Empire in Black and Gold

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The Wasps were watching even more closely now, suspecting some device, but Salma paid them no heed whatsoever, seeming utterly absorbed in his game. They barely glanced at Che, meanwhile, and she realized that they must be working on very limited information, secondhand descriptions. Salma was the only Dragonfly-kinden within a hundred miles, but she, a Beetle amongst Beetles, was safe in her anonymity.

  Even as she thought this, there was a shout from the table and all chaos broke loose.

  In the first few seconds of furious argument Che tried to piece together what was going on. Someone had been caught cheating, or suspected of it, and she soon realized that it was Salma. He, for his part, was outraged at the very suggestion, knocking his chair back and standing up, and then simply flipping the entire table over. Cards, money and angry gamblers were suddenly all scattered about the common room.

  She saw Salma moving fast, but one of the merchants still managed to bounce a fist off him before himself sprawling over a chair. The Wasps were trying to move in but everything was now in an uproar. A pair of stewards were trying to restore the peace, for there were at least three private fistfights going on, and one large one to which everyone was invited. In the midst of all of this, Salma grabbed her wrist, and a moment later he had extricated them both from the room, and they were running for the stairs.

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  ‘No idea,’ he admitted. The shouting from behind them was picking up in volume. She glanced back and saw a flash of black and yellow.

  Without any warning, a whole panel of wall beside them was open, and they saw Totho framed in it, wreathed in cloud with the chill air plucking at him.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ was his understatement. ‘Out this way, quick,’ he said, and then disappeared from sight. Che peered through the hatchway and saw Totho descending the Sky Without’s very hull, hand over hand on iron rungs. Below was an open walkway that must surely connect to the lower deck.

  Che did not want, under any circumstances, to be out there with nothing but the strength of her grip to save her from a dive into infinity. The Wasp soldiers were coming, though, so her preferences seemed irrelevant.

  ‘You first,’ she said, and Salma simply dived straight through the hatch. As soon as he was clear of it, his Art-wings blurred into life about his shoulders, catching him in the air, where he hovered and spun while waiting for her.

  She bundled herself through the hatch and hauled it closed behind her, balancing precariously. A moment’s extra thought showed her how to secure it, and by the time the Wasps had reached it, there was no obvious way for them to follow.

  The wind tugged at her, seemed to get between her fingers and the slick chill of the metal rungs. She concentrated only on her hands, trying to make her descent as mechanical and unerring as an automaton’s. Salma kept pace with her, and she knew he would try to catch her if she slipped, but she was not altogether sure whether he could.

  And then there came another hatch, at last. Totho was holding it open for them, practically hopping from foot to foot. She shouldered past him into the cramped walkway.

  ‘Where now?’

  ‘Tynisa’s waiting in the hangar.’ He bared his teeth nervously. ‘They’re after us and I’m not sure there’s anywhere we can safely hide. Maybe amongst the freight.’

  Che closed the hatch after Salma, who said, ‘Run,’ remarkably quietly. The walkway stretched the length of the airship’s gondola, but at the far end they could see movement: black and yellow yet again. Wasp soldiers were now forcing their way along the narrow space with their hands outstretched before them.

  Totho took off at once down the walkway, with an engineer’s practised hunch, and then almost immediately dropped through another hatchway. By the time Che had caught up, he was in the cavernous space of the hangar, where Tynisa was already coming out of hiding to greet them. As soon as Salma was clear of the hatch Che slammed it shut and threw the bar.

  ‘No time!’ she warned. ‘They’re coming!’

  Salma looked about them. ‘Where do these other doors go?’ he asked.

  ‘Engine room, a dead end,’ Totho explained. ‘And the other leads to the freight holds.’

  ‘But we don’t need to run anywhere on board!’ Tynisa interrupted them. ‘If we stay here they’re bound to find us. So let’s use this thing and just go.’ She was pointing at the fixed-wing. ‘Totho, start it up, make it go.’

  Totho goggled at her. ‘I can’t pilot a flier.’

  ‘But you’re Apt, you’re an artificer. You like machines.’

