The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Stenwold reached for him in frustration, but then thought better of it. 'Tell them that the war is over. You're an ambassador — Vek is sending ambassadors to Collegium, for Waste's sake!'

  'I do not have authority to countermand a Tactician's order.'

  At that moment Stenwold was physically shoved further into the shelter of the automotive's hatch by the injured soldier. 'Tell them!' he roared desperately. 'Don't you think that if your King was here he would order them to stop?'

  The idea of second-guessing the Monarch of Vek was obviously beyond consideration for this particular Vekken. He just stood there, staring at Stenwold with patent loathing. The guardsmen had now raised a cordon of shields around him and Cheerwell, with snapbowmen ducking down behind it to reload, then up again to shoot. Che noticed that there were a good few Vekken dead as well, as the bolts tore through their shields and armour both.

  'Well?' Stenwold demanded. 'Can't you admit to logic, just this once?'

  'Your men are the only ones still shooting,' the Vekken observed.

  Stenwold forced his way out of the automotive again. 'Put up your bows!' he called. 'Hold!'

  The Collegium soldiers waited tensely, the snapbowmen with their weapons still levelled above the shields of their fellows. The Vekken force mirrored them, big shields steady, crossbows loaded and aimed. There was a long, fraught pause while Stenwold caught his breath.

  'We cannot go on like this,' he declared at last. The Vekken ambassador eyed him as though he was mad.

  'Put up your bows,' he said again without anger, sounding only tired.

  The officer repeated the order with obvious reluctance and the barrels of the snapbows lifted.

  'What is going on?' Stenwold asked.

  'As I have said, these men were given their last orders before Tactician Akalia's force was defeated.' That defeat was obviously a bitter memory for the Vekken.

  'And now?'

  'They will seek further instructions, on the off chance that their orders will now be changed.'

  'Off chance?' Stenwold exploded.

  The Vekken's expression suggested that attacking Collegium agriculture was an eminently appropriate thing for bands of Vekken soldiers to be doing.

  'And are there any more of these soldiers?'

  There was a pause while the Vekken remained silent, obviously communing mind-to-mind with his kinsmen. 'Yes,' he replied at last. As Stenwold drew breath to speak he said, 'I have suggested, as an officer of Vek, that this band recommend they too seek new orders. I have no absolute authority, however, and they may disagree with my assessment.'

  And you secretly hope they will. Stenwold felt an urge to strangle the man. He cautioned himself: Diplomacy, remember. He had tried so hard, so very hard, to make things work. He had started with this premise: they are people, just as we are, but he should have known better. Since then he'd had plenty of cause to remember that Ant-kinden were not remotely like the sort of people he understood.

  The Vekken were now attending to their wounded. 'Do you want me to provide them with doctors?' Stenwold asked, seeing the opportunity for a peace offering.

  'They require no Collegiate doctor,' the Vekken ambassador snapped, without hesitation.

  'At least let us attend to your wound then …'

  The look he received was poisonous. 'My own people will tend to me in due course. For now, should we not be returning, as you have solved your mystery?'

  Stenwold took ten minutes' respite from diplomacy, as the automotive began to rumble its way back to Collegium, to think every vile thought he could about both the city of Vek and its bloody-minded inhabitants. After that satisfaction he leant forward to address the envoy again.

  'Do you at least see now, though, why your presence in our city is so necessary? Misunderstandings occur so very easily, between our people. Surely you must understand that there is no need for this violence, not any more?'

  There was no hint of understanding in the Vekken's face, in fact no expression of any kind. Stenwold sighed again.

  'You are here in Collegium for a purpose.' A purpose other than spying on us, surely, he added to himself.

  'Master Maker,' the Vekken replied, 'we are here for now, but how long do you think your plan will work? We are here because you have spoken so many words that some within our city have become curious. We know that your people hate us. We know that support for you in your ruling body wanes. Matters will soon resume their natural course. What do you hope to accomplish?'

