Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  In the face of that look, which disturbed her more than she could tell, she had to speak up, if only to disrupt the moody train of his thoughts.

  ‘So you’re sending her away?’

  He raised an eyebrow at her.

  ‘Grief in Chains,’ she continued, and his expression became briefly irritated. Quickly hidden again, but she saw it there nonetheless.

  ‘You have keen ears, Miss Maker,’ he told her dryly.

  ‘I’m more used to having machines around me than you think, perhaps.’

  He considered her again, but at least it was now an assessing look and not something darker. ‘I shall have to remember that when next torturing Beetles,’ he said.

  ‘You trust Aagen a lot, don’t you?’ she said, and for a fragile second there was a genuine smile on his face. Erased, again, but visible, for that brief second, on a face which surely could not belong to that fiend Thalric, agent of the Empire.

  ‘We go back many years, Aagen and I, so I can trust him with a great deal.’

  ‘Even with Grief in Chains?’ She could not entirely keep the bitterness out of her voice as she said it. ‘She seems to have an effect on men.’

  ‘I trust him even with her. He is a good servant of the Empire.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Thalric.’ She was still very much at his mercy, but her curiosity overtook her.

  ‘I am not here to be understood,’ he snapped, but she persisted.

  ‘You can’t just live for an Empire. Everybody must live for himself as well. Your man Aagen’s not just a good servant of the Empire. He’s a friend of yours.’

  ‘Enough,’ he said, ‘or I’ll work the machines myself.’ Then he sighed and, with a few simple moves, loosened her straps, arm, leg, leg, arm. Wincing, she sat up, and let herself slide down to the floor.

  ‘Let me guess, it’s back to my cell now.’

  ‘Until the next time.’ He had obviously achieved whatever piece of subterfuge he had intended, and yet he still seemed less than delighted.

  He escorted her back to the cell himself, and she guessed he did not want guards examining her too closely. She felt lucky because, if he had wanted to, he could easily have put enough marks on her to defy any scrutiny.

  And she felt doubly lucky, in that case. While he was unbuckling her ankles, she had palmed a probe from the medical kit. She was no expert housebreaker, but the locks on Salma’s bonds were big and crude, and she possessed an artificer’s training, after all.

  Outside her cell, Thalric turned to the guards — the same two he had brought all the way from Helleron. They took orders only from him.

  ‘Nobody is to see the prisoners except me,’ he told them. ‘If anyone insists on it, and won’t take my name as a warning, then you’re to kill the prisoners first, no mercy.’ The girl knows too much just now, and I have no time to finish with her. He left them abruptly, for he had an overdue appointment to keep.

  He went to meet Ulther in the war room. The place was a suitable testament to the old man’s sense of drama. He kept it on the same underground floor as the cells, to start with, away from the prying eyes of household servants, and it was coldly lit by blue glass lamps which put Thalric in mind of dark chasms beneath the sea. One end of the long table was choked with charts and logistics reports, while at the other was laid out a map, taking in all the terrain between Myna and Helleron. Wooden counters, like game pieces, picked out key locations across the intricately plotted countryside, whilst pinned-out ribbons showed marching routes and scribbled notes held down with tacks.

  ‘Your area, this, I think,’ Ulther said. ‘To tell the truth, I let them get on with it. One city’s quite enough for me to handle.’

  Thalric nodded, welcoming this chance to update himself on where the Empire’s plans had so far taken them. Just seeing those place names made him long to be in Helleron again, where it was all happening. He had only intended a brief side trip to Asta for the interrogations, and then Colonel Latvoc had got hold of him and he had found himself drawn into this. His agents in Helleron must now be wondering what was going on.

  He moved around the table, trying to pick out details in the undersea light. Behind him, but extending overhead and blotting the finer details of the map, was the suspended carapace of one of the great forest mantids, an insect that could rend a horse. It had been posed as if in mid-strike, its raptorial arms outflung to shadow the paper landscape below.

  ‘What do you think?’ Ulther asked him. ‘Another new acquisition. He’s for the throne room eventually.’

  ‘Is it really necessary?’ Thalric asked, taking an irritated glance at it.

