The Scarab Path

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Collegium, excellent.’ Amnon made a show of examining some of the weapons on the wall. ‘Will you advise me, then, on a matter regarding Collegium?’ His accent gave the familiar name an exotic sound.

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘How is it with the women there?’ Amnon said, still not looking at him directly.

  ‘The …?’ Totho let the sentence hang. Do I want to know what he means?

  ‘It is like this.’ Amnon turned to him, and his big, amiable face wore a defensive expression for once. ‘One of the Collegium delegation has caught my eye. In fact, I find her quite the most beautiful woman there is.’ He said it quickly, without fumbling the words in any way. ‘I know she is not wed, or intended, but I have not spoken to her of my feelings yet. I am not sure how things are done where she comes from.’

  Totho felt a sinking feeling. ‘Is it … the ambassador?’ he asked. No more rivals, he thought. And certainly not this man, this absurd specimen of physicality. He tried to imagine competing with Amnon, with all his smiles and prowess and position.

  ‘It is the woman Rakespear,’ Amnon announced, and Totho felt a wash of relief. He had only a vague idea of who Amnon meant, but it was not Che and that was all that mattered.

  ‘In Collegium, one normally speaks to her father or her guardian’ – and that worked well for me, didn’t it? – ‘but there is no reason not to speak with her direct, or to offer her gifts. I think you’ll find that Collegiate women are probably quite forward compared to what you’re used to.’

  ‘Good,’ said Amnon, and he was about to say something more when Corcoran came in, not with the armour but escorting another guest. Amnon straightened to attention immediately, and Totho recognized the robed figure of the First Minister standing there with his quiet smile.

  ‘My lord,’ Totho bowed to him quickly, ‘we had not expected you, but you are welcome, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ethmet replied, glancing from Totho to Amnon. ‘I had heard our First Soldier was to receive some gift today. It is very kind of you, Honoured Foreigner, and I would see it presented, if I may.’

  ‘We would be happy,’ said Totho, aware of a feeling of discomfort from Amnon. Is he breaking some rule of theirs? But Corcoran had done his groundwork, surely, and presenting gifts to high officials was every bit a part of Khanaphir life. Ethmet’s face offered no clues.

  They brought the armour out just then, four of his men manhandling the table on which it was laid. The mere empty shell of it, cast to Amnon’s proportions, made Totho feel dwarfed.

  ‘This is forged in what we call aviation steel, that the Solarnese developed for their flying machines,’ he explained, as the Iron Glove men buckled the arming jacket on Amnon and then began to piece the armour onto him. ‘It’s very light, and still very strong, but they had never thought of using the material for armour until we came along.’ The mail undershirt was already on, and Totho relished Amnon’s surprise at how light it was. ‘The mail rings are drawn from silver-steel wire, and they’ll bunch on impact to block an arrow or a sword.’ Totho walked around, observing as his people attached the metal plates, watching Amnon slowly disappear, becoming something huge and metallic. It was a glorious transformation, in Totho’s eyes. ‘The plates themselves are machined into flutes, which makes them as strong as much thicker metal, and which also helps deflect an enemy’s weapon. Every surface a blade might impact on is curved or, where those curves meet, is an angled line. That means that you have the absolute maximum of protection against attacks from any angle. With the mail, and the jack beneath, the only weak points are the groin and armpit, although there is fine mail even there.’ When the helm was lowered onto Amnon’s head, they had to stand on the table to do it.

  For a long moment there was silence. Totho watched Amnon making small movements, feeling the way the metal slid over metal. He looked like some creation of artifice, some colossal war-automaton. They had stripped from him all human frailties.

  Then, ‘No,’ said Ethmet softly.

  Amnon’s helm turned quickly to face him.

  ‘First Minister?’ Totho asked, uncertainly.

  ‘We cannot accept this gift,’ the old Khanaphir declared. There was some expression, at last, on his face. He was shaken by what he had seen. ‘We had thought it was mere armour. This is not armour as we understand it.’

  Amnon wrenched off the helm, looking aggrieved. ‘But, First Minister, I like this armour. It is lighter than my battlemail. I have never worn anything like it.’

