Empire in Black and Gold sota-1 Read online

  Looking now at these same faces, these same expressions of petulance, indifference, hearing those words echo in his mind, he thought, I am wasting my time here. It was pure spite that then made him go on, so that he could say, despite his promise, I told you so.

  ‘Masters,’ said Stenwold, and they hushed, for something in his voice must have touched them, some hitherto unmined vein of sincerity in his tone. ‘Masters,’ he said, ‘listen to me now. I have come before you and I have spoken to you before, and always you have let my words fall at your feet. Hear me now: the Wasp Empire’s long war with the Commonweal is done. They have swum in the blood of the Commonweal until even the vast Commonweal could bear it no longer. They have forced the signing of a surrender that places three principalities into imperial hands, an area of the Commonweal that would span a whole quarter of the Lowlands, were it placed here. Has the Empire put down the sword and taken up the plough? Has the Empire turned to books and learning, or the betterment of its poor and its slaves?’

  He stared at them, waited and waited, until someone said, ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell us, Master Maker.’

  ‘No!’ he shouted at them. ‘No, you tell me! You with your mercantile interests in Helleron, you tell me how many swords you have forged for the Empire! Tell me of the crossbow bolts, the firepowder, the automotive components, the engine parts, the flier designs, the tanks of fuel and the casks of airship gas that you have sold to them at your costly prices! Tell me of the men you have met with and talked money, and never asked why they might need such vast stocks of arms! For, I tell you, the Empire is not an Ant city-state where the citizens can all take up arms and fight if they must, be they soldier or farmer or artisan. The Empire is a great nation where every man is a warrior and nothing else. The work, the labour, the harvests and the craft, they leave for their slaves. There is not a man of the Empire who is not also a man of their army, and what can they do with such an immense force save to use it? Open your eyes, you merchants and you academics, and tell me where next such a force might march, if not here?’

  ‘I think,’ said the Speaker, old Thadspar, ‘that I shall stop you at that question, Master Maker. You must, if you will riddle us so, give us a chance to respond. Well, Masters, it is a weighty gauntlet that Master Maker has cast down before us.’

  ‘Yet again,’ said some anonymous wit, but Thadspar held up a sharp hand.

  ‘Masters! Respect, please. Will someone take this gauntlet up?’ He drew back as one of the Assemblers stood and approached the rostrum.

  ‘Master Maker makes a fine spectacle, does he not?’ The man who took the stand was named Helmess Broiler, but it might equally have been any of them. He said no more until Stenwold had resumed his seat, smiling with infinite patience at the maverick historian. ‘And I do wonder what we would do without him. These gatherings would lack their greatest source of wild imagination.’ Polite laughter, which Broiler acknowledged and then went on.

  ‘Yes, yes, the Empire. We all know about the Empire, if only because of Master Maker’s two-decade hysteria about that realm. They are certainly a vital pack of barbarians, it’s true. I believe they’ve made great inroads towards becoming a civilized nation recently. They have a government, and taxes, and even their own currency, although I understand their merchants prefer to deal in our coin.’ More laughter, especially from the trade magnates. Broiler was grinning openly.

  ‘Apparently they’ve had some trouble with their neighbours,’ he said. ‘But haven’t we all? I remember well when the armies of Vek were at our gates, as do most of you. How many of you wanted to take a force of soldiers back to their city and teach them their place? I know I wasn’t the only one, and perhaps we should have done it. The Empire did it. Faced with militant neighbours that threatened their emerging culture, they secured their own existence with force. Can we blame them? They would be in no position to send their ambassadors to us now if they had let their neighbours run roughshod over their borders before.’ Broiler shook his head sadly. ‘And the Commonweal, and their war — what do we truly know of those causes? We here do not have that great and silent state looming nearby to overshadow us, for geography intervenes. If the Commonweal, with all its vast resources, should take exception to us, what would we do? And their habitual sullen attitude gives us no clue that they hold us in anything but disdain. If the Wasps have clawed a victory and peace terms from such a mighty state, then surely we must congratulate them, and not castigate them. I have no doubt that if they wished to drive the Commonweal back, it was because such a brooding state on the Empire’s very borders was cause for great concern.’