  ‘I could repair it, yes, if it was broken.’ He kept shaking his head at her, and Che saw a whole bucketful of hope drain from Tynisa’s expression.

  ‘But . . . that was my plan,’ she said weakly.

  ‘I can fly it, maybe’ Che announced, to disbelieving stares. ‘I can try, at least,’ she amended. ‘I did a course on aviation at the College.’

  ‘Then let’s do it!’ Salma said. Totho was already running for the loading ramp wheel, unlocking it and spinning it so that the ramp descended into its full slope with a shriek of abused metal. The fixed-wing flier shifted a foot downwards against its rope restraints, pointing backwards down the ramp, about to re-enact its arrival in reverse.

  The first impact by the Wasps on the door they had entered by almost splintered it out of its frame. There was a fraught second of looks anxiously exchanged and then Che made the decision. Half-sliding down the ramp, she clambered awkwardly across the fixed-wing’s hull to squeeze herself into the pilot’s seat. The controls were simple: levers to steer the vanes, a crank to start the propeller. She began cranking straight away, just as the hangar door flew off its hinges, tumbling the first Wasp soldier into the room.

  ‘In!’ Tynisa decided, and she sprang into the seat behind Che, with Salma following close behind. Totho rushed to join then, thudding down onto the ramp and skidding dangerously on its metal slope. He reached for the lever that would release the ropes to free the flier, but before he could even touch it there was a crackle of fire and something bright struck sparks from near his hand. Totho fell backwards and had a gut-wrenching understanding that he was about to fall between the ramp and the hatch and then slip out into space. Salma and Tynisa both snagged him at the same time, and hauled him into the flier.

  ‘I can’t get the engine going!’ Che said in a panic, and Totho was explaining that he had to release the snagging ropes or the flier would be going absolutely nowhere.

  ‘Simple,’ Tynisa said, and flicked out her rapier. Totho howled for her to stop, but a moment later she had severed the ropes just on one side. The fixed-wing pitched left and hung for a second as another bolt of energy burned into the deck above them. Then Tynisa had severed another two strands and the flier slid helplessly down the ramp and away into space.

  But they were not flying. They were barely gliding, mostly falling, with Che repeating, ‘The engine won’t start! Someone look at the engine!’

  That someone, Totho realized, would have to be him. He squirmed towards the aft end of the flier, where the dark bulk of the engine was set well back. He dived through the space between the upper and lower wings, dodged about the mounted ballista, and off the back of the craft.

  His Art kept him there, clinging to the smooth side of the flier with feet and knees, whilst the air dashed past him and the world towards him. Totho had very little time in which to make a diagnosis. Perhaps less than he thought. There were figures above him, diving from the Sky Without with their Art-wings extended.

  I can fly it. The words were rattling around in Che’s skull, faster and faster. She had the flaps all the way back, so that if the engine had been functioning then the fixed-wing would be looping the loop. Instead it was dropping straight out of the sky, its nose gently tilting lower. ‘Any time, Toth!’ she called out. By now she had the levers pulled so far back that they were creaking in her hands.

  Energy crackled across one of the wings from a ranging shot o
f the Wasps. Hanging almost upside down by his Art and his knees, Totho’s hands searched frantically. He heard Che shout his name despairingly, but he could not be rushed now.

  There. And just in time. There were clamps on the fuel lines intended to stop just this kind of theft. None of the Wasps had been an artificer or else something more sophisticated, harder to find, would have been used. Swiftly he plucked them off and shouted for Che to fire up the engine one more time.

  There must have been quite a head of fuel waiting in the lines, because the engine seemed to explode, a flash of heat that scorched Totho’s face, and great clouds of smoke were falling away behind and above them. A moment later the engine was running, propeller turning at first slowly, then fast enough to blur. The fixed-wing struggled in the air, Che wrestling with the sticks. Clinging to the engine casing, which in a very short time was getting uncomfortably warm, Totho feared the little craft was going to slide sideways, slipping through the air and then simply plummeting into a mad spinning dive. Che put all her weight on the controls, though, and the flier swung level, pitched the other way and then righted, dashing through the air with the engine still coughing and smoking.

