The Scarab Path sota-5

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  They had not liked her being there, those craftsmen: they were members of a select and occult fraternity. However, Ethmet's word, his mere glance, had been law. They had given the book over to her and she had opened its pages, and her mind had jolted at what she had seen.

  She had thought it might be something simple, perhaps with a text in hieroglyphs set out on one leaf, and letters on the opposite, or even like a reading primer for children, the glyphs drawn large and their meaning inscribed beneath them. But no.

  The pages of the book had been layered end to end in hieroglyphs, drawn in large, bold strokes, page after page after page. Her eyes had been bombarded by their cryptic images, but after that first page she had ceased to see them as impenetrable symbols, but simply as the words that they represented. There was no apparent meaning to the book, no story, no sense of grammar, nothing but a cascade of images but, as she turned the last page, she had looked from it to the walls and read: 'All praise to the Masters, the lifeblood of the Jamail, the sweet rains and the rich earth,' and the words had struck her in the heart.

  She had looked to Ethmet, and then at the masons, and she had known, beyond the frailest doubt: They cannot see this. Ah, no, their own history is opaque to them, but I can read it. The pages of the book had worked a magic in her. Wherever she now looked, the stories of Khanaphes unravelled their meanings for her, on every wall.

  But not on every stone — the individual words, yes, the stories no. As she looked upon the greater book that was the city, she saw the cruel theft that time had committed. On the walls of the Scriptora, on the elder buildings, were tracked the countless voices of ancient Khanaphes. Merely in passing from the masons' room back to the library, her eyes snagged on every passageway, at each turning or pillar: 'In this year the great Batheut ventured into the Alim with his nine hundred …'; 'Of grain, fourteen baskets; of oats, nine baskets more, and he shall …'; 'And she sang the songs of her far homeland, and all who listened were …' until she had to almost shut her eyes to keep out the thronging meanings that would not leave her alone. Where new construction had been made, though, the script fell into babble: 'She boat sun leap shoe coral great if …'

  And then she understood: They have lost their ancient language. It died when their Aptitude was born. Generation by generation, those carving hands became more Apt, less arcane, until they were merely going through the rotes. In their secret little brotherhood, they copy and they carve, but it has no meaning any longer. The informative had long since become the merely decorative.

  And Ethmet knew it. She could see it in his face. He looked at her and there was hope in his eyes, a terrible, misplaced hope. It was as though her reading of the book of glyphs had revealed the key to his expressions as well.

  She had assumed he would keep her, but he had let her go. He believed, despite his Aptitude, in destiny. He believed she would come back to him voluntarily, to fulfil whatever role he wished of her. As an Inapt Beetle, her very curse had made her his messiah. Her mind was now reeling as she set off for the Place of Foreigners. She did not dare look at the pyramid, with those statues placed irregularly about its top, for fear of the stories it might tell her. She was painfully aware that she had failed Petri and Kadro, and that her own selfishness was to blame, once more.

  As she reached the archway leading through to the embassies, something stopped her, snapping her back to the here-and-now. She found her hand on her sword-hilt, yet no danger in sight. What is it? Some sense she had not known before was calling to her … No, I have known this. The desert, the Scorpion raid.

  'Achaeos?' she asked softly, feeling an edge of tension that was external to her, the result of some other's keener senses.

  Someone moved in the shadow of the archway. Up until then, she had not so much as glimpsed him. When she saw him she started to relax, but whatever had alerted her kept its hook in her twisted tight. It was one of the Vekken, she realized. As usual she could not have said which one.

  'Were you waiting for me?' she began.

  He stared at her blankly and she saw, so very late, that his sword was clear of its sheath, blackened with pitch. Her reactions caught up then, her hand clenching on her own hilt as she looked into his hating eyes.

  There was a rapid flutter of wings, and Trallo was standing beside her, all smiles. 'Ah, there you are, been looking all over. You do wander off some, Bella Cheerwell!' His hollow cheer washed over them both, but Che guessed at once that he knew where she had spent the day. The Vekken looked from her to the Fly-kinden, then stalked away without a word. He had already told her more than he had intended. Something has snapped in the Vekken's ambassadorial calm.

