Salute the Dark (55 page)

He brought the impossibly flowing blade up to his mouth, let his tongue taste an Emperor’s blood. Then he held it out to Seda. His red eyes transfixed her.

‘Taste it,’ he said.

She stared at him, almost grinning, but shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Immortality,’ he hissed. ‘You cannot tell me you don’t believe in magic.’

‘Oh, I believe,’ she told him. ‘I believe in what you could do to me.’

‘Taste it, you little fool!’ he spat at her, the blood from the knife flowing down his arm, pattering on to the floor. Seda’s face twisted with an emotion even all her years of
dissembling could not conceal and with a scream she struck the weapon from his hand.

‘You fool, you are bound to this! You have
nothing
but this!’ hissed Uctebri, but Seda was no longer even looking at him. She was abruptly retreating, staring past him.

He looked around instinctively. He could not, in that moment, help himself.

Out of the tangle of fighting Wasp soldiers a single figure had fought clear. It was drenched head to foot in blood, with one hand gone, a spear’s broken shaft jutting from its leg. Even
as it burst forth, a soldier drove a sword into the apparition’s back and lost his grip on the slick hilt. The bloody, mangled thing was then free to hurl itself up the tiered seats, keening
a battle-cry.

Your prey is already dead
, Uctebri thought, seeing the drained corpse that had been Alvdan the Second, Emperor of all the Wasps. It was still his thought as Tisamon reached him with that
fearsome claw drawn back.

For a split second Uctebri fought to assemble his magic to overwhelm the susceptible mind of the Mantis who had been his tool for so long. Tisamon’s mind was all pain and fury and ravaged
love, so slippery with blood that the Mosquito struggled for purchase on it. For a second he had the man again in his power, but then something lanced through Uctebri’s leg, tearing his robe,
laying his flesh open with dreadful pain from the calf downwards to pin his foot to the ground. He experienced a second’s horrified realization that the blade that now shed his precious blood
was the dagger that Seda had knocked from his grasp – and that its new wielder was Tynisa.

Her hands gripping about the dagger hilt, Tynisa watched a Wasp soldier, his own face slashed open by Tisamon’s claw, slam his blade up to the hilt in Tisamon’s back, alongside the
sword already lodged there, and Tisamon shuddered, crying out something, a word or a name. It could have been
Felise
.

The claw descended and Uctebri screamed, holding out the only thing he had left to defend himself.

Tisamon drove his blade into the Shadow Box, still howling that formless name, so that its wooden sides, with all their distorted carvings, flew apart like kindling, and for a moment there was a
boiling, evaporating
rip
in Uctebri’s hands, but shrivelling and dying even as Tynisa watched it.

Uctebri heard the triumphant cry in his head, the voice of his slave Laetrimae, and of all of her kin, of the entire doomed place of the Darakyon, as the anchor that held them to the world was
suddenly gone, the snarl in the world’s weave unravelling.

Tisamon’s claw buried itself deep in the Mosquito’s narrow chest, and the Sarcad’s own blood washed across the floor, to become lost in the stolen glory of the
Emperor’s.

She had seen the
Bleakness
go down.

Even as the corpse of the
Starnest
was settling on Solarno, the Wasp fliers had been attacking. They had been mad, then, almost jostling each other out of the air for a piece of him.
Hawkmoth’s ugly, armoured vessel had turned back over the city but they had been putting bolts into him already, and Taki could do nothing. She had hung in the air, naked, unshelled, a poor
Fly-kinden girl with nothing but a knife, watching the end of the most notorious pirate of the age.

In a flurry of yellow and black orthopters he had gone, the
Bleakness
thundering out over the Exalsee as if Hawkmoth was seeking to return to one of his island hideouts. The shrapnel
throwers had shredded the air to either side of him, and at least two of the Wasp machines had been knocked out of the sky, spinning over and over on suddenly ragged wings before tumbling away. But
there were a half-dozen others still strafing him, passing back and forth and pounding the
Bleakness
with everything they had.

She had watched the
Bleakness
begin its long dive towards the cold waters of the Exalsee, with the Wasps chasing it still.

And now she sat on the ground in the silence that followed, and wept.

