Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

Achaeos, who had obviously had a snide remark already poised, thought better of it. ‘You are right, of course,’ he said. ‘I shall go to my people and tell them all I can. I am no great statesmen of theirs, no leader, but whatever I can move with my words, it shall be moved.’

And it seemed that he was finished, and Stenwold was turning away from him, until he said, ‘And I wish your niece Cheerwell to come with me.’

Scuto’s voice still sounded in the background, parcelling out wards and fiefs of the city to his men. About Stenwold and Achaeos, though, the Moth’s words echoed loudly.

‘No!’ Totho shouted. By sheer instinct he had his sword half out of his scabbard, and that changed everything. Tisamon was instantly on guard, his clawed glove on his hand, and Tynisa found she had half-drawn along with him. Stenwold was holding his hands up, aware that Scuto had stuttered into silence, staring at them.

‘It is out of the question,’ he said to Achaeos. ‘How could you even ask such a thing?’

‘Because it will help ,’ Achaeos said. ‘Since I am to tell them that they must aid your folk for the good of us all, I wish to present her to the elders of my race, Master Maker. It will help. They must see her.’

‘You can’t even begin to think about it!’ snapped Totho. ‘Not Che, not any of us!’

‘They’ll kill her,’ put in Tynisa.

‘They will not,’ Achaeos said. ‘Do you really think we know nothing of hospitality? Do not judge us by the laws of this forsaken place. If I bring her to Tharn with me she will be safe. Welcome, I cannot guarantee, but safe she will be.’

‘The answer is still no,’ said Stenwold firmly. ‘No more debate on this. I will not risk my niece-’

‘Uncle Sten.’ At last Che’s voice broke in, and it had enough steel in it that they all stopped and looked when she spoke. ‘Do you remember the last time you tried to keep me from harm?’

He stared at her, thinking of that long chain of happenstance that had taken her from the Sky Without to the cells of Myna. ‘Are you saying that you. . want to go?’

Che swallowed, balling up her courage. ‘You have been a scholar, Uncle, among many other things. Tell me how many of our kinden have walked through the halls of the Moths? Do you know of any , in this day and age?’

‘Che, you cannot know, none of us can know, what might befall you there. Every place has rules of hospitality, and I mean no insult now when I say that every place breaks those rules from time to time.’

‘I trust Achaeos,’ she said. ‘And if I can do something to help, rather than just sit here and hide my head, I’ll do it. You don’t know, Uncle Sten, what I have been through since we parted at Collegium. I’ve been a fugitive and I’ve fought, I’ve been a slave and a prisoner. I’ve been on a torturer’s table and I’ve even struck Wasp officers. I’m not just Cheerwell the student who needs to be kept out of harm’s way. I’m going with him. I’m doing my part.’

Stenwold gave out a huge sigh that spoke mostly of the way the wheel of the years had turned while he had been looking elsewhere. He heard Totho insist, ‘You can’t let her!’ but even he knew that by then the matter was out of his hands.

‘Go,’ her uncle told her. ‘But take all care you can. You’re right. Though you’re still my niece, my family, you are a soldier in this war, and risk is a soldier’s constant companion.’

After nightfall Achaeos took Che out of the city by the quickest way, and then around its periphery, anxious to remain in Helleron’s shadow as little as possible. Soon they were passing the massive construction yards that were labouring over the last stretches of the Helleron-Collegium rail line — the Iron Road as they called it — which pounded out their metal rhythm every hour of day and night to get the job done.

Then they were heading towards the mountains. Outdoors, Che’s vision faltered after a distance, so that the ground before her feet was lit in shades of grey, but the mountains beyond still loomed as black, star-blotting shapes.

They had been on the move for some hours now, and they had no equipment with them for scaling such slopes. Even if Achaeos knew some secret path up to his home, Che was not sure she would be able to make it.

‘We may have to rest at the foothills,’ she warned him.

He did not seem to react at first, but seemed to be looking for some specific place in the scrubby, rising terrain. If she looked to the north and the east, Che could see the lights of the mining operations, Elias Monger’s amongst them no doubt. She wondered if Achaeos’s people would be raiding again tonight, and who had now inherited Elias Monger’s share.

‘We will be there later tonight,’ said Achaeos. It was already dusk.

‘I don’t think I can manage that.’

He turned at last, his pale eyes gleaming in her vision. ‘You cannot fly, can you? I know that some Beetles can.’

‘Few, very few, and that only badly,’ she confirmed. ‘I would. . I would so like to fly and I wouldn’t care how clumsy I might look. I’ve not been good with the Art, though. I only started seeing in the dark after the. . after I dreamed. .’ She had to force herself to say it. ‘After you spoke to me that night, before we reached Myna.’

‘You have more skill than you guess,’ he said. ‘Beetles endure; even my people know that. Think what you have already endured, and tell me your Art did not help you. However, you will not need to fly to Tharn. Simply find me a little brush that is dry enough to burn, and I will summon some transportation.’

‘Summon? Is this more magic?’ she asked him.

‘I would prefer to say yes, and take the credit, but, no, this is a mere trick.’

When they had enough suitable material to burn, he began to lay it out in a pattern that she was too close to make out, lighting each pile of dry grass and broken wood in turn until they were surrounded by an irregular ring of small fires. A shiver ran down Che’s spine: despite his words this felt like magic to her.

And then she felt something in the sky. Felt, not heard, for it made no sound, but the wingbeats were enough to make the fires dance and the warmed air gust across her. She reached out for Achaeos and clutched his sleeve as the stars above them went dark with the passage overhead of some enormous winged thing.

And then it dropped lower, and her eyes caught it in all its pale majesty. It was a moth, no more, no less, but as it circled down towards them she saw that its furry body was larger than that of a horse, its wingspan awesome, each wing as long as six men laid end to end. It had a small head, eyes glittering amongst the glossy fur behind frondlike antennae that extended forward in delicate furls. As it landed, the sweep of its wings extinguished most of their little fires.

‘We of Tharn cannot always fly so high. We are sometimes weary — or injured, of course.’ He grinned at her. ‘This was to be my plan after I left the stables where you met me, but other things then intervened.’ With a smooth movement and a flash of his own wings he was up on the great creature’s back, holding out a hand for her to join him.

She walked up to the moth’s side, behind the enormous sweep of its wingspan, putting a hand on its thick fur, feeling a warmth within that most of the great insects lacked. She took Achaeos’s hand and, with his help, clambered up onto the creature’s back. It shifted briefly on its six legs, adjusting to the extra weight. There was no saddle, she saw, but there were cords run from somewhere amongst its mouthparts, and Achaeos had clutched these like reins.

‘You must hold on tight,’ he said, and she put her arms about his waist and did her best to grip with her knees.