Empire in Black and Gold

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Everything’s accounted for,’ Khenice reported. ‘Look’s like you’re set to go, as soon as your man comes back.’

  ‘When he does, yes.’ Stenwold fought off a sinking feeling, knowing that Salma was still absent on his madman’s errand. I have taught these youngsters badly, that they are so bold. ‘You’ve been a good friend, Hokiak.’

  ‘Ain’t got no friends. Just got customers and business associates,’ the old Scorpion muttered, shrugging it off. He did not look at Stenwold when he said it, though. ‘Mind, can’t say for sure which one you are, so maybe that makes you as near a friend as I’m like to get these days.’

  Totho had watched Che for about as long as he could bear to, as she conversed in low tones with the Moth-kinden. It was not right, this. It was eating at him. She had met the man only once, some fleeting business at Monger’s place before the Wasps seized her. Now it was just as though he was some long-lost childhood friend. Totho neither liked nor trusted him. The man’s featureless eyes, his skulking manner, the way he kept his cowl raised up so much: it made him look like an assassin.

  Stenwold was packing up his own kit when Totho approached him. ‘I need to speak with you, sir.’

  ‘Go ahead.’ Stenwold had his toolstrip still unrolled, and Totho’s eyes flicked over the surprisingly extensive collection there.

  ‘It’s about the Moth, sir.’

  ‘Achaeos?’ Stenwold’s hands stopped moving.

  Totho knelt by him. ‘I don’t trust him.’

  ‘Totho, you had valid concerns before. We didn’t know him from Finni, as the Flies say. If he was going to sell us to the Wasps, though, he’s already had his chance. As I understand it he did good work for us, there in the palace. He’s no Wasp agent, whatever else he is.’

  ‘Then what is he?’ Totho asked. ‘Why are the Wasps the only . . . the only ones for us to worry about? What about his own people? They’d love to see Helleron burn, and you know it. They hate us.’ He was not sure what he meant, by that ‘us’. ‘How do you know he isn’t just . . . worming his way into your confidence. They’re subtle, they’re clever, everyone knows.’

  Stenwold smiled. ‘Well yes, they are that, and I can’t swear to you that there’s no chance of what you suggest. There’s every chance, in fact, whether Achaeos becomes a part of it or not, that his people will not be our allies in this business. I have to trust Scuto to scent that out for me. As for Achaeos, though, he has earned his place amongst us until proved otherwise. I’m certainly not going to drive him away because of the colour of his eyes.’

  Totho bit his lip and made to get up, but Stenwold stopped him with a gesture.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘You spoke to me earlier, before we met Chyses and the others. You recall?’

  Against his will, Totho’s eyes flicked across the room towards Che. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Not “sir”, not “Master Maker” – just “Stenwold”, please.’ Even as he said it, Stenwold knew that it was a faint hope. ‘I want to apologize for my reaction then, really. I’ve no right to judge, least of all regarding a man’s heritage.’ After all, I myself have been raising Tisamon’s halfbreed daughter all these years. ‘I will not stand in the way of any man that Che favours. Unless he’s a Wasp, possibly. Or a Scorpion.’ With a wry smile that Totho failed to catch, Stenwold sighed. ‘But I won’t promise her to anyone, either. I know it’s a custom, and even though I’m not her father I know I could, but I won’t. She has a mind as fine as anyone’s, and it’s hers to bestow along with the rest of her. You understand why I’m saying this. I’m not blind, Totho. I have seen the way things have fallen, since the rescue.’

  ‘I . . . understand, sir.’

  And after that discussion it was just a matter of waiting until she was alone. Totho, who had gone into the palace of the Wasps without shuddering, and clung to the hull of the fixed-wing, starting its engine even as it fell, barely had the courage for this. He had no other path to take, though, that would not lead him further from her.

  Achaeos was elsewhere, or at least Totho could not spot him there, which he supposed was no guarantee. He had found Che standing at one of the upper windows, staring out at rain-dashed Myna. She was worried about Salma, he knew, and he supposed he should be, too, but there was only room in his head for so many worries at a time.

