The Scarab Path

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Thalric put a hand to her shoulder, without thinking. All these dead we have in common. She covered it with her own, still peering into her own mind. For a moment, lost in memory and in drink, she had forgotten who he was.

  ‘And the Emperor died, of course,’ said Thalric. And from there come all my woes.

  She focused her gaze on him again, and instead of the anger he had expected there was only puzzlement there. ‘What are you doing here, Thalric?’

  ‘Keeping an eye on you.’ He said it before the Rekef in him could prevent it. ‘And you?’

  ‘Me? Oh, I’m mastering the art of self-deception. The others, they’re here to study – although I don’t expect you to believe a word of it. But I myself came here looking for … something else.’ She gave a fragile smile. ‘Something that isn’t here, that never was.’ No longer clutched so tight, the cloak had fallen open as she leant closer. Beneath it he saw the thin shift she wore, and under that, the swell of her breast. He felt a stab of arousal, absurdly inappropriate but powerful, and made to remove his hand from the warmth of her shoulder. For a second she held on to it, then let him reclaim it.

  ‘We are such fools, aren’t we?’ she said. ‘Brawling in the streets.’

  ‘To the great amusement of our hosts,’ he agreed.

  ‘Well, Thalric, where does this leave us?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Are we enemies, here and now?’

  She met his gaze. ‘You made a slave of me.’

  ‘Che—’

  ‘You would have had me raped. You would have tortured me – you would – don’t think I’ve forgotten.’

  He had gone cold. The ice had finally cracked and he had forgotten to be ready for it. ‘I won’t deny it.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would. You’ve never been less than honest.’ She shrugged. ‘And Uncle Sten thinks there’s even hope for the Vekken, so why not you? What are you asking for, Thalric?’

  ‘A truce? Until things degenerate between our factions again. A truce between you and me.’ He took that final step across the perilous ice. ‘For old times’ sake.’

  She snorted with laughter, but he was now on firm ground. He grasped her hand when she offered it to him, though he saw the faint flinch, her memory of what Wasp hands could do.

  ‘We are both a long way from home,’ she conceded, draining the last dregs from the jar. As she stood up it took her a moment to get her balance. ‘We … we run out of old friends, do we not? They die, or they leave.’

  He knew what she was saying: both of them marooned here at the ends of the earth. With whom did they share a past, however bitter, but with each other? He knew she would never have admitted it without the drink, but it was said now, impossible to retract.

  ‘A truce,’ she said. ‘I know you’re no good servant of your Empire, Thalric.’ He must have twitched because she said quickly, ‘and I’m no better. I came here for my own selfish reasons, however misconceived. A truce until the others start fighting again. Why not?’ She squeezed his hand briefly, then released it.

  He turned to Osgan and kicked the man’s foot, drawing a startled exclamation.

  ‘What—?’

  ‘If you’re intending to sleep, at least sleep indoors rather than under the stars like a Roach-kinden,’ Thalric reproached him, and half-hauled the man to his feet. He glanced at Che again, and she gave him a fragile smile, a lop-sided shrug.

  ‘Until next time,’ she said, and turned for her embassy.

  Petri Coggen was wide awake the next day – more awake than Che felt, certainly. Without fatigue to loosen her lips, she was now close-mouthed about the things she had said previously. Instead she eyed her fellow Collegiates cagily. You all think I’m mad, was written plain on her face.

  ‘We will talk later,’ Che whispered to her. After all, her great confessions had been disclosed only to Che, who was frankly not ready for further details. Between the disappointment and the drink she was feeling the morning keenly.

  ‘You’ve lived for a while amongst these Khanaphir,’ Berjek remarked. They were sitting together at a magnificently carved table, eating a local breakfast of honey and seedcake. The airy wave of his hand took in the city beyond the window, but ignored the servants that glided past him. ‘I confess to seeing here a great deal that has mystified me. Their culture is not at all like ours, and yet we are of the same kinden.’

  Petri Coggen nodded gloomily. ‘Yes, they are not like us,’ she said.

