There were only six of them but he doubted she would need more. Tall and slender, wearing armour of delicately crafted mail and leather that had been enamelled in black and gold. Each bore a narrow sword at the hip, a clawed gauntlet on his hand.
‘How …?’ he began, but was unable to say more.
‘How can she be sure of them?’ Tegrec asked, standing close enough that Thalric wanted to strike him. ‘Why, they are sworn to her protection, dedicated wholly into her service by command of the Skryres of Tharn. I think you know how seriously the Mantis-kinden take their honour.’
They took their place and stood there, still as statues around her throne, their faces hidden in the shadow of their helms. In their midst the Empress Seda looked young and demure, dressed in the minimum of finery. Her own natural beauty was all the adornment she needed. She smiled warmly at Thalric and held out a hand. He made himself walk forward and take it, stepping within the Mantis circle to seat himself beside her. Her touch felt shockingly warm.
It was like sitting next to something venomous: a scorpion with sting raised. He sat there very still, tried to ignore the brooding presence of the Mantis-kinden who had been sold into her service.
‘You will be joining me in my quarters later, of course?’ she said.
‘Of course, Your Imperial Majesty,’ he replied, with a broad, despairing smile.
The next day he lay recuperating in her chambers, pale and feverish. The day after that, he made himself scarce from any public engagements, retreating to the palace storerooms to seek out Osgan.
Theirs was an unlikely association and it had come about through Thalric’s desperation. Had he still been his own man he would have spared the wretched Osgan not a word, would as like as not have despised him.
This was not the first time his eyes had been opened to the sort of man he was. When he had been on the run from the Rekef, he had viewed his life from the outside and the world, he knew, held more pleasant sights. I was a model Imperial citizen, he reminded himself. Filtered through his experience, the thought was a painful one.
‘You look like I feel,’ Osgan remarked and it was broadly true. Mid-morning and Osgan was still unshaven, eyes redrimmed in a sagging grey face. Once a solidly built Wasp, he was now fast becoming simply heavy. There was already an open bottle on a crate beside him. The Rekef man behind Thalric’s eyes looked at him and recognized a liability.
Images from the night before last still recurred to him as he sat down opposite. He and Osgan avoided each other’s eyes, both of them men who had seen too much.
Osgan shook a pair of dice out of a leather bag, a handful of small coins from another. ‘Might as well make use of the time,’ he grunted. He was an appalling gambler, but Thalric made sure he did not lose too much. Only a year ago Osgan had been a rising star in the Consortium of the Honest: supply officer for the Ninth Army, stationed in Capitas, with his hands immersed in the stream of Imperial funds, even holding the favour of the Emperor, but now …
He held his current position among the steward’s staff becauseThalric made it so. If not for that he would have been a debt-slave by now, meat for the fighting pits, conscripted into the Auxillians. It had all fallen down for Osgan, on the day the Emperor died.
It had fallen down forThalric: same day, different reasons. Thalric who had been a traitor, just as Tegrec had named him, who had killed a Rekef general, who had been brought to Capitas in chains. Thalric who had been saved from a bad fate for, he was discovering, a worse one. Thalric who found the Empress’s court at Capitas that bit stranger each time he was dragged back to it. Thalric, who had grown used, in his career as a traitor, to having people around to talk to.
The Rekef man he had once been could not have cared less. That Rekef man had underlings and superiors and enemies. The traitor he became had stood alongside such as the redoubtable Stenwold Maker, the Mantis butcher Tisamon, the enigmatic Achaeos. They saw more of me than my own people were ever allowed to. It had seemed right, then, but he had not thought he would ever be coming back.
But I grew used to having someone to talk to. Well, now he had Osgan. He could say what he liked to Osgan. Nobody listened to a shaky supply officer who was drunk most of the time. Nobody cared about this man, except Thalric.
And who cares for me? The image of Seda’s face came straight to mind. She must feel something to draw him back and back again, but he had no word for that emotion. She had summoned him to her chamber, where he had been bathed and readied by the slaves, dressed in Spider silks and then taken to her bed. He knew there were many who would give everything to swap places with him. He would give anything to oblige.
