Seal of the Worm

Six

‘I remain acting governor of Collegium,’ General Tynan summarized his newly received orders. ‘No new troops to garrison the city. No progress towards the western coast, Vek, Tsen . . .’ He stared at the scroll before him as though it was his own death warrant, but one that he had lost the strength to fight against. ‘A mealy-mouthed commendation that I have done well, and not even Her Majesty’s own seal.’

The Beetle-kinden diplomat, who had been nodding pleasantly up until ‘mealy-mouthed’, looked sharply at the general. ‘These are Her Majesty’s orders, nonetheless.’

‘Time was,’ Tynan spat, ‘when a general took orders from the Empress’s own hand. No lesser person sufficed. No more: I see the seal of the Red Watch. We all know,’ and his sarcasm was heavy and unmissable, ‘that they are the Empress’s voice. Tell me, Bellowern, is she even still in Capitas? I hear rumours otherwise.’

Honory Bellowern, one of the highest-ranking Beetles in the Empire now that he had somehow secured a colonel’s badge, put on a stern demeanour. ‘Those are dangerous rumours to voice, General.’ He cast his eyes about Tynan’s staff room, which had once been some Collegiate merchant’s ground floor before the Engineers had kicked through a few inessential walls. A dozen officers of the Second Army were easily in earshot.

‘Colonel, if you wish me to directly order you to answer my question, I will do it.’ Tynan had made no secret of his disgust at Bellowern’s promotion. The antagonism was not because the man was Beetle-kinden – or not only that. Rather, it was that Bellowern had headed the Imperial diplomatic staff within Collegium prior to Tynan’s arrival, and so might have been of considerable use as an intelligencer and liaison when the Second Army appeared at the city’s gates. Instead the man had made sure he was out of the city long before the fighting started, returning only now that it was safe to do so and somehow bearing a portion of the glory, which Tynan felt entirely unearned.

‘Of course she is in Capitas, General. I saw her myself. Where would she be else?’

Tynan glowered at him, and the first hint of uncertainty entered Bellowern’s manner. Tynan had not spoken with a governor or a general’s formal cordiality. The Wasp’s hostility was palpable.

‘Might I ask,’ the Beetle ventured, ‘whether I have in some way offended?’ His change of manner was pointed, as if he had suddenly considered that if Tynan had him shot, he might be unable to raise his objections back at Capitas later.

‘You went to Captain Vrakir first,’ Tynan pronounced.

Bellowern blinked twice, mastering any surprise he might have felt. ‘As it happened, I had orders for Major Vrakir, and he crossed my path on my way to you. It seemed an economic use of my time.’

‘Which orders included a promotion,’ Tynan noted.

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘Which promotion also bore a Red Watch seal.’ No suggestion in the general’s tone of whether it was a question or a statement.

Bellowern was obviously playing it safe. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘So he’s a major now. So when’s his colonel’s badge due to arrive?’

‘I have no idea, General. You can imagine that such matters are not within my compass—’

‘I can imagine many things that may or may not be true,’ Tynan told him flatly. ‘But thank you kindly, Colonel, for coming so very far just to give me no news worth the hearing. No doubt you’ll want to take up your residence from before we took the city.’

‘Actually, General, after a little more time with our new . . . with Major Vrakir, I must be moving on. After all, Collegium is an Imperial city now, expertly pacified. I could hardly come here and be ambassador to myself.’

‘You are a diplomat. You know these people. I am a general, a battlefield commander.’

‘I have my orders. You’re welcome to peruse them.’ Now even professionally phlegmatic Bellowern was a little sharp. ‘They do bear the Empress’s own seal. You are to hold the city, as you are plainly doing most capably. I have my own concerns.’

Tynan stared at him for a long time, and at last voiced one of those questions that nobody was supposed to ask. ‘What is she up to?’ And, when Bellowern stuttered and stumbled over an answer, ‘You don’t know. I thought men like you were supposed to know everything.’

After the Beetle had gone, Tynan brooded a while, and his officers knew enough not to approach him. The taking of Collegium had been hard but swift, flawlessly executed. The reputation of the Gears, the Imperial Second Army, was secure. And yet Tynan brooded and mourned.

It was not the taking of the city but its aftermath. He had not been alone as he rode an automotive through Collegium’s gates. The Spider-kinden army of the Aldanrael had spilt its share of blood to take this prize, and its leader, the Lady Martial Mycella, had been close to Tynan. Far closer than was wise.

And of course the order had come, from the Empress via the Red Watch officer Vrakir: Kill all the Spiders.

Tynan had obeyed faultlessly. He himself had executed Mycella, his co-commander, his lover. He had torn out his own heart to do so, but he had orders. Orders had been his life to that point.

If he had been sent on westwards for Vek and beyond, allowed to do what an army general should, then perhaps he would have soon put it behind him and recovered. The Eighth Army had been broken by the Sarnesh, though, and the garrison force intended for Collegium had been hastily re-routed north to prevent the Ant-kinden from taking the initiative. And Tynan had been told to hold and govern Collegium, and wait.

