The Scarab Path

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘My advisers tell me the Empire is a great beast lurking to the north, that is always hungry. That each year it moults and splits its skin and grows larger by eating another of its neighbours.’

  Hrathen laughed at that, but Dannec drew his breath in sharply.

  ‘The Empire is not as you describe,’ the Wasp protested. ‘Those brought within our borders only benefit from our rule. So, many of our neighbours beg to join us.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Jakal said, dismissing with a word everything he had said. ‘Tell me’ – she returned to Hrathen – ‘how long before we are your neighbours? We do not beg.’

  Hrathen glanced at Dannec, who replied, ‘There will be no need for bad blood between us. After all, we are here now to strengthen bonds of friendship, are we not? Why talk of war?’

  ‘One cannot strengthen that which does not exist,’ Jakal retorted, amidst a mutter of laughter from the other Scorpions.

  ‘But alliances are always to be wished for, are they not? We have things you lack,’ Dannec pointed out. ‘I do not believe your advisers realize what the Empire has to offer.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Jakal said, pointedly to Hrathen, ‘is this your lord, that he talks so much in your place, or is he perhaps your mate?’

  The other Scorpions loved that, and Hrathen smiled, too. ‘You are right, of course. I shall have words with him.’ He turned the smile on Dannec and, as the man opened his mouth to speak, he rammed a thumb-claw as far as the knuckle into the Wasp’s throat. Dannec, words abruptly gone, stared at him. With faint interest Hrathen saw his own bloody claw-tip within the man’s gaping mouth. He jerked his hand three times, feeling the sharp bone slice flesh and arteries, and then withdrew his thumb with a practised movement. He turned back to Jakal as the Rekef man’s body slumped lifeless to the ground, thinking, Thank you, General Brugan. He was perfect for the purpose.

  The Scorpions were still laughing, but their tone had changed from mockery to appreciation. Strength again, and a strong leader did not tolerate weakness in his followers.

  ‘Very good,’Jakal said quietly. ‘I admire your performance.’ Her tone told him that she had seen through the device but still appreciated the effort. The next time the jar came round, she passed it over to him, and he took a great swig of the fierce, fiery liquor.

  He let the Scorpions talk amongst themselves for a while, let Jakal watch him and wonder, and then excused himself, wandering off into the dark to relieve his bladder. On the way back, he located the artificer, Angved, leaning on a capless pillar and carefully watching the group at the fire.

  ‘Well?’ Hrathen asked him.

  ‘Well, I never liked the man, but even so,’ the old man replied. He wore his armour still, even the helm. Field engineers seldom had to fly, and represented years of Imperial training, so they had better mail than anyone else except the sentinel heavy infantry.

  ‘All part of the plan,’ Hrathen said. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t see it coming when I called him to the fire.’

  ‘I know he didn’t,’ Angved remarked. ‘Tell me, sir, when do they descend on us with sword and axe and cut us all into pieces?’

  ‘When we’re no longer useful to them,’ Hrathen informed him. ‘Have you guessed at your duties?’

  ‘Doesn’t take much to work that out.’ Angved spat. ‘Can’t see them as quick students.’

  ‘Living out here, you learn anything fast, so don’t underestimate them,’ Hrathen warned. He assessed the artificer as a level-headed man, someone who could be relied on. Considering the man would suffice, he headed back to the fire.

  ‘So why does the Empire seek out the Many of Nem?’ Jakal asked him, as he sat down again. ‘I am not such a fool as to believe you fear us. You are far away and strong, so if you are giving gifts to us, it is because you want gifts in return.’

  ‘Tell me about Khanaphes,’ Hrathen said, and the Scorpions went quiet again. ‘Are the people of Khanaphes your friends?’ he persisted. ‘Do they pay your warriors tribute? Do they send you gifts?’

  Jakal tilted her helmet back. The face she revealed was a hard one, even for a Scorpion. Her eyes were red, and the oil-fire made them shine with a mad light. ‘We raid the Khanaphir all along the Jamail,’ she replied. ‘We strike at their farms, their merchants and tax gatherers. When they are strong they hunt us, but we are fast and they are slow. When we are strong, they fall back to their stone walls that we cannot breach.’