‘So what’s new, chief?’ Osgan asked, making a cavalier throw of the dice that spilled them off the crate entirely. The bottle was near empty, and Thalric took it up and drained it until it was. The bitter soldier’s beer Osgan had purloined tasted of honesty.
‘Someone’s trying to kill me,’ Thalric said.
Osgan made a grotesque mime of surprise. ‘News? Since when’s that news?’ He retrieved the dice. ‘Give me a quill and a week, I’ll draw you a list of them that want you dead. Lowlanders, Comm’wealers, even your own friends and neighbours. So what?’
‘They had a solid try at it outside Tyrshaan.’ Thalric frowned. ‘Wasp assassins, so not Commonwealers. And the Lowlanders who know me wouldn’t send assassins. Not since the Mantis died.’ Osgan flinched at that. Thalric grimaced. ‘Someone inside the Empire wants me dead,’ he finished.
‘Everyone wants you dead,’ Osgan muttered. ‘Everyone but me. And why not? If they hate Herself, then they hate you too. If they like Herself, then they hate you. Some of them probably just hate you anyway.’
Thalric nodded glumly, conceding the point. His position had endeared him to few. ‘I would shed this role if I could.’
Osgan was sober enough to grimace at that. ‘I know, I know,’ he said, almost whispering, ‘but don’t say it. I don’t want to hear it in case they come after me with their hooks to find out what I heard.’ He fumbled out another bottle, drew the cork with his teeth.
When Thalric had entered her chambers two nights ago she had been waiting for him, wearing a dress of white silk that hung from one shoulder and followed to her body’s every line. There was that happy glow to her that he had learned to recognize, just as he recognized the taste on her lips.
She had offered him a goblet.
Thalric grabbed the bottle from Osgan and took a great swallow, because that taste had suddenly recurred to him.
‘I have to get out of here,’ he said desperately.
Osgan shrugged. ‘Door’s right there, chief.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I know, but it’s like the army, chief. You don’t get out till it’s had its full use of you.’
Thalric had looked into the red, red liquid in the jewelled goblet, and he had drunk deep of it, because she would accept nothing else. The taste of salt and rust had coated his throat. She had kissed him, drawn him towards the great bed.
How long can I survive? A lucky man could retire from the army, but there would be no quitting this post. She took me as a prisoner and a traitor. She saw just enough in me to be worth keeping. Now she devours me at her leisure.
She would ask for him again tonight. She always left him a day and a night to recover. He wondered what arrangements she made when he was absent.
The most terrible thing about it was that he thought she did feel something for him, some attraction, even some affection. She was cold, though, and everything new she learned from her select advisers was making her more distant still. She was different. Everything about her appearance suggested simply a young Wasp woman who was little more than a girl. Her beauty almost broke his heart, but only because he knew that under the skin some part of her had been stripped away.
This last time, he had not looked into the antechamber where the detritus of her preparations would still be on display. He did not wish, when sippin
g from the red cup, to know what vintage she had provided him with.
She will be the death of me. It was no more than the truth.
General Brugan let him stew for a tenday before calling him in. Thalric spent the meantime in standing dutifully beside the Empress with a tight-lipped smile, or in hearing the words of those who courted his own favour. He spent his time in sloping off to talk with Osgan down in the cellars, and dulling the edges of his life with drink. He spent it in Seda’s chambers, stepping into her embrace, meeting her red lips as her slender body entwined with his.
Sometimes, as she arched atop him at the very climax of their coupling, he saw something in her eyes: a girl whose childhood had been lived in the shadow of death, and who had seized her only chance to live. The image was despairing, and it called to him for help. He wondered if she saw some similar plea for rescue in his.
He had lived his previous life hoping that a Rekef general would never call for him, but when Brugan’s messenger came, it was only a relief.
