Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

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.

Thalric had found another door to kick down, and Che guessed they were into the next building now, or just part of some extended family home. He was finding windows in turn, glancing out of them at the dark sky.

'Here!' he said and, instantly throwing the shutters back, had hooked his way out. She bundled Osgan through, more and more without any help from him, and followed after to find herself in the middle of an alleyway choked with people. The authorities had nested a host of refugees here, almost shoulder to shoulder, under the cover of a few wretched awnings. Thalric had already elbowed himself some space, and then he made some more, pushing dispirited people aside mercilessly, until the other two could join him.

'Now we wait,' he said.

'Until?' Che asked him.

'Until I say go.' He had hunched himself as low as he could in his cloak, slumped and abandoned-looking as any local. Osgan was lying on his side, breathing heavily, coughing again.