The Scarab Path (41 page)

‘You are
ignorant,’ she said, and it took him a moment to unpick her accent. ‘You are
from far away and know nothing.’

‘I know
that they will send people to look for me – that my absence will stir the city
up, and my own people as well.’

‘Do not
threaten us on our sacred ground,’ she warned him, voice still soft but the
spines jabbing him briefly. ‘The city shall not come here, and you were hunted
here by other foreign hands. There shall be no search to find your bones. We
have made our pact with the Masters: any that cross this far are ours. It is
our right.’

Another bloody thing the locals could have told us: that their
tame servants have murderous relatives just a short walk away!

‘I will
fight,’ Thalric said. His understanding of even the Lowlander Mantis-kinden was
limited, so he had little to work with. ‘Let me fight for our freedom. Choose
your best, if you will.’

The old
woman smirked. ‘Your death shall not be at our hands, foreigner. Your blood
shall be drunk by the earth, and by the avatar. Your comrade first, though. We
must shed his blood while he still has it.’

They
were opening up the wicker casing of the effigy. Osgan had collapsed, all his
limbs drawn in, shuddering and lost to his own terrors.
And
perhaps that’s a mercy
. Thalric made a sudden lunge back from the woman,
feeling the barbs of her arm gash his flesh. He tried to put a hand out towards
her, with some wild idea of holding her hostage, but someone struck him with a
spear-shaft behind his knees as another glanced from the back of his head. He
joined Osgan on the ground, reeling. Around them, the Mantis-kinden had begun a
soft humming, barely audible save that they were all doing it, a slow tune, but
a gradually building one.

‘Osgan,’
Thalric said, hunching closer. ‘Osgan, snap out of it!’

The
former quartermaster gave a great gasp, staring upwards at the latticed idol
above them. ‘We’re going to die,’ he said.

‘Then
die like an Imperial Wasp soldier, not like a Flykinden coward!’ Thalric spat
at him.

‘You
don’t understand,’ Osgan said hollowly. ‘You didn’t see.’

Thalric
opened his mouth to make some harsh comment, but the Mantids had stopped
humming.

Someone
else had entered the clearing.

As she walked into the village, Che barely saw the Mantis-kinden. The
guttering, flickering grey fire of Achaeos was all that was worthy of her
attention. Then her mind broadened to include the wicker idol and her mind was
briefly racked with memories and images, some that she owned and some that were
alien to her.
This is the thing that Tynisa would never
speak of
. She saw it with Inapt eyes, and she saw it running with death,
quivering with a thousand years of adoration and sacrifice. It spoke of skulls
to her, it leered blood, so that she flinched back from it even as the ghost
surged forward.

Then she
saw the Mantids, brought into sharp focus as their leader pointed towards her.
It was a Mantis woman standing before the idol, and Che did not notice the two
Wasp prisoners before her, only that old woman silhouetted before the empty
effigy’s power.

‘The
land has been generous to us today!’ the old Mantis cried out. ‘Take her and
bring her here!’

A dozen
of the Mantis-kinden were instantly in motion, falling on Che with expressionless
faces, with hungry eyes. She raised her hands to ward them off, and the old
woman suddenly screamed.

Inches
from laying hands on her, they stopped. She saw their reserve crack, surprise
and shock taking hold, expressions not native to Mantis faces. They were
looking back to see their leader on her knees, covering her face. Before her
was Achaeos’s blurred ghost.

The
Mantis warriors could not see it, Che realized, but their leader could. Despite
everything she had been through, the revelation hit her like a hammer blow. Che
dropped to her own knees, staring at the old woman. The Mantis leader –
priestess?
the unfamiliar word came into her mind – was
scrabbling at the muddy, bone-littered ground in front of the idol, trying to
claw some distance between herself and the shuddering grey stain in the air.
Her eyes were wide.

Give me your power
.