  ‘You’ve never been to the North Empire, I take it? The hill tribes?’

  ‘My line of work hasn’t taken me there.’

  ‘It’s an education. The Empire hasn’t changed them much in three generations, thataway. In between calls from the tax collectors, they’re still cutting each other’s throats and running off with each other’s women.’

  ‘I’ve heard they’re still a pack of barbarians, if that’s what you mean,’ agreed Thalric. ‘Still, good to recruit for shock troops, I hear.’

  ‘They do have something we’ve lost, you know,’ Ulther remarked, and Thalric glanced up in surprise. ‘Oh yes,’ the governor continued, ‘they might be savages but they know how to live. Life is short and brutal there, so they take full advantage of it. You won’t find a chieftain amongst them without some trophy, like this fellow, behind his throne — to give him strength, to give him courage.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you believe all that.’

  ‘I don’t need to. When people come in, they’ll see my spiny friend here, and they’ll believe. That’s the point.’

  Thalric made a noncommittal noise, but Ulther was smiling broadly. ‘When you’re done there, Captain, I have something else to show you. Another jewel in my collection. Perhaps the jewel.’

  That caught Thalric’s attention. ‘Lead on,’ he said.

  It was a short walk. Ulther took him to the cells, and for a moment Thalric thought the trouble would start right then, but this was a different prisoner, another woman, a local.

  ‘Her name,’ said Ulther, as if savouring it, ‘is Kymene. But they call her the Maid.’

  Thalric was instantly struck by her, less by her appearance than her manner. She had been resting on a straw mattress when they arrived, but she stood up instantly, waiting in the cell’s exact centre with a fighter’s poise. Her skin was the familiar blue-grey of all Mynans, and her hair was dark, cut clumsily short. Ulther had dressed her in a simple sleeveless tunic and breeches, giving her an almost boyish look. Except for a row of bars her cell was open along one side. Despite being kept on display like a wild beast, she stared straight into Thalric’s eyes. There was a challenge and a contempt there, and he felt something respond within himself. Defiance was a dangerous flag for a captive young woman to fly so plainly. Her eyes were steel, though. He felt a shock almost physical as he met their gaze. No surrender, they seemed to say.

  ‘What’s so special then?’ he asked the governor, trying to keep his voice casual.

  ‘Special? My dear Thalric, she is the resistance. She’s their adored leader, and a merry chase she led us, too. She was top of the wanted list for all of a year and a season, running the poor Rekef ragged trying to trap her. We tried everything. We infiltrated her followers; she killed our spies. We tortured family members; they lied to us. I’ve never known the like. To capture her in the end I had to turn to freelancers, the wretched scum.’

  Thalric frowned. ‘You did well to catch her. When do you start her interrogation?’

  Ulther laughed jovially. ‘Not so hasty, old friend. We’ve had her here two tendays so far. We’re breaking her down, piece by piece.’

  ‘Two tendays, and you’ve not put her to the question?’ Thalric heard the disbelief in his own voice, but Ulther blithely ignored it.

  ‘I prefer to break them slowly,’ Ulther told him. ‘No sun,
no air, no freedom — and no privacy. We’ll rebuild her mind, my friend, piece by piece. Every dawn she is less the rebel and more. . pliable. Soon, what will she not promise for a glimpse of the outside world?’

  He wants her for his wretched collection, Thalric finally understood, and it was a sourly amusing thought. The old man had been wise enough, before now, to confine his tastes to imported vintages. To invite this woman into his bed would be a death sentence for him, like as not. The amusing thing was that she had not seen it either. She held on to her pride so hard that she could not grasp the escape being offered to her.

  Still. . on meeting Kymene’s eyes, he could see what Ulther so desired there. She was not beautiful in any sense that Thalric usually understood. She was not the scintillating Grief in Chains, or even of the proper imperial proportions of the slave Hreya. In that look, so fierce with lancing disdain, she seemed unattainable, and that was somehow more attractive than mere beauty.

  But Ulther was still playing a dangerous game. ‘Should she not have been interrogated immediately, though, concerning her fellows in the resistance?’ Thalric asked.

