Empire in Black and Gold

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Which thought turned sour very fast when Scuto’s door was kicked open just in front of him, revealing the spiky grotesque levelling a crossbow at him.

  Stenwold froze, thinking, Ah no. Don’t say they’ve turned Scuto now as well. Not the man I sent them all to.

  ‘What was I doing when you first met me?’ Scuto asked, squinting suspiciously.

  Stenwold stared at him. ‘What?’

  ‘What was I doing when you first met me?’ the Thorn Bug demanded, jabbing the crossbow towards him forcefully enough to make the bolts in its magazine rattle.

  Stenwold goggled at him. ‘I don’t think I can remember precisely. I do remember that you had a sideline in truly awful poetry, if that’s any help. I could even recite some for you.’

  ‘No need,’ said the Thorn Bug hastily. ‘Come on in. We’ve had mixed news.’

  He backed into the shack, setting the crossbow down, and Stenwold followed.

  ‘I’ve had news too,’ he said, ‘mostly bad—’ before he was almost knocked off his feet by Tynisa.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re safe.’ She was hugging him as hard as she could. ‘We thought you were walking right into a trap.’

  ‘Oh I was,’ he confirmed, and when she gave him a startled look he added, ‘What, you think old Stenwold can’t look after himself?’ He held her at arm’s length, seeing beneath her skin the shadow of the last few days. ‘It’s good to see that you can survive a little, too,’ he said gently.

  Beyond her, amidst the clutter of Scuto’s artifice, he spotted Totho lurking. ‘You made it too, then? Good lad.’

  ‘Yes, Master Maker,’ replied Totho dutifully, at once as though he was still back at the College.

  ‘Good pair of hands, this one,’ Scuto put in. ‘If you was thinkin’ of posting him here, I could use him.’

  ‘Who stays and who goes,’ said Stenwold soberly, ‘well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Cheerwell and Salma haven’t been so lucky, it seems. They’ve been handed over to the Wasps.’

  ‘We know,’ Tynisa said. ‘A Wasp slave convoy has already left the city, heading east, and it sounds as if they were both in it.’

  Stenwold let out a long breath. ‘You’ve been using your time well. East, is it?’

  ‘The Empire,’ Scuto put in helpfully.

  ‘Oh, I know that. It’s been a while, though, since I was out that way.’ Seventeen years, and why did I ever think I could escape this moment. ‘I wish we had more time.’ I wish I had more time. ‘Nobody needs to come with me, and I mean that.’

  ‘That’s good, ’cos I certainly ain’t going,’ Scuto said with finality. ‘They don’t like most anyone in the Empire, but they really don’t like my kind.’

  ‘And I need you here anyway,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘Totho, you can stay here, if you wish. Scuto would be a good teacher.’

  ‘I . . . would rather come with you.’ Totho gave Scuto an apologetic look. ‘Sorry, but . . . they’re my friends.’

  ‘If things go badly for us . . . well, in the Empire they’re harsh on those of mixed blood,’ Stenwold warned him.

  Totho shrugged, as though to say it was not so different even beyond the Empire’s borders.

  Stenwold gathered himself. ‘Tynisa . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ she said firmly. ‘Of course I’m with you. You don’t even need to say it,’ but when she saw him nod, and fake a smile, she thought that perhaps he had been going to say something else.

  ‘Scuto, you find us what we need for our journey. I’ll meet the pair of you by the old Draywain spoil foundry just east of the city. I have a reinforcement to fetch.’

  It was not at all as she had envisaged, but in retrospect she supposed that her beliefs about her own importance had been misplaced.

  She had fully expected to be rushed into Helleron, thrown into some dungeon, questioned, even tortured. She had been ready, in her defiance, to spit in their faces.

  The sun shone bright on her and the air was full of dust. No secluded oubliette was set aside for her or Salma – at least she still had Salma. When she glanced at him now he was still able to muster a smile for her benefit.

