The Scarab Path

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Nafir made some polite comments, and was soon left behind. Next a group of three turned out to be called Hemses, Methret and Pthome, and already Che’s mind was swimming with the names. Of the faces she had lost all hope because, although the features varied, their expressions were so unified that she knew it would be impossible to recall them later.

  A musician had struck up somewhere, playing something plaintive on delicate strings. At the far end of the room there was food laid out, a complex arrangement of meat, insects and unfamiliar vegetables. The sight of it obviously broke the back of Manny’s patience, because he was off in that direction with a mumbled apology. Che looked around and saw that Praeda had already abandoned her, was now sitting studying the fountain. The Vekken, whichever one he was, remained standing sullenly in the shade of a column, the scale of its carving making him look like a sulky child.

  ‘And here …’ Ethmet went on, and introduced her to yet another Minister, and she smiled and nodded, and reflected that there were certain ubiquitous aspects of the Beetle-kinden character she could happily do without. Stenwold had always tried to avoid attending these kinds of receptions, and she wondered now if it had been to spare the visiting ambassadors from one more bewildering introduction.

  ‘… is Amnon, the First Soldier of the Royal Guard,’ continued Ethmet blandly, and Che started to repeat her threadbare greetings but, in the end, just said, ‘Oh,’ instead. To start with she was speaking to his chest, because he was more than a head taller than she was. It was a chest covered in gilt-edged metal scales, she noticed, for Amnon was wearing the most magnificent cuirass she had ever seen. She remembered the splendour of the escort that had welcomed them at the docks, and decided that they must have been wearing their everyday garb, because this, this was a dress uniform. Each scale had been enamelled in turquoise, and then minute figures painted on top, images of soldiers parading, throwing spears, giving battle. There was room for plenty of scales, too, because Amnon was broad as well as tall, his bare shoulders and arms bulging with muscle. He was grinning down at her with dazzling white teeth and, despite everything, she felt a flutter within her. She had never met anyone quite so robustly physical before, a man who looked as though he could break steel bars with his hands.

  ‘It is of course a pleasure to meet one so distinguished,’ he announced, and made an elaborate genuflection, beginning with the stomach and ending with the forehead. ‘I shall look forward to when I know you and your fellows better. The First Minister has suggested that I arrange a hunt in your honour.’

  ‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ stammered Che, but he was already magnanimously overruling her.

  ‘The great land-fish of the Jamail have grown fat and fierce,’ he declared grandly, ‘and the Marsh folk wait only for my word before they take up their spears and bows. No personage of distinction should be absent, for it shall be the greatest hunt in a tenyear.’

  ‘Well, that’s very kind,’ she managed. The sheer robust presence of him was overwhelming. She was grateful when Ethmet moved her on to meet someone less energetic.

  Eventually, of course, she was left to her own devices, with her head already leaking names and faces and titles. Ethmet had proved the perfect, mild-mannered host throughout, so it had been difficult to countenance all the dire warnings of Petri Coggen. She had bearded him at the end, though, declaring, ‘The work of the First Minister of such a great city must be hard.’

  ‘It is not so,’ he had assured her modestly. ‘I am only here to give reality to the wishes of my Masters.’

  ‘And how might a poor foreigner seek an audience with those Masters?’ she had asked carefully.

  His smile had not altered. ‘Alas it cannot be so. If they request to see you, then so be it, but you may not petition them. They are beyond such dealings, and you must content yourself with this poor servant.’

  She had responded to that with the necessary compliments, and all had been well. There had not been the slightest pause in their conversation to warn her of dangerous ground, but she had felt the pit yawning at her feet, despite it.

  She looked round to check up on the rest of her party. Manny was in close conversation with two of the women, who Che thought were young enough to be servants rather than Ministers. She decided it was probably the safest place to leave him. Praeda was still sitting at the fountain, staring silently at the waters as they swelled and leapt from their bed of coloured stones. As Che watched, she beckoned a servant over and put some question to him. Beyond her, Che noted the dark form of the Vekken ambassador, standing near the display of food but obviously unwilling to risk eating any. She felt a sudden misplaced surge of sympathy for a man so obviously out of his depth.

