The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Her eyes held his, and he thought: Claws first, and then sting. Always the way of it. His death was now in the forefront of her mind, being contemplated, and that did nothing but inflame him more.

  She thrust herself down on to him, and he was more than ready to enter her. Locked together, still grappling, his hands warm against her cool skin, in that moment he abandoned the Empire, all the games and rules and weaknesses.

  Later, separated, they lay watching each other, as the watches of the night turned towards morning. Scorpion-kinden did not slumber in one another's arms. Jakal had fallen back out of arm's reach, perhaps close enough still that the claws of her hands could scrape against those of his.

  'Let me in,' he said, barely more than a whisper. 'What is it that I cannot understand of your people? I want to be part of your world.'

  'Have I not let you in, this very night?' she asked him, amused.

  'I have worked with your kinden for years, in the Dryclaw,' he told her, feeling an urgency about it. 'You are not like them: they have been corrupted by the Spiders, by the Empire. How is it you have not?'

  'They forget their true enemies. They forget their past,' she explained, with a one-shouldered shrug. 'They tell no histories, they keep no lore. We hold firm to our histories here. Perhaps you had not thought of us as scholars?' He saw her fangs bared in a grin. 'Our histories are our grudges, told by each generation to the next. We hold to those grudges, and we would never let them go. Let our cousins of the Dryclaw be seduced away from their past. We remember.'

  'But remember what?'

  She eyed him, still smiling. 'And why would you know?'

  'Because I would be a part of it. Your grudges are mine.'

  'So besotted, Of-the-Empire?'

  'I will kill you if you name me that again.' The words came out flatly, but sharp-edged. She paused a long moment, regarding him, turning his death over in her mind once again, but the smile stayed put.

  'At last you speak as we do,' she said. 'A warrior needs no more reason to shed blood tomorrow than because the sun shines, but perhaps you should know our story, at last. We remember. We remember to the time when the desert was green. Long and long ago, when the desert was green and the cities of the Beetle-kinden were strung across it like dew on a spiderweb. Long ago when we lived in the dry fringes. When the whole world was ruled by the Masters of Khanaphes, and we alone would not bow the knee.'

  Hrathen felt an odd feeling stir inside him, as though he was at the edge of a chasm, looking down. How many generations? he wondered. How much was 'the whole world' when that was true?

  'Year on year, mother to daughter, and the slaves of the Masters tried to tame us. They forced us to the very edge of the world, but we would not be their slaves. We alone, of all the kinden of the world, would not surrender, nor would we flee to seek other lands and other masters.'

  Other lands and other masters? Hrathen had never been a student of history, but he guessed this must mean what they called the Bad Old Days, those times in which the world had belonged to very different kinden: Moths, Spiders. Were these 'Masters' in fact Spider-kinden? It sounds like their way.

  'Then the dry times came,' Jakal went on, 'and the green lands faded and the Beetle-kinden departed. Year on year, mother to daughter, the land dried, and the Beetle-kinden returned to their river, where it was always green. It was not that they could not have survived in the drier lands, but that their Masters could not, and where their Masters' power failed, so they failed also, for they were slaves always to their Masters.' Jakal's telling had started to sound almost ritualized, recalled words told over and over, told to him now in this tent in sight of Khanaphes's walls. He sensed history all around them: the clawed and brutal story of the Scorpion-kinden.

  'So we came unto the lands that had once been green, and we came unto the cities of the outer desert and the mid-desert, and all the things that the Beetles had left behind. We took their metal and made swords from it. We took their wood and made spears of it. Such was the wealth they had discarded that we yet mine their cities for the commonplace treasures they have left behind. Only the cities of the inner desert are barred to us, for there the Masters posted their guardians, and those we may not disturb.'

  The inner desert? Hrathen shivered again. Nothing lived in the inner desert, of course. Even the Scorpions could not survive there. That had been the Imperial understanding, at least. It had not been considered that fear of something worse might keep them away.

  Once Khanaphes is dust, he thought, I shall go there and view these cities, But it was a hollow boast because, in absorbing the Many's history, he was adopting their strictures too.

  'Yet still,' Jakal watched him carefully, 'still our enemies kept to the river, and held all the land that was still green, and penned us up in the dry lands, year on year, mother to daughter. Until the strangers came from the north and brought us many weapons, and showed us how to take those green lands from the Masters' servants. And we smote the servants of the Masters and tore down their walls, and slew them, women, men and children, each and every one,' and she said it sweetly, very sweetly indeed, and he loved her for it.

  Thirty-One

  We have lost control.

  Malius's gloomy response came back. We never had it.

  We cannot remain long in this city, Accius told him. This war of theirs has no relevance to us. The Vekken were sitting side by side on one of the beds in their room, in their customary silence. The movements of the Collegiates, their babble and clumsiness, intruded on them through the closed door.

  It has been claimed that the Empire is behind the attackers, Malius reminded him.

  I am not convinced. I can see no gain for the Empire.

  We are not best placed to know what the Empire seeks.

  Accius sighed inwardly. They talk and talk of leaving. He referred to the Collegium delegation, who had been packing their belongings frantically, but yet never seemed to make any definite plans. The implication was clear.

