Salute the Dark

They reached an anonymous-looking house in one of the many districts the Wasps had left to decay, and bundled her swiftly into it: from Hokiak’s cellar to the cellar of this place with the minimum of fuss. They locked her in, and left her there with her hands tied.

It will all be all right, she tried to tell herself. Kymene will come, and she’ll believe me. It will all be all right. It served as a hollow little mantra to recite to herself.

She guessed that most of an hour had gone past before the door opened again, and a Mynan man stalked down the stone steps towards her. A second man stayed aloft with a lantern, but Che did not need its light to recognize her visitor. For a moment his name escaped her, then it was blessedly in the front of her mind.

‘Chyses!’

He stared at her, motioned for the lantern to come closer. The man had changed little, save that his expression of bitter dissatisfaction had deepened. He had a knife in his hand, and she realized it was not to frighten her so much as to whet his own anticipation. Tynisa always said she didn’t like him…

‘Chyses, it’s me,’ Che said. ‘Don’t you recognize me?’

‘Of course I recognize you,’ the Mynan said coldly. ‘That’s usually the case with traitors.’

‘I’m no traitor,’ she protested.

‘Hokiak thinks you are.’

‘Hokiak is wrong! Hokiak only thinks so because I came in with a Wasp. If I was really trying to infiltrate your people, would I do that?’

Chyses regarded her without love. ‘I can’t think of anyone who would do something that stupid, so why not a traitor? It makes sense to me. Besides, I hear the Wasp ran after killing some of Hokiak’s men.’

‘He’s a renegade and the Empire wants him dead. He must have thought Hokiak was going to sell him out.’

‘You tell whatever story you want, right now,’ Chyses said. ‘Give me time and I’ll pare the truth from you, so you just go ahead and babble.’

‘Will you at least let me speak to Kymene?’ she asked.

Chyses gave a smile that was brief and unpleasant. ‘Be careful what you ask for. She’s coming to see you, girl. For old times’ sake, maybe.’

Maybe she thinks she owes me that much, Che thought. Or maybe she just wants to see me cut up with her own eyes.

‘I can help you, help the whole resistance,’ she insisted. ‘I came here to help.’

‘Of course you did, only not to help us.’ He crouched by her, the knife prominent. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have a talk, you and I. We’ll bare everything, every truth. Have no worries about that.’

She was about to appeal to him again, but she could not. This was a man short on trust. He had lived his life in an occupied city, fighting his own private war, and to him she was just another excuse to sharpen his hatred. She guessed that he even preferred killing traitors to killing the enemy. Probably he liked to take longer over it, too.

Then Kymene herself was stepping down into the cellar. The sight of her showed just how far the revolution in Myna had progressed. She wore a robe, but it was open down the front, exposing her black breastplate adorned with the two red arrows of the resistance: We have fallen, we shall rise again. She was armed, and she must have walked openly through the streets like that, along with her guards and unchallenged by the Wasps. Che guessed that areas of Myna like this must be virtually off-limits to the invaders now.

But Kymene herself, beyond the clothes, was the same woman Che recalled: young and fierce and proud, her hair cropped short, truly a warrior queen of Myna. In her expression there was no acknowledgement of the night that both women had been freed from the Empire’s cells, no common cause.

‘It is her, isn’t it,’ she declared.

Chyses nodded, stepping back. Che tried to speak but, in the face of Kymene’s piercing gaze, the words dried up.

‘Cheerwell Maker,’ she said, ‘they tell me you’re a Wasp agent these days.’

‘No,’ Che whispered. Kymene knelt beside her, scabbard-tip grating on the stone of the cellar floor.

‘I liked your uncle,’ the woman said. ‘As far as I’d trust an outsider, I’d trust him. You’re not him, though, for if he was here, like this, I’d take his word.’

‘Please,’ Che said, looking into her eyes. ‘I’m no traitor. I came with news, to help you. The Wasps never tortured me to make me their agent! They’re fighting my people even now.’

‘We have people in the palace – we had them there even then – and they know you were taken off to be interrogated. They heard the machines working, though sometimes all it takes is just the sight of them to break someone’s spirit.’ Kymene said it in a tone of dreadful reasonableness.