Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky

affirmation, but Totho squeezed just a little more respect out of him by weighing up the offer carefully.
    ‘Sir, will Che – Cheerwell – be going as well?’
    Stenwold frowned a little. ‘I hadn’t planned it—’
    ‘Yes. Yes, I will,’ Che told him, from the doorway behind. ‘I don’t care what you say, you can’t keep me here.’
    When Stenwold spun round he found her standing there with clenched fists, her courage screwed up to the hilt, more evidently ready for a fight than she had ever seemed in the Prowess Forum.

Stenwold closed his eyes resignedly. For all her shortcomings, the girl had timing . ‘Totho, would you—?’
    ‘You can say what you’ve got to say in front of him,’ Che told him. ‘I want to go. I want to do whatever it is you’re doing.’ She was standing there fiercely in her best white College robe amidst the sparks and grime.
    Stenwold turned on her. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, his face leaden.
    She confronted him defiantly with her hands on her hips, a solid young Beetle-kinden girl. A College scholar. My niece.
    ‘I am a part of this,’ she insisted.
    ‘Cheerwell, you don’t even know what “this” is,’ he said reasonably. ‘I am just going east on business, nothing more.’
    ‘Business that includes Toth and Salma, and . . . and Tynisa, but not me?’ She had wanted to be so calm about this, to pick him apart with clever words, but now he was here, now he was here talking with Totho , like some clandestine recruiting officer. She found that she was losing it. Quietly, the studious artificers were creeping out of the room. Only Totho had not moved, staring somewhere at the ground behind Stenwold.
    ‘What I’m about, it’s best you don’t know,’ he tried.
    ‘But you can tell everyone else? All my friends, but not me?’ And suddenly she realized it was all going to come out. All of it, that she had been stewing, was just going to vomit out of her. ‘Not me, though, is it? Never me. Please, Uncle Sten, I want to go. I want to do what you’re doing. I know it’s important.’
    ‘Cheerwell, listen,’ Stenwold said, still with a hand on reason, ‘I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t know exactly what to expect, but, worst to worst, it could be dangerous.’
    ‘Yet you always claim the whole world’s dangerous,’ she insisted. The whole of the last few days was crashing in on her, the failed meditation, the bitterness of humiliation in that duel.
    ‘Very dangerous,’ he said. ‘Helleron, points east . . . and there are things happening out there I don’t want you involved in. It’s not safe for you.’
    ‘I don’t care,’ she told him. ‘I can look after myself.’ Looking at him there she could not stop herself. ‘I’m not some . . . Well I’m not an old . . . fat man. What makes you think—?’
    He moved then, just a little motion, a tug at his cuffs, but it changed his stance and cut her off, because there was something more than history books in his personal history. His face was mild still as he spoke. ‘I’m sorry, Cheerwell, I don’t want to put you in danger. What would I be able to say to your father?’
    ‘You don’t care. When did you last speak to him? Or write?’ She actually stamped her foot. ‘Why not ? Why not me, Uncle Sten? Go on, say it. Just say it. What’s wrong with me?’
    ‘Cheerwell—’
    ‘I’m never good enough, am I? I’m just stupid Cheerwell with the stupid name, and I’ll just bumble along behind everyone else, shall I?’
    ‘Will you find some calm?’ he said, starting to lose his own. ‘It’s simple. There’s no great conspiracy. You’re my niece, my family, and I want to see you safe.’
    ‘Blood, is it?’ she said. She had thought it might come to this.
    ‘If you want.’ He gave a great hissing sigh. ‘Cheerwell—’
    ‘Only’ – she choked on the words, reached desperately for her courage – ‘from all that’s been going on, I could . . . could have sworn that it was her you