She slipped into the cellar after a single look at the proprietor. His eyes regarded her bleakly and he made no move to stop her.
'Thalric.'
He picked up on her urgent tone and was on his feet at once. 'They're here?'
'Right outside the front,' she said.
Osgan was sitting up, looking pale, but stronger than he had been. It was just as well.
'They followed you?' Thalric asked her.
'No, they did not follow me,' she snapped, put out by the suggestion. 'They tracked you down. They were here long before I returned. They're waiting for nightfall, is my guess. So we have to move right away.'
'What about the back?'
'I didn't see anyone.' She nodded at his expression. 'I know, I know, but I looked and there were no Wasps there that I could see. That doesn't mean they weren't there.'
'We move now,' Thalric decided. 'We try to lose them. There are a few other places that we could hole up in, but they're none of them far enough from here to shake off a chase. That means we'll have to go wide, then double back to one of them. Osgan, on your feet, now.'
'Can he-?' Che started, but Osgan groaned and shook himself, and clawed his way up the wall until he was standing.
'Let's go,' he croaked. He was red-eyed, unshaven, but Che wondered if a lack of drink had not taken over from his fever as the main antagonist.
'Can you fly?' Thalric asked him.
'Enough to get up the chute,' Osgan confirmed weakly. 'No roof-hopping.'
'We'll be staying on the ground,' Thalric decided. 'You two are both dead if we go above roof level. You might as well hover there waving flags.'
'Oh, really?' Che glared. 'And you'd just vanish into the night like a Moth-kinden, I suppose.'
'That's exactly what I'd do,' he told her. 'Now, when we hit the street above, make a left, and then run along the river until the third alley — then left again, into it. I'll bring up the rear. I want to see who follows us.' He had bundled himself in a cloak, but Che could not see him passing for a local any time soon. He was too tall, too pale; there was a violence evident in him that Beetle-kinden did not own.
He paused under the barrel chute and then kicked off, wings throwing him upwards. A moment later he said, 'Clear, come on.'
Che made Osgan go next. The man shook his head wearily. His arm was still bound up and she knew she should change the dressing, but they did not have the time. She heard him swear under his breath and then his wings flared, barely a sputter of them but getting him high enough to hook his good arm over the sill. Thalric hauled him up from there, and Che followed right behind, pulling herself through the hatchway. For a second they crouched there, just three more refugees among so many. She heard Thalric's breath emerge in a long hiss.
'Nothing on the roofs here, just like you said.' He grimaced. 'They could have someone with a glass positioned across the river, but that's not a recipe for a quick response. Let's move.'
They scattered down the narrow muddy track running beside the river, Che helping the wheezing Osgan along, whilst Thalric followed near-soundless behind them. The west bank was lit up by fires, and she found it hard not to brood on that. I should have duties at a time like this, as an ambassador. Save that those duties had dried up. Diplomacy has failed. Indeed, through the instruments of the Empire, she was now as much a target as was the city of Khanaphes.
You do pick my errands well, Uncle Sten. Just keeping me safe again, were you? Behind it all lurked a kind of specifically selfish despair. What if it should all come down, the city falling in ruins before I ever understand it?
'Move!' Thalric's voice hissed, and she picked up her pace, slinging herself and Osgan into the chosen alley. There was a thin rabble of locals still on the street and she just battered past them, with Thalric, running now, behind.
'Stay where there's people,' she got out. 'Won't risk drawing so much attention.'
'Don't bet on it,' he shot back. 'Go right, now.'
When he said 'now', he meant it. She and Osgan almost fell over each other's feet making the sharp turn into an even narrower alley. She saw that this one was roofed off with canvas, struts and spars, reminding her of the Marsh Alcaia with all the emotional baggage that carried. The Wasps, who had surely been tracking them from the skies, were momentarily confounded. Thalric paused for a second, whilst Osgan leant heavily on Che and coughed. The ex-Rekef man looked back at her: that was how she saw him, just then. He was smiling, a man on the edge and loving it.
He kicked in a door, without warning, at random. There was a scream from within. Then he was inside, leaving Che and Osgan to trail in his wake.
