The Scarab Path (47 page)

The big
man nodded. ‘I’ve got paperwork to catch up with.’ He gave Che a vague
half-salute, like a man unsure about the formalities, before retreating into
one of the upstairs rooms.

Thalric
had paused near the foot of the stairs, and stood looking at her with a slight
smile on his face. ‘I suppose you should come up then, unless you want to keep
this formal.’ He singled out one of the servants. ‘Get us some decent wine or
something.’ Then he was trekking back up the stairs, leaving Che to follow him.
Trallo had already flitted up to the landing and, judging from his expression,
Thalric must have given him a foul look as he passed.

The room
she followed him into matched her own across the other side of the Place of
Foreigners. She had to force her eyes away from the walls, where ancient hands
had inscribed a valedictory epic to a kinden she was not even sure she
recognized, but that she imagined were depicted in the tall, hunchbacked
effigies that flanked the main embassy doors. To one side there was a low table
on which some kind of game had been set up, with two couches facing each other
for the players. The two ambassadors took their places on either side of it.

‘How’s …
your man, the … injured one?’ She had been about to say ‘the drunk one’, but
that might not have been diplomatic enough.

‘Osgan?
Fevered,’ Thalric said. ‘Being tended, expected to recover. Getting yourself
cut open in a swamp’s a stupid thing to do.’ Thalric shrugged. They had not
spoken since the hunt, and she had no idea what he thought of what had happened
there, in the village of the Mantis-kinden.

‘Did he
… did he say what he saw there?’ she asked tentatively.

‘What
Osgan sees is not regarded as reliable testimony,’ he replied shortly. ‘Even at
the best of times.’

He did see something then
. Had this man become so caught
up in Tisamon’s final moments and the death of the Emperor, that he was now
able to grasp something of the Inapt world? She knew that she was unlikely ever
to find out. ‘Thalric …’ She frowned down at the game board and, in place of
chastising him over Trallo, she just said, ‘You’re a really bad chess player. These
pieces are all over the place.’

He had
been waiting for something serious, and he snorted at that, caught off guard.
‘What it is, is that you Lowlanders have no idea how to play chess,’ he
replied.

‘I came
third in the College trials, I’ll have you know.’ It had meant a lot to her, at
the time. Now, facing his amusement, her sense of pride was dwindling.

‘You
play Ant-chess,’ he said. ‘Trudge-trudge-trudge. I couldn’t believe it when I
first came to Helleron – all that lining up and slogging. In real chess—’

‘They
fly,’ Che finished for him. ‘Of course, if chess is a war, then … war is
different for the Wasps.’ Such a simple thing, but it seemed to say a lot about
the gap between them.

‘Blame
the Commonwealers. It’s their game,’ he said, but his smile was slipping fast.
‘All right, Che, out with it.’ The wine arrived then, a further stay of
execution, but he was still braced and waiting when the servants bowed their
way out.

‘You
have been keeping watch over me,’ she accused. ‘Using Trallo here, who has his
kinden’s sense of free business, I think.’

‘And his
kinden’s ability to keep his mouth shut, I see,’ Thalric added.

The Fly
gave an amused snort and Che turned to him sharply. ‘You’ve got something to
say, at this point?’

‘Only
that you’re both making a great fuss over nothing,’ he said easily. ‘He wants
you looked after, so what? She knows about it, so what? There’s no conflict
here, no difference of opinion. Why all the secrecy, eh?’

They
were both staring at him in exasperation. Then Che said, ‘Don’t you understand
anything?’ and paused, trying to put into words just why the Fly was wrong.
‘Perhaps … you’d better go wait at the embassy while I sort this out,’ she said
finally.

Trallo
rolled his eyes at that. ‘If you insist on complicating matters, Bella
Cheerwell.’ He bowed to them both, before stepping up on to the window ledge
and letting the air catch him beyond it. Che could not keep herself from going
to the window to make sure that he was not simply still hovering there,
eavesdropping.

‘Solarnese
Fly-kinden,’ she complained. ‘What can you do with them?’

‘It’s
all because their Spider mistresses let them get away with murder,’ Thalric
remarked.

She
looked over at him, her expression undecided. ‘So you told him it was all for
my own good, did you?’