Che
heard the imperious command, and she thought of the old saying,
Servants of the Green, Masters of the Grey
, and how the
Moth-kinden had always commanded, and the Mantids obeyed.

The old
woman was well clear of the idol now, and the ghost flowed into its vacant
frame, its trailing edges boiling and dissolving into the surrounding air.

‘Che?’
said someone, and she blinked down from the supernatural to the mundane to see
Thalric and his comrade staring up at her.

What can he think?
But she was too far removed from any
world that Thalric might know. He would only see the Mantis-kinden backing off
from her as though she was on fire, as though she was sacred. She held out a
hand to him, and somewhere in the gesture it turned from an offer of help to a
plea for it. She felt the world swimming, her eyes drawn relentlessly back to
the ghost of Achaeos hanging within the idol as though it was caught on the
bars.

Thalric
and Osgan were crawling towards her, trying to avoid notice. The Mantids had no
time for them any more. They watched only their leader and she watched Achaeos.

Within
the prison of the idol, the grey smudge waxed and grew, forming shapes – hands,
features. Che waited for him, waited to recognize those blank eyes, the sharp
features.
I set you free
, she thought.
Please, be free
.

It was
not working. The ghost billowed and surged within the prison of the canes, but
she could see that this was not enough. She heard that same harsh voice again,
this time almost spitting the words.
Is this all? How many
years and how many deaths have led to this? Has all your duty and reverence and
labour been to give birth only to this nothing?

The old
woman wailed, hiding her head, and if there were words there, Che could not
catch them. The other Mantis-kinden were slipping away into the trees and the
water, as if unwilling to witness the torment of their leader.

You wretched wasters of power!
the ghost continued.
You traitors to your past! There is nothing here, nothing!
Betrayers of your kinden and your heritage!
There was no trace in that
raging voice of the man she had once known, and Che thought,
He is going mad, tied to me, tied to this world. I do not know
him any more
.

The tirade
continued, showing no sign that it might ever stop, and Che wanted to rush
forward, to shout into the face of the idol that he should stop it, that it was
doing no good – but she managed one step only. The sheer fury that rippled
through the ghost’s substance was too much for her. She had not known that he
was capable of it. Perhaps it had taken death to bring it out of him.

‘Che, we
have to go,’ said Thalric, sounding distant, and she knew from his tone that
this was not the first time he had said it. He was barely audible over the
ghost’s rantings, but of course he could hear none of that. Only Che herself
and the Mantis woman could.
But I am not the only one, and
I am not insane, and this is real
. Something in her, some echo of her
past, wailed that this was all impossible, but she found in herself an
acceptance that the world was made of these things, that the world worked by
such means. It was clear to her now, in the way that the workings of a crossbow
or a lock would never again be.

‘We must
go,’ she agreed, and turned to find Thalric holding up his friend, who was pale
and shaking. He met Che’s eyes: two harrowed gazes, each with its load of
untranslatable grief. Then she too put an arm around Osgan, keeping clear of
the crude bandages, and the two of them helped guide him off into the swamp
towards the river. The going was hard enough to limit any further words until
the boats found them and they became separated once again.

They sat in silence in their room within the Collegiate embassy, one
standing by the window, the other one by the door: Accius and Malius, the
Vekken ambassadors.

They had
been invited to join the hunt, of course: they had ignored the invitation.
Instead this had seemed to them a golden opportunity for a little quiet, some
space to think without the Collegiates crowding them with their constant noise.

We have watched for long enough
, Malius decided.
The King would expect some action from us by now
.

The King does not know the conditions here
, Accius thought
darkly.

We are merely being distracted. No doubt that is the intent.

Agreed
. Accius watched Khanaphir servants outside as they
tended the gardens of the Place of Honoured Foreigners.
This
city is irrelevant
.

Primitive
, agreed Malius.
There is no
advantage to be secured for Collegium here. Even ten thousand Khanaphir
soldiers could not stand for more than a moment against aVekken army. Bows and
spears!
In the voice of the mind, derision was so much purer and more
satisfying.

