Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

They had moved her from room to room within the factora, ahead of a wave of fortification. Allotted such primitive facilities, the Iron Glove were not content to let them lie: the solid stone framework of the factora building was being re-edified even as she watched. She caught brief moments of the process as they moved her deeper inside. They were fixing metal grills over the windows, with apertures large enough to admit a snapbow's barrel. They had replaced the main door with something iron-bound and reinforced. Iron Glove people were running everywhere, now, strapping on breastplates and buckling on helms, checking the workings of crossbows and snapbows.

He's making ready for a siege . She could understand the logic. The Khanaphir could not stand by and allow these foreign merchants the run of their city. But they are not merchants . The staff of the factora had transformed their headquarters into a fort, and themselves into soldiers. She had no doubt that they practised regularly with all the different weapons that they sold.

At last she caught a brief glimpse of Totho again, helmet pushed back, his face appearing almost transformed. It was a look she remembered from when she had found him engaged in some artificing project or other, where everything was coming together just at the last moment.

She called out his name, even as two Iron Glove men began manhandling her up some stairs. She saw his head turn, then he strode over, leaving half a dozen metal-clad men waiting on him. He still wore his own elegantly fashioned mail, that made the serviceable equipment of the others look like something that should be hanging in a museum.

'Later,' was all he said, from the foot of the stairs, and then turned to go.

'Totho, tell me what's going on!' she cried, struggling furiously with the men that held her. 'This is me , Totho!'

'Yes, it is.' He turned sharply back to her, and he was actually grinning. It was an expression of desperation and elation all muddled together. 'Oh, I'll tell you all right what's going on, but not now. Soon enough I'll tell everybody what's going on.' Then he was off once more, marching back to his troops, and Che continued being hauled backwards up the stairs.

'Curse you!' she shouted after him. 'You can't do this!' She was about to add that he had no right, but Thalric's words came back to her, about what her 'rights' were worth.

'Bring her in here now.' She recognized the voice as Corcoran's, though his helm left him as anonymous as all the rest.

'You are all going to regret this so much,' she warned him, because she had nothing else to say.

'I imagine you're bang on the money there,' Corcoran concurred. 'Mind you, it's too late to be having second thoughts now, but I'm sure Himself will find a way out of this.'

'He's gone mad,' she hissed. Poised in the doorway to her latest prison, Che wrestled around to confront him, seeing his leather-clad shoulders rise and fall.

'And what manner of man hasn't said the same about his employer, once or twice?' was all Corcoran could offer before they propelled her inside. She heard a click — and saw that even the lock was new, bolted on to the solid Khanaphir door. She had to concede that she had clearly not done herself proud as a diplomat.

Are ambassadors kidnapped on a regular basis? And what is the diplomatic response? Are you supposed to remain calmly polite and thank everyone for the personal service?

The room they had put her in was located two storeys up, and they had not yet barred up the window. The opening was barely big enough for a Fly-kinden, though, which meant there would be no escape there. Scuff marks on the floor suggested that the Iron Glove had been using this as a storeroom, but now it was practically empty.

Someone else moved inside the room, and she froze, reaching automatically for the sword they had taken away from her. He had been standing by a desk in the corner of the room, small and still enough for her not to have noticed him.

'Trallo …' She heard the uncertainty in her own voice, on realizing he was no prisoner. A Fly-kinden could go in and out of that window as often as he pleased.

'Hello, Che,' he said, with an awkward look on his face, suggesting they had at last punctured his cheer. She gave herself a moment to rein in a temper that had been increasingly on its own recognizance of late.

'Just how many people,' she asked sharply, 'are paying you to "look after" me?'

He grimaced. 'Well, the thing is, you see … after that scuffle in the Marsh Alcaia, your Iron Glove fellow sent me a message, wanted to do business. Now, you know, in my line of work, you don't want a bad name with any of the big traders.' Seeing her darkening expression, he hurried on. 'And it was just … I was watching out for you anyway, and at the time it didn't seem that there'd be a problem about it.'

'I'm sure the shiny money blinded you to the obvious. And now?'

'And now I have what's known as a conflict of interests,' Trallo admitted. 'How was I to know that this Totho fellow would lose his mind so completely?'

Che stared out of the window. There was no crowd gathered yet, but it would only be a matter of time. It was not that she herself was so very important, but the sovereignty of their hosts had now been challenged. She knew how seriously they would take that. 'He's not mad,' she decided. 'I don't really know what he is, any more, but he's not mad.'

'Old friend of yours, he claimed.'

'He was, yes.' She thought about the man she had met after the Battle of the Rails, where it had still been possible to see her friend somewhere behind the scars that his recent history had scored across him. But the man she had met in Khanaphes had been all scars, and barely a hint left of the shy, awkward boy who had once helped her in her studies. Have I done this to him, somehow? Or is it Stenwold's doing? We cannot leave the Empire with all the blame .

She heard a rattle at the lock, and then they were around her again, bolting a grid across the window. This time she went with them without a struggle, accepting defeat. Trallo pattered along beside her, the Fly finally caught in the trap of his own diverse loyalties. She found she could muster scant sympathy, especially as he had taken her down with him.

They led her down one floor and into a long hall, where Totho was waiting with a dozen of his men.

'Now,' he addressed her, 'no more secrets.'

'Then tell me,' she said.

'I will, right now and, more than that, I'll make it a public proclamation.' He seemed on a knife-edge, as if waiting to see whether his carefully crafted project would succeed or fail. Out of everything about him, only that was painfully familiar. 'Come out onto the balcony with me,' he said.

'Totho …'

'No, no, let's …' He put on a smile. 'Let's — what do they say? — take the air? They're all out there now. The Empire, your people, lots of the locals.'

'I'm not surprised.'

'Neither am I, because it's what I wanted,' he told her. 'I've armoured this place up so that it's even given Amnon pause for thought, and now they're going to hear me out. And so are you. Come on, Che. You say you want to know what's going on? Now's your chance.'

Who would have imagined any of this? Looking over the gathering crowd, Thalric confessed to himself that he was surprised that some paltry Exalsee traders could achieve so much. Diplomatic history was being made. It was a tactic he might recommend to the Rekef: manufacture a common enemy and the world falls into your lap.

They were all here, that was his initial conclusion. Probably there were some people somewhere in Khanaphes who knew of Cheerwell Maker but had not turned out, but he could not think of any names. Her fellow Collegiates were here, of course. The three academics — old man, fat man and distant woman — were standing in a close-knit clump and looking worried. Separated from them by a pointed distance were the two Vekken ambassadors, who had arrived with their crossbows and their closed expressions. Near them was gathered the formal delegation from the Scriptora.