Empire in Black and Gold

Eleven

It was one of the better tavernas of middle Helleron. Well appointed, its upper windows at least gave a view of the slopes where the gleaming white villas of the wealthy held sway. The service was known to be good, the host friendly and the watch were slipped enough coins to have them come running at the hint of any trouble. Most of all, though, the Grain Shipment Taverna was discreet. When Thalric entered, tipping his broad-brimmed hat to the host, the wide-waisted Beetle-kinden just nodded. Thalric was able to find a table, lean back in his chair, and in a short while the host’s boy was at his elbow with a bowl of watered wine and the murmured message that the back room would be ready for him any time he wished.

Thalric felt no desire to hurry, though. He was not looking forward to this meeting. Behind him his two bodyguards had taken up positions beside the wall, keen eyed and, regrettably, looking like nothing so much as a pair of on-duty soldiers. They knew, of course, that if they got it wrong, if they chanced to be looking left when the action went right, then there would be no excuses. Not with Captain Thalric. He had a reputation that put men on edge all the way up and down the ladder of rank. In fact he was the very terror of the outlander Wasp war effort just now.

He looked at his reflection in the wine, wondering how much the dark liquid was hiding of the lines the last few years had put on his face. The final year of the Dragonfly war had been a tough assignment: Thalric and his picked men behind enemy lines, and fighting a cat-and-mouse war with the Commonweal’s own Mercers, their heroes of covert war. When the word had come about rebellion flaring in Maynes, he had been relieved to be recalled to deal with it. Then the Empire’s eye had turned west, and he had been sent to Helleron.

He felt as though he was already at war with Helleron, for the call of duty fought a nightly battle with his own desires, and did not always come away the utter victor. Imperial cities were simply not like this. Firstly, imperial cities were actually governed. Helleron had its council of the fat and wealthy, it was true, but Thalric had seen the city from all sides and he knew that, if it was governed at all, it actually governed itself. It was ruled through a thousand small concerns, ten thousand petty greeds, by gangs, factory magnates, artificer-lords, black marketeers and, of course, foreign agents. More, this was accepted, and even intended, by its people. It was all a great, sprawling, grasping chaos, the absolute anathema of the Empire’s iron rule, and Thalric found he rather enjoyed it. His line of duty, the sinuous line he was reeling through the fabric of Helleren society, had led him to many places that the Empire had not shown him. He had been to the theatre to watch a riotous play that openly derided the very people paying for the privilege of watching, and yet was applauded for it. He had gone to dinner with Beetle magnates and Spider slavemongers and renegade Ant weapons dealers and made polite conversation with them. He had talked business in exclusive clubs and richly decked chop houses and brothels that offered girls of every kinden he could name. For a military man with an active mind he was required to remind himself of his duty at least once a day.

He was going to miss it all. He knew that the Empire’s rule, when brought to this place, would crush much that made it what it was. His trembling subordinates would never have guessed that his iron reputation would allow for such regret.

Or for worry, come to that, but Thalric was a worrier by nature and that was why he was so good at his job. By worrying about everything, he allowed very little past him, and right then he was worrying about his contact. His contact had worried him for twenty years now, ever since they had started their unnatural association.

Thalric stood up, tipped the wink to the host’s boy and went up the stairs to the back room. It would be dark, he knew, since Scylis did not like being seen, and anyway Thalric had decided it would be better not to see whatever face the man might present to him. A master of disguise he had told himself. A clever man with masks and cosmetics. As the history of their dealings had been written, such assurances to himself had begun to ring hollow.

He had a particular fear — for fear was another thing he owned that his men would not guess at — that, should he suddenly unveil a lamp or light a candle at one of these meetings, the face he would see facing him would be his own.

He could see the dark shape of the man by the open window. Always cautious, was Scylis. Thalric took his time, sitting down, getting comfortable, sipping the last of his wine.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what went wrong?’

Scylis made an annoyed sound. ‘What went wrong is that you might as well employ clowns and circus freaks as your soldiers, and your local talent is even worse.’ The voice was crisp, sarcastic, accentless. ‘They closed the trap too soon, and your children meanwhile made their farewells and left. I’d advise you to discipline your men but there aren’t that many of them that even managed to walk away alive.’

