'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.'
'No…' Che sat down on the steps. She could feel something slipping away from her, and she thought it might be her hopes. Beyond Praeda's concerned face the stone pump ground minutely on, obstinately destroying everything she had come here to find.
Am I alone now? Now that the Khanaphir are just Apt, and merely backward, rather than some great survival from the Age of Lore? Can I admit to myself that I'm a freak and a cripple, and simply get it over with?
'Che, what's wrong?' Praeda asked. And then Ethmet was there.
'Forgive me, forgive me, Honoured Foreigners,' he said. 'Alas, you are used to better hospitality than our poor city can afford. Forgive me that we have bored you thus, that you have fled us into these unfit places. I shall call for dancers. I shall have Amnon order his men to fight for your pleasure.'
'Please, First Minister,' said Praeda, abruptly stand-in diplomat. 'I think that Che… that is, Miss Maker is ill.'
'Alas!' He crouched beside her and, despite Petri's predictions, his lined face showed nothing but concern. 'We shall have a physician sent for at once.'
'No, please.' Somehow Che got herself to her feet. She saw that Corcoran had made himself scarce as soon as the Minister arrived, perhaps not eager to be implicated in robbing this man of his guests. 'Please, I just need to rest. I just need to go to my rooms.'
'Well, it is late,' Ethmet agreed. 'I shall have some servants escort you.'
They have servants for everything, she thought muggily. Even to make their machines work. They have machines that are powered by people, how strange. She was wailing inside her head. She wanted to go home – away from this place that had so decisively betrayed her – but Collegium was just as strange, and she could not now say in what quarter home lay. They all headed back to the embassy together in the end. Manny was singing loudly, a girl on each arm, and Che was glad that her room was located at the opposite end of the building from his. Not that I will sleep, anyway. The discovery that had so thrilled Praeda had filled her with dread. I had everything worked out, and what a fool I've been! At every step, she felt she should plunge into the chasm that had suddenly opened up before her. Nowhere to go, she kept thinking. I have nowhere to go. This has been a fool's errand, and I was the fool for it. Another hour, another dawn facing that realization seemed unbearable.
'Manny,' she said, and then repeated, 'Manny!' when he wouldn't stop singing.
'What can I possibly do for you, Honoured Ambassador?' he drawled, and the girls giggled. Possibly, in their eyes, he seemed full of exotic allure. Overfull, maybe.
'You have drink, strong drink?' she enquired, though she already knew it to be true.
'I am drunk,' he considered. 'Also, I do have drink. Do you wish to retire with me and my new friends to my room so we can explore just how strong it is?'
She grabbed his robe hard enough that he halted abruptly and almost toppled over. 'If you ever dare say anything like that to me again, Mannerly Gorget, I will cut off your parts.' It was not fair, really, since she was not angry at him. He was just a broad and easy target for how very angry she felt with all the world, and with herself. 'I want at least two bottles of strong drink from wherever you've stashed it, but I will not be sharing them, do you understand?'
He goggled at her: her stern expression brooked no argument. She released him and strode off through the arch and into the Place of Foreigners.
This world has too many sharp edges, she brooded, and I have cut myself too often on them. I will blur them and blur them, and perhaps tonight I will not dream, and tomorrow I will not feel like putting a knife to my wrists. Sixteen The pen scratched as it went dry, and Thalric shook it irritably. He would have preferred a simple quill of rolled chitin, but the Regent must have only the best. These reservoir pens – manufactured in Helleron, or copied in Sonn – carried their own store of ink. No more constant dipping and messy inkwells. He found that they worked unreliably and that his handwriting became unrecognizable. Such was progress.
It was long past dark now, and well into the silent watches that dragged their way towards midnight, and Thalric was still writing his report. Contact made with the Khanaphir First Minister. Relations generally friendly. The precise power structure here is opaque. Mentions have been made of certain 'Masters', but this would seem to be a purely ceremonial position, from my observations.