Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The two hunters had developed an understanding, it seemed, and, as they had come back through the forest fringe, perhaps more than that. The darkness within the forest was as dense as midnight, not the near-dawn they had left outside, but she could still see enough in the half-light to make out the trees.

  And more than the trees. She stopped suddenly, and Tisamon halted at the same instant, looking straight at her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you see them too, don’t you?’

  She was not sure whether she really had until he said it, but there were figures there, amid the trees. Not close, not moving, and in the gloom even her eyes fought to distinguish their outlines. Then they became clearer, or perhaps closer, and she stopped trying to make them out. They were human, or might have been. They had the poise and stance of Mantis-kinden and yet, as she had glimpsed them, they seemed to be formed like praying mantids, with gleaming chitin and glittering eyes, and yet again there was gnarled wood and thorns worked into them.

  Tynisa stopped then and turned her eyes away. ‘I do not. . I cannot be seeing this.’ A Collegium-raised girl, from a world of rationality and science, for all that she understood none of it.

  ‘Your blood says otherwise,’ was Tisamon’s quiet reply, before they moved on in silence once more.

  It took a while of tracking to locate Stenwold’s new campsite. When they stepped into sight the Beetle looked up at them and she saw the brief hope dashed in his face.

  ‘Any sign?’ he asked quietly.

  Tisamon shook his head and went to sit by the dying fire.

  ‘They keep their prisoners in pits there, and we looked in every one,’ Tynisa explained. ‘No sign. They could have been in one of the buildings. There was no way of knowing.’

  She went to sit next to Tisamon, but he looked up at her with a face utterly devoid of invitation, only his usual cold mask with which he confronted the world, the face of a man expecting a fight. Their shared silent communion of the night was gone, and in his eyes there was no admission that it had ever existed. Mere minutes before they had been moving as one between the trees. Now his eyes were unwriting it all, remaking each memory in his own image. She felt a bitter anger well up in her.

  What was all that about, then? What did we share earlier, and where did we leave it? But she could voice no questions, and he would give no answers. Her fists clenched and unclenched and, not for the first time, she wished that she could talk to Che right now. Che was the only person she could unburden herself to.

  All the more reason to rescue her.

  She rose and went to sit beside Stenwold instead.

  ‘Why did you move the camp?’ Tisamon asked. ‘Not that it was difficult to find.’

  ‘We had some nocturnal visitors.’ Stenwold shook his head heavily. ‘A patrol chased us into the woods.’ He saw Tisamon flinch and he frowned. ‘They’re just woods, Tisamon. Trees. You get them all over.’

  ‘Are they indeed?’ The Mantis regarded him. ‘And so you two just crept into the Darakyon and crept out again?’

  Stenwold shared an unhappy glance with Totho. ‘Well. . you can imagine me and the boy here at night in the middle of a forest. .’ A quick look at Tisamon showed the Mantis was not satisfied with that. ‘What can I say?’

  ‘I don’t know. What can you say?’

  ‘It was dark. There were sounds. Woods at night are. . not my favourite place,’ Stenwold said defensively. There were sounds. Oh there were sounds all right. He wondered if the last dregs of the panic showed again on his face, in that moment: he and Totho blundering in circles, trying to retrace their path. There had been no path. Behind them had been only briars, until they had found a pitch-black clearing by feeling with their hands, a clearing from which there was no way out at all. They had gone from tree to gnarled tree, lancing their gloves on thorns, leaving drops of their blood smeared on the bark, and they had gone around and around in the darkness until Totho had tried to light a lantern, and to the pits with the Wasps. Stenwold remembered that moment most of all, for the steel lighter would not catch, just sparks and sparks that illuminated nothing but themselves, and in the silence afterwards they had heard an almost musical sound, from all around and far away, that could have been the forest breathing.

  ‘We had. . all sorts of games running through the woods at night,’ Stenwold finished weakly, and heard Tisamon’s almost triumphant snort.

  ‘Where is the Moth?’ the Mantis asked.

  ‘Achaeos?’ Stenwold looked at his hands. ‘He wasn’t with us. I can’t imagine the Wasps caught him. He can fly and see in the dark, after all. Still, if he’s around, he’s still keeping his distance. He never did want to go into the forest.’

