The Scarab Path

'I've come a long way.' Che finally released him, saw the shadow of her grasp on his skin, that he rubbed at resentfully. He would no longer look at either of them.

'If you want, then you shall have. But do not complain, afterwards, that it was not what you sought.'

'Just take me there,' Che said. 'Petri, you can go. You don't have to come with me.'

'But … you can't just go off alone with him,' Petri protested. She dragged Che away from the table, out of the man's earshot. 'He'll kill you,' she insisted.

'He might.' Che's hand moved to her sword, buckled on now that politeness was no issue. 'What else can I do?'

'No, Che!' Petri hissed, casting the thin man a venomous look — as though she herself had not been the one who had led Che here.

'Will you come with me, then?'

'With him? Into the Marsh Alcaia again?' Petri bared her teeth in desperation. 'Not again … don't make me …'

Someone right beside them rapped on a table with something hard, a dagger hilt. Both of them turned to see a Fly-kinden man, his face half hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat. The neat beard gave him away and Che felt her stomach lurch at the thought of discovery.

'Trallo,' she gasped.

He tilted up the brim of the hat and gave her a broad smile. 'I reckoned you were up to something foolish,' he said. 'Thankfully you have people interested in keeping you safe, so I decided to keep an eye on you.'

'Trallo, this isn't your business now.'

He took a long breath, a tiny spot of calm in the rowdy open house. The lean man still watched them, clutching at the edge of his table.

'You're about to do something really unwise, I can tell that. You're about to go somewhere very dangerous.'

'It's my decision.'

Trallo glanced from Che to the shaking Petri, and back. 'Fine, I'll come with you. That's my decision.'

Che was caught in mid-protest, suddenly thinking, Was that not what I wanted? Trallo would surely be of more use than poor Petri, and Petri just as surely would not come willingly. 'Do you know … You know Khanaphes. You should know what we're about before you make such an offer.'

Trallo shrugged. 'Like I said, our friends have asked me to ensure you're safe. They're worried about you.'

Che thought of Berjek and the rest, and would not have believed that of them, but here the Fly was, all the same.

She leant close to him. 'We are going to the Fir-eaters. You've heard of them?'

'Heard of, but never met.' He made a face. 'Tell your hungry friend there to pack his bags, then. Bella Petri, you get yourself back to the embassy — and not a word of this to anyone, you understand?'

Petri nodded gratefully and, before anyone could retract the offer, she was hurrying for the door.

'I'm grateful for this, Trallo,' Che said.

The Fly spread his hands. 'What are friends for?'

And she was happy enough with that answer not to notice the signal he gave, as they left the open house.

Eighteen

There had been Scorpions keeping pace with them for at least three days, and Hrathen guessed probably a while longer. Since that morning they had let themselves be silhouetted against the barren skyline. On foot, or seated on their beasts, with spears held high, they had stared at the odd caravan but made no move against it.

Why would they, Hrathen thought wryly, when we are so obligingly going where they want us to go? Imperial mapmakers had not made much inroad into the Nem. It was a wasteland of stones and dust, of coarse ridges of bloody-minded grass that cut the skin like knives, and of ruins. Here and there some fault in the rock beneath opened narrow rootspace with access to underground water, nourishing stark, barrel-trunked trees with fleshy leaves shaped like the sort of arrowheads the Empire used to pierce strong mail. The going was uneven, the dusty terrain rising and falling with the stony bones of the land beneath. Sometimes those bones speared through into crags and juts of red-black rock that the coarse wind had rounded and bowed.

The Imperial scouts, mostly staying with the dubious safety of the Slave Corps, had nevertheless ventured far enough to pinpoint a Scorpion-kinden camp, and it was this tenuous landmark that Hrathen had set his compass by. Overall, it was Brugan's plan but Hrathen's details. Hrathen found he liked this mission, as Brugan had known he would, and in liking it, he would remain faithful to it. Until it suits me otherwise. Such was the constant clash of his mixed blood: the Wasp crying, Serve yourself by serving the Empire, while the Scorpion roared out, Do what you will.

The Scorpions of the Nem were not so dependent on outside trading to make their living as the Dryclaw tribes Hrathen had known, but still, a caravan of this size walking obediently towards one of their camps had attracted a lot of interest: three heavily laden automotives grinding their monotonous way over the desert ground, and each of them with two draught beetles plodding meekly in traces before them, not labouring as yet but ready to haul the wagons if they broke down or ran out of fuel. Hrathen had asked for a score of the Slave Corps's most intrepid, and Brugan had not stinted on obliging him. They were like old friends, to him, for he knew them for men who adulterated Imperial writ with their own self-interest, willing to go further and risk more for the sake of their profits and their pleasures. Proceeding alongside them were a dozen who wore the armour of the Light Airborne, but who mostly kept to themselves with a quiet discipline. Hrathen had marked these as Rekef agents, and guessed that they would be keeping a close eye on him.

Still, twelve of them? He flatters me. Or perhaps Brugan had some other mission in mind, and that was an unwelcome thought. If these men had received orders to assassinate the Warlord of the Nemian Scorpions, then this expedition would be everyone's last service to the Empire.

After the soldiers came the experts, who got to ride while the others walked. Chief amongst them, and most vocal, was Dannec, the political officer of the Rekef and its most overt representative. He was a thin-faced, ambitious man who did not relish being sent off into the wilderness, not even by the Rekef's supreme commander himself. He wasted no chance to complain, and even now he was suggesting that they drive the Scorpions off the ridge over to their left. Hrathen had ignored him from the start, and by now everyone else did, too. Aside from Dannec, there were eight men from the Engineering Corps, led by a grey veteran named Angved. They formed a mysterious and silent cabal of their own, and Hrathen was looking forward to putting them through their paces.

The sky was darkening but the horizon ahead was heaping up with a range of stark artificial shapes: one of the famous ruins of the Nem desert that the Scorpions had made their own. There were flames to be seen there, burning bluish-white. They were fuelled by a rock-oil, Hrathen understood, that the Scorpions, or their slaves, extracted wherever it bubbled to the surface. Here in the desert it was more readily available than wood, and continued burning for days.

The Scorpions began to close in now, bringing their mounts nearer and nearer until they had turned from scouts to an escort. They rode humpbacked black desert beetles that skittered along on high, long legs, fast over the dusty ground. They also rode low-slung scorpions, whose claws had been capped with sharp iron, sitting on them in strangely made offset side-saddles to keep the riders out of the path of the curved stingers. Others were on foot: tall and burly men and women with waxy-pale skin and snaggletoothed underbites, wearing brief garments the colour of dust. About half of these had armour too, some merely with primitive carapace scale, but many with mail or plated leather. One even wore an undersized banded cuirass that had once borne the Imperial colours.

'Savages,' Dannec muttered, but Hrathen smiled to see them. He stood up from his seat on the lead wagon,