Empire in Black and Gold

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘And a companion too,’ Stenwold agreed, beckoning Salma over. She looked the Dragonfly up and down. ‘I reckon I don’t mind that at all, Master Maker.’

  Stenwold took both her and Salma aside, while Khenice began building a fire.

  His flier was ready for him in the airfield, Thalric knew. His possessions, so few, were already packed. He knew he should leave the palace, and Myna itself, before Colonel Latvoc decided that his refusals qualified as disloyalty. In truth, he would have departed two days ago, if not for the visitor.

  Thalric now stood by the workbench of the interrogation room and thought hard about that encounter because it had brought on him a sense of creeping discomfort that he had yet to shake off.

  It had seemed reasonable enough when a Wasp officer of middle years had arrived asking for him. The face had seemed vaguely familiar, but the number of such men that he had met was in the hundreds so he had thought nothing of it.

  In the small room commandeered as his office, he had been finishing his report for the colonel when the man came in. After a brief glance up he had returned to it, saying, ‘What can I do for you, soldier?’

  ‘Oh Major, surely you can do better than that.’

  The use of his true rank had snapped his head up, thinking that this must be a Rekef matter. The officer was not standing to attention like a soldier should, and that face was becoming maddeningly familiar . . .

  And then it had struck him like a physical blow. It was his own face he was looking at. Not an identical copy, which would have caused comment, but it could have been some extra brother he did not know about and the voice was one he knew as well.

  ‘Scylis?’ he had said softly, and the Wasp officer nodded with a smile that was most un-Wasplike.

  ‘Well done, Major, although I did rather make it easy for you.’

  Thalric remembered looking in vain for the edge of a mask, the sign of make-up. This was the first time he had clearly seen any face that Scylis had chosen to put up. There was no mask, nothing but that living face. It had sent a shiver of horror through him – horror at the unaccountable.

  ‘I really could have used you three days ago,’ he had said to disguise his shock. ‘You do pick your moments to turn up.’

  ‘And meanwhile your operation in Helleron is wondering if you’re still alive. I decided I was best suited to tracking you down. Travelling as a Wasp officer within the Empire has its benefits. I might even consider it as a retirement option.’

  Thalric had carefully not asked where Scylis had obtained the armour he was wearing.

  And then there had been the gift, for Scylis had not arrived empty handed. He had been in the city long enough to learn which way was up, politically. He had brought in a prisoner for interrogation.

  The prisoner was behind him now, stretched out on the bench. Because of the shortness of time available, Scylis had consented to let Thalric watch him work. The procedure had chilled him, he who had himself interrogated countless prisoners for the army or the Rekef.

  When Thalric asked questions, it was about troop movements, the identities of agents, supply lines and the plans of other spymasters. His methods utilized a trained artificer and the devices that hung above the workbench, folded like an insect’s limbs.

  Because he was not Apt, Scylis worked by hand. Spiders almost never were, assuming he truly was a Spider-kinden at all. He worked like an artist and, amongst the questions regarding names and places, he simply sought the details of everyday life, preparing himself for the role he would be playing. His voice was soft and patient, almost sympathetic, but behind it Thalric had recognized the glee of a man rejoicing in the skill and the power he wielded. It had been a glee enhanced by the fact that Thalric was his audience, and Scylis could witness the effect on him that his ministrations were having.

  At the end of it Thalric had given him his further orders and he had gladly accepted them. He had entered the palace as a Wasp officer, but by the time he was back in the city he would have another face entirely.

  Behind Thalric, on the workbench, the body of Khenice waited for disposal.

  At some point in the night Che sensed that she half-woke, some footfall beside her bringing her to the very brink of consciousness. Opening her eyes she saw something pale beside the rolled-up cloak that was her pillow and she identified it merely as a folded paper before passing back into troubled slumber. It seemed to her, some time later, that yet another crouched by her, but she turned over, resolutely determined not to be woken, dreaming only that whatever paper had been left beside her was now being opened and read.