  He put on an exasperated expression. ‘And so,’ he said, ‘Master Maker insists that they are coming for us.’ He was serious now, daring them to laugh. ‘He tells us of the growth of their armies, the vast numbers of their soldiers, their strength of arms and their skill in battle. The fact that they have had to preserve their young state from so many hostile influences does not convince Master Maker that they might require these forces merely to defend themselves.’ Broiler slammed his hands down on the lectern, looking angry.

  ‘And now they come for us, we are told!’ he cried out. ‘The dreaded Wasps come for the Lowlands? Well, yes, yes, they do. Of course they do. They come with ambassadors. They come with trade, and an open hand. These last three years there has been a treaty standing between the Empire and the Council at Helleron, and everyone has profited by it. In only days their people will be here to formalize relations between their Empire and our great city, in just the same way. They recognize the central role we play in our turbulent Lowlands. They wish to know us better, to trade and prosper alongside us. Perhaps they will seek our guidance, like a young student come to learn from the old master.’ His face, his hands, begged them to understand. ‘Have any of you read the Treaty of Iron? There are copies in our libraries, so I encourage you to read one. This document happily recognizes the autonomy and friendship of both Helleron and Collegium. It sets down in clear type how their military strength is to protect what they have, not to gather more than they could possibly need.’

  ‘Yes, they do,’ Stenwold snapped, despite Thadspar’s frantic gestures at him. ‘And all the while they mass their armies and, on the strength of their empty signature on a scroll, we let them!’

  ‘Oh they have their soldiers and their armies, Master Maker,’ Broiler retorted. ‘but there is only one possible reason they should turn them against us! It is because some fool here fires us up into a warlike fury against them! It is because we greet them with swords, and not friendship! Master Maker wishes to make his own prophecies come true by turning us against men who want only our recognition and support!’

  Stenwold stood abruptly, leaving Broiler with his mouth open, bereft of words. He approached the rostrum, and for a second the man shrank back as though Stenwold would strike him.

  ‘The Masters will excuse me,’ Stenwold said. His tone was quiet, but there was no sound to compete with him. ‘I must leave you to your talk, but for some reason I feel suddenly ill.’

  Four

  Salma was writing a letter. It was something he was out of practice with. This was not because the people of Collegium were not accustomed to writing letters. On the contrary, the literate middle classes were constantly penning each other missives, jokes, invitations and political pamphlets. Rather, the sheer fecund exuberance of it put him off. In the Commonweal of his birth one spent time in the writing, even in scribing the very characters themselves, but most especially in the thought that was behind it. Besides, for Salma, a letter home was no mere matter of sending a servant a few streets, or having someone take it to the engine depot or the airfield. It was going to cost a pretty price to get this where it was going.

  He looked down at what he had written.

  Most Highly Respected Prince-Major Felipe Shah of the Principality of Roh at his court in Suon Ren.

  In the name of our most gracious Commonweal and the Monarch thereof, and by the lo
ve and affinity that I bear you by the Obligation of my Birth and the honour in which I hold your family.

  Fortune prevailing I have found in this place of strangers one of a like mind and aims to my own, who sees with our same clarity in the dawn’s light where others may turn their heads against the glare, and so have taken him for a Mentor.

  He is a man for enquiries, especially where the sun rises, and there are many who answer the questions he poses. I myself am to be set an examination of questions, and some others with me, that I have leagued with.

  Meaning that the wily old man knows what is brewing in the east, and perhaps he’s the only one in Collegium to fathom it. And meaning also that he wants me for an agent, and that suits me. And I thought, and they all thought, that when I took this place at their vaunted College, that I would be going to sit around in the muck with a pack of coarse-grained primitives. But if Master Maker can find it in his heart to give me a blade and point me at the Empire, then I’m all for it.

