Empire in Black and Gold

He shrugged carelessly. ‘They’re on the maps, for what it’s worth. What about your maps?’

‘Oh, commerce. Merchants go everywhere and sell to everyone. Our maps have the caravan routes picked out in red. We have treaties and trade deals. We like pieces of paper with signatures on them. But most of all we expect people to come to us, since Collegium is the centre of the world as far as we’re concerned. I’ll tell you about Doctor Thordry,’ she said. ‘That should explain the Collegium attitude to explorers, anyway.’ And she did so, spinning the tale out for as long as she could, aware that the other slaves in the cage, piqued by Salma’s dismissive words, were all listening now.

Thordry had been an artificer of a century ago, around the very beginnings of man-made flight. He and his manservant had set out in a flying machine of his own invention and they had gone south, across the sea. It had been an ingenious piece of work, his machine. Che had seen it, even run her hands along the brass-bound wood of its hull in the Collegium Museum of Mechanical Science. An airship with a clockwork engine that Thordry and his companion had wound each day by letting out a weight on a cord, which they had then hauled in by hand.

Thordry had been gone and almost forgotten for five years when he had surfaced again. He came back with maps and stories of lands across the sea, none of which were believed and some of which were simply unbelievable. He had spent two years wandering as a self-appointed, itinerant ambassador for Collegium, and then set sail for home. His navigation skills, and ill winds, had landed him up in the Spiderlands, and he had spent a further year there as a fashionable talking point before seeing that his popularity was on the wane, and setting off for home.

But on his arrival, the triumphant explorer had not received the reception he had been expecting. He had not been laughed at, quite, but the Great College virtually ignored him, and to the populace he was a celebrated lunatic. His stories of distant lands were treated as just that, stories. When they were printed it was as The Marvellous and Fantastical Adventures of Doctor Thordry and his Man. His maps, that connected with no land known, were quietly shelved.

‘And that,’ Che finished, ‘is how Lowlanders treat explorers. Which is why we have an Empire on our doorstep that’s sharpening its swords as we speak, and yet everyone’s talking very loudly amongst themselves to block out the sound of it.’

‘Helleron can’t exactly fool itself. Helleron must have sold half the weapons that were used against my own people in the war,’ Salma said, and she snorted.

‘Oh, I think we’ve seen quite enough of Helleron and the Empire in bed together,’ she said bitterly, and to her surprise there was a current of agreement among the other slaves.

There might even have been a dialogue, then, the start of community between them. The reminders of their state were never far away, though. Even at that moment the slaver automotive passed another string of luckless captives. It was a caravan of the taloned, white-skinned race that someone identified as Scorpion-kinden. They had a string of pack-mules, and a pair of mule-sized scorpions loaded with baggage, but the pick of their trading stock was trudging along, tied to the end of their chain of animals. They were gaunt, malnourished, coated with dust, their clothes gone to rags that could not hide their lash-marks. Che tried to decide if they were escapees or criminals or honest men and women, but she realized soon enough that all they were was slaves.

Twenty-one

Two lamps, turned low, lit the quartermaster’s quarters, and the quartermaster had prudently agreed to absent himself. It was only a fraction after dusk when Thalric made his entrance, and yet there they were, already waiting for him. Four of them, all Rekef, no doubt, though he only recognized the one.

‘Colonel Latvoc.’ He saluted, which was something he had not needed to do for some time. The greying Wasp-kinden, dressed in loose and nondescript civilian clothes, gestured for him to find a seat.

‘Major Thalric,’ he said, his face giving no hints, ‘this is Lieutenant-Auxillian Odyssa.’ His moving finger picked out a Spider woman lounging against a sack of dates, which she pillaged occasionally. ‘And Lieutenant te Berro,’ the Fly-kinden who had summoned him. The Rekef, particularly the Rekef Outlander, made much use of foreign recruits. Their promotion prospects were limited.

The fourth man was a Wasp, thin faced and patient looking. He watched Thalric carefully. The fact that he had neither been named nor referred to was not lost on Thalric.

‘You seem nervous, Major,’ said Latvoc.

‘Not at all, sir.’ Thalric sat down, feeling his heart stutter. He was sure that his veneer of calm was fooling nobody.

‘Very well, in accordance with our charter I declare that we, in this room, are the Rekef presence in Asta, and that our decisions made here shall bind the Empire, and be for the Emperor.’ The formality brushed aside, the old man smiled. ‘We have a problem, Major, that you can help us with.’

‘Of course, sir.’ And is it me, this problem? He had seen what happened when the Rekef got its sting into someone. There was no mercy or kindness. He had himself been its agent, and he had known Rekef officers to fall from grace in the past. The Rekef watched the Empire and the army, and the Rekef also watched the Rekef.

But I have done nothing! And he knew it would not matter.

‘You are familiar with a Colonel Ulther, are you not?’ Latvoc had let him stew for long enough, it seemed.

‘Colonel Ulther? I knew a Major Ulther, some years ago, sir.’

‘The very man. You knew him well, did you not?’

‘He was my commanding officer. In the regular army, that is.’ Thalric’s first promotion: it had been in Myna, after the taking of the city, and it had been just before the Rekef had decided he would best serve the Empire from within their cloak of secrecy. ‘I haven’t seen him for some years, but I would say that I knew him well. I heard that he had governance of Myna some while back.’

‘Just so, in which position he remains.’ Latvoc looked over to the Spider, Odyssa, who took up the thread.

‘Would you say that you respected Ulther, Major?’ she asked.

‘Yes, when I knew him.’

‘Did you like him?’ He felt her Art at the edges of his mind, trying to draw him out, seeking weakness.

‘I respected him. As an officer. This was years ago and-’

‘That is understood, Major. When you were raised to the Rekef, you did not note any concerns about him?’

‘I had no concerns.’ He felt a sheen of sweat start on his forehead. Something had gone wrong with Ulther, apparently. What remained to be seen was whether someone had decided that his, Thalric’s, time in the Rekef’s favour was over, and was using his past association to hammer in the spike.

‘There will be war with the Lowlander cities soon,’ said Latvoc slowly. ‘This is not news to you, I am sure. You have been faithfully ensuring that the path to victory for the armies of the Empire will be as smooth as possible.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It has come to the attention of the Rekef that others are not so dedicated to their duty,’ Latvoc explained.

Odyssa glanced at Latvoc, and then at the unnamed, silent man, who nodded ever so slightly. Thalric found that he was flexing his fingers as if freeing his palms for battle, and forced himself to relax.

‘We have received some reports from agents in Myna that the governance of that city is subject to certain irregularities,’ said Latvoc. ‘Supplies and manufacture that is required for the Lowlands campaign is slow in coming and short in measure. It may seem trivial, and no doubt to the perpetrators it is intended to seem so, but an army cannot march without rations, cannot fight without weapons. Small acts mount up and become large ones, so an army that should have been in readiness at Asta is behind schedule, missing everything from boots to hard tack to spare parts for the fliers.’

He seemed to be waiting for Thalric to comment, but Thalric had nothing to say, was waiting still for the