The Scarab Path

Forty-Five

He had awoken several times, but retained only a sketchy memory of each occasion: aware that he was in the infirmary of the Scriptora, and that she was beside him. When he moved, he felt as if every bone and joint had been under the hammer. Amnon, the First Soldier of Khanaphes, opened his eyes.

They had not given up on him, he saw, for this was one of the little rooms reserved for Ministers or people of importance. His soldiers, most of whom had suffered worse than he, would be tended in the communal infirmaries of their barracks, or in converted storerooms. There would be more than enough work today to keep all Khanaphes's cutters and salvers busy.

He remembered, in fits and starts, that the city still stood, that the Scorpions had been washed away, that he had held the bridge just long enough. He squeezed the hand that he found in his, startling his companion from her doze as she sat beside the bed.

'Hello, Praeda.'

She looked haggard and he guessed she had not slept much these last few days. She bit her lip, watching him, and he levered himself up to a sitting position, determinedly ignoring all the complaints of his body. 'Don't tell me I look as bad as that,' he chided.

'I am so angry with you,' she said tightly. Her grip on his hand became painful. 'I can't believe just how angry I am.'

'You have every right to be.'

'Don't be reasonable about it now!' she snapped. 'You have no right to be reasonable now, after what you did. You were going to die, you and those other idiots. You were going to stay behind and die. What … What sort of a way is that for anyone to behave?'

'It is what the First Soldier of Khanaphes does, if it is needed,' said Amnon calmly. 'It is what the Chosen of the Marsh people does. For Totho and Meyr, I cannot say why they did it, and perhaps they cannot either. How long have I slept?'

'It's now evening of the day after the battle.'

'And what do the healers say about me?'

'Damn the healers. I stitched your wounds myself,' she informed him. 'We know our medicine in Collegium.'

'So what do you say about me?'

'That you're a cursed fool. And you got off lightly. I saw your armour after they'd cut it off you. It looked like someone had thrown it off a cliff and then put it into an industrial grinder. They should have taken you out of it in pieces.'

'You sound disappointed,' he noted.

'Because you won't learn,' she said bitterly. 'I know you soldiers, you'll remember that you won and that you survived, and you'll call it glory, and you'll do it again.'

He put both hands on hers, and his mind was abruptly full of all those who had not survived or won: Dariset and Kham and all his Royal Guard, the elite of the Khanaphir fighting forces now pared down to a fragile handful. And of course, Totho's foreigners, the Fly, the sailors, the loyal giant Meyr. 'No,' he said hollowly, 'never glory. That I lived was due to chance — chance and Totho's armour and his help. That we won was … I cannot explain it. The glory belongs to the dead.'

Tears shone in her eyes. 'Amnon, I love you. You made me love you. You just gnawed and gnawed away at me until I caved in. So promise me you'll never do anything so stupid again.'

He took a deep breath. 'I am guilty, as you say, but it is a promise I cannot make. Would you think the same of me if I were merely to stand by while those I loved — or those you loved — were harmed? Surely you would not.'

She gazed at him sadly for a long time. 'I suppose not,' she said at last. 'Although it's hard to live with it, you'd not be the same man if you did. You selfish bastard.'

He managed a smile at that, but then he glanced past her, and she turned to see a shadow hovering in the doorway: it was a stooped old Khanaphir who looked as sleepless as any of them.

'First Minister,' she named him, and Amnon said, 'Ethmet.'

'They told me,' said the old man, 'that you were well, Amnon.'

'I live,' Amnon confirmed.

Ethmet looked very old, standing there. The burden of the city's reconstruction would weigh on his shoulders. 'Your banishment …' he began quietly.

Amnon nodded. 'I had not forgotten.'

'Amnon, if it were my decision … but the Masters have spoken. You went against their tenets when you adopted the foreigners' ways.'

'And so I lived, when so many others died. And so I held the bridge, with the foreigners, who shed their blood for us. But that doesn't matter, does it?'