  Look for me in dark places. You will recall the gloom that fell when our cousin Daless lost her way. There you may find me, in the dawn’s light.

  Salma remembered Felipe Daless. She had been what he had always wanted to be: a Mercer warrior elite, in her shell and steel armour. It had been four years now since the Principality of Prava fell. He had heard, from survivors, that she had made a good showing at the end.

  He re-read his missive, noting with a frown that he had been using the metaphors of dawn and darkness for the same thing. For poetic logic perhaps someone should persuade the Wasps to invade from the west for once. Ah well, nothing that was worth writing was worth writing simply.

  In exile, this token of my esteem I send to you.

  Prince-Minor Salme Dien

  He finished the name with a flourish of his shard pen. He knew that the Beetle epistlers would have found this quaint, but he had no comprehension of their complex reservoir pens. A stylus of chitin was good enough for the Monarch of the Commonweal, and so it would be hubris in Salma himself to desire more.

  ‘I’m ready,’ he said, and the diminutive figure by the door stepped forward. She had been waiting for almost an hour while he wrote, without fidget or complaint, and he had a lot of respect for that in a place as bustling and assertive as Collegium.

  ‘You are sure that you are capable of this?’ he asked her. ‘Most everyone in this town seems to think my homeland belongs in a storybook.’

  The Fly-kinden stood about eye to eye with the seated Salma, a lithe young woman with blue-grey skin, and the circular badge of their Messenger Guild on her plain black tunic. ‘Actually, sir, there are Guildhouses in both Drame Jo and Shon Fhor, and I can find my way from there to Roh.’

  Salma folded the letter and sealed it with a disc of putty, using a thumbnail to press in a stylized little crest. It looked deceptively simple, but he knew any forger would go mad trying to imitate his precise style.

  ‘No reply is expected,’ he told the Fly. ‘Odds are, anyway, I won’t be where you might look for me.’

  The Fly-kinden messenger took the sealed scroll from him and bowed minutely. A moment later she was at the window, and then gone: a flurry of briefly glimpsed wings and a small figure receding in the sky.

  Salma took a deep breath. The moment the letter had left his hands, he had cast himself off on a journey of no return. At least his would not be a lonely one; the thought quirked his lips into a smile. He determined that he would now indulge in one of his favourite pastimes, and go and annoy Tynisa.

  She knew from the boldness and the pattern to his knock that it was Salma, come to call on her because he was bored. Tynisa paused before her glass, debating whether to play dead or to call out to him. It was a shame, she thought, that he usually did seek her out from ennui. She kept a fair number of young men at any given time who would seek her out with gifts, with flowers or some trinket of jewellery, a good poem stolen or a bad one written. Salma sought her out merely because her company amused him, and that was not the same thing after all.

  But it was why he interested her so much, she realized. It was because he was proof against all her looks and smiles and subtle words. And he was a prince. There were tacticians’ sons aplenty in Collegium, and the heirs of industrialists, lords of commerce or of learning or strategy. None of them was a prince, though. The Lowlands did not possess any with that kind of cachet.

  She was wearing her favourite silks, that swept down from her throat and left her shoulders bare: clothes suitable for a lady’s private chamber. So many men would have given so much, she thought proudly, for the privilege of seeing her thus adorned, but Salma would just come in and throw himself straight on the couch, and not really care all that much about her looks.

  ‘Oh come in then, if you have to,’ she said, trying to sound annoyed by the intrusion. She supposed that she should at least be glad that it was always her he sought to alleviate his routine, but the thought didn’t help that much. It was not that he did not have an eye for girls. He had his choice, almost, of the female students, and choose he did. Towards her, though, he was. . different.

  He sauntered in, pausing in the doorway to pass his robe to Stenwold’s long-suffering servant. ‘Well now, a work of art half-done,’ he commented, leaning against the doorframe. ‘Don’t let me stop you. I’m always one for watching an artist at work.’

  She gave a wry smile and turned her face towards him, seeing just the barest start of surprise break his poise.

  ‘Careless,’ he said. ‘How did that happen?’

