Salute the Dark sota-4

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

‘Guesswork before the fact,’ Inaspe replied. ‘Once one has learnt how to converse with more abstract sources of information, one’s guesswork can become remarkably accurate.’

  Stenwold felt a little shiver go through him. ‘I have known other people who believed in this. I too have seen things I cannot explain. But still, I cannot accept it.’

  ‘I have heard of those such as yourself in whose world the future is but darkness, while to us it is second nature to trust in prediction. To us you appear blind – and yet you are able to make such things, such metal creatures, and we are just as blind to your craft as you are to ours. How ingenious you are.’ The bleakness in her tone Stenwold ascribed to memories of the Twelve-Year War.

  She had scooped something into her hand from a bag, and now she cast the whole handful on to the pattern of light before her. Straws, he saw, and most of them instantly blew away in the breeze. Only a few now remained: a random scatter of pale stalks dyed in all colours by the glass. He himself could see nothing there, no patterns, no significance. When he looked from this display to Inaspe’s face, though, something sank inside him. He saw there such a certainty of woe, as though a Fly-kinden messenger had rushed up to present her with it in writing. She met his eyes, and he saw how she would take it all back, her talk of prophecy, if she could.

  ‘Speak,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth, speak.’

  ‘Perhaps you are wise not to credit prophecy,’ she said carefully, ‘for all your future is the shadow of the world’s own.’

  Caught between doubt and dread, he forced himself on. ‘What have you seen?’

  ‘Do not ask me.’

  His instincts were telling him that he should obey her in that, and leave his curiosity unsatisfied but, in the end, his heritage rose up within him, the practical Beetle impatient with such mummery, and he insisted, ‘Speak.’

  She sighed. ‘Stenwold Maker, you are destined for great loss, to both yourself and those close to you. You are caught in the jaws of history, and its mandibles tear pieces from you.’

  He shrugged. ‘It takes no prophet to foretell that.’

  She looked up from the pattern to assess his reaction, as though the idle fall of sticks had produced such a clear picture that he should recognize it immediately. ‘Autumn leaves, Stenwold Maker, that is the future shown to me. It is not too late, not quite, for you to escape the vice of winter, but the leaves are already falling.’

  Her hands passed over the sticks, and a slight cold breeze suddenly passed over Stenwold, and made him shiver. He heard the woman murmur. ‘A city by the lake sits beneath a rain of burning machines. Red hands, long dyed up to the elbows in the blood of others, plunge in one last time. The sky is on fire with the deaths of the brave. The slaves are being beaten. The hand that holds the whip is raised. I see a whole kinden on the brink of oblivion. A man with an iron fist reaches to snuff them out like pinching a candle flame. The proud one is in chains, and though he turns on his great master, he shall shed not one drop of his blood. The spinners’ webs are burning. The great plotter has out-thought himself.’

  Her eyes were wide now, blazing with conviction. ‘They are fighting now, the warrior-breed, but there are flames around them. They are falling like moths in torchlight. So many, there are now so many rushing to their deaths.’

  ‘Enough-’ Stenwold started, but the rush of words did not heed him.

  ‘The machines of war are turned on your own people. Your friends are loyal to you, and they shall die for it, or be scarred through, and never to recover what they once were. Blood is born of blood, welling up between the trees, beneath the gold lightning. Ancient evils brought to light, the dead tradition of the life-drinkers remade, and armies marching under a standard of black and gold and running red. A pillaging of the past for power, so that even the worst excesses of the old times are dug up. The worms of the earth! I see the worms of the earth feasting on all our corpses. Autumn leaves, Stenwold Maker. So many that you shall not see again. They fall and fall, the leaves of autumn, red and green and black and gold.’

  ‘But can we win?’ he demanded, forgetting that he did not believe.

  ‘What is it to win? How much will you sacrifice for it, when victory is more costly than defeat?’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Your future. All our futures. I am sorry.’

