The Scarab Path

ghost of it.

'Well, perhaps you can tell me why I'm here, and I'll tell you why you're here,' he suggested.

That nearly caused her a twitch of the lips. 'Why here, Thalric?' she said. 'You're the lord high grandee of the Empire. Surely that's guarantee enough that I can't just keep running into you.'

'Apparently not.' He paused, and she imagined that he was measuring the distance between them — not the physical space, but the miles that time and allegiance had interposed. 'I apologize, Miss Maker … Ambassador Maker, I should say. I now formally present myself as your … opposite number here in Khanaphes. I'm sure your staff will see fit to call on my own staff, in due course.' The words were said crisply, with a blithe smile, but she detected the wintry sadness behind them.

He nodded his head, took a few steps back, and then turned to find someone else to talk to. Che was left knowing there were other things she wanted to say, but still uncertain as to what they were.

She heard Mannerly Gorget's braying laughter from across the room and saw him talking now with the First Soldier of the Royal Guard. Amnon was nodding and grinning, and she hoped Manny was not being undiplomatic. With that thought, she looked around for Praeda, and felt a lurch in her stomach as she realized that the woman was no longer in the hall at all. Vanished? Like Kadro? She shook this dark thought off irritably and beckoned a servant over.

'Excuse me, I'm looking for one of my party,' she said. 'The … the other woman, taller than me.' The one with hair, the only other woman with hair in this whole building. The servant looked around in quick, jerky movements and opened her mouth as if to say that she did not know. But then she pointed to where Praeda was now emerging out of a small doorway to one side of the hall.

Praeda spotted Che and hurried over. Her facade of calm had cracked, revealing a scholarly fire in her eyes. 'Che, you've got to come and see this,' she rushed out, almost falling over the words.

'What? What's happened?'

'Nothing's happened,' said Praeda. 'It's just … It's incredible, really remarkable. Come with me … No, wait, come here.' She caught Che's hand and tugged her towards the fountain. 'Do you see? Do you?'

'I see a fountain,' replied Che slowly, watching the water bubble up between the stones and subside again. 'Praeda, please just be more clear.'

'Think, Che,' Praeda insisted. 'Yes, it's a fountain, but how do fountains work?'

'I …' I no longer know, and she could not say it.

Praeda shook her head impatiently. 'Did you assume this was just a natural spring or something? Che, think! We're above the level of the river here.'

Che vaguely understood what she meant, but that knowledge was dim and distant. 'Just get to the point,' she demanded, to cover up.

'The point is … follow me,' Praeda dragged her across the room to the little servants' door she had recently come in through.

'This is … rude,' Che protested. 'We're supposed to be guests here.'

'Manny can keep them occupied. He's loud enough and fat enough for all three,' Praeda sneered. She was pulling Che onwards through a series of small turns. The servants' passages were low-ceilinged and cramped. There were little doorless rooms either side, some filled with boxes and sacks, others with tables for preparing food, or with desks for scribes. Praeda paid them no notice whatsoever, nor the surprised servants they passed on their way.

There was a black-clad figure ahead and for a moment Che thought it was the Vekken, inexplicably involved in Praeda's schemes. Then she saw it was a man in dark armour, with a full-face helm tilted back to reveal sandy Solarnese features.

'Well, now, here you are at last,' he said as the pair of them approached him.

'Who's this?' Che demanded. 'What's going on here?'

'The name's Corcoran, Bella.' As he said it Che noticed his tabard, though the smoky lamplight made it hard to pick out the open gauntlet embroidered there.

'Iron Glove,' she observed automatically. As he grinned in acknowledgement, she thought back, seeing them dealing with Dragonflies at the oasis, or on the streets of Solarno. 'Who are you people?'

'We just happen to be the newest and most successful trading cartel out of Chasme,' Corcoran replied. He was a wiry individual with a pointed face that smiled shallowly and easily. 'Weapons, Bella. We deal in weapons and the accoutrements of war.'

'Here?' Che asked. 'I thought they weren't keen on … innovation here.'

'Oh, pits to innovation,' said Corcoran dismissively. 'We can sell them better swords than they have. You don't need innovation. We provide what they lack. It's purely good business.'

'This man isn't what I brought you here to see,' Praeda explained impatiently. 'It's what he showed me. Come on.'

She pushed past them both, leaving Che to blunder in her wake. The corridors were lit erratically by bowl- shaped oil lamps, or the occasional stone-cut shaft. Corcoran seemed almost to melt into the gloom as he followed, his dark leathers merging easily with the pooling shadows. Only his pale face, the gleam of his teeth, betrayed him.

'Here.' Praeda stopped abruptly then and darted through an even lower doorway. Che followed her, and almost tumbled down a short flight of steps. The room beyond was bigger than she expected, excavated down into the earth. There was a …

There was a something within it.

Praeda was obviously expecting comment, while Corcoran was lounging about at the top of the stairs, watching. Che did not know what to say.

'What … am I looking at?' she asked.

'Oh, Che, honestly,' Praeda chided, losing patience. 'Look here, these stone pipes must lead to the river — or to some pond where they keep their purified water. That's done by those reed beds we saw, by the way, but I'll tell you about it later. Anyway, the water is at a lower level than the fountain, so they have to draw it up somehow. That's where this comes in, you see?'

Che still didn't see, though. There was a vertical pipe, carved as intricately as everything else, with a metal rod jutting from it, and there was some kind of fulcrum there, and a weight … I'm supposed to be able to understand what this is, she realized. Deep inside herself, she began to feel ill.

'Tell me …' she said hoarsely.

'It's a vacuum pump, though, isn't it?' Corcoran said delightedly, from behind her. 'The cursed'st one I ever saw, but that's what it is. They get some poor sods of servants to haul the weight up, and then the weight comes down slow — probably there's some sand emptying out of somewhere else to keep it that way …'

'The weight descending draws up the plunger, expanding an airless space that the water then rushes up to fill,' Praeda went on. 'Really, Che, this is apprentice stuff. The water possesses enough momentum to gush through the smaller pipes and into the gravel fountain. It then probably flows right back down to where it originated.'

Che did not trust herself to speak, merely put out an arm to seek the support of the wall.

'Of course,' Corcoran was saying, 'we could sell them a pump the size of your shoe that would do a better job, and not need some bugger hauling a weight up every morning, but they won't have it. Mad, they are, around here.'

'But that's not right …' Che began slowly.

'What do you mean?' There was a look of perfect incomprehension on Praeda's face.

'The Khanaphir … they're Inapt, surely.' She glanced from the academic to the Iron Glove factor, whose expressions mirrored each other exactly.

'Inapt?' Praeda said slowly. 'Che, they're us — they're Beetle-kinden. Of course they aren't Inapt. What were you thinking?'

'Go out of the city,' Corcoran put in. 'Go upriver, they got watermills, cranes, they can do all sorts of clever things with levers and weights. Take a look at the Estuarine Gate some time! It's just, they've no more than that. No imagination is what I think.'