Empire in Black and Gold

Twenty-seven

Thalric returned to his chambers and methodically ensured that everything essential he owned was ready to take on his person. He laid out his sword and swordbelt, his pack with writing kit and paper and all the imperial documents he carried. He then took out his most valuable possession, for a man who travelled light. It was a short-sleeved shirt of copper-steel mesh, made somewhere far beyond the Empire’s borders. They were highly sought after, far more in demand than could be satisfied by the thin trickle of supply that reached the imperial markets by the Silk Road. He had been lucky to find it, for copper-weave armour was normally a perquisite of generals and statesmen.

He stripped off his tunic and put the garment on. Its thin layer of cloth backing was cool against his chest. When he put another tunic on, with sleeves down to the elbow, no watcher would guess at the thin layer of metal next to his skin.

He then buckled his swordbelt, wondering how much time he still had. The thought that at the end Ulther might stay loyal did not occur to him. He had lived with treachery long enough to hear its tread on the stairs.

And such a simple net to catch a man who was governor of Myna: to take his toys away and wait for the tantrum. If Thalric had been sentimental he would have been bitterly disappointed. In fact, he now admitted, he was disappointed. He should not have had to do this, not to Ulther, who had once been his friend and patron.

But the story that Hreya had told him had been clear enough: Ulther was a man of appetites. The great warrior of two decades before had become today’s petty tyrant. Myna was his city and he ran it for his personal delectation and that of his cronies, his sycophants, as the woman Kymene had called them. For a man of Thalric’s trade it had not taken long to uncover the signs. The imperial tallies did not tally. There were goods and coin going missing, far more than the mechanical supplies that Aagen had come here to chase. The war that was being constructed in Asta was months behind schedule, stinted at every turn as Myna was made a chokehold in the imperial supply lines. What Ulther did not appropriate himself, his parasites soon made off with. The black market of Myna was growing fat on war supplies that the Empire could not afford to lose.

Ulther was grown drunk on power, and his henchmen were growing fat on the Empire’s tax money and war funds. Meanwhile the city itself had been on the brink of explosion for years. Ulther had done a good job of keeping it from boiling over, but it was still seething, and Thalric had seen enough damaging reports. Even incarcerating Kymene had not been a real blow to the resistance because Ulther had seen her as a trophy and not an opportunity. The good man Thalric once knew had become a liability, had become a burden on the imperial war machine, a cancer that must be operated upon immediately, if the Empire was to exercise its full strength against the Lowlands.

So Colonel Latvoc had been right, in the end. He had even been right, in all probability, to send Thalric. That did not mean that Thalric had to like it, however.

He drew his blade, examined its surface for rust. It did not see as much wear as it should, but then a good Rekef agent seldom needed to fight in person. This time it would be different, though.

He looked up. ‘You can come out now,’ he said. ‘You’re fooling no one.’

He could not, in fact, have said where the watcher was, although he knew he was being watched. The shadow that moved was outside the window, someone crouched on the sill beside that narrow aperture. With an impressive display of dexterity a small figure squeezed through an opening never intended as an entrance, and descended to the floor in a glitter of wings. It was te Berro, Latvoc’s man.

‘How am I doing?’ Thalric asked dryly.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’ Te Berro dusted himself off. He was wearing a shapeless white robe, like many of the local Fly-kinden, but Thalric saw a bulge that must indicate a dagger hilt.

‘The lines are drawn. They’ll move against me soon,’ Thalric said. ‘Ulther will go and wrestle with his conscience for a while, but his greed will pin it easily. Then he’ll send men after me.’

‘Do you require help?’ te Berro asked him. ‘The Rekef Inlander have a few hands in the city, low ranked mostly.’

That would be a blessed abrogation of responsibility, to step aside and let the Rekef deal with his old mentor.

Thalric shook his head. ‘I’ll do it. If it’s possible, I’ll do it. But keep an eye on me, in case.’

‘If so, we may be too late.’

‘Then so be it.’

‘Your prerogative, of course.’ Te Berro nodded. ‘Good luck, Major Thalric.’ The Fly’s wings blurred at his shoulders and he hopped to the window ledge.

‘Lieutenant. .’

‘Major?’

Thalric took a deep breath. ‘You’ve been on Colonel Latvoc’s staff for how long, Lieutenant?’

