Empire in Black and Gold

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  For these few days he was one of them, and for the first time in his life nobody was looking askance at him because of his heredity – or being pointedly virtuous in ignoring it. If he could fix a piston, weld a joint and clear a fuel line then he was one of the elite, with the privileges and responsibilities that earned him. They were not all Beetle-kinden there, after all. A renegade Ant was lord of the main engine, having grown tired of war machines. There was a brace of Fly troubleshooters whose small frames and delicate fingers could fit into places the larger folk could not reach. There was another halfbreed, too, her ancestry being like his, Beetle and Ant conjoined. Her Ant parent had come from pale-skinned Tark, though, so she and Totho looked less like each other than anyone else on board.

  A tenday into the voyage, with Helleron close on the horizon, Totho and a handful of the other engineers were called to the very belly of the ship, where he had never ventured before. Here, between the freight holds, gaped an open wound in the Sky Without’s underside. A broad rectangle of open sky was being winched open, with the dusty countryside appearing in a dun haze, far below, as they slowly lowered the Sky’s huge loading ramp into empty space.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Totho asked.

  ‘Incoming,’ explained an engineer. ‘New visitors, messengers probably. Look, there she is.’

  Squinting, Totho made out a dark dot that closed, even as he watched, until he could identify it as a fixed-wing flier. Fixed-wings were new, quite the fastest things in the sky but expensive to build and easy to break. Totho watched its approach with interest. He had seen the design before, two stacked wings set back of the mid-point, the hull itself curving forwards and down like a hunched insect’s body, with stabilizing vanes like a box-kite thrust forward. The single propeller engine, the drone of which came to them even at this distance, was fixed at the back, below a mounted ballista.

  The hull of the fixed-wing was dark wood, and it was only as the craft was jockeying for position, trying to match speeds with the Sky Without, that Totho noticed the hurried repainting that had taken place: gold and black in ragged bars across the sides and the wings.

  The flier swayed and darted, trying to meet up with the sloping runway the loading ramp had now been turned into. The engineer next to Totho swore. ‘Bloody stupid, bringing a flying machine in like that. Had one once, an idiot who decided the best way to make the hatch was to come in at full speed. Went through three walls, punched out of the bows and dropped like a stone ’cos he’s shorn his wings off doing it.’

  At last the pilot managed the task, wings wobbling uncertainly, and the moving plane rolled up into the hold with the crew hauling the ramp closed as soon as it did. It was left sitting on the closed hatch with its propeller slowing gradually.

  There were five Wasp soldiers in total packed into the flier, but one was very obviously in charge. He was standing up even as the engineers secured the ropes and clasps that ensured the loading ramp stayed closed.

  The Wasp leader surveyed them all coldly, his gaze passing over Totho as easily as the rest. To him they were clearly all menials.

  ‘Send a runner to Captain Halrad,’ he ordered them, ‘and tell him that Captain Thalric wants his company.’

  The chief engineer folded her arms. ‘Sorry, sir, I didn’t hear you. Did you say you wanted to speak with the ship’s master?’ Her tone was profoundly unimpressed. If this Thalric had four armed soldiers at his back, she didn’t even seem to have noticed.

  The Wasp officer regarded her narrowly, and then mustered a tight smile. ‘Of course that is what I meant,’ he said, stepping out onto the Sky’s deck. ‘Shall I bring my men along, or would it be possible for them to be billeted with their compatriots?’

  Totho stepped back as the arrangements were made. As soon as it was possible, without catching the Wasps’ notice, he was out of the hangar and running.

  Captain Halrad had a professed fondness for Beetle-grown wine, Tynisa had soon discovered. He made a great show of sipping it, savouring the bouquet as he had undoubtedly seen the sophisticates do. He would tell her what a good blend this particular vintage was, when her own palette informed her it was what they called ‘orchard wine’, inferior stuff from the westerly vineyards.

  She politely agreed with him. He was meanwhile telling her about life in the Wasp military. Or life in the Empire. It seemed to equate to the same thing.

