Empire in Black and Gold

just wanted to talk. . but if you don’t want to. .’

She was looking out of the window again. ‘I can’t understand the man,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe he’d just go off like this. He thinks they can’t harm him. If they catch him now, they’ll kill him. The Wasps have no patience with escaped slaves. We witnessed that ourselves.’

Silently, Totho sat down close to her, within arm’s reach.

‘And all for a woman he’s barely met,’ she added. ‘I know I shouldn’t believe this but. . it really is like he’s under a spell or something.’

Quite, Totho thought, then said slowly, ‘There are ways to. . catch someone’s attention that aren’t Art or magic. The Spider-kinden are renowned for it, weaving their webs, making people believe all sorts of things. . As are other kinden, too. .’ He made this last observation as pointedly as he could but she did not take the hint.

‘I don’t care about the woman at all, but I hope he’s safe. He never did take things seriously enough.’

‘Che-’

‘Yes?’ She turned to him. There were spots of damp across her face and for a moment he thought she had been crying. It was just the rain, though, blown inside past the lop-sided shutters.

‘I. . When you were captured. . We’ve known. . For a long time, we’ve known each other. .’ His voice, to his own ears, sounded like someone else’s, some stranger rehearsing a conversation like an actor going over his words. But this was the performance. This was him. ‘What do you think of me, Che?’

She blinked at him, and she smiled slightly, and his heart leapt, but the hook had not caught. He was no Spider-kinden, no sly Moth mystic, to set such snares.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re right. You did as much as anyone, and I’ve been so wrapped up in myself, I never thanked you. For coming to rescue me.’

‘It’s not-’

‘Totho, I know you sometimes feel like an outsider. I really don’t care about who your parents are. You’ve always been a good friend, ever since in Mechanics when you helped me with my notes. I know sometimes you’ve not felt right, what with Salma and Tynisa fighting so well, and being. . being who they are. Believe me, I’ve felt the same. You can’t imagine how it felt, growing up with Tynisa there and always in her shadow, but it’s different now — that’s all behind us. You’re as much a part of this as anyone.’

‘But-’

‘But you’re more than that, to me,’ she told him, and he found that he suddenly couldn’t breathe. It was not hope that clutched him so. He felt the words about to emerge as though he was himself a seer.

‘You’re like a brother,’ she said. ‘You’re family, almost. Because you’ve always been there.’

He wanted to say more. He wanted to warn her about Achaeos, to demand, in fact, that she send the man away. He wanted to shout at her, or get his crossbow and put three bolts into the Moth-kinden, wherever he was, and then demand to be taken seriously.

But her words had stripped his strength from him. They had pierced him like knives. So he left her there, still awaiting Salma’s return.

Thirty-three

And there Che waited, with the rain slanting across the ruined window, for Salma to come home.

We held on to each other so long. All through their joint captivity. And now we’re free he’s off on his own, doing mad things.

This was only a ladleful of the whole bowl of worries and thoughts that beset her. There was Achaeos, of course, and he frightened her because he was different, alien, and because of the way she felt when he looked at her or touched her hand. Beyond that there was all that Tynisa had confessed: how the haughty Mantis-kinden killer was not only, somehow, an old friend of her uncle’s, but Tynisa’s own father. That Tynisa, the golden child, was a halfbreed after all. Through the fog of this, Totho’s words had barely penetrated.

And then she gasped, and almost let out such a loud cry that the entire Empire would hear, because there was suddenly a bedraggled figure atop a building across the square, and it was Salma. She saw him wearily let himself down, half-climbing, half-flying, and dash across the square out of the rain, and she hurried down to the ground floor to meet him.

‘Salma!’ She hugged him. ‘You’re safe!’ And then, a moment later, ‘You didn’t find her.’

‘I know where she is.’ Salma looked exhausted. ‘Can someone get me dry clothes, do you think? I’ve been playing dodge with the Wasp patrols for far too long in this foul weather. I think in the end they gave up because, no matter what they did once they caught me, they’d never make me feel more uncomfortable than I already am.’

By the time he had some dry clothes on, made of the same Mynan homespun that they were all wearing bar Tisamon, Stenwold had come over to him.

‘The rain’s easing. Dusk’s on its way. I want to be moving out when it gets here.’

‘No argument here,’ replied Salma. ‘This is a good city to be out of.’

‘We’ll collect the horses beyond the city wall,’ Stenwold explained.

‘We’re meeting your messenger there. The one going to Tark?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’ll be going there too.’

For a moment neither Stenwold nor Che realized exactly what he meant.

‘I don’t need you in Tark,’ Stenwold explained eventually, but Che was wiser than he was in this.

‘The Wasps have taken her away with the army,’ she said. ‘Grief in Chains.’

‘In a sense. She’s gone with them, anyway.’ In his mind, Salma recalled the parting words of the Wasp artificer. As Salma had stepped back onto the balcony, Aagen had said to him, ‘She has changed her name, of course. They do that often, her kinden.’

‘What name does she go by now?’ Salma had asked.

‘Now? Who can say?’ There was a twitch to the man’s expression, some melancholy emotion rising behind his eyes. ‘When she left here she called herself “Aagen’s Joy”.’

And Salma realized that in all his life, privileged as it was, he had never really known envy. Not until then.

‘I will go with your man to Tark,’ he explained to Stenwold, in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘If you have work for me there, then give it to me and I’ll be your agent. But it’s to Tark that I’m going.’

Stenwold sucked his breath through his teeth like a tradesman costing a job. ‘I can’t change your mind in this? Tark will be more dangerous by far.’

Salma just shook his head.

‘Then yes, you can do my work there. Give me a short while to think. By the time we set out, I’ll have it.’

He turned, leaving only Che’s horrified look.

‘Salma, it’s an army, a whole army of Wasps,’ she hissed. ‘They’ll kill you if they catch you. Torture you, perhaps.’

‘Then they had better not catch me.’ He opened his arms to her, held her against his chest. ‘We’ve been through the wars, you and I, but we’ll have our time together, when this is done. I’ll keep my skin safe and I’ll trust you to keep yours. I’ll be all right.’

There was much packing and preparation for them to do, and Kymene’s people were checking their route out of the city. For those without a mind to stuff bags or pore over maps it was a time of unexpected idleness. Perhaps to avoid Che’s recriminations, Salma had taken himself high up, to the top floors of a derelict building where the boards were rotten and the footing unsure. In stalking him here, Tynisa had been as silent and stealthy as when she and Tisamon had mounted their midnight raid on Asta, but still, somehow, he knew that she was coming.

‘I’ve never been a man for arguing with friends,’ he said softly. She had got here partly through her natural