The Scarab Path

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘What’s she like?’ Che asked. When he did not reply, she urged, ‘Come on, tell me. The woman who rules an Empire, what’s she like – your new match?’

  Still he did not answer, and she turned from her work to look at him. His expression was far away, somewhere that he did not want to be.

  ‘Thalric?’ she prompted, and his eyes flicked towards her.

  ‘You really want to know?’ he asked. ‘The best-kept secret in the Empire?You want to know about Seda?’

  ‘It doesn’t look likely that I’ll get a chance to gossip about it much,’ she pointed out. Do I really want to know? she asked herself: something in his face had disturbed her.

  ‘The Empress … Seda the First,’ he said, and she had now lost her chance to avoid the knowledge, whatever it would be. ‘She is not quite eighteen yet, younger than you by a year or two. She was eight when her father died, Alvdan the First, and she told me how she’d lived in fear of death ever since. She was the only sibling of the new Emperor to survive his coronation. He kept her around because making her afraid was one of his pastimes. That’s how she tells it.’

  Another pause. Che kept scrubbing away diligently.

  ‘I wasn’t there when the Emperor died,’ Thalric said. ‘In fact I was imprisoned in the cells beneath the arena, where they keep the fighters and the animals. When I found out about what she had become, the Empress, I searched out someone who could tell me exactly how it had happened, because it seemed clear to me that something had gone very badly wrong indeed.’

  ‘Osgan,’ Che filled in.

  ‘Osgan,’ Thalric confirmed. ‘The same man who was stupid enough to follow me here, and who’s surely paid for it now. But Osgan sat beside the Emperor, and saw it all. And then I heard what he had to say, and it made no sense.’

  ‘Tisamon killed the Emperor,’ Che said. ‘That’s what Tynisa said.’

  Thalric was silent again.

  ‘Or what? Did he just die? Did he have a weak heart?’ Che prompted. ‘Tisamon and that Dragonfly woman came charging out of the fighting pit and killed just about everyone they could get hold of. Did the Emperor just die coincidentally?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Thalric said. ‘All I know is that something happened, something … very wrong. The Emperor was there, and Seda, and General Maxin, and some slave of the Emperor’s. This is not just from Osgan. I’ve spoken to a few others who were there, too. It’s amazing how people remember … or don’t remember. Everyone remembers the mad Mantis killing the Emperor: it’s just that none of their versions quite match.’

  ‘And what does your new wife have to say?’

  Another pause, terminating in a laugh that was surprisingly free from bitterness. ‘You bloody Beetle woman,’ he said, but fondly, ‘why can’t I ever have a conversation with you, just once, where you don’t manage to trip me up? This … being here, in the dark, it’s the whole situation with us, from the start. You’ve always seen things in me I’ve wanted to hide, while you … I can’t make you out at all.’

  ‘That’s because what you see is all of me, Thalric,’ she told him. ‘And you’re not used to people who aren’t hiding things from you.’ But even as she said it, she realized that it was no longer true, that it had not been true for some time. Even I have secrets now. ‘So what did she say?’ she pressed on, to turn his attention away from the subject.

  ‘She said that Tisamon didn’t really kill the Emperor. That the Emperor’s old slave – nobody seems to have known who he was – was in the middle of the conspiracy to put her on the throne, only she’s glad he’s now dead. He’s dead, Maxin’s dead, the Emperor’s dead. It’s only Seda left from the royal box. Seda and Osgan, of all bloody people.’

  ‘So who killed the Emperor?’ Che asked. ‘According to her story.’

  ‘She says I wouldn’t believe her,’ he replied. ‘And she says she won’t tell me. And, knowing what I do about her, I don’t think I want to know.’

  ‘You’re going to soon run out of ways not to tell me,’ Che said, moving on to the next wall. ‘So why not just say? What’s so wrong? What’s the problem? I don’t think there are many Wasp excesses that could surprise me.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’ he said quietly. She heard him move closer to her. ‘You want me to tell you?’

