The Scarab Path (10 page)

In
contrast was Mannerly Gorget, who was younger, broader, livelier and lewder. He
eschewed College robes for brightly coloured Spider silks that strained over
his stomach. Manny was a rising star in the Natural History department, Che
understood, as well as being a better cartographer than Helmess Broiler. This
was only the case when he could be bothered, however. He came from a rich
family, and so work and discomfort were both unfamiliar to him. He had made a
corner of their common room his own, where, at cards and dice, he fleeced – and
was fleeced by – off-duty members of Parrols’s crew. He seemed happy about
everything until halfway through the journey, when he exhausted his private
stock of wine. That had since triggered his more or less constant complaints
about their travel arrangements. He dressed his moans up as badinage, but it
was clear that he felt hard done by that Drillen’s largesse had not extended to
housing them in the upper berths.

Praeda
Rakespear was a scholar of architecture and artifice. She did not drink wine,
or gamble. Her first action, once the
White Cloud
was under way, was to definitively rebuff Manny Gorget and make it clear that
she found him repulsive. The airship itself she found interesting, and she
spent a tenday sketching the workings of its engine. She had a fine precise
hand that would have been much admired, had she not made it clear that she
valued nobody’s admiration or praise. She was somewhere near thirty, impeccably
neat and attractive save that her face might as well have been carved in dark
stone. The ship’s crew, as well as Manny, had begun to call her the Cold One.
She cared not at all. She was abrupt with everyone, not from hostility but
because she lived her life without any luxuries, including manners. Che’s
attempts at friendship had not been rebuffed, just retreated from. Praeda had
not lived a happy life, Che gathered. Collegiate scholars had a phrase, ‘the
armour of the mind’, and Praeda wore it night and day.

Before
halfway Che had decided that of the three of them, Manny Gorget was the only
decent company. At some level she was even glad that her roiling stomach kept
her out of everyone’s path for much of the time.

Then
there were the other two: the Vekken. Stenwold had explained to Che why they were
there, with apologies. ‘They should likely keep out of your way,’ he had
advised – and they had. They stayed together, shoulder to shoulder, and said
nothing. They wore real armour all the time, their swords always close to hand.
They were ever waiting for treachery: Che could read it in their stance quite
clearly. The concept of mounting an academic expedition to a far city, even one
with a political undertone, made no sense to them. They had come aboard without
names, and Che had eventually had to force her presence on them. ‘I need to
know what to call you,’ she had said. They had stared. ‘I might have to
introduce you,’ she had said. They had still stared. ‘I was told you were
ambassadors,’ she had told them, now at her wits’ end. They had reluctantly
given her names: Accius and Malius. They looked almost twins, but she gathered
that Accius was the one who spoke infrequently, Malius the one who spoke not at
all.

They
spent a lot of time up on deck and stared down both the crew and Captain
Parrols when asked to go below. Cheerwell saw them most often at the stern, and
guessed they were looking towards their vanished home and wondering if they
would ever see it again. Looking at them, and their fearful hostility towards
everything around them, she decided that her uncle’s plan for conciliation with
these people was doomed.

Captain
Parrols was beckoning her over. He was a grizzled, unshaven man of near
Stenwold’s age, dressed in garish finery. Rumour placed him as being a sea
pirate, not so very long ago.

‘Look,’
he told her, gesturing grandly over the port bow. His paying customers were
present too, and they oohed and aahed at the sight. Cheerwell, at least, had
seen it before: Solarno, the city of white stone set before the silver expanse
of the Exalsee. The sun was lowering in the west into a bank of clouds, and a
shoal of rain was scudding across the surface of the lake like a living thing.
Parrols was giving a rambling and mostly inaccurate account of the city’s
history, but she ignored him and leant on the rail. Out here, with the wind in
her hair and the cool fresh air all around, she found it almost bearable. The
impulse to just spread her wings, to coast all the way to Solarno under her own
Art, was very strong. She knew she was not flier enough for it, alas.

Even at
this distance, she could pick out places that she knew. She saw the tangled
street market of the Venodor and the mansions of the Spider-kinden families
where she had once guested. She wondered which party now controlled the Corta,
the city’s intrigue-ridden council. It all seemed so long ago that she and Nero
had been Stenwold’s agents there.

