Empire in Black and Gold

Thirty-seven

When the Ant-kinden burst in it was a moment before he could speak, leaning against the door jamb of Scuto’s extended shack and gasping for breath. At last, and with everyone on their feet and staring at him, he got it out. ‘Marre’s dead.’

Scuto swore, baring pointed teeth. Totho, who had been carefully watching him at work, asked, ‘Who’s Marre?’

‘She was that Fly-kinden you sent to talk to the Moths, wasn’t she?’ Tynisa said to Scuto.

‘Yes she was.’ The Thorn Bug stomped over towards the newcomer, a big-framed Ant in plate-reinforced chain mail. ‘How do you know, Balkus? Are you sure of it?’

‘I saw the body.’ Balkus spoke jerkily, still catching his wind. ‘Arrow in her. They found her out on the slopes.’

‘The Moths have made their choice, then,’ Tynisa said calmly.

‘We don’t know that,’ Scuto insisted, but he was now looking hunted.

‘Che’s with them!’ Totho said. ‘I knew it! I told her not to go, and I told Stenwold not to let her go!’

There was a rising current of concern among the dozen or so of Scuto’s people waiting for his instructions, and eventually their chief held his spiked hands in the air. ‘Shut up, the lot of you!’ His lips twisted over his teeth in frustration. ‘Speak to me, Balkus.’

‘Don’t know more than that. I was out in the Sarnesh quarter, trawling for rumours like you asked. That was the rumour I got. The guard had her down as just another dead Fly with no connections, but I knew her. A single shot, right up under the ribs. Someone must have got her in flight.’

‘Oh bloody loose wheels and knives!’ Scuto shouted at the lot of them, or maybe at himself. ‘Everyone get your weapons. Everyone who wears it get into armour. Now! Someone help me.’

He looked to Totho, but the halfbreed was obviously not inclined to be anybody’s arming squire and so it was Balkus took down a breast- and back-plate that had been cut and twisted, welded and burned until its ruined, punctured contours matched Scuto’s own deformities.

Tynisa, whose blade was always on her hip and who had no armour to wear, watched the men and women of Scuto’s service get themselves ready for war with the speed of long practice. Two Fly-kinden strung bows whilst another racked up the tension on a crossbow. A Beetle-kinden man and woman were strapping each other into matching suits of part-plate backed with tough canvas. Another brace of Beetles wore artificer’s heavy leathers. The one-armed Scorpion had looped something like an apron over his head, and a layer of metal and leather over his chest that left his back bare. There was a Dragonfly-kinden woman, only recently arrived, buckling on bracers and greaves, and then contorting herself to string a bow as tall as she was. Finished with Scuto, Balkus the Ant had slung on a baldric of wooden boxes, and began testing the action on a blocky, bulky thing she recognized as a nail-bow, whilst beside him another Ant from another city was shrugging into chain mail, taking up a shield whose device had been defaced with plain black paint. Tisamon stood ready from the moment Balkus had burst in, but there was a second Mantis with them now, an angular-faced woman who had so far kept her distance from him. Now she had a rapier in her right hand, and in her left another ground down for balance, with forward curving horns for trapping a blade.

‘What is going on?’ Tynisa demanded of Scuto, who now had his armour on, little more than slung over his shoulders and held in place by his own thorns.

‘There’s a lifespan to any band like mine in the information game,’ he said, checking the action on a repeating crossbow. ‘Don’t matter how good you are, things come to the crunch point sooner or later. The point where, no matter how careful you are, the enemy knows enough about your gang to make a move. When that happens, it happens all together. I’ve seen networks wound up in a day, a score of men and women disappearing, dead or captured or turned traitor.’

‘But this might just be-’

‘It might just be anything, miss,’ he said, although his eyes held no hope in them. ‘But we got to be ready ’cos if it’s coming, it’s coming right away.’

But when the door burst open at that very moment she saw that he had not meant ‘right away’ as in that very moment. He had meant sometime that day, or the coming night, or the next day.

There was a Fly child in the doorway, his face completely wild with fright. ‘Scuto! Scuto!’ he was bawling. ‘Men’s coming! Bad men! A whole load of ’em!’

‘Bows to the wall!’ Scuto snapped out as the child fled, door slamming behind him. ‘We’ll take their first charge and then we’re getting out of here. Rendezvous is the Merro on Shriek Street!’

He slammed the door closed and put his bow to one of the small windows. Other archers and crossbowmen were finding positions about the walls of Scuto’s workshop, some at ground level, others powering upwards with brief wing-flares to find vantage points in the sloping roof.

