The Scarab Path

Empire, what's she like — your new match?'

Still he did not answer, and she turned from her work to look at him. His expression was far away, somewhere that he did not want to be.

'Thalric?' she prompted, and his eyes flicked towards her.

'You really want to know?' he asked. 'The best-kept secret in the Empire?You want to know about Seda?'

'It doesn't look likely that I'll get a chance to gossip about it much,' she pointed out. Do I really want to know? she asked herself: something in his face had disturbed her.

'The Empress … Seda the First,' he said, and she had now lost her chance to avoid the knowledge, whatever it would be. 'She is not quite eighteen yet, younger than you by a year or two. She was eight when her father died, Alvdan the First, and she told me how she'd lived in fear of death ever since. She was the only sibling of the new Emperor to survive his coronation. He kept her around because making her afraid was one of his pastimes. That's how she tells it.'

Another pause. Che kept scrubbing away diligently.

'I wasn't there when the Emperor died,' Thalric said. 'In fact I was imprisoned in the cells beneath the arena, where they keep the fighters and the animals. When I found out about what she had become, the Empress, I searched out someone who could tell me exactly how it had happened, because it seemed clear to me that something had gone very badly wrong indeed.'

'Osgan,' Che filled in.

'Osgan,' Thalric confirmed. 'The same man who was stupid enough to follow me here, and who's surely paid for it now. But Osgan sat beside the Emperor, and saw it all. And then I heard what he had to say, and it made no sense.'

'Tisamon killed the Emperor,' Che said. 'That's what Tynisa said.'

Thalric was silent again.

'Or what? Did he just die? Did he have a weak heart?' Che prompted. 'Tisamon and that Dragonfly woman came charging out of the fighting pit and killed just about everyone they could get hold of. Did the Emperor just die coincidentally?'

'I don't know,' Thalric said. 'All I know is that something happened, something … very wrong. The Emperor was there, and Seda, and General Maxin, and some slave of the Emperor's. This is not just from Osgan. I've spoken to a few others who were there, too. It's amazing how people remember … or don't remember. Everyone remembers the mad Mantis killing the Emperor: it's just that none of their versions quite match.'

'And what does your new wife have to say?'

Another pause, terminating in a laugh that was surprisingly free from bitterness. 'You bloody Beetle woman,' he said, but fondly, 'why can't I ever have a conversation with you, just once, where you don't manage to trip me up? This … being here, in the dark, it's the whole situation with us, from the start. You've always seen things in me I've wanted to hide, while you … I can't make you out at all.'

'That's because what you see is all of me, Thalric,' she told him. 'And you're not used to people who aren't hiding things from you.' But even as she said it, she realized that it was no longer true, that it had not been true for some time. Even I have secrets now. 'So what did she say?' she pressed on, to turn his attention away from the subject.

'She said that Tisamon didn't really kill the Emperor. That the Emperor's old slave — nobody seems to have known who he was — was in the middle of the conspiracy to put her on the throne, only she's glad he's now dead. He's dead, Maxin's dead, the Emperor's dead. It's only Seda left from the royal box. Seda and Osgan, of all bloody people.'

'So who killed the Emperor?' Che asked. 'According to her story.'

'She says I wouldn't believe her,' he replied. 'And she says she won't tell me. And, knowing what I do about her, I don't think I want to know.'

'You're going to soon run out of ways not to tell me,' Che said, moving on to the next wall. 'So why not just say? What's so wrong? What's the problem? I don't think there are many Wasp excesses that could surprise me.'

'Oh, is that so?' he said quietly. She heard him move closer to her. 'You want me to tell you?'

She put out a hand that brushed his shoulder. He flinched back from its touch, then took it briefly, confirming what it was. With that frame of reference, he got himself facing her directly, and his expression told her that he had been keeping this to himself for a long time. And wanting to tell someone for a long time, and not been able to …

'She's mad,' he said. 'She's completely insane. She thinks she … She thinks she has powers. Not Art, but magic powers.' His expression was almost embarrassed on behalf of the Empress, but Che was abruptly paying full attention, the carvings forgotten.

'Her powers, these powers she thinks she has, they derive from blood, you see,' Thalric explained. 'It's something to do with this old slave, some nonsense he told her, but she must have blood. And when an Empress sets her heart on something …' The corner of his mouth twitched. 'The thing is … there's someone inside there, just a Wasp-kinden girl who's had a hard life, and who's terrified of what's happening to her, but the madness, it takes possession of her. Then she gives the orders, and another two or three slaves are bled. For her bath. To fill her cup. She says it makes her powerful.' A shudder went through him. 'I have drunk from that cup, too, when she has asked me to.'

Deep inside, Che felt an unease that was nothing to do with the overt horror in Thalric's story. Something else had connected with her, and she did not know what. Something was trying to tell her that this was important, and at first she thought, Achaeos? She heard no harsh voice in her mind, but there was some link there, something close to her.

'The thing is, though,' Thalric continued, the words sounding as if they were dragged from him, 'somethinghappened to her. When the Emperor died … I don't know how to explain it, but something went terribly wrong. She was changed. It drove her mad. She was … wounded.'

'What do you mean?' Che whispered.

'She has … lost something,' Thalric said raggedly. 'Something in her mind has broken and driven her mad. She has lost her Aptitude. She is like some other kinden now, not a Wasp at all. That connection, that understanding … her mind is changed utterly. She does not think like we do any more. The worst thing is that she is not just mad, but she is Inapt and ruling an Apt Empire.'

Che slumped back against the slick wall, feeling something within her plummet. 'Oh that … that is the worst thing, is it?' she got out, but she was finding it difficult even to draw breath.

He got her reaction wrong, of course. 'I'm not talking about your Moth lover,' he protested. 'You can't imagine it. It's as though she's not human any more. Some part of her mind has just been cut away, and it's the part that would let anyone else understand her. It's turned her into a monster.'

She felt her heart lanced through with horror, with anger, even with that old revulsion at what she was, that she thought she had put behind her. 'And me,' she said. 'Would you say that of me, Thalric? Am I a monster?'

'What are you talking about?'

'Answer me? Am I a monster, too?' The anger was triumphing. Her fists were clenched. He would never see the blow coming.

'Che, I don't understand you.'

'No, you don't. Because some part of me has been cut away, Thalric. I'm Inapt. I lost it at the end of the war, when Achaeos died. I'm the same as her, so I suppose that makes me a monster too.'

She watched him, secure in the knowledge that he could not see her. She had felt like hitting him, but it was fast dissolving in a morass of despair at what she had lost. Who'sto say he's wrong? Perhaps I am a monster. Something's wrong with me. I've been crippled where nobody can see.

It was his hands that drew her attention. His fingers twitched, in and out, closing for safety, opening for danger. Hammer and tongs, is he going to kill me for it? She always forgot who he was when she spoke to him, forgot what he was. It was a small room. He would not need many blind sting-shots to find her.

'No,' he said, and he sounded surprised at his own conclusion. 'No, it doesn't. It makes her a monster, but