Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

‘Your Majesty?’

Alvdan’s eyes were now quite clear, and his voice quite calm. ‘We have pre-empted you, General – even before this latest news. When we first heard that Szar was stirring, we realized that they had heard. We knew that they would rise up, because she… she was the only thing holding them in check. When her leash finally snapped, we knew they would make their pathetic attempt at freedom. Now Colonel Gan has lost the Princess, who will become Queen, and they will all be up in arms. Your reinforcements will not hold them. No, we need a greater rod to chastise them with than just the army.’

Maxin glanced sidelong at the surrounding guards but they remained carefully expressionless. The Emperor thus taking the initiative in this matter was an unwelcome development. Alvdan was no fool, but Maxin was not wholly sure of his judgment. After all, he was supposed to live on a diet of whatever Maxin fed him, and that did not always include the entire truth.

‘If I may ask…’ he began slowly.

‘Oh, General, look at you!’ Alvdan said, with a bright smile. ‘Do you think we don’t need you any more? Non-sense! You are still our closest advisor. Our… no, we shall not quite call you brother.’

I remember well what I did to your brothers, on your command , Maxin thought.

Alvdan was plainly thinking the same thing. ‘We would call you a friend, save that Emperors have none. You are chief amongst our servants, and you must be satisfied with that.’

‘An honour, your Majesty,’ Maxin confirmed.

‘Of course. General, we now intend to make an example of Szar,’ Alvdan explained. ‘We have sent for a very special man, an executioner. He shall teach the provinces that the Empire is to be obeyed in all things, meekly and instantly. There shall be no spreading of revolution. Every city in the Empire shall know the name of Szar. It shall be the key to unlock all future revolutions, the cure for the infections of rebellion for all time to come.’

‘But who have you summoned, Majesty?’ said Maxin, almost impatiently.

Alvdan uttered a name, and it was a moment before Maxin had rifled through his capacious memory, but then he understood.

Maxin was a killer, who had taken the life of others for his own advancement so many times, and had countless more killed on his orders, but when he now put the idea together, the latest reports, the results of the tests, he shivered a little.

Szar is about to enter the histories , he considered. In fact the histories may be the only place left for it, when this is done.

He said I would notice no change.

The mirror was a fine piece of work in the shape of an hourglass, with a frame wrought from gold and silver filigree within which the shapes of dragonflies and butterflies hung suspended on fine wires. This was some trophy from the Twelve-Year War which had ended up, when nobody else had wanted it, here in her chambers.

It showed Seda only what she had always seen: a pale-skinned and slender Wasp-kinden woman, hair coiled neatly atop her head, with a vulnerability in her gaze that had been bred by long exposure to death and the cruel whims of her brother. Seda brushed back a lock of hair, and tried to see in the glass any sign of the magic that Uctebri claimed to have imbued her with.

Magic is subtlety , he had explained. It is better to work with the properties that exist, than seek to create something that is not there. You are already an admirable specimen of your kinden, therefore I shall merely hone your beauty.

It struck her that nobody had ever used that word to describe her, and that it should be left to the decrepit, blood-marked Mosquito to speak it made her sad.

If Father had lived, where would I be now? Married, no doubt, though to no one of her choosing. Alvdan, her brother, had never considered matching her with anyone, not even with his closest lackey, Maxin. He feared the ambitions of any children she might produce, let alone the ambitions of any husband she took, which would grow just as inevitably.

The one blessing of the revolution , Uctebri had told her, is that it meant magic’s day had passed. Why a blessing, you may ask? You did not believe in magic before you and I met and, among your fellow Wasp-kinden, all the way through the whole Empire, there is no belief in it. Superstition, you say dismissively to yourselves: ancient myth and foolishness. Thus it is that the simplest tricks of any magician can blind all eyes, because you Apt all accept whatever happens to you as if it made some kind of mechanical sense. A man goes suddenly mad and slays his close friend and, where once he might have said, ‘I was enchanted,’ now he says, ‘He had it coming to him.’ He invents his motives after the event, and never thinks of the subtle influence that inspired him.

Seda shivered. Perhaps the look in her eyes had changed since she met Uctebri, whatever he said about her being unchanged. They now contained a knowledge and a worry more even than she remembered. He had opened doors that were better closed.

And yet he offered her escape, from her brother and from the death sentence that was ever stayed but always present. So she had made her compact with him, and now she could not turn back.

She had applied her make-up with a care and understatement that any Spider maid might be proud of. The gown she wore was pure white, and it cinched tight at her waist to emphasize the curve of her hips and her breasts.

Iam beautiful , she realized. Perhaps it was just Uctebri’s spell-weaving breaking through, but she saw her reflection and knew it to be true.

Her first suitor arrived shortly after: the lean and aged Gjegevey. The Woodlouse-kinden counsellor stopped in the doorway, seeing her reclining on a couch as if waiting for him. She saw that banded grey forehead of his lift in surprise.

‘Your, mmn, Highness,’ he murmured. His eyes had narrowed and she knew he must be sensing the enchantments that Uctebri had put on her. That was why she had summoned him first.

‘We have spoken before, Gjegevey,’ she began, ‘and I know you are no fool. I am sure, therefore, that you have heard rumours.’

‘Certain appointments have been, mmn, mentioned,’ the Woodlouse-kinden replied. ‘You know that I am, ah, fond of you. As a daughter, perhaps – or a great-granddaughter, might be, hmm, more appropriate. Yet I fear for you.’

‘The company I keep?’ she asked him.

‘Indeed. You have made, hrm, close association with a creature of more power and evil than you realize.’

‘You fear for my virtue?’ She gestured for him to sit beside her.

‘In a very real sense, your Highness.’ He poled himself across the room on his long legs, stilt-like with age, and lowered himself onto the couch.

‘Gjegevey,’ she continued. ‘I have been as good as dead for eight years. They might as well have buried me in my father’s coffin. But now I have a chance, and this man is my patron in that. If he possesses power, as you suggest, then at least he bends it to my advantage.’

‘And if he is evil?’ the Woodlouse enquired.

‘I am a princess of the Wasp Empire,’ she declared with pride. ‘My father made war on thousands and subjugated a dozen cities, and I am his daughter. What my brother has done, so would I, if I had seized the throne and not he. Let mystics plot and scheme, old man. Let it be the sacrificial knife or the sting of a common soldier, the victim makes no distinction.’

He remained silent for a long time, not looking at her, and any hint of his thoughts was lost in the eternal melancholy of his face.

‘Do you abandon me now?’ she asked gently. ‘Do you find yourself poised on the brink of a descent you had not meant to undertake? You have served the Empire since before I was born, and you cannot have been naive for so long.’