The Scarab Path

'You don't understand.' Petri actually knelt before her. 'This thing, it is banned by the Masters… the Ministers, I mean. It is illegal. What would they think if they found you…? They call the very practice "the Profanity".'

In Che's mind the ghost howled again, and Achaeos's blank eyes held only hatred. She could feel her hands shaking, ever so slightly. I will break, she decided, if I cannot claw some release from this city. 'I don't care,' she told Petri. 'Let that be my worry.' The words tasted foul in her mouth.

'But the people… you must see, the people who practise Profanity, they are criminals, outlaws, outcasts. If you venture among them, they might just cut your throat.'

'I am looking for mystics, whatever shabby oracles and seers this place can throw up,' Che said stubbornly, 'not for some den of murderers.'

'They take their mysticism very seriously here. If the guard caught them, they would be executed. It is… a vice, an illegal pleasure. Fir, they call it.'

'Fear?'

'Fir,' Petri pronounced it more carefully. 'But it is not like taking some Spiderlands drug, or exotic women, or that kind of vice. There is… a whole under-society based around it, and they are mad, unpredictable. They might kill you on the spot – you can never tell. Kadro, he was good with such people, but he still didn't like to go looking for the Fir-eaters.'

Che clenched her fists in frustration. She felt as though she was already experiencing withdrawal from some drug, cut off from a normality that she had breathed and eaten and slept with for twenty years. I cannot be doing what I am now doing. I am Cheerwell Maker, scholar of the Great College, citizen of Collegium, niece of Master Stenwold Maker. I am no criminal. Give me some other way to turn!

'But they are mystics, or at least they talk like mystics do, about the past, and… impossible things,' Petri continued hoarsely. 'I do not know who else there is.'

'Then take me to them,' Che demanded, before she could change her mind.

*

The man Petri found was a starved-looking Khanaphir. He was bare-chested and Che could see each of his ribs distinctly beneath that taut skin. It was clear that sustenance came second to some greater love in his life.

They met him at an 'open house' near the docks, meaning a place where the locals offered drink and other services to foreign mariners, so that they would not be tempted to venture any further into the city. The place was crowded, squalid, the outer shell of an older building fitted out with as many benches and tables as possible. Solarnese and Dragonfly and Spider-kinden sat shoulder to shoulder, and argued and drank and brawled.

The lean man hunched forward towards the two Beetle women. His eyes were cavernous, hollowed. 'I hear you seek something this place here cannot provide,' he said. Che had to strain to catch the words.

Petri glanced nervously at Che and then nodded, her hands clutched each other anxiously on the tabletop. 'Something special,' she explained. 'I know… someone I know said you could find it for us.'

There was a bleak cynicism in the thin man's eyes. 'Be careful what you seek. The Profanity is not for all palates. It is not for foreigners.'

'Do not presume to know who I am,' Che interrupted. The words came from within her, yet no conscious thought had formed them. As she snapped them out, she found herself pincering the man's bony wrist with her fingers. His recoiling twitch whiplashed down his long arm, but her grip held tight.

'What do you want?' He was afraid now, not of them but of something else, something she could not see.

'You know what I want.' Che's heart was racing. She felt as though she was hurtling downhill, and sometimes she was in control and sometimes she was just falling forwards. Something had come over her, some sharp inspiration. Could that be Achaeos's ghost, speaking through her?

The lean man bit his lip, staring at her. 'This other… no, but you…Who are you? Where do you come from?'

'I've come a long way.' Che finally released him, saw the shadow of her grasp on his skin, that he rubbed at resentfully. He would no longer look at either of them.

'If you want, then you shall have. But do not complain, afterwards, that it was not what you sought.'

'Just take me there,' Che said. 'Petri, you can go. You don't have to come with me.'

'But… you can't just go off alone with him,' Petri protested. She dragged Che away from the table, out of the man's earshot. 'He'll kill you,' she insisted.

'He might.' Che's hand moved to her sword, buckled on now that politeness was no issue. 'What else can I do?'

'No, Che!' Petri hissed, casting the thin man a venomous look – as though she herself had not been the one who had led Che here.

'Will you come with me, then?'

'With him? Into the Marsh Alcaia again?' Petri bared her teeth in desperation. 'Not again… don't make me…'

Someone right beside them rapped on a table with something hard, a dagger hilt. Both of them turned to see a Fly-kinden man, his face half hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat. The neat beard gave him away and Che felt her stomach lurch at the thought of discovery.

'Trallo,' she gasped.

He tilted up the brim of the hat and gave her a broad smile. 'I reckoned you were up to something foolish,' he said. 'Thankfully you have people interested in keeping you safe, so I decided to keep an eye on you.'

'Trallo, this isn't your business now.'

He took a long breath, a tiny spot of calm in the rowdy open house. The lean man still watched them, clutching at the edge of his table.

'You're about to do something really unwise, I can tell that. You're about to go somewhere very dangerous.'

'It's my decision.'

Trallo glanced from Che to the shaking Petri, and back. 'Fine, I'll come with you. That's my decision.'

Che was caught in mid-protest, suddenly thinking, Was that not what I wanted? Trallo would surely be of more use than poor Petri, and Petri just as surely would not come willingly. 'Do you know… You know Khanaphes. You should know what we're about before you make such an offer.'

Trallo shrugged. 'Like I said, our friends have asked me to ensure you're safe. They're worried about you.'

Che thought of Berjek and the rest, and would not have believed that of them, but here the Fly was, all the same.

She leant close to him. 'We are going to the Fir-eaters. You've heard of them?'

'Heard of, but never met.' He made a face. 'Tell your hungry friend there to pack his bags, then. Bella Petri, you get yourself back to the embassy – and not a word of this to anyone, you understand?'

Petri nodded gratefully and, before anyone could retract the offer, she was hurrying for the door.

'I'm grateful for this, Trallo,' Che said.

The Fly spread his hands. 'What are friends for?'

And she was happy enough with that answer not to notice the signal he gave, as they left the open house. Eighteen There had been Scorpions keeping pace with them for at least three days, and Hrathen guessed probably a while longer. Since that morning they had let themselves be silhouetted against the barren skyline. On foot, or seated on their beasts, with spears held high, they had stared at the odd caravan but made no move against it.

Why would they, Hrathen thought wryly, when we are so obligingly going where they want us to go? Imperial mapmakers had not made much inroad into the Nem. It was a wasteland of stones and dust, of coarse ridges of bloody-minded grass that cut the skin like knives, and of ruins. Here and there some fault in the rock beneath opened narrow rootspace with access to underground water, nourishing stark, barrel-trunked trees with fleshy leaves shaped like the sort of arrowheads the Empire used to pierce strong mail. The going was uneven, the dusty terrain rising and falling with the stony bones of the land beneath. Sometimes those bones speared through into crags and juts of red-black rock that the coarse wind had rounded and bowed.

The Imperial scouts, mostly staying with the dubious safety of the Slave Corps, had nevertheless ventured far enough to pinpoint a Scorpion-kinden camp, and it was this tenuous landmark that Hrathen had set his compass by. Overall, it was Brugan's plan but Hrathen's details. Hrathen found he liked this mission, as Brugan had known he would, and in liking it, he would remain faithful to it. Until it suits me otherwise. Such was the constant clash of his mixed blood: the Wasp crying, Serve yourself by serving the Empire, while the Scorpion roared out, Do what you will.