Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

‘Hope only,’ he said, ‘that when we are done with you, the Empire can use one more live slave rather than one more dead Beetle. There is your hope, Miss Maker.’

  ‘Threats, still,’ she murmured.

  He released her suddenly, as simply as that, reclaiming his knife from the floor and scabbarding it. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, the epitome of calm itself now. His demeanour admitted nothing of the smashed table, or her attack on him. ‘Threats oft repeated become dull edged with overuse. Enough threats, then. I’ll send you back to your cell now, and next time I call for you, I promise, there will be no threats.’

  The guards took her back to the cell, where she found Salma sleeping fitfully, waking up and thrashing about, and then fighting for the blank respite of sleep again.

  Tomorrow night they will do it, she told herself. I must be strong.

  She wondered how strong she would have to be to resist the tortures of the Empire. And I am such a very strong person, by nature. I have such famous reserves of strength and willpower, she taunted herself bitterly.

  She clutched at her knees and shivered, and could not sleep. When the tread of the guards outside signalled a new day, it gave her no joy, and when the vile food was passed in to them, she could not eat it. When the night comes, they will come for me.

  Salma tried to comfort her, but he had only hollow words. What could he say?

  And, of course, they came for her in daylight. This was the Empire, and torturers were not skulking figures of moonlight and darkness but working men for the working day. She was hauled from Salma’s side in mid-morning, and she knew this time it would be different.

  Salma must have known as well. He actually tried to obstruct them. His arms were still bound, even though he could have flown nowhere. They had only untied him for a short space each day so as to leave him the use of them. Salma had charged them with his shoulder and they had knocked him down and kicked him until Che, through her own struggles, forced them to turn their attention to her.

  Previously she had always been taken up, towards the sun. Now they just hauled her further along the corridor. She had a glimpse of several other cell doors like theirs, each with a hatch and a grille. Some were open, some locked against other prisoners or perhaps against no one. She had a brief glimpse of an airier cell, its bars all the way from floor to ceiling, leaving the occupant exposed to all passers-by. A woman watched her pass, a local girl, hands gripping the bars.

  There was a single room at the end there, but with no hatch on the door. Che began struggling, but the two soldiers raised her almost off the ground, twisting her arms, and the way they manhandled her inside was effortless.

  She could not see, for a moment, what it was all intended for. She thought at first it was a workshop, for the room was dominated by a big workbench, pitted and scarred with the use of years, edged with fittings for tools and clamps and vices. To her it seemed innocuous, something familiar from the College machine rooms, until she was dragged to the table and rolled onto it. Then she looked up, and she screamed and screamed and fought them, so that another man had to come and pull the buckles tight while the two soldiers devoted their entire efforts to pinning her down.

  Yet it was nothing so much, out of context. This was a workbench, after all and, just as she would have expected, there were tools up there above her on the jointed arms that artificers preferred. Drills and saws, clamps and pliers and files — really nothing one would not find in any ordinary workshop. But they were poised right above her and the soldiers were clamping her to the bench.

  Twenty-four

  Hokiak’s Exchange was still there in the dingiest corner of the eastern plaza, just as Stenwold remembered it. Furthermore, so was Hokiak himself, although the intervening years had not been kind to him.

  He was the oldest Scorpion-kinden that Stenwold had ever seen, perhaps the oldest there was. They were a ruthless, primal people in their desert home and a man did not live long amongst them once his strength began to wane, unless he possessed some edge over his fellows. Hokiak’s edge was a self-imposed exile. Even when Stenwold had known him, he had been too old to go home. Now he was positively decayed, his waxy skin folded into sallow creases and his once-yellow eyes faded to a dim sepia. His throat was as creased as a discarded shirt and the characteristic large frame of his breed had slumped to fat now, and even that was ebbing like a low tide, leaving his bare chest an unsightly ripple of wrinkles and old scars. One of his foreclaws was a jagged stump that had not regrown, and his jutting jaws revealed a ghastly thicket of rotting spurs on protruding gums. He sat on a wicker chair and smoked, and occasionally skewered candied insects from a box with a thumbclaw.

