The Scarab Path

She slipped into the cellar after a single look at the proprietor. His eyes regarded her bleakly and he made no move to stop her.

'Thalric.'

He picked up on her urgent tone and was on his feet at once. 'They're here?'

'Right outside the front,' she said.

Osgan was sitting up, looking pale, but stronger than he had been. It was just as well.

'They followed you?' Thalric asked her.

'No, they did not follow me,' she snapped, put out by the suggestion. 'They tracked you down. They were here long before I returned. They're waiting for nightfall, is my guess. So we have to move right away.'

'What about the back?'

'I didn't see anyone.' She nodded at his expression. 'I know, I know, but I looked and there were no Wasps there that I could see. That doesn't mean they weren't there.'

'We move now,' Thalric decided. 'We try to lose them. There are a few other places that we could hole up in, but they're none of them far enough from here to shake off a chase. That means we'll have to go wide, then double back to one of them. Osgan, on your feet, now.'

'Can he-?' Che started, but Osgan groaned and shook himself, and clawed his way up the wall until he was standing.

'Let's go,' he croaked. He was red-eyed, unshaven, but Che wondered if a lack of drink had not taken over from his fever as the main antagonist.

'Can you fly?' Thalric asked him.

'Enough to get up the chute,' Osgan confirmed weakly. 'No roof-hopping.'

'We'll be staying on the ground,' Thalric decided. 'You two are both dead if we go above roof level. You might as well hover there waving flags.'

'Oh, really?' Che glared. 'And you'd just vanish into the night like a Moth-kinden, I suppose.'

'That's exactly what I'd do,' he told her. 'Now, when we hit the street above, make a left, and then run along the river until the third alley — then left again, into it. I'll bring up the rear. I want to see who follows us.' He had bundled himself in a cloak, but Che could not see him passing for a local any time soon. He was too tall, too pale; there was a violence evident in him that Beetle-kinden did not own.

He paused under the barrel chute and then kicked off, wings throwing him upwards. A moment later he said, 'Clear, come on.'

Che made Osgan go next. The man shook his head wearily. His arm was still bound up and she knew she should change the dressing, but they did not have the time. She heard him swear under his breath and then his wings flared, barely a sputter of them but getting him high enough to hook his good arm over the sill. Thalric hauled him up from there, and Che followed right behind, pulling herself through the hatchway. For a second they crouched there, just three more refugees among so many. She heard Thalric's breath emerge in a long hiss.

'Nothing on the roofs here, just like you said.' He grimaced. 'They could have someone with a glass positioned across the river, but that's not a recipe for a quick response. Let's move.'

They scattered down the narrow muddy track running beside the river, Che helping the wheezing Osgan along, whilst Thalric followed near-soundless behind them. The west bank was lit up by fires, and she found it hard not to brood on that. I should have duties at a time like this, as an ambassador. Save that those duties had dried up. Diplomacy has failed. Indeed, through the instruments of the Empire, she was now as much a target as was the city of Khanaphes.

You do pick my errands well, Uncle Sten. Just keeping me safe again, were you? Behind it all lurked a kind of specifically selfish despair. What if it should all come down, the city falling in ruins before I ever understand it?

'Move!' Thalric's voice hissed, and she picked up her pace, slinging herself and Osgan into the chosen alley. There was a thin rabble of locals still on the street and she just battered past them, with Thalric, running now, behind.

'Stay where there's people,' she got out. 'Won't risk drawing so much attention.'

'Don't bet on it,' he shot back. 'Go right, now.'

When he said 'now', he meant it. She and Osgan almost fell over each other's feet making the sharp turn into an even narrower alley. She saw that this one was roofed off with canvas, struts and spars, reminding her of the Marsh Alcaia with all the emotional baggage that carried. The Wasps, who had surely been tracking them from the skies, were momentarily confounded. Thalric paused for a second, whilst Osgan leant heavily on Che and coughed. The ex-Rekef man looked back at her: that was how she saw him, just then. He was smiling, a man on the edge and loving it.

He kicked in a door, without warning, at random. There was a scream from within. Then he was inside, leaving Che and Osgan to trail in his wake.

'Can't keep this up much longer,' the ailing Wasp grated in her ear. She had no words to spare him, just hustled him along as best she could.

Thalric had found another door to kick down, and Che guessed they were into the next building now, or just part of some extended family home. He was finding windows in turn, glancing out of them at the dark sky.

'Here!' he said and, instantly throwing the shutters back, had hooked his way out. She bundled Osgan through, more and more without any help from him, and followed after to find herself in the middle of an alleyway choked with people. The authorities had nested a host of refugees here, almost shoulder to shoulder, under the cover of a few wretched awnings. Thalric had already elbowed himself some space, and then he made some more, pushing dispirited people aside mercilessly, until the other two could join him.

'Now we wait,' he said.

'Until?' Che asked him.

'Until I say go.' He had hunched himself as low as he could in his cloak, slumped and abandoned-looking as any local. Osgan was lying on his side, breathing heavily, coughing again.

'Have we lost them?' Che whispered.

Thalric kept his eyes on the sky, surreptitiously. 'I don't see any fliers. They'll broaden their net in a while, thinking they've missed us, that we're still running. They know they can move faster than us, so they'll try to make the best of that advantage. So we use it against them instead. We just let them fly away.' He was still grinning slightly, not at his own cleverness but at the game. It was the only game, once you had tasted it: the spy game, the intelligencer's game — the Dance, as the Spiders called it. He was in the thick of it again, and it seemed to have taken years off him.

'You look like Tisamon,' she told him.

'The Mantis? What do you mean?'

'He was like that, too. When he was up against it, he'd be smiling always. He loved being challenged.'

'Tell me you don't feel it,' he said, fixing her eyes with his.

And she did, that was the terrible thing. There was Osgan to protect, and there were Trallo and Manny and Petri dead, and there was a city out there that would be put to the torch tomorrow, but through all that she felt a leaping spark of excitement inside her. She was an agent again, not an ambassador, and it was just like old times. She let herself smile, just enough for him to see.

'Stenwold was always lucky, having you as his left hand,' Thalric said softly, surprising her.

'You've taken every cursed chance you've been offered to point out my inadequacies in that field,' she reproached him. 'How can you say that now?'

'You must have something going for you, Che, some trick of the trade that I've never grasped. Think of all you've survived, all you've come through intact.'

Not intact, she thought. Not when you tally the friends I've lost. Thalric bent over Osgan and she heard him say, 'We'll have to move soon enough. Unless they find us again, we'll take it slowly. If we're lucky, we can get to another hiding place without them picking up the trail.'

'We should head for the Scriptora,' Che suggested. 'We'll be safe there.'

'You might be,' Thalric told her, 'but those old men and women will have us two executed as Imperial agents. The funny thing is I'm not sure whether that's true or not.'