The Scarab Path (18 page)

They
took their place and stood there, still as statues around her throne, their
faces hidden in the shadow of their helms. In their midst the Empress Seda
looked young and demure, dressed in the minimum of finery. Her own natural
beauty was all the adornment she needed. She smiled warmly at Thalric and held
out a hand. He made himself walk forward and take it, stepping within the
Mantis circle to seat himself beside her. Her touch felt shockingly warm.

It was
like sitting next to something venomous: a scorpion with sting raised. He sat
there very still, tried to ignore the brooding presence of the Mantis-kinden
who had been sold into her service.

‘You
will be joining me in my quarters later, of course?’ she said.

‘Of
course, Your Imperial Majesty,’ he replied, with a broad, despairing smile.

The next day he lay recuperating in her chambers, pale and feverish. The
day after that, he made himself scarce from any public engagements, retreating
to the palace storerooms to seek out Osgan.

Theirs
was an unlikely association and it had come about through Thalric’s
desperation. Had he still been his own man he would have spared the wretched
Osgan not a word, would as like as not have despised him.

This was
not the first time his eyes had been opened to the sort of man he was. When he
had been on the run from the Rekef, he had viewed his life from the outside and
the world, he knew, held more pleasant sights.
I was a
model Imperial citizen
, he reminded himself. Filtered through his
experience, the thought was a painful one.

‘You
look like I feel,’ Osgan remarked and it was broadly true. Mid-morning and
Osgan was still unshaven, eyes redrimmed in a sagging grey face. Once a solidly
built Wasp, he was now fast becoming simply heavy. There was already an open
bottle on a crate beside him. The Rekef man behind Thalric’s eyes looked at him
and recognized a liability.

Images
from the night before last still recurred to him as he sat down opposite. He
and Osgan avoided each other’s eyes, both of them men who had seen too much.

Osgan
shook a pair of dice out of a leather bag, a handful of small coins from
another. ‘Might as well make use of the time,’ he grunted. He was an appalling
gambler, but Thalric made sure he did not lose too much. Only a year ago Osgan
had been a rising star in the Consortium of the Honest: supply officer for the
Ninth Army, stationed in Capitas, with his hands immersed in the stream of
Imperial funds, even holding the favour of the Emperor, but now …

He held
his current position among the steward’s staff becauseThalric made it so. If
not for that he would have been a debt-slave by now, meat for the fighting
pits, conscripted into the Auxillians. It had all fallen down for Osgan, on the
day the Emperor died.

It had
fallen down forThalric: same day, different reasons. Thalric who had been a
traitor, just as Tegrec had named him, who had killed a Rekef general, who had
been brought to Capitas in chains. Thalric who had been saved from a bad fate
for, he was discovering, a worse one. Thalric who found the Empress’s court at
Capitas that bit stranger each time he was dragged back to it. Thalric, who had
grown used, in his career as a traitor, to having people around to talk to.

The
Rekef man he had once been could not have cared less. That Rekef man had
underlings and superiors and enemies. The traitor he became had stood alongside
such as the redoubtable Stenwold Maker, the Mantis butcher Tisamon, the
enigmatic Achaeos.
They saw more of me than my own people
were ever allowed to
. It had seemed right, then, but he had not thought
he would ever be coming back.

But I grew used to having someone to talk to
. Well, now he
had Osgan. He could say what he liked to Osgan. Nobody listened to a shaky
supply officer who was drunk most of the time. Nobody cared about this man,
except Thalric.

And who cares for me?
The image of Seda’s face came
straight to mind. She must feel
something
to draw
him back and back again, but he had no word for that emotion. She had summoned
him to her chamber, where he had been bathed and readied by the slaves, dressed
in Spider silks and then taken to her bed. He knew there were many who would
give everything to swap places with him. He would give anything to oblige.

‘So
what’s new, chief?’ Osgan asked, making a cavalier throw of the dice that
spilled them off the crate entirely. The bottle was near empty, and Thalric
took it up and drained it until it was. The bitter soldier’s beer Osgan had
purloined tasted of honesty.

