Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Well.’ Stenwold took a deep breath, reflecting that a man of his age and position should not find himself in such a situation. ‘The word is that Cheerwell and a companion came to the very door of your townhouse. Her companion was a Dragonfly prince in full regalia, so he would have been hard to miss.’

  Elias frowned at him. ‘What are you implying?’

  ‘That they came to you, cousin Elias. Cheerwell was running from her attackers and, like any sensible girl, she went to her own family for protection.’

  ‘Stenwold, I’ve already told you, I haven’t seen her.’ But Elias’s expression revealed a thin smile creeping up on it. Stenwold’s heart sank. A disappointment, perhaps, but equally not a surprise.

  ‘What’s going on, Elias?’ he asked softly.

  Elias steepled his fingers, elbows planted on the desk. ‘My dear Stenwold, you have always been, shall we say, a maverick. The way you blunder about waving warnings at people, you’re the family embarrassment, really. Perhaps they may put up with it in Collegium, where I hear eccentrics are considered one of their greatest resources, but it’s different in Helleron. Here you can’t just charge about like some Ant-kinden pugilist looking for a fight. What precisely do you want?’

  ‘I want my niece, who is also your cousin,’ said Stenwold, his face now stripped of all warmth or humour.

  ‘You’ve made enemies here, Stenwold,’ Elias said, ‘and they hate it when you pry into their business. If you’ve got your niece involved in that, it’s your own fault.’

  ‘Yes, yes it is my fault,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘Although I had thought to keep her from danger by sending her here. So much for that. What exactly did you do to her, Elias?’

  ‘I?’

  ‘Shall we dispense with the dissembling? I can see that you’re desperate to gloat, and here am I, a willing audience. So tell me how clever you’ve been, Elias. What has happened to Cheerwell?’

  Elias clasped his hands together, the essence of a merchant concluding a deal. ‘Your enemies heard about her, Stenwold, and they tracked her down.’

  ‘They tracked her to you.’

  Elias’s smile dried up. ‘And if they did? The girl was blundering from trouble to trouble. She would have ended up in their hands eventually.’

  ‘You could have sheltered her.’

  ‘Why should I?’ Elias stood up, angry. ‘You bring your rantings to my door and expect me to put myself out for you? You’ve invented a war, Stenwold, and you can fight it. You’re the one who has been agitating all over Helleron about the best clients this city has seen in a hundred years.’

  ‘What have you done with my niece?’ Stenwold said, still the soul of reason.

  ‘I handed her over to them, Stenwold. And why not?’

  ‘Because she was your cousin? Ah no, we’ve been there.’ Stenwold’s hands were fists. ‘And how much did you get?’

  ‘If the Empire was kind enough to render a reward, then so be it,’ Elias told him.

  ‘You sold her then,’ said Stenwold. ‘Have you any idea what they’ll do to her? Torture her? Execute her?’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, they’re a just people,’ Elias replied. ‘They’ll probably make a slave out of her.’

  ‘Is that all?’ Stenwold hissed. ‘Just a slave, is it?’

  From elsewhere in the house something thumped, and Elias’s thin smile broadened just a little.

  ‘She was a wanted criminal, in their eyes. As are you.’

  ‘Enough of this!’ Stenwold was right up to the desk, two feet of wood all that was between them. ‘Where have they taken her?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I have told you. Why should I care where she’s gone? She’s gone, and that’s enough for me.’ Elias leant forwards across the desk until he and Stenwold were nose to nose. ‘However, you’ll find out, and sooner than you might want.’ Abruptly he broke off and took a bell from beside the penholder, ringing it loudly. His expression was triumphant when he added, ‘In fact, you can join her.’

  The echo of the bell fell away into the walls. Stenwold had his hand to his sword hilt, a step back from the desk now, waiting. After a moment of looking at the room’s single door, he cocked an eyebrow at Elias.

  ‘And?’

  Elias rang the bell again, and then a third time, so hard that it bounced from the desk top. The high sound sang out, fell silent. Nothing.

  ‘Guards!’ Elias shouted. ‘Guards! To me, now!’

  There was the smallest of smiles on Stenwold’s face. ‘It can be so difficult,’ he commented, ‘hiring reliable staff these days.’

  ‘Guards!’ Elias bellowed again, and this time the door finally opened, and a man, a single man, entered, stalking into the room like death. A tall Mantis-kinden in green, a claw-like metal blade jutting from his right hand.

  ‘Tisamon,’ Stenwold said, and despite Cheerwell’s plight, despite his cousin’s betrayal, he could not suppress a grin. ‘I didn’t know if you’d got my message. I didn’t know if you’d come.’

  The Mantis smiled back, or as much as he had ever done. ‘Ten years since you last called for me. How could you think only ten years would keep me away? I am no fickle Beetle-kinden, Stenwold. We remember.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Elias demanded. ‘What is going on?’

