‘Is that your way of wishing me good luck, Commander?’ Che asked him drily, but he just shrugged.
Tynisa fell in alongside Maure. ‘What is it?’
The magician glanced at her – obviously still a little uneasy in the Weaponsmaster’s company after their jagged history in the Commonweal. ‘The Beetle woman,
Bartrer.’
‘What about her?’
‘I don’t like her. There’s something wrong with her: a ghost . . . or something like a ghost.’
Tynisa waved that away. ‘You don’t trust her, I don’t trust her.’ Thalric, the third member of their forced clique, had drifted in to eavesdrop, and she added, ‘And
you don’t trust anyone, so that makes three of us.’
Thalric nodded curtly. ‘Except Che, but yes, there’s something eating that woman for sure.’
‘The others?’ Tynisa pressed.
‘Amnon’s straight up, from what I remember,’ Thalric admitted. ‘Moths are always trouble. For the rest, we’ll all just keep our eyes a bit wider open.’
In his mind, Tynisa knew, everyone was an enemy, Sarnesh and Etheryen Mantids included. She found that she had begun to value his paranoia.
The Sarnesh camp at the edge of the forest was breaking up, its work accomplished. Those detachments chosen by Tactician Milus had entered the forest with the Etheryen blessing
that Che Maker had negotiated. The balance, along with Milus himself, was readying itself to head for home.
Somewhat controversially, of course, both the Collegiate and Princep ambassadors had gone into Mantis territory. Balkus had already departed to report to his Monarch on the war’s most
recent twists. The Collegiate orthopter still stood, one of the last machines on the impromptu airfield. Its Beetle pilot was in her seat and ready to go, but the side-hatch was still open, with a
small and lonely figure sitting there, staring out at the disintegrating camp. Laszlo was still waiting, and had been waiting since before dusk. Now the moon was high, the bulk of the Ants had
left, with their trademark efficiency, and he refused to give up.
‘Seriously.’ The pilot’s voice came from within. ‘I don’t know whether you noticed, but it’s about an hour short of midnight by the clock. Can we go
now?’
‘She’ll be here,’ Laszlo declared, not for the first time.
‘Well, then at least tell me who—’
‘An agent. One with vital information for Collegium,’ the Fly snapped back. That was his story, he had decided. Perhaps it was even true.
‘She’s stood you up,’ the pilot’s voice told him unhelpfully. ‘Look—’
‘Just – hold on.’ For a moment, just a moment, hope flared inside him, but even he could not fool himself for more than a second. Yes, someone was approaching the orthopter,
but it was not Lissart. This was an Ant and, as the figure neared, Laszlo with a sinking heart recognized Milus.
‘Collegium is surely waiting for your word!’ the tactician called out as he drew near. ‘And yet here you are.’ He must have had good night vision for an Ant, Laszlo
considered, because he was able to look the Fly straight in the eye at that distance. His crisp little smile said a great deal. ‘You’re Laszlo, of course.’
Having his name known to the Sarnesh court was not a thing of joy to Laszlo. ‘What of it?’ he asked cautiously.
‘She’s not coming. I’d have let you exhaust your patience, but it’s inefficient. Go home.’
For a moment Laszlo was frozen motionless, not a thought or quip or plan in his mind. ‘What do you mean, she’s not coming?’ was all he could come up with in the end.
Milus’s mind was unreadable from his face but, unlike with most Ants, it was not for want of an expression, just that the mild humour he posted up there was feigned entirely for
Laszlo’s benefit. ‘My adviser, Alisse – or te Liss, as she called herself in Solarno – will not be joining you. You should go now.’
Laszlo had a knife, and he had a little cut-down snapbow known as a sleevebow, which could poke some nice holes in the Ant’s mail, but there were a lot of Ants left about the place, and he
was suddenly convinced, by his instincts and his Art, that there would be Ant marksmen with their weapons trained on him right now. ‘What have you done?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Taken her in for questioning,’ Milus said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘She was a Wasp agent, you know. Well, of course, you know.’ That false
smile broadened by the requisite amount.
‘I . . .’ Laszlo had always prided himself on his quick wits and ready tongue, but Milus was changing his ground faster than the Fly could keep up. ‘What do you mean, I would
know?’
