The Scarab Path

She shook her head, about to make some suitable remark, when a servant stopped on the stairs beside her and straightened Che's robe, tugging the creases and folds expertly into place as though the girl had been born in Collegium. Che was left with her mouth open, the words evaporating. Manny cackled.

'You're happy to stay here on your own?' she eventually asked Berjek. 'Only, I promised-'

'Madam Coggen, yes,' Berjek finished for her. 'I was never one for gatherings, whether formal or informal. In fact I became a scholar of dead ages just to avoid the onerous chore of talking to the living. Go and suffer it, by all means. I would rather stay here and make notes about the wall-hangings.'

'And make sure to look in on Petri, every so often,' Che reminded him. 'And check that the servants don't … bother her.'

'And that, yes. Now go. Our hosts will be waiting for you.' There was a hint of a smile on his face and, inwardly, Che thanked him for being reliable.

The messenger the Ministers had sent to them was still waiting patiently by the door, and had done so for an hour as the academics changed into their formal robes. When they descended the stairs, Che, Manny and Praeda, they looked every bit the proper representatives of the Great College of the most enlightened city in the world. Skipping after them, half walking and half gliding down the stairs, came Trallo, whose baggy Solarnese whites provided a close enough match to their finery.

There was abruptly a Vekken at the foot of the steps, waiting for them. Che had assumed they would not be interested in a formal reception and, in truth, had not taken many steps to let them know about it. Still, here was one of them, which one she could not discern. At first she was going to remonstrate, or try to, since he was dressed in full armour, chainmail hauberk hanging to his knees and sword belted to his hip. But why not? We wear the dress of Collegium. He dresses as an Ant. Let our hosts judge for themselves.

'Are you ready?' she asked him. In that strangely nervous moment, with the mystery of unknown Khanaphes waiting just beyond the door, she almost felt like offering the grimfaced Ant her arm. He would not have known what to do with it, she thought glumly — would probably mistake it for an attack.

He nodded curtly. No doubt the other one would be lurking about the embassy somewhere, receiving reports or making notes.

The messenger was a woman, although it was difficult to tell with these locals. The females' off-shoulder tunics were cut slightly differently, so as to hide both breasts, and it was the garments, more than the facial features, that distinguished one gender from the other. Che sensed it was not so much a close kinship, as with the Ants, but simply a willingness to be interchangeable.

But what do I know about it? Che reproached herself. I'm just being an ignorant foreigner.

She led the way, after the messenger, towards the grand arch at the far side of the Place of Foreigners. Behind her she heard the others following her: Manny's slightly laboured breath and the faint clink of Vekken armour. As the messenger darted ahead, through the archway, Che followed, and stopped.

'Oh,' she remembered saying. Just that and no more. The others backed up behind her, but at that moment she didn't care.

The square beyond was twice the size, and the buildings lining it correspondingly grander, great facades rising four, five storeys, ranked with pillars in the shape of horsetails or scaled cycads, or of battle scenes where the faces of square columns continued the scene that unfolded on the wall behind them, so that the figures — as the watcher passed — moved behind one another, locked in their endless combat. Everywhere torches were lit, making a whole constellation out of each majestic facade. Che stepped forward with eyes wide, oblivious to most of the pageantry and seeing only what lay straight before her.

It was a stepped pyramid that took up most of the square's centre, and rose thirty feet to an oddly squared- off apex. But there were figures up there, great shining figures, and Che rushed forward to stare up at them. For a moment she felt their heavy regard, their cool amusement at this plain foreign girl who dared invade their presence.

She fell to one knee. She had no choice. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I'm all I have. I'm sorry.'

'Cheerwell … Madam Maker!' It was Praeda's voice, and Trallo's small hand was busy plucking at her robe. She blinked, looked back towards them, then was staring up again.

'What is it?' Trallo was saying, and Praeda added: 'They're statues, Cheerwell, only statues.'

Che stood up slowly, shaking her head. On closer inspection in the dance of the torchlight, they were merely forms carved of white marble, gazing down on her from their lofty vantage point. But they are not only statues, never that, an inner voice insisted. Even seeing them as dead stone could not strip them of their majesty. These effigies were cousins to the great watchers that flanked the Estuarine Gate, and they possessed the same callous beauty, the same thoughtless power.

'Who are they? Who were they?' she asked, because they were not Beetle-kinden, nor any kinden she had ever seen. The thought was irresistible: These were surely the Masters, when they lived, but who were they?

She allowed Trallo to guide her towards the most imposing of the edifices bordering the square, and there she spotted Ethmet, framed by torches. Her eyes met his, and she found there something quite different from the reserved patience that she had come to expect. His attention focused on her, just for a moment, with such intensity that she almost felt the heat of it.

Fifteen

Che had been expecting some kind of formal banquet, perhaps, but what she got instead was a kind of menagerie, with herself and the visitors from Collegium the prime exhibits. The building Ethmet stood waiting in front of looked like a tomb designed for a dead giant. Its exterior promised dingy windowless rooms and cramped passageways, but instead they emerged into a massive hall, its lofty ceiling supported by two rows of columns — carved figures of Khanaphir men and women reaching up to support the colossal weight of the roof. They were painted, stylized, and the craft that had gone into them was as nothing compared with those alien faces that topped the truncated pyramid outside. In between these caryatids, frozen in their eternal labour, light issued from a hundred shafts that burrowed upwards through the fabric of the monumental building. The effect tricked the eye into believing that the sun shone from all directions at once, although the day was growing late even before Che and the others had entered.

'There must be mirrors,' Praeda had been murmuring. 'Mirrors and lanterns and lenses perhaps. It's remarkable.'

Che remembered the intricacy of the Moth-kinden architecture at Tharn, and the tricks they could play with stone. Ancient techniques: Inapt craftsmen making up in ingenuity for their lack of artifice.

'Honoured and Beautiful Foreigners,' Ethmet addressed them, 'be so kind as to let me introduce you to my cousin Nafir, who is Minister for the Estuarine Waters.' Nafir had been pressed from the same mould as Ethmet, albeit more recently. He made the same genuflection, spreading hands out from his stomach, and Che did her best to copy the gesture. The great chamber was scattered with other Khanaphir men and women, two score at least, and it reminded her enough of the Collegium Assembly to suggest this was the combined Ministry of the city, gathered here expressly to scrutinize the foreigners. They did not crowd around: Ethmet would no doubt lead her past them all in turn. Instead, they were gathered in small groups, talking quietly. Only a few sat, although there were several stone benches arranged around the fountain that burbled gently in the hall's centre.

Nafir made some polite comments, and was soon left behind. Next a group of three turned out to be called Hemses, Methret and Pthome, and already Che's mind was swimming with the names. Of the faces she had lost all hope because, although the features varied, their expressions were so unified that she knew it would be impossible to recall them later.

A musician had struck up somewhere, playing something plaintive on delicate strings. At the far end of the room there was food laid out, a complex arrangement of meat, insects and unfamiliar vegetables. The sight of it obviously broke the back of Manny's patience, because he was off in that direction with a mumbled apology. Che looked around and saw that Praeda had already abandoned her, was now sitting studying the fountain. The Vekken, whichever one he was, remained standing sullenly in the shade of a column, the scale of its carving making him look