Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

She had finally elicited a genuine expression out of him, and it was surprised concern. Nobody had laid this trap deliberately, it had all been mere chance. Predictably, the Vekken had drawn their swords, but she did not feel she had the strength to reason with them again.

'It was … it was nothing,' she got out.

'We have displeased you,' Ethmet said mournfully. 'You must forgive us our ignorance of your ways.'

'No, no, please,' she said, and she looked the statue directly in its cold face.

Can I live with this, even for a tenday? What should I say, if I cannot? How could I explain?

I must live with it. The alternatives are too humiliating .

'Please …' she said. 'Please, it is just … the journey was long and I am tired, very tired.' The Vekken resheathed their blades sullenly, obviously resenting their inability to use them.

'Of course,' said Ethmet. He made a quick signal and the porters began moving the expedition's baggage inside. Che heard a startled cry from within, but she was already gazing around at the other embassies, the other statues that adorned them. She saw Spider-kinden, clearly recognizable by their features, although the garments were strange. She saw long-faced, hunchbacked people she could not name, and beside them were lanky Grasshoppers. There were even two that might have been Dragonflies.

'How long … how old …?' she murmured to herself. The carvings that circled the pillars and scaled the walls writhed under her gaze, and now seemed on the threshold of forming actual words, to reveal terrible secrets of time and antiquity.

She heard the sound of running feet behind her, and the all-too-familiar leather whisper of the Vekken drawing their swords again. A Beetle-woman burst out of the Moth-flanked embassy, knocking over a porter in her urgency. Che stared at her, wondering What is wrong with her? and seeing a moment later that it was the hair, of course. She had hair, which meant she was no native. When the woman cried out, 'Please, wait. Listen to me!' she had a Collegium accent.

Everyone had gone quiet, waiting for what she would say but, after a sidelong look at old Ethmet, she said nothing. The pause grew awkward.

'I'm sorry,' Che addressed her, 'who are you?'

'I'm … Petri Coggen. I'm Kadro's assistant,' the woman got out. She looked as though she had not changed her clothes or combed her hair for a tenday. Her eyes were wide and flinching. Che shared a frown with Berjek, then knelt beside her.

'What is it?' she asked. 'What's the matter?'

Petri's eyes kept being drawn to Ethmet, despite all her efforts to stop them. Che recognized a physical struggle within her, to control some outburst.

'I have to tell you things. Please-'

'Where's Master Kadro?'

'Ssh!' Petri's eyes went wider still. 'Not that — never that!'

Trallo had said as much when he briefed Che in Solarno. 'Where is … Sieur Kadro, then?' It seemed disrespectful to give a Master of the College nothing more than his name, and so Che compromised on the Solarnese title.

'Disappeared. Gone.' The words were barely a murmur on Petri's lips. 'This place …' Again her eyes were dragged over Che's shoulder towards Ethmet, whose expression suggested polite puzzlement at the ways of foreigners.

'Perhaps we had all better go inside,' said Che loudly, part worried about this woman's state of mind, part embarrassed at making a spectacle in front of their hosts. The porters had completed their job and Che saw a row of Khanaphir men and women lined up in the entrance hall, obviously the staff waiting to greet them. Glancing back she saw that the two Vekken still had their swords drawn, standing shoulder to shoulder, tilted away from each other.

'Please forgive us … First Minister.' In between turning to him and remembering his proper title she had caught, for a brief instant, a strange expression on Ethmet's face. It was the look of a man listening to a voice only he could hear. Are these people mindlinked too, like Ants? But this was something else, and she realized what it reminded her of. As she stepped over the little bridge, she put a hand on the Moth statue's shoulder, remembering how the magicians of the old races could speak to one another, distance no object. Achaeos had told her so many times.

The races who had graced this square in times past were all Inapt. The lords of the Days of Lore would have sent their emissaries here, before the revolution had put paid to their world. Those days, those far-off days, were engraved here in the very stone, enshrined in the reeds and the water, in the very faces of the locals. She felt her own loss, her deficiency, very keenly, but it was different here. Here, amongst the Khanaphir, it was surely no deficiency. Instead, it put her closer to them. Have I found a home here? Will they have words for what I have become?

'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 .