‘Tell me you’ve got a back door,’ Tisamon said.

‘Sure I do, but anyone putting their head out now is going to catch a whole load of crossbow.’

‘Give the word and I’ll go out there, open the way for the rest of you,’ Tisamon suggested.

Scuto spared him one look and saw he was serious. ‘Behind the bench. There’s a mechanism. Sperra!’

A Fly-kinden woman looked back from sighting down her crossbow. ‘Chief?’

‘When I give the word, let this madman out,’ Scuto told her.

‘They’re on us!’ shouted one of his men.

‘Give them everything!’ Scuto bellowed, and the shack resounded to the sound of Balkus’s nailbow roaring. Tynisa staggered away from the man, seeing the firing chamber flare and flare as he loosed off his bolts with the sound of thunder. She could hear nothing of the bows and crossbows, nothing of the enemy, whoever they were, outside.

She tried to get to a free window, saw one higher up, and began to climb to it, hands flat against the cobbled-together wood and metal, her Art giving her grip. Even as she did, a hole was punched abruptly through the wall, a jagged knot of daylight appearing in the wood. Another came a moment later, and she caught the flash of a heavy-headed crossbow bolt, four feet long, as it powered across the room and knocked an identical hole in the far wall.

She got to the window, putting as much of her body behind the protection of metal as she could. Outside was a scene of panic and confusion. In such a ramshackle part of the city there was no real open space. Instead the attackers were already on the hut and had made their charge from mere yards away. They had paid heavily for those yards, though. A dozen of the dead carpeted the mud and cobbles, their bodies studded with end-inches of crossbow bolts or the slender wands of arrows, or the exploded-looking holes that Balkus’s nailbow bolts made when they tore through flesh. There were more of them still alive out there, but they had taken what cover they could and showed no signs of pressing their attack.

Tynisa looked at the fallen. They were mostly Beetles, Ants, or halfbreeds of the two, wearing an ugly mismatch of metal and leathers. She knew the type. Sinon Halfway had kept plenty of them on his books: the lowest of Helleron’s mercenary classes, the strong-armers and thugs of which the city had an infinite supply.

And seeing that composition, and the hurried scowls of the others as they risked glances out from cover, she knew what they were waiting for. By that time, it was already on them.

One of the Fly-kinden, up at the roof, was suddenly jerking backwards, falling from his vantage point in a trail of blood. Tynisa saw the end of a blade drawn back through the arrowslit, and then there were iron hooks tearing at the workshop’s roof, ripping out a jagged section all of two feet across.

By now Tynisa was on her way herself, hands and feet gripping the irregular wall, moving up towards the slant of the ceiling.

A bolt of golden fire spat through the hole, scorching at one of Scuto’s Beetle henchmen. Then the first Wasp soldier pushed his way in. He was not in uniform, his armour painted over in other colours, but he was a soldier of the Empire nonetheless. Tynisa recognized that well enough.

Even as he cleared the roof he took a nailbow bolt directly in the chest, plummeting, spinning, to the ground a dozen feet below. There were more of them, though, and another hole soon gaped in the ceiling at the building’s other side.

‘Now, Scuto! Now!’ Tynisa was shouting, and Scuto obviously agreed.

‘Time to go! You, Mantis, head out the back! Everyone else, wait till he’s in action, then a serious barrage and we go. I’m rearguard with Balkus!’

The Fly, Sperra, flew straight across Tisamon’s face and spent a precious second hauling at the mechanism. A moment later half the back wall slid aside and, in the moment before it reclosed, Tisamon was gone through it.

Tynisa had reached the closest hole in the roof by then. Still clinging with her Art by one hand and both knees she dragged her rapier from its scabbard. The dark, heavy blade seemed to shudder in her hand, and when the next Wasp appeared, already putting his hand towards her, she struck.

She had been aiming for the armpit, where his armour ended, but the perspective tricked her. The narrow blade struck the metal plate over his breast and pierced straight through it, punching a diamond-shaped hole with a seamstress’s precision and lancing him through the chest. It drew from the wound without resistance, and the Wasp died halfway through the gap.

Below her, the soldiers of Scuto’s army gave off their round of shot, and Tynisa knew that Tisamon was out there exercising his skills and teaching the thugs of Helleron why the Mantis-kinden had been feared since before the revolution. She saw Scuto kick open the door and his people flood through it. There were Wasps inside now, entering from the other roof-hole, and three of Scuto’s men were down already. Tynisa saw a pair of imperial soldiers dive, blasting with their stings at the fleeing men and women. Then one was abruptly arching away, the Dragonfly woman having put an arrow through his ribs. Tynisa braced herself, and leapt for the other one.

