The Scarab Path

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Khanaphes had begun fading. In sections and pieces, the clutter of low buildings was losing substance, passing away, leaving only broad avenues and arcaded promenades between the great palaces and temples that had been the original Khanaphes. The city now transformed itself, whilst staying intrinsically the same, merely sweeping away all the accumulated detritus of five hundred years.

  She sensed a presence, a collective presence, whose mind filled the city completely. The Masters remained invisible to her, but she was touched by their attention – the entire city was blanketed in it – and she knew that, after she woke, its absence would seem as shocking as a broken tooth.

  Let me see you, she thought, as the streets and walls of Khanaphes wheeled and darted around her, but they were always around each corner, just out of sight.

  The city was hard to focus on, its edges blurred, the light it radiated painfully bright. Perhaps this is the city’s memory of itself, before the march of years eroded it all away. She moved close to one wall, trying to discern the carvings embellishing it, and in this half-dream they were words, as clear and comprehensible as a book written only yesterday. She read and read, the histories and learning of ages, and yet nothing stayed with her. The understanding flowed into and out of her head like a stream that barely disturbed the pebbles of her mind.

  Is this it? Is this the Profanity? This sad half-life, this feeling of meaningless wonder. Was this what the Fir-eaters craved? She thought of their tent, their faces. It is not real, this, but it is more palatable than their reality.

  She found the square before the Scriptora, lying open and bright. The city eddied and turned about her but something kept her here, some nagging feeling, until she realized it was wrong. Where is the pyramid? she asked. Where are the statues? In the centre of the square there was nothing but an old well. Is this not even the real city? Is this all some hallucination? There was now a bitter taste in her mouth.

  Is this no more than a common vice? Have I been fooled again?

  Yet I am thinking very clearly, for a dream-vision. She looked around the square once more. If I were dreaming this, it would be as I had already seen it. She suddenly had the feeling that this was indeed the reality, that the place she had seen and remembered was the falsehood.

  I do not carry their precious blood, how can I? Is this vice wasted on me? But she knew, with the absolute certainty of dreams, that what the Fir-eaters saw as a bloodline was something more tenuous. It was to do with Aptitude. It was some old strain of the Inapt that they laid claim to, some persistent reminder of those old, old days.

  Show me! she called out, and the voices of the city said, We have shown you. She drifted towards the Scriptora, and found Khanaphir men and women there, bent over tablets, scribing industriously. She thought she saw Ethmet there, too, or someone that looked very like him. These are the Ministers, back in the days when they were no more than servants of the Masters, but where are the Masters themselves?

  Is that really what you are looking for, little one?

  Her mind was full of voices and she felt a spurt of panic when she realized she could not tell which was her own. The thoughts flitted in and out of her, free as flies.

  What am I looking for? She was catching thoughts with her bare hands, holding them, as they crawled and buzzed. What did the Masters of Khanaphes matter to her, truly? She had become so distracted by the means that she had forgotten the end. She had not come here to meet the Masters, for all that they were just out of sight, forever in the corner of her eye. She had travelled here to come to terms with her own nature – and to reach a détente with her ghost.

  Achaeos! she cried. Achaeos, you led me here, so come forth now and speak to me. She did not know for sure whether she could survive regaining him here in this dream-place, only to lose him again. Perhaps this would be the end of it. She would take his hand once more, embrace him one last time, look into those white eyes of his, and then she would die and be with him, wherever the Inapt went after they shed their bodies.

  Please, Achaeos, I love you, but I cannot continue living like this. Either come forth and show me what you need, or leave me. I cannot stand in twilight for ever, between what I was and what I am.

  But no grey-robed figure came towards her in that flickering, painful light. She shouted out in frustration and anger: You brought me here! You drove me here! Now come forth, I demand it!

  The city fell very quiet as the echoes of her unspoken words rolled back and forth across the walls of the Scriptora. The scribing Beetles were gone, even the presence of the Masters seemed to have drawn further back.

  Achaeos? she asked, tentatively, because she was now sure that something was approaching.