  It was a surprisingly long speech, for one of his kind. Stenwold sat back and reflected. The Vekken initiative had been his idea, true, and almost a single-handed effort. He had traded a lot of the prestige he had accumulated during the war for this chance at a lasting peace.

  And he's right, the bastard. He sees it very clear. It wouldn't take much of a shift of opinion in the Assembly to have us rattling our spears again.

  The Vekken was looking at him without expression, except for a tiny wince of pain each time the automotive jolted. The studied loathing still evident in his eyes presaged the future.

  Three

  'Khanaphes,' said Master Jodry Drillen and, although it was twelve years since the man had been a teacher at the College, Stenwold still heard in his head the squeak of chalk on slate.

  'Khanaphes, indeed,' he murmured. The two of them had appropriated one of the smaller conference rooms at the Amphiophos. Nearby, the Assembly, the great elected mob that governed and failed to govern Collegium in equal measures, had only recently finished sitting.

  'Something must be done.' Master Drillen was a great, fat Beetle-kinden man a few years Stenwold's senior. He had exchanged academia for politics years ago and never looked back, his influence and waist expanding in tandem as though by some demonstrable formula of statesmanship. At the moment he wore a little greying goatee beard in the Spider style, which Stenwold thought looked ridiculous but was apparently all the fashion.

  Stenwold shrugged. 'The city of Khanaphes is a living, breathing city, rather than something consigned to the histories of the Inapt. That's no great surprise, is it? After all, the Moths left us with only the scraps from their table, academically speaking. No wonder, five centuries on, we're still rediscovering things that they have known all along. As for what you can mean with your "Something must be done" then it's simply one more field of study for the College geographers, unless you're now proposing going to war to wipe it off the map. It has been only recently added by the cartographers. The paint is probably still wet.' It was now two tendays after the incident at the mill, and Stenwold was feeling, at least, a bit more rested. Any good humour these days seemed to be fleeting, so he made any use of it he could.

  'Sophist.' Drillen gave him a grin that was surprisingly boyish. 'You know why this is important.'

  'Do I?'

  'It's all the fault of the Solarnese, of course, all those squabbling little provincials huddled around the Exalsee — why are you laughing now?'

  'Those "squabbling little provincials" have been teaching our artificers things we wouldn't have worked out for another ten years,' Stenwold said mildly. 'But do go on. You were blaming them for something.'

  One of Drillen's servants arrived just then, having finally tracked down the right vintage in the Assembly's cellars, and the two statesmen took a moment to sip it appreciatively. 'The Solarnese,' said Drillen eventually, 'with their stupid names with all those extra vowels … what was that ambassador they sent? Oh yes, he wrote it as Caidhreigh, but then when you introduced him it turned out he was called Cathray. Anyway, everyone seems agreed now that they're some kind of stable halfbreed stock, Ant-kinden and Beetle-kinden combined. You can see it in their faces, and most especially you can see it in their Art, after we finally convinced them to talk about it. They're like those other fellows you were always banging on about.'

  'Myna,' Stenwold agreed.

  'Exactly. But they're obviously no relation because of their skin colour, and so the ethnologists starte
d asking "Where did they come from?"'

  'Nobody cared when it was just Myna,' Stenwold said.

  'Two reasons, old soldier.' Drillen enumerated them on his chubby fingers. 'One: public attitudes were different back then. Two: Myna's within spitting distance of an Ant city-state — and not so very far from Helleron. No mysteries there, then. There are no Beetle-kinden around the Exalsee, and yet the ethnologists are adamant in their conclusions, so whence the Solarnese? Well, of course, we ask them that question, when politeness permits, and they show us their maps, and tell us their earliest word-of-mouth records say their ancestors came from Khanaphes. The Beetle-kinden city of Khanaphes, no less, just as some of our ancient-history fellows have been banging on about for ages. So now every scholar in that field is publishing his flights of utter fancy, saying that we came from there, that they came from here, all manner of lunacy. It makes you wish the Moths had been just a little more forthcoming with their menials, before the revolution. If there's one thing a man of the College hates it's feeling ignorant.'