'Amnon, I am sorry-'

'Dress it up as the Masters' will if you want,' Amnon interrupted. 'I care not. I am banished, so be it.'

'There is a chance,' said Ethmet, holding a hand up. 'If you were to ask forgiveness of the Masters, if you were to repudiate the foreigners, I think that you might yet be taken back. The Masters are just.'

'Are they?' Amnon said heavily. 'Consider this: if I were a man to beg forgiveness, then I would not have held the bridge until the waters came, and the only thing the river would then have achieved would be to wash all our corpses into the Marshland. So no, I ask no forgiveness. I apologize for none of my actions. I held the bridge and, if I am banished for that, then I shall go like a man. I shall go with Praeda Rakespear to her far country, where perhaps they understand things better than you or your Masters.' He saw the leap of joy on Praeda's face, and knew it was something she had wanted to ask him, and never dared.

'Please, Amnon,' Ethmet whispered, 'your city needs you …'

'My city needed me and, needed, I came. Now I have done what was required of me. Now it seems what my city needs is a man who will bow the knee, and I will not. You have set the price for my actions, and I shall pay it, as I have always paid my debts. Now we must both part on our own quests: I for a new city, you for a new First Soldier.'

Ethmet hovered in the doorway a short while longer, wringing his hands but without words, and then he skulked away.

This has been a disaster: it was Totho's personal assessment. Drephos would find something positive in it, of course. Drephos would see the whole Khanaphir expedition as an extended field-test to destruction: the ship, the armour, the people … He would be pleased, overall, with the performance. Drephos did not care about money, so long as he had enough, and the Iron Glove would not be bankrupted by this petty conflict.

Still, no market in Khanaphes, and the Iteration sunk with most of her crew, Tirado dead, Meyr dead, and also Meyr's people from the Nemian expedition. Still, Totho knew that he was merely dressing the books now, that the true disaster was a personal one. And Che gone, too. Lost to a Rekef knife, no doubt. They had hunted her down one night, and he had not been there to save her. That being so, the final disaster was: I survived. He had not meant to. His armour had been too proof, his instincts too cowardly. He had lived when all his fellows had died, save only Amnon himself. He wondered if Amnon felt as wretched as this.

But Amnon has his woman beside him, while I myself have … nothing. And what did I ever have?

The tide of self-pity was rising like the turbulent waters of the Jamail, and that was something he was adamantly not thinking about. There would be an explanation for the water's intervention, but just now he could not be moved to find it. The sight of those rushing floods encompassing only one half of the city had profoundly disturbed him. Time would smooth over the queasy feelings it had left within him, and give him a chance to piece together a rationale. Until then the memories were to stay under lock and key inside his mind.

And, of course, I am exiled from this place, never to return. It was a strange thing, to be walking alone through a city that was supposed to have thrown him and all his kind out, with only his snapbow over his shoulder, and his battered breastplate. The truth was that his casting out was still very much in force and, equally, would not be enforced. Not a soldier of Khanaphes would lift a finger against him, nor any of its citizens. The Ministers were too wise to issue the direct orders and risk an uproar. Totho was a hero of the city, they all knew. He had stood with Amnon on the bridge.

And I should be proud of that, shouldn't I? That I played the hero? He didn't feel like a hero. He had known heroes in his day, people who would fight for what they believed in, without hesitation. People who did not need time and thought to cajole themselves towards doing the right thing. Salma had been a hero, so Totho had always thought that he must have felt like a hero: knowing no doubt, no fear, worry or uncertainty. Did Salma feel empty instead, like me? Did Salma do all those things because not doing them would only make him feel worse?

No. Salma had been a hero. Amnon was a hero. Totho was not fit for their company save that chance had thrown him that way. I did the best I could with bad materials. I botched it together, when the moment came. That's all. I'm not a hero, but we were short of one, so I stepped into the gap.

He was going to find Amnon, to bid him farewell. There were a half-dozen Iron Glove men left, survivors of the Iteration. Totho had found them a ship out of Khanaphes, and it could not happen too soon.

