Empire in Black and Gold

‘That depends on the story.’ The sentry now had made enough room for her to sit down next to him. ‘Probably not.’

‘And then tonight, in the dark of the moon, when the world is quiet and yet full of odd sounds, you prepare to take your rest, and the story recurs to you, and you cannot sleep for the fears preying on your mind. Magic is like that. I simplify, of course, but magic breaks into the world where doubt leaves a gap for it.’

‘That doesn’t make sense. Not to me.’ Yet just for a moment the idea made her feel queasy, as though there were a chasm yawning at her feet.

‘Perhaps not, but your friend has been enchanted. This dancer was a magician — or at least the sort that the Butterfly-kinden have amongst them.’ He spoke the name with a certain distaste that, oddly, made Che feel better. She wondered if it was mere jealousy at this wondrous dancing woman that everyone seemed to like so much, or perhaps it was something more than that. Perhaps it was even what Achaeos was telling her: that the woman was a magician, that she had cast a spell on Salma.

She did not believe it, but at the same time she had to know.

‘So what has she done? Not that I-’

‘Not that you believe she has done anything, but what has she done?’ finished Achaeos with an arch glance. ‘She was desperate, I imagine. She was weak, surrounded by enemies. It is a simple charm that her people practise much, but it is one of powerful attraction. Her captors were proof against it because they already owned her. But then she saw your friend, and saw in him something that might help her. As a slave, with nowhere else to turn, she touched his mind. That is all. Perhaps some of it was just the Ancestor Art, for there are ways to catch the mind through that, but those charms fade. To last so long, through such separation, she used her magic.’

‘But I didn’t see her use any. . or do anything. . or. .’ Che stumbled to a halt with the sentence.

‘And you knew what to look for? She danced for him, yes?’

‘She danced.’

‘But in her mind she danced only for him. In his mind that was so as well. That was the incantation, no green smoke and no words of power. A dance is quite enough, and your friend was caught. Not unwillingly, I suspect, for I know Butterfly-kinden have charms of a physical nature.’

She caught that hint of derision again, and recalled: ‘She said, “Night Brother”, when. . when I woke from the dream. You have the same eyes, you and she.’

It was a moment before he spoke. ‘Yes, well, it is said that we were kin long ago. Children of the sun, children of the moon. And we hate them,’ he added, almost cheerily. ‘For their light and their wonder, we hate them.’

‘You hate all sorts of people,’ Che pointed out.

‘Oh, for all the wrongs done to us, we have hated your people for five hundred years. But the Butterfly- kinden, the weakest and most ineffectual people in the world, we have hated forever.’

He took one last look about these rooms, which he had rented so recently. He had experienced such a run of emotions here, he could almost feel them in the walls. What sights, what thoughts. Aagen shook his head but it would not clear. Instead it took him over to the balcony, where the open shutters were admitting the rain.

Thalric’s plans. Always a dangerous game and Aagen was still unsure of what his colleague had achieved, in the end. Thalric was an old friend, but he was Rekef too. It was known that the Rekef had no friends, not really.

Out there, lanced steadily by the rain, Myna lay quiet. Aagen knew the city was not expected to remain so. The resistance were gathering, their leader now returned to them. Thalric had said they were reckoned to strike soon. Aagen knew that of the men passing through Myna for the warfront, a good thousand were still close at hand, within reach of the city walls. There was going to be a great deal of killing in Myna very soon, or so the men at the top reckoned. Aagen was very glad that he would be out of it.

Thalric had now done his work here and was going back to continue with whatever plots he had boiling away. He, Aagen, could meanwhile return to the relative simplicities of war.

He was glad to be a friend to Thalric, because if any man needed a friend it was him, but at the same time he could wish that Thalric had never met him in Asta or co-opted him in this business here.

Her feet had moved across this very bare floor, a dance for him alone, bounded by the chains she wore and by the confines of the room. He shivered at the memory.

I have done a terrible thing.

He could never tell Thalric what had transpired. There was no one he could tell. Yet it was such a thing that told itself, a cloud hanging over him that spoke of his guilt.

He went through his requisitioned rooms towards the door. Only a short way to go now. He had his gear packed, and shockingly little of it now. His heliopter was back waiting for him at the airfield, stocked with new parts and with his stoker already standing by to pipe up the engines.

There was nothing else keeping him here. One last bowl of wine, perhaps, though it would not dissolve the memories, and then he would go.

That was when he heard the slight sound from the other room. When he turned, there was a man out on the balcony. He was a Dragonfly-kinden, and in his hand was a Wasp-made sword. For a moment neither of them moved, and then Aagen approached him slowly, one hand turned palm out in case he needed to call his Art. He saw the other man notice that gesture, tense to dodge the sting if it came.

‘Who are you supposed to be?’ Aagen demanded.

‘I don’t need to fight you,’ Salma told him.

‘I know you,’ the Wasp said belatedly. ‘You’re Thalric’s prisoner. Well, at least you were. If I were you I’d still be running.’

Salma was now balanced on the balls of his feet, waiting for a strike that would turn this into bloodshed. ‘Just give me what I want,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to fight. There’s been enough blood already in this city.’

‘What do you want?’ Aagen asked him, though he had a fair idea already.

‘I’ve come for her,’ the Dragonfly said, and took a quick step sideways, even then expecting the blast.

It did not come. ‘I thought you had,’ the Wasp said. ‘I thought it must be that. Come in.’

Salma’s mouth twitched into a smile, but it disguised only suspicion. ‘In?’

‘At least come out of the rain. Your kinden have sense enough for that, don’t you?’ Aagen clenched his fists, and it came to Salma, in a moment of almost vertiginous culture shock, that for the Wasp-kinden a clenched fist meant peace and an open hand death.

Aagen turned his back, as simply as that, and headed into the next room. If he had wanted, Salma could have killed him right then, but he was too surprised to take the man on. Instead he padded after him, sword still drawn. He can open a hand faster than I can get this blade clear of my belt. It made Salma lament for his own sword, lost like his robe and everything else he had owned.

‘Grief in Chains,’ he insisted, as the Wasp sat down heavily on the bed there in the next room, looked at his hands and then up at Salma. There was a wine jug and a bowl on a shelf above him, with another jug lying empty under the bed. Salma guessed that the Wasp artificer had been its solitary beneficiary.

‘I had her, here,’ Aagen said. ‘She danced for me.’

‘What have you done with her?’

‘And then Thalric came, and said she was mine. He gave her. . no, the Empire gave her to me. Can you believe it?’

Salma’s hand clenched about the sword’s hilt. ‘I’m taking her,’ he said. ‘She’s no one’s slave. Where is she? What have you done with her?’

‘I set her free.’

For a moment the words failed to find any meaning in Salma’s mind. Then: ‘You. . killed her?’

Aagen looked up at him, uncaring of the sword. ‘I set her free. I gave her freedom. I let her go.’

Salma stared at him, and something inside him squirmed with rage. The feeling horrified him because he knew what it was. It was that he had come here to take Grief in Chains, and take her for himself, and he had been thwarted. In that moment he was a slaver, a slave-master, as much as any Wasp-kinden — as much as Brutan or Ulther. The recognition of that part of what had driven him here made him feel ill, and he lowered the blade. ‘You just. .?’

‘Oh, not turned her out of doors. I know better than that. She is such that, law or no law, some man was