‘I read your report in Collegium, Laszlo.’ The use of his name was pointed and deliberate.
‘You’ve been spying on Collegium?’
A polite laugh. ‘Collegium has been sharing its intelligence with its allies, the Sarnesh. Your report included.’
But I never . . .
‘I didn’t say anything in my report about—’
‘A Wasp agent?’ Milus’s pale eyes flicked across his face as though Laszlo was a specimen in a jar. ‘It was all there for an adequate intelligencer to read, in between
the things you actually wrote. Without that one thing, none of your story really makes much sense. Her treachery completes the picture nicely. Although I am grateful to the look on your face for
confirmation.’
Laszlo failed to say two or three separate things because his heart was hammering and he could not quite catch enough breath for them. He remembered Lissart telling him what a poor spy he was,
over and over, and he had never realized how right she was, or that his failings would prove her undoing. His expression, whatever was left of it, prompted another careful widening of the
tactician’s smile.
‘I know,’ Milus admitted. ‘We are Ants. We are terribly traditional. We make good soldiers and not much else. We do not understand you other kinden with your free-thinking
minds: how very confusing and lonely you must all be, we think. We do not know how you think, and we cannot read your faces because we are ourselves so inscrutable. How our linked minds must
cripple us, hm? How unfair, then, to discover at this late date that we can play the same games you can.’
What Laszlo finally got out, at that juncture, was, ‘You can’t take her.’
‘She is taken. She is gone,’ Milus assured him. ‘You should also go.’
Piss on me
, Laszlo found himself thinking.
And he’s on
our
side!
‘I’ll go to Mar’Maker about this.’
Milus regarded him with an expression now turning to pity. ‘And he will be overjoyed that his
allies
are so committed to the war that he has lived for most of his life. I know
Stenwold Maker well enough, from one meeting and three score reports. Stenwold Maker hates the Wasps. So do I, and therefore so do all who serve under my command. Stenwold Maker and I need each
other, and we understand each other, and he will not care that an Imperial whore and spy is
assisting
me. Tell him I will let him have a report of what she knows. But go now. Your
continued presence is inappropriate, and I am sure your pilot wants to see her home as soon as possible.’
Laszlo twitched twice, his impulse to attack the man being murdered before it could get him killed. He wanted to say something like,
This isn’t over
, or warn Milus that if he
harmed Lissart, then . . . But he had no ‘then’. He had no Lissart. He had precisely nothing.
Such oaths he swore only inside his head, where Milus could not tear them apart with his cold logic.
‘Argastos.’ Seda pronounced it with care, as she would any name of power. Thus far she had travelled within the general Wasp forces that were pushing into the
Nethyon to support their Mantis allies – or that was the claim. Seda was unsure how much they could accomplish that the Nethyen would appreciate, but at least poor General Roder would get a
clean battle with the Sarnesh, while the Lowlander Mantis-kinden writhed in their death throes.
Such a useful kinden. If only the Etheryen would bend the knee to me, then I could save
them.
But she had not been able to approach them in person, and the Nethyen messenger bearing her offer reported that the Etheryen had taken it badly. Fatally, apparently, but perhaps there
was only one sort of ‘badly’ that the Mantids knew.
When this is over, I will save some. I will transplant them to the Empire and make them mine. Did my people think they feared the Rekef? How much more would they tremble at the thought of
Mantis-kinden secret police?
Seated at her fire were Gjegevey and the Tharen Wasp, Tegrec, serving as her chief advisers on this forest and its history. In this, Seda knew, the abominable Beetle girl would have an
advantage, being leagued with the Doric Moths from whom Argastos surely sprang. For all that Seda’s people might ransack the Empire’s libraries for every mention of the name, the Maker
girl would already know it all.
Curse her!
A sudden savagery in her expression had apparently silenced the two of them, so she gestured irritably for them to continue.
Tegrec spoke first. ‘This story goes back a long way, you understand, to the great wars of the Inapt world. And if you know Moth histories, you know that they aren’t written as
anything an Imperial historian would recognize. Almost no dates even in the Moth reckoning, place names given as metaphors, fact given as allegory, or the other way round. Any Apt reader would take
it for some lurid fiction. Even we, with our . . . advantages, run into a cultural barrier. Even modern Moths—’
‘Get to the point,’ Seda ordered him flatly, and he swallowed nervously.
