The Scarab Path (27 page)

‘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
.

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 them 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.