  She was already regretting the impulse before she reached him, but she pressed on regardless. His glance towards her was less suspicious than usual, but only because their strange surroundings had already stretched his capacity for suspicion to breaking point.

  ‘Are you … Is there anything you need?’ she asked him. ‘Should I introduce you to anyone here?’

  He looked at her as though she was mad, not unreasonably given the interminable round of meeting and greeting she herself had just endured. ‘I am waiting,’ he replied flatly.

  ‘Waiting? For?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  She sighed, because she did. He was still waiting for the trap to be sprung. He had been holding his breath for it, no doubt, ever since he had left Vek. How can anyone live in such a ferment of constant hostility? She wanted to explain to him that there was no great dark motive for their coming here, but he would never have believed her and, besides, was that actually true? I have my own motives and they are not those of my uncle, or the scholars accompanying me. Perhaps the Vekken have sensed that.

  ‘If they wanted to kill us, it would not be by poison,’ she said tiredly. ‘We are defenceless in their city. We would be dead if they wanted us dead.’ Deliberately, she broke off a sliver of meat and swallowed it. It was tender, flavoured with honey, and she discovered that she was hungry enough to take a larger piece. His eyes followed her hands as though she concealed a knife in them.

  ‘We can’t win, can we?’ she said, still chewing. She felt the sudden need to be candid with him: his mulishness drove her to it. ‘If, at the end of the day, we sail back to Collegium with no evidence of plots, no tricks, nothing but an academic study, then you’ll just think that you didn’t manage to root it out, that we hid it from you successfully. Is that it? Is there no chance of any trust?’

  He blinked quickly three times and she saw his hand move to his sword-hilt, not to draw the weapon but for the comfort of it. She could not put an age to him but his naivety made him seem as young as she was. She was about to assure him that he need not answer when he said, ‘What is it, to trust? It is to know, beyond doubt, the heart of the other. Yet you are silent to us. Your minds throng with all deceptions and lies, and we can never know you.’ He was quivering slightly, still blinking rapidly. ‘How can we trust such silence?’ Almost defiantly he grabbed for the food and, not even looking at it, forced a piece of fruit into his mouth. Then he was gone again, stalking off into his own personal silence. I wish I hadn’t asked, she thought, having found out more than she wanted to know about the Vekken. How can mere diplomacy hope to break through those walls?

  ‘The First Minister offered to introduce us,’ said someone close behind her, ‘but I explained that we were already old friends.’

  Although she had been half-expecting it, the voice opened a door in her mind, releasing a flood of remembered images: a dusty chain of slaves marching from Helleron; the interrogation rooms in the governor’s palace at Myna; the dingy back room of Hokiak’s Exchange.

  ‘Thalric,’ she replied, and she turned to face him, only with reluctance. He had dressed the part, in a pure white tunic and cloak edged with little geometric patterns picked out in black and gold. She knew enough to look for the delicate chainmail concealed beneath t
he cloth, and even without a sword his kinden never lacked for weapons. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘Diplomatic relations?’ He smiled easily. ‘The war’s over, hadn’t you heard?’

  ‘I thought it was only my side who were supposed to believe that.’

  ‘Oh, good, very good.’ His glance about the room told her that their meeting was being observed. ‘You look harassed, Che. Surely the locals aren’t getting to you? We’ve both been in worse places than this.’

  She felt a sudden rush of frustration and, for a moment, she nearly hit him, and would not have cared who was watching. ‘Why can’t you decide just whose side you’re on, Thalric?’ she hissed between her gritted teeth. ‘Why keep crossing the same old road, back and forth? You’re Empire now, aren’t you? So what do we two have to talk about?’

  She had done it again, just as on the first time she had ever met him: ten minutes of conversation inside his tent, and she had chanced on some random barb that had struck home and drawn blood. She saw his face tighten, his stance change as he mentally rolled with the blow.

