The Sea Watch sota-6

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Old ways,’ murmured Stenwold thoughtfully. ‘We ourselves are not so long established here, my people – not under our own governance. We were slaves once, and our rulers were wise and secretive. Who knows what deals they may have made, and with what powers? Anything is possible, back in the Bad Old Days. Perhaps the masters of Pathis-that-was knew more about your people than they ever bothered to tell us, their underlings.’ Stenwold saw that they were not following him, save perhaps for Laszlo, and gestured for Paladrya to continue.

  ‘There is little else to say,’ she stated. ‘I took with us two of the house guards, both Dart-kinden, Santiren and another. We rode on the Darts’ beasts, myself seated behind Santiren, and Aradocles behind

  … Marcantor, his name was. Santiren led the way, and she took us swift and sure, over the Edge, through the shallows, travelling by night, hiding always from the light. Then it was night again and… the waters above us became less and less, until we came up into the air.’

  ‘But where?’ Stenwold asked her. Abruptly he stood up, rifling across shelves until he found a curled map of the Lowlands.

  ‘I do not know the name of the place. I don’t think Santiren did either. It was a forest, like our weed plantations, but instead of the tall weeds there were… only crooked, twisted plants. And it was cold, and there was the sky, the moon…’ She looked up fearfully, as though that great expanse of the heavens still oppressed her even through the ceiling.

  ‘Trees,’ Stenwold noted. ‘Many of them?’

  ‘There was nothing else visible of the land except the forest,’ she said. ‘And I bade Aradocles goodbye and returned, and for two years Claeon could not quite believe I had betrayed him, and he hunted everywhere for the boy. Then his suspicion won over his pride, and I became a prisoner, as you found me.’

  And you do not mention the tortures he must have put you through, Stenwold thought. Her quiet strength impressed him more, the more she spoke. If only all your kinden had your selflessness, he considered. And what manner of man has Aradocles grown into, if he still lives? In your absence, whose hand may have guided him?

  ‘Trees,’ he muttered again. ‘Tell me, there was a beach first, perhaps? You scaled a cliff?’

  ‘No, your “trees” extended into the water, so that there was nowhere one could say, this is the land, or this is now the sea. It was an unnatural place, but Santiren swore she had met someone there that still honoured the old compacts.’

  Stenwold looked straight into her face – so like a Spider-kinden’s, just as Aradocles must surely have seemed a Spider youth – and his heart sank.

  ‘Only one place, that can be,’ he declared. They looked encouraged, but he was already shaking his head.

  ‘The Felyal,’ Laszlo supplied.

  ‘The Felyal,’ Stenwold echoed. His personal feelings for the Mantis-kinden were decidedly mixed, just now, but their feelings for Spider-kind were quite clear and pointed. Oh he’s dead, he’s dead, for sure.

  But Stenwold had unfinished business with the Mantids, those refugees of the Felyal that now called Collegium their home. He might as well drag this, the final fate of Aradocles, into the bargain. What did he have to lose?

  Thirty-Five

  Two streets away from Maker’s house, Cardless put his back to a wall and tried to think.

  His world was falling away from him, leaving him with no visible means of support. How could this have happened? He’d had his life made out, surely? It couldn’t all evaporate, as simply as that?

  He could go back to Stenwold tomorrow, make it out as a misunderstanding. He had been misled. He had been held hostage. It wasn’t his fault.

  But then he remembered the grim look of the people Stenwold had brought home with him, the sort of people Cardless would never have thought an Assembler, a College Master, would even know. Killers, mercenaries and pirates, the lot of them. It brought back to Cardless the odd rumours about Maker, his early career, his precise role in fighting the Vekken and the Empire. Blood on his hands, they say, and not just from the war.

  He could not go back there. He had made too free with Stenwold’s possessions. Yet everyone had known the man was dead. Helmess Broiler had been exultant about it. Spider-kinden assassins or something. Everyone knew it, though no two voices agreed just how. He had died out on the water, doing who could know what? His woman, Arianna, had died with him; some even said they had killed each other. The point was that they were dead, and the niece was missing, and the rest of the Maker family were so entrenched in internecine feuds that nobody had come to claim the house, the cellar, the larder, the cashbox. That left only Cardless, alone, in that big house, so who wouldn’t have started to see it as his own?

