Empire in Black and Gold sota-1

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  They paused, the length of the sand between them. Holden had so far been doing most of the work but his people were an enduring lot. Neither man was breathing hard. There was something about his stance, though, that Bello saw: something about Tisamon’s too. It was as though the two of them were party to a secret that nobody else watching had understood. In seeing it, Bello saw the secret, too, became an initiate into that tiny mystery.

  They closed again and this time Holden held nothing back. His swords slammed at Tisamon from all angles, drove him before them like a leaf in a storm. There was a rapid patter of metal as Tisamon’s claw came in at last, moving like a living thing, gathering Holden’s blades and casting them like chaff. Tisamon struck with his offhand, the spines scoring across the other man’s face, and as Holden cried out, he died. The claw made its first and fatal strike, a swift dart of silver between Holden’s neck and shoulder. Bello felt the stab of it, even though his champion had won.

  There was a hush as the spectators cast their thoughts back over those last moments, reconstructing them. Then the crowd, the idle punters, began to clap and cheer, and the lucky ones started to call in their creditors. Tisamon remained quite still, though, the dead man’s blood on his blade, and his eyes on the Firecallers. All the Maynard men had drawn knives or swords.

  Tisamon had made sure he was at the far end of the sand, closest to the Firecaller chief. There was a lot said in his stare about the cost of forcing the issue. Every man in a red Firecaller scarf was waiting for the word.

  The Firecallers left. Their leader stood up, face like thunder, and walked out without a backward glance, and the scarves followed him as swiftly as they could. The turf war with the House of Maynard was not done, but they had lost face, lost the challenge. The streets they had wagered had gone back to the Maynard, who would be able to muster a few more allies with this victory. The balance between them had changed.

  There was another duel on tonight. People were getting in drinks and food for it. Tisamon went to Clavia and her people, and Bello saw money change hands. He dropped from the rafters down to the sand, ignoring the looks he got at this breach of etiquette. He knelt by Holden’s body, feeling cold. The man had sold him out, it seemed certain. He had taken the part of the Firecallers. He had betrayed all the people he shared the tenement with. He had once been the brightest part of Bello’s life.

  Tisamon was leaving, pausing in the doorway to look back. Bello approached him hesitantly.

  ‘Do you. . want your money?’ he asked.

  ‘Hold it for me,’ Tisamon told him. He was swift and deadly, but he was not Holden, who had lived on the floor above and died on the sand below.

  But Holden was gone, and Tisamon was going. ‘Please, Master Tisamon. . Can’t I. .?’

  The fighter stopped. ‘Find other heroes than men like us, Fly-child. We do not last.’

  ‘But what can I do now?’

  Tisamon weighed him down with the same stare that had quelled the Firecallers, and gave his judgment, spoke the death sentence.

  ‘Go home, boy. It’s over. Go home and be thankful you still have one.’

  Spoils of war

  ‘You know, Yot, this is particularly fine wine,’ the Wasp officer said, swilling the dregs round in his bowl. Sfayot obediently leant forward to pour him another serving before setting the jug back on the upturned barrel that served them as a table.

  ‘The Thorn Bugs make it, in the North Empire,’ he explained.

  The Wasp gave a surprised snort. ‘Who’d have thought any people so ugly could make anything so pleasant.’ He leant back in his seat, an elaborate thing of cane and dyed wicker that had presumably been some Dragonfly noble’s pride and joy before it became spoils of war. The hut they were in, the Empire’s makeshift clearing house for its plunder, was piled high with all manner of goods that the Dragonflies and their subjects had once held dear, some of it already boxed up and some of it loose: silks and fine cloth, rolled artwork, statuary, books and scrolls. Only the gold was missing. The gold was being sent back to the Empire as a priority, to pay for the ongoing war.

  ‘You came with a cart, Yot,’ the Wasp noted, ‘filled with jars. Of wine, one imagines?’

  ‘The Imperial Army is thirsty,’ Sfayot observed. He was used to Wasps cutting his name short for their convenience.

  ‘One might wonder why the Imperial Army should not simply appropriate your cart, wine and all, rather than pay good silver.’ The Wasp raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Why, then I would not be in a position to bring more excellent wine next month,’ Sfayot explained with great remorse.

  ‘And. .?’