  'You are still a scholar at heart then?' Stenwold said. 'That amazes me. I happen to agree with you, but I'm surprised that a man of importance like yourself can still find time to concern himself with such abstruse academic matters.'

  'There is more at stake here than scholarship,' Drillen said fiercely. 'You must be aware that people are looking at the world in a different way now, after the war. For me, I'd just as soon everyone went back to not really caring what lay east of Tark and north of Helleron, despite all the trouble that attitude has caused us, but it's too late now. Go into any taverna in the city and you'll hear scribes and guardsmen and manual labourers all talking about places like Maynes and the Commonweal and bloody Solarno, as though they were planning on going there tomorrow.' Drillen was becoming quite excited now. Stenwold sipped his wine and watched him with interest.

  'And the romances!' the fat man continued. 'Have you any idea how many talentless clerks are writing "true" romances boasting of their supposed travels in distant lands? And still the printing houses can't get them to the booksellers fast enough to satisfy public demand. Everyone wants to read about foreigners, and I'll wager that not one of those people writing about them has so much as stepped outside Collegium's walls. It's all lies, but people are gobbling it whole. Foreign is fashionable. People are falling over themselves to be more misinformed than their neighbours about distant lands. And then there's Master Broiler.'

  Stenwold pressed his lips together, locking away his automatic reaction to the very name. The fact that Broiler had always been his vocal political opponent was something Stenwold could live with: such free debate was after all the cornerstone of Collegium governance. However, he had his own suspicions about precisely who had bought the man's loyalties.

  'What is Broiler doing now?'

  'Courting public support, as usual, by pandering to the latest fashion.' Drillen reached into his robes and came out with a smudgily printed volume whose title proudly proclaimed Master Helmess Broiler, His Atlas of the Known World and His Account of His Travels Therein.

  'The shameless fraud,' growled Stenwold, the historian in him genuinely shocked.

  'Quite,' Drillen agreed. 'He's taken every damn map he could copy from the library, put them all together in no particular order, even the ones that are obviously made-up or wrong, and called it "The World". And he's written about his incredible adventures, this man who would get lost just walking from his house to the marketplace. I swear that Helleron appears in three different places in his so-called "Known World", and on at least one of the maps he's got the sea and the land the wrong way round. And you know what?'

  'People are reading it?' Stenwold said.

  'People are lapping it up,' lamented Drillen. 'They think Broiler's the best thing since the revolution. Stenwold, it's time for Lots soon enough, meaning all change at the Assembly. We have to do something before then.'

  'We?'

  'I have to do something,' Drillen corrected, 'and, unless you want to see Broiler as the new Speaker, so do you.'

  'Where do I come into this, then?' Stenwold asked, thinking again about the Vekken and his final words. I am fighting for our future and my footing is being eroded like sand shifted by the sea.

  'The people like you, Stenwold.'

  'But the Assembly loathes the sight of me,' Stenwold pointed out. 'I remind them of how they were wrong.' It was a point of pride with him.

  'Yes, but the people like you. Everyone out on the street there remembers how you won the war. They fought alongside you. They watched you go out and send the Wasp army packing. People — I'm talking about that majority without political aspirations — respect you. That's one reason why I'm going to be seen shaking hands with you in as many places as possible.'

  'Why should I prostitute myself like that?'

  Drillen's grin resurfaced. 'Because I make sure that you get what you want. I was almost the only person backing your Vekken initiative, when you put it forward, but I wrestled enough support to push it through. You're not as detached as you pretend, old soldier. You don't give a fig for power, but there are things you want done, and for that you need people like me. Which is convenient, because people like me need people like you in order to defeat people like Helmess Broiler.'

  Stenwold scowled, but he had no argument to hand that could refute the other man's logic.

  'I need to trump Broiler's atlas if I'm to get enough lots cast in my direction to secure the Speaker's podium,' Drillen explained. 'Now, I could just match him, map for map, but I have no guarantee that my fraudulent cartography would be any better than his, so I rather thought I might produce something genuinely scholarly, just for the fun of it.'

