The Scarab Path (19 page)

Thalric
nodded, eyeing the automotive that Brugan had found for him. It would not be a comfortable
journey but he was used to that. The hold, hastily fitted out for passengers,
consisted of a metal and wood box slung between the huge-spoked rear wheels,
while the driver and his mate would be sitting up front amid the dust. It was a
conveyance meant for couriers, travelling fast and without luxury.

‘How
does it manage off the roads?’ Thalric asked.

Marger
raised his eyebrows. ‘Well enough, if we had to.’ Long-faced and sandy-haired,
he was about five years Thalric’s junior and slight of build for a Wasp. He
looked wholly inoffensive, which was the best way for a Rekef man to look.
Brugan had chosen an embassy as the ostensible reason for a Wasp team
descending on Khanaphes. Thalric would provide the public face, and act as
special adviser on the Lowlanders, while Marger would conduct the Rekef
Outlander operation proper. It was a delicate balance of power.

‘We’ll
go to Shalk,’ Thalric decided. ‘Not Tyrshaan.’
Let’s make
it difficult, just in case
.

Instead
of protesting, Marger digested this proclamation. ‘If you want. It shouldn’t
affect our timing much. With the mining trade the roads are probably better.’
His team was loading the automotive now: two more Wasps and a Beetle-kinden
strapping crates and rolled-up canvas to the vehicle’s sides, before returning
to the row of storage sheds for more. ‘I’d ask why, though.’

‘Why
not? Shalk’s as good,’ Thalric told him, ‘besides, I’ve seen Tyrshaan recently.
I’d rather see somewhere else.’
Let them think of me as the
Regent, not the Rekef Major
. He had other good reasons for wanting to go
to Shalk, but those were not for sharing.

Marger
shrugged, which he did a lot of. ‘It’s your call,’ he said, and went off to
help his men. Thalric leant back against one of the rear wheels, feeling the
machine rock and jolt as they continued loading it. Marger was opaque: it was
impossible to know yet whether he would cause problems. The captain’s
subordinates gave few clues, either. The Beetle-kinden was an artificer, a paunchy,
grey-haired veteran put in just to reassure the locals. The other two Wasps
looked like men more comfortable in armour. They showed Thalric a careful
deference but otherwise said nothing.

Thalric
was making maps in his mind: envisioning the Flykinden warren of Shalk, the
quarry mines there, the descent to Forest Alim and the river Jamail. It was all
book-learnt stuff, for his travels had never taken him much through the
South-Empire and not at all beyond its borders.

I will be happier once the war starts up again, to give me an
excuse to return to the Commonweal or the Lowlands, to places I know
.
Save that would mean crossing swords with Stenwold Maker once more.
We cannot afford to let each other live. The next time I will
have to remove him, or he me
. The thought brought with it an unwelcome
stab of conscience, for Stenwold could have had Thalric killed several times
already. Instead he had stayed his hand.
Though for his own
advantage!
Still, it did not sit well that Thalric’s too often pawned
loyalty must await that final twist of the knife.

The Lowlanders have come close to ruining me for a proper agent’s
work
. His outer shell of Good Imperial Servant had taken too many knocks
and shakes while in their company.

Marger
stepped away from the automotive, a soldier’s tension abruptly in his manner.
Someone came running unevenly around the storage sheds towards them, and
Thalric saw one of Marger’s people put down the big crate he was carrying and
crouch beside it with hand ready to sting.

‘Hold!’
Thalric called out, and he went to intercept the newcomer before any damage
could be done. ‘Osgan,’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

Osgan
had dredged up his old uniform from somewhere: a Consortium factor’s greatcoat,
quartered in the army colours. There was a shortsword at his belt, the baldric
crossing the strap of his satchel. He had even shaved, although he had made a
ragged job of it, and his eyes were red-rimmed but his gaze steady.

‘I’m
coming with you,’ he panted, short of breath.

‘You
aren’t,’ Thalric snapped. ‘What’s got into you?’With a firm hand on Osgan’s
shoulder, he led the man a short distance from the automotive, meanwhile
signalling for Marger to carry on.

Osgan
looked at him miserably. ‘You’ve found your escape, now. You’re going, yes? Going
far.’