So why are they here?
Accius posed the riddle they had
been slowly pondering for days.

Their scholars are almost certainly nothing more than that
,
Malius admitted reluctantly.
They may have other standing
orders that have yet to come into effect, but we have witnessed nothing about
them to suggest that their claims hide anything more devious
.

They are the typical irrelevant chaff with which Collegium always
hides its true purpose
, Accius agreed.
Which
purpose—

Which purpose is therefore embodied in the person of their
ambassador. No doubt we were intended to watch the academics, or the city
itself – the Collegiate contempt for the abilities of others, once again
.
Malius loaded the thought with particular emotion. It was their one pastime,
really, this disparagement of their enemies. It enlivened the silence, and it
even made the noise more bearable.

Her movements have been mysterious. She has been evading scrutiny
and she has been impossible to track
, Accius thought.
She has an agenda that even her foolish compatriots do not
realize. She is the real reason they are here, and they can look at all the
stones and rocks they want. That much is clear
.

That much is clear
, Malius echoed.
And
we must now unearth her purpose. It is obviously something more than we had
thought
.

The King was wise to send us on this mission
.

Indeed. We have seen where she visits most, who she associates
with
.

And that skirmish in the courtyard
, Accius recalled.
How swift she was to disarm it, and then spending so long
speaking to the Wasp
.

It is clear they have come here, so far from the Lowlands,
because it is a neutral city where arrangements can be made
.

They
both paused then. Their joint conclusion, inexorable, was sufficiently dire for
neither to wish it voiced. At last it was Malius who finished the thought.

Collegium has no stomach for another war, therefore they seek an
alliance with the Wasp Empire
.

Neither
needed to state the obvious consequence of that. Where else could the combined
eyes of such an alliance turn, save to Vek?

We must prevent this, at all costs
, Accius decided.
We must create disharmony between our enemies
.

There is only one way
, Malius concluded for him.
Their secrecy shall be their undoing. We must kill both
ambassadors. For the glory of Vek
.

Scorpion dens were seldom quiet places at night. The darkness was
punctuated by the sounds of drinking, brawling, vendettas abruptly realized,
the crash of pottery and the clash of steel, but when the explosion ripped
across the night of the city-camp of Gemrar it was of a different order. The
entire city was shocked into panicked motion instantly, Scorpions surging out
naked or half-dressed, weapons in their hands, shouting at each other or
rushing for the gap-toothed outer wall to confront the attack. Even Hrathen
himself was momentarily disoriented. He felt the desert chill and in his mind
he was back in the Dryclaw during the war, bellowing orders to the Slave Corps
officers who had followed him into infamy.
The Empire has
found us
, was his first thought, as he shrugged on his banded armour,
took up his shortsword and stepped into the night. His eyes scanned the sky,
looking for the Light Airborne or the square bulk of an Imperial heliopter.

Then he
remembered. This desert was the Nem, not its domesticated cousin. He was far
from the Empire’s reach.

‘Report!’
he bellowed, hoping that one of his men was in earshot. Most of the Scorpions
were still rushing outwards, roused to a single purpose by the thought of an
assault on their capital. There was a counter-current, however, that was
calling some of them somewhere within the city’s bounds. Hrathen joined the
latter, sheathing his sword and tightening the buckles of his armour. Whenever
the Scorpions got in his way he elbowed them aside, for all that they were
bigger than he was. It was the only way.

He smelled
the smoke soon enough, the acrid bite of spent firepowder in his nostrils.
Has some fool fired the magazine?
But the resulting
explosion would have been greater than that, and besides, they weren’t so easy
to light, for the firepowder was packed in small charges, little metal-bound
barrels not much bigger than a man’s fist. The Imperial engineers had made the
stuff as safe as possible, if only because it would be them who would be
standing next to it most of the time.