  Then a written message had come, just days ago, from Broiler’s people: Look out for Stenwold Maker. He may return any day. Cardless had burned it and laughed. Maker was dead. The sea had swallowed him. No man came back from that – not even Stenwold Maker.

  Yet that same old Beetle had stood in the doorway, his face strangely bloodless and grey like a man long without the sun, wearing clothes ragged and stained, and Cardless had almost expected to see barnacles and shells clinging to his skin, seawater pooling at his feet. Stenwold Maker was back from his watery grave.

  And now Cardless was out of a job. No money. No job. No money. Up until now he had been taking liberties with Maker’s credit, and his gambling friends had been happy to take his marker, once he had exhausted Stenwold’s stash of ready coin. Now, he owed, and some of the people he owed to would not take kindly to being put off. Not now that Cardless had nothing to fall back on.

  His mind, still fuddled from drink, at last lit on the only solution: Helmess Broiler. Helmess had told him to watch out for Maker’s return. Well, now he was returned, and Broiler would want to know of it. He would pay for that, surely. Perhaps he could find Cardless a new position. It wouldn’t have to be working for an Assembler: any decent household would do. Perhaps Broiler had contacts in Helleron. A span of time out of the city wouldn’t go amiss, right now.

  Yes, that’s it. Cardless caught his breath raggedly and nodded to himself. Helmess Broiler would want to know that Maker had returned, and then Helmess Broiler would make everything all right again. He was a proper magnate of Collegium, a good Assembler. He would be duly grateful for Cardless’s honest service.

  Muttering to himself, the dismissed manservant hurried off through Collegium’s dark streets.

  Helmess was inconveniently asleep when Cardless came calling. The wait in Broiler’s antechamber was sobering, and it gave the manservant a chance to put his thoughts in order, to straighten his stained tunic and run a hand through his dishevelled hair. Nonetheless, when he was finally ushered into Helmess Broiler’s presence, he was taken aback by the audience present: not only the Beetle magnate and his sultry Spider mistress, plus the pleasant-spoken servant Forman Sands, whom Cardless hoped he could count upon as a brother-in-craft, but there was another Spider-kinden in attendance as well. He was a dark, lean-faced man, slightly bearded, and in clothes that were surely Helmess’s own cast-offs and therefore nothing a Spider would normally be seen in. Not this man especially, for Cardless reckoned he could detect an Aristoi when he saw one… in fact, now he thought about it, the newcomer’s face was decidedly familiar. Behind him stood a ferocious-looking Dragonfly man, all tattoos and scars and a long-hafted sword slung over one shoulder.

  Helmess was making impatient gestures to him, so he turned from eyeing the newcomer and got out his story in reasonable order, leaving out any inconvenient details about the precise circumstances that Maker had discovered on his long-delayed return home. He saw the significant looks pass between Broiler and the Spider-kinden man, and allowed himself an eager little smile. Just as he had hoped, his news was obviously valuable, worthy of reward, not only to Helmess but to. .. Teornis?

  Cardless felt a little skip of unease within him. Surely this was Teornis of the Aldanrael, who some said had killed Stenwold, and others claim
ed had been Maker’s last victim. This was a night for dead men, it seemed. Moreover, there was a fair consensus that Teornis was behind the armada even now expected to sail from Seldis and Everis, to bring another war upon poor, battered Collegium. So what was the man doing here?

  There were rumours, of course, about Helmess Broiler, but then they circulated about any Beetle who ran for Speaker, mostly spread by his opponents. Still, the rumours about Broiler had suggested he was a deal too close to the Empire… and now Cardless found himself wondering whether Broiler wasn’t a deal too close to some other enemies of Collegium, for here he was sitting right next to one.

  He did his best to keep any of the suspicions off his face. He was supposed to be good at that. He just watched as Broiler leant across to the Spider, speaking in hushed tones.

  ‘Well?’ Helmess whispered so that this travesty of a manservant before them would catch none of it. ‘I assume you’ll have your assassins deal with this.’

