Adrian Tchaikovsky - Blood of the Mantis

Still, the very stand-offishness of the Colonel-Auxillian inevitably bred curiosity, so the city fought over any scrap of gossip he generated. The simple news that a messenger had come to him from the capital was seized on hungrily. Drephos was a self-contained man: he staved off paperwork and managed with no constant string of orders coming in or reports going out. It was as if the Empire had thrown up its hands in despair over him, leaving him to do what he did best. Nobody else understood his work enough to dictate to him.

Until now.

For now a panting Wasp-kinden had arrived at the Consellar chambers, waving a sealed scroll at a garrison sergeant whilst blurting out the halfbreed’s name. Orders for the Colonel-Auxillian, straight from Capitas, absolute priority, no excuses.

He is in one of the snapbow factories, the messenger was told, and the man set off there straight away. Enough of the seals on the message were recognizable for the garrison sergeant to know the messenger had not been exaggerating his missive’s importance.

‘I am informed,’ said Drephos, ‘that the balance of the Sixth Army will be with us in a matter of tendays, bound next for Sarn. How many snapbows can you give them?’ His clear tones cut through the constant clatter of the factory floor that rose up to them.

‘Perhaps another two thousand,’ said Totho, without even needing to think about it. ‘We did dispatch a rail shipment not long ago, although you know what happened to that. General Malkan has sent a messenger for more to be sent by automotive convoy.’

Drephos made a dismissive noise. ‘I am unimpressed so far by the Seventh’s ability to hold on to whatever we give them. First the troop train and now, I hear, the last supply convoy was ambushed as well. Give whatever you have to the Sixth and let the generals squabble over it themselves.’

Totho nodded, gazing down on his busy workers, the banks of engines that were cutting out his machine parts, rifling the barrels, casting the ammunition. He sensed, more than saw, as Drephos moved closer to him, one metal hand and one living one closing on the guard-rail.

‘I hear you have solved your discipline problems,’ the master artificer said.

‘I have, sir.’

There was a pause, and Totho glanced sideways at the Colonel-Auxillian, to see him staring out across the factory floor in an oddly distracted way. This was the first time that Totho had seen him in several tendays, for the man’s own projects had kept Drephos entirely secluded. Behind them both, the massive form of Big Greyv the Mole Cricket-kinden made the gantry groan in protest. The man was huge, a ten-foot-tall obsidian block with fingernails like chisels, but he was Drephos’s artificer of choice to work with, possessing a patience and care as impressive as his bulk. He hardly ever spoke, and Totho guessed this was another reason Drephos had chosen him for the new project.

Kaszaat, standing in the Mole Cricket’s shadow, seemed infinitely fragile.

‘And you have continued experimenting, of course?’ Drephos prompted.

Totho had not realized that he knew. ‘I’ve been tinkering with the snapbows, sir. I’ve being trying to add a built-in magazine to improve the shot-rate.’ As always, he warmed to his topic once he had started. ‘The problem is that use of a nailbow’s spring-and-lever mechanism shakes the aim and therefore halves the useful range, while gravity-feeding jams too often, and clockwork-’

‘Is too expensive and takes too long to make,’ Drephos agreed, clearly pleased with his persistence.

‘How…?’ He had not been actually ordered not to speak of it, but the shroud of secrecy about Drephos’s recent researches had been so plain. ‘How does your own work go, sir?’ Totho asked.

‘How indeed,’ said Drephos vaguely, not being evasive but genuinely considering. ‘The coming war with Sarn shall be remembered, Totho. There shall be names immortalized in the histories.’

If anyone survives to write them. Drephos’s current strange detachment worried Totho, for normally the man was inclined to be expansive, even boastful, about his work. Now, though, he had clearly chanced on something that seemed to have shaken even his customary composure.

‘Tell me, what do we work towards?’ the Colonel-Auxillian asked unexpectedly.

‘Sir?’ Totho glanced over his shoulder at Kaszaat and Big Greyv, but neither provided any answers.

‘Archetypes,’ Drephos said, almost too quietly to be heard. ‘Just as they say there is a Wasp archetype, a knowledge of which gives the Wasps their Art, and likewise with all the other kinden, so too there is a weapon archetype, Totho. Can you grasp that? A weapon of weapons where to simply grasp the hilt, to simply possess it, is to slay your enemies? No contest of skill needed, no inclement weather or defensive wall, but death, delivered pristine and precise.’

‘This… this is what you are working on?’ Totho asked.

‘We approach it, Totho. We do approach it,’ Drephos replied, then shook his head as though to clear it. What he might have said next was lost because just then a soldier pushed past Big Greyv and onto the gantry, with a scroll thrust out towards him. Drephos took it disdainfully and moved a little way off to read it. The reading took him a matter of seconds before he turned on the messenger with the word, ‘Impossible!’

‘Those are your orders, sir,’ insisted the messenger implacably.

‘I have work here,’ Drephos snapped at him, ‘and I am not finished. Go find someone else to do your dirty work.’

‘Not my work, sir. You see where this message comes from?’

Drephos looked back down at the scroll. The messenger would have noticed nothing, but Totho had known the halfbreed artificer long enough to spot a slight widening of his pale eyes.

‘So…’ Some of the fight had now gone out of him. ‘This is absurd. What do I know of such a business? There is no option, then?’

‘You have been commanded personally , sir,’ the sergeant replied smugly, and Totho knew that he was enjoying being able to snub this half-blood of superior rank. ‘And, if you note, you are requested to take your work along with you.’

The idea, however, did not seem to appeal. For a long time, whole minutes, Drephos stared down at the summons. His mind was elsewhere, charting webs of logistics, of numbers and calculations. Totho saw his lips twitch over and over, baring his teeth at whatever task was being forced on him. Kaszaat and Big Greyv looked as blank as he. Whatever had arrived from Capitas had come without a hint of warning.

Drephos bared his teeth to emit a long hiss. ‘Totho, find me a deputy from the engineering corps to take over here.’

‘Sir?’ Totho stammered out. Is it about me? Am I named in that note?

‘You’re coming with me. I’m taking the whole team, the projects, the lot. We shall also take the big freight automotives. I shall continue to work even on the way there. My work is much too valuable to disrupt.’

‘But where are we going, sir?’ Totho asked him.

‘Inform the others, too,’ Drephos said. ‘We are sent to Szar.’

Kaszaat’s face remained a mask. Totho could only guess at the turmoil beneath.

Lake Limnia at night, and the great expanse of moonlit water was chopped into a million pieces by the drizzle, blotched by swathes of reed, pockmarked by the shadows of Skater rafts and boats. It should have been nobody’s idea of a pleasant sight.

Tisamon stood by the shores of Lake Limnia and stared across the rain-dappled waters. Every so often the clouds grew ragged enough that a despairing slice of moon could claw itself free of them, and then its clean, pure light appeared in the lake itself as only a pockmarked, ruined reflection, a face given over to disease and ruin.