responding to the existing emergency.

Lissart!

He had a squad of soldiers there in an instant, and Milus himself was running back down the line towards it. The heat from the ruined carriage kept the Ants at bay, but they could peer through the windows and discern no human form within.

Nothing could have survived, one of them declared, and that only infuriated Milus the more.

You idiots! This was a trick! he shouted out the thought, the roar of his mind encompassing much of the army. This was to rescue her, my prisoner! It was all a trick and you fell for it! Where are those Fly-kinden? Maker’s Fly-kinden? Find them for me now!

As he stopped before the carriage, seeing its roof half lift off with the ferocity of the blaze – even though it had been lined with metal to stop exactly this sort of damage – he was aware that some of his followers were reacting poorly to his tirade, but he had no time for them and no tolerance for disobedience. Find them! he insisted. Aviators, quarter the ground here. Find me a party of Fly-kinden fleeing the rail lines. They can’t have got far. He did not pause to examine his own reaction, even in light of the way his own people were shying away from it. Lissart had been his, and she had been taken. Milus did not brook defiance, most certainly not from mere Flies.

By then his mind had returned to that little note of discord: the one who had been doing so much of the shouting, summoning the Sarnesh to this and that fresh explosion. Oh, certainly there had been a lot of voices, but one of them should not have been interfering in Sarn’s business, distracting the attention of the Ants to each new blast. Not direction, but misdirection.

The renegade with the Princep force, Balkus, Milus noted. Bring him to me.

Tactician . . . and then no report. For the first time one of his subordinates was thinking twice before breaking news to him.

Tell me, he growled.

The Princep force has joined the Collegiates. They are refusing to give up the renegade.

For a moment Milus became so incandescent with fury that the entire Sarnesh army just stopped, eyeing each other, all suffering an identical stabbing pain in their minds born of their commander’s frustrations. Then he had mastered himself, the hard man of war once again, and was striding double time towards the assembled Collegiate troops.

There were the Princep rabble, right in the middle, and that traitor Balkus amongst them. Milus surveyed the mass of Beetles and halfbreeds and assorted malcontents wearing Merchant Company colours, and by the time he had finished his assessment there were orderly ranks of Sarnesh soldiers at his back, more than enough to force the issue.

‘Who commands here?’

There were obviously some differences of opinion about that, but what could he expect from Collegiates? Then that half-Spider creature got pushed forwards, the one with the eyepatch.

‘Tactician?’ she said, trying for casual politeness but obviously as tense as a bowstring.

‘Give me that man,’ Milus ordered her, jabbing his finger at Balkus. ‘He’s needed for questioning. He’s not Collegiate. Give him up.’

‘He is somewhat Collegiate,’ the halfbreed told him, bracing herself. ‘The Princep contingent has asked for our protection. Honorary citizenship.’

‘Officer,’ Milus addressed her. ‘We have just been attacked by traitors from within your ranks. Fly-kinden in the pay of the Empire. The same ship’s crew that your man Maker brought here.’

The halfbreed shrugged. ‘They’re none of ours, Tactician. I can’t vouch for what Master Maker saw in them, him not being here, but they weren’t ever ours.’

He blinked at her. ‘I have reason to believe that that renegade has knowledge relating to what has happened here.’

The woman glanced down for a moment, as though summoning her courage, and then looked him directly in the eye. ‘Where’s Aagen?’

‘Who?’

‘You know who, Tactician.’

‘He was a Wasp agent,’ Milus snarled.

‘He was a Wasp,’ she contradicted him. ‘He was a citizen of Princep Salma. I understand he died on your torture machines.’

‘Spare me your Collegiate scruples.’

‘Tactician Milus,’ the halfbreed said formally, ‘Collegium hereby confirms that it will not relinquish up to you the Ant known as Balkus nor anyone else, because we do not trust what you will do with them.’

At a thought from Milus the soldiers behind him had their snapbows levelled, the front rank dropping to their knees to give the men behind them a clear shot. The Collegiates were armed too, and most of them responded with creditable speed. One Dragonfly woman had an arrow trained steadily at Milus’s left eye, and an expression that suggested she would be only too happy to let loose the string.

The halfbreed – herself the target of a good many bows right then – grimaced. ‘That depends,’ she said, as though he had actually worded some manner of proposal to her. ‘How badly do you want to win the war, Tactician?’

