The Scarab Path

Thirty-Four

It was hard work running Thalric's errands, but that was because the city was falling apart.

Even moving through the streets was getting difficult. The eastern city was packed out with refugees, and with soldiers trying to find a place for them all. In the last hour before dark it seemed to Che like the end of the world. The uprooted citizens of Khanaphes, clutching their children and their scant possessions, were herded sobbing and whimpering through the streets, to be bivouacked in markets, along pavements, in homes and storehouses, anywhere there was space. Che forged her way through it all with a foreigner's awkwardness. The distraught crowds were all part of the same world, despite their distress, while she was from elsewhere. There were currents and signs that allowed them to shoal like fish through even the narrowest parts of the city, where Che was left battered and bewildered. From all sides she heard them calling on their lost Masters, their city's ancient heritage. They were praying, beseeching invisible and absent entities for aid against the invader. She saw fervent belief on so many faces.

She had done her best to keep track of her remaining compatriots. Berjek and Praeda had been arguing earlier, now neither was speaking to the other. Berjek wanted to leave at once, given that the Scorpions had reclaimed their leadshotters from river duty to make up for the engines the Khanaphir had destroyed. Praeda would not go.

Che could still not quite believe it. Praeda herself bore an expression of puzzlement, whenever caught unawares, at the colossal entity that had come thundering into her life. It was not that she had not been wooed before, Che knew, for plenty of scholars and magnates had set their sights at her, demonstrating their erudition, their wealth, their good taste and sensibilities. She had been pursued in all the civilized ways known to Collegium, and had stood them all off with her icy reserve. It had been claimed that her heart would not be won until some artificer devised a clockwork husband for her.

But, of course, Collegium did not hold wooers like Amnon. He was something from the violent, brutal past. He was fierce, burning with energy, strong and swift. He had never sat on a committee, drafted a paper, given a lecture or brokered a bulk purchase. He would not know what to make of any part of Praeda's world, and that, for her, was the attraction. More, he had an aura about him, of youth and strength and infinite capability and, despite his status and his allegiance, and the hundreds of Khanaphir women who surely coveted him, he had looked just once at Praeda Rakespear and thought, Yes.

Che had to admit, that would be a hard offer to resist. The simple, pure adoration of Amnon the First Soldier was nothing to be cast aside lightly. Perhaps Praeda had been waiting, all this long cold time, for the warmth of a man such as he.

And he will let her be what she wants to be, she thought, battling still through the packed streets. No scholar he, nor merchant, he will not compete with her, or try to be her better. In Collegium it was always maintained that men and women were equals. Artisans, militia, artificers, scholars, all could boast women within their ranks. Still, Che had seen the Assembly, and seen that at least three of every four were men, and the ratio was worse amongst the merchant magnates. Helleron's Council consisted of twelve men and one hard-nosed woman. We are not the Wasps, with their strict patriarchy, but we should take a long look at what we actually are.

She ducked in at a convenient corner to get her bearings. She had received plenty of news from the battle front, which was even now advancing on the river. None of it seemed good. She had seen Totho and Amnon in conference several times, and it seemed that the Iron Glove was taking some personal interest in the outcome. Despite her harsh words for the man, she could not help but think, I hope Totho knows what he's doing. Certainly a great deal of the city had been surrendered already. In the sky to the west, the sunset was darkened with smoke.

She had been keeping her eyes out for the Wasp-kinden. They were out there still, and it seemed clear that both she and Thalric were on the menu as far as the Rekef were concerned. They would be holed up somewhere here in the east city, but they would be working at a disadvantage, because Khanaphes was not the sort of city they were used to. The word had gone out now that they were enemies of the Ministers and Masters, so a Wasp-kinden face would find few friends here. They would be forced to seek their agents and spies amongst the lowest of the low: halfbreeds, criminals and those few foreigners who had not fled when word of the Scorpions came. Even there they risked exposure and betrayal to the city's authorities. They would have to tread carefully.

