The Scarab Path

Twenty-Eight

There had been no easy answers forthcoming. The Ministers of Khanaphes had put question after question to him until, at the last, he had realized that they just would not believe him.

Thalric paused on the steps of the Scriptora, looking at the stepped pyramid that dominated the square ahead of him. At its top was poised that maddeningly asymmetrical ring of statues, frozen in their dance. It seemed that they smiled mockingly at him, from their barren, perfect faces. He had a strong urge to just sit down, right there, and put his head in his hands. He had a stronger urge, however, to seek out Che and try to make her, at least, believe him. He needed someone's belief, and his own was a washed-out, faded colour, after all the questioning. Could it be that they told me, and that I somehow didn't notice? Could a planned invasion have passed me by somewhere in the minutiae of my briefing?

They had not asked him whether Totho's claims were actually true. They had not even bothered with that preamble. Instead they had gone straight to probing him for details of the attacking force. They had wondered by what means the Empire had spurred the Many of Nem on to this act. They had enquired how long the Empire had been in contact with the Scorpions, what degree of control the Empress had over them. At no time had they left enough space for his denials.

Most of the time, he had just shaken his head. 'I have no knowledge of this,' he had stated, over and over. They had nodded sagely, those bald-headed men and women in severe robes, and their scribes had written all of it down.

They had conferred together: he remembered acutely the sound of their quiet, polite voices. Then they had come back to sit before him again, some score of Ministers, with Ethmet at their head, and they had asked him, in so many words, the exact same questions again. Their patience was infinite, their manner told him. Again he had made his disclaimers. The Empire had no such plans, he assured them. He, as the Empire's ambassador, would surely know of any such intention. If the Scorpions were coming, it was without any mandate from the Empress.

They had made no threats, had not even raised their voices. He had been free to leave at any time, save for the bonds of his ambassadorial duty, which kept him there as if bound by steel chains. He had begun to experience the despair of the man who knows nothing, faced with the questioner who does not believe him.

It had been hours before they had finally, and for no obvious reason, lost interest in him. Even then they had suggested that he remain available for any other further questions they might think of.

He had no idea where Che might have gone, meanwhile. She might be holed up with the Iron Glove, for all he knew. The entire Collegium delegation might have left the city. Worst of all, he had no idea, here on the steps of the Scriptora, if there really was a Scorpion army at the gates.

I must find Che. That was a traitorous thought because what he must do, without question, was make his report. This was Imperial business: the name of the Empire had been sullied. Or else the Empire's designs have been exposed. He no longer knew which. The relentless questioning had stripped him of any certainty he might have possessed.

I must find Che.

It was only a small detour, surely. To step through into the Place of Foreigners and turn left to the Moth-fronted embassy, and not right towards the building guarded by stone Woodlouse-kinden. It would require only a moment's disloyalty.

And if she doesn't believe me, either? It seemed more than likely. He had not exactly given her any reason to trust his unevidenced word.

And why do I care? His instinctive response had grown rather stale now. I care because she is a clumsy, naive, foolish Beetle-kinden girl, yet her regard matters to me. Because I find her company easier than that of my own kind. At least with her, I do not feel the knife at my back every moment. He doubted that she felt the same way.

His shoulders slumped, as he set off down the steps for the archway leading to the embassies. I have only ever had one virtue, and that one so often pawned as to have become near-worthless. Still, I used to pride myself on my loyalty. Therefore I shall make my report.

Something made him pause, as he passed through the arch: his Rekef senses had not quite left him yet. Some part of him, though overlaid now with uncertainty, was still living behind enemy lines. The quiet of the garden — the stillness of the pool — was an illusion. He found his fingers twitching, baring his palms by purest instinct.

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.