The Scarab Path

clueless Apt with her.

Climbing out into the sunlight was the sweetest thing in the world. She stood still, a statue on either side, as though she was part of their irregular order. Irregular, she realized, and purposefully confusing so that when the Masters came up here to view their shrunken dominion, no eye would note them there, even if the moon was bright.

She pushed out of her mind all she had been told and all she had seen, down below. There would be sleepless nights later for her to digest it. For now, she was free, and the war was over, and …

She took one step down the pyramid and saw Thalric emerge from the shaft and alight, wings blurring and fading. He had the temerity to lean on a statue, looking up at the cloudless sky as though he had not seen it in a hundred years, drinking in the blue.

'I thought I'd never …' he said.

'I know.' She turned to see Accius now climbing out, wiping the slime off his hands with an expression of revulsion even on his normally blank face.

He nodded to her. 'Malius and I are discussing what should be done, regarding our two cities: what report we will give,' he said. 'It is true, there are events that cannot be understood.' There was an awkward look about him. 'Events that, if reported, will cast doubt on our competence as reporters.'

'I understand,' Che told him.

'We have stood together, in this place.' The admission seemed somehow prompted, and she wondered if it was Malius or Accius who was making it. 'You released me from … some torment that even my brother could not unlock, and we are unsure what this means. We shall confer, and then we will come to you.' He settled his sword in its scabbard, a nervous, reassuring gesture, and stepped off quickly towards the Place of Foreigners.

'Hope yet?' Thalric enquired.

'I don't know. Perhaps. It would please Uncle Sten.'

Thalric smirked at that answer, and she demanded, 'What?'

'War Master Stenwold Maker, spymaster of Collegium and defier of the Empire, now reduced to 'Uncle Sten'. The Rekef would be mortified to hear it.' His grin faded at the memory of Marger's revelations. 'And that's another problem.'

'Which we'll solve, somehow,' Che assured him. 'For now, though, we're out, Thalric. We're free of the Masters. We're free.'

His smile returned and he caught her around the waist and kissed her. She heard somebody shout.

Turning, she saw Totho running towards them, and her heart sank. Oh, timing, Totho, always timing. Your eternal gift. 'Totho, wait …' she started, unsure what she could honestly say. Thalric's wings had taken him two steps up the pyramid, hand held out, but Che was between them.

The Wasp did not loose. Totho did.

He was shooting whilst running. She heard at least one bolt ping from the stones very close to her. Another tore her sleeve. A single shot punched into Thalric's shoulder, knocking him back against the steps. She fell across his body, hoping to shield him, seeing him clutch at the point of impact. Thalric's expression was not pain so much as fury, and it was contagious, leaping to her like wildfire. Totho had stopped shooting by then, was just running forward, shouting her name.

No, no … But it was too late. Something fierce and mad had arisen inside her at the sight of Thalric's blood, and she wrenched the Wasp's sword from its scabbard and was already turning to meet Totho. She felt empty hands guiding her, and an unfamiliar insanity gripping her mind. A whirl of alien thoughts — honour and vengeance and bitter pride — rose in her like bile. After so many months in residence, Tisamon had left some echo behind, the ghost of a ghost.

She lashed out even as Totho arrived, striking sparks from his breastplate. He called out her name, and she hit him thrice more, denting his pauldron, smashing the snapbow from his hand, and then slamming the sword so hard across his body that he stumbled backwards down three steps.

'Che! It's me!' he yelled at the stranger he saw behind her eyes, and she stabbed him as hard as she physically could, so that the blade of Thalric's sword snapped off close to the hilt, as Totho was punched off his feet. He landed with a hard clash of metal on stone and slid to the base of the pyramid. She was on to him as soon as he started to get up, drawing back the jagged, broken edge of the blade, about to jam it into his upturned face. The urge to kill him keened inside her, not through the Mantis's influence but just the bloody handprint his presence had left.

'You never learn!' she screamed at him. 'You never …'

He was crouching at her feet, making no effort to defend himself. The sword at his belt was still sheathed, the snapbow out of reach.

'… learn …' she finished, staring stupidly at the stump of blade in her hand. She let it drop, hearing it clang and clatter distantly. 'Totho?'

He made some muffled reply.

She looked from him back at Thalric, who was groaning, plucking at his wound. 'Oh Totho, why do you always get it so wrong? I'm sorry, Totho, I'm sorry,' she said, horrified, frightened by herself. 'I'm so sorry.'

He was saying something, the words blurred with tears, and eventually she heard it as, 'I held the bridge. I held the bridge for you. I wanted to do right.'

Horror and pity swept over her, in equal measures, and she thought, And I never learn either, and I always get it wrong. In that we two are soulmates, if in nothing else. 'I know you did, Totho. I saw you on the bridge, believe it or not. You did well. You saved the city. I'm proud of you, but you have to let me go, please. Totho, look at all you've built. Don't throw it away for me.'

'I would,' he got out. 'All of it, if you asked.'

'But I won't ask,' she replied. The sudden dispersal of all that rage had left her feeling weak and sick. 'Please, Totho, how often must we go through this? Who else will we hurt?' She stood up, stepped away, feeling sicker than ever. He got to his feet, flinching away when she offered her hand, then taking it like a drowning man. She took Totho in her arms and held him close just for a moment.

'I am not the girl you knew at the College,' she said softly, after releasing him. 'You are not that boy, nor is Thalric the same Rekef man who came hunting us. None of us are those people any more.' A sudden realization struck her that made her feel unsteady on her feet. 'Totho, I understand you.'

He was frowning, desperate for help from any quarter.

'Totho,' she told him, 'you still carry a picture of me in your mind, a memory from all those years ago. You let it torment you, but it's not me, Totho. It's not me that hurts you. I would never want to hurt you. You do it to yourself. Let go of me, please. I'm not who you think I am any more, and you deserve more than that.'

She heard movement behind her and turned to see Thalric. He had a shallow gash across his temple and one hand clutching to his shoulder, but she knew the strength of his armour of old. His old tricks had always preserved him before and, as the bolt had struck him, she had guessed that not even Totho's snapbows were his equal. In the instant she glanced at him, she noticed his expression was pure murder, his hand extended ready to sting. Che quickly interposed herself between them, to protect Totho from the Wasp's rage.

Thalric grimaced, made two efforts to speak, to order her out of the way, his eyes fierce with incomprehension. On the scales, his personal and cultural pride swung up and down against how she would see him if he killed her former friend.

He finally closed his hand and took a long breath, but it still was a long time before he could lower his hand.

'Che …?' Totho began quietly, as though releasing her name into a great silent room and waiting for the echo.

'I've used you badly,' she told him quietly. 'I'm sorry. And for what you did during the war, I have no right to judge, because I wasn't there.' She put a hand on his arm, feeling the battered mail. 'Be safe, Totho.'

He closed his eyes, keeping his expression very still, and then he nodded, and she half expected to see a filmy grey shape leave him, the ghost of all of their failed futures exorcized at last.

At last, he smiled, something weak and faint but still recognizable as a smile, and then he turned and left.

Thalric was working patiently with one hand to free the bolt in his shoulder. She reached to help, finding that the missile had punched through the fine rings of his copperweave but was snagged hopelessly in layers of cloth