Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

The faceless helm shifted left and right, seeming something less than human, a mute animal in pain. ‘If I’d known… I’d never have agreed to guide you, if I’d known.’

‘Listen,’ Che told him, ‘I’m not Rekef, right? I’m a Lowlander from Collegium. You’re…’ She remembered his cry: Pride of the Sixth. ‘Sixth Army? You were at…’ She got her recent history straight and blinked. ‘Malkan’s Folly, that must mean.’

‘Malkan’s Stand,’ Varmen corrected, giving the Wasp-kinden name for the battlefield on which Imperial ambitions towards the Sarnesh Ants had been smashed… and where the Empire’s heaviest line infantry had met the new dawn of the snapbow. Her eyes were drawn to that single flaw in the man’s mail, a finger-sized hole punched effortlessly through that thick armour plate.

‘I’m no Rekef, and Thalric hasn’t been one for years. That’s probably why he was on this list to begin with.’

Varmen’s carapaced shoulders slumped. ‘I’d never have said yes,’ he muttered, but he sheathed his sword in a single motion, through long habit able to find the scabbard’s mouth without searching, and then he was fumbling at the buckle to his helm, dragging the weighty thing off and then drawing back his coif, showing a tousled, unhappy man underneath.

‘We’re glad you came back, even so,’ Che told him. ‘And that you could get all your armour on so fast.’

‘All?’ he said, with a faint smile. ‘Woman, this isn’t all. This is just what I could, you know, throw on in a hurry. Most of it’s still on the beetle.’ His eyes found Thalric’s and the smile faded.

‘What can I say?’ Thalric shrugged. ‘So I was Rekef. As she says, not for a long time – and the Empire has gone to some lengths to get rid of me since. Putting my name on the lists is the least of it.’

Seeing Varmen’s grim expression linger, Che pressed on. ‘I promise you. Nothing about this journey relates to the Rekef, or even to the Empire.’ She essayed a smile. ‘Let me tell you about my sister.’

A crowd had gathered in one of Khanaphes’s great plazas. Merchants and artisans and farmers clumped together, looking up at the balcony from which, traditionally, the city’s leaders had formerly made pronouncements, passing on the words of the unseen Masters.

Now the balcony bore a less familiar burden, as a handful of Beetle-kinden Ministers was overshadowed by the presence of the Empire. However, the most imposing presence belonged not to the Wasp-kinden officers, nor the Mantis bodyguards, but to the Empress Seda herself. For all that she was such a slight and unassuming figure, something about her instantly drew the eye and held it. No Spider Arista possessed such raw presence as she did, looking out over the anxiously milling people of Khanaphes.

Across the street, from the window of a merchant factora, Praeda and Amnon watched as one of the Ministers stood forth to address the populace.

‘That’s not Ethmet,’ the big man murmured. ‘Why isn’t the First Minister there?’

Praeda shrugged. ‘You tell me,’ she replied, resting a hand on his arm. ‘These are your people. When I was here last I’d have said that very little the Ministers did made many kinds of sense.’

The foremost Minister standing on the balcony – at this distance just an anonymous old man – held out his hands, and the citizens below quietened swiftly. ‘People of Khanaphes, rejoice!’ he declared, with all apparent sincerity. ‘Rejoice for the friendship of a new Empire!’

The people below did not seem minded to spring into instant celebration, but merely stared upwards cautiously. Praeda guessed many of them would have heard how this selfsame Empire had been behind the ruinous Scorpion attack of the previous year, from which the city was so plainly still recovering. To have such a large Imperial force insert itself effortlessly within their walls caused them understandable concern.

‘The Honoured Foreigners of the Wasp Empire have heard of our troubles,’ the Minister pressed on stoically. ‘They are deeply grieved that renegades from within their own borders may have incited the Scorpions of the Nem to attack our walls.’ Nothing in the Minister’s assured delivery acknowledged just how swiftly those walls had been brought down, or the terrible cost of that assault. Khanaphes, city of ten thousand years, did not like to dwell on its own defeats.

Praeda shifted at the window, wishing she could get her telescope out, but knowing that, at this angle, sunlight might flash from the lens and draw Imperial attention. Amnon had talked his way into this place, the merchant that owned it was surely somewhere in the crowd outside, and she was still worried that word might already have reached the government that their errant son, their former First Soldier, had returned.

‘So it is,’ the Minister was saying, ‘that the Honoured Foreigners wish to make amends. Even today they will be taking their soldiers off into the Nem, with all their fearful artifice, there to confront and slay as many of the despoiling Scorpions as they can find. These foreigners, our friends, shall thus take the blood of the Many in recompense for the harm their rebellious subjects have done here. They tell us that, after they are done, we need not fear the return of the Scorpions for five hundred years!’

For a moment there was silence, as the listeners digested this statement. Then a few scattered cries of approbation heralded the floodgates opening, and a moment later, everyone was cheering – cheering the black and gold. Praeda wondered whether any of it was spontaneous, or whether the Ministers had orchestrated every last echo.

‘This is how they hope to keep the Wasps off their backs, is it?’ she mused aloud.

Amnon hissed, ‘Praeda,’ in warning tones, and a moment later she heard the sound of sandals scuffing on stone steps as several people ascended the stairs from the factora’s ground floor. She turned to see that Amnon had already drawn his sword: a well-crafted Helleron piece, and not the leaf-bladed weapon he had taken away on his departure from this city. She had a similar short blade herself strapped to the inside of the pack lying at her feet, and now she rested a hand on the hilt, waiting.

She had certainly not expected to see Ethmet, but the leading pair of feet to arrive belonged to none other than Khanaphes’s First Minister. The man and woman following him were outfitted in the gorgeous gold-edged scale mail of the Royal Guard, but they themselves looked young and green: surely replacements brought in after the Scorpions had been defeated. Though not amongst those commanded by Amnon during the city’s defence, they still eyed the big man with awe and reverence. Exiled though he was, his name still resonated within the city’s walls.

There was an awkward silence between them that the sound of the crowd outside could not break into. Then Ethmet spoke: ‘They told me you had returned.’

Amnon still held his sword to hand. ‘If you believe that I have come begging for pardon, you are mistaken,’ he stated. ‘If you intend threatening me with the law of Khanaphes for defying my banishment, then you have forgotten who I am. These children will not suffice.’ He looked directly into the faces of Ethmet’s guards. ‘They will not even stand against me.’

‘No, no.’ Ethmet’s voice, that had quieted angry crowds in its time, emerged weak enough that Praeda had to lean closer to hear it. ‘I just came to… to see you. An old friend…’

Amnon frowned suspiciously. ‘You seem to like your new friends well enough to have no need of old ones. We saw you bow the knee.’

‘Amnon, you do not understand.’ The old man’s voice cracked on the last word and, suddenly shaking, his legs gave way. One of his men lunged forward to catch him, and guide him over to a stone bench. To her embarrassment, Praeda saw tears on Ethmet’s withered cheeks.