Adrian Tchaikovsky - War Master's Gate

They were tall and graceful, and every one of them armed, even the youngest and the oldest who had ventured from the forest. Pale and sharp-featured, most of them looked on all who were not their kin with arch condescension. They were the masters of battle whose steel had once ruled the Lowlands in the name of their Moth-kinden masters. That five centuries of progress had erased that world, beyond their borders, was not hinted at in their expressions.

As Laszlo had observed, Helma Bartrer, Collegiate Assembler and Master of the College, was constantly twitchy. A jumpy look came into her eye every time she caught sight of a Mantis or a Moth. Amnon had thought at first it was fear, curious in a woman who had volunteered herself for this duty. By now he had a sinking feeling that it might instead be academic curiosity, as if Bartrer was forcibly restraining herself from stuffing each Mantis-kinden in a pickling jar for further study. He understood she belonged to the College history faculty, which covered a multitude of sins.

‘Ah, aha.’ She offered them a vague wave as they approached. ‘Good, in the nick of time. I think we’re close to getting under way.’ She was a broad, dark woman, solidly built as most Beetles were, with her hair drawn back into a bun and wearing formal College robes that somehow remained approximately white despite her living out of a tent. A delicate pair of spectacles sat on the bridge of her nose. Beside her was a man of around the same height, but of a slender build, grey of skin and with eyes of blank white: the ambassador from the Moths of Dorax. He had no name that Amnon had ever heard mentioned, and was dressed more like a scout than a diplomat, wearing a banded leather cuirass under his loose grey robe, and a bandolier of throwing knives over his narrow chest. Helma Bartrer became especially twitchy when Moths were about. If Amnon were to discover her dissecting the man for posterity, he would not be much surprised.

‘Is the Sarnesh fellow here, then?’ Laszlo asked eagerly,

‘The tactician? Just arrived, I think,’ Bartrer confirmed. ‘And Master. . tells me that the Nethyen delegates are expected any moment.’

The Moth, whom Bartrer consistently addressed as ‘Master. .’, in a pointed attempt at fishing for a name, nodded smoothly.

‘He says it’s a sign of how grave matters have become that the Nethyen have actually agreed to send someone,’ Bartrer went on, ‘They’re insular even for Mantids.’

‘I’ll be properly honoured, then,’ Laszlo said. ‘Look, I’ve got some official business to sort out for Sten Maker — you mind if I make myself scarce for a moment?’

Bartrer studied him narrowly through the lenses of her spectacles. ‘You seem to have a lot of official business that nobody told me about,’ she pointed out. ‘I am the ambassador.’

‘Mar’Maker’s a busy man, Helma Bartrer,’ Laszlo pointed out merrily, and with that he was off and winging on his way.

Bartrer made an undiplomatic grimace, then turned back to the Moth. While Amnon had a good idea why she always sought the man out when she could, why ‘Master. .’ stood around for it was less clear. Perhaps, under the man’s unflappable exterior, he was frantically trying to navigate an imagined maze of Collegiate etiquette. Perhaps the Moths were as frightened of alienating their allies as was everyone else?

He missed what Bartrer said next, though, because of a commotion starting up to the north of the camp, and because all the Ants around them had abruptly drawn their swords.

Balkus was not having a good time of it.

He was surrounded by his own people, and that was the problem. All those dun-coloured faces he could see were sufficiently like his own to have been sisters and brothers — indeed they had once been as close as sisters and brothers. Just like in any family, though, shared blood did not mean that you got on. Whilst most Ant-kinden knuckled down and let the mill of their peers grind all the awkward edges off them, a few found that what such a process would leave behind would no longer be them .

You did not abandon a city-state and then come back later. That decision was made once, and never revisited. To become renegade meant never going home.

Balkus liked life simple, and that had mostly involved going to the opposite end of the Lowlands to Sarn and selling his services as a fighter and nailbowman to anyone who had enough coin. Then he had gone into politics.

He hadn’t realized that he was doing it, at the time. He had merely signed on with a Helleren crew that had turned out to be run by an agent of Stenwold Maker, the Collegiate spymaster. Then there had been a fight with the Wasps that had killed off several of Balkus’s friends, and going along with Maker’s plans to scupper the Empire had seemed the right and proper thing to do.

That had led to his becoming a sort of unofficial lieutenant to Maker, which had in turn led, somehow, to Balkus leading the Collegiate detachment at the Battle of Malkan’s Folly — the first scrap there, where the Sarnesh and their allies had smashed the Imperial Seventh and won the war, rather than the more recent one where events had gone somewhat the other way.

Leading a group of non-Ants in an Ant-led battle had been hard, but not because of the hostility of his former kinsmen. In the heat of battle, Balkus had lost it. Instead of being the defiant renegade, he had been seamlessly taking mental orders from the Sarnesh tacticians and shouting them out to his Collegiate followers, never stopping to question them. He had become one of the colony again, for all that they said you could never go back. Memory of the experience still woke him up at night in a cold sweat, convinced he was losing himself in a great sea of everyone else.

He had left Maker’s service for that reason, gone off with a friend to the new city of Princep Salma, which a rabble of idealistic refugees had been building west of Sarn. He should have known better. He should have gone far, far away.

Of course, he had turned out to be one of the most experienced fighting men that the young city possessed. Before he could really think about matters, he had ended up in charge of the defence of a part-built town with no borders and no real soldiers.

And when word came that the Wasps were coming again, and that the Sarnesh were gathering their allies, Balkus had found himself with a minuscule delegation sent to keep an eye on things. Princep had neither the capability nor the inclination to wage war, even on the Wasps, but Sarn was its shield, closest neighbour and greatest potential threat if things went wrong. It was imperative for Princep to know just what plans and promises were being made.

So here he was again — a big Ant, a head taller than most of his kin — had it been just that, in the end, that had marked him out as somehow wrong? — walking through an invisible sea of their comment and criticism, breathing in ill wishes while exhaling his own profound dislike of his native people. The pressure of them all around him kept him constantly on his guard — against the chance that they might decide that his being here was an insult demanding answer, against that small traitorous part of himself that wanted to give it all up and go home, even though he never could.

His delegation was all of two other people: his heliopter pilot and a Roach-kinden girl who was something approximating an agent of Princep’s government, if the place could be said to have one. Her name was Syale, she was no more than twenty, and most of the time Balkus had no idea where she was or what she was doing. He would have worried, except that it turned out Roaches seemed to have some weird understanding with the Mantids. At least, if she was in their company, she was in no danger from anyone else.