Empire in Black and Gold (24 page)

The name told true. Sinon was a halfbreed, and she guessed that he was Moth-kinden interbred with the pale-skinned Ants of Tark. What should have been an unpleasant mottling had instead left him with milky skin traced with veins and twists of grey, like marble. It was an exotic, oddly attractive sight. His hair was dark, worn long over his shoulders in a Spider style. His eyes were just dark pupils circled in white, without irises. The melange of his ancestry had conspired to make a man at once unnerving and compelling.

‘So Malia has brought me a gift,’ he said, and the conversation about the table immediately stopped, each gangster looking across or craning over to see her. Malia left her side then, taking her place at Sinon’s right hand.

‘Delightful,’ said Sinon. His mouth and voice were amused, his eyes unreadable. ‘But I’m told that you’re not just here for ornament. Malia says you can fight. What’s your name, Spiderchild?’

‘Tynisa, Master Sinon.’ She hadn’t meant the honorific. Some holdover from childhood had brought it out of her.

‘And well-mannered too, such a rare combination. And you understand that you owe me a debt, a debt that Malia here has passed on to me.’

‘I’ve been told it,’ Tynisa replied. A murmur of laughter passed through the gangsters at her attitude. Only those closest to the head of the table were untouched by it.

‘And
can
you fight?’ Sinon asked her politely.

‘I can.’

‘Well, then, there may be a place for you at my table,’ Sinon said. ‘But I understand you need my help, Spiderchild. Malia’s already told me your little story. Help me and then perhaps I can spare some help for you.’

She realized that she was reacting too much, taking too little control. She narrowed her eyes, clenched her fists, stared at Sinon. ‘So,’ she demanded. ‘Where do I sit?’

There was a ragged murmur of approval from the gangsters, but Sinon held up a hand for silence, and got it. ‘Don’t get too fond of her,’ he warned his people. ‘She doesn’t know our traditions yet. You sit, Spiderchild, where you want, but be aware that for you to have any elbow room everyone moves down a seat. Now you tell me where you sit.’

Tynisa let herself pause. She would not jump as soon as Sinon cracked the whip.
Has it come to this
? she thought.
What would Stenwold say?
Sinon was talking about fighting for blood, just to join in his little clique. The fiefs of Helleron had harsh and simple rules.
At what point do I become one of them? When I draw their blood? When I take their place?

She wondered if she could still refuse now, if she could flee – a sudden dash down the hall, out of the building, onto the unknown streets of Helleron.
And then what?
She would never find Che or the others on her own. She needed help, and this thief, this killer, was apparently the only help she had.

And beneath all that was another dark voice, telling her that they had questioned her skill, that they wished to see her blade drawn.
It is your duty and your pleasure to oblige them . . .

She walked down the line of the table, seeing who met her gaze, who avoided it. There were a lot down the far end of the table that she knew she could beat, humiliate even, without worry. They were the rabble, the desperate hangers-on just clutching at the edges of Sinon’s favour. But if she was going to do this, she was going to do it properly.

She paced back towards the table’s head, feeling the hum of appreciation as they began to ask themselves just how daring she was going to be. The gangsters were a motley lot: Beetles, Ants, Flies, Spiders, plenty of half-breeds, and a few she could not name. Whatever their race, towards the head of the table they met her stare levelly. They had scars, most of them, amidst the jewellery, so it had been a fight for them to get where they were, and it would be a fight for her to take it from them. The few of them who did not seem to be warriors looked at her without fear, and from that she guessed at the presence of some stand-in or bodyguard to protect their useful talents from needless harm. Artificers, accountants, intelligencers and the like, no doubt. Sinon would have need of those.

She looked up to the very head of the table, at Sinon himself. He was watching her with great interest and she sent him one of her best smiles to show him she was not afraid of him.

To his right was Malia, of course, and Tynisa felt that to challenge her would be bad grace, and she was also not sure she could win. The woman had held onto her place at Sinon’s right, where anyone could call her out for it. That bespoke a truth behind her boasts earlier.