  ‘Time enough for that,’ Ulther replied vaguely.

  Thalric saw the woman shake her head slightly with a cold smile, and he wondered, Would she talk, even so? Mere pain and the threat of it might be something she was proof against. She was armoured in her belief.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new sycophant?’ Kymene spoke, and her voice was mocking. ‘You do love to parade them past me.’

  ‘My dear, this is Captain Thalric of the Rekef Outlander, and he was with me here when I first captured your city,’ Ulther told her. ‘You owe him a debt of gratitude almost as much as you owe me.’

  She studied them both, and obviously found nothing to choose between them. ‘Then it shall be paid. Do you want me to curtsey now?’ she said. ‘Or perhaps I should get on my knees, I’m so honoured.’

  A soldier came in then, and stood waiting to one side until Ulther went over to him. Thalric watched carefully, thinking, And here it starts. He realized Kymene was watching too. She was kept underground and behind bars, but she was looking out for anything that would help her. He liked to think that in her position he would do the same.

  ‘What do you mean, gone?’ Ulther suddenly demanded, gripping the soldier by the shoulder strap of his armour. ‘Who took her? Where?’

  The soldier’s reply was low, but his glance in Thalric’s direction told it all. Ulther let go of the man suddenly. ‘Get out!’ he snapped, and then turned to his old friend with an expression of forced good humour.

  ‘Thalric, that fellow had a strange tale to tell me.’

  ‘Really?’ Internally, Thalric was bracing himself.

  ‘He said that my Butterfly, my dancer, has been taken from her room, and now nobody knows where she is.’

  ‘I know,’ Thalric said. ‘I ordered it.’

  ‘You ordered it.’ The governor let a slow breath pass before coming closer. ‘Somewhat of a liberty, Captain. And why, if I may ask?’

  ‘You’re right, she’s a remarkable specimen,’ Thalric replied blandly, ‘and it so happens that my future projects west of here could use just such an operative. You know how the Rekef Outlander needs all sorts, all skills. Helleron is in a delicate enough state just now, and she could tip it. I have therefore requisitioned her.’

  Ulther’s control was admirable, and he even managed a smile. ‘Requisitioned, is it? I am governor of Myna remember, Thalric. You know this. You are an old friend, but under whose authority, Captain, can you go about requisitioning my possessions?’

  ‘I am a captain of the Imperial Army, but also a major of the Rekef. My work in the west is Rekef business.’

  ‘I know you’re bloody Rekef. I directed you at them, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Then you should understand. Imperial needs come before personal ones, Governor.’

  ‘But I hadn’t even. .’ Ulther’s meaty hands crushed the air impotently, and Thalric mentally provided had her yet to finish the sentence.

  ‘I’m sorry, Governor,’ he said, affecting to sound both businesslike and bored, ‘but she’s quite unique, as you’ve obviously noticed. If I’m to take Helleron it’s a matter of hearts and minds as well as bodies and swords. You can see how she’d be of use to me.’

  And he smiled. Ulther was staring at him as though he had turned into a venomous thing — which in a sense he had.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ the other man said.

  ‘Well, it has been a long time.’ Thalric met his gaze levelly. ‘You don’t grudge the Empire this small thing, surely?’

  And Ulther smiled, although it did not reach his eyes. ‘Not at all, Major, although you. . might just have asked. When, may I ask, shall she be returned to me?’

  ‘Returned?’ Thalric answered. ‘Impossible to say, although I think it likely that, by the time I’m done with her, she will know more than it is healthy for a slave to know. We must all make sacrifices, Governor, for the Empire’s good.’

  Ulther nodded ponderously. ‘Ah, well, that I can understand, Major.’ And he kept the smile as he left to ascend again to the sunlit levels, but Thalric did not want to think what his expression might become after that.

  And before he himself followed, he looked again at Kymene, who was studying him carefully. For a second, in her eyes, there was a look almost of complicity. She enjoyed that scene.

  He made himself follow Ulther, but he was aware of her eyes following him all the way.