'Can't keep this up much longer,' the ailing Wasp grated in her ear. She had no words to spare him, just hustled him along as best she could.
Thalric had found another door to kick down, and Che guessed they were into the next building now, or just part of some extended family home. He was finding windows in turn, glancing out of them at the dark sky.
'Here!' he said and, instantly throwing the shutters back, had hooked his way out. She bundled Osgan through, more and more without any help from him, and followed after to find herself in the middle of an alleyway choked with people. The authorities had nested a host of refugees here, almost shoulder to shoulder, under the cover of a few wretched awnings. Thalric had already elbowed himself some space, and then he made some more, pushing dispirited people aside mercilessly, until the other two could join him.
'Now we wait,' he said.
'Until?' Che asked him.
'Until I say go.' He had hunched himself as low as he could in his cloak, slumped and abandoned-looking as any local. Osgan was lying on his side, breathing heavily, coughing again.
'Have we lost them?' Che whispered.
Thalric kept his eyes on the sky, surreptitiously. 'I don't see any fliers. They'll broaden their net in a while, thinking they've missed us, that we're still running. They know they can move faster than us, so they'll try to make the best of that advantage. So we use it against them instead. We just let them fly away.' He was still grinning slightly, not at his own cleverness but at the game. It was the only game, once you had tasted it: the spy game, the intelligencer's game — the Dance, as the Spiders called it. He was in the thick of it again, and it seemed to have taken years off him.
'You look like Tisamon,' she told him.
'The Mantis? What do you mean?'
'He was like that, too. When he was up against it, he'd be smiling always. He loved being challenged.'
'Tell me you don't feel it,' he said, fixing her eyes with his.
And she did, that was the terrible thing. There was Osgan to protect, and there were Trallo and Manny and Petri dead, and there was a city out there that would be put to the torch tomorrow, but through all that she felt a leaping spark of excitement inside her. She was an agent again, not an ambassador, and it was just like old times. She let herself smile, just enough for him to see.
'Stenwold was always lucky, having you as his left hand,' Thalric said softly, surprising her.
'You've taken every cursed chance you've been offered to point out my inadequacies in that field,' she reproached him. 'How can you say that now?'
'You must have something going for you, Che, some trick of the trade that I've never grasped. Think of all you've survived, all you've come through intact.'
Not intact, she thought. Not when you tally the friends I've lost. Thalric bent over Osgan and she heard him say, 'We'll have to move soon enough. Unless they find us again, we'll take it slowly. If we're lucky, we can get to another hiding place without them picking up the trail.'
'We should head for the Scriptora,' Che suggested. 'We'll be safe there.'
'You might be,' Thalric told her, 'but those old men and women will have us two executed as Imperial agents. The funny thing is I'm not sure whether that's true or not.'
'I'll speak for you. Ethmet will listen to me.'
'Not unless we have no other hope,' Thalric arg
ued. 'I don't trust the Ministers an inch. If they come to believe that the Empire does want me dead, they'll probably hand me over to the enemy to try and buy their city back.'
'You're not a trusting person, are you?'
'A very good judge of character is what I am. Now, let's make a move slowly. Try your best to look local.'
They had picked their way halfway down the narrow street, stepping over legs and bodies, moving as steadily and wearily as any evicted local, when Thalric's hiss alerted them: 'They're on us already. Run!'
Here? Che thought, already automatically picking up her pace. There were people all around them, a hundred witnesses to each move they made. It seemed impossible that the Wasps would make such a public move against them.
But they will be gone, she thought. They will be over the rooftops and away.
She heard the first crackle of a stingshot, and the people all about her were suddenly jumping up, panic on their faces. Most of them must have thought it was some Scorpion advance guard, over the river already along with their Imperial allies. Instantly the alley ahead of them was choked with alarmed people, a wall that Che crashed into, fighting her way through them with Osgan stumbling in her wake.
'Push on! Push through!' she heard Thalric shout, with two or three more stings backing up his words. Che tried, but her ability to forge a way through the Khanaphir crowds had deserted her. She was just one more awkward foreigner, and the Wasps were closing fast.
