Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'It's what I'd do,' Thalric confirmed. And then: 'It's what I've done.'

Che went over to the shafts, paused there and looked back. 'Be safe, Thalric. I'll come back for you.'

'Send Trallo with messages, if you can,' Thalric said. 'Che …'

His urgent tone turned her back, as she was about to call upon her wings. He stood regarding her with a calculating expression, as if making his tallies and finding that they did not add up. This was Thalric the spymaster, she realized, the old Thalric — and somehow she was about his business.

'Why are you not just leaving, Che? I don't believe you think your intervention can save Khanaphes from the Scorpions, even if you cared to. What is this place, to you?'

The spectre of Achaeos rose in her mind, and all the frustrations of her Inaptitude. 'Do you need to know?' she asked him. 'Really?'

After a thoughtful pause he shook his head, and she scrambled out of the hatch, heading above and into sight of the river.

She found the embassy unoccupied save for servants. In the moment she entered, the desolate scene fell on her in pieces: the feeling of abandonment, the eerie silence, the men and women industriously cleaning the floor of an unmistakable stain.

'What has happened here?' she demanded hoarsely.

They pointed her towards the Scriptora, and there she found Berjek and Praeda, who had been hurriedly ensconced in guarded rooms. She found them sitting together, looking tense and fearful, whilst one of the Khanaphir ministers hovered nearby.

'Bloody ink and seals!' Berjek swore, as he saw her. 'You're here! We weren't sure you were even alive.'

'What's going on?' Che asked, because the Khanaphir, in their private way, had not told her.

After Berjek had done with his halting narrative, when the borrowed room had been loaded with two absences, one large, one small, Che remained very quiet.

Too slow, Thalric, with your warnings. You must be losing your touch . 'Manny, Trallo and Petri. Was Petri their victim as well?'

'Unlikely.' Berjek shook his head. 'They mentioned her by name, as if expecting to find her at the embassy. Che, if it hadn't been for Amnon and the Vekken-'

'Where are the Vekken?' Che demanded, feeling an uncomfortable twitch at the thought. She was not so blind to the way they had been looking at her. She did not know what conclusions they had come to in their hermetic little asylum of a shared mind, but none of it boded well for her.

'They … would not accept our hosts' hospitality,' Berjek said, with an embarrassed glance at the Khanaphir Minister. 'Certainly not after what happened this morning on the river.' Seeing Che's frown, he hastened to explain. 'The Scorpions are here, Che. They arrived with the dawn, and they're setting up outside the walls.' The old Beetle sighed. 'I was determined to leave today. I came here looking for a ship out of here. That's how I met Tathbir, here. He's the Minister of the Oceans.'

The short, podgy Beetle genuflected briefly, bobbing his shaven head.

'But when the Khanaphir lowered the river gate this morning, the Scorpions were already waiting for them,' Berjek explained. 'They put a leadshot into a fishing boat, sank it with all hands. They see that the river could be used to land a flanking force, is my guess. It doesn't take a tactical genius to see the opening. They've got a pair of leadshotters waiting out there to hole any vessel that comes out. Meanwhile, nobody's going anywhere until that can be dealt with.'

'We have sent messengers to the Marsh people,' Tathbir added. 'They will take this matter into their own hands. Until it is done, though, we cannot lower the Estuarine Gate. We are sorry.'

'The assault on the city has yet to start,' Berjek put in. 'The Scorpions are displaying unusual patience for their kind, I understand. Some small groups have come within bowshot of the walls, to their regret, but the rest are setting their engines to loose upon the city's defences. I know my field enough to know that the walls of Khanaphes were not designed to resist leadshotters.'

It was the suddenly stiffened pose of Tathbir that heralded the new arrival, the frisson of indignation radiating from the man. A shadow fell through the door: a man in dark armour, one whose face Che used to know.

'Are you yet in the city?' the Minister demanded. 'I am sure the First Minister banished you.'

Totho's stare remained intense enough for the stout man to take a step back. With his snapbow slung under his arm, within easy reach, there was something of the pirate about Totho now, a man outside rules. 'I was called here,' he said flatly. 'The First Soldier wishes to consult with me, so how could I say no?' His eyes dismissed the Minister utterly. 'Che, I need to talk with you.'

'I suppose you do.' This was not a conversation she had been looking forward to but, at the same time, she had been expecting it. 'Elsewhere,' she decided. This was not for Berjek and Praeda, or for the Ministers.

She chose the pump room, eventually, out of some perverse need for the appropriate — the secluded room with its primitive vacuum pump that she no longer understood.

'Are you going to start with pointing out how right you were?' she began. He had paused in the doorway as though there might be an ambush waiting. Now he stepped in and found himself a seat on the horizontal shaft of the pump.

'Would that help? Probably not,' he replied, his shoulder-plates scraping as he shrugged. 'The Empire never changes, as I should know well.'

'You were wrong about Thalric,' she told him, before she could stop herself.

'Was I?' There was no admission of it in his face. 'You think he hasn't betrayed you, just because you haven't found out about it yet.'

'The Empire wants him dead,' she said.

'The Empire has wanted him dead before. And then it calls, and he comes like a trained cricket. He's spent the last four months sleeping with the Empress.'

The thought cut her more deeply than she expected. She had known it, of course, but had steered her mind deftly away from it, every time. 'You've done your research.'

'He hurt you,' Totho said simply, 'so I found out what I could. We in the Glove have sources in the Empire. You'd have to walk a long mile before you found a man as untrustworthy as Thalric.'

She could feel a wave of anger rising in her, hearing the man attacked behind his back. Nothing but the truth, surely, and yet because it was a truth Thalric himself owned to, with his chequered past so openly admitted, she felt that she should be defending him.

'New topic, Totho?' she said. 'Unless all you wanted to do is come here and complain about Thalric.'

She saw his lips purse, but then he said, 'I can get you out of Khanaphes. You and your friends.'

She stared at him, waiting for the catch. He, however just waited for her response, looking down at his hands as they rested on his knees.

He got that from Uncle Sten , she thought, and asked, 'How? They say the Scorpions have engines watching the river.'

'My ship is the Fourth Iteration , and she's fast enough to dodge leadshots, tough enough to shrug a few off before suffering. She's a Solarnese corsair with a reinforced hull. She even has some smallshotters for the rails. She can leave as soon as the Khanaphir lower the gates, and for us they'll lower the gates because they want rid of us. Even with the Scorpions outside their walls.'

She stood up, with desperate hope. 'Take Berjek and Praeda,' she said. 'Please, take them away from here.'

'No,' he said.

'Totho …'

'I will take you,' he said. 'I will take you, and with you, anyone you wish — save for Thalric. I will not leave here without you.'

'Totho, the city's under siege now. What will you do here, if you don't leave? Don't be a fool.'