Thalric nodded. His four errant ‘scholars’, as he had been briefed, were turning into quite the death squad. ‘Afraid for your life, Scylis?’

The hidden man made a hiss of disdain. ‘If you had really wanted them dead, I would have killed them. As it was, I played my part. Do not think you will now withhold payment.’

‘Ever the mercenary.’

‘I could argue quite persuasively that being motivated by personal wealth is nobler than by imperialistic conquest,’ replied Scylis’s dry, amused voice. ‘However, my rates for scholarly debate are the same as those for my other services, so I doubt you would want to retain me as a pedagogue.’ He loved the sound of his own voice, Thalric knew. Not that he talked too much, but each word came out finely crafted and with relish. Yet he could sum up what he really knew about Scylis in seconds, and spend days over what he did not. From the shadow’s build, and the voice, he had decided that his catspaw was Spider-kinden, but Scylis could be Scyla for all he knew, and neither of those need be the agent’s real name.

‘You’ll be paid,’ Thalric said, ‘but could you impersonate any of them? Did you get a good enough look?’

‘It would be by appearance only,’ said Scylis. ‘I didn’t speak long enough to get to know them. Not like I did with Bolwyn.’

Thalric considered Bolwyn. He had no doubt that Scylis had questioned him most persuasively, before the man’s death, in order to assume that role. He felt no regrets about him. It was for the Empire.

‘It may yet come to that,’ he told the shadow. ‘In the meantime, here is your price.’ A bag of coins, gold Helleron Centrals, clinked on the floor. ‘I’ll have work for you soon enough. Word by the usual route.’

‘A pleasure as always, Major Thalric,’ came Scylis’s reply.

‘Captain Thalric,’ the Wasp corrected.

‘Come now, would you respect me if I could be fooled by your games? We have danced, you and I, and I know you.’

A characteristic Spider expression, and Thalric decided it was genuine, rather than a part the man was playing.

‘You know me, do you?’

‘I know your subordinates fear you, which is no strange thing in an officer, but your superiors fear you even more. Shall I utter the dreaded name and see what it conjures?’

‘Best you don’t,’ Thalric advised, as it came unbidden into his mind: Rekef. The army held a blade to the throat of the world, but he stood with his blade at the throat of the army, for the Emperor would tolerate no resistance, within or without. ‘Much more talk of that, Scylis, and even you might outlive your usefulness.’

Scylis made a dismissive sound, but he obviously gave some weight to the warning, because he changed the subject smoothly. ‘Did your men tell you about the Spider-kinden duellist? Quite the fencer to watch.’

Thalric nodded. ‘Yes they’re a proper bag of surprises.’ He stood up, feeling abruptly weary. Scylis always seemed to be mocking him, and he wished that he had some other agent who could do what this man appeared to be able to do, however it was that he managed it. ‘If you come across any information, any leads, you know I’ll pay for it,’ he said, as he left the room.

For the Empire. That was the rod at his core. No matter how much Helleron might tempt him with its decadent, delectable pleasures, when it was for the Empire he put all that aside and knew neither regret, worry nor fear. He was not a bad man, in his own estimation. No, he was a loyal man, and for an imperial citizen that was the crowning virtue. When the order had come to him, during the last war, to kill the three infant children of Prince Felise Dael, he had carried the knife himself to end the noble line, and known no remorse.

This thought stopped him on the stairs, for he had children himself, hundreds of miles away, whom he had barely ever seen since they were born. A wife he no longer wrote to. The fear of his underlings and the loathing of his superiors. Coded orders on scrolls scheduled for burning.

Their mother had been there, when he killed those three children, held restrained between two of his men. It was not that he had forced her to watch, simply that she had been in the nursery when he arrived. Standing on the stairs in the Grain Shipment Taverna he found that he wished she had been taken away.

For the Empire. It made him feel stronger, just saying the words to himself, but sometimes he felt as though he was turning into something like Scylis: masks and masks and masks, until he could hold them all up before him, and not know which was truly his own face.

Tynisa awoke slowly, but cautiously. She was somewhere she did not recognize. She could feel it from the bed, the sounds around her, the very smell. It could mean many things, from a kidnap to a successful liaison. She stayed quite still, allowing herself to come to without the world becoming aware of it.