  'That is not the thing the political future of the city will hang on,' Stenwold told him.

  'Believe me, stranger things have been known. Our cousins, our kinsmen, our estranged family of Khanaphes … I have planted a few seeds of rumour already. People are already beginning to talk about it. I will raise some pertinent questions at the Assembly, and you …'

  'What?' Stenwold said finally. 'What do you want from me?'

  'Your seal of approval. I happen to know a little more about Khanaphes than most. You remember Kadro the antiquarian?'

  'Vaguely, yes. I haven't seen him around recently.'

  'I'm not surprised, as he's been in Khanaphes for several months. He'd followed the Solarnese trail long before anyone was looking in that direction. I know because he's been writing to me for money, and I've been sending it. That makes him my man.'

  'And what has your man found out?'

  'My man has been keeping his cards close to his little Fly chest.' Drillen grimaced. 'Which is why there will be an expedition sent to help him out. The first official Collegiate expedition to Khanaphes. Our ambassadors will extend the hand of friendship to our estranged brothers. Master Kadro will receive his due, but I need results.'

  Stenwold nodded patiently, letting the quietness spin out until he was finally forced to ask. 'So where do I come into all of this?'

  'Aren't you roused by the sheer academic challenge of it all?' Drillen asked, still grinning like a fool.

  'As it happens I am, but where do I come in?'

  'You propose the expedition, which I then agree to sponsor and fund.'

  'Do I now?'

  'Because if I tried it myself, then Broiler would be all over me, and I'd be fighting tooth and nail every step of the way to stop him making it his expedition and his triumph. You, though … Broiler hates and loathes every inch of you there ever was, but more than that, he doesn't have the guts to take you on. If it's your expedition, he'll mutter and complain, but he won't dare stick his neck out, and you know why.'

  Stenwold cocked a surprised eyebrow at Drillen, seeing that his own suspicions about Broiler's loyalties were obviously not unique. He shrugged philosophically, waiting for the catch.

  'Please, Stenwold,' Drillen said, in a pleading tone that surprised both of them
. After an awkward pause the fat man continued, 'I'm a devious bastard whose only aim is my own betterment, I freely admit it, but I'm also on your side. A coup involving Khanaphes could be enough to swing the voting next Lots. We need each other.'

  Stenwold sighed. 'This sort of politics has always been exactly the sort of thing I've tried to avoid. So you want me to go to Khanaphes?'

  'No, no, I need you here to continue shaking hands with me in public. I just want you to drum up a few scholars to go there in your name, with my money. So people will like me more and Broiler less. And also the academic knowledge of the College will be expanded by another few feet of shelf space. That's a secondary consideration for me, but I do still care about it.'

  'I know,' said Stenwold tiredly. 'That's the only reason why I've been listening to you for this long.' Inside he was fighting his own battle. There was a lot of him saying that once he started making these deals he was on a slope — and his kinden were notoriously clumsy. That the future of Collegium might depend on closet conspiracies like this one made him feel sick about the whole business. Drillen was right, though: Stenwold needed support in the Assembly, and he must pay for any services rendered.

  And he was intrigued. Despite himself and despite everything he was intrigued. A Beetle-kinden city located beyond Solarno. What might we learn there? And on the back of that, another thought — the possible solution to another personal problem.

  'I'll do it,' he said. 'I'll regret it, but I'll do it.'

  'That's my old soldier!' Drillen clapped him on the shoulder with a meaty hand, and poured out another two goblets of wine.

  Stenwold took his and drank thoughtfully, turning implications over in his mind. 'I suppose you'll want everything to look spontaneous,' he mused.

  'Oh, of course,' Drillen agreed heartily. 'The serendipitous meeting of two great minds.'

  'Best if it looks that way,' Stenwold muttered darkly. 'I'm not thinking about Broiler now, but about the Imperial ambassador.'