The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The Fly had never actually been there, was the first thing Che learned. Taki's life had always been fiercely centred on the airborne elite of the Exalsee.

  'They don't have flying machines in Khanaphes?' Che probed.

  Taki made a condescending noise. 'They don't have machines of any kind in Khanaphes, from what I hear. Like I said, backward.' She looked amused, her eyes flicking across the clientele of the taverna as though she included them loosely in the same definition.

  That took a moment to sink in. 'But they're … I thought they were supposed to be Beetle-kinden.'

  'Oh, yes, yes they are. Not anything like your lot, though. I remember how Scobraan went there once, for a bet …' Her voice twitched for a moment, another colleague dead in the war. 'He said they'd never seen anything like his flier — didn't know what to make of it. Didn't want to know, either. And he couldn't get it refuelled, of course, had to get it shipped back to Porta Rabi by boat.'

  'But that doesn't …' Something odd moved inside Che. 'And have they been settled there long?'

  'Oh, you might say that. Long enough to have founded Solarno.'

  'Seriously?'

  'Oh now, this is long, long ago — and I'm remembering back to my school days for this, too. They used to own halfway around the Exalsee, way back before anyone can remember. But that was long before the Spiders and my own people came over — a thousand years before, something crazy like that. Then I suppose they just … got left behind. The way I hear it, they haven't changed much since those days. They still own a fair bit of territory up and down the river where they are.'

  Che digested these words, thinking: the past. It made no sense: she knew Beetle-kinden even if she could not quite claim to be one of them any more. It made no sense. Something doesn't add up. It gave her a strange sense of excitement. Khanaphes — what might I learn there?

  It struck her then, and she actually jumped up, knocking back her chair. Taki was in the air in an instant, wings a-blur and a knife in her hand. A few of the other taverna patrons had gone for their weapons too. The war was not so very long ago.

  She sat down, made herself give an apologetic wave around the room. Taki stood on her chair back for a moment, wings flicking for balance, before consenting to sit down.

  A city of Beetle-kinden without machines?

  A city of Inapt Beetle-kinden?

  'Yes,' she said, thinking of Stenwold's offer. 'Oh, yes I will.'

  Stenwold was enjoying an after-lunch bowl of wine in the College refectory when someone came brushing past behind him, murmuring, 'The Vekken are after you.'

  His stomach sank and he looked back. 'Which ones?'

  His informant, a natural history master, shrugged. 'Who can tell? They all look the same.'

  This was Stenwold's chance to make himself scarce, but he did not seize it. 'They're my problem,' he replied, whereupon his benefactor shrugged and made a quick exit. Stenwold braced himself mentally for another taxing encounter. His Vekken initiative which, in their mutual derision of it, had at last provided Collegium and Vek with something in common. Yet nobody understood how important it was. He was trying to do what Collegium should have done in the first place, instead of relying solely on the strength of its walls and assuming the Vekken had been defeated a generation ago. Stenwold was trying to make sure that there would be no third Vekken war. He was trying to build bridges. The result of his months of careful diplomacy was that the Vekken had at last sent four men who claimed to be ambassadors, and were more probably spies.

  Two of them located him soon enough after the tip-off, and came marching up to stand before his table.

  He couldn't even tell which two of the team they were. Ant-kinden all looked like siblings, and the Vekken seemed to have sent four ambassadors who were absolutely identical. They stared at him now as though they had just found out he had sent assassins to kill their families.

  'Masters …?' He made a motion at the table, offering chairs. They stared at the seats as though they were venomous, then turned the same expressions on him. His Vekken initiative had been worth it, if just for this. He had always known the dislike of his own people for the city of Vek, inspired by two repelled attempts at conquest, but he had not guessed at the reciprocal loathing felt by the Vekken because of Collegium's successful resistance. They hated the Beetle-kinden and, because they could not see how mere Beetles could resist the might of an Ant city-state, they feared them also. Stenwold was working as best he could to disarm that enmity but there was a lifetime of ingrained distrust to overcome.

  'We are aware of your plans,' one of them said, and then paused as if waiting for him to admit everything.

  He looked at them blankly. 'I have many plans,' he said at last. 'Which ones do you mean?'

  'You are gathering allies,' said the same one, speaking with the flat courage of a man who expects his hosts to have him killed. 'You are sending to another Beetle city to secure them.'

  That gave Stenwold pause, but he was good at handling surprises and just drained his wine bowl while he pondered, Now that's interesting. If they think that, then who else does?

  'Your silence indicates admission,' said the same ambassador. They had an identical expression of dislike etched onto their mirror-image faces, but no more than that. As with all Ant-kinden, the real feelings were expressed inside their heads, secret among their own kind.

  'You're talking about the Khanaphes expedition?'

  'So,' the Vekken said, all their fears confirmed.

