Empire in Black and Gold (9 page)

That must be why
, she thought.
That must be why he isn’t taking me, too.
Because she knew his plans now. Something was happening far off that he wanted to see for himself, something in Helleron away to the east. He was departing in just a few days, and he was taking Tynisa and Salma to act as his agents there.

He was leaving her behind.

She stood up. Clearly meditation was not the order of the day. He could not begin to know how much he had hurt her, when he had come in to ask Tynisa to join him and said nothing to Che, even though she was right there in the same room. Some way or other she would make him take her too because staying here at home with the rejection would hurt her far more than anything that might happen to her in Helleron.

She tidied her crumpled robes. She could not give up now. She would just have to find him and
tell
him. There was no more to it than that.

Traditionally the houses of Collegium’s richest and most privileged citizens were ranged up against the Great College itself. Perhaps it was considered inspiring to watch the students prepare for the governance of tomorrow’s world. Besides, many of the great and the good were current or past College Masters, and probably felt at home close by.

There was, however, one straggle of buildings not favoured by either the great or the good, and that was the wing housing the Halls of Artifice. For the furnace burned day and night, and the air above was ahaze with smoke and steam, while the immediate neighbourhood smelled of oil, molten metal and burning chemicals. Anyone trying to sleep anywhere near the Halls would need earplugs, and few of Collegium’s industrialists relished being reminded of the source of their wealth when they opened their shutters. Instead the housing round about was home for lowly College staff and students who could afford no better.

Stenwold arrived at the main portal leading to the Halls of Artifice and gazed at the curving line of workshops and smithies stretching away in front of him, remembering. They had added two new buildings since he had made his own prentice pieces here. Meanwhile two decades more of grime had settled on the hard-edged stonework around him. Forget the politics, the arts martial, the philosophy and history, here was the engine that had driven Collegium since the revolution which had ended the Bad Old Days. This was the hub that made the Beetle city great: not fighters, not schemers, not tatty mystics, but
makers
. And Stenwold was not alone in possessing this surname. Amongst his industrious nation the names of Maker, Smithy and Wright were as common as dirt.

He went inside, his clean robes already flecked with soot and ash, and swept past the porter with a nod, passing on through clamouring hall after hall, lit glowing red by furnaces, clogged with steam, until he finally located Totho.

With the excitement and distraction of the Games so close no ordinary student could be expected to be working today. But artificers were an odd breed. Totho was not the only one of them at work in the machine-heavy confines of the workshop. The few others were all true-bred Beetle-kinden, with a single Tarkesh Ant standing out bleach-pale amongst them. They were all bound together by their dedication to their craft. Among them Stenwold recognized an artisan’s son and the daughter of a prominent silk merchant hard at work, each absorbed in some private mechanical dream. Totho was no different, as he stood hunched over a pedal-lathe, staring through dark goggles and sheets of sparks, as he machined a section of metal into shape.

Stenwold approached him, but did not distract the youth from his task. There were half a dozen mechanisms already lying on the bench beside him, all seemingly versions of the same artefact, and all meticulously detailed. Stenwold had heard how good Totho was at his chosen business. It was a shame, then, that the lad was a poor halfbreed and an orphan. If he had come with a finer provenance the word his masters would have used of him was ‘great’. Collegium had spent centuries in the pursuit of freedom for all, opportunity for everyone, and if Totho had been in any other city he would have been a slave at worst, or at best an unskilled labourer. Here in Collegium he had acquired scholarship and skills, but the weight of his ancestry was like a chain about his ankles. He had all the written rules on his side, and all the unwritten ones working against him.

Stenwold picked up one of the finished items to inspect. It was a tube about as big as his fist, and he could see there was some manner of pump within it, but the precise purpose of it eluded him. Totho glanced at him briefly, then stopped pedalling and stepped away from the lathe. With the goggles, the gauntlets, the apron and the leather cap, he could have been any apprentice artificer in that busy little group, but Stenwold had recognized him instantly from the inward hunch of his shoulders, the slight downturn to his head.

‘Did you want me, Master Maker?’ the youth asked. His voice was an artificer’s through and through: not loud but specially pitched to carry across the machine noise.

‘I trained in this very hall,’ Stenwold told him, unconsciously slipping into the same register. ‘But it’s been a while since I had to weld a join or fix a spring. What
is
this thing?’

‘It’s an air battery, Master Maker.’

‘You don’t need to be formal with me, Totho,’ Stenwold told him, then added, ‘I don’t recall air batteries being part of the syllabus.’

‘Just a personal project, sir,’ Totho said. ‘Only, with everyone else away at the Games, it seemed a chance to . . .’

‘I know, yes.’
Nothing I didn’t do myself, at his age. I thought I was going to be an artificer for life, when I was young.
‘I feel embarrassed to ask, because I’m sure I should already know, but what exactly is an air battery?’

The change in the youth was remarkable. The animation in him built momentum like a machine itself as he explained, taking his creation apart with gloved hands. ‘You see, sir, there’s a chamber here with air in . . . see the one-way valve I’ve put in here . . . now it’s full and . . . you cock it like a repeating crossbow, with this lever here – just with your thumb, though, three or four times . . . and then you’ve put the air under pressure, lots of pressure . . . and then, with this lever here, you can release it all at once . . . and you produce almost as much force as a firepowder charge.’

‘Hammer and tongs,’ Stenwold murmured, impressed. ‘And what were you intending to use it for?’

Totho pushed back his goggles, revealing two lighter circles in his grime-darkened face. ‘Weapons, sir.’

‘Weapons?’

‘Projectiles, sir.’ The life that had taken hold of him began to ebb a little. ‘That’s . . . what I want to go into. If they’ll let me, sir.’

