The Scarab Path (65 page)

She
ducked in at a convenient corner to get her bearings. She had received plenty
of news from the battle front, which was even now advancing on the river. None
of it seemed good. She had seen Totho and Amnon in conference several times,
and it seemed that the Iron Glove was taking some personal interest in the
outcome. Despite her harsh words for the man, she could not help but think,
I hope Totho knows what he’s doing
. Certainly a great deal
of the city had been surrendered already. In the sky to the west, the sunset
was darkened with smoke.

She had
been keeping her eyes out for the Wasp-kinden. They were out there still, and
it seemed clear that both she and Thalric were on the menu as far as the Rekef
were concerned. They would be holed up somewhere here in the east city, but
they would be working at a disadvantage, because Khanaphes was not the sort of
city they were used to. The word had gone out now that they were enemies of the
Ministers and Masters, so a Wasp-kinden face would find few friends here. They
would be forced to seek their agents and spies amongst the lowest of the low:
halfbreeds, criminals and those few foreigners who had not fled when word of
the Scorpions came. Even there they risked exposure and betrayal to the city’s
authorities. They would have to tread carefully.

Of
course, Thalric had the same problem himself, hence his need for Che. She had
done her best to explain to the Ministers that Thalric himself was no part of
the Empire’s plan. They had nodded and smiled with their usual politic blankness,
leaving her unsure whether they had believed her or not. She also half expected
to get back to find that the drinking den’s owner had sold him out.

She
spotted a foreign face within the crowd, just for a moment. She had been
looking backwards, along the way she had come. It was the brief discontinuity
that had caught her, another person not quite in tune with the crowd. But it
was not the pale flash of a Wasp face. It was a face darker than her own, than
any local: coal-black Vekken features.

She cursed,
moving out into the crowd again, knowing that the other one of them would be
somewhere about.
What do they want?
But that was an
old question. They wanted to kill her, of course, and she had to assume they
were following some distant Vekken directive, because she had surely given them
no recent cause. They must have received their instructions before any of them
even set out from Collegium, and on that list, triggered by who knew what, was
the directive:
Kill the ambassador
.

Uncle Sten and his stupid ideas
. Peace with the Vekken,
indeed! She had already gathered enough understanding of them to know that it
was simply not an option.
They hate us. They fear us. There
is no common ground
.

She
picked up her pace, jostling and pushing, sensing in the back of her mind the
two Ant-kinden trying to reach her through the crowd. One was likely ahead of
her, trying to find an ambush point, silently guided by his comrade. She
changed direction several times, trying to be unpredictable. She was meanwhile
looking for any kind of public building.

She saw
a large house that had obviously been opened up for refugees. As swiftly as she
could, she ducked inside. The place was lined wall-to-wall with people: each
had inherited a space of stone floor in place of the home they had abandoned
across the river. She pushed through them, making for the stairs, ignoring
their complaints. She imagined the doorway now darkening as the hooded Vekken
came inside after her.

Upstairs,
still stepping and stumbling over destitute Khanaphir, but she had seen a
window large enough to admit her. She rushed for it, squeezed through it, let
her wings catch her as she dropped. She was a clumsy and awkward flier, but it
was an Art the Vekken could not attain. She let her wings carry her across a flight
of buildings, across two alleys, dropping down into a roof garden and then
making her way across to the street, past more surprised locals.
Let that put them off the trail
.

She was
uncomfortably aware that they would not give up hunting her, though. They had a
kind of blind, idiot patience in that regard, an Ant trait. She would have to
confront them eventually.

Then let me choose the time and place, and let me choose my
allies too
. She had no doubt that Thalric would back her, should she ask
him. The thought gave her an odd surge of confidence: to have a friend, no
matter who, one who would not ask the wrong questions. Just to have a friend.