So long ago, and so many gone.

They parted company with the
White Cloud
without much sorrow. Che engaged some locals to carry the surprising amount of
luggage that three academics had been able to accumulate and found her way by
memory to a Fly-run taverna where she installed them all in separate rooms.
Manny Gorget was already talking about finding a bath and a whore, in no
particular order. Praeda Rakespear and old Gripshod were talking in low voices
about the merits of Solarnese building. In the morning it would be time for Che
to find them a suitable road to Khanaphes.

*

‘Well,
if it’s just a matter of the getting there,’ replied the bearded Fly-kinden,
‘then no problem. Tell you the truth, you don’t even need me. Just find
yourself a caravan, find a ship. It’s not like people don’t ever go there.’

Che
nodded. ‘It’s more than that.’ They were sitting on cushions around a very low
table in something called Frido Caravanserai, which she understood was the
place to go to find trading parties heading east. As well as the bearded man
there was a Solarnese woman who looked as if she had been told something
displeasing just before Che sat down, and was unable to forget it. Their
quartet was rounded off by a lean, scarred Dragonfly-kinden who said not a
word. In that restricted company Che and the Fly were making most of the conversation.

‘Tell me
about Khanaphes,’ she said.

‘Ah,
well.’ The Fly took out a clay pipe and filled it carefully with nimble
fingers. ‘They’re strange over there.’

‘They’re
my people, I hear. My kinden?’

He
snickered, at that. ‘They look like it, sure. They ain’t, though. They’re a law
to themselves, the Khanaphir. Very secretive.’

‘Will we
have trouble getting into the city?’

‘I don’t
mean secrets like that. No, they got secrets all over, absolutely everywhere,
but because they’re secrets, you can’t see them. You just know that they’re
hiding stuff from you – and you never get to see their leaders. There’s just
this big pile of clerks running everything. And you have to be real careful
what you trade with them.’

‘What do
you
trade in?’

The Fly
looked to the Solarnese woman, who scowled at him. ‘In Khanaphes you buy food,’
she said. ‘Also gems and precious metalwork. They’re good at that. You sell raw
gold and iron, unworked metals of any kind. You sell cloth, Spider silks
especially. Timber too.’

‘That
doesn’t sound that odd to me.’

The
woman made a despairing noise. ‘My dear, you see them working in the fields
with draught-animals and ploughs, or else they potter about on their river with
oar-galleys. They are, in a word,
primitive.
Now, I
knew a fellow who imported the parts for an automotive, set it up outside the
walls to demonstrate it. He was going to start his own revolution. But nobody
would deal with him. Nobody would even talk to him. They all got busy
elsewhere, like nobody could find the time. He went back the next year with a
hold full of the best timber you could find – and nobody would buy. It
bankrupted him. The same thing happened to a woman I knew who tried to fly out
there and trade from her airship. They wouldn’t have it. They’re not just barbarians,
they’re
wilful
barbarians.’

Che felt
an odd feeling of excitement rise within her. Inapt Beetle-kinden? People who
would understand her curse, perhaps even be able to help her? She looked to the
Fly-kinden.

‘All
true,’ he confirmed. ‘’Course, it doesn’t mean squat to me. I’m just the
caravan master and trading’s what other people do. I just put them where they
can do it. Which brings me to you.’ He smiled at her brightly. ‘Now, you’re
looking for a caravan master, and I just happen to be one, and currently free
of hire. What are you carting?’

‘Just
passengers and their effects,’ Che said. ‘Six of us. And we’ll retain you to
stay on with us in Khanaphes just long enough for us to learn the ropes.’

The Fly
rubbed at his chin. ‘Don’t know if there’s enough time in the world for that.
Don’t think outsiders ever do work out what Khanaphes is all about.’

Che
smiled to herself and thought,
Try me.

They
were not the only party making business arrangements in the Frido Caravanserai.
Two Spiderkinden drank and laughed amongst their Solarnese retinues, while
their fingers flicked and spun loops of silk in a silent language. Across the
room, three tattooed Dragonflies were making a secretive deal with a pair of
armoured men who caught Che’s attention. Their tabards were dark grey, and the
device on them seemed scarcely a different colour, and yet some trick of the
cloth made it stand out plain: a heavy armoured gauntlet held open. An open
hand meant peace, of course, except in the Empire it meant threat.