She had hoped to put her sword into him first, but instead the point passed him by, so she struck him bodily, one hand dragging back his hair, knees locked about his waist. He shouted out, and then fell from the air, his wings unable to keep both of them up.

They separated as they hit the floor, and Tynisa took most of the impact. Even as she sat up, holding her head, he was standing over her with sword in hand.

But the rapier was still with her and, stunned as she was, it took his blade aside and ran him through the thigh. She stumbled to her feet as he fell, and finished him with another lunge.

Scuto was shouting at her: ‘Get out! Out out out!’

He was at one of his workbenches at the back. Her head still ringing, she could not work out why.

‘I’ll guard you!’ she said.

‘You bloody won’t!’

A hand grabbed for her arm and she nearly put her sword into Balkus, who backed off just in time.

‘We have to go!’ he shouted. Through the slot of the door she could see a savage melee as Scuto’s band tried to fight its way clear. Her sword twitched, and she felt it wanting to join in. Then she realized what Scuto was doing and she nodded sharply to Balkus and ran outside.

It was a bloody business out there and Tisamon was the vanguard. He had cut a swathe through them as they came. A dozen of Helleron’s street vandals and enforcers were already down, and he drove another dozen before him, desperate to stay out of his reach. His claw was never still, and any man who came close enough to try it had his own stroke caught and carried, and the Mantis blade passed his guard before he could dodge it. As she watched, a crossbow bolt flashed towards him and then exploded as he cut it from the air.

There were more than mere street thugs on the attack here. Wasp soldiers were shooting from overhead, or dropping on them from the sky. Tynisa ran one through even as he fell on her but there were now pitched skirmishes all about her. She saw two Fly-kinden rolling on the ground, knives out, and could not tell which side either was on. The Ant-kinden with the blank shield was fighting with brutal economy. His shield had three bolts embedded in it; one that had passed on through his arm. His sword trailed blood as he ripped it across the face of a Beetle bruiser. The Dragonfly had abandoned her bow and wielded a long, straight sword in both hands, spinning it about her head and lopping stray hands off. Tynisa went to aid her, but the blast of a Wasp sting suddenly scorched a circle on the woman’s back and she fell to her knees. She rammed her blade into the gut of the man she was fighting, even as he put his shortsword down past her collarbone. Beyond her the Mantis woman danced and stabbed with her rapiers, taking an Ant-kinden through the eye and then turning to cut a swooping Wasp from the air. Her face was all the while without expression.

Tynisa lunged forward, her rapier splitting chain-mail rings to kill a halfbreed man who was about to stab Totho in the back. Then three of them rushed her together, a Wasp and two of the hired help. The rapier danced. It was not actually tugging at her arm and yet, when she moved it, it seemed that it was by some mutual consent that it caught her opponents’ blades and cast them in all directions, tangling the Wasp with the man on his left so that she could parry and bind the third man and whip the red-gleaming rapier’s point across his throat. Then Scuto’s huge Scorpion had his hook in the Wasp’s back, dragging the man in to split him with a monstrous axe-blow, and abruptly the final one of the three was fleeing, dropping his sword. Tynisa had to fight the urge to go after him, for there was an exhilaration in her, a fierce, beating joy that sang in her ears, and she knew it was her Mantis blood, and that Tisamon must be feeling just the same.

Balkus’s nailbow exploded again. He was standing with his back to the workshop wall, tracking flying Wasp-kinden with his eyes narrowed, choosing his shots with care. A moment later he crouched in order to slot another of his wooden boxes into the top of the bow. Scuto appeared in the doorway beside him, loosing his crossbow over and over until it was empty.

‘Go!’ he shouted simply.

And they were going. Tisamon had done his work well and most of the hired rabble were dead or fled. Under the barrage of the Wasps, the survivors of Scuto’s people made their desperate escape. Some of the imperial soldiers had already darted inside the workshop and were busy ransacking it for Scuto’s papers when the device he had set exploded, incinerating everything less durable than metal within the shack’s walls.

It was Tynisa who intercepted Stenwold as he returned to the ruined workshop, and brought him instead to the low dive that Scuto had chosen as a fallback retreat. He was brimming with news but she gave him no time to explain it, simply leading him through the crooked streets of Helleron towards the blue lanterns of the Taverna Merro.