  The Exchange itself was clearly faring better than its namesake. Stenwold and Totho pushed into a small room made smaller still by stacks of heaped boxes. The air was thick with spices, and the pungent, dizzying tobacco that Hokiak still smoked. His staff was hard at work prising the lids off crates, cataloguing their contents and then nailing them back. There were three youngsters engaged at the work: a pair of Fly-kinden around Totho’s age and a dark Mynan girl no older than thirteen. They were supervised by a Spider-kinden man who couldn’t have been much short of Hokiak’s own years. Spiders aged rather better, though. This one had long silver hair and a trace of an aristocratic demeanour, but was almost skeletally thin.

  ‘Stenwold, are you sure about this. . this looks like a pirate’s den,’ Totho whispered as he took a glance at the place. He was right, too. Most of the commodities that were hanging from the rafters, or being hurriedly boxed, were exotic plunder from far parts of the world, and Stenwold knew that there would be a back room with the real contraband in it.

  ‘Our friend Hokiak,’ he murmured, ‘was a black marketeer — and is one still, unless I miss my guess. Now the sort of people we’re looking for will have good use for someone who can smuggle goods in and out. It’s all about contacts, Totho.’

  ‘Don’t just stand there letting the dust in,’ Hokiak suddenly complained in a surprisingly deep voice. ‘In or out, Master Beetle.’

  Stenwold closed the door behind him. With Totho dogging his every step nervously. ‘Well now, Master Scorpion, how’s about finding a little work for a tramp artificer and his boy?’

  ‘You any good?’ Hokiak blinked rheumy eyes at him. ‘Always can find work for a good ’un. You got references?’

  ‘There’s an old, old Scorpion-kinden I know who used to be able to vouch for me,’ said Stenwold. ‘His name’s Hokiak. You might even know him.’

  The Scorpion squinted at him. ‘Windblast you! I don’t know. .’ His voice tailed off, and he scratched his withered throat with his remaining claw. The Spider-kinden man was now looking over, Stenwold noted, with a hand on a dagger’s hilt: not a threat, but just to be ready in case Stenwold turned out to be one.

  ‘Stenwold Maker?’ Hokiak said in a small voice. ‘Can’t be, surely. Stenwold Maker must be dead three times by now.’

  ‘If any of us is guilty of living beyond his time, old man, it has to be you,’ Stenwold told him. ‘I didn’t know whether I would still find you here.’

  Hokiak had fumbled a stick to his hand, and it bent alarmingly under his weight as he heaved himself to his feet. He took a very close look at Stenwold, their faces only inches apart. ‘Blast and blow me, if it ain’t old Stenwold himself,’ he concluded, and the Spider removed his hand from his blade. ‘Didn’t ever figure I’d see you again. Now, Gryllis, this old boy and I did a load of business before the conquest.’

  The Spider nodded cautiously. ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, Master Maker,’ he said, in a voice still sounding cultured. By now the three youngsters had stopped working in order to listen, and Gryllis turned and cuffed the nearest Fly boy irritably. ‘Dirty your hands, you little parasites. Don’t think the arrival of one Beetle-kinden’s cause for a holiday!’

  ‘So what in the wastes brings you all the way back here?’ Hokiak asked Stenwold. ‘I figured you’d made track
s once this place came under new management.’

  ‘I thought you might have done the same.’

  The old man shrugged. ‘Ain’t got nowhere to go, me. Besides, don’t matter who you are, everyone needs the services of an importer-exporter now and then. Matter of fact, the Black Guild business is better than ever.’

  The Black Guild was Lowlander parlance for smuggling, although it never approached anything like a genuine guild’s unity. ‘You’re shifting goods for the Wasps now, are you?’ Stenwold asked him, a little uneasily.

  Hokiak grinned at him, an appalling sight. ‘Now you know it ain’t like that. I just shift for them that asks. I ain’t never one to nail my heart to a flagstaff, and no mistake. So if you got some business you ain’t keen for them stripeys to figure, you came to the right place.’

  Stenwold nodded. It could be a bad mistake, of course, to trust this old villain. He could find himself in the cell next door to Che’s in no time, if she was still even in this cursed city. Still, his options were fast running through his fingers like grains of sand.

  ‘Let’s just say,’ he replied, ‘that I want to meet some people the Wasps aren’t too anxious for anyone to meet.’