  ‘The Empire wishes an end to Khanaphes,’ said Hrathen. The Scorpion laughter was derisory, but Jakal held up a clawed hand to quell it.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘What offence has it caused, being so far away?’

  ‘Who can say why?’ Hrathen had asked himself the same question. It must be because Brugan wants to see if the Many can be put to work for the Empire, he had decided. Khanaphes is simply the most convenient testing ground. But there was more to it than that, and he guessed that the detachment of Rekef agents he had brought were to be involved in it. ‘Perhaps some citizen of Khanaphir has insulted our Empress … It only matters that the Empire wishes it done.’

  ‘And the Empire wishes me to do it,’ Jakal said.

  ‘Do you not wish to do it?’

  ‘If the riches of Khanaphes could be mine, I would already have taken them. Do you think I would have stayed my hand?’

  ‘You need stay it no longer, then,’ Hrathen told her. ‘For the gifts I bring you are weapons. I bring two thousand crossbows and more, supplied with bolts, and the men to teach you in their use.’

  ‘We know of crossbows,’ said Jakal coolly, but he could see the interest in her eyes.

  ‘Also, we bring a dozen siege engines – leadshotters, they are called,’ he continued. ‘The walls of Khanaphes shall stand in your way no more than the walls of this old city here.’

  They did not cheer at that. Instead they stared at him avidly, whilst word of what he had said was passed back and back, until the whole usurped city knew it.

  Nineteen

  ‘What is this place?’ Che asked, feeling as though she had stepped into another world. From the fierce, dry heat of the sun outside they were suddenly plunged into a thick, muggy, sticky humidity. The daylight had dimmed to a coloured gloom as it filtered through tight-stretched canvas, silk and linen. Ahead of them the emaciated Khanaphir had stopped again to wait for them.

  ‘The Marsh Alcaia,’ Trallo pronounced. ‘Even a city as polite as Khanaphes needs somewhere to break the law. At least when the guard come looking, they know exactly where to go. People will always have vices they need to indulge.’

  ‘But this?’ Che took a few steps deeper, beneath the cloth ceiling. It was like walking under water. She felt an almost physical resistance to her intrusion.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, worry about why our friend seems so fond of you,’ the Fly advised her.

  ‘What do you mean? I sought him out.’

  ‘I mean that he could have run while we were bickering in the open house, and he could still run now, and we’d never find him in here. Think about it.’

  She tried to, but here, in the stale heat, it was hard to match the pieces. Their guide was drawing ahead again, making them hurry to catch up with him. All around them were Khanaphir and foreigners intent on their purposeful errands. Amid the fragile aisles lined with people crying their wares, the sounds and smells were overwhelming.

  He always stayed just in sight, always paused by each new turning he took, and always looking back at them – at her – with that hollow, hungry gaze. Trallo was right: it was not because she was a foreigner, or anything to do with the money she might carry. Instead, something had sparked inside him, as soon as he had taken a proper look at her.

  Is this really what I am looking for? The stifling air was making her feel dizzy, while odd thoughts and feelings kept passing through her mind.

  ‘Wastes, but we’re going in deep,’ Trallo observed. ‘Never been this far into the Marsh Alcaia.’ He cast a glance backwards, teeth bared
, and Che drew back, suddenly feeling trapped. She opened her mouth to suggest turning back, but then something twisted in her mind and she saw it. There, just beside the skeletal, hurrying figure of their guide, she saw the air seethe and darken: something of the night fighting to be seen, to make itself known to her. She imagined she even saw it pointing after him, urging her onwards. After that she had no choice.

  Again, the lean man was waiting for them at the turn, leading into yet another alleyway. Roofed with heavier cloth, it was cooler there, and the air was thick with darkness. Che let her Art cut through it, spying a tent at the far end, with four or five figures seated there.

  ‘This must be it,’ she told Trallo. He nodded grimly. She saw that he held his hand near his knife-hilt.