  ‘We could talk, for a start, about what Collegium is doing here so far from home,’ he said.

  ‘We could talk about why the cursed Empire is here, for that matter,’ Che countered. She had known he was here and had been waiting for this, and yet he had caught her wholly off balance. Just seeing him and hearing his voice, she was instantly ready for a fight, reaching for the sword she had not brought with her. She looked into his face and saw the signs of tension pass. His smile returned, or at least some ghost of it.

  ‘Well, perhaps you can tell me why I’m here, and I’ll tell you why you’re here,’ he suggested.

  That nearly caused her a twitch of the lips. ‘Why here, Thalric?’ she said. ‘You’re the lord high grandee of the Empire. Surely that’s guarantee enough that I can’t just keep running into you.’

  ‘Apparently not.’ He paused, and she imagined that he was measuring the distance between them – not the physical space, but the miles that time and allegiance had interposed. ‘I apologize, Miss Maker … Ambassador Maker, I should say. I now formally present myself as your … opposite number here in Khanaphes. I’m sure your staff will see fit to call on my own staff, in due course.’ The words were said crisply, with a blithe smile, but she detected the wintry sadness behind them.

  He nodded his head, took a few steps back, and then turned to find someone else to talk to. Che was left knowing there were other things she wanted to say, but still uncertain as to what they were.

  She heard Mannerly Gorget’s braying laughter from across the room and saw him talking now with the First Soldier of the Royal Guard. Amnon was nodding and grinning, and she hoped Manny was not being undiplomatic. With that thought, she looked around for Praeda, and felt a lurch in her stomach as she realized that the woman was no longer in the hall at all. Vanished? Like Kadro? She shook this dark thought off irritably and beckoned a servant over.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for one of my party,’ she said. ‘The … the other woman, taller than me.’ The one with hair, the only other woman with hair in this whole building. The servant looked around in quick, jerky movements and opened her mouth as if to say that she did not know. But then she pointed to where Praeda was now emerging out of a small doorway to one side of the hall.

  Praeda spotted Che and hurried over. Her facade of calm had cracked, revealing a scholarly fire in her eyes. ‘Che, you’ve got to come and see this,’ she rushed out, almost falling over the words.

  ‘What? What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened,’ said Praeda. ‘It’s just … It’s incredible, really remarkable. Come with me … No, wait, come here.’ She caught Che’s hand and tugged her towards the fountain. ‘Do you see? Do you?’

  ‘I see a fountain,’ replied Che slowly, watching the water bubble up between the stones and subside again. ‘Praeda, please just be more clear.’

  ‘Think, Che,’ Praeda insisted. ‘Yes, it’s a fountain, but how do fountains work?’

  ‘I …’ I no longer know, and she could not say it.

  Praeda shook her head impatiently. ‘Did you assume this was just a natural spring or something? Che, think! We’re above the level of the river here.’

  Che vaguely understood what she meant, but that knowledge was dim and distant. ‘Just get to the point,’ she demanded, to cover up.

  ‘The point is … follow me,’ Praeda dragged her across the room to the little servants’ door she had recently come in through.

  ‘This is … rude,’ Che protested. ‘We’re supposed to be guests here.’

  ‘Manny can keep them occupied. He’s loud enough and fat enough for all three,’ Praeda sneered. She was pulling Che onwards through a series of small turns. The servants’ passages were low-ceilinged and cramped. There were little doorless rooms either side, some filled with boxes and sacks, others with tables for preparing food, or with desks for scribes. Praeda paid them no notice whatsoever, nor the surprised servants they passed on their way.

  There was a black-clad figure ahead and for a moment Che thought it was the Vekken, inexplicably involved in Praeda’s schemes. Then she saw it was a man in dark armour, with a full-face helm tilted back to reveal sandy Solarnese features.

  ‘Well, now, here you are at last,’ he said as the pair of them approached him.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Che demanded. ‘What’s going on here?’