‘Over a year now, sir.’ As te Berro crouched at the window, it was impossible to know whether the question made him uncomfortable.

‘If he wants Ulther dead, why not just kill him?’ The words dropped like lead. Te Berro stared, trapped suddenly in a conversation he had no wish to be a part of.

‘Sir?’

‘We are the Rekef, te Berro. City governors choke on their meat or fall out of windows or cut their throats shaving, same as everybody else. Why this charade?’

‘You think he tells me anything?’ te Berro said, hurrying the words out before they could be used against him. ‘You’ve made your investigation. You’ve found a reason to convict him. Be happy with that, Major. Be happy that it will all look legitimate when Ulther’s friends come calling.’ His face twisted slightly. ‘Besides, maybe it’s not really Ulther they’re interested in. Maybe it’s you, Major?’ His wings sprang dustily into existence, and a moment later he had contorted his way out of the narrow window and was gone.

By the sputtering, ghostly light of their artificial lamps Achaeos heard them whisper about the hands that built these ancient sewers. He rolled his blank eyes at it all but knew enough to stay silent.

There were enough of the lichen-overgrown and defaced carvings left for him to recognize the ancient structure as his own people’s handiwork. So Myna had once been a city of the Moth-kinden, so long lost now that even Tharn was unaware of it. But no, somewhere high enough up in the echelons of his masters that knowledge would remain. There was precious little of the past that they did not know. Knowledge was a currency in Tharn, and it was guarded more jealously than gold, even from their own kin.

Achaeos wondered whether they ever thought of him, wished him luck or wondered if he still lived. By this evening that might be a moot point.

He, who had so often troubled the world for news of the future, now felt trapped by the strings of fate. A chain of happenstance had tethered him to this moment, as surely as if he had become a slave of the Wasps himself. He had not intended any of it. He had merely sought Elias Monger’s stables as a brief hiding place. He would have been gone at nightfall, and nobody would have been the wiser — if not for that meddling woman.

And even her name was maddening. Only a Beetle would call a girlchild ‘Cheerwell’. They had no grace or taste.

If only she had not intruded. If only she had not been too strong for the Art-trance he had thrown over her. If only, when she had broken free of him, she had not gifted him back his freedom by her silence. If only she had not treated his wounds, his blood glistening on her hands, or if only he had not let her do so.

Well, fate dealt me a poor hand, and I played it badly even so. No sense battering himself against the glass now. He had provided for himself as best he could, and Chyses’ cell had provided him with a bow of cheap Fly-kinden make and a dozen short arrows. They would have to do.

He kept ahead of the lamplight, having no need of it. Even further ahead were the Mantis and the Spider-kinden girl, retracing their earlier steps. He could read the hostility between them clearly, although he had no interest whatsoever in their squabbles, save that the task would become easier if they were not at each other’s throats. Behind him came the heavy tread of the Apt: the halfbreed artificer clutching a truly grotesque-looking crossbow; then the leader of the resistance, Chyses, and two of his fellows, hooded and masked like travellers on a dusty road. Behind them, on near-silent bare feet, was the turncoat Grasshopper militiawoman, Toran Awe, with her staff. Achaeos put no faith in any of them.

He sensed they were approaching their destination, for Tisamon and Tynisa were slowing, waiting for the light to catch up with them. He padded to a halt beside them, looking at the hatch just above. Now the stones around him were no longer relics of his own people’s fall, for which he was grateful.

The others soon joined them. Chyses unrolled a rough map of the palace’s lower floors, which had been prepared with the complicity of servants working in the building. Achaeos had difficulty making anything of it.

‘We’ll need to head up from these storerooms,’ the Mynan explained. ‘There are several cellar systems and they don’t link. The cells we’re all interested in are right here. That’s assuming the prisoners haven’t been moved in the last few days. Who has the autoclef?’

‘That would be me,’ Totho said, displaying the toothy device for a moment. ‘Do we know exactly which cells they’re in?’

‘Kymene’s cell is open fronted, so I’m told, but as for your friends, just open every cell you come across. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who’s been locked up by the Wasps deserves to go free,’ said Chyses.

‘The Wasps will realize we’re there that much the sooner,’ Tynisa warned him.

