Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

Thalric had now done his work here and was going back to continue with whatever plots he had boiling away. He, Aagen, could meanwhile return to the relative simplicities of war.

He was glad to be a friend to Thalric, because if any man needed a friend it was him, but at the same time he could wish that Thalric had never met him in Asta or co-opted him in this business here.

Her feet had moved across this very bare floor, a dance for him alone, bounded by the chains she wore and by the confines of the room. He shivered at the memory.

I have done a terrible thing.

He could never tell Thalric what had transpired. There was no one he could tell. Yet it was such a thing that told itself, a cloud hanging over him that spoke of his guilt.

He went through his requisitioned rooms towards the door. Only a short way to go now. He had his gear packed, and shockingly little of it now. His heliopter was back waiting for him at the airfield, stocked with new parts and with his stoker already standing by to pipe up the engines.

There was nothing else keeping him here. One last bowl of wine, perhaps, though it would not dissolve the memories, and then he would go.

That was when he heard the slight sound from the other room. When he turned, there was a man out on the balcony. He was a Dragonfly-kinden, and in his hand was a Wasp-made sword. For a moment neither of them moved, and then Aagen approached him slowly, one hand turned palm out in case he needed to call his Art. He saw the other man notice that gesture, tense to dodge the sting if it came.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’ Aagen demanded.

‘I don’t need to fight you,’ Salma told him.

‘I know you,’ the Wasp said belatedly. ‘You’re Thalric’s prisoner. Well, at least you were. If I were you I’d still be running.’

Salma was now balanced on the balls of his feet, waiting for a strike that would turn this into bloodshed. ‘Just give me what I want,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to fight. There’s been enough blood already in this city.’

‘What do you want?’ Aagen asked him, though he had a fair idea already.

‘I’ve come for her,’ the Dragonfly said, and took a quick step sideways, even then expecting the blast.

It did not come. ‘I thought you had,’ the Wasp said. ‘I thought it must be that. Come in.’

Salma’s mouth twitched into a smile, but it disguised only suspicion. ‘In?’

‘At least come out of the rain. Your kinden have sense enough for that, don’t you?’ Aagen clenched his fists, and it came to Salma, in a moment of almost vertiginous culture shock, that for the Wasp-kinden a clenched fist meant peace and an open hand death.

Aagen turned his back, as simply as that, and headed into the next room. If he had wanted, Salma could have killed him right then, but he was too surprised to take the man on. Instead he padded after him, sword still drawn. He can open a hand faster than I can get this blade clear of my belt. It made Salma lament for his own sword, lost like his robe and everything else he had owned.

‘Grief in Chains,’ he insisted, as the Wasp sat down heavily on the bed there in the next room, looked at his hands and then up at Salma. There was a wine jug and a bowl on a shelf above him, with another jug lying empty under the bed. Salma guessed that the Wasp artificer had been its solitary beneficiary.

‘I had her, here,’ Aagen said. ‘She danced for me.’

‘What have you done with her?’

‘And then Thalric came, and said she was mine. He gave her. . no, the Empire gave her to me. Can you believe it?’

Salma’s hand clenched about the sword’s hilt. ‘I’m taking her,’ he said. ‘She’s no one’s slave. Where is she? What have you done with her?’

‘I set her free.’

For a moment the words failed to find any meaning in Salma’s mind. Then: ‘You. . killed her?’

Aagen looked up at him, uncaring of the sword. ‘I set her free. I gave her freedom. I let her go.’

Salma stared at him, and something inside him squirmed with rage. The feeling horrified him because he knew what it was. It was that he had come here to take Grief in Chains, and take her for himself, and he had been thwarted. In that moment he was a slaver, a slave-master, as much as any Wasp-kinden — as much as Brutan or Ulther. The recognition of that part of what had driven him here made him feel ill, and he lowered the blade. ‘You just. .?’

‘Oh, not turned her out of doors. I know better than that. She is such that, law or no law, some man was bound to seize on her,’ Aagen replied. He fetched down the jug and bowl and poured out the last of the wine. ‘Will you join me? You’ve never drunk with a Wasp before, I’d wager. Nor I with a Commonwealer.’

The shift, this change in understanding, made Salma feel dizzy, and he knelt across from Aagen, one hand to his head. When the bowl came to him he took it gratefully, taking a swallow of the harsh, dry liquid just to bring himself back to reality.

‘Have you heard of Mercy’s Daughters?’ inquired Aagen. ‘They are a sect in the Empire.’

‘I thought the Empire didn’t tolerate sects.’

‘Not officially, but these are healers, and they often follow the armies, tending to the wounded. Often they provide a dying soldier’s last comfort. Any officer who speaks against them most likely loses the loyalty of his men. So they persist, these women, although sometimes they are punished or driven away. I saw a Butterfly-kinden amongst their ranks once before. Her kinden has a gift, an Art I think, for healing.’ Aagen took the bowl back, drained the final dregs. ‘Well she has gone to them. If she can be kept safe at all, they will do it. They head off with the army.’

Salma cast his mind back along all the plans that Stenwold had unveiled. With the army must mean to the city of Tark, he realized, where the vast majority of the Wasp forces were heading.

‘I’m going to go after her,’ he said, only realizing the truth as he said it. Not to take her, not to own her, but to save her from the war. To give her the choice .

Aagen studied him for a long time, and something in that look told Salma how very hard it had been for the man to let her go, and what hidden strength had allowed him to do it.

‘Good luck,’ the Wasp told him. ‘I hope that, if you deserve it, you find her.’

‘You’re not like other Wasps.’

‘Aren’t I?’ Aagen smiled, but it was a painful smile. ‘No doubt you’ve killed my kinsmen by the score.’

‘A few,’ Salma allowed.

‘Well, next time you shed my kinden’s blood, think on this: we are but men, no less nor more than other men, and we strive and feel joy and fail as men have always done. We live in the darkness that is the birthright of us all, that of hurt and ignorance, only sometimes. . sometimes there comes the sun.’ He let the bowl fall from his fingers to the floor, watching it spin and settle, unbroken. ‘You should fly now while it’s still raining. People never look up that much in the wet.’

Hokiak himself came to deliver their supplies to Stenwold, arriving like visiting royalty in a sedan chair borne by four of his Mynan servants.

‘See you fell on your feet, then.’ Once inside he looked around at all the resistance fighters while leaning on his cane. ‘Wouldn’t of put money on it. This lot wouldn’t trust their own mothers half the time. Mind you, a lot of sand’s blown by since then.’

‘I hope we haven’t been bad for your business,’ Sten-wold said.

‘In my line of work, ain’t no such thing. We can sell ’em capes when it rains, an’ buy ’em back at half the price when it’s dry. Business is always good at Hokiak’s.’ He gave a wheezy little laugh. ‘I got your horses, too. Them’s waiting for you outside town.’ Hokiak watched the supplies being checked over by Khenice, the old fighter whom Stenwold only just remembered from his first visit here, when they were all of them a lot younger.