He had cast several narrow glances meaningfully at General Maxin as they left, and now the burly, grey-haired Wasp dropped back a pace to walk beside him.

‘You honour me with your attention, O General,’ said Uctebri with a sly smile.

‘You forget your place, slave,’ Maxin told him coldly. ‘What do you want?’

‘But you know what it is I want, General,’ Uctebri said humbly. ‘What I need, in fact, to bring his Great Majesty’s plans to fruition.’

‘Your box,’ Maxin snarled contemptuously. ‘I have my men travelling to Jerez even as we speak. You’ll soon have your trinket.’

‘However, General, so that I may be sure of it, I have asked a kinswoman of mine to attend at that place, and bend her own efforts to the same goal.’

‘You’ve had no chance to ask anything of anyone, slave,’ Maxin said, but there was no certainty in his voice.

‘Nonetheless, such a request has been conveyed.’ Uctebri watched the man’s face twitch uncomfortably. Was this not the most exquisite of pleasures? A general of the Rekef, whose spies and informers held the whole of the Imperial Army in terror for any question of their loyalty, and yet his heart trembled in facing a tired old slave. You have your host of agents, General, yet you cannot guess at mine.

‘Your kinswoman had best stay out of the way,’ snapped Maxin, bluffing unconcern. ‘My men do not know to expect her, so she is likely to get hurt before she can properly introduce herself.’

‘Why, General,’ Uctebri said, ‘what makes you think that they will even notice she is there, unless she wishes it?’

The Emperor still convened with his regular advisors as tradition demanded, but a new elite had now arisen. War was the word that buzzed through the chambers of power in Capitas. War was the meat and drink of the Empire. It was war that made careers and secured futures, that greased the wheels of commerce and reaped wealth and power for those who could ride on its swelling tide.

The Lowlanders did not understand, and could never understand, that the invasion of Tark, the Battle of the Rails, none of this actually constituted war. Skirmishes and expansion comprised the day-to-day business of the Empire, but it took resistance, a line drawn that the Imperial Army had to cross, to make it count as truly war.

The Lowlanders had now drawn that line: it ran crookedly from Merro to Collegium, from Collegium to Sarn. The Empire had engulfed almost half of the Lowlands before it had even become a war worthy of the name.

The Emperor walked amongst his generals, viewing the great map they had commissioned, first from this side, then from the other. It was a piece of art, that map, carved by the most accurate slave craftsmen. The mountains and the ridges, the rivers and the forests, they had all been laid in veneers of coloured woods, while the cities were bronze medallions cast especially, embossed with the name and emblem of each. Wooden blocks and little parchment flags showed the disposition of known forces currently under arms across the Lowlands.

General Maxin watched Alvdan give the entire affair his blessing, pleased to see an expression of keen knowledge on the Emperor’s face, which boosted morale. Standing respectfully back from the table, as the Emperor made his inspection, were the chief strategists of the Empire: two retired generals, a senior factor of the Consortium, a field colonel attached to the Eighth Army, which was currently in its barracks in Capitas awaiting assignment, a major in the Engineering Corps and yet another in the Slave Corps.

‘This is our Winged Furies?’ asked the Emperor, pointing at the army located on the silver thread representing the rail line between Helleron and Sarn.

‘The Seventh Army, exactly, your Imperial Majesty,’ one of the old generals replied. ‘Here at Helleron is the Sixth, which is waiting for new troops before reinforcing General Malkan. Malkan himself is being resupplied and rearmed even as we speak.’

‘Rearmed? Is this the new master-weapon we have been told of?’

‘The so-called snapbow, your Imperial Majesty,’ the engineering major agreed. ‘Results in combat against the Sarnesh suggest that it is effective enough, but I fear reports may be greatly exaggerated-’

There was a look of mischief in Alvdan’s eyes that the major missed. ‘Remind me again who is responsible for this new toy.’

‘It is the work of the outcast, Drephos the halfbreed.’ The major’s voice rang with disdain. ‘Amusing, no doubt, your Majesty, like all of his diversions, but no substitute for crossbow and automotive.’

The Emperor smiled at him, and the retired general prudently stepped back, being wiser in the ways of rulers. ‘Major, we appreciate your professional opinion,’ continued Alvdan. ‘Therefore we have requested a sample of this new weapon to be brought to Capitas for our own amusement.’

‘I am sure that it will amuse you, Majesty.’

‘Excellent. Do you own a suit of armour, Major?’

‘I fail to understand…’

‘You dismiss this new thing so lightly, therefore you will surely stand by your own words.’ Alvdan was still smiling, as pleasantly as ever. ‘We shall therefore look forward to pitting the halfbreed’s craft against your professional opinion and, yes, Major, we do anticipate some amusement.’

As the engineer stepped back, pale and shaken, Alvdan passed his gaze over the rest of them, and Maxin could almost read his mind: It does them good to remember what ‘Emperor’ means.

‘We are not pleased with progress in the Lowlands. We wish to spend the coming summer amongst our new subjects in Collegium. We trust this desire is clear.’

There was a murmur and a nodding.

‘Explain to us where our armies shall assault,’ Alvdan directed, picking out the Slave Corps major to reply. The man was an old campaigner who approached with the proper mix of deference and confidence. Few career soldiers stayed in the slavers to reach his rank, and he had long carved his niche in the human trade that war turned up.

‘Your Imperial Majesty, we are facing a three-sided defence. You have been told, of course, that General Alder and the Fourth have been repulsed by the Lowlander savages along the coast. We have the Second Army marching to Tark from Asta, so as to set out along the coast once spring comes, thus making the best time overland. The Eighth is also listed to march to Asta, for deployment then where it is best thought fit. We plan to sweep down the coast as rapidly as possible, but at the same time we face the problem of the Spider-kinden.’

‘I have made my decision concerning the Spiders,’ Alvdan remarked. A frisson of interest passed through the assembled tacticians, for this was news. ‘We must assume that they have played a part in the destruction of the Fourth,’ the Emperor continued. ‘So I have instructed General Maxin here to have his agents destabilize the local cities of the Spiderlands. We intend to sow sufficient disruption at their borders to ensure that they shall not trouble our Lowlands campaign.’ He smiled at them. ‘The rest is a Rekef matter, and in General Maxin’s capable hands, but no doubt the Second or Eighth can spare time to burn the Spiders’ webs, if the Rekef so wish. Continue.’

The slaver major gestured towards the map. ‘You have already heard how the Sixth and Seventh Armies will be approaching the city of Sarn, but agents in the Rekef Inlander inform us that Sarn is currently allied with a number of lesser cities in that area, making any advance into contested territory dangerous.’ He glanced at Maxin. ‘General, perhaps I range into your territory now?’

Maxin stepped forward to the map, tapping the shining disc that represented Sarn. ‘The mixing of kinden that the Lowlanders are currently engaging in, in their attempts to find an alliance against us, allows our agents much more freedom to act than before. We are well placed to shatter this alliance of theirs by removing key figures and playing on their suspicion of each other. At that point, when the season turns, General Malkan will advance overland and by rail and destroy Sarn before heading north to mop up the primitives living there. Collegium will then fall either to the Seventh coming south from Sarn, or to the Second coming east along the coast, whichever seems most convenient at the time. So ends the war with the Lowlands.’