The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Drillen blinked at him blankly.

  Stenwold looked unhappy as he continued. 'Think about it: Stenwold, implacable enemy of the Empire, entering into secret negotiations that will send agents to a city that is not so very far from the Empire's southern border.'

  'The war's over.'

  'The war isn't currently active. Both the Empire and I understand the distinction.'

  Drillen shrugged. 'Whatever you want. You're in charge. It's your expedition.'

  She was still in mourning, but mourning was difficult for her.

  In Collegium the official colour of mourning was grey. True, it was not customary any more for widows and grieving family to parade around the city in drab vestments for tendays, or even just days, but for funerals at least, grey was the order of the day.

  For Cheerwell Maker, though, grey was his colour, therefore a life colour, the colour of her happiness, in the same way that black and gold had become colours of death. She could not make grey the colour of her mourning because that would be a negation of his life.

  In the end she had tracked down a Moth-kinden, a pallid trader from Dorax, and not left him alone until he had explained the customs of his people. For the Moths, the concept of colour seldom entered their lives, since they lived in a midnight world where they could see perfectly without need for sunlight or spectrum. For death, though, they made an exception. For shed blood, they took on the hue of blood. She learned how Mantids did the same, dressing their honoured dead in scarlet, and then entrusting them to the red, red flames. The Moths, who had been the Mantis-kinden's masters since time immemorial, had become infected by such superstitions.

  And red was the colour of the Mynan resistance, their emblem of red arrows on a black background proclaiming their impossible triumph over the Empire. And Myna had been where he had died, for her, though he had been so many miles away.

  So Che wore red, and thus caused public comment. She wore a tunic of deep wine colours edged with black, or else black arrowed with resistance scarlet. Even though she also wore a Moth cape of grey sometimes, nobody realized that she was mourning.

  When she had gone to Tharn, after the war, they would not let her in nor tell her what rites had been performed over the body of poor Achaeos. They would barely spare two words for her. With the Empire beaten back, the old hatreds had resurfaced. She was Beetle-kinden, therefore a despoiler and an enemy. Her previous history as a Moth seer's lover had been erased and, in the end, the Moths had forced her, at bow-point, back on to the airship. Only the intervention of Jons Allanbridge, the aviator, had prevented her being shot dead there and then.

  She had tried to tell them of the mark, of the affliction she had been left with in his wake, but they had not wanted to know. Instead they had told her to leave promptly or they would throw her off the mountainside.

  Mourning was so hard for Che. Her own people had not understood her choice of lover, and now they did not understand her grief. She was surrounded by her own folk, yet feeling more alone each day that passed.

  Yet not alone enough. Sitting here on her bed, with the bright light of day blazing in through the window, she felt a sudden presence beside her. It always happened the same way: the movement did not manifest as such, at first, neither flicker nor shadow, but just as a concrete awareness of there being something there.

  If she moved her head to look, it would be gone. If she stayed very still, though, and emptied her mind the way he had taught her, and waited … then sometimes there would be a greyness at the edge of her vision, a tremor in the air, a something.

  Mourning was difficult for her because she knew that he was still there. He had been a magician, after all, which she now finally believed only after his death. He had been a magician, truly, and now he had become something else. She had been far away when he died, having left him to the failed mercies of his own people. Now, posthumously, he was close to her, and she could not bear it.

  She stood up, feeling the non-presence recede away instantly, knowing that it was still there somewhere, beyond her notice. At the same time she heard the front door, the hurried feet of Stenwold's servant running to greet his master. She drifted out on to the landing in time to see her uncle down below, divesting himself of his cloak. He complained so often of being old and tired, and yet seemed to her to be possessed of boundless reserves of energy. He complained of being mired in politics and intrigue, yet he fed on it with a starving man's appetite.

  He still wore his sword, one of the few Assemblers who did. Stenwold was still at war, they would joke, but their laughter had a nervous quality.