  Hokiak nodded sagely. ‘Not dealings I’d want to see in an establishment like mine. You’d better help me hide my eyes.’

  Stenwold placed two coins on a crate in front of him, gold, stamped each with a winged sword and the words ‘Central Mint of Helleron’. Hokiak whistled when he picked them up.

  ‘Centrals, no less. Your coin’s good, Stenwold. These’re harder than the Empire stuff these days. In that case, I’d advise you to go straight into the back-room bar and get yourself and your lad here a drink. I’ll join you there presently. Gryllis, you can watch the shop for me.’

  ‘I’m sure I can manage,’ replied the Spider laconically.

  As well as the hidden contraband store, there was a liquor house at the back of Hokiak’s, and there had been long before the Scorpion had lent his name to this place. They found seven drinkers there already, and none of them looking the type to stare at too closely. Stenwold registered a pair of Ants of a colour he did not recognize and a trio of Fly-kinden gamblers with knives laid out on the table to indicate theirs was a closed game. There was a female Beetle with a tremendous scar down one side of her face and one hand on a big under-over double-armed crossbow, whom Stenwold thought was probably a game hunter. There was even a Wasp-kinden man in repainted armour, who must surely have been a mercenary or even a deserter. Behind the bar stood a Mynan woman, one of that local strain that seemed to be a stable half-breed of Ant and Beetle, and for a couple of small coins she handed out clay beakers of an acrid clear liquid.

  ‘Don’t drink it,’ Stenwold warned Totho as they found a table.

  ‘I have tried drink before, sir,’ the artificer said stiffly.

  ‘Not drink like this. The first time I tried this stuff I was left blind for a day.’ Stenwold realized that he had chosen his seat to face the door. Old habits were coming back to him.

  ‘How much do you trust that old man?’ Totho inquired.

  ‘I wish I knew.’ Stenwold sighed. ‘I wish I knew. I don’t think he’d go out of his way to hand us in, but it’ll be different if there’s a reward out. Just be ready to jump if it all falls over.’

  Totho nodded, and Stenwold looked up to see Hokiak poling his way over with the help of his stick. With a wheezing sigh the old man lowered himself into a chair at their table.

  ‘Don’t you look at me like that, Maker. I still got years left in me,’ he said, between ragged breaths.

  ‘You’ll outlive the pair of us,’ said Stenwold, hoping it wasn’t true. ‘Tell me, your deputy-’

  ‘Partner,’ Hokiak corrected. ‘Old Gryllis is the soul of discretion. He ain’t the kind to draw attention to himself. Used to be a player, way down south, and got enemies still on the look-out for him. He likes a quiet life now, same as all of us.’ He produced a squat clay pipe and lit it, sending a worm of smoke that trailed across the width of the table. ‘Mind, you seem to be looking for a mite more noise in yours. You’re after the Red Flag lot.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘That’s what they’ve gotten to callin’ ’emselves these days — on account of what they leave behind at the scene. You sure you want to mix with them? Don’t get me wrong. They’re good customers of mine. Always on the look for me to get ’em things in, or people out sometimes. Still, they ain’t what you’d call nice boys and girls.’

  ‘Living under the Wasp boot will do that to you,’ Stenwold observed. ‘Anyone left over from my time?’

  ‘A few, just a few,’ Hokiak confirmed. ‘Mind, it’s the young bloods what run it now, mostly. You get me a handful of those Centrals and, sure, I can get you where you’ll meet ’em. I just got to warn you, you mayn’t like it when you do.’

  ‘I’ll take that chance,’ said Stenwold. ‘I need their help. Maybe I can even help them in exchange. How many’s a handful, Hokiak?’

  The old man gave him a carious smile. ‘Blast me, but it’s been a long while. You used to have always that madcap lot with you, din’t you? That Spider-kin who was such a looker, and there was your Mantis feller what did the prize-fighting that year. I won a parcel and a half on him. If’n you was new, Maker, I’d have bigger hands, but seeing as you remember an old man after all this time, call it a dozen and we’re happy.’

  It was a lot of money; for Totho, more money than he had ever seen in one place. Still, he saw Stenwold count it out willingly and without regret.

