The Scarab Path (43 page)

‘Strong?’
he asked, but then she had pointed out to him the Iron Glove’s chief factor in
the Nem, and he had understood. Scorpion-kinden were powerful, standing half a
foot or more over the Wasps, but in the midst of the Iron Glove people stood a
Mole Cricket, watching his minions distribute swords and metal ingots. Now
Hrathen could see the same giant walking with impunity amongst the Scorpions,
overseeing business.

Yes, we will have to deal with you, slave
. There were
three Mole-Cricket enclaves in Imperial hands, their populations decreasing,
generation to generation, as the Empire siphoned off their menfolk for work in
the mines or for the army. That prodigious strength and stamina, and their way
with rock and earth, was too useful to conserve. The Empire spent it all too
lavishly.

The huge
creature noticed Hrathen’s interest and strode over, putting him under its
shadow.
A runaway slave
, Hrathen decided,
or an Auxillian deserter
. How else would a Mole Cricket
come to be here? The Iron Glove had a lot to answer for.

‘You
wish to make a purchase, Captain?’ it rumbled. It had a name, and its name was
Meyr.

Hrathen
stared up at the creature.
The bastard must be eleven feet
tall
, he reckoned. Meyr wore a vast hauberk of leather with metal plates
sewn into it, and an axe the size of an ordinary man was thrust through his
broad leather belt. His monstrous hands had great square nails that looked
every bit the equal of a Scorpion’s claws. Certainly, Meyr was the face of the
Iron Glove as far as the Scorpion-kinden were concerned, big enough and strong
enough to protect his people from their depredations.

I’ll deal with you, soon
, Hrathen promised himself, but he
said nothing, just ignoring the creature and walking away.

Instead
he went to find the officer of the Light Airborne that he had brought with him.
The man was packed ready to go, along with half a dozen of his men. Their
leader was a hollow-cheeked type, his receding hair cropped close. His mouth
crooked up on one side into a dry little half-smile, as though enjoying some
small joke that only he was privy to. As he was the ranking Rekef officer here,
Hrathen thought that might be true. His name was Sulvec and he was obviously
Rekef Inlander to the core, for Hrathen knew enough to recognize a man who had
given himself over heart and mind to the service.

‘Not
forgotten anything?’ Hrathen asked him, realizing that if his own task was
intended to be a suicide mission, then Sulvec would be his executioner. He
wanted to show the man he was not afraid.
Scorpion
thinking, since Wasp-kinden tread carefully where the Rekef are
. The
fact that half of Sulvec’s men were staying with Hrathen’s party had not
escaped him. He was plainly not trusted, but that was hardly news.

‘We’ll
depart presently.’ Sulvec’s fragment of smile made its inevitable appearance:
it signalled disdain for everything Hrathen was or could be. ‘Don’t be too long
in coming, Captain.’

‘Scorpion-kinden
move fast,’ Hrathen told him. ‘Make sure we don’t outstrip you.’

‘Hm.’ A
slight noise was the response, all the humour the man would voice. ‘We’ll
liaise with you when you arrive with your thousands, Captain.’

Hrathen
just nodded, and in the next moment the seven Rekef men were airborne,
streaking across the sky towards distant Khanaphes with a speed born of
well-practised Art, and Hrathen had no idea what their orders were, for
implementation once they arrived in Khanaphes.

And if they are to betray me? Do they plan to win the Khanaphir
by betraying the Many of Nem?
He considered the possibility coldly.
Then they do not understand what the Scorpion-kinden are capable
of
, he decided, and left it at that.

With Hrathen gone, the Mole Cricket-kinden called Meyr took stock. He had
a dozen people here: enough, when allied to his strength, to dissuade the
Scorpions from precipitate action. The Scorpions would trade whenever there was
reason not to steal or take. The Iron Glove turned up with small shipments,
always promising more in the next, each visit a tentative link in the
mercantile chain. Meyr was a cautious man like most of his kind and, given a
free choice, he would not want to be the Iron Glove ambassador to the Nem. He
paid his debts, though. Totho had taken him in when he had been fleeing the
Empire, and Meyr had been a slave long enough that working for a living, to
another man’s orders, had become second nature. He might hate it in himself,
but he could not deny it.