  ‘You have made use of my talents in the past, Master Monger, in matters of business,’ Tisamon told him mildly. ‘My name is Tisamon of Felyal.’

  Elias’s eyes bulged. He had missed the name the first time but now it came to him in full force. ‘I will pay you twice what this man is offering,’ he croaked. ‘Five times.’

  Tisamon’s lips twitched and he shook his head.

  ‘He takes money,’ Stenwold explained to his cousin, ‘but he fights for honour, and that’s a currency I fear you’re not good for.’ He was round the edge of the desk in a moment, his sword out while his free hand grasped Elias’s robe at the front.

  ‘Stenwold, please-’

  ‘You sold my niece to the Wasps,’ Stenwold hissed through clenched teeth.

  ‘Please, I can-’

  ‘You have nothing worthwhile to offer me,’ Stenwold said. He found that his sword arm was actually shaking with the effort of restraining it. ‘You have betrayed your own family, your city and your race. What should I do with you?’

  ‘Stenwold, I’m sorry-’

  ‘But you’re not. Or you’re sorry you’ve been found out. If a squad of Wasps turned up now, you’d sell me for as much as the market would bear. Shut up!’ He slammed the babbling merchant back against the wall. ‘You have no idea how much, how very much, I want to kill you, Elias. Every base and violent part of me is baying for it.’ He mustered all the control at his command and released the trembling man, stepped back. ‘I will not compound your betrayal by making myself a kinslayer, however. I do not think I could live with that.’

  He sheathed his sword, unblooded still, and turned to go.

  ‘Stenwold, cousin. . thank you. .’ Elias gasped.

  His back turned to the merchant, Stenwold paused in the doorway. ‘Tisamon, however, has no such qualms, I wager.’

  ‘What?’

  Stenwold stepped out of the study and closed the door behind him, then went to sit on a chair in the hall, feeling utterly drained and disgusted by the world. Through the closed door behind him he heard Elias shrieking out his desperate offers to buy Tisamon’s soul. A fitting thing for him, Stenwold decided: dying with numbers on his lips.

  After a moment Stenwold glanced round to see the Mantis emerge from the study, cleaning his blade meticulously with a piece of cloth cut from Elias’s robe. ‘Did you really think that I might turn my back on you?’ Tisamon said quietly.

  Stenwold approached the Mantis-kinden wonderingly. ‘Look at that. You haven’t aged a moment in ten years.’

  ‘You have,’ Tisamon said uncharitably. ‘Older and balder and fatter. Mind you, you were never slim or well-haired.’
<
br />   ‘And young?’

  ‘It seems to me we were neither of us ever that young, even then.’

  Left hand to left they clasped, and Stenwold noticed that the other man had aged, even so. The patches of white might be lost within his fair hair, but there were new lines on his face that bespoke a less than happy life.

  ‘What would you have done,’ the Mantis asked lightly, ‘if your message had not reached me?’ He did not say if I had not come.

  Stenwold felt a lurch within him, at what would befall them both shortly. Himself and his oldest friend. ‘I would have fought,’ he said simply.

  ‘I think you would,’ Tisamon agreed.

  ‘How many would I have been fighting, then?’

  ‘Half a dozen of your locals, the same number of Wasp light infantry.’ Tisamon shrugged, as though to suggest it was nothing much to think about. Stenwold reminded himself: Barely a sound, all the while I was talking to Elias. Tisamon had earned his bread as assassin as well as duellist, even back then. He had treated the trade as the continuation of the duel by other means. There was not even a single spot of blood on his clothes.

  ‘We have a lot to catch up on,’ Stenwold said.

  ‘Less than you think. The past has been just keeping place for the future, hasn’t it? They’ve finished playing with the Commonweal and now they’re coming for us, at last.’

  At last? But yes, of course Tisamon was looking forward to the Wasps’ next move. ‘You keep yourself informed?’

  ‘Helleron’s a hive of rumours, for those who will listen.’

  ‘And yet nobody will listen.’ Stenwold shook his head as he walked out of his dead cousin’s house, and had his sword immediately to hand. There was a man standing there, right outside the door: a Moth-kinden, Stenwold noted with surprise. No servant or creature of Elias’s then. ‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ Stenwold asked him.

  ‘Not an assassin, as I had first assumed,’ came Tisamon’s voice from behind him. ‘In fact, something of a benefactor. He was creeping up on you even as you went in the door. He’d seen the Wasps, you see, and wanted to warn you,’ Tisamon said, ‘but sadly I was creeping up on him.’

  Stenwold glanced back at the Moth. ‘You didn’t kill him then?’