He walked out into the square in front of the Scriptora, and saw her stepping down the pyramid as though she had simply been frozen among the statues on the summit all this time.

Che.

It had been a fight to be quit of that place. After Garmoth's death, the tunnels and halls had turned against them, but Che had proved their equal in the end. She had pushed and pushed. They were immeasurably stronger, of course, but they were tired: the Masters most of all wanted to sleep again, and she possessed a Beetle's persistence. In the end she had outlasted them, and forged her way through to the open air, guiding the two clueless Apt with her.

Climbing out into the sunlight was the sweetest thing in the world. She stood still, a statue on either side, as though she was part of their irregular order. Irregular, she realized, and purposefully confusing so that when the Masters came up here to view their shrunken dominion, no eye would note them there, even if the moon was bright.

She pushed out of her mind all she had been told and all she had seen, down below. There would be sleepless nights later for her to digest it. For now, she was free, and the war was over, and …

She took one step down the pyramid and saw Thalric emerge from the shaft and alight, wings blurring and fading. He had the temerity to lean on a statue, looking up at the cloudless sky as though he had not seen it in a hundred years, drinking in the blue.

'I thought I'd never …' he said.

'I know.' She turned to see Accius now climbing out, wiping the slime off his hands with an expression of revulsion even on his normally blank face.

He nodded to her. 'Malius and I are discussing what should be done, regarding our two cities: what report we will give,' he said. 'It is true, there are events that cannot be understood.' There was an awkward look about him. 'Events that, if reported, will cast doubt on our competence as reporters.'

'I understand,' Che told him.

'We have stood together, in this place.' The admission seemed somehow prompted, and she wondered if it was Malius or Accius who was making it. 'You released me from … some torment that even my brother could not unlock, and we are unsure what this means. We shall confer, and then we will come to you.' He settled his sword in its scabbard, a nervous, reassuring gesture, and stepped off quickly towards the Place of Foreigners.

'Hope yet?' Thalric enquired.

'I don't know. Perhaps. It would please Uncle Sten.'

Thalric smirked at that answer, and she demanded, 'What?'

'War Master Stenwold Maker, spymaster of Collegium and defier of the Empire, now reduced to "Uncle Sten". The Rekef would be mortified to hear it.' His grin faded at the memory of Marger's revelations. 'And that's another problem.'

'Which we'll solve, somehow,' Che assured him. 'For now, though, we're out, Thalric. We're free of the Masters. We're free.'

His smile returned and he caught her around the waist and kissed her. She heard somebody shout.

Turning, she saw Totho running towards them, and her heart sank. Oh, timing, Totho, always timing. Your eternal gift. 'Totho, wait …' she started, unsure what she could honestly say. Thalric's wings had taken him two steps up the pyramid, hand held out, but Che was between them.

The Wasp did not loose. Totho did.

He was shooting whilst running. She heard at least one bolt ping from the stones very close to her. Another tore her sleeve. A single shot punched into Thalric's shoulder, knocking him back against the steps. She fell across his body, hoping to shield him, seeing him clutch at the point of impact. Thalric's expression was not pain so much as fury, and it was contagious, leaping to her like wildfire. Totho had stopped shooting by then, was just running forward, shouting her name.

No, no … But it was too late. Something fierce and mad had arisen inside her at the sight of Thalric's blood, and she wrenched the Wasp's sword from its scabbard and was already turning to meet Totho. She felt empty hands guiding her, and an unfamiliar insanity gripping her mind. A whirl of alien thoughts — honour and vengeance and bitter pride — rose in her like bile. After so many months in residence, Tisamon had left some echo behind, the ghost of a ghost.

She lashed out even as Totho arrived, striking sparks from his breastplate. He called out her name, and she hit him thrice more, denting his pauldron, smashing the snapbow from his hand, and then slamming the sword so hard across his body that he stumbled backwards down three steps.

