Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Lies, normally his first line of defence, did not seem to have followed Sfayot when he had mounted up here. It seemed impossible to tell anything but the truth to that calm, doomed face. ‘I can’t recall,’ Sfayot whispered. ‘Sometimes I was. Sometimes I wasn’t. I cannot remember.’

  ‘Ah, well.’ The answer had apparently been satisfactory in some way. He turned to a man in the next cell. ‘Kindly pass this on until it reaches my master-at-arms, if you would. Tell him that it is fit, after all, that he dies in battle.’

  The low-spoken word passed from mouth to mouth in the opposite direction, until all was dark and silence, and then the noble said, ‘I should stand ready, if I were you.’

  Sfayot obediently crawled over to the given cell. Peering in he saw — yes — a flash of white. He called her name, softly, urgently, and again, and at the third time she stirred.

  She was half-starved, filthy, bruised and scabbed, but her face was beautiful when she saw that he had come for her.

  The padlock holding the hatch shut was solid, and Sfayot was as Inapt as most of his people, and could not have opened it even with the key. The wood, though, the wood was a different matter. His people had an Art that meant they would never starve, that they could live anywhere, on anything.

  There was a cry from the far side of the cells, except that the word did not do justice to it. It was a long, howling yell, dragged straight from the pits of someone’s being, a maniac’s death-cry. It went on and on, and Sfayot heard the sounds of someone battering and kicking at the wood, screaming curses and oaths, and it seemed that every Wasp in the area was running that way or flying overhead.

  Sfayot set to work, bringing his head low to the foul wood of the cage. He got his teeth to the slat the lock was secured to, and began to chew. His stomach roiled, but then his Art overruled it, and his jaws worked, grinding and grinding away, tearing off splinters and jagged mouthfuls of the cell.

  Wasp slavers were in motion from all around, pitching into the air and casting over the labyrinth of cells towards the commotion. Sfayot glanced up, jaws working fiercely, as one of them levered open the lid on that cell, hand extended. Instantly there was a man leaping up from it, Art-born wings flaring: a Dragonfly-kinden, rich clothes reduced to nothing but rags, but there was a brooch, some golden brooch, proudly displayed on his chest now, that surely the slavers would have taken if they had found it, and — from nowhere, from thin air — a blade in his hands, long-hafted, straight-bladed. Still keening that dreadful, agonized shriek he laid into the Wasps, cutting two of the surprised slavers down on the instant before the rest descended upon him with sword and stone.

  Sfayot bent down and fixed his teeth in the wood again, wrenching and rending until the lock was abruptly holding nothing at all and the hatch swung open when he pulled.

  They passed her up to him. That is what he remembered most. The other prisoners, Grasshoppers and Dragonflies, passed her up first.

  He looked round. There was still a commotion at the far extent of the cells, and he saw the flash of sting-fire. The howling cry had stopped, but somehow the Dragonfly master-at-arms was still fighting. It could not be for long: the distraction was coming to its fatal conclusion.

  While he looked, the cell beneath him had emptied, Grasshoppers clearing the hatchway in a standing leap, Dragonflies crawling out and summoning up their wings. Sfayot took his daughter in his arms and huddled back to the nobleman’s cell.

  ‘I cannot free you, sir,’ he said, almost in tears. ‘I would, but-’

  ‘Take your child,’ came the reply. ‘You can do nothing for us except remember.’

  And Sfayot fled, with his daughter clinging to him, and never looked back.

  The dreams of Avaris

  Roven was a tough guy and Merric was a killer and Skessi was just an annoyance, and they were the bad part of the deal, but me and my partner had been in Wasp cells at the time, and finding a couple of Wasps willing to go absent without leave for a private errand had been all the luck we were able to scrape together. It was better than slavery. I’d been born poor in Siennis, way down south, and I know everything about slavery that one Spider-kinden can teach another. I was regularly bought and sold from when my mother had parted with me at age five up to when I’d cut the throat of the latest merchant to offer me for sale, and I fled the Spiderlands after that because the merchant was an Aristoi man. Back then the Commonweal had seemed a nice peaceful place to pull a few scams and get rich. That was right before the Wasp Empire got the same idea, only on a much larger scale.

