The Scarab Path (4 page)

Stenwold
pressed his lips together, locking away his automatic reaction to the very
name. The fact that Broiler had always been his vocal political opponent was
something Stenwold could live with: such free debate was after all the
cornerstone of Collegium governance. However, he had his own suspicions about
precisely who had bought the man’s loyalties.

‘What is
Broiler doing now?’

‘Courting
public support, as usual, by pandering to the latest fashion.’ Drillen reached
into his robes and came out with a smudgily printed volume whose title proudly
proclaimed
Master Helmess Broiler, His Atlas of the Known
World and His Account of His Travels Therein
.

‘The
shameless fraud,’ growled Stenwold, the historian in him genuinely shocked.

‘Quite,’
Drillen agreed. ‘He’s taken every damn map he could copy from the library, put
them all together in no particular order, even the ones that are obviously
made-up or wrong, and called it “The World”. And he’s written about his
incredible adventures, this man who would get lost just walking from his house
to the marketplace. I swear that Helleron appears in three different places in
his so-called “Known World”, and on at least one of the maps he’s got the sea
and the land the wrong way round. And you know what?’

‘People
are reading it?’ Stenwold said.

‘People
are lapping it up,’ lamented Drillen. ‘They think Broiler’s the best thing
since the revolution. Stenwold, it’s time for Lots soon enough, meaning all
change at the Assembly. We have to do something before then.’

‘We?’

‘I have
to do something,’ Drillen corrected, ‘and, unless you want to see Broiler as
the new Speaker, so do you.’

‘Where
do I come into this, then?’ Stenwold asked, thinking again about the Vekken and
his final words.
I am fighting for our future and my
footing is being eroded like sand shifted by the sea.

‘The
people like you, Stenwold.’

‘But the
Assembly loathes the sight of me,’ Stenwold pointed out. ‘I remind them of how
they were wrong.’ It was a point of pride with him.

‘Yes,
but the people like you. Everyone out on the street there remembers how
you
won the war. They fought alongside you. They watched
you go out and send the Wasp army packing.
People
–
I’m talking about that majority without political aspirations – respect you.
That’s one reason why I’m going to be seen shaking hands with you in as many
places as possible.’

‘Why
should I prostitute myself like that?’

Drillen’s
grin resurfaced. ‘Because I make sure that you get what you want. I was almost
the only person backing your Vekken initiative, when you put it forward, but I
wrestled enough support to push it through. You’re not as detached as you
pretend, old soldier. You don’t give a fig for power, but there are things you
want done, and for that you need people like me. Which is convenient, because
people like me need people like you in order to defeat people like Helmess Broiler.’

Stenwold
scowled, but he had no argument to hand that could refute the other man’s
logic.

‘I need
to trump Broiler’s atlas if I’m to get enough lots cast in my direction to
secure the Speaker’s podium,’ Drillen explained. ‘Now, I could just match him,
map for map, but I have no guarantee that my fraudulent cartography would be
any better than his, so I rather thought I might produce something genuinely
scholarly, just for the fun of it.’

‘That is
not the thing the political future of the city will hang on,’ Stenwold told
him.

‘Believe
me, stranger things have been known. Our cousins, our kinsmen, our estranged
family of Khanaphes … I have planted a few seeds of rumour already. People are
already beginning to talk about it. I will raise some pertinent questions at
the Assembly, and you …’

‘What?’
Stenwold said finally. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘Your
seal of approval. I happen to know a little more about Khanaphes than most. You
remember Kadro the antiquarian?’

‘Vaguely,
yes. I haven’t seen him around recently.’

‘I’m not
surprised, as he’s been in Khanaphes for several months. He’d followed the
Solarnese trail long before anyone was looking in that direction. I know
because he’s been writing to me for money, and I’ve been sending it. That makes
him my man.’

‘And
what has your man found out?’

