Part 31 (2/2)

The Queen of Sarn regarded them coolly, her gaze dwelling long enough on Scuto that he began to shuffle.

Eventually he spoke up: 'Listen, Your Highness-'

'Your Majesty,' Sperra hissed.

'Your Majesty,' he corrected himself. 'What it is, I'm a Thorn Bug. No, you don't normally get my kinden around these parts. Yes, there are others. No, it doesn't hurt. Is that about it, Your Majesty, with all respect?'

The others held their breaths, but what would have seen Scuto dead by now if spoken to a Spider lady or Wasp officer pa.s.sed without reproach here, for the Ant-kinden knew little of standing on ceremony.

'Save the matter of how you fell in with a Beetle named Stenwold Maker,' she said.

Scuto shrugged. 'He got me set up in h.e.l.leron when there was no one else to turn to. He picked me out as being good for something, Your Majesty, and since then we've done a lot for each other. Is there news of him, if I might ask?'

'Some of the last reports to come in from Collegium give his name as one of their . . .' there followed a pause, in which some unseen aide was obviously briefing her, '. . . War Masters, we believe the term is.'

'Do you know if the fighting has started yet, Your Majesty?' Che burst out.

'It seems certain. You four are his agents, then, in my city. You are the delegation sent to win us over to join your fight against the Wasps?'

'We are, Your Majesty,' Che confirmed.

'Then consider us won, but in no way that you will appreciate,' the Queen declared with heavy irony. 'You have heard that the Empire is already in possession of h.e.l.leron. We believe they are coming here next.'

'Here, Your Majesty?' Scuto goggled. 'To Sarn?'

'At the moment,' she said, 'there is a running conflict between my artificers and those of the Empire. Mine are destroying the tracks of the Iron Road while theirs are replacing them. There will inevitably be a battle. Our agents inform us the Empire's armies are mustering for a march on my city even now.'

They stared at her. The whole room seemed unutterably still.

'You must understand what this means,' she continued.

But they did not. They could not understand. Too much was happening too fast.

'I cannot therefore send my soldiers to Collegium,' she said, almost gently. 'I must defend my own city, my own people.'

Che gasped. 'But Collegium cannot stand against the Vekken. Our citizens aren't proper warriors. Your Majesty, please-'

'It pains me to make this decision,' the Queen interrupted, in a voice that brooked no argument. 'Collegium has been our ally, and it is an alliance we have profited by. If I could be sure that I could hold the Wasps with half my soldiers, I would send the other half to your city without delay. I would maintain that my forces are the best equipped and best trained in all the Lowlands, but now the Lowlands have changed. It is not just that Vek is at the gates of Collegium, or that h.e.l.leron is in the hands of the Empire. News comes from Tark, at last, and all word states that the city has fallen. An Ant-kinden city. A city-state like mine. I cannot afford to wait for the Empire to come right up to my walls, lest my city suffer the same fate as Tark. My soldiers are trained for open battle, battle on the field. We shall meet them in the open, and then see if we are still the soldiers to put the world in awe.'

'But what about Collegium?' Che cried. 'What about Stenwold?'

'Do you know what a Lorn detachment is?' the Queen asked them. Surprisingly, it was Sperra who had the answer.

'It's a suicide detail, Your Majesty.'

The Queen's lips twitched. 'That is not exactly how my people would describe it but a desperate a.s.signment, certainly. I will send a Lorn detachment to Collegium. Solidarity should demand more, but no more can I afford to give. Three battle automotives with crew, though I can ill spare them.' She turned to the Fly messenger. 'Master Frezzo?'

He stood forward. 'Your Majesty?' He looked pale, and when he risked a glance at Che she saw her own distress mirrored in his face.

'It was you brought me the news of the Vekken army from Collegium,' the Queen told him. 'Now you must take this reply back, though one that I am loath to make. The Vekken will almost certainly be at the walls by the time you arrive.'

'It will present no difficulty, Your Majesty,' Frezzo said firmly. Che knew that he had the honour of his guild to uphold.

'Then go,' the Queen ordered him, and he saluted her and ran from the room. The ruler of Sarn turned back to Che and her companions. 'You may stay here or you may leave,' she told them. 'Save that there is no safe pa.s.sage guaranteed to Collegium any more.'

'Someone should go with the Lorn automotives,' Scuto said.

'It is your choice.'

