Empire in Black and Gold (33 page)

Salma had never been the responsible type: he had always taken being a prince frivolously. This had given him a light-hearted outlook on life. At home he had played the games of court, wooed young women or sparred and flown with his peers. Even when war and the Empire had come to the eastern principalities, he had not taken it seriously enough.

Thereafter he had been sent to study at Collegium, where Stenwold had broached to him the subject of the Empire. It had all still seemed a game, a bit of excitement for him to intersperse amongst his studies and casual seductions. Of course the Wasps were his enemies, but that was all so far, far away.

In the Lowlands, though, they had developed so many wondrous means of transport, so that same
far away
could become
here
very quickly indeed. Salma found himself learning all about responsibility now.

‘Come on.’ He helped Che stand up, and a blank-helmed slaver tied them together and set them moving. Back in Collegium Salma had always found Che tremendously amusing, in a fond way, of course: how she bustled about and was always so
serious
about everything. Her studies, her ethics, her desperate attempts to break into the Ancestor Art. Everything was a crisis on which her personal world hinged. Privately he had found such endeavours hilarious, just as so much else of Beetle society appeared risible to him.

Now here she was, tied to him by three feet of rope, and he felt such a burden of responsibility for her that he wanted to thrust her behind him and strike out at any Wasp who even looked at her. This emotion surprised him: he did not know where it came from. He had never seen Che as a candidate for one of his idle conquests. Nor was it because he felt a responsibility to Stenwold to keep his niece safe. This was something entirely new: he wanted to keep her safe because she was all he had.

And thinking about her safety allowed him to ignore the ignominy of his own bondage.

The slaves had been lined up now in a single row and everyone was clearly waiting for something to happen. It came when one of the slavers removed his black-and-gold helm, revealing heavy-jawed features and a shaven scalp. When he spoke, his voice identified him as Brutan, their leader.

‘You are all slaves!’ he shouted at them.

Che glanced off to one side at Thalric and his soldiers, who were studiously ignoring what was going on. Instantly a whip cracked towards her, sending her reeling into Salma.

‘
Look at me, you bitch!
’ Brutan bellowed, the cords of his neck standing out. ‘Slaves look at their masters when they’re spoken to. Not in the eye, but you look!’ He cracked his whip again. ‘You are all slaves!’ he repeated. ‘Worse, you are all escaped slaves, slaves twice over. That makes you lowest of all slaves!’ Brutan was glaring at them all with an abiding and personal loathing, enough to make his eyes bulge and veins throb in his forehead. ‘You are the worst kind of scum because you have made the Empire waste my precious time in fetching you back!’ he almost screamed. ‘I only wish the Empire had more slaves to spare because then I would have the lot of you executed. However, a lesson must now be taught, so that you do not try wasting any more of my or the Empire’s time.’

He stalked forward, proceeding to one end of the line, then strode along it, looking at each face in turn. ‘The only thing left now is to make my choice.’

His progress past them was agonizingly slow. He stopped often, while each slave stared down at his own feet. Many were shaking and somewhere down the line someone was weeping in desperate sobs that no amount of effort could muffle.

Brutan stopped in front of the lanky, sallow man, considering. He was now only a few bodies down the line from Salma and Che. He moved on, passing a Beetle-kinden, then the female Ant that Che had spoken to last night. He stopped again.

‘Commonwealer,’ he remarked. ‘Slavery too good for your kind, is it?’

Salma stared at his feet and said nothing.

‘I’ve got a villa in Dras Hesha, boy. You know where that is?’ And when Salma said nothing, he shrieked, ‘Slaves answer their masters! Do you know where that is?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Salma said quietly. ‘Yes, master.’

‘I keep my villa well stocked, boy. In fact I’ve got a Dragonfly girl there: she could just about be your sister.’ He watched carefully, his eyes flicking about Salma’s bowed face, waiting for the first rebel spark. The words passed the Dragonfly by, though. He felt them strike him, strike where his pride was and then course to either side like the waters of a stream. His responsibility protected him. He could not indulge in mere pride, now he had Che to look after.

Brutan’s lip curled in disgust, and he passed on down the line of prisoners.

