Empire in Black and Gold

magnates and Spider slavemongers and renegade Ant weapons dealers and made polite conversation with them. He had talked business in exclusive clubs and richly decked chop houses and brothels that offered girls of every kinden he could name. For a military man with an active mind he was required to remind himself of his duty at least once a day.

He was going to miss it all. He knew that the Empire’s rule, when brought to this place, would crush much that made it what it was. His trembling subordinates would never have guessed that his iron reputation would allow for such regret.

Or for worry, come to that, but Thalric was a worrier by nature and that was why he was so good at his job. By worrying about everything, he allowed very little past him, and right then he was worrying about his contact. His contact had worried him for twenty years now, ever since they had started their unnatural association.

Thalric stood up, tipped the wink to the host’s boy and went up the stairs to the back room. It would be dark, he knew, since Scylis did not like being seen, and anyway Thalric had decided it would be better not to see whatever face the man might present to him. A master of disguise he had told himself. A clever man with masks and cosmetics. As the history of their dealings had been written, such assurances to himself had begun to ring hollow.

He had a particular fear — for fear was another thing he owned that his men would not guess at — that, should he suddenly unveil a lamp or light a candle at one of these meetings, the face he would see facing him would be his own.

He could see the dark shape of the man by the open window. Always cautious, was Scylis. Thalric took his time, sitting down, getting comfortable, sipping the last of his wine.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what went wrong?’

Scylis made an annoyed sound. ‘What went wrong is that you might as well employ clowns and circus freaks as your soldiers, and your local talent is even worse.’ The voice was crisp, sarcastic, accentless. ‘They closed the trap too soon, and your children meanwhile made their farewells and left. I’d advise you to discipline your men but there aren’t that many of them that even managed to walk away alive.’

Thalric nodded. His four errant ‘scholars’, as he had been briefed, were turning into quite the death squad. ‘Afraid for your life, Scylis?’

The hidden man made a hiss of disdain. ‘If you had really wanted them dead, I would have killed them. As it was, I played my part. Do not think you will now withhold payment.’

‘Ever the mercenary.’

‘I could argue quite persuasively that being motivated by personal wealth is nobler than by imperialistic conquest,’ replied Scylis’s dry, amused voice. ‘However, my rates for scholarly debate are the same as those for my other services, so I doubt you would want to retain me as a pedagogue.’ He loved the sound of his own voice, Thalric knew. Not that he talked too much, but each word came out finely crafted and with relish. Yet he could sum up what he really knew about Scylis in seconds, and spend days over what he did not. From the shadow’s build, and the voice, he had decided that his catspaw was Spider-kinden, but Scylis could be Scyla for all he knew, and neither of those need be the agent’s real name.

‘You’ll be paid,’ Thalric said, ‘but could you impersonate any of them? Did you get a good enough look?’

‘It would be by appearance only,’ said Scylis. ‘I didn’t speak long enough to get to know them. Not like I did with Bolwyn.’

Thalric considered Bolwyn. He had no doubt that Scylis had questioned him most persuasively, before the man’s death, in order to assume that role. He felt no regrets about him. It was for the Empire.

‘It may yet come to that,’ he told the shadow. ‘In the meantime, here is your price.’ A bag of coins, gold Helleron Centrals, clinked on the floor. ‘I’ll have work for you soon enough. Word by the usual route.’

‘A pleasure as always, Major Thalric,’ came Scylis’s reply.

‘Captain Thalric,’ the Wasp corrected.

‘Come now, would you respect me if I could be fooled by your games? We have danced, you and I, and I know you.’

A characteristic Spider expression, and Thalric decided it was genuine, rather than a part the man was playing.

‘You know me, do you?’

‘I know your subordinates fear you, which is no strange thing in an officer, but your superiors fear you even more. Shall I utter the dreaded name and see what it conjures?’

‘Best you don’t,’ Thalric advised, as it came unbidden into his mind: Rekef. The army held a blade to the throat of the world, but he stood with his blade at the throat of the army, for the Emperor would tolerate no resistance, within or without. ‘Much more talk of that, Scylis, and even you might outlive your usefulness.’

Scylis made a dismissive sound, but he obviously gave some weight to the warning, because he changed the subject smoothly. ‘Did your men tell you about the Spider-kinden duellist? Quite the fencer to watch.’

Thalric nodded. ‘Yes they’re a proper bag of surprises.’ He stood up, feeling abruptly weary. Scylis always seemed to be mocking him, and he wished that he had some other agent who could do what this man appeared to be able to do, however it was that he managed it. ‘If you come across any information, any leads, you know I’ll pay for it,’ he said, as he left the room.

For the Empire. That was the rod at his core. No matter how much Helleron might tempt him with its decadent, delectable pleasures, when it was for the Empire he put all that aside and knew neither regret, worry nor fear. He was not a bad man, in his own estimation. No, he was a loyal man, and for an imperial citizen that was the crowning virtue. When the order had come to him, during the last war, to kill the three infant children of Prince Felise Dael, he had carried the knife himself to end the noble line, and known no remorse.

This thought stopped him on the stairs, for he had children himself, hundreds of miles away, whom he had barely ever seen since they were born. A wife he no longer wrote to. The fear of his underlings and the loathing of his superiors. Coded orders on scrolls scheduled for burning.

Their mother had been there, when he killed those three children, held restrained between two of his men. It was not that he had forced her to watch, simply that she had been in the nursery when he arrived. Standing on the stairs in the Grain Shipment Taverna he found that he wished she had been taken away.

For the Empire. It made him feel stronger, just saying the words to himself, but sometimes he felt as though he was turning into something like Scylis: masks and masks and masks, until he could hold them all up before him, and not know which was truly his own face.

Tynisa awoke slowly, but cautiously. She was somewhere she did not recognize. She could feel it from the bed, the sounds around her, the very smell. It could mean many things, from a kidnap to a successful liaison. She stayed quite still, allowing herself to come to without the world becoming aware of it.

A lumpy straw mattress and a sour, stale smell. If this was a liaison then she was certainly slumming it.

Bolwyn’s betrayal! It was all she could do not to open her eyes, to leap off the mattress. Bolwyn’s betrayal, then dashing for the alley mouth, two dead Wasps on her slope-shouldered conscience that seemed to be able to shrug them off so easily, but where was she now?

Her head ached abominably. She must have struck it on something.

She had got out into the street. More Wasps had been coming, cutting furrows through the crowd. Her bloody sword had been like a talisman to clear the way for her. She had tried to cut her way back, find Che and Salma, but there were Wasps and town militia approaching, and she had been driven further and further.

She had been exhausted. She had run and run and Helleron had always been there. In the end she had been running to escape the city itself, and failed.

It had consumed her.

So, she was in its bowels. With the most careful of movements, eyes still tight shut, she felt for her blade. Gone. She wore nothing but a shift. Where had she run to? Her mind simply did not have the answers.

It was time. She finally opened her eyes.

On a filthy mattress, covered by a stained sheet, in some tiny room with one slit window.

There was a chair across from her, near the doorless doorway. A small man was dozing in it, and carelessly slung over its back-

She was on her feet before she could stop herself, but silently, silent as her kind could be. In two steps she