Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky

quarter of the Lowlands, were it placed here. Has the Empire put down the sword and taken up the plough? Has the Empire turned to books and learning, or the betterment of its poor and its slaves?’
    He stared at them, waited and waited, until someone said, ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell us, Master Maker.’
    ‘ No! ’ he shouted at them. ‘No, you tell me! You with your mercantile interests in Helleron, you tell me how many swords you have forged for the Empire! Tell me of the crossbow bolts, the firepowder, the automotive components, the engine parts, the flier designs, the tanks of fuel and the casks of airship gas that you have sold to them at your costly prices! Tell me of the men you have met with and talked money, and never asked why they might need such vast stocks of arms! For, I tell you, the Empire is not an Ant city-state where the citizens can all take up arms and fight if they must, be they soldier or farmer or artisan. The Empire is a great nation where every man is a warrior and nothing else. The work, the labour, the harvests and the craft, they leave for their slaves. There is not a man of the Empire who is not also a man of their army, and what can they do with such an immense force save to use it? Open your eyes, you merchants and you academics, and tell me where next such a force might march, if not here?’
    ‘I think,’ said the Speaker, old Thadspar, ‘that I shall stop you at that question, Master Maker. You must, if you will riddle us so, give us a chance to respond. Well, Masters, it is a weighty gauntlet that Master Maker has cast down before us.’
    ‘Yet again,’ said some anonymous wit, but Thadspar held up a sharp hand.
    ‘Masters! Respect, please. Will someone take this gauntlet up?’ He drew back as one of the Assemblers stood and approached the rostrum.
    ‘Master Maker makes a fine spectacle, does he not?’ The man who took the stand was named Helmess Broiler, but it might equally have been any of them. He said no more until Stenwold had resumed his seat, smiling with infinite patience at the maverick historian. ‘And I do wonder what we would do without him. These gatherings would lack their greatest source of wild imagination.’ Polite laughter, which Broiler acknowledged and then went on.
    ‘Yes, yes, the Empire. We all know about the Empire, if only because of Master Maker’s two-decade hysteria about that realm. They are certainly a vital pack of barbarians, it’s true. I believe they’ve made great inroads towards becoming a civilized nation recently. They have a government, and taxes, and even their own currency, although I understand their merchants prefer to deal in our coin.’ More laughter, especially from the trade magnates. Broiler was grinning openly.
    ‘Apparently they’ve had some trouble with their neighbours,’ he said. ‘But haven’t we all? I remember well when the armies of Vek were at our gates, as do most of you. How many of you wanted to take a force of soldiers back to their city and teach them their place? I know I wasn’t the only one, and perhaps we should have done it. The Empire did it. Faced with militant neighbours that threatened their emerging culture, they secured their own existence with force. Can we blame them? They would be in no position to send their ambassadors to us now if they had let their neighbours run roughshod over their borders before.’ Broiler shook his head sadly. ‘And the Commonweal, and their war – what do we truly know of those causes? We here do not have that great and silent state looming nearby to overshadow us, for geography intervenes. If the Commonweal, with all its vast resources, should take exception to us, what would we do? And their habitual sullen attitude gives us no clue that they hold us in anything but disdain. If the Wasps have clawed a victory and peace terms from such a mighty state, then surely we must congratulate them, and not castigate them. I have no doubt that if they wished to