  There were a dozen of them now as prisoners. Thalric’s soldiers had joined up with another squad guarding a single line of roped-together captives, and they had promptly set out across the scrublands east of Helleron. There was to be no talking between the prisoners, a rule enforced by the fists of the guards where necessary, but Che was not sure that they would have had much to say. They were Ants of some unfamiliar city, Beetles who did not look Helleron-born, a couple of Fly-kinden, a lanky, sallow creature with a distinctive high forehead that she could not place. Most were men, only a couple were women, and uniformly they looked even more dispirited than Che herself felt. They bore their captivity with a sense of inevitability.

  The first evening, the soldiers built a staked palisade about them, as crude a piece of handiwork as Che had ever seen. The prisoners were kept roped together, and watched over at all hours. Some of the Wasps carried crossbows, but she knew that none of them was without a means to punish their prisoners at range. Thalric kept himself separate from his men, having found a flat rock to perch on some distance away, and was intent on reading from a scroll whilst he ate.

  She had thought that she would be somehow special after they had gone to such lengths to take her and Salma into their custody. Now it seemed she was considered just another slave.

  She was woken past midnight by the approach of another group, but it turned out to be more of the same. Her eyes settled first on the string of listless captives and only then shifted to their captors. These latter were Wasps of a different stripe to Thalric’s soldiers: a half-dozen men in open-sided tabards, lean and muscled and bestial. They seemed almost faceless in full helms, T-shaped slots showing narrow slices of hard faces, and they had clubs and whips fastened at their belts. Slavers’ weapons, Che quickly realized: enough to keep the livestock in order, yet nothing too dangerous should it fall into the wrong hands.

  There was a shifting among the Wasp soldiers as they arrived, and she saw that these newcomers were not exactly well loved. Her fellow prisoners plainly recognized them, and a tremor ran through them at the sight.

  Thalric came pacing over. ‘Someone light a lantern,’ he directed, and a soldier obediently struck the flint on an oil-lamp. The glow it cast across the rough ground was anything but cosy.

  ‘Captain Thalric.’ The foremost slaver gave him a halfhearted salute. ‘This season’s harvest.’

  Thalric looked over the new prisoners, about twenty in all. ‘More runners, Brutan?’

  ‘Why not?’

  The officer gave the slaver a narrow look. ‘You’re sure you haven’t been exceeding your brief ?’

  ‘You think they’ll care?’ replied the man Brutan. ‘A slave’s a slave. In the long term, what difference will it make?’

  Thalric shrugged. ‘I’m sure you know your business. Nineteen bodies added to your tally then, Brutan. I’ll see the count is passed on.’

  ‘We’re coming with you, Captain. I’ll pick the bounty up myself.’

  There was a definite murmur of distaste amongst the Wasp soldiers, but Thalric shut them up with a glance. ‘As you will, Brutan. I’ll put the whole lot of them into your care, then. As I said, you know your trade.’

  The new prisoners were much of a muchness with the others, plus a scattering of half-breeds and a single man that Che decided could even be a Wasp himself. This realization came paired with the fact that two of Brutan’s slavers were clearly Ant-kinden, possessing the pale skins of Tark. These slavers obviously either operated by different rules, or they paid little heed to whatever rules they were given.

  The regular soldiers were only too glad to give up their charges to the newcomers, and quickly left to huddle round their fire. The palisade was soon being widened, and the new slaves packed in so there was barely room for them all to sit. The slavers kept a close watch on them, but many of the prisoners
seemed to sense that the regime had now changed. A low, cautious murmur was struck up, a halting exchange of names and places. Where did they take you? How far did you get?

  ‘Salma,’ Che whispered. ‘I’m frightened.’

  ‘I think you’re allowed to be,’ he encouraged her, squeezing her hand. ‘Just be calm. Stay calm and wait.’

  She tried to be calm, but it was like meditating. She simply could not concentrate. The Beetle-kinden man sitting next to her turned and asked, ‘Where did you break from?’ in a hollow, weary voice.

  ‘Break from? They caught us just outside Helleron,’ Che replied.

  ‘No, no, where did you escape from, to reach there? How far did you manage?’

  She understood, then. ‘This is the first time. I’ve never been a . . . a slave before.’