  ‘Che—’

  She turned, gave him a weak smile. ‘You really don’t have to come to see how I am. Or did Uncle Sten send you?’

  That ‘Uncle Sten’ – a child’s abbreviation – cut him sharply. He knew that there were only a few months between their ages, but Che always seemed younger than him, certainly younger than Salma or Tynisa. ‘No, I . . . I just wanted to talk . . . but if you don’t want to . . .’

  She was looking out of the window again. ‘I can’t understand the man,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe he’d just go off like this. He thinks they can’t harm him. If they catch him now, they’ll kill him. The Wasps have no patience with escaped slaves. We witnessed that ourselves.’

  Silently, Totho sat down close to her, within arm’s reach.

  ‘And all for a woman he’s barely met,’ she added. ‘I know I shouldn’t believe this but . . . it really is like he’s under a spell or something.’

  Quite, Totho thought, then said slowly, ‘There are ways to . . . catch someone’s attention that aren’t Art or magic. The Spider-kinden are renowned for it, weaving their webs, making people believe all sorts of things . . . As are other kinden, too . . .’ He made this last observation as pointedly as he could but she did not take the hint.

  ‘I don’t care about the woman at all, but I hope he’s safe. He never did take things seriously enough.’

  ‘Che—’

  ‘Yes?’ She turned to him. There were spots of damp across her face and for a moment he thought she had been crying. It was just the rain, though, blown inside past the lop-sided shutters.

  ‘I . . . When you were captured . . . We’ve known . . . For a long time, we’ve known each other . . .’ His voice, to his own ears, sounded like someone else’s, some stranger rehearsing a conversation like an actor going over his words. But this was the performance. This was him. ‘What do you think of me, Che?’

  She blinked at him, and she smiled slightly, and his heart leapt, but the hook had not caught. He was no Spider-kinden, no sly Moth mystic, to set such snares.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right. You did as much as anyone, and I’ve been so wrapped up in myself, I never thanked you. For coming to rescue me.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘Totho, I know you sometimes feel like an outsider. I really don’t care about who your parents are. You’ve always been a good friend, ever since in Mechanics when you helped me with my notes. I know sometimes you’ve not felt right, what with Salma and Tynisa fighting so well, and being . . . being who they are. Believe me, I’ve felt the same. You can’t imagine how it felt, growing up with Tynisa there and always in her shadow, but it’s different now – that’s all behind us. You’re as much a part of this as anyone.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But you’re more than that, to me,’ she told him, and he found that he suddenly couldn’t breathe. It was not hope that clutched him so. He felt the words about to emerge as though he was himself a seer.

  ‘You’re like a brother,’ she said. ‘You’re family, almost. Because you’ve always been there.’

  He wanted to say more. He wanted to warn her about Achaeos, to demand, in fact, that she send the man away. He wanted to shout at her, or get his crossbow and put three bolts into the Moth-kinden, wherever he was, and then demand to be taken seriously.

  But her words had stripped his strength from him. They had pierced him like knives. So he left her there, still awaiting Salma’s return.

  And there Che waited, with the rain slanting across the ruined window, for Salma to come home.

  We held on to each other so long. All through their joint captivity. And
now we’re free he’s off on his own, doing mad things.

  This was only a ladleful of the whole bowl of worries and thoughts that beset her. There was Achaeos, of course, and he frightened her because he was different, alien, and because of the way she felt when he looked at her or touched her hand. Beyond that there was all that Tynisa had confessed: how the haughty Mantis-kinden killer was not only, somehow, an old friend of her uncle’s, but Tynisa’s own father. That Tynisa, the golden child, was a halfbreed after all. Through the fog of this, Totho’s words had barely penetrated.

  And then she gasped, and almost let out such a loud cry that the entire Empire would hear, because there was suddenly a bedraggled figure atop a building across the square, and it was Salma. She saw him wearily let himself down, half-climbing, half-flying, and dash across the square out of the rain, and she hurried down to the ground floor to meet him.

  ‘Salma!’ She hugged him. ‘You’re safe!’ And then, a moment later, ‘You didn’t find her.’

