By the time they found another place for him he could see again through watering eyes. He was in a starkly bare room, with a single slit window high up, illuminated by hissing white lamps burning on two walls. He turned to question one of the soldiers and the man punched him solidly below the ribs, doubling him over. As Salma struggled to recover his breath, his wrists were hauled up and their bonds hitched over a dangling hook. He heard the rattle of chains and his arms were jerked abruptly over his head, yanking him onto his toes.
The two soldiers then stood back, clearly satisfied with their work. They could have been brothers to each other, and, equally, to the men who had captured him: short, solidly built types with flat, pallid faces and dark hair, dressed in hauberks of dark chainmail.
There was a single door to this room, and Salma eyed it as he waited for the interrogator to arrive, as he must. This position was intended to be painful, he guessed, but he could have stood on his toes for hours. His race owned a poise and balance that the Ants had never known. Salma allowed himself to relax into it, recovering from the knocks and scrapes of the last few minutes.
Lovely fellows, these Tarkesh. Remind me why we’re on their side again?
Of course that was the point. Nobody ever claimed the Lowlands were populated by paragons of virtue, only that the Lowlands free were of more service to the world than the Lowlands under imperial rule. This was doubly the case from Salma’s perspective, for if the Lowlands fell it would open to attack the entire southern border of his own nation, the Dragonfly Commonweal.
The door opened, at last, and a woman came in, a sister to the soldiers’ fraternity. She might have been some higher official than they but she wore chainmail just as they did, and carried no badge of rank. He supposed that they sorted all that kind of thing out in their heads, communicating it between their minds. Creeping in behind her was a Fly-kinden girl, no more than fourteen, who sat down by the door with scroll and poised pen. A scribe slave, Salma guessed.
‘Name,’ the interrogator said. Her tone gave the word no hint of questioning, just a flat statement.
Salma decided to be fancy. ‘Prince Minor Salme Dien of the Dragonfly Commonweal.’ The pen of the scribe scratched the words down without hesitation.
The Ant woman, however, looked unamused. ‘Do not play games with me. You must know that you are under order of execution.’
‘Because you think I’m a spy.’
‘You are a spy,’ she told him. ‘There can be no other reason for your skulking about to the north of our city where you were found. Tell us about your masters, then, their weapons and their military capacity, their tactics and weaknesses, and you might be allowed to serve Tark as a slave.’
‘I’m not with the Wasps,’ he insisted.
She pursed her lips and slipped something from her belt. It was a glove, he saw, with metal rivets studded across the knuckles, and she drew it on without ceremony.
‘I am indeed a spy, however,’ he said hurriedly and she raised an eyebrow, ‘but not for the Wasp Empire. But I do know something about them, and I’m more than willing to reveal to you all I know. They’re my enemies, too, and my people have fought them – I’ve fought them myself, been their prisoner, even.’
She seemed not to have registered most of what he said. ‘If not for the army currently beyond our gates, then which other city are you spying for? Kes would seem most logical.’
Salma had to think a moment before he recalled that Kes was yet another Ant city-state and the one closest to Tark.
‘I’m not spying for any of the Ant-kinden,’ he told her.
‘I fail to see any other option. Who else would profit from this situation?’
He looked into her bland, uninterested gaze. ‘I was sent here by Stenwold Maker: a Beetle-kinden, a Master of the Great College. He has been working against the Wasps for years, and he sent me and my companions just to observe and report back to him. His only interest – our only interest, is in stopping the Empire.’
‘We will stop this Empire,’ she replied, with a curl of contempt. ‘Why should some Beetle academic care?’
Salma knew that his next words might not help him, would in fact hurt him, so he tried to find another way of putting it, but he could not paint Stenwold as a Tarkesh sympathizer any believable way.
‘Stenwold Maker firmly believes that the Wasps will not be halted at the walls of Tark,’ he said quietly, and waited.
One of the soldiers actually strode forward to strike him for his insolence, but some unheard command of the interrogator turned him back.
‘Explain yourself,’ she said, still expressionless.
Salma took a deep breath. ‘The Empire has been expanding rapidly for two generations,’ he said. ‘They have met Ant-kinden before, and triumphed over them. You have proof of this, if you’ve even looked over your walls at the enemy. We ourselves saw Ant-kinden amongst them before your scouts took us. Not as mercenaries or allies, mind, but as slave-soldiers.’
She remained quiet for a moment, and he wondered what was now passing between her and her kin. ‘They have fought Ants, yes,’ she agreed at last. ‘They have not fought Tark.’
Salma tried to shrug, but couldn’t. ‘Whatever. Perhaps. Maybe you’ll just kick the dung out of them and they’ll go limping back east dragging their dead with them. If that happens, no one will be happier than I. But Stenwold fears otherwise. What else can I say?’
He knew that there was now a mental debate going on. The soldiers were in on it too, for he could see the interrogator’s eyes flicking between them. Perhaps in time the whole city would be arguing the merits.
Then the interrogator turned and left him without warning, her slave scribe hurriedly following. The soldiers hoisted him off the hook, and it was downwards all the way from there, back to the pitch-darkness of his cell.
Some time later, the extent of which he found impossible to judge, he heard them coming for him once more. On seeing there was light, Salma hid his eyes quickly behind his bound hands, in case they tried the same trick again.
‘Come out here!’ one of his guards barked roughly.
‘Not if you’re going to blind me again.’
He heard them coming into the cell and backed off, finally dropping his hands. The time had almost come for an escape attempt, he was thinking, however doomed to failure.
‘Now calm there! No need to turn this into a diplomatic incident!’ It was not an Ant voice, not even a Tarkesh accent. The leading soldier stepped to one side to reveal the ugliest Fly-kinden Salma had ever seen. Bald and broken-nosed, the little man looked him up and down critically.
‘I see our hosts here have been their usual warm-hearted selves,’ he said.
‘Are you a prisoner, too?’
‘I’m your ticket out of here, son.’
Salma’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re a slave-buyer?’
The Fly laughed loudly at that. ‘If I had that kind of money I wouldn’t be where I am now. No, I’m your secret guardian, boy, and I’m getting you free. Or at least as free as anyone around here is right now.’ Something glinted in his hands, and with a single twitch he had cut the bonds about Salma’s wrists. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of here.’
He turned and left and, keeping a suspicious eye on the guard, Salma followed. The Fly might be small but he walked fast, so Salma had to jog to keep up with him.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘I’ve never liked repeating myself, so just let me get us safely into this room up here and I’ll spill all.’
Without warning the Fly took a sharp left and pattered up a flight of stairs. Salma, following, found himself in an antechamber with two of the familiar high-up windows and, more importantly, with Totho and Skrill.
He almost knocked the Fly over in his haste to get over to them. Skrill looked decidedly weary, while Totho had a fistful of bruises about his face and a split lip.