Totho sat in a corner of a workshop that he had marked out for himself, and tinkered with his new snapbow design, feeling obsolescence creeping over him already. This was not a war that he understood any more.

Kaszaat was kept under watch most of the time. This was not by Drephos’ orders but those of Colonel Gan, who could not accept that she was Drephos’ creature and not a spy of the rebellious locals. Totho knew that Gan was right to doubt her, and he was only thankful that he himself remained trusted enough that the spies would keep their distance when Kaszaat sought him out.

He had expected her to try to recruit him in her own tiny rebellion but, when she was with him, she made no mention of the great engines, of the poison or of Drephos. He did not know whether it was because she was uncertain of what move to make next, or whether she simply did not trust him.

I do not care what the history books will say.

But that was not entirely true, because Drephos had not managed to cut himself off from ordinary human feelings quite as thoroughly as he might have wished.

Colonel-Auxillian Dariandrephos now stood atop one of his observation platforms and looked out over the city of Szar, all those little low buildings, those innumerable factories and workhouses. It was evening now, late and getting later, but a strong breeze was predicted to begin before dawn, blowing in from behind him. Daylight would then see the engines begin their work.

In his mind’s eye, which was always sharper and more vivid than his actual sight, he could see it all: the canisters, full of poison held under immense pressure, would be hurled almost gently, tipping end over end into the sky. The locals would look up and wonder, at first. Only on impact would their casings crack open, their tight-pressed contents escape.

With Drephos’ arrival, Colonel Gan and his soldiers had ceased trying to break the rebel lines. With typical Bee-kinden thinking the locals had simply hunkered down and refortified, defensive to the last. They were a simple, industrious and inoffensive people, strong in their unity but in little enough else. That was the reason the world was not overrun with them. They were now waiting for the anticipated Wasp reinforcements to come, having heard there were 10,000 soldiers marching from the Capitas garrison. Drephos knew those men had now been diverted, however, redeployed to keep the lid on the situation at Myna, which he heard was deteriorating.

Let them first hear the news from Szar, and then let them think about their revolution, he reflected, but he felt oddly uncomfortable with the concept. This is war simply for politics’ sake. I prefer the reverse.

The canisters would burst asunder, and the gas would be let loose in the city. The natural breeze would keep the heavy gas from spreading back towards the Wasps, and the chemicals would pass through every window, into every cellar. Death would be relatively swift, but agonizing. The gas, once taken into the lungs, began to dissolve the very tissues, so that the victims died while trying to inhale the fluid of their own bodies. The Beetle twins had been great innovators in the field of alchemy, and Drephos had been lucky to have grabbed them for his own service.

Dead now, of course. He was disappointed in them for that, but he always failed to allow for basic human sentiment. It was such a weakening force. Besides, when it came to culpability, it would not be their names written in the history books.

Perhaps the Bee-kinden would seek shelter underground, considering so much of their city was dug into the earth. It would avail them naught since the gas, to be effective at all, needed to be heavier than air. It would sink inevitably into every cellar and tunnel and crevice, and if the Bees managed to board themselves up so tightly that the poison could not get in, well, neither could the air. Colonel Gan had already planned to send men in straight after the gas, to ‘clear up any remaining resistance’. His comprehension of what was about to happen was so blatantly limited that Drephos had not even begun to explain. He had simply warned that, wherever the gas lay, in any depression or hole or bunker, it would remain potent for many tendays.

‘But I will have a city to run,’ Colonel Gan had protested. Drephos had merely turned away from him. Gan would have no city, would no longer be a governor, after this. Drephos had an uncomfortable feeling that a great many careers would die here along with Szar. Even the Emperor himself, who had given the order for Drephos to come here, had not known what kind of war he was unleashing.

Drephos had designed protective masks, to filter the worst of the poison from the gas. There were enough of these for his people only, and he suspected that inhaling even the air thus filtered would make them all ill. If the gas was blown back by errant winds, at least his artificers had a chance at survival. Gan and his garrison would not be so lucky. After tomorrow, the whole Empire would come to know the name of Dariandrephos. Within a month his fame, or his infamy, would spread to the Commonweal and the Lowlands, and beyond. He had never objected to either fame or notoriety so long as either was justified.

After tomorrow the world would know Drephos for one thing. It would not be as a genius artificer, inventor of machines, paragon of progress, the man who drove the mills of war. They would know him as the man who killed Szar. They would overlook the technical achievements he had made in bringing it about, citing him only as a butcher, the pedlar of atrocity. The Empire, that had given him such opportunity, would have made him its scapegoat, the focus for the world’s scorn and hatred. The Wasps would keep him around, keep him working, but the world would never know the truth for which he had worked all his life, his ideology and his ethos. Anything he put forward henceforth, be it philosophy or technology, would be tainted with that reputation.

He heard movement below him, where nobody should be trespassing, then a sudden shout of alarm as Big Greyv, the silent Mole Cricket, loomed massively from the shadows to accost the newcomer.

‘It’s all right, let him come up,’ Drephos called down. ‘Come on, Totho. I’ve been expecting you.’

It was the sudden unfolding of Big Greyv from the shadows that had given Totho such a turn. Of course he knew that the Mole Cricket could see perfectly in the dark, just as Drephos could, but that someone so huge could lurk totally unseen shook him badly. Greyv held an axe casually in one hand, the weapon dwarfed by its wielder. Totho himself would barely have been able to lift it.

He weighed his own burden in both hands while looking up at the watchtower beside the new engines. The lights of the engineering works behind showed him the robed figure standing atop it.

‘You are here to talk to me, are you not?’ the voice of Drephos drifted down to him. ‘Then climb up here. I dislike shouting.’

Totho cast a look at Greyv. The Mole Cricket’s dark face was unreadable but the set of his body said that he was unhappy, and that he did not trust Totho alone with their master. It was, Totho reckoned, a fair enough assessment.

He slung his burden over one shoulder and walked over to the metal rungs. One was missing and some were loose, and he therefore divined that this must be a tower constructed by the garrison engineers and not Drephos’ own people. He paused for a moment beside the deceptively small cask that was crammed full of the poison. It looked manageable enough to be carried easily by one man but the material within was so compressed and concentrated that it would have taken all Totho’s strength to shift it. He glanced up to see Drephos peering down at him, his halfbreed, iris-less eyes calmly curious as to what Totho might do.