Salute the Dark

‘I know how you’ve helped the resistance-’ Che started.

‘I ain’t never helped no one. I just sold to ’em, because I ain’t choosy that way. The Red Flag pay like everyone else.’ He was obviously waiting for something that she had not given him yet.

Is it the money? She persevered regardless. ‘Hokiak, you’ve got to… I need your help to get in touch with them.’

He smiled, the pale skin creasing about the stumps of his tusks. ‘Now then,’ he said slowly, ‘how come I already knew that, eh?’

‘I don’t have much, but I can pay-’

Again he stopped her, his clawed hand raised. ‘I do remember you, girl.’

‘Good, then-’

‘You was the one the Wasps got – the one that Stenwold’s lot came over here to spring.’

‘Me and Salma, yes.’

‘I heard they put you to the question.’

She could not avoid glancing at Thalric, who, after all, had been the man who put her on the rack, for all he had not, in the end, actually tortured her. ‘I… in a way.’

Hokiak sighed heavily. ‘And now you want in to the resistance.’

Che heard Thalric shift in his chair, tense all of a sudden. A moment later she, too, was aware that the sound of the room had changed. The boisterous pack of gamblers had fallen quiet. She heard chairs scraping back, and glanced at Thalric again.

‘Someone must have cheated at cards,’ she said weakly, trying to work out what was wrong.

The gamblers were heading over. Che stood up hurriedly as she saw knives drawn. Only when they surrounded the table did she realize, so very late, that they were Hokiak’s men. She found herself with her hand only halfway to her sword-hilt, feeling foolish and off-balance, and completely blind to what was going on. Thalric was still seated, leaning back in his chair, but she knew him enough to see that he was coiled ready to move, whether to kick the table back in Hokiak’s face or to blast the nearest man with his Art.

‘What’s going on, Hokiak?’ she asked. ‘You…’ She felt her world shift beneath her. ‘You’ve gone over to the Wasps?’

Hokiak laughed out loud at that, genuinely if not pleasantly. ‘I have, have I? You sit down again, girl. You listen to old Hokiak for a moment.’

‘Sit,’ hissed Thalric, and she did so without quite deciding to.

‘Well, now,’ said Hokiak wearily, ‘Sten’s little niece is all growed up, is she? She’s in town again and wants to keep up with her old friends in the resistance. She don’t even care that the Wasps are here, ready to slam her back in the machine room? No, she don’t.’ He chewed on his pipe-stem for a moment. ‘So what a feller gets to wonderin’ is just what the girl is doin’ here with a Wasp-kinden handler. Bit obvious, maybe? Not very subtle, but these ain’t subtle times. You I remember, him I don’t. More, you won’t be the first to come out of the machine room with a change of heart. I hear they can be right persuasive in there.’

Che stared at him. ‘What are you saying?’

‘He’s saying he thinks you’ve been turned,’ said Thalric, with a certain satisfaction. ‘He’s saying he doesn’t trust you.’

‘What? But I’m Stenwold’s niece-’

‘And old Sten himself would know that doesn’t carry much weight with me… Oh, I forgot, he don’t know you’re here.’

Che looked from the Scorpion to his men. ‘But… what can I do to make you believe me?’

Hokiak shrugged. ‘Don’t have to make me believe you. I ain’t no more than a simple pedlar. All that happens now is who you get peddled to.’

‘So we’re your stock-in-trade now, are we?’ Thalric asked him.

Hokiak leered at him. ‘Man’s got to make a livin’.’

Che sensed the Wasp about to move, and she said hurriedly, ‘So sell us to the resistance. That’s fine. Kymene will know me. Just let me speak to her.’

‘Che-’ Thalric started, but she shook her head and went on.

‘I’ll go unarmed. I don’t care. Look, I’m not working for the Wasps, and Thalric here isn’t either. He’s gone renegade.’

Hokiak’s eyes narrowed. ‘Thalric? Ain’t the first time I heard that name.’

Thalric cursed and kicked over the table.

It was so without warning that he caught them, and Che, by surprise. The round surface of the table sprang up, toppling Hokiak backwards, still on his chair, slamming into two of the bravos and sending them stumbling. Thalric’s hand flared and the man closest to him was punched from his feet, to land heavily, his chest now a smoking ruin. The Wasp vaulted the tipped-over table with his wings coursing from his shoulders. Hokiak’s Fly-kinden flung a blade at him, but Thalric loosed his sting at the same time. The Fly ducked back, his aim going awry so that the hiltless blade skimmed Thalric’s scalp rather than taking him through the eye. Another man tried to get in the Wasp’s way and caught Thalric’s elbow in his face. The single leap had taken the Wasp halfway across the room.