The Scarab Path

before anyone was looking in that direction. I know because he's been writing to me for money, and I've been sending it. That makes him my man.'

'And what has your man found out?'

'My man has been keeping his cards close to his little Fly chest.' Drillen grimaced. 'Which is why there will be an expedition sent to help him out. The first official Collegiate expedition to Khanaphes. Our ambassadors will extend the hand of friendship to our estranged brothers. Master Kadro will receive his due, but I need results.'

Stenwold nodded patiently, letting the quietness spin out until he was finally forced to ask. 'So where do I come into all of this?'

'Aren't you roused by the sheer academic challenge of it all?' Drillen asked, still grinning like a fool.

'As it happens I am, but where do I come in?'

'You propose the expedition, which I then agree to sponsor and fund.'

'Do I now?'

'Because if I tried it myself, then Broiler would be all over me, and I'd be fighting tooth and nail every step of the way to stop him making it his expedition and his triumph. You, though … Broiler hates and loathes every inch of you there ever was, but more than that, he doesn't have the guts to take you on. If it's your expedition, he'll mutter and complain, but he won't dare stick his neck out, and you know why.'

Stenwold cocked a surprised eyebrow at Drillen, seeing that his own suspicions about Broiler's loyalties were obviously not unique. He shrugged philosophically, waiting for the catch.

'Please, Stenwold,' Drillen said, in a pleading tone that surprised both of them. After an awkward pause the fat man continued, 'I'm a devious bastard whose only aim is my own betterment, I freely admit it, but I'm also on your side. A coup involving Khanaphes could be enough to swing the voting next Lots. We need each other.'

Stenwold sighed. 'This sort of politics has always been exactly the sort of thing I've tried to avoid. So you want me to go to Khanaphes?'

'No, no, I need you here to continue shaking hands with me in public. I just want you to drum up a few scholars to go there in your name, with my money. So people will like me more and Broiler less. And also the academic knowledge of the College will be expanded by another few feet of shelf space. That's a secondary consideration for me, but I do still care about it.'

'I know,' said Stenwold tiredly. 'That's the only reason why I've been listening to you for this long.' Inside he was fighting his own battle. There was a lot of him saying that once he started making these deals he was on a slope — and his kinden were notoriously clumsy. That the future of Collegium might depend on closet conspiracies like this one made him feel sick about the whole business. Drillen was right, though: Stenwold needed support in the Assembly, and he must pay for any services rendered.

And he was intrigued. Despite himself and despite everything he was intrigued. A Beetle-kinden city located beyond Solarno. What might we learn there? And on the back of that, another thought — the possible solution to another personal problem.

'I'll do it,' he said. 'I'll regret it, but I'll do it.'

'That's my old soldier!' Drillen clapped him on the shoulder with a meaty hand, and poured out another two goblets of wine.

Stenwold took his and drank thoughtfully, turning implications over in his mind. 'I suppose you'll want everything to look spontaneous,' he mused.

'Oh, of course,' Drillen agreed heartily. 'The serendipitous meeting of two great minds.'

'Best if it looks that way,' Stenwold muttered darkly. 'I'm not thinking about Broiler now, but about the Imperial ambassador.'

Drillen blinked at him blankly.

Stenwold looked unhappy as he continued. 'Think about it: Stenwold, implacable enemy of the Empire, entering into secret negotiations that will send agents to a city that is not so very far from the Empire's southern border.'

'The war's over.'

'The war isn't currently active. Both the Empire and I understand the distinction.'

Drillen shrugged. 'Whatever you want. You're in charge. It's your expedition.'

She was still in mourning, but mourning was difficult for her.

In Collegium the official colour of mourning was grey. True, it was not customary any more for widows and grieving family to parade around the city in drab vestments for tendays, or even just days, but for funerals at least, grey was the order of the day.

For Cheerwell Maker, though, grey was his colour, therefore a life colour, the colour of her happiness, in the same way that black and gold had become colours of death. She could not make grey the colour of her mourning because that would be a negation of his life.

In the end she had tracked down a Moth-kinden, a pallid trader from Dorax, and not left him alone until he had explained the customs of his people. For the Moths, the concept of colour seldom entered their lives, since they lived in a midnight world where they could see perfectly without need for sunlight or spectrum. For death, though, they made an exception. For shed blood, they took on the hue of blood. She learned how Mantids did the same, dressing their honoured dead in scarlet, and then entrusting them to the red, red flames. The Moths, who had been the Mantis-kinden's masters since time immemorial, had become infected by such superstitions.

And red was the colour of the Mynan resistance, their emblem of red arrows on a black background proclaiming their impossible triumph over the Empire. And Myna had been where he had died, for her, though he had been so many miles away.

So Che wore red, and thus caused public comment. She wore a tunic of deep wine colours edged with black, or else black arrowed with resistance scarlet. Even though she also wore a Moth cape of grey sometimes, nobody realized that she was mourning.

When she had gone to Tharn, after the war, they would not let her in nor tell her what rites had been performed over the body of poor Achaeos. They would barely spare two words for her. With the Empire beaten back, the old hatreds had resurfaced. She was Beetle-kinden, therefore a despoiler and an enemy. Her previous history as a Moth seer's lover had been erased and, in the end, the Moths had forced her, at bow-point, back on to the airship. Only the intervention of Jons Allanbridge, the aviator, had prevented her being shot dead there and then.

She had tried to tell them of the mark, of the affliction she had been left with in his wake, but they had not wanted to know. Instead they had told her to leave promptly or they would throw her off the mountainside.

Mourning was so hard for Che. Her own people had not understood her choice of lover, and now they did not understand her grief. She was surrounded by her own folk, yet feeling more alone each day that passed.

Yet not alone enough. Sitting here on her bed, with the bright light of day blazing in through the window, she felt a sudden presence beside her. It always happened the same way: the movement did not manifest as such, at first, neither flicker nor shadow, but just as a concrete awareness of there being something there.

If she moved her head to look, it would be gone. If she stayed very still, though, and emptied her mind the way he had taught her, and waited … then sometimes there would be a greyness at the edge of her vision, a tremor in the air, a something.

Mourning was difficult for her because she knew that he was still there. He had been a magician, after all, which she now finally believed only after his death. He had been a magician, truly, and now he had become something else. She had been far away when he died, having left him to the failed mercies of his own people. Now, posthumously, he was close to her, and she could not bear it.

She stood up, feeling the non-presence recede away instantly, knowing that it was still there somewhere, beyond her notice. At the same time she heard the front door, the hurried feet of Stenwold's servant running to greet his master. She drifted out on to the landing in time to see her uncle down below, divesting himself of his cloak. He complained so often of being old and tired, and yet seemed to her to be possessed of boundless reserves of energy. He complained of being mired in politics and intrigue, yet he fed on it with a starving man's appetite.

He still wore his sword, one of the few Assemblers who did. Stenwold was still at war, they would joke, but