'Che! It's me!' he yelled at the stranger he saw behind her eyes, and she stabbed him as hard as she physically could, so that the blade of Thalric's sword snapped off close to the hilt, as Totho was punched off his feet. He landed with a hard clash of metal on stone and slid to the base of the pyramid. She was on to him as soon as he started to get up, drawing back the jagged, broken edge of the blade, about to jam it into his upturned face. The urge to kill him keened inside her, not through the Mantis's influence but just the bloody handprint his presence had left.

'You never learn!' she screamed at him. 'You never …'

He was crouching at her feet, making no effort to defend himself. The sword at his belt was still sheathed, the snapbow out of reach.

'… learn …' she finished, staring stupidly at the stump of blade in her hand. She let it drop, hearing it clang and clatter distantly. 'Totho?'

He made some muffled reply.

She looked from him back at Thalric, who was groaning, plucking at his wound. 'Oh Totho, why do you always get it so wrong? I'm sorry, Totho, I'm sorry,' she said, horrified, frightened by herself. 'I'm so sorry.'

He was saying something, the words blurred with tears, and eventually she heard it as, 'I held the bridge. I held the bridge for you. I wanted to do right.'

Horror and pity swept over her, in equal measures, and she thought, And I never learn either, and I always get it wrong. In that we two are soulmates, if in nothing else. 'I know you did, Totho. I saw you on the bridge, believe it or not. You did well. You saved the city. I'm proud of you, but you have to let me go, please. Totho, look at all you've built. Don't throw it away for me.'

'I would,' he got out. 'All of it, if you asked.'

'But I won't ask,' she replied. The sudden dispersal of all that rage had left her feeling weak and sick. 'Please, Totho, how often must we go through this? Who else will we hurt?' She stood up, stepped away, feeling sicker than ever. He got to his feet, flinching away when she offered her hand, then taking it like a drowning man. She took Totho in her arms and held him close just for a moment.

'I am not the girl you knew at the College,' she said softly, after releasing him. 'You are not that boy, nor is Thalric the same Rekef man who came hunting us. None of us are those people any more.' A sudden realization struck her that made her feel unsteady on her feet. 'Totho, I understand you.'

He was frowning, desperate for help from any quarter.

'Totho,' she told him, 'you still carry a picture of me in your mind, a memory from all those years ago. You let it torment you, but it's not me, Totho. It's not me that hurts you. I would never want to hurt you. You do it to yourself. Let go of me, please. I'm not who you think I am any more, and you deserve more than that.'

She heard movement behind her and turned to see Thalric. He had a shallow gash across his temple and one hand clutching to his shoulder, but she knew the strength of his armour of old. His old tricks had always preserved him before and, as the bolt had struck him, she had guessed that not even Totho's snapbows were his equal. In the instant she glanced at him, she noticed his expression was pure murder, his hand extended ready to sting. Che quickly interposed herself between them, to protect Totho from the Wasp's rage.

Thalric grimaced, made two efforts to speak, to order her out of the way, his eyes fierce with incomprehension. On the scales, his personal and cultural pride swung up and down against how she would see him if he killed her former friend.

He finally closed his hand and took a long breath, but it still was a long time before he could lower his hand.

'Che …?' Totho began quietly, as though releasing her name into a great silent room and waiting for the echo.

'I've used you badly,' she told him quietly. 'I'm sorry. And for what you did during the war, I have no right to judge, because I wasn't there.' She put a hand on his arm, feeling the battered mail. 'Be safe, Totho.'

He closed his eyes, keeping his expression very still, and then he nodded, and she half expected to see a filmy grey shape leave him, the ghost of all of their failed futures exorcized at last.

At last, he smiled, something weak and faint but still recognizable as a smile, and then he turned and left.

Thalric was working patiently with one hand to free the bolt in his shoulder. She reached to help, finding that the missile had punched through the fine rings of his copperweave but was snagged hopelessly in layers of cloth beneath. Spider silk, she realized.

'If you're wondering,' he said, 'it still hurts like the rack.' His voice was taut, with pain and the stale dregs of his own emotions. She opened her mouth to reply and he said, 'That was very elegantly handled. You're a born ambassador.'

