The Scarab Path (29 page)

‘A
truce? Until things degenerate between our factions again. A truce between you
and me.’ He took that final step across the perilous ice. ‘For old times’
sake.’

She
snorted with laughter, but he was now on firm ground. He grasped her hand when
she offered it to him, though he saw the faint flinch, her memory of what Wasp
hands could do.

‘We are
both a long way from home,’ she conceded, draining the last dregs from the jar.
As she stood up it took her a moment to get her balance. ‘We … we run out of
old friends, do we not? They die, or they leave.’

He knew
what she was saying: both of them marooned here at the ends of the earth. With
whom did they share a past, however bitter, but with each other? He knew she
would never have admitted it without the drink, but it was said now, impossible
to retract.

‘A
truce,’ she said. ‘I know you’re no good servant of your Empire, Thalric.’ He
must have twitched because she said quickly, ‘and I’m no better. I came here
for my own selfish reasons, however misconceived. A truce until the others
start fighting again. Why not?’ She squeezed his hand briefly, then released
it.

He
turned to Osgan and kicked the man’s foot, drawing a startled exclamation.

‘What—?’

‘If
you’re intending to sleep, at least sleep indoors rather than under the stars
like a Roach-kinden,’ Thalric reproached him, and half-hauled the man to his
feet. He glanced at Che again, and she gave him a fragile smile, a lop-sided
shrug.

‘Until
next time,’ she said, and turned for her embassy.

Petri Coggen was wide awake the next day – more awake than Che felt,
certainly. Without fatigue to loosen her lips, she was now close-mouthed about
the things she had said previously. Instead she eyed her fellow Collegiates
cagily.
You all think I’m mad
, was written plain on
her face.

‘We will
talk later,’ Che whispered to her. After all, her great confessions had been
disclosed only to Che, who was frankly not ready for further details. Between
the disappointment and the drink she was feeling the morning keenly.

‘You’ve
lived for a while amongst these Khanaphir,’ Berjek remarked. They were sitting
together at a magnificently carved table, eating a local breakfast of honey and
seedcake. The airy wave of his hand took in the city beyond the window, but
ignored the servants that glided past him. ‘I confess to seeing here a great
deal that has mystified me. Their culture is not at all like ours, and yet we
are of the same kinden.’

Petri
Coggen nodded gloomily. ‘Yes, they are not like us,’ she said.

‘Technologically,
in particular,’ Praeda put in. ‘Which I think we can take as a valid yardstick
of any culture—’

‘Oh,
nonsense.’ The objection of Berjek the historian to Praeda the artificer.

She
ignored him. ‘These Khanaphir have a marvellous architecture, it’s true, and
I’m told they have some achievements in basic water-powered or weight-and-lever
devices, but … but when Che first saw this place, she even thought they might
be
Inapt
, and I must admit I can see why.’

Oh you can’t
, Che thought, around her headache.
Really, you can’t
.

‘Do you
know much of their history?’ Praeda asked.

‘They do
not talk about their history, for the same reason fish don’t talk of water,’
Petri told them. ‘They are swimming in history. So much of this city is ancient,
and so much more simply copied from that.’

Manny
seemed to be suffering worse than Che, and had been listlessly chewing the same
mouthful of seedcake for twenty minutes. Now he swallowed forcibly, and said,
‘Maybe they achieved Aptitude more recently than we did.’

The
others looked at him quizzically.

‘Yes,
yes,’ he said irritably, ‘I am a Master of the Great College. I may not be as
respected as either of you two, but I’m a cartographer. I study maps, and I
know that sometimes there are maps that I can’t read: maps made by the Inapt,
who frankly have no concept of how to draw one. But sometimes there are maps
that are … trying harder. Those of the Fly-kinden, for instance. Fly-kinden
maps dating from a couple of centuries ago are illegible, but modern ones, most
of them, are clear as day.’

‘It’s a
possibility,’ Berjek allowed. ‘The transmigration of Aptitude over time is a …
contentious issue, academically speaking. I’m not sure that’s something I want
to get into.’

‘Corcoran
said something …’ Che blurted out. What was it the Iron Glove factor had said?

