The Dreams of Avaris

  By Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Roven was a tough guy and Merric was a killer and Skessi was just an annoyance, and they were the bad part of the deal, but me and my partner had been in Wasp cells at the time, and finding a couple of Wasps willing to go absent without leave for a private errand had been all the luck we had been able to scrape together. It was better than slavery. I’d been born poor in Siennis, way down south, and I know everything about slavery that one Spider-kinden can teach another. I was bought and sold from when my mother had parted with me at age five to when I’d cut the throat of the latest merchant to offer me for sale, and I fled the Spiderlands after that because the merchant was an Aristoi man. Back then the Commonweal had seemed a nice peaceful place to pull a few scams and get rich. That was right before the Wasp Empire got the same idea, only on a much larger scale.

  From that point, the Dragonfly Commonweal had become an overly exciting place, and

  I’d have made tracks south, or north, or anywhere, if not for the money. There was money in other peoples’ suffering. The Wasps were chewing up great tracts of Commonweal land, scooping up whole villages’ worth of slaves, winning hard-fought battles, enduring the keen Commonweal winters. They were men, those Wasp soldiers, and men had needs. A light-footed trader in certain luxuries could make a living out of drink and whores and second-hand Dragonfly souvenirs. If I watched my step: watching one’s step was a difficult proposition even for a Spider-born. The Wasp officers had short tempers. Every so often a trader in dubious goods would be taken up, stock confiscated and leg-irons on with professional speed and care. There was no appeal. The Wasps accorded other kinden no rights, nor even the status of a human being.

  Everyone else was fair prey.

  My name’s Avaris, and I’ve never stayed still long enough to have to change it. My

  partner was a lean old Dragonfly called Gatre Fael who’d been robbing his kinsmen up and down the roads and canals since long before the Wasps took an interest. Our game was black guild trading and a lot of different versions of selling the Monarch’s Crown to people, which makes sense when you know there’s no such thing, but you’d be amazed how many people don’t know.

  We’d been working together three years now: my mouth and his knowledge of the land, until we landed up in the north-eastern end of the Principality of Sial Men, and in irons, and in trouble.

  We’d done a fair trade, and had missed just one step. We’d passed through the Wasp

  camps peddling our seedy wares, bringing flesh and firewater to bitter, bloodied soldiers who had been fighting, some of them, a full ten years without seeing their homes and wives. It was not that the war was going badly: to the generals and the folks back home it was stride after stride of victory for the legions of Black and Gold. To the soldiers it was fighting a numberless and fiercely determined enemy, bringing Imperial rule to village after village of bitter, surly peasants, months of trail rations and harsh discipline, the bite of each year’s snow and ice, the red-washed memories of what war had made them do. Even Wasp-kinden started to feel the bloodstains, after ten years without mercy.

  We never knew what it was, that had seen us taken up, stripped of our goods and slung into slave-cells. It was simply one of those things that happened to people, that you heard about, and this time the people it happened to were us. We had planned for this, though. Gatre Fael had a caper, and it was a good one, and one we had been waiting months to spring, and with slavery our only other option, why not spring it now? Riches beyond riches, Fael had said. Riches beyond riches indeed, but our target was behind Wasp lines, now, and somehow it had never seemed worth the journey.

  “It’ll be worth the journey,” I had explained to Roven and Merric. “It’s a fair step, but riches, sergeant, riches. They used to bury them well-heeled back in the bad old days.”

  It helped that Roven, the sergeant, had heard something of this. He opined, offhand, that some officer in the engineers he knew had struck old gold excavating some Commonweal lord’s broken-up castle. “Vaults of it, he said,” Roven explained. “Just bodies and gold.” Merric had looked interested.

  “I don’t know though,” had said Galtre Fael, his lean face, the colour of gold itself, twisting. “Disturbing the dead.”

  “Disturbing the dead what?” Roven had grunted.

  The Dragonfly had shrugged. “They say… bad things happen, when you open the oldest

  tombs. The makers protected their wealth with curses, and the dead aren’t always that dead.”