  ‘Moth-kinden,’ said Tisamon. ‘Old habits die hard.’ Like the rest of the past, the ancient fealties of his people ran deep. ‘Old loyalties, we have,’ and he was smiling at Stenwold again like a ghost from seventeen years ago.

  Stenwold turned back to the waiting Moth, who had not moved or made a sound all this time. He noticed the stranger was wounded and bandaged messily. He could not make the connection. ‘So where do you come in? What are the Wasps to you?’

  ‘I care nothing for them. But I wanted to warn you.’

  ‘Warn me?’

  ‘I saw your niece being taken,’ said the Moth without much inflection, keeping his expression guarded.

  ‘You saw Cheerwell?’ Suddenly Stenwold came alive. The Moth backed off smoothly as he approached.

  ‘She. . helped me,’ he said.

  Stenwold stopped before he forced the man out of the door. ‘You have nothing to fear from me,’ he said, and then: ‘I understand now. You must be from Tharn. A raider, are you?’

  The Moth nodded cautiously. ‘My name. . is Achaeos.’

  ‘Well, right now Helleron doesn’t have much claim on my loyalty,’ announced Stenwold. ‘The master of this house, my cousin Elias Monger, lies dead in the next room, and I imagine your grand high potentates or whatever they’re called are going to be rubbing their hands over that.’

  ‘They will shed no tears,’ Achaeos agreed.

  ‘Tell me about Cheerwell. Where is she?’

  Achaeos related all that he had witnessed without emotion. He had a trained eye for detail, Stenwold noted: here was a man used to spying out the enemy. The thought that he, Stenwold, might be one of that enemy was a strange one. With a very few exceptions the Moth-kinden were a race he had never had much to do with.

  ‘They took them where?’

  ‘South and east. I know the city has slave camps located at its edge,’ Achaeos reported. Stenwold had no idea whether Moths kept slaves these days, and nothing in the man’s tone enlightened him.

  Stenwold rubbed at his chin, feeling the stubble grown there. ‘You have no idea how hard I pushed in order to make the time I did. If all this had happened in a month’s time I’d have had a completed railroad to carry me straight here from Collegium. As it is, this last tenday and more, I’ve hopped on at least five different forms of transport, and still I’m too late. Too late by a single day.’

  ‘You’ll go after her.’ For Tisamon it was a rhetorical question.

  ‘She’s my niece, and she’s with another of my students. I’ll go after them both.’ Stenwold bared his teeth in something like a smile. ‘I shall not lack for help, though. Do you remember Scuto the Thorn Bug?’

  ‘Remember him?’ said Tisamon. ‘I’ve turned down three contracts to kill him.’

  Stenwold maintained the semblance of a smile. These histories we do not ask about. ‘I shall go to him now. He’s bored into this city like a grub. For information or material, I shall not lack for help.’

  ‘My blade is yours,’ Tisamon said, so simply that Stenwold stared at him.

  ‘I had not thought. .’

  ‘I told you.’ The Mantis looked down. ‘I have been marking time all these years. Did you think I would turn from you now?’

  They had met perhaps three times, after the siege at Myna. Sometimes Tisamon had helped in Stenwold’s intelligencing, at the start. As the work changed, and watching and waiting became more important than a swift blade, there had been less need to call upon him. Meanwhile College work had claimed Stenwold more and more and they had gone their separate ways. It had been ten years since they had last seen each other.

  ‘I. . don’t know what to say,’ the Beetle stammered. A terrible feeling of doom hung over him: We will both regret this. ‘At least take time to think.’ Before burdening me with your promise. Mantis promises were harder than steel, and heavier to bear. ‘You have a life, here. .’

  Tisamon was staring at his feet again. It was a sight so familiar that for a second it was twenty years ago, Tisamon unable to answer some cutting observation one of the others had made.

  ‘I have no life, here,’ the Mantis whispered. ‘Seventeen years, Sten — You know what I mean.’

  Time has not passed for him. He knew that the Mantis-kinden were loath to let go of hurts, or wrongs, or old friends either. He had never quite appreciated how alien the feeling would be, to become involved with such a mind.

  I am so sorry, my friend.

  They had made arrangements to meet that evening, Stenwold and Tisamon. They had almost spoken the name of the place together, their old haunt from the old, old days. The moment of coincidence had brought a brief wash of nostalgia to Stenwold, but the emotion had only driven in the jagged-glass thought of what was to come that much more deeply.

  He had set off for Scuto’s slum den, resolutely keeping his mind on the task to come. Beetles were a practical folk, he told himself. They did not spend their lives worrying about things they could not be sure of.

  Scuto’s neighbours spotted him way off, but he had no worries about that. Many of them would even recognize him as the Thorn Bug’s friend. Here, of all places in Helleron, he did not fear assault.

  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.’