The office was lined with racks full of scrolls and shelves of books and next to it was housed a coterie of clerks who sifted every word that came into the Empire, searching for the least drachm of significance. It had belonged to Brugan’s rival and predecessor, yet he had changed nothing, and Thalric wondered whether this was to celebrate Brugan’s victory, or remind him that nobody lasts for ever.
‘Ah, Lord Regent,’ he said without expression. There was a Wasp-kinden woman sitting in the corner, ready to record whatever was said.
‘General,’ Thalric was aware of the absurdity, ‘you can call me Major, if you want, sir. I think I still own the rank.’
Brugan shrugged. There was no warmth towards Thalric in his expression, but it was not the job of a Rekef general to like people. ‘I suppose I am calling on you for information, as I would with any agent,’ he said carefully, with a curt gesture for Thalric to sit. ‘I am aware you had a many-coloured career in the war.’
Thalric took the one seat before the desk, wondering how many others must have sweated and trembled here. However, he did not rise to the barb.
Brugan’s lips twitched slightly. ‘That may be of use,’ he continued drily, ‘now that you are a good son of the Empire once again. You were in a position to see things that sounder agents had no chance for.’ His eyes said traitor, but Thalric met them without flinching. For a long time they stared at each other, with neither breaking from the other’s gaze.
‘Do you consider that you’re immortal, Regent?’ Brugan asked at last.
‘I am sure that if you thought it in the Empire’s interest, you’d make an end of me,’ replied Thalric. The thought rose in him, If you must, then do it sooner rather than later, and he swallowed it down.
‘Apparently someone tried to have you killed,’ Brugan went on. ‘Outside Tyrshaan, I am informed. The Regent may do as he likes, but perhaps Major Thalric should have made his report before now?’
Thalric looked down, at last. ‘You are correct, of course, sir.’
‘Well, it is now known to us and we will determine who is responsible,’ said Brugan dismissively, as if now bored with the subject. ‘Stenwold Maker, you met him, I believe?’
‘I did. Several times.’ This change of direction threw Thalric temporarily. ‘What of him?’
‘My agents there say that Collegium believes in peace, but what does Stenwold Maker believe in?’
‘He believes that the peace is transitory,’ Thalric replied. ‘May I speak frankly?’
‘Do.’
‘He would make a good Wasp. Indeed he would make a good Rekef agent. Perceptive, loyal and selfless, he lives for his people and he sees threats to them very clearly. He foresaw the invasion of the Lowlands an entire decade early and spent all that time laying plans and training agents.’
‘You admire him.’
‘He has many admirable qualities. It is unfortunate he is our enemy.’ The brief time he himself had been Stenwold’s agent-captive, and the work he had done for Stenwold’s cause, flickered briefly in Thalric’s memory.
‘He’s sending agents out again,’ Brugan growled. ‘South of the Empire now. To places we will be looking to, once the South-Empire is fully ours. It would make sense for the Lowlands to make our Imperial ambitions there difficult, and they already have allies around the Exalsee.’
Thalric nodded. ‘It’s a good move for him. I can understand him making it.’
‘We are far from ready yet for another conflict with the Lowlands,’ Brugan said. ‘Is he likely to force war upon us?’
‘No.’
‘So certain?’
‘Stenwold will not start a war, not fought by his own people. He may, however, start a war with others’ blood, as he did at Solarno.’
Brugan nodded. ‘You are well informed.’
‘Old habits die hard, sir.’ Some emotion had stirred in Thalric’s chest. ‘Sir, you’ll be sending out agents to keep an eye on Maker and his people?’
Brugan studied him with narrowed eyes but remained silent.
‘Send me,’ Thalric said. Please, send me. Send me away from here. Give me my life back.
‘Why?’
‘Why not? I am Rekef, still – Regent or not. I was good at my job. I know Stenwold Maker better than any agent you have. Give me a small team, embassy credentials perhaps. Who would be better?’
Brugan stared at him for a long moment, his heavy face expressionless. Rekef thoughts would be scuttling through his head.
‘An Imperial embassy to Khanaphes,’ he spat out finally. ‘Ever heard of it?’
‘I could soon learn,’ Thalric replied.