Sitting there, in the city that to him still reeked of his own betrayal, his soldiers had watched him sink into himself, gnawing on his own regrets. A bitter silent war had sprung up between him and Vrakir, bearer of those fatal orders. Neither man could bear to be in the other’s company for more than a few minutes, and the Imperial administration of Collegium virtually existed in two camps because of it: the voice of the general against the transmitted voice of the Empress.

And in the middle were the citizens themselves, at the mercy of a general’s depression and the increasing restlessness of his soldiers.

On the far side of the Gear Gate from Tynan’s headquarters was the townhouse commandeered by the Red Watch man, Major Vrakir.

He had fewer staff to wait on him than the general. General Tynan commanded the Second Army and governed Collegium for now, but there were many who were waiting for the orders to come that might change that. Anyone who had contacts back home had heard of the Red Watch: its unpredictable, unaccountable habits; the way even the Rekef had to bow the knee to it.

Vrakir had been a regular army officer before the Empress had chosen him. She had taken him to the Imperial Museum in Capitas. She had led him to that hidden room at its heart where she kept the Mantis-kinden idol. She had bid him kill, and then offered him a goblet filled with the victim’s blood.

She had asked him if he had not always felt different, detached from those around him. He had not been able to deny it. She had told him the truth. He was Apt, as all Wasps were Apt save her. Some quirk of his inheritance, though, some muddying of his blood, had left him with a holdover from the old days. She could make use of him. He was not different, but superior.

And he had believed her, and drunk. And so had begun his long road to the edge of sanity.

He was Apt. He understood machines, even if he was not quite comfortable with them – no artificer he – and of course he had never believed in magic. Now, though . . .

He dreamt, and the dreams had meaning. The Empress’s will made itself known to him – by nothing so arcane as her words in his mind, but he still knew. It was as though he had been told long ago, in childhood, all the demands of state that she burdened him with, and each was only recalled at the proper time.

He had brought Tynan the orders to turn on the Spiders, to murder the man’s Aldanrael lover. Only he and the general knew that the supposed betrayal of the Empire by its allies had never happened. But it would have happened, he sincerely believed. The Empress had foreseen it.

Even then, with that responsibility on him, he had retained his control. He had faced off against General Tynan with utter confidence in the Empress’s orders. Then the Empress had returned to Capitas, though, and she had changed.

There was something terribly twisted, now, in that link he shared with his mistress. Whatever had happened, whatever she had done in the Mantis forest to the north, it had marked her. She had nightmares, and Vrakir shared them helplessly. She tormented herself. She feared.

In her dreams she was beneath the earth, and things moved there. They crawled and burrowed, they scratched and dug, fighting ever closer to the surface. And it was her fault, he knew, experiencing her dreams. The Empress was to blame, and she had lost something, left something behind, when she fled to Capitas. She was not whole, and she could not escape her bonds to that lost part of her.

From the earth, such fear, so that Vrakir found himself steadying himself as if the ground beneath him would suddenly betray him. And, worst of all, this was no irrational fear, but very real. The Empress understood entirely what there was to be scared of.

And he sent word for the army’s scouts, and he heard their reports: there were isolated farms and mills found empty, only the ground around them disturbed. One entire village had been abandoned, no sign of where its hundred or so inhabitants had gone. The ground was marked with spiral patterns and some of the buildings were cracked as though they had been undermined.

Vrakir fought against sleep, awake even past midnight alone in the empty house he had seized, and still the Empress’s nightmares howled in the hollow spaces of his mind.

‘I don’t understand. Who is it you’re meeting here?’ Raullo wanted to know.

‘No idea.’ Sartaea te Mosca sipped at her wine, holding the bowl in both hands. She had brought the Beetle artist to a taverna near the College: the Press House on Salkind Way. The place was still a student haunt, and there was a passage that ran to one of the dormitories, meaning that curfew was negotiable. The windows were even now being shuttered against the dusk, and soon the landlord would lock the Wasps out and pretend to be shut.

Sartaea was an occasional visitor to the Press House in any case, but tonight she had a purpose: word had come that she should meet someone here, no more detail than that.

‘It’s a trap.’ Raullo was well into his wine, but then he could sink quite a lot of it these days. He cut an odd figure in the city, awkward father to a wild and unrepresentative school of painting that had followers amongst locals and Imperials alike and was beginning to spawn imitators. She had brought him along tonight to watch her back in case her mysterious contact turned out to be someone she would rather not be seen with.

‘Well, if so . . .’ She shrugged. ‘There’s nothing illegal about meeting someone. Even after curfew, so long as you’re indoors.’

‘I still don’t like it,’ Raullo muttered.

‘Oh, hush,’ she told him, and then there was a scream. It was outside but sounded as though it was somewhere just along their street, and the taverner paused, about to close the last shutters. Collegium had become used to screams after dark, though. Those caught breaking curfew were punished, and if they were women the Wasp soldiers might exact the penalty then and there.

