Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  She sat close to the fire, on a rug woven of a soft fabric that Achaeos had explained was moth fur. She tried to imagine these serious people shaving the giant moths with great ceremony. At least it brought a smile to her face.

  There had been no word yet from the Skryres, none at all, and she had seen little enough of Achaeos. When she had come to this place he had thanked her haltingly, awkwardly. She had not realized just how shaken he had been, having come back as the hero only to be treated as a criminal and a traitor.

  He had left her there to sleep, but now she had been awake some hours and there was still no sign of him. Instead there were Moth servants, and occasionally she saw a Mantis, or one of the Spider-kinden. In place of the hostility that had blasted her earlier there was now a strange diffidence. They did not know what to do with her, but she had passed some crucial test. She was no longer the Hated Enemy. Neither she nor they, it seemed, were quite sure what she was.

  Even as she thought this there was a fluttering at the balcony. Achaeos was there with the wind tugging at his hood and robe. She ran to him, changed her mind halfway, and ended up meeting him just inside the doorway.

  ‘Where have you been? Have you heard anything new?’

  ‘The Skryres deliberate still,’ he told her. ‘Or if they’ve finished I’ve had no word. I have been. . talking with a great many people, though. A few sought me out, with their own concerns about the Wasps, willing to nock an arrow if need be. There are others, more I regret, who would rather the Skryres had come to a different decision concerning me. I have been going about my kin trying to calm waters. .’ he smiled weakly, ‘and stitch wounds.’

  ‘Enemies? Who was that woman?’ she asked him. ‘What did you do to her, to make her hate you that much?’

  He did not know who she meant, but when she added, ‘The advocate, whoever she was,’ he was quick to correct her.

  ‘It was nothing personal. I know her distantly, but we have hardly crossed paths. It is simply a role that someone must perform. I have done it myself. The advocate must accuse, must attack as fiercely as possible. The accused is supposed to resist these accusations with the truth. I did poorly because I was not prepared.’

  ‘But they wanted to do to you whatever they did to me. Did they read my mind, really?’ She was clinging to her rational heritage as best she could, but amongst this alien people, she could easily believe that magic lurked in every corner.

  ‘They did. It is the last defence of any, according to our law. The Skryres see all truth.’ He broke from her gaze then. ‘My motives are not so pure as I had told them. If they had seen. . they would have cast me out. They may yet do so. My own people. I knew I was going beyond what they expected of me but. .’ He went over before the fire, kneeling on the rug. ‘They were right, of course. I had been around foreigners too long. It alters the way the world appears.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve-’

  ‘You? You saved my life. More, you’ve done more to swing the balance here than I ever could. And perhaps a new way of looking at the world is no bad thing.’ With an awkward gesture he suggested she join him by the fire. It was strange, she thought, seeing him do anything awkwardly. All these old races, the faded inks of history, had such a grace about them. Ants were the lords of war in the Lowlands, but no Ant could fight like a Mantis. Beetles dealt and traded and brokered in every city, but they were grubby peddlers beside the elegance of the Spider-kinden, steeped in centuries of political devices. And whilst her own kinden loved lore and learning, and had founded the greatest institution devoted to knowledge in the whole world, still they did not possess the Moths’ reserved air of deeper understanding that pervaded this whole city.

  And here now was Achaeos, who was all things: a raider, a scholar, a sorcerer — if he could be believed — and a rescuer. Since that first moment of seeing him in the stables, with his desperate, wounded defiance, she had romanticized him. Then he had travelled across all those dangerous miles for her, and the glowing image she had built of him, like any dreaming schoolgirl might, had been borne out. And here he was, as confused as she, coming to terms, just as she was, with a world larger than he had thought existed.

  ‘We trade our debts, we two,’ he said softly. ‘You aid me, I aid you. Now I have, like a fool, brought you to a place where both our lives hang by a spider’s thread and, here in my own homeland, you saved me.’

  ‘We don’t need to think of debts,’ she told him. ‘We. . know each other too well.’ Even as she said it, she was not sure whether that was true.

  ‘I have a service I can perform for you. It may come to nothing, but you have said you have had little progress with the Ancestor Art.’

  ‘It’s no secret,’ she agreed. ‘I suppose there are always some like me.’

  ‘Of course, but amongst your people, where you have your thousands and more, it passes notice. Here each man and woman counts, for we are fewer than you think. We have ways of aiding meditation, of raising the mind to the correct state.’

  ‘You’re serious?’ She was wide-eyed now. ‘If you think there’s even the smallest chance that it could work I’ll do it, whatever it is. Please, Achaeos, you can’t imagine how long. .’

