The Scarab Path (33 page)

The
other Scorpions loved that, and Hrathen smiled, too. ‘You are right, of course.
I shall have words with him.’ He turned the smile on Dannec and, as the man
opened his mouth to speak, he rammed a thumb-claw as far as the knuckle into
the Wasp’s throat. Dannec, words abruptly gone, stared at him. With faint
interest Hrathen saw his own bloody claw-tip within the man’s gaping mouth. He
jerked his hand three times, feeling the sharp bone slice flesh and arteries,
and then withdrew his thumb with a practised movement. He turned back to Jakal
as the Rekef man’s body slumped lifeless to the ground, thinking,
Thank you, General Brugan. He was perfect for the purpose
.

The
Scorpions were still laughing, but their tone had changed from mockery to
appreciation. Strength again, and a strong leader did not tolerate weakness in
his followers.

‘Very
good,’Jakal said quietly. ‘I admire your performance.’ Her tone told him that
she had seen through the device but still appreciated the effort. The next time
the jar came round, she passed it over to him, and he took a great swig of the
fierce, fiery liquor.

He let
the Scorpions talk amongst themselves for a while, let Jakal watch him and
wonder, and then excused himself, wandering off into the dark to relieve his
bladder. On the way back, he located the artificer, Angved, leaning on a
capless pillar and carefully watching the group at the fire.

‘Well?’
Hrathen asked him.

‘Well, I
never liked the man, but even so,’ the old man replied. He wore his armour
still, even the helm. Field engineers seldom had to fly, and represented years
of Imperial training, so they had better mail than anyone else except the
sentinel heavy infantry.

‘All
part of the plan,’ Hrathen said. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t see it coming when I
called him to the fire.’

‘I know
he
didn’t,’ Angved remarked. ‘Tell me, sir, when do they
descend on us with sword and axe and cut us all into pieces?’

‘When
we’re no longer useful to them,’ Hrathen informed him. ‘Have you guessed at
your duties?’

‘Doesn’t
take much to work that out.’ Angved spat. ‘Can’t see them as quick students.’

‘Living
out here, you learn anything fast, so don’t underestimate them,’ Hrathen
warned. He assessed the artificer as a level-headed man, someone who could be
relied on. Considering the man would suffice, he headed back to the fire.

‘So why
does the Empire seek out the Many of Nem?’ Jakal asked him, as he sat down
again. ‘I am not such a fool as to believe you fear us. You are far away and
strong, so if you are giving gifts to us, it is because you want gifts in
return.’

‘Tell me
about Khanaphes,’ Hrathen said, and the Scorpions went quiet again. ‘Are the
people of Khanaphes your friends?’ he persisted. ‘Do they pay your warriors
tribute? Do they send you gifts?’

Jakal
tilted her helmet back. The face she revealed was a hard one, even for a
Scorpion. Her eyes were red, and the oil-fire made them shine with a mad light.
‘We raid the Khanaphir all along the Jamail,’ she replied. ‘We strike at their
farms, their merchants and tax gatherers. When they are strong they hunt us,
but we are fast and they are slow. When we are strong, they fall back to their
stone walls that we cannot breach.’

‘The
Empire wishes an end to Khanaphes,’ said Hrathen. The Scorpion laughter was
derisory, but Jakal held up a clawed hand to quell it.

‘Why?’
she demanded. ‘What offence has it caused, being so far away?’

‘Who can
say why?’ Hrathen had asked himself the same question.
It
must be because Brugan wants to see if the Many can be put to work for the
Empire
, he had decided.
Khanaphes is simply the most
convenient testing ground
. But there was more to it than that, and he
guessed that the detachment of Rekef agents he had brought were to be involved
in it. ‘Perhaps some citizen of Khanaphir has insulted our Empress … It only
matters that the Empire wishes it done.’

‘And the
Empire wishes me to do it,’ Jakal said.

‘Do you
not wish to do it?’

‘If the
riches of Khanaphes could be mine, I would already have taken them. Do you
think I would have stayed my hand?’

‘You
need stay it no longer, then,’ Hrathen told her. ‘For the gifts I bring you are
weapons. I bring two thousand crossbows and more, supplied with bolts, and the
men to teach you in their use.’

