Empire in Black and Gold (61 page)

‘I have one thing to ask, if I may,’ said Salma. He had been fast asleep the last anyone was aware of him, and now he sat down beside them even as he spoke. Even in his prison-grimy tunic and breeches, he looked vastly more the young man they remembered. Even his smile was back.

‘Ask it,’ Kymene said.

‘There was another prisoner of the Wasps. A Butterfly-kinden named Grief in Chains?’ the Dragonfly pressed.

‘I know of her.’ Kymene looked at him oddly. ‘Last I heard she was some kind of pawn in their little games.’

‘She was passed into the hands of an officer named Aagen. Che overheard them discussing it,’ Salma said. ‘I need to know where she is. There’s one rescue left to make.’

‘Tynisa did better than she knew in bringing these to me,’ Stenwold remarked. He had his fellows gathered before him like a class in Collegium, even Tisamon. Only Achaeos kept himself distant, as usual. ‘Of course these are only a fragment, but I have grown used to reading fragments these last ten years.’

‘I thought they must be plans. Invasion plans, perhaps?’ said Tynisa. ‘I had a look at them, on the way back. I . . . didn’t understand them.’

‘Nothing so dramatic. Just quartermasters’ notes, logistics, accounts. The minutiae of an army’s organizing,’ Stenwold told her. When she looked crestfallen, he added, ‘But dearer than gold for all that, for they tell me where the Wasps have gone to, and in what numbers, and also with what provisions and equipment. If you know how to read them, then they’re as good as an annotated map of their progress.’

‘And what is the news then?’ Tisamon asked. ‘The fighters here have been saying that a lot of troops have been moving through, going west. We’ve seen some of that.’

‘They don’t lie.’ Stenwold nodded. ‘And neither do these reports. Remember Asta? That was just a staging ground, and now I know where they were staging for. Look here.’ He turned one of the sheets over, and took a stylus from his toolbelt, dotting on the places as he named them. ‘Myna here. Asta here. This,’ a scribbly blur, ‘is the Darakyon. Helleron here, beyond it. Here now is the Dryclaw.’ A dotted line delineated the shifting boundaries of the desert. ‘And here . . .’ For a second he was indeed back in the classrooms of the Great College. ‘Anyone . . . ?’

‘Tark, sir,’ Totho said.

‘The Ant city-state of Tark, easternmost of the Lowlands cities. And what are the Ants of Tark best known for?’

‘Slaves,’ said Che distastefully.

‘A little simplistic,’ Stenwold said, with a scholarly wrinkle, ‘but it represents the truth that, of all the Ant city-states, Tark can consider itself rich. It stands on the Silk Road leading from the Spiderlands, on the west road used by the Scorpion-kinden of the Dryclaw into the Lowlands, on the east road for the Fly warrens of Egel and Merro. But its trade harvest is so particularly rich precisely because it is the portal to the entire Lowlands. Only not even the Tarkesh think like that. And why? Because they are more concerned with maintaining their military strength against the other Ant cities, rather than in preparing against an outside threat.’ He made an arrow with the stylus covering the march from Asta to Tark. ‘Now there
is
a threat. Myna has seen a vast number of soldiers already shipped to Asta, and the majority of them are headed onwards for Tark. I would guess from these figures anywhere in the region of thirty thousand: Wasp soldiers and Auxillian support totalled. Together with field weapons, war automotives, fliers, of course. It’s all in these papers, if you know how to read them.’

‘What can we do then?’ Che demanded, as though there could be some simple means by which to save a city.

‘The Ants of Tark will have to manage their own defence, not that they’d appreciate any offers of help from outsiders. The Wasps have moved ahead of us, but at least I will have eyes there to see what may be seen, and can report to me. We must go to those places in the Lowlands that will listen to us. Collegium, Sarn, even Helleron.’ The stylus tapped the map. ‘And there we have our next problem, for not all the soldiers mentioned in these reports are slated for Tark’s walls.’

