Empire in Black and Gold (77 page)

He had often wondered how he would take an occasion like this, when his star had fallen but the Empire still peopled the night sky with its lights, and he was both surprised and relieved to find he took comfort in that. He could be lost, but he was only one small piece of the machine, and the machine itself would go on forever. To the south the assault on Tark would be starting any day, if it had not begun already. Tark would fall as Ant cities always fell to the Empire, with a bloody, brutal, no-quarter fight, but overwhelmed by an enemy more numerous, more mobile, broader of thought, and ruthless of purpose.

And Helleron? Thalric would return home with the balance of his two thousand soldiers, but either he, or his successor, would be back with five thousand, or perhaps he would counsel fifty thousand. The Helleron Beetles were already telling themselves that the entire Imperial Army was at Tark – for the news was finally breaking here – but the men who were in sight of Tark’s walls were only the Fourth Army, supported by a few Auxillian battalions and some detachments of the Engineering Corps. The Empire had plenty of armies to spare, as Helleron would discover.

As the surgeon swabbed off the stitched wound and closed his toolbag, Thalric began to compose his report, without emotion or fear.

Stenwold gathered up those who could travel. After the two days that had passed, that included Che, Tynisa and even Tisamon, although the Mantis was still pained by his wound and kept his chest bare, his arming jacket slung open over his shoulders.

‘Now comes the time,’ Stenwold told them simply. ‘We have struck a small victory against a great enemy, not for Helleron, or Collegium, or revenge, or justice, or anything so small. We have done it for all the Lowlands, so the Lowlands retains a chance to lock shields against the foe.

‘But of course it is only one blow struck. There is now war in Tark as you know, and the Empire is sending more troops westwards, I guarantee it. We must carry the word ahead of them. Unity or slavery, these must be our watchwords, for they are no more than the flat truth. The future of the Lowlands: unity or slavery. The unity, if we achieve it, will never last. The slavery, however, might lie on our shoulders forever.

‘So I myself am bound for Collegium, which is the best soil we have for unity to grow in. Collegium is already allied with the Ants of Sarn, and that net can spread. If Tark does fall, as I fear it will, it will serve as an example, burning letters ten feet high that state:
The Empire Must Be Stopped.

‘And there will be danger aplenty, for the Wasps will have their agents in Collegium and Sarn and Merro, and all the other places, and they will be preaching to the great and the good of all those places that the Empire comes only to attack their enemies, not them. They will tell each city to rub its hands as its ancient rivals fall, and in this way they will seek to eat the Lowlands bit by bit, and they may even succeed.

‘Ours will not be a war of swords, but of words. The swords are there, but we must convince the hands that hold them to draw them from the scabbard, to let them flash defiance in the sun.

‘I have sent messengers already, to Collegium, to Sarn, even to the Spiderlands, whose denizens have always worked against Lowlander unity in the past. There is no hand from which I would not take help at this point. I would write to the underground halls of the Centipede kingdom or the Mosquito Lords if they were anything more than a myth. Perhaps, if matters grow much worse, I will do so anyway.’

He looked over his audience, battered and bruised as they were. His niece and his adopted daughter, and her true father; the ever-faithful, durable Scuto, and Balkus the mercenary Ant-kinden, who had not been paid and yet was here; Achaeos, forever inscrutable, here amidst his traditional enemies; Sperra the Fly-kinden, who had insisted on being carried from her convalescence to hear his words.

He thought of that other fellowship, so long ago, of dead Marius and of Tisamon’s lost love.

Not in vain.
He swore it to himself. Each sword raised against the Empire, each word spoken, would be added to the scales. He would rally and rouse, he would wake the sleeping, open the eyes of the blind, to gain those swords for his cause, and in the end, if the scales did not tip, if the tide of the Empire drowned all the lands he knew of, then it would not be because he had spared an ounce of effort in resisting it.

‘Will you come with me to Collegium?’ he asked them all, and not one face, not even Achaeos’s, told him ‘no’.

The first shots were yet to be loosed but, when Salma and the others came within sight of Tark, the Wasps were already there. Their camp half-encircled the city’s walls, and it seemed incredible, impossible, that so many had come so swiftly, and making their way through the desert’s fringe.

Skrill shielded her eyes, tracking down the banners and the symbols, the machines and the formations. ‘I see serious artillery. Wall-pounders and leadshotters are the least of it. Looks like Bee-kinden Auxillian engineers from Szar, if I’m a judge; Cricket diggers from Delve; some wild-boy Wasps from the hill tribes for shock value; even Maynes Ants under arms there, guess they know how much Ants like killing Ants. And there’s a whole row of somethings under canvas, autos or the like. Cut me open, that’s the whole Fourth and then some. Bloody flux!’

Salma and Totho simply took in this sight in silence. They had never seen so many men of war in one place, let alone their equipment, machinery, earthworks, slaves, mounts, camp followers and sutlers.

Neither had Tark, they realized. Neither had anywhere in the Lowlands, ever before.

The glass was so smudged and dusty that only a poor kind of light came through it, but the fly considered it was enough. It buzzed and battered, skating first one way and then back along the filthy pane. The greater world was out there, as the wan light told it, so it made its mindless bid for freedom over and over and over.

That’s our totem
, thought Bello hollowly as he sat by the window, waiting for the call with a score of other scrawny youths.
My people, my race – that’s our totem.
The machines in the factory next door thundered and crashed in a rhythm he knew by heart.

