Empire in Black and Gold

was within reach, and she had the hilt in her hand. She slid it from its scabbard.

That woke him, the whisper of steel on leather beside his ear. Even as he jumped she had the blade beneath his chin, drawing a bead of blood as he started. He was a halfbreed, she saw, looked like Beetle and Fly-kinden in there and perhaps more. He stood very still. He only had a knife himself but kept his hands far from it as if to reassure her.

‘Where am I?’ she hissed.

‘Malia’s house,’ he croaked, eyes flicking from her to the blade.

‘And who’s Malia that I should know her?’

‘She’s my chief. She’s important. You don’t mess with her.’ His voice shook as he said it, though. She smiled cruelly.

‘Well maybe I want to give this Malia a message. Maybe you’re the message, what do you think? So tell me something useful.’

‘I–I — I–I don’t know. What do you-? You were just brought in. I don’t know. I just got told to watch you,’ he stammered.

‘Why?’

A woman’s voice, from the doorway: ‘Why talk to the little finger when the face is here?’

Tynisa jumped back, rapier extended in a duellist’s guard. The newcomer was a woman of beyond middle years, greying, but lean and solidly built. She wore the under- and over-robes that the Helleren favoured, but she was Ant-kinden and still retained that race’s warrior stance. Her shortsword stayed in its sheath. Given the confidence in her, it was obviously a pointed statement.

Tynisa slowly lowered the blade until the tip was close to the floor. She could bring it up at a moment’s notice, but for now she wanted to talk. ‘And you’re Malia?’

‘That I am.’ The woman surveyed her dispassionately. ‘You bounced back quickly, child.’ Her voice still had a little of the Ant formality about it.

‘I’m no child.’

‘That remains to be seen. You owe me.’

‘For bed and board?’ Tynisa said contemptuously. ‘What, didn’t you have any stables you could sling me in?’

A quirk at the corner of Malia’s mouth. ‘This is Helleron. Here this is luxury accommodation. You owe me because you killed one of my people.’

‘When?’ Tynisa grasped at those parts of the previous day that still eluded her. ‘When did I?’ Is she with the Empire?

‘Oh, he went for you first, but that makes no difference.’ Malia folded her arms across her chest. ‘He always was a fool, and when you ran in, sword all red, he clearly decided you were for target practice.’

A thought, an image, the scattered shards of the previous day now drifting ever closer. A man pointing a short-bow at her, letting loose an arrow. It had passed across her back, ruffling her cloak, and she had gone for him. She had been moving without thought by then, reflex to reflex.

‘I killed him.’ She had cut the bow in half as he raised it to defend himself, and a twist of the wrist had turned the move into a lunge that had opened his throat.

‘And you injured four others of mine,’ Malia said. ‘They went to help the man you killed. You bloodied them all before one of them got a club against your head. And here you are with your sword pointed at Auntie Malia, to whom you owe so much.’

‘They’re not debts I recognize.’ Another dead man. Tynisa barely felt the weight.

‘If you think I can’t draw sword and kill you, then you had better think again,’ Malia said, in all seriousness. ‘I might be a matron now, but I was a duellist and assassin in my time, and I never gave up the sword habit.’

Tynisa slowly, deliberately, raised the sword until it was directed at her. ‘But?’ she prompted.

Malia’s twitch turned into a full, grudging smile. ‘But I might have other uses for you. Sword’s point, child! Who are you? You raise a stink around Hammerstake Street. You leave a neat set of dead men for the guard to puzzle over. You cross three separate fiefs trailing your bloody sword, and you end up on my back porch brawling with my men. And brawling well, for there’s not one of them who shouldn’t be grateful for the lesson in swordsmanship.’

‘I need to find some friends of mine,’ Tynisa said levelly.

‘As I said, you owe me,’ Malia told her. ‘Now, you can add to your credit, if you want, and I can have people keep an open eye. But you owe me, and I have a use for you.’

Here it comes. ‘And what might that be?’ The slit window would not have fit a Flychild. If she wanted to get out of here the hard way it would have to be through Malia. The woman could have been lying, of course, but Ants were warrior-bred from birth.

‘You owe me,’ Malia repeated. ‘I owe other people in our fief and you’d make a fine gift for them.’

‘Slavery?’ spat Tynisa, and Malia raised a hand to quiet her.

‘You don’t understand where you are or how things work, child, so keep your anger until you can use it. If I had a choice I’d find work for you myself, put you on my books. Teaching sword, perhaps. Or using it. As it is, I think I’ll send your talents up the ladder. I’ll be quits, and you’ll have a better chance to do whatever you need to, so long as you remember that you owe. And when you owe, you do what you’re told.’

‘What’s to stop me just running, as soon as I get the chance?’

Malia nodded. ‘Intelligent questions, good. Firstly, you’d be hunted. Secondly, I’m guessing you are already hunted, and the fief will be able to shelter you if you keep faith with us. Thirdly, if you want to find someone in Helleron, there are a lot of doors to knock on if you’re on your own. Fourth and last, you never know, you might actually like it in the fief. You seem just the type.’

Tynisa lowered the sword again. ‘And what is a fief?’

‘It’s like a family, and a city, and a factory all in one, child,’ Malia said. She turned and began to descend the stairs, and without options Tynisa sheathed her blade, slung the baldric over her shoulder, and followed.

‘A family because you do what your elders tell you, and they take care of you,’ Malia called back to her. ‘A city because there are rulers and subjects, and territory that must be defended. A factory because we’re all so very, very busy making things. Although most of what we make is what other people would call trouble.’

‘You’re a gang then? Criminals!’ Tynisa started.

‘That we are, child. One of a few hundred spread across Helleron, and neither the least nor the greatest. We’re the Halfway House, and I think you’ll fit in just perfectly.’

A rain had swept down off the mountains to attempt the futile task of trying to wash Helleron clean. After it had filtered through the smog of the factories it was greasy on the skin, stinging in the eyes. Che and Salma sheltered in the townhouse’s doorway, and she hung on the bell-rope again, hearing the distant tinkle from within the house.

The slot beside her head flicked open. ‘I told you to go away,’ said the appalled voice of the servant. ‘I shall call the watch.’

‘Please tell Master Monger that I’m here,’ she said. ‘I am his cousin.’

‘Master Monger is not at home to vagrants,’ the servant told her — and this after she and Salma had changed back into their proper clothes. She reflected that if Salma was a vagrant, he was the best-dressed one in the world.

‘But I’m family!’ she insisted.

‘Master Monger is too wise to fall for such a ploy, urchin,’ said the narrow piece of servant she could spy through the slot. ‘I swear that I shall call the watch. Be off with you.’

‘I. .’ A stubborn streak took hold of Che. ‘Hammer and tongs!’ she swore, just like Uncle Stenwold. ‘I am not moving off this doorstep until you fetch Master Elias Monger, and when he finds out how you have treated me, then by all the coin in the mint, he will have you thrashed!’

The silence that followed this outburst was broken at last only by Salma’s quiet chuckle.

‘I should do as she says,’ he confirmed quietly. ‘I would if I were in your shoes.’

The slot slammed shut and they could hear the man pattering off into the house. Elias Monger’s townhouse was not one of the villas on the hill itself, though it was practically at the hill’s foot. Cousin Elias had clearly been doing well for himself, even if his hospitality left something to be desired.