  She put out a hand that brushed his shoulder. He flinched back from its touch, then took it briefly, confirming what it was. With that frame of reference, he got himself facing her directly, and his expression told her that he had been keeping this to himself for a long time. And wanting to tell someone for a long time, and not been able to …

  ‘She’s mad,’ he said. ‘She’s completely insane. She thinks she … She thinks she has powers. Not Art, but magic powers.’ His expression was almost embarrassed on behalf of the Empress, but Che was abruptly paying full attention, the carvings forgotten.

  ‘Her powers, these powers she thinks she has, they derive from blood, you see,’ Thalric explained. ‘It’s something to do with this old slave, some nonsense he told her, but she must have blood. And when an Empress sets her heart on something …’ The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘The thing is … there’s someone inside there, just a Wasp-kinden girl who’s had a hard life, and who’s terrified of what’s happening to her, but the madness, it takes possession of her. Then she gives the orders, and another two or three slaves are bled. For her bath. To fill her cup. She says it makes her powerful.’ A shudder went through him. ‘I have drunk from that cup, too, when she has asked me to.’

  Deep inside, Che felt an unease that was nothing to do with the overt horror in Thalric’s story. Something else had connected with her, and she did not know what. Something was trying to tell her that this was important, and at first she thought, Achaeos? She heard no harsh voice in her mind, but there was some link there, something close to her.

  ‘The thing is, though,’ Thalric continued, the words sounding as if they were dragged from him, ‘something happened to her. When the Emperor died … I don’t know how to explain it, but something went terribly wrong. She was changed. It drove her mad. She was … wounded.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Che whispered.

  ‘She has … lost something,’ Thalric said raggedly. ‘Something in her mind has broken and driven her mad. She has lost her Aptitude. She is like some other kinden now, not a Wasp at all. That connection, that understanding … her mind is changed utterly. She does not think like we do any more. The worst thing is that she is not just mad, but she is Inapt and ruling an Apt Empire.’

  Che slumped back against the slick wall, feeling something within her plummet. ‘Oh that … that is the worst thing, is it?’ she got out, but she was finding it difficult even to draw breath.

  He got her reaction wrong, of course. ‘I’m not talking about your Moth lover,’ he protested. ‘You can’t imagine it. It’s as though she’s not human any more. Some part of her mind has just been cut away, and it’s the part that would let anyone else understand her. It’s turned her into a monster.’

  She felt her heart lanced through with horror, with anger, even with that old revulsion at what she was, that she thought she had put behind her. ‘And me,’ she said. ‘Would you say that of me, Thalric? Am I a monster?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Answer me? Am I a monster, too?’ The anger was triumphing. Her fists were clenched. He would never see the blow coming.

  ‘Che, I don’t understand you.’

  ‘No, you don’t. Because some part of me has been cut away, Thalric. I’m Inapt. I lost it at the end of the war, when Achaeos died. I’m the same as her, so I suppose that makes me a monster too.’

  She watched him, secure in the knowledge that he could not see her. She had felt like hitting him, but it was fast dissolving in a morass of despair at what she had lost. Who’s to say he’s wrong? Perhaps I am a monster. Something’s wrong with me. I’ve been crippled where nobody can see.

  It was his hands that drew her attenti
on. His fingers twitched, in and out, closing for safety, opening for danger. Hammer and tongs, is he going to kill me for it? She always forgot who he was when she spoke to him, forgot what he was. It was a small room. He would not need many blind sting-shots to find her.

  ‘No,’ he said, and he sounded surprised at his own conclusion. ‘No, it doesn’t. It makes her a monster, but not you under any circumstances. Perhaps she was more monstrous to begin with. Something to do with her kinden, probably.’

  When Che said nothing, he began to look around, imagining that she had moved elsewhere. ‘When I found out about her, about her loss, it made a kind of sense of her, of all her other habits – of the blood. But you … I find I don’t honestly care. I know you. I know you’re not what she is.’