The fly had stopped walking up the glass, bemused. It cleaned its face and Bello could almost read its tiny mind as it thought,
Well, if I got in, I can get out.
That was why flies were superior to wasps or beetles. Wasps would just batter at the window until they fell and died. Flies would get the point, eventually. They would go and find another way out.

So why can’t we?
The Fly-kinden, Bello’s diminutive people, were equally imprisoned, battering away, toiling without end.

He thought about his father, coming back from the factory, jostled in a crowd of bigger men and women. His father with his shoulders bowed, his balding head down, parcelled in his long coat. He trudged the four hundred yards back home every evening and never thought to fly. The Ancestor Art that gave his people shimmering wings, and the sky, had shrivelled inside him. His feet never left the ground.

Trapped behind the glass, in Helleron.
Helleron, city of opportunity because the Beetle-kinden that owned each stone and soul of it never turned anybody away. The factories were hungry mouths. They chewed up labour, ground it down to grit. There was a place for every newcomer in Helleron, and that place was at the bottom. The magnates who owned the factories and the tenements and the big houses on the hill were all locals, but the grist of their mills came from all the other people of the Lowlands. The little Fly-kinden were everywhere, running errands, serving food, crawling beneath machines to unblock them, adding a little of their blood to make the engines of commerce run smoothly.

The fat brown-skinned Beetle man who was Bello’s employer stomped in, staring at his charges. ‘Bello! Jons Prater, Lock House in Porter Square, quick as you like.’ Bello jumped up automatically as his name was called, almost ripped the letter from the big man’s hand and was off through the door. The Ancestor Art swelled in him, and he felt the twitch of his shoulder blades as his wings formed, shimmering and half-seen, and then he was airborne. Below him Helleron spread out on all sides like a great stain, smogging the air with the smoke of its factories. There were some parts of the industrial district so thick with it that the air was impassable, poisonous. Bello had lived here all his life, and been running messages since his wings came at age six. Outside the city, the Messengers Guild still held sway with its guarantees of quality and service. Inside it, however, there were plenty who did not want to pay the Guild’s prices, and men like Bello’s employer were swift to spot a market.

Bello raced along at rooftop height, unravelling his mind’s map of the city for the short route to Porter Square. It would be easy, winging across the sky’s wide bowl, to take this for freedom. The rush of his wings spoke to him of his people’s own warrens far south of here, and all the glorious clear air in between. He was still behind the glass, though. He would give Jons Prater the message and take his money, and then he would be back, waiting with the other youths for the next job. His speed was not dedication, but knowing he would get no pay if he was late. He was thirteen years old and he had a reputation to keep up.

There were raised voices when he got home. It was an hour after dark and he was wretchedly tired, but he made the effort anyway, flitting from landing to landing without touching the steps between. All around him the tenement creaked and grumbled with the lives of all the cursed people who had nowhere better to live. He heard a dozen arguments and a full-on fight through the thin walls. On the fourth floor he heard his father’s voice: raised but not shouting. His father never shouted any more. He could manage only a whining complaint that held the seeds of its own defeat. Bello stopped, not wanting to go in. He felt a hand on his shoulders, pushing him down, keeping him down. Beyond the day’s long, tired haul he recognized it as despair.
Battering against the glass.
He sat on the top step and rubbed at his eyes. He would do what he always did. He would wait out here until it was done.

The stairs creaked on the flight above and he looked up quickly. There was only one person who lived above Bello’s family. The man was a local celebrity, of sorts. He, of them all, lived here because he chose to, not because he must. He said it kept him closer to his clients. Holden, the pugilist. If he had ever had a first name, nobody remembered it. He was just Holden, Holden with the scarred face and the leather coat that didn’t quite hide his shortswords. He was Beetle-kinden, with the squat, solid build of that race, but he was lean with it, balanced. For all he towered over Bello’s three-foot height, he had a cocky grace unusual for his people.

As he passed the landing he ruffled Bello’s hair. The Fly youth mustered a smile for him. ‘You off to work, Master Holden?’

‘Always, son.’ The fighter paused, rolled his shoulders to loosen them. ‘Some fellow in the Gladhander fief’s getting too big for himself, needs a taking-down.’

Bello followed the news of the fiefs, Helleron’s criminal gangs, as avidly as all his fellows did. Men like Holden were the heroes, the free spirits, who passed through their lives. The simple news that Holden was off to pull the Gladhanders’ noses sent a vicarious thrill through Bello. He would surely lie awake tonight, imagining the man in chases down alleys, fights on the rooftops, stealthy stalking through the halls of his enemies.

‘Good luck, Master Holden!’ Bello said.

‘Ain’t no such thing as luck, son. Skill’s all,’ Holden told him, setting off down the stairs. ‘Remember that, boy, and you can’t go far wrong.’ As he went, Bello heard the door open, realized his father’s voice had ceased its sad tirade.

The long-faced old Beetle-kinden man who now came past him on the stairs was the landlord’s agent, whom Bello had known and disliked all his life. He had become a symbol of the family’s hopelessness, its lack of prospects. He turned up every month for his money, and Bello’s father would scrape together what they had, and sometimes it was enough and sometimes it was short. If it was short, then the man would be back the next week: slow, mournful, patient, three times the size of Bello’s father, insistent. He always got his due eventually. By some grotesque chance he was called Joyless Bidewell. He carried the weight of that name like a sack of coal.