  From that point on, the Dragonfly Commonweal had become an overly exciting place, and I’d have made tracks south, or north, or anywhere, if not for the money. There was money in other people’s suffering. The Wasps were chewing up great tracts of Commonweal land, scooping up whole villages’ worth of slaves, winning hard-fought battles, enduring the keen Commonweal winters. They were men, those Wasp soldiers, and men had needs, so a light-footed trader in certain luxuries could make a living out of drink and whores and second-hand Dragonfly souvenirs. If I watched my step, that is, and watching one’s step was a difficult proposition even for a Spider-born. The Wasp officers had short tempers and every so often a trader in dubious goods would be taken up, his stock confiscated and leg-irons applied with professional speed and care. There was no appeal. The Wasps accorded other kinden no rights, nor even the status of a human being. Everyone else was fair prey.

  My name’s Avaris, and I’ve never stayed still long enough to have to change it. My partner was a lean old Dragonfly called Galtre Fael who’d been robbing his kinsmen up and down the roads and canals since long before the Wasps took an interest. Our game was black guild trading and a lot of different versions of selling the Monarch’s Crown to people, which makes sense when you know there’s no such thing, but you’d be amazed how many people don’t know that. We’d been working together three years now, relying on my mouth and his knowledge of the land, until we landed up in the north-eastern end of the principality of Sial Men — and in irons, and in trouble.

  We’d done a fair trade, and had missed just one step. We’d passed through the Wasp camps peddling our seedy wares, bringing flesh and firewater to bitter, bloodied soldiers who had been fighting, some of them, a full ten years without seeing their homes and wives. It was not that the war was going badly: to the generals and the folks back home it was stride after stride towards victory for the legions of black and gold. To the soldiers it was fighting a numberless and fiercely determined enemy, bringing Imperial rule to village after village of bitter, surly peasants, months of trail rations and harsh discipline, the bite of each year’s snow and ice, the red-washed memories of what war had made them do. Even Wasp-kinden started to feel the bloodstains after ten years without mercy.

  We never knew what it was that had seen us snatched up, stripped of our goods and slung into slave-cells. It was simply one of those things that happened to people that you heard about, and this time the people it happened to were us ourselves. We had planned for this, though. Galtre Fael had a caper, and it was a good one, and one we had been waiting months to spring and, with slavery our only other option, why not spring it now? Riches beyond riches, Fael had said. Riches beyond riches indeed, but our target was behind Wasp lines, now, and somehow it had never seemed worth the journey.

  ‘It’ll be worth the journey,’ I had explained to Roven and Merric. ‘It’s a fair step, but riches, Sergeant, riches. They used to bury them well heeled back in the bad old days.’

  It helped that Roven, the sergeant, had himself heard something of this. He opined, offhand, that some officer in the engineers he knew had struck old gold excavating some Commonweal lord’s broken-up castle. ‘Vaults of it, he said,’ Roven explained. ‘Just bodies and gold.’ Merric had looked interested.

  ‘I don’t know though,’ had said Galtre Fael, his lean face, the colour of gold itself, twisting in doubt. ‘Disturbing the dead?’

  ‘Disturbing the dead what?’ R
oven had grunted.

  The Dragonfly had shrugged. ‘They say. . bad things happen when you open the oldest tombs. The makers protected their wealth with curses, and the dead aren’t always that dead.’

  And the Wasps had jeered at that, and the seed was planted in their minds.

  I could talk for ever, and Fael knew the land, and that got both of us sprung from the cells and travelling overland north, heading for the mountains. Roven and Merric were sick of campaigning, they said, or of campaigning in places where there was too much risk and not enough gold. Both of them were swearing blind they wished they’d signed on with the Slave Corps. After all, who cared if everyone hated you when you were that rich? Money bought back all the respect that a slaver’s uniform lost you, was how they put it. As for Skessi, he just turned up when we were two days out. Skessi was Fly-kinden, a scout attached to the Fourth, and a nosy bastard by anyone’s book. He’d heard, somehow, that Roven and Merric had something on the go, and he turned up threatening to shop them to their officers unless he was dealt in. Nobody much liked that, but Skessi could fly faster even than Galtre, and he was a wary little sod, and it didn’t seem we had much choice. It was odds on whether the officers would declare Roven a deserter anyway, especially after he’d had made off with four horses and a pack-beetle, but if he came back rich, well, that would smooth over a lot of rough waters. Besides, there were just so many Wasps forging west, even as winter came on, that it seemed possible that two soldiers could slip off on a frolic of their own and just claim to have got left behind. That was what Roven was counting on. As for Merric, he was happy enough to follow along, and if he ever got the chance to open my or Fael’s throat, well, that would be a bonus. Merric was like that, and he liked that. He was a simple man with simple pleasures, and would have been a perfect Wasp soldier if he’d had the slightest interest in listening to orders.