  He nodded. ‘You should sit and face the fire. Close your eyes, or stare into it, just as you prefer.’

  She did so. When she closed her eyes the dancing of the fire came through her eyelids, more as the warmth that passed over her face than light itself. ‘What do I do next?’

  ‘Nothing. Relax and let your mind go. . where it will. .’ His voice seemed uncertain, but she kept her eyes shut.

  His hands dropped onto her shoulders, making her start, and she realized he must be kneeling behind her. She steadied her breathing, tried all the meditative tricks her tutors had once given her to take her mind off the here and now.

  She felt his fingers trace a path over her shoulders, and then dig in, his thumbs firm against her shoulder blades, and he began to gently knead the flesh there through her tunic. A shiver went through her, and her concentration went to pieces, but his hands seemed to hold her pinioned, as though she was manacled like Salma had been by the Wasps. She wanted to say something, tell him that he was not helping in any way, but his hands seemed to be smoothing calmness into her very muscles, prying and easing about her neck and working down her spine. They moved with infinite patience and delicacy, like an artificer deconstructing a machine piece by piece — save that now she was the machine.

  The Mynan homespun cloth was scratchy under his touch, though. Its coarseness scraped against her back. His fingers eased past the collar, between the cloth and her skin, searching across her exposed shoulders. She saw, with a catch of breath, how this would normally be done and, before her nerve could fail her, she took hold of her tunic’s hem. Her arms felt oddly leaden but she was able to drag it halfway up, muffling herself within it. His hands paused for a moment, fingertips trailing. She was shocked by her own daring but equally she knew that this was how it was meant to be.

  He removed the garment from over her head, slid it up her arms and cast it away into the unseen room behind her. She felt an instant chill across her belly and breasts, and then the fire’s heat straight after. Her back felt numb but comfortably warm.

  His hands settled again on her bare shoulders, and she could not suppress a sharp intake of breath. The hands began to work again, from the start, slowly and carefully smoothing and clenching their way across her skin, levelling out the knots and aches that had been with her since Myna, pulling and working over her shoulder blades and along the curve of her back with infinite care. How could she meditate when her whole mind was taken up with those hands? Delicate hands, but with an archer’s strength in them. They were slowly kneading their way into her very mind. She could not possibly concentrate, with her body so loose and distant, and with him so close.

  ‘Lie down,’ he said in her ear, and she found herself lying full length on the rug, its soft weave pressing against her cheek. He w
as straddling her hips, his hands still engaged in their dulling progress, now rubbing and squeezing at the bulge of her waist. She had forgotten to concentrate, but instead she lay there with her eyes closed, being eased away from herself, drifting out towards the very far shore of consciousness.

  And it seemed gradually as though there was a third presence in the nebulous darkness of the room, somehow beyond the walls, or on the far side of the fire. Something vast and undefined, beyond anything her mind could grasp, and yet it knew her, and loved her as it loved all its children.

  And she felt his hands on her shoulders once more, trembling, and then his breath on her neck, and his lips brushed her ear, and kissed her cheek. From the depths of her drifting daze she heard him say, ‘I am lost to you. I am drowning in you. Help me.’

  With sluggish motion, revelling in every sensation of it, her skin against his, her skin against the softness of the rug, she turned over to face him, and heard his breath catch in quiet wonder. At last she opened her eyes to meet his, and even in their blank whiteness she read a longing, a yearning that chimed in perfect accord with her own.

  She tugged at his own tunic, drawing it from him by measured degrees, seeing again his lean frame, the fateful scar on his side, mostly healed by now. She drew a lazy finger across it and saw him shiver. He was the mystic, but in that moment the tide that carried her was the heartbeat of the world, and she drew him along helpless with her.

  ‘Achaeos,’ she breathed. She was still adrift on the dizzying sea of his touch, of his spell, whatever it had been. She was so full of love for him that tears ran down her cheeks until he kissed them away, and she drew him down to her breasts and lost herself to the universe, and to him.

  And towards dawn she woke, and found him still sleeping beside her, one arm softly holding her to him as though he feared she would be gone.

  Gently, she eased herself from beneath it and got herself dressed. The fire was now embers but she felt none of the night’s chill.

  She went out onto the balcony, spread her wings and flew.

  Thirty-six

  There was little enough goodwill left amongst the thirteen magnates who governed Helleron. If Stenwold, coming with his apocalyptic warnings, had been a stranger to them, he would have been thrown out onto the street, or worse. As it was, one of the two councillors whose marker he supposedly held had made it clear that he neither remembered nor cared to meet anyone by the name of Stenwold Maker.