  He nodded in sudden understanding. The man looked about Stenwold’s age, but Stenwold made thin by a very harsh life. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry for all of us,’ she replied.

  He shook his head, would not look at her. The tall, sallow man beside him took up the slack. ‘His meaning: we are escaped slaves and the Empire has harsh lessons for those who attempt to flee. You are with us now so you will suffer as we do. We are sorry for you because by being with us we have included you in our future suffering.’

  ‘You were slaves,’ Che said. ‘You can’t blame yourselves for escaping.’

  ‘You will learn.’ The sallow man of unknown race shook his head. ‘We are blamed. We are the lesser race.’

  Che stared at him. In the dark it was hard to tell how he meant this fatalism, but she had a feeling that it went deep, that it had long been pounded into him.

  ‘I am not a slave,’ she announced stubbornly. ‘I will never be a slave. Not in here.’ She pointed at her forehead. ‘No matter how often they tell me it.’

  None of them seemed able to look her in the eyes. She singled one out, a ruddy-skinned Ant-kinden woman. ‘You’re a warrior? I thought all Ants were warriors. Tell me you don’t think like this.’

  The woman’s agonized expression implored her to keep her voice down. ‘I took part in the rebellion at Maynes,’ she replied. ‘We were warriors then – for the space of two tendays. Then their army returned from the front and they crushed us. They crucified four hundred men and women around the walls of the city. Not revolutionaries, just anyone – anyone they didn’t like the look of. They took hundreds of our children away to become slaves in other cities. The survivors, any who had fought, they branded in the face. I ran away. I am not a warrior any more. I have seen what misery it brings. Now they will kill me when I am taken back to them. They will kill me where the whole city can see it.’

  ‘Then why not fight?’ Che demanded. ‘What have you got to lose?’

  ‘You do not understand,’ the Ant woman said flatly.

  The man of unknown race hissed suddenly, and they fell quiet as one of the slavers passed alongside the palisade. After he had gone, the high-browed prisoner leant over towards Che.

  ‘Tomorrow, if you still live, you will learn how to be a slave,’ he said, almost as though he was encouraging her.

  ‘If I live? You may not have heard, but we Beetles are tough.’

  ‘Tomorrow one of us will most certainly die,’ he said simply. ‘It is the Empire’s way.’

  Most of the slaves woke at dawn, from long habit. Those who did not, exhausted from the previous day, were allowed a single whip-crack in which to wake themselves. After that the whip itself came down.

  The dawn had woken Salma, and he shook Che into wakefulness before the slavers could get round to her. The prisoners were being hauled up and roped together again for walking. He looked about him, trying to gauge if this was their chance to make a break for it, but there were too many slavers posted all about. He might have given it a try, on his own: a lightning strike to get a knife in his hands, to cut his bonds and into the air. He was not optimistic about his chances, though, and Che would never make it.

  Salma had never been the responsible type: he had always taken being a prince frivolously. This had given him a light-hearted outlook on life. At home he had played the games of court, wooed young women or sparred and flown with his peers. Even when war and the Empire had come to the eastern principalities, he had not taken it seriously enough.

  Thereafter he had been sent to study at Collegium, where Stenwold had broached to him the subject of the Empire. It had all still seemed a game, a bit of excitement for him to intersperse amongst his studies and casual seductions. Of course the Wasps were his enemies, but that was all so far, far away.

  In the Lowlands, though, they had developed so many wondrous means of transport, so that same far away could become here very quickly indeed. Salma found himself learning all about responsibility now.

  ‘Come on.’ He helped Che stand up, and a blank-helmed slaver tied them together and set them moving. Back in Collegium Salma had always found Che tremendously amusing, in a fond way, of course: how she bustled about and was always so serious about everything. Her studies, her ethics, her desperate attempts to break into the Ancestor Art. Everything was a crisis on which her personal world hinged. Privately he had found such endeavours hilarious, just as so much else of Beetle society appeared risible to him.

  Now here she was, tied to him by three feet of rope, and he felt such a burden of responsibility for her that he wanted to thrust her behind him and strike out at any Wasp who even looked at her. This emotion surprised him: he did not know where it came from. He had never seen Che as a candidate for one of his idle conquests. Nor was it because he felt a responsibility to Stenwold to keep his niece safe. This was something entirely new: he wanted to keep her safe because she was all he had.