  A poor deception then: they intend to stay.

  Denying us our chance to return home.

  Home, Malius echoed, and his inner voice was wretched. But we cannot give up all hope.

  Could we even find home, if we left this city on our own? They compared maps, mind to mind, trying to stitch the borders of where-they-were to those of where-they-knew. But Vek had lived in isolation for such a long time, it barely acknowledged Helleron and Tark, let alone the Exalsee. We are lost. Only by staying with the Collegiates can we ever hope to reach home. We could put a blade to their throats and force them to guide us, if need be. Accius was warming to the idea. Or we could take their Fly-kinden slave and force him, instead. Fly-kinden are pliable.

  A plan, Malius admitted. But what would we tell the Court, after we found our home again? What have we accomplished? What have we discovered?

  That Collegium seeks common cause with the Empire! was Accius's prompt response. That our enemies gather against us. Another thought followed swiftly on: They pretend to leave, but they must wait here to betray the local Beetles to the Empire. Perhaps that is what they have promised, in return for Imperial help against Vek.

  Plausible, agreed Malius. Feeling the other man's alarm at the thought, he fed him caution in return. We must accomplish what we have set out to do. We cannot return empty-handed. We must attempt to spoil their plot.

  We care nothing for this city, Accius argued. In fact, we hate it. This is a crude, loud, chaotic place.

  Still, it is being attacked by our enemies. In following our course of action, we deprive our enemies of their advantage. We must kill the ambassador, as we planned.

  Accius's mind signalled frustration. She seems to be able to appear and disappear like a Moth-kinden. Whenever she is present, others watch her. That Fly slave has his eyes on her often, yet at times even he cannot find her, or that is what he claims.

  That is what he claims, Malius echoed. We no longer have the time to do this properly, like soldiers. We m
ust resort to other facets of our training. They fight their battles even now. We must be expedient.

  I understand you. Accius signalled his preference for a simple killing, out of sight and without subtlety, but he felt Malius holding firm and ultimately knew the other man was right. They were not, after all, diplomats by profession, nor were they wholly soldiers. They could fall back on other resources, if need be, and that need had made itself amply apparent.

  She is here, in this building, right now, Malius told him, building his confidence. She has returned to her fellows. Tonight she shall sleep in her own bed. I shall watch out for the others and, when she is settled, you must make your move. It must be swift.

  The swifter she is dead, the sooner we can make the others leave this place and return us to the Lowlands. To our own city. Accius felt a tremor of the old homesickness rack him momentarily, leaning on his comrade for support. This is a vile place, and we will be well rid of it.

  Malius stood up, stepping out of the room and on to the landing, to look down at the bickering Beetles in the main hallway below. He was out of the room but not out of Accius's presence, and so he could feel his friend begin to prepare, removing his armour, blacking his sword. The assassin's knife would now be whetted for Ambassador Cheerwell Maker. She would be found dead by one of the others. Then they would leave.

  Or, if they do not leave, we will cut them until they agree to, Malius thought with a spike of anger. He could feel Accius's approval radiating to him through the wall.

  Below him, the Beetles were still arguing. Their Flykinden slave had just flown in with news that the Khanaphir army was returning.

  'And in cursed poor shape,' the little man was saying. 'They got a bloody nose, and then some. They're all kinds of beaten up.'

  They were all of them down there: the old man, the fat man, the ambassador woman, but their attention was focused on the other woman, the one who normally seemed so admirably detached. Malius saw, with disapproval, that her creditable reserve had broken down. She had her hands to her mouth, eyes locked on the Fly in some kind of emotion that Malius found uncomfortably overstated.

  'I'm not going,' she insisted. 'I'm not going.'

  'Praeda …' the ambassador started, but the other woman shook her head.

  'No, I couldn't … How could he do this to me? Men!' She rounded on the fat man, for want of another target. 'This is unfair! How often I've been wooed by some fool — she prodded him in the chest — 'by some ignorant oaf, and I've not cared. It's never touched me, before.'

  'Now, look …' the fat one started, but she would not be diverted. Leaning on the stone rail of the landing, Malius found himself perversely fascinated. All this bared emotion, it was almost as if he could actually look into their minds. It was as eye-catching as someone throwing a screaming fit in the street.

  'And now he comes along,' the woman complained, 'and he … he was different. I thought: there's something special here. Because he wasn't just some magnate's son, flashing his wealth, some scholar all full of himself, or a merchant adventurer. He was real. He was genuine. He was honest. And then, the moment he's got my attention, he goes off to war and gets himself killed.'

  'You don't know that,' the ambassador protested.

  'Trallo, did you see him there?' the grieving woman asked.

  The pause the Fly allowed made the answer obvious. 'Not as such, but there were a lot of people about.'

  'If he's still alive, he would come here,' the woman insisted.

  'He might be thinking exactly the same about you,' the fat man pointed out. 'Bloody women, honestly.'

  'He would come here,' she said again, sitting down. 'And I will wait for him here. I'll wait all night, if I must.'

