Empire in Black and Gold (37 page)

‘Mind you,’ Brutan said, ignoring him completely, ‘it’s a poor pimp that hasn’t dipped his wick in all the bottles.’ The blank mask of his helm was very close to Che’s face, and there was nowhere she could pull away to. ‘Not exactly a prizewinner, is she? But I’m not feeling choosy so bring her over here.’

He strode off, but the two slavers had not moved. ‘Sarge,’ said one unhappily.

Brutan rounded on them. ‘Did I or did I not give you an order?’

‘But it’s Captain Thalric, sir.’

‘You don’t seem to know who’s holding your chain in their hands,’ said Brutan, coming back with hands open, fingers splayed.

‘They say he’s Rekef, sir.’

Brutan stopped. ‘So what if they do?’ he asked, but there was a slight change in his tone. ‘Think I’m scared of that? Think I’m scared of him?’

The silence of the slavers suggested that
they
were, but they were also scared of their leader. When Brutan barked ‘Bring her!’ they did.

She was pulled off to a secluded dip beyond the main camp, slammed onto the ground on her back hard enough to put the breath out of her. Until that moment she had not quite appreciated what he intended.

‘You can’t— You’re not going to—’

‘Shut her up,’ said Brutan, sounding bored. He was undoing his belt with practised fingers.

Che screamed, and when a slaver put a hand over her mouth she bit him savagely. He cuffed her and her head rang with it, and the other was already stuffing a rag or somesuch into her mouth. She fought and fought, and it took the both of them to hold her down as Brutan dragged at her breeches.

‘Do you really think—?’ one of the slavers was saying.

‘Yes,
I
think,’ Brutan snapped at him. ‘You just do as I say.’

‘But if he
is
. . .’ the other whined, casting a look back towards the camp. Che’s frantic struggles and muffled cries might not have been going on at all for all the notice they took of them.

‘Shut up, the pair of you.’ Brutan had begun to sound harried. Now he lurched across Che. She felt his bare flesh on hers. Then there was a pause. It was such a pause that she stopped fighting, trying to work out what was going on. Brutan was still suspended above her on his hands and knees. She could see only darkness within the helm that he had not even taken off.

She glanced down and saw more than she wanted to of the man, but saw, moreover, that he was going limp.

‘Sergeant?’ one of the slavers asked nervously. After a moment Brutan rolled off her and cursed.

‘Pox-rotten Rekef bastards.’

There was another pause. Given this small opportunity, Che pulled up her breeches and did her best to tie them with the broken cords left to her, still not quite believing what was happening.

‘Sergeant?’ asked the slaver again.

‘You’d better take her to him,’ Brutan muttered, sounding furious with them, with her, with Thalric, and with himself.

The big automotives obviously transported more than slaves. Thalric had a tent now, pitched out of sight of the slave pens. When she was hustled inside, the man was sitting before a folding desk, looking for all the world as though he were in his study somewhere civilized. A hissing white-flamed salt-lamp gave an unhealthy pallor to his skin.

He looked up, at her and at the two slavers. He must have heard her screaming just moments before but his face admitted nothing of it.

‘You may go,’ he told her escorts, and they left gratefully. There were two of his soldiers at the door so she knew that this did not offer an escape attempt. It remained to be found out just what it did mean.

‘Sit, if you want,’ he told her. She regarded him curiously. It was impossible to place his age, save that he was neither young nor old. He was regular of feature, without being striking in any way. He would have been equally fitting as a College registrar or at the winch of a rack. In fact his bland features could have placed him anywhere.

‘Why did you send the slavers to fetch me, if you don’t like them?’ she asked him, watching for a reaction.

‘Because it’s their job,’ he replied simply. ‘You’re a slave. They’re slavers.’ After a moment he relented. ‘It’s no secret that the regular army doesn’t get on with the Slave Corps. The army doesn’t like them because taking slaves is no true profession for a man of the Empire, and I don’t like them because they’re greedy and self-interested.’

‘Do you . . . do you know what . . . ?’

‘I can guess.’ His face was without guilt or pity. ‘Our Brutan is a lusty fellow, or so they say.’

‘And are you going to punish him?’

‘Why should I? What has he done wrong?’

