The Scarab Path Read Online Free PDF

way,’ Stenwold muttered darkly. ‘I’m not thinking about Broiler
now, but about the Imperial ambassador.’
    Drillen
blinked at him blankly.
    Stenwold
looked unhappy as he continued. ‘Think about it: Stenwold, implacable enemy of
the Empire, entering into secret negotiations that will send agents to a city
that is not so very far from the Empire’s southern border.’
    ‘The
war’s over.’
    ‘The war
isn’t currently active. Both the Empire and I understand the distinction.’
    Drillen
shrugged. ‘Whatever you want. You’re in charge. It’s your expedition.’
    She was still in mourning, but mourning was difficult for her.
    In
Collegium the official colour of mourning was grey. True, it was not customary
any more for widows and grieving family to parade around the city in drab
vestments for tendays, or even just days, but for funerals at least, grey was
the order of the day.
    For
Cheerwell Maker, though, grey was his colour,
therefore a life colour, the colour of her happiness, in the same way that
black and gold had become colours of death. She could not make grey the colour
of her mourning because that would be a negation of his life.
    In the
end she had tracked down a Moth-kinden, a pallid trader from Dorax, and not
left him alone until he had explained the customs of his people. For the Moths,
the concept of colour seldom entered their lives, since they lived in a
midnight world where they could see perfectly without need for sunlight or
spectrum. For death, though, they made an exception. For shed blood, they took
on the hue of blood. She learned how Mantids did the same, dressing their
honoured dead in scarlet, and then entrusting them to the red, red flames. The
Moths, who had been the Mantis-kinden’s masters since time immemorial, had
become infected by such superstitions.
    And red
was the colour of the Mynan resistance, their emblem of red arrows on a black
background proclaiming their impossible triumph over the Empire. And Myna had
been where he had died, for her, though he had been so many miles away.
    So Che
wore red, and thus caused public comment. She wore a tunic of deep wine colours
edged with black, or else black arrowed with resistance scarlet. Even though
she also wore a Moth cape of grey sometimes, nobody realized that she was
mourning.
    When she
had gone to Tharn, after the war, they would not let her in nor tell her what
rites had been performed over the body of poor Achaeos. They would barely spare
two words for her. With the Empire beaten back, the old hatreds had resurfaced.
She was Beetle-kinden, therefore a despoiler and an enemy. Her previous history
as a Moth seer’s lover had been erased and, in the end, the Moths had forced
her, at bow-point, back on to the airship. Only the intervention of Jons
Allanbridge, the aviator, had prevented her being shot dead there and then.
    She had
tried to tell them of the mark, of the affliction she had been left with in his
wake, but they had not wanted to know. Instead they had told her to leave
promptly or they would throw her off the mountainside.
    Mourning
was so hard for Che. Her own people had not understood her choice of lover, and
now they did not understand her grief. She was surrounded by her own folk, yet
feeling more alone each day that passed.
    Yet not
alone enough. Sitting here on her bed, with the bright light of day blazing in
through the window, she felt a sudden presence beside her. It always happened
the same way: the movement did not manifest as such, at first, neither flicker
nor shadow, but just as a concrete awareness of there being
something there.
    If she
moved her head to look, it would be gone. If she stayed very still, though, and
emptied her mind the way he had taught her, and waited … then sometimes there
would be a greyness at the edge of her vision, a tremor in the air, a something .
    Mourning
was difficult for her because she knew that he was still there. He had been a
magician, after all, which she now