  And the Wasps had jeered at that, and the seed was planted in their minds.

  I could talk forever, and Fael knew the land, and that got both of us sprung from the cells and travelling overland north, heading for the mountains. Roven and Merric were sick of campaigning, they said, or of campaigning places where there was too much risk and not enough gold. Both of them were swearing blind they wished they’d signed on with the Slave Corps. Who cared if everyone hated you when you were that rich? Money bought back all the respect that a slaver’s uniform lost you, was the way they put it. As for Skessi, he just turned up when we were two days out. Skessi was Fly-kinden, a scout attached to the Fourth and a nosy bastard by anyone’s book. He’d heard, somehow, that Roven and Merric had something on, and he turned up threatening to shop them to their officers unless he was dealt in. Nobody much liked that, but Skessi could fly faster even than Gatre, and he was a wary little sod, and it didn’t seem we had much choice. It was odds on whether the officers would declare Roven deserter anyway, especially after he’d had it away with four horses and a pack-beetle, but if he came back rich, well, that would smooth over a lot of rough waters. Besides, there were just so many Wasps forging west even as winter came on that it seemed possible that two soldiers could slip off on a frolic of their own and just claim to have gotten left behind. That was what Roven was counting on. As for Merric, he was happy enough to follow along, and if he got the chance to open my or Fael’s throat, well, that would be a bonus. Merric was like that, and he liked that. He was a simple man with simple pleasures, and would have been a perfect Wasp soldier if he’d had the slightest interest in listening to orders.

  The plan, when me and Fael had first made the plan, had been to hightail it over here on our twosome, but it turned out our friends from the army were worth something after all. We ran into trouble twice. The first was with the Slave Corps, but Roven straightened that out. The second was with brigands, who had been having a field day since the Commonweal soldiers gave up these lands without a fight. About a dozen lean, ragged Grasshopper-kinden swept down on us from a tree-clogged ridge, with two Mantis warriors in the vanguard. Roven’s sting picked off one in a flash of golden fire, and Merric killed the other. He killed the Mantis sword to sword, too, with the Mantis sword near twice as long as his, and that gave me and Fael plenty to think about. The Grasshoppers had leapt and flown and run as soon as their leaders were down.

  Still, the plan didn’t call to split the loot five ways, and on the journey me and Fael had been given plenty of chance to talk about just what to do about that. “High stakes, high risk,”

  Fael had said, but it turned out it was just one of our usual stock in trade scams after all, only played taut as a bowstring, and for real.

  So that, and two tendays’ sullen travel through the cold crisp air and the occasional flurry of early snow, put us here, looking at the castle. This was an old one, and like a lot of them it had been left to rot a long time ago. No Wasp army had been forced to besiege this place. The walls were crumbled, their tops gappy and uneven like broken teeth. One face had come down entirely, leaving three tottering sides of uneven stones, the internal architecture laid out in sheared floors, the traceries of fallen walls, windows and doorways gaping like dead eyes.

  “Don’t know why you people bothered with these things,” Roven spat, jabbing Fael.

  “Half-dozen trebuchet and a leadshotter, and they come down a treat.”

  How strange a thought, I remember thinking, having one of my philosophical fits on me, that sufficient Wasp artillery can do the work of centuries. Is there a precise exchange rate, a year-value one can assign to a catapult? How many decades wear is a solid ball from a leadshotter?

  “We didn’t build them,” Fael said, which prompted a reflective pause. It was news to me too. The Commonweal was dotted with these castles, tall stone keeps and towers, inward-leaning at the top to defend against aerial attackers. The Dragonflies had made much use of them as strong-points during the war, although Roven’s assessment of their longevity was a fair one.

  Everyone knew that the structures were very old, and these days the Dragonflies built flimsy stuff out of wood and screens that looked like a strong wind would blow it away. It was the first suggestion I’d heard that the castles were not originally theirs though.

  “Grew like mushrooms did they?” Skessi jeered, winging close for a moment. Fly-kinden flew, it was true, but Skessi seemed to have unlimited reserves of Art to call on. He was in the air almost every waking moment.