  Stenwold and Totho had sat down to wait for dawn, while the Darakyon creaked and rasped about them, lightless and bitterly cold. The time they had spent there, unable to sleep, nerves constantly fraying at each groan and snap, had seemed too long to possibly fit inside only one night.

  Then it had come to them. They had heard it, the slow, careful approach of something very large. There had been the rattle of Totho trying to load his crossbow blind, and Stenwold had taken up his sword, hopeless in the darkness. I do not believe in Tisamon’s folk tales, he had told himself, but traitor logic had grinned at him and said, Why think of ghosts at all? There are many things belonging to the material world that can kill a man. In his mind’s eye he had envisaged that stealthy approach as a mantis, an insect ten feet long with huge night-seeing eyes and neatly folded killing arms. He had held out his sword invisibly before him, hearing Totho’s fumbling grow increasingly desperate and hearing the thing, whatever it was, grow closer.

  They had run, the pair of them. In the same moment, as if by agreement, they had bolted, and the clearing was suddenly permeable again. They had bolted through briars and needling thorns and not stopped, and they had run until, without warning, there were no trees around them and they were half a mile east of their original camp. They had then spent the scant time before dawn finding the automotive again.

  ‘It’s just a wood,’ he said, voice sounding hollow to his own ears. ‘In the dark, the imagination will always run riot. We were in no real danger, two armed men. It’s Achaeos I’m worried about.’

  ‘He might just have absconded,’ Totho said darkly. ‘This isn’t his fight.’

  ‘When he comes back. .’ Stenwold said, and paused. ‘When he comes back, because if he doesn’t we may have to make a different choice, we have to make a decision. We don’t know whether Che and Salma are being held at Asta, or whether Achaeos now is, if things have gone really badly, or whether they’ve already gone east, deeper into the Empire. If they’re being kept apart from other prisoners, well, that could prove good or bad.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Totho.

  ‘I mean that it probably suggests they’ve been set aside for questioning,’ said Stenwold. ‘I’m sorry. It could just mean they’re being given special treatment, held more securely, I don’t know, but. . Tisamon and I know how the Wasps work.’

  ‘Maybe. . I should go in tomorrow night,’ said Totho reluctantly. ‘I mean, I’m not so. . with the creeping around, but I’ve got the tools to force a lock.’

  Stenwold grimaced. ‘It may even come to that.’

  And a new voice asked, ‘Where or what is Myna?’

  Achaeos had returned. He looked dead on his feet, his grey skin gone deathly pale, eyes narrowed down to white slits.

  ‘Where in the name of reason have you been all night?’ Stenwold demanded of him.

  Achaeos regarded him coldly. ‘Myna,’ he said. ‘Does this name mean anything to you?’

  ‘It does.’ Tisamon stood, his metal claw unfolding from the line of his arm.

  ‘She is going to Myna,’ the Moth said. ‘They are not in the town down there.’

  ‘How did you find this out?’ Stenwold asked him.

  ‘Old ways.’ Achaeos shrugged. ‘Ways you wouldn’t understand.’

  Tisamon
and Stenwold exchanged looks in which their mutual memory of Myna was unearthed, and neither of them looked happy with it.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Totho said. ‘He can’t know that.’

  ‘They are gone to Myna,’ Achaeos insisted stubbornly.

  ‘He could have. . crept into Asta,’ Tynisa said slowly, ‘and overheard. But you didn’t, did you?’

  ‘There are ways,’ said Tisamon. ‘Masters of the Grey,’ he added.

  ‘Servants of the Green,’ Achaeos completed, as if by rote. ‘Yes, there are ways.’ If only you knew what I have risked, to take those ways. ‘So, Mantis, you at least believe me.’

  There was a very swift movement that Achaeos could not follow, and a moment later the thin, cold edge of Tisamon’s blade was pressing against his neck. He held very still, nearly swallowing his heart inside, but outside he managed to cling to his customary aloofness.

  ‘I am no fool, nor am I quick to trust,’ Tisamon told him. ‘There are ways, yes, and one of them is to be in the pay of our enemies. Moths are subtle. It would not surprise me to find you playing such a game. Especially a game that led to Myna. What better place to lure Stenwold, in order to catch him?’

