War Master's Gate (48 page)

‘We’ve come to the last sand in the hourglass, I think,’ she told them. ‘That’s what I have to tell you. Whether you fight for the Empress because she’s
promised you your old glories back again, or because you agree with Imperial aims, or for any other reason, it doesn’t really matter. You already know her promises can’t be trusted, as
much as I do. In your hearts, you do. And if you had subjugated yourselves to the Sarnesh, or even still obeyed the Tharen, it would make no real difference. You’d still be serving someone.
Servants of the Green, that’s how the Moths used to put it. And maybe, in those days, doing what the Moths wanted was a good thing. They were great magicians and wise, after all. But it seems
to me that ever since those days, you’ve just been waiting for them to return and tell you how to get it all back. And they haven’t, because they don’t know.’

Thalric had managed to find his way through to her by then, and when he rested a hand on her shoulder she squeezed it gratefully.

‘Then the Empress came instead, and I can understand why you’ve ended up fighting for her – because fighting is what you do, and because nobody had a better offer. Until now, I
hope.’ She was speeding up a little, sensing that her claim on their attention might be shorter than she thought. ‘But I think that you never did quite believe her. Instead, she came as
a sign – the sort of sign the Moths once prophesied of – a sign of the end. I have walked through your forest, and witnessed you and the Etheryen tearing one another apart. I have seen
an entire hold slaughtered by its own kin, and I have felt the horror and despair that you all feel. The whole forest is rank with it. The Empress’s very arrival made you face the world,
her
world. She was something new that you couldn’t ignore. She gave you an excuse to die, and you jumped at it – for, in your deepest selves, you saw this as an escape from a
world that had gone so far wrong as to create
her
. And me, too, I suppose. I’m certainly not something that the great magicians of old might have envisaged or approved of.’

She let the silence linger, and the Mantids were still angry and resentful but it was that sort of anger that only truth can provoke. Che’s words had sunk barbed hooks in them.

‘No matter what the Empress promises, the Days of Lore will never come again,’ said Che, in that silent glade. ‘And now that past is sufficiently far gone that it’s a
Wasp
who comes to broker deals with you as though she was one of your old masters – and a Beetle
-
kinden stands here to lecture you about what you should and shouldn’t
do.’ She shrugged. ‘If you want to pass on, if the world’s so intolerable to you now, then that’s your right. The great Mantis tradition of the Lowlands could be snuffed out
quite easily, if that’s what you want. All those centuries of history just gone, and by your own hands. If you want to make a start by cutting my throat, I can hardly stop you.

‘Because otherwise you have to change as the world has changed. Yes, it’s an Apt world, but it still recognizes Mantis-kinden fighting skill. There is a place for you in it, yet, if
you’ll take it. Wait another generation, and maybe there won’t be. Maybe then a good death will be all you can hope for.

‘You must decide, all of you, whether you want to live. I won’t insult you by telling you that living is harder than dying, that continuing to fight is more worthy than a good end.
I’m not Mantis, I can’t weigh these things for you.’

She took a deep breath. ‘But know that, if you pass from this world, you will be remembered. But it will not be in your old songs. Gone will be the stories you tell of your heroes, gone
the legends of the Days of Lore. None will be left to tell the histories as you once told them. Instead, you’ll be remembered by
my
people. Can you imagine what Beetle-kinden stories
of your people are like? Can you conceive just how wrong we get it all? How we turn all your glories and your tragedies into farce and bathos? And yet, if you are gone, nobody will ever know any
better. Our clumsy Apt retellings will be all anyone ever knows of the Mantis-kinden.’

She seemed to shrink, then, before the gaze of her audience, discarding some invisible mantle of authority that she had donned simply to hold their interest. ‘I’ve said my
piece,’ she finished. Then she reached out and hugged Thalric to her, plainly more glad than she could say to have him there. The others made their way over, too: Tynisa, Amnon, Maure. None
dared break the silence, but she hugged each in turn.

There was a stir amongst the Nethyen. One of the older women was picking her way through them, her eyes fixed on the Beetle girl. Her hair was silver-white, but she stood straight and there was
a rapier at her hip and spines jutting from her forearms.

