The Scarab Path

Eleven

'The roads are good all the way to Tyrshaan,' said Captain Marger. 'With the insurrection there quelled we should make good time.'

Thalric nodded, eyeing the automotive that Brugan had found for him. It would not be a comfortable journey but he was used to that. The hold, hastily fitted out for passengers, consisted of a metal and wood box slung between the huge-spoked rear wheels, while the driver and his mate would be sitting up front amid the dust. It was a conveyance meant for couriers, travelling fast and without luxury.

'How does it manage off the roads?' Thalric asked.

Marger raised his eyebrows. 'Well enough, if we had to.' Long-faced and sandy-haired, he was about five years Thalric's junior and slight of build for a Wasp. He looked wholly inoffensive, which was the best way for a Rekef man to look. Brugan had chosen an embassy as the ostensible reason for a Wasp team descending on Khanaphes. Thalric would provide the public face, and act as special adviser on the Lowlanders, while Marger would conduct the Rekef Outlander operation proper. It was a delicate balance of power.

'We'll go to Shalk,' Thalric decided. 'Not Tyrshaan.' Let's make it difficult, just in case.

Instead of protesting, Marger digested this proclamation. 'If you want. It shouldn't affect our timing much. With the mining trade the roads are probably better.' His team was loading the automotive now: two more Wasps and a Beetle-kinden strapping crates and rolled-up canvas to the vehicle's sides, before returning to the row of storage sheds for more. 'I'd ask why, though.'

'Why not? Shalk's as good,' Thalric told him, 'besides, I've seen Tyrshaan recently. I'd rather see somewhere else.' Let them think of me as the Regent, not the Rekef Major. He had other good reasons for wanting to go to Shalk, but those were not for sharing.

Marger shrugged, which he did a lot of. 'It's your call,' he said, and went off to help his men. Thalric leant back against one of the rear wheels, feeling the machine rock and jolt as they continued loading it. Marger was opaque: it was impossible to know yet whether he would cause problems. The captain's subordinates gave few clues, either. The Beetle-kinden was an artificer, a paunchy, grey-haired veteran put in just to reassure the locals. The other two Wasps looked like men more comfortable in armour. They showed Thalric a careful deference but otherwise said nothing.

Thalric was making maps in his mind: envisioning the Flykinden warren of Shalk, the quarry mines there, the descent to Forest Alim and the river Jamail. It was all book-learnt stuff, for his travels had never taken him much through the South-Empire and not at all beyond its borders.

I will be happier once the war starts up again, to give me an excuse to return to the Commonweal or the Lowlands, to places I know. Save that would mean crossing swords with Stenwold Maker once more. We cannot afford to let each other live. The next time I will have to remove him, or he me. The thought brought with it an unwelcome stab of conscience, for Stenwold could have had Thalric killed several times already. Instead he had stayed his hand. Though for his own advantage! Still, it did not sit well that Thalric's too often pawned loyalty must await that final twist of the knife.

The Lowlanders have come close to ruining me for a proper agent's work. His outer shell of Good Imperial Servant had taken too many knocks and shakes while in their company.

Marger stepped away from the automotive, a soldier's tension abruptly in his manner. Someone came running unevenly around the storage sheds towards them, and Thalric saw one of Marger's people put down the big crate he was carrying and crouch beside it with hand ready to sting.

'Hold!' Thalric called out, and he went to intercept the newcomer before any damage could be done. 'Osgan,' he exclaimed. 'What are you doing here?'

Osgan had dredged up his old uniform from somewhere: a Consortium factor's greatcoat, quartered in the army colours. There was a shortsword at his belt, the baldric crossing the strap of his satchel. He had even shaved, although he had made a ragged job of it, and his eyes were red-rimmed but his gaze steady.

'I'm coming with you,' he panted, short of breath.

'You aren't,' Thalric snapped. 'What's got into you?'With a firm hand on Osgan's shoulder, he led the man a short distance from the automotive, meanwhile signalling for Marger to carry on.

Osgan looked at him miserably. 'You've found your escape, now. You're going, yes? Going far.'

Thalric nodded and scowled, his last words with the Empress recurring to him. As she had made a public farewell, before the whole court, she had reached up to kiss him and murmured, 'You shall return to me. You shall always return.'