‘Corcoran
advised us to study the Estuarine Gate,’ Praeda recalled. ‘I think we should
take him up on it. He told me where their consortium has its factora located.
I’m sure he’d be happy for us to engage his services for the day.’

The bright sun provided no antidote to a harsh night. Che staggered like
a blind woman half the distance to the Estuarine Gate, before her eyes and
brain reluctantly reached a détente with the new day. Corcoran seemed in
annoyingly jaunty form, more than happy to help his fellow foreigners. He had
been in Khanaphes for a while, she gathered, but the locals would not let him
forget that he did not belong. He was enjoying the novelty of some company.

‘The
thing is …’ Corcoran began, running his hand along the intricately cut stone of
the Estuarine Gate’s nearside pillar. ‘No – tell you what, you take a look at
it there, then you tell me.’ He beamed around at the academics. Che could not
yet make up her mind about him. He had the demeanour of a mercenary, and wore
the dark armour of the Iron Glove at all times, but he talked like a merchant,
instantly familiar, endearingly irreverent. His Solarnese features looked
infinitely honest and Che would not have bought a kitchen knife from him.

Berjek
and Praeda both stepped forward to take a look. The great column that formed
the eastern Estuarine Gate towered above them, incised at every level with
those ubiquitous pictographs that Khanaphes had tattooed itself with. Che
forced herself to examine them, aware that behind her Manny Gorget had drifted
off to accost a sweetmeat seller, while Petri Coggen stood biting at her nails
and flinching away from the many Khanaphir that bustled past.

In
frustration, Berjek had dismissed the designs as merely decorative. Che’s eyes
gave him the lie. They caught on the orderly lines of carving, drawn into
following them. On most of the buildings it was like seeing a madman’s scrawl,
always promising sense, delivering nothing. Here on these ancient stones …

She
blinked. For a moment just then it had seemed as though she saw words, had
heard voices almost.
In that day… Honour to … So it was …
She averted her eyes, her headache stabbing sharply behind the eyes, then
forced herself to look again. It was as though the sense they conveyed was
hovering like a fish just below the surface – distorted, deceptive, but
nevertheless there.

‘Corcoran,
tell me,’ she said, ‘what are these cursed carvings they engrave on
everything?’

‘No idea.’
He grinned briefly. ‘Just part of the Khanaphir way, their traditions. When
they build something in stone they have special craftsmen come and put these
squiggles on them. It’s just what they do.’ He gave a half-shrug, clearly not
so bothered. ‘They say the carvers train especially from a great book of the
designs that the Ministers have, that shows all the permitted pictures they can
use. Good luck in seeing that, though. Our hosts don’t make it easy to
understand them.’

Che
filed the information away.
I will see that book if I have
to steal it
.

‘I
really don’t know what I’m looking for,’ Berjek admitted, backing away from the
towering structure. ‘Or do you mean the statues on the estuary side? We saw
those coming in.’

Didn’t we just
, Che thought. She had dreamt last night of
Achaeos, the drink betraying her. He had been hunting her, the lethal lines of
a snapbow in his slender hands, and she had tried and tried to hide, but he had
always tracked her down, his white eyes blazing in fury. It had been Khanaphes
he was hunting her through, a city empty of people, and with those colossal
statues, in their eternal cold beauty, looming at every corner.

‘I have
it,’ Praeda said at last. ‘This is not of one piece. There are four sides to
it, and it is hollow.’

‘Very
good,’ Corcoran smiled. ‘You can hardly tell, I know, but the cracks are there.
Now look across at the side of the west gate, facing us. You see the groove
there?’

‘There
is … Is that a chain?’ Praeda leant out, alarmingly, over the river. ‘It can’t
be.’

‘They
don’t call this a gate for nothing,’ Corcoran confirmed. ‘Below us, way below
the draught of any ship, there is a great big, bronze-shod, wooden gate, and
inside those towers there must be the biggest drop-weights you ever saw. When
they want to close the river, they close the river, though I’ve never actually
seen it done. They tell me it was last raised about forty years ago, so I
reckon it’s in good working order still.’

‘Still?’
Berjek echoed. ‘Yes, but “still” from when? Oh, it looks old enough, but then
everything here does. When was this mechanism put in?’

