The Scarab Path (3 page)

‘Pull
in!’ the officer shouted. ‘Protect the War Master!’

‘Uncle
Sten!’ Che cried. She was already halfway back inside the automotive, an arm
reaching out for him, when she noticed the Vekken ambassador was sprawled on
his back. A moment later he was lurching to his feet, but he had a bolt
embedded up to its metal fletchings in his shoulder. His sword was out,
offhanded, but he did nothing but stand there in plain view. She rushed over to
him, got her hand on his shoulder.

He cut
viciously at her. If not for his wound, he might have lopped her arm off at the
elbow. She retreated, seeing him loom over her with blade raised, at that
moment prepared to kill her without another thought. She was an enemy of his
race and had dared to touch him. He must really have been what passed for a
Vekken diplomat, however, because he let something stay his hand.

‘Get
inside the automotive!’ she urged him. ‘Please!’

‘I am in
no danger,’ he replied, and she thought she had misheard him at first, barely
catching the words over the shouting. Stenwold collided backwards into the
automotive’s side with a curse, as a soldier thrust him back, one-handed. There
was a bolt lodged through the man’s left arm, and with his other hand he
pressed his snapbow into Che’s grip.

‘Take it
and use it. Come on, Master Maker!’

‘Wait!’
Stenwold crouched lower. ‘Wait – look at them!’

The
attackers had mostly stopped shooting now, and instead were forming up a line
of shields, preparing to rush in and finish the job. Meanwhile the automotive’s
driver was pointedly letting the steam engine whine and rumble, as if trying to
get the idea of escape across. Che looked down at the snapbow, glinting fully
loaded in her hands.

If only I could.
But it was a deadweight, useless to her.
She dropped it into the automotive’s waiting hold.

‘Look at
them!’ Stenwold was shouting, pointing for the benefit of the Vekken envoy, and
Cheerwell suddenly realized what he meant. The line of attackers, who were
moving in even as the Collegium guard tightened around the automotive, were all
Ant-kinden. Specifically, they were Ant-kinden of Vek.

‘They
are a detachment from Tactician Akalia’s force,’ the Vekken –
their
Vekken – explained. ‘They are merely obeying their
last order, which was to harass Collegium in any way possible.’

‘But
they shot you!’

‘My
people are skilled soldiers.’ The Vekken sounded insulted. ‘I had no time to
announce my presence to them before they commenced their ambush.’

Stenwold
was shouting now. ‘Then tell them you’re here, you fool!’

‘They
are already aware,’ said the Vekken, as another volley of crossbow bolts drove
the Collegium men further back towards the vehicle. ‘They have advised me to
leave before they begin their shield-charge.’

Stenwold
reached for him in frustration, but then thought better of it. ‘Tell them that
the war is over. You’re an ambassador – Vek is sending ambassadors to
Collegium, for Waste’s sake!’

‘I do
not have authority to countermand a Tactician’s order.’

At that
moment Stenwold was physically shoved further into the shelter of the
automotive’s hatch by the injured soldier. ‘Tell them!’ he roared desperately.
‘Don’t you think that if your King was here he would order them to stop?’

The idea
of second-guessing the Monarch of Vek was obviously beyond consideration for
this particular Vekken. He just stood there, staring at Stenwold with patent
loathing. The guardsmen had now raised a cordon of shields around him and
Cheerwell, with snapbowmen ducking down behind it to reload, then up again to
shoot. Che noticed that there were a good few Vekken dead as well, as the bolts
tore through their shields and armour both.

‘Well?’
Stenwold demanded. ‘Can’t you admit to logic, just this once?’

‘Your
men are the only ones still shooting,’ the Vekken observed.

Stenwold
forced his way out of the automotive again. ‘Put up your bows!’ he called.
‘Hold!’

The
Collegium soldiers waited tensely, the snapbowmen with their weapons still
levelled above the shields of their fellows. The Vekken force mirrored them,
big shields steady, crossbows loaded and aimed. There was a long, fraught pause
while Stenwold caught his breath.

‘We
cannot go on like this,’ he declared at last. The Vekken ambassador eyed him as
though he was mad.

