Empire in Black and Gold

The blade was gone from his throat, so suddenly that for a second he thought she must have rammed it home. ‘I don’t care whether it’s politics or paid, whether he slept with your woman or muddied your name, or whether you just want to see what colour his fat liver is. I give you your life, Captain Thalric. Now let’s see what you do with it.’

And with that she was off, her supporters dashing after her, leaving Thalric fingering the shallow graze on his neck.

There was a pressure building above them, they knew. It was composed of a large number of Wasps who, for now at least, were on the wrong trail, but would realize their error soon enough. As they left Kymene and her guard, their pace quickened and quickened. They had done everything save what they had come to do. The last sands were teetering in the hourglass.

‘There!’ Totho said, for there were more doors, more cells ahead. There were more guards, too. A pair of them had come out into the corridor, Wasps in light striped armour. One of them was so astounded by the sight bearing down on them that he just gaped, but the other one cried the alarm.

Tynisa was on them even with the release of their first sting, and she felt the heat of the blast wash past her face. He had not drawn his sword, that man, falling back on Wasp-Art to save him, and she made him pay for that by slipping her blade around the side of his armour plates. The other man had a sword ready but, as he tried to use it against her, Chyses had slammed into him and the two of them grappled fiercely on the ground. Tynisa was about to finish the fight for him, but Totho’s warning shout made her start back. A third man had come out by the same way, and this one was something more. He wore heavy armour of the sort called sentinel-mail, with plate and chain all over that her blade would not pierce, and a helm that left only a slit for the wearer’s eyes. For all that metal weight he came out fast, and he had a long-shafted glaive in his hands, its swordhead lunging towards her. He almost took her, too. She misjudged the weapon’s reach, and what had seemed a safe distance brought the weapon’s point dancing right before her eyes the next moment, so that she had to fall backwards to avoid it.

She heard the harsh ratchet of Totho’s crossbow, and saw the man twist at the next moment. One bolt stuck in, hanging limply from the chain mail, but two rebounded back from the man’s curved shoulder-guard and helm.

There were other guards following behind him now, a pair of them emerging to pause and stare in shock at the fight. The sentinel drew back his glaive to spit her, and she scuttled back across the floor, seeing one of Achaeos’s arrows break across the man’s breastplate.

Tisamon!

But Tisamon was behind them, still covering their retreat.

The sentinel had now stepped right over Chyses and his opponent, driving for her with the polearm. Tynisa stepped aside and lunged, trying for his throat or else the eyeslit, but he swayed back and her blade bent dangerously against his gorget. Then the haft of the polearm slammed her into the wall, driven with all the strength of a man who has lived in such armour for many years.

Chyses meanwhile had finished his man, but was caught between the sentinel’s back and the two new soldiers. They were in some quick debate, though, and even despite her bruised ribs Tynisa wondered why they were not attacking. Chyses took his chance, and lunged at the sentinel from behind, slamming his dagger into him with all the strength he possessed. It bit into the chain mail beneath the backplate and must have done some work because a muffled roar rose from within the helm.

Then Chyses suddenly had the iron-shod butt of the glaive across his jaw. He spun back against the wall, leaving his dagger in place, and Tynisa jabbed forward again. She got her opponent’s throat, but there was chain mail even there, and leather beneath it. Her sword bit and then bowed, but she put all her strength into it with a desperate shout.

The blade skidded from the mail and she slammed into the man himself. The sharp curves of her own sword’s guard scored a line across her face below one eye and the sentinel fell back against the corridor wall, driving Chyses’ dagger inches deeper into the small of his back.

And then she saw the two soldiers come to a decision at last as they drew blades and headed off in the opposite direction, towards the cells.

They were going to kill the prisoners, and she knew without doubt that those same prisoners must be Salma and Che.

The sentinel roared and hurled her away with the shaft of his glaive as he struggled back from the wall.

Tisamon! she thought again, but there was no Tisamon. There was only her.

Twenty-nine

He tried to tell the first soldiers he saw that there were slaves loose, prisoners freed. The men backed away from him, staring at his face and his bloody tunic, enough to make him wonder what rumours had been spread about him to anticipate his demise. They would not even stop to listen to him. Deeper in, there were guards who tried to bar his way, heedless of his warnings. He stared them down. He did not need to summon up the name of the Rekef, for te Berro’s agents had done their work well. He was known. It would be a loyal soldier that barred the Rekef’s path and it seemed that Ulther himself no longer inspired such loyalty. The barriers that the governor had put up parted before Thalric: the guards continued staring straight ahead as though he was not there. He hurried on towards the harem.

And it was a harem: the word used amongst the servants and soldiers was not just hyperbole. Ulther had adopted his design and intent from the decadent excesses of the Spiderlands: a large, many-alcoved room at the deep heart of the palace, windowless and lit only by the leaping flames of sconces. The alcoves and the outer edges of the room were strewn with cushions providing the only resting place for the score or so of women Ulther had summoned there. Among them were the slaves that Thalric had seen before, Hreya included, and there were others, of whatever kinden had taken the old man’s eye over the last few years: Spiders and Ant-kinden, Wasp and Grasshopper, even a sullen-looking Dragonfly maid, for Ulther had a roving and acquisitive taste.

He had made this place a Wasp place, even so. Here, amongst the shadows and the lounging women, against the pillared buttress looming dimly at the far wall, he had installed another carved throne as rich as the one in the great hall above. Enthroned, the governor of Myna reclined there and waited. He did not seem surprised when Thalric appeared at his arched doorway, rather than one of his assassins.

Thalric gazed across the assembled beauties, and then towards Ulther, whose reproachful gaze seemed to indicate that there was yet one beauty missing. There was an absence shaped like Grief in Chains, and it stood between them.

‘Captain Thalric,’ Ulther said, taking his time over the words, shaping the consonants with care. ‘You seem to have undergone some recent reversals. A difficult night, perhaps?’

‘I’ve had better.’ Thalric took a few steps in, looking only at Ulther, but sensing the women draw back at the sight of the blood and the bared sword.

‘What’s this about, old friend?’ Ulther inquired.

‘You tell me.’

‘Oh no, none of that. It’s a little late to get coy, isn’t it?’ The big old man shifted himself on the throne, and only then did Thalric see through the gloom that there was a blade laid across his knees, something narrow and wicked looking. ‘You dealt with Rauth and the others, I assume? All of them? A shoulder wound’s a light enough price, for so many dead men.’

‘They were amateurs.’

‘I suppose they were. And why, you ask, did I have to send them?’

‘Because your love of your appetites has become greater than your love of the Empire,’ said Thalric, stopping far enough from Ulther that he would have a chance to duck if the old man loosed his sting.

‘No, because you forced me to it. You made me gather them and give those orders. You know it, Thalric, so why? Not because you needed the Butterfly dancer. You wanted this, then? You’re tired of my friendship? Was I not a good friend to you?’

‘The Empire, Ulther. Always the Empire.’

‘Oh but nobody thinks like that!’ the old man snapped. ‘You think the generals think like that? You think the