'Then it should be me,' Che decided. 'Stenwold is my uncle.'

'You and Achaeos need to continue your work here,' Scuto advised her. 'It's looking more important all the time. Stenwold's going to need me me, though. A War Master indeed? You know how he is, always forgetting himself and playing soldier.'

'Scuto, no-' started Sperra.

'Yes,' he said. 'Your Majesty, I'll go. I'm an artificer and I never knew an automotive that couldn't use another decent pair of hands.'

'Scuto!' Che reached for his arm but stopped just short of the spines.

'Che, listen to me,' Scuto insisted. 'Stenwold is going to need to know what's going on here, and I don't just mean what that messenger can tell him. What's going on with your work stuff I wouldn't trust to paper. I'm our best bet. I'll be a good hand on the automotives, and I'm tough as a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Remember the Pride Pride, when it went up? Think you'd be standing here if my hide weren't between you and that mess? And yet here I am, healthy as anything.'

'You had better b.l.o.o.d.y be right about that,' Sperra hissed. 'n.o.body as ugly as you was meant to be a hero.'

Salma opened his eyes to sunlight, and for a brief moment he thought it was her her.

Then he recalled. The Broken Sword. Himself being smuggled out of the Wasp camp. He was about to sit up hurriedly, but remembered his wounds and eased himself up with care. The injuries tugged less than before, and he felt stronger. Looking around he saw Nero sitting close.

The Fly nodded to him. 'You're looking better than you have for a while.'

'Where are we now?' Propping himself up with one arm was about all he could manage, however improved he might look. Salma looked around, seeing a scrubby hollow and a dozen or so other people. There were a few feeble fires going, and an earth mound that smelled like bread, and that he realized must therefore be a scratch-built oven. 'What's going on, Nero? Who are these people?'

'They're on the run, like us,' Nero said. He pointed out a mismatched trio in Ant-style tunics: a Spider, a Fly and a Kessen Ant. 'They're slaves who got out from the city before it surrendered-'

'Tark surrendered?'

Nero grimaced. 'I suppose you never heard. You never saw, either. The Wasps . . . they just took the city apart from the air, like your friend said they would do, until the Ants knew there was nothing for it but to give up, or to see Tark rubbed from the map. That's how they deal with Ant-kinden, apparently. Anyway, those three were lucky enough to make a run for it, and now they've got nothing just like the rest of us. As for them-' He indicated the woman tending the oven, who had three small children holding close to her skirt. 'They used to farm at a waterhole on the Dryclaw edge. Now Tark's gone, though, the Scorpions are raiding unchecked, and there are dozens of little farmsteads, and whole villages, that are getting attacked and left burnt out. She thinks her husband might be alive, but he's a slave of the Scorpions if he is, and being dead might be better.'

There were half a dozen young Fly-kinden sitting close together at the lip of the hollow, staring suspiciously at all the others. 'They were slaves of the Wasps,' Scuto identified them. 'I get the impression they were a gang of some kind, probably from Seldis. They sell off their criminals down Seldis way. Anyway, they're completely lost. They know the Wasps are going to take Merro and Egel, and they don't want to go back to the Spiderlands in a hurry, and so they're pretending they're not part of our troupe here, but they're sticking around all the same. And the gentleman and ladies behind you . . .'

Salma made the laborious effort of turning himself over to look. There was a covered cart there, he now saw, and a bearded man seated on the footboard was carving something in wood. A girl of around twelve was stretched out across the back of their draft-animal, which was a big, low-bodied beetle with fierce-looking jaws. Another girl of nearly Salma's age was nearby, picking over the halfhearted bushes for berries. They were all white-haired and tan-skinned, and they wore loose clothes of earth-tones and greens. The older girl sensed Salma's attention and glanced his way. She had a heart-shaped face and bright eyes, and she smiled timidly at him.

'Roach-kinden,' Salma identified them. 'I didn't think you had them in the Lowlands, but they roam all over the Commonweal.'

'And the Empire too, although the Wasps really hate them,' Nero agreed. 'Oh they're not seen much, but I hear they come south past Dorax from the Commonweal into Etheryon, and even down the h.e.l.leronTark road and west towards Felyal. The Mantis-kinden seem to tolerate them, or so I understand. These poor fools were found by the Wasp army as they were travelling, and a pack of scouts decided to do a little free-range looting. They don't know what happened to the rest of their family.'

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