The Scarab Path

longer subscribe to the logic of her people. The books she had pillaged from the library were written in the crabbed hands of Moth-kinden or the elegant loops of Spiders. The one thing she had learned from them was that, by their logic, she was not mad. There were precedents for her situation, though she was not sure that this was any reassurance. Being haunted was surely worse than mere madness. Especially being haunted in a city where nobody, not even her open-minded uncle, believed in ghosts.

During the ritual atop Tharn, Achaeos had called out to her, and she had lent him as much strength as she could, and possibly contributed thereby to his death. Her mind and his had been touching when the mouldering evil of the Darakyon had stirred itself to answer his call for power. When he had died, therefore, something of him had stayed with her. The logic — since all insanities have their own internal logic — was faultless. The books were silent on remedy, however.

And there was more than that: she was not whole, any more, after the war.

She stretched herself and shook her head. The ghost of Achaeos was gone: still there in the back of her mind but no longer apparent to her eyes. As she dressed, she saw the first pearl-grey of dawn glimmer through her shutters. She approached the door carefully, as though it might suddenly become a monster, a jailer. It was ajar, though, and she went out on to the landing.

Stenwold's door stood open, which meant he had not come back last night. She smiled at that. She knew that she was a burden on him that he could not shift, so it was good that he still had Arianna.

Che and Arianna had not got on well, not at all, and the real problem had been Stenwold himself, who simply did not know how to deal with them both at the same time: on the one hand his young niece, his daughter in all but name; on the other his lover, scarcely older than her, with whom he was a different man entirely. The confusion it threw him into had obviously amused Arianna at first, but then it had become inconvenient and, in her smooth Spider-kinden way, she had secured a first-floor residence across town. Stenwold was abruptly released from the pressure of having to be two men at the same time, while Che and Arianna did their best not to meet. Life was easier that way.

Che pulled her grey cloak on over her mourning reds, taking only a moment to look in the mirror. With the hood raised high her reflection always surprised her: her skin appearing too dark, her eyes disfigured by iris and pupil rather than blank white. Seeing any face framed in grey cloth, she expected to see his face and not her own.

'Achaeos,' she said softly. He must be able to hear her, from his vantage point at the back of her mind. 'Help me.' Sometimes she saw him flicker in the background of mirrors, but not now. She lifted the bar on the front door. There was no lock, only the simplest latch.

Collegium was a city of the day, but good business came the way of early risers. By the time she ventured out, the sky was already flecked by Fly-kinden messengers, and a big dirigible was making its way in slowly from the north towards the airfield, bearing goods and news from Sarn, no doubt. There was currently a law about running automotives through the city streets before a civilized hour of the morning, but handcarts and animal carts were already rattling across the cobbles, and she could hear the slow shunting of the trains almost all the way across the city, in the still dawn air.

Stenwold lived in a good part of town, not far from the College, and the short walk took her through what was now called War Harvest Square, because of the mummery that was enacted here every tenday. Collegium looked after its own. Collegium was wealthy enough, despite the costs of the recent war, to do that. She spotted the queues ahead of her, and knew it must be the day when the War Harvest was doled out.

It could have been worse. Collegium medicine was some of the best in the world, and modern weapons were efficient enough to kill more often than they maimed. There were enough, though, who had fallen between the extremes of kill and cure, and every tenday they made their arduous way here. These veterans, the men and women of Collegium who had fought for their city against the Empire or the Vekken, or else gone out to fight for the Sarnesh, and whose injuries meant they now had no trade left to them. Men and women missing legs, missing arms, missing eyes, they came and queued here every tenday, and the Assembly ensured that they were given enough to live on. There had been a bitter dispute over it at the time but, in the flush of peace, the Assemblers of Collegium were not going to turn their soldiers out to beg or starve. It had made Che proud of her kinden, and the veterans who gathered here for the handout had been left a little pride, a little self-respect. Passers-by saluted them, cheered them, and acknowledged their sacrifice, while the two tavernas nearby did a good trade from citizens buying them drinks.

The problem came with those whose wounds were less visible. She knew there were many: those who had not been able to bear the blood and destruction, the loss of loved ones; those who had retreated into themselves; those who could not hear a shout or a loud noise without being flung back into the fighting. Victims of the war without a mark on them, they were not provided for. Instead the doctors prodded them, frowned at them, and shrugged their shoulders.

She herself had not gone to see a doctor. They would not understand.

It had come upon her as she went by airship to Tharn, to try to visit Achaeos's ashes. Before then the shock of his death, the whirl of events at the end of the war, had kept her off balance. It had only been on that return journey that she had realized.

She remembered the waves of nausea first, losing her balance at the slight sway of the wind. She had crouched on the deck, feeling her stomach churn in sudden spasms. The movement of the vessel beneath her had seemed as unnatural as water on fire.

This is what he felt, she had reflected at the time, remembering how Achaeos had always been so uncomfortable with modern transport. She had assumed that was just because he was new to it, then.

She remembered staggering towards the stern, clinging to the rail, where the concerned expression of Jons Allanbridge had wavered through her view, a meaningless image. She had stared at the engine, the blur of the propeller, and felt a chasm gape beneath her. It was wrong — worse, it was meaningless. She had stared at all that pointless metal, its inexorable convolutions, its parts and pipes and moving things, and she had felt as though she was falling.

The white elegance of the College was straight ahead of her now. The library's great gates were still closed and barred, this early, so she went to the side door and knocked and knocked, until a peevish voice responded from within, announcing, 'It's not locked.'

Che drew a deep breath and knocked again. 'It's not locked!' called out the librarian, thoroughly irritated now. 'Either come in or go away.'

She stared at the handle, feeling tears prickle at the corners of her eyes. Her memory told her that this was simple but her body had no path for it, her mind no connection. She rattled with the metal ring, but the door would not move. She could not understand the process. It made no sense to her. In her final moments, while touching Achaeos's mind as a channel for the Darakyon, something fundamental had been ripped out of her.

At last someone came to the door and yanked it open. The librarian was a stern old woman, her face devoid of sympathy. 'What do you want?' she demanded.

'I want to come in,' Che replied in a tiny voice, fighting the urge to weep in frustration.

It would have been worse if there had never been Tynisa. Che had grown up with her as though they were sisters: Stenwold's clumsy niece and Tisamon's halfbreed bastard — although neither had known Tynisa's heritage at the time: Tynisa, who was graceful and beautiful and accomplished in every field save one. So it was that Stenwold had made alterations to his house, and given his servant special instructions about the doors and the locks. That servant had died in the Imperial siege, though, and the new man was taking a while to learn. It was not surprising, for the instructions were baffling to him and Che could hardly blame the man for forgetting. At least Stenwold was used to the idea; he could pretend he understood.

Walking through the streets of Collegium, she was nevertheless a cripple. She looked up at the slowly manoeuvring airship and felt that it should fall on her. It was too great; it could not stay up. The sounds of the trains, which had lulled her to sleep ever since she first came to Collegium, were now like the cries of strange and frightening beasts.

Yet she had spent years learning mechanics, basic artificing, forces and levers, power and pressure. Now it was as if she had spent all that time learning how to walk through walls or turn lead into gold. She could clearly remember being able to do it once, but not how. The logic had deserted her and she had become like him. She had lost her birthright, the basic tools that made the modern world