  She drew back into her room, knowing he would come to speak with her soon enough. He did not understand, could not fathom, what she was going through, but he did his best, so she could not complain. He was perpetually a busy man.

  Downstairs, Stenwold stopped himself from turning his head as he heard the landing creak. Either she was still there or she had retreated and he did not know whether her absence or her presence was more disturbing: this ghostly, red-clad apparition that his niece had become.

  I need help. But there was nobody to help him. The war had stripped him of both allies and friends. Above the fireplace, he had finally had framed and hung the old picture that Nero had done of Stenwold and the others when they had just been setting out. Dead faces now, only Stenwold Maker living on out of all of them.

  How is it that I am still here, after all of this? He had a sudden sense, almost like vertigo, of all the people he had sent out to die or get hurt: Salma, Totho, Tynisa, Achaeos, Sperra, Scuto, Tisamon, Nero — even the madwoman Felise Mienn. There was no justice in a world that preserved Stenwold Maker after all that loss.

  But it was worse when he considered the survivors. The Assembly was crawling now with men boasting of their exploits in the war, but Stenwold could not remember seeing any of them defending the walls at the time.

  He glanced up, at last, to find no scarlet watcher above. The war had left so many casualties, with so many different wounds that he was powerless to cure.

  'Lady Arianna sent word that she would be expecting you at her residence, sir,' his servant informed him. The thought stirred an ember of a smile, but he was so tired that it could be no more than that.

  He began the slow clump up the staircase.

  There were books all over Cheerwell's room, open, bookmarked or stacked, lying on the bed and at her desk. They looked old and valuable, and he knew she was trading on her family name to extract favours from the librarians. On the other hand, it was not as though the topics she was researching were required reading for College scholars. Most of these tomes had not been opened before during her lifetime, perhaps not even in Stenwold's. The sight of them reinforced his disquiet, reminded him of the scale of the plight they faced.

  'How was the Assembly?' she asked him. She sat demurely on her bed but there was a brittle aura about her, as of some fragile thing delicately balanced.

  'Tedious as usual.' He racked his mind for something amusing he could recount to her, was forced to accept that nothing amusing had occurred. 'I did my normal job of making friends, so I'm surprised they're not burning my effigy in the square before the Amphiophos.'

  He saw her smirk at the quip, a reaction more than the words warranted. 'You have no idea,' Cheerwell told him. 'You should get her … get Arianna to go to the play with you.' She stumbled a little over the woman's name, but only a little. She was at least trying.

  'Play?' he asked blankly.

  'Haven't you heard? At the Rover on Sheldon Street?' Her smile was genuine, though a sadness shone through it. 'They call it The Shell Crack'd or something like that. It's about goings on in this city when the siege was under way. It's all people leaping into each other's beds and arguing.'

  'There's a play about the war and it's a farce?' said Stenwold, quite thrown off course from what he was originally going to say.

  'Yes, but you're in it too. You're the serious bit in the fourth act, like they always in
clude,' Che told him. 'When you went out to confront the Wasp army and got them to surrender and go away-'

  'It wasn't like that-'

  'Tell that to the playwrights. Tell that to the audience. You're a hero, Uncle Sten.' Her shoulders shook briefly with mirth, for a moment like the Che he knew from before it all. Then another layer of solemnity enveloped her and she said, 'Your man from Paroxinal came back today.'

  'Oh?' and he was serious at that news, too.

  'He said he'd report fully to you, for what it was worth, but nothing.'

  'He found nothing, or they'd tell him nothing?'

  'Nothing either way. Nothing at all. He found no trace of her.'

  For a moment they just looked at one another, chained together by an equal guilt, until Stenwold bared his teeth in annoyance and looked away.

  'Damn the girl!' he said. 'Why-?'

  'You know why,' Che interrupted him flatly.

  'Oh, I know what sparked it, but why go off-?'

  'You know why,' she repeated firmly, and he had no answer to that, because he did know.