  Felipe Shah was a man of indeterminate age. His face was that of a young man, but his hair grey above the ears. His princely court was open to the sky, a courtyard within the palace-castle that overlooked Suon Ren. He was like the rest of his kind to Stenwold’s eyes: slim and golden-skinned, dark-haired. He sat in the courtyard’s centre, on a blanket spread on the ground. The four figures standing round him, whom Stenwold had initially taken for soldiers, became statues of burnished wood when he looked closer. Felipe wore a robe of shimmering red and blue, with an edging of gold discs, very much like the robe in which Salma had first arrived in Collegium, wondering why everyone found him such a spectacle.

  The rest of his court, about thirty other Dragonfly-kinden, sat about him in what Stenwold assumed was a precise pattern, not just before him but on all sides. Some sat in nooks up on the walls. Some held scroll and stylus, poised to write. Others were simply sitting there, not even paying any particular attention to Felipe Shah. They wore the usual loose, flowing Dragonfly garments, and Felipe Shah himself was by no means the most ostentatious. Like Spiders they managed to carry it off without seeming overdressed. If I had myself got up like that, I’d be vulgar, Stenwold conceded.

  Stenwold himself now sat to Felipe’s left, and he had no idea whether this was a position of honour, of security, or what any of it meant. The precise patterns on which the Commonwealers so obviously organized their court were opaque to him. He wished Destrachis was still here to advise him.

  Looking around, Stenwold spotted the fortune-teller, Inaspe Raimm, with three other Dragonflies seated in a shallow curve behind her. She did not glance at him, however, looking straight ahead only. There was something strange about the way she sat there, something in her positioning, that suggested things were not as he had understood them – but more than that he could not discern.

  A whole life spent in the intelligence business and I’m now completely out of my depth.

  There was a handful of Mercers present in their full armour, and now one stepped forwards to hand something to the prince. It was Salma’s letter, Stenwold saw: Prince Salme Dien’s message to Prince Felipe Shah.

  The prince read it in silence and the court waited. Nobody had mentioned what this document was and yet everyone seemed to already know, as though they were Ant-kinden linked by a common mind. Stenwold increasingly felt that he was skimming the surface of a vastly complicated world. Of course the Commonweal is both vast and complicated, so I should expect this bafflement. Yet it is still hard to deal with, when matters are so pressing back home.

  There had been no news, of course. For all he knew, Sarn could have fallen by now.

  Prince Felipe Shah began to weep, and Stenwold started in surprise. He had not set eyes on Salma’s message, but he could not think of anything his former student might have written that would have sparked this reaction. Still the Prince wept silently, tears trickling down his face, unwiped, and falling to spot his robe. It was impossible, Stenwold realized, to tell what emotion was being displayed here, only the intensity of it. All around, the other Dragonflies were nodding silently, clearly approving whatever was going on. Stenwold ground his teeth in frustration at his inability to grasp it.

  A servant stepped forwards with a white cloth. Felipe Shah quickly wiped his eyes and then sat with the letter in one hand, the cloth clutched so tight in the other that his fist shook. The rest of him, in poise, manner and expression, remained utterly calm, as though he had transferred his inner feelings over to the cloth as naturally as doffing a hat.

  ‘Master Stenwold Maker,’ Prince Felipe began, ‘your ambassador has stated that you wish an audience.’

  Stenwold
was aware of how Gramo, sitting nearby, straightened up proudly.

  ‘I would owe you the hospitality that I owe to all who visit my court in peace,’ Felipe continued slowly. ‘I owe you more than this, though, for you have brought me the farewell of my kin-obligate, who I shall not see again.’

  Stenwold, though bursting with questions, forced himself to remain silent, but something must have shown on his face.

  ‘You do not have this custom, in your own land, I am sure,’ the Prince said. ‘Here we do not keep our children close to us, Master Stenwold Maker. We ensure, instead, that they reside in the houses of others, to thus learn their ways, their world. So they learn to judge, or to labour, or to peer into the waters. Prince Minor Salme Dien came to me, when he was young, to learn governance. He was not my son, and yet he was a son to me, while my own children were far away.’

  ‘Did…’ Stenwold waited to see if he would be silenced, but Felipe Shah nodded for him to continue, ‘did you send him to the Lowlands, master – your Highness?’

  Felipe inclined his head then. ‘It was my choice that he went.’

