Empire in Black and Gold

bandsaw, a set of optic lenses and a punch-press. It was almost like coming home.

‘I took you for the type,’ his host remarked, and Totho snapped from his reverie. In his fascination he had almost forgotten the man existed.

‘Thank you for. .’ He had decided to trust this man, and then, turning to look at him, he choked on his words. Scuto had cast his cloak back and he was indeed wearing armour, but it was an old leather breastplate that had been crudely cut to fit him. The rest of his shape was entirely his own.

As a child back in Collegium, Totho had watched puppet shows on occasion, and even then he had been more interested in how it was done than in the stories and jokes. There had been one puppet that turned up in most of them which was known as the Malefactor and existed to get other puppets into trouble and so start off the plot. It had a great hooked nose that almost met its upward-curving chin, and Scuto looked just like that long-remembered manikin. Between nose and chin his mouth appeared as a crooked line in skin that was nut-brown and slightly shiny, and above the nose his eyes were small and suspicious. He was frankly hideous. It was not even the face that made him so, or the hunched back, for he bristled everywhere with curving spikes. There were small ones the size of fish hooks, and others as long as knife blades, and they sprouted from him at random and all over. His breastplate, his very garments, were roughly cut to avoid these, but still his tunic was darned a hundred times over, and ripped even so. It was a wonder, Totho thought helplessly, that this man had not cut himself to ribbons.

‘Yeah, well,’ Scuto said sourly. ‘You ain’t a picture yourself, halfbreed.’ He shuffled over to one of the benches and put down his crossbow. It was a sleek repeater with a high magazine at the top, holding ten quarrels at least.

‘I–I’m sorry but. .’ Even the sight of the crossbow could not keep Totho’s attention off the man himself.

‘But what, halfway? I’m a pureblood, me.’ Scuto’s smile showed barbed snaggle-teeth. ‘You don’t get so many of my kind down here, but the Empire knows us. They can’t stand us. Wonder why. Thorn Bug-kinden, that’s me, so live with it.’

‘You mean there’s. .’

‘More of us?’ Scuto actually cackled, which improved his appearance not one bit. ‘Way north of here, boy, there’s more of us than anyone could sensibly want. And you know the real killer? There ain’t one of us quite like the other. You look on me, and you see a real ugly bug. Well that’s what I see in the mirror, boy, and that’s what I see when I look at all my folk.’

Totho nodded. ‘I think I can. . understand that.’

‘Bet you can, you being a hybrid boy and all.’ Scuto looked him up and down, from a vantage point focused around Totho’s chest. ‘So, you going to admit to being one of Stenwold Maker’s little helpers?’

‘I suppose I am.’ At this point it didn’t seem that there was much point denying it.

‘That bag there says you’re an artificer, boy. You just carrying it for someone else, or can you do something useful with your life?’

‘I’ve received my accredits from the Great College,’ Totho said with pride.

‘Don’t mean squat to me, boy. Till you show me you can do something, you ain’t no artificer to me.’

‘Oh really?’ Totho heaved his bag onto a bench and began rifling through it. ‘How do you keep all this stuff here anyway? You couldn’t keep it secret. They’d. . hear you milling through the walls. Why hasn’t it been stolen or something?’

Scuto spat, not as an insult, Totho guessed, but some local way of showing emphasis.

‘Listen, boy, in this neighbourhood I’m the man. That means half the eyes and spies out there are on my books. That means there are swords and crossbows out there that point where I tell them, and when I ask it, I can get a real doctor to come out here who knows he’ll be safe and get properly paid. It all adds up, because anyone out there who means me ill will run foul of the locals unless he’s got a damn army, believe you me. What with all that and your man Maker’s work to do, it’s a wonder I find time for my actual occupation.’

‘Which is artificing.’ Totho pulled a device from his bag and handed it over.

‘That it is.’ Scuto took the air-battery in his thorny hands and squinted at it. His look was suspicious at first, then surprised and at last appreciative. ‘Not bad work, boy. Very neat, very small. You’ve got good hands there. Pistons, is it? For powering engines?’