  ‘Technologically, in particular,’ Praeda put in. ‘Which I think we can take as a valid yardstick of any culture—’

  ‘Oh, nonsense.’ The objection of Berjek the historian to Praeda the artificer.

  She ignored him. ‘These Khanaphir have a marvellous architecture, it’s true, and I’m told they have some achievements in basic water-powered or weight-and-lever devices, but … but when Che first saw this place, she even thought they might be Inapt, and I must admit I can see why.’

  Oh you can’t, Che thought, around her headache. Really, you can’t.

  ‘Do you know much of their history?’ Praeda asked.

  ‘They do not talk about their history, for the same reason fish don’t talk of water,’ Petri told them. ‘They are swimming in history. So much of this city is ancient, and so much more simply copied from that.’

  Manny seemed to be suffering worse than Che, and had been listlessly chewing the same mouthful of seedcake for twenty minutes. Now he swallowed forcibly, and said, ‘Maybe they achieved Aptitude more recently than we did.’

  The others looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said irritably, ‘I am a Master of the Great College. I may not be as respected as either of you two, but I’m a cartographer. I study maps, and I know that sometimes there are maps that I can’t read: maps made by the Inapt, who frankly have no concept of how to draw one. But sometimes there are maps that are … trying harder. Those of the Fly-kinden, for instance. Fly-kinden maps dating from a couple of centuries ago are illegible, but modern ones, most of them, are clear as day.’

  ‘It’s a possibility,’ Berjek allowed. ‘The transmigration of Aptitude over time is a … contentious issue, academically speaking. I’m not sure that’s something I want to get into.’

  ‘Corcoran said something …’ Che blurted out. What was it the Iron Glove factor had said?

  ‘Corcoran advised us to study the Estuarine Gate,’ Praeda recalled. ‘I think we should take him up on it. He told me where their consortium has its factora located. I’m sure he’d be happy for us to engage his services for the day.’

  The bright sun provided no antidote to a harsh night. Che staggered like a blind woman half the distance to the Estuarine Gate, before her eyes and brain reluctantly reached a détente with the new day. Corcoran seemed in annoyingly jaunty form, more than happy to help his fellow foreigners. He had been in Khanaphes for a while, she gathered, but the locals would not let him forget that he did not belong. He was enjoying the novelty of some company.

  ‘The thing is …’ Corcoran began, running his hand along the intricately cut stone of the Estuarine Gate’s nearside pillar. ‘No – tell you what, you take a look at it there, then you tell me.’ He beamed around at the academics. Che could not yet make up her mind about him. He had the demeanour of a mercenary, and wore the dark armour of the Iron Glove at all times, but he talked like a merchant, instantly familiar, endearingly irreverent. His Solarnese features looked infinitely honest and Che would not have bought a kitchen knife from him.

  Berjek and Praeda both stepped forward to take a look. The great column that formed the eastern Estuarine Gate towered above them, incised at every level with those ubiquitous pictographs that Khanaphes had tattooed itself with. Che forced herself to examine them, aware that behind her Manny Gorget had drifted off to accost a sweetmeat seller, while Petri Coggen stood biting at her nails and flinching away from the many Khanaphir that bustled past.

  In frustration, Berjek had dismissed the desi
gns as merely decorative. Che’s eyes gave him the lie. They caught on the orderly lines of carving, drawn into following them. On most of the buildings it was like seeing a madman’s scrawl, always promising sense, delivering nothing. Here on these ancient stones …

  She blinked. For a moment just then it had seemed as though she saw words, had heard voices almost. In that day… Honour to … So it was … She averted her eyes, her headache stabbing sharply behind the eyes, then forced herself to look again. It was as though the sense they conveyed was hovering like a fish just below the surface – distorted, deceptive, but nevertheless there.

  ‘Corcoran, tell me,’ she said, ‘what are these cursed carvings they engrave on everything?’

  ‘No idea.’ He grinned briefly. ‘Just part of the Khanaphir way, their traditions. When they build something in stone they have special craftsmen come and put these squiggles on them. It’s just what they do.’ He gave a half-shrug, clearly not so bothered. ‘They say the carvers train especially from a great book of the designs that the Ministers have, that shows all the permitted pictures they can use. Good luck in seeing that, though. Our hosts don’t make it easy to understand them.’