  'What of it? It's simply an academic expedition to study a city of our cousins …' He was about to ask them if they would not be similarly interested, in his position, but they would never be in a similar position, because any other Ant city was automatically their enemy.

  'So you say,' said the Vekken. 'But we see more.'

  'Please sit down,' he suggested, but they would not. They continued standing there with their hands near their sword-hilts, waiting for the worst. He had a sudden dizzying thought of what it must be like for these envoys, surrounded by those they knew to be their avowed enemies, while deprived of the comforting voices of their own kin that they had lived with all their lives: just the four of them cut off and alone in an alien sea.

  'What do you want?' he asked them patiently.

  'Warmaster Stenwold Maker is sending an expedition,' declared one of the Vekken crisply. 'He tells us it is peaceful and that no harm is meant. He will not deny a Vekken presence, therefore.'

  They waited for his furious objections as he stared at them, mind spinning. They saw a military purpose in everything, and that purpose forever turned against Vek.

  At the thought, it was all he could do not to laugh, but that would not have been diplomatic.

  'If you want to go, I shall make the arrangements,' he agreed.

  They betrayed nothing in their faces, but he knew he had caught them out. They did not know whether to rejoice at defeating him, or curse at themselves being defeated.

  He only wondered what they would make of Khanaphes.

  Five

  Greetings and salutations of the Great College to my good friend Master Kadro.

  It has occurred to me that you may think we do not allow sufficient importance to your far-flung mission.

  Similarly, communicating as we do by such inadequate means, your discoveries to date — as opposed to your renewed requests for funding — have not been communicated to us here so well as I am sure you would prefer.

  As the first College Master to study such a fascinating people as the Khanaphir, I can tell you we are all agog to learn what you have discovered, and to assist in furthering your studies.

  So it is that no less a man than War Master Stenwold Maker, whose decisive role in the recent war cannot have escaped your attention, has proposed that we send some further members of the College to assist you in your labours.

  Rejoice, then! For an ambassador of Collegium, none other than War Master Maker's own niece, shall be travelling to assist you,
be the distance never so far. She shall take with her certain other academics who have expressed an interest — as who would not? — in the vital work you are doing. They shall of course bring equipment and funds to assist you, and they will be keen to hear from you regarding your theories and evidence.

  I do hope you can arrange for them, with the Khanaphir authorities whoever they might be, appropriate lodging and similar conveniences.

  Your most dutiful friend and sponsor

  Master Jodry Drillen,

  of the Assembly of that most enlightened city of Collegium.

  Petri Coggen read the letter again and felt like weeping.

  She sat at the little sloping lectern which the Khanaphir had given her for a desk, and put her head in her hands. They were so obtuse, those old men at the College. Worse, they had a gift for bad timing. Beside Drillen's letter was one of her own, completed last night and ready for sending. It read:

  Good Master Drillen,

  Forgive me for writing to you directly but I am the bearer of terrible news. Master Kadro is gone. He disappeared only two days ago. There is no trace of him. The Ministers say nothing, but I am sure they know.

  Something terrible is happening here. There is a secret in Khanaphes and Kadro was close to it. They have done something to him. I am sure he is dead.

  Please tell me what to do. I do not want to stay here longer, but I fear what might happen if I try to leave.

  Yours

  Petri Coggen, assistant to Master Kadro.

  She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. Instead she took her own letter and folded it, then put it inside her tunic. Perhaps, somehow, it would arrive in time to do some good. Assuming it arrived at all.

  She buckled on her belt, carrying her purse and her dagger. It was the only weapon she owned but she would not know what to do with it if she was forced to use it on another living thing. Petri Coggen had never been much more than an aide and secretary to Master Kadro, who had been the great academic and explorer, dragging her out here so that she could scribe his exploits. But now she was alone, and the city of Khanaphes had become a brooding and hostile place. She was merely a Beetle-kinden woman edging towards her middle years, short and stout and prone to getting out of breath. She was certainly not the woman to avenge Kadro's death, but she felt she must at least try to investigate his disappearance.

  She had shared a third-storey room with Kadro, a little box with two windows squeezed under the flat roof of a warehouse. Kadro had chosen it because the landlord was a merchant, and therefore used to dealing with foreigners; also because the place was cheap and lay close to the little stew of villainy that cluttered this side of the river beyond Khanaphes's great Estuarine Gate. This was a busy market by day, a tent city by night, and the tents often grand and elaborate, for there was a great deal of money changing hands at any given moment, and people in Khanaphes — legitimate dealers or otherwise — liked to show that they were doing well. It was a place that, in other circumstances, she would never have dreamt of visiting on her own, but nowhere else in Khanaphes might she find some kind of answer to her questions.

