The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  '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 the 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, though, 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.'

  'No …' Che sat down on the steps. She could feel something slipping away from her, and she thought it might be her hopes. Beyond Praeda's concerned face the stone pump ground minutely on, obstinately destroying everything she had come here to find.

  Am I alone now? Now that the Khanaphir are just Apt, and merely backward, rather than some great survival from the Age of Lore? Can I admit to myself that I'm a freak and a cripple, and simply get it over with?

  'Che, what's wrong?' Praeda asked. And then Ethmet was there.

  'Forgive me, forgive me, Honoured Foreigners,' he said. 'Alas, you are used to better hospitality than our poor city can afford. Forgive me that we have bored you thus, that you have fled us into these unfit places. I shall call for dancers. I shall have Amnon order his men to fight for your pleasure.'

  'Please, First Minister,' said Praeda, abruptly stand-in diplomat. 'I think that Che … that is, Miss Maker is ill.'

  'Alas!' He crouched beside her and, despite Petri's predictions, his lined face showed nothing but concern. 'We shall have a physician sent for at once.'

  'No, please.' Somehow Che got herself to her feet. She saw that Corcoran had made himself scarce as soon as the Minister arrived, perhaps not eager to be implicated in robbing this man of his guests. 'Please, I just need to rest. I just need to go to my rooms.'

  'Well, it is late,' Ethmet agreed. 'I shall have some servants escort you.'

  They have servants for everything, she thought muggily. Even to make their machines work. They have machines that are powered by people, how strange. She was wailing inside her head. She wanted to go home — away from this place that had so decisively betrayed her — but Collegium was just as strange, and she could not now say in what quarter home lay.

  They all headed back to the embassy together in the end. Manny was singing loudly, a girl on each arm, and Che was glad that her room was located at the opposite end of the building from his. Not that I will sleep, anyway. The discovery that had so thrilled Praeda had filled her with dread. I had everything worked out, and what a fool I've been! At every step, she felt she should plunge into the chasm that had suddenly opened up before her. Nowhere to go, she kept thinking. I have nowhere to go. This has been a fool's errand, and I was the fool for it. Another hour, another dawn facing that realization seemed unbearable.

  'Manny,' she said, and then repeated, 'Manny!' when he wouldn't stop singing.

  'What can I possibly do for you, Honoured Ambassador?' he drawled, and the girls giggled. Possibly, in their eyes, he seemed full of exotic allure. Overfull, maybe.

  'You have drink, strong drink?' she enquired, though she already knew it to be true.

  'I am drunk,' he considered. 'Also, I do have drink. Do you wish to retire with me and my new friends to my room so we can explore just how strong it is?'

  She grabbed his robe hard enough that he halted abruptly and almost toppled over. 'If you ever dare say anything like that to me again, Mannerly Gorget, I will cut off your parts.' It was not fair, really, since she was not angry at him. He was just a broad and easy target for how very angry she felt with all the world, and with herself. 'I want at least two bottles of strong drink from wherever you've stashed it, but I will not be sharing them, do you understand?'

  He goggled at her: her stern expression brooked no argument. She released him and strode off through the arch and into the Place of Foreigners.

  This world has too many sharp edges, she brooded, and I have cut myself too often on them. I will blur them and blur them, and perhaps tonight I will not dream, and tomorrow I will not feel like putting a knife to my wrists.

  Sixteen

  The pen scratched as it went dry, and Thalric shook it irritably. He would have preferred a simple quill of rolled chitin, but the Regent must have only the best. These reservoir pens — manufactured in Helleron, or copied in Sonn — carried their own store of ink. No more constant dipping and messy inkwells. He found that they worked unreliably and that his handwriting became unrecognizable. Such was progress.

  It was long past dark now, and well into the silent watches that dragged their way towards midnight, and Thalric was still writing his report.

  Contact made with the Khanaphir First Minister. Relations generally friendly. The precise power structure here is opaque. Mentions have been made of certain 'Masters', but this would seem to be a purely ceremonial position, from my observations.

  He had already written his assessment of the Khanaphir people, their character, their defences. He concurred with Vollen:

  If the Empire brings force against Khanaphes, then there seems no prospect of a successful resistance. Their ground defences seem antiquated, and the Khanaphir have no visible means of defending their city or its holdings from the air.

  So far so good. Yet he had barely written a new line for over an hour now, the pen poised, then scratching out letters, then crossing th
em through, pages being copied to disguise his indecision.

  It was all academic, of course, since Marger would be preparing his own report. If the purpose of this expedition fell into Rekef territory, then it would be Marger giving the orders. Thalric was only an adviser. Still, here he was playing the Rekef officer because it was all he knew how to do.

  I have made contact with the Collegium embassy. Their ambassador is Cheerwell Maker, niece of their general, Stenwold Maker.

  He crossed it out and started again. His Rekef past and his more recent past hung on scales in his mind, each balancing the other. He found he did not want to be the man who put her name into the thoughts of General Brugan. The Rekef remembered names and he had no way to describe the two sides of Cheerwell Maker. List her accomplishments — fomenting rebellion in Myna, resistance in Solarno and Tharn — see her that way and she was such a threat that the Rekef death-orders would be signed the moment his report found home.

  And yet I know she is just a foolish girl. She bumbles about the world meaning well, and trying to do the right thing, then gets it wrong as often as not, and must run to catch up with events. No, he did not want to be the man responsible for putting her on the List — inscribed beside her uncle — of those people the Rekef would remove when the new war broke out.

  I am a poor Rekef man, a poor Imperial soldier. He had always tried to be loyal to his friends and comrades, but that had almost never worked. So where is my loyalty now? It seemed absurd that the sticking point for his muchabused fidelity could be a Beetle-kinden girl working for the opposite side.

  Everyone else recognizes the risks. Maybe that was it. Che Maker never seemed to realize the danger she constantly put herself in. Watching her progress through life was like witnessing a constant series of near-misses, like seeing someone sleepwalk through a battle.