‘And they’ll have more to worry about,’ Chyses said. ‘And I would not be a true enemy of theirs if I did not set every last one of their prisoners free, whether they be friends of mine, or friends of yours, or even just criminals and murderers.’

Totho exchanged an uneasy glance with Tynisa, but Tisamon was already over at the hatch, listening intently. A moment later he levered the trapdoor open, took a second to peer around, and then pushed it all the way up and pulled himself through.

It was quiet in the storeroom itself, but there was movement enough above it. Large buildings like this palace never really slept, and there was a whole nightshift of servants preparing for the new day: cleaning and repairing, stoking fires, baking breakfasts. Chyses had said that the hated governor had a love of opulence. It all multiplied the number of eyes now abroad to see them.

Chyses had also been adamant that these servants were mostly locals and so would keep their mouths shut. Tisamon remained unconvinced.

He gathered himself and then took the stairs with a measured, silent tread. A faint lamp-glow came from above, and he crept to the door. It was barred from the far side, but he slipped the blade of his claw between door and frame. Behind him, he sensed Tynisa and the Grasshopper, Toran Awe, tense.

The bar lifted, and Tisamon eased the door open. A soft gleam of lamplight fell past him as he leant back into the shadow of the door. Toran Awe slipped by into the corridor. She was wearing her uniform: the yellow shirt and dark breeches that were the stamp of her conscription. They heard her murmur something, and then there was a sharp sound of wood on flesh, a muffled cry, and another blow.

Moments later the Grasshopper was back, dragging with her the body of a Mynan servant. Chyses’ eyes — the only part of him visible between hood and mask — glared at her resentfully.

‘Don’t tell us,’ Tisamon warned him, ‘that every one of your people taking the governor’s bread is just waiting to throw off their shackles.’

‘He is stunned only,’ Toran assured them, as she passed the limp form back to them and Chyses’ two associates laid it in the grain cellar.

‘And this way, he may not suffer for what we’re about to do,’ Tynisa added. Chyses’ angry look did not soften, but he nodded grudgingly.

‘The sands are running now,’ said Tisamon, ‘until he’s missed. Where does your map say we should go next?’

Achaeos could have told them, if only they would have believed him and if only they could have walked through solid earth and stone. The maze of the palace was unknown to him, but he could feel her heart beating, even through these cellar walls, feel the blood he had shed on her hands calling out to him.

Thalric had to wait until dusk before they came for him, and he would never know whether it was Ulther’s conscience that had restrained him that long, or if they had needed the time to gather their courage.

He had made himself readily available. Wherever he had gone throughout the day, there had been servants watching who could report on his doings. It was important, at this point, that they find him easily.

His plan, which seemed to have come to fruition without his ever having to piece it together, was complete.

He had chosen a walled garden this time, situated on one of the higher tiers of the palace. The expense that must have gone into the hauling of the earth and the plants staggered him, let alone the constant attention needed to prevent such an artificial plantation from withering where it stood. It would be as suitable a place as any to confront what Ulther would send for him.

When he saw them he was instantly relieved. If it had been soldiers then he would have been out of his depth. Ulther had a great many soldiers to call on, and the Auxillian militia as well, but it was obvious he did not trust the garrison. The Rekef’s reputation had done its work well. Ulther knew there must be Rekef agents in place, but could not know who, and so he could not even trust his own men in this. Instead, he had gone to his henchmen, his sycophants, and told them that the hour had come for them to repay him for all his favour.

Some half a dozen men came stalking carefully into the garden. Thalric had made sure he was seen going there, but he had chosen a vantage point concealed behind a stand of stunted fruit trees, so he had a good chance to see who he was dealing with.

He recognized first Oltan the quartermaster, surely a leading hand behind the embezzling of supplies that had brought Aagen here. The items he had taken as his due, intended for the war effort, instead went onto the black market, feeding into the lawlessness of the city and therefore the power of the resistance. Behind Oltan came Freigen of the Consortium of the Honest. Thalric, who disliked self-important merchants even when they did their job, would lose no sleep over his death. Draywain, his Beetle-kinden partner, was not present; either he was insufficiently martial or insufficiently reliable. There was the intelligencer, Rauth, as well, who must have found his own games to play with the Empire’s resources, and there was a confidence to his walk that had Thalric pinning him as the most dangerous of the conspirators. There were another two as well, unknown to him, but evidently of the same stamp.