Inside, in the back room, were the survivors: Totho and Tisamon, the former with a long, shallow wound now bandaged on his arm; Balkus the nailbowman, and a slightly singed Scuto; Sperra the Fly-kinden, currently playing doctor to the worst wounded; the one-handed Scorpion, known as Rakka and apparently mute, grimly sharpening the blade of his axe. One of the Beetle artificers had survived, and the Mantis-kinden woman; both were badly injured, having been burned by the Wasp-kinden stings. They had been joined by some of Scuto’s other agents from elsewhere in the city, who, seeing the damage at his headquarters, had found their way to other safe-houses, and thence to the Merro. Many had not come home at all.

‘Hammer and tongs!’ said Stenwold. ‘What happened?’

‘What always happens. They rooted us out.’ Scuto hissed in pain as Sperra put a cold sponge to his burns. His armour still hung off him, the breastplate blackened where it had turned away a sting bolt. ‘I’ve had a half-dozen and more of my people dead in every quarter of the city. We’re bust, chief. We’re cooked. The operation’s over.’

There were perhaps a dozen of them, in total, with a similar number unaccounted for, but more than half of Scuto’s people were confirmed dead.

Stenwold sat heavily on the floor by a low table. ‘You know what this means?’

‘They’re going to do it, whatever it is,’ Scuto agreed.

‘And I know what. Or at least I can’t think of anything else, so-’

‘Hold it there, chief,’ Scuto told him quickly. ‘Totho, you remember what we talked about, about Bolwyn.’

The artificer nodded. ‘I do.’

‘We’re not secure, chief. You know why. They knew where a whole lot of my people would be, all over the city. There’s a spy here, and there’s no way of knowing just who.’

Stenwold looked at his hands. ‘This is all sounding far too familiar.’

‘Isn’t it just,’ said Tisamon. ‘Just like Myna, back before the conquest.’

‘We can’t ever leave it behind us, can we?’ Stenwold abruptly slammed a fist into the tabletop. ‘So what do you suggest?’

‘You’ve got a plan,’ Scuto told him. ‘I know you.’

‘Calling it a plan is an overstatement,’ said Stenwold. ‘However, consider merely that I’ve got one.’

Scuto managed a harsh smile. ‘Then you don’t tell anyone, you don’t even tell me, until we’re ready. At least then they won’t know in advance where or when we’re moving.’

‘What about the Moths?’ Tynisa asked. ‘What about Che?’

‘Why?’ Stenwold looked round at her. ‘What about them?’

‘I sent my girl Marre to chase ’em up, ’cos your girl and that fellow had been such a long time. Balkus saw Marre dead with a Moth arrow in her.’

Stenwold felt as if a cold stone was sinking in his chest. When his agents were attacked, it was war. But when his flesh and blood were attacked. .

‘Can you spare anyone to go. .?’

Scuto looked down. ‘This is it, chief. This is all they left us.’

‘I’ll go.’ Totho stood. ‘I can’t fly or anything, but I can climb if I have to. I’ll go wherever you tell me your people go in order to meet the Moths.’

‘Totho-’ Stenwold began, but the artificer cut him off angrily.

‘No, this time you’re not stopping me. I’m going — and I’m going to save Che, because she should never have gone in the first place. And Stenwold, even if you say no, I’m still going. You’ll have to chain me to keep me from it. You know why.’

To Stenwold’s mind’s eye came, then, a moment’s vision. The Prowess Forum, the Majestic Felbling taking its stand across from old Paldron’s lot. Now Salma was going off to the war at Tark, and Che was lost, and Totho was heading into still more danger. Tisamon had said it best. Stenwold had become the thing he hated.

‘I won’t stop you,’ he said. ‘So go.’

‘Tell me one thing,’ Che said. ‘You said your people had a special way to wake the Art. Does it always work like that?’ Her smile got even broader when his cheeks darkened with embarrassment.

‘Usually. . just the massage.’ Achaeos shrugged his pack on his shoulder, the bow sticking up above one ear. ‘I. .’

He looked so uncertain just then that she hugged him, and he kissed her forehead in return. They were ready to travel now. They had been told that the Skryres were to give their judgment. That word was all they were waiting for.

It came more swiftly than they had hoped. An old Moth, who must have served the Skryres for decades, poled his way over to them, his staff clacking on the stone floor. His expression suggested that it was a crime to have him thus awake in daylight, and that Achaeos was a fool for adopting the patterns of outsiders.

‘The Skryres have made their decision?’ Achaeos asked him.

‘They have,’ the old man said. He took a deep breath. ‘And they have decided to make no decision.’