On Sinon’s left sat a giant. Standing, he would be at least seven feet tall, his head brushing the ceiling. His skin was dead white, not the translucent pale of an albino but a waxy blank whiteness she had never seen before. Strange as that was, it was nothing to his lower jaw, which jutted out in a snarl of upwards-pointing fangs, or his hands that sported great bone blades curving from thumb and forefinger, eight inches long at the least. His eyes, above a flat nose and that grotesque jaw, were small and calm, and he cupped the wine bowl in his palm and three fingers with great care. He was more, she decided, than a simple brute. His yellow eyes were keenly picking her apart, evaluating her, and she decided that he would be too much, too soon.

Remember Che and Salma. Remember who you are shedding blood for.
Or, if the worst came to the worst and the Empire had beaten her to it, at least Sinon’s people could become her tool for revenge. The thought brought a sudden fire to her.
So I draw a little criminal blood today, and how much Wasp blood tomorrow?

She had her blade out in a moment, startling those nearest to her, but she was pointing across the table, to the giant’s left-hand neighbour. He was a pale Ant from Tark, and he stood right away with an eagerness that spoke of a few tricks she did not know about. He looked like Adax from the College duelling society, and she decided that she had always wanted to take that particular man down a peg. Even his image here would do.

‘Where do we fight?’ she asked.

‘Why, right here, where we can all see, but try not to tread on the food,’ Sinon said with a lazy gesture.

With deliberate ease the Ant-kinden drew a pair of shortswords from beneath the table. He grinned at her, and then glanced at his comrades. There were three other Tarkesh Ants here for dinner, and he singled them out especially. She saw it then: his mind and theirs would be as one during this fight. Whatever he missed, they would see on his behalf. There would be no surprising him.

‘Two-sword boy, are you?’ She felt proud of the calm humour in her voice, though inside she had begun to think that she had made a serious mistake. With a swift dart she snatched an eating knife from the nearest diner and balanced it in her left hand. ‘I suppose that evens the odds a little.’

The spectators gave her a scattered laugh. She took three steps back and settled into her stance, rapier extended, blunt knife held back and high as though she would make the killing stroke with it.

Their fighting space was a strip three feet wide and twenty long, and she hoped that her longer blade would tell in it. He did not seem to be worried, though, standing still down the length of their battlefield, relaxed and eager.

‘First blood,’ Sinon warned them. ‘It’s been a quiet day so far. I don’t want a body spoiling it for me. Of course, if first blood is last blood, well, what can you do?’ The halfbreed licked his lips, obviously a man to enjoy a little dinner entertainment. ‘Well off you go then. Don’t keep us in suspense.’

Tynisa moved first, and almost had him then, a quick step, step and lunge and he was almost on the end of her sword. His spies in the audience called him to it just in time, though; and then he was on her.

He fought left and right, attacks from either side coming in without pattern, a constant driving dance of swordwork. His face, behind it, was set, without clues for her. He drove her back and back until her instincts told her the wall was just an inch behind her back heel. As he came in at her again she bounced backwards, got a foot on the wall and pushed. His left sword went past her, close enough to snag her tunic, and her rapier lanced over his head. She followed it, diving part-over, part-past him, trying to crack his nose with her elbow as she did. He swayed back, though, warned again by his collaborators, and she landed past, rolling just once and coming up on her feet.

He was already at her, driving in through a storm of applause from the crowd. She had his measure now. He came from left and right but his stock of moves was limited, the same strikes mirroring each other every time. She began to fend him off, sliding his blades off her own and then turning parries into ripostes, until they were in the middle of their narrow slice of arena, and he was no longer driving her before him. All the while she kept the eating knife poised, glinting in the light, always in his eyeline, always on his mind.

She realized that she had already made up her mind how to end this, perhaps even before she started. Even as she kept him at the length of her rapier, outside his reach, the plan she had not even known about was made plain to her, and she saw that it was good.

She went on the attack, seemed to mis-step. Abruptly she was too close, playing into the range of his blades. He took the chance she offered, by accident or not. She dragged her sword in, moving it like light and shadow, both of his blades skittering off its hand-guard and quillons. The eating knife darted in.