‘Where else?’ Che looked from his face to the map and back.

‘Two armies, a forked attack. The bulk of the soldiers against the military might of Tark, but enough, perhaps enough, to take on Helleron. How many soldiers would it take to conquer Helleron? How many to persuade the Helleren that working with the Empire would be better than against it, or that the terms of the Treaty of Iron were now due to relax?’

‘Send a few men and a large enough purse,’ interrupted Achaeos’s acid voice from beyond them. Stenwold nodded at him without acrimony.

‘And they have sent more than a few men, and I have no idea of the size of the purse, but Helleron is where we must now go to do most good. If the magnates of Helleron can band their armies and their wits together, they have enough to resist a force of ten times this size. If they are divided, or blinker themselves to the truth, then the Wasps may take Helleron very easily indeed, and then the Lowlands will be open to them. Helleron, as I say, is where we can do most good. I have already sent my messenger off to Scuto there, warning him to prepare. We may not quite outstrip the Wasps but the messenger, and word of their coming, will do.’ He sighed, paused a moment before continuing.

‘So we come to it at last. I have made you my agents. I have sent you into danger, imprisonment. I have gambled with your lives, I who am a poor gambler at best. I ask you now to go to war with me, and any of you may still say no. I will not hold that against you, even my oldest friend or my closest relation.’

Those gathered close faced him with equanimity, not a face flinching, and so he looked beyond towards the Moth. ‘This is not your fight, Achaeos.’

They all turned to look at him, and he glanced at Che for a moment before answering. ‘None of this has been my fight, Master Maker, and I will not go to war to save Helleron.’

‘And I cannot blame you. You have already done much for us—’ Stenwold started, but Achaeos held up a grey hand.

‘Your niece and I spoke, this morning before the sun. We spoke of many things. She told me that the Wasps would eventually come to my people as to yours, and I have seen their works, and I believe her. And whilst you Beetles may chip, chip, chip at our mountains to scratch for your puny profits, the Wasps bring tyranny and war, and they
fly –
either in themselves or in their machines. That makes all the difference in the world, for while your people grub in the earth, they will look to the heights as they hone their swords. So, I will return with you now and tell my people what I have seen – for all they will not want to hear it. I will try to convince them that the Wasps must be fought, in such ways as my people are wont to fight. I will not go to war to save Helleron, but I will go to war to save my own people, whether from Beetle-kinden or Wasp-kinden, or whoever dares raise a hand against us.’

After Salma had gone Che was left only with the bitter taste of the harsh words she had exchanged with him. The harsh words she had given him, in fact. He had smiled through them, shrugged them off.

She had told him what a foolish thing he was doing, going out into the city right under the eyes of the Wasps, actually seeking them out, and he had freely admitted it. She had pointed out that he hardly knew the woman: some short days of shared imprisonment, a few words and a chained dance. He had nodded amiably.

‘Do you think you’re invisible?’ she had shouted at him. ‘There’s a whole city full of Wasps out there!’

He had shaken his head maddeningly. ‘They are at the palace, and they are waiting for a Mynan rebellion. You heard what Kymene said. They will be watching the ground, not the air, and they will not be out on the streets in force if they want to tempt the Mynans to rise up.’

‘But they will be watching the ground from the air,’ she had insisted.

He had shrugged again, equally maddeningly. ‘And I shall see them before they see me, because I have better eyes, and I am a better flier than any Wasp alive.’ His expression suggested it was all so simple.

She had become angry with him, but it was only because she could not understand why he was taking such risks, such needless risks, just for Grief in Chains.

And at the end she had run out of words to throw at him, whereupon he just smiled and shrugged again. ‘It’s just something I have to do, so if it can be done, I’ll do it.’

‘You know this Aagen is a close friend of Thalric, that you’ll almost certainly run into Thalric himself when you go after him. Salma, we’ve only just been set free ourselves.’

‘That’s because we had friends who cared enough to come after us,’ he said, infuriating in his reasonableness. ‘Who does
she
have?’