  The thin man was now kneeling in front of the tent: a low, ragged structure, patched and filthy, its original colour lost beyond recall. The doorway was hung with charms and lockets, little bits of brass and bronze and tin that dangled and jangled on slender chains. Someone inside was speaking slowly in a low voice, as Che paused before the entrance to reach out for one of the swinging fragments of metal. It had been crudely cut with a symbol that reminded her of the stone carvings to be seen everywhere about the city. Again she felt a stab of anticipation.

  ‘Why have you brought these here?’ demanded the voice. Only now did Che identify it as a woman’s, so deep and rough it sounded.

  ‘She was asking, asking questions, and she found me,’ the lean man explained. ‘Mother, when she asked … I saw …’

  Che saw a bulky form shift within the tent, half hidden by the hanging drapes. ‘I see her. She is foreign Beetle-kinden. I know them and they have nothing. They are lost to the old ways. She is wasting her time. You are wasting mine.’

  ‘Only look at her, Mother!’ the lean man almost howled.

  ‘May I speak?’ Che intruded, trying to keep her voice steady. She saw the figure shift again, still shapeless behind the drapes.

  ‘Come forward at your own risk,’ the half-seen woman replied, and Che could hear the soft whisper of daggers and knifes tasting the air.

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ Che persisted and, although Trallo was shaking his head fiercely, she crouched to enter the tent on her knees.

  There were three Khanaphir inside, two men and one woman who each held a leaf-bladed dagger and stared at her with mute hostility. Another denizen was a halfbreed, Khanaphir mixed with something else to produce skin of a green-black hue. He was hollow-cheeked and thin-shouldered and yet with a gut that bulged over his belt. Che’s eyes were now fixed on the woman beside him, the one whom the thin man had called ‘Mother’. She was another halfbreed, and a halfbreed of halfbreeds, until it was impossible to tell just which kindens’ blood ran through her veins. She was grotesquely fat, her huge frame shuddering with each breath even as she reclined on silken cushions. Her face was round and sagging, a dozen vices writ large there in pocks and blemishes, a true degenerate except for the eyes. Her eyes were blue and clear and piercing and, looking into them, Che felt an almost physical shock, like sudden recognition.

  ‘Well, now …’ the woman called Mother rumbled.

  Che heard Trallo step in behind her, staying close to the door.

  ‘My name is Cheerwell Maker,’ she said. ‘I … I come seeking …’

  ‘Enlightenment.’ Mother pronounced the word as though she were eating a sweetmeat. ‘Oh, yes, you do, don’t you.’ She leant forward, her shapeless body bulging. ‘What are you, little traveller? Do you truly know what we do here? The thing they call the Profanity?’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Che, and the woman smiled slyly.

  ‘O Foreigner,’ she said, ‘you know nothing of the Masters of Khanaphes, and yet here you are. You have been led here – by what, I wonder?’

  ‘I have heard of these Masters, but nobody will tell me anything about them,’ Che replied, and some of her frustration must have leaked out, because Mother chuckled indulgently.

  ‘Then listen, O Foreign child,’ she said. ‘Once, many, many generations ago, the Masters walked the streets of Khanaphes, and exercised their power over the earth as naturally as we ourselves would breathe and eat. They were lordly and beautiful, and they knew no death, nor did age afflict them, or disease or injury. Their thought was law, and the city of Khanaphes knew a greatness that today is only a shadow.’

  ‘Only a shadow of a shadow,’ murmured the halfbreed man, and then the three Khanaphir in chorus. Che felt Trallo shift nervously.

  ‘But that was our Golden Age, and all things fade. So it came about that the Masters were seen no more on the streets of Khanaphes, and the decline of our people began. Oh, the Ministers will claim that they hear the voices of the Masters, that the Masters reside still within their sealed palaces, ready to save the city should they be called upon, but we know that the true glory of our city is long passed, and it is many hundreds of years since this soil knew the tread of the Masters.’ Her brilliant eyes were fixed on Che and she licked her lips thoughtfully.

  ‘So what is it that you do here?’ Che asked her. I am almost there. Just a handful of words and surely I will understand.