  And then she was being shaken, only gently but she snapped out of her dreams with one hand fumbling for her sword. The paper, had there ever been one, was gone.

  ‘What is it? Is it Thalric?’ she gasped, but then she recalled she was a prisoner no longer. They were in the shadow of the Darakyon, with the lights of Asta visible now to the south, and just last evening Salma had gone to follow the army to Tark with Skrill as his guide.

  Her eyes finally obliged and the night grew pale for her – and there was Achaeos kneeling beside her, his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘What is it? Is it my watch now?’

  ‘Your sister is still on watch,’ he said, which, because they were plainly not sisters, oddly touched her.

  She sat up, looking about. ‘What is it, then?’ Tynisa was indeed sitting alert on a hummock near the forest’s edge and, without her Art, Che would never have been able to see her.

  ‘I need to take you somewhere,’ Achaeos whispered.

  She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I cannot say where it is, what it is, only that it is something that I need you to see.’

  ‘If I knew in advance, I wouldn’t go, is that it?’

  ‘It is.’ He said without shame. ‘Will you come with me?’

  And in that was weighed the question: how far did she trust him? Was there some slaver or Wasp agent waiting there within the dark wood? What did she really know about this grey-skinned man with his strange beliefs and his unreadable eyes?

  She rubbed her own eyes, stood up and threw her cloak over her shoulders against the night’s chill, then buckled on her baldric, the sword tapping against her leg like some familiar trained animal. She had been separated from it too long.

  ‘I will trust you,’ she decided, and he led her to the edge of the wood.

  Tynisa watched them approach cautiously. ‘Che, you shouldn’t go with him if you don’t want to,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right, I . . . I want to.’

  ‘Well just shout if there’s any trouble.’ There seemed more to this warning than Achaeos taking liberties or even servants of the Empire lying in wait. Che frowned, but even as she opened her mouth to reply a shadow was looming beside her, making her squeak with fright.

  ‘Are you ready?’ asked Tisamon.

  ‘We are,’ Achaeos replied.

  ‘He’s coming too?’ Che asked, and the Moth nodded so very seriously.

  ‘We need him. We would not be safe without him. Not even I.’

  ‘Achaeos, what’s going on?’

  ‘I cannot tell you. Until you yourself have seen, you would not understand.’

  Even to her enhanced vision, the Darakyon was dark. She wondered that Tisamon, padding ahead, could see anything, and she saw him keep one hand out ahead of him, brushing the bark of the old trees, as though he was making his way by touch combined with some other sense she had no concept of.

  She decided that she was not fond of this forest, or forests in general – at least at night. It was filled with the sounds of small things, and not so small things, and at every step she made something, somewhere nearby, twitched. Achaeos’s hooded form was making its way resolutely ahead and being left behind would be even worse.

  And then Tisamon had stopped and she saw his claw was on his hand, though she had not seen him don and buckle it.

  ‘I have returned,’ said Achaeos, and he ann
ounced it to the air and to the trees. ‘You know me, and your power marks me still.’

  He had gone mad, that was clear enough, and she glanced worriedly at Tisamon. She saw him cock his head and it was a moment before she identified this as the reaction of someone listening.

  ‘I have brought her because I wanted her to see you,’ Achaeos continued and then, after a pause. ‘My reasons are my own.’

  It seemed to her that a sudden breeze gusted through the trees, and shook the leaves a little.

  ‘I have no more favours, and besides,’ Achaeos said, ‘what could I offer, who am already bound?’

  Che shook her head, reaching out to tap his shoulder, as if to demand the reason for this performance. The wind was becoming more insistent, gusting and then falling in irregular patterns. Unexpectedly, Tisamon’s hand encircled her wrist, drawing her hand away from the Moth’s shoulder.

  ‘Whatever you can ask of me, ask it,’ said Achaeos, but his voice trembled as he spoke.

  And she heard. The rustle of the trees, the whisper of leaves, insects scraping in the night. A hundred natural sounds, but together they formed a voice. If she listened very carefully, they were a voice.