'Let me come with you,' Osgan said. 'Please, Thalric. I'm dying here.'

'You're more likely to die on the road. This is Rekef business, Osgan. Stay here and keep to your cellars.'.

'Each time you find some way of getting out of this place, it gets worse for me,' Osgan complained, almost in a whisper. 'They hate me. They hate me because of you — and because of me. They know I've broken. You'll come back and find me gone, and nobody will even remember my name.'

'You're exaggerating.' Osgan was probably not exaggerating but Thalric couldn't agree to it.

'And what of you, anyway?' Osgan asked. 'You think you'll go back to your old ways, your old trade? You think they'll let you? Them?' Even his jabbing gesture towards the automotive looked crippled, his fingers crooked. 'They won't let you back in, Thalric. They won't forget who you are. What you were.'

Thalric glanced around, despite himself, seeing Marger watching him. The man bore his placid, accepting expression that Thalric had not yet been able to scratch. There had been no sense of complicity between them, no admission that they even lived in the same world. Thalric had wanted to protest, I am a major in the Rekef, but now he realized that he did not even know Marger's true Rekef rank. The 'captain' was army-issue, meaning less than nothing on a covert run like this.

'If you can't keep up with us, I'm not sure I can save you,' he warned. His Imperial conditioning raged at him: What is this? Mercy? Compassion? A strong man did not bow to such emotions. He had no duty to save Osgan from the results of his own dissipation. Better for the Empire that the man just vanished away, making room for someone who would be better at his job.

I am tainted. Thalric had seen too much, done too much. He had been born a true Wasp, but now he'd become some kind of halfbreed of the mind.

He turned back to the waiting automotive. 'Captain Marger,' he announced, 'one more for the journey.'

Marger hesitated over that, taking in the sight of Osgan. 'I wouldn't advise it,' he said. 'We'll be short of space and supplies.'

'Comfort is never a soldier's companion, and there are enough way stations to supply us.' Thalric felt as though he and Marger were facing up to each other in duel, looking for the other's weak points. 'This is Lieutenant Osgan and he's on my staff.'

Still, Marger was unhappy with the idea. 'This is a Rekef operation and he's no agent.'

'We already know our paths will be diverging, once we reach the city,' Thalric said reasonably. 'It will make more sense for me to have Osgan there with me than to have to call on you for assistance.' He held Marger's gaze, waiting to see if the man would stand firm, or fall back.

The final answer was a shrug, the man's easy acceptance reasserting itself. There had been a gleam in there, of Rekef steel, but this was not a battlefield Marger would choose to fight on.

'Your call,' he said again, then, 'We're just about loaded. Are you and your … staff ready to move out?'

Many Wasps wondered why Fly-kinden, who had the sky as their plaything, chose to live so much of their time underground. On the surface Shalk appeared merely a collection of little huts and mounds almost lost amid the sweep of the surrounding hills, and only anchored by the bulk of an Imperial garrison's barracks. Thalric knew that most of the town lay beneath, in a complex of narrow tunnels and broad chambers that were impossible to navigate unless one was both tiny and airborne. Military tacticians had often speculated on the difficulties of forcing an Imperial presence on the Fly-kinden, in the unlikely event that they decided to resist one. It would certainly be possible, but drastic measures would be called for and Thalric, having heard of the gas-weapon disastrously employed at Szar, thought it a good thing that the Shalken and their ilk were proving so compliant. Nobody would profit from a rebellion here.

Of course the Fly town itself was only half of it. Beyond the hills the land suddenly stopped and dropped, so the anatomy of the earth he stood on was exposed in stratified layers where the ground had simply fallen away as a result of some ancient cataclysm. It had since become the Empire's largest quarry and mining complex, with several thousand slaves working there day in and day out. If the insurrection had allowed these toiling wretches any reprieve, that was well and truly over now.

After they had docked their automotive at the garrison's stables, Thalric took Marger aside.

'Find me transport to Forest Alim from Shalk End,' he requested. 'We'll take the river from there to Khanaphes.'

'Shalk End?' Marger said. That meant the Shalk below them, the quarry and its slaves. It was certainly possible to shortcut to the plain below by descending the face of the mine workings, but not usual. 'Is there something I should know?'

