The Scarab Path

Fourteen

'They're setting up right opposite from us,' Vollen observed. 'That's convenient.'

'For them and us,' Thalric mused. With Marger and Corolly off making arrangements with their hosts, Thalric had been left with the two other Wasps in Marger's team, a pair by the names of Vollen and Gram. Vollen was taller, thinner, and Thalric reckoned his role was the specialist sneak, perhaps even an assassin, whereas Gram, even out of uniform, looked every bit the professional soldier.

'I count four Beetles: two men, two women. There's a Flykinden there, too, and a couple of Ants,' Vollen went on.

'Ants? What city?'

Vollen shrugged. 'You should look yourself. You're the Lowlander expert, sir.'

I suppose I have no choice but to go to the window then. Thalric went over, displaced Vollen from his post, and looked down. He experienced an odd sense of trepidation as though he might fall. Everyday sounds reached him — cicadas out in the greenery, the clatter as Osgan organized their supplies and gave orders to the servants below — but it all seemed to come from very far away. He felt very detached, looking only at the knot of people assembled across the Place of Foreigners.

She was there, of course. Cheerwell Maker, I didn't think I'd see you again this soon, perhaps ever. She was wearing Mynan colours, which made no objective sense, but made sense to him. He would always associate her with that city.

Did I pay my debts, through what I did in Myna? He felt emotionally split, his mind running on different rails at the same time. Part of him was thinking of old Stenwold Maker, how he had sent his niece out into danger yet again. Did it mean that this mission of theirs was so important to the Lowlands that he had risked his own flesh and blood to guide it? He never would keep her safe; it was an odd blind spot to Stenwold. Ever since Thalric had known him he had been doing his best to get his family killed. On the other hand, perhaps Che had put herself forward, and if she had done so then all of Stenwold's careful attention would not have been able to stop her. Yes, that would be just like her.

He caught the thought, the slight smile, and killed it. Enough of that.

Underneath such personal considerations ran the professional: how to proceed now against the Lowlanders. Their hosts were playing games in this place, it was clear. The Empire and the Lowlands could spy on each other here without even going outside the door, while the Khanaphir could keep an eye on them both. 'Do you think we can infiltrate a spy amongst their servants?' he asked.

'I don't know the local character well enough,' Vollen replied. 'They seem poor, subservient. We should be able to corrupt one.'

Or perhaps they would simply expand their game, double our agent back on us, feed us false information. Thalric was a man used to finding his way around in strange cities, amongst strange people, but Khanaphes had yet to open up for him. There are important things that are kept hidden here. I can almost smell them.

'What city, sir?' Vollen asked him abruptly. Thalric blinked, losing the point of the question and then remembering. The Ant-kinden? He frowned when he looked to the two identical men standing a little apart from the rest.

'Vekken,' he declared, and ransacked his memory for news of Vek following the abortive siege of Collegium that he had been so instrumental in prompting. Had there not been some word of Vekken ambassadors in that city, since? He thought maybe there had, but why were they here?

Because whatever Che Maker was searching for in this place, it was important. Whether it was seeking an alliance or information or ancient buried treasure, the Vekken were obviously interested, perhaps even willing partners. That seemed next to impossible, considering the way they regarded Collegium, but if anyone could solder together that breach, then it would be Stenwold.

The Lowlanders were going in now. If their embassy was anything like the Empire's, they would find an embarrassment of riches and service to get used to, giving the Empire a day's clear start in keeping an eye on them. Thalric watched closely as Che herself went in, the others filing dutifully after her. She's definitely in charge, good for her. Only when she had gone from sight did he permit himself the liberty of the third line of thought that had been brewing. It was a notion that had sparked when he had seen her at the docks, having gone there to see who the Lowlands had sent. Having seen, he should have backed into the crowd: Gram had been plucking at his sleeve, but he had stood his ground, watching. Unprofessional, for a man of your experience. The answer to that question was there in plain sight, but he had avoided it, up until now.