  The old Scorpion had made the arrangements and then given them directions, which had led them by moonlight to a dark square. Stenwold kept his gaze steady, his breath rising as a slight plume in the night air. There were many such faded locations, away from Myna’s centre and its main thoroughfares and the grotesque wart of the governor’s palace. This had been a rich area of the city before the conquest. The surrounding houses here were three-storeyed, many of them, and some still sported empty iron hanging baskets where flowers had once been kept, or the peeling traces of ochre or dark blue where the lintels had been painted about the doors and windows. Many windows were shutterless now, and others had them hanging precariously off one hinge. Stenwold guessed that half of these houses were abandoned now, and such occupants as remained were not those families that had originally held court here.

  Hokiak had directed him here, though. They would meet here.

  Totho, beside him, had Scuto’s repeating crossbow in his hands, with a full magazine slotted into the top. Stenwold was beginning to wish he had brought a crossbow himself, and not just his sword. If the Scorpion had betrayed them this would be a poor place to get trapped by Wasp soldiers.

  ‘Master Maker,’ Totho whispered a warning.

  Stenwold started and turned to see two tall men in yellow shirts and black breeches passing into the square. One held a staff, and the other a lantern. They pointedly paid no attention to the two foreigners, instead lighting two braziers with exaggerated care before moving on. The dim red light lent the scene little warmth, however. Stenwold and Totho had seen many such men — and women — in Myna, standing guard at markets or patrolling the streets. They were substitute soldiers, brought in for the inferior tasks that the Imperial Army disdained, having been conscripted from elsewhere in the Empire. Stenwold thought they were probably Grasshopper-kinden from Sa, which was far enough from Myna that they would not be tempted to rebel or defect. Auxillians, they were called: slave soldiers of the Empire.

  The lamplighters passed on, but there was something so very private in their manner that told Stenwold they had been expecting him to be there. He began to feel nervous, or at least more nervous. There were too many shadows in this part of Myna and his night vision had never been of the best. That was part of the Art that had always eluded him. Closer into the city’s hub there would have been gas lamps flaring, but out here there was only naked flame, primitive and unreliable against the darkness.
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  ‘Master Maker,’ said Totho again, after a short while of waiting.

  ‘Stenwold — call me Stenwold, please. Or even Sten,’ the older man said.

  ‘Sten’ was clearly too much for the young artificer who, after a pause, began again: ‘Stenwold, then. . There’s something I’ve been meaning. . that is, when I had the opportunity. .’

  Stenwold kept his eyes on their surroundings, but he nodded to show he was listening. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It’s only that. . When we’ve freed Che. . freed Cheerwell I mean. And Salma of course. But when we have. .’

  The boy was certainly taking a long time over this, whatever it was. Meanwhile Stenwold clutched his hand about his sword hilt. The night was getting colder, too, the sky above ripped clear of clouds, pockmarked with stars.

  ‘It’s just, I’ve never met her parents, you see,’ Totho continued wretchedly.

  Caught unawares, Stenwold could genuinely not think what he meant. ‘Her parents?’ he asked, turning a blank expression to the youth.

  ‘Only. . I haven’t asked her at all. She doesn’t. . She doesn’t even know, I think.’ Totho’s dark face twisted. ‘But since you’re her uncle. .’

  ‘Totho, are you talking about a proposal?’ Stenwold asked, completely thrown by this, in this place and at this time.

  ‘I. .’ Totho read in his face something that Stenwold would have hidden had he realized it was there. The young artificer lowered his head in humiliation. The thought etched on Stenwold’s brow had been clear enough, even in the dull light. His plans for Che, whatever they might be, had not included welcoming a halfbreed artificer into the family.

  Stenwold saw his reaction, divined it accurately. ‘Totho, I don’t mean to say-’

  ‘It’s all right, Master Maker.’

  ‘You’re a fine lad, but-’

  ‘They’re here, sir.’

  Stenwold stopped, turned. They were, indeed, there.

  Men and women were emerging from the shadows around the other end of the square. They were not as stealthy-silent as Tisamon was, but they moved with a minimum of fuss, only the occasional clink of metal or scuff of leather. Stenwold made a quick headcount, and by the time his eyes had passed back again to catch the stragglers there were fifteen of them.