‘My man
has been keeping his cards close to his little Fly chest.’ Drillen grimaced.
‘Which is why there will be an expedition sent to help him out. The first
official Collegiate expedition to Khanaphes. Our ambassadors will extend the
hand of friendship to our estranged brothers. Master Kadro will receive his
due, but I need results.’

Stenwold
nodded patiently, letting the quietness spin out until he was finally forced to
ask. ‘So where do I come into all of this?’

‘Aren’t
you roused by the sheer academic challenge of it all?’ Drillen asked, still
grinning like a fool.

‘As it
happens I am, but where do I come in?’

‘You
propose the expedition, which I then agree to sponsor and fund.’

‘Do I
now?’

‘Because
if I tried it myself, then Broiler would be all over me, and I’d be fighting
tooth and nail every step of the way to stop him making it
his
expedition and
his
triumph. You, though … Broiler
hates and loathes every inch of you there ever was, but more than that, he
doesn’t have the guts to take you on. If it’s your expedition, he’ll mutter and
complain, but he won’t dare stick his neck out, and you know why.’

Stenwold
cocked a surprised eyebrow at Drillen, seeing that his own suspicions about
Broiler’s loyalties were obviously not unique. He shrugged philosophically,
waiting for the catch.

‘
Please
, Stenwold,’ Drillen said, in a pleading tone that
surprised both of them. After an awkward pause the fat man continued, ‘I’m a
devious bastard whose only aim is my own betterment, I freely admit it, but I’m
also on your side. A coup involving Khanaphes could be enough to swing the
voting next Lots. We need each other.’

Stenwold
sighed. ‘This sort of politics has always been exactly the sort of thing I’ve
tried to avoid. So you want me to go to Khanaphes?’

‘No, no,
I need you here to continue shaking hands with me in public. I just want you to
drum up a few scholars to go there in your name, with my money. So people will
like me more and Broiler less. And also the academic knowledge of the College
will be expanded by another few feet of shelf space. That’s a secondary
consideration for me, but I do still care about it.’

‘I
know,’ said Stenwold tiredly. ‘That’s the only reason why I’ve been listening
to you for this long.’ Inside he was fighting his own battle. There was a lot
of him saying that once he started making these deals he was on a slope – and
his kinden were notoriously clumsy. That the future of Collegium might depend
on closet conspiracies like this one made him feel sick about the whole
business. Drillen was right, though: Stenwold needed support in the Assembly,
and he must pay for any services rendered.

And he
was intrigued. Despite himself and despite everything he was intrigued. A
Beetle-kinden city located beyond Solarno.
What might we
learn there?
And on the back of that, another thought – the possible
solution to another personal problem.

‘I’ll do
it,’ he said. ‘I’ll regret it, but I’ll do it.’

‘That’s
my old soldier!’ Drillen clapped him on the shoulder with a meaty hand, and
poured out another two goblets of wine.

Stenwold
took his and drank thoughtfully, turning implications over in his mind. ‘I
suppose you’ll want everything to look spontaneous,’ he mused.

‘Oh, of
course,’ Drillen agreed heartily. ‘The serendipitous meeting of two great
minds.’

‘Best if
it looks that way,’ Stenwold muttered darkly. ‘I’m not thinking about Broiler
now, but about the Imperial ambassador.’

Drillen
blinked at him blankly.

Stenwold
looked unhappy as he continued. ‘Think about it: Stenwold, implacable enemy of
the Empire, entering into secret negotiations that will send agents to a city
that is not so very far from the Empire’s southern border.’

‘The
war’s over.’

‘The war
isn’t currently active. Both the Empire and I understand the distinction.’

Drillen
shrugged. ‘Whatever you want. You’re in charge. It’s your expedition.’

She was still in mourning, but mourning was difficult for her.

In
Collegium the official colour of mourning was grey. True, it was not customary
any more for widows and grieving family to parade around the city in drab
vestments for tendays, or even just days, but for funerals at least, grey was
the order of the day.

