Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

And she felt his hands on her shoulders once more, trembling, and then his breath on her neck, and his lips brushed her ear, and kissed her cheek. From the depths of her drifting daze she heard him say, ‘I am lost to you. I am drowning in you. Help me.’

With sluggish motion, revelling in every sensation of it, her skin against his, her skin against the softness of the rug, she turned over to face him, and heard his breath catch in quiet wonder. At last she opened her eyes to meet his, and even in their blank whiteness she read a longing, a yearning that chimed in perfect accord with her own.

She tugged at his own tunic, drawing it from him by measured degrees, seeing again his lean frame, the fateful scar on his side, mostly healed by now. She drew a lazy finger across it and saw him shiver. He was the mystic, but in that moment the tide that carried her was the heartbeat of the world, and she drew him along helpless with her.

‘Achaeos,’ she breathed. She was still adrift on the dizzying sea of his touch, of his spell, whatever it had been. She was so full of love for him that tears ran down her cheeks until he kissed them away, and she drew him down to her breasts and lost herself to the universe, and to him.

And towards dawn she woke, and found him still sleeping beside her, one arm softly holding her to him as though he feared she would be gone.

Gently, she eased herself from beneath it and got herself dressed. The fire was now embers but she felt none of the night’s chill.

She went out onto the balcony, spread her wings and flew.

There was little enough goodwill left amongst the thirteen magnates who governed Helleron. If Stenwold, coming with his apocalyptic warnings, had been a stranger to them, he would have been thrown out onto the street, or worse. As it was, one of the two councillors whose marker he supposedly held had made it clear that he neither remembered nor cared to meet anyone by the name of Stenwold Maker.

There remained one honest man in the city, although, after all the time and effort it took to wheedle his way through the man’s lackeys and subordinates, Stenwold was ready to wager that it was just the one, and his name was Greenwise Artector. If his family, as the surname suggested, had once earned their bread by designing buildings, now their wealth came from owning them: renting them by the tenday to the swarming hordes that came looking for new hope on Helleron’s teeming streets. Whole warrens of the poor quarters were now in Artector hands. It suggested an uncertain moral basis on which to place trust, but Stenwold was without options, and at least the man agreed to see him.

They met in a chocolate house three avenues away from the Councillar Chambers. It was the latest vice amongst the very rich, Stenwold understood: drinking chocolate, brought from the Spiderlands at vast expense, was apparently the mark of a gentleman. Stenwold prudently left it to Greenwise’s tab.

Greenwise Artector was a man only a few years Stenwold’s senior. His slighter waist was a corset, his fuller head a wig. When they had first met, the younger Greenwise had dyed his hair grey and drawn on wrinkles for the then current fashion of sagacity and wisdom. Now truly a man of that age, he shammed youth now that the tastes of the cultivated had changed. He wore even more finery than Stenwold remembered: his coat was elaborate red brocade slashed with cloth of gold, and the sword he sported had a hilt of rare metals and precious stones, and had surely never so much as left its scabbard. After all, he had other people to draw weapons for him. Three of them hovered at a discreet distance, near the chocolate-house door, Beetle-kinden brawlers with mace and crossbow and mail shirts visible beneath their long coats.

The general expression on Greenwise’s face was the only thing about him that had not changed; it was what had made Stenwold deal with him initially and what brought Stenwold to him now. It was built of world-weary cynicism and a wry humour, and that reflected an honesty of a sort.

‘You’re a troublemaker, Sten,’ grumbled the magnate. ‘Every time you’re in town we find bodies lying in the alleys. One might almost think you make a living as an assassin, or at our age perhaps just broker for them. True?’

‘Hardly.’

‘A shame. It would make you a useful fellow to know. These days a man could be glad of a trusty hired killer.’

The face of Tisamon occurred in Stenwold’s mind but he quickly repressed it. ‘I’m just a concerned citizen, Green.’

‘Of Collegium, though,’ Greenwise noted.

‘And if Helleron suffers, where is Collegium then? And the reverse is equally true. We devise what you profit by, remember. No new device nor advance in metallurgy, no talented technologist or mining engineer is seen in Collegium that does not come to Helleron in time. And I have seen the accounts of the Great College, and I know that the magnates of Helleron ensure that we are well provided for. Don’t think I’ve not seen your name included there.’

‘Not so loud. If I get a reputation for charity I’m ruined.’ Greenwise shrugged. ‘You called and I came, Sten. Since you’ve been of service to me in the past. What can I do for you that won’t bite too deeply into my own interests?’

As succinctly as he could, Stenwold laid out what he knew of the Wasps’ future intentions, the gold-and-black vision he had seen, with their soldiers garrisoned in every city, their flag flying from every spire.

‘And now they’re here right on your doorstep,’ he concluded. ‘And they may be talking peace and profit with you now, but they mean none of it.’

Greenwise nodded. ‘I’m glad you came to me with this, as I happen to agree with you, but if you’d brought it before the Council, you’d be lying at the bottom of a mineshaft by now. The Wasps have recently renegotiated the Treaty of Iron. Which is to say that some of their diplomats came before the Council with a new treaty, and we all signed it with big, strained smiles. They have naturally restated their avowed intent never to set foot in the Lowlands with armed force or hostile intent.’

‘But how does that work when they’re currently marching on Tark?’ Stenwold demanded.

‘Ah well,’ Greenwise said dryly. ‘Surely you must know that Tark is not a city of the Lowlands?’

‘Since when?’

‘Since this new Treaty and the map drawn up on page thirty-two. Turns out those lying Ants have been claiming to be Lowlanders all this time, when in fact they’re actually part of the Dryclaw or the Spiderlands or something. Can you believe the cheek of them?’ There was not a trace of humour on Greenwise’s face. ‘It’s just as well the Wasps are going to give them a slap, we all say, for such pernicious falsehood.’

‘And so the Council just signed Tark away?’

‘With the aforementioned smiles. Because everyone was thinking about all those swords and automotives and explosives and flying machines we sold them. What if they find fault with them, and want to bring them all back for refunds — bring them all back point first?’

Stenwold nodded glumly. ‘And how long before they do that anyway? Haven’t the Magnates at least started to talk about raising a standing army or improving the city defences?’

‘It was mentioned,’ Greenwise admitted. ‘Specifically it was mentioned that if we started rattling our sabres and building siege weapons then the Empire might wonder why we’re keeping back some of our stock in trade, rather than selling it to them, and after that there might be trouble. Besides, have you any idea what most of my peers think the Empire’s chief export is? Money. And they think that because of the way these Wasp-kinden have been spending it recently. Everyone’s had a nasty shock, but you’ll find that both shock and common sense are soluble in a sufficient concentration of money.’