It was not truly silence, since so much of the city had burnt, and some was burning still. There were a few knots of Wasps still holding out, in this quarter or that. To her it seemed a silence
though, being without the sound of engines and the rush of the wind.

They had won, apparently.

Scobraan was dead, she knew. She had felt it in the way the handling of the
Mayfly Prolonged
had suddenly changed, known that within that metal and wood casing he was dead, his hands
slack on the controls. The Creev was dead, and Hawkmoth too, he who had borne the Solarnese no love but had come to help them fight the greater enemy. Te Frenna, who had been more of a dandy than a
duellist, was dead. With them had fallen dozens of others: Solarnese pilots, pirates of Chasme and the Exalsee, dragonfly-knights from Princep Exilla, and hundreds of citizens of Solarno who had
turned out on to the streets to fight the Wasps.

Nero was dead, too. He would paint no more. Cesta, bloody-handed, a name feared and hated and courted, Cesta also was dead. She could not imagine a world without his loathsome shadow.

She did not weep for them, though she had cause. Her loss cut keener than even her own brother’s death had cut. Her
Esca Volenti
was gone, smashed on the streets of Solarno along
with Axrad’s flier, and probably Axrad himself. There would be other orthopters, she knew, but never one like that, so perfect, so loyal. In the midst of so much death she wept, like a child
for a lost mother, over a machine.

A footstep nearby made her look up, red-eyed. Niamedh crouched beside her, put a hand on her shoulder. Her
Executrix
had come unscathed through the fire, one of very few. Niamedh
understood, though. Behind her stood the Dragonfly lord, Drevane Sae, leaning heavily on a staff with his leg splinted. His painted face was drawn and his expression grim. His mount, carefully
nurtured from the egg as they all were, had been shot from beneath him. He also understood her grief.

There would be work to be done, and soon. Those citizens who were not mourning, or rescuing their possessions, or putting out fires, were already looking northwards. There was an Empire out
there that they had barely guessed at, and the same thought occurred to all of them:
What if it comes back?

It would definitely come back if it could. Unless Che and her friends could strike enough of a blow, then this triumph would be nothing. The victory that had cast the invader out of Solarno was
just a stone bouncing off armour-plate to the Empire. It would not leave any dent in history, unless so many stones were thrown at once that even the Empire would have to pause, step back, raise a
shield.

Taki found that she did not even care. The way she felt at the moment, Solarno was hardly her home. So much that she genuinely cared for here had been cut from it.

‘They’ve cleared out the last of the Wasps,’ Niamedh informed her. ‘They surrendered, I think. They’re going to be sent north with some suitably defiant
message.’

‘Suitable?’
How about ‘Please don’t kill us?’
But Taki did not voice it. ‘So what now?’

‘Ceremonies,’ the other pilot said drily. ‘You know how we Solarnese are about such things. They’ll want to give you something in reward, probably. I thought I’d
let you know in case you wanted to dodge it.’

‘Let them give me a new machine,’ said Taki hollowly. ‘Then let them let me go.’ Right now she wanted none of it. She was sick of it all.

* * *

The princess stood up. The crowd seated about the arena was in seven stages of panic and confusion. They did not know what was going on. Perhaps she was the only one who
did.

Seda looked upon the body of her brother and, for the first time in her life, she felt sorry for him. He sat rigid in his chair, but twisted sideways, his skin bleached and on his face an
expression of the most abysmal horror.

She turned to one side, and her eyes met those of General Maxin. The chief of the Rekef was shaking. As he tore his gaze from the drained features of his Emperor, he looked back at her.

He could never know the sheer depth of the plot, but he understood. He saw it was her doing, somehow.

‘Take her!’ he bellowed, above the shouts and wails and fighting of the crowd. It was the voice of a man whose agents are never far away. ‘Kill the little bitch! Now!’
His own sword was in his hand but he did not dare approach her.

The Rekef agents came instantly from the crowd, though she could not have spotted them before they made their presence clear.

‘She’s murdered the Emperor!’ Maxin yelled. ‘Put her to the sword!’

