Empire in Black and Gold

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Stenwold nodded glumly. ‘And how long before they do that anyway? Haven’t the Magnates at least started to talk about raising a standing army or improving the city defences?’

  ‘It was mentioned,’ Greenwise admitted. ‘Specifically it was mentioned that if we started rattling our sabres and building siege weapons then the Empire might wonder why we’re keeping back some of our stock in trade, rather than selling it to them, and after that there might be trouble. Besides, have you any idea what most of my peers think the Empire’s chief export is? Money. And they think that because of the way these Wasp-kinden have been spending it recently. Everyone’s had a nasty shock, but you’ll find that both shock and common sense are soluble in a sufficient concentration of money.’

  ‘Easy for the Wasps to spend what they have taken by force from others.’

  ‘Well, pirated gold is still good gold in this man’s town.’ Greenwise sipped his bitter chocolate thoughtfully. ‘You want Helleron to turn away their money? Helleron takes anybody’s money, and the moment we stop is the moment we breed enemies. We have never taken sides and never will. That way we have grown rich stoking the fires of other people’s wars, and never, ever having a war of our own.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, when we were both young I could jeer at the rich old men who practised such trades. Now I’m one of those rich old bastards, Sten, and it’s a bloody business all round. Two years ago I went north, do you know that? To what used to be the Commonweal, apparently, though I never visited there when it was. Your black-and-gold boys are all over it now. I know you’re right, Sten, but nobody would believe me, let alone believe you. And if I wouldn’t shut up about it, I might find my properties burned down, or my servants attacked, or worse.’

  ‘The Wasps would do that openly?’

  Greenwise gave him a pitying smile. ‘Why should they need to, when my profiteering peers would gladly do it on their own initiative?’

  ‘I think I understand.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sten. Until the Wasps actually start looting parts of this city nobody else here will take a blind piece of notice, and even then, they’d have to loot somewhere fashionable for anyone to care. Until then, well, the Wasps are just sitting there spending their money with us, and if they wanted to cause trouble they could have surely done so by now. But I know they’re . . . waiting, Sten. They’ll swarm when it happens, whatever it is, but until then they’re our best friends and best customers.’

  ‘So what are they waiting for, do you think?’

  ‘Some say they’re after the Commonweal again, but as I told you, they’re well entrenched north of here already. They don’t need to sit on our doorstep for that. Others say they’ll go south, give the Spiders some bother, or Tark, or even harass the Scorpions of the Dryclaw. Anywhere so long as it isn’t here. You know the mentality.’

  ‘I do.’ I’ve missed something, though. Sitting there, where the rich and powerful took their ease, Stenwold felt shackled and helpless. Something was eluding him, and he had a keen sense that time was running out, the hands of the clock sweeping towards the last hour.

  He stood. ‘Thank you for at least talking to me.’

  Greenwise shrugged yet again. It was a frequent gesture that seemed characteristic of him now, and had not been so evident before. ‘Good luck, Sten, and one more thing . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Stenwold felt a sudden tension, and his hand strayed near his sword hilt.

  ‘We were followed on our way here. So watch yourself, as you leave.’

  With Greenwise’s warning in mind, Stenwold left the chocolate house cautiously. At first there was no hint of trouble, for this was a wealthy area, with guardsmen and private militia all over it. Then his eyes met other eyes fixed on him, belonging to a lone Wasp-kinden across the street. There was no pretence at subterfuge: just a man, a little short of Stenwold’s years, in a striped tunic and unarmed. As soon as he had Stenwold’s attention he came walking over, smiling as though meeting a friend.

  Stenwold realized he had seen this man before, but his mind failed to place him – the realization coming only with the introduction.

  ‘Master Stenwold Maker of the Great College?’ the Wasp said, stopping just out of sword reach. ‘A good day to you. My name is Captain Thalric of the Imperial Army.’

  ‘Yes, you are, aren’t you.’ For as soon as the name was mentioned, Stenwold recalled seeing this man in the Assembly chambers. He had been standing beside that smooth statesman of theirs as though he was some menial, but Stenwold had seen through it. ‘You’re the one who turned my niece into a slave.’

