Empire in Black and Gold

Some barb, some unknowing dart in her speech made him flinch as though she had drawn blood ‘Don’t play games with me, girl,’ he warned her. In a detached way she could see the anger rising in him was not anger focused on her, but had been in place before she was even brought in front of him. The entire conversation was taking second place to some other struggle in his mind. He had locked her up, then had her dragged here before him, and he wasn’t even paying proper attention save when some chance word got in the way of his thoughts.

‘Games? Who’s playing games? What’s this then, if not a game of yours?’ she got out. ‘I’m your prisoner. Am I supposed to forget that and just give you my life story? If anyone’s playing games it’s you, Captain. Your whole life must consist of them.’ She was stammering a little, choking on her own boldness. Something she had just said had touched a nerve, made him pause to think. He stared at her with almost desperate loathing.

She had taken enough. She could not stop herself. ‘What’s the matter, Captain?’ she asked, not quite believing that he was letting her get away with it. ‘Maybe you should tell me about it. Maybe that would help, because I have nothing to tell you.’

‘Now is a poor time to discover rebellion,’ he said, his voice taut.

‘Better now than not at all, I think-’

A muscle twitched in his face, and the table exploded. She was flung backwards across the room in a shower of wood shards, striking the wall hard enough to leave her breathless. She saw him stride towards her over the wreckage. The palms of his hands were black with soot, wispy with wood-smoke.

‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ he said, each word through clenched teeth.

‘You can’t blame me,’ she said, gasping, and knew he understood her but did not care.

‘And if I chose to take it out on you, who would stop me?’ he said. He was standing over her now, and his hands were still smoking.

‘What use would. . what good would killing me do for your Empire?’ She had never been really afraid of him — not until now. He had spoken to her previously, and he had been civilized. Now that civility was gone from him. She peered into his Wasp soul with all its hard edges and hungry fires.

His eyes were so wide she could almost see his torment as a living thing. Sparks crackled across his fingers and she hid her face from them.

‘The Empire needs a happy Thalric more than an unhappy Thalric,’ he grated, each word snapped out with all the control he could muster. ‘And right now I think it might make me happier to make a corpse of a Beetle maid who will not talk.’

But he did not and, after a pause, she cautiously looked up at him. His face was still stern, remorseless, and there was no humour there when he said, ‘It is the scourge of my people, Miss Maker, this temper of ours. I have a stronger rein on it than most, but do not presume.’

With shaking hands she reached up, plucked a three-inch-long splinter from her hair. Her heart was still stuttering: he had been so close, was still so close to killing her. ‘Captain Thalric-’ She heard her voice shaking and hated herself for it, hated herself more for the next word. ‘Please listen to me. I don’t know anything you want to know. I don’t know Stenwold’s plans, or where he is now, or what he wants. I don’t know anything that can help you. Can’t you. .’ She got a hold on herself before she actually said it.

As he watched, she rearranged her clothes, brushed the sharp flecks of wood from them. ‘Salma and I,’ she went on, her voice now almost steady, ‘we are just ordinary students of the Great College, and we have stumbled into something monstrous. What harm could we be to your Empire? You only. . frustrate yourself, in this questioning. How would it hurt your Empire if you freed us, aside from saving it the cost of feeding us?’

He barked a laugh at that suggestion, but his face was still barren as the Dryclaw Desert, when she dared to look at it.

‘Miss Maker, you are Stenwold’s creature, and he is the Empire’s enemy. Whatever meagre help you could render to him, you would. Rather than let you loose to cause trouble I would have you killed without a thought. In fact, if there were even fifty-one out of a hundred parts of you that opposed the Empire I would thrust a knife beneath your chin rather than set you free.’ He turned away. ‘You are lucky, then, that you are still useful to us as a source of information.’

‘And after that?’ she said, forcing herself to her feet. ‘And what about after that? What hope have I then?’

At the word, ‘hope’ he laughed at her, shaking his head, half turning away, and the look on his face — of disdain, derision — was such that she attacked him.

She did not know how she did it, only that she believed him, then. She was a dead woman whether now or later, a woman totally without hope. Without any premeditation she went for his knife hilt and found her hand closed around it. Her other fist cracked against his jaw as she drew back to stab.

He had a hand on her knife wrist instantly, and for a second they swayed back and forth, as she used both hands to try and force the blade into him. He was far stronger than she was, however. She saw the muscles cord on his bare arms, and he was now pushing her back until she slammed into the wall. The knife fell from her fingers, ringing in her ears as it struck the floor, and he had a hand under her chin, where he had said he would stab her. She felt his thumb and fingers dig in there, and waited for the crackle and sear of the fire.

But it did not come. His temper, that had been only a scratch-depth from the surface a moment ago, had not stirred all this while. In fact, when she opened her eyes, he was even smiling slightly. She was horribly aware of how close he was to her, how strong.

‘Very good,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘And what then? My guards are outside the door. My people are all over the palace. My Empire owns this city. And what hope, you say? No hope whatsoever, even if you had it in you to kill me.’

‘Perhaps that’s all I hoped,’ she said, a whisper too, but there was something else in his eyes, now, and she wondered if she imagined that she saw respect there.

‘Hope only,’ he said, ‘that when we are done with you, the Empire can use one more live slave rather than one more dead Beetle. There is your hope, Miss Maker.’

‘Threats, still,’ she murmured.

He released her suddenly, as simply as that, reclaiming his knife from the floor and scabbarding it. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said, the epitome of calm itself now. His demeanour admitted nothing of the smashed table, or her attack on him. ‘Threats oft repeated become dull edged with overuse. Enough threats, then. I’ll send you back to your cell now, and next time I call for you, I promise, there will be no threats.’

The guards took her back to the cell, where she found Salma sleeping fitfully, waking up and thrashing about, and then fighting for the blank respite of sleep again.

Tomorrow night they will do it, she told herself. I must be strong.

She wondered how strong she would have to be to resist the tortures of the Empire. And I am such a very strong person, by nature. I have such famous reserves of strength and willpower, she taunted herself bitterly.

She clutched at her knees and shivered, and could not sleep. When the tread of the guards outside signalled a new day, it gave her no joy, and when the vile food was passed in to them, she could not eat it. When the night comes, they will come for me.

Salma tried to comfort her, but he had only hollow words. What could he say?

And, of course, they came for her in daylight. This was the Empire, and torturers were not skulking figures of moonlight and darkness but working men for the working day. She was hauled from Salma’s side in mid-morning, and she knew this time it would be different.

Salma must have known as well. He actually tried to obstruct them. His arms were still bound, even though he could have flown nowhere. They had only untied him for a short space each day so as to leave him the use of them. Salma had charged them with his shoulder and they had knocked him down and kicked him until Che, through her own struggles, forced them to turn their attention to her.

Previously she had always been taken up, towards the sun. Now they just hauled her further along the corridor. She had a glimpse of several other cell doors like theirs, each with a hatch and a grille. Some were open, some locked against other prisoners or perhaps against no one. She had a brief glimpse of an airier cell, its bars all the way from floor to ceiling, leaving the occupant exposed to all passers-by. A woman watched her pass, a local girl, hands gripping the bars.

There was a single room at the end there, but with no hatch on the door. Che began struggling, but the two