  ‘I know where she is.’ Salma looked exhausted. ‘Can someone get me dry clothes, do you think? I’ve been playing dodge with the Wasp patrols for far too long in this foul weather. I think in the end they gave up because, no matter what they did once they caught me, they’d never make me feel more uncomfortable than I already am.’

  By the time he had some dry clothes on, made of the same Mynan homespun that they were all wearing bar Tisamon, Stenwold had come over to him.

  ‘The rain’s easing. Dusk’s on its way. I want to be moving out when it gets here.’

  ‘No argument here,’ replied Salma. ‘This is a good city to be out of.’

  ‘We’ll collect the horses beyond the city wall,’ Stenwold explained.

  ‘We’re meeting your messenger there. The one going to Tark?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’ll be going there too.’

  For a moment neither Stenwold nor Che realized exactly what he meant.

  ‘I don’t need you in Tark,’ Stenwold explained eventually, but Che was wiser than he was in this.

  ‘The Wasps have taken her away with the army,’ she said. ‘Grief in Chains.’

  ‘In a sense. She’s gone with them, anyway.’ In his mind, Salma recalled the parting words of the Wasp artificer. As Salma had stepped back onto the balcony, Aagen had said to him, ‘She has changed her name, of course. They do that often, her kinden.’

  ‘What name does she go by now?’ Salma had asked.

  ‘Now? Who can say?’ There was a twitch to the man’s expression, some melancholy emotion rising behind his eyes. ‘When she left here she called herself “Aagen’s Joy”.’

  And Salma realized that in all his life, privileged as it was, he had never really known envy. Not until then.

  ‘I will go with your man to Tark,’ he explained to Stenwold, in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘If you have work for me there, then give it to me and I’ll be your agent. But it’s to Tark that I’m going.’

  Stenwold sucked his breath through his teeth like a tradesman costing a job. ‘I can’t change your mind in this? Tark will be more dangerous by far.’

  Salma just shook his head.

  ‘Then yes, you can do my work there. Give me a short while to think. By the time we set out, I’ll have it.’

  He turned, leaving only Che’s horrified look.

  ‘Salma, it’s an army, a whole army of Wasps,’ she hissed. ‘They’ll kill you if they catch you. Torture you, perhaps.’

  ‘Then they had better not catch me.’ He opened his arms to her, held her against his chest. ‘We’ve been through the wars, you and I, but we’ll have our time together, when this is done. I’ll keep my skin safe and I’ll trust you to keep yours. I’ll be all right.’

  There was much packing and preparation for them to do, and Kymene’s people were checking their route out of the city. For those without a mind to stuff bags or pore over maps it was a time of unexpected idleness. Perhaps to avoid Che’s recriminations, Salma had taken himself high up, to the top floors of a derelict building where the boards were rotten and the footing unsure. In stalking him here, Tynisa had been as silent and stealthy as when she and Tisamon had mounted their midnight raid on Asta, but still, somehow, he knew that she was coming.

  ‘I’ve never been a man for arguing with friends,’ he said softly. She had got here partly through her natural sense of balance and partly through her Art, which had allowed her to go hand over hand up the walls when the upper floors had been too frail to support her. Now she stretched a leg out, testing the strength of a beam. The floorboards it had once supported were perishing to beetle-grubs and time, but the footing she found was solid.

  ‘Totho couldn’t get up here, nor Che or Stenwold,’ Salma went on. He was sitting in a nook, beneath a roof that was peppered with holes. One of the shafts of wan sunlight touched his face, and made it more golden still. ‘The Mantis or the Moth wouldn’t care where I went or what I did. Which just leaves you. You’ve got some words for me, no doubt?’

  His resting place was close to where the beam met the wall, and she took a few steps along it, shifting her shoulders slightly to stay level. ‘What game are you playing now, O hero of the Commonweal?’ she asked him.

  ‘No idea. I’m still waiting for someone to tell me the rules,’ he replied.

  ‘Che says it’s because of some dancer.’ She put a lot of venom into the word, more than she had meant.