You wanted her to know that you were here.

He tried to make some capital out of this action, for the Empire. Surely he could wrestle it around to benefit his mission. He felt Vollen watching him, and knew that he was not above reproach, here. Brugan probably told them to keep me on a careful leash.

'I recognized their leader,' he said lightly. 'An old acquaintance.'

'Sir.' Vollen's tone remained carefully neutral.

Thalric turned away from the window, putting himself out of sight of the building opposite. 'It gives us another option, in working out what they're after.'

Vollen nodded, waiting for enlightenment.

'I'll make contact,' Thalric declared, sounding very relaxed, almost flippant. 'Since they know the Empire's in the city, I'll think up some story and make contact. For old times' sake, you know.' What have you been told about me? he wondered, looking directly into Vollen's face. What have you been warned about?

Vollen appeared all business though. 'That would make sense,' he agreed. 'We can hardly keep avoiding each other, being lodged so close. We might as well have some formal contact, and it sounds as though this is why the General sent you along with us.' Thalric saw no hint of suspicion, nothing but a Rekef man mulling over a problem.

Is it quite so easy? Are my treasons forgotten? But that was the curse of running agents and spies, of course. Consider those men and women who spent their lives under false pretences, and how was their spymaster — how was anyone — to know their true nature? How, eventually, was even the spy himself to know where his loyalties lay? Pretend hard enough and it builds a shell of reality, as difficult to scrub off as barnacles from a boat. I remember learning that the hard way from my agents in Collegium. He felt a stab of regret at that, and shame at his own failure. They had been good Imperial agents until he had told them that Collegium must be destroyed, and it was then they had discovered that they were really citizens of Collegium, ready to fight him to protect their city. No one could have known that, until he had put them to the test.

And now I am put to the test, am I? Who would I betray, given the chance? Then a pang of self-pity: Is there anyone I would not?

'What do you make of this city, Vollen?'

The other man shook his head. 'Speaking frankly, sir, it's an armpit. You saw those fields on our way down the river. My people are farmers, back home. I know how it's done. We didn't spot a single automotive on the way in, nothing but a few watermills. They do everything by hand or by beast labour here. The guards don't even have a crossbow between them. If the Empire wanted this place, we could walk in tomorrow.'

'Just a primitive little backwater, then?'

'Exactly.' Vollen's expression precisely indicated a Rekef man who wanted to be elsewhere: this assignment was not, his face said, the stuff a career was made of. Thalric realized, with a stab of guilt, that the man was talking to him as one Rekef to another, without any of the reserve that had marked their journey so far. Vollen must have caught himself at the same time because he added, 'Sorry, sir, if I've been too blunt.'

'Be as blunt as you like,' Thalric told him. 'If it helps, I agree with you.' Only he didn't agree, merely wanted to. It was clear to him, he who had made a career out of finding his feet in foreign cities, that there were parts of Khanaphes still being kept hidden from him. There were too many inconsistencies all around him. If only, though … because, if Khanaphes was just some misbegotten hole of peasants and primitives, then it could not in any way be important. And if it was not important, then it could not really matter what he did here, since nothing was at stake. After all, my purpose — my true purpose — in coming here was to escape the Empress, if only for a little while.

There was a crash of breaking pottery below, and he took it as his cue. 'I'll see how Osgan is managing.'

Vollen's expression showed just what he thought of Osgan, but he nodded.

I was a traitor for such a short time, he thought as he descended the stairs. Why do I miss it so much? Prisoner and fugitive, beaten, hunted. Such times, he thought drily, but there was a nub of truth there. His life as Regent was no garden, after all, and it had not even honesty to recommend it. It had been different when he had been a traitor.

What was Che to him? He realized that she was the closest thing to an old comrade he had.

He wondered if Cheerwell Maker would want to talk over old times.

'So tell me what happened here,' Che said.

Petri Coggen stared at her, wide-eyed, then her gaze slid over towards the servants who were carefully setting down Che's meagre baggage. The other academics crowded about them as well, so that Che felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia.

