The Seal of the Worm by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page A

revulsion as soon as she saw it. The world was full of venomous creatures, but none had a reputation as bad as this sort, so that sane people killed these creatures wherever they found them. But why? Let the academics of Collegium argue as they would, nobody could say just why. Except Che, right now. She understood why the mere sight of a centipede sent shudders down the spines even of the Apt, and why there were so many stories casting them as deadly killers.
    It was the Worm; they were remembering the Worm. The beast there, with its whip-like antennae and curved claws full of venom; the ridged scars that ornamented the old man’s hide; the very line of soldiers, just segments of a greater whole, undifferentiated and mindless. Symptoms of the same ancient disease.
    ‘This is too soon,’ Atraea quavered. ‘You cannot be here for the tax.’
    ‘You will have your people present their tribute,’ the old man – the Scarred One – informed her. He sounded bitter, human , and he regarded Atraea with the contempt of an owner for his slave.
    ‘But you were here . . . I have marked the time faithfully, I have!’
    ‘The Great Lord demands,’ the Scarred One said. ‘Do not believe that scratching marks on the wall allows you to guess the plans of god. Do as you are told.’
    ‘But what has changed?’ Atraea begged him.
    ‘Do not tempt a further tax of Cold Well.’ The Scarred One sounded almost bored, like a College bureaucrat dealing with a student who had filled in the wrong papers. The threat plainly went straight to the heart of Atraea, though, for she was bowing and nodding, practically kissing the man’s filthy feet.
    ‘I will, I will,’ she promised. ‘It will be as the Great Overlord commands. Please . . .’
    But the old man was turning aside, stepping back past his men. Che shivered to watch them follow him, the entire line of them moving like a single living thing. The centipede itself remained a moment, its front segments lifted from the ground, its trident of a head casting from side to side as if sensing that all was not as it should be. Che froze, fearing that it had sniffed her out somehow, but then the beast dropped back down and coursed fluidly off after the priest.
    Atraea was already gone, but they could hear her thin, hopeless voice crying out beyond: ‘We must do as they say! Do not defy them, or we will suffer all the more! Please, my people, please!’
    ‘Cold Well goes hungry this season, then,’ Thalric murmured. ‘I’ll admit I’ve seen the same in the Empire on occasion.’
    ‘You have not,’ Messel told him flatly. ‘You do not understand. Of course you do not understand.’
    There was something in his voice, some dead echo, that affected Che. ‘Then make us understand,’ she urged. ‘Tell us. Show us.’
    He crept past her, fingers brushing the stone as he moved to the cave’s entrance. ‘Then see,’ he told them. ‘And see what you have been sent to save us from. See the Worm at work.’
    They moved to the entrance of Atraea’s cave cautiously, but it was Che alone who went so far as to put her head outside, so that she could witness what was going on.
    Work at the foundry had stopped. All the people of Cold Well were standing out in the open, as the chains of Worm soldiers passed between them. There seemed to be some manner of census going on, or at least Atraea seemed to be flying here and there, trying to account for people.
    Che expected to see goods being brought from the forges: weapons or armour or metal ingots, such as Messel had mentioned. Or else food: Atraea had been worried about something more than simply not making quota, surely? Was Cold Well going to starve in order to load the tables of the Worm?
    ‘Cages.’ Esmail was beside her, crouching low; she had not realized he was still at the cave mouth until he spoke to her. She saw what he had seen: there were Mole Crickets and a few Beetles up at the lip of the cliff, overlooking the whole of Cold Well,