Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

Still, the initial plan didn’t call to split the loot five ways, and on the journey me and Fael had been given plenty of chance to discuss just what to do about that. ‘High stakes, high risk,’ Fael had said, but it turned out it was just one of our usual stock-in-trade scams after all — only played taut as a bowstring, and for real.

So that, and two tendays’ sullen travel through the cold crisp air and the occasional flurry of early snow, put us here, looking at the castle. This was an old one, and like a lot of them it had been left to rot a long time ago. No Wasp army had been forced to besiege this place. The walls were crumbling, their tops gappy and uneven like broken teeth. One face had come down entirely, leaving three tottering sides of uneven stones, the internal architecture laid out in sheared floors, the traces of fallen walls, and windows and doorways gaping like dead eyes.

‘Don’t know why you people bothered with these things,’ Roven spat, jabbing at Fael. ‘Half-dozen trebuchet and a leadshotter, and they come down a treat.’

How strange a thought , I remember thinking, having one of my philosophical fits on me, that sufficient Wasp artillery can do the work of centuries of decay. Is there a precise exchange rate, a year-value one can assign to a catapult? How many decades wear is a solid ball from a leadshotter?

‘We didn’t build them,’ Fael said, which prompted a reflective pause. That was news to me too. The Commonweal was dotted with such castles, tall stone keeps and towers, inward-leaning at the top to defend against aerial attackers. The Dragonflies had made much use of them as strong-points during the war, although Roven’s assessment of their longevity was a fair one. Everyone knew that the structures were very old, and these days the Dragonflies built flimsy stuff out of wood and screens that looked like any strong wind would blow it away. It was the first suggestion I’d heard that the castles were not originally theirs though.

‘Just grew like mushrooms, did they?’ Skessi jeered, winging close for a moment. Fly-kinden flew, it was true, but Skessi seemed to have unlimited reserves of Art to call on. He was in the air almost every waking moment.

‘We were not the first,’ Fael said airily, ‘to call these places home. Especially here near the mountains. There were ancient powers who taught us our ways and blessed the first Monarch and bade us found the Commonweal, but they were not of our kinden. They were great masters, whose magic could reshape the world, command the skies. It was they had the castles built for, while they lived amongst us, they loved to dwell in cold stone.’ By now I’d figured what he was up to, and I just nodded along.

‘Right, whatever,’ said Roven, but uneasily. The great broken edifice before us had a forlorn, tragic feel to it. It was evening by that point, and Merric chose that moment to start setting up camp. Nobody suggested investigating the place at night.

‘Where’s this loot of yours?’ Roven would ask, though, by moonlight. ‘Can’t see there’s much left of any treasury.’

‘Crypts,’ I explained blithely. ‘It’s the loot of the dead. The family that ruled here in yesteryear laid out its dead in state, and dressed in gold and jewels.’

‘And maybe those from before are laid out here as well,’ Fael muttered in dark tones. ‘The ancient nameless ones, they can lie in the earth for ever, they say, and yet wake again, if they must.’

‘Enough of that talk. We’re not superstitious savages like your lot,’ Roven growled. Merric’s fire shadowed his face, but the corner of Skessi’s mouth was twitching, and Merric himself had his sword held close, as if for comfort. The gutted castle loomed impartial over all, black against a darkening sky.

We went in next morning, once dawn and a bottle of war-loot wine had emboldened the Wasps. Fael would go first, with Skessi hovering at his shoulder, and then the Wasps with me in arm’s reach, in case of funny business. The Wasps had a couple of hissing gas lanterns, one of which was forced on me to carry. If it had been just the two of them, matters would have been easier, but Skessi’s eyes were as good in the dark as mine.

Still, after some searching and shifting, the plan proved its worth by providing a passage into the earth that was only partially choked with fallen stones. It was a sheer drop, but Fael’s wings carried him down there easily enough. Skessi didn’t look keen to follow, but a dirty look from Roven convinced him, and he fluttered down after.

‘Where’d you and he hear about this place?’ Roven growled, one ear cocked for any report from below.

‘We turned over a castle crypt where your lot had previously been. Good business, too: Empire doesn’t realize that’s where the good stuff is, half the time. Only we found clues there. The nobles had a cadet branch lived over here, ’til they died out. Rich as rich, Fael reckoned, and who’s been here to dig it up but us?’

‘Local boys didn’t seem so shy,’ Roven pointed out. ‘How’d you know they’ve not had it all?’

‘Oh, you won’t find any locals willing to go into a noble family’s crypts,’ I told him lightly. ‘Not with the curses.’

‘You don’t believe that’ — nothing but a growl deep in Roven’s throat.

‘Oh, we’re all civilized sorts from the Spiderlands,’ I said. ‘Still, makes you think, doesn’t it?’

‘Come on down,’ came Skessi’s distant call, and we did so, the Wasps lowering themselves on spread wings, and me edging hand-over-hand down the wall. The gaslamps threw guttering shadows across walls made of irregular stones that still fit into each other so tight you’d not get a blade in.

‘This is never just for the dead,’ Roven spat. ‘Too much work. Burn ’em or bury ’em, but not all this digging and masonry.’

‘Reckon they took their dead seriously, back then,’ I put in. Fael and Skessi were already ahead, but it was so pitchy down there that even they had so stay within the edge of the lantern light. I began to wonder then whether this wasn’t just some kind of grain store. Fael was leading strong, but it wouldn’t have done to show we weren’t sure, so I was as much in the dark as Roven right then.

I’d have been able to pacify the Wasps, I think, had we turned up nothing but a few jars of rice that first day, but some kind of luck was with us, good or bad, you decide, because Fael found some gold.

It was in some niches in the wall, and there wasn’t much of it, but it was enough to make us look good. No bodies, mind, just a little trinketry: brooches, rings. I caught Fael’s eye, because of the two plans we were running right then, the first one, the get-rich one, had turned out sunny. That stuff we’d read, in that other old castle, looked to have been true after all, just like I told Roven. Of course, the second plan, the new one, would need a bit of work.

Roven and Merric confiscated all that glittered, although I’d bet Skessi pocketed a handful as well, and then there was nothing for it but for Fael to press on. Every so often there was a niche, and sometimes there was a piece of loot there, and sometimes there wasn’t. Then Fael had yelled out, his wings taking him up so fast he bounced off the ceiling and ended up scrabbling away on his backside as something reared up over him. The Wasps’ stings flashed, blinding bright down here, and then things went quiet. I helped Fael get to his feet, and he looked shaken. It had been a centipede, and living proof of how well you can live eating roaches and pillbugs and silverfish: ten feet long if it was an inch. Not a man-eater, but the poison in those fangs would have finished Fael off surely and, anyway, centipedes are bad luck in the Commonweal, because of old history.