Thalric cursed, catching up with her. She saw his hand jut forward, but until he loosed his own sting she had not realized what he intended.
'No!' she yelled, but people were already recoiling from them, seeing his pale skin and features, falling before the golden fire his Art unleashed on them. He was aiming deliberately high, enough to scare and disperse them. She hoped he had hit nobody.
'Go!' he snapped and muscled forward, virtually throwing aside any local who had not already retreated. His sting spat again, and then another bolt seared past on Che's other side. The Rekef! she thought, but it was Osgan, his one good arm extended, following Thalric's lead. Injured and weak as he was, she had almost forgotten that he too was a Wasp.
She had no choice but to keep up with Thalric. There were people screaming and sobbing on all sides, and she made sure she did not look at them too closely. She did not want to see charred wounds, to become an accomplice to murder.
Thalric suddenly shoved her, knocking her sideways into Osgan. A figure had landed ahead of them, hand already extending to sting. Thalric's hand flashed first, punching the other Wasp off his feet. Then they were running again, virtually trampling over his body, taking an abrupt left on to a broader street, straight across into another narrow one. There were no cluttered refugees here, only a couple of late-returning citizens who got out of their way in a hurry.
'Where now? Where's the safe house?' Che asked, trying to keep pace with Thalric. Osgan was still with them, for the moment, driving himself hard. His face was shiny with sweat.
'Behind us,' Thalric got out. He turned in mid-run, loosed a couple of shots backwards, and then was catching them back up again. 'They've done their research,' he said.
'Scriptora!' Che said. 'Only chance.'
He bared his teeth. 'No, we'll tire them out. Flying and stinging's like all Art, it drains the strength. We'll just wear them out.' He had done this before, she realized. He was reliving some other chase, perhaps being hunted by Mercers in the Twelve-year War. He dragged them down another street, changing direction without warning, seeking out covered places where the airborne might lose sight of them.
'Thalric!' Che yelled at him. 'Osgan won't last! Look at him. The Scriptora's our only chance. It isn't far.'
He led them without answer into the courtyard of some wealthy man's residence. There were steps up to a roof garden, and Thalric took them three at a time. At the top he turned, dropped to one knee, hand flashing. Che and Osgan hurled themselves past him, into the greenery beyond.
There was little enough cover in the roof garden but, between the low parapet, the urns and the plants, there was just enough to conceal the three of them. She heard Thalric's sting crack three more times. Then he said, 'That put their heads down. They'll be working their way round. I've been a fool.'
'How?'
'In forgetting they have a Beetle-kinden with them too. That bastard Vastern, I saw him as we were running. Shaved bald as a native and keeping track of me. No wonder they found us so fast. He was right there all along.'
Che had no answer to that. Some old memory within her hands itched for a crossbow, but of course she would not have been able to shoot one even if she could somehow find one here. The locals had bows, but she had never used a bow. It was not a weapon her homeland placed any stock in. Perhaps I'll have to learn.
'The Scriptora.' Thalric did not sound happy about it. 'You're right, it's our best chance. But you'd better be able to talk the Ministers round.'
'I will,' she promised, hoping it was true.
'We're going over the wall to our left, then we fly down into the street and run for it. We're almost at the embassy now. It's only three streets from here to the Scriptora proper. Osgan, reckon you can make that?'
'Only one way to find out,' the other Wasp gasped.
Thalric nodded. 'Then now,' he hissed, and was up and running for the edge, vaulting over it. Che let Osgan follow first, the Wasp simply toppling off and out of sight. She heard the sizzle of stings even as she herself followed suit. Her wings bore her raggedly and she stumbled as she landed. Thalric was already running across the street, lancing bolts of fire. She saw two or three figures at roof level, drawing back to avoid his aim. Osgan pitched a sting at them, too, before lurching after Thalric. If only Beetle Art provided some facility like that! Che ran after them, an enemy bolt scarring the ground close behind her.