  The earth before her cracked open, the stones of the antique well shifting as something began to claw its way up the shaft. Without transition, Che felt very afraid of what it was that she had awoken. It is not Khanaphes that I have called up: it is something within me. She wanted to flee, but the cracking earth about the well-mouth was hypnotic, and she could not tear herself away. The thing rushing upwards sounded like distant thunder on the edge of hearing.

  Achaeos … help me … she thought, and the thunder grew more and more urgent, getting closer without ever becoming louder, and she knew that whatever it was had now reached the very lip and was about to burst forth in all its force and fury.

  There was nothing, only silence, but Che was not fooled. She knew that it was waiting at the very lip of the well.

  A single tendril reached up from the darkness, quested briefly in the air, then arced downwards to dig into the sundered earth. She saw it was a briar, studded with thorns, and the sight of it instantly turned her stomach. She managed a single step back …

  Another followed it, and then another, coiling and twisting as they were liberated into the open air. A darkness clung to them that she well remembered.

  Oh no, oh no no no …

  Something else came out, unfolding and then unfolding again – a great hinged arm, hooked and barbed, that clutched at the well’s edge and tore the stones loose. The ground bucked and buckled, something vast ripping its way free. She saw long antennae spring upwards, another raptorial arm, then a triangular head with immense eyes burning with a green fire. Pierced and re-pierced by those arching thorns, the mantis lurched its way out of its chrysalis of earth, and Che felt a silent wail of horror in her mind.

  The Darakyon … he was touching the Darakyon when he died. Have they taken him now? Is that why he needs me?

  The mantis’s killing arms wept blood, and its monstrous eyes were fixed on her as the thorns continued to penetrate its flesh, riddling it with wounds. This was the true Darakyon, the very personification of all Mantis-kinden fury and pride and futility.

  Run, came a voice in her head, and she turned and ran, but the monstrous thing was immediately on her heels, red blood spilling from the myriad wounds the thorns had bored in its carapace, the shadows of its claws raking the ground on either side of her. She had called out first to Achaeos, but in the end she had just called – and she had awoken the ghost of the mad, embittered Darakyon instead.

  Che felt something lurch in her stomach, a sudden feeling of disorientation. The bright light was dimming … The monster that had been about to seize her in its jagged arms was suddenly very far away, receding and receding. She felt dizzy, nauseous, impossibly weak. The enclosed, baking air surrounded her again, amid the tatty gloom of the tent. She collapsed on its floor, and heard again the husky voice of the halfbreed woman they called Mother.

  ‘She has the touch of the Masters. She has it as pure as I have ever known,’ and then, after a moment’s smothering of any conscience, the woman ordered, ‘Kill her. Kill her and take her blood.’

  Che tried to reach for her sword, but her arm was leaden. She heard a shout and something passed over her, Trallo lunging knife-first and wings a-blur. There was a hoarse cry of pain, and Trallo cried out again, words this time.

  ‘Now!’ he was y
elling. ‘Now! Come on!’

  She could barely turn her head, just heard a scuffle and the cursing. Her vision was eclipsed and she saw the halfbreed man loom over her. His teeth were bared into a snarl and his dagger was raised high.

  Achaeos! she called, and she would not have cared if the Darakyon had answered her again.

  For a second the interior of the tent was lit by unbearable brightness, then a wind seemed to hurl the halfbreed away from her. Che heard the woman known as Mother begin to scream in rage and grief. Trallo staggered away past her, bleeding across the scalp. One of the Khanaphir came after him, but again there was that burst of pure light, and the bald man reeled back, his chest just a blackened hole. Mother kept screaming and screaming.

  ‘Che! Che, get up!’ Trallo was shouting at her, pulling at her arm. She made all the effort she could, her limbs like jelly. Someone grabbed hold of her, strong hands digging under her arms to haul her to her feet. She was leaning against someone, as her world swam. Her stomach was squirming with the abomination she had swallowed. She tried desperately to focus, to see who had come for her.

  ‘Achaeos?’ she asked.

