The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky Page A

addressed me properly,
instead of “Miss Schola”. I should never have told them my full name,
honestly.’
    She was
looking well. Taki had also been crippled by the war, but in her case the
damage had been made good by artifice. Her beloved Esca
Volenti had been destroyed over Solarno, but here she was fine-tuning
the Esca Magni . It was the perfect fusion of
Solarnese know-how, Collegiate industry and Taki’s prodigious skills as a
pilot. She claimed it as the most agile flying machine in the known world. The
boast had been put to the test and so far never proved false.
    ‘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