Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

The grander surroundings, the most prestigious company, none of it changed the speech she delivered, which mirrored the words she had given the pilots: this is the Empire.

They were a far from attentive audience, though. As she explained, as passionately as she could, about the scale, strength and danger of the Wasps, they talked in low voices amongst themselves or perused books taken from the shelves on the far wall or simply stared out of the windows. Even the servants that passed back and forth across the room seemed to pay more heed, as they offered food and drink in an unending supply. Some of those assembled here were doubtless in the pay of the Wasps, so it was a certainty that the imperial agents within the city would soon get to hear of this. As they had already tried to kill her twice, there seemed little point in hiding her opposition from them. Displaying it thus openly, however, seemed to be having little effect, for the nobles of Solarno, all members of the Corta Lucidi, and all gathered here for this one purpose, seemed barely to care. Even Genissa of the Destiavel, who had organized this entire venture after hearing Taki’s representations, seemed engrossed in talking gossip with her neighbour.

Che drew to a close, her final point petering out, feeling like an actor whose audience has seen better.

‘Any… questions?’ she asked, falteringly.

‘You’ve seen all this yourself, have you?’ a well-dressed, elegant man near the back enquired. ‘These armies and soldiers and machines?’

‘I’ve seen enough of them. I was involved in a field battle against them – a battle that they won.’

‘But why would they come here? It seems such a great deal of trouble,’ a woman observed. ‘Who says they aren’t here just as mercenaries? I’ve heard no proof either way.’

‘The Wasp Empire does not hire out its soldiers as mercenaries,’ Che insisted. ‘Those men out there are openly wearing imperial colours. They are here as an advance force, ahead of an invasion. They have already divided your people, it seems.’

‘My dear girl, we were quite divided enough before they ever showed their faces,’ Genissa remarked, prompting a polite ripple of laughter. ‘I think these Wasp-kinden could be useful to us. After all, they have rather polarized the common folk of the city.’

‘Please believe me,’ Che said. ‘You can’t use the Wasps, not like that. They’re not going to fit into your…’ she nearly said petty provincial politics , because that would have been true, but fortunately she held it back, ‘… into your parties and factions. They’re bigger than you and, if they want, they can field an army with more soldiers than Solarno has citizens. They don’t seek alliances and they don’t make deals. Their foreign policy consists of one objective only: conquest.’

‘That’s all very well, but I can hardly see an army bothering to come all the way through the Dryclaw and then over the mountains, just for Solarno,’ one of them said. ‘I really think you’re making far too much of this.’

‘But there is an army approaching even now,’ Che insisted. ‘They’re shipping soldiers over the mountains in airships.’

‘I think we’re missing the important point here,’ said one of the dignitaries of the Path of Jade, waving her hand languidly for attention. ‘All this Empire business is all very well, but nobody’s so much as mentioned a word about how we can turn this against the Crystal Standard!’

Che sagged in despair.

‘After all,’ the same woman went on, ‘these Wasp creatures are unpopular allies, and yet the Standard have embraced them. I’ll wager there have been more than a few seats shifted because of that. If the Trail will stand with us, we can call a Corta election and have the Standard thrown out of the Obscuri before you can say “done”.’

‘A Corta Obscuri run by the Path of Jade?’ someone scoffed.

‘Well, of course not,’ said the woman. ‘I’m simply suggesting that we will support you in return for a few concessions that should be easily sketched out…’

‘But what if the Standard won’t let go?’ Che demanded. ‘What if they call on the Wasps to keep them in power?’

There was a round of patronizing laughter.

‘My, how dramatic you foreigners are,’ said one of them. ‘We’re not going to put them into permanent exile, just take over for a year or two. You just don’t understand the way things are done here.’

Che gave up. They were right, of course, but the barrier to mutual understanding fell both ways. If she was to find help here, it would not be amongst Solarno’s rulers.

The news broke by evening that the Crystal Standard had apparently, possibly retrospectively, invited the Wasp-kinden in, ostensibly for the sake of Solarno’s stability given the riots and mobs so often afflicting the city.

But stability was the last thing that such news brought. In all the tavernas and chocolate houses the gossips were soon abuzz with it, and opinions were stridently voiced. The grass-roots support for the Satin Trail and the Path of Jade were talking in hushed, angry voices, and for once they were not at each other’s throats. As long as the Wasps had just seemed unwanted foreigners lurking on every street corner, the Solarnese had been content to ignore them. Now they had been legitimized, local people suddenly knew whether to hate them or not. The Crystal Standard’s followers stood by uncertainly, finding their new allies coolly arrogant and disdainful of their company, whilst the two other main parties – and half a dozen lesser parties nobody normally bothered with – began to voice their opposition in stronger and stronger terms.

The Crystal Standard recognized this as just the everyday Solarnese citizens’ participation in politics. The Wasps, however, did not.

One squad of a half-dozen Wasp soldiers found itself taunted and threatened by a pack of locals, who waved their narrow swords and accused them of being filthy foreign mercenaries who should go back where they came from. The Wasps, of uncertain temper at the best of times, loosed their stings onto this mob, killing several men and women outright. When the crowd had recovered from its shock, it charged at the soldiers, who retreated to the rooftops still shooting in retaliation. All in all perhaps three Wasps and twelve locals were killed before the citizens turned and fled.

The Wasps counted it as a great victory, but there was a hurried meeting between the Crystal Standard leaders and Captain Havel, who now found himself responsible for it all.

‘This must stop,’ he was told. ‘Your men must exercise control.’

Captain Havel was not entirely sure that they were his men at all. He was still technically the Rekef officer in command of Solarno, but there was an army colonel, still currently north of Toek and the mountains, who had given these soldiers their orders and outlined their tactics, a man who had never been to Solarno nor ever wished to until he could claim governorship of the place. He had written to Havel and made that last wish very plain.

Havel had lived comfortably here in Solarno for many years, and enjoyed a prosperous and hedonistic lifestyle while doing so. He was determined to cling on to that privilege, which meant no outright invasion, no bludgeoning use of Wasp power to inflame the city. He passed on his strict recommendations to the imperial forces, but with the knowledge that his kinden were never inclined to take insults meekly, while to the hot-headed Solarnese an insult was as common as a greeting, and therefore shrugged off as easily. It was a clash of cultures that could now go badly wrong very quickly.

By nightfall there had been no buildings yet burnt, and only half a dozen more deaths, so he counted himself lucky. It would take many tendays for the Solarnese to adapt to this new power in their midst, and meanwhile that army colonel up north would not stop moving his troops in. The airships would already be on their way back to the city laden with full complements of fighting men.