Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

Halrad shook his head angrily. ‘Forget them: they’re as good as caught. Thalric will have them and let him be satisfied with that. You, though, you’re mine . He can keep his hands off you.’

‘Who is this Thalric?’ she asked, but he just tugged at her arm harder, hustling her onwards through the innards of the Sky Without . So she tried, ‘But if he’s just a captain and you’re a captain-’

He stopped, just for a moment, to stare back at her. ‘You don’t understand. Thalric is from the Rekef . Everyone knows that.’

‘The what?’

‘None of your concern,’ and he was hauling her off again. He barrelled his way past another engineer and abruptly they were in a larger space, not any longer the cramped warrens of the engine rooms. There was some kind of machine, of the winged variety, sitting innocuously in the middle of the floor.

‘What are you trying to do?’ she demanded.

‘Oh well now, I’m just staking my claim,’ he hissed. ‘You see, Captain Thalric thinks he can take possession of just anything he pleases, but you’re mine. We’re almost at Helleron and he can’t hope to search every corner of this ship before then, even if the crew would permit it.’ He was now pulling her across the great hangar, towards an open doorway in the far wall. ‘The cargo hold is through there,’ he explained. ‘And as of now, you’re my cargo. I’ll find somewhere safe for you, to keep you out of Thalric’s way, but I’m going to have to lock you up there. We can’t have you running around the ship any more, and besides. .’ His eyes were wild. ‘If you do turn out to be something more than you seem, well. .’ His face was suddenly cold and she found it hard to believe he had ever smiled at her. ‘Well then why should Thalric get all the credit for handing you in, when I can do that myself? And if you are just a Spider girl who’s walked into more than she can handle, then you’re mine, so you should get used to staying where you’re put and doing what I say.’

They had come to the open doors leading into the next chamber, which was packed with crates all neatly tied down. Halrad’s gaze raked it, and she realized he must mean to put her in one of the boxes to avoid this mysterious Thalric’s search. ‘Get in the hold, woman!’ He tried to push her in, but she squirmed out of the way and then retreated from him along the partition wall.

‘Don’t make me force you,’ he warned. He held one hand up now, and she started as bright worms of light writhed and danced about it. Ancestor Art, she realized, but like none she had ever seen before.

She took stock of the situation, of the room itself. At no point did the thought of actually cooperating with him tempt her.

‘Two things, Captain,’ she said. ‘Firstly, I won’t abandon my friends. Secondly. .’ She swallowed, put him from her mind. ‘Now would be a good time.’

‘What?’ Halrad’s puzzlement turned into a shriek of agony as Totho stabbed him in the back. He arched towards her, and she threw herself aside, twisting out of his grip. For a second he remained standing, propped against the wall, just staring. Then he fell backwards and sideways, through the doorway and into the hold.

She turned to Totho, who was still staring at the corpse with wide eyes. Whatever he felt on this occasion, the first time he had taken a human life, it was not the exultation that had gripped Tynisa herself in the hall of Stenwold’s townhouse.

‘You’ve a gift for timing,’ she told him calmly. ‘How did you get here so fast?’

‘What?’ He looked at her, and visibly coloured. ‘Oh, I. . told some of the engineers I was. . I, ah. . liked you. . so they kept an eye on you for me.’ He avoided her gaze.

‘That’s sweet,’ she told him, which only made his embarrassment worse. ‘Look, did you hear what he said, about this Thalric person hunting for us?’

‘Che’s already gone to fetch Salma,’ he explained. ‘What should we do now?’

‘Bring them here,’ she told him. ‘If nothing else, below decks is probably the last place they’ll look. I’ll hide the body in the meantime.’

Che found Salma lounging in the common room, but the news she had was not news to him. He indicated the trio of Wasp soldiers who were lurking along one wall. ‘The ugly one in the middle came in just now, and since then they’ve obviously been on watch-and-wait. Something’s changed, all right.’

‘This new officer,’ confirmed Che, who had put on something more action-worthy, tunic and breeches, with her possessions slung over her shoulder and her sword at her hip.

‘They’re onto us.’ He shrugged. ‘Whether they know for sure we’re in service or they just think we can lead them to Stenwold, it doesn’t really matter.’

‘But what can we do now?’ Che asked. ‘We can’t just sit here forever, and besides, if they get impatient, Totho says they could take over the whole ship and just fly us to the Empire, or something.’

‘By the customs of my own people, there are two things we can do,’ he told her, his customary sardonic expression creasing further. ‘Firstly, I can get my steel out and hunt them down all across the ship, shadow to shadow. Kill them in ones and twos until they’re all dead, or I am. That would be one option.’

She stared at him, wide-eyed. He sounded as serious as he ever could be. ‘You’ve done that, before?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s a done thing, where I come from. Happened a lot during the war, I’m told.’ He stretched. ‘That, then, is the right hand. However there is always the plan of the left hand.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Watch and learn, O scholar.’ He stood up abruptly and she saw a sudden shifting of stance amongst the Wasp soldiers, but he ignored them contemptuously. Instead, his meandering path took him over to a table occupied by a group of Beetle merchants, and before her eyes he proposed to them a game of chance.

It was a short while, minutes only, before the table was scattered with coins. Gambling was one of those frowned-upon pastimes that the poor were dissuaded from indulging in by a middle class that could not itself resist the lure, turning many a member of the latter class into one of the former in the course of a single profligate night. In short order Salma was matching cards happily with three cloth merchants and a brace of Fly-kinden, including the formerly aloof dulcimer player. Betting was fast and fierce, and Che kept having to remind herself that their lives were on the line here, because she had never seen Salma play cards before. He played as though he could not lose, and when he lost he was careless of it, but mostly he won.

The Wasps were watching even more closely now, suspecting some device, but Salma paid them no heed whatsoever, seeming utterly absorbed in his game. They barely glanced at Che, meanwhile, and she realized that they must be working on very limited information, secondhand descriptions. Salma was the only Dragonfly-kinden within a hundred miles, but she, a Beetle amongst Beetles, was safe in her anonymity.

Even as she thought this, there was a shout from the table and all chaos broke loose.

In the first few seconds of furious argument Che tried to piece together what was going on. Someone had been caught cheating, or suspected of it, and she soon realized that it was Salma. He, for his part, was outraged at the very suggestion, knocking his chair back and standing up, and then simply flipping the entire table over. Cards, money and angry gamblers were suddenly all scattered about the common room.

She saw Salma moving fast, but one of the merchants still managed to bounce a fist off him before himself sprawling over a chair. The Wasps were trying to move in but everything was now in an uproar. A pair of stewards were trying to restore the peace, for there were at least three private fistfights going on, and one large one to which everyone was invited. In the midst of all of this, Salma grabbed her wrist, and a moment later he had extricated them both from the room, and they were running for the stairs.