  ‘No,’ Ethmet said again, ‘we regret that Khanaphes cannot accept this.’

  ‘But, First Minister …!’ Amnon began again, till Ethmet turned on him sharply, his glance alone quelling any argument.

  ‘The Masters would not approve,’ he proclaimed, and Amnon’s face sagged. The Minister’s expression was still stern as he turned to Totho again. ‘Trade us your arrows and your swords, your shields and such things as we approve of, but you are henceforth warned, O Foreigner. There are limits, in this city, to what may be done, and the Masters’ will may not be crossed.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ protested Totho.

  ‘I think you do.’ The man facing him now was a stranger, stripped of all the mild patience of the First Minister. There was no compromise at all in that face and Totho saw that Amnon was visibly frightened. He could snap the old man in half with one hand, but things didn’t work that way, it would seem. What does this remind me of, that I have seen before? Mantis and Moth, that is what it reminds me of. The strong whipped into submission by the weak.

  As they stripped the armour from Amnon, his expression remained resentful but cowed. Whatever power Ethmet held over him, it was something that the First Soldier would not provoke at any cost. Who exactly are these Masters of Khanaphir? Totho wondered. A fiction, Corcoran had assumed – some invention of the Ministers, to ensure their continuing power. Totho himself had not been sure, until now. Nothing but such a deception could allow this old man to get away with it.

  ‘I had thought that the Honoured Foreigner might come on my hunt,’ Amnon muttered, almost too quiet to be heard.

  ‘It is not appropriate,’ Ethmet replied, as though Totho was not there. ‘Your hunt is for dignitaries, not for merchants.’

  The two of them departed after that, the old man shepherding the huge warrior out of the Iron Glove factora, leaving Totho quizzing Corcoran futilely in an attempt to understand what it had all been about.

  Twenty-One

  The boat cut through the water at a surprising pace, its shallow draught moving cleanly and with almost no wake. Che huddled inside her cloak and felt miserable.

  ‘I don’t see why I have to join this circus,’ she complained. Her last few days had been hectic – the Fir was still giving her occasional stabs of queasiness and she had not come to terms with meeting Totho either – so the last thing she wanted was to be dragged from her bed to go on some hunting expedition.

  ‘It’s in your honour,’ Manny explained airily. ‘Or perhaps our honour.’

  ‘Berjek didn’t have to come along.’

  ‘Master Gripshod isn’t the ambassador.’

  Che shook herself irritably. The locals had come to fetch them two hours before dawn, which had been a surprise to everyone except Mannerly Gorget. Manny himself had been downstairs and ready, drinking hot spiked tea, having neglected to tell anyone else of the arrangements he had made. It had meant a bungled rush for Che and Praeda to get dressed, and then be bustled down to the docks. They had reached the river to see the first bare streaks of dawn kindling in the eastern sky.

  The boat that awaited them there was not what Che had expected. For a start it had no mast, and it seemed very small. It was a long, slender craft that rocked alarmingly when Manny transferred his bulk on to it, little more than an oversized canoe. At both prow and stern the curving shape tapered and rose into a stumpy carving of something that Che could not identify.

  There were two boat crew, standing fore and
aft, and although they must already have been waiting an hour they did not show it. Che, cowled and half-asleep, did not get a proper look at them until they had cast off and were under way, each standing upright to paddle with great strong strokes, alternating left and right. Then, belatedly, she realized that they were not Khanaphir. They were slender, with silver-grey skins, and though they had shaved heads and simple tunics like Khanaphir servants, Che recognized their angular features instantly.

  ‘Mantis-kinden?’ she exclaimed, blinking herself wider awake.

  ‘They call them the Marsh People,’ Praeda informed her. ‘They seem to be attached somehow to the city, under its control, though the relationship between them and our hosts seems complex. We’re going out into the delta now, you see. It’s their place.’ She spoke distractedly, something else clearly on her mind.

  They had just passed between the great pillars of the Estuarine Gate, and Che carefully did not look back at the morass of cloth that was the Marsh Alcaia. ‘I didn’t realize the Khanaphir had subject peoples,’ she said. ‘The city’s not exactly cosmopolitan.’

