Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Tynisa recalled the ill-fated Captain Halrad’s manner, his possessive attitude. If all Wasps thought that way then they would seek to pluck Helleron and hold it close, crush it in their grasping hands until it was good for nothing and nobody. The Wasp Empire, by Halrad’s own words, was no respecter of mutual benefit. The Wasp Empire saw only property to be possessed and enemies to vanquish.

  The four of them had dressed themselves up as local peasantry, and Salma and Tynisa had hoods up to shade their faces. If the mysterious Thalric was waiting for them in Helleron, as seemed almost certain, then they were determined to make it harder for him. The city’s daunting size would become their unexpected ally.

  Helleron finally fell across them like a shadow. The buildings rose abruptly high on both sides, the air thickening with smoke and the stench of people. Here on the outskirts were those seeking to mimic the commerce of the inner city: little amateur markets selling goods of dubious provenance for small change, itinerant entertainers and charlatans, beggars everywhere. A squad of Ant soldiers drilled in an open space before the city, their masters or employers no doubt tending their business within. Stake-fenced pens advertised the wares of slavers: even though Beetles kept no slaves and allowed none within their towns, more lives were bought and sold in Helleron every day than anywhere else in the Lowlands.

  ‘Where do you stop?’ Che inquired of the driver of their automotive. He was sitting one level down from them, exposed to the open air just like any real beetle driver.

  ‘Chancery Street Station,’ he rasped back. ‘Got a big depot there, they have.’

  ‘Excuse me, but do you happen to know Benevolence Square?’ she continued. It seemed the easiest way, although she was sure an experienced agent would have had a more subtle way of doing it.

  He did indeed, and although the way was long, they had only to follow one of the outer circula, as he called Helleron’s ringroads, in order to come to it.

  ‘You can’t miss it,’ their driver assured them. ‘The old Benevolence place has got two great big skeletons all over it.’

  That sounded unlikely, but they disembarked as instructed, having no directions to trust save his. The tide of busy humanity that was Helleron immediately engulfed them, and in the first moments Che was nearly ripped away from her companions and hauled off down the street by the simple crush of people, each one a slave to his destination. The four of them huddled together, feeling cowed by such a press. Great vehicles, beasts and wagons crawled past them to one side, the walls leered down to the other. A succession of short-tempered people buffeted them as they stood in the way, a stone in the course of the human stream.

  Tynisa signalled that they should move on, and they found their way into the flow, bustled along at an undignified pace. The people around them seemed mostly workers and small traders. They looked close mouthed and sullen, minding their own business and never looking at each other. Passing on, the wall to one side gave way to a succession of small workshops: a cobbler, a piece-maker, a sharpener, a leatherworker, men and women hard at work with solid, uncomplaining, joyless faces.

  Salma’s face, too, was wrinkled up. ‘I can’t understand how they live with the smell of themselves,’ he complained. ‘The smell of the air. . it’s like it’s been burned and then sweated out.’

  ‘Let me guess, they don’t have. . factories or anything like that, where you come from,’ Totho said.

  ‘And how thankful I am for it,’ said Salma. ‘We may have our vices but this mayhem isn’t one of them. I don’t even know if there’s a name for what vice this is.’

  ‘Helleron,’ Tynisa suggested. ‘There’s your name.’

  Totho shrugged, as best he could in the crush. ‘Well, I think it’s. . it’s got promise. I’d like to work here. Everything ever manufactured is made here. What do you think, Che?’

  She felt rather guilty in the face of his enthusiasm, but she replied, ‘Collegium for me, every time.’

  ‘And that must be the Benevolence,’ Salma said suddenly. Ahead of them, past a line of near-identical inns and stables, lay a square. The largest building fronting it was facing them as well. The driver had been wrong, however: there was only one skeleton patterned in pale bricks amongst the darker stone. The other figure depicted a woman, austerely offering her hand to the same cadaver. The ‘old Benevolence place’ had been an almshouse once, offering succour to the needy, the destitute, the sick and the mad. Now it was a workhouse, where any succour was bought with a hard day’s labour. There was little enough going free in Helleron.

