Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

That gave Stenwold pause, but he was good at handling surprises and just drained his wine bowl while he pondered, Now that's interesting. If they think that, then who else does?

'Your silence indicates admission,' said the same ambassador. They had an identical expression of dislike etched onto their mirror-image faces, but no more than that. As with all Ant-kinden, the real feelings were expressed inside their heads, secret among their own kind.

'You're talking about the Khanaphes expedition?'

'So,' the Vekken said, all their fears confirmed.

'What of it? It's simply an academic expedition to study a city of our cousins …' He was about to ask them if they would not be similarly interested, in his position, but they would never be in a similar position, because any other Ant city was automatically their enemy.

'So you say,' said the Vekken. 'But we see more.'

'Please sit down,' he suggested, but they would not. They continued standing there with their hands near their sword-hilts, waiting for the worst. He had a sudden dizzying thought of what it must be like for these envoys, surrounded by those they knew to be their avowed enemies, while deprived of the comforting voices of their own kin that they had lived with all their lives: just the four of them cut off and alone in an alien sea.

'What do you want?' he asked them patiently.

'Warmaster Stenwold Maker is sending an expedition,' declared one of the Vekken crisply. 'He tells us it is peaceful and that no harm is meant. He will not deny a Vekken presence, therefore.'

They waited for his furious objections as he stared at them, mind spinning. They saw a military purpose in everything, and that purpose forever turned against Vek.

At the thought, it was all he could do not to laugh, but that would not have been diplomatic.

'If you want to go, I shall make the arrangements,' he agreed.

They betrayed nothing in their faces, but he knew he had caught them out. They did not know whether to rejoice at defeating him, or curse at themselves being defeated.

He only wondered what they would make of Khanaphes.

Greetings and salutations of the Great College to my good friend Master Kadro.

It has occurred to me that you may think we do not allow sufficient importance to your far-flung mission.

Similarly, communicating as we do by such inadequate means, your discoveries to date — as opposed to your renewed requests for funding — have not been communicated to us here so well as I am sure you would prefer.

As the first College Master to study such a fascinating people as the Khanaphir, I can tell you we are all agog to learn what you have discovered, and to assist in furthering your studies.

So it is that no less a man than War Master Stenwold Maker, whose decisive role in the recent war cannot have escaped your attention, has proposed that we send some further members of the College to assist you in your labours.

Rejoice, then! For an ambassador of Collegium, none other than War Master Maker's own niece, shall be travelling to assist you, be the distance never so far. She shall take with her certain other academics who have expressed an interest — as who would not? — in the vital work you are doing. They shall of course bring equipment and funds to assist you, and they will be keen to hear from you regarding your theories and evidence.

I do hope you can arrange for them, with the Khanaphir authorities whoever they might be, appropriate lodging and similar conveniences.

Your most dutiful friend and sponsor

Master Jodry Drillen,

of the Assembly of that most enlightened city of Collegium.

Petri Coggen read the letter again and felt like weeping.

She sat at the little sloping lectern which the Khanaphir had given her for a desk, and put her head in her hands. They were so obtuse , those old men at the College. Worse, they had a gift for bad timing. Beside Drillen's letter was one of her own, completed last night and ready for sending. It read:

Good Master Drillen,

Forgive me for writing to you directly but I am the bearer of terrible news. Master Kadro is gone. He disappeared only two days ago. There is no trace of him. The Ministers say nothing, but I am sure they know.

Something terrible is happening here. There is a secret in Khanaphes and Kadro was close to it. They have done something to him. I am sure he is dead.

Please tell me what to do. I do not want to stay here longer, but I fear what might happen if I try to leave.

Yours

Petri Coggen, assistant to Master Kadro.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. Instead she took her own letter and folded it, then put it inside her tunic. Perhaps, somehow, it would arrive in time to do some good. Assuming it arrived at all.

She buckled on her belt, carrying her purse and her dagger. It was the only weapon she owned but she would not know what to do with it if she was forced to use it on another living thing. Petri Coggen had never been much more than an aide and secretary to Master Kadro, who had been the great academic and explorer, dragging her out here so that she could scribe his exploits. But now she was alone, and the city of Khanaphes had become a brooding and hostile place. She was merely a Beetle-kinden woman edging towards her middle years, short and stout and prone to getting out of breath. She was certainly not the woman to avenge Kadro's death, but she felt she must at least try to investigate his disappearance.

She had shared a third-storey room with Kadro, a little box with two windows squeezed under the flat roof of a warehouse. Kadro had chosen it because the landlord was a merchant, and therefore used to dealing with foreigners; also because the place was cheap and lay close to the little stew of villainy that cluttered this side of the river beyond Khanaphes's great Estuarine Gate. This was a busy market by day, a tent city by night, and the tents often grand and elaborate, for there was a great deal of money changing hands at any given moment, and people in Khanaphes — legitimate dealers or otherwise — liked to show that they were doing well. It was a place that, in other circumstances, she would never have dreamt of visiting on her own, but nowhere else in Khanaphes might she find some kind of answer to her questions.

She made good time. A few hurried glances detected no followers, but the streets were teeming this close to the docks. There were always ships coming to the river quays, and then a swarm of dockhands, fishermen, merchants and rogues to pester them. Despite the time she had spent here, the heat still raised a sweat on to her skin, and the bustle of bald heads, the murmur of quiet voices, remained densely impenetrable. These are my kinden but not my people and I cannot understand them.

In the shadow of the Estuarine Gate, she paused. The gate itself was out of sight, supposedly deep in the waters of the river, under any ship's draught passing between those gargantuan carved pillars. Again she looked round and saw no soldiers of the Ministers come to apprehend her, no skulking cloaked figure with eyes fixed on her.

And a poor spy it would be that I would notice! She did not know what to do next. Her training at the College, all that history and architecture and philosophy, had been no preparation for this crisis.

She slipped past the gate by the narrow footpath, wall on one side, the choppy brown waters on the other. She did not look up, past that monumental pillar, to see the great stone likeness that was set into its southern side. Those inhumanly beautiful, blandly smiling features were constantly in her dreams. She had begun to fear them, for all they were a thousand years dead.