Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

Captain Halrad had a professed fondness for Beetle-grown wine, Tynisa had soon discovered. He made a great show of sipping it, savouring the bouquet as he had undoubtedly seen the sophisticates do. He would tell her what a good blend this particular vintage was, when her own palette informed her it was what they called ‘orchard wine’, inferior stuff from the westerly vineyards.

She politely agreed with him. He was meanwhile telling her about life in the Wasp military. Or life in the Empire. It seemed to equate to the same thing.

‘But you can’t all be in the army,’ she protested. ‘How would that work?’

‘A Wasp is a warrior. A male Wasp, I mean. There’s no other livelihood,’ he told her.

‘What about artificers? Scholars?’

‘Warriors,’ he confirmed. ‘Warriors first. If you’re not a warrior you’re less than a man, like our subject peoples.’

‘But what about people with skills you need. They can’t all be in the army too.’

‘But they have to be,’ he said. ‘Let’s say there was someone from outside whose particular assets,’ he smiled at her, ‘could be useful to the Empire. We’d make them army, army auxillian anyway, give them a rank. Without that, they would be nobody. No more than a slave, even.’

‘You’re looking at me as though I might be useful to the Empire,’ she said, disarmingly coy.

‘We’ll make a general of you yet,’ he promised, and then hissed wine through his teeth as someone suddenly hammered on the door of his stateroom.

‘What is it?’ he demanded, flinging the door open. One of his soldiers stood there at attention, and Tynisa saw something new, something urgent in his expression.

‘You’re to come right away, Captain,’ the soldier announced, and when Halrad made to dispute this, he added, ‘Captain Thalric says it.’

The change in Halrad was marked. Instantly he turned from being a man in control to a man being watched . Tynisa was fascinated. She stepped up behind him, asking, ‘What is it?’ In the doorway the soldier stared back at her with patent loathing.

‘You just stay here,’ Halrad told her shortly. ‘I have to go. For your own safety you had better not leave this room.’

A moment later he was out of the room, and to her amazement she heard the key turn in the lock.

Che had tried her best to make herself useful on the voyage, but instead she had found herself without place, without purpose. Tynisa was off being either devious or indiscreet with the Wasp officer, Halrad, Totho had disappeared into the ship’s bowels, and Salma seemed to be playing some dangerous game with the Wasp soldiers. He could always be found somewhere in their line of sight but usually somewhere public. He kept smiling at them in that strange way of his. She feared he was going to get himself killed, but somehow he was still alive each morning.

She therefore spent the voyage browsing the few books on the common room’s shelves, or meditating in her own cabin. She had found that the constant soft revolution of the airship’s engine was in some ways an aid to concentration. Well, at least she was able to enter something approximating a trance, although the Ancestor Art remained conspicuous in its absence.

Totho practically kicked the door open in his haste to find her, startling her into diving for her sword, which was all the way across the room.

‘Trouble!’ he told her.

‘Wha-?’ She gaped at him.

‘More Wasps,’ he explained. ‘Turned up on a flier. New orders, I reckon.’

‘That means the game’s changed.’ She stood, brushing her robes down. ‘What do you think?’

‘We can’t take chances, because that makes eleven of them on board now.’ His eyes went wide. ‘With that many they could overpower the crew.’

‘Where’s Tynisa?’ she asked him.

‘I can go and find her.’

‘Then I’d better look for Salma. We have to plan.’

Tynisa had discovered that, short of breaking a porthole and somehow squeezing herself through it onto the sheer hull beyond, the cabin door was the only way out, and the door was locked.

Now if she had been a Beetle, that would have been different. She was quite sure that if she had been a Beetle-maid then a few quick jabs with a piece of wire would see her out of the door and away as fast as her stubby legs would carry her. She even began to try that, kneeling before the lock and peering into the narrow keyhole, trying to imagine the pieces of metal inside that, in some way beyond her imagining, controlled whether the door would open or not.

She simply could not do it: there was no place in her mind to conceive of the lock, the link between the turn of the key, the immobility of the door. Of all the old Inapt races, the Spider-kinden still prospered as before, but that was only because they found other people to make and operate machines for them. Spider doorways were hung with curtains, and they had guards, not locks, to keep out strangers.

And so, due to the limitations of her mind, she was trapped, left to curse Halrad’s name and pick over his belongings until he should choose to return for her. She found nothing of use, no sealed orders, no secret maps. He was, as she had already guessed, a dull creature of habit, and little more.

It seemed a very long time indeed before he returned, but up here the passing of time was difficult to gauge. Tynisa was instantly ready, though, a hand close to her rapier hilt as the lock clicked and the door opened. She had expected a bundle of soldiers to come pushing in to grab her, but it was just Halrad himself, conspicuously alone, his eyes wide.

‘Come with me,’ he ordered.

‘Why? What’s going on?’

‘Don’t question me, woman. Just come with me.’

He reached out and took her wrist. By the moment he touched her she had decided to play along, or he would have found her with steel drawn already. Instead she let herself be led, almost dragged along the corridor, down the spiralling wooden steps at the far end. Every time she asked him what he thought he was doing with her he just shook his head. She began to wonder if he had gone mad. He was acting like a man trying to escape a monster that only he could see. His feet skidded on the steps in his haste, and when they reached the common room deck he dragged her even further down, into the Sky Without ’s guts, pushing past startled crew and engineers.

‘Captain Halrad,’ she protested, ‘tell me what is going on!’

He turned on her with sweat shiny on his brow. ‘You’ve been very clever with me,’ he said. ‘Yes, you have — and perhaps it’s worked. You knew all along I was looking for Stenwold Maker. Don’t try and deny it.’

She was sure that no hint of guilt touched her face, but still she turned cold within. Exactly what did he know? ‘Master Maker?’ she said awkwardly.

‘You know him. I know that now. You were seen with him, in Collegium. Captain Thalric knows all about you. Still, does that really make you a spy? Not necessarily, you don’t have to be.’

She saw it in his face, that he could not believe she was anything other than some innocent girl, caught up in something beyond her. If he chose otherwise then he would have been fooled by her, and he could not accept that. She had a moment for wry thought: Spider-kinden, my race, we already have such a reputation for lies. Yet, individually, who can we not convince?

She had an uncomfortable feeling that he was becoming less and less convinced as the minutes ticked by. Whatever was in his mind, he was making it up as he went along, and coming to fresh conclusions as he did so.

‘What about my friends?’