  Salma struck without warning, his fingers pincering the wrist of a boy even as the child was putting a hand into his pocket. There was a fraught moment, for the child produced a blade, and then Che saw it was not even a child, but a Fly-kinden adult got up in child’s clothing. A long look passed between Salma and the wretch, and then the Dragonfly let him go, and the man was immediately lost in the crowd.

  ‘You should have called the watch,’ Che said.

  Salma gave her a bleak look. ‘Just having to live here seems punishment enough.’

  ‘There are an awful lot of people here,’ sighed Tynisa. ‘How are we going to find this Bolwyn individual?’

  ‘We’ve missed him,’ Salma said. ‘He’d be expecting us off the Sky Without which must have got in. . Totho?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ Totho guessed.

  ‘We have to hope that he’ll come here again to look for us. So let’s get up on the steps of the big place over there, and watch for him. And if he doesn’t come today, what’s left of it, we’ll try it again tomorrow. If that doesn’t work then we’ll make other plans. What other plans, though, I don’t know.’

  ‘I’ve got some relatives in Helleron,’ Che suggested. ‘I can probably remember their name, given a minute. Someone must know where they live.’

  ‘It’s a fallback, possibly,’ Salma confirmed. ‘Now, eyes on the crowd, and try not to look suspicious.’

  There was no Bolwyn that day, or if he was there at all, they missed him. They ate unpalatable food from even less palatable vendors, and when the smoggy gloom deepened into night they sought refuge at one of the inns, only to find its prices unheard of, so that their communal wealth would barely buy them enough space on the common-room floor. Che then remembered that they had passed a Keepers’ wayhouse coming in, and they tangled back through the gaslit streets trying to find it. They were not the only ones abroad after sundown, for at first they encountered guardsmen with oil-burning lamps and crossbows, but only in those areas where the residents had wealth worth protecting. The other nocturnal pedestrians were involved in darker trades, either practising them or seeking to buy. The four soon had plenty of offers in their short journey, from the pleasures of the flesh to drugs and potions to small valuables whose current owners were anxious to part with them.

  The wayhouse, found at last, promised no better accommodation than any of the inns, but it was to be had for the price of a reasonable donation, and they could rest easy there without the fear of getting their throats cut. The Keepers were a charitable order, originally from Collegium, which had spread throughout the Lowlands as part of the great upswell of humanist philosophy a century ago, when good deeds had been fashionable, and the wealthy competed in funding public works. The benevolent way of life still endured in Collegium, but apart from the grey-robed Keepers there was little enough of it to be seen in Helleron.

  The next day, halfway to noon, Salma spotted their man.

  They had been taking it in turns to stand up and stare, the others meanwhile sitting on the steps of the Benevolence, as many did. No beggars there, though. From time to time a pair of Ants with clubs dangling at their belts came out from inside, and anyone who could not show them at least a coin or two was thrown off roughly. The Benevolence provided only one form of charity for the poor, which was earned with hard graft.

  Salma nudged Che with the toe of his sandal, startling her out of a light doze. When she stood up, as they all did, he mu
rmured, ‘Far end, on the right corner. What do you think?’

  Che saw only a bustle of people there and it seemed impossible that Salma could have recognized any face at that distance.

  ‘Give me the picture,’ the Dragonfly demanded. He glanced quickly from the sketch to the crowd. ‘It’s him, I’m sure of it. Look, he’s coming this way.’

  It took the others longer to pick him out from the crowds, even with Salma muttering constant directions. Then the face leapt out of the mob at them. A man with a heavy, unshaven jaw, hair already receding a little from the time that picture was drawn. He wore the open, sleeveless robe that seemed to be the fashion for artisans and middle merchants here, but the under-robe below it was supplemented with a buckled leather cuirass. A man undoubtedly expecting trouble, and this impression inspired a kind of trust.

  ‘We have to approach him. He won’t know us,’ Che said.