  Heart and soul, blood and bone, mind and will, what would you give?

  A whimper escaped her, and had it not been for Tisamon’s hand on her, she would have slid to the ground.

  You return to us, little neophyte, with your prize and your temerity. What will we ask? Go and grow. Become great. Don Skryre’s robes and learn the secrets. Go to the ends of the earth if you will. But always know you are bound, bound to us, to our destiny, go you ever so far. One day, in a shadow, in a mirror, in the face of the waters, you shall see us, and we shall ask of you, and that time shall be soon.

  ‘Achaeos?’ she said, her voice reed-thin with fright.

  ‘You see them?’ His voice was soft, like that of a hunter who dares not take his eyes from his prey.

  ‘See? No, but I can hear. There are voices, Achaeos. Who else is here?’

  ‘Your eyes can cut the dark like mine can, Che. I want you to see.’

  She looked around wildly, but there was no one there and, besides, nobody, no ordinary human being, could have given that voice life.

  Tisamon, the composite voice of the forest spoke, and the Mantis let go of her and straightened up. Still there was nobody visible between the boles of the dark trees.

  Tisamon, it said again, you have been altered since last you passed within these halls.

  It shocked her that the Mantis, the most intimidating man she had ever met, gave a soft exhalation of fear.

  You were Tisamon the Hollow Man when east you went. Now you are Tisamon of the Purpose. But your purpose is clouded to us, Tisamon. As clouded as it is to you yourself. Do you mean to send the girl into a better future, or weight her with the past?

  Tisamon made no answer, but she saw his teeth were bared, his eyes fixed on something ahead. She followed that riveted gaze, and saw.

  She collapsed then, hiding her eyes from them. There were so many of them, a score at least, and they were hideous. They were composed of smooth chitin and barbed spines, and knotted bark and thorns and twisted briars, and yet they were human beings, Mantis-kinden features as like to Tisamon’s as to be family. And their eyes were huge, and they stared and stared.

  She had only a brief glimpse of them before she wrenched her head aside, but the image, the sight of them, would stay with her for all her remaining days.

  Then she felt Achaeos’s hands on her shoulders, heard his voice, low and comforting, and she found that she clung to him because she had nothing else.

  ‘What are they? Why did you bring me here? Why?’

  ‘This is the ghost story in the night, Che. This is the dream that is there when you wake. This is the worst of dark magic. And I want you to believe, Che. You must believe.’

  She now had her face pressed into his chest, for fear of what she might see beyond him. ‘I can’t believe. I can’t have a world with such things in it. Please—’

  ‘And tomorrow you will tell yourself they were just men in costume, or that you saw them unclearly, or that you merely dreamt them, but I want you to remember this, Che. You must remember that what you have seen is real, and cannot be explained away.’

  At last she dared to meet his eyes. ‘But why?’

  ‘Because this is my world, Che, and I want you to see it, to acknowledge it. We are the people of the twilight, of the Lore Age, before all your gears and levers. Though we fail and dwindle, we have some power yet. We are the keepers of those secrets that the world yet retains.’

  ‘You want me to . . .’

  ‘I would share my world with you, if your mind could absorb it. If you could just for once tear away the veil of doubt that surrounds all of your people. I may hate machines, and either destroy them or leave them, but at least I cannot avoid the fact of them. Che, please look. Please.’

  And he was begging her and that was what finally persuaded her. He, who could have forced this on her, was a slave to her will in that moment.

  She looked past his shoulder, clutching hard to him as her eyes picked them out again between the trees. They were speaking for Tisamon only, now. Their voice was a soft rush that she could not pick out words from. Even now they were not clear: they shifted before her, merging with the trees and each other. Che shuddered as every part of her mind except one demanded that she look away.