  She glanced behind her, and was rewarded with the sight of Tynisa and Salma actually clinging together from pure fear, and she gave out a great whoop of glee, for in that moment she was suddenly enjoying herself.

  Then out of the smoke the Wasp soldiers came arrowing down on them with swords and fire.

  ‘Get to the ballista! Salma! Tynisa! Someone get to the ballista!’ Che yelled, and realized that neither of them would know what to do with it. Totho was now clambering, exhausted, up onto the flier’s stern and so she shouted it at him instead. He gave her an aggrieved look but struggled over to the weapon.

  A burst of energy impacted squarely on one wing, punching a hole through the light wood frame. The fixed-wing bucked dangerously and Che had to turn her attention back to keeping the craft level.

  Behind her, Totho reached the ballista. It was nothing more than a glorified heavy crossbow, but double-strung with two sets of arms to give the single bolt more range and force. There was a two-handled winch at the butt end and he cranked it over and over to drag the string back against the resistance of the sprung steel.

  ‘Pass me a bolt!’ he called over his shoulder. For a moment he thought that they would prove incapable even of that. He began to curse all Inapt peoples, but then Tynisa nearly rammed a quarrel in his ear as the flier pitched and he snatched it from her and slotted it into place.

  The first Wasp soldier appeared, darting past the fixed-wing on its far side. There was energy dancing about his hands, something that Totho could recognize as Ancestor Art, but of some Wasp variation he had never previously encountered. The man sent a bolt of energy straight at Che, who flinched, pulling the fixed-wing into a long curving turn back towards the lagging Wasp soldiers.

  ‘Get him away! Someone get him away from me!’ Che shrieked. Totho tried to swivel the ballista about, but its angle of fire would not permit it. Instead he wrenched it back to face the other Wasps, two of them now almost on him, and one flew straight into the weapon’s path without spotting it. Totho glimpsed a second’s worth of abject horror as the man suddenly realized, then he released the trigger and the bolt rammed into its target at no more than ten yards’ distance. The very force of impact hurled him away, end over end over end, somersaulting towards the earth. Totho hurriedly began winching the ballista’s arms back again.

  Another crackle of energy struck the side of the hull, just beyond the pilot’s seat, and the entire flier rocked as Che ducked. There was nowhere to hide, though, nowhere to dodge. ‘Hammer and tongs, someone do something!’ she shouted, looking angrily back at the others.

  Salma was standing up even as she looked, and a moment later he parted company with the fixed-wing, and his own wings unfurled into being. He launched into the air in a blaze of silver. His sword was already out, a wicked short punch-blade that thrust straight out from the knuckles, and he kept pace with the limping flier effortlessly, dancing in the air before diving beneath it. Che caught her breath. She remembered him saying that the Wasp-kinden were clumsy in the air but this had not been true until he took flight. She spotted him again a moment later, soaring up under the Wasp who was targeting her. The man had little enough chance to notice him before Salma had slashed across him, and in his wake the Wasp was left clutching a bloody wound in his side, tumbling over himself and falling out of the sky.

  Salma paused, treading air while flying backwards as he kept up speed, and then he flung himself along the entire length of the fixed-wing, cutting a curve around its doubled wings and lunging at the closest Wasp with blade outstretched.

  Che peered straight ahead and blanked her mind of anything now but flying the machine to safety. She forced herself to keep the flier level and would worry about Salma later. Still, that sight of Salma, vaunting in the air with his sword gleaming in the sunlight, was something that would not readily leave her.

  Salma toyed with the other Wasp, darting in and out, hovering where the soldier could only lumber after him through the air. Then the Dragonfly was gone and past him. As the Wasp turned, spitting a bolt of sting-energy at his taunter, Totho shot the man in the back with enough force to slam the steel head of the bolt right through his chest.