If you were meant to know, you'd already have been told, Thalric thought, still with assassins in mind. 'I like a bit of variety, Captain,' he said. 'Besides, wouldn't you like to see the Empire's largest quarry in operation?'

Marger shrugged, predictably. 'I'll go lean on the foreman,' he replied.

Thalric nodded. 'Osgan, go find the Consortium and get enough supplies for a tenday for the six of us.'

The man started on hearing his name and seemed to wrestle with the words before agreeing.

'Good,' Thalric nodded. 'The rest of you, wait by the machine until we're ready.' He smiled at the Beetle and two Wasps and they regarded him cautiously. They had none of them decided precisely what he was, and he wondered what they might have already heard.

Which leaves me at liberty in Shalk. But he would have to be quick. No doubt Marger would be prompt enough in doing his job.

The garrison at Shalk was unusual at the best of times, but even more unsettled now since the insurrection. Its purpose had always been to safeguard the mines and the quarry, rather than to intimidate a naturally obsequious populace. The current military personnel were all new, the traitorous old guard having been rooted out or fled, or else died on the field before Tyrshaan. The staff, though, the underlings who kept everything running, were the same old faces. For most such garrisons they dragged Auxillians from halfway across the Empire, putting them among foreigners to limit any chance of betrayal.

The Shalken themselves were an exception, however. Where most other kinden were unwilling partners, slaves of the Empire with their families and home cities held hostage for their good behaviour, Flies and Beetle-kinden had proved willing subjects of the crown since the Empire's early days. The halls of the Shalken garrison were busy with diminutive forms — in the air and on the ground — of cleaners, messengers, scribes and servants. They went about their duties deftly, with the eternal pragmatism of their kind.

Thalric sought out the records office, where messages came in either for filing or passing on. The Fly-kinden had long made Shalk the South-Empire's great message hub, which had been difficult while the traitor governors divided up the South between them. Now everything was returning to business as usual, and the same faces were to be found at the same desks. All except one.

It had been a lucky piece of research, but Thalric liked to keep in touch with his old friends.

He spotted the man quickly, just another Fly-kinden sorting papers in a pool of sunlight under a window. Thalric made his way behind the man's desk, appearing to peruse a rack of scrolls thoughtfully, and in a low voice murmured, 'A strange place to find a lieutenant of the Rekef, one might think.'

The Fly did not pause in his work, did not even twitch. 'If one thought that, one might wonder whether it was common knowledge,' he said, as if speaking to the ledger he was marking.

'Not yet,' Thalric replied, and he heard the smallest sigh.

'Some of us fall despite our best endeavours, some of us rise despite our tribulations,' the Fly observed. 'For instance, I saw your name included on an execution list, shortly before I decided to retire.'

'You don't ever retire from the Rekef, te Berro.'

'No, they retire you instead.' Thalric heard the misery in te Berro's voice. 'Might one ask how it is that a dead man is now Regent of the Empire? I've followed your career with interest.'

Of course you have. For te Berro was a Rekef man, and that training did not sit idle. Even here, in hiding, he had clearly put himself in a position to gather information, even if he was doing so only for himself. It reminded Thalric of his own behaviour in occupied Tharn, when he had been acting as Stenwold's agent. Old habits like that didn't die.

'You must have jumped ship from Reiner's people, if you got to see that list,' Thalric noted.

'Oh, I was on the good ship Maxin a while previously. But then a high-up operation went sour and I judged it a good time to vanish. And now it appears I didn't vanish well enough.'

'With all the changes at the capital, they haven't even started cleaning house properly,' Thalric reassured him. 'Still, it's only a matter of time. I hear Solarno is nice, this time of year. Perhaps you're due for a holiday, assuming they don't hear about you shortly.'

Another sigh. 'What do you want, Thalric?'

'Information. There was an attempt on my life in Tyrshaan. What was the follow up?'

'They strung up three of Governor Vargen's men within days. Case closed.'

Thalric stifled a chuckle. 'And after that?'

'There's a very definite kind of … silence from that direction.'