  Am I not? Perhaps not, but I think I could understand why she does what she does. ‘I’ve only ever told Uncle Sten,’ Che admitted. She had just realized that her secret, her terrible secret, was now known by two others, and one of them was a Wasp.

  He reached out and, more by luck than judgement, brushed her hair, then found her uninjured shoulder. She held his hand there with her own. He does not flinch or struggle, at having to touch the monster.

  ‘You don’t believe in magic,’ she said. ‘How could you?’ It reminded her of a conversation she’d had once with Salma, long ago. ‘But you must have seen some things, during your life …’

  ‘Some,’ he acknowledged grudgingly. ‘I saw the spy, Scyla, doing her tricks with my own face. It was no Art, and yet she did it – and I cannot say how.’

  ‘The world is full of the inexplicable,’ she said. ‘I find it easier to see that now.’ She felt his hand tense for a moment, then relax. ‘Or at least, I cannot explain such things for you, but I can navigate them. Would you believe that?’

  ‘Just because I cannot explain something does not mean that there is no rational explanation,’ he replied. There was a faint edge to his voice that told her, He’s frightened. He knows just enough to be frightened.

  ‘If I told you that I sensed the trap, where you saw nothing, you would say it was because my eyes and my Art let me see better. If I told you that I can read these carvings because of what I have lost, you would say it was merely because I had studied.’ It made her feel lonely, saying it out loud, the way that she had been cut off from so much of the world. ‘If I told you that I did believe in magic, you would think me mad.’

  Through each revelation, she could feel him on the point of pulling away from her, but he never quite did. ‘Che …’ he began. His hand tightened. ‘Actions are more important than beliefs. You believe what you want, so long as you don’t start bathing in the blood of slaves.’ His lips twitched, the long-absent mocking smile coming back. ‘An Inapt Beetle? You’ve finally found a way to make yourself completely useless to everyone.’

  ‘What?’ she snapped, and pushed him in the chest, hard enough to make him stagger. She tried to follow up, but now he had the measure of where she was. In a moment he was holding her against his chest, her forehead on his shoulder. She did not dare look up and see what unguarded expression he wore.

  She had expected him to let go, while he made some other barbed comment, but instead he stood quite still, his breath rising and falling against her.

  ‘Thalric …’ It felt strange, comfortable and horribly guilty all at once. She kept expecting the spectre of Achaeos to loom large in order to castigate her, but it seemed to have absented itself since enticing her to this place. ‘What if I told you now that I could open the doors to this room, from what I have learned in the carvings here? Would you say it was just artifice?’

  His breath quickened. ‘You can open this room up?’

  ‘I don’t know, for sure,’ she said. ‘But the carvings say I can, if I try.’

  ‘Then I’d say it was magic and not care who heard me,’ he said quickly, but she knew that was not true. Achaeos was right: belief is easy in the dark, but soon banished by sunlight. If we ever get out of this he will invent some explanation to settle his mind.

  She pulled away, was held tight for a moment and then released. Oh this is wrong. Stenwold would be mortified. In fact the list of people who would recoil from her was long: Tynisa, Achaeos, Totho … How many was she betraying by feeling this way about a Wasp, a Rekef Wasp? About Thalric.

  It had been growing on her since she spotted him in this city, a face if not friendly then familiar, amid an ocean of strangers. It had been growing since she found such common territory with him, her opposite number, her old adversary. Now, looking at his face, she did not any longer automatically think of the cells in Asta and Myna, of the interrogation and what he would have done to her, for the Empire’s sake. The past had reclaimed its own. She had acknowledged the account was settled, through what he had done later.

  ‘I remember Myna,’ she said, and saw him stiffen, expecting rebuke. ‘The second time, I mean. I remember that you gave yourself up for the resistance – and for me.’

  ‘These things never quite work out how you plan them,’ he said.

  I remember Collegium, too, and the signing of the Treaty of Gold. That moment we were able to speak freely, before the diplomacy claimed him.

  She felt a wellspring of emotion about to burst, and fought it down. Not now. Not here. But how strange that it should come to this. ‘You try and rest,’ she advised. ‘You look as though you need it. I’ll work on getting us out of here.’