Of course, Thalric had the same problem himself, hence his need for Che. She had done her best to explain to the Ministers that Thalric himself was no part of the Empire's plan. They had nodded and smiled with their usual politic blankness, leaving her unsure whether they had believed her or not. She also half expected to get back to find that the drinking den's owner had sold him out.

She spotted a foreign face within the crowd, just for a moment. She had been looking backwards, along the way she had come. It was the brief discontinuity that had caught her, another person not quite in tune with the crowd. But it was not the pale flash of a Wasp face. It was a face darker than her own, than any local: coal-black Vekken features.

She cursed, moving out into the crowd again, knowing that the other one of them would be somewhere about. What do they want? But that was an old question. They wanted to kill her, of course, and she had to assume they were following some distant Vekken directive, because she had surely given them no recent cause. They must have received their instructions before any of them even set out from Collegium, and on that list, triggered by who knew what, was the directive: Kill the ambassador.

Uncle Sten and his stupid ideas. Peace with the Vekken, indeed! She had already gathered enough understanding of them to know that it was simply not an option. They hate us. They fear us. There is no common ground.

She picked up her pace, jostling and pushing, sensing in the back of her mind the two Ant-kinden trying to reach her through the crowd. One was likely ahead of her, trying to find an ambush point, silently guided by his comrade. She changed direction several times, trying to be unpredictable. She was meanwhile looking for any kind of public building.

She saw a large house that had obviously been opened up for refugees. As swiftly as she could, she ducked inside. The place was lined wall-to-wall with people: each had inherited a space of stone floor in place of the home they had abandoned across the river. She pushed through them, making for the stairs, ignoring their complaints. She imagined the doorway now darkening as the hooded Vekken came inside after her.

Upstairs, still stepping and stumbling over destitute Khanaphir, but she had seen a window large enough to admit her. She rushed for it, squeezed through it, let her wings catch her as she dropped. She was a clumsy and awkward flier, but it was an Art the Vekken could not attain. She let her wings carry her across a flight of buildings, across two alleys, dropping down into a roof garden and then making her way across to the street, past more surprised locals. Let that put them off the trail.

She was uncomfortably aware that they would not give up hunting her, though. They had a kind of blind, idiot patience in that regard, an Ant trait. She would have to confront them eventually.

Then let me choose the time and place, and let me choose my allies too. She had no doubt that Thalric would back her, should she ask him. The thought gave her an odd surge of confidence: to have a friend, no matter who, one who would not ask the wrong questions. Just to have a friend.

She was getting close to his retreat now. It had taken her long enough. His hideout was across an open-air market from her, although the stalls had now all been turned into surrogate housing. Rows and rows of Khanaphir were huddled together beneath the awnings, hundreds of them sitting there with bland acceptance, simply waiting to be told they could go home.

It was an instinct that came with flying, an instinct that precious few of the locals could possess. Entering the market, Che had glanced up at the rooftops.

They were there. She saw two of them clearly, one to her left, one to her right, crouching on high and watching: Wasp-kinden. They were cloaked, but their simple presence said it all.

They've tracked him down. For a moment she thought they might have killed him already, but then why would they still be watching? Surely not for her? It's still daylight, just, and they won't risk anything until after dark. She could not be sure of that, but it seemed to make sense. If she went into that drinking den now, she could be walking into a trap, but if she did not she could be leaving him to his fate.

Was this part of the bargain we made? But that was not a question worth asking. Her difficulty now would be getting in without being spotted by the Wasp sentries.

She put a shawl up over her hair, so that she now looked as much a Beetle-kinden as the locals. Once that tell-tale was covered, there was nothing in her appearance that should scream foreigner at them. Nothing except the way she moved.

The crowd was settling, the streets were emptying as dusk drew on. She must go now if she was to take cover amongst these, her distant kin.

But what a gulf separates us. We are of different worlds. The thought was irresistible, sweeping over her with the feverish insistence of a Fir dream. O Masters of Khanaphir, aid me, she mouthed. Hide me from the eyes of my enemies.