Thalric nodded, satisfied. It meant that General Brugan had matters properly in hand. After public executions that would reassure the real wrongdoers, the Rekef would start their own covert investigation. It was a way of doing things he had used himself often enough.

'Anything else?' he asked, as if still talking to the racking. 'Don't hold out on me, now.'

'Everything's still upside down here in the South-Empire,' te Berro complained. 'Reliable news is hard to come by. They're still purging Tyrshaan.'

'Who hates me that much, te Berro?'

The Fly made an amused noise. 'Grief, man, who doesn't? They hate the Empress? They hate you. They worked for General Reiner? They hate you. They're just loyal Imperial citizens who remember too much about the war …'

'I get the message.' Thalric gritted his teeth, hearing again the truth that Osgan had already given him. I am now a foreigner in my own country.

'Well, we make good messengers.' The Fly appeared at Thalric's elbow and started filing scrolls with care. 'Not that I've got anything against reunions, but you're a dangerous man to be around. What happens now?'

The image came to Thalric of a rooftop garden in Myna, of te Berro saving his life with a well-placed arrow. 'I go south and I advise you to get yourself outside the Empire's borders while they change the guard. Maybe, when the next big war looms, they'll look to their old agents, especially those who have been making a life for themselves meanwhile in Solarno or the Lowlands. Until then, I'd keep my head well down, if I were you.'

Still not looking at him, te Berro nodded. 'A holiday on the Exalsee?' he mused. 'I think I've earned it.'

They were winched down the face of the Shalk quarry among descending bundles of mining supplies and a barrel of firepowder charges. The Empire's slaves crawled across the scaffolded rock-face, cutting and measuring, hacking and breaking. There was a scattering of Fly-kinden artificers there for the technical work but the rest were imported labour — Flies were physically and temperamentally unsuited to such hard toil. Instead, Shalk had inherited hundreds of the Empire's most robust. There were Ant-kinden and Beetles, prisoners from Szar and Myna, and everywhere the vast, lumbering shapes of the Mole Crickets. Almost half the adult population of Least Delve had been herded here after the Empire had taken the place twenty years ago. They were not a numerous people but their skill with stone was such that they were ruthlessly put under the whip wherever they were found. Back home at the Delve, their families — especially the children who lacked the Art to simply slip away into the earth — were closely held as strict surety for their parents' continued industry.

The air was so thick with dust that Thalric's party was forced to breathe through cloth. They observed the quarry's vertiginous workings through goggles that had to be cleaned and cleaned again to stop them silting over, and the air was painfully dry. Work in mines and quarries was the Empire's rod for its worst offenders, the final destination of those whose luck had entirely expired. Here, sharing the forced labour of the Mole Crickets, were the deserters, the prisoners of war, the traitors whose physical strength would now serve the Empire they had betrayed until it gave out on them and they died.

Thalric, surveying all this as their lift jerked and shuddered its way downwards, thought, I, too, could have been here, so easily. Certainly there were enough other Wasp-kinden toiling at the cliff face.

At the foot of the descent there was the pit, where the quarry had been extended further into the earth. The entire cliff face above was riddled with blast-holes and mineshafts. There had been a web of gold here once, long since exhausted, but now they had found rich seams of iron. Overlooking the quarry itself stood a squat, brooding ziggurat that housed more of the Shalk garrison, with the workers' pitiful huts corralled all around it.

Marger had been conscientious in his arrangements. There was a Slave Corps expedition setting out that was already waiting for them before the garrison. They would travel along the line of the ridge, stopping at each spring and waterhole to trade with the desert Scorpions, until they reached the river and the green edge of Forest Alim. There the slavers and Thalric's expedition would part company.

Thalric found surprisingly little curiosity in himself about his destination or his journey, even about the Lowlanders he was heading off to spy on. All that matters is that I'm moving further away. He felt the Empress as a constant pressure in the back of his mind, but he was now putting the miles between them, and there must come a point where her presence would fade.

You will come back to me, she had said. He shuddered, successfully hiding it in the rocking motion as the crude lift touched down. Marger and his people unloaded their supplies, and Thalric automatically shouldered a crate himself, without even thinking of his elevated position. When he realized, halfway across the quarry-pit and into the shadow of the garrison, he smiled to himself. O Regent, see how I escape you.