Empire in Black and Gold

Nineteen

She danced for them the next night. It was like nothing they had ever seen.

The slavers had put the two huge vehicles with the caged backs facing one another, and strung a wide fence around both to make a single big oval enclosure. They were all gathered around one end or the other, and most of the soldiers as well. Che was nervous. Something was going on, and the only thing she could think of was a blood-fight. Death-fights were not common in the Lowlands. In Collegium, for instance, they thought of themselves as far too civilized, and while the Ant cities loved a gladiatorial match they watched it for the skill and not the blood. The practice was known, though. The Spiders did it, in their southern fastnesses, and it was rumoured that Helleron had underground fighting dens, for the connoisseur of death as entertainment.

They had banked up fires either side of the palisade, with another burning in the very centre of the pen. Looking around, Che spotted Brutan, the slavers’ leader, and a fair number of the automotive crew, but not Thalric. Presumably he felt himself above whatever was going to happen.

And then she stepped forward. They had not noticed her before. She must have been caged on the other vehicle, or even kept separate entirely. Che felt Salma twitch as he saw her, tense for a moment. Che glanced from him to the woman uncertainly.

She was. . for a moment Che thought she must be a Moth-kinden, because she possessed their featureless white eyes. When the firelight caught her, though, Che started in surprise, because her skin was moving.

She had been grey as grey a moment ago, a Moth indeed. That was plain enough to see. She wore only the briefest of clothes, a loincloth, a band of cloth tied across her breasts. Now something was happening to her. Shadows were chasing themselves across her flesh. No, not shadows: colours. The ruddy firelight tried to hide it, but as they watched, a fleeting patchwork of reds and purples, dark blues and pale pieces were flitting and skipping over the contours of her body.

A pipe and drum struck up from somewhere. Che twisted round to see it was the lanky, sallow-skinned man playing, keeping time on the drum with his foot. And then she danced.

It was a wild thing, and she led where the pipe only followed. It was not like the carefully orchestrated Collegium terpsichoreans or the rustic folk dances Che had previously seen. This was not the lewd invitation of a brothel. It was like nothing in the experience of a Lowlander. It was furious and angry, it was beautiful, it was sad. Every man’s eye was on her, most women’s as well. When Che tore her gaze away, she passed it across the yearning faces of the prisoners, to the guards beyond. The Wasp soldiers were lost in it, utterly. There was something stripped from their faces that she had never seen them without, as though some buried knife had been sheathed for this moment only. The impassive helms of the slavers showed nothing, of course, but many of them had taken them off to see better, and the same bereft, gentle look was on them. There was lust there, certainly, and all the ugly baggage that it brought, but it was shackled, in those men of chains, by something wholly other.

And she danced, to the skirling wail of the pipe, the skittering of the drum. The music spoke not of her but of the desperate, hopeless need of her audience as it chased and chased and never caught her.

Che glanced aside to make some comment to Salma, but his face was stricken with amazement, all of his haughty smiles and hidden laughter cut away from him.

She danced, and then she was done, a bitterly scornful obeisance to those who watched from beyond the palisade, leaving the pipe to squeal to a close along with her. She stayed there, motionless, bending forward so that her forehead almost touched the sand, one arm flung forward, one leg straight and the other folded beneath her. The dead silence the pipe had bequeathed stretched on and on.

And when she raised her head it was to Salma that she looked and that outflung arm became a desperate entreaty, her obeisance a plea. Help me. Save me.

At last it was Brutan who said, ‘All right, feed the bastards,’ and the Wasp-kinden picked up the vices they had, for an instant, put away, and remembered they were conquerors and warriors.

The dancer stood, looking uncertain now, and drained, and so very sad. Che felt a movement beside her and realized that Salma was standing. The dancer saw him, flinched back a moment and then looked again. She was making a first step towards him when three slavers muscled into the palisade and took hold of her, leading her off. She did not resist but she cast a last glance back at Salma that made him flinch too.

‘What was that?’ Che said. ‘I mean. . Salma, are you listening to me?’

‘Of course I am,’ but he still seemed preoccupied as he sat down again.

‘Salma, did you recognize her or something?’

‘I don’t. . No, not her. I know what she is, though.’

‘And?’

‘There are a few communities in the Commonweal — “In” meaning within, rather than a part of. They are. . different. Butterfly-kinden, you know. I’d never seen one before. Only heard people talk about them. And it’s true, all they say. For the love of lords and princes!’ he exclaimed.

