The northern edge of the Azian continent had spent most of recorded history being a problem someone else owned. Wedged between the Kakin Empire and a rotating cast of smaller nations, it was the kind of territory that appeared on maps in different colors depending on which decade you were looking at. Wars moved through it the way weather moved through a valley: regularly, inevitably, and without much concern for the locals.
The hills here were desolate. The roads were bad. Three bulletproof off-road vehicles ground through the scrubland in convoy, trailing dust clouds visible from a considerable distance, which meant that anyone watching from the ridgelines either didn't care or was already aware of the convoy's business.
The mountain at the end of the route looked, from outside, like exactly what the hills around it looked like: bald, unremarkable, not worth anyone's time. The rock face at its base slid open when the vehicles stopped. Two halves of a very convincing stone facade separated smoothly on concealed hinges, admitting the convoy one vehicle at a time, then sealed behind them with the low, final sound of something designed to stay shut.
Inside, the mountain was a different proposition.
Cameras in every corridor. Guards at intervals that suggested someone had thought carefully about sightlines. The doors that stood open revealed precision instruments, contained lab environments, sample cases under examination lighting. Whatever this facility had been built to do, it was doing it with the budget of a small nation-state.
The highest-security level was below all of it.
It looked like a natural cave, which was either the most honest design decision in the building or the most ironic. The stone walls were unfinished. The ceiling was raw rock. The only concession to the modern world was the specialized freezing unit at the far end, and the thing inside it.
The Chimera Ant Queen was roughly the size of a grown human. The mechanical restraints holding her in place suggested that the design team had stress-tested their assumptions about what a queen ant at full vitality might be capable of. The ice had kept her dormant. The machine around her had kept her contained.
Pariston stood in front of the unit and regarded her with the gentle, attentive expression of a man who found everything about existence privately amusing.
"Is that the queen?" said a voice from the dark.
The Fourth Prince of Kakin walked out of the cave shadows with the unhurried confidence of someone who had never needed to rush for anything in his life. His long hair was tied back loosely. He was dressed for movement: practical sportswear, nothing ceremonial. Behind him, two private security personnel followed at the precise distance that said professional without saying anything else.
Tserriednich stopped beside Pariston and studied the queen with the focused, evaluative look of a collector appraising an acquisition.
"Chimera ants this large," he said. "Where did you acquire her?"
"The queen herself is the result of a particular breeding process," Pariston said pleasantly. "The previous generation of chimera ants, the original species, were considerably smaller. It's the introduction of human genetic material that produces a queen of this scale. Human blood gives the queen the cognitive capacity to reason and communicate. The resulting offspring are correspondingly more capable."
"Human blood." Tserriednich turned this over with detached curiosity. "The ant king mated with a human woman?"
"With a specific woman. Yes."
"Is there footage?"
Pariston produced a phone from his jacket and handed it over.
The two private guards standing behind the prince, Sargov and Tita, maintained the expressions of people who had accepted, as a professional condition of their employment, that certain things would simply occur in their presence. Sargov stared at a point on the far wall. Tita studied the queen with the focused attention of someone who had found a genuinely interesting object.
The sounds from the phone were not pleasant.
Tserriednich watched with the calm interest of someone viewing a nature documentary about a species he'd never encountered before. The contents, which had produced a particular quality of stillness in both his guards, registered on his face as novelty. Mildly interesting. Certainly not his usual scale of entertainment.
He handed the phone back.
"Can she produce the soldiers I need?"
"The queen's reproductive output is, under normal circumstances, limited only by her nutritional intake," Pariston said. "She produces offspring according to her colony's requirements, with specialized functions. Her genetic control over the colony is absolute. She can modify the blueprint of what she produces to meet a specific operational requirement." He paused. "If her own biological flexibility proves insufficient, the researchers in this facility are equipped to supplement the process."
"Good." Tserriednich's gaze moved from Pariston back to the freezer. "And she can actually hold a conversation."
"Let me demonstrate."
Pariston crossed to the console and began the thaw cycle. The queen's vitality reasserted itself with a speed that suggested her biology had not suffered particularly from the cold. The moment consciousness returned, she located the four humans in front of her by some sense that had nothing to do with eyes, and she lunged.
The mechanical restraints absorbed this without comment.
A device on the console translated the brain-wave output of her struggle into synthesized speech.
"Hungry. I want to eat. To birth the ant king, I need nutrition."
Tserriednich walked forward until he was standing directly in front of the freezer. He looked at the queen the way he looked at most things: with the patient, assessing eye of someone taking inventory.
"Nutrition isn't a problem," he said. "Produce enough soldiers to meet my specifications, and I'll provide a consistent supply of humans. You'll have everything you need to birth the ant king you want."
He glanced behind him. Tita spoke briefly into her radio.
A door at the far end of the cave opened. A prison guard brought in a man in restraints. The man saw the queen through the freezer glass and went the color of old ash.
What happened next was quick, and afterward the death row prisoner was considerably shorter than he had been, and the queen was chewing with evident satisfaction.
"Do we understand each other?" Tserriednich said.
The queen regarded him. In the functional part of her consciousness that handled threat assessment, the human in front of her registered as something considerably more than a food source. The aura coming off him was dense and wrong in a way that activated ancient, instinctive categories she had no language for. She was not afraid of death. She was afraid of dying before she could birth the ant king. That imperative overrode everything.
She agreed.
"I need twenty humans every day."
Tserriednich's mouth curved slightly. He turned away from the freezer with the relaxed finality of someone who had just concluded a satisfactory meeting.
Two months ago, Beyond Netero had called Pariston with characteristic impatience. There was a complication, Beyond had said. Someone had heard about the chimera ants, and they were urgently in need of Nen-capable subordinates. The plan needed to be moved up. Beyond had expressed this as a personal inconvenience and hung up before Pariston could ask follow-up questions.
Pariston had spent the subsequent week assembling his read of the situation, which he found enjoyable in the way he found most problems enjoyable. A prince who had only recently discovered Nen, suddenly desperate for Nen-trained fighters: the timeline wrote itself. Tserriednich had learned Nen late. He had realized, shortly afterward, that several of his brothers had not. The succession math had shifted abruptly. A man with everything to prove and not enough time to prove it was, in Pariston's experience, an excellent client.
Two perverted things, Beyond had called them. Pariston had found this assessment generous.
Somewhere above the clouds, an airship was making steady progress toward Freier Mountain.
Liam looked out the window at the terrain below and thought about Netero's text message, which had contained an address and nothing else, which was either deeply trusting or deeply annoying depending on how you looked at it.
He had decided on the airship.