  The plan, when me and Fael had first made the plan, had been to hightail it over here on our twosome, but it turned out our friends from the army were worth something after all. We ran into trouble twice. The first was with the Slave Corps, but Roven straightened that out. The second was with brigands, who had been having a field day since the Commonweal soldiers had given up these lands without a fight. About a dozen lean, ragged Grasshopper-kinden swept down on us from a tree-clogged ridge, with two Mantis warriors in the vanguard. Roven’s sting picked off one in a flash of golden fire, and Merric killed the other. He killed the Mantis sword to sword, too, with the Mantis sword near twice as long as his, and that gave me and Fael plenty to think about. The Grasshoppers themselves had leapt and flown and run as soon as their leaders were down.

  Still, the initial plan didn’t call to split the loot five ways, and on the journey me and Fael had been given plenty of chance to discuss just what to do about that. ‘High stakes, high risk,’ Fael had said, but it turned out it was just one of our usual stock-in-trade scams after all — only played taut as a bowstring, and for real.

  So that, and two tendays’ sullen travel through the cold crisp air and the occasional flurry of early snow, put us here, looking at the castle. This was an old one, and like a lot of them it had been left to rot a long time ago. No Wasp army had been forced to besiege this place. The walls were crumbling, their tops gappy and uneven like broken teeth. One face had come down entirely, leaving three tottering sides of uneven stones, the internal architecture laid out in sheared floors, the traces of fallen walls, and windows and doorways gaping like dead eyes.

  ‘Don’t know why you people bothered with these things,’ Roven spat, jabbing at Fael. ‘Half-dozen trebuchet and a leadshotter, and they come down a treat.’

  How strange a thought, I remember thinking, having one of my philosophical fits on me, that sufficient Wasp artillery can do the work of centuries of decay. Is there a precise exchange rate, a year-value one can assign to a catapult? How many decades wear is a solid ball from a leadshotter?

  ‘We didn’t build them,’ Fael said, which prompted a reflective pause. That was news to me too. The Commonweal was dotted with such castles, tall stone keeps and towers, inward-leaning at the top to defend against aerial attackers. The Dragonflies had made much use of them as strong-points during the war, although Roven’s assessment of their longevity was a fair one. Everyone knew that the structures were very old, and these days the Dragonflies built flimsy stuff out of wood and screens that looked like any strong wind would blow it away. It was the first suggestion I’d heard that the castles were not originally theirs though.

  ‘Just grew like mushrooms, did they?’ Skessi jeered, winging close for a moment. Fly-kinden flew, it was true, but Skessi seemed to have unlimited reserves of Art to call on. He was in the air almost every waking moment.

  ‘We were not the first,’ Fael said airily, ‘to call these places home. Especially here near the mountains. There were ancient powers who taught us our ways and blessed the first Monarch and bade us found the Commonweal, but they were not of our kinden. They were great masters, whose magic could reshape the world, command the skies. It was they had the castles built for, while they lived amongst us, they loved to dwell in cold stone.’ By now I’d figured what he was up to, and I just nodded along.

  ‘Right, whatever,’ said Roven, but uneasily. The great broken edifice before us had a forlorn, tragic feel to it. It was evening by that point, and Merric chose that moment to start setting up camp. Nobody suggested investigating the place at night.

  ‘Where’s this loot of yours?’ Roven would ask, though, by moonlight. ‘Can’t see there’s much left of any treasury.’

