He saw them then, two shadows of the evening standing near the Collegiate embassy. They were like statues, or the shadows of statues, dark instead of pale marble. They watched him, and he watched them back, ready to use the archway as cover if they were assassins come after him. Some small and detached part of him thought, as he hesitated, Is this the way of things now, for me? Will it be assassins for breakfast? Will I wake to them each morning? Is that what it means to be Regent? I would rather live the life of a spy. At least spies sleep well sometimes.
He was no Fly-kinden or Spider, possessed of good night-eyes, but the light of the sunset still greyed the west sufficiently, and it told him enough about their build and stance to identify them as Ant-kinden. The Vekken, of course.
He had no wish to have any dealings with the Vekken, for a number of reasons. Their customary stare of absolute antipathy was born of their city’s isolation, and its recent history with the Empire. It was not usually personal. On the other hand, if they knew that it had been his word that had prompted them into their disastrous assault on Collegium, then he had no doubt that they would kill him.
The sight of them brought back a great deal that he could have done without, just then. He remembered the neatly soulless city of Vek. Perhaps to a native it had seemed bustling with cheer. He did not believe it. The sole impression he had received was one of cold pride exemplifying all that was Ant-kinden and honed to a brittle edge.
He remembered their general boasting of her army, as it had marched past in its perfect ranks. What came to him, across the bloody stretch of intervening time, was a colossal arrogance. Such fierce and overweening confidence they had then possessed, such joy in their anticipated victory: a city of soldiers making war on a city of scholars. And they had lost. He had been, at that point, in no position to appreciate Collegium’s victory, but the details had come to him later, as they would come to any competent spymaster. Collegium had won because of its own unique virtues: ingenuity and allies. Vek had lost because of its bankruptcy on either front.
Thalric’s lips were pursed tight He had been in no position to cheer the victors, because he had left the Vekken camp by then. His mind recalled with perfect clarity the severing of the ties that had bound him to the Empire. They had not been cleanly cut, either, but crudely hacked until they parted, the blade running red. Even the thought made his side twinge, a relic of the old wound that Daklan had given him, the scar that bore mute testimony to when he should have died.
Would the world be a better or worse place, I wonder. His bleak thoughts would not leave him. A lot of the man he had once been had died on the point of Daklan’s knife. He had been so loyal, and every atrocity that his hands had worked had been justified by the cause he served. He found that he was frightened by the man he had once been. If I met him, that burning idealist, I would kill him if I could. Far too dangerous to let him live.
He thought too much, these days.
The Vekken had clearly come to some decision, under his silent scrutiny. They made a quick exit by the passage alongside the embassy, vanishing from his sight, if not his thoughts. He made no attempt at pinning a motive on them. Ant-kinden were all mad, he decided: living constantly in each other’s heads could not be healthy. He had never met any Ant-kinden, of any city, that he had actually liked.
He turned aside for the Imperial embassy. And why the Woodlouse-kinden at the door? Do they mock us with our own slaves? The statues reminded him of Gjegevey, one of the Empress’s favourite tools. That brought a whole new fleet of grim thoughts into port. He realized, standing before the heavy-lidded stone stare of the Woodlice, that he had no idea where his life was going now. He had lost hold of it. He had rejoined the Empire, but it had not let him back in. He did not understand it any more.
‘Thalric!’ A hoarse whisper.
He recoiled from the Woodlice statues, took three long steps away from the embassy, eyes raking the gloom.
‘Thalric! Here!’
The stand of trees, with its burden that had so appalled Osgan, was hissing at him. He was frozen, old instincts rusty, trying to pierce the shadows between them with his gaze.
He discerned the paleness of the Mantis statue, but there was something dark lurking at its base. He had his hands palm-outwards as he approached, but they dropped back to his sides once he saw what it was. He walked over to the very trees, and leant in further, peering down.
He could not imagine what it must have cost the man, to come here. It was not just the wound – Osgan’s face was pale and sweaty with it – but the fear. He had forced himself to crawl in among these trees until he sat at the very feet of the Mantis statue. He was resolutely facing away from it, and yet every part of him aware of it.
‘What are you doing?’ Thalric demanded, despairingly. ‘You shouldn’t even be up yet. Is it so important to get to a taverna that you’d kill yourself for it?’
Osgan stared up at him, teeth bared. ‘Thalric, you mustn’t go inside,’ he managed to get out. His breathing was ragged, and there was still fever in him from the arm wound. It must have been all he could do to haul himself this far, and it was not drink that had drawn this effort out of him. Thalric felt something sharp-edged turn in his stomach.
‘Report,’ he said, as if he was still the Rekef officer, living in a straightforward world.
Osgan held his eyes. ‘A new officer’s flown in,’ he croaked. ‘Rekef … He’s taken charge. Given orders …’
‘Orders?’
‘To have you killed.’ Osgan clung to the Mantis effigy, grappling with its stone legs to haul himself half-upright. ‘They’re waiting inside, right now … I overheard it all. They’d forgotten about me, or they didn’t think I could move …’ Hooking an arm about the stone waist, he sagged, just some drunkard making a fool of himself.