  'Trallo, what's going on?'

  'You're asking me?' The little man shook his head. 'Nothing's happened at the embassy. The professors are all off looking at rocks down by the river, for reasons unknown to man or insect. Oh, and Sieur Gorget is being more insufferable than usual, but apart from that …' He was staring after the Vekken ambassador, rubbing at his beard.

  'Manny is …?'

  'Oh, it might be that Bella Rakespear received a certain Khanaphir beau this morning, in her own chambers, but more than that I have no knowledge of.'

  Che managed to raise a small smile at that. They passed through into the Place of Foreigners, and she took a seat by the pond. I need to speak with the Vekken, but I first need to know what's set them off. She remembered that brief moment of confrontation. This is more than injured pride.

  'That's twice you've been there for me, Trallo,' she noted. It was a train of thought she had stored away a while ago, now dragged out into the sunlight again. The little man merely shrugged, and did not look surprised when she continued, 'I don't recall you asking me for any pay recently.'

  'Well, you know …' he replied, but he was waiting for what she said next.

  'You're a business-minded sort.' She wanted to pick her words with more care, but it had been such a long day. 'The plan was that you'd be back in Solarno by now. Talk to me, Trallo.'

  'You've a complaint about my services?' he enquired, light-heartedly, but with a brittle edge.

  'Quite the opposite. Talk to me.'

  He smiled. 'You're a popular woman,' he explained. 'You have a lot of friends, and they're anxious that you're well.'

  'We're not talking about Berjek and the others. I know that much,' she said flatly. 'Trallo, are you taking orders from the Ministers?'

  'From the …?' She saw in his expression immediately that she was wrong. He laughed out loud, in fact. 'They already have a thousand Khanaphir watching you, Bella Cheerwell. They don't need me to keep an eye on things as well.'

  'Then …' And who was it who pulled me from the tent of the Fir-eaters — for all the good it did him? And I never stopped to ask what he was doing there so deep in the Marsh Alcaia, so close to me. A terrible bleakness settled on her. 'Are you taking the Empire's coin, Trallo?' she asked.

  'Not a bit of it,' he told her. 'Bella Cheerwell, I like you, so I only take coin from those I think have your best interests at heart. That way they're paying me for something I'd want to do anyway, if I could afford to do it on my own.' His grin was so guileless, it cut her like a knife. 'I wouldn't take Imperial coin, Bella Cheerwell, but I might just take the coin of Sieur Thalric.'

  She stared at him. 'You've been spying on me for Thalric,' she said.

  'I've been watching out for you, for Thalric,' he confirmed, absolutely candid. 'That's what he asked, that's what I've done. He doesn't think you can look after yourself, you see.'

  'Oh, doesn't he?' she snapped. 'Does he not?' She heard her raised voice echo back from the embassy walls. Trallo waited, still smiling slightly, but not so close that he could not get out of the way if she went for him.

  Diplomatic incident, her mind told her. He's broken the truce by spying on me. Blast the man — just as I was getting somewhere with this city the Empire comes butting in. Another part of her was saying, You should not have asked the question if you did not w
ant to hear the answer — especially as you have known all this, if you had only thought about it, long before.

  And, a fragile voice: And he dragged you out of the Fir den, and what if he had not?

  'I want to be angry,' she complained. 'Why aren't I?'

  'Beetle-kinden are a phlegmatic lot,' suggested Trallo, and then skipped back a step as she glared at him.

  'And Flies are a pragmatic one,' she shot back. He shrugged at the truth of it.

  She glanced back towards the Collegiate embassy, which was where she should now be going. But the Vekken would be there, and she did not feel ready to deal with that problem yet — if it was even capable of being dealt with. Petri Coggen would be there too, another person Che did not want to see just now. She would have accepted the company of Manny Gorget or the others, but they were out doing what they were supposed to be doing. How simple some people's lives are.