  ‘And more than just the Marsh-dwellers,’ Praeda confirmed, ‘but they keep to their places. I’ve been asking to go upriver, to see some of the other settlements. The Dominion of Khanaphes has at least four disparate kinden within it, I believe.’

  ‘What keeps them in line?’ Che said softly, almost to herself. She looked up again at the nearest Marsh-dweller, silhouetted against the lightening sky. The Mantis woman did not glance down, but kept paddling strongly, stroke after stroke. What do they get out of this servitude? Who can manage to hold Mantis-kinden in thrall?

  The Moths could – Achaeos’s people. The thought came automatically, and she knew she was touching the secret again, hearing the pulse of Khanaphes’s hidden heart. The Moths were a sorcerous, Inapt race, whereas the Khanaphir were not … or at least that was the face they showed to the world.

  The river beyond the gates was swathed in mist: white curtains of it rose from the waters, cloaking the banks and muffling the deep ratcheting of the crickets and the boom of a distant cicada. Abruptly they were within it, and the world had been left behind, only the pale and ragged sheets of the mist itself coursing over and around them.

  ‘We’re not just going out alone are we?’ Che whispered. ‘Aren’t there supposed to be more of us?’

  ‘They’ll be waiting for us further out on the river,’ said Manny, with slightly hollow confidence.

  ‘Do we have any idea what we’re supposed to be hunting?’ asked Praeda. Even she sounded slightly nervous.

  ‘Fishing,’ Manny said dismissively. ‘After all this, it’s only fishing. So I intend to get a decent look at the local fauna while everyone is fooling about with nets and things.’

  There was a slight sound from the forward Mantis, which might have indicated humour. Che looked up abruptly to see a definite smile being fought off the woman’s face. Her stomach sank, knowing that Manny’s research had not been as thorough as he thought.

  Something loomed ahead in the clearing mist, and Che made out a greater boat, a broad barge that was ten times as long as their little punt, equipped with a bare mast and a canopy to keep off the sun that would soon be burning the mist away. Che saw several robed figures standing at the rail, watching them with polite interest. She recognized Ethmet and a few of the other Ministers, obviously come to watch the sport.

  ‘Why aren’t I on that boat?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah, well,’ said Manny, in a tone that admitted guilt even while he was choosing his words. ‘We were given the choice, of course, but I reckoned we’d see nothing from up there.’

  ‘Manny, are we … participating in this hunt?’ Praeda asked him.

  ‘Well, not so much – not unless you wanted to. I just wanted to make sure we were close enough to the water to see what was going on, get a decent look at the wildlife.’

  There were other boats now skimming along the side of the barge. Che saw that they were tiny, barely five feet long and with a single Mantis-kinden poling or paddling them, poised with impossible balance as they scudded across the river. Those craft were not of wood, but merely bundled reeds, and where the bunched reeds were lashed together, at front and rear, they formed the original of the wooden carving that her own boat was capped with. She turned to point this out to Praeda, but the woman was already bent over the boards of their own craft, examining its construction.

  ‘Fascinating,’ she said finally. ‘You realize there are no nails in this boat at all?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish,’ Manny sneered. ‘What’s holding it together then?’ He shifted his place and the craft rocked alarmingly. The Mantis crew accommodated the movement with a slight shift of balance, as though it had all been rehearsed between them and Manny the previous day.

  ‘Rope,’ Praeda revealed. ‘Just rope, passed round and through and round again. It must shrink in the water, to hold everything together. But it’s perfect Inapt boatbuilding. The techniques must be centuries old.’

  Just like everything around here, Che thought.

  Another boat came up beside them, the mirror of their own but twice as long, four Mantids back-paddling to bring the craft alongside. Amnon was standing at its carved prow, stripped to the waist and wearing only a kilt. Che heard Praeda murmur, ‘Oh, grace and favour, look at him!’ in civilized horror. She kept looking at him, though, Che noticed, and when she glanced away her eyes were drawn back to him soon enough. A conversation with Manny recurred to her, and Che wondered if similar word had crept round to Praeda.