At the very end he turned suddenly and pointed with the handle of his whip. ‘You!’ It was one of the Ant-kinden he had selected. Instantly the man braced himself to resist but a pair of slavers descended on him from behind. One of them struck him a glancing blow with a club and then they had cut him free and were grappling him away from the rest.

‘Don’t look,’ said Salma in Che’s ear and she frowned at him.

‘I’ve seen death before.’ She was so desperate to put on a brave face.

‘Not this death. Don’t look.’ Salma knew what was coming. It had been mentioned in dispatches from the war front: the favoured Wasp way of execution, especially for their own.

Two of the slavers carried long spears, tipped at each end with a skewer-like point, and with a crosspiece halfway down, like a hunting spear. Che stubbornly watched them as the first spear was firmly grounded in the earth at an angle, and it was only when the slave was dragged towards it, and she understood, that she closed her eyes and turned her head away. Then all she had were the sounds, the hideous shrieks of the man that went on and on, weaker and weaker.

And when she opened her eyes, he was still alive, only just, too weak for any further sound. He hung off the crossed spears that passed through his body, emerging under the armpit to lance into his spread arms so that he was splayed like an unattended puppet. She hoped, she fervently hoped, that he would die swiftly. It was all the hope she could offer him.

She had believed that she was so special, and that Salma was special, considering how much trouble Thalric had gone to to track them down. And yet here they were, and how close had Salma been to providing that grotesque example?

‘All right!’ Brutan bellowed, as the line of slaves was made whole again. ‘The Captain wants to leave now. Time for you to start moving!’

Even before the slaves could begin stirring, the whips were in motion. To the east their path would take them beyond the shadowy fastnesses of the Darakyon Forest, through hill country and off all the maps, into the Empire itself.

Stenwold had been bracing himself against all manner of things recently, but he was not prepared for the sheer onslaught of memories on seeing Tisamon seated at the usual table at the Taverna Egelitara. It had been their old gathering place, of course, where they had always met in Helleron, all five of them together. The place was still here after all those years, though the family that owned it had changed generations in that time. And there was Tisamon himself, leaning back in his chair at the corner table outside the taverna, as though any moment Marius or Atryssa might cross the square to greet him.

But there was nobody save Stenwold left of that world now and the Beetle walked over with a heavy heart.

It was only when he was almost at the table that he noticed the Moth, Achaeos. The small man sat as though he were not here in the very citadel of his enemies, a quiet shadow at Tisamon’s table. Nobody paid him any heed beyond the occasional puzzled look. Perhaps it was Tisa-mon’s lean figure that discouraged them, but Stenwold rather thought it was the simple difference in the way his own race and the Moths viewed each other. To the Moths of Tharn, Helleron represented evil on earth, come to rape their sacred mountains and infect their culture. To the industrial barons of Helleron, the Moths were a small annoyance in a larger world. They lost more sleep over fluctuations in the price of tin.

With a nod to Tisamon Stenwold took a seat. ‘I see you’re still here,’ he said, turning to the Moth.

‘Apparently,’ said Achaeos. His tone made it clear that Stenwold was still a Beetle, despite it all. ‘I intend to make good on my debts.’

‘You’re beginning to sound like
him
,’ said Stenwold, with a glance at Tisamon.

‘Masters of the Grey, Servants of the Green,’ said Achaeos, a little litany that Stenwold knew referred to the way things were before the revolution. ‘Who is to say we cannot learn from our brothers?’

‘Right, enough wordplay. I am about to go and rescue my niece from Wasp-kinden. So what do you want?’

The direct question at last scratched the composure of Achaeos, just slightly. ‘Your niece helped me,’ he said. ‘I was unable to help her later, and I wish to redress that.’

‘I’m going to speak very bluntly now,’ said Stenwold. ‘Are you Arcanum?’

The Moth’s white eyes widened at that name, at the fact that Stenwold even knew it. The pause stretched across the table. Tisamon watched impassively.

‘I am not,’ Achaeos said at last. ‘But . . . there are agents in the city, of course. I have spoken to them. They agree that the matter of the Empire of the Wasps may concern them, so I am to report to them.’ Inwardly, Achaeos cringed at the true memory, how he had nagged and nagged his uncaring contact within the Arcanum until he had finally secured the woman’s permission. The backwards-told story for Stenwold sounded so much better. He had not told the Arcanum about Cheerwell or his debt to her, for such things would not be understood. The secret society that passed for the Moth foreign service was not in a tolerant mood these days.

