Empire in Black and Gold (6 page)

Totho squared up against Adax of Tark. His Ant-kinden opponent was taller and as broad across the shoulders but leaner of build. He looked like a proper warrior as all Ants did. Every one of them was used to carrying a shortsword in their hands since the age of five, and they grew up inspired by all the martial minds around them.

Which means I can outthink him
, Totho decided. He gave Stenwold a little nod as Kymon handed out the swords, for Totho was very keen to have Stenwold, of all people, see him in a favourable light, perhaps look past the accident of his birth.

‘Salute the book,’ Kymon intoned, stepping back, and then, ‘Clock!’

Adax attacked, before Totho was quite ready, cracking him a swift blow on the shoulder. If he had reacted a moment later it would have been his head. Totho heard Kymon sigh.

‘First strike to Adax of Tark,’ announced the Master of Ceremonies. ‘Clock!’

Totho got out of the Ant-kinden’s reach quickly, because he knew his opponent would try the exact same move again, as indeed he did. There was no gap for a riposte in there, as Adax pressed and pressed at Totho’s guard, but Totho was not looking for an opening. Totho could do little more than defend himself, keeping up a steady, curving retreat about the perimeter of the circle, with Adax following him step for step.

Outthink him
, thought the halfbreed grimly, but there was precious little room for any planning. Adax was intent on keeping up a constant, efficient battering: only half a dozen different moves, but fast and always remorselessly on target. The Ant’s face was set in an expression of dislike that had probably soured in place there as soon as the fight started. Totho realized that the next blow that landed on him would be delivered with all of the man’s considerable strength. Still he managed to keep the Ant-kinden off him, by a hair’s breadth. Always he was a step too far back, or his sword cut a parry with a only second to spare, and always the clock was grinding down, the ticks slower and slower, and Adax was a hit up, and not looking ready to give any points away.

To pull the match back Totho knew that he would have to do something spectacular at this point, and knew equally that he had nothing spectacular to give. Yet he was holding, holding. His parries were sloppy, but solid. His footwork was better, and Adax was getting frustrated.

Totho put an expression of unconcern on his face and kept up his guard. He had one thing that Adax did not, for whatever unknown parent had given him Beetle blood had passed on that breed’s stamina. Adax had been battering at him full tilt for over a minute and there was now a sheen of sweat blooming on the man’s forehead.

If only these matches went on longer. I could parry him to death.
Totho grinned suddenly at the thought, and his opponent’s calm collapsed.

‘Fight me, slave!’ Adax snapped angrily, his sword stilled for a moment, and Totho, without really planning to, hit him across the face for all he was worth, spilling the arrogant Ant-kinden to the ground.

He almost dropped his sword in surprise, because there was a great deal of blood and he thought for a moment he had maimed the other man for life. When Adax did look up from a wounded crouch, his nose was evidently broken, and Totho wondered about the state of his cheekbone, too.
I hit him bloody hard, I did.

‘Time!’ Kymon called. The ever-slowing ticks of the clock had finally finished with the legendary solid ‘clunk’ that every duellist knew. The match was over.

‘No!’ Adax spat, voice sounding somewhat muffled.

‘Time!’ Kymon repeated. ‘One strike apiece, so a draw, I’m sorry to say. And, for most of it, the dullest pass of fencing I have seen for many years.’

Totho couldn’t help but grin, though. He didn’t care much that Kymon didn’t approve of him. He only cared that he had not actually lost. He looked over at his comrades for their reaction.

‘Watch out!’ Tynisa shouted in warning, and then something barged into him, knocking him out of the circle to stumble across the mosaic floor. He ended up amongst the spectators, almost in the lap of a middle-aged Beetle woman, craning frantically to see what had happened. Adax now lay sprawled right across the circle, one hand to his shin and the other to the back of his head. Kymon stood over him impassively, a mock sword in his hand.