  ‘We have been very blessed in his addition to our people,’ Stenwold proclaimed, aware that he was becoming rather over-florid in attempting simply to be polite. ‘Could I ask why you did so? Otherwise there has been very little contact between our peoples, the ambassador excepted.’

  There was a pause then, and it was to Inaspe Raimm that the Prince’s eyes flicked. ‘Two reasons suggest themselves,’ Felipe said at last. ‘But who can say which is the truth? After the war with the Empire, I thought we needed to know more about our neighbours. Also divination suggested that the Commonweal would benefit.’

  ‘I cannot comment on the second reason,’ said Stenwold awkwardly. ‘As for the first, we are fighting the Empire even now.’

  ‘We know this,’ Felipe Shah confirmed.

  ‘And if the Empire defeats the Lowlands, then they will come north.’ Realizing what he had just said, Stenwold smiled weakly. ‘I’m no fortune-teller, but I can predict that, I think.’

  Felipe put the tear-stained cloth down and placed his hands on his knees, and from the reaction of the entire court Stenwold saw that this was a significant gesture, as though, back in Collegium, one man around a table had just stood up to speak.

  ‘Before you came, we had long discussed this,’ the Prince declared. ‘The Commonweal has suffered greatly under the Empire’s advance. Our people have died and been enslaved, in numbers so great they make us weak to consider it. Now you, the new kin-obligate of Salme Dien, have come asking us to join in a common cause.’

  Stenwold blinked at the new designation he had been given, but nodded anyway. ‘That is so,’ he allowed.

  ‘We fought the Empire,’ the Prince said, his voice falling so low that Stenwold could barely hear it. ‘We resisted them with our blood and our bodies. The road their war machines travelled on was made up of the bones of our people. There are those among us who wonder what it was for, all that valour and passion. What did we accomplish, that our sons and daughters bled for?’

  Stenwold opened his mouth to retort, as though this was the Collegium Assembly, but the character of the silence told him that his words were not wanted. For a long while the Dragonfly lord stared at the ground, and not a single one of his followers moved. Autumn leaves, came a voice in his memory. Green and red and black and gold.

  ‘The place is not mine,’ Felipe Shah said at last. ‘I am but a prince amongst princes. The Monarch alone must give you our answer.’

  ‘It is then possible to secure an audience with… with the Monarch?’ Stenwold felt as though he was walking a fragile tightrope of etiquette. The Commonweal was vast, the Monarch doubtless distant and mighty. How many such baffling audiences would he have to sit through, how much time before he could put his case? Could the Lowlands last that long?

  Felipe Shah’s melancholy did not break, precisely, but there was a curious spark in his eye, a slight creasing about his face, as though he nonetheless saw that something in his view was amusing. Looking around, Stenwold saw an identical expression on all the courtiers’ faces, a polite and pointed fixedness of feature.

  At last he saw that one Dragonfly face remained composed and still, and then he understood.

  With the greatest possible care, Stenwold stood up and made a low bow before Inaspe Raimm – teller of the future and Monarch of the Commonweal.

  ‘I… am a fool,’ he confessed.

  ‘That understanding is the first step to wisdom,’ the Monarch replied softly. ‘Perhaps Prince Salme Dien has not spoken to you of the proper role of a prince of our Commonweal. It is not to be heaped with honours and raised high, but to stoop low, to bear burdens for the people that the prince must serve. So it should be for a prince, and so much more for a monarch.’

  ‘And I am fortunate to come and find you here when…’ His voice trailed off. ‘Or you knew, and came here especially to meet what the Lowlands would send.’ He had no scepticism left. Here in this ephemeral court they had finally drained him of it.

  She nodded slowly. ‘I have enjoyed our meeting, Stenwold Maker.’

  ‘But if I had known… I have requests…’

  ‘I am glad for your ignorance, then. I know already what you would request.’

  ‘What I came all this way to ask…’ he put in, feeling that he was teetering on the very edge of propriety. ‘Please, let me ask it.’

  ‘Even if we are bound to refuse?’ she said, and he gaped at her.

  ‘But you can’t know what I intend to ask you.’

  Her face remained very composed, solemn with melancholy. ‘We already know, Stenwold Maker, but if it would help you, please speak your requests. Let there be no possibility of doubt between us.’

