Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

'You've lived for a while amongst these Khanaphir,' Berjek remarked. They were sitting together at a magnificently carved table, eating a local breakfast of honey and seedcake. The airy wave of his hand took in the city beyond the window, but ignored the servants that glided past him. 'I confess to seeing here a great deal that has mystified me. Their culture is not at all like ours, and yet we are of the same kinden.'

Petri Coggen nodded gloomily. 'Yes, they are not like us,' she said.

'Technologically, in particular,' Praeda put in. 'Which I think we can take as a valid yardstick of any culture-'

'Oh, nonsense.' The objection of Berjek the historian to Praeda the artificer.

She ignored him. 'These Khanaphir have a marvellous architecture, it's true, and I'm told they have some achievements in basic water-powered or weight-and-lever devices, but … but when Che first saw this place, she even thought they might be Inapt , and I must admit I can see why.'

Oh you can't , Che thought, around her headache. Really, you can't .

'Do you know much of their history?' Praeda asked.

'They do not talk about their history, for the same reason fish don't talk of water,' Petri told them. 'They are swimming in history. So much of this city is ancient, and so much more simply copied from that.'

Manny seemed to be suffering worse than Che, and had been listlessly chewing the same mouthful of seedcake for twenty minutes. Now he swallowed forcibly, and said, 'Maybe they achieved Aptitude more recently than we did.'

The others looked at him quizzically.

'Yes, yes,' he said irritably, 'I am a Master of the Great College. I may not be as respected as either of you two, but I'm a cartographer. I study maps, and I know that sometimes there are maps that I can't read: maps made by the Inapt, who frankly have no concept of how to draw one. But sometimes there are maps that are … trying harder. Those of the Fly-kinden, for instance. Fly-kinden maps dating from a couple of centuries ago are illegible, but modern ones, most of them, are clear as day.'

'It's a possibility,' Berjek allowed. 'The transmigration of Aptitude over time is a … contentious issue, academically speaking. I'm not sure that's something I want to get into.'

'Corcoran said something …' Che blurted out. What was it the Iron Glove factor had said?

'Corcoran advised us to study the Estuarine Gate,' Praeda recalled. 'I think we should take him up on it. He told me where their consortium has its factora located. I'm sure he'd be happy for us to engage his services for the day.'

The bright sun provided no antidote to a harsh night. Che staggered like a blind woman half the distance to the Estuarine Gate, before her eyes and brain reluctantly reached a detente with the new day. Corcoran seemed in annoyingly jaunty form, more than happy to help his fellow foreigners. He had been in Khanaphes for a while, she gathered, but the locals would not let him forget that he did not belong. He was enjoying the novelty of some company.

'The thing is …' Corcoran began, running his hand along the intricately cut stone of the Estuarine Gate's nearside pillar. 'No — tell you what, you take a look at it there, then you tell me.' He beamed around at the academics. Che could not yet make up her mind about him. He had the demeanour of a mercenary, and wore the dark armour of the Iron Glove at all times, but he talked like a merchant, instantly familiar, endearingly irreverent. His Solarnese features looked infinitely honest and Che would not have bought a kitchen knife from him.

Berjek and Praeda both stepped forward to take a look. The great column that formed the eastern Estuarine Gate towered above them, incised at every level with those ubiquitous pictographs that Khanaphes had tattooed itself with. Che forced herself to examine them, aware that behind her Manny Gorget had drifted off to accost a sweetmeat seller, while Petri Coggen stood biting at her nails and flinching away from the many Khanaphir that bustled past.

In frustration, Berjek had dismissed the designs as merely decorative. Che's eyes gave him the lie. They caught on the orderly lines of carving, drawn into following them. On most of the buildings it was like seeing a madman's scrawl, always promising sense, delivering nothing. Here on these ancient stones …

She blinked. For a moment just then it had seemed as though she saw words, had heard voices almost. In that day… Honour to … So it was … She averted her eyes, her headache stabbing sharply behind the eyes, then forced herself to look again. It was as though the sense they conveyed was hovering like a fish just below the surface — distorted, deceptive, but nevertheless there.

'Corcoran, tell me,' she said, 'what are these cursed carvings they engrave on everything?'

'No idea.' He grinned briefly. 'Just part of the Khanaphir way, their traditions. When they build something in stone they have special craftsmen come and put these squiggles on them. It's just what they do.' He gave a half-shrug, clearly not so bothered. 'They say the carvers train especially from a great book of the designs that the Ministers have, that shows all the permitted pictures they can use. Good luck in seeing that, though. Our hosts don't make it easy to understand them.'

Che filed the information away. I will see that book if I have to steal it .

'I really don't know what I'm looking for,' Berjek admitted, backing away from the towering structure. 'Or do you mean the statues on the estuary side? We saw those coming in.'

Didn't we just , Che thought. She had dreamt last night of Achaeos, the drink betraying her. He had been hunting her, the lethal lines of a snapbow in his slender hands, and she had tried and tried to hide, but he had always tracked her down, his white eyes blazing in fury. It had been Khanaphes he was hunting her through, a city empty of people, and with those colossal statues, in their eternal cold beauty, looming at every corner.

'I have it,' Praeda said at last. 'This is not of one piece. There are four sides to it, and it is hollow.'

'Very good,' Corcoran smiled. 'You can hardly tell, I know, but the cracks are there. Now look across at the side of the west gate, facing us. You see the groove there?'

'There is … Is that a chain?' Praeda leant out, alarmingly, over the river. 'It can't be.'

'They don't call this a gate for nothing,' Corcoran confirmed. 'Below us, way below the draught of any ship, there is a great big, bronze-shod, wooden gate, and inside those towers there must be the biggest drop-weights you ever saw. When they want to close the river, they close the river, though I've never actually seen it done. They tell me it was last raised about forty years ago, so I reckon it's in good working order still.'

'Still?' Berjek echoed. 'Yes, but "still" from when? Oh, it looks old enough, but then everything here does. When was this mechanism put in?'

'That I can't tell you,' Corcoran admitted, and when the academics turned sour faces on him, he raised a hand. 'Believe it or not, I wanted to know that as well. I'm an artificer, after all, and you get curious. The locals just say it's been here for ever, whatever that means. No help there, then. But I got friendly with a Spider-kinden captain, and she did a bit of digging for me — in exchange for a cheap deal on some crossbows from the Glove. She found some records of once when a Spider Arista was stopped at the gates by the Khanaphir — some diplomatic incident — and the Spider-kinden families don't forget insults. Their description of the gate is perfect, same then as now.'

'And when was this supposed to be?' Berjek asked, annoyed by the man's air of showmanship.

'Hold on to something,' Corcoran said, 'because it was at least — at least , mind — five hundred and fifty years back. And it didn't say anything about the gate being new , even then.'