The Seal of the Worm by Adrian Tchaikovsky

was being reeled in.
    ‘They were desperate.’ Che wasn’t sure why she was defending the magicians of the ancient world, but the words came out anyway.
    ‘I’ve known plenty of desperate people,’ Tynisa remarked, and then: ‘I can remember when I was desperate, and the things I did, but this . . . Desperate deeds are spur-of-the-moment deeds. This took planning and patience.’
    ‘Power,’ put in Maure softly. ‘It took power. And when you have that sort of power, then desperation can do very different things.’
    ‘You’re missing the main point,’ Thalric’s acerbic tone cut in, ‘which is that the bastards who devised this place were never going to end up in it.’
    That silenced them for a moment, ceding him the floor.
    ‘Those old Moths,’ he went on, ‘your great wizards or whatever you call them – there’s nothing inherently magical about this story. Change the trappings and it’s everyone’s. Give someone a big stick, and tell them it’s their right, and they’ll use it. Desperation just means they’ll use it harder. So we all know Moths are useless mumblers who live up mountains and wring their precious grey hands over all these machines everyone else seems to have now. But they were executing your people on a whim a few centuries ago, Che. Give someone power, and at the same time you take away any qualms they’d have about using it.’
    ‘Well, the Imperial subject speaks from experience,’ Tynisa said acidly.
    ‘Yes, he bloody does,’ Thalric agreed hotly. ‘We know there’s no slave that wouldn’t wield the lash if you gave him the chance. It’s only Collegium that thinks there’s some mythic moral superiority.’
    ‘You don’t believe that,’ Che reproached, her eyes searching his face in the darkness. She saw the flaws there, the lines of doubt his association with her had marked out: the certainty in his voice was betrayed by his naked expression.
    Still, he came back with, ‘Che, since I met you, you’ve no idea how many stupid things I’ve had to believe.’ And she laughed at him then, feeling the weight of that buried place momentarily lifted off her shoulders.
    Later, when both Thalric and Tynisa had put their heads down, Che saw Maure stir, shivering. She reached a hand out, snagging at the halfbreed’s sleeve, thinking she must be feeling the cold, but the woman flinched back.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Che murmured.
    Maure stared out at that terrible sky. ‘No dead, Che. A place of death without any dead. I don’t know if you can imagine it.’
    ‘Probably not.’
    ‘I always sensed the dead. Even when I was very young, I could feel them. I got driven out of a lot of places before the Woodlouse-kinden took me in and trained me. No one better for that than the Woodlice. They understand everything there. I wish I’d never left.’
    ‘Why did you?’
    ‘Because I thought I had a duty, to the dead, to the living. I thought I was needed, to mediate between the two. And now I’m in a place where the living live like the dead and the dead themselves are gone beyond, utterly consumed . . . I’m sorry, Messel.’
    Che started. She had almost forgotten their guide, but the blind man shifted and shrugged.
    ‘What a world you must come from,’ he said softly, an unplumbed depth of longing in his voice. ‘As for mine, I have no illusions.’
    At first it seemed that they were travelling to Cold Well simply because, in all this vast, hostile and inbred world, there was no other landmark on their maps. Messel’s agitation increased as they closed the distance, though, and even on his face Che could make out a certain furtive look, a need for them to hurry towards some deadline he had refrained from mentioning.
    In that place, suspicion came easily.
    As they stopped to camp after the second span of dayless travel, she cornered him, dragging him away from the others to the edge of their firelight, aware that Thalric and Tynisa would leap to her defence if she encountered