  ‘By no means,’ Teornis replied softly. ‘I would never dream of doing anything so base. Master Maker continues to win my admiration.’

  ‘We have to put him away, now,’ Helmess insisted. ‘Surely you can see that?’

  ‘That is not how it is done,’ was Teornis’s light response. ‘Nor would it be so easy.’ His thought went unsaid, but distinctly understood, that, if there was a choice, to kill Stenwold or kill Broiler, he would not hesitate to cut his host’s throat himself. ‘Can we dispense with this creature?’ He waved a bored hand at Cardless.

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Helmess nodded. Then, in louder tones, he said, ‘I suppose we’ve heard enough.’

  ‘Please, Master Broiler,’ Cardless said, half obsequious, half desperate. ‘I was hoping that I should have some recompense for bringing you this. And… I have nowhere to go. Perhaps you have some position… or know of one…?’

  ‘Yes, tiresome that you’re no longer in Maker’s household,’ said Helmess. ‘Ah well, so much for that. Sands, would you be so kind as to give our friend Cardless his final payment. Be sure he wants for nothing.’

  ‘I would be delighted, Master Broiler,’ replied Sands, giving Cardless his best smile and taking him by the elbow. Cardless’s backward glance was only one of thankfulness.

  Helmess waited until he was gone before adding, ‘That is, assuming you’re happy for me to dispose of at least this irritation?’

  ‘Oh, kill him,’ Teornis said dismissively. ‘It would be only a day at most before he thought to sell some piece of information back to Stenwold Maker, therefore he’s best in the earth. Maker is back, though, and with sea-kinden dancing attendance, no less. He did better than I, for he got out of the water a free man.’

  ‘Sea-kinden?’ Helmess was frowning, perhaps thinking of such specimens as Rosander in full armour. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘What does your good lady think?’ Teornis prompted.

  Elytrya nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes, the man Cardless’s descriptions were clear, even though he did not really know what he was describing. Some, at least, were of the sea.’

  ‘So how did Stenwold persuade them into facing their greatest fear? Are they also Littoralists, plotting the destruction of all land-people? I think not,’ Teornis conjectured, ‘but what else could drag some of them all the way to Collegium?’

  ‘The heir,’ Elytrya spat out.

  Teornis nodded enthusiastically. ‘None other,’ he agreed. ‘And I must restate my utter admiration for the resourcefulness of Stenwold Maker. Indeed, it’s high time that we made it work on our behalf.’

  Helmess regarded him with hooded eyes for a moment, then made a dubious sound. ‘That calls for a great deal of skill, Teornis. I’d not stake even my man Sands on performing that kind of work.’

  ‘Then be thankful that I include amongst my followers some with sharp ears and silent wings,’ Teornis told him. ‘Varante, you understand my meaning? Keep watch on Maker’s house. Have spies to mark his course. Tell me where he goes. Eavesdrop, if you can. Why should we not let the redoubtable Stenwold Maker himself lead us to this errant boy?’

  Waking up in his own bed, Stenwold yawned, stretched, flung out a lazy arm across the sheet to reach for Arianna.

  A moment of confusion and chaotic memory later, he was sitting up, sweating and hoarse, reaching for purchase under the avalanche of images that came cascading back into place in his mind. Arkeuthys, Rosander, the coiled shell of Wys’s submersible and the Echinoi running riot through the Hot Stations. A thought of Arianna tugged at his mind, struggling against this landslide, but when he mouthed her name it was another face he saw: skin so pale as to seem translucent, framed by floating hair.

  For a moment, in the pre-dawn silence of the house, he felt her there: Lyess, impossibly with him, somewhere just out of sight in the room, as though she was hiding there with her Art, subtly faded into transparency. There was a gauzy distance between them which was new, but he knew that must simply be the surface of the water – that she would drag him back through eventually. He could not in any way be free of her.

  Stenwold had enough self-knowledge to realize that something was wrong here. She has put her Art on me, he thought, but it wasn’t only that. There was a scent, an indefinable feel to any kind of Art that he always recognized. If she had done something to him, it was not something so readily explicable.

  Drugs? Can you drug someone into remembering you? Is it possible to mix a love potion? A love poison?

