Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

‘I have sent messengers already, to Collegium, to Sarn, even to the Spiderlands, whose denizens have always worked against Lowlander unity in the past. There is no hand from which I would not take help at this point. I would write to the underground halls of the Centipede kingdom or the Mosquito Lords if they were anything more than a myth. Perhaps, if matters grow much worse, I will do so anyway.’

He looked over his audience, battered and bruised as they were. His niece and his adopted daughter, and her true father; the ever-faithful, durable Scuto, and Balkus the mercenary Ant-kinden, who had not been paid and yet was here; Achaeos, forever inscrutable, here amidst his traditional enemies; Sperra the Fly-kinden, who had insisted on being carried from her convalescence to hear his words.

He thought of that other fellowship, so long ago, of dead Marius and of Tisamon’s lost love.

Not in vain. He swore it to himself. Each sword raised against the Empire, each word spoken, would be added to the scales. He would rally and rouse, he would wake the sleeping, open the eyes of the blind, to gain those swords for his cause, and in the end, if the scales did not tip, if the tide of the Empire drowned all the lands he knew of, then it would not be because he had spared an ounce of effort in resisting it.

‘Will you come with me to Collegium?’ he asked them all, and not one face, not even Achaeos’s, told him ‘no’.

The first shots were yet to be loosed but, when Salma and the others came within sight of Tark, the Wasps were already there. Their camp half-encircled the city’s walls, and it seemed incredible, impossible, that so many had come so swiftly, and making their way through the desert’s fringe.

Skrill shielded her eyes, tracking down the banners and the symbols, the machines and the formations. ‘I see serious artillery. Wall-pounders and leadshotters are the least of it. Looks like Bee-kinden Auxillian engineers from Szar, if I’m a judge; Cricket diggers from Delve; some wild-boy Wasps from the hill tribes for shock value; even Maynes Ants under arms there, guess they know how much Ants like killing Ants. And there’s a whole row of somethings under canvas, autos or the like. Cut me open, that’s the whole Fourth and then some. Bloody flux!’

Salma and Totho simply took in this sight in silence. They had never seen so many men of war in one place, let alone their equipment, machinery, earthworks, slaves, mounts, camp followers and sutlers.

Neither had Tark, they realized. Neither had anywhere in the Lowlands, ever before.

The glass was so smudged and dusty that only a poor kind of light came through it, but the fly considered it was enough. It buzzed and battered, skating first one way and then back along the filthy pane. The greater world was out there, as the wan light told it, so it made its mindless bid for freedom over and over and over.

That’s our totem , thought Bello hollowly as he sat by the window, waiting for the call with a score of other scrawny youths. My people, my race — that’s our totem. The machines in the factory next door thundered and crashed in a rhythm he knew by heart.

The fly had stopped walking up the glass, bemused. It cleaned its face and Bello could almost read its tiny mind as it thought, Well, if I got in, I can get out. That was why flies were superior to wasps or beetles. Wasps would just batter at the window until they fell and died. Flies would get the point, eventually. They would go and find another way out.

So why can’t we? The Fly-kinden, Bello’s diminutive people, were equally imprisoned, battering away, toiling without end.

He thought about his father, coming back from the factory, jostled in a crowd of bigger men and women. His father with his shoulders bowed, his balding head down, parcelled in his long coat. He trudged the four hundred yards back home every evening and never thought to fly. The Ancestor Art that gave his people shimmering wings, and the sky, had shrivelled inside him. His feet never left the ground.

Trapped behind the glass, in Helleron. Helleron, city of opportunity because the Beetle-kinden that owned each stone and soul of it never turned anybody away. The factories were hungry mouths. They chewed up labour, ground it down to grit. There was a place for every newcomer in Helleron, and that place was at the bottom. The magnates who owned the factories and the tenements and the big houses on the hill were all locals, but the grist of their mills came from all the other people of the Lowlands. The little Fly-kinden were everywhere, running errands, serving food, crawling beneath machines to unblock them, adding a little of their blood to make the engines of commerce run smoothly.

The fat brown-skinned Beetle man who was Bello’s employer stomped in, staring at his charges. ‘Bello! Jons Prater, Lock House in Porter Square, quick as you like.’ Bello jumped up automatically as his name was called, almost ripped the letter from the big man’s hand and was off through the door. The Ancestor Art swelled in him, and he felt the twitch of his shoulder blades as his wings formed, shimmering and half-seen, and then he was airborne. Below him Helleron spread out on all sides like a great stain, smogging the air with the smoke of its factories. There were some parts of the industrial district so thick with it that the air was impassable, poisonous. Bello had lived here all his life, and been running messages since his wings came at age six. Outside the city, the Messengers Guild still held sway with its guarantees of quality and service. Inside it, however, there were plenty who did not want to pay the Guild’s prices, and men like Bello’s employer were swift to spot a market.

Bello raced along at rooftop height, unravelling his mind’s map of the city for the short route to Porter Square. It would be easy, winging across the sky’s wide bowl, to take this for freedom. The rush of his wings spoke to him of his people’s own warrens far south of here, and all the glorious clear air in between. He was still behind the glass, though. He would give Jons Prater the message and take his money, and then he would be back, waiting with the other youths for the next job. His speed was not dedication, but knowing he would get no pay if he was late. He was thirteen years old and he had a reputation to keep up.

There were raised voices when he got home. It was an hour after dark and he was wretchedly tired, but he made the effort anyway, flitting from landing to landing without touching the steps between. All around him the tenement creaked and grumbled with the lives of all the cursed people who had nowhere better to live. He heard a dozen arguments and a full-on fight through the thin walls. On the fourth floor he heard his father’s voice: raised but not shouting. His father never shouted any more. He could manage only a whining complaint that held the seeds of its own defeat. Bello stopped, not wanting to go in. He felt a hand on his shoulders, pushing him down, keeping him down. Beyond the day’s long, tired haul he recognized it as despair. Battering against the glass. He sat on the top step and rubbed at his eyes. He would do what he always did. He would wait out here until it was done.

The stairs creaked on the flight above and he looked up quickly. There was only one person who lived above Bello’s family. The man was a local celebrity, of sorts. He, of them all, lived here because he chose to, not because he must. He said it kept him closer to his clients. Holden, the pugilist. If he had ever had a first name, nobody remembered it. He was just Holden, Holden with the scarred face and the leather coat that didn’t quite hide his shortswords. He was Beetle-kinden, with the squat, solid build of that race, but he was lean with it, balanced. For all he towered over Bello’s three-foot height, he had a cocky grace unusual for his people.