‘Loquae,’ Che addressed her, for this must be one of the leaders of the Mantids.

The old woman regarded her with a mixture of hostility, respect and that fear of the magical that the Moths had taken pains to instil in their servants. ‘You, too, may as well style
yourself Loquae here, although you have nothing but harsh words for us.’

‘True words,’ Che corrected.

‘Those are often the harshest. What do you
want
, child of Collegium? What is it you want from us?’

Che glanced back towards Ceremon and Amalthae. ‘When I came to your forest, it was for two reasons. I needed to stop the Empress finding Argastos and assuming his power, and that’s
my personal goal still. I also came to help the Sarnesh and the Etheryen fight off the Empire. If the Sarnesh leader was here he’d tell me to try and persuade you to fight the Empire too
– as you did under the Ancient League. But I won’t.’

The Loquae cocked an eyebrow, waiting.

‘I’m not going to tell you what to do. Being told what to do has already done too much damage to your kinden, whether it’s by heeding the Moths or the Empire. I’m
asking
you to consider your options while you still have them, but I won’t beg on behalf of the Sarnesh. I won’t even beg for Collegium. I am not a child of Collegium any
more.’ It seemed only as she said it that she realized it was true. ‘I am here as the inheritrix of the old ways, for all that I never chose to be. Amalthae has asked me to intercede,
to try and help
you
, not Sarn, and not myself. I want you to live. I want there to be Mantis-kinden in the Lowlands in a generation’s time.’

‘Why do you care?’ It was an accusation, the way the woman said it.

‘Because what I have become carries a responsibility. Because it was Mantis magic as much as anything that made me this way. Because it’s
right
.’

The woman’s hand rested on her sword hilt, but there was no suggestion that she meant to draw the blade. Despite her age and her warrior’s bearing she seemed lost, almost bewildered.
‘We must speak about what you have said, and we are only one hold here.’

‘Then I ask that you pass my words on, to all the others, Nethyen and Etheryen alike. And maybe some will choose to live and some prefer to die. Or all to die. I don’t know.’
She tried a brittle smile. ‘And what do you yourself intend, now I’ve said my words?’

The old Loquae looked about the firelit clearing as though seeking volunteers, but there seemed no will for violence amongst the Mantids, for once.

‘We will talk,’ she said. ‘And
you
should go. Your presence is like salt on a wound. Perhaps that is what we need, but I am not sure.’

Che glanced at her fellows briefly, as though canvassing their unspoken thoughts. ‘You know where I must go.’

The Loquae nodded unhappily. ‘You go to Argastos.’

‘Not for myself but only because the Empress must not have him.’

For a long while the Loquae’s eyes searched Che’s expression over and over. Tynisa was waiting for Che to give some reassurance, to draw out some proof of her virtuous intent, and
yet the Beetle girl seemed momentarily frightened that she could find no such evidence within herself.
Magicians and power
, came the unwelcome thought.
Can she be so sure she will not
use it?

The Loquae plainly saw the same, but merely shrugged. ‘You go wherever you must. The Nethyen will not stop you.’

‘Will they open the way for me?’ Che pressed.

The old woman’s eyes widened. ‘The way is open for you, Beetle Skryre. How can you not know that? The blood price has already been paid, for you and yours.’

Che mastered her expression quickly, perhaps with a queasy twitch over just whose blood that might have been, which had opened the gate.

‘Your followers, though, have further business with us.’ And was that the sharp edge of a smile on the Loquae’s lean face? Tynisa sensed the lurching moment that Che stumbled
over her own ignorance.

‘Explain,’ the Beetle got out.

‘The duel,’ Amnon stated flatly, and Tynisa echoed him a moment later.

‘What have you done?’ Che demanded of them.

‘Bought time by issuing a challenge,’ Thalric drawled. ‘The Commonweal trick.’

And now we come to pay for the Commonweal trick
, Tynisa decided. ‘Well that’s fine,’ she declared, loud enough to draw all eyes. ‘So let’s get it over with
now, and we can be on our way. Which of you is champion?’

‘Tynisa . . .’ Che started, but this was Mantis business, and she could not prevent it.