She gaped at him. ‘I don’t think you know what that word means!’

‘Miss Maker.’ Abruptly he was stern, standing. She flinched back from him. In that instant response she realized that she really was a slave.

‘Miss Maker,’ he said again, ‘it remains to be seen whether you will enjoy any protection from Brutan and his like, and before you say a word, his like includes plenty who wear the chains, as well as those who wield the whips. I can have you separated from your Commonwealer friend in an instant, and after that you’ll be just one more victim’s victim.’

She tried to face up to him boldly but the crawling horror of the thought was overtaking her, as he knew it would.

‘We are going to Asta,’ he told her. ‘It’s a little outpost of ours but it has sufficient facilities for my purposes, which are to learn what you and your fellow know.’

‘You mean torture.’

‘Do I? Well, let that be what I mean then. However, it is possible for you and I to keep our questioning artificers idle for an hour or so. Sit and talk to me.’

She tried to read his face, his posture, but there was nothing. ‘I won’t . . .’ It was harder to say it than she had thought, with his threat still hanging in the air. ‘I won’t betray my uncle.’

‘Then simply sit and talk,’ he said. ‘A few words, a little wine perhaps. Let us find out where the borders of your betrayal are. Let us visit them together, look into that forbidden country.’

‘You think you can trick me,’ she said.

‘You think I can’t trick you,’ he countered. ‘Why should we not see who is right?’

She regarded him suspiciously, saying nothing, and he smiled. It was such a frank and open expression that it took her off her guard.

‘We tried to kill your uncle. We hunted you across the Lowlands. We tried to trap you in Helleron. We caught you. We enslaved you. We nearly raped you. We threaten you. With all of that on the account, some people might quite have taken against us.’

A strained laugh escaped her, his humour was so unexpected.

‘Perhaps tonight I should talk and you should listen, and tomorrow or the next night you may feel like talking to me,’ he suggested.

‘I – I don’t think that I’ll ever—’

‘Don’t . . .’ His voice stopped her, in that one word was a world of warning. ‘Don’t say anything that you cannot take back. You think you’re special, yes?’

‘I . . . Not so special your bully boys mightn’t have killed me just like anyone else, as one of their nasty little examples.’

The smile again. So very genuine and wry, and yet the things he smiled at would have appalled any rational person. ‘But you were in no danger, Miss Maker. I had already made sure that you would live through the experience. It was just an object lesson.’ He leant forward over the desk. ‘But if you are overly stubborn, then next time it may be for real. You think I am an evil man, yes?’

‘That we can agree on.’

He sat back, poured two goblets of wine as he spoke. ‘Taken as a whole, I would say that I am no more virtuous nor vice-ridden than any other, save for one overriding virtue. Do you know what that virtue is? True, it is a virtue rare in the Lowlands, in my limited experience. It is loyalty. I will do anything the Empire asks of me, Miss Maker, and I will do anything for the benefit of the Empire. I will destroy villages and lives, I will cross deserts, I will . . . kill children.’ She noticed the minute hesitation there and filed it for later use. ‘I will do all of this, and I will account it no evil, but instead a virtue, the virtue of
loyalty
, the Empire before everything, my own desires included. Do you understand how this relates to our little talk right now?’

She shook her head slowly.

‘It means that if the best use I can put you to is to offer you wine,’ and he did so, ‘and treat you kindly and have a conversation or two within this tent, then I shall serve the Empire that way. If the best use I find is to put you to the question, or gift you to Brutan, then I shall do that. It is nothing personal, Miss Maker. Do I make myself clear?’

‘I suppose you do.’ She took the wine cautiously, sipping. It had a dry, harsh taste, somewhat unfamiliar.

‘Then tonight I will talk to you, and thus try to make it easier for you to talk to me,’ he told her. ‘I will tell you about my people and my Empire, and in that way hope that you will understand why we do what we do.’

At that moment the most delicious aroma entered the tent, preceding a soldier bearing a platter. There was dried fruit on it, and nuts, and what must be honey, and a half-dozen slices of steaming meat that must surely be horse. She found that she had taken two steps towards the table as soon as it was set down.

