The Scarab Path

'Mistress Rakespear,' he said, 'is Che … is Mistress Maker …? I was wondering if she would come here, to speak with me.'

'Che?' Praeda frowned at him. 'Do you know where she is?'

Totho stared. 'Is she not with you? With you and the old man?'

'Nobody seems to have seen her since yesterday,' Praeda told him. 'I've asked the Ministers, but they don't seem to understand. She's gone missing before. She … she's not been acting rationally.'

'Tirado,'Totho ordered. 'Go and find her.'

'Right you are.' The Fly bolted whatever he was eating, and lifted off into the sky, wings glittering, heading across the river towards the east. Totho grimaced. That bloody woman can't keep out of trouble to save her life, and then, But am I really in a position to judge her?

He found a flat space of stone away from the locals and set to eating as quickly and efficiently as possible, so as not to be interrupted.

Someone sat down beside him. He started in surprise and looked up to see one of Amnon's Guard, a woman ten years his senior, her scaled armour streaked with blood. A younger man sat on the far side of her, his helm removed, his bald head gleaming. Totho regarded them both cautiously.

'I am Dariset,' the woman announced, before biting into the hunk of bread they had given her.

'Ptasmon,' said the man.

'Halmir, me,' said another man appearing on the far side of him. There were soon quite a few gathered, sitting on stones or the ground, in a loose circle that now included him.

'Totho,' he said awkwardly, 'of Collegium.'

'You have done much for us, Totho,' Dariset said. 'Much that you did not need to.'

And to please a woman who won't even turn up and witness it, he thought, but he just nodded noncommittally.

'We are honoured that you and your giant and your people fight alongside us, Totho,' said one of the others, and something clicked inside Totho, as he thought, This is the first time that any of them, save Amnon, has called me something other than 'Foreigner'. He looked into their faces, the faces of simple, hardworking people who were prepared to die for their city. This is something that Drephos never did. He never knew the names of his soldiers. He would never have cared.

It was a terrible trap, though. They would die, he knew. Perhaps even today. Perhaps in an hour's time or less, Ptasmon would be writhing in agony with his gut ripped open by a Scorpion halberd, or Dariset would lie still with a crossbow bolt through her eye. In knowing their names, in making them real people and not components of a machine, he was baring his flesh for the lash. They are meat for the war machine, he tried to remind himself but, sitting there with them, it came hard.

He was going to say something dismissive, cast them off, become the Foreigner again in their eyes. They were now going about their midday meal industriously, talking amongst themselves, in between mouthfuls. But these people are so solemn and silent, almost like Ant-kinden, he thought, but the notion was easily corrected: They are like that only in front of strangers. Like Ant-kinden, amongst their own they behave like all people.

He said nothing further, just let them talk. He learned about the widow that Halmir was hoping to woo, and that Ptasmon did not yet know whether his family had got safely over the river. He learned that the scarred man called Kham was Amnon's cousin, yet was openly critical of much that the First Soldier did. He learned that Dariset had once gone on an expedition to scout the ruins in the heart of the Nem, but they had turned back on seeing the shapes that moved there, and the signs that those shapes left behind: crucified Scorpions poisoned and desiccating in the sun and sand, and yet some of them still alive.

I should not have shared in this. He felt their lives loading him with emotional baggage that Drephos would have scoffed at. He remembered when he had let so much similar baggage slough off him, during the siege of Tark. He had been granted a kind of icy rationality at that point, a clarity of vision he would be loath to lose. But, he now considered, had he ever truly been free of sentiment?

Remind me again why I am still here, and not gone from this doomed city? Che's face, in his mind, never failed to twist something inside him, some organ that seemed designed purely to wreck his life and ruin his every dream. Cursed woman! Wretched wasting woman! Can you not let me be, after all this time? He had tried — oh how he had tried — to excise the callow, clumsy youth who had been so besotted with her, but no matter how deep his reason cut, up to its elbows in blood and tissue, his younger self always grew back.

And so we are brought to this pass. I will fight to defend a city I should care nothing about, and then I will most likely die, and so will those who follow me. Drephos would laugh himself to death if he knew. Or would he weep for me? If Drephos could weep for anything, it would be at such a futile waste.

He looked over to Meyr, saw the huge man still sitting, Teuthete standing by him, their heads almost on the same level. The Mantis was speaking, but Totho could not hear her quiet words. The Mole Cricket shook his head slowly, and she put a hand to his chest, her arm-spines flexing.

A shout went up from nearby and suddenly they were all in motion again, rushing for the barricades, cramming a last mouthful before taking up weapons. Meyr pulled his helm forward over his face. Totho saw Amnon embrace Praeda one more time and then take up his shield.

The next wave of the Many were coming.

Corcoran felt the engines of the Fourth Iteration turn over, first slowly and then with a building urgency. The crew were casting off, letting the rudders and the current of the river pull them away from the quays.

There was already a movement among the Scorpion-kinden in anticipation. A great mass of them was gathering by the west pillar of the Estuarine Gate, anticipating that the ship would have to come close enough for them to rake it with crossbow shot before it quit the city. And we should, we really should, Corcoran thought. What we should be doing right now is leaving. Khanaphes was never going to be a market for us, and soon it won't even be a city any more.

He did not understand his leader: Totho seemed to have gone mad, caught some local fever. Gone native, perhaps. Where was the profit in this, to defend one pack of primitives against another? What could they possibly gain? Especially as the beast they had backed was going to lose. It didn't take any tactical mind to see that.

Corcoran was not a soldier, despite the armour. He was a merchant, from a family of small traders. When the Iron Glove had hoisted its banner over Chasme he had seen the opportunity. He had been in near the start, and done well out of it. It had been worth exchanging the cluttered security of Solarno to make that bid for profit. He was a merchant and profit was his business. That was what he understood. Profit allowed him to live well and be a pleasant and amiable person, because to be pleasant and amiable in this world you needed a buffer between you and its woes.

The world's woes were coming right back at him today. Sure and I'm very sorry for them all, he thought, but it wasn't as if they were family. The Khanaphir were having their last days on the map before the Scorpions consigned them to the past they had dwelled in for so long.

But the halfbreed had decided that the Iron Glove should be making some kind of idiot stand now. It was beyond comprehension. Corcoran wanted so very badly to sail the Iteration towards the river mouth and demand that they raise the gate. Surely he would then be doing what was best for the consortium. Totho had plainly gone mad.

If it had been any other man, perhaps, but Totho was a favourite of the Grand Old Man himself. It was well known that he and the big chief had built the Iron Glove with their own hands. Whatever Totho did would be given the nod, no matter how insane. Which left Corcoran out on the river, turning the bows of the Fourth Iteration towards the bridge.

They were fighting up there. Totho was fighting up there. And maybe there'll be some justice and he'll get killed before I do. There would be a signal, but the Iteration had to be in place by then.

'Take us in closer!' Corcoran called, and the order was relayed down to the engine rooms. 'And get the smallshotters loaded and on the rail,' he added, trying to sound adequately military. His hands were clenched on that rail themselves because otherwise they would be shaking.

The Iteration was a good ship, made to stand the perils of hostile seas and hostile