'What, breaking a sword over him and then mouthing platitudes?' she replied.

'Everyone walked away from it.' Thalric finally held up the bolt and she saw a pinprick of blood at its tip.

'Closer than you'd like to admit?' she suggested.

'Being the pleasant-natured creature you are, and beloved of so many, you cannot imagine how many have tried to kill me over the years,' he told her, and she could not decide whether he was mocking her, and to what extent. 'That halfway artificer hasn't come the closest, and he's more reason than many to attempt it.' His smile was flat. 'I happen to agree with him. I think you're worth killing for too.'

She instantly felt deeply uncomfortable, remembering that he was a killer from a race of killers. At the same time, something responded in her that someone should say such a thing about her and not her sister … her sister … Tynisa.

'Where now, Thalric? Where do we take this now?'

'I have some temporary plans, regarding some matters I need to put right. All the more so if you'll be travelling with me.'

'I have plans as well,' she told him. 'There is something I must do.' The feeling of that moment's wrath, that Mantis-fury pure and deadly as forged steel, still terrified her. Not Tynisa, she thought. You shall not have her.

There was a ship that had already departed, and a ship that was preparing to leave. Two voyages to mark the end of this blighted moment in Khanaphir history.

Already on the seas were the Iron Glove men, finally enacting their long-promised banishment. Che had not spoken to Totho before he left, by unspoken consent. The fragile detente they had achieved would not bear too much inspection.

Now there was a second vessel, a Spider trader called Flighty Drachmis, and it would be heading to Porta Rabi, and from there one could find a way to Solarno, and from Solarno, home.

They were fewer than they had been, the Collegiate scholars. Trallo of the dubious loyalties had been loyal enough to die for them, and poor Mannerly Gorget too. They were also reinforced though, for as well as Praeda and old Berjek Gripshod, and the brace of Vekken, there was now the looming figure of Amnon, former First Soldier of Khanaphes. Even in his simple white tunic he still looked like a warrior.

'Are you sure you're not coming with us, Miss Maker?' Berjek asked. 'What precisely am I to tell your uncle?'

'I've thought of that,' Che said, producing a folded and sealed letter. 'This will satisfy him. I'll send messengers when I can — if I can. Tell him not to worry about me.'

He huffed, and asked balefully, 'Any other impossible tasks?' After a moment he added, sadly, 'It's not worked out well here, has it?'

'Not so well, no,' she admitted. 'I have had my hand in that, I think. I'm sure I could have done more.' She thought of Petri Coggen, and knew that, of all of their losses, she could have prevented that death, had she not been so wrapped up in her own problems. I am sorry. There were so many people that she owed apologies to, and most would never hear them.

'Che, come back to us,' Praeda told her. 'If not now, then soon.'

Che shrugged, unwilling to commit herself. 'I will try. I can make no promises. I have a long road.'

Praeda glared at Thalric, over Che's shoulder. 'And you'd travel with this Wasp, rather than us?'

'Yes, I would.'

The other woman made a wry expression. 'Well, be safe.'

'And you.' After which, Che turned to the last two waiting to embark. They looked back at her from near-identical faces, dark and expressionless.

'What will you say?' she asked them.

Accius and Malius shared a moment of silent conference before Malius finally answered. 'That we cannot understand why you came here, but it involved no plot against Vek. That our cities are both enemies of the Empire. That …' She had the impression that Accius was prompting him before he went on. 'That there may be some cause for common ground between us. Perhaps.'

She took a deep breath. So little conceded, and yet see how far we've come! 'My uncle is a genuine man, and he does not wish another Vekken war. I know he will treat fairly with you. I know that you cannot take my word on that, but all I ask is that you keep an open mind.'

'That was humour?' Accius interposed unexpectedly. Caught unawares, Che stared at him in surprise.

'Open mind?' she realized at last. 'The Ant mindlink.' A smile forced its way unbidden to her lips. 'Humour, fair enough. Travel safely, both of you.'

