Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

But they were the Empire, or at least a certain face of it, the powerful and the ambitious whose desires she yoked to haul her Empire forward. She had divided and wooed them, played favourites, cast down, raised up, and always she had walked with the knives of the Rekef in her shadow. There was no union or alliance of them strong enough to bring her down, not for the moment.

She was aware of how most of them looked at her. She had won them, for now. She was a woman more Wasp-kinden than her brother had ever been. She met the world head-on. She was fierce when ferocity was needed, cunning as required, and when she punished, her abrupt sentences were often carried out before the whole court, less a lesson than a spectacle. She thought that they loved her most of all for that. There was an arbitrariness to her – the one thing she shared with her late brother – that well became a master of the Empire.

For these qualities, they forgave her a few foibles, such as the mystics and Inapt scholars she kept about the court. After all, even the Wasp-kinden had to admit that the Moths and their ilk had ruled the world centuries before, had been great powers in an age when Wasp history was not even being written down. What other great power of the modern world had seen their ambassadors come so meekly and humbly? Was there a Lowlander merchant prince or Assembler who could boast the same?

And now she had some new visitors, and she reclined on the throne to watch as they were escorted through the great doors at the far end of the chamber.

They were three men, all in full armour, and although they must have been aware of the unfriendly attention of the whole room, they made a brave show by marching in step, the last of them bearing a banner sloping across one shoulder: a simple checked field in familiar colours. The style of their mail was familiar to most of her court, or certainly those in active service a decade before: curved plates of chitin overlaying silk and leather and fine chainmail, in shapes elegant and graceful, and slightly too extravagant for an Imperial armourer’s more practical tastes. Where the spectators might have expected scintillating greens and blues and reds, though, all three wore identical colours, segments painted over or enamelled, and the leader’s breastplate newly wrought, so that the chitin’s sparkling finish was resplendent in their colours: black and gold.

They had bunches of moth-antennae plumes, cloaks lined with butterfly scales, torcs of gold and mother of pearl. These Dragonfly-kinden had clearly gone to great pains to impress, unaware that in the Empire such excess would seem quaint and barbaric. As they progressed towards the throne, presenting a study in pride and defiance, they were followed by an undercurrent of derision and mockery. What did they think they were, these savages decked in the livery of Empire? Was this some kind of joke?

‘Speak.’ Seda’s voice rang out, halting them. ‘What do you bring before me?’

There was a small exchange of sidelong glances between the two at the rear, but their leader knelt without hesitation. His brow gleamed a little with sweat, and Seda saw him swallow away a dry throat before he announced, ‘Your Imperial Majesty, accept me as your servant General Torste Sain, here to bring you word of the Principalities.’

At his proclaimed rank, a tide of laughter welled up, and an eddy of angry calls for the crossed pikes, amid jeers and threats. Seda held the gaze of Torste Sain the Dragonfly general, noticing his jaw clench and his shoulders hunch, as though readying himself for the rod.

She stood up abruptly and the room went silent, waiting for the Imperial verdict and for the downfall of these strange visitors. Instead, she turned her gaze upon her own court, and few enough of them dared meet her eyes the way the Dragonfly had.

‘How dare you mock?’ she demanded, not loudly, but sharply enough to reach the back of the room. ‘What do you find here that is worthy of your humour? Is there a general of our Empire who would dare to stand thus in the heart of a foreign state, facing every expectation of a swift execution? Would any of you risk your lives in the halls of the Spider-kinden Aristoi, or the royal court of some hostile Ant city-state?’ Torste Sain was regarding her impassively, so she invited him, ‘General, speak to us of the Principalities.’

At her words the kneeling Dragonfly stood up in a single smooth motion. ‘Great Majesty,’ he announced, ‘I am sent from the Principalities as a humble messenger. Since the borders of Empire shifted, you must know how we have been beset on all sides by the Commonweal to the west, by Myna and its allies to the east. We have had to forge ourselves a new state from the pieces that were left to us, guided by those of your people who remained and being taught the ways of Empire by your former servants. It is with joy that my people have learned the power of the new, Highness. I am proud to bear the rank of general, for I am the first of my kinden ever to do so.’ And he was indeed proud, it was plain to see. Seda wondered if any Wasp-kinden within living memory had felt that honour quite so keenly.

‘And do you seek to rejoin the Empire, General?’ she asked softly.

Taking a deep breath, he braced himself. ‘Your Highness, no.’

There might have been a uproar then, but her outstretched hands rendered it stillborn.

The general’s two companions were standing markedly closer together now, but he himself had not moved. ‘We honour the Empire,’ he stated. ‘There is no need to take what can be freely given. We shall have tribute for your treasury, Highness. We shall have soldiers to fight alongside your armies. We ask only for recognition as your friends and protection against our mutual enemies.’

This time she let the protests run a little longer, because there were many traditionalists still in her court, and the Empire had always recognized only two classes of geography: those parts of the map already in black and gold, and those parts yet to be painted. That mentality had served well enough to let a single hill tribe swallow up its kindred neighbours, and then put a score of other cities in chains. But the times have changed.

‘The word you seek is “protectorate”,’ she declared, and her court quietened quickly, because speaking over the Empress was seldom forgiven. She looked around at them all, seeing plenty there of shock and outrage, with the old guard ready to decry the insurrection of the Principalities’ Wasp-kinden, and to call for the subjugation of pretenders such as this Torste Sain. There were other expressions to be read too, though. There were thoughtful Consortium merchants, calculating tacticians, scholars of recent history and politics, Beetle-kinden diplomats and agents of the Rekef Outlander. They were thinking as she was thinking, using a logic that had nothing to do with Apt or Inapt.

‘Consider Collegium in the Lowlands,’ she urged her court. ‘How is it that Collegium is not beneath our flag already? Because Collegium never stands alone. When we fought Collegium, we were also fighting Tharn, the Spiderlands, the Sarnesh, Solarno and the Commonweal, not to mention the rebellions in Myna and Szar which Collegiate agents incited. That is how Collegium staved us off.’ She gifted them with a smile fierce as the sun. ‘You have all seen the statue that stands within the palace doors. Who are the defenders who stand at my back there? Soldier, artificer, merchant and diplomat. Wars are won by more weapons than swords and snapbows and artillery. General Torste, the Empire is glad to recognize its errant children, and to extend to them a hand of friendship and protection, and in return, and with our aid, you shall guard our border with the Commonweal, whose stratagems your people are best placed to understand. And when we march on the Lowlands once more, when we stand before the gates of Collegium, you shall be with us to see it, and this time we shall not turn away.’