She stepped into the crowd and moved through it, and it opened up before her. It was not that people parted for her; that would hardly have served her purpose. Instead, they were always just out of her step, not in her way, not snagging her elbows or stepping on her feet. She coursed through the settling crowd like a true part of it. Her mind reeled at the continuing strangeness, waited each moment for everything to come crashing down, but somewhere deeper it felt natural to her, as though she had finally started to listen to a voice she had been trying to ignore.

She reached the den's entrance, knowing better than to glance back and thus show her face.

A thought struck her just before she entered the building, and she let her smooth course carry her past and then down a side alley, seeming nothing more than one Beetle amongst hundreds. She was keenly aware of time, the hour latening, the Wasps surely readying themselves to swoop. Still, she continued on to the riverside, towards the building's rear, the hatch that was Thalric's fall-back. With eyes that were not hindered by the gathering dusk, she managed several quick glances at the rooftops, seeing no one.

But why would the Wasps not be watching here? It felt wrong. They were Rekef, therefore neither fools nor amateurs. Still, aside from a few ambling Beetles going homeward, their eyes fixed on the far bank and its bristling newcomers, she saw nobody.

She walked right around the building and slipped back to the front, ducking inside. It was increasingly difficult to keep her pace nonchalant. She could almost hear the sands dwindling in the glass.

The place was nearly empty: the Ministers had yet to commandeer it to house fugitives and, with the city sundered in two, it was not a night for drinking. Khanaphes was frightened. Of the three people there, one was audibly murmuring some invocation to the Masters, and she wondered if this was something they had always done when faced with life's trials, or whether the emergency had brought them back to it.

She slipped into the cellar after a single look at the proprietor. His eyes regarded her bleakly and he made no move to stop her.

'Thalric.'

He picked up on her urgent tone and was on his feet at once. 'They're here?'

'Right outside the front,' she said.

Osgan was sitting up, looking pale, but stronger than he had been. It was just as well.

'They followed you?' Thalric asked her.

'No, they did not follow me,' she snapped, put out by the suggestion. 'They tracked you down. They were here long before I returned. They're waiting for nightfall, is my guess. So we have to move right away.'

'What about the back?'

'I didn't see anyone.' She nodded at his expression. 'I know, I know, but I looked and there were no Wasps there that I could see. That doesn't mean they weren't there.'

'We move now,' Thalric decided. 'We try to lose them. There are a few other places that we could hole up in, but they're none of them far enough from here to shake off a chase. That means we'll have to go wide, then double back to one of them. Osgan, on your feet, now.'

'Can he-?' Che started, but Osgan groaned and shook himself, and clawed his way up the wall until he was standing.

'Let's go,' he croaked. He was red-eyed, unshaven, but Che wondered if a lack of drink had not taken over from his fever as the main antagonist.

'Can you fly?' Thalric asked him.

'Enough to get up the chute,' Osgan confirmed weakly. 'No roof-hopping.'

'We'll be staying on the ground,' Thalric decided. 'You two are both dead if we go above roof level. You might as well hover there waving flags.'

'Oh, really?' Che glared. 'And you'd just vanish into the night like a Moth-kinden, I suppose.'

'That's exactly what I'd do,' he told her. 'Now, when we hit the street above, make a left, and then run along the river until the third alley — then left again, into it. I'll bring up the rear. I want to see who follows us.' He had bundled himself in a cloak, but Che could not see him passing for a local any time soon. He was too tall, too pale; there was a violence evident in him that Beetle-kinden did not own.

He paused under the barrel chute and then kicked off, wings throwing him upwards. A moment later he said, 'Clear, come on.'

Che made Osgan go next. The man shook his head wearily. His arm was still bound up and she knew she should change the dressing, but they did not have the time. She heard him swear under his breath and then his wings flared, barely a sputter of them but getting him high enough to hook his good arm over the sill. Thalric hauled him up from there, and Che followed right behind, pulling herself through the hatchway. For a second they crouched there, just three more refugees among so many. She heard Thalric's breath emerge in a long hiss.

