The Scarab Path

The pause the Fly allowed made the answer obvious. 'Not as such, but there were a lot of people about.'

'If he's still alive, he would come here,' the woman insisted.

'He might be thinking exactly the same about you,' the fat man pointed out. 'Bloody women, honestly.'

'He would come here,' she said again, sitting down. 'And I will wait for him here. I'll wait all night, if I must.'

Mad, all of them, was Accius's silent comment. He was ready now for when the house went to bed. The ambassador would get her throat cut, and thus the last tie holding the expedition to Khanaphes would be severed. It's just as well the other woman's lover is dead. We might have had to kill him, then. Or her.

Luck has been scarce recently, Malius thought. We were owed some.

She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles, falling into that familiar nightmare once again. Che did not need to open her eyes to know where she was: the interrogation room in the Myna palace. It was the room that she had personally witnessed being gutted by the resistance, every implement there destroyed, but in her mind it remained whole and unassailable.

And he did not even use the machines on me, she reflected, half in and half out of the dream. Yet still it haunts me. How quickly would I have broken under torture, had he ordered it? And would they ever have been able to put the pieces of me back together?

And she opened her eyes, seeing above her the poised arms, the drills and saws and files of an artificer's trade now horribly suborned. The sound of the steam engine was turned up, the noise that Thalric had used to hide his conspiracies. She looked around for him now, for this was not the first time her dreams had dragged her back here.

But it was not Thalric, at the levers. It was a slighter man, in grey robes, and she did not need him to turn around to recognize him. Turn he did, though, regarding her coolly with those white eyes, and she cried out, 'Achaeos!'

'Why do you make me do this?' he asked, his hands hovering over the controls. She was fully in the dream, now, and no escaping. It had all become terribly real in such a short space of time.

'Let me go!' she begged him, wrenching at the straps. 'Achaeos, let me go!'

'Not this time,' he said. His voice was quiet but she could hear it clearly over the whine of all the drills and the rumble of the steam. 'Che, look at us.'

'Achaeos — what is it? Why are you doing this?'

'Because you force me, Che,' he explained.

'Just tell me what you want me to do,' she said quickly, tripping over the words. 'I've tried! I've tried to follow you when you appear to me. I've gone everywhere you led me.'

'You do not understand,' he said. 'You do not understand at all. What do I want, you ask me? What do you think I want?'

'I don't know! Tell me!' she shrilled, for the drill arms were descending jerkily now, under his ministrations

'What do you want, Che? Freedom? To be let go? Do you think I would do this if you were not forcing me?'

The wrongness, the discontinuity of the situation, tried to speak to her, but the drill was very close, glittering within her vision, and it took all of her attention. She squirmed and twisted, trying to shift herself from underneath it.

It dropped, and she screamed-

And she woke.

The darkness of Khanaphes at night. The cool air from the river. There was no sound of distant battle, or of nocturnal assault by the Scorpions. The city was not yet under siege. She took a deep breath, still shaking.

I cannot survive many more of those nightmares. And, following from that: What if I do not wake next time, as the drill comes down?

The slightest sound then, and she went cold all over because there was someone in the room with her. She was instantly and absolutely sure of it. Achaeos? she wondered, but the ghost had never announced itself by sounds — just a smudge in the air, or the harsh, authoritative voice in her head.

Her Art penetrated the darkness, leaving her with that muted grey clarity that must have been how he always saw the world. Her heart caught, on seeing the cloaked figure crouching by the window.

'Oh, you have gone too far now,' she berated him, sitting up. 'Thalric, what …?' And then her horrified pause as he stared through the darkness, towards her voice — because, of course, she had not seen him since matters had fallen foul with the Empire. Which of your flags are you flying tonight, Thalric? Is it the black and the gold once more?

'If you're here to kill me, you've missed your best chance,' she told him, sounding remarkably calm even to herself. She had a sword within easy reach of the bed, a habit learned from her uncle. He could sting her before her hand reached it, of course. She heard a ragged release of breath.

'I need your help, Che.'

He was not quite looking at her, just vaguely in the direction of the bed. She kept forgetting how the Wasps possessed no Art against the darkness. Seeing him more clearly, he looked as though the intervening days had not been kind to him. His clothes were creased and torn, and he was unshaven, hollow-eyed. He stayed close to the window, one hand reaching out towards the sill, as if ready to jump.

She swung her legs off the bed. In her flimsy nightshirt she would be just a shape in the dark to him, but he still made her feel self-conscious. She pulled on a tunic, telling herself it was against the chill.

'Help?' she asked him. 'Help against what?'

'The Empire,' he said, and she laughed at him. She had not meant to, and she saw his hurt expression, unguarded because he thought she could not see it.

'I'm sorry, Thalric, but-'

'I know,' he said flatly. 'I lose track myself, of whether they want me dead or alive. I certainly lost track this time, but now I know they want me dead. I don't know for what reason, but the orders must come from high up. I need your help, Che, because there's nobody else I can turn to.'

She had her sword in her hands now, not to wield but for the comfort it brought her. She padded towards him, seeing his eyes track her approach with difficulty. Little enough of the moonlight got in at her window.

How strange to see him so helpless. He sat himself back on the windowsill, within arm's reach of her — a man at the end of his resources but not defeated, never that. He had a wild look to him, the patient Rekef officer cast off for the moment, and she thought, This is how he looked in Myna — a man with nowhere else to go, and all the more dangerous for it. He will make some other Wasps pay for putting him here again, she thought, and it was oddly comforting. So he is on my side again. At least I know.

'What do you need?' she asked. 'If I can help you, I will.'

The sudden smile surprised her. He thought I would cut him loose. And why not? Do I need these complications, when everything else is falling apart? Despite the thought, she knew she would not turn him away.

'Osgan's on the run with me, and he needs medical help. We're holed up in a drinking den. I need … What I need is just someone who has the freedom of the city, to come and go. Someone to fetch for me and tell me what's going on. Above all, someone I can trust.'

'Major Thalric, are you trying to recruit me?' she asked with a slight smile, then collected her satchel, which held some basic medicines in it. When she turned to him again, his expression surprised her in its thoughtfulness.

'I have just described an agent's work, haven't I?' he said. 'No matter how hard I try, the old instincts just won't leave me alone.' He shrugged. 'Just as well, for I'll need them. Ready?'

She felt an odd leap of excitement at the thought, something she had been missing since the war. But I hated all of that, surely. She had served as her uncle's agent, therefore plunging