Free The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky

was being led into some kind of trap. By then she could only
follow, because she was lost already. She was out of breath from keeping up
with the girl’s skipping figure, with dodging all the other bustling people
doing their secretive deals beneath this all-embracing cloth sky.
    The girl
had stopped, ahead of her. Petri put a hand on her dagger-hilt, feeling it so
unfamiliar in her grip. There was a tent ahead, which surely could hold a dozen
people inside, all ready to lay hands on her. ‘This … this is it?’ she asked.
The girl looked back at her, as blandly unreadable as any local. She still had
hair, cut ragged to just above her shoulders. The ubiquitous head-shaving was
an adult affectation.
    Deprived
of an answer, Petri took a deep, harsh breath. She could wait out here as long
as she wanted, but all she would accomplish would be to make herself look
indecisive and lost. She had to move forward, so she pushed into the tent.
    The
Fisher lay there, attended by a quartet of young Khanaphir men serving her wine
and grapes. She was spread out on a heap of cushions, wearing Spiderland silks
that must cost a fortune to import here, and adorned with gold all over:
armlets, anklets, rings, pendants, even a band of it across her forehead. She
was compensating in some way, Petri suspected, for the Fisher was a halfbreed
of mixed Khanaphir and Marsh people stock. Her skin was an oily greenish colour
and, somewhere between the solid Beetle build and the slight grace of the
estuary folk, she had turned out shapeless and baggy. Her eyes were yellow and
unblinking as they regarded Petri. A servant handed her a long-stemmed lit pipe
made from smoke-coloured glass, and she accepted it, wordlessly.
    How did Kadro do this?
    ‘I … er
… I wish to do business,’ Petri began, trying to keep her voice steady.
Responding to a small tilt of the Fisher’s head, abruptly one of the servants
appeared by Petri’s arm, offering her a shallow bowl of wine. Gratefully Petri
took it and subsided on to the cushions. It was hot and airless in here, and
the bittersweet pipe smoke made her head swim.
    ‘Please
…’ she said, before she could stop herself.
    The
Fisher continued to regard her silently, waiting. Petri summoned all her
reserves of strength.
    ‘I wish
you to find someone for me.’ How would Kadro have put this? ‘I know that, of all the knowledgeable people in the Marsh Alcaia, you are
renowned as being the one who can locate anyone or anything.’ Compliments were
important in Khanaphes, she knew.
    A slight
nod revealed the Fisher’s acceptance of Petri’s clumsy offering. ‘A friend of
Kadro of Collegium is always my friend too, of course,’ she replied. ‘But a
curious woman would wonder at the purpose of such a hunt. Perhaps some fool who
has insulted you, and is therefore deserving of death? You should know that
there is another who would be keenly interested in such dealings.’
    Petri’s
mouth twitched. ‘It is no such matter,’ she stammered, ‘only that a friend of
mine has been … too long out of touch, so that I am now concerned for him.’
    ‘Your
sense of duty does you credit,’ the Fisher told her, with a shallow smile. ‘The
path to my tent is not the worst that you might have chosen. Who is this ailing
friend?’
    Petri
drained her wine for courage. The local stuff was strong, and she waited for a
moment of dizziness to pass her. ‘Ma … Kadro. I need you to find Kadro.’ Never Master Kadro, not here. Here, the word had other meanings.
    The
Fisher’s slight smile did not flicker, and its very fixed immobility told Petri
that something was wrong. The halfbreed woman took a long puff of her pipe,
then handed it back to one of her servants.
    ‘Fisher?’
Petri pressed, knowing that things had gone awry, but unable to see precisely
how or why.
    In a
single movement the Fisher stood up, her face still devoid of expression.
‘Alas, what you ask is impossible,’ she declared. Her servants had moved