Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

‘Chyses,’ she began, and the man came forward almost nervously. ‘You are the one who gave me hope in the dark. I shall always remember you for it. You are dear to me, from now.’

She clasped him by the arm and Stenwold guessed that their history had not been so amicable in the past, and it was to erase that stain that he had mounted the rescue. Chyses made to return to his place, and Stenwold saw tears glint in his eyes, but then Kymene was catching at his sleeve, keeping him at her side.

‘You have come here from all across the city,’ she told her audience. ‘I know most of you. I know that you are not all friends with one another, that each of you holds a revolution in your hearts that differs from your neighbour’s. You are all come here under one roof, though, when before my capture I could not bring you together. Let us thank the Wasps for that, at least.’

A slight current of laughter, while Stenwold glanced from face to face. Old and young, men and women, Soldier Beetles of Myna and a few others, Grasshopper militia, Fly-kinden gangsters sympathetic to the cause, even a couple of ruddy-skinned Ant renegades from the conquered city of Maynes. All of them now watched Kymene and waited for her orders.

‘You must probably expect me to set the city alight with a single brand, to call on every man, woman and child of Myna to rise up with staves and swords to drive the Empire from us.’

A few cries to the positive, but her tone had caught their attention, and they waited.

‘You know that the Bloat is dead!’ she called, to emphatic nods and savage grins. ‘But who killed him?’ she demanded of them, and that struck them dumb.

‘I did not slay him, not that I would have stayed my hand. Neither did Chyses, nor any of our party. Yet we all know he is dead. So who slew the Bloat?’ Her eyes fixed each in turn until one spoke.

‘They say he crossed another Wasp over a woman, is what I’ve heard. I heard they executed some officer for it.’

‘It was Captain Rauth, I heard,’ another put in. ‘The Bloat’s sneak. We won’t miss him either.’

‘Is that what they say?’ Kymene asked, killing the murmur of speculation that was beginning. ‘The Wasps have been fighting each other? Even as Chyses was breaking the lock of my cell, they were killing one another in the dark? Myna will have a new governor, worse no doubt than the old, and look to that man for why the Bloat was killed. For now they have put the word out that the Bloat is dead, made it very public indeed. Why is that, though? Why trumpet the news from end to end of the city, so that we all know it and can take heart from it?’

She strode along the front row of her audience, her cloak unfurling behind her.

‘Which one of us does not know that our enemy possesses cunning as well as force? We have all felt it, I most of all when their mercenaries caged me! So why have they let us hear so soon that the Bloat has fallen? They have let us hear because they are waiting for us to act. They know that we are growing strong, and they wish us to become no stronger before we strike. They are waiting for us to go to the ordinary people, and then they will put us down with fire and blood. Because we are strong but we must be stronger. The time for revolution will come, but it is not now, and the Wasps know that.’

She had them utterly. They stared at her and Stenwold stared with them.

‘For many days, five tendays at the very least, there must be no murmur of resistance. They cannot stand waiting with sword raised forever. Some time they must lower the blade, and all that while we will grow stronger. Our time will come, but we must be more cunning than the Wasps in order to triumph. Strength alone will not avail us. This is why Chyses was wise to enlist these foreigners in my rescue. Those Wasps that saw them and lived, and there were few,’ a murmur of grim satisfaction at that, and several glances at Tisamon, ‘will say that it was merely some foreigners rescuing foreign prisoners. You shall pass the same story around, wherever the Wasps might overhear. Let them begin to doubt themselves. Let them lower their guard. Do nothing to hone their suspicions. You now all understand why this is?’

And they did. Kymene was a rare speaker, Stenwold decided. She cast her words into a room of disparate and divided people, and each one was drawn closer by them, until they were all standing together before her, and she was speaking to each one and all of them.

He still held out little hope for the Mynan revolution, but without Kymene he would have held out no hope at all.

After she had finished rallying her troops and had sent them back to their followers and their resistance cells with her instructions, Kymene still was not finished. With no visible sign that she had been locked in a Wasp cell until the small hours of that morning, she came over and sat before Stenwold, motioning for the other foreigners to join them. They filtered in slowly: Cheerwell sitting beside her uncle with Totho a little behind her; Tynisa and Tisamon sitting close together on his other side, she still holding the sheathed blade her father had given her; Achaeos a little further back, shrouded in his robes like a sick man on a cold day.

‘You are a remarkable revolutionary,’ Stenwold said, putting aside the stolen Wasp papers only with reluctance. ‘I’ve known a few activists in my time, but we call them “chaotics” in Collegium, and that’s as much a testament to their own lack of cohesion as their aim in causing chaos. I can’t think of any who, in your shoes, would have counselled such patience.’

‘I am just a woman who loves her native city,’ Kymene said. ‘I remember your name, Master Stenwold Maker. One still hears it on occasion. You fought the Wasps during the conquest. Or you ran from them, depending on the story.’

‘A little of both, I fear.’

‘Well, all records are rewritten now. I know you came here to rescue two of your own, and that freeing me was incidental to your plans, but because you have given me back to my city, to work for its freedom again, I owe you more than I can ever pay. What I can afford to give, though, you have only to ask for.’

Stenwold nodded tiredly. ‘Well, it would be a lovely thing to shake hands and say we are replete with what we’ll need, but I fear we must indeed call on you for help. No great demands, but help enough.’

‘Ask,’ she prompted.

‘I need a messenger, the fastest you can get, to fly to Helleron.’

‘It shall be done.’

‘I’ll have prepared a message in an hour’s time that must be taken to a man of mine there.’ He saw the worried looks of his prote?ge?s and continued, ‘I’ll explain all in a moment, but first let’s deal with what we need. I assume a flier’s out of the question.’

She actually laughed at that. ‘To steal one from the Wasps would be to break my own instructions to my followers, and there are no fliers outside their hands. I can get you horses, though.’

Stenwold weighed that up. ‘We ourselves have an automotive stowed outside town. Can you get us enough horses for a change of mounts halfway, and I’ll trade you the machine?’

‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘Your line of credit extends a while yet, Stenwold Maker. What else? Ask.’

‘A man to go to the city of Tark and gather information. I can brief him in detail. I have no agents there, and now I need some eyes.’

‘Agreed, though you may have to pay him.’

‘Not a problem. In addition we’ll need supplies for our journey to Helleron, and a change of clothes for most of us wouldn’t go amiss.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Then I think we’ll be in shape to leave you.’ He looked at his hands, bunched into fists in his lap. ‘There is one more thing, though. Not something I ask of you, but something that you should know.’