  Thalric actually smiled at that and Stenwold felt anger rising in him. Steady yourself. It’s supposed to be they who have the tempers. A fight here would end badly for whoever started it.

  ‘She was technically not a slave but a prisoner of war. A captured spy, if you will. I understand that you yourself put her into that line of business.’ The Wasp spoke mildly but it was obvious he was angling for a response.

  ‘What do you want, Captain?’ Stenwold asked him. ‘Are you come to bribe me, perhaps? Offer me a rank badge to serve your Empire?’

  ‘What would be the point? You wouldn’t accept,’ Thalric replied, still smiling, but it was a complex expression, that smile. There was both mockery and melancholy contained within it. Stenwold had an odd sense that there were other things the man wanted to say, but could not feed them past the filter of his duty.

  ‘If you’ve men here, to make an end of me, then you had better summon them, Captain,’ Stenwold said, hand now resting on his sword hilt. The crowds buffeted them both constantly. A single passing killer, a blade beneath the ribs? Stenwold tried to hold himself in absolute readiness, as if he were Tisamon or some other professional designed for such business.

  Thalric’s smile was wintry. ‘Your voice has fallen on deaf ears all these years, Master Maker. My people tell me you have buzzed your tale in the Assembly for over a decade, and were simply brushed away for your pains. The discovery of your murdered corpse, on the other hand, might speak most eloquently, and remind them too readily of all your living words of warning besides. No, it is nothing so sinister that brings me here, Master Maker. I merely wanted to see you, speak with you. We have been enemies for a long time, since long before each knew of the other’s existence. The game is nearly done now. Only a few days until the world looks very different. I might then not have another chance to see my adversary.’

  ‘I did not think Wasp officers were allowed to be so indulgent,’ said Stenwold, innocently enough, but to his surprise a muscle twitched in the man’s face, a nerve touched.

  ‘They are not.’ Thalric looked away. ‘They are not, lest they fall. Will you drink with me, Master Maker?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘One drink. No poison, I promise, although I hear trying to poison Beetles is an uncertain business.’

  ‘You want . . . to drink with me?’

  Thalric stared back at him, saying nothing, just waiting, and in the end it was sheer curiosity that made Stenwold accept.

  Stenwold chose the drinking den himself. It was only four streets from the chocolate house, but a different character of place altogether, a vice den where rich dilettantes came to spend their money. Whilst a Spider-kinden woman danced and undressed in tired and practised stages, he and Thalric shared a jug of sharp and acrid Forta Water that made their eyes sting.

  ‘I will not speak of the superiority of the Empire,’ Thalric said. ‘I’ve beat that drum quite enough.’

  ‘And do you still like the sound of it?’

  The Wasp gave a short laugh. ‘You’d try to recruit me, would you? Master Maker, nobody ever understands that I have only one love, and that is the Empire.’ He said it in such a way that Stenwold saw that ‘nobody’ included those of Thalric’s own party. He remembered the story of infighting at Myna that Kymene had told. ‘No, I just wanted to see you, to gain your measure, as no doubt you are similarly gauging me.’

  ‘You strike me as an
unusual man, for one of your race.’

  ‘I try to be anything but. Perhaps that is what makes me unusual.’ Thalric drained his bowl without flinching, and poured some more. ‘Your niece is a remarkable woman.’

  ‘She said you were going to torture her.’

  ‘And?’ Thalric raised an eyebrow.

  ‘And I can read between the lines. You could have done so. Perhaps you would have, if she had not been freed.’

  ‘I would have had to, eventually.’

  Stenwold frowned. ‘You’re not a happy man, Captain.’

  ‘Nor are you, Master Maker. I may have only now met you, but on paper I know you very well. College scholar, artificer, traveller – so what brought you to this sordid trade?’

  ‘You mean your trade.’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  Stenwold had his own bitter smile for that. ‘You did – perhaps not personally, but your Empire. I was in Myna at the conquest. I realized the future then.’

