The Scarab Path

Instead he went to find the officer of the Light Airborne that he had brought with him. The man was packed ready to go, along with half a dozen of his men. Their leader was a hollow-cheeked type, his receding hair cropped close. His mouth crooked up on one side into a dry little half-smile, as though enjoying some small joke that only he was privy to. As he was the ranking Rekef officer here, Hrathen thought that might be true. His name was Sulvec and he was obviously Rekef Inlander to the core, for Hrathen knew enough to recognize a man who had given himself over heart and mind to the service.

'Not forgotten anything?' Hrathen asked him, realizing that if his own task was intended to be a suicide mission, then Sulvec would be his executioner. He wanted to show the man he was not afraid. Scorpion thinking, since Wasp-kinden tread carefully where the Rekef are. The fact that half of Sulvec's men were staying with Hrathen's party had not escaped him. He was plainly not trusted, but that was hardly news.

'We'll depart presently.' Sulvec's fragment of smile made its inevitable appearance: it signalled disdain for everything Hrathen was or could be. 'Don't be too long in coming, Captain.'

'Scorpion-kinden move fast,' Hrathen told him. 'Make sure we don't outstrip you.'

'Hm.' A slight noise was the response, all the humour the man would voice. 'We'll liaise with you when you arrive with your thousands, Captain.'

Hrathen just nodded, and in the next moment the seven Rekef men were airborne, streaking across the sky towards distant Khanaphes with a speed born of well-practised Art, and Hrathen had no idea what their orders were, for implementation once they arrived in Khanaphes.

And if they are to betray me? Do they plan to win the Khanaphir by betraying the Many of Nem? He considered the possibility coldly. Then they do not understand what the Scorpion-kinden are capable of, he decided, and left it at that.

With Hrathen gone, the Mole Cricket-kinden called Meyr took stock. He had a dozen people here: enough, when allied to his strength, to dissuade the Scorpions from precipitate action. The Scorpions would trade whenever there was reason not to steal or take. The Iron Glove turned up with small shipments, always promising more in the next, each visit a tentative link in the mercantile chain. Meyr was a cautious man like most of his kind and, given a free choice, he would not want to be the Iron Glove ambassador to the Nem. He paid his debts, though. Totho had taken him in when he had been fleeing the Empire, and Meyr had been a slave long enough that working for a living, to another man's orders, had become second nature. He might hate it in himself, but he could not deny it.

'We're going to have trouble soon,' he said softly. His second-in-command, a Solarnese woman named Faighl, was nodding. She was a tough, compact woman, a mercenary out of Chasme for more than a decade before signing on with the new-formed Glove. She had already killed two Scorpions who assumed that her size meant weakness rather than a killing speed. Now they gave her space at their fires and drank with her.

'Pull out?' she asked.

Meyr was a big man to be balanced on a knife-edge. Pulling out was safe, but he would not be thanked for it. It was not the trade that mattered, it was the information. Something was happening here that the Glove had to be informed of. The Empire was in the Nem, and had become everyone's best friend, giving out free presents and holding lectures. The Scorpions had no idea of secrecy, so word of their target had come to Meyr almost as soon as he and his team had arrived with their packs and crates.

But why? It makes no sense. Meyr knew the Empire well enough to understand, that, whatever their evils, they did nothing without reason.

'We stay,' he replied heavily. 'But … Where's Tirado?'

'Here, chief.' The Fly-kinden man ducked forward under Faighl's arm. 'What, where and who?'

'I'll write it out,' the Mole Cricket decided. One of his people snapped open a folding desk, a square of wood smaller than Meyr's two open hands. He knelt by it awkwardly, taking a fresh slate out from his pack. His Art rose within him, and he put the corner of one fingernail to it. Back home, his people wrote their letters in stone. Pens were lost in his grasp and paper tore under his nails. His people had ways with the earth, though, which was why the Empire enslaved them so enthusiastically.