  ‘Not Achaeos,’ said a clipped voice in her ear, and then they were out of the tent – out into the confusing underwater colours of the Marsh Alcaia – and the world was swimming, spinning around her, and she could hold on to it no longer.

  Thalric almost fell over as Che’s full weight dragged against him, but he got an arm behind her knees and hoisted her off the ground. Cursed Beetle girl could stand to lose some weight, came the thought, but then he had a firm grip on her and was backing out of that horrible tent. He noticed movement and turned awkwardly, seeing someone running towards them. He twisted a hand free, almost losing hold of Che again, and let his sting flash. The man, an emaciated Khanaphir, fell back in a tangle of limbs.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he grated. ‘Come on, Fly-kinden.’

  Trallo was already on his way, trying to wind back the string on a pistol crossbow as he went. The denizens of the Marsh Alcaia had begun to show all too much interest in a Wasp lugging a foreign Beetle girl about.

  ‘Stupid, stupid woman,’ Thalric was cursing under his breath. ‘What did you think you were doing?’

  ‘Lucky you were keeping an eye on her,’ said Trallo, having finally got his crossbow cocked. Now that he brandished it so openly, interest from the street people was fast diminishing. The Khanaphir didn’t seem to possess such weapons themselves, but everyone here seemed to know what it was capable of. Loosing a crossbow bolt in a confined space bounded entirely by cloth walls would be an interesting exercise, Thalric thought.

  Trallo was leading the way confidently, left, left, then right. Merchants and gamblers watched narrowly as they passed, making Thalric keenly aware of just how much Che’s unconscious body was hampering his progress. If they jump me I’m dead, he thought, and then, and I bloody well deserve it. He was conscious that dressing this episode up to satisfy his Rekef colleagues would be nigh impossible. But I knew – I knew she would get involved in something like this. Cheerwell Maker, as usual, blundering through a world of sharp edges with her eyes shut.

  The uncomfortable truth: I have a problem, here, and then Trallo shouted something, and Thalric tried to turn. Something hit him in the jaw hard enough to snap his head back. He staggered, his legs suddenly weak, and someone tried to wrestle Che from his grasp. There was a moment of fumbling that, to a disinterested observer, must have seemed hilarious, and Che was pulled out of Thalric’s hands. The abductor had botched it, though, tripping and falling backwards so that the weight of her drove the breath from his lungs. Abruptly free of her, with palm open and ready, Thalric turned to receive another hammering punch that knocked him flat on his back. A dark-armoured form loomed over him just as he heard the clack of Trallo’s crossbow. Impossibly the little bolt just danced off the attacker’s mail and those gauntleted hands now came up with something ugly and short-barrelled: a cut-down snapbow!

  ‘Flee!’ Thalric shouted, as two of his attackers began hauling him to his feet. He struggled furiously, trying to turn the palms of his hands towards them. ‘Trallo, flee!’ he yelled again. He saw the armoured assailant sight down the wicked little snapbow, then lower it.

  Telling a Fly-kinden to run, it occurred to Thalric, is surely unnecessary.

  ‘Watch his hands!’ the man warned, but they were already holding Thalric’s arms out straight and back, putting pressure on his elbows to keep them that way. Their dark armour was mostly plated leathers, and only their leader wore steel mail, of a design Thalric had never seen before. It was a moment before he recognized the emblem on their tabards.

  ‘What—?’ One of them wrenched his arm and he hissed in pain. ‘What do the Iron Glove want with me? I am Imperial ambassador in this city!’

  ‘Are you?’ He could see himself reflected dimly in the armoured man’s helm. The eye-slit gave no clues. ‘And what does the Empire want with abducting Lowlander women?’

  ‘I was …’ But he was what? What can I say that will not incriminate me?

  ‘Your name is Thalric, my people tell me,’ said the Iron Glove man, and a chill went through him.

  Assassins? He had all but forgotten, given the challenge of this new city and its distractions. Are you so weary of your life that you forget such things? But he was far from the Empire, and the attack outside Tyrshaan now seemed like something long ago.