'Out, everyone out,' she said. 'Let me talk to Miss Coggen alone. You all go … pick your rooms or something.'

Mannerly Gorget was first out the door, his future comfort very much in mind, and the rest began to follow him.

Berjek went last, frowning. 'Are you sure …?' he enquired. 'If there's something amiss here we all should know it.'

'Master Gripshod …' Che began, and saw the servants visibly flinch. She gritted her teeth. 'Berjek, please,' she continued, 'I don't think an extra pair of hands is going to help, here.' With a tilt of her head she tried to indicate Petri Coggen, who now sat on the bed, looking dishevelled, shaking and red-eyed, hugging her knees.

Berjek pursed his lips in irritation, but nodded and made his exit. Che waited for the servants to go too, but they continued patiently unpacking.

'Sorry, could you leave us alone for a moment.' She had to say it twice before they registered that she was actually talking to them. Their expressions were those of frozen surprise, as though a chair had just spoken to them. Servants, or slaves? Che wondered. She remembered her brief sight of the Spiderlands, on the way to Solarno. There had been slaves everywhere, yet they had been invisible, for that was the custom: it was considered bad manners even to look at them. 'I'm sorry,' she addressed the servants again. There were three of them — two young women and a middle-aged man, all as bald as the rest of the locals — wearing simple white tunics that hung off one shoulder.

'Where I come from, we are not used to such hospitality,' Che explained carefully. 'Please would you leave us for a little while.'

Blank-faced, they filed from the room, and Che closed the door after them. From recent experience she thought instantly, Have I locked myself in now? But there was no catch on the door, only a loop of cord and a hook. The sight of such Inapt measures was absurdly thrilling to her. This is it. I've found it. There can be no mistake.

'They're still listening,' Petri Coggen said in a whisper.

Che opened the door again, quickly, but no eavesdropping servants were revealed. The nearest one, dusting a display of pottery down the hall, could have heard them only if they shouted.

'No one's listening.'

'They're always listening,' Petri insisted.

Che closed the door and took a deep breath. 'How long since you slept, if I might ask?'

'Four days. I … If I sleep, they might …' The woman shuddered. 'I don't want to sleep.'

'Where's Master — where's Kadro?' I need to break myself of that habit as quickly as possible.

'He's disappeared!' Petri almost wailed, surely loud enough for any servants outside to hear whether they wanted to or not. 'He was investigating the city … he had found something, their great secret. He told me as much, and then, and then … gone. Just vanished.'

'What was this secret?'

'He didn't tell me that, just that he was so close — that he knew where to go.'

Che took a chair and sat down across from her. 'What sort of investigations was he making? Where did he go?'

'He went everywhere — at night, mostly. You know how Fly-kinden can see in the dark. He would copy down inscriptions from the oldest buildings. He went into the desert once, too, to see some ruins out there. Or he would go out beyond the gates to the Marsh Alcaia — the black market. He was always asking questions, piecing things together.'

Che put a hand up to stop her. 'It sounds … forgive me for saying this, but it sounds as though Kadro was fond of dangerous places.'

'He knew what he was doing!' Petri snapped back, then put a hand over her mouth, horrified. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' she said after a moment.

'But did you tell our hosts that he was missing?' Che pressed her. 'Did they look for him?'

'They know!' Petri insisted. 'They did it. They took him, because he found out something. They made him vanish.'

But can you prove it? Looking at this shaking woman, Che knew the answer already. In this state, Petri Coggen was of no use to anyone.

'You think I'm mad, don't you?' Petri visibly sagged. 'You don't believe me.'

Che studied her and saw haggard exhaustion, hysteria, but not madness. 'Something has clearly happened to Kadro, so I will need to meet the local leaders. I'll ask them about him and see how they react. How would I get an audience with the Masters of Khanaphes — or will they send for me?'