  “We were not the first,” Fael said airily, “to call these places home. Especially here near the mountains. There were ancient powers who taught us our ways and blessed the first Monarch and bade us found the Commonweal, but they were not our kinden. They were great masters, whose magic could reshape the world, command the skies. They had the castles b

uilt, for while they lived amongst us, they loved to dwell in cold stone.” By now I’d figured what he was doing, and just nodded along.

  “Right, whatever,” said Roven, but uneasily. The great broken edifice before us had a forlorn, tragic feel to it. It was evening by that point, and Merric chose that moment to start setting up camp. Nobody suggested plumbing the place at night.

  “Where’s this loot of yours?” Roven would ask, though, by moonlight. “Can’t see there’s much left of any treasury.”

  “Crypts,” I explained blithely. “It’s the loot of the dead. The family that ruled here in yesteryear laid out its dead in state, and in gold and jewels.”

  “And maybe those from before are laid out here as well,” Fael muttered in dark tones.

  “The ancient nameless ones. They can lie in the earth forever, they say, and yet wake again, if they must.”

  “Enough of that talk. We’re not superstitious savages like your lot,” Roven growled.

  Merric’s fire shadowed his face, but the corner of Skessi’s mouth was twitching, and Merric himself had his sword held close, as if for comfort. The gutted castle loomed impartial over all, black against a darkening sky.

  We went in next morning, once dawn and a bottle of war-loot wine had emboldened the

  Wasps. Fael would go first, with Skessi hovering at his shoulder, and then the Wasps with me in arm’s reach, in case of funny business. The Wasps had a couple of hissing gas lanterns, one of which was forced on me. If it had been just the two of them, matters would have been easier, but Skessi’s eyes were as good in the dark as mine.

  Still, after some searching and shifting, the plan proved its worth by providing a passage into the earth that was only partially choked with fallen stones. It was a sheer drop, but Fael’s wings carried him down there easily enough. Skessi didn’t look keen to follow, but a dirty look from Roven convinced him, and he fluttered down after.

  “Where’d you and he hear about this place?” Roven growled, one ear cocked for a report.

  “We turned over a castle crypt where your lot had been. Good business: Empire doesn’t know that’s where the good stuff is, half the time. Only we found clues, there. The nobles had a branch lived over here, ‘til they died out. Rich as rich, Fael reckoned, and who’s been here to dig it up, but us?”

  “Local boys didn’t seem so shy,” Roven pointed out. “How’d you know they’ve not had

  it all?”

  “Oh, you won’t find any locals willing to go into a noble family’s crypts,” I told him lightly. “Not with the curses.”

  “You don’t believe that,” nothing but a growl deep in Roven’s throat.

  “Oh we’re all civilised sorts from the Spiderlands,” I said. “Still, makes you think, doesn’t it?”

  “Come on down,” came Skessi’s distant call, and we did so, the Wasps lowered on spread wings, and me hand over hand down the wall. The gaslamps threw guttering shadows across walls made of irregular stones that still fit into each other so tight you’d not get a blade in.

  “This is never just for the dead,” Roven spat. “Too much work. Burn’em or bury’em, but not all this digging and masonry.”

  “Reckon they took their dead seriously, back then,” I put in. Fael and Skessi were already ahead, but it was so pitchy down there that even they had so stay in the edge of the lantern light.

  I wasn’t sure then that this wasn’t just some kind of grain store. Fael was leading strong, but it wouldn’t have done to show we weren’t sure, so I was as much in the dark as Roven right then.

  I’d have been able to pacify the Wasps, I think, had we turned up nothing but a few jars of rice that first day, but some kind of luck was with us, good or bad, your call, because Fael found some gold.

  It was in some niches in the wall, and there wasn’t much of it, but it was enough to make us look good. No bodies, mind, just a little trinketry: broaches, rings. I caught Fael’s eye, because of the two plans we were running right then, the first one, the get rich one, had turned out sunny. That stuff we’d read, in that other old castle, looked to have been true after all, just like I told Roven. Of course, the second plan, the new one, would need a bit of work.