‘There was a man named Argastos, and he was a Skryre, and he was a warrior, and he led a Mantis war-host and raised the greatest army the world had ever seen.’ He said it as if he
was reciting a text.
Seda stared at him.
So swift on my own thoughts comes this?
Some great magician, she had expected – for what else would make a Moth’s name live on? – but a war leader?
I like him better already.
And across the vast darkness of the forest, yet still intolerably under the same night sky, she knew that Che would be having the same guarded conversation with her no doubt far better informed
advisers . . .
Terastos had prevaricated but now they had set up camp for the night, Che was not to be denied. ‘She is after something,’ she insisted, not needing to name the
Empress for them. ‘And Maure and I, we know that there is a knot of darkness in this forest, at the very heart of it. So tell me.’
The Moth started and stopped several times. ‘My people fought many wars, long ago,’ he would say. Or, ‘It is written that a sole name once ruled all you can see.’ And he
was getting nowhere, to Che’s increasing frustration. It was as though there was something he was trying to say, but a key word – a name – could not be forced through his
teeth.
Until: ‘Why, then, surely you are talking about Argastos,’ Helma Bartrer declared, half putting him out of his misery, half archly establishing her credentials as expert.
Terastos reacted like a man released from a stranglehold, some spell broken by the simple mention of the name. ‘There was a man named Argastos that made this place his own,’ he
admitted weakly. ‘But we do not . . . we did not speak of him. Nobody has spoken of him for a very long time.’
Che glared in exasperation, then looked somewhat reluctantly to Bartrer. ‘So speak,’ she said.
Bartrer gave a smug little smile. ‘There were wars, back then. It’s as difficult as getting money out of a Helleren, to work out what they were about, but they had wars. This
Argastos was a Moth, a magician, a warlord. This was early, too. He’s named in a codex that lists the victorious war leaders of this particular scrap, and there are names from all over, and
some that even read like Mosquito-kinden Blooded Ones – Sarcads as they called them. So if it’s true that the Moths and Mosquitos actually did rip into each other, then this Argastos
was before that. Really early, then. There were Woodlouse-kinden names, too, all given high honours, and that’s about the last you hear of them in the histories as amounting to anything
important. Spiders and Mantids side by side, Dragonfly noble families . . . Others I never could pin down. Basically, my reconstructions suggest that this Argastos was the brightest star in a
gathering of war-leaders from pretty much everywhere the Moths could call on. And he lived right here in this forest. In fact he’s described in two distinct ways: like a great Moth magician,
and like one of the Mantis Loquae – their speakers and leaders – so he may have been a halfbreed, or he may have been just a Moth with an unusual talent for fighting. A Weaponsmaster,
maybe.’ Bartrer nodded familiarly at Tynisa’s sword-and-circle brooch. ‘But when they fought – whoever it was that all these people fought – he gets the most of the
credit. He was a hero, a great man. At that time, anyway.’
‘Those few mentions of him that we have, hm, found,’ Gjegevey explained, ‘seem to fall into two camps. He led the armies of the Inapt, and led them to
victory, at great cost.’
He thought he was being clever, Seda considered, but she could read every wrinkle in his face. She let him speak because there was no point challenging him about it, not when the answers were
written so plainly. ‘So he was a great man, remembered in song and story,’ she murmured.
‘Hm, yes,’ the old Woodlouse agreed, ‘but other sources speak poorly of him. We, ahm, believe that relations between Argastos and the other Skryres deteriorated later . . . or
that is our best, hm, reading.’
‘Books that speak directly of him are simply not to be had,’ Tegrec complained. ‘Probably the Tharen Skryres keep them hidden. They do a lot of that. But some texts from
– I don’t know – generations after the man’s time, perhaps? They mention him obliquely – he’s used as a metaphor for pride and ambition, for turning on his
betters. For . . . some sort of corruption – questionable magics, that sort of thing.’
‘There is a play, even,’ Gjegevey added, ‘wherein it is, ahm, declaimed that, “Like Argastos, I have won for you the world, and gained but spite,” or some
such.’
But Seda was still considering what Tegrec had said. ‘I was unaware that the Skryres considered any magics questionable.’