'Nothing on the roofs here, just like you said.' He grimaced. 'They could have someone with a glass positioned across the river, but that's not a recipe for a quick response. Let's move.'

They scattered down the narrow muddy track running beside the river, Che helping the wheezing Osgan along, whilst Thalric followed near-soundless behind them. The west bank was lit up by fires, and she found it hard not to brood on that. I should have duties at a time like this, as an ambassador. Save that those duties had dried up. Diplomacy has failed. Indeed, through the instruments of the Empire, she was now as much a target as was the city of Khanaphes.

You do pick my errands well, Uncle Sten. Just keeping me safe again, were you? Behind it all lurked a kind of specifically selfish despair. What if it should all come down, the city falling in ruins before I ever understand it?

'Move!' Thalric's voice hissed, and she picked up her pace, slinging herself and Osgan into the chosen alley. There was a thin rabble of locals still on the street and she just battered past them, with Thalric, running now, behind.

'Stay where there's people,' she got out. 'Won't risk drawing so much attention.'

'Don't bet on it,' he shot back. 'Go right, now.'

When he said 'now', he meant it. She and Osgan almost fell over each other's feet making the sharp turn into an even narrower alley. She saw that this one was roofed off with canvas, struts and spars, reminding her of the Marsh Alcaia with all the emotional baggage that carried. The Wasps, who had surely been tracking them from the skies, were momentarily confounded. Thalric paused for a second, whilst Osgan leant heavily on Che and coughed. The ex-Rekef man looked back at her: that was how she saw him, just then. He was smiling, a man on the edge and loving it.

He kicked in a door, without warning, at random. There was a scream from within. Then he was inside, leaving Che and Osgan to trail in his wake.

'Can't keep this up much longer,' the ailing Wasp grated in her ear. She had no words to spare him, just hustled him along as best she could.

Thalric had found another door to kick down, and Che guessed they were into the next building now, or just part of some extended family home. He was finding windows in turn, glancing out of them at the dark sky.

'Here!' he said and, instantly throwing the shutters back, had hooked his way out. She bundled Osgan through, more and more without any help from him, and followed after to find herself in the middle of an alleyway choked with people. The authorities had nested a host of refugees here, almost shoulder to shoulder, under the cover of a few wretched awnings. Thalric had already elbowed himself some space, and then he made some more, pushing dispirited people aside mercilessly, until the other two could join him.

'Now we wait,' he said.

'Until?' Che asked him.

'Until I say go.' He had hunched himself as low as he could in his cloak, slumped and abandoned-looking as any local. Osgan was lying on his side, breathing heavily, coughing again.

'Have we lost them?' Che whispered.

Thalric kept his eyes on the sky, surreptitiously. 'I don't see any fliers. They'll broaden their net in a while, thinking they've missed us, that we're still running. They know they can move faster than us, so they'll try to make the best of that advantage. So we use it against them instead. We just let them fly away.' He was still grinning slightly, not at his own cleverness but at the game. It was the only game, once you had tasted it: the spy game, the intelligencer's game — the Dance, as the Spiders called it. He was in the thick of it again, and it seemed to have taken years off him.

'You look like Tisamon,' she told him.

'The Mantis? What do you mean?'

'He was like that, too. When he was up against it, he'd be smiling always. He loved being challenged.'

'Tell me you don't feel it,' he said, fixing her eyes with his.

And she did, that was the terrible thing. There was Osgan to protect, and there were Trallo and Manny and Petri dead, and there was a city out there that would be put to the torch tomorrow, but through all that she felt a leaping spark of excitement inside her. She was an agent again, not an ambassador, and it was just like old times. She let herself smile, just enough for him to see.

'Stenwold was always lucky, having you as his left hand,' Thalric said softly, surprising her.

'You've taken every cursed chance you've been offered to point out my inadequacies in that field,' she reproached him. 'How can you say that now?'

'You must have something going for you, Che, some trick of the trade that I've never grasped. Think of all you've survived, all you've come through intact.'