‘We know
of crossbows,’ said Jakal coolly, but he could see the interest in her eyes.

‘Also,
we bring a dozen siege engines – leadshotters, they are called,’ he continued.
‘The walls of Khanaphes shall stand in your way no more than the walls of this
old city here.’

They did
not cheer at that. Instead they stared at him avidly, whilst word of what he
had said was passed back and back, until the whole usurped city knew it.

‘What is this place?’ Che asked, feeling as though she had stepped into another
world. From the fierce, dry heat of the sun outside they were suddenly plunged
into a thick, muggy, sticky humidity. The daylight had dimmed to a coloured
gloom as it filtered through tight-stretched canvas, silk and linen. Ahead of
them the emaciated Khanaphir had stopped again to wait for them.

‘The
Marsh Alcaia,’ Trallo pronounced. ‘Even a city as polite as Khanaphes needs
somewhere to break the law. At least when the guard come looking, they know
exactly where to go. People will always have vices they need to indulge.’

‘But
this?’ Che took a few steps deeper, beneath the cloth ceiling. It was like
walking under water. She felt an almost physical resistance to her intrusion.

‘Don’t
worry about that, worry about why our friend seems so fond of you,’ the Fly
advised her.

‘What do
you mean?
I
sought
him
out.’

‘I mean
that he could have run while we were bickering in the open house, and he could
still run now, and we’d never find him in here. Think about it.’

She
tried to, but here, in the stale heat, it was hard to match the pieces. Their
guide was drawing ahead again, making them hurry to catch up with him. All
around them were Khanaphir and foreigners intent on their purposeful errands.
Amid the fragile aisles lined with people crying their wares, the sounds and
smells were overwhelming.

He
always stayed just in sight, always paused by each new turning he took, and
always looking back at them – at
her
– with that
hollow, hungry gaze. Trallo was right: it was not because she was a foreigner,
or anything to do with the money she might carry. Instead, something had
sparked inside him, as soon as he had taken a proper look at her.

Is this really what I am looking for?
The stifling air was
making her feel dizzy, while odd thoughts and feelings kept passing through her
mind.

‘Wastes,
but we’re going in deep,’ Trallo observed. ‘Never been this far into the Marsh
Alcaia.’ He cast a glance backwards, teeth bared, and Che drew back, suddenly
feeling trapped. She opened her mouth to suggest turning back, but then something
twisted in her mind and she saw it. There, just beside the skeletal, hurrying
figure of their guide, she saw the air seethe and darken: something of the
night fighting to be seen, to make itself known to her. She imagined she even
saw it pointing after him, urging her onwards. After that she had no choice.

Again,
the lean man was waiting for them at the turn, leading into yet another
alleyway. Roofed with heavier cloth, it was cooler there, and the air was thick
with darkness. Che let her Art cut through it, spying a tent at the far end,
with four or five figures seated there.

‘This
must be it,’ she told Trallo. He nodded grimly. She saw that he held his hand
near his knife-hilt.

The thin
man was now kneeling in front of the tent: a low, ragged structure, patched and
filthy, its original colour lost beyond recall. The doorway was hung with
charms and lockets, little bits of brass and bronze and tin that dangled and
jangled on slender chains. Someone inside was speaking slowly in a low voice,
as Che paused before the entrance to reach out for one of the swinging
fragments of metal. It had been crudely cut with a symbol that reminded her of
the stone carvings to be seen everywhere about the city. Again she felt a stab
of anticipation.

‘Why
have you brought these here?’ demanded the voice. Only now did Che identify it
as a woman’s, so deep and rough it sounded.

‘She was
asking, asking questions, and she found me,’ the lean man explained. ‘Mother,
when she asked … I saw …’

Che saw
a bulky form shift within the tent, half hidden by the hanging drapes. ‘I see
her. She is foreign Beetle-kinden. I know them and they have nothing. They are
lost to the old ways. She is wasting her time. You are wasting mine.’

‘Only
look at her, Mother!’ the lean man almost howled.

‘May I
speak?’ Che intruded, trying to keep her voice steady. She saw the figure shift
again, still shapeless behind the drapes.

‘Come
forward at your own risk,’ the half-seen woman replied, and Che could hear the
soft whisper of daggers and knifes tasting the air.