It came from above him for the top of his head, but the voices in his head were shouting for him to watch for it. He twisted faster than she had thought, his blades coming up to catch the blunt knife. She was already a step back and the rapier was inside his guard. With utter delicacy, she struck.

She had intended to pink his shoulder, first blood as Sinon had said, but her blade laid open the side of his neck, and he went down in a startling abundance of red. For a moment she thought he might get up again, leaning on his sword and spitting at her, but then he fell forward, and she knew that he was dead.

Looking down now, with the heat of the moment cooling on her, she realized that she had absolutely no right to beat him. She was, after all, merely a good duellist for the College circuit. With a wood and bronze blade she had been better than most, but worse than some.

With a live blade in her hand, where death was at her shoulder and not just the gain or forfeit of a game, it seemed she had a talent for reddening her blade with other people’s blood. She had not drawn this blade in anger without having a man die over it and yesterday it had taken four of Malia’s men to catch her, even exhausted and confused as she must have been.
And she had blooded them all.

She had a talent, for sure. If Sinon had his way, she might even have a vocation. The thought did not sit well with her, but a moment before, with the fierce fire of victory on her, she would have welcomed it.

What am I becoming?

She looked at Halfway. There was a commotion all along the table, some applauding and some cursing her, but in her mind it was just her and the gangster chief here now. She met his strange eyes and her smile, however forced, challenged him.

‘Malia didn’t exaggerate a word of it,’ he said, his followers quieting even as he spoke. ‘In fact, I think she even played it down a little.’ He glanced at the Ant woman, who was looking ever so slightly concerned. Tynisa thought back to their first meeting, and wondered just what might have happened had she herself pushed it to a fight.

Better not to know. They were right when they said she needed them. Everything had gone wrong and her comrades were scattered to the winds. If this gang of murderers and blackguards was her only tool, then she would grasp it by the hilt.

Smiling so sweetly, she cleaned her blade and went to sit beside the giant, just a seat away from Sinon himself.

Elias Monger was a busy man. Rather than leave them in his house to fret, he had suggested that they come to see the leading sights of Helleron with him, such sights consisting of his commercial holdings and factories. Che wondered if he was trying to impress Salma the prince with his wealth and productivity. If so, that plan had fallen at the first hurdle.

Around them, the cavernous space boomed and thundered, as though what they were making here was not crossbow bolts but elemental weather. It was order on a grand scale: the ranks of great forges and presses and tooling machines that were never still, the constant onward progressing, each pair of hands only a tiny part of the grand scheme. The sheer industry of it, the fact that someone had worked all this out, this machined sequence, and then made it real as one of Elias Monger’s factory floors, was beyond Che’s ability to conceive.

‘What do you think?’ she asked.

‘I thought you Beetles didn’t keep slaves.’ Salma’s bleak gaze took in the long, gloomy, toiling room and found little in it he liked.

‘Slaves?’ Che said blankly. ‘These aren’t slaves.’

‘Aren’t they?’

She put her hands on her hips. ‘No, they aren’t. They’re here to earn a wage. They’re here of their own free will. You’re just saying that because you don’t understand what they’re working
at
.’

‘Free will?’ Salma saw, in that long room, more people than he could readily count. They were almost shoulder to shoulder at the benches, each repeating some action over and over. Some were tending pole-lathes, others shaping shards of chitin. Some at the back fed a row of forges whose red glow shed more light than the grime-covered windows. Others poured molten metal into moulds, and others still honed the edges of the tiny pieces resulting, or freed them from the casts. Each man or woman had a fragment of a job, performed over and over. Each was utterly absorbed by it, working as fast as they could, passing over forever to the next pair of hands in line. Salma wondered what would happen if, in their same free will, they decided not to work.

‘Oh, lose the long face,’ Che snapped at him, annoyed. ‘So they don’t do things this way in the Commonweal. This is industry, Salma. This is how things happen in the Lowlands. We can’t all spend three years making the perfect sword or whatever.’