One of them said something to him, which she was sure was, ‘We’re sorry, General.’ They took his sword and held his arms, wrestling him to his knees. Maxin’s face was
instantly all incandescent incomprehension, and he began bawling and yelling at them as though they had simply made some ridiculous mistake.

There was then a figure coming up beside Seda, and she recognized General Brugan. He looked shaken by what he had witnessed but he had done his work well these last tendays, by replacing or
subverting the men that Maxin had put in position. Maxin had been so fixed on his more outspoken adversary, Reiner, that he had never perceived the threat.

She nodded briefly, having no sense of drama when it came to these things.

Brugan drew his dagger and stomped over towards Maxin in a businesslike way.

Maxin was the lord of the Rekef, of course. He had ten times as many agents as Brugan, all across the Empire. He had the power, and had possessed the Emperor’s favour. Right here, though,
in this limited slice of that vast Empire, the men were Brugan’s and Brugan held the knife.

Have I now avenged my siblings?
Seda decided that she was too honest with herself to believe that.

‘People of the Empire!’ Brugan was shouting. ‘People of the Empire!’ but the crowd was still too wild to hear him. He made a curt, angry signal, and there was a sudden
explosion. One of his people, standing by one of the entrances, had shot off a nailbow or a piercer, or something with a firepowder charge. The ripples spread through the crowd, until they were
quiet enough to hear the general shout.

‘Your Emperor is dead!’ Brugan bellowed at the top of his lungs. ‘He was slain by his outlander slave, and through the treachery of his closest advisor! I am General Brugan of
the Rekef, and I have now slain the traitor.’

There was no applause for him. The murmuring of the crowd was frightened, at the brink of violence. They wanted to see what would happen next.

‘I therefore declare the Princess Seda, last of great Alvdan’s bloodline, to be the new Empress!’ Brugan boomed.

‘No!’ someone shouted, and then others were calling out, ‘A woman?’ in sheer outrage. Seda stood before them, knowing that if the scales tipped against her they would
tear her apart. Within the chorus of defiance she heard other voices, though, shouting her name – insisting that she was the only choice. Gjegevey and her other ministers had done their work
well, spreading the poison of her popularity. These here, attending the Emperor’s private games, these were the great and the good of the Empire, the rich, the powerful, senior officers and
scions of good families. These were the ones who must be won over to her side.

‘Listen to me!’ Brugan was demanding. ‘Who else is there? The imperial line must be kept pure!’

They were wavering, however, and she knew that there were many who would not willingly accept her as she was. She had plans for that, if only she could survive these next few minutes. She would
take a partner into her bed. She would give them a figurehead of a man to respect, while she consolidated her grip on her brother’s empire.

She listened to the riotous arguing of the crowd, while she waited for the balance to tip.

* * *

The next morning, before the walls of Collegium a Wasp messenger arrived, with Stenwold’s name on his lips. He was escorted to the War Master’s door, and there he
and his Collegiate guards were made to wait some time before Stenwold presented himself. When he did so, the Beetle looked half dead: hollow-eyed and grey-faced, dishevelled and shaken.

‘What has happened?’ he demanded, emerging out on the street.

‘I bear a message from General Tynan,’ the Wasp announced, staring at Stenwold with utter disdain. ‘He suggests that you, and you especially, General Maker, come to the east
wall to observe something this morning. He will even delay his assault for that purpose.’

Stenwold knew, at that moment. For the last hour he had been sending messengers out across all Collegium in the hope that they would find Arianna, so abruptly vanished. The Wasp emissary did not
need to explain any further. Stenwold pushed past him and hurried to the walls.

He ignored the greetings of his officers and charged the steps like a siege engine, knocking down anyone who got in his way. He did not stop until he stood atop the battlements, looking down on
the Imperial Second Army.

And seeing what he did, he uttered a hoarse cry of grief and horror.

‘War Master, what is it?’ asked one of the defenders nearby, a man less familiar with Wasp-kinden customs. ‘It’s just two crossed spears they’ve put up. What does
it mean?’

Stenwold took a deep breath, clenching his hands tight on the stone. This was how the Wasps disposed of their most despised prisoners: the slow death they gave to their traitors, their failed
officers, their recaptured slaves. He went to his elbows on the crenulations, clasping his face in his hands.