The Scarab Path (46 page)

The tape
kept ravelling on, and Totho leant back in his chair and listened to it as
though it was music: the pinnacle of artificing used to bring to him the
furthest advances in artifice. It was how life should always work, and so
seldom did. And if he missed any of it, or wanted to hear it all again, then he
could do so. He could recoil the tape and wind it through again and again.
Drephos’s words, anybody’s words, need never be lost. The Iron Glove had found
a way to cheat time and death.

We should take one to Collegium, record some of Stenwold’s
speeches …

At last
the report came to its close, leaving Totho smiling slightly, still, at the
ingenuity of it. Belatedly he remembered the Fly-kinden, now kept waiting for
an hour or more. With a scowl, Totho called him in. Tirado had obviously been
reminded about being a good Iron Glove employee in the interim, because he
saluted properly this time.

‘What’s
happened to Meyr?’ Totho demanded.

‘Nothing
when I left, but that’s a state of affairs not likely to continue,’ Tirado
reported. He handed over Meyr’s wrapped slate. Totho was still slouching easily
as he started to read but, after only a few words, he sat bolt upright and
started paying real attention.

It was late in the day when she finally broke away from the Scriptora.

She had
expected the guards, after what Ethmet had said. She had expected to be thrown
into the cells to await the Masters’ pleasure – a pleasure that would surely
see her rot before it was made manifest. She had come to believe that the
Masters’ bloodlines might still echo within Khanaphes, in men like Ethmet or
women like the Mother, but not their voices or footsteps. That was the fiction
that the city was built on – and that perhaps Ethmet even believed – that the
Masters would one day come forth again and take up the reins. It was a
foundation that was concrete as long as it was believed, that would be shifting
sand the moment it was doubted.

He had
shown her the book, which had made all the difference. She was becoming used to
sharing her life with the miraculous, but the book made the miraculous
commonplace. Ethmet had taken her to a small room in the Scriptora where
stonemasons were working. They were carving out the hieroglyphs that infested
Khanaphes like indecipherable locusts, and they had for reference a book.

They had
not liked her being there, those craftsmen: they were members of a select and
occult fraternity. However, Ethmet’s word, his mere glance, had been law. They
had given the book over to her and she had opened its pages, and her mind had
jolted at what she had seen.

She had
thought it might be something simple, perhaps with a text in hieroglyphs set
out on one leaf, and letters on the opposite, or even like a reading primer for
children, the glyphs drawn large and their meaning inscribed beneath them. But
no.

The
pages of the book had been layered end to end in hieroglyphs, drawn in large,
bold strokes, page after page after page. Her eyes had been bombarded by their
cryptic images, but after that first page she had ceased to see them as
impenetrable symbols, but simply as the words that they represented. There was
no apparent meaning to the book, no story, no sense of grammar, nothing but a
cascade of images but, as she turned the last page, she had looked from it to
the walls and read: ‘
All praise to the Masters, the
lifeblood of the Jamail, the sweet rains and the rich earth
,’ and the
words had struck her in the heart.

She had
looked to Ethmet, and then at the masons, and she had known, beyond the
frailest doubt:
They cannot see this. Ah, no, their own
history is opaque to them, but I can read it
. The pages of the book had
worked a magic in her. Wherever she now looked, the stories of Khanaphes
unravelled their meanings for her, on every wall.

But not
on every stone – the individual words, yes, the stories no. As she looked upon
the greater book that was the city, she saw the cruel theft that time had
committed. On the walls of the Scriptora, on the elder buildings, were tracked
the countless voices of ancient Khanaphes. Merely in passing from the masons’
room back to the library, her eyes snagged on every passageway, at each turning
or pillar: ‘
In this year the great Batheut ventured into
the Alim with his nine hundred …
’; ‘
Of grain,
fourteen baskets; of oats, nine baskets more, and he shall …
’; ‘
And she sang the songs of her far homeland, and all who listened
were …
’ until she had to almost shut her eyes to keep out the thronging
meanings that would not leave her alone. Where new construction had been made,
though, the script fell into babble: ‘
She boat sun leap
shoe coral great if …
’

And then
she understood:
They have lost their ancient language. It
died when their Aptitude was born. Generation by generation, those carving
hands became more Apt, less arcane, until they were merely going through the
rotes. In their secret little brotherhood, they copy and they carve, but it has
no meaning any longer
. The informative had long since become the merely
decorative.