Raullo opened his mouth to pass another comment, but suddenly there was a whole chorus of yells and shouts outside, and the floor beneath them shuddered to the grinding sound of stone on stone. Sartaea and the artist stared at one another, and a few of the patrons stood up uneasily, waiting to see if there would be more. A couple were already inching towards the back room and to the trapdoor that would take them underground and away.

The taverner had been peering round the edges of the window, trying to see, but now he sprang back with a curse.

‘What? What is it?’ Sartaea demanded of him.

‘I thought I saw . . . Something ran past, something . . .’

The sounds of panic were escalating outside; the floor quivered again.

‘What are they doing? Is it more fighting?’ Raullo whispered. ‘Please, no.’

Sartaea abandoned him to go to the window, wings lifting her higher so she could see. She got there just in time to see the house across the street begin to shake, cracks snaking up the walls.

‘Save us,’ she whispered. The building was coming down all on its own. There had been no explosion, no roar of artillery, but the structure was suddenly falling in on itself, collapsing and dragging the neighbouring buildings towards one another, and there were . . .

Her eyes were keen in the dusk but still she could not quite believe what she saw: figures emerging from the wreckage, swift and sure and together, a long chain of them seemingly vomited up from the earth itself.

Then there was a banging at the door. Raullo stood abruptly, knocking his chair backwards and dragging a dagger from his belt.

‘You have to get out!’ someone was yelling. ‘Out of the taverna!’

The taverner threw the door open before anyone could stop him, revealing a Fly-kinden man there, cloaked and hooded.

‘Get out now!’ he snapped. ‘Something bad’s happening all down this street.’ As some of the patrons began to run for the rear, he called out after them. ‘Not that way! Not down! Out of the door and head for home!’

‘Who are you?’ Sartaea demanded, though she thought she knew him. Was he not . . .?

He locked eyes with her. ‘Miss te Mosca . . . some other time. Get yourself out of here, all of you!’

The ground below the taverna shifted. Abruptly the floor was canted towards the cellar stairs. From down there came a scream, then more: some of the patrons had already tried to escape that way.

They’ll be crushed! But the screams went on, and Sartaea heard the clash of metal. No, they’re being attacked – but by what? The Wasps? And yet she knew it was not the Wasps. Some sense, some vestigial awareness born of her paltry magical ability, was screaming at her.

Still, she went to help. It was not in her to refuse it. The cloaked Fly was on her in a moment, wings casting him across the crowded room to bundle her to the floor.

‘Get off me!’ she yelled into his face, and his name was in her mind even as she did so, ‘Laszlo!’

‘Out, please!’ he insisted, but then Raullo had taken a swing at him, drunken and clumsy, and the Fly’s nimble dodge took his weight off her and she darted for the cellar stairs.

They were emerging even as she got there. She saw pale faces looking up at her from the gloom, colourless eyes, sunken cheeks. She locked gazes with one pair of those eyes, but there was no contact, no human interchange, and then they were moving all at once, the band of them uncoiling from the cellar and taking the stairs at a run.

She let out a hoarse yell of sheer panic and reached for her magic to cloak her. Her magic . . .

She had none. In that same stunned moment, her mind turned the word over, ‘magic’, and found nothing in it, no meaning at all.

Then a hand hooked her shoulder and virtually threw her at the door to the street: not little Laszlo but Raullo’s solid Beetle strength. He was out right after her too, far faster than she would have guessed, sprawling across the uneven paving at her feet, and Laszlo behind him, aiming a little snapbow back into the taverna and yet not loosing. She could hear yells of fear and horror from within – some of the patrons had left their exit too late. She could not force herself to go to help them. There was no helping them. Not after that moment of lost blankness when she had forgotten what she was.

Around them, the whole of Salkind Way was tilting vertiginously, some buildings already toppling, as if the Empire had developed some new invisible and soundless bombing orthopter and was punishing its own city.

And she saw them, the lines of them coursing from the broken walls, from the guts of the earth, their movements swift as beasts, human in shape but not in any other way. Some carried bodies between them, but many were dragging living, screaming citizens of Collegium.

‘Away!’ insisted Laszlo, and she needed no other prompting. From that moment, she and Raullo were running, desperate to put Salkind Way behind them.

Only after they were at the doors of the College library, far enough that no outcry could reach them, did Raullo drop to his knees, wheezing, and she realized that Laszlo had not come with them.

‘Who was he?’ the artist got out. ‘The Fly? Did he make that happen?’

Sartaea te Mosca shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. He was Laszlo; you know, the . . .’ A pause as she considered what she was about to say – ‘Stenwold Maker’s friend.’

The next morning they returned to Salkind Way, finding it broken and shattered as if the earth had buckled beneath its load, and yet the streets on either side lay completely untouched. There were Wasp soldiers searching the wreckage, so plainly mystified by what had happened that not even the most fervent patriot was accusing the Empire of being behind whatever had happened.

They found no bodies. Upwards of fifty people had just disappeared.