  ‘I speak only what I have seen, Servant of the Green. If you know my kinden so well, you should know not to bandy threats against me,’ Achaeos said defiantly, but the blade twitched against his skin, the faintest prick of blood welling.

  ‘Don’t think that you can frighten me,’ warned Tisamon, although to Stenwold’s ear, who had known him so long, there was a slight uncertainty to his voice.

  ‘I was not an assassin the last time you drew on me,’ said Achaeos, ‘and I am not a spy now. I could tell you one thing more that should convince you, but it is for your ears alone.’

  Without moving his blade from its resting place, Tisamon leant close suspiciously. As he heard the Moth’s whispered sentence, the others saw him flinch from it. At once the blade was clear of the Moth’s neck, folding back along its owner’s arm.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ the Mantis announced.

  ‘Just from a bit of mystic posturing?’ Totho demanded. ‘Listen, Che could be in one of those buildings right now. They could be about to actually torture her. And now we’re supposed to. . just go away to some whole other city, all because of some dream you had or something? Stenwold, you’re not going to listen to this rubbish, surely?’

  To his alarm Stenwold was not looking dismissive, only troubled. ‘There is more in the world than we know,’ he said quietly. ‘I have been a long time trying to stave off that conclusion, but in the end I have had to admit there are things I have seen that I cannot account for. Tisamon, you truly believe this?’

  A short nod was the Mantis’s only response.

  ‘Tynisa?’

  She gave Tisamon a narrow look. ‘I’m with Totho on this. We should at least take another turn around Asta first.’

  ‘Well, in Collegium we abide by the vote, and it looks as though I get the deciding one,’ said Stenwold. ‘I’m out of my depth here, with this talk of arcana, but logic tells me that Asta is a staging post, a muster ground. If you had important prisoners, maybe you would indeed move them to the nearest proper city. Which is Myna — of unhappy memory. Tisamon. .’ Stenwold hesitated, biting his lip.

  ‘Speak,’ Tisamon said.

  ‘I. . find it difficult to hold to what I cannot understand.’

  ‘You always did.’

  ‘But I never had so much riding on a decision before. What did he say to you, the Moth? What did he say to convince you?’ He glanced at Achaeos, who was impassive as always.

  ‘I cannot think that it would help you to know.’

  ‘Please tell me,’ asked Stenwold, and the Mantis shrugged.

  ‘He said that those who told him they had gone to Myna also said that they stayed their hands from us because of the badge that I bear.’ He touched it for a moment, the gold circle-and-sword pin of the Weapons-masters. ‘And I earned this, Stenwold. I earned it in blood and fire.’

  For a long time Stenwold stared at him, before transferring his gaze to the others. Totho still looked rebellious but something in Tynisa’s face, some recent experience, had changed her mind. He gave a great sigh. ‘We’ll go to Myna.’ He had never thought that he would see Myna again, nor had he wished to.

  It was a jumbled vision they had of it, landing at an airfield overflown by yellow and black flags. The cumbersome heliopter shuddered and groaned at the last, settling too fast and creaking with the effort, despite the repairs that Aagen had grounded it for last night.

  The savagery of daylight, after the dimness of their holding cell, left the two of them staggering and blinking. Salma could not shield his eyes and so Che put her hands over them for him, knowing how much more sensitive they were than hers. Grief in Chains did not flinch or blink but gazed straight at the sun with her all-white eyes and glowed with it, drinking it in. She had paled and pined in the last day, but now she shone as though she had a piece of the sun inside her, and for a second the Wasp soldiers stepped back, and every head on the airfield turned to stare.

  Then Thalric was hustling them, ordering the soldiers to take them in hand. They were rough with her and with Salma, but Grief they escorted with something more uncertain. She was beautiful, Che had to admit; she was perfect. Colours flowed across her skin like silk.

