The Scarab Path

He spread his hands. 'I don't need to believe anything.'

As they stood in the hallway, Thalric appeared at the stair-rail above them, his expression suggesting that he had not believed the servant's message. Behind him there was a Beetle-kinden, a bulky Imperial of about Stenwold's age and dimensions.

There was a beat, a moment's pause, before Thalric turned and descended the stairs, saying, 'Ambassador? Is there a problem?'

'Possibly.' Che saw Thalric's gaze touch on Trallo and then slide off, noticed the quickly suppressed flicker of understanding.

'Ah, well,' he said, then turned back to his Beetle companion. 'We'll have to break, Corolly. I'll leave the board set.'

The big man nodded. 'I've got paperwork to catch up with.' He gave Che a vague half-salute, like a man unsure about the formalities, before retreating into one of the upstairs rooms.

Thalric had paused near the foot of the stairs, and stood looking at her with a slight smile on his face. 'I suppose you should come up then, unless you want to keep this formal.' He singled out one of the servants. 'Get us some decent wine or something.' Then he was trekking back up the stairs, leaving Che to follow him. Trallo had already flitted up to the landing and, judging from his expression, Thalric must have given him a foul look as he passed.

The room she followed him into matched her own across the other side of the Place of Foreigners. She had to force her eyes away from the walls, where ancient hands had inscribed a valedictory epic to a kinden she was not even sure she recognized, but that she imagined were depicted in the tall, hunchbacked effigies that flanked the main embassy doors. To one side there was a low table on which some kind of game had been set up, with two couches facing each other for the players. The two ambassadors took their places on either side of it.

'How's … your man, the … injured one?' She had been about to say 'the drunk one', but that might not have been diplomatic enough.

'Osgan? Fevered,' Thalric said. 'Being tended, expected to recover. Getting yourself cut open in a swamp's a stupid thing to do.' Thalric shrugged. They had not spoken since the hunt, and she had no idea what he thought of what had happened there, in the village of the Mantis-kinden.

'Did he … did he say what he saw there?' she asked tentatively.

'What Osgan sees is not regarded as reliable testimony,' he replied shortly. 'Even at the best of times.'

He did see something then. Had this man become so caught up in Tisamon's final moments and the death of the Emperor, that he was now able to grasp something of the Inapt world? She knew that she was unlikely ever to find out. 'Thalric …' She frowned down at the game board and, in place of chastising him over Trallo, she just said, 'You're a really bad chess player. These pieces are all over the place.'

He had been waiting for something serious, and he snorted at that, caught off guard. 'What it is, is that you Lowlanders have no idea how to play chess,' he replied.

'I came third in the College trials, I'll have you know.' It had meant a lot to her, at the time. Now, facing his amusement, her sense of pride was dwindling.

'You play Ant-chess,' he said. 'Trudge-trudge-trudge. I couldn't believe it when I first came to Helleron — all that lining up and slogging. In real chess-'

'They fly,' Che finished for him. 'Of course, if chess is a war, then … war is different for the Wasps.' Such a simple thing, but it seemed to say a lot about the gap between them.

'Blame the Commonwealers. It's their game,' he said, but his smile was slipping fast. 'All right, Che, out with it.' The wine arrived then, a further stay of execution, but he was still braced and waiting when the servants bowed their way out.

'You have been keeping watch over me,' she accused. 'Using Trallo here, who has his kinden's sense of free business, I think.'

'And his kinden's ability to keep his mouth shut, I see,' Thalric added.

The Fly gave an amused snort and Che turned to him sharply. 'You've got something to say, at this point?'

'Only that you're both making a great fuss over nothing,' he said easily. 'He wants you looked after, so what? She knows about it, so what? There's no conflict here, no difference of opinion. Why all the secrecy, eh?'

They were both staring at him in exasperation. Then Che said, 'Don't you understand anything?' and paused, trying to put into words just why the Fly was wrong. 'Perhaps … you'd better go wait at the embassy while I sort this out,' she said finally.

Trallo rolled his eyes at that. 'If you insist on complicating matters, Bella Cheerwell.' He bowed to them both, before stepping up on to the window ledge and letting the air catch him beyond it. Che could not keep herself from going to the window to make sure that he was not simply still hovering there, eavesdropping.

'Solarnese Fly-kinden,' she complained. 'What can you do with them?'

'It's all because their Spider mistresses let them get away with murder,' Thalric remarked.

She looked over at him, her expression undecided. 'So you told him it was all for my own good, did you?'

'Wasn't it?' he asked.

Slowly she returned to her seat. 'What right do you have-' but he was smirking at her in that patronizing way he had always done, from the beginning, and she demanded, 'What?'

'I had forgotten,' he said, 'how you Collegiates aways talk of rights — rights of humanity. This is nothing to do with having a right, according to some obscure philosophy. Che, I look after my comrades, past or present. It's an Imperial virtue, believe it or not, although one that's seldom practised these days.'

'And I can't look after myself, is that it?'

He looked at her, fighting for a moment to hold in the response, and the laugh that went with it. 'No,' he let out, finally. 'Oh, Che, even when we first met it was after you had gone to great lengths to put yourself straight into the hands of the man most likely to betray you to me. When we were in Myna together you managed so well with the resistance that they were about to execute you as a collaborator. Che, from what should I believe that you will keep yourself safe?'

'You …!' As she stood, her indignation was strangling any chance of getting coherent words out. 'How-! Why you-!' He still had a faint smile, which maddened her even more, and she slapped the little table, flipping it over entirely and scattering chess pieces to the four quarters of the room. 'Bah-!' she got out. Thalric was not looking suitably chastened, instead was plainly fighting not to laugh out loud.

Oh, that does it. She went for him, then, catching him completely by surprise. She was not entirely sure what she intended, save perhaps to strangle the smile from his face, but she knocked him backwards off the couch and landed on him hard enough that she heard the breath whoosh out of him. Shocked at her own success, she dithered, sitting back on his stomach. His recovery was impeded more by his laughter than her weight.

'Hammer and tongs!' she exclaimed. 'What?'

'You don't change,' he choked out at last. 'You must have been a riot in the debating circles. Do you attack everyone you don't have an answer for?'

The humour of it got through to her at last. The anger burning but a moment ago, now seemed to have died a death, not even an ember left. She met Thalric's eyes, feeling his body twist beneath her, testing himself against her weight, and there was a moment when something passed between them. Che felt suddenly uncomfortable and scrabbled backwards, ending up perched on the couch he had just vacated. Thalric picked himself up and dusted himself down, then plucked a chess piece from the floor, where it had been digging into his back.

'I've escaped another mauling from Corolly, then,' he said vaguely. She knew, from his abruptly subdued tone, that he had felt that fleeting something too.

'Thalric …' she began, but did not know where to go next.

'They suggested I should seduce you,' he told her, the words ambushing both of them without warning.

She stared at him, agog. 'What …?'

'Good Rekef practice.' Instead of looking at her, he was busy picking up game pieces.

'Why are you telling me this?'

'I'm trying out honesty,' he said. 'I'm just telling you what they suggested.'

'I should go,' she said. He was still hunting chessmen, though, and she did not want to go until he had at