Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

Still, it is being attacked by our enemies. In following our course of action, we deprive our enemies of their advantage. We must kill the ambassador, as we planned .

Accius's mind signalled frustration. She seems to be able to appear and disappear like a Moth-kinden. Whenever she is present, others watch her. That Fly slave has his eyes on her often, yet at times even he cannot find her, or that is what he claims .

That is what he claims , Malius echoed. We no longer have the time to do this properly, like soldiers. We must resort to other facets of our training. They fight their battles even now. We must be expedient .

I understand you . Accius signalled his preference for a simple killing, out of sight and without subtlety, but he felt Malius holding firm and ultimately knew the other man was right. They were not, after all, diplomats by profession, nor were they wholly soldiers. They could fall back on other resources, if need be, and that need had made itself amply apparent.

She is here, in this building, right now , Malius told him, building his confidence. She has returned to her fellows. Tonight she shall sleep in her own bed. I shall watch out for the others and, when she is settled, you must make your move. It must be swift .

The swifter she is dead, the sooner we can make the others leave this place and return us to the Lowlands. To our own city . Accius felt a tremor of the old homesickness rack him momentarily, leaning on his comrade for support. This is a vile place, and we will be well rid of it .

Malius stood up, stepping out of the room and on to the landing, to look down at the bickering Beetles in the main hallway below. He was out of the room but not out of Accius's presence, and so he could feel his friend begin to prepare, removing his armour, blacking his sword. The assassin's knife would now be whetted for Ambassador Cheerwell Maker. She would be found dead by one of the others. Then they would leave.

Or, if they do not leave, we will cut them until they agree to , Malius thought with a spike of anger. He could feel Accius's approval radiating to him through the wall.

Below him, the Beetles were still arguing. Their Flykinden slave had just flown in with news that the Khanaphir army was returning.

'And in cursed poor shape,' the little man was saying. 'They got a bloody nose, and then some. They're all kinds of beaten up.'

They were all of them down there: the old man, the fat man, the ambassador woman, but their attention was focused on the other woman, the one who normally seemed so admirably detached. Malius saw, with disapproval, that her creditable reserve had broken down. She had her hands to her mouth, eyes locked on the Fly in some kind of emotion that Malius found uncomfortably overstated.

'I'm not going,' she insisted. 'I'm not going.'

'Praeda …' the ambassador started, but the other woman shook her head.

'No, I couldn't … How could he do this to me? Men!' She rounded on the fat man, for want of another target. 'This is unfair! How often I've been wooed by some fool — she prodded him in the chest — 'by some ignorant oaf, and I've not cared. It's never touched me, before.'

'Now, look …' the fat one started, but she would not be diverted. Leaning on the stone rail of the landing, Malius found himself perversely fascinated. All this bared emotion, it was almost as if he could actually look into their minds. It was as eye-catching as someone throwing a screaming fit in the street.

'And now he comes along,' the woman complained, 'and he … he was different. I thought: there's something special here. Because he wasn't just some magnate's son, flashing his wealth, some scholar all full of himself, or a merchant adventurer. He was real . He was genuine. He was honest. And then, the moment he's got my attention, he goes off to war and gets himself killed.'

'You don't know that,' the ambassador protested.

'Trallo, did you see him there?' the grieving woman asked.

The pause the Fly allowed made the answer obvious. 'Not as such, but there were a lot of people about.'

'If he's still alive, he would come here,' the woman insisted.

'He might be thinking exactly the same about you,' the fat man pointed out. 'Bloody women, honestly.'

'He would come here,' she said again, sitting down. 'And I will wait for him here. I'll wait all night, if I must.'

Mad, all of them , was Accius's silent comment. He was ready now for when the house went to bed. The ambassador would get her throat cut, and thus the last tie holding the expedition to Khanaphes would be severed. It's just as well the other woman's lover is dead. We might have had to kill him, then. Or her .

Luck has been scarce recently , Malius thought. We were owed some .

She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles, falling into that familiar nightmare once again. Che did not need to open her eyes to know where she was: the interrogation room in the Myna palace. It was the room that she had personally witnessed being gutted by the resistance, every implement there destroyed, but in her mind it remained whole and unassailable.

And he did not even use the machines on me , she reflected, half in and half out of the dream. Yet still it haunts me. How quickly would I have broken under torture, had he ordered it? And would they ever have been able to put the pieces of me back together?

And she opened her eyes, seeing above her the poised arms, the drills and saws and files of an artificer's trade now horribly suborned. The sound of the steam engine was turned up, the noise that Thalric had used to hide his conspiracies. She looked around for him now, for this was not the first time her dreams had dragged her back here.

But it was not Thalric, at the levers. It was a slighter man, in grey robes, and she did not need him to turn around to recognize him. Turn he did, though, regarding her coolly with those white eyes, and she cried out, 'Achaeos!'

'Why do you make me do this?' he asked, his hands hovering over the controls. She was fully in the dream, now, and no escaping. It had all become terribly real in such a short space of time.

'Let me go!' she begged him, wrenching at the straps. 'Achaeos, let me go!'

'Not this time,' he said. His voice was quiet but she could hear it clearly over the whine of all the drills and the rumble of the steam. 'Che, look at us.'

'Achaeos — what is it? Why are you doing this?'

'Because you force me, Che,' he explained.

'Just tell me what you want me to do,' she said quickly, tripping over the words. 'I've tried! I've tried to follow you when you appear to me. I've gone everywhere you led me.'

'You do not understand,' he said. 'You do not understand at all. What do I want, you ask me? What do you think I want?'

' I don't know! Tell me! ' she shrilled, for the drill arms were descending jerkily now, under his ministrations

'What do you want, Che? Freedom? To be let go? Do you think I would do this if you were not forcing me?'

The wrongness, the discontinuity of the situation, tried to speak to her, but the drill was very close, glittering within her vision, and it took all of her attention. She squirmed and twisted, trying to shift herself from underneath it.

It dropped, and she screamed-

And she woke.

The darkness of Khanaphes at night. The cool air from the river. There was no sound of distant battle, or of nocturnal assault by the Scorpions. The city was not yet under siege. She took a deep breath, still shaking.

I cannot survive many more of those nightmares . And, following from that: What if I do not wake next time, as the drill comes down?