  'Let's go have a word with Thalric,' she decided. Trallo raised his eyebrows, and she had the chance to turn his smile back on him. 'Why not? In this new climate of brutal honesty, I want to ask him why he's suborning my staff.'

  She marched off around the pond towards the Imperial embassy, feeling a mean spark of pride that she had wrong-footed the Fly-kinden for once.

  A servant was already opening the door to greet her.

  'Cheerwell Maker, the Collegiate ambassador, here to see her opposite number,' she announced smartly. The servant ushered her into the hallway, where another was already padding off to deliver the news. Aside from the ubiquitous Khanaphir she saw no one, certainly nobody serving under the Imperial flag.

  'Where are they all?' she asked.

  'Off watching your lot, I imagine,' Trallo said. 'You have to remember the way the Empire thinks. They don't believe for a moment you're just here to catch fish and look at stones.'

  'And do you?' she asked him, because his tone had seemed doubting.

  He spread his hands. 'I don't need to believe anything.'

  As they stood in the hallway, Thalric appeared at the stair-rail above them, his expression suggesting that he had not believed the servant's message. Behind him there was a Beetle-kinden, a bulky Imperial of about Stenwold's age and dimensions.

  There was a beat, a moment's pause, before Thalric turned and descended the stairs, saying, 'Ambassador? Is there a problem?'

  'Possibly.' Che saw Thalric's gaze touch on Trallo and then slide off, noticed the quickly suppressed flicker of understanding.

  'Ah, well,' he said, then turned back to his Beetle companion. 'We'll have to break, Corolly. I'll leave the board set.'

  The big man nodded. 'I've got paperwork to catch up with.' He gave Che a vague half-salute, like a man unsure about the formalities, before retreating into one of the upstairs rooms.

  Thalric had paused near the foot of the stairs, and stood looking at her with a slight smile on his face. 'I suppose you should come up then, unless you want to keep this formal.' He singled out one of the servants. 'Get us some decent wine or something.' Then he was trekking back up the stairs, leaving Che to follow him. Trallo had already flitted up to the landing and, judging from his expression, Thalric must have given him a foul look as he passed.

  The room she followed him into matched her own across the other side of the Place of Foreigners. She had to force her eyes away from the walls, where ancient hands had inscribed a valedictory epic to a kinden she was not even sure she recognized, but that she imagined were depicted in the tall, hunchbacked effigies that flanked the main embassy doors. To one side there was a low table on which some kind of game had been set up, with two couches facing each other for the players. The two ambassadors took their places on either side of it.

  'How's … your man, the … injured one?' She had been about to say 'the drunk one', but that might not have been diplomatic enough.

  'Osgan? Fevered,' Thalric said. 'Being tended, expected to recover. Getting yourself cut open in a swamp's a stupid thing to do.' Thalric shrugged. They had not spoken since the hunt, and she had no idea what he thought of what had happened there, in the village of the Mantis-kinden.

  'Did he … did he say what he saw there?' she asked tentatively.

  'What Osgan sees is not regarded as reliable testimony,' he replied shortly. 'Even at the best of times.'

  He did see something then. Had this man become so caught up in Tisamon's final moments and the death of the Emperor, that he was now able to grasp something of the Inapt world? She knew that she was unlikely ever to find out. 'Thalric …' She frowned down at the game board and, in place of chastising him over Trallo, she just said, 'You're a really bad chess player. These pieces are all over the place.'

  He had been waiting for something serious, and he snorted at that, caught off guard. 'What it is, is that you Lowlanders have no idea how to play chess,' he replied.

  'I came third in the College trials, I'll have you know.' It had meant a lot to her, at the time. Now, facing his amusement, her sense of pride was dwindling.

  'You play Ant-chess,' he said. 'Trudge-trudge-trudge. I couldn't believe it when I first came to Helleron — all that lining up and slogging. In real chess-'

  'They fly,' Che finished for him. 'Of course, if chess is a war, then … war is different for the Wasps.' Such a simple thing, but it seemed to say a lot about the gap between them.