  He was remembering, now, something that Salma had said, something Che had reported to him just after the lad had left for Tark. Salma had been enchanted, or so he had claimed. A spell, a magic, had been placed on him by the Butterfly-kinden called Grief in Chains – she had bound him to her by sorcery. Stenwold did not believe in sorcery within the walls of his city when the sun was high, but the dawn was barely feeling out the east, and he felt suddenly helpless in the face of this invasion. But didn’t it end well for Salma? He got the girl, in the end. He had died, in the end, too, and Grief in Chains – who had renamed herself Prized of Dragons – had retreated to the city they were building in his honour. Death and mourning hardly counts as things ending well.

  He forced himself out of bed, seeking absolution through action. The sea-kinden were all awake, and looking as though they had barely slept all night. Everything here was uncomfortable to them. They would take a while to adjust, and this was even before the brightness of dawn assailed them.

  Stenwold woke Laszlo and sent him for victuals, fish if there was any to be found. He explained to Wys and the others, ‘We don’t eat fish here, you see, not if there’s a choice.’ They looked at him as if he was mad, and he went on, ‘When my people were slaves, we ate fish, and only our masters ate meat. Now we are free, and only the poorest make do with food from the sea.’

  Laszlo did his best, though the palates of the sea-kinden nearly bested him. They found the taste of red meat – horse and goat – abhorrent. Stenwold tried them on milk, the least offensive thing he could think of. The very stench of it turned their stomachs, apparently: the whole city smelled bad to them, but the milk seemed to concentrate and epitomize that sour, rotten odour. Bread they ate, thankfully, so he offered them a little honey to go with it – and watched their eyes go wide at the taste. He remembered, belatedly, how he had tasted nothing at all sweet during his long soujourn beneath the waves, and he retrieved the jar from them before they could take too much of it, for fear that they would make themselves ill, like children.

  It was shortly after dawn that he finally met with his allies. The sea-kinden were bustled into another room, with Laszlo to watch over them, as into the house came the swaying bulk of Jodry Drillen. In came bearded Tomasso, too, and the plain, honest face of Elder Padstock.

  Jodry shook his head, marvelling. There was a genuine tear in his eye as he exclaimed, ‘I thought… I thought we’d lost you, Sten.’

  Padstock nodded soberly. Tomasso explained how she and her fellows had been removed from the barge by the Spider g
alley, which was intent on learning the fate of Teornis. The Tidenfree had come broadside to it, though, half the size of the other vessel, and threatened them with the balance of the Mantis marines, including Danaen, who had flown back to rally more resistance once the Spiders had come alongside.

  Stenwold nodded grimly. And I have a score to settle there.

  In the end they had settled for repatriating Padstock and her people, and then departing.

  ‘You’ve done well with the sea defences,’ Stenwold told Jodry. ‘And you should keep it up – keep drilling the companies.’

  ‘But you have another plan?’ Jodry guessed, frowning. ‘I have received word. The armada is close on sailing. The Spiders are confident enough that they’ve let it be known, spread the word so as to demoralize us.’

  ‘I do have another plan,’ Stenwold assured him, ‘though it may not work. At the moment it’s looking very dubious indeed, but if it does. .. I have to follow it up, for many reasons. I merely ask you to trust me.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jodry replied without hesitation. ‘I’ll also trust to the Sarnesh to send us a few detachments, if you don’t mind. And even the Vekken are making threats.’

  ‘Threats?’

  ‘To come to our aid, if you’d believe. If we get them and the Sarnesh both at once I’m not sure we’ll need the Spiders to level the city. All in all, I hope you know what you’re doing. We’ve only just rebuilt most of the docklands after the last time.’

  Stenwold sent Jodry and Padstock on their way, with some encouragement to keep up the good work. Tomasso he detained, though, and then called for Laszlo to bring their guests through.

  The sea-kinden filed in uneasily, frowning at the black-bearded Fly-kinden. When Tomasso clasped Laszlo to him with a grin, the gesture went a long way towards taking the edge off their nervousness.

  ‘This,’ Laszlo proudly announced to Wys, ‘is just the very man I was telling you about.’