  Twenty-six

  ‘Her name is Kymene,’ Chyses explained. Stenwold, who had heard a lot of Mynan names over the last half-hour, sensed from the way this one was said that it was special.

  ‘She used to run your cell?’ he guessed. Che and Salma are the priority, he reminded himself, but he was an intelligencer by habit, and thoughts were forming about Mynan resistance. The Empire’s reach was as strong as the platform it reached out from.

  ‘She is the beacon for the whole resistance,’ Chyses told him. ‘They were trying to catch her for well over a year. She invented the Red Flag: the symbol that strikes fear into the hearts of the Wasps. She is the best of us.’

  ‘How did they catch her then?’

  Chyses smiled sharply. ‘Not with their thick-headed soldiers. The Bloat hired hunters from all over the Empire and one of them got lucky.’

  Stenwold had gathered that the ‘Bloat’ was their name for the present governor. ‘And she’s been held for two tendays, now?’

  Chyses nodded. ‘And well guarded, deep in the guts of the palace. They think we can’t get to her.’

  ‘But you can?’ And you can get to Che and Salma remained unsaid, and yet Stenwold felt the thought must be so apparent it must be branded on his face.

  ‘They built that palace up so fast, just to show us we were conquered.’ Chyses slapped the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, a habit he indulged in a lot. ‘But they didn’t think much on what lay underneath. See this?’ He was indicating the decayed masonry, the lowest layer of stones of their sprawling cellar. ‘There was some city here before we built Myna, before the revolution, and nobody even remembers whose, but they liked their tunnels. The sewers beneath us were their streets. They go right under the palace, under everywhere. That will be our way in.’

  ‘Sewers?’ Stenwold glanced at Tynisa and Totho, who were listening close by. ‘Lovely.’

  His sarcasm passed Chyses by. ‘Our problem is that without Kymene we’re vulnerable, fragmented. If the Bloat were to launch an assault on us now, if he got to know about enough of our safe houses and fallbacks, then we would. .’

  ‘You’d have a job to hold things together,’ Stenwold finished.

  ‘And at any attempt by us, right now, to make a rescue, the Bloat would clench his fist on the city like he did a few years back, when they had that uprising in Maynes.’

  ‘So you can get to her, but your people would suffer for it,’ Stenwold sai
d. ‘For a revolutionary that’s a surprisingly responsible attitude.’

  The look Chyses flashed him was savage. ‘On my own, Master Beetle, I would set the fires myself, if the smoke from it would drive this city’s people onto the streets,’ he said flatly. ‘However, she would not approve. I myself will not bow my head to either governor or emperor, but for Kymene. .’

  ‘I understand. And I see where your logic goes.’ Stenwold felt a flash of dislike for Chyses but reminded himself, We need this man. ‘Mynan resistance, red flags everywhere, and the administration comes down on you like thunder. But if a pack of foreigners is loose in the palace freeing prisoners, including your Kymene. .’

  ‘We understand each other.’ Chyses took his hand off his sword hilt, and Stenwold only then realized that the young man had been holding it. He still looked as if he wanted to kill people. Here was a man whose reserves of humanity had been drained. They need this leader of theirs soon. Revolution would not happen overnight in Myna, Stenwold divined, but neither would invasion happen overnight across the Lowlands. Give me an audience with this woman, this undisputed leader of the resistance. . Have we stumbled onto the weapon I have been looking for?

  ‘And you would provide. .?’ he probed.

  ‘Maps of the sewers, guides to go along with you, a few extra swords without livery to betray them. Hermetic lamps, an autoclef. .’

  ‘You’re a well-equipped lot, aren’t you?’

  ‘Hokiak keeps us well supplied.’ Chyses was humourless. ‘Kymene is more important to us than any of it.’

  ‘Well.’ Stenwold settled back. ‘I will have to canvass the others but I suspect we won’t get a better offer.’ He glanced up then, because Tisamon was approaching, and the Mantis looked sterner than usual. Tynisa stood up even as he arrived. The tension between the two of them was still there, the unresolved history, so much so that Stenwold could almost taste it.

  ‘I have been talking to Khenice and those who remember the conquest, talking to them about your plans back then,’ Tisamon announced.