‘Someone’s
trying to kill me,’ Thalric said.

Osgan
made a grotesque mime of surprise. ‘News? Since when’s that news?’ He retrieved
the dice. ‘Give me a quill and a week, I’ll draw you a list of them that want
you dead. Lowlanders, Comm’wealers, even your own friends and neighbours. So
what?’

‘They
had a solid try at it outside Tyrshaan.’ Thalric frowned. ‘Wasp assassins, so
not Commonwealers. And the Lowlanders who know me wouldn’t send assassins. Not
since the Mantis died.’ Osgan flinched at that. Thalric grimaced. ‘Someone inside
the Empire wants me dead,’ he finished.

‘Everyone
wants you dead,’ Osgan muttered. ‘Everyone but me. And why not? If they hate
Herself, then they hate you too. If they like Herself, then they hate you. Some
of them probably just hate you anyway.’

Thalric
nodded glumly, conceding the point. His position had endeared him to few. ‘I
would shed this role if I could.’

Osgan
was sober enough to grimace at that. ‘I know, I know,’ he said, almost
whispering, ‘but don’t
say
it. I don’t want to hear
it in case they come after me with their hooks to find out what I heard.’ He
fumbled out another bottle, drew the cork with his teeth.

When
Thalric had entered her chambers two nights ago she had been waiting for him,
wearing a dress of white silk that hung from one shoulder and followed to her
body’s every line. There was that happy glow to her that he had learned to
recognize, just as he recognized the taste on her lips.

She had
offered him a goblet.

Thalric
grabbed the bottle from Osgan and took a great swallow, because that taste had
suddenly recurred to him.

‘I have
to get out of here,’ he said desperately.

Osgan
shrugged. ‘Door’s right there, chief.’

‘You
know what I mean.’

‘I know,
but it’s like the army, chief. You don’t get out till it’s had its full use of
you.’

Thalric
had looked into the red, red liquid in the jewelled goblet, and he had drunk
deep of it, because she would accept nothing else. The taste of salt and rust
had coated his throat. She had kissed him, drawn him towards the great bed.

How long can I survive?
A lucky man could retire from the
army, but there would be no quitting this post.
She took me
as a prisoner and a traitor. She saw just enough in me to be worth keeping. Now
she devours me at her leisure
.

She
would ask for him again tonight. She always left him a day and a night to
recover. He wondered what arrangements she made when he was absent.

The most
terrible thing about it was that he thought she did feel something for him,
some attraction, even some affection. She was cold, though, and everything new
she learned from her select advisers was making her more distant still. She was
different
. Everything about her appearance suggested
simply a young Wasp woman who was little more than a girl. Her beauty almost
broke his heart, but only because he knew that under the skin some part of her
had been stripped away.

This
last time, he had not looked into the antechamber where the detritus of her
preparations would still be on display. He did not wish, when sipping from the
red cup, to know what vintage she had provided him with.

She will be the death of me
. It was no more than the
truth.

General Brugan let him stew for a tenday before calling him in. Thalric
spent the meantime in standing dutifully beside the Empress with a tight-lipped
smile, or in hearing the words of those who courted his own favour. He spent
his time in sloping off to talk with Osgan down in the cellars, and dulling the
edges of his life with drink. He spent it in Seda’s chambers, stepping into her
embrace, meeting her red lips as her slender body entwined with his.

Sometimes,
as she arched atop him at the very climax of their coupling, he saw something
in her eyes: a girl whose childhood had been lived in the shadow of death, and
who had seized her only chance to live. The image was despairing, and it called
to him for help. He wondered if she saw some similar plea for rescue in his.

He had
lived his previous life hoping that a Rekef general would never call for him,
but when Brugan’s messenger came, it was only a relief.

The
office was lined with racks full of scrolls and shelves of books and next to it
was housed a coterie of clerks who sifted every word that came into the Empire,
searching for the least drachm of significance. It had belonged to Brugan’s
rival and predecessor, yet he had changed nothing, and Thalric wondered whether
this was to celebrate Brugan’s victory, or remind him that nobody lasts for
ever.