Not intact, she thought. Not when you tally the friends I've lost. Thalric bent over Osgan and she heard him say, 'We'll have to move soon enough. Unless they find us again, we'll take it slowly. If we're lucky, we can get to another hiding place without them picking up the trail.'

'We should head for the Scriptora,' Che suggested. 'We'll be safe there.'

'You might be,' Thalric told her, 'but those old men and women will have us two executed as Imperial agents. The funny thing is I'm not sure whether that's true or not.'

'I'll speak for you. Ethmet will listen to me.'

'Not unless we have no other hope,' Thalric argued. 'I don't trust the Ministers an inch. If they come to believe that the Empire does want me dead, they'll probably hand me over to the enemy to try and buy their city back.'

'You're not a trusting person, are you?'

'A very good judge of character is what I am. Now, let's make a move slowly. Try your best to look local.'

They had picked their way halfway down the narrow street, stepping over legs and bodies, moving as steadily and wearily as any evicted local, when Thalric's hiss alerted them: 'They're on us already. Run!'

Here? Che thought, already automatically picking up her pace. There were people all around them, a hundred witnesses to each move they made. It seemed impossible that the Wasps would make such a public move against them.

But they will be gone, she thought. They will be over the rooftops and away.

She heard the first crackle of a stingshot, and the people all about her were suddenly jumping up, panic on their faces. Most of them must have thought it was some Scorpion advance guard, over the river already along with their Imperial allies. Instantly the alley ahead of them was choked with alarmed people, a wall that Che crashed into, fighting her way through them with Osgan stumbling in her wake.

'Push on! Push through!' she heard Thalric shout, with two or three more stings backing up his words. Che tried, but her ability to forge a way through the Khanaphir crowds had deserted her. She was just one more awkward foreigner, and the Wasps were closing fast.

Thalric cursed, catching up with her. She saw his hand jut forward, but until he loosed his own sting she had not realized what he intended.

'No!' she yelled, but people were already recoiling from them, seeing his pale skin and features, falling before the golden fire his Art unleashed on them. He was aiming deliberately high, enough to scare and disperse them. She hoped he had hit nobody.

'Go!' he snapped and muscled forward, virtually throwing aside any local who had not already retreated. His sting spat again, and then another bolt seared past on Che's other side. The Rekef! she thought, but it was Osgan, his one good arm extended, following Thalric's lead. Injured and weak as he was, she had almost forgotten that he too was a Wasp.

She had no choice but to keep up with Thalric. There were people screaming and sobbing on all sides, and she made sure she did not look at them too closely. She did not want to see charred wounds, to become an accomplice to murder.

Thalric suddenly shoved her, knocking her sideways into Osgan. A figure had landed ahead of them, hand already extending to sting. Thalric's hand flashed first, punching the other Wasp off his feet. Then they were running again, virtually trampling over his body, taking an abrupt left on to a broader street, straight across into another narrow one. There were no cluttered refugees here, only a couple of late-returning citizens who got out of their way in a hurry.

'Where now? Where's the safe house?' Che asked, trying to keep pace with Thalric. Osgan was still with them, for the moment, driving himself hard. His face was shiny with sweat.

'Behind us,' Thalric got out. He turned in mid-run, loosed a couple of shots backwards, and then was catching them back up again. 'They've done their research,' he said.

'Scriptora!' Che said. 'Only chance.'

He bared his teeth. 'No, we'll tire them out. Flying and stinging's like all Art, it drains the strength. We'll just wear them out.' He had done this before, she realized. He was reliving some other chase, perhaps being hunted by Mercers in the Twelve-year War. He dragged them down another street, changing direction without warning, seeking out covered places where the airborne might lose sight of them.

'Thalric!' Che yelled at him. 'Osgan won't last! Look at him. The Scriptora's our only chance. It isn't far.'

He led them without answer into the courtyard of some wealthy man's residence. There were steps up to a roof garden, and Thalric took them three at a time. At the top he turned, dropped to one knee, hand flashing. Che and Osgan hurled themselves past him, into the greenery beyond.

