Salute the Dark

Two soldiers entered the room without preamble. Their demeanour showed that they were fully aware of what their fellows – and their late fellows – had gone through to bring him here. They both loathed him and were frightened of him.

‘Well?’ Thalric asked them. ‘What now?’

‘Come with us,’ said one. His lips twitched, as if at a foul taste, when he added, ‘sir.’ The word struck Thalric like a blow. He almost toppled back on the bed, his legs suddenly weak at the power of a mere three-letter word. He had endured a long, harsh winter since anyone had truly called him that. The word was a whole life away for him: a door onto better days.

‘Sir, is it?’ he managed to get out, hoping that his face showed none of his surprise.

The man merely replied, ‘I have been ordered to request your presence, sir. You are sent for.’

And you don’t like it, soldier, but you’ll obey your orders. That was the underlying principle of the entire Wasp nation, who were by nature so quarrelsome and undisciplined.

‘Lead on, soldier,’ Thalric said it as casually as he could manage.

As soon as he got out into the corridor he knew that this must be the governor’s palace. He had no fond memories of it, for he had been through as much pain here as he had at any time before, and he had lost a good friend, too. The only luck thrown his way, aside from his continued survival, was that in the end it had not been his hand that had scorched out the life of Colonel Ulther, at the last. Mere chance, too, and he had no right to feel better over mere chance.

They took him up three levels and he applied his mind to drawing himself a map of the place as he recalled it. These were the quarters of important guests and higher officers, up here. He had even stayed here himself. There were public staterooms too, though he was already above the grand hall that Ulther had held court in. Wherever he was being taken, it was to be behind closed doors.

Do they imagine I know something, and wish to woo it out of me? Do I now turn informant against Stenwold and his people? And why not?

If they had wanted information, they needed only put him under the machines, for surely the ways and means had not softened so very much. But if I myself were in charge, would I not ask nicely first? Sometimes it is more efficient. Of all the hypotheses milling in his brain this seemed the most likely. He should not therefore get used to his current liberty. Which means I should exploit it as soon as the chance arises. Just give me a room with a decent-sized window.

And, obligingly, they did so. This palace, like most large Wasp-constructed buildings, was a ziggurat, and the room they brought him to even boasted a balcony, beyond which the blue sky stretched broad and inviting. He stayed put, though. He wanted to know where he stood, before he ran. There were two soldiers at the door, keenly watching over him, but they did not yet figure in his calculations. Five dead men could become seven soon enough. He had nothing to lose and it made him feel immortal.

The room itself had little of the garish style that Ulther had loved: the gaudy and overdone, the displayed loot from a dozen conquered peoples. This was Capitas-style Wasp: the long table devoid of ornament and a single frieze on the wall, in the local style but depicting the battle for occupation of the city itself, eighteen years before. Thalric wondered idly if he could pinpoint one of those images of triumphant, larger-than-life Wasp soldiers as his younger self. Perhaps one of them was Ulther, commanding the attack. He glanced from the frieze to the soldiers, young men both. They were not there, of course. They had probably not even fought in the Twelve-Year War against the Commonweal. It made feel him oddly lonely. He had now more in common with Stenwold Maker than with these men. In the end the burden of cultural identity did not weigh as much as the years.

They had come to attention swiftly, and he positioned himself across the table from the door, waiting. Some instinct told him that he recognized the tread, even before the man himself appeared: a grey-haired, severe-looking Wasp-kinden. A colonel and, as he saw now from the additional insignia, a governor.

Of course. The new governor had not been referred to by name in any of the documents he had seen because there was no need, but if he had really, really tried, then he could have worked out who the man was. There was no reason for him to be surprised.

‘Colonel Latvoc,’ Thalric said. ‘Excuse me for the informality, but I don’t feel that I’m in a position to salute.’