Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

She nodded, waiting silently, and he thought she guessed already at what he would say.

‘The Treaty of Iron is rusting fast,’ he said. ‘The Wasps have recovered their losses from the Twelve-Year War and they are now ready to march again. I’ve seen their staging point at Asta, and I’ve read their logistics reports, and their next assault could be underway in a matter of tendays. Westwards — this time the might of the Wasp Empire will be concentrated west of here, their power brought to bear against the cities of the Lowlands.’

‘It would be a logical step for them,’ she agreed.

‘You do not need me to tell you that, when our enemy most exerts his weight elsewhere, that is the time any revolution might have the best hope of success.’

She smiled thinly.‘I think we understand each other,’ she said. ‘My people are not ready yet to throw off the Wasps, but they will be. May that turn out to be to your people’s good, as it will be to mine. Our revolution will succeed,’ she said, and there was not the faintest smudge of doubt on her, ‘but we may need allies in the west if we’re to stay free.’

‘I have one thing to ask, if I may,’ said Salma. He had been fast asleep the last anyone was aware of him, and now he sat down beside them even as he spoke. Even in his prison-grimy tunic and breeches, he looked vastly more the young man they remembered. Even his smile was back.

‘Ask it,’ Kymene said.

‘There was another prisoner of the Wasps. A Butterfly-kinden named Grief in Chains?’ the Dragonfly pressed.

‘I know of her.’ Kymene looked at him oddly. ‘Last I heard she was some kind of pawn in their little games.’

‘She was passed into the hands of an officer named Aagen. Che overheard them discussing it,’ Salma said. ‘I need to know where she is. There’s one rescue left to make.’

‘Tynisa did better than she knew in bringing these to me,’ Stenwold remarked. He had his fellows gathered before him like a class in Collegium, even Tisamon. Only Achaeos kept himself distant, as usual. ‘Of course these are only a fragment, but I have grown used to reading fragments these last ten years.’

‘I thought they must be plans. Invasion plans, perhaps?’ said Tynisa. ‘I had a look at them, on the way back. I. . didn’t understand them.’

‘Nothing so dramatic. Just quartermasters’ notes, logistics, accounts. The minutiae of an army’s organizing,’ Stenwold told her. When she looked crestfallen, he added, ‘But dearer than gold for all that, for they tell me where the Wasps have gone to, and in what numbers, and also with what provisions and equipment. If you know how to read them, then they’re as good as an annotated map of their progress.’

‘And what is the news then?’ Tisamon asked. ‘The fighters here have been saying that a lot of troops have been moving through, going west. We’ve seen some of that.’

‘They don’t lie.’ Stenwold nodded. ‘And neither do these reports. Remember Asta? That was just a staging ground, and now I know where they were staging for. Look here.’ He turned one of the sheets over, and took a stylus from his toolbelt, dotting on the places as he named them. ‘Myna here. Asta here. This,’ a scribbly blur, ‘is the Darakyon. Helleron here, beyond it. Here now is the Dryclaw.’ A dotted line delineated the shifting boundaries of the desert. ‘And here. .’ For a second he was indeed back in the classrooms of the Great College. ‘Anyone. .?’

‘Tark, sir,’ Totho said.

‘The Ant city-state of Tark, easternmost of the Lowlands cities. And what are the Ants of Tark best known for?’

‘Slaves,’ said Che distastefully.

‘A little simplistic,’ Stenwold said, with a scholarly wrinkle, ‘but it represents the truth that, of all the Ant city-states, Tark can consider itself rich. It stands on the Silk Road leading from the Spiderlands, on the west road used by the Scorpion-kinden of the Dryclaw into the Lowlands, on the east road for the Fly warrens of Egel and Merro. But its trade harvest is so particularly rich precisely because it is the portal to the entire Lowlands. Only not even the Tarkesh think like that. And why? Because they are more concerned with maintaining their military strength against the other Ant cities, rather than in preparing against an outside threat.’ He made an arrow with the stylus covering the march from Asta to Tark. ‘Now there is a threat. Myna has seen a vast number of soldiers already shipped to Asta, and the majority of them are headed onwards for Tark. I would guess from these figures anywhere in the region of thirty thousand: Wasp soldiers and Auxillian support totalled. Together with field weapons, war automotives, fliers, of course. It’s all in these papers, if you know how to read them.’

‘What can we do then?’ Che demanded, as though there could be some simple means by which to save a city.

‘The Ants of Tark will have to manage their own defence, not that they’d appreciate any offers of help from outsiders. The Wasps have moved ahead of us, but at least I will have eyes there to see what may be seen, and can report to me. We must go to those places in the Lowlands that will listen to us. Collegium, Sarn, even Helleron.’ The stylus tapped the map. ‘And there we have our next problem, for not all the soldiers mentioned in these reports are slated for Tark’s walls.’

‘Where else?’ Che looked from his face to the map and back.

‘Two armies, a forked attack. The bulk of the soldiers against the military might of Tark, but enough, perhaps enough, to take on Helleron. How many soldiers would it take to conquer Helleron? How many to persuade the Helleren that working with the Empire would be better than against it, or that the terms of the Treaty of Iron were now due to relax?’

‘Send a few men and a large enough purse,’ interrupted Achaeos’s acid voice from beyond them. Stenwold nodded at him without acrimony.

‘And they have sent more than a few men, and I have no idea of the size of the purse, but Helleron is where we must now go to do most good. If the magnates of Helleron can band their armies and their wits together, they have enough to resist a force of ten times this size. If they are divided, or blinker themselves to the truth, then the Wasps may take Helleron very easily indeed, and then the Lowlands will be open to them. Helleron, as I say, is where we can do most good. I have already sent my messenger off to Scuto there, warning him to prepare. We may not quite outstrip the Wasps but the messenger, and word of their coming, will do.’ He sighed, paused a moment before continuing.

‘So we come to it at last. I have made you my agents. I have sent you into danger, imprisonment. I have gambled with your lives, I who am a poor gambler at best. I ask you now to go to war with me, and any of you may still say no. I will not hold that against you, even my oldest friend or my closest relation.’

Those gathered close faced him with equanimity, not a face flinching, and so he looked beyond towards the Moth. ‘This is not your fight, Achaeos.’

They all turned to look at him, and he glanced at Che for a moment before answering. ‘None of this has been my fight, Master Maker, and I will not go to war to save Helleron.’

‘And I cannot blame you. You have already done much for us-’ Stenwold started, but Achaeos held up a grey hand.

‘Your niece and I spoke, this morning before the sun. We spoke of many things. She told me that the Wasps would eventually come to my people as to yours, and I have seen their works, and I believe her. And whilst you Beetles may chip, chip, chip at our mountains to scratch for your puny profits, the Wasps bring tyranny and war, and they fly — either in themselves or in their machines. That makes all the difference in the world, for while your people grub in the earth, they will look to the heights as they hone their swords. So, I will return with you now and tell my people what I have seen — for all they will not want to hear it. I will try to convince them that the Wasps must be fought, in such ways as my people are wont to fight. I will not go to war to save Helleron, but I will go to war to save my own people, whether from Beetle-kinden or Wasp-kinden, or whoever dares raise a hand against us.’