There was a pause before Che said, ‘They have decided what?’

The old man barely acknowledged her, spoke instead to Achaeos. ‘The emissaries of the Wasp Empire have made many promises, which may yet be fulfilled. You have brought many warnings, which also may yet be fulfilled. The omens have been cast, and the world holds its breath. The Skryres, in their wisdom, will wait, and let the lesser people below us enact their petty plots. They will reach their decision when the omens change, or when fresh knowledge comes to them.’

‘Then what are we two supposed to do?’ Achaeos demanded.

‘What you wish,’ said the old man, sublimely unconcerned. ‘However, if it is fresh information you seek, you could leave Tharn to go and find it, and take’ — a dismissive gesture — ‘your baggage with you.’

Achaeos smiled thinly. ‘Well, I shall find you the fresh knowledge, then. I will find something to prod them into action, shall I? And if not then, one evening, you will look out of the mountain and have the fresh knowledge that a Wasp armada is at the gates of Tharn, and perhaps then the Skryres will decide to act.’

The old man curled his lip and left them.

Che clutched at Achaeos’s sleeve. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Leave here, as he said. If I can find something to convince them, then so. If not, I’ll do what I can with my own two hands.’ He turned to her. ‘We can leave now freely, you realize.’

‘I. . I’m not sure. I only. . It was only for a little while, last night.’

‘All we have to do is step off the mountain,’ Achaeos told her, ‘and then you open your wings. It’s as simple as that.’

She held to his hand as they took the leap, and he was a far better flier than she could ever be. She lumbered in the air, the curse of her race. Rather than glide down, she simply fell rather more slowly, with him keeping pace with her all the way, pulling her up whenever she faltered.

And then they were at the foot of the mountain, and she could only look back up, at the great slopes, and at all the intervening clouds they had passed through. She had not noticed, in that lurching descent, the chill air grow warm with the approaching land or the great spectacle of Helleron spreading itself out below.

Next time I shall fly properly, she told herself, and she hugged Achaeos fiercely, because he had given her a gift beyond counting — and love as well.

They had come down near where their fires had brought the great moth to them, at the base of the foothills of the Tornos range. Che’s infant power of flight was too weak to take her any further and it was still a walk of some way to get to Helleron. The going was rugged at first, but Che did not care. The mere thought that soon, if she wished, she would be able to rise above this difficult terrain and coast along on her own wings was enough to sustain her. Beside her, Achaeos was in a thoughtful mood, but there was also a faint smile on his face.

He is thinking of me.

And how strange, after all this time, to be thinking this. She had been in Tynisa’s shadow so long, watching every caller’s face turn to eye her beautiful foster-sister, ignoring poor, hardworking Che, who had done everything to follow in her uncle’s footsteps. Now, unbidden, this man had looked on her and found her fair.

And with that thought a hand caught her and dragged her from his side.

‘Achaeos!’ she cried, fumbling for her sword. Whoever it was had his arm around her neck, clutching at her tunic. Achaeos had a hand to his dagger, but it remained undrawn.

‘You keep away from her, you bastard!’ growled a voice in her ear, and it was a voice she recognized. Her hand fell away from her sword hilt.

‘Totho?’

‘Are you all right, Che?’

‘Of course I’m all right. What are you doing?’

‘We’re betrayed, Che,’ Totho said desperately. He had a sword in his other hand. Twisting her head she saw his eyes were fixed on Achaeos furiously. ‘We’re betrayed,’ he said again. ‘Scuto’s place is gone. Most of his people are dead. They knew just where they all were, even the messenger Scuto sent out to this bastard and his people. Who knew, Che? Who was able to set us up?’

‘Totho, he’s been with me. .’ But it was not quite true. There had been time enough when he had been away from her side. I won’t believe it. Her voice shook when she said, ‘Totho, Achaeos is not a traitor. He’s been trying to help-’

Achaeos had strung his bow, as calmly as a man might tie a lace. The string was back, the arrow nocked.

‘Achaeos, don’t! Look, this is a misunderstanding!’ Che said desperately. She felt Totho’s grip tighten on her. He was mostly behind her. That arrow could cut into herself as easily as him.

It could be meant for me.

‘Please!’ she cried out to both of them, and then Achaeos ran forward, and Totho brought his sword back, and at the last moment the Moth kicked off and was in the air above them.

She head the swift, tearing sound of the arrow, the thrum of the string in the same instant, felt the shudder of its impact, deep between Totho’s shoulder and neck. With a startled sound the artificer fell away from her, his grip dragging a moment before it went slack.