‘I was going to use it for a weapon. I. . like weapons,’ Totho said awkwardly.

‘Not a lad your age that doesn’t,’ said Scuto, grinning. ‘This has potential. If Stenwold’s work leaves you any time free, I’d like to see what you do with it.’

‘Stenwold’s work?’ Totho’s instant smile suddenly soured. ‘What happened with your man?’

Scuto grimaced. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I do! Three of my friends are still out there, if they haven’t already been caught.’ He bit his lip. ‘I should never have left them. I thought they’d be right behind me. And all because your man sold us to the Wasps!’

‘No he didn’t,’ Scuto said, but he was looking down at his hands as they toyed with the air-battery.

‘Then how do you explain what happened? He led us right into an ambush!’

‘No he didn’t,’ said Scuto again. ‘On account of this morning I fished his body out of the reagent vats in the factory right behind us. Someone had dumped the corpse for a quick get-rid-of job, but picked the wrong vat.’

‘This morning? But-’

‘Oh I know, boy.’ When Scuto shrugged, the spines rippled across his shoulders and back again like grass in the wind. ‘I was watching at Benevolence Square, and I tracked you from there. I saw the bastard, and for sure, it was Bolwyn, a man I’ve known for three years. And yet his body’s in the poorgrave five streets from here, and has been since near dawn.’ The Thorn Bug bared his teeth again. ‘Beats me, boy. Beats me.’

Eleven

It was one of the better tavernas of middle Helleron. Well appointed, its upper windows at least gave a view of the slopes where the gleaming white villas of the wealthy held sway. The service was known to be good, the host friendly and the watch were slipped enough coins to have them come running at the hint of any trouble. Most of all, though, the Grain Shipment Taverna was discreet. When Thalric entered, tipping his broad-brimmed hat to the host, the wide-waisted Beetle-kinden just nodded. Thalric was able to find a table, lean back in his chair, and in a short while the host’s boy was at his elbow with a bowl of watered wine and the murmured message that the back room would be ready for him any time he wished.

Thalric felt no desire to hurry, though. He was not looking forward to this meeting. Behind him his two bodyguards had taken up positions beside the wall, keen eyed and, regrettably, looking like nothing so much as a pair of on-duty soldiers. They knew, of course, that if they got it wrong, if they chanced to be looking left when the action went right, then there would be no excuses. Not with Captain Thalric. He had a reputation that put men on edge all the way up and down the ladder of rank. In fact he was the very terror of the outlander Wasp war effort just now.

He looked at his reflection in the wine, wondering how much the dark liquid was hiding of the lines the last few years had put on his face. The final year of the Dragonfly war had been a tough assignment: Thalric and his picked men behind enemy lines, and fighting a cat-and-mouse war with the Commonweal’s own Mercers, their heroes of covert war. When the word had come about rebellion flaring in Maynes, he had been relieved to be recalled to deal with it. Then the Empire’s eye had turned west, and he had been sent to Helleron.

He felt as though he was already at war with Helleron, for the call of duty fought a nightly battle with his own desires, and did not always come away the utter victor. Imperial cities were simply not like this. Firstly, imperial cities were actually governed. Helleron had its council of the fat and wealthy, it was true, but Thalric had seen the city from all sides and he knew that, if it was governed at all, it actually governed itself. It was ruled through a thousand small concerns, ten thousand petty greeds, by gangs, factory magnates, artificer-lords, black marketeers and, of course, foreign agents. More, this was accepted, and even intended, by its people. It was all a great, sprawling, grasping chaos, the absolute anathema of the Empire’s iron rule, and Thalric found he rather enjoyed it. His line of duty, the sinuous line he was reeling through the fabric of Helleren society, had led him to many places that the Empire had not shown him. He had been to the theatre to watch a riotous play that openly derided the very people paying for the privilege of watching, and yet was applauded for it. He had gone to dinner with Beetle