  ‘Allow me,’ Tynisa said, and sauntered casually down the steps of the Benevolence. They tracked her progress through the crowd, moving with no obvious direction or urgency, until she was within arm’s reach of Bolwyn. He twitched as she passed, turned to look, and they guessed she must have snagged his sleeve. She spoke to him, simply an apology rendered, then apparently interest expressed by a male Beetle of middling years towards an attractive young woman of another kind. Interest repaid, as she smiled at him, and a moment later the pair were walking away together, making for one of the roads leading out of Benevolence Square.

  ‘Off we go,’ Salma said, and the other three descended into the crowd, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible as they intercepted Tynisa and her newfound friend.

  Once out of sight of the square, the two of them ducked under the awning of a clothier’s shop and mulled over fabrics until the stragglers caught up. Bolwyn glanced around guardedly. He had a long knife sheathed at his belt, and one hand constantly plucked at the robe over it.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘Why weren’t you on the Sky?’

  ‘Due to mutual friends who wanted more of our company,’ Tynisa told him. He grunted.

  ‘So you’re Stenwold’s new people,’ he remarked. ‘He said to expect a Commonwealer and I’m not sure I believed him. Nice of him to pick his people so they’re just about as conspicuous as possible.’

  Salma looked at him levelly. ‘I can’t believe you saw through my disguise. Besides, I’ve seen a half-dozen of my kinden so far in Helleron. We get everywhere, apparently.’

  Bolwyn shrugged. ‘So, you know me but I’m not sure I need to know you, yet. We’ll let the chief decide on that. When’s the Old Man himself expected?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Che admitted. ‘He said he’d meet us here as soon as he could, but there were. . problems back home.’

  ‘Even in Collegium now? Well, how the world turns,’ Bolwyn said, scratching his stubble. ‘Let’s get you off the streets as soon as, shall we? Come with me and just try to keep up.’

  He looked each way down the street before hurrying out into the crowd, obviously used to Helleron’s human press. For them, however, it took a fair deal of shouldering and elbowing to keep pace with him.

  ‘Friendly sort, isn’t he?’ Che muttered.

  ‘I don’t think this business of ours breeds friends,’ Tynisa told her.

  Bolwyn got them off the street fairly quickly, heading down a narrow alley that was backed onto on either side by a row of small shops. Nobody else had much reason to go there, and only very few were out to watch them pass: an old Beetle sitting at a window, smoking a clay pipe cupped in his hands; a limping Fly in old rags scavenging through newer rags. There was a sour, rotting smell here over and above Helleron’s customary reek.

  Their guide kept glancing back at them, stopping and then starting again. Che thought that he could not look more suspicious if he tried, but then she was beginning to think that her breed was definitely not made for espionage. That led her to wonder just what her uncle had ever experienced that had led him into the trade. Or Bolwyn either, for that matter. What course had ended up in him turning down this alley on this day, with four amateurs in tow?

  ‘Wait up, Bolwyn,’ Salma snapped. ‘Who’s that up ahead?’

  Che had not even noticed anyone, but she was beginning to realize that Salma’s eyes were far keener than her own. Ahead, she saw, were a handful of figures, muffled in cloaks.

  ‘Don’t you worry about them,’ Bolwyn’s voice came back to them. ‘They’re mine, to make sure nobody comes after us.’

  They hurried towards the waiting men, who looked tough and mean: an Ant, a Beetle and some kind of halfbreed. Their eyes, passing across Bolwyn’s four young followers, remained devoid of emotion.

  Is this the sort of person I’ll be dealing with, from now on? Che wondered. She was beginning to feel homesick for Collegium, where unpleasant things, when they happened, were at least the exception.

  Salma almost punched her in the mouth, and she had a second of utter confused hurt before she realized he had merely flung out an arm to halt her.

  ‘Run!’ he shouted, and she had a sudden sense of motion. She lost vital seconds trying to understand whilst the others were already reacting. Tynisa, her rapier clear of its scabbard, was skittering back down the alleyway. Totho had already turned, running off back the way they had come and trusting that the others were following him. His artificer’s bag jostled and bounced awkwardly on his back.