‘Help yourself,’ he offered, as the soldier left. She was instantly on her guard, but he shrugged. ‘Or not? You will profit nothing from abstaining. A moral victory on this small point would be an empty one, would it not?’

And she had to concede that. She had to concede that, because she had eaten slave food for two days and she was unable to take her eyes off the plate. By awkward stages she sat and took up a piece of meat, bolting it even as it burned her fingers. She saw Thalric’s expression then, and recognized it as that of a man who had won the first battle of a campaign. She hated him for that, but did not stop eating.

‘You must have a very skewed picture of the Wasp-kinden,’ he told her. ‘If you think of us at all, you must think that we’re savages.’

She nodded vigorously, still eating.

‘Not so far from the truth,’ he admitted, and she raised surprised eyebrows. ‘The Empire is young. Three generations, three Emperors.’

She frowned at him.

‘No, we don’t live for hundreds of years. Nothing like that. Our Most Revered Majesty Alvdan the Second is not thirty years of age. His grandfather was one tribal chieftain in a steppeland full of feuding tribes, but he had, as the story goes, a dream. He took war to the other tribes, and he subjugated them. He brought all the Wasp-kinden together under his banner. It took a lifetime of bitter fighting and worse diplomacy. His son, Alvdan the First, built the Empire: city after city brought into the fold, the borders pushed ever outwards. Each people we made our own, we learned the lessons they taught us. We honed the tool of war until it was keen as a razor. Our Emperor now, Alvdan Two, was sixteen when he came to the throne, and since then he has not rested in furthering the dream of his father and his grandfather. We have fought more peoples than the Lowlands even knows exist. We have defended ourselves against enemies who were stronger than us, or wiser than us, or steeped in lore we could not guess at. We have conquered internal strife and we have done what no other has ever done before us. The Empire is physically near the size of the entire Lowlands, but all under one flag and all marching to one beat. The Empire represents progress, Miss Maker. The Empire is the future. Look at my people. They have a foot in the barbaric still. They must be forced into discipline, into control, into civilization! But they have come so very far in such a short time. I am proud of my people, Miss Maker. I am proud of what they have brought about.’

‘So why inflict their regime on other people?’ she demanded.

‘Because we must grow lest we stagnate,’ he replied, as though it was as very simple as that. ‘And because those who are not within the Empire remain a threat to it. How long before the Commonweal takes arms against us, or some Ant general similarly unifies the Lowlands? How

long before some other chieftain with the same dream raises the spear against us? If we were to declare peace with the world, then the world would soon take the war to us. Look at the Lowlands, Miss Maker: a dozen city-states that cannot agree on anything. If we were to invade Tark tomorrow, do you know what the other Ant-kinden cities would do? They would simply cheer. That is the rot of the Lowlands, Miss Maker, so we will bring them into the Empire. We will unite the Lowlands under the black-and-gold banner. Think what we might accomplish then.’

‘All I can think of is that you would turn my race, and all the Lowlands, into slaves within your Empire.’

‘There are many Beetle-kinden in the Empire, Miss Maker. They do very well. The Emperor trusts most of the imperial economy to them, as far as I can make out. The Empire needs slaves to do a slave’s work, but we would not enslave the Lowlands. The people of the Lowlands would simply discover that their best interests lie in working with us.’

‘Tell me, Captain, what is the Rekef ?’

The question caught him quite by surprise, but in the next moment he was smiling again, as though she had, at last, proved a promising student. ‘Well, how has that word come to you?’

‘Brutan, amongst others.’

‘The Rekef, Miss Maker, is a secret society.’

She had to laugh at that. ‘But everyone seems to know you’re in it so how can it be secret?’

‘Well, that is rather the point.’ His smile looked a little embarrassed. ‘Why, after all, would you be part of a terrifying secret society that strikes fear into the hearts of men, if nobody even knows that you’re in it? In actual fact, if I was Rekef Inlander then the first anyone would know about it would be when they found themselves hauled in and being put to the question, with a list of their crimes before them.’ His smile became self-mocking. ‘To tell the truth they even frighten me. I, on the other hand, am Rekef Outlander. My place is dealing with people like you.’ He paused, searching her face. ‘Have I reached you, Miss Maker? Have you heard what I have said?’

‘You’ve given me a lot to think about.’