Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

The Lowlanders have come close to ruining me for a proper agent's work . His outer shell of Good Imperial Servant had taken too many knocks and shakes while in their company.

Marger stepped away from the automotive, a soldier's tension abruptly in his manner. Someone came running unevenly around the storage sheds towards them, and Thalric saw one of Marger's people put down the big crate he was carrying and crouch beside it with hand ready to sting.

'Hold!' Thalric called out, and he went to intercept the newcomer before any damage could be done. 'Osgan,' he exclaimed. 'What are you doing here?'

Osgan had dredged up his old uniform from somewhere: a Consortium factor's greatcoat, quartered in the army colours. There was a shortsword at his belt, the baldric crossing the strap of his satchel. He had even shaved, although he had made a ragged job of it, and his eyes were red-rimmed but his gaze steady.

'I'm coming with you,' he panted, short of breath.

'You aren't,' Thalric snapped. 'What's got into you?'With a firm hand on Osgan's shoulder, he led the man a short distance from the automotive, meanwhile signalling for Marger to carry on.

Osgan looked at him miserably. 'You've found your escape, now. You're going, yes? Going far.'

Thalric nodded and scowled, his last words with the Empress recurring to him. As she had made a public farewell, before the whole court, she had reached up to kiss him and murmured, ' You shall return to me. You shall always return .'

'Let me come with you,' Osgan said. 'Please, Thalric. I'm dying here.'

'You're more likely to die on the road. This is Rekef business, Osgan. Stay here and keep to your cellars.'.

'Each time you find some way of getting out of this place, it gets worse for me,' Osgan complained, almost in a whisper. 'They hate me. They hate me because of you — and because of me. They know I've broken. You'll come back and find me gone, and nobody will even remember my name.'

'You're exaggerating.' Osgan was probably not exaggerating but Thalric couldn't agree to it.

'And what of you, anyway?' Osgan asked. 'You think you'll go back to your old ways, your old trade? You think they'll let you? Them?' Even his jabbing gesture towards the automotive looked crippled, his fingers crooked. 'They won't let you back in, Thalric. They won't forget who you are. What you were.'

Thalric glanced around, despite himself, seeing Marger watching him. The man bore his placid, accepting expression that Thalric had not yet been able to scratch. There had been no sense of complicity between them, no admission that they even lived in the same world. Thalric had wanted to protest, I am a major in the Rekef , but now he realized that he did not even know Marger's true Rekef rank. The 'captain' was army-issue, meaning less than nothing on a covert run like this.

'If you can't keep up with us, I'm not sure I can save you,' he warned. His Imperial conditioning raged at him: What is this? Mercy? Compassion? A strong man did not bow to such emotions. He had no duty to save Osgan from the results of his own dissipation. Better for the Empire that the man just vanished away, making room for someone who would be better at his job.

I am tainted . Thalric had seen too much, done too much. He had been born a true Wasp, but now he'd become some kind of halfbreed of the mind.

He turned back to the waiting automotive. 'Captain Marger,' he announced, 'one more for the journey.'

Marger hesitated over that, taking in the sight of Osgan. 'I wouldn't advise it,' he said. 'We'll be short of space and supplies.'

'Comfort is never a soldier's companion, and there are enough way stations to supply us.' Thalric felt as though he and Marger were facing up to each other in duel, looking for the other's weak points. 'This is Lieutenant Osgan and he's on my staff.'

Still, Marger was unhappy with the idea. 'This is a Rekef operation and he's no agent.'

'We already know our paths will be diverging, once we reach the city,' Thalric said reasonably. 'It will make more sense for me to have Osgan there with me than to have to call on you for assistance.' He held Marger's gaze, waiting to see if the man would stand firm, or fall back.

The final answer was a shrug, the man's easy acceptance reasserting itself. There had been a gleam in there, of Rekef steel, but this was not a battlefield Marger would choose to fight on.

'Your call,' he said again, then, 'We're just about loaded. Are you and your … staff ready to move out?'

Many Wasps wondered why Fly-kinden, who had the sky as their plaything, chose to live so much of their time underground. On the surface Shalk appeared merely a collection of little huts and mounds almost lost amid the sweep of the surrounding hills, and only anchored by the bulk of an Imperial garrison's barracks. Thalric knew that most of the town lay beneath, in a complex of narrow tunnels and broad chambers that were impossible to navigate unless one was both tiny and airborne. Military tacticians had often speculated on the difficulties of forcing an Imperial presence on the Fly-kinden, in the unlikely event that they decided to resist one. It would certainly be possible, but drastic measures would be called for and Thalric, having heard of the gas-weapon disastrously employed at Szar, thought it a good thing that the Shalken and their ilk were proving so compliant. Nobody would profit from a rebellion here.

Of course the Fly town itself was only half of it. Beyond the hills the land suddenly stopped and dropped, so the anatomy of the earth he stood on was exposed in stratified layers where the ground had simply fallen away as a result of some ancient cataclysm. It had since become the Empire's largest quarry and mining complex, with several thousand slaves working there day in and day out. If the insurrection had allowed these toiling wretches any reprieve, that was well and truly over now.

After they had docked their automotive at the garrison's stables, Thalric took Marger aside.

'Find me transport to Forest Alim from Shalk End,' he requested. 'We'll take the river from there to Khanaphes.'

'Shalk End?' Marger said. That meant the Shalk below them, the quarry and its slaves. It was certainly possible to shortcut to the plain below by descending the face of the mine workings, but not usual. 'Is there something I should know?'

If you were meant to know, you'd already have been told , Thalric thought, still with assassins in mind. 'I like a bit of variety, Captain,' he said. 'Besides, wouldn't you like to see the Empire's largest quarry in operation?'

Marger shrugged, predictably. 'I'll go lean on the foreman,' he replied.

Thalric nodded. 'Osgan, go find the Consortium and get enough supplies for a tenday for the six of us.'

The man started on hearing his name and seemed to wrestle with the words before agreeing.

'Good,' Thalric nodded. 'The rest of you, wait by the machine until we're ready.' He smiled at the Beetle and two Wasps and they regarded him cautiously. They had none of them decided precisely what he was, and he wondered what they might have already heard.

Which leaves me at liberty in Shalk . But he would have to be quick. No doubt Marger would be prompt enough in doing his job.

The garrison at Shalk was unusual at the best of times, but even more unsettled now since the insurrection. Its purpose had always been to safeguard the mines and the quarry, rather than to intimidate a naturally obsequious populace. The current military personnel were all new, the traitorous old guard having been rooted out or fled, or else died on the field before Tyrshaan. The staff, though, the underlings who kept everything running, were the same old faces. For most such garrisons they dragged Auxillians from halfway across the Empire, putting them among foreigners to limit any chance of betrayal.