  There were men now coming at them from a side alley, and as the first one’s cloak twitched aside she caught a flash of black and gold.

  ‘Bolwyn!’ she cried, seeing even as she did that his three men were starting to move forward. They were not coming to her rescue, though. They were coming to join in the ambush.

  Bolwyn turned, and for a moment his face was just an expressionless mask, without any life or feeling. . and it seemed to blur even as she looked, a smearing of the features in some way that knotted her insides with horror. Then the Beetle’s face was as before, but she still felt that something else was watching her through those mild eyes.

  ‘Run!’ Salma yelled to her again. He had his punch-sword now in hand, lunging forward as the first Wasp soldier cleared the alley’s mouth. The man deflected the thrust but Salma pushed close, whipping his elbow up to crack into his opponent’s jaw.

  Che stumbled back, hands still groping for her own blade.

  ‘Run!’ Salma bellowed once more, and she ran.

  Ten

  Tynisa pelted down the alleyway, seeing the street at the far end, with all its life and its busy throng. There was a figure appearing in the way, though, then two of them: nondescript men who could have simply been out-of-work labourers, save for the shortswords they were now drawing from within their jerkins. She saw Totho, ahead of them, skid to a halt, about to turn and help.

  ‘Go!’ she shouted at him. ‘Go! I can take them!’ And he went, and she was running full pelt with her rapier extended, and there were still only two of them.

  They were not skilled. Even as she was almost on them something in her read them, the way they stood, the way they held their swords. These were cheap hoods, and she was better than that.

  She feigned left, went right at the very last moment. The man to her right had gone along with her first indication. Now he was in the way of his fellow. She buried the rapier in him, through the leather of his jerkin, his shirt, under his ribs. She held firm to the hilt and ran on, letting the force of her charge drag him around by the wound, letting it pull her around to face him, and slide the blood-slick rapier clean of him even as he fell. He got in the way of his fellow even then, the wretched man helplessly stumbling over the convulsing body. She could see herself as though she was watching an actor in some awful, mock-tragic opera. She watched as she put the blade effortlessly into the back of the man’s neck as he tripped past her, ramming it home with brutal efficiency and then whipping it out again.

  She felt a keen and terrible sense of her own prowess, some possessing f
orce that guided her hand, that hissed triumph in her ear. Her face, unknown to her, was smiling.

  Totho was gone and she looked back for the others. Instead she spotted two Wasp soldiers coming for her. Their swords were sheathed but they had open hands outstretched to unleash the fire of their Art. She heard Salma shouting for her to run.

  She skipped backwards into the crowded street. The people eddied about her, some staring at her reddened sword, some into the alley at what she had done with it. There were now screams, shouting. She watched the Wasps coming.

  Then there were more than Wasps coming. From further down the street a half-dozen guardsmen were pushing. They had shields, armour. She cast a desperate look back down the alley. There was a lot going on there, and she could not see how her friends were faring.

  The guard were almost here and she decided that she had no wish to answer questions. She would find somewhere to hole up, come back as soon as things allowed. Without putting her blade away, she ran for cover.

  Che had her sword out and, when the Wasp grabbed her other wrist, the decision to slash at him was taken entirely on reflex, following her training at the Prowess Forum. The Wasp flinched back from it but she still laid open the back of his hand. Somewhere behind her Salma was fighting, steel ringing on steel amid the curses of his opponents.

  The Wasp reached for her again, sword up now to deflect her own. She retreated from him, knees bent and stance textbook-perfect. ‘Salma!’ she called.

  ‘Run!’ she heard him urge her once again.

  ‘Can’t!’ She watched the Wasp as she spoke and knew, before he moved, that he would take advantage of the word. He came in, weapon high but still trying to grab her with his wounded hand. Her blade darted forwards at his chest, and then under his parry, sliding along his side. It cut only armour, though, scoring along the metal beneath his cloak. He snagged the collar of her tunic and she brought the pommel of her blade down across the raw wound on his hand.