Adrian Tchaikovsky - Empire in Black and Gold

‘Yes, yes it is my fault,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘Although I had thought to keep her from danger by sending her here. So much for that. What exactly did you do to her, Elias?’

‘I?’

‘Shall we dispense with the dissembling? I can see that you’re desperate to gloat, and here am I, a willing audience. So tell me how clever you’ve been, Elias. What has happened to Cheerwell?’

Elias clasped his hands together, the essence of a merchant concluding a deal. ‘Your enemies heard about her, Stenwold, and they tracked her down.’

‘They tracked her to you.’

Elias’s smile dried up. ‘And if they did? The girl was blundering from trouble to trouble. She would have ended up in their hands eventually.’

‘You could have sheltered her.’

‘Why should I?’ Elias stood up, angry. ‘You bring your rantings to my door and expect me to put myself out for you? You’ve invented a war, Stenwold, and you can fight it. You’re the one who has been agitating all over Helleron about the best clients this city has seen in a hundred years.’

‘What have you done with my niece?’ Stenwold said, still the soul of reason.

‘I handed her over to them, Stenwold. And why not?’

‘Because she was your cousin? Ah no, we’ve been there.’ Stenwold’s hands were fists. ‘And how much did you get?’

‘If the Empire was kind enough to render a reward, then so be it,’ Elias told him.

‘You sold her then,’ said Stenwold. ‘Have you any idea what they’ll do to her? Torture her? Execute her?’

‘Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, they’re a just people,’ Elias replied. ‘They’ll probably make a slave out of her.’

‘Is that all?’ Stenwold hissed. ‘Just a slave, is it?’

From elsewhere in the house something thumped, and Elias’s thin smile broadened just a little.

‘She was a wanted criminal, in their eyes. As are you.’

‘Enough of this!’ Stenwold was right up to the desk, two feet of wood all that was between them. ‘Where have they taken her?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Tell me!’

‘I have told you. Why should I care where she’s gone? She’s gone, and that’s enough for me.’ Elias leant forwards across the desk until he and Stenwold were nose to nose. ‘However, you’ll find out, and sooner than you might want.’ Abruptly he broke off and took a bell from beside the penholder, ringing it loudly. His expression was triumphant when he added, ‘In fact, you can join her.’

The echo of the bell fell away into the walls. Stenwold had his hand to his sword hilt, a step back from the desk now, waiting. After a moment of looking at the room’s single door, he cocked an eyebrow at Elias.

‘And?’

Elias rang the bell again, and then a third time, so hard that it bounced from the desk top. The high sound sang out, fell silent. Nothing.

‘Guards!’ Elias shouted. ‘Guards! To me, now!’

There was the smallest of smiles on Stenwold’s face. ‘It can be so difficult,’ he commented, ‘hiring reliable staff these days.’

‘Guards!’ Elias bellowed again, and this time the door finally opened, and a man, a single man, entered, stalking into the room like death. A tall Mantis-kinden in green, a claw-like metal blade jutting from his right hand.

‘Tisamon,’ Stenwold said, and despite Cheerwell’s plight, despite his cousin’s betrayal, he could not suppress a grin. ‘I didn’t know if you’d got my message. I didn’t know if you’d come.’

The Mantis smiled back, or as much as he had ever done. ‘Ten years since you last called for me. How could you think only ten years would keep me away? I am no fickle Beetle-kinden, Stenwold. We remember.’

‘Who is this?’ Elias demanded. ‘What is going on?’

‘You have made use of my talents in the past, Master Monger, in matters of business,’ Tisamon told him mildly. ‘My name is Tisamon of Felyal.’

Elias’s eyes bulged. He had missed the name the first time but now it came to him in full force. ‘I will pay you twice what this man is offering,’ he croaked. ‘Five times.’

Tisamon’s lips twitched and he shook his head.

‘He takes money,’ Stenwold explained to his cousin, ‘but he fights for honour, and that’s a currency I fear you’re not good for.’ He was round the edge of the desk in a moment, his sword out while his free hand grasped Elias’s robe at the front.

‘Stenwold, please-’

‘You sold my niece to the Wasps,’ Stenwold hissed through clenched teeth.

‘Please, I can-’

‘You have nothing worthwhile to offer me,’ Stenwold said. He found that his sword arm was actually shaking with the effort of restraining it. ‘You have betrayed your own family, your city and your race. What should I do with you?’

‘Stenwold, I’m sorry-’

‘But you’re not. Or you’re sorry you’ve been found out. If a squad of Wasps turned up now, you’d sell me for as much as the market would bear. Shut up !’ He slammed the babbling merchant back against the wall. ‘You have no idea how much, how very much, I want to kill you, Elias. Every base and violent part of me is baying for it.’ He mustered all the control at his command and released the trembling man, stepped back. ‘I will not compound your betrayal by making myself a kinslayer, however. I do not think I could live with that.’

He sheathed his sword, unblooded still, and turned to go.

‘Stenwold, cousin. . thank you. .’ Elias gasped.

His back turned to the merchant, Stenwold paused in the doorway. ‘Tisamon, however, has no such qualms, I wager.’

‘What?’

Stenwold stepped out of the study and closed the door behind him, then went to sit on a chair in the hall, feeling utterly drained and disgusted by the world. Through the closed door behind him he heard Elias shrieking out his desperate offers to buy Tisamon’s soul. A fitting thing for him, Stenwold decided: dying with numbers on his lips.

After a moment Stenwold glanced round to see the Mantis emerge from the study, cleaning his blade meticulously with a piece of cloth cut from Elias’s robe. ‘Did you really think that I might turn my back on you?’ Tisamon said quietly.

Stenwold approached the Mantis-kinden wonderingly. ‘Look at that. You haven’t aged a moment in ten years.’

‘You have,’ Tisamon said uncharitably. ‘Older and balder and fatter. Mind you, you were never slim or well-haired.’

‘And young?’

‘It seems to me we were neither of us ever that young, even then.’

Left hand to left they clasped, and Stenwold noticed that the other man had aged, even so. The patches of white might be lost within his fair hair, but there were new lines on his face that bespoke a less than happy life.

‘What would you have done,’ the Mantis asked lightly, ‘if your message had not reached me?’ He did not say if I had not come .

Stenwold felt a lurch within him, at what would befall them both shortly. Himself and his oldest friend. ‘I would have fought,’ he said simply.

‘I think you would,’ Tisamon agreed.

‘How many would I have been fighting, then?’

‘Half a dozen of your locals, the same number of Wasp light infantry.’ Tisamon shrugged, as though to suggest it was nothing much to think about. Stenwold reminded himself: Barely a sound, all the while I was talking to Elias. Tisamon had earned his bread as assassin as well as duellist, even back then. He had treated the trade as the continuation of the duel by other means. There was not even a single spot of blood on his clothes.

‘We have a lot to catch up on,’ Stenwold said.

‘Less than you think. The past has been just keeping place for the future, hasn’t it? They’ve finished playing with the Commonweal and now they’re coming for us, at last.’