  ‘My name is Thalric,’ he admitted.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ the armoured man replied slowly. ‘I saw you only briefly, on the Sky Without. But she told me what you did to her, in Helleron and in Myna.’ There were knives in that tone which mocked the terrors of mere assassins.

  ‘Who are you?’ Thalric demanded.

  ‘Me?’ The faceless helm came closer. ‘Why, I’m no Rekef officer, Master Thalric. I’m no lord of the Empire or grand ambassador. I’m just a poor halfbreed boy who’s had to make his own way in the world.’

  A name hovered at the very edge of Thalric’s memory, but he could not bring it to mind.

  ‘But look at me now,’ the man continued. ‘I’ve not done so badly. Look at what I can do.’

  Thalric saw him draw back his fist for the blow, amateurish and clumsy if only he himself had been able to dodge. Then the metal-clad fist slammed into his stomach and doubled him over, only the layer of copperweave saving his innards. He sagged against his captors, who instantly jerked him upright. The armoured man was examining his mailed fist speculatively.

  ‘Look what I can do,’ he repeated, wonderingly. When the gaze of the helm tilted towards Thalric again, it was as though they were collaborators in this new exercise of power.

  ‘You don’t understand what’s going on here,’ said Thalric, and because he was speaking he was not ready for the next blow, which lashed into his cheek, splitting his lip and throwing him out of the grip of his captors. He hit the ground hard, clawing at the dust, trying to extend a hand out to sting. The boot came from nowhere into his ribs and he cried out at last, curling about the pain, bracing for the next blow.

  There was no next one, though, and he forced himself to look up. The snapbow was directed at him, at his face, at his eye. Well, I always knew the mail wouldn’t save me every time.

  ‘This is personal, between us two,’ the armoured man explained. ‘The Iron Glove wouldn’t thank me for killing an ambassador. Be grateful that your Fly got away to tell tales. It’s enough now that you know you’re beaten.’

  Two of them still supported Che between them, and the two others that had been holding him now had their crossbows out and ready. The company started moving away through the Marsh Alcaia, only the armoured man pausing a moment, staring down at Thalric.

  ‘If I ever see you again,’ he said, ‘know that I haven’t even begun to avenge what you did to her.’

  Thalric tried to sit up, unkinking bruise by bruise, his breath ragged in his throat. No broken ribs, just pain all over and a bloodied lip.
He had suffered much worse. The halfbreed had no idea just how much Thalric had endured, before.

  There was a flurry of movement nearby, and he instinctively jabbed an arm out towards it, reaching for his sword with the other.

  ‘It’s me, it’s me!’ Trallo shrilled, coming to rest beside him, surveying him critically. ‘They did a real job on you, didn’t they?’

  Thalric groaned, pulling himself fully to his feet, light-headed and breathing through waves of pain.

  ‘I hope you can walk,’ Trallo added reproachfully. ‘There’s no way I’m carrying you.’

  ‘I can walk.’ And I can think up some explanation for Marger and the others, as well. He was still ransacking his memory for the name of the armoured halfbreed.

  Twenty

  She awoke, and was in a strange place.

  She was still in Khanaphes, because the city signed every brick that composed it, but this was nowhere she recognized. The ceiling was too low, the windows too small: it was certainly not the splendour of the Place of Honoured Foreigners.

  Nor was it the coloured cloth of the Marsh Alcaia, and that was something to be grateful for, at least. She gathered up the pieces of her last recollections and tried to put them in order. The Fir dream came back to her with shocking suddenness: the mantis of the Darakyon, reaching out with bloody claws towards her. She sat up with a start.

  ‘Achaeos?’ she whispered the name, out of force of habit, but his ghost was not there, not even a tremor in the air to hint of it. She was in some kind of dormitory, lying on a narrow cot that was one of five. It looked like a room allotted for servants.

  They were going to kill me, she recalled. The woman they called Mother had urged, Take her blood. Was that why she was now here? Were they going to farm her blood, syphon it off in cups and quarts? Che realized she was not tied to the bed, but she was willing to bet that the door was locked, and the single window was too small to let a Fly in.