A lumpy straw mattress and a sour, stale smell. If this was a liaison then she was certainly slumming it.

Bolwyn’s betrayal! It was all she could do not to open her eyes, to leap off the mattress. Bolwyn’s betrayal, then dashing for the alley mouth, two dead Wasps on her slope-shouldered conscience that seemed to be able to shrug them off so easily, but where was she now?

Her head ached abominably. She must have struck it on something.

She had got out into the street. More Wasps had been coming, cutting furrows through the crowd. Her bloody sword had been like a talisman to clear the way for her. She had tried to cut her way back, find Che and Salma, but there were Wasps and town militia approaching, and she had been driven further and further.

She had been exhausted. She had run and run and Helleron had always been there. In the end she had been running to escape the city itself, and failed.

It had consumed her.

So, she was in its bowels. With the most careful of movements, eyes still tight shut, she felt for her blade. Gone. She wore nothing but a shift. Where had she run to? Her mind simply did not have the answers.

It was time. She finally opened her eyes.

On a filthy mattress, covered by a stained sheet, in some tiny room with one slit window.

There was a chair across from her, near the doorless doorway. A small man was dozing in it, and carelessly slung over its back-

She was on her feet before she could stop herself, but silently, silent as her kind could be. In two steps she was within reach, and she had the hilt in her hand. She slid it from its scabbard.

That woke him, the whisper of steel on leather beside his ear. Even as he jumped she had the blade beneath his chin, drawing a bead of blood as he started. He was a halfbreed, she saw, looked like Beetle and Fly-kinden in there and perhaps more. He stood very still. He only had a knife himself but kept his hands far from it as if to reassure her.

‘Where am I?’ she hissed.

‘Malia’s house,’ he croaked, eyes flicking from her to the blade.

‘And who’s Malia that I should know her?’

‘She’s my chief. She’s important. You don’t mess with her.’ His voice shook as he said it, though. She smiled cruelly.

‘Well maybe I want to give this Malia a message. Maybe you’re the message, what do you think? So tell me something useful.’

‘I–I — I–I don’t know. What do you-? You were just brought in. I don’t know. I just got told to watch you,’ he stammered.

‘Why?’

A woman’s voice, from the doorway: ‘Why talk to the little finger when the face is here?’

Tynisa jumped back, rapier extended in a duellist’s guard. The newcomer was a woman of beyond middle years, greying, but lean and solidly built. She wore the under- and over-robes that the Helleren favoured, but she was Ant-kinden and still retained that race’s warrior stance. Her shortsword stayed in its sheath. Given the confidence in her, it was obviously a pointed statement.

Tynisa slowly lowered the blade until the tip was close to the floor. She could bring it up at a moment’s notice, but for now she wanted to talk. ‘And you’re Malia?’

‘That I am.’ The woman surveyed her dispassionately. ‘You bounced back quickly, child.’ Her voice still had a little of the Ant formality about it.

‘I’m no child.’

‘That remains to be seen. You owe me.’

‘For bed and board?’ Tynisa said contemptuously. ‘What, didn’t you have any stables you could sling me in?’

A quirk at the corner of Malia’s mouth. ‘This is Helleron. Here this is luxury accommodation. You owe me because you killed one of my people.’

‘When?’ Tynisa grasped at those parts of the previous day that still eluded her. ‘When did I?’ Is she with the Empire?

‘Oh, he went for you first, but that makes no difference.’ Malia folded her arms across her chest. ‘He always was a fool, and when you ran in, sword all red, he clearly decided you were for target practice.’

A thought, an image, the scattered shards of the previous day now drifting ever closer. A man pointing a short-bow at her, letting loose an arrow. It had passed across her back, ruffling her cloak, and she had gone for him. She had been moving without thought by then, reflex to reflex.

‘I killed him.’ She had cut the bow in half as he raised it to defend himself, and a twist of the wrist had turned the move into a lunge that had opened his throat.

‘And you injured four others of mine,’ Malia said. ‘They went to help the man you killed. You bloodied them all before one of them got a club against your head. And here you are with your sword pointed at Auntie Malia, to whom you owe so much.’

‘They’re not debts I recognize.’ Another dead man. Tynisa barely felt the weight.