Adax had tried to rush him once off his guard, Totho realized. Strictly against the rules, such behaviour, and had the victim been anyone but a lowly halfbreed, perhaps it would have even led to the whole team being disqualified. Inigo Paldron was already bustling up to make his unctuous apologies, however, and Totho knew it would not go any further. Kymon shot him a look, though, as he went to rejoin his colleagues, and it had a certain recognition in it. Adax was from the city of Tark, Totho reflected, and Kymon himself from the island city of Kes, and so perhaps the old man had not minded seeing a traditional enemy brought low.

‘Not bad for a trainee pot-mender,’ Salma conceded as he joined them. ‘You had a plan, I take it?’

‘Something like that.’ Totho nodded to Tynisa. ‘Thanks for the warning.’

She raised an eyebrow, shrugged slightly. He was not sure whether it was saying,
I won’t be there next time
, or
You’re one of us now.
Tynisa always made him feel especially awkward and ugly, and he had long-ago decided to avoid her attention as much as possible.

He sat down beside Che. ‘Any good?’

She glanced at him distractedly. ‘What?’

‘Was I . . . all right?’ He realized that she had not really been concentrating on his round. She was, of course, thinking all the time about her own fencing pass. Even now, Paldron’s nephew was taking his place across the circle.

‘He’s, what, a year younger than you?’ Totho said encouragingly.

‘And no great shakes,’ Salma added. ‘He’s yours, so just go and take him.’

‘He’s only in the team because of his uncle,’ declared Totho before he could stop himself, and then he grimaced at the look of hurt that Che tried desperately to hide.

Because of his uncle
, she was thinking.
Well, that’s a broad net these days.
She glanced at her own uncle, in whose household she had been living for ten years. More than an uncle but less than a father, and she had certainly never been in a position to monopolize his affections. He could be hard work, Stenwold Maker: he expected so many things of his niece, and never quite acknowledged when she tried. Whether at scholarship, artificing or, of course, the fight . . . and here she was, now . . .

Just a game. A sport.
True, the city was mad on sports just now, with the Games commencing in a mere tenday’s time, but this duelling was still only an idle pastime for College students. It didn’t matter whether she won or lost here. The taking part was the thing.

Except, of course, it was all on her shoulders now. If only Totho had lost his bout, then the best the Majestic Felbling could have managed was a draw. After drawing, the chosen champions of each team would then fight to decide it, and Piraeus would no doubt emerge victorious, and so, if she lost, it wouldn’t matter. But now, after Totho’s maddening stalemate, victory was apparently hers for the taking.

She took up her place opposite Falger Paldron. He was a little taller than she was, a dark-faced young Beetle lad, still slightly awkward in his movements. He was no fighter, she decided.

But nor am I.
She was a girl with her hair cut short and her physique cut broad. No Mantis-grace for her, no Ant-precision or Spider-tricks. She was just poor, lamentably named Cheerwell Maker, and she was no good at sports or swords or anything else.

‘Salute the book!’ Kymon barked out, and she realized that she already had a sword in her hand. Behind her, the others were clearly watching her every move.

They muttered and moaned as he took the rostrum. These middle-aged merchants, the old College masters, men and women robed in white, reclining comfortably on the stepped stone seats of the Amphiophos. Some of them whispered to each other, scribbled agreements and concluded deals. One Master, stone deaf, read through the writing of his students and tsked loudly at each error he noted. Stenwold gazed upon them and despaired.

The heart of culture
, he told himself.
The wonder of the civilized world. The democratic Assembly of Collegium. Give me a thousand Ant mercenaries, let me command where now I can only beg.
Then
we might get something done!

Then I would be just like a Wasp indeed, in all but fact. That is why this is worth fighting for.
He looked across their bored, distracted faces, writ large with their wealth and rivalries and vested interests.

‘You know why I am standing here speaking before you, on today of all days.’

There was a jeering undercurrent of murmurs, but no outright mockery.
Just get on with it
, they seemed to say.

‘I’ve stood here before,’ Stenwold told them. ‘You all know that. I have stood here often enough that all of you must have heard me at least once. I am no great musician. My tune remains the same.’