Eleven
‘The roads are good all the way to Tyrshaan,’ said Captain Marger. ‘With the insurrection there quelled we should make good time.’
Thalric nodded, eyeing the automotive that Brugan had found for him. It would not be a comfortable journey but he was used to that. The hold, hastily fitted out for passengers, consisted of a metal and wood box slung between the huge-spoked rear wheels, while the driver and his mate would be sitting up front amid the dust. It was a conveyance meant for couriers, travelling fast and without luxury.
‘How does it manage off the roads?’ Thalric asked.
Marger raised his eyebrows. ‘Well enough, if we had to.’ Long-faced and sandy-haired, he was about five years Thalric’s junior and slight of build for a Wasp. He looked wholly inoffensive, which was the best way for a Rekef man to look. Brugan had chosen an embassy as the ostensible reason for a Wasp team descending on Khanaphes. Thalric would provide the public face, and act as special adviser on the Lowlanders, while Marger would conduct the Rekef Outlander operation proper. It was a delicate balance of power.
‘We’ll go to Shalk,’ Thalric decided. ‘Not Tyrshaan.’ Let’s make it difficult, just in case.
Instead of protesting, Marger digested this proclamation. ‘If you want. It shouldn’t affect our timing much. With the mining trade the roads are probably better.’ His team was loading the automotive now: two more Wasps and a Beetle-kinden strapping crates and rolled-up canvas to the vehicle’s sides, before returning to the row of storage sheds for more. ‘I’d ask why, though.’
‘Why not? Shalk’s as good,’ Thalric told him, ‘besides, I’ve seen Tyrshaan recently. I’d rather see somewhere else.’ Let them think of me as the Regent, not the Rekef Major. He had other good reasons for wanting to go to Shalk, but those were not for sharing.
Marger shrugged, which he did a lot of. ‘It’s your call,’ he said, and went off to help his men. Thalric leant back against one of the rear wheels, feeling the machine rock and jolt as they continued loading it. Marger was opaque: it was impossible to know yet whether he would cause problems. The captain’s subordinates gave few clues, either. The Beetle-kinden was an artificer, a paunchy, grey-haired veteran put in just to reassure the locals. The other two Wasps looked like men more comfortable in armour. They showed Thalric a careful deference but otherwise said nothing
.
Thalric was making maps in his mind: envisioning the Flykinden warren of Shalk, the quarry mines there, the descent to Forest Alim and the river Jamail. It was all book-learnt stuff, for his travels had never taken him much through the South-Empire and not at all beyond its borders.
I will be happier once the war starts up again, to give me an excuse to return to the Commonweal or the Lowlands, to places I know. Save that would mean crossing swords with Stenwold Maker once more. We cannot afford to let each other live. The next time I will have to remove him, or he me. The thought brought with it an unwelcome stab of conscience, for Stenwold could have had Thalric killed several times already. Instead he had stayed his hand. Though for his own advantage! Still, it did not sit well that Thalric’s too often pawned loyalty must await that final twist of the knife.
The Lowlanders have come close to ruining me for a proper agent’s work. His outer shell of Good Imperial Servant had taken too many knocks and shakes while in their company.
Marger stepped away from the automotive, a soldier’s tension abruptly in his manner. Someone came running unevenly around the storage sheds towards them, and Thalric saw one of Marger’s people put down the big crate he was carrying and crouch beside it with hand ready to sting.
‘Hold!’ Thalric called out, and he went to intercept the newcomer before any damage could be done. ‘Osgan,’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’
Osgan had dredged up his old uniform from somewhere: a Consortium factor’s greatcoat, quartered in the army colours. There was a shortsword at his belt, the baldric crossing the strap of his satchel. He had even shaved, although he had made a ragged job of it, and his eyes were red-rimmed but his gaze steady.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he panted, short of breath.
‘You aren’t,’ Thalric snapped. ‘What’s got into you?’With a firm hand on Osgan’s shoulder, he led the man a short distance from the automotive, meanwhile signalling for Marger to carry on.
The Scarab Path Page 13