  ‘But you can’t all be in the army,’ she protested. ‘How would that work?’

  ‘A Wasp is a warrior. A male Wasp, I mean. There’s no other livelihood,’ he told her.

  ‘What about artificers? Scholars?’

  ‘Warriors,’ he confirmed. ‘Warriors first. If you’re not a warrior you’re less than a man, like our subject peoples.’

  ‘But what about people with skills you need. They can’t all be in the army too.’

  ‘But they have to be,’ he said. ‘Let’s say there was someone from outside whose particular assets,’ he smiled at her, ‘could be useful to the Empire. We’d make them army, army auxillian anyway, give them a rank. Without that, they would be nobody. No more than a slave, even.’

  ‘You’re looking at me as though I might be useful to the Empire,’ she said, disarmingly coy.

  ‘We’ll make a general of you yet,’ he promised, and then hissed wine through his teeth as someone suddenly hammered on the door of his stateroom.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded, flinging the door open. One of his soldiers stood there at attention, and Tynisa saw something new, something urgent in his expression.

  ‘You’re to come right away, Captain,’ the soldier announced, and when Halrad made to dispute this, he added, ‘Captain Thalric says it.’

  The change in Halrad was marked. Instantly he turned from being a man in control to a man being watched. Tynisa was fascinated. She stepped up behind him, asking, ‘What is it?’ In the doorway the soldier stared back at her with patent loathing.

  ‘You just stay here,’ Halrad told her shortly. ‘I have to go. For your own safety you had better not leave this room.’

  A moment later he was out of the room, and to her amazement she heard the key turn in the lock.

  Che had tried her best to make herself useful on the voyage, but instead she had found herself without place, without purpose. Tynisa was off being either devious or indiscreet with the Wasp officer, Halrad, Totho had disappeared into the ship’s bowels, and Salma seemed to be playing some dangerous game with the Wasp soldiers. He could always be found somewhere in their line of sight but usually somewhere public. He kept smiling at them in that strange way of his. She feared he was going to get himself killed, but somehow he was still alive each morning.

  She therefore spent the voyage browsing the few books on the common room’s shelves, or meditating in her own cabin. She had found that the constant soft revolution of the airship’s engine was in some ways an aid to concentration. Well, at least she was able to enter something approximating a trance, although the Ancestor Art remained conspicuous in its absence.

  Totho practically kicked the door open in his haste to find her, startling her into diving for her sword, which was all the way across the room.

  ‘Trouble!’ he told her.

  ‘Wha—?’ She gaped at him.

  ‘More Wasps,’ he explained. ‘Turned up on a flier. New orders, I reckon.’

  ‘That means the game’s changed.’ She stood, brushing her robes down. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘We can’t take chances, because that makes eleven of them on board now.’ His eyes went wide. ‘With that many they could overpower the crew.’

  ‘Where’s Tynisa?’ she asked him.

  ‘I can go and find her.’

  ‘Then I’d better look for Salma. We have to plan.’

  Tynisa had discovered that, short of breaking a porthole and somehow squeezing herself through it onto the sheer hull beyond, the cabin door was the only way out, and the door was locked.

  Now if she had been a Beetle, t
hat would have been different. She was quite sure that if she had been a Beetle-maid then a few quick jabs with a piece of wire would see her out of the door and away as fast as her stubby legs would carry her. She even began to try that, kneeling before the lock and peering into the narrow keyhole, trying to imagine the pieces of metal inside that, in some way beyond her imagining, controlled whether the door would open or not.

  She simply could not do it: there was no place in her mind to conceive of the lock, the link between the turn of the key, the immobility of the door. Of all the old Inapt races, the Spider-kinden still prospered as before, but that was only because they found other people to make and operate machines for them. Spider doorways were hung with curtains, and they had guards, not locks, to keep out strangers.

  And so, due to the limitations of her mind, she was trapped, left to curse Halrad’s name and pick over his belongings until he should choose to return for her. She found nothing of use, no sealed orders, no secret maps. He was, as she had already guessed, a dull creature of habit, and little more.