‘Can we not simply refer to your previous speech and save ourselves an afternoon?’ someone called, to a ripple of laughter.

‘If I thought,’ snapped Stenwold, loud enough to quash them, ‘that one of you, even
one
of you, would do so, or had ever done so, then perhaps we would not be here, inflicting this ordeal upon each other!’ They stared at him in surprise. He was being
rude
, and members of the Assembly did not shout at each other. He bared his teeth in frustration, wished for those Ant mercenaries again, and then pressed on.

‘I do not think,’ he said, ‘that you’re likely to endure many more of my speeches, Masters. I do not foresee a future where any of us will have liberty for such polite debate. I swear on my life that, when what I have foreseen comes to pass, I shall not stand here before you then and tell you I was right. I shall not need to, for there will be none of you who won’t remember how I warned you.’

The resentful muttering was building again, but he spoke over it, muscling through it like the ram had broken the gates at Myna. ‘Fourteen years ago,’ he called out, ‘I made my first speech here before you, not even a Master then, but just a precocious artificer who would not be silent. How long ago it seems now! I told you of a people in the east, a martial people, who were prosecuting war upon their neighbours. I told you of cities whose names were known to some of you, those of you who do business in Helleron perhaps. Cities such as Maynes, Szar, Myna. Not Lowlander cities, true, but not so very many miles beyond. Cities under the yoke of an empire, I said, and you listened politely, and said, ‘But what is this to do with us?’ Foreigners will fight, you said, and so the men and women of Maynes and Myna and Szar went with backs bowed, into slavery and conscription, and you shed not a tear.’

They sighed and fidgeted. The Speaker for the assembly, old Lineo Thadspar, made a ‘hurry-up’ gesture. He had allowed Stenwold this speech for old time’s sake, and looked as though he now regretted it.

‘Eight years ago I told you that the Empire was engaging in a new war, a war on a scale unprecedented; that the Empire was making war upon our northern neighbour, the great Commonweal of the Dragonflies. You heard from me how the armies of the Wasps had killed in their hundreds and their thousands, and no doubt you remember the answer that the Assembly thought fit to give me then.’

He gave them a chance, noticed defiance in some, disinterest in others. He remembered it keenly, that answer, though he barely recalled which of the fat, dismissive magnates had uttered it. In his mind the words echoed, still sharp enough to wound him.

‘
Master Maker comes before us again to prate about the Wasps
,’ they had said. ‘
He tells us they are fighting again, but that is their business. When the Ants of Kes land a force ashore and march on the walls of Tark, Collegium does not raise a voice. Why should we? Some kinden are warlike and therefore fight each other
.

‘
Master Maker tells us that we should beware them because they are an empire, and no mere city-state, and so seeks to fright us with semantics. If the Mantids of Felyal decided to call themselves an empire, would we suddenly be tasked to descend upon them with sword and crossbow? I think not, for all the occasional provocation they give us.
’

There had been a murmur of laughter at that. Stenwold remembered it keenly.

‘
And Master Maker also tells us they are fighting the Commonweal
,’ the magnate had continued, all those years ago. ‘
And I say to that, so what and so let them!
’ (They had cheered, back then, at this.) ‘
What do we know of the Empire, beyond Master Maker’s ravings? We know that they are Apt and industrious, like us. We know that they have built a strongly governed state of many kinden, with none of the internal strife that beggars relations within the Lowlands. Are we, who claim to prize civilization, meant to despise them for theirs? We know that their merchants receive our goods avidly. Those of us with interests in Helleron and Tark know they will buy dear and sell cheap, when they know no better.
’ (Laughter) ‘
And what do we know of the Commonweal? We know that they do not receive our emissaries, that they forbid any airship over their borders, that they have neither artificers nor engineers nor anything but a moribund and backward society of tilling peasants. We know that they will not even deal with our merchants, not at any price, that they would rather see grain rot in their fields than sell. All this we know, and can we really know the cause of the quarrel between these so-different people? What have the people of the Commonweal done to lay claim to our love, that we should turn on those that seem like our close brothers in contrast?
’