‘That I
can’t tell you,’ Corcoran admitted, and when the academics turned sour faces on
him, he raised a hand. ‘Believe it or not, I wanted to know that as well. I’m
an artificer, after all, and you get curious. The locals just say it’s been
here for ever, whatever that means. No help there, then. But I got friendly
with a Spider-kinden captain, and she did a bit of digging for me – in exchange
for a cheap deal on some crossbows from the Glove. She found some records of
once when a Spider Arista was stopped at the gates by the Khanaphir – some
diplomatic incident – and the Spider-kinden families don’t forget insults.
Their description of the gate is perfect, same then as now.’

‘And
when was this supposed to be?’ Berjek asked, annoyed by the man’s air of
showmanship.

‘Hold on
to something,’ Corcoran said, ‘because it was at least –
at
least
, mind – five hundred and fifty years back. And it didn’t say
anything about the gate being
new
, even then.’

Berjek
stared at him. ‘Well, that’s impossible,’ he protested, but something tugged at
the corner of his mouth and he added, ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Could
Collegium have built this, then?’ Che asked.

‘No,’
Praeda said simply. ‘That long ago is before the revolution, back when we might
really have been Inapt.’

‘But the
Khanaphir can’t have been Apt for fifty – maybe a hundred? – years longer than
we have,’ said Berjek, scandalized. ‘Just look at them! What happened? Are you
telling me that all their artificers just gave up, closed their books and
locked their workshops?’

‘I’m not
telling you anything,’ Corcoran said mildly. ‘They do the most impressive
things you ever saw with simple mechanisms, and they’ll have nothing to do with
anything more, even if you promise to install it free of charge. You’re right,
it makes no sense, but that’s the way it is.’

It doesn’t make sense
, Che agreed inwardly.
And so there must be some reason for it that we have not found.
Aptitude? It is all about Aptitude. This city has not truly taken to it, so …
so …

So there may be something left, some survival, that the tide of
progress has not washed away
.

She fell
back from the bickering academics to join Petri Coggen, who looked at her
fearfully. Che could not blame her.

‘You
know this city,’ Che began. ‘You know it better than any of us.’

‘What do
you want?’ Petri asked her, voice shaking slightly. There was clearly something
in Che’s expression she did not like, and Che was not surprised.

‘There
must be something … Even in Collegium, if one searches hard enough, one can
find a mystic, some old Moth or halfbreed peddling prophecy from a doorway. You
can’t tell me there is nothing of that here.’

Petri
stared at her aghast. ‘But … why?’

‘Never
mind why,’ Che replied, with more force than she intended. ‘I want you to think
carefully about what I have asked and then, when we can go without these
scholars bothering me, you will show me what I want to see.’

Petri
was already shaking her head slowly. ‘I’m not sure …’

‘You
have told me your fears,’ Che persisted. ‘I have not dismissed them. In fact, I
agree with you: there is something at the heart of this city that is very wrong
indeed. But I must use unusual methods to find it.’ It was dishonest, putting
it like that, but she was desperate. ‘Did Master – did Kadro go to those
places?’

There
was a very long pause, as shock registered on Petri’s face.

‘He
did,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know how you know that, but he did.’

‘Then so
shall I.’

They had sent Corcoran advance warning of the ship, but the vessel was
now three days late and he was not a man to be out sitting on the dock every
morning in loyal vigilance. Instead, for a handful of coins he had a boy keep
watch for him. He meanwhile did his best to show autonomy and importance, for
the position of foreign traders in Khanaphes was an uncertain one. A man had to
work hard to get invited to the diplomatic functions that Corcoran enjoyed.
Still, when the boy came running to the Iron Glove factora bringing the news,
Corcoran got himself to the docks absolutely as quickly as possible.

He
spotted the ship straight away, even amongst the perpetual dance of other
vessels docking and leaving. Following his advice, they had come in under sail,
but he could see the tarpaulin-covered bulk of the engine and paddle wheel at
the stern, which had cut across the Sunroad Sea in defiance of wind or weather.
The gauntlet badge of the Iron Glove was displayed on the round shields that
lined her rails, a practice borrowed from the Mantis-kinden and more decorative
than functional here. The sail was blank, but they seldom had to resort to it:
only here, where time stood still, was being at the mercy of the elements
considered good form.