Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [60]
The city of Khanaphes, which had stood changeless for countless centuries, was now becoming unrecognizable to the old Beetle-kinden minister. It seemed that he had been serving the unseen, unheard Masters for ever, just one link in the chain of First Ministers stretching back into the golden dawn of time. He had thought, in time, to pass on the mantle of responsibility to one of his like-minded colleagues, had thought to become another name carved on the lists adorning one wall of the Scriptora’s hall of records. A legacy of honour, surely, but also a curiously anonymous one, in no way marked out from his predecessors or his successors. But that was not to be, for history had chosen him to be significant after all, and the thought made him weak.
Khanaphes could have recovered from last year’s unpleasantness, he knew. For the Scorpions to come from the deep desert and conquer half the city, aided by agents of the Wasp Empire, that was a terrible thing. The Scorpions had gone, though – the power of the Masters had put the rabble back in their place, the river Jamail overflowing its banks to wash Khanaphes clean of them. Ethmet should have rejoiced at this clear sign of favour, unprecedented in a thousand years, but even then he had fretted. He did not want to carry the burden of importance. Let me pass on and be gone, and let my name survive only in stone.
But then the Wasp-kinden had come, in force. They had come with ambassadors who had explained to him that it was rogue elements fleeing the justice of their Empress who had been behind the Scorpion attack. Ethmet had recognized the lie, though even the men they had sent to him believed their words to be true. Nonetheless he thanked them on behalf of the city, and had assured them that the Dominion of Khanaphes bore them no ill-will.
It was not quite as easy as that, they then explained. The Wasp Empire felt dishonoured by the incident, cut to the bone by shame and guilt at the way its renegades had injured a neighbouring power. They had come to put matters right, to ensure that Khanaphes was properly defended whilst rebuilding its strength.
Ethmet had assured them that the Khanaphir trusted to the Masters, and therefore such kindness really was not necessary. By that time, messengers from upriver had been flocking to the city with further news.
You should not put yourself to any trouble, he had assured the Wasps, and they had told him that there would be no further trouble, and that was what the soldiers were here for – the soldiers who had been marching south from the Imperial border, come to defend Khanaphes from . . . From just about everything, it seemed, including any aberrant belief amongst the city’s leaders that it might not require defending.
So far there had been little trouble: Ethmet had ordered it so. The Khanaphir guardsmen and militia had stood by as the Empire entered their city, not raising sword or spear against the intruders. For tendays now there had been Wasp soldiers on every street, in every marketplace, on the city walls, watching the rebuilding. Ethmet had wrestled with his conscience, for there had once been a rod of iron to his spine, which countenanced no deviation from The Way Things Were Done – as set down a millennium ago by the Masters themselves. Surely, having witnessed what must have represented the Masters’ intervention on behalf of their favoured city, that rod should be even more inflexible now? Surely he should be exhorting his people to rise up and slay the Wasps, to defy their new-minted Empire?
And yet, when he reached out for that rod of iron, he found that it had rusted through. Something within his proud heart had shattered quietly when the Scorpion-kinden had sundered