  ‘A hazard of ambition is to make enemies,’ Thalric acknowledged. ‘Would it make things easier for you to know that I was part of that conquest. I was much younger then, of course.’

  ‘We all were, Captain Thalric. But you’re not here for Helleron.’

  ‘Am I not? If you don’t already understand, you can’t think that I will tell you.’ And there was a glint in Thalric’s eye that chilled Stenwold through and through. ‘Would you join me in a toast, now, Master Maker? It is a Lowlander habit, and I adopt it in deference to the . . . current allegiance of our surroundings.’

  ‘Name your toast,’ Stenwold said.

  Thalric had been about to say something cutting, a needle-comment to bait him with, but at the last moment something twisted in him, that part of him that had clapped Aagen on the shoulder, and had once been Ulther’s prote´ge´, and instead he said, ‘Everything is going to change, Master Maker. The old will be swept away, the new will march in. The Lowland cities are no different to two score others that now serve the Empire. You have striven mightily against us, against the apathy and cupidity of your own people, and at last it has come to this. We meet now, because even if you stabbed me through the heart right here and now you would still be too late to turn aside the course of history. But I admire you, because at least you have tried. Because you also believe in your people, however misplaced that belief may be. So let us have an old toast, while we still can. To absent friends.’

  Stenwold stared at him, thinking of Marius and Atryssa, so long dead now, but with him still, and he could almost see reflected in Thalric’s eyes some kindred loss, more recent but no less deep. He raised his bowl and clicked it against the Wasp’s own, and they drank.

  Once Stenwold had gone, Thalric’s aide came to him, his face a mix of concern and disapproval. ‘Do you want me to follow him, sir? What was that all about?’

  Thalric drained the last harsh dregs from his bowl. ‘It was an indulgence,’ he said, mostly to himself. ‘And we already know where he is going.’ He had held Stenwold Maker up enough, he felt. By the time the man arrived, it would all be over.

  Stenwold’s head was spinning, but not from the strong drink. First his maddening conversation with Greenwise, highlighting that elusive cog missing from the machine he had been building in his mind. Why were the Wasps here? What were they waiting for? Then the baffling conversation with Thalric, a man racked by a confession he could tell nobody. The thought of Wasp fighting Wasp in Myna recurred to him and he could make nothing of it.

  Greenwise Artector had confirmed only what Stenwold had already known. The Wasps were waiting, were looking elsewhere but Helleron. If so, why come here at all? Two thousand soldiers with vehicles and supplies was an investment the Empire would not make without reason. Was there some incursion they were here to put down?

  In a few days . . .

  Those were Thalric’s words, and not given as any revelation, just something said as a matter of course. Clock hands counting down, and yet for all this the Wasp had dropped no further clue. But there had been an apology, had there not? Unspoken, but there had been a heaviness to Thalric like a doctor coming to relatives with bad news. Something had been eating at the man. He had gone away with his bad news unsaid, and yet . . .

  Stenwold was no Helleren, and he had come here expecting the city to be under attack, yet that was not the case. Thalric had been telling him, whether gloatingly or just unconsciously, that their move, when it came, would . . .

  There was a queasy feeling growing in Stenwold’s stomach. The strong drink boiled there: not with any poison but a horrible suspicion, growing and growing. Here in Helleron there was one matter that the next day or so would bring to fruition. A commercial matter. A profitable matter. Something that would change the face of the Lowlands forever.

  As soon as he had the idea, it put its jaws into him and shook him, and desperately he began to run, pushing through the streets of Helleron because he had questions, desperate questions, for Scuto.

  He had to know more about the Iron Road.

  When the Ant-kinden burst in it was a moment before he could speak, leaning against the door jamb of Scuto’s extended shack and gasping for breath. At last, and with everyone on their feet and staring at him, he got it out. ‘Marre’s dead.’

  Scuto swore, baring pointed teeth. Totho, who had been carefully watching him at work, asked, ‘Who’s Marre?’

  ‘She was that Fly-kinden you sent to talk to the Moths, wasn’t she?’ Tynisa said to Scuto.