  She touched the bruise which extended from cheekbone to chin on the left side of her face. ‘You’re the clever foreigner who knows all our ways inside out, Salma, so you tell me.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘Didn’t I? Then how else did I get it, your royal principalness?’ She turned back to the glass. It was a Spider-made artefact. All the best ones were. It was not that the Spiderlands craftsmen had superior skill, more that they knew what to look for. Being so fond of their own image, as I am.

  ‘Piraeus.’ Salma stepped into the room at last, casting himself down on the couch.

  ‘I told you what I wanted with him,’ she confirmed. There was a whole alchemy of make-up spread out before her, Spider-harvested and prepared, all of it. She made several delicate passes across her face, first with one brush and then another.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I told him I wanted to fight him, a duel, and he laughed at me. He looked at me down his nose, like the Mantids always do. I was beneath his notice, for I was a Spider. I was a thing of contempt, not fit to draw blade against.’

  ‘He said all that?’

  ‘Oh, posing, posing. You know how it is. I was talking too, though. When he finished speaking he had no more to say. When I finished he had agreed to meet me at the Forum.’

  ‘And that must have gone well,’ Salma noted dryly. She looked straight at him, over her shoulder.

  ‘He beat me. He beat me by two strikes to none,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve another bruise on my side that’s a little short of this one for size, but lovely for colour, like a flower bouquet. You can see it if, you want?’ She tilted her head, mockingly coquettish.

  He shrugged indifferently, one hand tracing patterns on the wall. ‘I’m no chirurgeon,’ he said with a blithe smile, ‘but if you want. So what, then? Or did you really think you could beat him?’

  ‘I wanted to see if I could make him fight, Salma. That was the object. This. .’ she passed another brush over the bruise. ‘This is a medal for the sort of wars I’ll be fighting in.’

  ‘Spider wars.’

  ‘Your people don’t play that game, Salma?’

  She had him there, and he laughed. ‘Well, perhaps, but nobody plays as well as the Spider-kinden. Even one, it seems, brought up by Beetles. It must be in the blood.’

  ‘In the blood and in the Art,’ she agreed. ‘And I needed to know. Now that Stenwold’s come clean with me, with us, I needed
to be sure of myself.’

  ‘For a woman with a bruise the size of Lake Sideriti you certainly sound sure of yourself.’

  She turned from her paints and powders again, a face now unmarked, devoid of blemish. ‘What bruise?’ she asked sweetly. ‘And besides, I’ll have him again sometime, and that time I’ll win. It’s not just the Mantids who remember a grudge.’

  Cheerwell Maker, Che, was meditating. There was a room for that in any decent-sized house in Collegium, while in the poorer areas of the city there were civic buildings set aside just for this silent communion. If she had gone into the Ant city of Vek, miles down the coast, she would have found great echoing halls filled with men and women, and especially the young, each seeking to communicate with the infinite. In the Mantis holds of Etheryon and Nethyon, deep amidst the trees, there were glades and groves where no sword was ever drawn, where only the mind was unsheathed.

  This was not about gods. Well read, she knew the concept. Even in the Bad Old Days before the revolution, this had not been about gods. Long ago, when her people had been no more than gullible slaves to charlatan wizards, there had been no idols or altars. The imaginary spirits and forces that the Moth-kinden rulers had believed in were invoked and commanded and harnessed: religion but not worship.

  Meditation was different to that old quackery. Nobody doubted how important it was. The tactile evidence was all around them. Meditation was the Ancestor Art, the founding basis of all the insect-kinden. Whether it was meditation to make the Fly-kinden fly, and the Ants live within each other’s minds; to make the Mantids swift, the Spiders subtle, meditation was the Art that lived within them all, waiting to be unlocked.

  Cheerwell Maker was very bad at it. It was not that she was slow, for being slow would probably have helped. She had a quick mind, and it chafed too easily at inaction. No sooner had she approached some contemplative plateau than it buzzed off after some other trail and instead left her uncomfortably aware of her surroundings. Such as now.