  It seemed a very long time indeed before he returned, but up here the passing of time was difficult to gauge. Tynisa was instantly ready, though, a hand close to her rapier hilt as the lock clicked and the door opened. She had expected a bundle of soldiers to come pushing in to grab her, but it was just Halrad himself, conspicuously alone, his eyes wide.

  ‘Come with me,’ he ordered.

  ‘Why? What’s going on?’

  ‘Don’t question me, woman. Just come with me.’

  He reached out and took her wrist. By the moment he touched her she had decided to play along, or he would have found her with steel drawn already. Instead she let herself be led, almost dragged along the corridor, down the spiralling wooden steps at the far end. Every time she asked him what he thought he was doing with her he just shook his head. She began to wonder if he had gone mad. He was acting like a man trying to escape a monster that only he could see. His feet skidded on the steps in his haste, and when they reached the common room deck he dragged her even further down, into the Sky Without’s guts, pushing past startled crew and engineers.

  ‘Captain Halrad,’ she protested, ‘tell me what is going on!’

  He turned on her with sweat shiny on his brow. ‘You’ve been very clever with me,’ he said. ‘Yes, you have – and perhaps it’s worked. You knew all along I was looking for Stenwold Maker. Don’t try and deny it.’

  She was sure that no hint of guilt touched her face, but still she turned cold within. Exactly what did he know? ‘Master Maker?’ she said awkwardly.

  ‘You know him. I know that now. You were seen with him, in Collegium. Captain Thalric knows all about you. Still, does that really make you a spy? Not necessarily, you don’t have to be.’

  She saw it in his face, that he could not believe she was anything other than some innocent girl, caught up in something beyond her. If he chose otherwise then he would have been fooled by her, and he could not accept that. She had a moment for wry thought: Spider-kinden, my race, we already have such a reputation for lies. Yet, individually, who can we not convince?

  She had an uncomfortable feeling that he was becoming less and less convinced as the minutes ticked by. Whatever was in his mind, he was making it up as he went along, and coming to fresh conclusions as he did so.

  ‘What about my friends?’

  Halrad shook his head angrily. ‘Forget them: they’re as good as caught. Thalric will have them and let him be satisfied with that. You, though, you’re mine. He can keep his hands off you.’

  ‘Who is this Thalric?’ she asked, but he just tugged at her arm harder, hustling her onwards through the innards of the Sky Without. So she tried, ‘But if he’s just a captain and you’re a captain—’

  He stopped, just for a moment, to stare back at her. ‘You don’t understand. Thalric is from the Rekef. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘None of your concern,’ and he was hauling her off again. He barrelled his way past another engineer and abruptly they were in a larger space, not any longer the cramped warrens of the engine rooms. There was some kind of machine, of the winged variety, sitting innocuously in the middle of the floor.

  ‘What are you trying to do?’ she demanded.

  ‘Oh well now, I’m just staking my claim,’ he hissed. ‘You see, Captain Thalric thinks he can take possession of just anything he pleases, but you’re mine. We’re almost at Helleron and he can’t hope to search every corner of this ship before then, even if the crew would permit it.’ He was now pulling her across the great hangar, towards an open doorway in the far wall. ‘The cargo hold is through there,’ he explained. ‘And as of now, you’re my cargo. I’ll find somewhere safe for you, to keep you out of Thalric’s way, but I’m going to have to lock you up there. We can’t have you running around the ship any more, and besides . . .’ His eyes were wild. ‘If you do turn out to be something more than you seem, well . . .’ His face was suddenly cold and she found it hard to believe he had ever smiled at her. ‘Well then why should Thalric get all the credit for handing you in, when I can do that myself? And if you are just a Spider girl who’s walked into more than she can handle, then you’re mine, so you should get used to staying where you’re put and doing what I say.’