Che had never seen him so shaken. ‘So she danced well. So what?’ she said, feeling a little ill disposed to this dancing Butterfly already.

‘What?’ he asked her, trying for jovial. ‘You think I’ll abandon you and go off with her?’

‘I do know everyone seemed to be turned into a drooling idiot the moment she appeared, but you were king of the idiots, if you ask me,’ she grumbled.

His smile was coming back, and very much at her expense. ‘Cheerwell Maker, don’t tell me that’s jealousy I’m hearing? I didn’t know that we two were handfast.’

She coloured a little, knowing that in the firelight his eyes would spot it easily. ‘No, of course not. I was just worried about you, that’s all.’

Salma was about to reply when his eye was caught by two slavers approaching. He tensed, ready for them to single him out.

It was Che, however, who had their attention. ‘You! On your feet.’

‘Why?’

He hit her so fast that even Salma could not put himself in the way, slapping her across the face with an open palm. The blade of his hand had a bone hook jutting from it, Art-grown, and, even with her head ringing, she realized he could have done a lot worse.

‘No questions, slave. On your feet.’

She didn’t need to be told a third time. Salma was half on his feet too, but the second slaver directed a hand at him that crackled with energy.

‘No more heroics from you, Wealer,’ he warned. ‘Don’t think anyone would miss you.’

‘Where are you taking her?’ Salma demanded.

The energy blazed up in the man’s hand, and Che cried out, ‘I’m going with them. It’s all right. Don’t hurt him.’ It was anything but all right, but Salma was leashed to the pen and they would have been able to kill him at their leisure. ‘Please, I’m going.’

The soldier severed her leather with the spurs on his hands, and the two of them virtually dragged her from the pen, not giving her time to get her feet underneath her.

‘What have I done?’ she asked, but they just dragged her out through the palisade and let other slavers reset the stakes.

She repeated the question and one of the soldiers raised a hand to strike her again. She quailed away, tried to hide her face, but they had her arms secure. The man gave a guttural laugh.

‘Full of questions, this one,’ he said.

‘Shouldn’t be asking ’em,’ said his companion. ‘She won’t like the answers.’

And they dragged her off into the dark. She had one last glimpse of Salma’s agonized face before the pen was way behind her, and she was being hauled alongside the looming bulk of one of the automotives. She had a brief glimpse of a Wasp-kinden artificer tinkering with it, glancing at her with disinterest and then returning to his work.

‘What’s this?’ She recognized the gruff tones even as her escorts slowed and stopped. The broad-shouldered figure of Brutan the slavemaster had intercepted them. ‘What’s going on, lads?’

‘Orders, Sarge,’ said one of them.

‘You take my orders, lads,’ said Brutan. He took Che’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, yanked her head up. She could see almost nothing of him within his helm. ‘Someone got a taste for Beetle flesh, is it? I don’t recall giving you any orders, lads, so who’s been meddling in my operation.’

‘Captain Thalric, sir,’ said the other slaver awkwardly.

‘Well Captain Thalric can kiss my arse,’ Brutan declared. ‘If he wants a whore he can speak to the pimp.’

‘I don’t know, sir-’ began one of the slavers.

‘Mind you,’ Brutan said, ignoring him completely, ‘it’s a poor pimp that hasn’t dipped his wick in all the bottles.’ The blank mask of his helm was very close to Che’s face, and there was nowhere she could pull away to. ‘Not exactly a prizewinner, is she? But I’m not feeling choosy so bring her over here.’

He strode off, but the two slavers had not moved. ‘Sarge,’ said one unhappily.

Brutan rounded on them. ‘Did I or did I not give you an order?’

‘But it’s Captain Thalric, sir.’

‘You don’t seem to know who’s holding your chain in their hands,’ said Brutan, coming back with hands open, fingers splayed.

‘They say he’s Rekef, sir.’

Brutan stopped. ‘So what if they do?’ he asked, but there was a slight change in his tone. ‘Think I’m scared of that? Think I’m scared of him?’

The silence of the slavers suggested that they were, but they were also scared of their leader. When Brutan barked ‘Bring her!’ they did.

She was pulled off to a secluded dip beyond the main camp, slammed onto the ground on her back hard enough to put the breath out of her. Until that moment she had not quite appreciated what he intended.

‘You can’t- You’re not going to-’

‘Shut her up,’ said Brutan, sounding bored. He was undoing his belt with practised fingers.