‘Wasn’t
it?’ he asked.

Slowly
she returned to her seat. ‘What right do you have—’ but he was smirking at her
in that patronizing way he had always done, from the beginning, and she
demanded, ‘What?’

‘I had
forgotten,’ he said, ‘how you Collegiates aways talk of rights – rights of
humanity. This is nothing to do with having a
right
,
according to some obscure philosophy. Che, I look after my comrades, past or
present. It’s an Imperial virtue, believe it or not, although one that’s seldom
practised these days.’

‘And I
can’t look after myself, is that it?’

He
looked at her, fighting for a moment to hold in the response, and the laugh
that went with it. ‘No,’ he let out, finally. ‘Oh, Che, even when we first met
it was after you had gone to great lengths to put yourself straight into the
hands of the man most likely to betray you to me. When we were in Myna together
you managed so well with the resistance that they were about to execute you as
a collaborator. Che, from what should I believe that you will keep yourself
safe?’

‘You …!’
As she stood, her indignation was strangling any chance of getting coherent
words out. ‘How—! Why you—!’ He still had a faint smile, which maddened her
even more, and she slapped the little table, flipping it over entirely and
scattering chess pieces to the four quarters of the room. ‘Bah—!’ she got out.
Thalric was not looking suitably chastened, instead was plainly fighting not to
laugh out loud.

Oh, that does it
. She went for him, then, catching him
completely by surprise. She was not entirely sure what she intended, save
perhaps to strangle the smile from his face, but she knocked him backwards off
the couch and landed on him hard enough that she heard the breath whoosh out of
him. Shocked at her own success, she dithered, sitting back on his stomach. His
recovery was impeded more by his laughter than her weight.

‘Hammer
and tongs!’ she exclaimed. ‘What?’

‘You
don’t change,’ he choked out at last. ‘You must have been a riot in the
debating circles. Do you attack everyone you don’t have an answer for?’

The
humour of it got through to her at last. The anger burning but a moment ago,
now seemed to have died a death, not even an ember left. She met Thalric’s
eyes, feeling his body twist beneath her, testing himself against her weight,
and there was a moment when something passed between them. Che felt suddenly
uncomfortable and scrabbled backwards, ending up perched on the couch he had
just vacated. Thalric picked himself up and dusted himself down, then plucked a
chess piece from the floor, where it had been digging into his back.

‘I’ve
escaped another mauling from Corolly, then,’ he said vaguely. She knew, from
his abruptly subdued tone, that he had felt that fleeting something too.

‘Thalric
…’ she began, but did not know where to go next.

‘They
suggested I should seduce you,’ he told her, the words ambushing both of them
without warning.

She
stared at him, agog. ‘What …?’

‘Good
Rekef practice.’ Instead of looking at her, he was busy picking up game pieces.

‘Why are
you telling me this?’

‘I’m
trying out honesty,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you what they suggested.’

‘I
should go,’ she said. He was still hunting chessmen, though, and she did not
want to go until he had at least turned to face her. ‘Thalric,’ she said, more
urgently, and he looked at her at last. The expression he had been hiding from
her left some traces still, on his face. He looked a little uncertain, a little
shaken. She tried a smile on him, saw the corner of his mouth twitch in return.

Something
crashed downstairs and they heard the servants scream.

Che was
out of the room in an instant, reaching for her sword. She saw the Beetle,
Corolly, surge out onto the landing, dragging at the string of a crossbow.
There were soldiers in dark armour rushing up the stairs already, who reached
him before he could cock the weapon. One of them smashed Corolly across the
face with the butt of a snapbow, knocking him to the ground. Another put a foot
on the Beetle’s chest, levelling a long-barrelled weapon at his face. The rest
were surging towards Che.

She
brandished her sword, and only then did she recognize them.

‘Totho?’
she faltered. The lead figure was wholly concealed in armour, black metal
plates cast into elegant flutes and ridges. She was not even sure that she had
identified him correctly until he spoke.

‘Che.’
She could barely recognize the hollow voice from within the helm. ‘You’re
coming with us.’

‘
You!
’ Thalric spat the word out from behind her, and she
felt a sudden plummeting in her stomach at what was about to happen.