  He had by now lost track of Commonweal opinion, whether he was being honoured or just very rude. He was struck suddenly with a great sense of urgency, absurd considering the long journey here, the distance involved. ‘We fight the Wasps even now, as they march on our cities. We lack strength to fight them, our enemies – the enemies of all of us, the Wasp Empire.’ The words came spilling out from him unsorted and jumbled, but still he pressed on. ‘I know from Salma the injuries they did to your own people, the bitter years of war, the principalities they stole from you with their treaties and their demands. I am a fool, perhaps, but not such a fool that I cannot see common cause. The Empire’s armies run thin, for they are fighting on all fronts, pushing outwards. They are mad for conquest. A Commonweal force that marched or flew east now could reclaim all that you have lost, and the Wasps would have no strength to resist you. And while they recoiled from you, their strikes at us would also weaken. They would be stretched until they snapped.’

  He finished, slightly out of breath, waiting anxiously for her response.

  It was too slow in coming. ‘Help us,’ he begged. ‘Help us, and help yourselves – please.’

  Inaspe Raimm lowered her gaze. ‘You do not understand. We cannot do as you ask. It is impossible.’

  Stenwold made sounds that he could not force into words. At last he said, ‘But… even a modest force?’

  ‘We cannot retake the lost Principalities,’ she said, simply. ‘The reason is very clear: we have signed the Treaty of Pearl. Those lands were ceded to the Empire.’

  Stenwold felt his mouth fall open, staring. ‘But they forced you to sign that treaty. You cannot have signed it willingly. Twelve years of war…’

  ‘I signed the Treaty of Pearl,’ she told him, and the hint of emphasis in her voice silenced him. ‘It is a shame that I myself shall continue to bear, and pass on to each monarch that succeeds me. True, we were dragged to it through a sea of our people’s blood. True it was a device of the Empire that they themselves would not pause for a moment before breaking. But that is not material.’

  ‘I don’t understand…’ he began.

  ‘Then I am sorry. Perhaps the Wasps did not understand either, when they bound us to the treaty, bu
t I am the Monarch, and therefore responsible for all my people. The whole of my kinden have pledged themselves, through me. It was an oath, a promise made by the Commonweal entire. So we can never march upon those lost lands. We cannot go against our own soul. We cannot go to war with the Empire to aid you, though we would dearly wish to. Our word is final.’

  ‘Oh…’ Stenwold said weakly, feeling as though she had just stabbed him through the gut. ‘Oh…’ All this way, through storm and bandits, and for nothing. Losing Felise, losing Destrachis, and all for nothing.

  ‘The Wasps will tear that paper up as soon as they are done with us,’ he protested hoarsely.

  ‘It seems likely,’ the Monarch agreed sadly. ‘Until they do, we remain bound by it. I am sorry that we cannot help you, Stenwold Maker. Your need is great and you are deserving. Perhaps some escort could travel with you back to your lands, to safeguard you.’

  ‘A Lorn detachment,’ Stenwold said, although they would not recognize the term. All hope was leaking out from him like life’s blood.

  To stand so fast by a meaningless treaty. The Wasps truly cannot have known what they were winning, through that one piece of paper.

  And then a thought: the Wasps will still be ignorant of what they have gained.

  ‘I… have an idea, O Monarch,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Speak, Stenwold Maker.’

  ‘Sleight of hand, Monarch. Shadows and illusions. Spider games. You are not without such resources, here in the Commonweal?’

  A few knowing looks around them. ‘Indeed we are not,’ Inaspe Raimm replied.

  ‘Then…’ This time he ordered the words carefully before he uttered them. ‘If a force was to mass… close to the borders of the stolen principalities. An army of soldiers, beasts…’ He had nearly added engines, war machines. ‘All the business of war, in fact. The treaty makes no mention of that, I am sure.’

  She regarded him, but he thought he saw a slight smile of comprehension there.

  ‘A Commonweal army on the border, O Monarch,’ Stenwold continued. ‘That is surely the current nightmare of the Empire, the Dragonflies returning for their lands. They cannot know, they do not know, that you will still honour your word. It would never occur to them, who would break their own so readily. Is that possible, O Monarch?’