  Feeling weary to his bones he pulled the desk chair out and reversed it, sitting so he could rest his arms on the carved back. He heard it creak at the unaccustomed strain. I'll be as fat as Drillen, one of these days. 'Che, I've had a thought about … something for you.'

  She sat very still, waiting warily. It was not the first time he had tried to find things for her to do. She knew he meant well, but he did not understand that her current problems could not simply be left behind.

  'Che … you did some good diplomatic work during the war.'

  That took her by surprise. 'When?'

  'In Myna, for example.'

  'Sten, they nearly killed me there as a traitor.'

  He smiled slightly at that. 'Same here … and with death, it's all about the "nearly". The way I hear it, you finally got their rebellion inspired to the point where they could throw off the Empire.'

  'It wasn't like that,' hearing in her voice an echo of his own words.

  'Tell that to my agents. Tell that to the Mynans. Che …' Staring at his hands as he always did when he sought inspiration. 'You need something to do …' One hand rose, quickly, to cut off her objection. 'I know, I know it won't stitch the wound, and it won't make everything better, just to be doing something, but you need time to heal, and at the moment it's just you and the wound, and nothing else. I have a job I need doing, and you need something to do — and you're good at it.' When she just stared at him he continued, 'I need an ambassador. An official ambassador representing Collegium, bearing the seal of the Assembly and everything.'

  For a moment she continued to stare, then she laughed at him incredulously. 'You can't be serious.'

  'Why not? You've already proven your worth: in Myna, in Solarno, in Sarn. This isn't just Uncle Sten finding jobs for his family. You've shown you're more than equal to the task, and-'

  'And it would give me something to do,' she finished sourly. 'And where, pray?' A thought struck her. 'The Commonweal?'

  'Not the Commonweal,' he said. 'We're being … very careful there. They're a strange lot, up north. They don't really seem to understand yet why ambassadors are necessary. We may even have to buy into their "kin-obligate" business, not that we really understand it.' He waved his hand impatiently. 'No, it's a place called Khanaphes.'

  She stared at him, which he interpreted, incorrectly, as ignorance.

  'The Solarnese know a path to reach it. It's east of the Exalsee, a long way off any Collegiate trade route.' He left the appropriate pause before revealing, 'A Beetle-kinden city, Che.'

  Since her return from Tharn she had been deep in the old tomes of the Moth-kinden. She had been immersing herself in the world that the revolution had shattered, in an attempt to find some cure for her own affliction. In the very oldest of the books and scrolls remaining to the College, amid the most impenetrable shreds of ancient history, there had been a city of that name. It was a relic of the forgotten world that the Beetles had shrugged off in order to become what they were now.

  'Think about it, please.' Stenwold took her silence for reluctance. He wanted to tell her that it was a golden opportunity, that she should look to her own future, capitalize on the respect she had won in the war. He wanted to tell her, in short, that no mourning could be for ever. He knew better than to say it. 'Just think about it. You are a student of the College after all, and the possibilities for scholarship alone are-'

  'I'll think about it,' she said, a little harshly, and he nodded, standing up to go. 'Another thing,' she began, her voice sounding strained. 'You …' She paused, gathered her courage together. 'Please tell the new man about the doors again. He forgets.'

  Stenwold stared at her, a welter of different emotions momentarily at war across his broad face.

  'It's not just me … it's … I'm thinking about Arianna as well.' Che's voice shook under the sheer humiliation of having to say it.

  'Of course I will,' he said. 'Of course. I'll have a word with him when I go back downstairs.'

  The expedition was approved by the Assembly, despite anything that Broiler and his supporters could say against it. The Town vote, comprising the merchants and magnates, scoffed at the expense, but the Gown vote of the College masters was mostly for it, and Drillen's promise to secure funding without troubling either College or Assembly coffers sealed the matter neatly. There was no suggestion that the proposal had been stage-managed from the start.

