'Tell me about Khanaphes,' Hrathen said, and the Scorpions went quiet again. 'Are the people of Khanaphes your friends?' he persisted. 'Do they pay your warriors tribute? Do they send you gifts?'
Jakal tilted her helmet back. The face she revealed was a hard one, even for a Scorpion. Her eyes were red, and the oil-fire made them shine with a mad light. 'We raid the Khanaphir all along the Jamail,' she replied. 'We strike at their farms, their merchants and tax gatherers. When they are strong they hunt us, but we are fast and they are slow. When we are strong, they fall back to their stone walls that we cannot breach.'
'The Empire wishes an end to Khanaphes,' said Hrathen. The Scorpion laughter was derisory, but Jakal held up a clawed hand to quell it.
'Why?' she demanded. 'What offence has it caused, being so far away?'
'Who can say why?' Hrathen had asked himself the same question. It must be because Brugan wants to see if the Many can be put to work for the Empire, he had decided. Khanaphes is simply the most convenient testing ground. But there was more to it than that, and he guessed that the detachment of Rekef agents he had brought were to be involved in it. 'Perhaps some citizen of Khanaphir has insulted our Empress… It only matters that the Empire wishes it done.'
'And the Empire wishes me to do it,' Jakal said.
'Do you not wish to do it?'
'If the riches of Khanaphes could be mine, I would already have taken them. Do you think I would have stayed my hand?'
'You need stay it no longer, then,' Hrathen told her. 'For the gifts I bring you are weapons. I bring two thousand crossbows and more, supplied with bolts, and the men to teach you in their use.'
'We know of crossbows,' said Jakal coolly, but he could see the interest in her eyes.
'Also, we bring a dozen siege engines – leadshotters, they are called,' he continued. 'The walls of Khanaphes shall stand in your way no more than the walls of this old city here.'
They did not cheer at that. Instead they stared at him avidly, whilst word of what he had said was passed back and back, until the whole usurped city knew it. Nineteen 'What is this place?' Che asked, feeling as though she had stepped into another world. From the fierce, dry heat of the sun outside they were suddenly plunged into a thick, muggy, sticky humidity. The daylight had dimmed to a coloured gloom as it filtered through tight-stretched canvas, silk and linen. Ahead of them the emaciated Khanaphir had stopped again to wait for them.
'The Marsh Alcaia,' Trallo pronounced. 'Even a city as polite as Khanaphes needs somewhere to break the law. At least when the guard come looking, they know exactly where to go. People will always have vices they need to indulge.'
'But this?' Che took a few steps deeper, beneath the cloth ceiling. It was like walking under water. She felt an almost physical resistance to her intrusion.
'Don't worry about that, worry about why our friend seems so fond of you,' the Fly advised her.
'What do you mean? I sought him out.'
'I mean that he could have run while we were bickering in the open house, and he could still run now, and we'd never find him in here. Think about it.'
She tried to, but here, in the stale heat, it was hard to match the pieces. Their guide was drawing ahead again, making them hurry to catch up with him. All around them were Khanaphir and foreigners intent on their purposeful errands. Amid the fragile aisles lined with people crying their wares, the sounds and smells were overwhelming.
He always stayed just in sight, always paused by each new turning he took, and always looking back at them – at her – with that hollow, hungry gaze. Trallo was right: it was not because she was a foreigner, or anything to do with the money she might carry. Instead, something had sparked inside him, as soon as he had taken a proper look at her.
Is this really what I am looking for? The stifling air was making her feel dizzy, while odd thoughts and feelings kept passing through her mind.
'Wastes, but we're going in deep,' Trallo observed. 'Never been this far into the Marsh Alcaia.' He cast a glance backwards, teeth bared, and Che drew back, suddenly feeling trapped. She opened her mouth to suggest turning back, but then something twisted in her mind and she saw it. There, just beside the skeletal, hurrying figure of their guide, she saw the air seethe and darken: something of the night fighting to be seen, to make itself known to her. She imagined she even saw it pointing after him, urging her onwards. After that she had no choice.
Again, the lean man was waiting for them at the turn, leading into yet another alleyway. Roofed with heavier cloth, it was cooler there, and the air was thick with darkness. Che let her Art cut through it, spying a tent at the far end, with four or five figures seated there.
'This must be it,' she told Trallo. He nodded grimly. She saw that he held his hand near his knife-hilt.
The thin man was now kneeling in front of the tent: a low, ragged structure, patched and filthy, its original colour lost beyond recall. The doorway was hung with charms and lockets, little bits of brass and bronze and tin that dangled and jangled on slender chains. Someone inside was speaking slowly in a low voice, as Che paused before the entrance to reach out for one of the swinging fragments of metal. It had been crudely cut with a symbol that reminded her of the stone carvings to be seen everywhere about the city. Again she felt a stab of anticipation.
'Why have you brought these here?' demanded the voice. Only now did Che identify it as a woman's, so deep and rough it sounded.
'She was asking, asking questions, and she found me,' the lean man explained. 'Mother, when she asked… I saw…'
Che saw a bulky form shift within the tent, half hidden by the hanging drapes. 'I see her. She is foreign Beetle-kinden. I know them and they have nothing. They are lost to the old ways. She is wasting her time. You are wasting mine.'
'Only look at her, Mother!' the lean man almost howled.
'May I speak?' Che intruded, trying to keep her voice steady. She saw the figure shift again, still shapeless behind the drapes.
'Come forward at your own risk,' the half-seen woman replied, and Che could hear the soft whisper of daggers and knifes tasting the air.
'I mean you no harm,' Che persisted and, although Trallo was shaking his head fiercely, she crouched to enter the tent on her knees.
There were three Khanaphir inside, two men and one woman who each held a leaf-bladed dagger and stared at her with mute hostility. Another denizen was a halfbreed, Khanaphir mixed with something else to produce skin of a green-black hue. He was hollow-cheeked and thin-shouldered and yet with a gut that bulged over his belt. Che's eyes were now fixed on the woman beside him, the one whom the thin man had called 'Mother'. She was another halfbreed, and a halfbreed of halfbreeds, until it was impossible to tell just which kindens' blood ran through her veins. She was grotesquely fat, her huge frame shuddering with each breath even as she reclined on silken cushions. Her face was round and sagging, a dozen vices writ large there in pocks and blemishes, a true degenerate except for the eyes. Her eyes were blue and clear and piercing and, looking into them, Che felt an almost physical shock, like sudden recognition.
'Well, now…' the woman called Mother rumbled.
Che heard Trallo step in behind her, staying close to the door.
'My name is Cheerwell Maker,' she said. 'I… I come seeking…'
'Enlightenment.' Mother pronounced the word as though she were eating a sweetmeat. 'Oh, yes, you do, don't you.' She leant forward, her shapeless body bulging. 'What are you, little traveller? Do you truly know what we do here? The thing they call the Profanity?'
'Tell me,' said Che, and the woman smiled slyly.