And
Ethmet knew it. She could see it in his face. He looked at her and there was
hope in his eyes, a terrible, misplaced hope. It was as though her reading of
the book of glyphs had revealed the key to his expressions as well.

She had
assumed he would keep her, but he had let her go. He believed, despite his
Aptitude, in destiny. He believed she would come back to him voluntarily, to
fulfil whatever role he wished of her. As an Inapt Beetle, her very curse had
made her his messiah. Her mind was now reeling as she set off for the Place of
Foreigners. She did not dare look at the pyramid, with those statues placed
irregularly about its top, for fear of the stories it might tell her. She was
painfully aware that she had failed Petri and Kadro, and that her own
selfishness was to blame, once more.

As she
reached the archway leading through to the embassies, something stopped her,
snapping her back to the here-and-now. She found her hand on her sword-hilt,
yet no danger in sight.
What is it?
Some sense she
had not known before was calling to her …
No, I have known
this. The desert, the Scorpion raid
.

‘Achaeos?’
she asked softly, feeling an edge of tension that was external to her, the
result of some other’s keener senses.

Someone
moved in the shadow of the archway. Up until then, she had not so much as
glimpsed him. When she saw him she started to relax, but whatever had alerted
her kept its hook in her twisted tight. It was one of the Vekken, she realized.
As usual she could not have said which one.

‘Were
you waiting for me?’ she began.

He
stared at her blankly and she saw, so very late, that his sword was clear of
its sheath, blackened with pitch. Her reactions caught up then, her hand
clenching on her own hilt as she looked into his hating eyes.

There
was a rapid flutter of wings, and Trallo was standing beside her, all smiles.
‘Ah, there you are, been looking all over. You do wander off some, Bella
Cheerwell!’ His hollow cheer washed over them both, but Che guessed at once
that he knew where she had spent the day. The Vekken looked from her to the
Fly-kinden, then stalked away without a word. He had already told her more than
he had intended.
Something has snapped in the Vekken’s
ambassadorial calm
.

‘Trallo,
what’s going on?’

‘You’re
asking
me?’
The little man shook his head.
‘Nothing’s happened at the embassy. The professors are all off looking at rocks
down by the river, for reasons unknown to man or insect. Oh, and Sieur Gorget
is being more insufferable than usual, but apart from that …’ He was staring
after the Vekken ambassador, rubbing at his beard.

‘Manny
is …?’

‘Oh, it
might be that Bella Rakespear received a certain Khanaphir beau this morning,
in her own chambers, but more than that I have no knowledge of.’

Che
managed to raise a small smile at that. They passed through into the Place of
Foreigners, and she took a seat by the pond.
I need to
speak with the Vekken, but I first need to know what’s set them off
. She
remembered that brief moment of confrontation.
This is more
than injured pride
.

‘That’s
twice you’ve been there for me, Trallo,’ she noted. It was a train of thought
she had stored away a while ago, now dragged out into the sunlight again. The
little man merely shrugged, and did not look surprised when she continued, ‘I
don’t recall you asking me for any pay recently.’

‘Well,
you know …’ he replied, but he was waiting for what she said next.

‘You’re
a business-minded sort.’ She wanted to pick her words with more care, but it
had been such a long day. ‘The plan was that you’d be back in Solarno by now.
Talk to me, Trallo.’

‘You’ve
a complaint about my services?’ he enquired, light-heartedly, but with a
brittle edge.

‘Quite
the opposite. Talk to me.’

He
smiled. ‘You’re a popular woman,’ he explained. ‘You have a lot of friends, and
they’re anxious that you’re well.’

‘We’re
not talking about Berjek and the others. I know that much,’ she said flatly.
‘Trallo, are you taking orders from the Ministers?’