‘If you think I can’t draw sword and kill you, then you had better think again,’ Malia said, in all seriousness. ‘I might be a matron now, but I was a duellist and assassin in my time, and I never gave up the sword habit.’

Tynisa slowly, deliberately, raised the sword until it was directed at her. ‘But?’ she prompted.

Malia’s twitch turned into a full, grudging smile. ‘But I might have other uses for you. Sword’s point, child! Who are you? You raise a stink around Hammerstake Street. You leave a neat set of dead men for the guard to puzzle over. You cross three separate fiefs trailing your bloody sword, and you end up on my back porch brawling with my men. And brawling well, for there’s not one of them who shouldn’t be grateful for the lesson in swordsmanship.’

‘I need to find some friends of mine,’ Tynisa said levelly.

‘As I said, you owe me,’ Malia told her. ‘Now, you can add to your credit, if you want, and I can have people keep an open eye. But you owe me, and I have a use for you.’

Here it comes. ‘And what might that be?’ The slit window would not have fit a Flychild. If she wanted to get out of here the hard way it would have to be through Malia. The woman could have been lying, of course, but Ants were warrior-bred from birth.

‘You owe me,’ Malia repeated. ‘I owe other people in our fief and you’d make a fine gift for them.’

‘Slavery?’ spat Tynisa, and Malia raised a hand to quiet her.

‘You don’t understand where you are or how things work, child, so keep your anger until you can use it. If I had a choice I’d find work for you myself, put you on my books. Teaching sword, perhaps. Or using it. As it is, I think I’ll send your talents up the ladder. I’ll be quits, and you’ll have a better chance to do whatever you need to, so long as you remember that you owe. And when you owe, you do what you’re told.’

‘What’s to stop me just running, as soon as I get the chance?’

Malia nodded. ‘Intelligent questions, good. Firstly, you’d be hunted. Secondly, I’m guessing you are already hunted, and the fief will be able to shelter you if you keep faith with us. Thirdly, if you want to find someone in Helleron, there are a lot of doors to knock on if you’re on your own. Fourth and last, you never know, you might actually like it in the fief. You seem just the type.’

Tynisa lowered the sword again. ‘And what is a fief?’

‘It’s like a family, and a city, and a factory all in one, child,’ Malia said. She turned and began to descend the stairs, and without options Tynisa sheathed her blade, slung the baldric over her shoulder, and followed.

‘A family because you do what your elders tell you, and they take care of you,’ Malia called back to her. ‘A city because there are rulers and subjects, and territory that must be defended. A factory because we’re all so very, very busy making things. Although most of what we make is what other people would call trouble.’

‘You’re a gang then? Criminals!’ Tynisa started.

‘That we are, child. One of a few hundred spread across Helleron, and neither the least nor the greatest. We’re the Halfway House, and I think you’ll fit in just perfectly.’

A rain had swept down off the mountains to attempt the futile task of trying to wash Helleron clean. After it had filtered through the smog of the factories it was greasy on the skin, stinging in the eyes. Che and Salma sheltered in the townhouse’s doorway, and she hung on the bell-rope again, hearing the distant tinkle from within the house.

The slot beside her head flicked open. ‘I told you to go away,’ said the appalled voice of the servant. ‘I shall call the watch.’

‘Please tell Master Monger that I’m here,’ she said. ‘I am his cousin.’

‘Master Monger is not at home to vagrants,’ the servant told her — and this after she and Salma had changed back into their proper clothes. She reflected that if Salma was a vagrant, he was the best-dressed one in the world.

‘But I’m family!’ she insisted.

‘Master Monger is too wise to fall for such a ploy, urchin,’ said the narrow piece of servant she could spy through the slot. ‘I swear that I shall call the watch. Be off with you.’

‘I. .’ A stubborn streak took hold of Che. ‘Hammer and tongs!’ she swore, just like Uncle Stenwold. ‘I am not moving off this doorstep until you fetch Master Elias Monger, and when he finds out how you have treated me, then by all the coin in the mint, he will have you thrashed!’

The silence that followed this outburst was broken at last only by Salma’s quiet chuckle.

‘I should do as she says,’ he confirmed quietly. ‘I would if I were in your shoes.’