  Che filed the information away. I will see that book if I have to steal it.

  ‘I really don’t know what I’m looking for,’ Berjek admitted, backing away from the towering structure. ‘Or do you mean the statues on the estuary side? We saw those coming in.’

  Didn’t we just, Che thought. She had dreamt last night of Achaeos, the drink betraying her. He had been hunting her, the lethal lines of a snapbow in his slender hands, and she had tried and tried to hide, but he had always tracked her down, his white eyes blazing in fury. It had been Khanaphes he was hunting her through, a city empty of people, and with those colossal statues, in their eternal cold beauty, looming at every corner.

  ‘I have it,’ Praeda said at last. ‘This is not of one piece. There are four sides to it, and it is hollow.’

  ‘Very good,’ Corcoran smiled. ‘You can hardly tell, I know, but the cracks are there. Now look across at the side of the west gate, facing us. You see the groove there?’

  ‘There is … Is that a chain?’ Praeda leant out, alarmingly, over the river. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘They don’t call this a gate for nothing,’ Corcoran confirmed. ‘Below us, way below the draught of any ship, there is a great big, bronze-shod, wooden gate, and inside those towers there must be the biggest drop-weights you ever saw. When they want to close the river, they close the river, though I’ve never actually seen it done. They tell me it was last raised about forty years ago, so I reckon it’s in good working order still.’

  ‘Still?’ Berjek echoed. ‘Yes, but “still” from when? Oh, it looks old enough, but then everything here does. When was this mechanism put in?’

  ‘That I can’t tell you,’ Corcoran admitted, and when the academics turned sour faces on him, he raised a hand. ‘Believe it or not, I wanted to know that as well. I’m an artificer, after all, and you get curious. The locals just say it’s been here for ever, whatever that means. No help there, then. But I got friendly with a Spider-kinden captain, and she did a bit of digging for me – in exchange for a cheap deal on some crossbows from the Glove. She found some records of once when a Spider Arista was stopped at the gates by the Khanaphir – some diplomatic incident – and the Spider-kinden families don’t forget insults. Their description of the gate is perfect, same then as now.’

  ‘And when was this supposed to be?’ Berjek asked, annoyed by the man’s air of showmanship.

  ‘Hold on to something,’ Corcoran said, ‘because it was at least – at least, mind – five hundred and fifty years back. And it didn’t say anything about the gate being new, even then.’

  Berjek stared at him. ‘Well, that’s impossible,’ he protested, but something tugged at the corner of his mouth and he added, ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Could Collegium have built this, then?’ Che asked.

  ‘No,’ Praeda said simply. ‘That long ago is before the revolution, back when we might really have been Inapt.’

  ‘But the Khanaphir can’t have been Apt for fifty – maybe a hundred? – years longer than we have,’ said Berjek, scandalized. ‘Just look at them! What happened? Are you telling me that all their artificers just gave up, closed their books and locked their workshops?’

  ‘I’m not telling you anything,’ Corcoran said mildly. ‘They do the most impressive things you ever saw with simple mechanisms, and they’ll have nothing to do with anything more, even if you promise to install it free of charge. You’re right, it makes no sense, but that’s the way it is.’

  It doesn’t make sense, Che agreed inwardly. And so there must be some reason for it that we have not found. Aptitude? It is all about Aptitude. This city has not truly taken to it, so … so …

  So there may be something left, some survival, that the tide of progress has not washed away.

  She fell back from the bickering academics to join Petri Coggen, who looked at her fearfully. Che could not blame her.

  ‘You know this city,’ Che began. ‘You know it better than any of us.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Petri asked her, voice shaking slightly. There was clearly something in Che’s expression she did not like, and Che was not surprised.

  ‘There must be something … Even in Collegium, if one searches hard enough, one can find a mystic, some old Moth or halfbreed peddling prophecy from a doorway. You can’t tell me there is nothing of that here.’

