The Scarab Path (25 page)

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?