Before halfway Che had decided that of the three of them, Manny Gorget was the only decent company. At some level she was even glad that her roiling stomach kept her out of everyone's path for much of the time.
Then there were the other two: the Vekken. Stenwold had explained to Che why they were there, with apologies. 'They should likely keep out of your way,' he had advised – and they had. They stayed together, shoulder to shoulder, and said nothing. They wore real armour all the time, their swords always close to hand. They were ever waiting for treachery: Che could read it in their stance quite clearly. The concept of mounting an academic expedition to a far city, even one with a political undertone, made no sense to them. They had come aboard without names, and Che had eventually had to force her presence on them. 'I need to know what to call you,' she had said. They had stared. 'I might have to introduce you,' she had said. They had still stared. 'I was told you were ambassadors,' she had told them, now at her wits' end. They had reluctantly given her names: Accius and Malius. They looked almost twins, but she gathered that Accius was the one who spoke infrequently, Malius the one who spoke not at all.
They spent a lot of time up on deck and stared down both the crew and Captain Parrols when asked to go below. Cheerwell saw them most often at the stern, and guessed they were looking towards their vanished home and wondering if they would ever see it again. Looking at them, and their fearful hostility towards everything around them, she decided that her uncle's plan for conciliation with these people was doomed.
Captain Parrols was beckoning her over. He was a grizzled, unshaven man of near Stenwold's age, dressed in garish finery. Rumour placed him as being a sea pirate, not so very long ago.
'Look,' he told her, gesturing grandly over the port bow. His paying customers were present too, and they oohed and aahed at the sight. Cheerwell, at least, had seen it before: Solarno, the city of white stone set before the silver expanse of the Exalsee. The sun was lowering in the west into a bank of clouds, and a shoal of rain was scudding across the surface of the lake like a living thing. Parrols was giving a rambling and mostly inaccurate account of the city's history, but she ignored him and leant on the rail. Out here, with the wind in her hair and the cool fresh air all around, she found it almost bearable. The impulse to just spread her wings, to coast all the way to Solarno under her own Art, was very strong. She knew she was not flier enough for it, alas.
Even at this distance, she could pick out places that she knew. She saw the tangled street market of the Venodor and the mansions of the Spider-kinden families where she had once guested. She wondered which party now controlled the Corta, the city's intrigue-ridden council. It all seemed so long ago that she and Nero had been Stenwold's agents there.
So long ago, and so many gone. They parted company with the White Cloud without much sorrow. Che engaged some locals to carry the surprising amount of luggage that three academics had been able to accumulate and found her way by memory to a Fly-run taverna where she installed them all in separate rooms. Manny Gorget was already talking about finding a bath and a whore, in no particular order. Praeda Rakespear and old Gripshod were talking in low voices about the merits of Solarnese building. In the morning it would be time for Che to find them a suitable road to Khanaphes.
*
'Well, if it's just a matter of the getting there,' replied the bearded Fly-kinden, 'then no problem. Tell you the truth, you don't even need me. Just find yourself a caravan, find a ship. It's not like people don't ever go there.'
Che nodded. 'It's more than that.' They were sitting on cushions around a very low table in something called Frido Caravanserai, which she understood was the place to go to find trading parties heading east. As well as the bearded man there was a Solarnese woman who looked as if she had been told something displeasing just before Che sat down, and was unable to forget it. Their quartet was rounded off by a lean, scarred Dragonfly-kinden who said not a word. In that restricted company Che and the Fly were making most of the conversation.
'Tell me about Khanaphes,' she said.
'Ah, well.' The Fly took out a clay pipe and filled it carefully with nimble fingers. 'They're strange over there.'
'They're my people, I hear. My kinden?'
He snickered, at that. 'They look like it, sure. They ain't, though. They're a law to themselves, the Khanaphir. Very secretive.'
'Will we have trouble getting into the city?'
'I don't mean secrets like that. No, they got secrets all over, absolutely everywhere, but because they're secrets, you can't see them. You just know that they're hiding stuff from you – and you never get to see their leaders. There's just this big pile of clerks running everything. And you have to be real careful what you trade with them.'
'What do you trade in?'
The Fly looked to the Solarnese woman, who scowled at him. 'In Khanaphes you buy food,' she said. 'Also gems and precious metalwork. They're good at that. You sell raw gold and iron, unworked metals of any kind. You sell cloth, Spider silks especially. Timber too.'
'That doesn't sound that odd to me.'
The woman made a despairing noise. 'My dear, you see them working in the fields with draught-animals and ploughs, or else they potter about on their river with oar-galleys. They are, in a word, primitive. Now, I knew a fellow who imported the parts for an automotive, set it up outside the walls to demonstrate it. He was going to start his own revolution. But nobody would deal with him. Nobody would even talk to him. They all got busy elsewhere, like nobody could find the time. He went back the next year with a hold full of the best timber you could find – and nobody would buy. It bankrupted him. The same thing happened to a woman I knew who tried to fly out there and trade from her airship. They wouldn't have it. They're not just barbarians, they're wilful barbarians.'
Che felt an odd feeling of excitement rise within her. Inapt Beetle-kinden? People who would understand her curse, perhaps even be able to help her? She looked to the Fly-kinden.
'All true,' he confirmed. ''Course, it doesn't mean squat to me. I'm just the caravan master and trading's what other people do. I just put them where they can do it. Which brings me to you.' He smiled at her brightly. 'Now, you're looking for a caravan master, and I just happen to be one, and currently free of hire. What are you carting?'
'Just passengers and their effects,' Che said. 'Six of us. And we'll retain you to stay on with us in Khanaphes just long enough for us to learn the ropes.'
The Fly rubbed at his chin. 'Don't know if there's enough time in the world for that. Don't think outsiders ever do work out what Khanaphes is all about.'
Che smiled to herself and thought, Try me.
They were not the only party making business arrangements in the Frido Caravanserai. Two Spiderkinden drank and laughed amongst their Solarnese retinues, while their fingers flicked and spun loops of silk in a silent language. Across the room, three tattooed Dragonflies were making a secretive deal with a pair of armoured men who caught Che's attention. Their tabards were dark grey, and the device on them seemed scarcely a different colour, and yet some trick of the cloth made it stand out plain: a heavy armoured gauntlet held open. An open hand meant peace, of course, except in the Empire it meant threat.