There was little enough cover in the roof garden but, between the low parapet, the urns and the plants, there was just enough to conceal the three of them. She heard Thalric's sting crack three more times. Then he said, 'That put their heads down. They'll be working their way round. I've been a fool.'

'How?'

'In forgetting they have a Beetle-kinden with them too. That bastard Vastern, I saw him as we were running. Shaved bald as a native and keeping track of me. No wonder they found us so fast. He was right there all along.'

Che had no answer to that. Some old memory within her hands itched for a crossbow, but of course she would not have been able to shoot one even if she could somehow find one here. The locals had bows, but she had never used a bow. It was not a weapon her homeland placed any stock in. Perhaps I'll have to learn.

'The Scriptora.' Thalric did not sound happy about it. 'You're right, it's our best chance. But you'd better be able to talk the Ministers round.'

'I will,' she promised, hoping it was true.

'We're going over the wall to our left, then we fly down into the street and run for it. We're almost at the embassy now. It's only three streets from here to the Scriptora proper. Osgan, reckon you can make that?'

'Only one way to find out,' the other Wasp gasped.

Thalric nodded. 'Then now,' he hissed, and was up and running for the edge, vaulting over it. Che let Osgan follow first, the Wasp simply toppling off and out of sight. She heard the sizzle of stings even as she herself followed suit. Her wings bore her raggedly and she stumbled as she landed. Thalric was already running across the street, lancing bolts of fire. She saw two or three figures at roof level, drawing back to avoid his aim. Osgan pitched a sting at them, too, before lurching after Thalric. If only Beetle Art provided some facility like that! Che ran after them, an enemy bolt scarring the ground close behind her.

They were close to the Scriptora now and she experienced an odd sense of anticipation, beside and beyond her own feelings. Achaeos? It was the same sense as before, that feeling of invisible company. Oh, if I ever had need of you, Achaeos, it's now.

In the air, the Rekef hunters easily outpaced them, but Thalric used the city to his advantage. The walls of Khanaphes's buildings, its uneven skyline of huge old buildings surrounded by the cluttered new ones, became their allies. Thalric changed direction over and over, each time bringing them back towards the Scriptora. Sometimes he was way ahead, sometimes he lagged, letting Che and Osgan build a lead. Often she heard his sting as he used it to warn off their enemies, forcing them out of his sight, buying a little extra time.

He is a hard man to hunt, Che thought. Thalric backed into a corner was a dangerous beast, was at his best, his most alive. It made her heart jump to see him so fervently defiant of all the odds. He was a proper bastard, she knew, but he would make them fight for his blood. None of it was for giving away easily.

'Here! Run!' he snapped, as though they had not been running already. Abruptly there were no walls about them. They had hit the Place of Government from an unexpected angle, directly across from the arch to the Place of Foreigners. Ahead of them was the stepped pyramid with its crown of pale statues; to their left rose the Scriptora, huge and dark. There was not a single light in its windows. It looked like a tomb.

But the Ministers … Che wondered, but there were a hundred possible reasons. They might be sleeping, readying themselves for tomorrow's battle. They might also fear Wasp assassins, and with good reason. They might still be working somewhere out in the city, housing refugees. There was not a sign that anyone remained behind those closed doors. Still, they had nowhere else to run to.

Figures were dropping down ahead of them, swiftly cutting them off. She saw at least four Wasps falling into place. Thalric's sting spoke, but they answered in kind. The range was long, but Che flinched back, changed direction. The Wasps were already barring them from the Scriptora doors.

And so it ends.

Thalric had thrown himself backwards, a winged jump of ten feet that put him seven steps up the side of the pyramid, returning golden fire from his open palm. Osgan collapsed beside him, shaking, gasping, one hand held fitfully out towards the enemy.

Cheerwell Maker!

That voice, all within her head, was enough. It caught her by the chin and dragged her face round until she was looking back and up — up the stone slope, up past the poised stone giants.