  She made good time. A few hurried glances detected no followers, but the streets were teeming this close to the docks. There were always ships coming to the river quays, and then a swarm of dockhands, fishermen, merchants and rogues to pester them. Despite the time she had spent here, the heat still raised a sweat on to her skin, and the bustle of bald heads, the murmur of quiet voices, remained densely impenetrable. These are my kinden but not my people and I cannot understand them.

  In the shadow of the Estuarine Gate, she paused. The gate itself was out of sight, supposedly deep in the waters of the river, under any ship's draught passing between those gargantuan carved pillars. Again she looked round and saw no soldiers of the Ministers come to apprehend her, no skulking cloaked figure with eyes fixed on her.

  And a poor spy it would be that I would notice! She did not know what to do next. Her training at the College, all that history and architecture and philosophy, had been no preparation for this crisis.

  She slipped past the gate by the narrow footpath, wall on one side, the choppy brown waters on the other. She did not look up, past that monumental pillar, to see the great stone likeness that was set into its southern side. Those inhumanly beautiful, blandly smiling features were constantly in her dreams. She had begun to fear them, for all they were a thousand years dead.

  The maze of tents and awnings that awaited her was known to the locals as the Marsh Alcaia. She had come here twice before, both times with Kadro. Each time he had been cautious. Khanaphes was a well-run city, law-abiding and peaceful, but there was a froth of uncertainty where the external world met its walls, here before the Estuarine Gate. Other foreigners were not always so respectful of Khanaphes's laws. The golden Royal Guard sometimes swept through here with lance and sword, arresting and confiscating and slaying those that resisted, burning the tents. Khanaphes needed its trade, though, and so long as it did, the scum of the Marsh Alcaia would always re-establish itself before the Estuarine Gate, just outside of the city proper.

  Entering the Marsh Alcaia was like stepping underwater, as the faded orange and yellow cloth closed over her and muted the sunlight. She was abruptly in a different world, stuffy, gloomy, reeking of spices and sweat. As she stood, a silhouette against the bright day beyond, the denizens of the Alcaia jostled past her. They did not look at her, each preoccupied with his own business. Every one of them was armed, a hand always close to the hilt of a broad-bladed dagger, a short sword with a leaf-shaped blade, a hatchet. Some bore as weapons simply the extrusions of bone that the Art had raised from their hands.

  She finally conquered her fears and pushed inwards. Kadro had walked here without fear, or at least he had shown none. She tried to emulate him, even though she was big and clumsy and kept getting in the way. Porters with sacks of flour and sweet spices jostled and cursed her. A be-ringed merchant's retinue pushed her aside against the counter of a jeweller so that she upset his scales in a tiny clatter of brass. Her apologies fell into the abyss: they all maintained the Khanaphir reserve. Whether they were the local Beetle-kinden or the sinewy Marsh folk, or one of a dozen breeds of foreigner or halfbreed, they looked at her as though she was not wanted there. As though I do not belong. She did not belong. She had no wish to belong. It was just that she had nowhere within this city to turn. Khanaphes was the problem. If a solution existed, it must be somewhere here.

  She regained her balance. The offended jeweller was a Khanaphir Beetle, shaven-headed as they all were. With that narrow-eyed, unreadable look they all adopted when looking at her, he finished restacking his weights and measures. She tried to remember what route Kadro had taken through this maze of shifting streets, hoping it was still good. Her memory was not up to it, though: the Marsh Alcaia was a world without reference. Each day the faces here might be different, and if there was a code in the colours of the awnings that might have directed her where she needed to go, she had no way of reading it. Recognizing such patterns had been Kadro's strong point.

  'Excuse me,' she said to the jeweller, the effort almost having her in tears again. 'I need to speak to the Fisher. Do you know her?' The title was all she knew. Most of the darker denizens of the Alcaia had left their real names behind a long time ago.

  The jeweller stared at her with the Khanaphir stare reserved for foreigners. It was not hostile, in fact very polite, but suggested that she was speaking some kind of infantile nonsense that the man could not possibly be expected to understand. It humoured her without admitting any comprehension.

  Petri bit her lip. Reaching for her purse, she took out a pair of coins — Helleron-minted Standards and a long way from home — and put them on his counter. With a deft motion he slipped them on to his scales. Weight and purity of metal was everything here. Her money from home was disastrously devalued and she knew that in exchange he would give her a fraction of the value that unadulterated gold of that same weight wo
uld have brought her.

  'Please?' she asked. The jeweller still said nothing but, as if by magic, a small child appeared at his elbow. He muttered a few words and the girl ducked under the counter and ran off into the Alcaia. A nod of the jeweller's head then suggested that she follow.

  Where the girl led her was nowhere near where she had gone before, but headed deeper into the Alcaia than she had ever been. The thought came to her, within three turns, that she 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.