‘We’re
going to have trouble soon,’ he said softly. His second-in-command, a Solarnese
woman named Faighl, was nodding. She was a tough, compact woman, a mercenary
out of Chasme for more than a decade before signing on with the new-formed
Glove. She had already killed two Scorpions who assumed that her size meant
weakness rather than a killing speed. Now they gave her space at their fires
and drank with her.

‘Pull
out?’ she asked.

Meyr was
a big man to be balanced on a knife-edge. Pulling out was safe, but he would
not be thanked for it. It was not the trade that mattered, it was the
information. Something was happening here that the Glove had to be informed of.
The Empire was in the Nem, and had become everyone’s best friend, giving out
free presents and holding lectures. The Scorpions had no idea of secrecy, so
word of their target had come to Meyr almost as soon as he and his team had
arrived with their packs and crates.

But why? It makes no sense
. Meyr knew the Empire well
enough to understand, that, whatever their evils, they did nothing without
reason.

‘We
stay,’ he replied heavily. ‘But … Where’s Tirado?’

‘Here,
chief.’ The Fly-kinden man ducked forward under Faighl’s arm. ‘What, where and
who?’

‘I’ll
write it out,’ the Mole Cricket decided. One of his people snapped open a
folding desk, a square of wood smaller than Meyr’s two open hands. He knelt by
it awkwardly, taking a fresh slate out from his pack. His Art rose within him,
and he put the corner of one fingernail to it. Back home, his people wrote
their letters in stone. Pens were lost in his grasp and paper tore under his
nails. His people had ways with the earth, though, which was why the Empire
enslaved them so enthusiastically.

The tip
of his nail scribed, carving blocky, close-packed script into the slate as
though it was wet clay. He filled the square of stone from edge to edge, a
solid mass of writing, trusting to Totho to decipher it. When he made an error
he smoothed the stone over and wrote again.

When he
was done he wrapped the slate in cloth and handed it to Tirado in a comedy of
scale: the receiving hand would barely match one of Meyr’s fingers for size.

‘Fly to
Totho at Khanaphes, swift as you can,’ he instructed. ‘This information must be
known.’

‘The hunt …’ Amnon wrinkled his nose. ‘I thought it had gone well.
Perhaps I was wrong.’

Totho
watched him empty the dregs of a beer jug. The Iron Glove staff had brought in
plenty, though, and then left the room at his command. Totho had assumed that
the Khanaphir First Soldier was coming to talk business, but it turned out that
Amnon was seeking something simpler, and at the same time more fraught: a
sympathetic ear.
And I’m the ear?
There was a whole
city of Khanaphir out there, any of whom would have been honoured to receive
the First Soldier of the Royal Guard as their guest. But Amnon was out of
sorts, Amnon had worries, possibly for the first time in his life, and he
wanted to bare his soul. Perhaps that was not something the Khanaphir did with
one another: their secretive, mirror-placid nature went deep. Somehow, Amnon
had looked on Totho and seen a kindred spirit.

I’m willing to bet the Ministers don’t know he’s here either
.

Iron
Glove business in Khanaphes had not been good over the last few days, after
Ethmet’s displeasure had filtered into the city. Totho reckoned it was only a
matter of time before they had to write this city off as unprofitable. They
would have been leaving soon enough, anyway, denied an outlet to practise their
true craft. Totho had no real interest in bulk orders for ordinary swords and
arrowheads.

‘We took
four of the land-fish, one as large as any I have seen,’ Amnon explained, and
then sighed massively. ‘I do not understand these Collegium women – are they
not impressed with such prowess?’

Totho
found himself wondering what Che must have made of it. ‘They’re a perverse
lot,’ he agreed, feeling a pang of the old bitterness. ‘Believe me, I tried to
…’
And am I revealing this now, and to him, that I have
kept to myself for so long?
The beer and Amnon’s blithe innocence
encouraged him. ‘I tried to help the girl I … tried to show her how I felt and
what I could do. I even went halfway across the world to rescue her. For
nothing.’

‘So what
do they want?’ Amnon demanded, taking up another jug. ‘Has she enemies I can
slay? No, it is all diplomacy with them, and I am not allowed. How am I to
show
this woman?’