  The big man grinned down at them. ‘Welcome!’ he said. ‘At last you are with us: the hunt can begin. It is my honour that you have agreed to participate as bold hunters along with us. In this way shall the skill and the courage of Collegium be known.’

  Che grimaced up at him. ‘Captain, I think you should first let us know just what we are hunting, and how to go about it,’ she said weakly. ‘We are rather new to this.’

  ‘Of course, of course. You should watch me make the first kill, perhaps.’ He put a bare foot up on the side of his boat, scanning the riverbank beyond them, then jabbing out a finger. ‘There, you see,’ he said. ‘They come to warm themselves in the sun. Do you see them there?’

  ‘Fish basking in the …’ Che could see nothing but rocks amongst the foliage, but she heard Manny whistle in astonishment, and then one of the rocks opened a bulbous eye to appraise her. There were half a dozen of them, the least of them the size of a man. Slick-skinned, brown creatures with stubby front fins like arms, and high-set, goggling eyes, they lounged half-in and half-out of the water. One of them yawned, and its mouth was cavernous, the needle-sharp teeth glinting in the dawn light.

  ‘Oh, loose knives and bloody thunder,’ Manny said in awe. ‘They’re fish. Those are the fish they’re hunting.’

  ‘Land-fish,’ Amnon said proudly, as though he was personally responsible for their existence. ‘But we will not hunt these, of course. They are only young. It would not be fair to pit our skills against them until they have fully grown.’

  ‘I want to go on the barge,’ said Che, but the Mantids were suddenly thrusting the boat forward, almost toppling her backwards. Amnon’s crew did the same, and she saw a few other boats like their own coursing ahead over the water, moving beyond the wallowing barge.

  ‘Catch these!’ Amnon called out. ‘You must have the tools to hunt them!’ He took up a leather-wrapped bundle that was as long as he was and cast it, with no appreciable effort, across the water towards them. Manny took it full in the chest and would have toppled overboard with it had Praeda and Che not grabbed hold of his robes. With a certain avid interest he unwrapped it, spilling arrows into the bottom of the boat. There was a brace of shortbows, too, curled forward ready to be strung, and a spear with a barbed head attached to a neatly coiled line.

  ‘Nets and things,’ said Che pointedly to Manny. ‘What have you got us into?’

  ‘That Amnon, he claime
d it was fishing,’ the fat man protested.

  ‘Well, to him, this probably does count as fishing,’ Che snapped. ‘We will keep well clear of all this hunting, and Waste take the honour of Collegium.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Manny, slightly shaken by this turn of events. Che sat back and put a hand to her head. Land-fish stared at her with sleepy suspicion from the banks, and so she turned her back on them, looking out at the other boats.

  From the far side of Amnon’s craft another boat emerged. It had two Mantids poling it forward, but a third man was standing near the bows, spear in hand and cloak billowing. It took Che a moment to recognize him.

  Thalric. And of course what she should be doing now, instead of performing this ridiculous charade, was talking to Thalric and smoothing things over. But it would have done no good to seek him out, she saw, because she was not the only ambassador to have been invited on the hunt.

  He glanced over at her, and on his pale face she could see bruising, and her heart sank. Totho thought he was rescuing me. Trallo had explained to her how Thalric had taken her from the Fir-eaters, only to lose her to the Iron Glove. I am changing hands so often, they should put customs duty on me.

  She raised a hand to send a feeble greeting over the water. She saw him nod in response. That small contact, the opening of negotiations, brought her a disproportionate relief. Has Totho now usurped him as the person I know best in this city? Or do I know Thalric even better, at this remove? Thalric has been drifting nearer, while Totho began close to me but he seems so far away now.

  There was a series of shrill whistles that Che could not locate. As they sounded again she realized they came from beyond the river proper, amid the channels and marshes of the delta which spread its tangled fingers from here all the way to the sea. Amnon’s boat went coursing towards the sounds, and her own followed under the swift, sure oar-strokes of the Mantis-kinden. She saw Thalric’s craft leap forward also, his wings flickering to keep balance. There was another Wasp sitting in the boat behind him, looking every bit as ill and miserable as Che herself felt. She thought it might be the same man who had reacted so badly to the Mantis statue, and wondered how he was getting on with their boat’s crew.