Thalric felt something building up inside him, a great rushing wave that cried out: It’s happening again. It’s happening again. He felt Daklan’s dagger go in, the keen cleanness of the man’s strike.
He could not keep himself from laughing. After all his recent brooding, the worst had already happened. However hard he had tried to reattach himself to the Empire, his knots had slipped, his bindings frayed. He laughed because he had suddenly been cut free.
I am a dead man. But it was still funny.
Osgan stared at him, shivering. ‘Thalric, we’ve got to get out of here,’ he pleaded.
Thalric’s grin was keen as a razor. ‘Of course we do,’ he replied. ‘You’ll know some low dive where a couple of foreigners can hide up. I doubt there’s a drinking den in this city you haven’t tasted.’
‘I know … places.’ Osgan struggled to stand, and Thalric helped him up, slinging the man’s good arm over his own shoulder.
‘Then let’s go,’ Thalric said. ‘Suddenly I have no appointments.’
All the leaden chains of doubt had just clattered to the ground with Osgan’s halting words. From the bewildered ambassador he had become the hunted agent in a hostile city. It was a role he felt infinitely more comfortable with.
For as long as she could stave off sleeping, she had not slept. She knew that, in her dreams, the other Khanaphes was waiting for her: Petri Coggen, passable scholar, graduate of the Great College, Beetle-kinden student of the past, and fugitive.
She did not run, this fugitive. She hid in the Collegiate embassy – no, in the embassy they had painted over as Collegiate, although it had the marks of the old Moth tyranny underneath. Being a historian was becoming a curse, now that the accumulated centuries of Khanaphes, the city where time had died, were rising up to choke her with the dust of ages.
She needed help, so she had gone to Che – but Che had her own worries. The other academics regarded Petri with disdain. She could not speak to them more than five words without stammering and shaking. They did not understand. They looked at the carvings and the statues and the colonnades, and they thought it was simply the past. They did not understand that it was all still alive, the truth of
it lurking beneath the surface, glimpsed only from the corner of the eye.
She was seeing a lot from the corner of her eye these days, after nights of resistance to sleep. The world was alive with motion as the ghosts of old Khanaphes whirled about her. Even when the servants came to her with food, she shied away. She could not be sure if they were real or not. The servants of five centuries ago would have looked no different, she knew.
She needed help, but there was nobody here who could, and if she ventured out on to the streets …
She had not left her room in two days. The encroaching taint of history arisen had crept even into the other parts of the embassy. The net of Khanaphes was closing on her.
Sleep was closing on her … She pricked herself with a knife. She stripped the rugs away and sat on the cold floor. She twisted her fingers in turn, searching for pain enough to keep her awake. She considered driving the blunt blade through her foot. She held it poised, quivering, ready to ram it down. She heard her own sobbing breath loud in her ears.
She could not do it. She lacked the courage or the resolve or whatever mad quality it was that enabled people to mutilate their own bodies. She let the knife fall clattering to the stone floor.
The claws of sleep rose again for her, eager to hook into her mind, and she had no defences left. None.
In her dream, Petri Coggen was outside, alone in the midnight streets of Khanaphes. It was the same dream, or another segment of the same dream, as it thrust itself slowly upwards from the depths of her unconscious. Each dream was another lurching progression further forward. Each dream took her deeper into the city.
Now she had arrived.
The Scriptora rose behind her, a wall of darkness. She reached back to feel the stone-carved scales on the columns that fronted it. The night was chilly, the moon veiled in ragged cloud. The air was damp with the breath of the river.
In her dream she could feel her awakening fear like the pounding on a distant door. This was the hub of her nightmares. This was what kept her behind the safe walls of the embassy. Khanaphes was out to get her.
In the end, Che had not believed her. Che had not even given much thought to the absent Master Kadro. The ambassador had other matters on her mind. Petri had not even tried confiding in the other academics. She had just been clinging on, day to day, waiting for when they would pack up and set sail for Collegium once again, because surely they could not deny her passage then.
And each night the dreams returned, and each night they grew worse, until now.
She turned away from the hulking presence of the Scriptora to face the steps of the pyramid. The pale statues at its summit regarded her with an impartial coldness. She felt her feet begin to climb, taking her with them. It was her dream, but she had no control of herself. I don’t want to see what lies within. She knew with a passion that whatever secret Kadro had unearthed would prove fatal, that a mere glance would seal her doom, would cut her off for ever from the comforting world of Collegium and the Lowlands. Still, her feet kept climbing, step by step by step. She could hear her waking fears wailing, feel them battering at the inside of her mind. In the dream, in her dream-mind, she remained placid, even content, to be taking this journey. In the dream the never-ending carvings almost made sense, and the city around her was rich and vibrant with a life that the waking mind could not see. So it was in the dream, but at the same time she knew it was a lie.
And she stood atop the pyramid, but fought the impulse that would have her look down. The shaft was at her very toes, while either side of her those majestic and inhuman statues kept their eternal watch.
Her head was being drawn down: the dream wanted her to see. She teetered on the edge of waking, the facade of her dream cracking. Don’t want to … I don’t want to … Because there was something down there, and it was rising up.
