Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

Khanaphes could have recovered from last year’s unpleasantness, he knew. For the Scorpions to come from the deep desert and conquer half the city, aided by agents of the Wasp Empire, that was a terrible thing. The Scorpions had gone, though – the power of the Masters had put the rabble back in their place, the river Jamail overflowing its banks to wash Khanaphes clean of them. Ethmet should have rejoiced at this clear sign of favour, unprecedented in a thousand years, but even then he had fretted. He did not want to carry the burden of importance. Let me pass on and be gone, and let my name survive only in stone.

But then the Wasp-kinden had come, in force. They had come with ambassadors who had explained to him that it was rogue elements fleeing the justice of their Empress who had been behind the Scorpion attack. Ethmet had recognized the lie, though even the men they had sent to him believed their words to be true. Nonetheless he thanked them on behalf of the city, and had assured them that the Dominion of Khanaphes bore them no ill-will.

It was not quite as easy as that, they then explained. The Wasp Empire felt dishonoured by the incident, cut to the bone by shame and guilt at the way its renegades had injured a neighbouring power. They had come to put matters right, to ensure that Khanaphes was properly defended whilst rebuilding its strength.

Ethmet had assured them that the Khanaphir trusted to the Masters, and therefore such kindness really was not necessary. By that time, messengers from upriver had been flocking to the city with further news.

You should not put yourself to any trouble, he had assured the Wasps, and they had told him that there would be no further trouble, and that was what the soldiers were here for – the soldiers who had been marching south from the Imperial border, come to defend Khanaphes from… From just about everything, it seemed, including any aberrant belief amongst the city’s leaders that it might not require defending.

So far there had been little trouble: Ethmet had ordered it so. The Khanaphir guardsmen and militia had stood by as the Empire entered their city, not raising sword or spear against the intruders. For tendays now there had been Wasp soldiers on every street, in every marketplace, on the city walls, watching the rebuilding. Ethmet had wrestled with his conscience, for there had once been a rod of iron to his spine, which countenanced no deviation from The Way Things Were Done – as set down a millennium ago by the Masters themselves. Surely, having witnessed what must have represented the Masters’ intervention on behalf of their favoured city, that rod should be even more inflexible now? Surely he should be exhorting his people to rise up and slay the Wasps, to defy their new-minted Empire?

And yet, when he reached out for that rod of iron, he found that it had rusted through. Something within his proud heart had shattered quietly when the Scorpion-kinden had sundered the walls of his city, and captured every street and building as far as to the western bank of the river. Now his former strength of purpose was gone, and he hid a terrible fear inside him: that if the Khanaphir fought against this new invader, the Masters might do nothing to save them. Ethmet did not think on the flood that had driven away the Scorpions, but only upon all those losses they had suffered before the flood had come. What more might be lost? Would the hand of the Masters serve only to sweep the Wasps from a barren ruin? It was blasphemous, such thinking, yet he could not rid himself of it. He could not give the order to go to war.

He had meanwhile called on the Masters, night after night, praying for guidance. There are foreigners profaning your city, great ones, he had told them. Shall we do nothing?

And an echo had come back, Nothing, only nothing – so that he could not know if he had been answered or not. He had eaten the drug called Fir to open his mind to them, and reached for their guidance, but still that empty Nothing had returned to him. He felt as though the Masters themselves were waiting, and likewise holding their breath.

And worming in his gut was the knowledge that it had not been his prayers that had inspired the Masters to drive away the Scorpion-kinden of the Many of Nem. For all that he had entreated them, as their pre-eminent servant, they might as well have been no more than the statues they had left behind.

As yet the hand of these new conquerors had been felt only lightly. Some foreigners within the city had been exiled, others arrested and taken away. Traffic in and out now had to pass Wasp checkpoints. Ships were searched at the docks. There was a curfew, though enforced erratically. A few deaths, a few more beatings: the Wasp soldiers were being kept in check. A few who had killed or raped in a manner that, by some invisible yardstick, was unacceptable had been executed publicly on crossed spears thrust up through their living bodies. So far, the Wasps were being very considerate conquerors, but Ethmet had an unpleasant feeling that this must surely change.

And then, only this morning, the Imperial colonel serving as chief ambassador had come to him with news which was plainly scarcely less new to the colonel himself.

The Empress is coming to Khanaphes.

In fact, the Empress had been on her way for several days, but the news had been carried only a half-day ahead of her, in case some enemy of the Empire might choose to take it as a challenge. The news the colonel had brought him was that the Empress would be arriving in Khanaphes by noon.

And now Ethmet looked up at this descending airship – the world of the now descending to destroy thousands of years of carefully husbanded history – and he felt like weeping.

There had been a Rekef mission to Khanaphes which had gone painfully awry, that much Seda knew. The few survivors who made it back to the Empire had not been Rekef people but Engineers, and so, instead of the secret service keeping its errors secret, matters became widely known in a variety of circles.

Seda knew that nobody had expected her to take much interest in this business. It had been meat and drink for General Brugan’s enemies, ammunition for their broadsides at him, when her advisers met. She was their grand figurehead, the beautiful, whimsical Empress, and they knew she left the minutiae of government to them. She made a great show of acceding to their requests, validating their decisions, making herself the unchanged catalyst by which every other thing happened, but she left them to get on with their areas of expertise, which they appreciated.

But when Khanaphes had been mentioned, as a ranging shot aimed at General Brugan’s high standing in her eyes, she had announced, ‘We will go there.’

There had been silence amongst her advisers then, and they glanced at each other uncertainly. Her brother, the late Emperor, had kept to their ridiculous tribal custom of leader and advisers all sitting in a line, not facing one another. That did not suit her, though, so she had changed it effortlessly, without anyone being able to muster an argument against her decision. Now the Empress would meet with her advisers outside on a sun-warmed balcony, sitting or even reclining on comfortable couches in the Spider style, while plied with food and drink by the palace servants.

‘There is nothing there,’ had ventured Colonel Thanred, an old soldier who was the nominal governor of Capitas. ‘Just a backward Beetle city full of simpletons.’

‘The Rekef clearly believed there was something there worth seeing,’ a Consortium magnate had suggested snidely.

‘Lowlander agents were present in the city, so it was our duty to ensure they did not secure a base from which to strike at us.’ General Brugan had retained his composure magnificently, for which Seda indulged him with a small smile of approval that did not go unnoticed by his peers. He lies so well, she had thought, almost proudly.