He looked up, at her and at the two slavers. He must have heard her screaming just moments before but his face admitted nothing of it.
‘You may go,’ he told her escorts, and they left gratefully. There were two of his soldiers at the door so she knew that this did not offer an escape attempt. It remained to be found out just what it did mean.
‘Sit, if you want,’ he told her. She regarded him curiously. It was impossible to place his age, save that he was neither young nor old. He was regular of feature, without being striking in any way. He would have been equally fitting as a College registrar or at the winch of a rack. In fact his bland features could have placed him anywhere.
‘Why did you send the slavers to fetch me, if you don’t like them?’ she asked him, watching for a reaction.
‘Because it’s their job,’ he replied simply. ‘You’re a slave. They’re slavers.’ After a moment he relented. ‘It’s no secret that the regular army doesn’t get on with the Slave Corps. The army doesn’t like them because taking slaves is no true profession for a man of the Empire, and I don’t like them because they’re greedy and self-interested.’
‘Do you. . do you know what. .?’
‘I can guess.’ His face was without guilt or pity. ‘Our Brutan is a lusty fellow, or so they say.’
‘And are you going to punish him?’
‘Why should I? What has he done wrong?’
She gaped at him. ‘I don’t think you know what that word means!’
‘Miss Maker.’ Abruptly he was stern, standing. She flinched back from him. In that instant response she realized that she really was a slave.
‘Miss Maker,’ he said again, ‘it remains to be seen whether you will enjoy any protection from Brutan and his like, and before you say a word, his like includes plenty who wear the chains, as well as those who wield the whips. I can have you separated from your Commonwealer friend in an instant, and after that you’ll be just one more victim’s victim.’
She tried to face up to him boldly but the crawling horror of the thought was overtaking her, as he knew it would.
‘We are going to Asta,’ he told her. ‘It’s a little outpost of ours but it has sufficient facilities for my purposes, which are to learn what you and your fellow know.’
‘You mean torture.’
‘Do I? Well, let that be what I mean then. However, it is possible for you and I to keep our questioning artificers idle for an hour or so. Sit and talk to me.’
She tried to read his face, his posture, but there was nothing. ‘I won’t. .’ It was harder to say it than she had thought, with his threat still hanging in the air. ‘I won’t betray my uncle.’
‘Then simply sit and talk,’ he said. ‘A few words, a little wine perhaps. Let us find out where the borders of your betrayal are. Let us visit them together, look into that forbidden country.’
‘You think you can trick me,’ she said.
‘You think I can’t trick you,’ he countered. ‘Why should we not see who is right?’
She regarded him suspiciously, saying nothing, and he smiled. It was such a frank and open expression that it took her off her guard.
‘We tried to kill your uncle. We hunted you across the Lowlands. We tried to trap you in Helleron. We caught you. We enslaved you. We nearly raped you. We threaten you. With all of that on the account, some people might quite have taken against us.’
A strained laugh escaped her, his humour was so unexpected.
‘Perhaps tonight I should talk and you should listen, and tomorrow or the next night you may feel like talking to me,’ he suggested.
‘I–I don’t think that I’ll ever-’
‘Don’t. .’ His voice stopped her, in that one word was a world of warning. ‘Don’t say anything that you cannot take back. You think you’re special, yes?’
‘I. . Not so special your bully boys mightn’t have killed me just like anyone else, as one of their nasty little examples.’
The smile again. So very genuine and wry, and yet the things he smiled at would have appalled any rational person. ‘But you were in no danger, Miss Maker. I had already made sure that you would live through the experience. It was just an object lesson.’ He leant forward over the desk. ‘But if you are overly stubborn, then next time it may be for real. You think I am an evil man, yes?’
‘That we can agree on.’
He sat back, poured two goblets of wine as he spoke. ‘Taken as a whole, I would say that I am no more virtuous nor vice-ridden than any other, save for one overriding virtue. Do you know what that virtue is? True, it is a virtue rare in the Lowlands, in my limited experience. It is loyalty. I will do anything the Empire asks of me, Miss Maker, and I will do anything for the benefit of the Empire. I will destroy villages and lives, I will cross deserts, I will. . kill children.’ She noticed the minute hesitation there and filed it for later use. ‘I will do all of this, and I will account it no evil, but instead a virtue, the virtue of loyalty, the Empire before everything, my own desires included. Do you understand how this relates to our little talk right now?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘It means that if the best use I can put you to is to offer you wine,’ and he did so, ‘and treat you kindly and have a conversation or two within this tent, then I shall serve the Empire that way. If the best use I find is to put you to the question, or gift you to Brutan, then I shall do that. It is nothing personal, Miss Maker. Do I make myself clear?’
‘I suppose you do.’ She took the wine cautiously, sipping. It had a dry, harsh taste, somewhat unfamiliar.
‘Then tonight I will talk to you, and thus try to make it easier for you to talk to me,’ he told her. ‘I will tell you about my people and my Empire, and in that way hope that you will understand why we do what we do.’
At that moment the most delicious aroma entered the tent, preceding a soldier bearing a platter. There was dried fruit on it, and nuts, and what must be honey, and a half-dozen slices of steaming meat that must surely be horse. She found that she had taken two steps towards the table as soon as it was set down.
‘Help yourself,’ he offered, as the soldier left. She was instantly on her guard, but he shrugged. ‘Or not? You will profit nothing from abstaining. A moral victory on this small point would be an empty one, would it not?’
And she had to concede that. She had to concede that, because she had eaten slave food for two days and she was unable to take her eyes off the plate. By awkward stages she sat and took up a piece of meat, bolting it even as it burned her fingers. She saw Thalric’s expression then, and recognized it as that of a man who had won the first battle of a campaign. She hated him for that, but did not stop eating.
‘You must have a very skewed picture of the Wasp-kinden,’ he told her. ‘If you think of us at all, you must think that we’re savages.’
She nodded vigorously, still eating.
‘Not so far from the truth,’ he admitted, and she raised surprised eyebrows. ‘The Empire is young. Three generations, three Emperors.’
She frowned at him.
‘No, we don’t live for hundreds of years. Nothing like that. Our Most Revered Majesty Alvdan the Second is not thirty years of age. His grandfather was one tribal chieftain in a steppeland full of feuding tribes, but he had, as the story goes, a dream. He took war to the other tribes, and he subjugated them. He brought all the Wasp-kinden together under his banner. It took a lifetime of bitter fighting and worse diplomacy. His son, Alvdan the First, built the Empire: city after city brought into the fold, the borders pushed ever outwards. Each people we made our own, we learned the lessons they taught us. We honed the tool of war until it was keen as a razor. Our Emperor now, Alvdan Two, was sixteen when he came to the throne, and since then he has not rested in furthering the dream of his father and his grandfather. We have fought more peoples than the Lowlands even knows exist. We have defended ourselves against enemies who were stronger than us, or wiser than us, or steeped in lore we could not guess at. We have conquered internal strife and we have done what no other has ever done before us. The Empire is physically near the size of the entire Lowlands, but all under one flag and all marching to one beat. The Empire represents progress, Miss Maker. The Empire is the future. Look at my people. They have a foot in the barbaric still. They must be forced into discipline, into control, into civilization! But they have come so very far in such a short time. I am proud of my people, Miss Maker. I am proud of what they have brought about.’