Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

‘And?’ Thalric raised an eyebrow.

‘And I can read between the lines. You could have done so. Perhaps you would have, if she had not been freed.’

‘I would have had to, eventually.’

Stenwold frowned. ‘You’re not a happy man, Captain.’

‘Nor are you, Master Maker. I may have only now met you, but on paper I know you very well. College scholar, artificer, traveller — so what brought you to this sordid trade?’

‘You mean your trade.’

‘I do, yes.’

Stenwold had his own bitter smile for that. ‘You did — perhaps not personally, but your Empire. I was in Myna at the conquest. I realized the future then.’

‘A hazard of ambition is to make enemies,’ Thalric acknowledged. ‘Would it make things easier for you to know that I was part of that conquest. I was much younger then, of course.’

‘We all were, Captain Thalric. But you’re not here for Helleron.’

‘Am I not? If you don’t already understand, you can’t think that I will tell you.’ And there was a glint in Thalric’s eye that chilled Stenwold through and through. ‘Would you join me in a toast, now, Master Maker? It is a Lowlander habit, and I adopt it in deference to the. . current allegiance of our surroundings.’

‘Name your toast,’ Stenwold said.

Thalric had been about to say something cutting, a needle-comment to bait him with, but at the last moment something twisted in him, that part of him that had clapped Aagen on the shoulder, and had once been Ulther’s prote?ge? and instead he said, ‘Everything is going to change, Master Maker. The old will be swept away, the new will march in. The Lowland cities are no different to two score others that now serve the Empire. You have striven mightily against us, against the apathy and cupidity of your own people, and at last it has come to this. We meet now, because even if you stabbed me through the heart right here and now you would still be too late to turn aside the course of history. But I admire you, because at least you have tried. Because you also believe in your people, however misplaced that belief may be. So let us have an old toast, while we still can. To absent friends.’

Stenwold stared at him, thinking of Marius and Atryssa, so long dead now, but with him still, and he could almost see reflected in Thalric’s eyes some kindred loss, more recent but no less deep. He raised his bowl and clicked it against the Wasp’s own, and they drank.

Once Stenwold had gone, Thalric’s aide came to him, his face a mix of concern and disapproval. ‘Do you want me to follow him, sir? What was that all about?’

Thalric drained the last harsh dregs from his bowl. ‘It was an indulgence,’ he said, mostly to himself. ‘And we already know where he is going.’ He had held Stenwold Maker up enough, he felt. By the time the man arrived, it would all be over.

Stenwold’s head was spinning, but not from the strong drink. First his maddening conversation with Greenwise, highlighting that elusive cog missing from the machine he had been building in his mind. Why were the Wasps here? What were they waiting for? Then the baffling conversation with Thalric, a man racked by a confession he could tell nobody. The thought of Wasp fighting Wasp in Myna recurred to him and he could make nothing of it.

Greenwise Artector had confirmed only what Stenwold had already known. The Wasps were waiting, were looking elsewhere but Helleron. If so, why come here at all? Two thousand soldiers with vehicles and supplies was an investment the Empire would not make without reason. Was there some incursion they were here to put down?

In a few days. .

Those were Thalric’s words, and not given as any revelation, just something said as a matter of course. Clock hands counting down, and yet for all this the Wasp had dropped no further clue. But there had been an apology, had there not? Unspoken, but there had been a heaviness to Thalric like a doctor coming to relatives with bad news. Something had been eating at the man. He had gone away with his bad news unsaid, and yet. .

Stenwold was no Helleren, and he had come here expecting the city to be under attack, yet that was not the case. Thalric had been telling him, whether gloatingly or just unconsciously, that their move, when it came, would. .

There was a queasy feeling growing in Stenwold’s stomach. The strong drink boiled there: not with any poison but a horrible suspicion, growing and growing. Here in Helleron there was one matter that the next day or so would bring to fruition. A commercial matter. A profitable matter. Something that would change the face of the Lowlands forever.

As soon as he had the idea, it put its jaws into him and shook him, and desperately he began to run, pushing through the streets of Helleron because he had questions, desperate questions, for Scuto.

He had to know more about the Iron Road.

When the Ant-kinden burst in it was a moment before he could speak, leaning against the door jamb of Scuto’s extended shack and gasping for breath. At last, and with everyone on their feet and staring at him, he got it out. ‘Marre’s dead.’

Scuto swore, baring pointed teeth. Totho, who had been carefully watching him at work, asked, ‘Who’s Marre?’

‘She was that Fly-kinden you sent to talk to the Moths, wasn’t she?’ Tynisa said to Scuto.

‘Yes she was.’ The Thorn Bug stomped over towards the newcomer, a big-framed Ant in plate-reinforced chain mail. ‘How do you know, Balkus? Are you sure of it?’

‘I saw the body.’ Balkus spoke jerkily, still catching his wind. ‘Arrow in her. They found her out on the slopes.’

‘The Moths have made their choice, then,’ Tynisa said calmly.

‘We don’t know that,’ Scuto insisted, but he was now looking hunted.

‘Che’s with them!’ Totho said. ‘ I knew it! I told her not to go, and I told Stenwold not to let her go!’

There was a rising current of concern among the dozen or so of Scuto’s people waiting for his instructions, and eventually their chief held his spiked hands in the air. ‘Shut up, the lot of you!’ His lips twisted over his teeth in frustration. ‘Speak to me, Balkus.’

‘Don’t know more than that. I was out in the Sarnesh quarter, trawling for rumours like you asked. That was the rumour I got. The guard had her down as just another dead Fly with no connections, but I knew her. A single shot, right up under the ribs. Someone must have got her in flight.’

‘Oh bloody loose wheels and knives!’ Scuto shouted at the lot of them, or maybe at himself. ‘Everyone get your weapons. Everyone who wears it get into armour. Now! Someone help me.’

He looked to Totho, but the halfbreed was obviously not inclined to be anybody’s arming squire and so it was Balkus took down a breast- and back-plate that had been cut and twisted, welded and burned until its ruined, punctured contours matched Scuto’s own deformities.

Tynisa, whose blade was always on her hip and who had no armour to wear, watched the men and women of Scuto’s service get themselves ready for war with the speed of long practice. Two Fly-kinden strung bows whilst another racked up the tension on a crossbow. A Beetle-kinden man and woman were strapping each other into matching suits of part-plate backed with tough canvas. Another brace of Beetles wore artificer’s heavy leathers. The one-armed Scorpion had looped something like an apron over his head, and a layer of metal and leather over his chest that left his back bare. There was a Dragonfly-kinden woman, only recently arrived, buckling on bracers and greaves, and then contorting herself to string a bow as tall as she was. Finished with Scuto, Balkus the Ant had slung on a baldric of wooden boxes, and began testing the action on a blocky, bulky thing she recognized as a nail-bow, whilst beside him another Ant from another city was shrugging into chain mail, taking up a shield whose device had been defaced with plain black paint. Tisamon stood ready from the moment Balkus had burst in, but there was a second Mantis with them now, an angular-faced woman who had so far kept her distance from him. Now she had a rapier in her right hand, and in her left another ground down for balance, with forward curving horns for trapping a blade.