‘No worries there, Totho. If not here, then Sarn, perhaps. A Collegium-trained weaponsmith commands a high price there.’ The words rang a little hollow. Stenwold toyed with the air battery and put it down. ‘Ever fancy going to visit Helleron?’

The youth’s eyes went wide. ‘Yes, sir, of course.’ He probably dreamt about it longingly. In a warlike world, a fair proportion of the Lowland’s weapons were made in the foundries of Helleron, ranging from swords by the thousand to land-ironclads and siege artillery. The city of Helleron was the acknowledged queen of the industrial age, and produced almost everything that could be manufactured, but it was the arms trade she was best known for.

‘Well,’ said Stenwold, and let things hang there for a moment as he considered further. Tynisa and Salma he had absolutely no qualms about: they could look after themselves if things went wrong. But Totho here was an unknown quantity: a halfbreed, a quiet lad who kept very much to himself. He had only come to Stenwold’s attention at all because Cheerwell had needed to take some lessons in things mechanical, and it had been through Totho’s quiet help that she had passed her examinations. Still, Stenwold had been impressed by his conduct in the duel with Adax. Kymon might dismiss it as tedious, but Stenwold privately thought that Totho, who possessed little and had done better than he should, had proved rather more than Piraeus, who possessed a lot and had done worse than he might.

‘I’m travelling that way in a few days’ time,’ he informed the youth, as idly as he could. ‘I might have some work there that a few young hands could help me with. So do you want to come?’

He had expected an instant, eager affirmation, but Totho squeezed just a little more respect out of him by weighing up the offer carefully.

‘Sir, will Che – Cheerwell – be going as well?’

Stenwold frowned a little. ‘I hadn’t planned it—’

‘Yes. Yes, I will,’ Che told him, from the doorway behind. ‘I don’t care what you say, you can’t keep me here.’

When Stenwold spun round he found her standing there with clenched fists, her courage screwed up to the hilt, more evidently ready for a fight than she had ever seemed in the Prowess Forum.

Stenwold closed his eyes resignedly. For all her shortcomings, the girl had
timing
. ‘Totho, would you—?’

‘You can say what you’ve got to say in front of him,’ Che told him. ‘I want to go. I want to do whatever it is you’re doing.’ She was standing there fiercely in her best white College robe amidst the sparks and grime.

Stenwold turned on her. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, his face leaden.

She confronted him defiantly with her hands on her hips, a solid young Beetle-kinden girl. A College scholar.
My niece.

‘I am a
part
of this,’ she insisted.

‘Cheerwell, you don’t even know what “this” is,’ he said reasonably. ‘I am just going east on business, nothing more.’

‘Business that includes Toth and Salma, and . . . and Tynisa, but not me?’ She had wanted to be so calm about this, to pick him apart with clever words, but now he was here, now he was here talking with
Totho
, like some clandestine recruiting officer. She found that she was losing it. Quietly, the studious artificers were creeping out of the room. Only Totho had not moved, staring somewhere at the ground behind Stenwold.

‘What I’m about, it’s best you don’t know,’ he tried.

‘But you can tell everyone else? All my friends, but not me?’ And suddenly she realized it was all going to come out. All of it, that she had been stewing, was just going to vomit out of her. ‘Not me, though, is it? Never me. Please, Uncle Sten, I want to go. I want to do what you’re doing. I know it’s important.’

‘Cheerwell, listen,’ Stenwold said, still with a hand on reason, ‘I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t know exactly what to expect, but, worst to worst, it could be dangerous.’

‘Yet you always claim the whole world’s dangerous,’ she insisted. The whole of the last few days was crashing in on her, the failed meditation, the bitterness of humiliation in that duel.

‘Very dangerous,’ he said. ‘Helleron, points east . . . and there are things happening out there I don’t want you involved in. It’s not safe for you.’

‘I don’t care,’ she told him. ‘I can look after myself.’ Looking at him there she could not stop herself. ‘I’m not some . . . Well I’m not an old . . . fat man. What makes you think—?’

He moved then, just a little motion, a tug at his cuffs, but it changed his stance and cut her off, because there was something more than history books in his personal history. His face was mild still as he spoke. ‘I’m sorry, Cheerwell, I don’t want to put you in danger. What would I be able to say to your father?’

‘You don’t care. When did you last speak to him? Or write?’ She actually stamped her foot. ‘Why
not
? Why not me, Uncle Sten? Go on, say it. Just say it. What’s wrong with me?’

‘Cheerwell—’

‘I’m never good enough, am I? I’m just stupid Cheerwell with the stupid name, and I’ll just bumble along behind everyone else, shall I?’

‘Will you find some calm?’ he said, starting to lose his own. ‘It’s simple. There’s no great conspiracy. You’re my niece, my family, and I want to see you safe.’

‘Blood, is it?’ she said. She had thought it might come to this.

‘If you want.’ He gave a great hissing sigh. ‘Cheerwell—’

‘Only’ – she choked on the words, reached desperately for her courage – ‘from all that’s been going on, I could . . . could have sworn that it was
her
you count as your own flesh and blood, and . . . and not . . . not
me
at all.’

And so it was said, and a silence fell on them, the three of them, like cinders from a pyre. Behind Stenwold, Totho was visibly cringing, hands clenched into fists over his apron. Che realized that she was shaking, not just a little but hard enough to make her teeth rattle. Her breath was coming out in short gasps and she knew that any moment she was going to break out in tears and make everything so much
worse
.

Stenwold was staring at her intently, and for a moment she thought he was really angry, angry enough to hit her, and she flinched away from him.

But he had never struck her before, and he was not going to do so now. The expression on his face was one she had never seen previously. He had gone pale and sick-looking, and very, very sad, and full of something else: some guilt or horror of his own making. All of this was evident in his face before he turned to leave them.