‘Who do any of them have? You can’t set every slave in the Empire free!’

‘No, just one.’

And then he had gone. Wearing Mynan garb, and heavily cloaked, but still looking like nothing other than a Dragonfly noble from the Commonweal, off he had gone. She watched from the doorway of their hideout until he was out of sight, and then she watched some more in case the power of her gaze might, by some mechanics quite unknown to her, draw him back.

A hand fell on her shoulder and she knew, before she turned, that it belonged to Achaeos. For a moment she let it rest there, and then he said, ‘I can tell you why, if you wish, but you won’t believe me.’

She turned round, stepping away from him. ‘I suppose it’s magic.’

‘Yes,’ he said, and there was a slight smile on his face, so she was not sure whether he was mocking her or not.

‘I don’t . . . I can’t believe in magic. There is always an explanation, always.’

‘And if magic
is
the explanation?’

‘Magic doesn’t explain anything. In Collegium there are papers, studies from years going all the way back to the revolution. They’ve done test after test and there’s no such thing as magic.’

‘That’s like a man who lives in a world without wind denying the existence of a sailing ship,’ Achaeos replied. With a great display of diffidence he seated himself beside the sentry at the door, who shuffled sideways and made more room for him than he needed. ‘It is because magic – the magic that I myself have grown up with – is blown by winds that your tests take no account of. Winds of the mind, I mean, like confidence, belief. Look, the sun is out, yet I have my cowl up because my people are not fond of it. If I were to tell you a story now of strange deeds and ghosts, or somesuch, would I scare you?’

‘That depends on the story.’ The sentry now had made enough room for her to sit down next to him. ‘Probably not.’

‘And then tonight, in the dark of the moon, when the world is quiet and yet full of odd sounds, you prepare to take your rest, and the story recurs to you, and you cannot sleep for the fears preying on your mind. Magic is like that. I simplify, of course, but magic breaks into the world where doubt leaves a gap for it.’

‘That doesn’t make sense. Not to me.’ Yet just for a moment the idea made her feel queasy, as though there were a chasm yawning at her feet.

‘Perhaps not, but your friend has been enchanted. This dancer was a magician – or at least the sort that the Butterfly-kinden have amongst them.’ He spoke the name with a certain distaste that, oddly, made Che feel better. She wondered if it was mere jealousy at this wondrous dancing woman that everyone seemed to like so much, or perhaps it was something more than that. Perhaps it was even what Achaeos was telling her: that the woman was a magician, that she had cast a spell on Salma.

She did not believe it, but at the same time she had to know.

‘So what has she done? Not that I—’

‘Not that you believe she has done anything, but what
has
she done?’ finished Achaeos with an arch glance. ‘She was desperate, I imagine. She was weak, surrounded by enemies. It is a simple charm that her people practise much, but it is one of powerful attraction. Her captors were proof against it because they already owned her. But then she saw your friend, and saw in him something that might help her. As a slave, with nowhere else to turn, she touched his mind. That is all. Perhaps some of it was just the Ancestor Art, for there are ways to catch the mind through that, but those charms fade. To last so long, through such separation, she used her magic.’

‘But I didn’t see her use any . . . or do anything . . . or . . .’ Che stumbled to a halt with the sentence.

‘And you knew what to look for? She danced for him, yes?’

‘She danced.’

‘But in her mind she danced only for him. In his mind that was so as well.
That
was the incantation, no green smoke and no words of power. A dance is quite enough, and your friend was caught. Not unwillingly, I suspect, for I know Butterfly-kinden have charms of a physical nature.’

She caught that hint of derision again, and recalled: ‘She said, “Night Brother”, when . . . when I woke from the dream. You have the same eyes, you and she.’

It was a moment before he spoke. ‘Yes, well, it is said that we were kin long ago. Children of the sun, children of the moon. And we
hate
them,’ he added, almost cheerily. ‘For their light and their wonder, we hate them.’