'Do not fear for us,' Malius said, halfway between affront and reassurance. It was hard for Che to keep in mind how both of them had been present there beneath the earth, one in body, the other just in mind.

She watched them take ship, as the Spider-kinden crew cast off moorings and let the current take them out towards the Marsh channels without raising sail. Her own route would take them upriver as far as the Forest Alim, and further still.

'Have you actually any idea where we're going?' Thalric said.

'Oh, yes,' Che replied, 'every idea, but you're not going to like it. You won't be made very welcome.'

'That hardly narrows down the list of places I know,' he said drily.

'The Commonweal,' she said, remembering Tisamon's shade saying, She is amongst the Dragonflies. 'Tynisa is in the Commonweal. Feeling any reservations now?'

'No, that's good,' he said, surprising her. 'It's out of the way, and I feel the need to be invisible for a while. News travels more slowly in the Commonweal — although there is a single message that I must send first. Just a little unfinished business.'

General Brugan retired to the desk in his study after a long day. The Khanaphir expedition had returned at last, or what was left of it. Detailed interrogations could wait, but the ranking officer had some plea for mitigation he wanted to make, sounding tiresomely technical. Other than that, Captain-Auxillian Hrathen was dead, which was no loss. The Scorpions of the Nem had been decimated, likewise, and half of Khanaphes had been sacked. How one sacked half a city was a mystery to General Brugan, but it suggested poor planning.

There had been no definite word, however, regarding his chief concern, and that irked him. Sulvec and the entire Rekef team seemed to have died as well, which was a shame. Brugan was left only with the uneasy hope that they had at least accomplished their mission before vanishing so utterly.

It was late now, but the Rekef paperwork would only accumulate if he postponed it. Unlike his predecessor, he kept as many layers of clerks between himself and the sources of information as possible: good, trained men who knew how to judge what was important.

He sorted through the summaries and reports, gleaning the essential information from a quick glance, reading in more detail when it was merited. His mental picture of Rekef operations within the Empire, and without, was advanced by one day.

He came to one sealed scroll and broke it open, and paused. The seal on the outside was top priority from the governor of Shalk, his eyes only. The handwriting within was no clerk's, though, too solid and blocky and uneconomical. It was a soldier's hand, and Brugan knew it already. He felt his stomach twist just to see it, even before he read the words:

General Brugan,

I hope this missive finds you in good health and secure in the heart of your power.

You will be pleased to hear that I have solved the matter of the assassinations. It took a few more attempts and a confession for the pattern to become clear, but now I understand. I have been painfully slow in this task, not befitting a Rekef agent, and I apologize for this.

I understand that, when I was chosen to stand beside our Queen, it was because I was a man entirely at her mercy, who would have nothing without her support. I was her husband to satisfy the conservatives, while she was my preservation against the crossed pikes.

I had not thought at that time what other plans I might be intruding on, but I was given no choice, after all. It is not quite true to say that I would rather the pikes than share Her bed, but there is yet some truth in that.

And I know now that it is not enemies of the Empress that seek my death, nor any of that multitude whose lives I have personally ruined at the call of my professional career. It is simply because a man loves a woman, and would remove the only barrier between them.

Let me tell you, General: I give her to you with all my heart. She is yours. Keep her if you can. You deserve each other.

Tell her I died in Khanaphes. I do not intend to expose the lie. I do not intend that any word of me will reach the Empire for a very long time. If you send more killers after me, though, I will get word to her of your actions, and I do not believe she will see them in a favourable light.

Tell her I died. I don't imagine she will mourn for long.

But if this does not move you to forget about me, General, then know that, just as this letter has found you in good health at the heart of your own Empire, then so can I. I have one Rekef general's blood on my hands, and I would not scruple at there being two. Keep sending killers, and what would I have to lose?

I hope you and the Empress are as happy together as she'll let you be.

Yours

Thalric, formerly Major.

General Brugan stood for a long time with the scroll still in his hands, and then he cursed and consigned it to the fire.