  There remained one honest man in the city, although, after all the time and effort it took to wheedle his way through the man’s lackeys and subordinates, Stenwold was ready to wager that it was just the one, and his name was Greenwise Artector. If his family, as the surname suggested, had once earned their bread by designing buildings, now their wealth came from owning them: renting them by the tenday to the swarming hordes that came looking for new hope on Helleron’s teeming streets. Whole warrens of the poor quarters were now in Artector hands. It suggested an uncertain moral basis on which to place trust, but Stenwold was without options, and at least the man agreed to see him.

  They met in a chocolate house three avenues away from the Councillar Chambers. It was the latest vice amongst the very rich, Stenwold understood: drinking chocolate, brought from the Spiderlands at vast expense, was apparently the mark of a gentleman. Stenwold prudently left it to Greenwise’s tab.

  Greenwise Artector was a man only a few years Stenwold’s senior. His slighter waist was a corset, his fuller head a wig. When they had first met, the younger Greenwise had dyed his hair grey and drawn on wrinkles for the then current fashion of sagacity and wisdom. Now truly a man of that age, he shammed youth now that the tastes of the cultivated had changed. He wore even more finery than Stenwold remembered: his coat was elaborate red brocade slashed with cloth of gold, and the sword he sported had a hilt of rare metals and precious stones, and had surely never so much as left its scabbard. After all, he had other people to draw weapons for him. Three of them hovered at a discreet distance, near the chocolate-house door, Beetle-kinden brawlers with mace and crossbow and mail shirts visible beneath their long coats.

  The general expression on Greenwise’s face was the only thing about him that had not changed; it was what had made Stenwold deal with him initially and what brought Stenwold to him now. It was built of world-weary cynicism and a wry humour, and that reflected an honesty of a sort.

  ‘You’re a troublemaker, Sten,’ grumbled the magnate. ‘Every time you’re in town we find bodies lying in the alleys. One might almost think you make a living as an assassin, or at our age perhaps just broker for them. True?’

  ‘Hardly.’

  ‘A shame. It would make you a useful fellow to know. These days a man could be glad of a trusty hired killer.’

  The face of Tisamon occurred in Stenwold’s mind but he quickly repressed it. ‘I’m just a concerned citizen, Green.’

  ‘Of Collegium, though,’ Greenwise noted.

  ‘And if Helleron suffers, where is Collegium then? And the reverse is equally true. We devise what you profit by, remember. No new device nor advance in metallurgy, no talented technologist or mining engineer is seen in Collegium that does not come to Helleron in time. And I have seen the accounts of the Great College, and I know that the magnates of Helleron ensure that we are well provided for. Don’t think I’ve not seen your name included there.’

  ‘Not so loud. If I get a reputation for charity I’m ruined.’ Greenwise shrugged. ‘You called and I came, Sten. Since you’ve been of service to me in the past. What can I do for you that won’t bite too deeply into my own interests?’

  As succinctly as he could, Stenwold laid out what he knew of the Wasps’ future intentions, the gold-and-black vision he had seen, with their soldiers garrisoned in every city, their flag flying from every spire.

  ‘And now they’re here right on your doorstep,’ he concluded. ‘And they may be talking peace and profit with you now, but they mean none of it.’

  Greenwise nodded. ‘I’m glad you came to me with this, as I happen to agree with you, but if you’d brought it before the Council, you’d be lying at the bottom of a mineshaft by now. The Wasps have recently renegotiated the Treaty of Iron. Which is to say that some of their diplomats came before the Council with a new treaty, and we all signed it with big, strained smiles. They have naturally restated their avowed intent never to set foot in the Lowlands with armed force or hostile intent.’

  ‘But how does that work when they’re currently marching on Tark?’ Stenwold demanded.

  ‘Ah well,’ Greenwise said dryly. ‘Surely you must know that Tark is not a city of the Lowlands?’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since this new Treaty and the map drawn up on page thirty-two. Turns out those lying Ants have been claiming to be Lowlanders all this time, when in fact they’re actually part of the Dryclaw or the Spiderlands or something. Can you believe the cheek of them?’ There was not a trace of humour on Greenwise’s face. ‘It’s just as well the Wasps are going to give them a slap, we all say, for such pernicious falsehood.’

  ‘And so the Council just signed Tark away?’

  ‘With the aforementioned smiles. Because everyone was thinking about all those swords and automotives and explosives and flying machines we sold them. What if they find fault with them, and want to bring them all back for refunds — bring them all back point first?’

  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 b
een 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.’