  Mad, all of them, was Accius's silent comment. He was ready now for when the house went to bed. The ambassador would get her throat cut, and thus the last tie holding the expedition to Khanaphes would be severed. It's just as well the other woman's lover is dead. We might have had to kill him, then. Or her.

  Luck has been scarce recently, Malius thought. We were owed some.

  She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles, falling into that familiar nightmare once again. Che did not need to open her eyes to know where she was: the interrogation room in the Myna palace. It was the room that she had personally witnessed being gutted by the resistance, every implement there destroyed, but in her mind it remained whole and unassailable.

  And he did not even use the machines on me, she reflected, half in and half out of the dream. Yet still it haunts me. How quickly would I have broken under torture, had he ordered it? And would they ever have been able to put the pieces of me back together?

  And she opened her eyes, seeing above her the poised arms, the drills and saws and files of an artificer's trade now horribly suborned. The sound of the steam engine was turned up, the noise that Thalric had used to hide his conspiracies. She looked around for him now, for this was not the first time her dreams had dragged her back here.

  But it was not Thalric, at the levers. It was a slighter man, in grey robes, and she did not need him to turn around to recognize him. Turn he did, though, regarding her coolly with those white eyes, and she cried out, 'Achaeos!'

  'Why do you make me do this?' he asked, his hands hovering over the controls. She was fully in the dream, now, and no escaping. It had all become terribly real in such a short space of time.

  'Let me go!' she begged him, wrenching at the straps. 'Achaeos, let me go!'

  'Not this time,' he said. His voice was quiet but she could hear it clearly over the whine of all the drills and the rumble of the steam. 'Che, look at us.'

  'Achaeos — what is it? Why are you doing this?'

  'Because you force me, Che,' he explained.

  'Just tell me what you want me to do,' she said quickly, tripping over the words. 'I've tried! I've tried to follow you when you appear to me. I've gone everywhere you led me.'

  'You do not understand,' he said. 'You do not understand at all. What do I want, you ask me? What do you think I want?'

  'I don't know! Tell me!' she shrilled, for the drill arms were descending jerkily now, under his ministrations

  'What do you want, Che? Freedom? To be let go? Do you think I would do this if you were not forcing me?'

  The wrongness, the discontinuity of the situation, tried to speak to her, but the drill was very close, glittering within her vision, and it took all of her attention. She squirmed and twisted, trying to shift herself from underneath it.

  It dropped, and she screamed-

  And she woke.

  The darkness of Khanaphes at night. The cool air from the river. There was no sound of distant battle, or of nocturnal assault by the Scorpions. The city was not yet under siege. She took a deep breath, still shaking.

  I cannot survive many more of those nightmares. And, following from that: What if I do not wake next time, as the drill comes down?

  The slightest sound then, and she went cold all over because there was someone in the room with her. She was instantly and absolutely sure of it. Achaeos? she wondered, but the ghost had never announced itself by sounds — just a smudge in the air, or the harsh, authoritative voice in her head.

  Her Art penetrated the darkness, leaving her with that muted grey clarity that must have been how he always saw the world. Her heart caught, on seeing the cloaked figure crouching by the window.

  'Oh, you have gone too far now,' she berated him, sitting up. 'Thalric, what …?' And then her horrified pause as he stared through the darkness, towards her voice — because, of course, she had not seen him since matters had fallen foul with the Empire. Which of your flags are you flying tonight, Thalric? Is it the black and the gold once more?

  'If you're here to kill me, you've missed your best chance,' she told him, sounding remarkably calm even to herself. She had a sword within easy reach of the bed, a habit learned from her uncle. He could sting her before her hand reached it, of course. She heard a ragged release of br
eath.

  'I need your help, Che.'

  He was not quite looking at her, just vaguely in the direction of the bed. She kept forgetting how the Wasps possessed no Art against the darkness. Seeing him more clearly, he looked as though the intervening days had not been kind to him. His clothes were creased and torn, and he was unshaven, hollow-eyed. He stayed close to the window, one hand reaching out towards the sill, as if ready to jump.

  She swung her legs off the bed. In her flimsy nightshirt she would be just a shape in the dark to him, but he still made her feel self-conscious. She pulled on a tunic, telling herself it was against the chill.

  'Help?' she asked him. 'Help against what?'

  'The Empire,' he said, and she laughed at him. She had not meant to, and she saw his hurt expression, unguarded because he thought she could not see it.

  'I'm sorry, Thalric, but-'

  'I know,' he said flatly. 'I lose track myself, of whether they want me dead or alive. I certainly lost track this time, but now I know they want me dead. I don't know for what reason, but the orders must come from high up. I need your help, Che, because there's nobody else I can turn to.'

  She had her sword in her hands now, not to wield but for the comfort it brought her. She padded towards him, seeing his eyes track her approach with difficulty. Little enough of the moonlight got in at her window.

  How strange to see him so helpless. He sat himself back on the windowsill, within arm's reach of her — a man at the end of his resources but not defeated, never that. He had a wild look to him, the patient Rekef officer cast off for the moment, and she thought, This is how he looked in Myna — a man with nowhere else to go, and all the more dangerous for it. He will make some other Wasps pay for putting him here again, she thought, and it was oddly comforting. So he is on my side again. At least I know.