  ‘The name’s Corcoran, Bella.’ As he said it Che noticed his tabard, though the smoky lamplight made it hard to pick out the open gauntlet embroidered there.

  ‘Iron Glove,’ she observed automatically. As he grinned in acknowledgement, she thought back, seeing them dealing with Dragonflies at the oasis, or on the streets of Solarno. ‘Who are you people?’

  ‘We just happen to be the newest and most successful trading cartel out of Chasme,’ Corcoran replied. He was a wiry individual with a pointed face that smiled shallowly and easily. ‘Weapons, Bella. We deal in weapons and the accoutrements of war.’

  ‘Here?’ Che asked. ‘I thought they weren’t keen on … innovation here.’

  ‘Oh, pits to innovation,’ said Corcoran dismissively. ‘We can sell them better swords than they have. You don’t need innovation. We provide what they lack. It’s purely good business.’

  ‘This man isn’t what I brought you here to see,’ Praeda explained impatiently. ‘It’s what he showed me. Come on.’

  She pushed past them both, leaving Che to blunder in her wake. The corridors were lit erratically by bowl-shaped oil lamps, or the occasional stone-cut shaft. Corcoran seemed almost to melt into the gloom as he followed, his dark leathers merging easily with the pooling shadows. Only his pale face, the gleam of his teeth, betrayed him.

  ‘Here.’ Praeda stopped abruptly then and darted through an even lower doorway. Che followed her, and almost tumbled down a short flight of steps. The room beyond was bigger than she expected, excavated down into the earth. There was a …

  There was a something within it.

  Praeda was obviously expecting comment, while Corcoran was lounging about at the top of the stairs, watching. Che did not know what to say.

  ‘What … am I looking at?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, Che, honestly,’ Praeda chided, losing patience. ‘Look here, these stone pipes must lead to the river – or to some pond where they keep their purified water. That’s done by those reed beds we saw, by the way, but I’ll tell you about it later. Anyway, the water is at a lower level than the fountain, so they have to draw it up somehow. That’s where this comes in, you see?’

  Che still didn’t see, though. There was a vertical pipe, carved as intricately as everything else, with a metal rod jutting from it, and there was some kind of fulcrum there, and a weight … I’m supposed to be able to understand what this is, she realized. Deep inside herself, she began to feel ill.

  ‘Tell me …’ she said hoarsely.

  ‘It’s a vacuum pump, t
hough, isn’t it?’ Corcoran said delightedly, from behind her. ‘The cursed’st one I ever saw, but that’s what it is. They get some poor sods of servants to haul the weight up, and then the weight comes down slow – probably there’s some sand emptying out of somewhere else to keep it that way …’

  ‘The weight descending draws up the plunger, expanding an airless space that the water then rushes up to fill,’ Praeda went on. ‘Really, Che, this is apprentice stuff. The water possesses enough momentum to gush through the smaller pipes and into the gravel fountain. It then probably flows right back down to where it originated.’

  Che did not trust herself to speak, merely put out an arm to seek the support of the wall.

  ‘Of course,’ Corcoran was saying, ‘we could sell them a pump the size of your shoe that would do a better job, and not need some bugger hauling a weight up every morning, but they won’t have it. Mad, they are, around here.’

  ‘But that’s not right …’ Che began slowly.

  ‘What do you mean?’ There was a look of perfect incomprehension on Praeda’s face.

  ‘The Khanaphir … they’re Inapt, surely.’ She glanced from the academic to the Iron Glove factor, whose expressions mirrored each other exactly.

  ‘Inapt?’ Praeda said slowly. ‘Che, they’re us – they’re Beetle-kinden. Of course they aren’t Inapt. What were you thinking?’

  ‘Go out of the city,’ Corcoran put in. ‘Go upriver, they got watermills, cranes, they can do all sorts of clever things with levers and weights. Take a look at the Estuarine Gate some time! It’s just, they’ve no more than that. No imagination is what I think.’