‘From
the …?’ She saw in his expression immediately that she was wrong. He laughed
out loud, in fact. ‘They already have a thousand Khanaphir watching you, Bella
Cheerwell. They don’t need me to keep an eye on things as well.’

‘Then …’
And who was it who pulled me from the tent of the
Fir-eaters – for all the good it did him? And I never stopped to ask what he
was doing there so deep in the Marsh Alcaia, so close to me
. A terrible
bleakness settled on her. ‘Are you taking the Empire’s coin, Trallo?’ she
asked.

‘Not a
bit of it,’ he told her. ‘Bella Cheerwell, I like you, so I only take coin from
those I think have your best interests at heart. That way they’re paying me for
something I’d want to do anyway, if I could afford to do it on my own.’ His
grin was so guileless, it cut her like a knife. ‘I wouldn’t take Imperial coin,
Bella Cheerwell, but I might just take the coin of Sieur Thalric.’

She
stared at him. ‘You’ve been spying on me for Thalric,’ she said.

‘I’ve
been watching out for you, for Thalric,’ he confirmed, absolutely candid.
‘That’s what he asked, that’s what I’ve done. He doesn’t think you can look
after yourself, you see.’

‘Oh,
doesn’t he?’ she snapped. ‘Does he not?’ She heard her raised voice echo back
from the embassy walls. Trallo waited, still smiling slightly, but not so close
that he could not get out of the way if she went for him.

Diplomatic incident
, her mind told her.
He’s broken the truce by spying on me. Blast the man – just as I
was getting somewhere with this city the Empire comes butting in
.
Another part of her was saying,
You should not have asked
the question if you did not want to hear the answer – especially as you have
known all this, if you had only thought about it, long before
.

And, a
fragile voice:
And he dragged you out of the Fir den, and
what if he had not?

‘I want
to be angry,’ she complained. ‘Why aren’t I?’

‘Beetle-kinden
are a phlegmatic lot,’ suggested Trallo, and then skipped back a step as she
glared at him.

‘And
Flies are a pragmatic one,’ she shot back. He shrugged at the truth of it.

She
glanced back towards the Collegiate embassy, which was where she should now be
going. But the Vekken would be there, and she did not feel ready to deal with
that problem yet – if it was even capable of being dealt with. Petri Coggen
would be there too, another person Che did not want to see just now. She would
have accepted the company of Manny Gorget or the others, but they were out
doing what they were supposed to be doing.
How simple some
people’s lives are
.

‘Let’s
go have a word with Thalric,’ she decided. Trallo raised his eyebrows, and she
had the chance to turn his smile back on him. ‘Why not? In this new climate of
brutal honesty, I want to ask him why he’s suborning my staff.’

She
marched off around the pond towards the Imperial embassy, feeling a mean spark
of pride that she had wrong-footed the Fly-kinden for once.

A
servant was already opening the door to greet her.

‘Cheerwell
Maker, the Collegiate ambassador, here to see her opposite number,’ she
announced smartly. The servant ushered her into the hallway, where another was
already padding off to deliver the news. Aside from the ubiquitous Khanaphir
she saw no one, certainly nobody serving under the Imperial flag.

‘Where
are they all?’ she asked.

‘Off
watching your lot, I imagine,’ Trallo said. ‘You have to remember the way the
Empire thinks. They don’t believe for a moment you’re just here to catch fish
and look at stones.’

‘And do
you?’ she asked him, because his tone had seemed doubting.

He spread
his hands. ‘I don’t need to believe anything.’

As they
stood in the hallway, Thalric appeared at the stair-rail above them, his
expression suggesting that he had not believed the servant’s message. Behind
him there was a Beetle-kinden, a bulky Imperial of about Stenwold’s age and
dimensions.

There
was a beat, a moment’s pause, before Thalric turned and descended the stairs,
saying, ‘Ambassador? Is there a problem?’

‘Possibly.’
Che saw Thalric’s gaze touch on Trallo and then slide off, noticed the quickly
suppressed flicker of understanding.

‘Ah,
well,’ he said, then turned back to his Beetle companion. ‘We’ll have to break,
Corolly. I’ll leave the board set.’