  ‘Crypts,’ I explained blithely. ‘It’s the loot of the dead. The family that ruled here in yesteryear laid out its dead in state, and dressed in gold and jewels.’

  ‘And maybe those from before are laid out here as well,’ Fael muttered in dark tones. ‘The ancient nameless ones, they can lie in the earth for ever, they say, and yet wake again, if they must.’

  ‘Enough of that talk. We’re not superstitious savages like your lot,’ Roven growled. Merric’s fire shadowed his face, but the corner of Skessi’s mouth was twitching, and Merric himself had his sword held close, as if for comfort. The gutted castle loomed impartial over all, black against a darkening sky.

  We went in next morning, once dawn and a bottle of war-loot wine had emboldened the Wasps. Fael would go first, with Skessi hovering at his shoulder, and then the Wasps with me in arm’s reach, in case of funny business. The Wasps had a couple of hissing gas lanterns, one of which was forced on me to carry. If it had been just the two of them, matters would have been easier, but Skessi’s eyes were as good in the dark as mine.

  Still, after some searching and shifting, the plan proved its worth by providing a passage into the earth that was only partially choked with fallen stones. It was a sheer drop, but Fael’s wings carried him down there easily enough. Skessi didn’t look keen to follow, but a dirty look from Roven convinced him, and he fluttered down after.

  ‘Where’d you and he hear about this place?’ Roven growled, one ear cocked for any report from below.

  ‘We turned over a castle crypt where your lot had previously been. Good business, too: Empire doesn’t realize that’s where the good stuff is, half the time. Only we found clues there. The nobles had a cadet branch lived over here, ’til they died out. Rich as rich, Fael reckoned, and who’s been here to dig it up but us?’

  ‘Local boys didn’t seem so shy,’ Roven pointed out. ‘How’d you know they’ve not had it all?’

  ‘Oh, you won’t find any locals willing to go into a noble family’s crypts,’ I told him lightly. ‘Not with the curses.’

  ‘You don’t believe that’ — nothing but a growl deep in Roven’s throat.

  ‘Oh, we’re all civilized sorts from the Spiderlands,’ I said. ‘Still, makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Come on down,’ came Skessi’s distant call, and we did so, the Wasps lowering themselves on spread wings, and me edging hand-over-hand down th
e wall. The gaslamps threw guttering shadows across walls made of irregular stones that still fit into each other so tight you’d not get a blade in.

  ‘This is never just for the dead,’ Roven spat. ‘Too much work. Burn ’em or bury ’em, but not all this digging and masonry.’

  ‘Reckon they took their dead seriously, back then,’ I put in. Fael and Skessi were already ahead, but it was so pitchy down there that even they had so stay within the edge of the lantern light. I began to wonder then whether this wasn’t just some kind of grain store. Fael was leading strong, but it wouldn’t have done to show we weren’t sure, so I was as much in the dark as Roven right then.

  I’d have been able to pacify the Wasps, I think, had we turned up nothing but a few jars of rice that first day, but some kind of luck was with us, good or bad, you decide, because Fael found some gold.

  It was in some niches in the wall, and there wasn’t much of it, but it was enough to make us look good. No bodies, mind, just a little trinketry: brooches, rings. I caught Fael’s eye, because of the two plans we were running right then, the first one, the get-rich one, had turned out sunny. That stuff we’d read, in that other old castle, looked to have been true after all, just like I told Roven. Of course, the second plan, the new one, would need a bit of work.

  Roven and Merric confiscated all that glittered, although I’d bet Skessi pocketed a handful as well, and then there was nothing for it but for Fael to press on. Every so often there was a niche, and sometimes there was a piece of loot there, and sometimes there wasn’t. Then Fael had yelled out, his wings taking him up so fast he bounced off the ceiling and ended up scrabbling away on his backside as something reared up over him. The Wasps’ stings flashed, blinding bright down here, and then things went quiet. I helped Fael get to his feet, and he looked shaken. It had been a centipede, and living proof of how well you can live eating roaches and pillbugs and silverfish: ten feet long if it was an inch. Not a man-eater, but the poison in those fangs would have finished Fael off surely and, anyway, centipedes are bad luck in the Commonweal, because of old history.