Blood of the Mantis

The man and woman standing at one end of the roof terrace were councillors of Helleron, Totho knew. He watched as the portly man, dressed in gold-embroidered robes of Spider silk, laughed and pointed something out to the woman – something in the city below them. The Consellar Chambers of Helleron made great use of this roof, running a railed walkway all the way round it. Fly messengers used it regularly to arrive and depart, and the great and the good of Helleron often came here to gloat over their civic holdings, surveying a roofscape of fine townhouses that gave way, after a few streets, to smog-hung chimneys and the bleak and featureless walls of factories.

Helleron was now a city under occupation, and what had surprised Totho was how very little it had changed. True, there was a garrison force in, now: Wasp soldiers on the streets and Ant-kinden Auxillians from some far corner of the Empire. True the council was merely advisory to the imperial governor, who was a man beyond the social pale as far as they were concerned. Still, Beetles always endured. Beetles flourished everywhere. Totho, half-Beetle himself, had never appreciated that so clearly before.

He was able to sidle close to the two councillors, so long as he did not stare at them openly. They took him for a servant and therefore overlooked him graciously. The woman was now pointing at some district across the city that was mostly shrouded in smoke. They were fighting there now, she declared. Fighting on the streets of Helleron! She seemed to think it was simply marvellous.

Totho knew what the fighting was about. A war was being won and lost on a daily basis in Helleron because, whilst the Council of Thirteen had meekly bowed the knee as soon as the Wasp armies had appeared on the horizon, there had been others who had been left out of the deal, and were now holding onto their power as tightly as they could. This winter, the imperial garrison was busily engaged rooting out the fiefdoms.

They were criminal holdings, areas of the city run by gangs comprising as varied a mix as could be imagined: home-grown Beetle toughs, magnates fallen on hard times, Spider manipuli, close-knit Fly-kinden families or knots of exotic killers like Mantids or Dragonflies. The Empire was not accustomed to sharing power with other authorities either legal or illegal, nor did the Consortium of the Honest wish for its profits to be diluted in any way. Some of the criminal fiefs had since fallen into line, paying their dues and taking their orders, whilst others had dug in and mobilized their fighters. Each tenday now the Empire took on another little band or alliance and smashed it.

Totho listened to the two councillors tell each other how wonderful it was, that their city was finally being rid of such trash. He noted that neither mentioned the secret deals they had undoubtedly made with those same fiefs, the profits they had squeezed from them or the commissions they had paid. It all made him feel ill.

He himself had betrayed his friends, turned his back on his whole previous life, but these rich and powerful councillors were a whole world of hypocrisy ahead of him.

The first few spots of rain started to fall, and he watched the superbly dressed councillors hurry inside. Totho chose to stay outside, as if the downpour could wash him clean of all his recent actions. After a short while, Kaszaat came and joined him.

For him the last month had brought and taken away many things, but it still had not taken her, though he had assumed, without even analysing why, that she would surely be long gone by now.

‘I just heard the news. Another two factories for you,’ she said. ‘I congratulate you now, yes?’

He shrugged. ‘You know his thinking better than I do. You tell me.’

‘I think yes – but not all the way.’ She leant on the rail beside him, tugging her peaked leather cap down a little to shield her face from the rain. He let himself study her, for him a new luxury. Here was a woman a little older than himself, shorter and with the stocky build and dark skin that reminded him of a Beetle-kinden, and yet subtly different in every way. Her face was flat and round, and he had at first thought it expressionless. Now he knew that impassive front was partly due to being one of a conquered race within the Empire, and the rest he could now read, from experience. He realized that his own habitual expression was not too dissimilar, for his mixed blood had taught him to keep his feelings inward.

‘How is the new project?’ he asked her. His current duties meant that he was committed to actual manufacture, and had lost touch with the research and design that artificers coveted so much.