  They had come to the open doors leading into the next chamber, which was packed with crates all neatly tied down. Halrad’s gaze raked it, and she realized he must mean to put her in one of the boxes to avoid this mysterious Thalric’s search. ‘Get in the hold, woman!’ He tried to push her in, but she squirmed out of the way and then retreated from him along the partition wall.

  ‘Don’t make me force you,’ he warned. He held one hand up now, and she started as bright worms of light writhed and danced about it. Ancestor Art, she realized, but like none she had ever seen before.

  She took stock of the situation, of the room itself. At no point did the thought of actually cooperating with him tempt her.

  ‘Two things, Captain,’ she said. ‘Firstly, I won’t abandon my friends. Secondly . . .’ She swallowed, put him from her mind. ‘Now would be a good time.’

  ‘What?’ Halrad’s puzzlement turned into a shriek of agony as Totho stabbed him in the back. He arched towards her, and she threw herself aside, twisting out of his grip. For a second he remained standing, propped against the wall, just staring. Then he fell backwards and sideways, through the doorway and into the hold.

  She turned to Totho, who was still staring at the corpse with wide eyes. Whatever he felt on this occasion, the first time he had taken a human life, it was not the exultation that had gripped Tynisa herself in the hall of Stenwold’s townhouse.

  ‘You’ve a gift for timing,’ she told him calmly. ‘How did you get here so fast?’

  ‘What?’ He looked at her, and visibly coloured. ‘Oh, I . . . told some of the engineers I was . . . I, ah . . . liked you . . . so they kept an eye on you for me.’ He avoided her gaze.

  ‘That’s sweet,’ she told him, which only made his embarrassment worse. ‘Look, did you hear what he said, about this Thalric person hunting for us?’

  ‘Che’s already gone to fetch Salma,’ he explained. ‘What should we do now?’

  ‘Bring them here,’ she told him. ‘If nothing else, below decks is probably the last place they’ll look. I’ll hide the body in the meantime.’

  Che found Salma lounging in the common room, but the news she had was not news to him. He indicated the trio of Wasp soldiers who were lurking along one wall. ‘The ugly one in the middle came in just now, and since then they’ve obviously been on watch-and-wait. Something’s changed, all right.’

  ‘This new officer,’ confirmed Che, who had put on something more action-worthy, tunic and breeches, with her possessions slung over her shoulder and her sword at her hip.

  ‘They’re onto us.’ He shrugged. ‘Whether they know for sure we’re in service or they just think we can lead them to Stenwold, it doesn’t real
ly matter.’

  ‘But what can we do now?’ Che asked. ‘We can’t just sit here forever, and besides, if they get impatient, Totho says they could take over the whole ship and just fly us to the Empire, or something.’

  ‘By the customs of my own people, there are two things we can do,’ he told her, his customary sardonic expression creasing further. ‘Firstly, I can get my steel out and hunt them down all across the ship, shadow to shadow. Kill them in ones and twos until they’re all dead, or I am. That would be one option.’

  She stared at him, wide-eyed. He sounded as serious as he ever could be. ‘You’ve done that, before?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s a done thing, where I come from. Happened a lot during the war, I’m told.’ He stretched. ‘That, then, is the right hand. However there is always the plan of the left hand.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Watch and learn, O scholar.’ He stood up abruptly and she saw a sudden shifting of stance amongst the Wasp soldiers, but he ignored them contemptuously. Instead, his meandering path took him over to a table occupied by a group of Beetle merchants, and before her eyes he proposed to them a game of chance.

  It was a short while, minutes only, before the table was scattered with coins. Gambling was one of those frowned-upon pastimes that the poor were dissuaded from indulging in by a middle class that could not itself resist the lure, turning many a member of the latter class into one of the former in the course of a single profligate night. In short order Salma was matching cards happily with three cloth merchants and a brace of Fly-kinden, including the formerly aloof dulcimer player. Betting was fast and fierce, and Che kept having to remind herself that their lives were on the line here, because she had never seen Salma play cards before. He played as though he could not lose, and when he lost he was careless of it, but mostly he won.