‘Excuse me, sir, we weren’t notified-’
‘You wouldn’t have been,’ Thalric cut him off. ‘I require lodgings for three, an engineer to repair this vehicle, and a meeting as soon as possible with your duty officer. Oh, and round up some doctors. Local ones would be best.’
The sergeant blinked at him. ‘I’ll first have to ask who you are, sir, and what’s your authority.’
And here goes the dice. ‘Captain Manus, sergeant, on my way to Capitas. Rest assured the duty officer will get all the details he needs.’
The sergeant was still not convinced, but in Thalric’s experience they seldom were. Nevertheless the man sent some of his men off to relay Thalric’s requests, which was perhaps as much as could be expected.
‘Good,’ Thalric commented. ‘Now get two of your men inside the flier. I have a casualty that needs to get under cover without delay.’
He dropped back inside ahead of them, confident that the sergeant would follow to keep him in sight, and that he would get his chance to win the man over then and there.
The sergeant and his man came next and stopped short, staring suspiciously at Achaeos and at Che.
‘Is there something wrong, Sergeant?’ Thalric asked sharply.
‘Sir, these are-’
‘Servants of the Empire, Sergeant,’ Thalric said firmly. ‘There is a war on, you may have heard. Some places are no longer safe for servants of the Empire.’ He placed just the right stress on the words because, of course, an officer of the imperial secret service, the dreaded Rekef, would never say it, not straight out, but there were always times when it paid to be recognized for what they really were.
The sergeant was clearly not a stupid man and it was fairly well known how the Rekef Outlander employed agents of all races. Now his hurried salute and his issuing orders to his men provided all the reassurance Thalric needed.
Shortly thereafter, Thalric had Achaeos safely stowed in an infirmary, with some of his Moth-kinden kinsmen staring nervously at him from around the door, and Che sitting at the man’s bedside. By that time Thalric himself was standing before the local Rekef Outlander officer.
The man was another sergeant, and Thalric could not believe his luck. He guessed that Tharn merited the barest minimum of Rekef presence, probably making do with this one man alone. Nobody cared about such backward little places. As far as the Empire was concerned, the garrison here was merely to keep the Moths from bothering Helleron, so the Tharen governor was only a major and the Rekef had better things to do. He would feel ashamed, later, of the way in which he now browbeat the wretched Rekef sergeant, but maybe that aggression was something he had been needing to get out of his system for a long time.
And news travelled fast. After that, when he strode the corridors of Tharn, now lit with hastily cobbled-together gas-lanterns, the locals and the conquerors alike gave him a wide berth, pointing him out to each other as the Rekef’s man. In the shock of relief, he almost forgot that it was not true, and that Che and Achaeos were even there. Instead he went to the suite of rooms he had commandeered, with good-sized windows cut into the outer wall of the mountain, and waited there for the information he had requested. For what else would the Rekef’s man do, after arriving, but receive reports and pick the local intelligencer’s brains?
Che had wanted to stay with Achaeos throughout, but the Moths refused to tend him in her presence, finding that a Beetle-kinden in their halls was more of an insult than any number of Wasps. Only after she had reluctantly withdrawn did his people begin their business with him. The doctors arrived before the inquisitors: administering salves and poultices, chants and charms, two full days of careful ritual and healing skill. By the time the questions started Achaeos was fit enough to raise himself up on one elbow. He was able, at least, to look his questioner in the eye.
She was a Moth of middle-young years with a severe face, and two others came in behind her. One of them was a young scribe with a scroll, and the other a woman bearing a staff, which identified her to Achaeos as a guard, although the Wasps present would not have guessed it. He supposed that the Wasps must have banned the carrying of weapons inside Tharn, but a staff was beneath their notice.
‘I understand you to be a Rekef agent,’ began their leader, with enough questioning in her tone for him to know that he had not been condemned out of hand. The presence of the doctors should already have told him that, but he was taking nothing for granted. Even now he did not know whether it was simply his imagined link to the conquering Empire that protected him from his own people’s wrath.
‘Is that all you understand?’ he asked her. His voice was weak, and he kept it soft, making her strain to hear his words. At this point, words were all he had to fight with.
‘You are Achaeos,’ she noted, ‘you didn’t leave here in glory. In fact you nearly did not leave here at all. During this last year you have progressed from uninspired student to positive maverick – and now here you are.’
He kept his feelings from his face. ‘Is a man not allowed to come home? I may have dallied with exile, but I do not believe a sentence of exile was ever passed.’
She glanced backwards, but not at her companions, so he knew that they were being overheard by another – one of the Skryres he guessed – who might be anywhere in Tharn.
‘There are no Wasps guarding the door,’ she said, ‘so we speak only before our own people. Or at least my own people. Do you really still claim the Moths of Tharn as yours?’
‘I do.’
‘Then you are no Rekef, or Wasp agent.’
‘Well deduced.’
If she felt he was baiting her, she gave no sign of it. They faced each other without expression. ‘Our situation here is currently delicate. We do not wish some agitator appearing in the halls of Tharn, spreading confusion.’
‘You would rather remain slaves?’
‘It takes more than a single glance to truly tell the master from the slave.’
That made him pause. Again she was unreadable but there had been something in her tone, in that simple platitude, to suggest that there was more going on here than he had thought.
He narrowed his eyes as she glanced over her shoulder again. It was a bad habit of hers and there was no need for it. It suggested someone who had spent a long time away from her own people. But where? And the answer was quick to suggest itself. She has been in the Empire, surely. What is going on here?
It was not that she was simply being observed, either. She must be receiving instructions from a Skryre and they did not sit well with her. Her expression was beginning to tell him things.
‘I am Xaraea,’ she announced suddenly.
He held on to that for a moment, feeling his heart leap, for his people did not give up their names easily. It was a sign of status: to know a name gave you power. To be given a name made you at least an equal. That could only mean he had been let into something.
‘What is happening here?’ he asked her.
‘You know much of what passes in the Lowlands?’
‘I know some of it.’
She considered him. ‘You are not strong enough yet to leave your bed.’
‘I am stronger than I was, but no.’
‘But later you will be, and there is someone you must meet.’
He stared at her suspiciously. ‘And who would that be?’
At last her mouth twisted into a slight smile. ‘Who else but our new master, the governor of Tharn?’