The Scarab Path (11 page)

‘Why not
fly straight to this Porta Rabi?’ she asked.

Trallo
laughed unkindly. ‘You’re a foreigner, so perhaps you don’t know about our
neighbours in Princep Exilla.’

‘The
Dragonflies – you mean air pirates?’

‘Any
airship near Princep is fair game. So we go overland, and in company, since
it’s not the safest of roads. From Porta Rabi we find a ship heading for
Khanaphes: there’ll be one every few tendays.’ He shook his head. He had met
Master Gripshod and the rest earlier that day and not seemed much impressed.
‘They don’t like questions in Khanaphes, Bella Cheerwell, so I hope you know
what you’re doing.’

‘So do
I.’ Here in Solarno, such a long way from home, all of Stenwold’s plans and
Drillen’s ambitions seemed weak and hazy.

‘Tell
your boffins that we’ll take ship in three days,’ Trallo continued. He had not
met the Vekken yet, which was probably for the best.

‘They’ll
be ready. They’re keen to investigate new ground. Solarno has been the talk of
Collegium for months.’ She hoped that was true for all of them, since Manny had
shown a particular liking for the seamier side of this city.

Trallo
stood up with a flick of his wings, then changed his mind and sat down again,
abruptly waving to a servant for another bowl of chocolate.

‘I don’t
know this place you come from,’ he said. ‘So I asked around – what’s this
College place like, I ask them. Nice, they tell me. Busy, hard-working. A bit
fond of the pomp and gravitas. They don’t tell me about the politics.’ His
voice had lowered.

‘Politics?’
Che felt something uncomfortable stir inside her.

‘People
here are taking an interest. Nobody’s been so crass as to offer me money yet,
but I’m almost waiting for it. You’re being watched, and it’s not just cos
you’re new in town. Anything particular I should know, is there?’

She
shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t think that can be from back home. It’s too far,
surely. Who …?’ She stared at him for a long time. ‘Tell me, does the Wasp
Empire keep any … people in Solarno?’

‘Oh
there’s an embassy, an ambassador,’ he replied lightly, but he was looking
straight into her eyes and nodding. ‘I don’t mind, but it may cost extra, and
it’s only right I should know.’

She
shook her head. ‘It must just be because of the war. They probably still keep
tabs on every Lowlander in Solarno.’ He was looking doubtful, though, and she
hardly believed it herself.

‘Change
the arrangements at the last minute,’ she suggested. ‘Make it two days, not
three. I’ll pay for any inconvenience. If someone’s interested, let’s surprise
them.’

Trallo
nodded, already making the changes in his head. ‘Wise,’ he muttered. ‘Very
wise.’

Across the mirror of the Exalsee, the glitter and dance of an aerial duel
was takng place. Che leant on the rail, fascinated. She could just make out the
combatants. The match was something peculiar to this region, uniquely uneven: a
dragonfly-rider from Princep Exilla was flying against a mechanical orthopter.
The insect was vastly nimbler in the air, hovering and darting in circles about
the machine. Its rider had only a bow and throwing spears. Barring the luckiest
shot, he would merely waste his arrows. If the orthopter’s rotating piercers
found their prey then it would be over in a moment but the machine, sleek and
deadly as it was, seemed to lumber through the air. Eventually it would run
short of fuel and the pilot would have to break off from the contest. The
Dragonfly would count that as a win.

Trallo
joined her, stretching theatrically. Their current transport was a more
utilitarian beast than Captain Parrols’s piece of luxury. The
Fighting Craidhen
ran passengers and light cargo in short,
quick hops around the Exalsee. Aside from the impressive engines, which stank
of a mineral oil that made Che feel queasy, there was no spare weight or
needless decoration in the airship’s design.

‘Here.’
Trallo handed her a spyglass. She took it, abruptly glum, and even looked into
it. She saw only blurs and smudges wheeling and dancing at the lens’s far end.
It made her think of Trallo’s little people.

‘Your
kinden …’ It was an awkward thing to ask. ‘Some of you are Inapt, yes?’ She
already knew it was so. She had even seen Fly seers in Tharn.

‘Hardly,’
Trallo said, nevertheless. ‘What use would they be?’