Che screamed, and when a slaver put a hand over her mouth she bit him savagely. He cuffed her and her head rang with it, and the other was already stuffing a rag or somesuch into her mouth. She fought and fought, and it took the both of them to hold her down as Brutan dragged at her breeches.

‘Do you really think-?’ one of the slavers was saying.

‘Yes, I think,’ Brutan snapped at him. ‘You just do as I say.’

‘But if he is. .’ the other whined, casting a look back towards the camp. Che’s frantic struggles and muffled cries might not have been going on at all for all the notice they took of them.

‘Shut up, the pair of you.’ Brutan had begun to sound harried. Now he lurched across Che. She felt his bare flesh on hers. Then there was a pause. It was such a pause that she stopped fighting, trying to work out what was going on. Brutan was still suspended above her on his hands and knees. She could see only darkness within the helm that he had not even taken off.

She glanced down and saw more than she wanted to of the man, but saw, moreover, that he was going limp.

‘Sergeant?’ one of the slavers asked nervously. After a moment Brutan rolled off her and cursed.

‘Pox-rotten Rekef bastards.’

There was another pause. Given this small opportunity, Che pulled up her breeches and did her best to tie them with the broken cords left to her, still not quite believing what was happening.

‘Sergeant?’ asked the slaver again.

‘You’d better take her to him,’ Brutan muttered, sounding furious with them, with her, with Thalric, and with himself.

The big automotives obviously transported more than slaves. Thalric had a tent now, pitched out of sight of the slave pens. When she was hustled inside, the man was sitting before a folding desk, looking for all the world as though he were in his study somewhere civilized. A hissing white-flamed salt-lamp gave an unhealthy pallor to his skin.

He looked up, at her and at the two slavers. He must have heard her screaming just moments before but his face admitted nothing of it.

‘You may go,’ he told her escorts, and they left gratefully. There were two of his soldiers at the door so she knew that this did not offer an escape attempt. It remained to be found out just what it did mean.

‘Sit, if you want,’ he told her. She regarded him curiously. It was impossible to place his age, save that he was neither young nor old. He was regular of feature, without being striking in any way. He would have been equally fitting as a College registrar or at the winch of a rack. In fact his bland features could have placed him anywhere.

‘Why did you send the slavers to fetch me, if you don’t like them?’ she asked him, watching for a reaction.

‘Because it’s their job,’ he replied simply. ‘You’re a slave. They’re slavers.’ After a moment he relented. ‘It’s no secret that the regular army doesn’t get on with the Slave Corps. The army doesn’t like them because taking slaves is no true profession for a man of the Empire, and I don’t like them because they’re greedy and self-interested.’

‘Do you. . do you know what. .?’

‘I can guess.’ His face was without guilt or pity. ‘Our Brutan is a lusty fellow, or so they say.’

‘And are you going to punish him?’

‘Why should I? What has he done wrong?’

She gaped at him. ‘I don’t think you know what that word means!’

‘Miss Maker.’ Abruptly he was stern, standing. She flinched back from him. In that instant response she realized that she really was a slave.

‘Miss Maker,’ he said again, ‘it remains to be seen whether you will enjoy any protection from Brutan and his like, and before you say a word, his like includes plenty who wear the chains, as well as those who wield the whips. I can have you separated from your Commonwealer friend in an instant, and after that you’ll be just one more victim’s victim.’

She tried to face up to him boldly but the crawling horror of the thought was overtaking her, as he knew it would.

‘We are going to Asta,’ he told her. ‘It’s a little outpost of ours but it has sufficient facilities for my purposes, which are to learn what you and your fellow know.’

‘You mean torture.’

‘Do I? Well, let that be what I mean then. However, it is possible for you and I to keep our questioning artificers idle for an hour or so. Sit and talk to me.’

She tried to read his face, his posture, but there was nothing. ‘I won’t. .’ It was harder to say it than she had thought, with his threat still hanging in the air. ‘I won’t betray my uncle.’

‘Then simply sit and talk,’ he said. ‘A few words, a little wine perhaps. Let us find out where the borders of your betrayal are. Let us visit them together, look into that forbidden country.’

‘You think you can trick me,’ she said.

‘You think I can’t trick you,’ he countered. ‘Why should we not see who is right?’

She regarded him suspiciously, saying nothing, and he smiled. It was such a frank and open expression that it took her off her guard.