The slot slammed shut and they could hear the man pattering off into the house. Elias Monger’s townhouse was not one of the villas on the hill itself, though it was practically at the hill’s foot. Cousin Elias had clearly been doing well for himself, even if his hospitality left something to be desired.

‘Well,’ said Salma after a moment, ‘I don’t know if they’re going to let us in or set the watch-bugs on us, but you’ve certainly made an impact.’

‘I. . don’t know what came over me,’ she said, feeling a little giddy. A moment later they heard the sound of feet approaching, several pairs of them. They took a step back from the door and Che smoothed down the front of her tunic.

When the door opened there were two armed men standing there, not soldiers but solid Beetle-kinden nonetheless with studded clubs and a couple of shields that had probably been adorning the wall until a moment ago. To Che’s credit they looked nervous. Behind them was a lean, pinch-mouthed man she recognized as the servant, and beside him a shorter, fuller-figured individual with a thunderous frown on his face. He had a scroll in one hand and a reservoir pen in the other, obviously called to the door from the middle of his book-keeping.

‘Now what is this? Grace and favour, but I can’t be doing with these interruptions!’ he snapped. ‘I suggest the pair of you make yourselves scarce before my men give you a richly deserved beating.’

‘Master Monger?’ Che said meekly. ‘My name is Cheerwell Maker and I have come here from Collegium. Uncle Stenwold sent me.’

Monger made to give some derisive reply, but then paused and squinted at her. From a chain about his neck he brought up a monocle to his eye. ‘Cheerwell?’ he said suspiciously.

‘My father is Dorvy Maker, sir, but Uncle Stenwold took me in. I’ve been studying at the Great College.’

‘Oh, Dorvy’s child.’ There was no great love in the words, but Che was already aware that her parents were from the less reputable end of the family. ‘Cheerwell,’ Monger mused. ‘That does sound familiar. Who’s this other fellow?’

‘Oh, this is Salma-’ Che started, and then stopped herself. ‘Excuse me, this is Prince Salme Dien of the Commonweal. He would also like to guest at your house, cousin.’

Salma, on cue, executed an elaborate genuflection, something exotic from his homeland. Monger’s mouth picked up.

‘Well, a Commonwealer.’ Whatever he had heard about Salma’s people, it obviously included something good, or at least profitable, because his reserve was fast diminishing. ‘A prince of the Commonweal and my own dear cousin Cheerwell? Remarkable days indeed.’ He gave the snide servant a look of exasperation. ‘Really, I can only apologize for the zeal of my staff. You must understand that we have a great many callers of a less than savoury nature. Please come in, do come in.’

She had walked a fine line in telling Elias their story, and did not want to compromise him by naming names and allegiances. So it was that she patched together something close enough to the truth to resemble it at a distance. She and her friends had been sent to Helleron on some undefined business by Stenwold. They had been attacked in the street, although she did not know by whom, or why. They had been scattered in the fray and two were still missing. She and Salma needed a place to stay until Stenwold arrived, and they needed their host’s help.

Despite her obfuscation she guessed that Elias had read between the lines well enough. He seemed to understand that, under the circumstances, Totho and Tynisa would not be making it easy to be found.

‘I’ll send the word round to my foremen and factors to look out for them,’ he promised them over dinner. ‘I’ll post up a bit of a reward, as well. There are a whole breed of people in this city for whom finding other people is a way of life.’ Finding other people who don’t want to be found. The words hung unsaid in the air.

‘Do you think it’s wise, to just. .’ Che squirmed, knowing that whatever word was now put out would reach their enemies soon enough.

‘My dear girl,’ Elias told her. ‘What else can we do? Otherwise it’s like looking for someone in a crowded plaza by blindfolding yourself and whispering their name. Don’t worry. I’m not without influence in this city. I have seven factories and a mining concern, and that means that when I speak, people listen. We’ll have your fellows safe within these walls before you know it. Just give it a few days.’

Che toyed with her food, glanced at Salma and saw her own concern mirrored in his easy smile. Helleron was vast, her friends were small, and the Wasp Empire that had taken such an interest in them would not rest. She could not imagine Elias Monger’s connections working faster than the Wasps’ implacable malice. Hour by hour a dreadful cold feeling was growing in her chest, as she thought of Tynisa and Totho.