She had assumed he would keep her, but he had let her go. He believed, despite his Aptitude, in destiny. He believed she would come back to him voluntarily, to fulfil whatever role he wished of her. As an Inapt Beetle, her very curse had made her his messiah. Her mind was now reeling as she set off for the Place of Foreigners. She did not dare look at the pyramid, with those statues placed irregularly about its top, for fear of the stories it might tell her. She was painfully aware that she had failed Petri and Kadro, and that her own selfishness was to blame, once more.
As she reached the archway leading through to the embassies, something stopped her, snapping her back to the here-and-now. She found her hand on her sword-hilt, yet no danger in sight. What is it? Some sense she had not known before was calling to her… No, I have known this. The desert, the Scorpion raid.
'Achaeos?' she asked softly, feeling an edge of tension that was external to her, the result of some other's keener senses.
Someone moved in the shadow of the archway. Up until then, she had not so much as glimpsed him. When she saw him she started to relax, but whatever had alerted her kept its hook in her twisted tight. It was one of the Vekken, she realized. As usual she could not have said which one.
'Were you waiting for me?' she began.
He stared at her blankly and she saw, so very late, that his sword was clear of its sheath, blackened with pitch. Her reactions caught up then, her hand clenching on her own hilt as she looked into his hating eyes.
There was a rapid flutter of wings, and Trallo was standing beside her, all smiles. 'Ah, there you are, been looking all over. You do wander off some, Bella Cheerwell!' His hollow cheer washed over them both, but Che guessed at once that he knew where she had spent the day. The Vekken looked from her to the Fly-kinden, then stalked away without a word. He had already told her more than he had intended. Something has snapped in the Vekken's ambassadorial calm.
'Trallo, what's going on?'
'You're asking me?' The little man shook his head. 'Nothing's happened at the embassy. The professors are all off looking at rocks down by the river, for reasons unknown to man or insect. Oh, and Sieur Gorget is being more insufferable than usual, but apart from that…' He was staring after the Vekken ambassador, rubbing at his beard.
'Manny is…?'
'Oh, it might be that Bella Rakespear received a certain Khanaphir beau this morning, in her own chambers, but more than that I have no knowledge of.'
Che managed to raise a small smile at that. They passed through into the Place of Foreigners, and she took a seat by the pond. I need to speak with the Vekken, but I first need to know what's set them off. She remembered that brief moment of confrontation. This is more than injured pride.
'That's twice you've been there for me, Trallo,' she noted. It was a train of thought she had stored away a while ago, now dragged out into the sunlight again. The little man merely shrugged, and did not look surprised when she continued, 'I don't recall you asking me for any pay recently.'
'Well, you know…' he replied, but he was waiting for what she said next.
'You're a business-minded sort.' She wanted to pick her words with more care, but it had been such a long day. 'The plan was that you'd be back in Solarno by now. Talk to me, Trallo.'
'You've a complaint about my services?' he enquired, light-heartedly, but with a brittle edge.
'Quite the opposite. Talk to me.'
He smiled. 'You're a popular woman,' he explained. 'You have a lot of friends, and they're anxious that you're well.'
'We're not talking about Berjek and the others. I know that much,' she said flatly. 'Trallo, are you taking orders from the Ministers?'
'From the…?' She saw in his expression immediately that she was wrong. He laughed out loud, in fact. 'They already have a thousand Khanaphir watching you, Bella Cheerwell. They don't need me to keep an eye on things as well.'
'Then…' And who was it who pulled me from the tent of the Fir-eaters – for all the good it did him? And I never stopped to ask what he was doing there so deep in the Marsh Alcaia, so close to me. A terrible bleakness settled on her. 'Are you taking the Empire's coin, Trallo?' she asked.
'Not a bit of it,' he told her. 'Bella Cheerwell, I like you, so I only take coin from those I think have your best interests at heart. That way they're paying me for something I'd want to do anyway, if I could afford to do it on my own.' His grin was so guileless, it cut her like a knife. 'I wouldn't take Imperial coin, Bella Cheerwell, but I might just take the coin of Sieur Thalric.'
She stared at him. 'You've been spying on me for Thalric,' she said.
'I've been watching out for you, for Thalric,' he confirmed, absolutely candid. 'That's what he asked, that's what I've done. He doesn't think you can look after yourself, you see.'
'Oh, doesn't he?' she snapped. 'Does he not?' She heard her raised voice echo back from the embassy walls. Trallo waited, still smiling slightly, but not so close that he could not get out of the way if she went for him.
Diplomatic incident, her mind told her. He's broken the truce by spying on me. Blast the man – just as I was getting somewhere with this city the Empire comes butting in. Another part of her was saying, You should not have asked the question if you did not want to hear the answer – especially as you have known all this, if you had only thought about it, long before.
And, a fragile voice: And he dragged you out of the Fir den, and what if he had not?
'I want to be angry,' she complained. 'Why aren't I?'
'Beetle-kinden are a phlegmatic lot,' suggested Trallo, and then skipped back a step as she glared at him.
'And Flies are a pragmatic one,' she shot back. He shrugged at the truth of it.
She glanced back towards the Collegiate embassy, which was where she should now be going. But the Vekken would be there, and she did not feel ready to deal with that problem yet – if it was even capable of being dealt with. Petri Coggen would be there too, another person Che did not want to see just now. She would have accepted the company of Manny Gorget or the others, but they were out doing what they were supposed to be doing. How simple some people's lives are.
'Let's go have a word with Thalric,' she decided. Trallo raised his eyebrows, and she had the chance to turn his smile back on him. 'Why not? In this new climate of brutal honesty, I want to ask him why he's suborning my staff.'
She marched off around the pond towards the Imperial embassy, feeling a mean spark of pride that she had wrong-footed the Fly-kinden for once.
A servant was already opening the door to greet her.
'Cheerwell Maker, the Collegiate ambassador, here to see her opposite number,' she announced smartly. The servant ushered her into the hallway, where another was already padding off to deliver the news. Aside from the ubiquitous Khanaphir she saw no one, certainly nobody serving under the Imperial flag.
'Where are they all?' she asked.
'Off watching your lot, I imagine,' Trallo said. 'You have to remember the way the Empire thinks. They don't believe for a moment you're just here to catch fish and look at stones.'
'And do you?' she asked him, because his tone had seemed doubting.
He spread his hands. 'I don't need to believe anything.'
As they stood in the hallway, Thalric appeared at the stair-rail above them, his expression suggesting that he had not believed the servant's message. Behind him there was a Beetle-kinden, a bulky Imperial of about Stenwold's age and dimensions.
There was a beat, a moment's pause, before Thalric turned and descended the stairs, saying, 'Ambassador? Is there a problem?'
'Possibly.' Che saw Thalric's gaze touch on Trallo and then slide off, noticed the quickly suppressed flicker of understanding.
'Ah, well,' he said, then turned back to his Beetle companion. 'We'll have to break, Corolly. I'll leave the board set.'