Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'Che …' she heard Thalric's warning tone, but she shrugged him off.

'Why?' she asked. 'Why would I?' She expected them to recoil from the insolence of the question, to inform her that serving them was reward enough in itself. She was ready for that.

'Because you are a true scholar,' said Elysiath, 'one who seeks knowledge always. And nowhere will you find such understanding as we have, we who have lived out, in person, the ages that are your kind's ancient history. We can give you knowledge that even the Moths have forgotten, and that, even if they possessed it, they would not share. We can tell you the names of all the kinden in the world. We can reveal to you why it is that the Mantids of the Lowlands hate the Spiders so, though even they have let themselves forget it. We can teach you where the Art came from, and how to truly master it.' Her fond look deepened. 'But more than that, little child, where else have you to go? You are in a world that has no place for you, save here. You are no longer one of your people, no longer a creature of your home. You are adrift in a land that cannot understand you. You cannot even understand yourself. We shall explain everything. We shall give you a place here. You shall be honoured, become the messenger of the Masters to their servants.'

Che tried to refuse them, but the words came reluctantly to her mind and she could not force them out. It was their sympathy that struck her to the heart, the understanding that they had promised. They knew what she had gone through, and she felt tears in her eyes. Where else but here would she ever find real acceptance? Better a servant of the Masters than a lonely outcast forever moving on.

'Yes,' she said, her voice choking.

Elysiath's approval warmed her. 'You know what you must do,' she said, 'to be ours, and to enter into our grace.' At her side Jeherian held out something small, and Che stepped forward, reached up and took it. In her hand rested a curved blade of sharpened copper: a razor.

Kneeling down, she took a fistful of her hair, bringing the razor up to it. Of course she knew what she must do, what the Khanaphir had done since time immemorial in order to demonstrate their servitude.

'Che!' Thalric spoke urgently. 'Don't do this.' She could sense the attention of the Masters focused on her like a pressure guiding her hand. The blade, keener than copper should rightly be, severed the first few strands.

'Che, you heard them,' Thalric persisted. 'They don't care about you. They don't care about anyone in Khanaphes, or anyone in the world. Listen to me, Che, this is insane. You can't want to stay down here in the slime and the dark.'

She just gazed at him, and already felt him as a memory, receding into her past. 'I'm sorry,' she said, not sure who she was sorry for, or why.

'They killed your man Kadro, and that woman his assistant,' Thalric went on. He was fighting to get out the words as though the air itself was smothering him. 'And they don't care. People like us, the Apt kinden, we're just beasts to them, nothing but insects.'

'I know,' she replied sadly, 'but what are we, if not that?' She moved the razor more decisively, severing a handful of her locks, took hold of some more.

'Che, I like your hair. Don't cut it off,' Thalric implored her.

She looked for him again, finding that he was hard to focus on. Even his name seemed strange in her mind.

'Che, please,' he went on, 'listen to me. You know that I care for you. Ever since we first met, there was something about you.' He laughed desperately. 'I'll admit we got off to a poor start, but you can't say I don't have some claim on you. Please, Che, stay with me.'

She shook her head, astonished by his temerity. 'With you?' she said incredulously, the memories drawn back to the surface of her mind whether she wanted them or not. 'Thalric, when the Masters tested me, do you know what they made me live through? What they chose as the most terrible memory I must relive? It was the interrogation room in Myna. That was the worst moment in my life, and they made me watch you torturing me, over and over.'

'What do you think,' he replied through gritted teeth, 'they made me see?'

'…What?' She felt as though something deep within her had exploded, yet so far away that she had only heard the hollow knock of it, that the main force of it was still travelling towards her.

'What do you think was the moment in my life they took me back to, if not that? The one moment of them all that I would take back if I could. Not your bastard sister and her father destroying me in Helleron. Not killing my own mentor for some Rekef General's whim. Not my own kind turning on me outside Collegium. Not that bitch Felise Mienn with her blade held at my throat, or being strung up in Armour Square, ready for execution. Not my pain at all, but yours . They used their Art, or whatever, to make me hurt you, in my head, and I could not endure it. It would have destroyed me if you had not broken their hold.'

The breath whooshed out of her, and she felt the razor slip from her hand. It left a shallow cut on her thigh as it bounced from her leg, and then clacked onto the oily floor.

'Help me,' she whispered, and Thalric took her hand, pulled her up towards him and held her tightly. She sensed Accius moving forward, until he stood beside Thalric, and belatedly she realized that this was because the Masters were now frowning at them.

She hugged Thalric briefly and then turned to them, and their glowering expressions. The awesome disappointment and disapproval she saw there nearly dried up the words in her mouth. She finally got out, 'I thank you for your offer, your generous offer, but I am not the person you take me for. I am not fit to serve you, surely. We must return to the city. I have friends there.'

Elysiath regarded her sourly, almost petulantly, and Che wondered whether she was the first person to ever refuse the Masters something they wanted. 'Return?' the woman said drily. 'Return to Khanaphes Above?'

'We must, all three of us,' Che said, with more strength. 'I'm sorry.'

The Masters exchanged looks from the corners of their eyes. 'Perhaps you are right,' Elysiath said. 'You are not fit to serve us, if that is what you believe.'

'You have heard entirely too much of our secret histories,' added Lirielle, but Elysiath actually interrupted and spoke over her: 'These two with you, the savages, were doomed from the moment they stepped into our resting place, but you, you had a chance to become something greater than you are. Yet you have turned your back on that chance. You were born amongst the slave races, and now you shall die amongst them. Think only how you could have been more.'

Thalric tensed, hand poised to sting, and she saw Accius bring his sword up. Elysiath laughed, as the Jamail might have laughed when it destroyed the Scorpions. 'Your weapons are nothing here,' she told them patiently. 'Though our dominion may have shrunk from the height of its greatness, you are within it now, for we still rule these halls.' The great pressure of their collective minds hung over the three intruders. Che saw Thalric's hand shake, his Art trapped within it. Accius's face was shiny with sweat, his sword motionless.

'You are not the first to come and steal our secrets,' Elysiath said, raising a hand. 'Nor shall you be the last to pay the price for it.'

'Secrets?'

Che started at the voice, for it belonged to the Vekken beside them.

'Our knowledge is our treasure, and no thieves shall take it outside these halls.' Jeherian told him.

'You have kept no secrets here.' Accius's expression suggested that the worst had befallen him, and he was meeting it joyously. 'Slay me and you set your seal on nothing. You cannot keep us from knowing.'

'What nonsense,' Elysiath said scornfully, but Accius grinned, teeth gleaming brightly in his dark face.