Blood of the Mantis

‘You are worried I am merely bait for General Maxin?’ she said. She expected a harsh reaction to that name, but instead he smiled slightly, eyes still fixed on her.

‘I am not,’ he said. ‘I have always had my eyes here inside the palace, whatever he may have thought. I know you are no friend of his.’

‘Does that mean that you trust me, General?’

‘I would not be such a fool.’ But his voice was strangely hoarse.

‘General, my brother is always in Maxin’s company these days. Your eyes have witnessed that much, have they not?’

‘They have indeed.’

She leant towards him, wondering if Uctebri was working in his mind also. To think that she might be flirting at the same time with the cadaverous Mosquito-kinden was worse than unsettling, but she kept her mask up, moistening her lips, looking into those remarkable eyes of his and hoping not to discern a tint of red within them.

‘It is your duty to detect treason, is it not?’ she asked.

‘As a general of the Rekef Inlander, it is.’

‘But treason against what, General?’

‘Against the Empire, Princess Seda.’

Her heart was in her mouth, but for joy, only joy, at such a grand concession. It was not only the title he gave her, a Dragonfly honour she had no true right to, but that he had named the state, and not the man: the Empire not the Emperor. She knew that Uctebri must be within his mind even now, with his unsuspected magic, but the thoughts he was teasing out from General Brugan were only those already grown there, buried deep beneath the man’s sense of duty and honour. Uctebri was just bringing the hidden part of Brugan into the light, perhaps a Brugan hidden even from himself.

‘Treason against the Empire is a deadly foe for all of us,’ she said, leaning even closer, finding him leaning in too, until mere inches separated their faces. His heavy features did not seem so coarse now, not with those shimmering metallic eyes to illuminate them. ‘I imagine it can occur even at the highest levels.’

‘At the very highest,’ he confirmed, so entranced now that he seemed a decade younger, years of harsh duties, betrayals and caution falling away from him, and she knew, just as he said it, that he was now hers.

The acting governor of Helleron was beyond the social pale. He held no dinners or dances, for nobody would have attended save under duress. He went to no entertainments, lest he darken the mood by his very presence. He was like the Empire’s bastard son, the Emperor’s favourite half-caste artificer-king and, save for his few apprentices, he had no intimates. Except for the demands he made of Helleron’s manufacturing power, he had no involvement with the city’s running.

It was a storm through which blue skies could be detected, the magnates of the Council said cautiously. In the Consellar Chambers they met, as they always had before the conquest, and ordered the daily life of the city. Within those walls it was as if General Malkan had never come to visit them and, so long as they adjusted their plans to fuel Drephos’s constant needs for manpower and raw materials, they were left to run the city however they chose.

It could be worse, was their hesitant thought, once their initial revulsion at the governor’s heritage had worked itself out. The Wasps might easily have installed a more interfering governor, a military dictator, some greedy grafter who taxed and robbed them: a man, in short, closer to their own nature. Drephos’s haughty isolation was aggravating, but it was not bad for business, and in their hearts the magnates could almost find forgiveness. At least he leaves us alone.

And behind even their love of money and profitable trade were the other thoughts, left unvoiced. He is a monster, but not the worst kind of monster. Certainly the Wasp soldiers on the streets were a touchy bunch, so there were deaths, though of nobody important. A few buildings burnt, a few small traders were executed, but this was just the result of the Wasp-kinden’s natural exuberance. With a tyrannical governor constantly goading them, things could be much worse, especially for those who had more to lose.

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.