In Solarno things are different.
Still, she stared at him
until he shrugged.

‘Oh a
few,’ he admitted. ‘A few are born each generation. Less and less, I’d guess.
They have a blasted hard time of it, I’d guess.’

‘Quite.’
She handed back the spyglass to him.

The
Fighting Craidhen
flew on through the night, and the
academics were given nothing but some blankets thrown over the bare boards of
the hold on which to sleep. Che made it plain she had no time for their
complaints. She had not explained to them why they had left Solarno so
precipitately. When Praeda questioned the wisdom of hiring Trallo, she had
likewise not been drawn into debate. To her astonishment, her fiat on such
matters was grudgingly accepted.
They all think I know what
I’m doing!
She could have laughed.
I’m making it up
as I go along.
She knew that Stenwold would have done better.

Trallo
came to shake her by the shoulder, a very little after dawn. She twitched awake
suddenly, reaching instinctively across the hard floor for a slight man who was
not there. For a moment she felt disoriented. Surely Achaeos had been kneeling
beside her only now. Where was she, and where had he gone?

The
avalanche of a year’s history brought her back, trading happy fantasy for hard
fact. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes. What is it?’

The
Fly-kinden tugged his beard, which she recognized by now as a sign of good
humour. Leaving the academics to bicker, and the Vekken to their stony silence,
she had been spending most of her time with the caravan master. His cheerful
talk reminded her of Taki. There was an open flamboyance to these Solarnese
Fly-kinden that their Lowlands brethren lacked.

‘You
should see this from the air,’ he said. ‘We’re coming up on the place now.’

Blearily
she stumbled up on deck. Dawn had done little to shift the night’s gloom, but
she could see that beneath them the water was giving way to solid ground.
Trallo had reached the bow rail with a flicker of his wings, while she trod
heavily after him.

‘What am
I looking for?’ she asked him. After a pause, she changed that to, ‘What am I
looking at?’

It was a
mountain, only it was too narrow, altogether too smooth. She could see the
cluster of buildings at its base: a walled enclosure of huts and houses built
in its shadow. It cut into the sky like a knife blade, looming bigger and
bigger as the
Craidhen
neared it.

Che
shook her head. ‘I give up,’ she said. ‘What?’

Trallo
was grinning. ‘There’s a fellow I once met who went deep into the Forest Aleth
– that’s all the green stuff south of the Exalsee. He went real deep, said that
these things were all over there, just rising up from the canopy, big as you
like, with some kind of albino Ant-kinden just building them up from the
ground. Anyway, that’s one of them. Been abandoned for a long time by whoever
did make it, but it’s like a castle. There’s rooms and passages and all sorts
inside, and even more underground. A tribe of the Alethi live there now, won’t
let much anyone in. I hear they’re only using a tiny portion of it, though.’

More
light struck the vast dagger of earth and stone, turning it the colour of
honey. It was a hundred feet high, perhaps more, for the scale of the buildings
in its shadow was hard to guess. Che had a strange feeling in her stomach at
the sight which, after some hesitation, she identified as excitement.

Ostrander
was but the door to greater mysteries.
We are leaving
behind the things that we know.

They ran into trouble at Ostrander. It caught them unawares, having come
so far without.

Trallo
had found them lodgings in one of the shacks within Ostrander’s wooden walls,
and was now busy making arrangements for the trek onwards to Porta Rabi. The
Vekken ambassadors would not venture out, because Ostrander was a hostile Ant
city-state as far as they were concerned, even though the Ants of the Exalsee
seemed to behave differently to their Lowlander cousins. (
But
doesn’t everything, here?
was Che’s thought on that.) Che herself
shadowed Trallo, because he was always good company and because his
companionship was teaching her something of his trade. The academics she left
to their own devices, which would also prove to be a learning experience.

Trallo
had spent the day haggling with a succession of merchants over pack animals and
automotives, and had concluded his dealings with each by angrily springing up
and declaring that he would never do business with such a villain ever again.
They would then meet the next day and renegotiate. It was a way of trading that
exactly suited both the hot-blooded Solarnese and the proud Dragonflies of
Princep Exilla, and the trading crowd in Ostrander was made up of both. There
were a few Spider-kinden as well, and a miscellany of renegades and halfbreeds
from Chasme. The actual locals took no part in Ostrander’s role as a caravan
stop, save by tolerating the rabble of newcomers’ buildings in the shadow of
their artificial mountain.

