'Hello, Totho,' said the scratchy tones.
'Hello, Dariandrephos,' Totho replied, even though there was nobody there to hear him. A sense of wonder still came to him, although they had been using these similophone tapes for two months now. It was the secret of the Iron Glove. Only he and Drephos possessed the drum-like similophone ears, and so far Drephos had the one weaver, the machine that took the sound of his voice and wove it into cloth. He was working, however, on a model that was portable.
The winding handle carried the tape further, projecting Drephos's voice, dry and tendays old, into the factora in Khanaphes. Totho was careful to keep his speed steady, so as to pitch the man's voice right. When the first similophone tape had been heard, he had been left in stitches, making Drephos squeak and drawl as he tried to match the pace.
'First,' came the tiny voice, 'you should know that the Empire has made some advances in retroengineering the Solarnese-style aeromotives that we sold them. I understand that they will be in a position to upgrade their Spearflight models within the next two months, at this rate. Our new design of rotary piercer has exceeded expectations to the extent that I am uncomfortable with allowing them onto the market without consideration, and I would value your input when you return, which I trust will be shortly. Matters with the Empire are likely to reach a head soon, one way or another.
'Less importantly, our fourth factory assembled and test-fired the first greatshotter design yesterday. The results were remarkable, but the damage to the prototype was such that it required complete disassembly: the barrel integrity does not stand up to the pressures generated. I am loath to look for new materials right now, but aviation steel, in the thickness required, does not offer the absorbent flexibility…'
Totho let the details wash over him, considering each, letting them settle in his mind. This was the important thing. In such a wash of technical minutiae he felt happy, as he always had, and such imprecise calculations as the affections of Cheerwell Maker could be temporarily shunted aside. At this late age, in this foreign land, he had found for himself a surrogate father. Oh, Dariandrephos was a monster, for certain: he had no conscience, no humanity, no regard whatsoever for any who could not contribute to the world of artifice. He would destroy Khanaphes without a thought if he needed to, because he considered the city a waste of stone and wood and flesh. Drephos was all these things, but he was a man whose priorities struck a chord in his protege – and he valued Totho. For the sake of Totho's artificing Drephos indulged him like a spoilt child, even when Totho's preoccupations went beyond the older halfbreed's comprehension.
The tape kept ravelling on, and Totho leant back in his chair and listened to it as though it was music: the pinnacle of artificing used to bring to him the furthest advances in artifice. It was how life should always work, and so seldom did. And if he missed any of it, or wanted to hear it all again, then he could do so. He could recoil the tape and wind it through again and again. Drephos's words, anybody's words, need never be lost. The Iron Glove had found a way to cheat time and death.
We should take one to Collegium, record some of Stenwold's speeches…
At last the report came to its close, leaving Totho smiling slightly, still, at the ingenuity of it. Belatedly he remembered the Fly-kinden, now kept waiting for an hour or more. With a scowl, Totho called him in. Tirado had obviously been reminded about being a good Iron Glove employee in the interim, because he saluted properly this time.
'What's happened to Meyr?' Totho demanded.
'Nothing when I left, but that's a state of affairs not likely to continue,' Tirado reported. He handed over Meyr's wrapped slate. Totho was still slouching easily as he started to read but, after only a few words, he sat bolt upright and started paying real attention. It was late in the day when she finally broke away from the Scriptora.
She had expected the guards, after what Ethmet had said. She had expected to be thrown into the cells to await the Masters' pleasure – a pleasure that would surely see her rot before it was made manifest. She had come to believe that the Masters' bloodlines might still echo within Khanaphes, in men like Ethmet or women like the Mother, but not their voices or footsteps. That was the fiction that the city was built on – and that perhaps Ethmet even believed – that the Masters would one day come forth again and take up the reins. It was a foundation that was concrete as long as it was believed, that would be shifting sand the moment it was doubted.
He had shown her the book, which had made all the difference. She was becoming used to sharing her life with the miraculous, but the book made the miraculous commonplace. Ethmet had taken her to a small room in the Scriptora where stonemasons were working. They were carving out the hieroglyphs that infested Khanaphes like indecipherable locusts, and they had for reference a book.
They had not liked her being there, those craftsmen: they were members of a select and occult fraternity. However, Ethmet's word, his mere glance, had been law. They had given the book over to her and she had opened its pages, and her mind had jolted at what she had seen.
She had thought it might be something simple, perhaps with a text in hieroglyphs set out on one leaf, and letters on the opposite, or even like a reading primer for children, the glyphs drawn large and their meaning inscribed beneath them. But no.
The pages of the book had been layered end to end in hieroglyphs, drawn in large, bold strokes, page after page after page. Her eyes had been bombarded by their cryptic images, but after that first page she had ceased to see them as impenetrable symbols, but simply as the words that they represented. There was no apparent meaning to the book, no story, no sense of grammar, nothing but a cascade of images but, as she turned the last page, she had looked from it to the walls and read: 'All praise to the Masters, the lifeblood of the Jamail, the sweet rains and the rich earth,' and the words had struck her in the heart.
She had looked to Ethmet, and then at the masons, and she had known, beyond the frailest doubt: They cannot see this. Ah, no, their own history is opaque to them, but I can read it. The pages of the book had worked a magic in her. Wherever she now looked, the stories of Khanaphes unravelled their meanings for her, on every wall.
But not on every stone – the individual words, yes, the stories no. As she looked upon the greater book that was the city, she saw the cruel theft that time had committed. On the walls of the Scriptora, on the elder buildings, were tracked the countless voices of ancient Khanaphes. Merely in passing from the masons' room back to the library, her eyes snagged on every passageway, at each turning or pillar: 'In this year the great Batheut ventured into the Alim with his nine hundred…'; 'Of grain, fourteen baskets; of oats, nine baskets more, and he shall…'; 'And she sang the songs of her far homeland, and all who listened were…' until she had to almost shut her eyes to keep out the thronging meanings that would not leave her alone. Where new construction had been made, though, the script fell into babble: 'She boat sun leap shoe coral great if…'
And then she understood: They have lost their ancient language. It died when their Aptitude was born. Generation by generation, those carving hands became more Apt, less arcane, until they were merely going through the rotes. In their secret little brotherhood, they copy and they carve, but it has no meaning any longer. The informative had long since become the merely decorative.
And Ethmet knew it. She could see it in his face. He looked at her and there was hope in his eyes, a terrible, misplaced hope. It was as though her reading of the book of glyphs had revealed the key to his expressions as well.