Petri laughed out loud, a wretched and unexpected sound. 'You can't,' she said bitterly. 'You can't. And if they send for you …' She laughed again from pure despair. 'Kadro wanted to meet the Masters, after we came here. Everyone talks about them. They have ceremonies, to give them thanks. But whoever sees the Masters? Kadro thought they were a myth. He thought that was the whole secret …'

'But who runs the city?'

'You've already met him.' She stifled another strained laugh. 'Ethmet.'

'What, that …?'

'That nice old man? That was what you were going to say, weren't you?' Petri chewed at her lip, which was already ragged from it. 'The First Minister rules Khanaphes. He says he's only a servant of the Masters, and that the Ministers know everything, see everything. There are palaces and halls in which the Ministers are supposed to serve the Masters, but Kadro was sure they were empty. It's Ethmet, telling everyone the lie.'

'I can see why it might be dangerous to find out the truth of that,' Che said slowly. 'Although I can't see how you could really keep that fact secret from a whole city.'

Petri collapsed back on the bed with a groan. 'You won't let them take me?' she pleaded.

'Nothing's going to happen to you, now that we're here,' Che assured her. 'You're not alone any more.' She saw Petri's shoulders shake, realized that the woman was barely stifling an outburst of sobs. Whatever the truth, something happened here. On the heels of that came a more selfish thought: I hope she recovers soon. We need to learn what she knows. Che was ashamed of it but that made it no less true. She went to the door as quietly as she could, prompted by the sudden, irrational feeling that there was a servant there, silent and listening, just a moment before. That way madness lies, she decided.

From the bed Petri began murmuring, just a noise at first, then becoming words. 'But when he had done his researches …' she said, though Che could barely catch it. 'When he had gone into the desert, and spoken to the Marsh people, Kadro started doubting it all. At the end, just before he vanished, he was talking as though there was another secret inside the secret … as though he had begun to believe in the Masters after all.'

Che stood there waiting for a long time, but there was no more. At long last, sleep had found Petri Coggen.

Beyond the windows the city of Khanaphes bustled, bright with sunshine, busy with the simple industry of its people, and happily concealed under the mask of its own innocence.

'I hope I get used to them soon,' Berjek grumbled. 'It's all very decadent having them around, but …' He shook his head. The grand entrance hall to the makeshift Collegiate embassy was opulently decorated: with wall friezes depicting scenes of hunting and farming; with twin statues of Khanaphir soldiers cast in bronze; with those countless pictograms carved in their eternal lines. Mostly, however, it was decorated with servants. Standing halfway up the broad marble-faced staircase, Berjek could see a good dozen of them going through the never-ending business of keeping the edifice spotless. One was even retouching tiny chips in the friezes.

'I know what you mean,' Praeda Rakespear said. 'I woke up in the middle of the night and thought we were being robbed. They never seem to stop working.'

'I like it.' Manny smirked at them. 'I could live here. It's like being in the Spiderlands without having the Spider-kinden.' From sounds heard last night, Che guessed he had enticed one of the female servants into a different kind of service. She also suspected the woman had simply seen that as part of her duty.

'Remember this is just because we're honoured guests,' she reminded him. 'The common people of Khanaphes don't live like this.'

'I've never been common anywhere I went,' Manny replied airily.

She shook her head, about to make some suitable remark, when a servant stopped on the stairs beside her and straightened Che's robe, tugging the creases and folds expertly into place as though the girl had been born in Collegium. Che was left with her mouth open, the words evaporating. Manny cackled.

'You're happy to stay here on your own?' she eventually asked Berjek. 'Only, I promised-'

'Madam Coggen, yes,' Berjek finished for her. 'I was never one for gatherings, whether formal or informal. In fact I became a scholar of dead ages just to avoid the onerous chore of talking to the living. Go and suffer it, by all means. I would rather stay here and make notes about the wall-hangings.'

'And make sure to look in on Petri, every so often,' Che reminded him. 'And check that the servants don't … bother her.'