Then, muscling in from behind Freigen, came a figure looming head and shoulders over the others: a Scorpion-kinden, massively built and bare chested. Some hired thug or bodyguard, Thalric guessed, and he looked a capable one. He was not armed, and that in itself was worrying. It suggested that his scythed hands alone would be sufficient for his needs.

With Thalric not immediately visible, they paused at the garden’s entrance. Rauth was glancing upwards, evidently wondering if their quarry had made his escape skywards. Some brief argument went on between the others, and then Freigen took a step forward.

‘Captain Thalric, are you there? The governor has sent us to. . to talk with you. Will you come forth?’ The hesitation part-way through made his speech ridiculous and Thalric saw an annoyed look pass over the faces of some of the others.

Now or never. He stretched out his hand, stepping forward to get a better look at them. His Ancestor Art coalesced in his mind and he sent it forth. His fingers spat golden light at them.

He had been aiming for the Scorpion hireling but, as luck would have it, Oltan had chosen that moment to step in to tug at Freigen’s sleeve and the bolt of energy struck him instead. As Thalric had been aiming for the centre of the Scorpion’s chest, Oltan took the blow full in his face, slamming back against the big mercenary and then collapsing to the ground, dead before he knew it.

‘There!’ howled Freigen, and launched a bolt of light at Thalric himself. It went wide and Thalric already had his sword out, still half hidden by the trees. Some of them were coming for him and others were seeking cover of their own. The Scorpion shouldered Freigen out of his way and ran at Thalric, claws out and held low. Thalric sent another bolt that scorched across the huge man’s shoulder but barely slowed him, and then he kicked off into the air. Sting-bolts lashed left and right of him, but none of them close yet. He glanced down to see at least three of them coming after him, and wondered whether they were any good, whether their years of self-indulgence had left them room for training and practice.

He chose to alight on another tier quickly, for he was not the strongest flier of his people. Even as he touched down they were upon him.

The first man approaching was a face unknown, barrelling up with his sword foremost and his eyes almost closed. No warrior, this one. Thalric stepped aside neatly, ducking into a crouch as the man passed over him and stumbled into an awkward landing. Before he could recover, Thalric had kicked out into an extended lunge, his wings flickering for just a second to help turn a three-foot jump into a six-foot leap. His sword caught the man in the ribs. His victim had the armour of the light airborne on under his tunic, but that was open at the sides, and the man screamed in shock as the blade pierced him, rammed home almost to the hilt.

As the guard flexed against the man’s ribs Thalric instantly let go of it and was snatching the man’s own military-issue blade from the air. He whirled just as a thrust sliced across his shoulder, grating on the copper-weave armour beneath. His assailant’s face twitched with surprise, either at Thalric’s speed or his mail. Thalric elbowed him in the face, breaking his nose and spattering them both with blood.

Rauth was now standing on the very edge of the balcony, wings dancing in and out of existence to keep him balanced there. As the bloody-faced man staggered away Rauth took one step down and levelled his blade, his offhand raised high and directed forward. For Thalric it was a pose that brought back a lot of bittersweet memories.

He recalled that the girl Cheerwell had been part of some duelling circle at Collegium, for all the good it had done her, but the Beetle-kinden were not unique in their ritual combat; Thalric himself had done his time amongst the Arms-Brothers when he was a junior officer, learning the blade and practising his social contacts. Rauth had taken the stance of an Arms-Brother duellist, and he was waiting for Thalric to join him.

Old habits, however inappropriate, die hard. Thalric felt himself drop into the correct stance without really choosing to, and a moment later he was making his careful advance.

Rauth lunged first, kicking off into the air and reversing his blade, coming down point first towards Thalric’s collarbone. Of course these were not the practice blades of dull bone usually seen in the sand circles of the Arms-Brothers. The steel flashed past Thalric as he swayed back, and his own stroke went wild, but he followed it up with three savage circular sweeps that Rauth dodged and ducked until he was on the very edge of the tier again. There was no parrying among the Arms-Brothers: the sword was for offence only, feet and wings were for defence.