She woke with a sharp start, as though she had been slapped. For a moment the dream still clung to her, its sights, sounds, the very texture of the air confusing her. Where am I?
She froze. The air around her was chill and damp, kissed by the Jamail. She was high up, and the cloud-strung moon’s light settled on little, but it settled on the pale stone of the statues looming across from her. They had always looked outwards before, but now one was turned towards her – and it was smiling slightly as if in amusement at her folly.
She screamed, a short and ugly sound, as she felt the sudden rush of air from the pit at her very feet –as if something was rising from the depths.
She stumbled backwards, abruptly without sure footing, tripping back towards the descending steps of the pyramid. She reached out for a support, grasped the arm of one of the statues, expecting cold stone. What she touched was slick and slippery, not stone but flesh.
She screamed again and let go.
Part 4
The Voice of the Masters
Twenty-Nine
On this day, the one hundred and seventy-fifth day of the seven hundred and forty-second year from the founding of the Bounteous City, were the tallies made of all peoples who dwell under the hand of the Masters, happy are we to stand in their shadow …
Also in this year the harvest was of unexpected richness, so that the stores of the city were increased by three parts in one hundred for the coming years. The word of the Masters has cautioned that our storehouses must remain full, for there are lean years foreseen in the east …
Also in this year …
‘Bella Cheerwell?’
The words – her own name – startled her from her reverie. Che blinked, stared at the wall she was crouching before. For a moment the hieroglyphs only marched their incomprehensible procession before her eyes. Then they swam and twisted, as though suddenly viewed through tears. Comprehension came as naturally as breathing, and she saw: Also in this year did the First Soldier of Khanaphes take to the West River Plains so as to turn aside the advances of the Many of Nem …
But what did that remind her of …?
‘Che! What’s wrong with you?’
It was an irritation that would not go away. She shook her head and looked up to see a figure standing beside her. Beside her, not over her, though she knelt, for it was Flykinden: a man in a traveller’s garb and cloak, with a little snarl of beard at his chin, in the Spider manner. His face seemed familiar to her …
A tenday of personal history slipped, like a great rock mass long hanging, and descended on her without mercy, leaving no survivors. Che gasped, flinched back from Trallo so hard that she bounced her head against the wall she had just been studying. Khanaphes – the Fir eaters – the hunt – Thalric – Totho – the Empire – war! It was all so much to fit in place that she nearly choked on it.
‘Trallo—?’ She stared at the Fly wildly, trying to work out precisely where they were. Khanaphes, yes, but she did not recognize this district. Beyond the worried-looking Fly, the shaven-headed people were going about their business in a narrow street, without even a glance for the mad foreign woman. They continued herding their goats and sheep and aphids, carrying jars of water or oil, or baskets of grain.
‘Che,’ said Trallo patiently, trying to capture her attention. ‘I have been looking for you for two days.’ He let that sink in before adding, out of sheer exasperation, ‘And do you know how difficult it is to stay out of my sight for two days? People have been worried sick. All sorts of things have been going wrong. You’re supposed to be an ambassador and—’
‘And whose money paid for all this searching? Which of all your masters?’ she snapped back at him, before she could stop herself. She grimaced instantly. ‘Trallo, I’m sorry …’
‘No, that was a fair shot,’ he said, not seeming at all hurt or even repentant. ‘My own house got a little untidy towards the end, but then I wasn’t expecting open war between the Iron Glove and your Wasp fellow.’ His expression soured. ‘I wasn’t expecting open war, full stop. Che, I won’t pretend that your halfbreed friend hasn’t wanted me to track you down, but it’s your own people who are going m
ad right now. After all that’s happened, they want to get straight out of town – and, to be frank, so do I.’
‘All that’s happened?’ Ah yes. ‘So … the rumour …’
‘The Scorpions are coming, and they’re going to be here, well, really soon. Really, really soon. Whether they’ve had all the Imperial help that the Glove have been claiming, that’s unproven for now, but they’re coming sure as death and taxes. The Khanaphir are putting their army together as though the point of the whole exercise was just to give them the chance to hold parades. You can’t move through most of the streets of this city for soldiers marching about and crowds waving at them.’
Che stood up, realizing as she did so that her robe was filthy, ingrained with dirt and dust. How long have I …? ‘I have been researching,’ she explained uncertainly.
‘Surely you have,’ Trallo replied. ‘Now let’s just …’
‘You don’t understand. I have been reading the histories of Khanaphes – the true histories.’ She waved towards the wall with all its bewildering array of sigils. ‘These old walls, they’re the ones that matter. It’s all there in plain view if you can only read it.’
Trallo was staring at her as one stares at the suddenly mad. ‘Surely,’ he said again. ‘You’re a credit to the College. Now, how about you come on back to the embassy?’
‘Who were the Masters of Khanaphes, Trallo?’ she asked him abruptly.
‘You want my call? There never were any,’ he replied in a harsh whisper, with a suspicious look at the natives passing behind him. ‘Now let’s—’
‘But there were,’ she said simply. What knowledge she had deciphered, during those missing, dream-lost days, was filtering back. ‘They write about them all the time, their commands, their wishes, their guidance.’
The Scarab Path Page 38
