Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

You will come back to me , she had said. He shuddered, successfully hiding it in the rocking motion as the crude lift touched down. Marger and his people unloaded their supplies, and Thalric automatically shouldered a crate himself, without even thinking of his elevated position. When he realized, halfway across the quarry-pit and into the shadow of the garrison, he smiled to himself. O Regent, see how I escape you .

The river Jamail was the child of the slanting sheets of rain that fell daily against the Morgen Range, the clouds emptying themselves over the dense forest and denying the arid Nem water and life. From a hundred channels deep inside the forest, coalescing from a forest floor that in the wettest seasons was actually submerged, arose the snaking Jamail that began its long, looping progress south, out of the woodland, cutting its course through the dry lands and bringing fragile abundance to those who claimed its banks. From Alim, the logging town up against the forest's petering edge, all the way downriver to the marsh delta, extended the Dominion of Khanaphes, as it had done since time immemorial.

Thalric had expected something rough from Alim. Researches had told him that, as the furthest-flung outpost of Khanaphir territory, it served as nothing more than a port for forest timber. He had expected only a collection of wooden huts and a pier, and was therefore surprised.

Forest Alim was dominated by what he first assumed was a fortress, but then revised as a fortified palace. It was ancient, partly overgrown by the forest's resurgence, looming over the waters from the river's far side. Beyond the wall, as the slavers approached, he caught occasional glimpses of colonnades and ornamented rooftops. A stone pier jutted into the young river, dominated by a great, broad barge half loaded with timber, while half a dozen smaller vessels huddled in its lee.

The slavers were not interested in this place: it was simply the point where they would turn around and head back to Shalk. As Thalric's band approached carefully, he noticed a little patchwork of fields on the near side of the river, divided and subdivided by irrigation dykes excavated outward from the river itself. The men and women working in the fields were solid, bald-headed Beetle-kinden and paid them no notice whatsoever. In the face of their stoic labouring, which seemed to admit nothing of time or progress, Thalric felt his mission, the entire Empire, being subtly dismissed. You are not important to us , they were saying. We shall work here and you shall pass, and we shall continue on .

Outside the walled palace, which Thalric guessed would house the garrison and administration from distant Khanaphes, Forest Alim consisted of a cluster of warehouses and a sawmill. Even these buildings were stone-walled, however, converted to their present purpose from whatever ancient rites they had been built for. Thalric had taken a quick look into the sawmill, where he watched men slicing trees into planks by hand, working with huge two-man saws, or with foot-powered circular blades. By Imperial standards it was laughable, but they worked fast and with no sign of tiring.

Marger, and the two Wasps in his team, had gone to enquire about securing passage downriver, and Thalric was left hoping that he would find something faster than that ponderous barge. Aside from a scattering of fishing boats, the only vessel of any stature was a narrow, open craft, piled with cushions at one end to seat a privileged passenger, and equipped with eight oars and a single mast. It had been left unattended, as though the simple status of its owner was sufficient to see off any unwanted attention. Thalric was even considering whether it might be worth making off with, if nothing else presented itself.

'You know, for a logging town, they don't seem to fell many trees,' observed the Beetle-kinden Rekef man, who had been staring into the forest for some time. Their seat near the quay gave them a good view of the darkness between the tree trunks.

Thalric glanced at him curiously and the prompt died on his lips as he saw it — so obvious that it had escaped notice. 'No stumps,' he concurred. 'No cut trees at all. Not the sound of an axe, nothing beyond the sawmill.'

The Beetle nodded. His name was Corolly Vastern and he was old enough to have been a veteran before the Twelve-year War. He was strong, though, with his kind's long-reaching endurance. His face settled into a slight smile, calculated from long practice to dispel any Wasp ire towards an inferior race. 'I've been watching for a while, and all the wood comes from deeper in. These Beetles've got it worked out so they don't even need to cut their own.'

There was a steady trickle of outsiders heading into Alim. They were not Khanaphir but men and women with skin the rich colour of teak. Some kind of long-limbed, loping Ant-kinden, they appeared bearing wood. Chains of them bore whole trees aloft out of the forest, from who knew what distance, or floated them down the river towards the sawmill. Thalric saw Khanaphir scribes carefully noting the arrival of each group on their scrolls. No money changed hands and he wondered if these forest Ants were slaves of Khanaphes in some way. It occurred to him belatedly — and it oddly disturbed him — that he had no idea at all what precise kinden these forest-dwellers were. They were at the borders of the Empire, but the forest of the Alim was an utter unknown. Imperial expansion had been so rapid that their own scouts had barely been able to keep track of it.

Osgan, lying back, began to snore softly, though for once it was not due to drink — or not entirely. Thalric had been keeping an eye on him, and the man had barely taken a sip at his hip-flask. It was the unaccustomed pace that had worn him out.

'Major Thalric …' Corolly began, in a subtly different tone.

'I know,' Thalric interrupted. 'The Khanaphir sitting over there, he's been watching us for almost twenty minutes now. Maybe it's just that the locals are curious.'

'Don't know about that,' Corolly muttered. 'In fact, that's the one thing they aren't. Six men of the Empire turn up on their doorstep, and nobody even turns a head to look. Except him.'

'Well, then,' said Thalric, 'let's force the matter, shall we? I'll go and ask some directions of a local.'

'Directions?' the Beetle said, a tilt of his head indicating that the only meaningful directions here were up the river or down.

'Something similar.' Thalric stood up, casting his eyes over the quay again. They were loading the barge with more planks, teams of Khanaphir labourers sweating and hauling as they sang a low, rhythmic tune with words he could not follow. He sauntered over towards the watcher, expecting the man to suddenly find urgent business elsewhere. Instead he stood his ground, so Thalric had a chance to examine him properly. He was not young, although these Khanaphir were difficult to age, what with their bald scalps and dark, sun-creased faces. He wore a white robe that fell from one shoulder, leaving half of his chest bare. Thalric noted a respectable quantity of gold: rings, amulets, pendants, even gold tassels on his robes. At Thalric's approach, he only nodded politely.

'Excuse me,' Thalric said. 'I don't suppose you know who owns that boat over there?'

The man smiled at him as if he had been handed a compliment. 'Of course I do, Honoured Foreigner, for it is mine.'

Caught off balance, Thalric blinked. 'Then you are …'

'O stranger, I have been waiting here for you to ask me to carry you to Khanaphes. If your need is so great, there was no need to be reticent.'

'How did you know?' Thalric asked, through gritted teeth. His agent's senses were abruptly alert, feeling great wheels moving invisibly around him. The spy in him was compromised, his mission open knowledge. Escape. Fall back . Except there was no falling back here, because the mission had not even started.