Milus was very aware of the Vekken and Tseni contingents watching curiously, not taking sides but plainly not impressed.

Tactician, repairs are complete, an inopportune report came from one of his artificers who had not been keeping up with developments.

The long seconds dragged by. Milus fought a battle inside his head, and enough of it leaked out that he felt the little currents of dismay and uncertainty creeping through his soldiers.

‘Back on the train,’ he ordered, turning away from the entire fraught confrontation as if it had been nothing. ‘Time to move.’

Returning to the carriage, Straessa found her seat again and managed to get herself settled before her hands started trembling.

‘Oh, stab me,’ she whispered, staring at them. ‘Oh, stab me. Oh, that was too close, Gorenn. That was too close. I am so sorry. I am sorry for every thing I just said and did. I nearly got every one of us killed. I am such a pisspoor officer. I am so sorry.’

For a long time the Dragonfly regarded her solemnly, studying the Antspider’s pale face. Straessa was waiting for condemnation, the ‘this isn’t how we run things over in the Commonweal’, but in the end what came out was, ‘Your people are lucky they have you.’

Straessa managed a strangled laugh. ‘Right, sure they are.’

The Dragonfly’s face twisted unexpectedly into something that was almost anger. Whatever she was seeing, it was invisible to Straessa, save as a tortured reflection in Gorenn’s shining eyes. ‘I was young, back then, when the Empire invaded our lands,’ she began, with a catch in her voice. ‘Too young to fight at the start of it, though I’d killed my share by the war’s end. War forges a people, or breaks them, and you see the quality of their metal when you bring it under the hammer. When my people had to go to war, they broke. I saw people leading armies who had no right to. I saw princes and nobles shatter under the strain, and the sharp pieces of their bad decisions kill hundreds of others. When my people were placed under such pressure, we could not hold our shape. You, though . . . like you say, you’re no soldier. None of your people is a soldier. You come from no warrior kinden. You are people of peace and money and being clever. And yet you have been forged. You have been made strong by the hammer. You, especially. I watch you and I wish there had been a woman like you to stand before the Wasps in the Twelve-year War.’

Straessa stared at her hands, not knowing what to say.

‘I did not know what it would be like, to serve with the Apt,’ Gorenn went on awkwardly. ‘It has not been easy. I have made many adjustments, as you have seen.’

Straessa, who had seen nothing of the sort, wisely said nothing.

‘You, though, I understand,’ the Dragonfly finished, and it was only with the dragging silence after those words that the Antspider realized that that was it, and that it was intended as a compliment.

‘Ah, thank you,’ she managed, and then the automotive was in motion at last, and they were back on the road to Capitas.

Straessa left matters for most of an hour before she let herself wander back down to the Collegiate baggage car: a little more difficult now to squeeze her way down the aisle, but then an army did travel with a remarkable amount of kit.

‘I hope you’re happy,’ she murmured, after making sure that nobody else was within earshot, ‘because frankly that was pissing terrifying. “It’s not such a grand thing,” you said. My arse it wasn’t.’

There was a little shuffling of luggage from down by her knee, opening up the space that the Flies had prepared earlier. There she could see Laszlo, his artificer Despard and the rest of his crew, all sitting elbow to elbow in relative comfort in the baggage fort they had made.

‘Nonsense, you loved it,’ he told her, although his expression was serious. ‘Well done, though, you and the Princep lot.’ Laszlo and the rescued girl had slipped in under cover of the Collegiate detachment in the midst of the Princep Salma soldiers.

‘They’ll come searching here,’ Straessa said. ‘Once they start thinking that maybe you didn’t just leg it, they’ll search all over.’

‘We can move around. This isn’t our only bolthole,’ Laszlo assured her.

Straessa looked past him at the Fly with the shock of red curls. ‘She’s the why, is she? You’re . . . what was it?’

‘Lissart,’ the woman said. ‘Apparently I’m the why.’ To Straessa she seemed too tense and twitchy still, scarcely more at ease beside Laszlo than she had presumably been in Milus’s keeping. Then, again, perhaps being imprisoned and tortured would do that.

‘Why haven’t you all just gone, anyway?’ she asked the Flies. ‘I reckon you could vanish easily in this country, let the Ants search as much as they like.’

‘Oh, we’ve got work to do still,’ Lissart told her, cutting off Laszlo even as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘We’re not done yet.’