‘I mean
you no harm,’ Che persisted and, although Trallo was shaking his head fiercely,
she crouched to enter the tent on her knees.

There
were three Khanaphir inside, two men and one woman who each held a leaf-bladed
dagger and stared at her with mute hostility. Another denizen was a halfbreed,
Khanaphir mixed with something else to produce skin of a green-black hue. He
was hollow-cheeked and thin-shouldered and yet with a gut that bulged over his
belt. Che’s eyes were now fixed on the woman beside him, the one whom the thin
man had called ‘Mother’. She was another halfbreed, and a halfbreed of
halfbreeds, until it was impossible to tell just which kindens’ blood ran
through her veins. She was grotesquely fat, her huge frame shuddering with each
breath even as she reclined on silken cushions. Her face was round and sagging,
a dozen vices writ large there in pocks and blemishes, a true degenerate except
for the eyes. Her eyes were blue and clear and piercing and, looking into them,
Che felt an almost physical shock, like sudden recognition.

‘Well,
now …’ the woman called Mother rumbled.

Che
heard Trallo step in behind her, staying close to the door.

‘My name
is Cheerwell Maker,’ she said. ‘I … I come seeking …’

‘Enlightenment.’
Mother pronounced the word as though she were eating a sweetmeat. ‘Oh, yes, you
do, don’t you.’ She leant forward, her shapeless body bulging. ‘What are you,
little traveller? Do you truly know what we do here? The thing they call the Profanity?’

‘Tell
me,’ said Che, and the woman smiled slyly.

‘O
Foreigner,’ she said, ‘you know nothing of the Masters of Khanaphes, and yet
here you are. You have been led here – by what, I wonder?’

‘I have
heard of these Masters, but nobody will tell me anything about them,’ Che
replied, and some of her frustration must have leaked out, because Mother
chuckled indulgently.

‘Then
listen, O Foreign child,’ she said. ‘Once, many, many generations ago, the
Masters walked the streets of Khanaphes, and exercised their power over the
earth as naturally as we ourselves would breathe and eat. They were lordly and
beautiful, and they knew no death, nor did age afflict them, or disease or
injury. Their thought was law, and the city of Khanaphes knew a greatness that
today is only a shadow.’

‘Only a
shadow of a shadow,’ murmured the halfbreed man, and then the three Khanaphir
in chorus. Che felt Trallo shift nervously.

‘But
that was our Golden Age, and all things fade. So it came about that the Masters
were seen no more on the streets of Khanaphes, and the decline of our people
began. Oh, the Ministers will claim that they hear the voices of the Masters,
that the Masters reside still within their sealed palaces, ready to save the
city should they be called upon, but we know that the true glory of our city is
long passed, and it is many hundreds of years since this soil knew the tread of
the Masters.’ Her brilliant eyes were fixed on Che and she licked her lips
thoughtfully.

‘So what
is it that you do here?’ Che asked her.
I am almost there.
Just a handful of words and surely I will understand
.

‘Though
the Masters are gone, they have left their legacy. There are those that possess
some spark, some trace of their old blood,’ Mother said slowly. ‘They find the
world of today hostile and confusing, perhaps? They are tormented by dreams and
visions? They long for something more …?’ Her lips split in a smile. ‘I thought
as much. O Foreigner, I see in you something of their touch, their mark. All
who are here with me are your kin. We carry within us the bloodline of the
Masters, and were the Ministers just, we would be elevated and praised for it,
instead of hunted like criminals.’

Che
glanced at the others, and she noticed now that even the Khanaphir had a
strange cast to their features, uneven, slightly disfigured, perhaps some
distant trace of mingled bloods. A cynical part of her said,
It probably does not take too much belief to turn a wart into the
blood of the Masters
. Another voice was saying,
Are
they talking about Aptitude? Is it the lack of it they discern in me? Is all
this a memory going back to when this city was Inapt, before their revolution?
And were the Masters their seers, who were cast out after they discovered their
new artifice?

‘But …’
Mother continued, and let the word hang for a moment in the stuffy air, ‘there
is a way for those of us that still bear the ancient gift to touch those
far-off days. There is a substance that can yet wake memories of the golden
days of Khanaphes.’