Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

As mine can. Irrationally, this thought gave her some small hope.

From a dark doorway across from her more Moths began to emerge. She could tell, ignorant as she was, that these must be the Skryres and therefore all the others mere spectators. They wore robes of a differing cut to their kin, no finer cloth but the hoods peaked high, and the drape of their skirts folded and flowed like water. On their brows they wore pale metal, coronets or diadems for some, ornately inscribed skullcaps for others. Although she found it difficult to judge Moth-kinden ages, she could see that most of these men and women were very old. Some even had wrinkles, or grey in their dark hair, which would have spoken of five decades in a Beetle but here could mean, she guessed, a century or more.

They did not sit down, however old they were, and though some held to carved staffs, they all stood straight as lances. Their stares did not reveal the same hostility as the others, but something beyond that, and Che felt she was being evaluated in ways she could not guess at.

A man whose skullcap dipped in a sharp widow’s peak above his nose rapped his staff once on the floor, and by the time it echoed each and every Moth there had fallen still and quiet. All their eyes were fixed on Che still, with no more love than before.

‘Come forth, advocate, and speak,’ the Skryre demanded, and in her innocence Che thought he meant Achaeos. She looked to him, waiting for him to explain it all, to transform their hate into something warmer, but his own attention drew her to a newcomer coming in by the same way that they had entered. It was a Moth woman, not much beyond Achaeos’s age perhaps, and she carried a ceremonial staff, gold-capped, on which winged insects of all kinds chased one another, layering over each other in an eye-twisting tide.

‘Make your accusations,’ the Skryre said, and Che now realized that this was the advocate, and the situation was worse than she had thought.

‘Tharn accuses the man named Achaeos, who stands now before you,’ the advocate announced. Her voice was low, but it carried all the way to the upper walls, lifted by the elegant architecture of the place. ‘Achaeos, neophyte and raider, fell wounded in battle with the Hated Enemy. He was seen to flee, as should be done, but the next dusk did not find him back in his proper place. Instead, our eyes and ears within the Forging City heard that he had chosen his own path and committed himself to the cause of another. He sought then to leave for eastern lands, for he claimed some greater enemy awaited him there. See how now he skulks back having leagued himself with the Hated Enemy. He has even brought one of them to our very halls. He has clearly lost his way in the temptations of the outer world and been corrupted. He is lost to us and thus Tharn can have no home for him. I call for his exile, his exile or his death, whichever his courage prefers.’

The thought made Che cold that, while Achaeos was worth accusing, worth the bother of a trial, she herself was considered nothing. She would live or die by no merit whatsoever of her own. She was now at the mercy of Achaeos’s words.

‘You have been accused,’ said the Skryre who had spoken before. ‘Achaeos, once a son of Tharn, what can you say to this?’

‘I had not expected such accusations,’ Achaeos said hotly, but Che heard his voice tremble. ‘What I have done has been for Tharn. Would I have come back here, if I was guilty of all this?’

‘Such things are said by all who come here,’ chimed the advocate’s voice behind them. ‘How can a single neophyte weigh the good of a city while cut off from our counsel and pursuing his own ends? There are many who leave yet try to return, believing a few meagre words may heal this rift. This is no adequate explanation.’

‘You disappoint us,’ the Skryre said to Achaeos. ‘Speak of your fall from grace, Achaeos.’

‘There is a foe now gathered at the gates of the Forging City that will threaten even our halls of Tharn,’ Achaeos said, but Che could sense that he was losing both his composure and his train of thought. ‘I have seen them myself, seen their armies: a race of the Apt in countless numbers, flying where they please. They are at the gates of the Lowlands now, and it may seem a wonderful thing to you all that they have their swords at the Enemy’s throat, but those swords are whet for all of us. They know no allies, no equals, only enemies and slaves. I have seen this. I have uncovered this.’

‘What is he asking of us?’ the advocate said, and Che, sick of her voice, wanted to turn round and hit her. ‘Can he be asking for us to aid the Hated Enemy now that they are at odds with some cousin-race of theirs? He has been swayed by them. He has been lost to them. He even brings them here as his allies. Look at this coarse creature he chooses as his companion! He cares nothing for Tharn now. His loyalties lie elsewhere.’

Che turned on her then, but managed to keep her temper in check. All about them, across the tiers of seats, Moths had stood up suddenly. She realized this was their way of shouting, of heckling. They would not speak out of turn in front of their leaders, and so they merely stood to show their opposition to Achaeos, their support for the advocate’s words.

‘I defy that!’ Achaeos cried. ‘I am no traitor to my people!’

‘He would not be the first, either. The Hated Enemy have their tricks and ways to seduce even our best. They offer their promises of opportunity, their gold, their devices that cannot be comprehended. Who knows what has called him from the true path, but it is certain that he is lost to us.’

‘We are under deadly threat!’ Achaeos said desperately. ‘And you cannot ignore that. Whatever the Enemy might do, whatever I might do, there is an Empire out there that cares nothing for a thousand years of history, that seeks only to write its own name in our dust! We have resisted the Forging City for a century, but if we stood alone against this Empire we would not have one more month to live in freedom!’

‘Enough, Achaeos,’ interrupted another Skryre, a woman who seemed perhaps the oldest of them all. Achaeos bared his teeth, but could not manage to speak as she walked carefully forward. The single sound in all that echoing chamber was the rap of her wooden staff on the stone floor.

‘We do not credit your words,’ she said simply, and a shudder went through Achaeos that chilled Che to witness it. ‘The world cannot change so swiftly, and these newcomers, these men of black and gold, are the enemies of our enemies and have so far shown us no harm. You are condemned, either exile or death, unless you would submit yourself to us.’

Achaeos seemed frozen, and Che could not understand what the woman meant. Submit , she urged him mentally. Exile or death, what could be worse?

The woman reached out a hand, claw-thin with age, and Achaeos shrank away from it. He seemed like a cornered beast without means of escape, broken.

‘Achaeos,’ she continued, and there was something kindly in her voice, some kind of sympathy. ‘We are not unjust, as you well know. We give you this chance to show us, with no masks or lies, the truth of your words. Or else we must wonder what you would hide from us, and the advocate’s judgment shall stand.’

This time, Che could not stay silent. ‘Let her!’ she hissed, and her voice rippled disapproval across the audience of Moths. ‘Let her do it, whatever it is!’

He cast her a look that was filled wholly with guilt. Not fear, but guilt.

She thought she understood, then, what it was that he could not show them. ‘Then let me,’ she said, and his look turned to horror, and almost every one of the Moths around them was again on his feet, so that a great wave of disapproval fell crashing over her.