Empire in Black and Gold

‘I have work yet to do,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Prisoners. .’ The thought came to him then of his own prisoners. He could see so much more clearly with Ulther dead and gone. ‘Prisoners,’ he said again, and with Hreya watching, with all the women watching, he made his halting way out of the harem.

Che’s hands were raw by now. She had thought that this would be so much easier. She had an education, after all.

If her Art had not been able to banish the darkness for her then it would have been impossible. Even so, she was having to teach herself the craft of lockpicking from first principles. It was not something she had ever been called upon to do before.

She had studied mechanics. She knew how a lock worked. This was not exactly a masterpiece, either, the shackles securing Salma’s arms. The Wasps always made solid, practical things.

She had been working at it for hours now. The sun had gone down on her as she scratched and fiddled with it. The medical probe she had stolen, its end bent to catch the tumblers, was awkward in fingers gone numb with the interminable fumbling. She was constantly dropping it and having to find it again.

She had three tumblers now where she reckoned they should be. There were only two left.

‘I think you had better hurry, if that’s possible,’ Salma murmured.

‘If you’re getting cramp again, you can sit down. I could use the break myself.’

‘I don’t think that’s an option.’

She had heard nothing of what was going on outside, as her concentration on the stubborn thing had been all-consuming, but now she listened. There was something happening beyond their door and it sounded fierce. She heard cries of pain and the sound of blade on metal.

‘Please, Che. Any time now would be useful,’ Salma urged her. The first thought that came to her had been rescue, but clearly Salma was not anticipating anything good.

She took up the pick and went at it again, fiddling and scratching, feeling out that fourth tumbler that was so stubborn. It was stiff: nothing a key could not turn, but her pick was a slim thing, scraping and sliding past the tumbler’s catch.

‘Che, hurry.’ Salma was as tense as a drawn bowstring. The sounds without were louder now, some voice roaring in rage and pain amid racing footsteps.

She twisted the pick and felt it bend against the tumbler. If she kept up the pressure, she would either succeed or the pick would break. She must gamble everything on the quality of Wasp steel.

There was a key in the door then, the hurried fumbling of a simple task done under great pressure. Concentrate! She wrenched at the pick, waiting for the dreaded snap. She pushed until her wrist ached.

The door opened, pulled so hard it slammed against the wall outside. She started in shock and that extra twitch put the fourth tumbler in place. No time for the fifth.

There was no fifth. She had miscounted at the start. The shackles fell from Salma in that instant, and his wings blazed to life before her startled face, the force of them knocking her back across the cell.

His arms would be bloodless and numb, good for nothing, but he hit the soldier in the doorway with one shoulder, bearing the startled man over with the force of his charge. There was another man behind, also knocked out of the way. He had a sword but could not use it for fear of stabbing his fellow. Che ran at him, no war cry and no warning, and before he could put his sword between them she had hold of his sword arm and yanked at it with all her weight and strength.

Tynisa tried to force her way past the sentinel, gripping the haft of the man’s glaive and pushing at him, but he shook her off contemptuously. Behind him the soldiers were opening one of the cell doors. She caught a brief glimpse of Totho coming closer with his crossbow raised, but he was not a great shot at the best of times, and the best of times were now long behind them. She thrust at the sentinel again with her rapier, scraping at his armour.

Then Achaeos was there. In truth she had forgotten about him. There had been no arrows for a while. He must have been gathering his courage.

He came in around ceiling height, his wings sparking from the stones, and he dropped onto the sentinel’s shoulders, trying to stab through the eyeslit. The sentinel went berserk, swinging about like a beast, his glaive slashing left and right, up and down while Achaeos was trying desperately to hang on with one arm, his wings flashing in and out, the force of them wrenching at the man’s neck.

And then he lost his grip, falling off, but he held on to the helm with one hand, dragging the sentinel’s head up and back. Tynisa darted forwards, with the glaive stabbing blindly out at her, but she vaulted it, one foot bending the haft as she used it for purchase, and the narrow tip of her sword punched up under his chin. The chain mail there stopped it for an instant, and then the rings gave way, and he cried out and fell backwards, as dead as she could make him.

Beyond him. . Tynisa’s heart leapt when she saw all was not lost. Salma and Che were there, but they were still fighting. Even as she took the sight in, she saw Salma cast down by his opponent and the man’s sword drawing back. Totho was beside her by then with a clear shot, and he cranked the crossbow’s lever twice. One bolt was lost in the darkness beyond but the second found its mark in the man’s ribs, sending him to his knees. Salma wrenched his sword off him at that point, and turned it against its owner, putting his whole weight behind it.

By that point the other man was done as well. Che had been grappling with him, losing ground as she tried to hang on to his sword. Then there was a dagger in his side and Che finally got the sword off him, but held off from using it. The dagger whipped out and thrust in again, Achaeos’s white eyes and white teeth flashing in the gloom. Chyses was beside him at that point, reeling from the blow he had taken, but determined to do his part, and the two of them bore their enemy down and slew him.

Tynisa ran in and virtually caught Che as the girl staggered backwards. She looked utterly exhausted, bruised and battered, but completely overjoyed. She embraced her foster-sister hard enough to make her ribs creak.

‘You came! Hammer and tongs, look at you! You came!’ Che released her hold as she saw, past Tynisa’s shoulder, the narrow-framed figure of Achaeos carefully cleaning the much-used blade of his dagger.

‘You. .’ she said. There was a memory suddenly in the front of her mind: a dream she had swum through during the heliopter journey to Myna. There was a shock, a physical shock, as she met his featureless eyes — and she knew, outside reason, that he knew.

Then Totho was at her elbow, and she hugged him too for good measure, not noticing his surprise at the embrace. Behind her, Salma was telling Tynisa how every part of him above the waist had cramp.

‘We have to leave,’ Chyses insisted. ‘We have to go, now.’

They made their hurried way, the best pace that Che and Salma could keep up with, to the stairs leading up from the cells. There they found Tisamon.

Tynisa spotted him first and, although she had known to find him there, she scuffed to a halt at the sight. He was positioned halfway up the stairs, gazing back down at them. The stairs themselves were visible only in uneven patches, and those were all slick with blood.

The bodies of eleven Wasp soldiers lay there, perhaps more, and from the way they were laid out, most of them had arrived together as a squad. He must have leapt into the midst of them to deny them the use of their stings, and the few lying near the top of the stairs had taken wounds in their backs as they had scrabbled desperately to get away from their untouchable adversary.

Or not quite untouchable. There was a thin line of red across Tisamon’s cheek, almost a twin to the mark on Tynisa’s own face, which had been made by the pointed guard of her own blade.

‘We’re. . going now,’ Chyses told the Mantis, his voice catching a little at the sight of the carnage. Tisamon gave him a brief nod, and stood aside to let him lead the way.

The entire palace was in the throes of chaos. Thalric kept blundering into guards and demanding to know what was going on, but very few of them gave him a coherent response. To credit all of them there were a dozen separate attacks underway, all in different parts of the palace. Soldiers and Auxillian militia were running everywhere and getting in each other’s way. If the Mynan resistance truly knew what was going on, he thought, and mounted an attack right now, they might actually force the Empire out of its own headquarters. As he passed on through, it was clear that there was far more confusion than actual conflict going on. Someone had clearly laid a few false trails, and his own activities of the night had hardly helped.

He knew exactly where he was going. The cells. Cheerwell Maker and her Dragonfly friend. He had not even