The Scarab Path

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.'

Berjek stared at him. 'Well, that's impossible,' he protested, but something tugged at the corner of his mouth and he added, 'Isn't it?'

'Could Collegium have built this, then?' Che asked.

'No,' Praeda said simply. 'That long ago is before the revolution, back when we might really have been Inapt.'

'But the Khanaphir can't have been Apt for fifty — maybe a hundred? — years longer than we have,' said Berjek, scandalized. 'Just look at them! What happened? Are you telling me that all their artificers just gave up, closed their books and locked their workshops?'

'I'm not telling you anything,' Corcoran said mildly. 'They do the most impressive things you ever saw with simple mechanisms, and they'll have nothing to do with anything more, even if you promise to install it free of charge. You're right, it makes no sense, but that's the way it is.'

It doesn't make sense, Che agreed inwardly. And so there must be some reason for it that we have not found. Aptitude? It is all about Aptitude. This city has not truly taken to it, so … so …

So there may be something left, some survival, that the tide of progress has not washed away.

She fell back from the bickering academics to join Petri Coggen, who looked at her fearfully. Che could not blame her.

'You know this city,' Che began. 'You know it better than any of us.'

'What do you want?' Petri asked her, voice shaking slightly. There was clearly something in Che's expression she did not like, and Che was not surprised.

'There must be something … Even in Collegium, if one searches hard enough, one can find a mystic, some old Moth or halfbreed peddling prophecy from a doorway. You can't tell me there is nothing of that here.'

Petri stared at her aghast. 'But … why?'

'Never mind why,' Che replied, with more force than she intended. 'I want you to think carefully about what I have asked and then, when we can go without these scholars bothering me, you will show me what I want to see.'

Petri was already shaking her head slowly. 'I'm not sure …'

'You have told me your fears,' Che persisted. 'I have not dismissed them. In fact, I agree with you: there is something at the heart of this city that is very wrong indeed. But I must use unusual methods to find it.' It was dishonest, putting it like that, but she was desperate. 'Did Master — did Kadro go to those places?'

There was a very long pause, as shock registered on Petri's face.

'He did,' she whispered. 'I don't know how you know that, but he did.'

'Then so shall I.'