  Che received only a confused, blurring impression of Myna. First the airstrip, where most of the traffic was military; then onto narrow streets and being hauled, tripping, down runs of little steps; brief glimpses of the citizens, men and women of a bluish-grey cast of skin, not quite Beetle-kinden, not quite Ant — another new race for her — who went about their daily lot with heads downcast. There were plenty of Wasps, too: most were soldiers, and others not in armour were probably still soldiers, judging from what Thalric had said about his people. Other kinden wore the imperial colours: plenty of Fly-kinden running errands, or sometimes watching from a high vantage point, with a bow and quiver on their backs. There were more, too: lean, long men and women resembling the musician who had been a slave with them in Brutan’s convoy. These went barefoot but wore yellow shirts and black breeches, like some poor imitation of their Wasp masters, and they carried staves and odd, two-pronged daggers. From the brief glimpse she had, they looked like guards, city watch.

  But of course, she realized, as the shadow of a great wall fell across her, it would be considered menial for Wasps to police their subjects, unless there is some great need for it. These strange sentries must be drafted in from some other imperial conquest.

  And then she looked up at the edifice that loomed above them, and she choked, because it was ugly beyond belief. All around it the buildings of Myna conformed to a low and careful style, flat-roofed and spartan like Ant-city designs. This thing was so utterly alien here that it must have been Wasp architecture: a great tiered monstrosity that looked so out of place it might have been dropped from the sky. There was a broad flight of steps at the fore that narrowed upwards to a door that, even as they approached, still looked tastelessly oversized. They could have driven a fair-sized automotive through it, if they could only have got it up the steps. The door was flanked by two statues, which matched neither each other, the building nor the city. One of them was something abstract, the work of some madman or genius who had made the stone flow like water under his hands. The other showed a warrior in strange armour, and Salma missed a step when he saw it and almost fell backwards. From that reaction Che realized it must be from his own people, war loot from the recent campaign.

  Brief glimpses of the interior, where shafts of sunlight fell like spears, and there was a gallery hall like a museum that valued its exhibits by the amount of gilt they sported rather than their meaning, and then they were descending underground again. Grief was taken off one way by Aagen, with a final backwards glance at Salma, then Che’s chin was seized, her head tilted painfully back to look up into Thalric’s face.

 
‘I have business,’ the Wasp told her, ‘and when I am done we have a conversation to finish, so think on it.’

  She was still thinking on it when the cell door closed behind her.

  On the other side, the free side, of her cell door, Thalric took a moment to consider his options. The Rekef Inlander had sent him to Myna to have a word with his old friend Ulther. Myna was one of the cities supplying the war against the Lowlands, the war that Thalric had been preparing for a long time, and apparently it was not pulling its weight. Was it really due to Ulther being greedy and corrupt? It only mattered that the Rekef thought it so. They did not trust Ulther, which meant that neither should Thalric.

  On their way to the governor’s palace he had been carefully watching the crowd. Still, he had nearly missed it, for Fly-kinden got everywhere, after all. That was why the Rekef made use of them. Because he had been watching, he had seen te Berro, watching him in return. The Rekef had sent Thalric, but they did not trust him either. There was clearly a choice coming up in the near future which he was loath to make.

  Thalric liked life simple, which many would think was a strange attitude for a spymaster. The simplicity he craved was to know exactly what side he was on. This was why he had thrown himself into the Rekef Outlander so diligently. The Empire was right and the quarrelsome, disorganized and barbaric foreigners were wrong. Once you had that simple truth in your head, so many problems just melted away.

  But the problems had just been waiting for their moment, he now saw.

  Ulther and he, they went way back. Thalric had been aged fifteen at Myna, the most junior of junior officers. They had given him a squad of ten men and put him near the front when the gates fell. He had acquitted himself adequately.

  There had been a colonel commanding the assault. At this remove Thalric found he couldn’t remember the man’s name. He had died, anyway. The Soldier Beetle-kinden of Myna hadn’t done it. Some roving assassin with an anti-Empire brief had played that role. Rumour suggested it had been a Commonweal plot. Whatever the reason, Major Ulther had taken charge of the street-to-street fighting. The Mynans weren’t as tricky as Ant-kinden, no mindlinks here to coordinate perfect attacks and defences, but every one of the bastards had been out fighting, even the children. It had been dealt with in the usual way — cause enough destruction and hold a knife to the leaders’ throats. Ulther had caused the destruction and held the knife, and in Thalric’s view he had done it brilliantly, so Myna had been taken in half the time, with half the loss of life.