The tip of his nail scribed, carving blocky, close-packed script into the slate as though it was wet clay. He filled the square of stone from edge to edge, a solid mass of writing, trusting to Totho to decipher it. When he made an error he smoothed the stone over and wrote again.

When he was done he wrapped the slate in cloth and handed it to Tirado in a comedy of scale: the receiving hand would barely match one of Meyr's fingers for size.

'Fly to Totho at Khanaphes, swift as you can,' he instructed. 'This information must be known.'

Twenty-Four

'The hunt …' Amnon wrinkled his nose. 'I thought it had gone well. Perhaps I was wrong.'

Totho watched him empty the dregs of a beer jug. The Iron Glove staff had brought in plenty, though, and then left the room at his command. Totho had assumed that the Khanaphir First Soldier was coming to talk business, but it turned out that Amnon was seeking something simpler, and at the same time more fraught: a sympathetic ear. And I'm the ear? There was a whole city of Khanaphir out there, any of whom would have been honoured to receive the First Soldier of the Royal Guard as their guest. But Amnon was out of sorts, Amnon had worries, possibly for the first time in his life, and he wanted to bare his soul. Perhaps that was not something the Khanaphir did with one another: their secretive, mirror-placid nature went deep. Somehow, Amnon had looked on Totho and seen a kindred spirit.

I'm willing to bet the Ministers don't know he's here either.

Iron Glove business in Khanaphes had not been good over the last few days, after Ethmet's displeasure had filtered into the city. Totho reckoned it was only a matter of time before they had to write this city off as unprofitable. They would have been leaving soon enough, anyway, denied an outlet to practise their true craft. Totho had no real interest in bulk orders for ordinary swords and arrowheads.

'We took four of the land-fish, one as large as any I have seen,' Amnon explained, and then sighed massively. 'I do not understand these Collegium women — are they not impressed with such prowess?'

Totho found himself wondering what Che must have made of it. 'They're a perverse lot,' he agreed, feeling a pang of the old bitterness. 'Believe me, I tried to …' And am I revealing this now, and to him, that I have kept to myself for so long? The beer and Amnon's blithe innocence encouraged him. 'I tried to help the girl I … tried to show her how I felt and what I could do. I even went halfway across the world to rescue her. For nothing.'

'So what do they want?' Amnon demanded, taking up another jug. 'Has she enemies I can slay? No, it is all diplomacy with them, and I am not allowed. How am I to show this woman?'

'They're very sentimental, Collegium women,' Totho told him. 'Sentimental to a fault. They read too much.' A sweeping statement, but he had just decided that it was true. Am I drunk? It seemed likely. The empty jugs littering the table between them were not entirely the fault of Amnon. Mind you, just because he had been drinking, it didn't mean that it wasn't true. 'They prefer a hollow gesture to all manner of sincerity,' he added. One touch of Moth-kinden mystery and she virtually forgot I was even there.

'So you think I should woo her gently?' Amnon said. It did not quite match with what Totho thought he had just said, but he let that be.

The big man was thinking. 'I had not wanted to seem too forward.'

'You'll get nothing by hiding your fire. They never notice, if you do that,' Totho replied sagely. 'And they don't care about what success you make of yourself either. You could be general of the world and suddenly it wouldn't matter.' And, in that case, what am I doing here? What is it I really want?

'I am observing this, with her,' Amnon agreed heavily. 'I must make a grand gesture — an unmistakable one.'

'Tell me, then,' said Totho. 'Tell me what she did, on your hunt.'

'She seemed not the least interested in anything of it,' Amnon reported gloomily. 'Even when I pulled her from the water with my own hands, she did not seem to see me.'

'No, no, not your Rakespear woman,' Totho interrupted. 'I mean Che — the ambassador.'

'Ah, that I cannot tell you,' Amnon replied ponderously. 'For she vanished for some time, strangely, leaving