  The very night of the Assembly meeting, however, found a clerk working late. Drillen was a rigorous employer who demanded results from the least of his underlings, so candlelight in the late evenings was nothing unusual. This clerk, a young man who had hoped to make more of himself, and had lived beyond his means, was just finishing his last missive. The letters seemed nonsense, strings of meaningless babble, but an informed eye would have deciphered them as:

  Urgent. Codeword: 'Yellowjacket'. You told me to keep an eye on all dealings of Stenwold Maker, so this should interest you: the expedition being launched to Canafes (sp?) is not as it seems. JD and SM met twice beforehand re: this matter. Unusual secrecy. Believe JD and SM have their own purposes aside from those stated. Thought you would appreciate knowing.

  He folded the note over, and went over to his rack of couriers. Drillen used these various insects as missivecarriers across the city. They rattled and buzzed in their tubes, each tube with its label to show what place the creature was imprinted on. The clerk, whose responsibility these carrier-creatures were, selected one carefully: a fat, furry-bodied moth. It bumbled out of its tube and crouched on his desk, cleaning its antennae irritably as he secured the message to its abdomen. He had no idea where it went, or to whom, save that it would not be the man who had originally recruited him into this double-dealing. He only knew that the insect would be returned safe, along with a purse of money, to his house. This told him two things: that his shadowy benefactors were wealthy, and that they knew where he lived.

  The insect whirred angrily off into the night, swooping low over the streetlamps but impelled by an inescapable instinct to return home. Before morning the Rekef operatives in Collegium, placed there with exquisite care after the close of the war, had something new to think about, and other, grander, messengers were soon winging their way east.

  Four

  She was dreaming, and she knew she was dreaming. The problem was that it was his dream. Worse still, she knew that the things that she was witnessing through his eyes were real.

  Her mind was full of chanting voices, overlapping and blurring together. She heard no distinct words, just the ebb and flow of the sounds interfering with each other until it was like a great tide, rolling in towards her endlessly.

  And she saw robed shapes …

  She saw robed shapes. They were atop a mountain, and the air around them was bending and fragmenting under the strain of what they were doing. She could not tell which one of them was Achaeos. Because it was also her dream she rushe
d from one to another, to find him. She never could. Their pale, grey Moth faces, their blank white eyes, were all transfigured, so that each face looked the same. The ritual had gripped them with an identical hand. She shouted at them and tried to shake them. She warned them that he would die, if they kept tearing at the world like this. Because it was his dream, and she had not been present, they ignored her.

  She knew that she was running out of time. It was not his time, not the time remaining until the barbed peak of the ritual, when the power they invoked would come thundering down through the city of Tharn, and his fragile body would be unable to take the strain. Instead it was the time until the other arrived.

  It had always been there beside them, although she had been blind to it for so long. From the very first moment their minds had touched, he venturing among the ghost-infested trees, she imprisoned in the hold of a Wasp heliopter, it had been with them. Now she felt it rising from beneath them, through the warrened rock of the mountain, through the very weave of the world. It was surging upwards at a fierce, relentless pace, but it was still a good distance off because it was pursuing from five hundred years ago.

  She thought of flying over the Exalsee and seeing the lake monster rushing for the surface, the great pale body of it forming from the depths.

  The chanting grew even less and less coherent as the voices of the Moth-kinden fell into the echo of that older, greater ritual. Around them the rock of the mountain itself began to crack. Thorny vines thrust themselves violently into the air, then arced round to penetrate the stone once more, to pierce the flesh of the ritualists, yet they did not seem to notice. Transformations were being wreaked on them. Che would run faster and faster from one to another, trying to find Achaeos before the things of the Darakyon did. There were shadows all around now, the shadows of great twisted trees, of Mantis-kinden writhing, bristling with barbs, gleaming with chitin. The shadows were closing in, encompassing the ritual. The robed figures were being consumed.