  There were three further specks in the sky out there, insignificant now beside the receding bulk of the Sky Without. For a moment Salma wanted to go after them too, to dance amongst them in the sky and to take them if he could. His ancestors and his fallen kin were calling for him to do so, urging him to test himself.

  But he was not a man alone. He had others he was responsible for. Stenwold had known, when he gave them this task, that Salma was no callow youth but had experience enough not to indulge himself.

  Fast though he was, he had to push himself to catch up with the fixed-wing, and that meant the Wasp pursuers would never overtake it. He caught hold of a wing, pulled himself forward into the arms of Tynisa and Totho as he released his Art and his wings flickered and vanished from his back. He discovered that he was panting heavily after the brief flight, shamefully out of practice. Tynisa was giving him a wondering look. Totho’s expression was just relief that it was all over.

  ‘Which way to Helleron?’ he called. ‘Can we get there in this thing?’

  Che glanced back and grinned at him. ‘I’ve taken a compass reading already,’ she said. ‘If we’ve got enough fuel we’ll make it. Otherwise it might mean a bit of a walk.’

  She brought the fixed-wing down still some distance from Helleron because, from the noise the engine was making, it would not have been able to carry them much further. Landing was, she now discovered, distinctly the trickiest part of the flight. Or at least the flier itself did not enjoy it. When it finally ground to a halt while traversing the furrows of some farmer’s field, it had lost half a wing and the stabilizers from the front.

  On solid ground at last, Che took a deep breath. That had been a harrowing experience, white knuckles clamped on the sticks, staring into the blue while trying to coax as much distance out of the craft as it could give her. She was glad to be travelling on nothing more challenging than her own two feet once again. Still . . . in a strange way she had enjoyed it. Beetles might possess the grace of stone blocks when the Art allowed them wings, but their artifice could make up for that sometimes.

  ‘Everybody in one piece?’ she called back, to a chorus of grumbles as her passengers began to extricate themselves from the mortally wounded flier.

  The wronged farmer, whom they encountered shortly thereafter, told them that they were still about a day’s journey from Helleron, further away than they had hoped. He was not the coarse-handed rustic that they had been expecting. This close to Helleron even the sons of the soil saw a great deal of the Lowlands culture passing by. They offered him the salvage rights to the fixed wing and Tynisa haggled languidly with him until they had secured transport to th
e nearest thoroughfare, as well as a few provisions and clothes. The latter, she explained, would be important since the Sky Without would doubtless be at berth at Helleron’s airfield by the time they reached the city, and the Wasps would be out in force looking for them. Disguise would therefore be crucial, as they waited for Bolwyn at Benevolence Square.

  ‘Why do we think the Wasps are all over Helleron, then?’ Che asked.

  ‘Their agents will be,’ Tynisa said confidently. ‘The Wasps have had a good while now to put them in place. We need to find Bolwyn as quickly as possible, and then step well out of sight.’

  Helleron crept up over the horizon like a looming black tide. The road they were following was a jostling two-way stream of travellers feeding the city’s eternal hunger for buying and selling. There were hand-carts and travelling tinkers laden with their packs; there were wagons drawn by horses or by great insects, mostly slow and patient beetles that could muscle along all day if need be. A few mounted wayfarers passed by too, either horse-borne or on bug-back. Much of the traffic was mechanical though, they noted, for Helleron was the centre of the artificing world, and its wandering children would return there in droves.

  They watched the city come near from their perch on the hood of a great grain-hauling automotive trundling along on six metal legs – looking more like a beetle than those insects themselves. None of them had fully appreciated the concept of Helleron as the Lowlands’ epicentre of industry. They had envisaged something like Collegium but with a few more factories and without the elegant white buildings of the College.

  But Helleron was vast, extending half again Collegium’s size, the greatest single city in all the Lowlands. It sprawled and it was dirty: whether its buildings had been raised of dark stone or not, they had been overlaid, day after day, with the grime of the city’s foundries and workshops. There was a pall in the very air, as though the visitors were gazing on the place through smoked glass. A hundred hundred chimneys gouted it out continually, their narrow windows aglare with forge-fire.