For
Cheerwell Maker, though, grey was
his
colour,
therefore a life colour, the colour of her happiness, in the same way that
black and gold had become colours of death. She could not make grey the colour
of her mourning because that would be a negation of his life.

In the
end she had tracked down a Moth-kinden, a pallid trader from Dorax, and not
left him alone until he had explained the customs of his people. For the Moths,
the concept of colour seldom entered their lives, since they lived in a
midnight world where they could see perfectly without need for sunlight or
spectrum. For death, though, they made an exception. For shed blood, they took
on the hue of blood. She learned how Mantids did the same, dressing their
honoured dead in scarlet, and then entrusting them to the red, red flames. The
Moths, who had been the Mantis-kinden’s masters since time immemorial, had
become infected by such superstitions.

And red
was the colour of the Mynan resistance, their emblem of red arrows on a black
background proclaiming their impossible triumph over the Empire. And Myna had
been where he had died, for her, though he had been so many miles away.

So Che
wore red, and thus caused public comment. She wore a tunic of deep wine colours
edged with black, or else black arrowed with resistance scarlet. Even though
she also wore a Moth cape of grey sometimes, nobody realized that she was
mourning.

When she
had gone to Tharn, after the war, they would not let her in nor tell her what
rites had been performed over the body of poor Achaeos. They would barely spare
two words for her. With the Empire beaten back, the old hatreds had resurfaced.
She was Beetle-kinden, therefore a despoiler and an enemy. Her previous history
as a Moth seer’s lover had been erased and, in the end, the Moths had forced
her, at bow-point, back on to the airship. Only the intervention of Jons
Allanbridge, the aviator, had prevented her being shot dead there and then.

She had
tried to tell them of the mark, of the affliction she had been left with in his
wake, but they had not wanted to know. Instead they had told her to leave
promptly or they would throw her off the mountainside.

Mourning
was so hard for Che. Her own people had not understood her choice of lover, and
now they did not understand her grief. She was surrounded by her own folk, yet
feeling more alone each day that passed.

Yet not
alone enough. Sitting here on her bed, with the bright light of day blazing in
through the window, she felt a sudden presence beside her. It always happened
the same way: the movement did not manifest as such, at first, neither flicker
nor shadow, but just as a concrete awareness of
there being
something there.

If she
moved her head to look, it would be gone. If she stayed very still, though, and
emptied her mind the way he had taught her, and waited … then sometimes there
would be a greyness at the edge of her vision, a tremor in the air, a
something
.

Mourning
was difficult for her because she knew that he was still there. He had been a
magician, after all, which she now finally believed only after his death. He
had been a magician, truly, and now he had become something else. She had been
far away when he died, having left him to the failed mercies of his own people.
Now, posthumously, he was close to her, and she could not bear it.

She
stood up, feeling the non-presence recede away instantly, knowing that it was
still there somewhere, beyond her notice. At the same time she heard the front
door, the hurried feet of Stenwold’s servant running to greet his master. She
drifted out on to the landing in time to see her uncle down below, divesting
himself of his cloak. He complained so often of being old and tired, and yet
seemed to her to be possessed of boundless reserves of energy. He complained of
being mired in politics and intrigue, yet he fed on it with a starving man’s
appetite.

He still
wore his sword, one of the few Assemblers who did. Stenwold was still at war,
they would joke, but their laughter had a nervous quality.

She drew
back into her room, knowing he would come to speak with her soon enough. He did
not understand, could not fathom, what she was going through, but he did his
best, so she could not complain. He was perpetually a busy man.

Downstairs, Stenwold stopped himself from turning his head as he heard
the landing creak. Either she was still there or she had retreated and he did
not know whether her absence or her presence was more disturbing: this ghostly,
red-clad apparition that his niece had become.

I need help.
But there was nobody to help him. The war had
stripped him of both allies and friends. Above the fireplace, he had finally
had framed and hung the old picture that Nero had done of Stenwold and the
others when they had just been setting out. Dead faces now, only Stenwold Maker
living on out of all of them.