Thalric
nodded and scowled, his last words with the Empress recurring to him. As she
had made a public farewell, before the whole court, she had reached up to kiss
him and murmured, ‘
You shall return to me. You shall always
return
.’

‘Let me
come with you,’ Osgan said. ‘Please, Thalric. I’m dying here.’

‘You’re
more likely to die on the road. This is Rekef business, Osgan. Stay here and
keep to your cellars.’.

‘Each
time you find some way of getting out of this place, it gets worse for me,’
Osgan complained, almost in a whisper. ‘They hate me. They hate me because of
you – and because of me. They know I’ve broken. You’ll come back and find me
gone, and nobody will even remember my name.’

‘You’re
exaggerating.’ Osgan was probably not exaggerating but Thalric couldn’t agree
to it.

‘And
what of you, anyway?’ Osgan asked. ‘You think you’ll go back to your old ways,
your old trade? You think they’ll let you? Them?’ Even his jabbing gesture
towards the automotive looked crippled, his fingers crooked. ‘They won’t let
you back in, Thalric. They won’t forget who you are. What you were.’

Thalric
glanced around, despite himself, seeing Marger watching him. The man bore his
placid, accepting expression that Thalric had not yet been able to scratch.
There had been no sense of complicity between them, no admission that they even
lived in the same world. Thalric had wanted to protest,
I
am a major in the Rekef
, but now he realized that he did not even know
Marger’s true Rekef rank. The ‘captain’ was army-issue, meaning less than
nothing on a covert run like this.

‘If you
can’t keep up with us, I’m not sure I can save you,’ he warned. His Imperial
conditioning raged at him:
What is this? Mercy? Compassion?
A strong man did not bow to such emotions. He had no duty to save Osgan from
the results of his own dissipation. Better for the Empire that the man just
vanished away, making room for someone who would be better at his job.

I am tainted
. Thalric had seen too much, done too much. He
had been born a true Wasp, but now he’d become some kind of halfbreed of the
mind.

He
turned back to the waiting automotive. ‘Captain Marger,’ he announced, ‘one
more for the journey.’

Marger
hesitated over that, taking in the sight of Osgan. ‘I wouldn’t advise it,’ he
said. ‘We’ll be short of space and supplies.’

‘Comfort
is never a soldier’s companion, and there are enough way stations to supply
us.’ Thalric felt as though he and Marger were facing up to each other in duel,
looking for the other’s weak points. ‘This is Lieutenant Osgan and he’s on my
staff.’

Still,
Marger was unhappy with the idea. ‘This is a Rekef operation and he’s no
agent.’

‘We
already know our paths will be diverging, once we reach the city,’ Thalric said
reasonably. ‘It will make more sense for me to have Osgan there with me than to
have to call on you for assistance.’ He held Marger’s gaze, waiting to see if
the man would stand firm, or fall back.

The
final answer was a shrug, the man’s easy acceptance reasserting itself. There
had been a gleam in there, of Rekef steel, but this was not a battlefield
Marger would choose to fight on.

‘Your
call,’ he said again, then, ‘We’re just about loaded. Are you and your … staff
ready to move out?’

Many Wasps wondered why Fly-kinden, who had the sky as their plaything,
chose to live so much of their time underground. On the surface Shalk appeared
merely a collection of little huts and mounds almost lost amid the sweep of the
surrounding hills, and only anchored by the bulk of an Imperial garrison’s
barracks. Thalric knew that most of the town lay beneath, in a complex of
narrow tunnels and broad chambers that were impossible to navigate unless one
was both tiny and airborne. Military tacticians had often speculated on the
difficulties of forcing an Imperial presence on the Fly-kinden, in the unlikely
event that they decided to resist one. It would certainly be possible, but
drastic measures would be called for and Thalric, having heard of the
gas-weapon disastrously employed at Szar, thought it a good thing that the
Shalken and their ilk were proving so compliant. Nobody would profit from a
rebellion here.

Of
course the Fly town itself was only half of it. Beyond the hills the land
suddenly stopped and dropped, so the anatomy of the earth he stood on was
exposed in stratified layers where the ground had simply fallen away as a
result of some ancient cataclysm. It had since become the Empire’s largest
quarry and mining complex, with several thousand slaves working there day in
and day out. If the insurrection had allowed these toiling wretches any
reprieve, that was well and truly over now.

