Empire in Black and Gold

He wants her for his wretched collection, Thalric finally understood, and it was a sourly amusing thought. The old man had been wise enough, before now, to confine his tastes to imported vintages. To invite this woman into his bed would be a death sentence for him, like as not. The amusing thing was that she had not seen it either. She held on to her pride so hard that she could not grasp the escape being offered to her.

Still. . on meeting Kymene’s eyes, he could see what Ulther so desired there. She was not beautiful in any sense that Thalric usually understood. She was not the scintillating Grief in Chains, or even of the proper imperial proportions of the slave Hreya. In that look, so fierce with lancing disdain, she seemed unattainable, and that was somehow more attractive than mere beauty.

But Ulther was still playing a dangerous game. ‘Should she not have been interrogated immediately, though, concerning her fellows in the resistance?’ Thalric asked.

‘Time enough for that,’ Ulther replied vaguely.

Thalric saw the woman shake her head slightly with a cold smile, and he wondered, Would she talk, even so? Mere pain and the threat of it might be something she was proof against. She was armoured in her belief.

‘Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new sycophant?’ Kymene spoke, and her voice was mocking. ‘You do love to parade them past me.’

‘My dear, this is Captain Thalric of the Rekef Outlander, and he was with me here when I first captured your city,’ Ulther told her. ‘You owe him a debt of gratitude almost as much as you owe me.’

She studied them both, and obviously found nothing to choose between them. ‘Then it shall be paid. Do you want me to curtsey now?’ she said. ‘Or perhaps I should get on my knees, I’m so honoured.’

A soldier came in then, and stood waiting to one side until Ulther went over to him. Thalric watched carefully, thinking, And here it starts. He realized Kymene was watching too. She was kept underground and behind bars, but she was looking out for anything that would help her. He liked to think that in her position he would do the same.

‘What do you mean, gone?’ Ulther suddenly demanded, gripping the soldier by the shoulder strap of his armour. ‘Who took her? Where?’

The soldier’s reply was low, but his glance in Thalric’s direction told it all. Ulther let go of the man suddenly. ‘Get out!’ he snapped, and then turned to his old friend with an expression of forced good humour.

‘Thalric, that fellow had a strange tale to tell me.’

‘Really?’ Internally, Thalric was bracing himself.

‘He said that my Butterfly, my dancer, has been taken from her room, and now nobody knows where she is.’

‘I know,’ Thalric said. ‘I ordered it.’

‘You ordered it.’ The governor let a slow breath pass before coming closer. ‘Somewhat of a liberty, Captain. And why, if I may ask?’

‘You’re right, she’s a remarkable specimen,’ Thalric replied blandly, ‘and it so happens that my future projects west of here could use just such an operative. You know how the Rekef Outlander needs all sorts, all skills. Helleron is in a delicate enough state just now, and she could tip it. I have therefore requisitioned her.’

Ulther’s control was admirable, and he even managed a smile. ‘Requisitioned, is it? I am governor of Myna remember, Thalric. You know this. You are an old friend, but under whose authority, Captain, can you go about requisitioning my possessions?’

‘I am a captain of the Imperial Army, but also a major of the Rekef. My work in the west is Rekef business.’

‘I know you’re bloody Rekef. I directed you at them, in case you’ve forgotten.’

‘Then you should understand. Imperial needs come before personal ones, Governor.’

‘But I hadn’t even. .’ Ulther’s meaty hands crushed the air impotently, and Thalric mentally provided had her yet to finish the sentence.

‘I’m sorry, Governor,’ he said, affecting to sound both businesslike and bored, ‘but she’s quite unique, as you’ve obviously noticed. If I’m to take Helleron it’s a matter of hearts and minds as well as bodies and swords. You can see how she’d be of use to me.’

And he smiled. Ulther was staring at him as though he had turned into a venomous thing — which in a sense he had.

‘I don’t know you,’ the other man said.

‘Well, it has been a long time.’ Thalric met his gaze levelly. ‘You don’t grudge the Empire this small thing, surely?’

And Ulther smiled, although it did not reach his eyes. ‘Not at all, Major, although you. . might just have asked. When, may I ask, shall she be returned to me?’

‘Returned?’ Thalric answered. ‘Impossible to say, although I think it likely that, by the time I’m done with her, she will know more than it is healthy for a slave to know. We must all make sacrifices, Governor, for the Empire’s good.’

Ulther nodded ponderously. ‘Ah, well, that I can understand, Major.’ And he kept the smile as he left to ascend again to the sunlit levels, but Thalric did not want to think what his expression might become after that.

And before he himself followed, he looked again at Kymene, who was studying him carefully. For a second, in her eyes, there was a look almost of complicity. She enjoyed that scene.

He made himself follow Ulther, but he was aware of her eyes following him all the way.

Twenty-six

‘Her name is Kymene,’ Chyses explained. Stenwold, who had heard a lot of Mynan names over the last half- hour, sensed from the way this one was said that it was special.

‘She used to run your cell?’ he guessed. Che and Salma are the priority, he reminded himself, but he was an intelligencer by habit, and thoughts were forming about Mynan resistance. The Empire’s reach was as strong as the platform it reached out from.

‘She is the beacon for the whole resistance,’ Chyses told him. ‘They were trying to catch her for well over a year. She invented the Red Flag: the symbol that strikes fear into the hearts of the Wasps. She is the best of us.’

‘How did they catch her then?’

Chyses smiled sharply. ‘Not with their thick-headed soldiers. The Bloat hired hunters from all over the Empire and one of them got lucky.’

Stenwold had gathered that the ‘Bloat’ was their name for the present governor. ‘And she’s been held for two tendays, now?’

Chyses nodded. ‘And well guarded, deep in the guts of the palace. They think we can’t get to her.’

‘But you can?’ And you can get to Che and Salma remained unsaid, and yet Stenwold felt the thought must be so apparent it must be branded on his face.

‘They built that palace up so fast, just to show us we were conquered.’ Chyses slapped the fist of one hand into the palm of the other, a habit he indulged in a lot. ‘But they didn’t think much on what lay underneath. See this?’ He was indicating the decayed masonry, the lowest layer of stones of their sprawling cellar. ‘There was some city here before we built Myna, before the revolution, and nobody even remembers whose, but they liked their tunnels. The sewers beneath us were their streets. They go right under the palace, under everywhere. That will be our way in.’

‘Sewers?’ Stenwold glanced at Tynisa and Totho, who were listening close by. ‘Lovely.’

His sarcasm passed Chyses by. ‘Our problem is that without Kymene we’re vulnerable, fragmented. If the Bloat were to launch an assault on us now, if he got to know about enough of our safe houses and fallbacks, then we would. .’

‘You’d have a job to hold things together,’ Stenwold finished.