He hung there, clearly visible even at night, a grey ghost in a foreign city. Here, girl! The voice snapped in her head, admitting no patience with her.

The Wasps were advancing: another two had dropped down, one to each side. The square was broad, so the range still defeated their stings, but they were moving in. Thalric was retreating up the pyramid side.

'Up!' Che shouted at him. 'To the top now.' And why? 'Take cover among the statues!'

Thalric glanced at her and nodded grimly. He has no illusions about how this will go. He reached the flattened top in a sudden rush, darting behind a stone thigh as broad as his own torso. A moment later he was calling out, 'Osgan! For the Emperor's love, come on!'

Osgan picked himself up, stingshot bursting close by him, and looked up.

He screamed, falling back, rolling down the steps and landing on his side at the pyramid's foot. Thalric cried out his name, but Osgan was pointing — pointing at something past and through Thalric. Che, halfway up, stopped in horror and realization.

He does see it. He sees Achaeos. She recalled Osgan's history, his fears. He saw Achaeos at the Mantis village: he thinks he's a Mantis.

'Come on, you drunken bloody fool!' Thalric roared at him. Che got most of the way to the top before turning. Osgan was clenched up into a ball, but she could still hear him cry out, 'It's him! He's come back!'

'It's not him, Osgan!' Che called. A stingblast cracked against the stones near her and she fell back, clawed her way over to where the statues could be her shield. 'Osgan, please-!'

The Rekef were now reaching the pyramid's foot. still spread out. Thalric's occasional shots made them start back, leap briefly into the air with a flurry of wings, before settling down again. Despite Thalric's promises, it did not seem that either flight or shot had tired them. They seemed all patience, closing carefully, while they kept a wary eye on Osgan. They could have killed him easily, but it was clear they would take him alive when they reached him. He would provide the leverage to force their other quarry into reach.

It was surreal, Che thought: they were standing in sight of the very fount of governance for Khanaphes, an armed insurrection in the heart of the city, with Rekef assassins running riot, and nobody else seemed to care.

'Osgan!' Thalric bellowed, just as a stingshot blazed from the Wasp on the leftmost flank and seared Che's shoulder. She cried out in pain and fell back. And fell further.

There was no solid ground behind her. What the grey stain of the ghost had been hovering over was the pit: the shaft sunk into the middle of the pyramid. She plummeted, too startled to call upon her wings. One outstretched hand scraped the pit edge, dragging its way through a layer of slime inches thick. Then she was gone, dropping into the darkness.

She heard Thalric call out her name and then he was diving after her. Still falling, in shock from the pain of her wound, she watched him outpace her with his wings flaring, sparking against the sides of the shaft.

Then he had her, arms tight about her, unimaginably painful where he grasped at her injured shoulder. His wings backed, trying to fight against their descent, their combined weight. She had a split-second glimpse of his face, his expression gone taut with the effort.

They struck bottom. She spilled from his arms, landing on her good side, scrabbling for purchase. It was dark, which did not matter to her, but it mattered to Thalric. He went stumbling away from her, arms out blindly. She tried for her feet and got there, swaying. 'Thalric,' she said, and he swung towards her.

There was a light, a lamp. It was getting brighter: from the shaft.

'They're coming!' he spat, backing away from it. She tried to make sense of their surroundings. The shaft gave on to a narrow room — Just how far below the ground are we? — and she saw a single passage beyond, branching three ways almost instantly. Thalric was making for it, hoping for cover, and she stumbled into him, clutching at him to hold herself upright. It hurt to move her right arm, but she could still move it. The sting must have just clipped her, for all the pain.

There was something about the tunnels ahead. She could not reconcile it, but there was something wrong there, hanging in the air like a ghost.

A pair of Wasps dropped down the shaft behind them, their stings blazing blind even as they did so, bolts of fire scattering within the confined space, their lantern glaring beyond. Che saw Thalric back away into the passageway, and a stab of panic overcame her, without any reason.

'Run!' she cried, then her wings hurled her at him fast, spoiling his aim as he tried to shoot back. The two Wasps were almost on her heels, charging forward to close with swords drawn.