  ‘Yes she was.’ The Thorn Bug stomped over towards the newcomer, a big-framed Ant in plate-reinforced chain mail. ‘How do you know, Balkus? Are you sure of it?’

  ‘I saw the body.’ Balkus spoke jerkily, still catching his wind. ‘Arrow in her. They found her out on the slopes.’

  ‘The Moths have made their choice, then,’ Tynisa said calmly.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Scuto insisted, but he was now looking hunted.

  ‘Che’s with them!’ Totho said. ‘I knew it! I told her not to go, and I told Stenwold not to let her go!’

  There was a rising current of concern among the dozen or so of Scuto’s people waiting for his instructions, and eventually their chief held his spiked hands in the air. ‘Shut up, the lot of you!’ His lips twisted over his teeth in frustration. ‘Speak to me, Balkus.’

  ‘Don’t know more than that. I was out in the Sarnesh quarter, trawling for rumours like you asked. That was the rumour I got. The guard had her down as just another dead Fly with no connections, but I knew her. A single shot, right up under the ribs. Someone must have got her in flight.’

  ‘Oh bloody loose wheels and knives!’ Scuto shouted at the lot of them, or maybe at himself. ‘Everyone get your weapons. Everyone who wears it get into armour. Now! Someone help me.’

  He looked to Totho, but the halfbreed was obviously not inclined to be anybody’s arming squire and so it was Balkus took down a breast- and back-plate that had been cut and twisted, welded and burned until its ruined, punctured contours matched Scuto’s own deformities.

  Tynisa, whose blade was always on her hip and who had no armour to wear, watched the men and women of Scuto’s service get themselves ready for war with the speed of long practice. Two Fly-kinden strung bows whilst another racked up the tension on a crossbow. A Beetle-kinden man and woman were strapping each other into matching suits of part-plate backed with tough canvas. Another brace of Beetles wore artificer’s heavy leathers. The one-armed Scorpion had looped something like an apron over his head, and a layer of metal and leather over his chest that left his back bare. There was a Dragonfly-kinden woman, only recently arrived, buckling on bracers and greaves, and then contorting herself to string a bow as tall as she was. Finished with Scuto, Balkus the Ant had slung on a baldric of wooden boxes, and began testing the action on a blocky, bulky thing she recognized as a nail-bow, whilst beside him another Ant from another city was shrugging into chain mail, taking up a shield whose device had been defaced with plain black paint. Tis
amon stood ready from the moment Balkus had burst in, but there was a second Mantis with them now, an angular-faced woman who had so far kept her distance from him. Now she had a rapier in her right hand, and in her left another ground down for balance, with forward curving horns for trapping a blade.

  ‘What is going on?’ Tynisa demanded of Scuto, who now had his armour on, little more than slung over his shoulders and held in place by his own thorns.

  ‘There’s a lifespan to any band like mine in the information game,’ he said, checking the action on a repeating crossbow. ‘Don’t matter how good you are, things come to the crunch point sooner or later. The point where, no matter how careful you are, the enemy knows enough about your gang to make a move. When that happens, it happens all together. I’ve seen networks wound up in a day, a score of men and women disappearing, dead or captured or turned traitor.’

  ‘But this might just be—’

  ‘It might just be anything, miss,’ he said, although his eyes held no hope in them. ‘But we got to be ready ’cos if it’s coming, it’s coming right away.’

  But when the door burst open at that very moment she saw that he had not meant ‘right away’ as in that very moment. He had meant sometime that day, or the coming night, or the next day.

  There was a Fly child in the doorway, his face completely wild with fright. ‘Scuto! Scuto!’ he was bawling. ‘Men’s coming! Bad men! A whole load of ’em!’

  ‘Bows to the wall!’ Scuto snapped out as the child fled, door slamming behind him. ‘We’ll take their first charge and then we’re getting out of here. Rendezvous is the Merro on Shriek Street!’

  He slammed the door closed and put his bow to one of the small windows. Other archers and crossbowmen were finding positions about the walls of Scuto’s workshop, some at ground level, others powering upwards with brief wing-flares to find vantage points in the sloping roof.