She was
getting close to his retreat now. It had taken her long enough. His hideout was
across an open-air market from her, although the stalls had now all been turned
into surrogate housing. Rows and rows of Khanaphir were huddled together
beneath the awnings, hundreds of them sitting there with bland acceptance,
simply waiting to be told they could go home.

It was
an instinct that came with flying, an instinct that precious few of the locals
could possess. Entering the market, Che had glanced up at the rooftops.

They
were there. She saw two of them clearly, one to her left, one to her right,
crouching on high and watching: Wasp-kinden. They were cloaked, but their
simple presence said it all.

They’ve tracked him down
. For a moment she thought they
might have killed him already, but then why would they still be watching?
Surely not for her?
It’s still daylight, just, and they
won’t risk anything until after dark
. She could not be sure of that, but
it seemed to make sense. If she went into that drinking den now, she could be
walking into a trap, but if she did not she could be leaving him to his fate.

Was this part of the bargain we made?
But that was not a
question worth asking. Her difficulty now would be getting in without being
spotted by the Wasp sentries.

She put
a shawl up over her hair, so that she now looked as much a Beetle-kinden as the
locals. Once that tell-tale was covered, there was nothing in her appearance
that should scream
foreigner
at them. Nothing except
the way she moved.

The
crowd was settling, the streets were emptying as dusk drew on. She must go now
if she was to take cover amongst these, her distant kin.

But what a gulf separates us. We are of different worlds
.
The thought was irresistible, sweeping over her with the feverish insistence of
a Fir dream.
O Masters of Khanaphir
,
aid me
, she mouthed.
Hide me from the
eyes of my enemies
.

She
stepped into the crowd and moved through it, and it opened up before her. It
was not that people parted for her; that would hardly have served her purpose.
Instead, they were always just out of her step, not in her way, not snagging
her elbows or stepping on her feet. She coursed through the settling crowd like
a true part of it. Her mind reeled at the continuing strangeness, waited each
moment for everything to come crashing down, but somewhere deeper it felt
natural to her, as though she had finally started to listen to a voice she had
been trying to ignore.

She
reached the den’s entrance, knowing better than to glance back and thus show
her face.

A
thought struck her just before she entered the building, and she let her smooth
course carry her past and then down a side alley, seeming nothing more than one
Beetle amongst hundreds. She was keenly aware of time, the hour latening, the
Wasps surely readying themselves to swoop. Still, she continued on to the
riverside, towards the building’s rear, the hatch that was Thalric’s fall-back.
With eyes that were not hindered by the gathering dusk, she managed several
quick glances at the rooftops, seeing no one.

But why would the Wasps not be watching here?
It felt
wrong. They were Rekef, therefore neither fools nor amateurs. Still, aside from
a few ambling Beetles going homeward, their eyes fixed on the far bank and its
bristling newcomers, she saw nobody.

She
walked right around the building and slipped back to the front, ducking inside.
It was increasingly difficult to keep her pace nonchalant. She could almost
hear the sands dwindling in the glass.

The
place was nearly empty: the Ministers had yet to commandeer it to house
fugitives and, with the city sundered in two, it was not a night for drinking.
Khanaphes was frightened. Of the three people there, one was audibly murmuring
some invocation to the Masters, and she wondered if this was something they had
always done when faced with life’s trials, or whether the emergency had brought
them back to it.

She
slipped into the cellar after a single look at the proprietor. His eyes
regarded her bleakly and he made no move to stop her.

‘Thalric.’

He
picked up on her urgent tone and was on his feet at once. ‘They’re here?’

‘Right
outside the front,’ she said.

Osgan
was sitting up, looking pale, but stronger than he had been. It was just as
well.

‘They
followed you?’ Thalric asked her.

‘No,
they did
not
follow me,’ she snapped, put out by the
suggestion. ‘They tracked you down. They were here long before I returned.
They’re waiting for nightfall, is my guess. So we have to move right away.’

‘What
about the back?’

‘I
didn’t see anyone.’ She nodded at his expression. ‘I know, I know, but I looked
and there were no Wasps there that I could see. That doesn’t mean they weren’t
there.’

