Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

I rearmed the world, equipped it in my own image. I destroyed an army. I halted the Empire, drove them out of Szar . But he did not like to think of Szar. He was not yet ready for that. If I had been some magnate's son, I would have needed to do nothing, to secure my future. To come this far I have had to wade hip-deep in bad choices and bad deeds. And still she turns away from me .

Lunch was set out for him, but he spared it barely a look. There were some sealed documents beside it, and a roll of cloth tape — and a Fly-kinden man. 'You're post, are you?' He raised an eyebrow.

'Tirado,' the man confirmed. 'Message from Factor Meyr, your eyes only.'

'Well, get out until I've finished eating,' Totho snapped, deciding that cocky Fly-kinden annoyed him. Some of them seemed to think that rules and authority didn't apply to them. The Fly looked put out, but he stepped down from the table and flitted out through the door. Totho sat down, pushing the food away despite his recent words. The papers were all manifests, he could look those over later. He broke each seal, to be sure, then laid them to one side.

The tape was another matter, a little spark of daylight showing through the clouds that were on his mind. He reached into his pouch and took out one of the Iron Glove's newest artifacts. It was hand-sized, and looked mostly like a very small drum with a winding handle, as though someone had decided that even a drum was too complex to learn to play, and had therefore invented an automatic one. Where the handle joined the drum there was a spidery little arrangement of teeth and tiny pins.

Totho took the reel of cloth, a woven strip barely an inch across. It was an ugly piece of work, the threads jumbled together without pattern, looking like some clothier's reject remnant. With the utmost care, he fed the end of it into the teeth of the machine until it caught. He then wound it through a few inches, listening carefully. The sound that echoed from the drum was almost too faint to hear. Patiently, Totho fiddled with it, turning the clamps to increase the space inside the drum itself. In this small exercise of his skill, he had forgotten about Che or Amnon, or all the rest of it. The intricacy of the device itself consumed him.

He wound the cloth back, and then began winding it forwards again, letting the delicate pins brush against the rugged fabric, and their vibrations carry down to the drum itself. Into the room, small and distant-sounding, came a voice.

It was a voice Totho knew well, after two years' association and more. It was the voice of the senior partner of the Iron Glove, and the man after whom the entire enterprise was named.

'Hello, Totho,' said the scratchy tones.

'Hello, Dariandrephos,' Totho replied, even though there was nobody there to hear him. A sense of wonder still came to him, although they had been using these similophone tapes for two months now. It was the secret of the Iron Glove. Only he and Drephos possessed the drum-like similophone ears, and so far Drephos had the one weaver, the machine that took the sound of his voice and wove it into cloth. He was working, however, on a model that was portable.

The winding handle carried the tape further, projecting Drephos's voice, dry and tendays old, into the factora in Khanaphes. Totho was careful to keep his speed steady, so as to pitch the man's voice right. When the first similophone tape had been heard, he had been left in stitches, making Drephos squeak and drawl as he tried to match the pace.

'First,' came the tiny voice, 'you should know that the Empire has made some advances in retroengineering the Solarnese-style aeromotives that we sold them. I understand that they will be in a position to upgrade their Spearflight models within the next two months, at this rate. Our new design of rotary piercer has exceeded expectations to the extent that I am uncomfortable with allowing them onto the market without consideration, and I would value your input when you return, which I trust will be shortly. Matters with the Empire are likely to reach a head soon, one way or another.

'Less importantly, our fourth factory assembled and test-fired the first greatshotter design yesterday. The results were remarkable, but the damage to the prototype was such that it required complete disassembly: the barrel integrity does not stand up to the pressures generated. I am loath to look for new materials right now, but aviation steel, in the thickness required, does not offer the absorbent flexibility …'

Totho let the details wash over him, considering each, letting them settle in his mind. This was the important thing. In such a wash of technical minutiae he felt happy, as he always had, and such imprecise calculations as the affections of Cheerwell Maker could be temporarily shunted aside. At this late age, in this foreign land, he had found for himself a surrogate father. Oh, Dariandrephos was a monster, for certain: he had no conscience, no humanity, no regard whatsoever for any who could not contribute to the world of artifice. He would destroy Khanaphes without a thought if he needed to, because he considered the city a waste of stone and wood and flesh. Drephos was all these things, but he was a man whose priorities struck a chord in his protege — and he valued Totho. For the sake of Totho's artificing Drephos indulged him like a spoilt child, even when Totho's preoccupations went beyond the older halfbreed's comprehension.

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.