Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky Read Free Book Online Page B

Maynes and Myna and Szar went with backs bowed, into slavery and conscription, and you shed not a tear.’
    They sighed and fidgeted. The Speaker for the assembly, old Lineo Thadspar, made a ‘hurry-up’ gesture. He had allowed Stenwold this speech for old time’s sake, and looked as though he now regretted it.
    ‘Eight years ago I told you that the Empire was engaging in a new war, a war on a scale unprecedented; that the Empire was making war upon our northern neighbour, the great Commonweal of the Dragonflies. You heard from me how the armies of the Wasps had killed in their hundreds and their thousands, and no doubt you remember the answer that the Assembly thought fit to give me then.’
    He gave them a chance, noticed defiance in some, disinterest in others. He remembered it keenly, that answer, though he barely recalled which of the fat, dismissive magnates had uttered it. In his mind the words echoed, still sharp enough to wound him.
    ‘ Master Maker comes before us again to prate about the Wasps ,’ they had said. ‘ He tells us they are fighting again, but that is their business. When the Ants of Kes land a force ashore and march on the walls of Tark, Collegium does not raise a voice. Why should we? Some kinden are warlike and therefore fight each other .
    ‘ Master Maker tells us that we should beware them because they are an empire, and no mere city-state, and so seeks to fright us with semantics. If the Mantids of Felyal decided to call themselves an empire, would we suddenly be tasked to descend upon them with sword and crossbow? I think not, for all the occasional provocation they give us. ’
    There had been a murmur of laughter at that. Stenwold remembered it keenly.
    ‘ And Master Maker also tells us they are fighting the Commonweal ,’ the magnate had continued, all those years ago. ‘ And I say to that, so what and so let them! ’ (They had cheered, back then, at this.) ‘ What do we know of the Empire, beyond Master Maker’s ravings? We know that they are Apt and industrious, like us. We know that they have built a strongly governed state of many kinden, with none of the internal strife that beggars relations within the Lowlands. Are we, who claim to prize civilization, meant to despise them for theirs? We know that their merchants receive our goods avidly. Those of us with interests in Helleron and Tark know they will buy dear and sell cheap, when they know no better. ’ (Laughter) ‘ And what do we know of the Commonweal? We know that they do not receive our emissaries, that they forbid any airship over their borders, that they have neither artificers nor engineers nor anything but a moribund and backward society of tilling peasants. We know that they will not even deal with our merchants, not at any price, that they would rather see grain rot in their fields than sell. All this we know, and can we really know the cause of the quarrel between these so-different people? What have the people of the Commonweal done to lay claim to our love, that we should turn on those that seem like our close brothers in contrast? ’
    Looking now at these same faces, these same expressions of petulance, indifference, hearing those words echo in his mind, he thought, I am wasting my time here. It was pure spite that then made him go on, so that he could say, despite his promise, I told you so.
    ‘Masters,’ said Stenwold, and they hushed, for something in his voice must have touched them, some hitherto unmined vein of sincerity in his tone. ‘Masters,’ he said, ‘listen to me now. I have come before you and I have spoken to you before, and always you have let my words fall at your feet. Hear me now: the Wasp Empire’s long war with the Commonweal is done. They have swum in the blood of the Commonweal until even the vast Commonweal could bear it no longer. They have forced the signing of a surrender that places three principalities into imperial hands, an area of the Commonweal that would span a whole