Stenwold, though, had taken this news strangely. ‘You believe that your people could be persuaded that the Wasps are a threat?’

Achaeos’s eyes narrowed, trying to judge his angle. ‘It is possible.’

‘They
are
a threat,’ Stenwold confirmed. ‘I’ve been saying it all along from here to Collegium and back, and nobody’s been listening. It’s about time though. After we get Cheerwell and Salma back, you and I should talk.’

Achaeos nodded, privately resolving that, once that rescue was accomplished, he would be gone.

‘I suppose we should join the others.’ Stenwold felt the oppressive weight of the near future settle on him with the words. ‘They’re waiting just outside the city.’ He stood, unable not to stare at Tisamon.
Here it is, the moment.
He had been gifted with so many years in which to ready himself for this, and how he had wasted all that time.

‘Do you know where they’re taking her?’ Tisamon asked.

‘East, either to Asta or deeper into the Empire.’ Stenwold shuffled, wanting to be gone now, to get it over with. Achaeos was standing, waiting, but Tisamon had other things on his mind.

‘I’ve hunted men east of here these last few years. I’ve tracked Wasp convoys. They’re creatures of habit. Do you want me to go ahead and scout?’

Stenwold paused, the doom on him suddenly staved off a little further. ‘Scout?’ No, it would not be fair on Tisamon. The inevitable would wait and wait, but it would always be there. Far better to face it right away. Even as the thought came to him, though, his voice was betraying him: ‘That would be good. In which case, I’ll trust you to find us by . . .’ And how long could this be put off, really? ‘By nightfall?’

‘Nightfall it is.’ Tisamon rose, and Stenwold wished they had more time together, there and then, with no rescues to perform. He did not know if he would still have a friend when he and Tisamon met again.

Scuto had secured transport for them, although Stenwold suspected they might have been better off walking. It was a rickety-looking automotive: a simple open cab balanced on a set of eight rusty legs.

‘Is it fast?’ he asked.

‘Faster than walking? Just about,’ was the Thorn Bug’s reply. Stenwold peered underneath the contraption’s high-stepping legs. Walking automotives had gone through a period of taking short cuts a generation ago and, as he feared, this one was very much a victim of its times. Instead of eight separate legs there were just two projecting from the engine, so the vehicle would be lurching along on two four-pronged feet.

‘It’ll go fine,’ Scuto assured him, ‘so long as you wind it each morning. Two-man job, but you’ve got Totho there to help you. Don’t forget, if you’re complaining, any fuel east of here’s going to have black and yellow stamped all over it.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’ A decent clockwork engine had a lot of advantages over steam or combustion. It would never run dry and it was easy enough to repair if it broke down. Stenwold had whittled cogs from wood before now to set one aright.

‘What’s troubling you?’ Tynisa asked him suddenly. ‘It’s not just Che, is it?’

He smiled at her, though his heart sank. ‘It’s . . .’ But he could not say it. Anything he said now would be too much of a lie. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he added.
When I have to. When I’m forced to it.

It had been a long day of walking. What rest stops the Wasps had allowed them were overshadowed by the slavers, who never allowed their charges to forget their presence. Water was rationed with a parsimonious hand. Hard bread and stale cheese was their only food. On the march, if any slave faltered he was whipped back into line without hesitation or mercy. Che had begun the day full of pity for her broken-spirited fellows and ended it thanking providence only that she was in better physical shape than most of them.

Towards dusk it became evident that they were approaching something at last. Some things, in fact: two structures that could not be made out clearly against the darkening sky.

‘Farmstead?’ Che suggested. Salma peered ahead, his eyes much better than hers in the gloom.

‘Not buildings,’ he confirmed. ‘But I can’t see just what they are.’ Then a slaver passed close to them and they knew well enough to be quiet.

It was near dark when they arrived, but Che recognized them by then, because she had seen similar constructions before. They were automotives, but monstrous huge ones. She had seen them used for bulk transport of stock, and stock, she realized, was just what she and the others had become.