Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'I'll just have to make sure the Scorpions lose, then, won't I,' he said.

'You are a fool,' she decided. 'You'd risk your life, your followers …'

'Yes, I'm a fool. One among many.'

'But why?'

'You know why.' He was on his feet suddenly and she shrank back from him. 'Che, you don't need to ask that question. I will stay, if you stay. I will also leave if you will leave with me. That's because I love you. You know that I love you. That I always have, since we were students and you were copying down my answers in class.'

'You're right. I didn't need to ask,' she replied, and then: 'I wish I hadn't.'

He took the blow, rolled with it. 'I never knew what you saw in the Moth,' he said, 'but I knew what you missed in me. I've tried, Che, to make something more of myself. I've tried to patch the defects that nature gave me. I'm still a halfbreed, but I'm a magnate now. I've money, prospects. They'd kiss my feet in Helleron, if I walked in under Iron Glove colours. My hand is on the tiller of artifice.' He looked into her face, forcing her to avoid his gaze lest it scorch her. 'And I can see, though — I can see it's not enough. So tell me what you want me to be, Che. Tell me what it is I'm still missing. Or is it the blood? It didn't seem to matter to you, of all people, that I was a half-caste.'

'It's not your heritage,' she said. 'Do you really think I care about that?'

'No,' he said, fiercely. 'No, I don't. I really don't. So tell me what it is that's wrong with me.'

'Oh, Totho,' she sighed, 'all this time you've been trying to make yourself into what you think I might want … but I can barely see the friend I once knew, let alone anything beyond. You've built yourself a suit of armour for the inside as well as the out. Just listen to you now!' She felt suddenly frustrated with him. 'You're bargaining for my affection with the lives of my friends, yet you spent most of the war working for the Empire.'

'To save Salma!' he put in hotly, but she came back just as hard.

'Was it?' she demanded. 'Was that what it was? And did they never give you a chance to leave them, after that? Totho, you rail at Thalric for all the things he has done, and, yes, he has done terrible things, but at least he tried to divert his course away from them. You have just moved towards and towards . Totho, tell me you could not have escaped from the army, if you had wanted.'

'And what would have happened then?' he demanded. They were almost nose to nose now, an inch from drawing swords. 'I beat them in the end, Che. I beat the Empire, in Szar. What would have happened there, if I had just snuck off and left?'

The moment teetered in the balance, the weights of recollection dropping. Che had been in Myna, of course, and she had heard the news from Szar, in more detail than she needed. It had been a great victory against the Empire, but nobody had felt much like celebrating it, not even the Szaren.

'Szar?' she began. She had not seen the twisted bodies of the Wasp garrison, but there had been no shortage of description. An entire force of thousands, with their slaves and servants and Auxillians, dead in a single night, and in agony. The last she had heard, there was still a whole district of their city that the local Bee-kinden did not enter, for fear of the coughing sickness that might still come to cull them. They said that the air still smelled of sour death, there, when the wind was in the wrong quarter.

'Che …'

'Szar. That was you? '

His face was that of a man who would do anything just to retract a few words. 'Che, you weren't there. There was nothing else …'

She was retreating from him, back to the doorway, staring at the creature that wore her friend's face. He called her name again, but at the mere sound of it she fled from him, leaving him in the darkness of the pump room, her skin crawling at the thought of what he had done.

Amnon summoned him soon after. The defeat on the field had not managed to stifle his fierce energy. Totho felt tired just looking at him.

'You called for me, First Soldier,' the artificer said, feeling in no mood for this now. No mood at all.

'You are still in the city,' Amnon observed.

'Is that it? Is that why you sent for me?' Totho demanded. 'Yes, I am still in the city. My people are still in the city. So what are you going to do about it? Shed a little blood early, before the Scorpions come for the rest?'

'I will make use of you, if you will let me,' Amnon suggested. 'Totho, will you walk the walls with me?'

'Walk the …? Why?'

'Because I need to understand,' the big Khanaphir said. 'I need to know what to do, Totho, and I need your wisdom to guide me.'

'Wisdom?' Totho managed to say, strangled by the need to laugh at the word. 'I've precious little wisdom, Amnon.'

'I'll take anything I can get,' Amnon said, quite seriously. 'Will you do this one thing for me before you go?'

'Of course,' Totho replied, finding that he meant it. He liked Amnon: there was some trace of commonality between them, despite their disparate cultures and histories. Both of them, at this moment, were where the metal met.

Khanaphes was gripped by panic. Totho saw people cowering inside their homes, saw groups of soldiers rushing here and there, seemingly with no aim at all. Passing over the great span of bridge that linked the two halves of the city, they heard a hollow knocking sound, distant and harmless save for the plume of dust that rose beyond the walls. Amnon started, but Totho put a hand out.

'That wasn't an attack. There's been no attack yet.'

'They are raiding all the farms, burning the fields,' Amnon spat. 'Also they know that by making us wait, they also make us fear.'

'And by launching a few rocks over the city they'll make you fear even more,' Totho agreed. 'They want you shaken up by the time they meet you hand to hand.'

'No,' Amnon said firmly, 'they simply want us to fear. That is their sport, to know that the good people of my city live in terror of them for this interval of time, before the end comes.'

From the lofty arch of the bridge they could see the city's soldiers atop the walls. Totho took his telescope out automatically, panning its lens across the battlements. The Khanaphir sentries were rushing back and forth, and then he noticed a sudden haze of dust rising from between the great stones of the wall. The sound of the leadshotter's discharge came a moment later.

The walls of Khanaphes had stood a long time. They were tall and thick, built of massive slabs of rock, curving slightly as they rose. There was a walkway along the top to allow two men to walk abreast, with stone steps leading up to the parapet every two hundred yards. Those walls would have seemed a remarkable piece of engineering even two centuries ago, let alone whenever they had actually been built. Totho knelt as he reached the top, pressing a hand to the stone to feel the grain of it. In his mind were the fortress designs that Drephos had sketched out on scrap paper, in order to resist a siege by modern weapons. They were all planes and edges, thrusting out into the besieging force to give the widest arc of shot, and slanted to let the enemy's weapons glance off them.

'Tell me,' Amnon asked him, 'will we hold? They tell me that the Masters would never let the walls of Khanaphes fall. What do you tell me?'

Totho went to the ramparts and the sight beyond struck him hard, although it must strike any Khanaphir observing it that much harder. The Many of Nem were encamped outside, a squalid mess of tents and lean-tos against a horizon thick with smoke. They had laid waste everything that lay within a day's ride, pillaged everything worth taking. They must expect a quick siege, otherwise they will starve .