  She made herself look. With Achaeos’s slim arms about her, with him almost as her shield, she forced her eyes until they saw, they truly saw the abomination that was the Darakyon. Hideous tortured ghosts splayed on the rack of history, had they not been occupied with their living kinsman, their faceted gaze would have flayed her. Instead she felt she was looking into the very soul of Tisamon’s people, ripped out and hung in the air like smoke and cobwebs. They were tall and proud and callous – and lost and sad.

  ‘What did this to them?’ she whispered, for the pain contained in those crooked things was infinite, as was their power.

  Achaeos’s voice was very soft, very solemn. ‘You did,’ he said. ‘You did and then we did.’ And he would not explain further.

  The Wasps had come to Helleron. At first Stenwold thought the city was under siege, for from the east they saw only the tents of the Empire’s soldiers, their gold-and-black barred flags and armoured automotives. Even as they watched, an orthopter in imperial colours ghosted down silently, wings spread to catch the air.

  They approached carefully, circling to the south, and from there it became apparent that matters were very different.

  There was a very sizeable Wasp encampment outside Helleron, all the men and materials that Stenwold had already guessed at, but beyond them the city went on about its business just the same. There were caravans of goods, roads cluttered with people, the perpetual entrances and exits that turned the money mills of Helleron. The same tent city of traders, foreign buyers, slave markets and hawkers took up where the Wasps left off and yet nobody seemed to care that there were two thousand soldiers from an enemy power camped at the wall-less gates.

  ‘They have surrendered,’ Achaeos said bitterly. ‘The moment the Wasp army got here, they laid down their weapons.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Stenwold said. ‘What we’re seeing here is not an occupied city. Look, people coming and going as they please, no guards, no sentries or militia. This is Helleron just as it always was.’

  ‘A thousand Wasps don’t just turn up here to see the sights or go to the theatre,’ Tynisa said.

  ‘Our answers will be found inside,’ Stenwold decided. ‘We have to meet with Scuto.’

  It was strange, entering that city again, for it held so many memories. Flight and fight for Tynisa and Totho, betrayal and capture for Che. Tisamon must be recalling his countless mercenary duels, all those years counted out in meaningless exercise of his skills. Achaeos tugged his cowl over his face and hid his hands. There were a few Moth-kinden in Helle
ron, but they were despised.

  There were Wasps, too, within the crowd. Not many, and doing nothing more than talking to traders or passing on their way, but there they were. They were in armour, in uniform, rubbing shoulders in the weapon markets with Ant-kinden who regarded them suspiciously. Wasp quartermasters could be seen taking up provisions for their men, while Wasp artificers debated with Beetle machine-smiths over the quality of their wares. None of them spared a glance for the incoming train of riders. It was all so strangely unreal.

  Stenwold found them stabling for the horses and paid over the high prices Helleron demanded, and then they went to seek out the poor quarter of the city where Scuto had his home.

  ‘I don’t understand it any more than you,’ the Thorn Bug said. He was perched on a bench in his workroom, with quite a crowd there. Stenwold and his companions had been joined by almost a score of others who were obviously Scuto’s agents within the city. They were a motley and disparate pack of rogues, Che decided: Beetles, Flies and Ants, halfbreeds, an elegant Spider-kinden in fine silks, even a scarred Scorpion-kinden whose left hand was now just a two-pronged hook of metal.

  ‘They arrived here, what, a tenday ago, bit by bit, and they’re still trickling in. As my lads can tell you, there was a real panic at first. The magnates all mobilized their retinues, and the Council hired every mercenary they could put their hands on. It was knife-edge stuff all the way for a day or so, but the stripeys, they just sat there outside, pitching their tents. Then word got out that it was something else they were here for, but not the fighting. Some news arrived from the south saying there was an army marching on Tark that made this bunch look like the boys who clean the dunnies. Then the word was that this lot were only here to buy. They had pots of gold, Helleron mint and their own tat coins, and they were after weapons, supplies, all sorts of kit. Some reckoned they were going north – to go kick the Commonweal again maybe. People was talking maybe like they could be hired, as a mercenary army. They wanted to send them against Tharn, and this lad’s folk.’