She felt the stone around them shift, even as she collided with Thalric, striking him full in the chest, propelling him down the centre corridor. There was no mechanism, no click and grind of machinery. The stone moved as if it was alive.

She landed on Thalric hard enough to expel the breath from his lungs with a whoosh.

What landed on the two Wasps, only feet behind her, was the ceiling itself. A colossal block, the same height and width as the passage, thundered down on them. It cut off their scream, which was mercifully brief.

Thalric's eyes were wide, staring, unseeing in the pitch darkness.

She rolled off him with a groan, and lay flat on her back. Traps, she thought, traps for the intruder, the unwary. Traps laid by the Inapt, though. There had been no pressure point, no tripwire, that had brought that fatal load down. There had been a watching magic, and she had sensed it somehow, where Thalric and the dead Wasps had not.

She peered about herself at last, saw that the room was not large. There was Khanaphir picture-writing on the walls, but in bolder and larger characters than she had seen before.

There were no doors.

Sulvec perched on the lip of the pit, as the resounding crash died away below him. He had heard the momentary cries of the two men he had sent after Thalric.

'Gram!' he called down. 'Gram, report!'

Only silence replied.

Marger and the soldiers joined him there, crouching among the statues. They would have to go in, he realized. No matter what had happened to Gram, they would still have to go in. He opened his mouth to give the order.

At that moment he felt fear. It came steaming up like cold breath from the slime-edged mouth of the pit. It caught him in mid-word, freezing him, wrenching at his stomach. He felt himself gripped by an unreasoning terror.

We should not be here. The placid faces of the statues had become nightmarish without ever changing expression. They looked down upon the intruding Wasps with condemnation. Sulvec heard his own breath sounding ragged in his throat. We should not be here. This is a terrible place. Something terrible has happened to Gram. Those screams, so brutally stopped, had unnerved him, but now fear had taken hold and was shaking him in its jaws.

I am a Rekef officer! But in this faraway city the Rekef seemed just a pale dream. He looked over to Marger, saw the man's eyes wide, his hands shaking. The other soldiers were retreating down the pyramid, away from the statues and the dreadful pit.

'Back.' The word was dragged from him. 'Go back. We …' He could give no reason for it, could not justify the order. He only knew that to stay where they were, in this forbidden place, meant death.

None of them needed to be told again. They fled down the side of the pyramid gratefully, gathering near the archway to the Place of Foreigners.

'They must be dead,' Marger was saying. 'Thalric and the Beetle girl. Surely they must be dead, all of them.'

Sulvec wanted badly to agree with him, but he had been given his orders most specifically. 'He's survived a lot,' he got out. 'We have to see the body. Absolutely sure.' Two of his men had a prisoner, he noticed. The wretched Osgan was hanging limply in their grip. The man looked half dead.

'What now, sir?' Marger asked him, a man with the luxury of not having to make decisions. At that point, Corolly Vastern caught them up, looking like a local with his shaved head.

'Why did you come down, sir?' he asked. He had obviously seen something of what went on. Sulvec opened his mouth, reaching for answers. I can't just say 'because I feared.' His mind progressed to: So that cannot be the reason, but I must have had a reason. I do nothing without a logical reason.

'Sir, Guards coming,' said one of his men, and his mind leapt. There was a squad of Khanaphir soldiers arriving at the far side of the square, no doubt drawn by all the noise. I must have known that, Sulvec told himself. I heard them coming. I knew that they would catch us, if we were still up there.

'Marger, keep a watch on this place. If Thalric comes out again, I want to know about it,' he snapped out. 'The rest of you, fall back with me. We'll return tonight if they leave it unguarded, or we'll be back tomorrow night, whatever. We have a job to do here. Come on.'

He could not entirely keep the trembling from his voice, still feeling that dread gnawing at his innards. A perfectly rational feeling: fear of discovery. Good trade-craft. A Rekef agent's instincts. The words rattled about inside his skull looking for acceptance.