  ‘And make a gift of wine to my good friend Lieutenant Malic, who was so helpful to me when I was here before.’

  Malic smiled at that. He was a factor for the Consortium of the Honest, the mercantile branch of the Wasp army. The role bred greed like a corpse bred flies, but Malic was a plain-dealing rogue. Unless it was a superior officer asking, he made no bones about how he preferred to do business. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve a farm in the north-east. Wife, too. Years since I last saw either of ’em, mind. Your lot, Roach-kinden, are all over there. A right curse, you are.’ He said it without acrimony, almost fondly. ‘Steal anything that’s not nailed down, always shifting from place to place. Drive the customs lads half mad.’ He took another mouthful of wine and his smile widened. ‘Not to say you don’t have your uses. This is truly fine, Yot. Don’t get me wrong, we’re taking enough liquor from the ’Wealers to drown the Fourth Army, but it’s good to get a taste of home. The men will appreciate it.’

  Sfayot nodded, taking a moment to plan his attack. ‘There is a matter. .’

  ‘I thought there might be. Speak now, while I’m in a mellow mood.’

  ‘I wish to travel west, and not be put in irons. Perhaps some papers, a licence to trade. .’

  ‘Towards the front?’ Malic was frowning. ‘That’s not wise.’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  ‘There’s a market, certainly, but it’s ugly, that ways.’ The Wasp’s eyes narrowed. ‘But it’s not just for profits, is it, Yot? Or you’d unload here and head back east. What’s going on?’ He had a hand on the barrel-table between them, resting on its wrist and tilted slightly up. If Sfayot had meant any treachery just then, the Wasp’s sting would have answered it.

  ‘You know how we Roach-kinden live,’ Sfayot said carefully. ‘How we travel with our families, and meet, and trade.’

  ‘And get moved on,’ Malic added. ‘And steal, and sometimes exhaust the patience of the local garrison.’

  ‘It is just as you say,’ Sfayot confirmed mildly. ‘My family were travelling near here, travelling and trading. One of our number was unwise, and she wandered from our camp. I have heard she was taken up.’

  Malic looked at him for a long while. ‘I do remember a white-haired girl,’ he said at last. Sfayot nodded encouragingly and the Wasp continued, ‘That Slave Corps man had her with him, Sergeant Ban, his name was. You know that much, I take it.’

  The Roach-kinden nodded. He was white haired as well, although in his case it could pass for age. It was a mark of the Roach-kinden: white hair and tan skin and restless feet. Sfayot was old for it, though; too old for the journey that he was considering. Lean and snow-bearded, dressed in shabby, patched clothes of green and brown and grey, he knew he looked like a beggar standing before this well-dressed Wasp whose black-and-gold tunic was worn over looted Dragonfly satins.

  ‘My daughter,’ Sfayot said softly, watching the other man’s face. ‘She is but thirteen years.’

  Malic nodded, taking a little more wine, and his face was not without sympathy. ‘Then, yes, Ban’s gone west to pick up another chain. Seems like every Slave Corps man is headed that way, and I hear they still have more prisoners than they know what to do with. I’d guess he saw your lass and took a shine to her. Slave Corps,’ he added, with faint disgust. ‘You understand, in the Empire even the worst have a role to play,
and the slavers are that role. I remember she was a pretty enough lass, for a Roach.’

  Sfayot said nothing.

  ‘Means she’s more likely to stay whole on the trip,’ Malic noted. ‘Unless she catches the eye of some officer on the road, Ban will want to get her back to the good markets, back home. At this end we’re glutted with slaves, you can’t give them away. What will you do when you find Ban?’ The question was thrown in without warning and Malic was regarding him keenly.

  ‘Offer him a good price,’ Sfayot said without hesitation. ‘I am not a Wasp. My people do not fight or demand vengeance or harbour grudges. We cannot afford such luxuries.’

  Malic’s face had a strange look on it, almost a sad one. ‘I’ll give you papers to trade,’ he said abruptly, ‘and to travel. I wish you luck, Yot. I hope you find her, and I hope she’s not too damaged when you do.’ There was something about his manner which suggested that he might have done as much even without the wine. Greedy, corrupt men, as opposed to upright, honest soldiers, had more leeway for spontaneous kindnesses as well as private evils.