  Thirty-Seven

  We have reached a turning point, I think, was Accius’s conclusion. The two Vekken were crouching in the shadows of the archway that linked the Place of Foreigners to the square fronting the Scriptora. They had, from one vantage or another, been watching the pyramid since last night, taking turns to sleep for short periods, knowing that the sleeper would wake the instant the sentry called on him.

  Last night they had tracked the fugitive Beetle ambassador, street by street, silently and with grim determination. The Wasps had helped. The Vekken had followed Cheerwell Maker’s trail by watching the sky and hunting the hunters. Their chase had been tireless, careful, and the Wasps had never guessed that they were acting as beacons in a greater pursuit.

  They had been in time to see the Maker woman and her co-conspirators bearded at the pyramid. They witnessed the Wasp advance, one fugitive captured, the other, along with Maker, disappearing into the edifice itself. Two Wasps had followed them. There had been a sound.

  Cheerwell Maker had not returned from inside that pyramid. Nor had any of theWasps, either her companion or their pursuers. The Imperials above had fled the structure, seemingly without cause or warning.

  The Wasps still keep watch, Malius noted. They believe as we do, then, that they are still within.

  There was a moment of silence between them, an understanding close enough that even unspoken words were not needed. Neither one said, We could let this rest here, but each knew the other was thinking just that.

  I do not like that place, Accius decided. It is an irrational reaction, but something I cannot define disturbs me about it. He compared his perceptions with those of Malius, and was comforted to find the same disquiet in his colleague. The behaviour of the Wasps cannot be fully accounted for. They fled very swiftly, from nothing that was apparent to us. I cannot say what, but some other force is at work here – some force as yet invisible to us. We can see only its effects.

  Agreed. Malius hunkered down lower, while checking the action of his crossbow. Again there was a pause in their thought-conversation, each steeling himself.

  Our suppositions to date are challenged. It was Malius who voiced this silently. The Collegium ambassador’s game is not so simple as one of loyalty or betrayal. There is division in the Imperial camp also. We came here to determine the Collegiate plans, and how they might affect our city. We know less now than we thought we did yesterday. We cannot return without gaining more concrete information. Otherwise we would have failed our city.

  It is clear, then, that whatever th
e Collegiate ambassador is up to, it is substantially more complicated than we thought, Accius agreed with a sigh. Only a proper interrogation will reveal it, and for that we must catch her alive. And for that …

  We must follow her, Malius finished. They both felt the strange dread exercised by the pyramid, but each took strength from the other.

  I feel that this journey shall only be one-way. Accius was saying what they had both been thinking. There is something down there, something that I cannot give a name or shape to. There is only one way to do this. We must separate.

  I shall— Malius started, but Accius overrode him. No, I shall. I shall venture within. You must stay hidden up here and I shall report to you all I encounter down below. If I meet the ambassador, I shall relay her explanations to you. If matters come to their worst …

  I shall find my way home, Malius stated firmly. No matter what, I shall take what you learn there back to our city. Your sacrifice shall be known. I only wish there was some other way.

  None suggests itself, none to be achieved with honour. Accius took a deep breath. I fear.

  Take strength from me.

  I do.

  They shall know, back in Vek, that you did your duty. Malius shifted position, eyes still on the pyramid. The sky above was darkening towards dusk, the square empty of life. What words for your comrades?

  None but the usual: that through me the city shall prosper, and our enemies fail. Accius stood up slowly, seeking for inner calm. The alien, hostile city all around them seemed to encroach, to loom and threaten.

  I shall speak personally to your mate and children, Malius assured him. I know you are fond of them. Is there any specific message?

  What more could I want for my children, since they enjoy the greatest gift already? They will be brought up as soldiers of Vek. Accius slung his crossbow. The Wasps will see me as I approach the pyramid.

  If they move to attack you, I shall draw their attention, Malius assured him. A death or two should serve. I shall be with you, brother.