Salute the Dark

Asta was larger than she remembered it, at least twice the size now. There were more and more of the same hastily constructed barracks and storehouses, and a field of tents bivouacked beyond. Tynisa’s party arrived around noon, and it seemed to her that not one of the Wasp-kinden she could see kept still. There were troops of soldiers marching or flying in, unpacking their kit, setting up tents or taking them down, packing up, moving out north or west or south. There were flying machines, automotives, pack animals. There were Auxillians of half a dozen kinden amidst the Wasps. Entire armies were on the move.

The patrol she was with did not slow for any of it, and so she was plunged into the hurly-burly of the Imperial Army like a stone thrown into unruly waters. For a moment they were shoulder to shoulder with other Wasps and their slaves, thronging back and forth, and she felt that she was drowning in the sheer scale of the Empire, of which this was just an outlying camp, just a small drop in their ocean.

The sergeant turned to her. ‘You stay here while I report. I’ll come out soon enough, or someone else will.’ The look he gave her was calculating, narrow-eyed, still weighing up her usefulness.

He left her then, pushing his way through the throng, and his men quickly dispersed, seeking food, drink, dice games and whores. With no option left to her, she waited. After a while of being jostled, she found a nearby automotive wagon and climbed up the side of it, gaining purchase on the smooth wood and metal by her Art, until she could sit aloft, gaining some illusion of being apart from it all. Even then, soldiers were constantly buzzing overhead, close enough for her to reach out and grab. The air was full of Wasps and Flies, and other kinden in the Empire’s colours.

It was more than an hour before someone came for her, and then it was not the same sergeant but a narrow-faced Wasp, middle-aged and with rank bars that she identified as a major’s, alighting atop the wagon and looking down on her. He put her in mind of the first Wasp she had spoken to, and deceived: Captain Halrad aboard the Sky Without, whom Totho had killed for her.

‘You want to make yourself useful, do you?’ he asked flatly. ‘What are you? Spiderlands spy, perhaps?’

She made herself smile at him easily. ‘Would I tell you if I was? Besides, since when was the Empire at war with the Spiderlands?’

‘I expect news of that hourly,’ he said, regarding her doubtfully. ‘So, what are you, precisely?’

‘A mercenary,’ she replied.

‘An honest one, then?’

‘Just so.’ She leant back. ‘So, Major, can you think of any use for me?’

‘Don’t play games,’ he told her, but she could see a glint there, which showed she had reached some vanity within him. ‘I could have you arrested.’

‘Yes, but what would you gain?’

‘You tell me. What’s your name, first off?’

‘Atryssa.’ She had not meant it, but the name came out without a thought: her mother’s name. Surely it would not have been begrudged, if permission could have been asked for. ‘Your sergeant told me you have a Mantis here.’

‘And he told me you’re looking for one. Some kind of vengeance, is it?’

She read his tone carefully. ‘Not that can’t be put off. Just a dangerous man I’d rather keep track of.’

‘Or he was hunting you, was he?’ he smiled then. ‘You don’t think much of us Wasp-kinden, I’ll wager. You Spiders, you look down on all sorts. When did you last catch a Mantis alive, though, in your webs?’

‘You have him prisoner?’ Her own anxiety bled through, even though she reminded herself, It need not be Tisamon, once again. He read her question as simple surprise, though.

‘More than that. Nicely broken in, and playing for the crowd.’

Despite herself, she made herself sound impressed. ‘I should like to see that.’ Can it be this easy? she thought, and then, It cannot be him, not the man this Wasp describes.

She was all wide-eyed for him, and she was young, and he was a man who liked to impress. He hopped down from the wagon in a brief flurry of wings, holding his hand out. ‘Come and see what the Empire can accomplish,’ he told her, and she jumped down after him, knowing in her heart that it could not be him, just some other Mantis pressed into servitude here.

He led her across Asta, shouting at any soldiers that got in his way, and that told her a lot about him, more than did their conversation. They wove their path through the tents and the press of bodies and the machines, around the buildings that were already showing the wear and tear of their impromptu nature, until she came to an arena.