‘They’re
very sentimental, Collegium women,’ Totho told him. ‘Sentimental to a fault.
They read too much.’ A sweeping statement, but he had just decided that it was
true.
Am I drunk?
It seemed likely. The empty jugs
littering the table between them were not entirely the fault of Amnon. Mind
you, just because he had been drinking, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t true.
‘They prefer a hollow gesture to all manner of sincerity,’ he added.
One touch of Moth-kinden mystery and she virtually forgot I was
even there
.

‘So you
think I should woo her gently?’ Amnon said. It did not quite match with what
Totho thought he had just said, but he let that be.

The big
man was thinking. ‘I had not wanted to seem too forward.’

‘You’ll
get nothing by hiding your fire. They never notice, if you do that,’ Totho
replied sagely. ‘And they don’t care about what success you make of yourself
either. You could be general of the world and suddenly it wouldn’t matter.’
And, in that case, what am I doing here? What is it I really
want?

‘I am
observing this, with her,’ Amnon agreed heavily. ‘I must make a grand gesture –
an unmistakable one.’

‘Tell
me, then,’ said Totho. ‘Tell me what she did, on your hunt.’

‘She
seemed not the least interested in anything of it,’ Amnon reported gloomily.
‘Even when I pulled her from the water with my own hands, she did not seem to
see me.’

‘No, no,
not your Rakespear woman,’ Totho interrupted. ‘I mean Che – the ambassador.’

‘Ah,
that I cannot tell you,’ Amnon replied ponderously. ‘For she vanished for some
time, strangely, leaving her companions very concerned. When our search parties
finally found her, she was with the Imperial ambassador and his clown.’

I am not drunk any more
. Indeed he felt abruptly, coldly
sober. Totho wrestled a polite expression on to his face, glad that Amnon was
being too introspective tonight to notice. ‘Is that so?’ he asked.

The big
man nodded. ‘It is not safe, to venture so far as she did,’ he said.

It is not
, Totho silently agreed.
I
was asking myself what I want here. What I undoubtedly want is to make sure
that Che does not fall into the hands of the Empire. Surely that is what I want
,
and on the heels of that, came the wretched thought,
And
how many rescues will it take, to make her mine?

In her dream, Petri Coggen found herself standing at the door of the
embassy, looking out at the Place of Foreigners. A breeze brought cool air from
the river, but the sky above was almost cloudless.

This isn’t right
.

In the
dream there was a strange feeling laid on her, of calm and acceptance. As it
enveloped her like a blanket, she took three steps out towards the pond and its
benches. Deep inside her something flinched. That part of her trying to wake
was thrashing, fighting, but buried very deep. The numbing calm they had laid
upon her was smothering it.

This isn’t right
. Still that note of discord.
This is not the Place of Foreigners
. There was enough
awareness left to her to force her head around, to look closely at her
surroundings. It was a dream, but she
knew
it was a
dream, and that behind this dream there lurked something much worse. Somewhere,
out beyond her sight, they were waiting. She could feel the leaden weight of
their attention.

The
statues in the garden of Honoured Foreigners were now watching her. As the
moonlight caressed them, it touched not cold stone but cloth and flesh. Deep
inside, a shiver of horror went through her – because if these statues could
live, then why not others? – but her outer calm was barely cracked, staring at
them.

They
made no move, just stood in their places, but she saw them shift slightly, and
their eyes tracked her as she crossed the garden. The Moth-kinden watched her
with inscrutable patience, the Spiders with arch disdain. From his hiding place
within the foliage, the eyes of the Mantis warrior gazed with narrow suspicion.
Other kinden, some that she had never known in life, stared down on her, as
their names were dredged from her memory: long-limbed Grasshoppers, hunchbacked
Woodlice, poised and beautiful Dragonfly-kinden.

No Ants, no Beetles, not even a Khanaphir
. But in the
dream she understood that. It was because they were so very lowly: who would
waste the fine white stone on a statue of Petri Coggen or any of her relations?
They were the servants, the minions, the countless running hordes, whose myriad
deaths and births passed unmarked season to season. These, here, were the
nobility.