'And that, yes. Now go. Our hosts will be waiting for you.' There was a hint of a smile on his face and, inwardly, Che thanked him for being reliable.

The messenger the Ministers had sent to them was still waiting patiently by the door, and had done so for an hour as the academics changed into their formal robes. When they descended the stairs, Che, Manny and Praeda, they looked every bit the proper representatives of the Great College of the most enlightened city in the world. Skipping after them, half walking and half gliding down the stairs, came Trallo, whose baggy Solarnese whites provided a close enough match to their finery.

There was abruptly a Vekken at the foot of the steps, waiting for them. Che had assumed they would not be interested in a formal reception and, in truth, had not taken many steps to let them know about it. Still, here was one of them, which one she could not discern. At first she was going to remonstrate, or try to, since he was dressed in full armour, chainmail hauberk hanging to his knees and sword belted to his hip. But why not? We wear the dress of Collegium. He dresses as an Ant. Let our hosts judge for themselves.

'Are you ready?' she asked him. In that strangely nervous moment, with the mystery of unknown Khanaphes waiting just beyond the door, she almost felt like offering the grimfaced Ant her arm. He would not have known what to do with it, she thought glumly — would probably mistake it for an attack.

He nodded curtly. No doubt the other one would be lurking about the embassy somewhere, receiving reports or making notes.

The messenger was a woman, although it was difficult to tell with these locals. The females' off-shoulder tunics were cut slightly differently, so as to hide both breasts, and it was the garments, more than the facial features, that distinguished one gender from the other. Che sensed it was not so much a close kinship, as with the Ants, but simply a willingness to be interchangeable.

But what do I know about it? Che reproached herself. I'm just being an ignorant foreigner.

She led the way, after the messenger, towards the grand arch at the far side of the Place of Foreigners. Behind her she heard the others following her: Manny's slightly laboured breath and the faint clink of Vekken armour. As the messenger darted ahead, through the archway, Che followed, and stopped.

'Oh,' she remembered saying. Just that and no more. The others backed up behind her, but at that moment she didn't care.

The square beyond was twice the size, and the buildings lining it correspondingly grander, great facades rising four, five storeys, ranked with pillars in the shape of horsetails or scaled cycads, or of battle scenes where the faces of square columns continued the scene that unfolded on the wall behind them, so that the figures — as the watcher passed — moved behind one another, locked in their endless combat. Everywhere torches were lit, making a whole constellation out of each majestic facade. Che stepped forward with eyes wide, oblivious to most of the pageantry and seeing only what lay straight before her.

It was a stepped pyramid that took up most of the square's centre, and rose thirty feet to an oddly squared-off apex. But there were figures up there, great shining figures, and Che rushed forward to stare up at them. For a moment she felt their heavy regard, their cool amusement at this plain foreign girl who dared invade their presence.

She fell to one knee. She had no choice. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I'm all I have. I'm sorry.'

'Cheerwell … Madam Maker!' It was Praeda's voice, and Trallo's small hand was busy plucking at her robe. She blinked, looked back towards them, then was staring up again.

'What is it?' Trallo was saying, and Praeda added: 'They're statues, Cheerwell, only statues.'

Che stood up slowly, shaking her head. On closer inspection in the dance of the torchlight, they were merely forms carved of white marble, gazing down on her from their lofty vantage point. But they are not only statues, never that, an inner voice insisted. Even seeing them as dead stone could not strip them of their majesty. These effigies were cousins to the great watchers that flanked the Estuarine Gate, and they possessed the same callous beauty, the same thoughtless power.

'Who are they? Who were they?' she asked, because they were not Beetle-kinden, nor any kinden she had ever seen. The thought was irresistible: These were surely the Masters, when they lived, but who were they?

She allowed Trallo to guide her towards the most imposing of the edifices bordering the square, and there she spotted Ethmet, framed by torches. Her eyes met his, and she found there something quite different from the reserved patience that she had come to expect. His attention focused on her, just for a moment, with such intensity that she almost felt the heat of it.