  Petri stared at her aghast. ‘But … why?’

  ‘Never mind why,’ Che replied, with more force than she intended. ‘I want you to think carefully about what I have asked and then, when we can go without these scholars bothering me, you will show me what I want to see.’

  Petri was already shaking her head slowly. ‘I’m not sure …’

  ‘You have told me your fears,’ Che persisted. ‘I have not dismissed them. In fact, I agree with you: there is something at the heart of this city that is very wrong indeed. But I must use unusual methods to find it.’ It was dishonest, putting it like that, but she was desperate. ‘Did Master – did Kadro go to those places?’

  There was a very long pause, as shock registered on Petri’s face.

  ‘He did,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know how you know that, but he did.’

  ‘Then so shall I.’

  Seventeen

  They had sent Corcoran advance warning of the ship, but the vessel was now three days late and he was not a man to be out sitting on the dock every morning in loyal vigilance. Instead, for a handful of coins he had a boy keep watch for him. He meanwhile did his best to show autonomy and importance, for the position of foreign traders in Khanaphes was an uncertain one. A man had to work hard to get invited to the diplomatic functions that Corcoran enjoyed. Still, when the boy came running to the Iron Glove factora bringing the news, Corcoran got himself to the docks absolutely as quickly as possible.

  He spotted the ship straight away, even amongst the perpetual dance of other vessels docking and leaving. Following his advice, they had come in under sail, but he could see the tarpaulin-covered bulk of the engine and paddle wheel at the stern, which had cut across the Sunroad Sea in defiance of wind or weather. The gauntlet badge of the Iron Glove was displayed on the round shields that lined her rails, a practice borrowed from the Mantis-kinden and more decorative than functional here. The sail was blank, but they seldom had to resort to it: only here, where time stood still, was being at the mercy of the elements considered good form.

  Corcoran got himself to the quay just as the ship drew in, making himself evident in his dark armour and shifting tabard. Though he liked to consider himself a free spirit, there were certain people whose continued favour was essential to his livelihood, and one such was currently on this ship.

  And why is Himself taking all this so very personally? A simple message from Corcoran had confirmed when the Lowlanders were expected, and the r
eply had come back by return: I am coming, and projected times and dates. None of my business, Corcoran decided. He’s worried about the competition, no doubt.

  Once the dockhands had finished tying the ship off, a section of its metal-plated side fell open to form a gangplank. Corcoran drew himself up straight as the passengers began to disembark.

  Life alive, he marvelled. He doesn’t do things by halves.

  The man in the lead wore armour of black, fluted steel: an intricate mesh of fine mail and sliding plates, and each section cast in ridges and folds to give it more strength for less weight. Nothing of his face showed between the slotted helm and a high gorget. His Iron Glove tabard was edged in silver, but beyond that it was only the sophistication of the armour itself that marked his rank. Behind him came a full dozen Iron Glove mercenaries armoured in leathers, like Corcoran himself, but under plain breastplates and blackened steel helms. They all carried spears and swords, and Corcoran guessed at the disassembled crossbows or snapbows lying hidden in their packs.

  It’s not a delegation, it’s an invasion, he thought. Already there would be word rushing upriver towards the Scriptora, so they would receive their official welcome soon enough.

  ‘Welcome to Khanaphes, Sieur,’ he said. The eye-slit of the helm waited, and he hastily corrected himself, ‘Sir, rather.’ And why they have to use Imperial, rather than good honest Solarnese words, I don’t know. ‘Are you not hot in all that armour, sir?’

  The man gave a hollow laugh. ‘A little, but giving the right impression is important. What is the situation here? Where do we stand?’

  ‘Would you not rather retire to the factora first, sir?’

  ‘I’m sure I will be required to speak with the locals shortly, so tell me what I need to know.’

  ‘Well then, nothing much has changed,’ Corcoran explained. ‘The Collegiates have been here almost a tenday now, and they’ve been meeting with the Ministers and poking at the statues, all what you’d expect. The only business was some kind of midnight scuffle with some Imperial types a few days back, but nothing further seemed to come of that.’