  ‘Though the Masters are gone, they have left their legacy. There are those that possess some spark, some trace of their old blood,’ Mother said slowly. ‘They find the world of today hostile and confusing, perhaps? They are tormented by dreams and visions? They long for something more …?’ Her lips split in a smile. ‘I thought as much. O Foreigner, I see in you something of their touch, their mark. All who are here with me are your kin. We carry within us the bloodline of the Masters, and were the Ministers just, we would be elevated and praised for it, instead of hunted like criminals.’

  Che glanced at the others, and she noticed now that even the Khanaphir had a strange cast to their features, uneven, slightly disfigured, perhaps some distant trace of mingled bloods. A cynical part of her said, It probably does not take too much belief to turn a wart into the blood of the Masters. Another voice was saying, Are they talking about Aptitude? Is it the lack of it they discern in me? Is all this a memory going back to when this city was Inapt, before their revolution? And were the Masters their seers, who were cast out after they discovered their new artifice?

  ‘But …’ Mother continued, and let the word hang for a moment in the stuffy air, ‘there is a way for those of us that still bear the ancient gift to touch those far-off days. There is a substance that can yet wake memories of the golden days of Khanaphes.’

  ‘Fir,’ Che suggested, and the woman nodded ponderously.

  ‘It brings true visions, echoes of the past, a sight of the Masters perhaps. There is nothing else in the world. It is our only link with our birthright and heritage.’ She had reached out for the halfbreed man to give her a pot in which something glistened. ‘O Foreigner,’ said Mother, ‘having come so far at the call of your blood, will you not eat Fir with us?’

  Che glanced back at Trallo, who was staring wide-eyed. For the first time ever her capable Solarnese guide seemed out of his depth.

  Why else have I come so far, if not for this?

  ‘Let me eat of it,’ she agreed. ‘I need to understand.’

  Mother extended her hand and the halfbreed man drew a small blade delicately over one thick finger so that a drop of her blood fell into the pot. Then he lanced his own hand and did likewise, before passing the pot to the three Khanaphir. His dark eyes were fixed on Che all the while.

  The pot came to her, and they watched her patiently until she took out her own knife, pricked at her thumb and shook a drop of blood into it. The halfbreed retrieved the vessel jealously, as though she might run off with it, and with his blade stirred the viscous contents, the red droplets streaking and blurring into the clear jelly.

  He finally passed the pot to Mother, whose eyes were now closed in naked anticipation. She stuck two fingers into the thick mess and drew them out, gleaming with a gob of slime. With a hedonistic shiver, she licked it from her hand.

>   The pot was passed around, each of the dingy celebrants taking a share, and now it was back with Che. She stared into it, fighting down bile, having no idea what the Fir consisted of, even before it was tainted with blood. Mother was already shuddering, eyes firmly closed while the others seemed to be falling one by one into a trance.

  Che had scooped some up, without even realizing it, her hand responding to no conscious command. Out of some bizarre consideration she put the pot down, lest she spill some.

  She raised the hand to her mouth. The Fir was odourless, colourless, sticky and dense. She closed her eyes, already gagging. I came here, so I must do this. I wanted to learn the secrets of Khanaphes.

  With a jerky, convulsive movement she put the smeared fingers into her mouth. The slime was so salt and sweet she almost choked, but she swallowed it down, shuddering and retching.

  She looked round for Trallo to tell him something, but whatever she had been going to say was already gone from her mind. He was now too far away to hear, anyway, sliding further and further into the gloom of the tent, as the oppressive heat of the Marsh Alcaia lifted from her, and she fell into time.

  For a long while she just sat there, still falling but unable to move, feeling the rushing of the world as it left her on all sides at great speed. Eventually she recovered her balance, as though she had discovered some other Art of flight to arrest that endless descent.

  As she stepped out of the dingy tent, she could not have said whether it was herself moving, or whether the world had just been diverted sideways. All around her the Marsh Alcaia was disintegrating, stripping itself down to its struts and poles, as though a great host of invisible locusts had descended on it, tearing the fabric away as she watched. Soon even the poles themselves were gone, and she was turning towards the city itself. The great statues of the Estuarine Gate seemed to glow with a white fire as she passed them by, and she was walking on the river itself, and it seemed natural that she should do so.