‘We tried to kill your uncle. We hunted you across the Lowlands. We tried to trap you in Helleron. We caught you. We enslaved you. We nearly raped you. We threaten you. With all of that on the account, some people might quite have taken against us.’

A strained laugh escaped her, his humour was so unexpected.

‘Perhaps tonight I should talk and you should listen, and tomorrow or the next night you may feel like talking to me,’ he suggested.

‘I–I don’t think that I’ll ever-’

‘Don’t. .’ His voice stopped her, in that one word was a world of warning. ‘Don’t say anything that you cannot take back. You think you’re special, yes?’

‘I. . Not so special your bully boys mightn’t have killed me just like anyone else, as one of their nasty little examples.’

The smile again. So very genuine and wry, and yet the things he smiled at would have appalled any rational person. ‘But you were in no danger, Miss Maker. I had already made sure that you would live through the experience. It was just an object lesson.’ He leant forward over the desk. ‘But if you are overly stubborn, then next time it may be for real. You think I am an evil man, yes?’

‘That we can agree on.’

He sat back, poured two goblets of wine as he spoke. ‘Taken as a whole, I would say that I am no more virtuous nor vice-ridden than any other, save for one overriding virtue. Do you know what that virtue is? True, it is a virtue rare in the Lowlands, in my limited experience. It is loyalty. I will do anything the Empire asks of me, Miss Maker, and I will do anything for the benefit of the Empire. I will destroy villages and lives, I will cross deserts, I will. . kill children.’ She noticed the minute hesitation there and filed it for later use. ‘I will do all of this, and I will account it no evil, but instead a virtue, the virtue of loyalty, the Empire before everything, my own desires included. Do you understand how this relates to our little talk right now?’

She shook her head slowly.

‘It means that if the best use I can put you to is to offer you wine,’ and he did so, ‘and treat you kindly and have a conversation or two within this tent, then I shall serve the Empire that way. If the best use I find is to put you to the question, or gift you to Brutan, then I shall do that. It is nothing personal, Miss Maker. Do I make myself clear?’

‘I suppose you do.’ She took the wine cautiously, sipping. It had a dry, harsh taste, somewhat unfamiliar.

‘Then tonight I will talk to you, and thus try to make it easier for you to talk to me,’ he told her. ‘I will tell you about my people and my Empire, and in that way hope that you will understand why we do what we do.’

At that moment the most delicious aroma entered the tent, preceding a soldier bearing a platter. There was dried fruit on it, and nuts, and what must be honey, and a half-dozen slices of steaming meat that must surely be horse. She found that she had taken two steps towards the table as soon as it was set down.

‘Help yourself,’ he offered, as the soldier left. She was instantly on her guard, but he shrugged. ‘Or not? You will profit nothing from abstaining. A moral victory on this small point would be an empty one, would it not?’

And she had to concede that. She had to concede that, because she had eaten slave food for two days and she was unable to take her eyes off the plate. By awkward stages she sat and took up a piece of meat, bolting it even as it burned her fingers. She saw Thalric’s expression then, and recognized it as that of a man who had won the first battle of a campaign. She hated him for that, but did not stop eating.

‘You must have a very skewed picture of the Wasp-kinden,’ he told her. ‘If you think of us at all, you must think that we’re savages.’

She nodded vigorously, still eating.

‘Not so far from the truth,’ he admitted, and she raised surprised eyebrows. ‘The Empire is young. Three generations, three Emperors.’

She frowned at him.

‘No, we don’t live for hundreds of years. Nothing like that. Our Most Revered Majesty Alvdan the Second is not thirty years of age. His grandfather was one tribal chieftain in a steppeland full of feuding tribes, but he had, as the story goes, a dream. He took war to the other tribes, and he subjugated them. He brought all the Wasp-kinden together under his banner. It took a lifetime of bitter fighting and worse diplomacy. His son, Alvdan the First, built the Empire: city after city brought into the fold, the borders pushed ever outwards. Each people we made our own, we learned the lessons they taught us. We honed the tool of war until it was keen as a razor. Our Emperor now, Alvdan Two, was sixteen when he came to the throne, and since then he has not rested in furthering the dream of his father and his grandfather. We have fought more peoples than the Lowlands even knows exist. We have defended ourselves against enemies who were stronger than us, or wiser than us, or steeped in lore we could not guess at. We have conquered internal strife and we have done what no other has ever done before us. The Empire is physically near the size of the entire Lowlands, but all under one flag and all marching to one beat. The Empire represents progress, Miss Maker. The Empire is the future. Look at my people. They have a foot in the barbaric still. They must be forced into discipline, into control, into civilization! But they have come so very far in such a short time. I am proud of my people, Miss Maker. I am proud of what they have brought about.’