  Sfayot watched him sign the scroll, sealing it with black wax and the Consortium’s imprint.

  He had lied to Malic, of course, but only a little, in details that would have complicated matters. The girl had not simply wandered off. Roach-kinden knew better than that. Their roving lifestyle, across the Empire and the Commonweal both, was to avoid the persecutions of government. In the Empire it didn’t do to stay too long in one place, lest someone decided that made you their property. You stuck with your family because they were all you could rely on.

  Sfayot’s family had been in the little village of Nalfers — Nal Fra as was — when something had gone wrong. It was an occupied town with a garrison, but the Wasps had apparently decided it needed sacking anyway. Perhaps orders had been misunderstood, perhaps the local troops had gotten drunk and leery. In any event, nobody would be visiting either Nalfers or Nal Fra any more, and when Sfayot’s family had finally regrouped the next morning, within sight of the rising smoke, he discovered that a cousin and a nephew were dead, and that his daughter was missing. A niece had seen her dragged off by a slaver, the man’s trade made unmistakable by his full-face helm.

  His family had begged Sfayot not to go looking for her, since it soon became clear where the slaver was headed. The Roach families did not go near the warfront: there was nothing for them there. The advancing plough-blade of war made a barrier they could not cross, and what was left exposed on the upturned earth behind it was rumoured to be worse than the fighting itself. The Wasps were a hard, wild people. Their army forced them to obey orders when they were on duty, and so when they were released from it they became monsters.

  But Sfayot had left his younger brother to take the caravan east, and had set off in slow pursuit. He was old, and it had seemed unlikely he would ever achieve any great thing in his life. Perhaps retrieving his daughter could be that thing. Certainly if he died, and he accepted this was likely, then the loss to his family would not be great: one less mouth to feed during a harsh season.

  The roads to the front were clogged with soldiers and army transports: reinforcements heading for the front, slaves and plunder being escorted home again. Sfayot passed smoke-belching automotives with cages full of thin, dispirited Dragonfly- and Grasshopper-kinden, men and women destined to feed the Empire’s infinite capacity for human servitude. He did not approach the slavers, for there was room enough in those cages for an inquisitive old Roach-kinden, but he asked many questions of others about a white-haired girl, and sometimes he got answers.

  He found a military camp a few nights later, and peddled his wine to the Wasp officers, showing them his papers. Malic had been better than his word, it seemed. The conduct passes were faultless, and he was neither robbed nor beaten, more than a Roach-kinden would normally expect from Wasps anywhere. Eventually he fell in with a squad of Bee-kinden Auxillians from Vesserett in the East Empire, who were surely hundreds of miles further from home than anyone else. The Bees of Vesserett had a proud and embattled history, and at one time had looked to be in a position to destroy the burgeoning Wasp Empire almost before it began. These men, though, short and dark and weatherbeaten, were simply tired. When Sfayot was able to talk of their homeland, that he had seen more recently than they, they let him into their circle and drank his health. After his questions had gone around the fire someone called over a tiny Fly-kinden man because ‘Ferro knows everything’. Ferro was not in uniform, and Sfayot understood he was a freelance hunter engaged in tracking down absconding or hiding Dragonfly nobles. The Empire had determined that certain Commonweal bloodlines must be terminated without scion, and so experienced professionals like Ferro were making a healthy living.

  Ferro was as good as his reputation. He had seen such a girl, and he named Sergeant Ban without prompting. They had gone to Shona, he said, Shon Aeres as had been, and maybe Ban was going to fill his string of slaves there. A bad place, Shona, Ferro confided — did Sfayot know it?

  ‘Only before the war,’ the Roach replied guardedly.

  Ferro nodded, abruptly nostalgic. ‘Ah, before the war this was a beautiful country. I stayed at the castles of the nobility, at their summer retreats. I tracked brigands for them.’ He drank more of Sfayot’s wine with the expression of a connoisseur. ‘Now it is those same nobles I hunt down like animals, so the Wasps can hang them on crossed pikes. So the wheel turns.’ It was clear that Ferro’s sense of balance enabled him to walk the wheel as it ground over those less fortunate.

