Adrian Tchaikovsky - Heirs of the Blade

Before she had changed, before Uctebri’s rituals and her brother’s death, she had seen only points of light up there. Now she saw great forms striding across the sky, and she knew that the same forms had been known to the Inapt peoples of the world since the start of time.

Her guards had not seen her come out to stand here, and her staff believed her asleep in her chamber. It was a simple piece of misdirection to have them look elsewhere as she passed. In all the embassy, only one knew that she had departed it, and he had followed, his footsteps dragging softly on the stone flags. That he had stepped outside would not be remarked on. He was an old slave, for all his prestigious influence, and few cared where old slaves chose to walk, so long as they were present to fulfil their duties later.

‘Gjegevey,’ she said.

‘Your, mmm, Imperial Majesty,’ came his quiet voice. She sensed the presence of the tall, hunchbacked Woodlouse-kinden at her shoulder.

‘It must be tonight,’ she said. ‘The call is too strong, and I feel that if I let another dawn pass me by, then I will fail in some test. Or they will think me afraid. I am not afraid, Gjegevey.’

‘I am sure you are not, although were I, hmm, in your position, I would fear for my very being,’ he said diplomatically.

She turned then and took his hand, feeling it lean and angular with bone, his skin dry and smooth, his Art making it feel harder than skin should. He had gone still, knowing that Empresses did not touch slaves, or at least not slaves who wished to live.

‘Do not fear me, Gjegevey.’

He said nothing, but when she looked across to the archway leading from the Place of Foreigners to the square before the Scriptora, his eyes followed hers.

‘This is not wise,’ he whispered.

‘I came here for no other reason. The old powers of this place must respect me, must recognize me, and they shall never do that if I slink away like a whipped slave. I will go to them tonight. I cannot take my guards or my servants, my spymasters or my artificers. None of these can understand, and likely they would die. There is only one of my retinue who might be of use to me in penetrating those dark tombs.’

He met her gaze, but only for a moment before he lowered his eyes. ‘Surely your, ahm, Mantis-kinden…’

‘Not there, Gjegevey. Not in that place. Faced with what we shall find there, I do not know if my bodyguards would remain true to me. Only you shall accompany me.’

‘You ask a great deal of your slave, ah, Majesty.’ For a moment his withered face was screwed up, lines upon lines, but then he mastered himself. ‘Well, it has been many centuries since one of my kind went to visit the Masters of Khanaphes, even assuming the old stories are true. I shall be your guardsman and your servant and your, mm, intelligencer on this journey, Majesty, and should we ever see the sky again I shall be thankful.’

‘Then follow me,’ she said imperiously, and strode off towards the arch that linked the Place of Foreigners with the government of Khanaphes. The night, as well as her own skills, would prevent any Apt eyes from seeing her. Her soldiers kept a close lookout, but of all things, they did not expect to see their Empress walking past in a white gown, all alone save for her aged Woodlouse adviser.

The Scriptora was dark save for one window picked out by the dim glow of a rush-light, some diligent clerk labouring into the night. Even should he look up from his calligraphy, she trusted in her skills to cloud his eyes. These Khanaphir were but Beetle-kinden, chained by their Aptitude, and yet without any of the material advantages their cousins elsewhere enjoyed.

That is because the Masters do not desire them to change, the thought came to her, and she knew it to be true. The lurking power that dwells beneath this city has influence yet.

At the centre of the square fronting the Scriptora stood that squat, stepped pyramid with its flat top, about which stood an irregular placement of statues in white stone. They were not Beetle-kinden, nor Wasp nor any other race that Seda had known, and they were carved to be twice the height of normal men and women, giants looking over the city with a proprietorial eye.

And there they are. They were but stone, but Seda felt an echo there in their cold, disdainful likenesses, their distant beauty. They are the Masters, whom I must now seek out. Her dreams recurred to her: the darkness below, the pale forms striding through it. It was as though she had made this journey before. Even as she ascended the pyramid’s steps, she knew that there would be a shaft at its apex, ringed and guarded by those statues. That was the path. It was the only path.

She took the steps carefully, wondering partway whether the city had been this silent for long or whether, as her imagination fancied, she had stilled all other sound by her ascent. Some part of her felt that, on reaching the top, she should somehow become of equal stature with the great stone forms, and ready to take her place amongst them, but instead they dwarfed her, which made her feel angry.

Gjegevey took longer to join her, struggling over each step. At the last he stopped and doubled over, and she let him catch his breath while she stared up at the stars.

‘The most ancient tales of my, ah, people,’ the Woodlouse slave got out, ‘said that we were taught our earliest crafts by this vanished kinden, that our letters, our philosophy, all have their seed in the learning brought to us in the elder times by those who had been Masters here, and left Khanaphes to travel and teach the savage lesser kinden elsewhere.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘Of course, I am reminded of the, hmm, Spider-kinden, who will have you believe that without them the sun would fall from the sky – and they’ll convince you of it, too, if you let them. There is no story ever told that can be separated from the interests of the teller.’

‘You urge caution, then?’ Seda asked him.

‘My Empress, if to urge caution would help, then we would not be here. But… if they should stand before you in the majesty and grandeur of ten thousand years, do not forget, mn, all you are, and all you have achieved. There are many kinds of greatness in the world.’

For a long time she regarded him with a solemn scrutiny that would have made any other subject tremble and sweat, but he knew that a smile would appear eventually.

‘I shall not forget,’ she promised. ‘Now, we shall descend and then, if I have a destiny, I shall find it here in that darkness, or not at all.’

Che awoke, staring upwards into pitch darkness, her Art nevertheless picking out the spider in its circular web.

What was the ruler of the Wasp-kinden doing in that ancient city? And why did Che’s mind send her there every night that her dreams were lucid enough to remember?

And when I was there myself, walking beneath Khanaphes and seeing what I saw, was the Empress seeing me the same way as I see her now?

She had no control over this strange link with the Wasp Empress. It was part of the great magical world that she had been thrust into, vast and trackless and hostile, and yet it had become her new home.

The thought came to her, not for the first time, that there were magicians aplenty in the Commonweal. If anyone could help her understand this new life, then surely some Dragonfly mystic would spare her the time. Surely that was the reason for this lunatic journey in the first place?

No. I am here for Tynisa, to save her… Each day Che had to remind herself of that, at least once. Her concern for her foster-sister was steadily being eclipsed by her dreams, and by something else, too: this new world she was a native of concealed a wellspring of power, a power able to change the world in ways that the Apt could never conceive. If she learned just a little more, surely she could reach out and take a little of that power for herself? And then what might she not do? Even if it had fallen into decay, surely magic could still accomplish anything.