‘Ah,
Lord Regent,’ he said without expression. There was a Wasp-kinden woman sitting
in the corner, ready to record whatever was said.

‘General,’
Thalric was aware of the absurdity, ‘you can call me Major, if you want, sir. I
think I still own the rank.’

Brugan
shrugged. There was no warmth towards Thalric in his expression, but it was not
the job of a Rekef general to like people. ‘I suppose I am calling on you for
information, as I would with any agent,’ he said carefully, with a curt gesture
for Thalric to sit. ‘I am aware you had a many-coloured career in the war.’

Thalric
took the one seat before the desk, wondering how many others must have sweated
and trembled here. However, he did not rise to the barb.

Brugan’s
lips twitched slightly. ‘That may be of use,’ he continued drily, ‘now that you
are a good son of the Empire once again. You were in a position to see things
that sounder agents had no chance for.’ His eyes said
traitor
,
but Thalric met them without flinching. For a long time they stared at each
other, with neither breaking from the other’s gaze.

‘Do you
consider that you’re immortal, Regent?’ Brugan asked at last.

‘I am
sure that if you thought it in the Empire’s interest, you’d make an end of me,’
replied Thalric. The thought rose in him,
If you must, then
do it sooner rather than later
, and he swallowed it down.

‘Apparently
someone tried to have you killed,’ Brugan went on. ‘Outside Tyrshaan, I am
informed. The Regent may do as he likes, but perhaps Major Thalric should have
made his report before now?’

Thalric
looked down, at last. ‘You are correct, of course, sir.’

‘Well,
it is now known to us and we will determine who is responsible,’ said Brugan
dismissively, as if now bored with the subject. ‘Stenwold Maker, you met him, I
believe?’

‘I did.
Several times.’ This change of direction threw Thalric temporarily. ‘What of
him?’

‘My
agents there say that Collegium believes in peace, but what does Stenwold Maker
believe in?’

‘He
believes that the peace is transitory,’ Thalric replied. ‘May I speak frankly?’

‘Do.’

‘He
would make a good Wasp. Indeed he would make a good Rekef agent. Perceptive,
loyal and selfless, he lives for his people and he sees threats to them very
clearly. He foresaw the invasion of the Lowlands an entire decade early and
spent all that time laying plans and training agents.’

‘You
admire him.’

‘He has
many admirable qualities. It is unfortunate he is our enemy.’ The brief time he
himself had been Stenwold’s agent-captive, and the work he had done for
Stenwold’s cause, flickered briefly in Thalric’s memory.

‘He’s
sending agents out again,’ Brugan growled. ‘South of the Empire now. To places
we will be looking to, once the South-Empire is fully ours. It would make sense
for the Lowlands to make our Imperial ambitions there difficult, and they
already have allies around the Exalsee.’

Thalric
nodded. ‘It’s a good move for him. I can understand him making it.’

‘We are
far from ready yet for another conflict with the Lowlands,’ Brugan said. ‘Is he
likely to force war upon us?’

‘No.’

‘So
certain?’

‘Stenwold
will not start a war, not fought by his own people. He may, however, start a
war with others’ blood, as he did at Solarno.’

Brugan
nodded. ‘You are well informed.’

‘Old
habits die hard, sir.’ Some emotion had stirred in Thalric’s chest. ‘Sir,
you’ll be sending out agents to keep an eye on Maker and his people?’

Brugan
studied him with narrowed eyes but remained silent.

‘Send
me,’ Thalric said.
Please, send me. Send me away from here.
Give me my life back
.

‘Why?’

‘Why
not? I am Rekef, still – Regent or not. I was good at my job. I know Stenwold
Maker better than any agent you have. Give me a small team, embassy credentials
perhaps. Who would be better?’

Brugan
stared at him for a long moment, his heavy face expressionless. Rekef thoughts
would be scuttling through his head.

‘An
Imperial embassy to Khanaphes,’ he spat out finally. ‘Ever heard of it?’

‘I could
soon learn,’ Thalric replied.

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