  And thinking about her safety allowed him to ignore the ignominy of his own bondage.

  The slaves had been lined up now in a single row and everyone was clearly waiting for something to happen. It came when one of the slavers removed his black-and-gold helm, revealing heavy-jawed features and a shaven scalp. When he spoke, his voice identified him as Brutan, their leader.

  ‘You are all slaves!’ he shouted at them.

  Che glanced off to one side at Thalric and his soldiers, who were studiously ignoring what was going on. Instantly a whip cracked towards her, sending her reeling into Salma.

  ‘Look at me, you bitch!’ Brutan bellowed, the cords of his neck standing out. ‘Slaves look at their masters when they’re spoken to. Not in the eye, but you look!’ He cracked his whip again. ‘You are all slaves!’ he repeated. ‘Worse, you are all escaped slaves, slaves twice over. That makes you lowest of all slaves!’ Brutan was glaring at them all with an abiding and personal loathing, enough to make his eyes bulge and veins throb in his forehead. ‘You are the worst kind of scum because you have made the Empire waste my precious time in fetching you back!’ he almost screamed. ‘I only wish the Empire had more slaves to spare because then I would have the lot of you executed. However, a lesson must now be taught, so that you do not try wasting any more of my or the Empire’s time.’

  He stalked forward, proceeding to one end of the line, then strode along it, looking at each face in turn. ‘The only thing left now is to make my choice.’

  His progress past them was agonizingly slow. He stopped often, while each slave stared down at his own feet. Many were shaking and somewhere down the line someone was weeping in desperate sobs that no amount of effort could muffle.

  Brutan stopped in front of the lanky, sallow man, considering. He was now only a few bodies down the line from Salma and Che. He moved on, passing a Beetle-kinden, then the female Ant that Che had spoken to last night. He stopped again.

  ‘Commonwealer,’ he remarked. ‘Slavery too good for your kind, is it?’

  Salma stared at his feet and said nothing.

  ‘I’ve got a villa in Dras Hesha, boy. You know where that is?’ And when Salma said nothing, he shrieked, ‘Slaves answer their masters! Do you know
where that is?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Salma said quietly. ‘Yes, master.’

  ‘I keep my villa well stocked, boy. In fact I’ve got a Dragonfly girl there: she could just about be your sister.’ He watched carefully, his eyes flicking about Salma’s bowed face, waiting for the first rebel spark. The words passed the Dragonfly by, though. He felt them strike him, strike where his pride was and then course to either side like the waters of a stream. His responsibility protected him. He could not indulge in mere pride, now he had Che to look after.

  Brutan’s lip curled in disgust, and he passed on down the line of prisoners.

  At the very end he turned suddenly and pointed with the handle of his whip. ‘You!’ It was one of the Ant-kinden he had selected. Instantly the man braced himself to resist but a pair of slavers descended on him from behind. One of them struck him a glancing blow with a club and then they had cut him free and were grappling him away from the rest.

  ‘Don’t look,’ said Salma in Che’s ear and she frowned at him.

  ‘I’ve seen death before.’ She was so desperate to put on a brave face.

  ‘Not this death. Don’t look.’ Salma knew what was coming. It had been mentioned in dispatches from the war front: the favoured Wasp way of execution, especially for their own.

  Two of the slavers carried long spears, tipped at each end with a skewer-like point, and with a crosspiece halfway down, like a hunting spear. Che stubbornly watched them as the first spear was firmly grounded in the earth at an angle, and it was only when the slave was dragged towards it, and she understood, that she closed her eyes and turned her head away. Then all she had were the sounds, the hideous shrieks of the man that went on and on, weaker and weaker.

  And when she opened her eyes, he was still alive, only just, too weak for any further sound. He hung off the crossed spears that passed through his body, emerging under the armpit to lance into his spread arms so that he was splayed like an unattended puppet. She hoped, she fervently hoped, that he would die swiftly. It was all the hope she could offer him.