‘So why inflict their regime on other people?’ she demanded.

‘Because we must grow lest we stagnate,’ he replied, as though it was as very simple as that. ‘And because those who are not within the Empire remain a threat to it. How long before the Commonweal takes arms against us, or some Ant general similarly unifies the Lowlands? How

long before some other chieftain with the same dream raises the spear against us? If we were to declare peace with the world, then the world would soon take the war to us. Look at the Lowlands, Miss Maker: a dozen city-states that cannot agree on anything. If we were to invade Tark tomorrow, do you know what the other Ant-kinden cities would do? They would simply cheer. That is the rot of the Lowlands, Miss Maker, so we will bring them into the Empire. We will unite the Lowlands under the black-and-gold banner. Think what we might accomplish then.’

‘All I can think of is that you would turn my race, and all the Lowlands, into slaves within your Empire.’

‘There are many Beetle-kinden in the Empire, Miss Maker. They do very well. The Emperor trusts most of the imperial economy to them, as far as I can make out. The Empire needs slaves to do a slave’s work, but we would not enslave the Lowlands. The people of the Lowlands would simply discover that their best interests lie in working with us.’

‘Tell me, Captain, what is the Rekef?’

The question caught him quite by surprise, but in the next moment he was smiling again, as though she had, at last, proved a promising student. ‘Well, how has that word come to you?’

‘Brutan, amongst others.’

‘The Rekef, Miss Maker, is a secret society.’

She had to laugh at that. ‘But everyone seems to know you’re in it so how can it be secret?’

‘Well, that is rather the point.’ His smile looked a little embarrassed. ‘Why, after all, would you be part of a terrifying secret society that strikes fear into the hearts of men, if nobody even knows that you’re in it? In actual fact, if I was Rekef Inlander then the first anyone would know about it would be when they found themselves hauled in and being put to the question, with a list of their crimes before them.’ His smile became self-mocking. ‘To tell the truth they even frighten me. I, on the other hand, am Rekef Outlander. My place is dealing with people like you.’ He paused, searching her face. ‘Have I reached you, Miss Maker? Have you heard what I have said?’

‘You’ve given me a lot to think about.’

‘And?’

‘I remember. . when I was in Helleron with Salma — the Dragonfly-kinden, although I’m sure you know that — when we were there, we saw a factory, and he said he had thought that we Beetle-kinden didn’t keep slaves. And I told him not to be so ridiculous, because they weren’t slaves. They were working for a wage. They were there of their own free will. But I couldn’t persuade him. Whatever I said, I couldn’t make him see that they were free. Perhaps that was because he was right.’

Thalric’s smile was still there, but bleak, very bleak. ‘Your point is elegantly made, Miss Maker.’

She put down her goblet, composed herself. ‘What will you do with me?’

He looked down at the scroll before him and ticked off a few items carefully with a scratchy chitin-nibbed pen. She thought at first he was only trying to make her squirm, but then realized that he really was thinking what might be done with her.

‘I will call you for another conversation — at Asta perhaps. Another chance for you to talk to me, before the artificers become involved, or your Dragonfly friend is hurt. Until then. . let us hope the dreadful reputation of the Rekef suffices to stave off Brutan’s advances.’

‘You’re. .?’ She didn’t want to ask it. She knew it would make her look weak. ‘You’re not going to. .?’

He looked up at her, face quite without expression. ‘Guards!’ he called suddenly, and then, more softly: ‘No, Miss Maker. I cannot see how that would serve any purpose. Not yet.’

He was so very smug behind that bland facade. He was so very in control that, as the soldiers came in, she did something very unwise, knowing it to be so even as she did it.

‘Whose children did you kill?’ she asked.

His nib snapped, its tip leaping across the tent. For a second he held himself very still, while she could see the great shadow of his anger pass across his face, and something else, too, some other emotion his features were not designed for. The soldiers had paused halfway towards her. She thought even they were holding their breath.

At last he let his anger out in a long sigh. ‘Take her back to the pens,’ he instructed, not looking at his men. The shadow of that other emotion was still there on his face.