‘Who are
they?’ she asked.

The Fly
turned to see where she was pointing and made a dismissive grunt. ‘Can’t seem
to go anywhere without seeing them these days. All over the Exalsee, they are.
Iron Glove Cartel. New boys out of Chasme, but they fix up some good stuff.’

‘What do
they make?’

‘Weapons,’
said their quiet Dragonfly unexpectedly. ‘Armour. Things of war.’ He lapsed
into silence again.

Che
regarded the two Iron Glove men, who wore armour of studded leather all over,
even visored helms. They made her feel uncomfortable at some deep level, and
for no obvious reason. With a little shiver she turned back to the Fly-kinden.

They
haggled over money a little. She knew in the end that he had got her to agree
to more than his services were worth, but it was Drillen’s money and she had no
emotional attachment to it. Anyway, she reckoned that she could probably keep
tapping the Fly for information by riding on the guilt of his good fortune.

‘I’m
Cheerwell Maker of Collegium, by the way,’ she informed him. ‘What do I call you?’

He leant
across the table to clasp her hand with his much smaller one. ‘You may call me
te Rallo Alla-Maani, Bella Cheerwell,’ he said proudly.

‘That’s
your name,’ she acknowledged, ‘but what do I really call you?’ She saw the
surprise in his face, at a foreigner knowing this much. The Solarnese woman
snorted.

‘He’s
just Trallo,’ she said. ‘Nothing more than Trallo. And you’d better watch him,
Bella. He’s a rogue.’

Trallo’s
easy smile neither confirmed nor denied it.

When Che
returned to their lodgings that night, she found Praeda out on the balcony, a
silent figure against the raucous background noise of Mannerly Gorget and at
least two Solarnese strumpets. The Collegiate woman could almost have been one
of the Vekken, and engaged in their silent communion. They had not sufficient
funds for a view of the lake, and so Praeda was staring blankly at the
buildings just across the street. Che would have gone straight to her own bed
and tried for some sleep, save that there was something uncharacteristic about
the way Praeda was standing there.

‘What
are you doing out here, Miss Rakespear?’ she asked, joining the woman in the
open air. Fly-kinden buzzed overhead, either messengers or just late in going
home.

‘Not
stabbing Manny,’ Praeda said flatly, keeping her face turned away from Che.

‘He
didn’t—?’

‘He
decided to subject me to another broadside of his affection,’ Praeda snapped.
‘And I do mean broadside.’

‘Drunk,
I suppose …’ said Che and then caught herself. ‘Meaning no reflection on you,
save that he always seems to be.’

Praeda’s
shoulders shook, just briefly, hunching forward about her feelings. Che
suddenly felt horribly awkward.

‘I know
what they say,’ the other woman said. ‘Don’t think I haven’t heard. I’d hoped
to get away from … that kind of talk, save that wretched Gorget has brought it
with him. Che …’ But she killed the thought, the reaching hand snatched away.
‘I apologize, Miss Maker. I will soon be myself again.’

‘Cheerwell,
please. In fact, I’d prefer Che,’ Che told her. ‘And can I—?’

‘Praeda,
please,’ Praeda confirmed. ‘Thank you.’ She turned, valiantly, and Che could
see the redness round her eyes. ‘It’s been a long journey and I’m tired,’ she
said with dignity, at which Che could only nod.

*

‘It’s a
three-stage business, the road to Khanaphes,’ Trallo explained. Despite the
warnings about him, he had been working hard for his money in making
arrangements. ‘We may as well fly to Ostrander. There’s a regular run of
airships making the jaunt there. From Ostrander we’ll fall in with a larger
caravan, hiring pack animals and porters. There’s always a pool of villains
there waiting for work. We go overland to Porta Rabi, almost the longest part
of the journey.’ He had taken Che to a Fly-kinden chocolate house overlooking
the water, and ostentatiously insisted on paying for everything. She was not
sure whether this was business as usual for a Solarnese caravan master or
whether he was trying to impress her.