Totho
raised some kind of weapon, levelling it directly over her shoulder, but
Thalric was quicker. The flash and flare of his sting warmed her cheek before
it struck Totho across the breastplate and pauldron. He reeled back with the
impact, the short weapon in his hands snapping a bolt into the ceiling. The
seething fire from the Wasp’s Art merely boiled off his armour, leaving it
patterned with pale lines but unbroken.

‘Everybody
stop!’ Che cried out at the top of her voice. ‘What is going on?’

Totho
grabbed her – just reached out, took hold of her tunic and hauled her towards
him effortlessly. As her back was pulled hard up against the grooves of his
breastplate, she could feel where it was still warm from Thalric’s shot.

Thalric
stood in the doorway of his chamber, hand again spitting golden fire. A man
beside Totho went down, a fist-sized hole charred through his leather armour.
The weapon in Totho’s hand snapped again, striking stone-dust from the lintel
and forcing Thalric to duck back. Che was struggling to escape from Totho, but
he held her close with a grip she could not break. ‘What are you doing?’ she
demanded over and over until he roared in her ear, ‘Just shut up for once, Che.
You’re coming with me!’ The vehemence shocked her into silence, mouth left open
in mid-complaint. The Iron Glove contingent, some dozen men in all, began
retreating back down the stairs. She heard Thalric call her name as he ran out
onto the balcony, and his hand blazed again. Then a snapbow bolt tore across
his arm and another skimmed his ribs, and he fell back.

‘Where
in the wastes are the rest of them?’ someone was asking, and she recognized
Corcoran’s voice. ‘Setting an ambush?’

Totho
paused, and Che could almost feel the workings of his mind, transmitted through
the armour that was digging into her back. If the rest of the Imperials were
elsewhere, then Totho could accomplish more than simply dragging Che away.

Deliberately
she began fighting him again, and she heard his curse echo from inside his
helm. Corolly had appeared at the balcony rail again, crossbow loaded now. A
snapbow bolt made him duck back. Totho came to his decision.

‘Let’s
go. We have what we came for.’

Under
the gaze of the aghast servants, the Iron Glove men retreated from the Imperial
embassy. They left a dead man on the balcony, irrevocable proof of how they had
broken the peace of Khanaphes.

What can he mean to do?
Che asked herself helplessly.
They will hunt him down for this. The Ministers will set Amnon
and the Mantids and everything they have on him
. She envisaged being
manhandled to the docks, a swift flight through the Estuarine Gate before the
alarm was raised. Totho was not taking her towards the river, though. As she
was marched briskly on, she understood where: the Iron Glove factora.
He must be mad. What will he do, holed up in there?
‘Totho, tell me what’s going on,’ she pleaded, but he said nothing, just
hustled her on through the streets of Khanaphes, under the increasingly
concerned attention of the locals.

She
stumbled, as a memory revived within her like a cold knife in her, leaving her
suddenly sick with the thought.
It is just like before
.
She pictured a mountainside outside Helleron, and a sudden abduction by a
familiar face. It had been her lost Achaeos that had stood before her then, rather
than Thalric of the Empire, but the face of her kidnapper had still been
Totho’s.

But it was not truly him
, not then. That first time, it
had been the Spider-kinden shape-changer, Scyla.
And now we
are come full circle, and this time he really has done it
.

She had expected Totho to at least sit down and talk to her, after they
bustled her into the Iron Glove factora. He seemed to have no time for her,
though. She had assumed at first that this was some mad impulse of his, and
that he could not know what a nest of hornets he would be stirring. Now she saw
that he had planned everything.

They had
moved her from room to room within the factora, ahead of a wave of
fortification. Allotted such primitive facilities, the Iron Glove were not
content to let them lie: the solid stone framework of the factora building was
being re-edified even as she watched. She caught brief moments of the process
as they moved her deeper inside. They were fixing metal grills over the
windows, with apertures large enough to admit a snapbow’s barrel. They had
replaced the main door with something iron-bound and reinforced. Iron Glove
people were running everywhere, now, strapping on breastplates and buckling on
helms, checking the workings of crossbows and snapbows.