'It's good to see you again.' Che eyed the opened innards of the machine, fought down a brief stab of queasiness. 'Something wrong here?'
'Not wrong, just could be made better. One of your fellows at the College came up with an idea about air exchange, so I reckon I can get another few per cent efficiency out of the rewinding gears.' She grinned in the face of Che's polite expression, because she didn't know what was behind it. 'I want to try a non-stopper to Capitas.'
'Capitas in the Empire?' It was a stupid question, Che knew, but it leapt out before she could stop it.
'Where else? They're keen on their fliers up that ways. I've had an invitation.' She shrugged. 'If not there, then there's an exhibition in Helleron in a month's time, and I won't miss that.'
The Esca Magni was sleek, hunched up from nose to cockpit, then with a long sweep of tail. The two wings, silk stretched over a frame of wood and wire, were currently folded back along her length. Beneath the nose emerged the compact fist of a pair of rotating piercers, another Solarnese innovation in the world of aviation. Taki, just three foot tall in her sandals, sat on its hull like an empress, mistress of all she surveyed.
'What?'Taki asked her. 'I know that look. What's up?'
'Taki… have you ever heard of a place called Khanaphes?'
The Fly gave her a surprised look. 'Well, of course, but how did that come up?'
'It's just that… people have been mentioning it.'
Taki shrugged. 'Well, why not? Big old place down the east coast from the Exalsee. All a bit, you know, backward thataways.'
'Backward?'
'Not really keeping pace with progress, you know.' Taki made a vague gesture. 'We get food from them, trading through Ostrander. Now, Ostrander's a strange place, and you never saw it when you were over…' She saw something in Che's expression. 'But Khanaphes? What's to say? Let's get a drink and then you can ask your questions.' The Fly had never actually been there, was the first thing Che learned. Taki's life had always been fiercely centred on the airborne elite of the Exalsee.
'They don't have flying machines in Khanaphes?' Che probed.
Taki made a condescending noise. 'They don't have machines of any kind in Khanaphes, from what I hear. Like I said, backward.' She looked amused, her eyes flicking across the clientele of the taverna as though she included them loosely in the same definition.
That took a moment to sink in. 'But they're… I thought they were supposed to be Beetle-kinden.'
'Oh, yes, yes they are. Not anything like your lot, though. I remember how Scobraan went there once, for a bet…' Her voice twitched for a moment, another colleague dead in the war. 'He said they'd never seen anything like his flier – didn't know what to make of it. Didn't want to know, either. And he couldn't get it refuelled, of course, had to get it shipped back to Porta Rabi by boat.'
'But that doesn't…' Something odd moved inside Che. 'And have they been settled there long?'
'Oh, you might say that. Long enough to have founded Solarno.'
'Seriously?'
'Oh now, this is long, long ago – and I'm remembering back to my school days for this, too. They used to own halfway around the Exalsee, way back before anyone can remember. But that was long before the Spiders and my own people came over – a thousand years before, something crazy like that. Then I suppose they just… got left behind. The way I hear it, they haven't changed much since those days. They still own a fair bit of territory up and down the river where they are.'
Che digested these words, thinking: the past. It made no sense: she knew Beetle-kinden even if she could not quite claim to be one of them any more. It made no sense. Something doesn't add up. It gave her a strange sense of excitement. Khanaphes – what might I learn there?
It struck her then, and she actually jumped up, knocking back her chair. Taki was in the air in an instant, wings a-blur and a knife in her hand. A few of the other taverna patrons had gone for their weapons too. The war was not so very long ago.
She sat down, made herself give an apologetic wave around the room. Taki stood on her chair back for a moment, wings flicking for balance, before consenting to sit down.
A city of Beetle-kinden without machines?
A city of Inapt Beetle-kinden?
'Yes,' she said, thinking of Stenwold's offer. 'Oh, yes I will.' Stenwold was enjoying an after-lunch bowl of wine in the College refectory when someone came brushing past behind him, murmuring, 'The Vekken are after you.'
His stomach sank and he looked back. 'Which ones?'
His informant, a natural history master, shrugged. 'Who can tell? They all look the same.'
This was Stenwold's chance to make himself scarce, but he did not seize it. 'They're my problem,' he replied, whereupon his benefactor shrugged and made a quick exit. Stenwold braced himself mentally for another taxing encounter. His Vekken initiative which, in their mutual derision of it, had at last provided Collegium and Vek with something in common. Yet nobody understood how important it was. He was trying to do what Collegium should have done in the first place, instead of relying solely on the strength of its walls and assuming the Vekken had been defeated a generation ago. Stenwold was trying to make sure that there would be no third Vekken war. He was trying to build bridges. The result of his months of careful diplomacy was that the Vekken had at last sent four men who claimed to be ambassadors, and were more probably spies.
Two of them located him soon enough after the tip-off, and came marching up to stand before his table.
He couldn't even tell which two of the team they were. Ant-kinden all looked like siblings, and the Vekken seemed to have sent four ambassadors who were absolutely identical. They stared at him now as though they had just found out he had sent assassins to kill their families.
'Masters…?' He made a motion at the table, offering chairs. They stared at the seats as though they were venomous, then turned the same expressions on him. His Vekken initiative had been worth it, if just for this. He had always known the dislike of his own people for the city of Vek, inspired by two repelled attempts at conquest, but he had not guessed at the reciprocal loathing felt by the Vekken because of Collegium's successful resistance. They hated the Beetle-kinden and, because they could not see how mere Beetles could resist the might of an Ant city-state, they feared them also. Stenwold was working as best he could to disarm that enmity but there was a lifetime of ingrained distrust to overcome.
'We are aware of your plans,' one of them said, and then paused as if waiting for him to admit everything.
He looked at them blankly. 'I have many plans,' he said at last. 'Which ones do you mean?'
'You are gathering allies,' said the same one, speaking with the flat courage of a man who expects his hosts to have him killed. 'You are sending to another Beetle city to secure them.'
That gave Stenwold pause, but he was good at handling surprises and just drained his wine bowl while he pondered, Now that's interesting. If they think that, then who else does?
'Your silence indicates admission,' said the same ambassador. They had an identical expression of dislike etched onto their mirror-image faces, but no more than that. As with all Ant-kinden, the real feelings were expressed inside their heads, secret among their own kind.
'You're talking about the Khanaphes expedition?'
'So,' the Vekken said, all their fears confirmed.
'What of it? It's simply an academic expedition to study a city of our cousins…' He was about to ask them if they would not be similarly interested, in his position, but they would never be in a similar position, because any other Ant city was automatically their enemy.