The sight of them brought back a great deal that he could have done without, just then. He remembered the neatly soulless city of Vek. Perhaps to a native it had seemed bustling with cheer. He did not believe it. The sole impression he had received was one of cold pride exemplifying all that was Ant-kinden and honed to a brittle edge.
He remembered their general boasting of her army, as it had marched past in its perfect ranks. What came to him, across the bloody stretch of intervening time, was a colossal arrogance. Such fierce and overweening confidence they had then possessed, such joy in their anticipated victory: a city of soldiers making war on a city of scholars. And they had lost. He had been, at that point, in no position to appreciate Collegium's victory, but the details had come to him later, as they would come to any competent spymaster. Collegium had won because of its own unique virtues: ingenuity and allies. Vek had lost because of its bankruptcy on either front.
Thalric's lips were pursed tight He had been in no position to cheer the victors, because he had left the Vekken camp by then. His mind recalled with perfect clarity the severing of the ties that had bound him to the Empire. They had not been cleanly cut, either, but crudely hacked until they parted, the blade running red. Even the thought made his side twinge, a relic of the old wound that Daklan had given him, the scar that bore mute testimony to when he should have died.
Would the world be a better or worse place, I wonder. His bleak thoughts would not leave him. A lot of the man he had once been had died on the point of Daklan's knife. He had been so loyal, and every atrocity that his hands had worked had been justified by the cause he served. He found that he was frightened by the man he had once been. If I met him, that burning idealist, I would kill him if I could. Far too dangerous to let him live.
He thought too much, these days.
The Vekken had clearly come to some decision, under his silent scrutiny. They made a quick exit by the passage alongside the embassy, vanishing from his sight, if not his thoughts. He made no attempt at pinning a motive on them. Ant-kinden were all mad, he decided: living constantly in each other's heads could not be healthy. He had never met any Ant-kinden, of any city, that he had actually liked.
He turned aside for the Imperial embassy. And why the Woodlouse-kinden at the door? Do they mock us with our own slaves? The statues reminded him of Gjegevey, one of the Empress's favourite tools. That brought a whole new fleet of grim thoughts into port. He realized, standing before the heavy-lidded stone stare of the Woodlice, that he had no idea where his life was going now. He had lost hold of it. He had rejoined the Empire, but it had not let him back in. He did not understand it any more.
'Thalric!' A hoarse whisper.
He recoiled from the Woodlice statues, took three long steps away from the embassy, eyes raking the gloom.
'Thalric! Here!'
The stand of trees, with its burden that had so appalled Osgan, was hissing at him. He was frozen, old instincts rusty, trying to pierce the shadows between them with his gaze.
He discerned the paleness of the Mantis statue, but there was something dark lurking at its base. He had his hands palm-outwards as he approached, but they dropped back to his sides once he saw what it was. He walked over to the very trees, and leant in further, peering down.
He could not imagine what it must have cost the man, to come here. It was not just the wound — Osgan's face was pale and sweaty with it — but the fear. He had forced himself to crawl in among these trees until he sat at the very feet of the Mantis statue. He was resolutely facing away from it, and yet every part of him aware of it.
'What are you doing?' Thalric demanded, despairingly. 'You shouldn't even be up yet. Is it so important to get to a taverna that you'd kill yourself for it?'
Osgan stared up at him, teeth bared. 'Thalric, you mustn't go inside,' he managed to get out. His breathing was ragged, and there was still fever in him from the arm wound. It must have been all he could do to haul himself this far, and it was not drink that had drawn this effort out of him. Thalric felt something sharp-edged turn in his stomach.
'Report,' he said, as if he was still the Rekef officer, living in a straightforward world.
Osgan held his eyes. 'A new officer's flown in,' he croaked. 'Rekef … He's taken charge. Given orders …'
'Orders?'
'To have you killed.' Osgan clung to the Mantis effigy, grappling with its stone legs to haul himself half-upright. 'They're waiting inside, right now … I overheard it all. They'd forgotten about me, or they didn't think I could move …' Hooking an arm about the stone waist, he sagged, just some drunkard making a fool of himself.
Thalric felt something building up inside him, a great rushing wave that cried out: It's happening again. It's happening again. He felt Daklan's dagger go in, the keen cleanness of the man's strike.
He could not keep himself from laughing. After all his recent brooding, the worst had already happened. However hard he had tried to reattach himself to the Empire, his knots had slipped, his bindings frayed. He laughed because he had suddenly been cut free.
I am a dead man. But it was still funny.
Osgan stared at him, shivering. 'Thalric, we've got to get out of here,' he pleaded.
Thalric's grin was keen as a razor. 'Of course we do,' he replied. 'You'll know some low dive where a couple of foreigners can hide up. I doubt there's a drinking den in this city you haven't tasted.'
'I know … places.' Osgan struggled to stand, and Thalric helped him up, slinging the man's good arm over his own shoulder.
'Then let's go,' Thalric said. 'Suddenly I have no appointments.'
All the leaden chains of doubt had just clattered to the ground with Osgan's halting words. From the bewildered ambassador he had become the hunted agent in a hostile city. It was a role he felt infinitely more comfortable with.
For as long as she could stave off sleeping, she had not slept. She knew that, in her dreams, the other Khanaphes was waiting for her: Petri Coggen, passable scholar, graduate of the Great College, Beetle-kinden student of the past, and fugitive.
She did not run, this fugitive. She hid in the Collegiate embassy — no, in the embassy they had painted over as Collegiate, although it had the marks of the old Moth tyranny underneath. Being a historian was becoming a curse, now that the accumulated centuries of Khanaphes, the city where time had died, were rising up to choke her with the dust of ages.
She needed help, so she had gone to Che — but Che had her own worries. The other academics regarded Petri with disdain. She could not speak to them more than five words without stammering and shaking. They did not understand. They looked at the carvings and the statues and the colonnades, and they thought it was simply the past. They did not understand that it was all still alive, the truth of it lurking beneath the surface, glimpsed only from the corner of the eye.
She was seeing a lot from the corner of her eye these days, after nights of resistance to sleep. The world was alive with motion as the ghosts of old Khanaphes whirled about her. Even when the servants came to her with food, she shied away. She could not be sure if they were real or not. The servants of five centuries ago would have looked no different, she knew.
She needed help, but there was nobody here who could, and if she ventured out on to the streets …