‘Amalthae stands for us,’ the Loquae stated, and Che froze.

Tynisa had heard the name, and not quite connected it with a face. ‘Fine, so which of you is she? Let’s see her.’ She looked from face to pale Mantis face, as they shuffled
aside, expecting to see a human opponent revealed by their eddying movement. Instead . . .

‘Ah.’

The cleared fighting ground stretched from her to the trees, and she saw the great mottled shape that swayed there, glittering eyes casting back the firelight.

Tynisa felt her bravado dry up. She would face any human opponent without flinching, but she knew full well the creature’s sheer speed and strength. She was Mantis enough to know the
creature at once as something not merely physically powerful, but supernatural as well, an incarnation of her father’s kinden made armoured flesh.

But she stood, blade outstretched, and in a quiet, calm voice got out, ‘Well come on, then, for my sister would be gone.’

The long-haired Mantis beside the creature cleared his throat. ‘Amalthae bids you: go with your sister, for she will need you. A duel pledged cannot be taken back, and she and you shall
meet. But not now, nor at dawn. Go, for she knows you will return to honour your word.’

Tynisa lowered her blade slowly, and the very character of the air seemed to change around her, the Mantids reacting to this validation of her badge and her blood. They might still hate her, but
never again could they deny her.

Che glanced about, testing the quality of the silence. ‘Then there is one thing I will ask, then, if you can grant it.’

The Loquae’s eyes narrowed and she waited.

Che drew herself up as tall as she could – not physically, but gathering together the trailing folds of a power that, here at this pyre, Tynisa could almost see. ‘Give me your
blessing on my journey,’ the Beetle asked. ‘Let my steps be light until I find the Empress, for if I catch her before she catches Argastos, then we need never know what I might do with
him.’

‘Our blessing?’

‘These are your lands,’ and it was a recognition of sovereignty the Empress had surely never granted them. ‘I walk here as your guest now. Give me your blessing, wish me well,
speed me on my way.’

And Tynisa saw, at last, something like approval in the old Mantis woman’s face, because Che had said the right thing.
Just words, but words have power.
Ancient compacts had been
brought to light, a respect for the Mantis-kinden that the ages had not shown them – and so elegantly expressed.

‘I give you our blessing,’ the Loquae breathed, and the forest breathed with her. ‘Now go on your way.’

That morning, Major Oski turned up before his general. He was out of uniform, wearing dark, baggy clothes and with his face blacked like a comic artificer in a play.

‘General.’ The little man saluted. ‘Apologies, I’ve not had time to change.’

A horn sounded – in the last few days it had become a familiar and miserable call. It meant the Collegiate orthopters had been sighted on their way for another bombing run, under skies
still grey with dawn. The Farsphex pilots and ground artillerists would be scrabbling to ready themselves, but those repeating ballistae with which the Empire had been threatening the slower enemy
bombers had themselves become the prime targets, and each time the Collegiate machines flew over once again – several times a day now – the resistance offered was that much less.

Tynan kept an eye on the sky. ‘Explain.’

‘I’ve been over to look at the walls, sir,’ Oski told him. ‘Trick I learned from the Colonel-Auxillian – he always went for a look in the dark in person. Anyway, I
thought I’d take a look at the closest gate, shooting arcs and the like. I’ve got a plan of attack now, if you’ll have it.’

Tynan gestured for him to continue. The first bomb fell, released too soon and impacting out in the earthworks. There was always someone too keen or too nervous, amongst the enemy. The growl of
the Farsphex engines was all around them, too: Bergild’s pilots lifting into the air to do what they could. The numbers were stacked against them, though, and if they tried too hard they
would find themselves shot down. Their game of feint and threat was growing more and more difficult, and most of the time Collegium could spare a score of Stormreaders to ward them off, whilst the
rest got to work on the army.

And the Second Army was still spreading itself thin, but when the order came to press the actual attack, the Wasps would have to gather their soldiers, and then the bombing would begin in
earnest. At this rate it seemed touch and go whether they could get close to the walls at all, given all the Collegiate artillery out there. And when they did, how long would they have to sit under
bombardment before the ramparts could be taken or the wall breached?