  'Blame the Commonwealers. It's their game,' he said, but his smile was slipping fast. 'All right, Che, out with it.' The wine arrived then, a further stay of execution, but he was still braced and waiting when the servants bowed their way out.

  'You have been keeping watch over me,' she accused. 'Using Trallo here, who has his kinden's sense of free business, I think.'

  'And his kinden's ability to keep his mouth shut, I see,' Thalric added.

  The Fly gave an amused snort and Che turned to him sharply. 'You've got something to say, at this point?'

  'Only that you're both making a great fuss over nothing,' he said easily. 'He wants you looked after, so what? She knows about it, so what? There's no conflict here, no difference of opinion. Why all the secrecy, eh?'

  They were both staring at him in exasperation. Then Che said, 'Don't you understand anything?' and paused, trying to put into words just why the Fly was wrong. 'Perhaps … you'd better go wait at the embassy while I sort this out,' she said finally.

  Trallo rolled his eyes at that. 'If you insist on complicating matters, Bella Cheerwell.' He bowed to them both, before stepping up on to the window ledge and letting the air catch him beyond it. Che could not keep herself from going to the window to make sure that he was not simply still hovering there, eavesdropping.

  'Solarnese Fly-kinden,' she complained. 'What can you do with them?'

  'It's all because their Spider mistresses let them get away with murder,' Thalric remarked.

  She looked over at him, her expression undecided. 'So you told him it was all for my own good, did you?'

  'Wasn't it?' he asked.

  Slowly she returned to her seat. 'What right do you have-' but he was smirking at her in that patronizing way he had always done, from the beginning, and she demanded, 'What?'

  'I had forgotten,' he said, 'how you Collegiates aways talk of rights — rights of humanity. This is nothing to do with having a right, according to some obscure philosophy. Che, I look after my comrades, past or present. It's an Imperial virtue, believe it or not, although one that's seldom practised these days.'

  'And I can't look after myself, is that it?'

  He looked at her, fighting for a moment to hold in the response, and the laugh that went with it. 'No,' he let out, finally. 'Oh, Che, even when we first met it was after you had gone to great lengths to put yourself straight into the hands of the man most likely to betray you to me. When we were in Myna together you managed so well with the resistance that they were about to execute you as a collaborator. Che, from what should I believe that you will keep yourself safe?'

  'You …!' As she stood, her indignation was stran
gling any chance of getting coherent words out. 'How-! Why you-!' He still had a faint smile, which maddened her even more, and she slapped the little table, flipping it over entirely and scattering chess pieces to the four quarters of the room. 'Bah-!' she got out. Thalric was not looking suitably chastened, instead was plainly fighting not to laugh out loud.

  Oh, that does it. She went for him, then, catching him completely by surprise. She was not entirely sure what she intended, save perhaps to strangle the smile from his face, but she knocked him backwards off the couch and landed on him hard enough that she heard the breath whoosh out of him. Shocked at her own success, she dithered, sitting back on his stomach. His recovery was impeded more by his laughter than her weight.

  'Hammer and tongs!' she exclaimed. 'What?'

  'You don't change,' he choked out at last. 'You must have been a riot in the debating circles. Do you attack everyone you don't have an answer for?'

  The humour of it got through to her at last. The anger burning but a moment ago, now seemed to have died a death, not even an ember left. She met Thalric's eyes, feeling his body twist beneath her, testing himself against her weight, and there was a moment when something passed between them. Che felt suddenly uncomfortable and scrabbled backwards, ending up perched on the couch he had just vacated. Thalric picked himself up and dusted himself down, then plucked a chess piece from the floor, where it had been digging into his back.

  'I've escaped another mauling from Corolly, then,' he said vaguely. She knew, from his abruptly subdued tone, that he had felt that fleeting something too.

  'Thalric …' she began, but did not know where to go next.

  'They suggested I should seduce you,' he told her, the words ambushing both of them without warning.

  She stared at him, agog. 'What …?'

  'Good Rekef practice.' Instead of looking at her, he was busy picking up game pieces.