'That's because what you see is all of me, Thalric,' she told him. 'And you're not used to people who aren't hiding things from you.' But even as she said it, she realized that it was no longer true, that it had not been true for some time. Even I have secrets now. 'So what did she say?' she pressed on, to turn his attention away from the subject.
'She said that Tisamon didn't really kill the Emperor. That the Emperor's old slave – nobody seems to have known who he was – was in the middle of the conspiracy to put her on the throne, only she's glad he's now dead. He's dead, Maxin's dead, the Emperor's dead. It's only Seda left from the royal box. Seda and Osgan, of all bloody people.'
'So who killed the Emperor?' Che asked. 'According to her story.'
'She says I wouldn't believe her,' he replied. 'And she says she won't tell me. And, knowing what I do about her, I don't think I want to know.'
'You're going to soon run out of ways not to tell me,' Che said, moving on to the next wall. 'So why not just say? What's so wrong? What's the problem? I don't think there are many Wasp excesses that could surprise me.'
'Oh, is that so?' he said quietly. She heard him move closer to her. 'You want me to tell you?'
She put out a hand that brushed his shoulder. He flinched back from its touch, then took it briefly, confirming what it was. With that frame of reference, he got himself facing her directly, and his expression told her that he had been keeping this to himself for a long time. And wanting to tell someone for a long time, and not been able to…
'She's mad,' he said. 'She's completely insane. She thinks she… She thinks she has powers. Not Art, but magic powers.' His expression was almost embarrassed on behalf of the Empress, but Che was abruptly paying full attention, the carvings forgotten.
'Her powers, these powers she thinks she has, they derive from blood, you see,' Thalric explained. 'It's something to do with this old slave, some nonsense he told her, but she must have blood. And when an Empress sets her heart on something…' The corner of his mouth twitched. 'The thing is… there's someone inside there, just a Wasp-kinden girl who's had a hard life, and who's terrified of what's happening to her, but the madness, it takes possession of her. Then she gives the orders, and another two or three slaves are bled. For her bath. To fill her cup. She says it makes her powerful.' A shudder went through him. 'I have drunk from that cup, too, when she has asked me to.'
Deep inside, Che felt an unease that was nothing to do with the overt horror in Thalric's story. Something else had connected with her, and she did not know what. Something was trying to tell her that this was important, and at first she thought, Achaeos? She heard no harsh voice in her mind, but there was some link there, something close to her.
'The thing is, though,' Thalric continued, the words sounding as if they were dragged from him, 'something happened to her. When the Emperor died… I don't know how to explain it, but something went terribly wrong. She was changed. It drove her mad. She was… wounded.'
'What do you mean?' Che whispered.
'She has… lost something,' Thalric said raggedly. 'Something in her mind has broken and driven her mad. She has lost her Aptitude. She is like some other kinden now, not a Wasp at all. That connection, that understanding… her mind is changed utterly. She does not think like we do any more. The worst thing is that she is not just mad, but she is Inapt and ruling an Apt Empire.'
Che slumped back against the slick wall, feeling something within her plummet. 'Oh that… that is the worst thing, is it?' she got out, but she was finding it difficult even to draw breath.
He got her reaction wrong, of course. 'I'm not talking about your Moth lover,' he protested. 'You can't imagine it. It's as though she's not human any more. Some part of her mind has just been cut away, and it's the part that would let anyone else understand her. It's turned her into a monster.'
She felt her heart lanced through with horror, with anger, even with that old revulsion at what she was, that she thought she had put behind her. 'And me,' she said. 'Would you say that of me, Thalric? Am I a monster?'
'What are you talking about?'
'Answer me? Am I a monster, too?' The anger was triumphing. Her fists were clenched. He would never see the blow coming.
'Che, I don't understand you.'
'No, you don't. Because some part of me has been cut away, Thalric. I'm Inapt. I lost it at the end of the war, when Achaeos died. I'm the same as her, so I suppose that makes me a monster too.'
She watched him, secure in the knowledge that he could not see her. She had felt like hitting him, but it was fast dissolving in a morass of despair at what she had lost. Who's to say he's wrong? Perhaps I am a monster. Something's wrong with me. I've been crippled where nobody can see.
It was his hands that drew her attention. His fingers twitched, in and out, closing for safety, opening for danger. Hammer and tongs, is he going to kill me for it? She always forgot who he was when she spoke to him, forgot what he was. It was a small room. He would not need many blind sting-shots to find her.
'No,' he said, and he sounded surprised at his own conclusion. 'No, it doesn't. It makes her a monster, but not you under any circumstances. Perhaps she was more monstrous to begin with. Something to do with her kinden, probably.'
When Che said nothing, he began to look around, imagining that she had moved elsewhere. 'When I found out about her, about her loss, it made a kind of sense of her, of all her other habits – of the blood. But you… I find I don't honestly care. I know you. I know you're not what she is.'
Am I not? Perhaps not, but I think I could understand why she does what she does. 'I've only ever told Uncle Sten,' Che admitted. She had just realized that her secret, her terrible secret, was now known by two others, and one of them was a Wasp.
He reached out and, more by luck than judgement, brushed her hair, then found her uninjured shoulder. She held his hand there with her own. He does not flinch or struggle, at having to touch the monster.
'You don't believe in magic,' she said. 'How could you?' It reminded her of a conversation she'd had once with Salma, long ago. 'But you must have seen some things, during your life…'
'Some,' he acknowledged grudgingly. 'I saw the spy, Scyla, doing her tricks with my own face. It was no Art, and yet she did it – and I cannot say how.'
'The world is full of the inexplicable,' she said. 'I find it easier to see that now.' She felt his hand tense for a moment, then relax. 'Or at least, I cannot explain such things for you, but I can navigate them. Would you believe that?'
'Just because I cannot explain something does not mean that there is no rational explanation,' he replied. There was a faint edge to his voice that told her, He's frightened. He knows just enough to be frightened.
'If I told you that I sensed the trap, where you saw nothing, you would say it was because my eyes and my Art let me see better. If I told you that I can read these carvings because of what I have lost, you would say it was merely because I had studied.' It made her feel lonely, saying it out loud, the way that she had been cut off from so much of the world. 'If I told you that I did believe in magic, you would think me mad.'
Through each revelation, she could feel him on the point of pulling away from her, but he never quite did. 'Che…' he began. His hand tightened. 'Actions are more important than beliefs. You believe what you want, so long as you don't start bathing in the blood of slaves.' His lips twitched, the long-absent mocking smile coming back. 'An Inapt Beetle? You've finally found a way to make yourself completely useless to everyone.'