Rauth was airborne again, passing straight overhead. Thalric spun as he passed, cutting across the man’s flight-path and scoring a narrow line across his calf. The man with the broken nose ran in suddenly, half-blinded and charging like a mad animal. Thalric stepped left and low, his leading leg folded double, and as the man went past he opened him up below the sternum with a single slice, and then sent him over the side with a spinning kick, launching him screaming down twenty feet into the unsuspecting garden.

Rauth had tried to make use of the distraction but as he pounced again from above his doomed comrade’s flight got in his way. He ducked back and Thalric drove up at him. For a moment they spun about one another in the air, swords drawing a complex web of lines about them, and then they were on the very balcony edge once again, back into their familiar stances.

Time to bring this to a close, decided Thalric. It was not a move from the Arms-Brothers manual but he launched a bolt of energy from his offhand at Rauth’s chest. The other man jumped back, but the flash seared across him anyway, and he dropped from sight off the balcony, injured but by no means done for. A moment later he was soaring back and around to come up on the other side. Thalric turned — and came face to face with the huge Scorpion-kinden hireling.

How-? was all he had time to think, and Bastard must have climbed up, before one of the great clawed hands pincered into his left shoulder.

The pain nearly made Thalric drop his blade. The finger claw was deep under his shoulder blade and the thumb wedged in near his collarbone, and the big man was doing his best to lift Thalric off the ground by his grip. Over the Scorpion’s shoulder Thalric saw Rauth arrowing in, sword forward. He flared his wings in a desperate flurry, gripping the Scorpion’s wrist, and kicked off from the tier’s edge. The movement spun the ungainly Scorpion about just as Rauth was coming in, and the assailant’s blade slashed across the huge mercenary’s back.

The Scorpion roared in pain and backhanded Rauth away, whereupon Thalric rammed his blade into the big man’s chest, and gripped him by the throat for good measure before blasting forth with his sting. The shock knocked the great man flat, and Thalric was flung away. A moment later he was falling.

The pain of his pierced shoulder was almost all he could think about and he barely got his wings about him to catch him in mid-air. He was already below the level of the treetops in the garden when he stayed his mad plummet. As he laboured back up he knew that he would not have the strength to fly after this final effort.

Rauth was just getting to his feet, sword already in hand, and Thalric saw his glance flick from his approaching opponent to the sword still lodged in the Scorpion’s body.

Thalric was feeling dead on his feet and every movement sent a jolt of pain lancing through him. Even so, he got to his sword first, hauling it from the corpse and bringing it into line with his enemy as Rauth bore down on him. Suddenly footsteps from behind brought the truth of the situation, though. He had forgotten Freigen the merchant, who presumably did not count flight as one of his assets. He had been all this time running up stairs, but now he was here and Rauth paused, waiting for the inevitable moment when Thalric’s attention proved insufficient to split between them.

An expression of shock crossed Rauth’s face in the very moment before Thalric, with the very last of his reserves, ran him through. The sword’s tip grated on armour first, but found its way between the metal plates, biting through the leather backing and deep into Rauth’s body. For the third time, Thalric felt the sword hilt slip from his fingers. He dropped to his knees, trying to even out his breathing, and it was a good many seconds before he turned round.

Freigen was lying face down with an arrow in his back, while the diminutive te Berro sat ten yards away at the far end of the balcony, calmly unstringing his bow. It had been, Thalric was forced to admit, an admirable shot.

He stood up at last, feeling a little strength return to him, and reclaimed his own sword from the first man he had stabbed. The Fly-kinden looked up with a diffident smile as Thalric approached to thank him.

‘Don’t mention it,’ te Berro said. ‘All suspicions confirmed now, of course. So, what about Ulther?’

‘I should do it,’ said Thalric.

‘Forgive me, but you don’t look in any shape for that.’

Thalric let out a harsh laugh: he felt about a hundred years old at this moment. ‘I don’t expect you to understand or approve, but I owe it to him to do it myself.’

‘Your operation, your choice,’ te Berro confirmed. ‘He’s in his harem, waiting to hear the news from his victorious assassins.’

Thalric nodded, still gathering his strength like an officer marshalling wavering soldiers. He wiped his blade off on dead Freigen’s back, and carefully sheathed it. No sense in alarming the servants as he went on his way to murder their master.