  Sfayot set out for Shona the next morning, though Ferro’s talk of the Dragonfly nobility had stirred no nostalgia in his breast. There were plenty of times his family had been moved on by the lords of the Commonweal, or when they had been taken up, too, for crimes they had or had not committed: whipped, punished, lectured, put to work. The Commonwealers did not have the cruelty and savagery of the Wasps, but they did not like a people who wandered where they would and did not fit in. Sfayot himself had been hauled before some headman or prince enough times, and seen in those aristocratic eyes a keen loathing of any man who was neither servant nor master.

  The road to Shona was many days towards the front, and Sfayot could only guess as to how much faster Ban and his captive were travelling. He examined keenly every slaver troop that passed back towards the Empire, seeking a head of white hair. Slaves a-plenty there were, and a few dozen of his kinden, but none was his daughter.

  Shon Aere, as was, had been torn up by the roots. Not a sign of any Dragonfly buildings remained, and the fields had been churned up by war and marching feet. Now there was a veritable city there of tents and shacks and lean-tos. A large proportion of the Imperial Third was currently billeted there, either waiting to take the few days’ march to the current fighting, or else taking a rest from the front. Shona was no simple soldiers’ camp but a Consortium town, it quickly became clear. Here the Empire’s merchants set about the business of fleecing the Empire’s soldiers of their pay and their booty.

  It was growing dark by the time that Sfayot arrived at the tent-town’s edge, but he had been able to hear Shona for miles: the sound of an army off duty and riotous with it. The guards who stopped him had the surly, miserable expressions of men on punishment detail, and a gratis jug of wine bought more ready admittance than all the papers in the world.

  He saw three fights before he had gone thirty yards, all of them between Wasps and one of them clearly fatal. The makeshift, mud-rutted street he walked down was lined with taverns, gaming houses and brothels, or so the signs outside various tents advertised. Soldiers were everywhere, most out of armour, but Wasps were never unarmed. The expressions on those faces were almost desperate, determined to lose themselves in any vice rather than think about what tomorrow might bring.

  Further progress with the cart was going to be impossible, Sfayot saw. He sold it and most of his remaining stock to a taverner, and for a price that told him just how much the soldiers were being overch
arged. He retained as many jugs as he could safely string from his belt or bed down in his pack, because his bribing work was surely not done yet.

  He made for the centre of Shona, adopting a careful, skulking walk that put him beyond the notice of the rowdy Wasps. Malic had not been entirely wrong in his characterization of the Roach-kinden people. They had a knack for hiding and for stealth born of long years of spite from most other races.

  He could see (for Roach eyes were good in the dark) that the centre of Shona, perhaps the entire original area occupied by Shon Aeres itself, was an open square, and that there was some manner of entertainment there. Vague, wild strains of music drifted towards him, and he followed them around the edge of a crowd until he saw a set of mismatched Grasshopper-kinden minstrels plucking and piping as best they could, enduring the occasional kick and missile from the jostling crowd. The square boasted a series of raised wooden platforms, Sfayot saw, and on the nearest there were women dancing. They wore rags only, and he soon saw why: when any of them got too close to the crowd, hands reached for them to tear off whatever remained. An old, bald Wasp with a pike kept watch, and jabbed at them when they clustered too close to the centre. They were Dragonfly-kinden all, with that people’s slender grace and elegance, and they wept and shook and went on dancing, unfettered and with the wide sky above them, and for a long time Sfayot could not understand why they did not simply fly free and risk the Wasp stings.

  He saw, at last: at one edge of the platform was an unexpected row amongst the audience: a dozen children sat cross-legged there, some crying, some stony faced and blank eyed. They watched, he saw: they watched their mothers or sisters humiliated for the pleasure of their captors. They themselves would be too young to have learned their airborne Art, and their presence held their relatives in captivity more surely than locks and chains. Sfayot felt ill, and shouldered on past this spectacle. Other platforms boasted fighters, men and women hobbled, bound together, forced to fight each other, or to fight beasts. He saw a nine-foot dragonfly, its wings mere broken stubs, slicing savagely into a pair of unarmed Grasshopper women with its razor mandibles. He saw a tethered, raging Mantis-kinden, one eye put out and the rest of her face a mask of blood, kill slave after slave in a heedless, mindless frenzy, carving each up with the spines of her arms until an officer flew from the crowd and seared her with the bright fire of his sting. The expression on the officer’s face as he killed her was the only compassion Sfayot was to see that night.