‘Put up
your bows,’ he said again without anger, sounding only tired.

The
officer repeated the order with obvious reluctance and the barrels of the
snapbows lifted.

‘What is
going on?’ Stenwold asked.

‘As I
have said, these men were given their last orders before Tactician Akalia’s
force was defeated.’ That defeat was obviously a bitter memory for the Vekken.

‘And
now?’

‘They
will seek further instructions, on the off chance that their orders will now be
changed.’

‘
Off chance?
’ Stenwold exploded.

The
Vekken’s expression suggested that attacking Collegium agriculture was an
eminently appropriate thing for bands of Vekken soldiers to be doing.

‘And are
there any more of these soldiers?’

There
was a pause while the Vekken remained silent, obviously communing mind-to-mind
with his kinsmen. ‘Yes,’ he replied at last. As Stenwold drew breath to speak
he said, ‘I have suggested, as an officer of Vek, that this band recommend they
too seek new orders. I have no absolute authority, however, and they may
disagree with my assessment.’

And you secretly hope they will.
Stenwold felt an urge to
strangle the man. He cautioned himself:
Diplomacy,
remember.
He had tried so hard, so very hard, to make things work. He
had started with this premise:
they are people, just as we
are,
but he should have known better. Since then he’d had plenty of
cause to remember that Ant-kinden were not remotely like the sort of people he
understood.

The
Vekken were now attending to their wounded. ‘Do you want me to provide them
with doctors?’ Stenwold asked, seeing the opportunity for a peace offering.

‘They
require no Collegiate doctor,’ the Vekken ambassador snapped, without
hesitation.

‘At
least let us attend to
your
wound then …’

The look
he received was poisonous. ‘My own people will tend to me in due course. For
now, should we not be returning, as you have solved your mystery?’

Stenwold
took ten minutes’ respite from diplomacy, as the automotive began to rumble its
way back to Collegium, to think every vile thought he could about both the city
of Vek and its bloody-minded inhabitants. After that satisfaction he leant
forward to address the envoy again.

‘Do you
at least see now, though, why your presence in our city is so necessary?
Misunderstandings occur so very easily, between our people. Surely you must
understand that there is no need for this violence, not any more?’

There
was no hint of understanding in the Vekken’s face, in fact no expression of any
kind. Stenwold sighed again.

‘You are
here in Collegium for a purpose.’
A purpose other than
spying on us, surely
, he added to himself.

‘Master
Maker,’ the Vekken replied, ‘we are here for now, but how long do you think
your plan will work? We are here because you have spoken so many words that
some within our city have become curious. We know that your people hate us. We
know that support for you in your ruling body wanes. Matters will soon resume
their natural course. What do you hope to accomplish?’

It was a
surprisingly long speech, for one of his kind. Stenwold sat back and reflected.
The Vekken initiative had been his idea, true, and almost a single-handed
effort. He had traded a lot of the prestige he had accumulated during the war
for this chance at a lasting peace.

And he’s right, the bastard. He sees it very clear. It wouldn’t
take much of a shift of opinion in the Assembly to have us rattling our spears
again.

The
Vekken was looking at him without expression, except for a tiny wince of pain
each time the automotive jolted. The studied loathing still evident in his eyes
presaged the future.

‘Khanaphes,’ said Master Jodry Drillen and, although it was twelve years
since the man had been a teacher at the College, Stenwold still heard in his head
the squeak of chalk on slate.

‘Khanaphes,
indeed,’ he murmured. The two of them had appropriated one of the smaller
conference rooms at the Amphiophos. Nearby, the Assembly, the great elected mob
that governed and failed to govern Collegium in equal measures, had only
recently finished sitting.

‘Something
must be done.’ Master Drillen was a great, fat Beetle-kinden man a few years
Stenwold’s senior. He had exchanged academia for politics years ago and never
looked back, his influence and waist expanding in tandem as though by some
demonstrable formula of statesmanship. At the moment he wore a little greying
goatee beard in the Spider style, which Stenwold thought looked ridiculous but
was apparently all the fashion.