They were close to the Scriptora now and she experienced an odd sense of anticipation, beside and beyond her own feelings. Achaeos? It was the same sense as before, that feeling of invisible company. Oh, if I ever had need of you, Achaeos, it's now.
In the air, the Rekef hunters easily outpaced them, but Thalric used the city to his advantage. The walls of Khanaphes's buildings, its uneven skyline of huge old buildings surrounded by the cluttered new ones, became their allies. Thalric changed direction over and over, each time bringing them back towards the Scriptora. Sometimes he was way ahead, sometimes he lagged, letting Che and Osgan build a lead. Often she heard his sting as he used it to warn off their enemies, forcing them out of his sight, buying a little extra time.
He is a hard man to hunt, Che thought. Thalric backed into a corner was a dangerous beast, was at his best, his most alive. It made her heart jump to see him so fervently defiant of all the odds. He was a proper bastard, she knew, but he would make them fight for his blood. None of it was for giving away easily.
'Here! Run!' he snapped, as though they had not been running already. Abruptly there were no walls about them. They had hit the Place of Government from an unexpected angle, directly across from the arch to the Place of Foreigners. Ahead of them was the stepped pyramid with its crown of pale statues; to their left rose the Scriptora, huge and dark. There was not a single light in its windows. It looked like a tomb.
But the Ministers … Che wondered, but there were a hundred possible reasons. They might be sleeping, readying themselves for tomorrow's battle. They might also fear Wasp assassins, and with good reason. They might still be working somewhere out in the city, housing refugees. There was not a sign that anyone remained behind those closed doors. Still, they had nowhere else to run to.
Figures were dropping down ahead of them, swiftly cutting them off. She saw at least four Wasps falling into place. Thalric's sting spoke, but they answered in kind. The range was long, but Che flinched back, changed direction. The Wasps were already barring them from the Scriptora doors.
And so it ends.
Thalric had thrown himself backwards, a winged jump of ten
feet that put him seven steps up the side of the pyramid, returning golden fire from his open palm. Osgan collapsed beside him, shaking, gasping, one hand held fitfully out towards the enemy.
Cheerwell Maker!
That voice, all within her head, was enough. It caught her by the chin and dragged her face round until she was looking back and up — up the stone slope, up past the poised stone giants.
He hung there, clearly visible even at night, a grey ghost in a foreign city. Here, girl! The voice snapped in her head, admitting no patience with her.
The Wasps were advancing: another two had dropped down, one to each side. The square was broad, so the range still defeated their stings, but they were moving in. Thalric was retreating up the pyramid side.
'Up!' Che shouted at him. 'To the top now.' And why? 'Take cover among the statues!'
Thalric glanced at her and nodded grimly. He has no illusions about how this will go. He reached the flattened top in a sudden rush, darting behind a stone thigh as broad as his own torso. A moment later he was calling out, 'Osgan! For the Emperor's love, come on!'
Osgan picked himself up, stingshot bursting close by him, and looked up.
He screamed, falling back, rolling down the steps and landing on his side at the pyramid's foot. Thalric cried out his name, but Osgan was pointing — pointing at something past and through Thalric. Che, halfway up, stopped in horror and realization.
He does see it. He sees Achaeos. She recalled Osgan's history, his fears. He saw Achaeos at the Mantis village: he thinks he's a Mantis.
'Come on, you drunken bloody fool!' Thalric roared at him. Che got most of the way to the top before turning. Osgan was clenched up into a ball, but she could still hear him cry out, 'It's him! He's come back!'
'It's not him, Osgan!' Che called. A stingblast cracked against the stones near her and she fell back, clawed her way over to where the statues could be her shield. 'Osgan, please-!'
The Rekef were now reaching the pyramid's foot. still spread out. Thalric's occasional shots made them start back, leap briefly into the air with a flurry of wings, before settling down again. Despite Thalric's promises, it did not seem that either flight or shot had tired them. They seemed all patience, closing carefully, while they kept a wary eye on Osgan. They could have killed him easily, but it was clear they would take him alive when they reached him. He would provide the leverage to force their other quarry into reach.
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