The Scarab Path (91 page)

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 détente they had achieved would not bear too much inspection.