Stenwold
shrugged. ‘The city of Khanaphes is a living, breathing city, rather than
something consigned to the histories of the Inapt. That’s no great surprise, is
it? After all, the Moths left us with only the scraps from their table,
academically speaking. No wonder, five centuries on, we’re still rediscovering
things that they have known all along. As for what you can mean with your
“Something must be done” then it’s simply one more field of study for the
College geographers, unless you’re now proposing going to war to wipe it off
the map. It has been only recently added by the cartographers. The paint is
probably still wet.’ It was now two tendays after the incident at the mill, and
Stenwold was feeling, at least, a bit more rested. Any good humour these days
seemed to be fleeting, so he made any use of it he could.

‘Sophist.’
Drillen gave him a grin that was surprisingly boyish. ‘You
know
why this is important.’

‘Do I?’

‘It’s
all the fault of the Solarnese, of course, all those squabbling little
provincials huddled around the Exalsee – why are you laughing now?’

‘Those
“squabbling little provincials” have been teaching our artificers things we
wouldn’t have worked out for another ten years,’ Stenwold said mildly. ‘But do
go on. You were blaming them for something.’

One of
Drillen’s servants arrived just then, having finally tracked down the right
vintage in the Assembly’s cellars, and the two statesmen took a moment to sip
it appreciatively. ‘The Solarnese,’ said Drillen eventually, ‘with their stupid
names with all those extra vowels … what was that ambassador they sent? Oh yes,
he wrote it as Caidhreigh, but then when you introduced him it turned out he
was called Cathray. Anyway, everyone seems agreed now that they’re some kind of
stable halfbreed stock, Ant-kinden and Beetle-kinden combined. You can see it
in their faces, and most especially you can see it in their Art, after we
finally convinced them to talk about it. They’re like those other fellows you
were always banging on about.’

‘Myna,’
Stenwold agreed.

‘Exactly.
But they’re obviously no relation because of their skin colour, and so the
ethnologists started asking “Where did they come from?”’

‘Nobody
cared when it was just Myna,’ Stenwold said.

‘Two
reasons, old soldier.’ Drillen enumerated them on his chubby fingers. ‘One:
public attitudes were different back then. Two: Myna’s within spitting distance
of an Ant city-state – and not so very far from Helleron. No mysteries there,
then. There are no Beetle-kinden around the Exalsee, and yet the ethnologists
are adamant in their conclusions, so whence the Solarnese? Well, of course, we
ask them that question, when politeness permits, and they show us their maps,
and tell us their earliest word-of-mouth records say their ancestors came from
Khanaphes. The Beetle-kinden city of Khanaphes, no less, just as some of our
ancient-history fellows have been banging on about for ages. So now every
scholar in that field is publishing his flights of utter fancy, saying that we
came from there, that they came from here, all manner of lunacy. It makes you
wish the Moths had been just a little more forthcoming with their menials,
before the revolution. If there’s one thing a man of the College hates it’s
feeling ignorant.’

‘You are
still a scholar at heart then?’ Stenwold said. ‘That amazes me. I happen to
agree with you, but I’m surprised that a man of importance like yourself can
still find time to concern himself with such abstruse academic matters.’

‘There
is more at stake here than scholarship,’ Drillen said fiercely. ‘You must be
aware that people are looking at the world in a different way now, after the
war. For me, I’d just as soon everyone went back to not really caring what lay
east of Tark and north of Helleron, despite all the trouble that attitude has
caused us, but it’s too late now. Go into any taverna in the city and you’ll
hear scribes and guardsmen and manual labourers all talking about places like
Maynes and the Commonweal and bloody Solarno, as though they were planning on
going there tomorrow.’ Drillen was becoming quite excited now. Stenwold sipped
his wine and watched him with interest.

‘And the
romances!’ the fat man continued. ‘Have you any idea how many talentless clerks
are writing “true” romances boasting of their supposed travels in distant
lands? And still the printing houses can’t get them to the booksellers fast
enough to satisfy public demand. Everyone wants to read about foreigners, and
I’ll wager that not one of those people writing about them has so much as
stepped outside Collegium’s walls. It’s all lies, but people are gobbling it
whole. Foreign is fashionable. People are falling over themselves to be more
misinformed than their neighbours about distant lands. And then there’s Master
Broiler.’