‘We move
now,’ Thalric decided. ‘We try to lose them. There are a few other places that
we could hole up in, but they’re none of them far enough from here to shake off
a chase. That means we’ll have to go wide, then double back to one of them.
Osgan, on your feet, now.’

‘Can
he—?’ Che started, but Osgan groaned and shook himself, and clawed his way up
the wall until he was standing.

‘Let’s
go,’ he croaked. He was red-eyed, unshaven, but Che wondered if a lack of drink
had not taken over from his fever as the main antagonist.

‘Can you
fly?’ Thalric asked him.

‘Enough
to get up the chute,’ Osgan confirmed weakly. ‘No roof-hopping.’

‘We’ll
be staying on the ground,’ Thalric decided. ‘You two are both dead if we go
above roof level. You might as well hover there waving flags.’

‘Oh,
really?’ Che glared. ‘And you’d just vanish into the night like a Moth-kinden,
I suppose.’

‘That’s
exactly what I’d do,’ he told her. ‘Now, when we hit the street above, make a
left, and then run along the river until the third alley – then left again,
into it. I’ll bring up the rear. I want to see who follows us.’ He had bundled
himself in a cloak, but Che could not see him passing for a local any time
soon. He was too tall, too pale; there was a violence evident in him that
Beetle-kinden did not own.

He
paused under the barrel chute and then kicked off, wings throwing him upwards.
A moment later he said, ‘Clear, come on.’

Che made
Osgan go next. The man shook his head wearily. His arm was still bound up and
she knew she should change the dressing, but they did not have the time. She
heard him swear under his breath and then his wings flared, barely a sputter of
them but getting him high enough to hook his good arm over the sill. Thalric
hauled him up from there, and Che followed right behind, pulling herself
through the hatchway. For a second they crouched there, just three more
refugees among so many. She heard Thalric’s breath emerge in a long hiss.

‘Nothing
on the roofs here, just like you said.’ He grimaced. ‘They could have someone
with a glass positioned across the river, but that’s not a recipe for a quick
response. Let’s move.’

They
scattered down the narrow muddy track running beside the river, Che helping the
wheezing Osgan along, whilst Thalric followed near-soundless behind them. The
west bank was lit up by fires, and she found it hard not to brood on that.
I should have duties at a time like this, as an ambassador
.
Save that those duties had dried up.
Diplomacy has failed
.
Indeed, through the instruments of the Empire, she was now as much a target as
was the city of Khanaphes.

You do pick my errands well, Uncle Sten. Just keeping me safe
again, were you?
Behind it all lurked a kind of specifically selfish
despair.
What if it should all come down, the city falling
in ruins before I ever understand it?

‘Move!’
Thalric’s voice hissed, and she picked up her pace, slinging herself and Osgan
into the chosen alley. There was a thin rabble of locals still on the street
and she just battered past them, with Thalric, running now, behind.

‘Stay
where there’s people,’ she got out. ‘Won’t risk drawing so much attention.’

‘Don’t
bet on it,’ he shot back. ‘Go right, now.’

When he
said ‘now’, he meant it. She and Osgan almost fell over each other’s feet
making the sharp turn into an even narrower alley. She saw that this one was
roofed off with canvas, struts and spars, reminding her of the Marsh Alcaia
with all the emotional baggage that carried. The Wasps, who had surely been tracking
them from the skies, were momentarily confounded. Thalric paused for a second,
whilst Osgan leant heavily on Che and coughed. The ex-Rekef man looked back at
her: that was how she saw him, just then. He was smiling, a man on the edge and
loving it.

He
kicked in a door, without warning, at random. There was a scream from within.
Then he was inside, leaving Che and Osgan to trail in his wake.

‘Can’t
keep this up much longer,’ the ailing Wasp grated in her ear. She had no words
to spare him, just hustled him along as best she could.