  Roven and Merric confiscated all that glittered, although I’d bet Skessi pocketed a

  handful as well, and then there was nothing for it but for Fael to press on. Every so often there was a niche, and sometimes there was a piece of loot there, and sometimes there wasn’t. Then Fael had yelled out, his wings taking him up so fast he bounced off the ceiling and ended up scrabbling away on his backside as something reared up over him. The Wasps’ stings flashed, blinding bright down here, and then things went quiet. I helped Fael get to his feet, and he looked shaken. It had been a centipede, and living proof of how well you can live eating roaches and pillbugs and silverfish: ten feet long if it was an inch. Not a man-eater, but the poison in those fangs would have finished Fael off surely, and anyway, centipedes are bad luck in the Commonweal, because of old history.

  We went on a bit slower after that. The roof was lower, for a start, and the walls had become oddly slick and nasty to touch. The floor was slippery, and sloping too, and the lanterns didn’t seem to be giving out enough light even for me. I could hear the two Wasps breathing harsh and hoarse in my ear, and a lot of other little scuttlings and scrabblings as well. Nobody was much looking forward to stepping on the next centipede, or whatever other venomous residents we might disturb. You didn’t get scorpions so much, in the Commonweal, but my little spider brothers certainly put in an appearance, and I didn’t have the Art to warn them off. Skessi was sticking close to the light, now. He might not have the fear of the dark that the Wasps had, but he was somewhere he couldn’t make much use of his wings. In the Lowlands the Fly-kinden love little tunnels. Their warrens are mazes of chambers and narrow vertical drops and the like that make it impossible for any bigger kinden to get around. I think Imperial Fly-kinden don’t like being enclosed so much. Certainly Skessi wasn’t at all fond of it.

  Then came the bad news. The whole thing led to a wall: a dead end.

  We argued then, or at least the Wasps threw accusations and we tried to defend ourselves.

  The loot we’d found already might as well not have been there. They wanted the big haul, worth absconding from the army for. Harsh words were exchanged, a free and frank exchange of views, until Merric got free and frank enough to shoot at Fael. His sting went wide, from poor light and Fael throwing himself flat, but it knocked a chunk out of that wall, a chunk the size of your hand.

  I won’t swear something moved, past that gap, but Skessi was shouting that it had, and then a great deal was moving all at once because the tunnel saw fit to collapse.

  Not all of it, and not all at once, but Fael just pitched forwards into what was suddenly quite a big hole, too many stones and stuff in the air to use his wings. I felt the earth beneath me shift, and I scrabbled back and back, Art-clinging from stone to stone, and feeling each one move as I trusted it. One of the lanterns smashed and the other one went out, and it was all suddenly very black, and everyone was shouting.

  We got to a stage when the only noise was us, though, and all the stone that was going anywhere had gone. Roven had somehow shielded his dead lantern with his body to save the glass, and now he coaxed a little light from it. The place had undergone severe redecoration. We counted the two Wasps and me, and Skessi had got clear of course because his kind always do.

  “Fael?” I called. I had no idea what shape the plan was in, just then. The plan needed Fael, for starters.

  “Here,” came a weak voice, and then, “Down here, quick!” with extreme urgency.

  I started forwards, and Roven came with me, lantern out. The first thing we saw was that the place was crawling with critters. There were little centipedes, finger-length, and worms and slugs and some kind of palm-wide albino cricket that just looked bad to touch. The tunnel we were in had just gone, a few feet ahead, but it had gone into a lower level that none of us had guessed at. Roven tried to get some light down there, and the first thing we saw were the bodies.

  I hadn’t thought Fael was telling the truth, perhaps he hadn’t either. There hadn’t been bodies in the other place, just a little loot and the writing that put us onto this one. There were bodies here though. Before the stones had fallen on them, they had been standing up in armour, and one of them was still on its feet, propped up in an alcove with its bony hands about a sword-hilt. The rest were in pieces, and the dried skulls seemed to leer and scream out at us when the lantern-light hit them. There was plenty else to catch the light, though, and it was mostly gold.

 

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