After
they had docked their automotive at the garrison’s stables, Thalric took Marger
aside.

‘Find me
transport to Forest Alim from Shalk End,’ he requested. ‘We’ll take the river
from there to Khanaphes.’

‘Shalk
End?’ Marger said. That meant the Shalk below them, the quarry and its slaves.
It was certainly possible to shortcut to the plain below by descending the face
of the mine workings, but not usual. ‘Is there something I should know?’

If you were meant to know, you’d already have been told
,
Thalric thought, still with assassins in mind. ‘I like a bit of variety,
Captain,’ he said. ‘Besides, wouldn’t you like to see the Empire’s largest
quarry in operation?’

Marger
shrugged, predictably. ‘I’ll go lean on the foreman,’ he replied.

Thalric
nodded. ‘Osgan, go find the Consortium and get enough supplies for a tenday for
the six of us.’

The man
started on hearing his name and seemed to wrestle with the words before
agreeing.

‘Good,’
Thalric nodded. ‘The rest of you, wait by the machine until we’re ready.’ He
smiled at the Beetle and two Wasps and they regarded him cautiously. They had
none of them decided precisely what he was, and he wondered what they might
have already heard.

Which leaves me at liberty in Shalk
. But he would have to
be quick. No doubt Marger would be prompt enough in doing his job.

The
garrison at Shalk was unusual at the best of times, but even more unsettled now
since the insurrection. Its purpose had always been to safeguard the mines and
the quarry, rather than to intimidate a naturally obsequious populace. The
current military personnel were all new, the traitorous old guard having been
rooted out or fled, or else died on the field before Tyrshaan. The staff,
though, the underlings who kept everything running, were the same old faces.
For most such garrisons they dragged Auxillians from halfway across the Empire,
putting them among foreigners to limit any chance of betrayal.

The
Shalken themselves were an exception, however. Where most other kinden were
unwilling partners, slaves of the Empire with their families and home cities held
hostage for their good behaviour, Flies and Beetle-kinden had proved willing
subjects of the crown since the Empire’s early days. The halls of the Shalken
garrison were busy with diminutive forms – in the air and on the ground – of
cleaners, messengers, scribes and servants. They went about their duties
deftly, with the eternal pragmatism of their kind.

Thalric
sought out the records office, where messages came in either for filing or
passing on. The Fly-kinden had long made Shalk the South-Empire’s great message
hub, which had been difficult while the traitor governors divided up the South
between them. Now everything was returning to business as usual, and the same
faces were to be found at the same desks. All except one.

It had
been a lucky piece of research, but Thalric liked to keep in touch with his old
friends.

He
spotted the man quickly, just another Fly-kinden sorting papers in a pool of
sunlight under a window. Thalric made his way behind the man’s desk, appearing
to peruse a rack of scrolls thoughtfully, and in a low voice murmured, ‘A
strange place to find a lieutenant of the Rekef, one might think.’

The Fly
did not pause in his work, did not even twitch. ‘If one thought that, one might
wonder whether it was common knowledge,’ he said, as if speaking to the ledger
he was marking.

‘Not
yet,’ Thalric replied, and he heard the smallest sigh.

‘Some of
us fall despite our best endeavours, some of us rise despite our tribulations,’
the Fly observed. ‘For instance, I saw your name included on an execution list,
shortly before I decided to retire.’

‘You
don’t ever retire from the Rekef, te Berro.’

‘No,
they retire you instead.’ Thalric heard the misery in te Berro’s voice. ‘Might
one ask how it is that a dead man is now Regent of the Empire? I’ve followed
your career with interest.’

Of course you have
. For te Berro was a Rekef man, and that
training did not sit idle. Even here, in hiding, he had clearly put himself in
a position to gather information, even if he was doing so only for himself. It
reminded Thalric of his own behaviour in occupied Tharn, when he had been
acting as Stenwold’s agent. Old habits like that didn’t die.

‘You
must have jumped ship from Reiner’s people, if you got to see that list,’
Thalric noted.