Che
spotted the natives around, although fewer than she had expected. They were
Ant-kinden of an unhealthy shade, greenish-white and anaemic-looking. The vast
majority of them did not venture beyond the caverns of their pirated home, and
they only came out to tax those who sought shelter in their shadow. They
carried spears and crossbows and wore a mismatch of armour, from clattering
vests of chitin shards to Solarnese plated leathers and full chainmail. Che
already knew that most of the Ant-kinden of the Exalsee lived nomadic lives in
the Forest Aleth and were reckoned a primitive lot, by the Solarnese at least.
The Ostranden, however, had broken from that lifestyle, settled down in their
inherited fortress and acquired civilized vices. In fact they were starting to
become a mirror of the fiercely territorial Lowlander city-states that Che knew
all too well.

With
evening coming on, Che and Trallo found themselves sitting discussing alliances
with a Spider-kinden woman and a Solarnese man. Travellers did not set off
singly down the road to Porta Rabi, for the desert fringe held too many dangers
to be travelled alone. The Solarnese was a rug-trader, the Spider was a slaver,
and Trallo had brought them together and, as a reward for the introduction,
earned a place in their company. Che had the vague impression they would be
paying him for the privilege as well but, as they only made veiled allusions to
money, she could not be sure.

Manny
burst in just as they were concluding their business, thundering through the
door and almost falling at Che’s feet. The Solarnese and the Spider had drawn
blades on the instant, and Che found her own shortsword in her hand by some
instinct she had not known she still owned. The fat man was running with sweat,
his fine clothes ripped down the back.

‘Hammer
and tongs!’ Che swore at him. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

Manny
shook his head so hard that his jowls quivered. ‘Not me,’ he got out, ‘the
others … Soldiers come to the lodgings … trying to arrest everyone—’

Trallo
was out of the door at once, wings a blur. Che ran after him, trying to
resheathe her sword as she went. The wretched Mannerly Gorget was left to
recover his breath.

They
found a dozen greenish Ant-kinden standing some distance from the lodgings as
they arrived. Che saw that they had apprehended Praeda already, holding the
Beetle woman tightly between two of them. A dark bruise was emerging on the
scholar’s face. Armed with crossbows and bows, the Ant-kinden were keeping a
respectful watch on the lodging-house, and Che noticed movement in one of the ramshackle
building’s upper windows.

‘What’s
this?’ Trallo demanded, touching down ahead of her. ‘What’s this? Open arrest
on the streets of Ostrander?’ He pitched his voice loudly enough to carry to
all the traders and travellers and caravaneers loitering nearby, all the other
foreigners. The Ostranden Ants remained packed close together and Che could see
that the incident had already attracted more notice than they were happy with.

It must be the Vekken
, she decided, with a sinking heart.
Had they not been able to resist antagonizing enemy Antkinden?

‘You
claim responsibility for these?’ demanded one of the Ostranden, a woman. ‘They
have transgressed against us.’

‘What?
What have they done?’ Che asked. She spotted a pitch-dark face at the upper
window, and guessed that the Vekken had crossbows ready up there, and better
ones than the locals.

The
Ostranden woman stared coldly at Che. ‘We demand our rights for trespass,’ she
insisted.

Che saw
Trallo visibly relax. ‘Oh, money,’ he said, almost dismissively. ‘We’ll talk
money.
We’ll come to an arrangement. Let’s go do it now,
before nightfall. There’s no need for all this.’ He glanced along the street,
leading Che’s gaze in the same direction. She saw another score of Ants
approaching, called by their comrades’ silent summons.

The
Ostranden turned away, along with her soldiers, then turned back sharply. ‘Tell
them,
’ she said, jabbing her spear towards the
lodging-house, ‘they must leave. If they are still here at tomorrow sunset, we
will burn them out, if we must.’

Che
stormed off towards the house, determined to set some limits on ambassadorial
freedoms. Behind them she heard Trallo begin to negotiate for the return of
Praeda.