  ‘Well, my people are great patrons of the arts,’ he told her flippantly and she yelled, ‘Will you be serious for once in your cursed life?’ and heard the words jumble and blur into the echo all the way down to the cellars. She might just have called the entire Empire down on the resistance, but for all that she could not have kept the words in.

  ‘I was a slave,’ he said simply, not rising to the bait at all. ‘I was a prisoner. They took the sky from me. They made me serious, I assure you.’

  ‘Then why are you going? Why not stay with us? With your friends, who . . . with people who love you? Don’t tell me it’s just some great crusade to free the Empire one slave at a time.’

  ‘I won’t tell you that, no.’ His face, in the sunlight, was beautiful. She was itching to punch it.

  ‘Che says that she, that woman, used her Art on you, or worse.’

  Salma shrugged, no more than that.

  ‘You love her more than you love us, is that it?’

  He looked at her sadly. ‘Perhaps love means different things to different kinden,’ he said softly. ‘I cannot ignore her.’

  But you can ignore me? She found that her hand had gone to the hilt of her new rapier without her meaning it. As soon as she realized, it took a great effort of will not to draw the blade.

  ‘Salma . . .’

  He stood up abruptly, in a brief flurry of wings, to land within her sword’s reach on the beam, facing her. The muscles in her arm twitched and in her mind, rising from a thousand years of buried heredity, came the words, Challenge him.

  ‘No . . .’ she said to herself, staring at his face.

  Challenge him. It is the only way you will win him. Show him your skill. Defeat him.

  She was trembling. The voices of a host of Mantis-kinden had clawed their way free of her ignorance and her Collegium upbringing. Salma just watched her patiently. Part of her was amazed that he had not taken up his own sword. Fight! howled part of her mind. Fight me!

  She jerked, the rapier rattling in its scabbard, and abruptly she had lost her balance, teetering on the beam. Instantly he had stepped in, arms about her to steady her, and for a moment she let herself rest against his chest, the voices in her head banished.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m still going. I have no choice.’ Once he was sure she was steady, he stepped from the beam and let his wings carry him gently downwards, leaving her to make her own halting way.

  With the Wasps still waiting for the resistance to rise against them, leaving the city without being seen was easy enough, tuck
ed away amidst one of Hokiak’s caravans, with a few coins paid to the guards to forestall too detailed a search. The last thing the Empire expected of its enemies just now was for them to leave. Once beyond the walls it was Khenice who led them: a line of hooded travellers who might be no more than a band of locals out to slingshot moths or gather night-growing mushrooms. They left as the sky was darkening, but there was light enough from the west by the time Khenice found their rendezvous point.

  There was nobody there, nor any horses, but the old Mynan told them to wait. It was only a minute or two before a voice from the gloom startled them.

  ‘If you’re not those I’m waiting for, I’m going straight home and selling the horses.’ It was a voice strangely accented, and the figure that stepped out in front of them was stranger still. Che let her Art-eyes adjust to the darkness, and what had seemed at first like a very lanky Fly-kinden was revealed as something quite other.

  Skrill, as Hokiak had named her, was a halfbreed, and part of her blood must be local Mynan, for she had their shade of skin and hair, and something of their look. Her face was thinner, though, and her ears were back-sloped, long and pointed, with a nose and chin almost as sharp. Her build was the most disconcerting aspect of her, though. She was very small in the body, like a Fly-kinden or child indeed, but her limbs were overlong, not grotesquely but certainly enough to notice, so that despite her lack of height the strides she took would match a tall man’s. Her movements were jerky, either a quick dash or standing very still. Beneath her cloak was a cuirass of metal scales, padded with felt for quiet movement. The packroll slung across her back had the two ends of a bow protruding from it, and there was a Wasp-issue shortsword bald-ricked up enough for the hilt to be almost hidden in her armpit. Beside her high-pitched voice there was little of the feminine about her, and her angular features rendered her androgynous.

  ‘Don’t stare at the lady,’ she chided them, for that was what they had been doing. ‘Now which one of you great lords is Master Stenwold Maker? I hear you’ve a job for me.’