Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

She peered further around the room. There were almost two-score people sleeping here in rough ranks, and half a dozen standing watch, or perhaps just having woken before dawn as she had. Some crumbling cellar, this was. Probably she had seen it before when they came in but she had no memory.

‘Che,’ said a voice, soft from behind her, and she craned back to see Totho. He had been sitting at the head of her mattress almost like Achaeos’s opposite number. Instinctively she reached out to him, grasped his wrist, just to be sure that he was real, that it all was real.

‘I-’

‘You should try to sleep more. There’s a little while till dawn yet,’ he said.

‘I’ve lost all sense of time,’ she told him. ‘Where are we?’

‘Some hideout of the resistance here. They got us into the palace to help you.’ He glanced about, his face darkening. ‘They didn’t do much more than that. They were more keen on finding this leader of theirs.’

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘So long as it worked, I don’t care.’ She looked around suddenly, panicking. ‘Where’s Salma? Did he-?’

‘He’s got the sense to still be asleep,’ said Totho pointedly. ‘He’s over there. He looked after you well, then?’

‘We looked after each other. It was complicated. I think it might have gone worse for us but the man who took us prisoner had some other business to deal with and he never quite got around to us.’ Her face hardened, enough to make Totho flinch. ‘Are we going back to Helleron now, Toth?’

‘No idea. Probably.’

‘I’ve got a message for my Uncle Elias.’

He shook his head. ‘No point trying to deliver that. Tisamon killed him, Stenwold told me.’

‘Tisamon? The Mantis?’

Totho nodded soberly. ‘He’s. . To tell the truth he frightens me. Che. .?’

‘Yes?’

‘I. .’ His face, as usual, gave no clue as to his mind. He had grown up with the weight of mixed blood on his shoulders, and he had learned to hide himself deep. ‘I. . I’m glad you’re safe.’

‘Not half as much as I am,’ she replied with feeling. ‘Totho, I want to see the sky again.’

‘The sky?’

‘I’ve been in wagons and in fliers and in cells for days and days now. I don’t care if it’s night. I just want to be outside. Just to stand in the doorway of this place will be enough. I’ll come back in straight away if anyone’s there.’

She stood up awkwardly, stretching, and bundled the dark cloak about her. After a moment he took her hand and guided her around the main body of the sleepers, nodding reassuringly to any Mynans who were already awake, and nervously to Tisamon, who was over in one corner, carefully sharpening and oiling the blade of his claw.

There were a couple of sentries outside, one lounging in the street like a homeless beggar, the other two floors up with a crossbow, watching down over the little square. The night was chill, the sky like pin-studded velvet, untroubled by clouds. They paused in the doorway, looking out, and in halting words Totho did his best to explain what had transpired since that fateful day in Helleron had separated them. He made most of it clear to her: Scuto’s intervention, Stenwold’s interview with Elias and the appearance of Tisamon, the hunt leading to Asta, and from there to the gates of Myna.

And there she stopped him. ‘Tell me. .’ It was a question she could barely believe she was asking, but there was a hook lodged in her mind, and its barbs were troubling her. ‘How did you know? How did you know where we were going?’

Totho looked stubborn. ‘Tisamon and Tynisa went right into the Wasp camp there,’ he said, but he could not hide from his tone that there was rather more to it than that.

She just waited in silence, trusting him to tell her the truth, and confronted with that trust he could do nothing else.

‘The Moth, he. . just knew.’ Totho looked sullen. ‘I still don’t trust him. Either he’s been speaking to the Wasps or else he was just guessing.’

Che shook her head. Her mind swam with the details of that inexplicable half-dream. Inexplicable? That was the very wall she was battering against. There is no way he could have known. There is no way he could have called to me, or that I could have heard. Impossible. Inexplicable. If the sun had been above them she would have shaken it off and found some glib sleight of mind to wish it away, but faced with the immensity of a dark and moonless sky, in this strange and intimidating city, she felt shaken by it, as if on the brink of some great irrational abyss.

In the hold of the heliopter, in her dream, that had been more and less than any dream that had troubled her before, he had asked of her where she was bound, and she had said. She had told him.

She should ask Totho about the precise times. She could then count the days back to that night when Aagen had grounded the flier within sight of Myna’s walls in order to repair it. Surely that would dispel any coincidence.

Or strengthen it. She found now that she did not want to ask him. The possible answers lurked like childhood monsters in the shadows.

‘Totho, I. . need to think. Just a little time to myself.’

He had his stubborn look again. ‘You should go back and try to sleep, really.’

‘I’m as wide awake as I’ve ever been,’ she said, and it was true. ‘Please, Totho.’

Reluctantly he left her, but she heard him murmur to the beggarly sentry to watch over her.

After he had gone, she wondered about him. They had not been apart so very long, but Totho had changed. She supposed they all had. They had been young and naive when they stepped aboard the Sky Without , but they were growing up fast now. It had been a time of harsh lessons. Totho still had that awkwardness about him, that shyness born of a tainted heritage, but beneath it was developing a core of steel. She would never have guessed him for a fighter, but he had been there ready with crossbow in hand when she had needed him, as had they all.

‘Come on,’ she said abruptly. ‘No sense skulking. I know you’re there.’

There was an amused snort, and Achaeos fluttered down from the upper storeys on glimmering wings. Like the Ant- and Beetle-kinden they resembled, the people of Myna had never built for three dimensions. A deft, slight-framed man with Art-born wings had the run of the place.

She looked at him cautiously. He had come down out of arm’s reach, and was regarding her with his arms folded within his robe.

‘Why?’ she asked him.

‘Who can say?’ She imagined there might even be bitterness in his voice. ‘But here I am.’

‘I’m glad of it. You. .’ She could not say it. ‘I had a dream that. . gave me comfort. At that time there wasn’t much comfort for Salma and me.’

‘A dream?’ Noncommittally.

‘Yes. A dream.’ She was defensive about it.

He shrugged. ‘You Beetles,’ he remarked, but did not qualify it. ‘No matter. We’ll be back to Helleron soon enough, and then we two can be enemies again. I assume my debt to you is now paid?’

‘Debt?’ She took a step towards him. ‘The bandage? Those stitches? Your people need to fix a better rate of exchange, if this is all in return for that! You have done for me such. . things that you had no need to do. But you did, and I don’t want to be your enemy ever .’

She wanted to reach out to him, then. Through all his masks, he looked so baffled, so unsure of why he was there. In the cold night he just looked so alone.

‘We should not be enemies,’ she said. ‘If the Wasps come to Helleron, do you think they will not move against your people also? Believe me, their Empire makes no exceptions.’

He said nothing, but she could see he was thinking how his people might rejoice in the fall of Helleron, even if it meant their own homes burned.