The Sea Watch sota-6

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘Is that right?’ Her eyes narrrowed. She and Tomasso squared off against one another, and Stenwold had to smile. It was just as though they were any two merchants trying to take each other’s measure.

  ‘What have you brought me, boy?’ Tomasso asked, seeing a bald Fly-kinden woman of strange looks, with an unfamiliar accent.

  ‘Uncle Tomasso, meet the sea people,’ Laszlo told him.

  Tomasso raised an eyebrow. ‘That so? You don’t just mean from some port I’ve not heard of, some part of the Spiderlands maybe. You don’t mean that at all, do you?’ He inclined his head towards the Onychoi woman. ‘Lady, I’m Tomasso, master of the Tidenfree and uncle to this nuisance here.’

  Wys shrugged her high shoulders. ‘Wys,’ she replied simply. ‘I’ve got a barque and a crew – most of which you see here. The “nuisance” tells me you’re into trading the exotic. Myself likewise.’

  ‘What’ve you got that’s exotic?’

  ‘To you, everything.’ She grinned, whereupon Tomasso matched her tooth for tooth.

  ‘Looks like you might have trawled something worthwhile up to the surface,’ he admitted to Laszlo, still without taking his eyes off Wys. ‘Been using your time well, then?’

  Laszlo shrugged, ostentatiously nonchalant. ‘I like to keep myself busy, skipper.’

  Tomasso’s eyes flicked towards Stenwold. ‘Master Maker, you look like a man with plans.’

  ‘Oh, plans certainly. You don’t seem overly surprised to be face to face with people from under the sea.’

  ‘You hear rumours,’ Tomasso said. ‘Sail these seas enough, and any number of drunk sailors will tell you about the sea-kinden. Never believed it, but that was only for want of evidence. I’ve travelled, Maker. I’ve travelled from Cerrih to Sea-Limnis and from Silk Gate to Port Planten, but I’ve never seen anything like this mob here. They have to come from somewhere, so why not the sea? There must be stranger things.’

  Stenwold nodded. Silk Gate, as he knew, was on the Silk Road south of Mavralis. The other places were just names. ‘I get the impression that you and Wys would like the chance to get better acquainted,’ he said. ‘May I borrow Laszlo?’

  ‘Not sure I could prise him away from you, in any case,’ Tomasso said wryly. ‘Master Maker, you have the look of a man about to do something unwise.’

  ‘Oh, unwise, certainly. There is unrest beneath the sea, Master Tomasso, but somewhere here on land there may be the means to cure it. Unfortunately that means was last seen off Felyal, which means our talking to the Mantis-kinden.’

  Tomasso grimaced. ‘I can’t see that Laszlo’s going to be much help there. I could find you some lads…’

  ‘If it comes to a shoving match, I’ve already lost it,’ Stenwold told him. ‘I know Mantis-kinden, though, as well as any outsider can. I know how they think, how they like to see themselves. I only need Laszlo to tell people how I ended up, if I get it wrong.’

  Thirty-Six

  It was the same Mantis dive that he had once gone fishing for pirates in, without success. He could only hope to have more luck this time, since the stakes were a whole lot higher.

  He ducked beneath the lintel, into a waft of fire-warmed air, out of the night’s cool. He would have preferred to visit here by daylight, but had not managed to track down his target until after dusk. Laszlo had trailed dutifully after him all around the city, as he spoke to his informants or avoided people wanting to question him about his absence. Now he gestured for the Fly to stay back. If things went badly, he needed Laszlo to be able to make an escape and tell the story.

  It was just as he remembered inside: a forest of wooden pillars cluttering the harbour-front tavern. The Mantids sat with their backs to the virtual trees, talking in low voices, eyes glittering red in the firelight. Winding pipe music came from somewhere, the voices of two instruments entwined, quavering some strange and sad melody.

  Stenwold paused just within the doorway, and felt for his courage. There were a good twenty-five or so Mantis-kinden present, of whom he could name only one – and that one was no friend of his, not any more. He called on his memories of Tisamon, but then Tisamon had never been the most typical of his kind. Stenwold hoped that, in this most important thing, he had judged matters right.

  He drew his sword. The whisper of steel on leather was barely audible even to himself, but it silenced them all, even the musicians. He felt their eyes settle on him, not with fear or alarm but with a crawling eagerness. Without any transition, weapons were in every hand: rapiers, long knives, spears. A few were even buckling on clawed gauntlets like the one that Tisamon used to wear.

  One stood up, a hard-faced woman with a slender blade held loose in her left hand. ‘You have walked through the wrong doorway, Beetle,’ she told him. ‘Perhaps you should go elsewhere with your little sword.’

  Stenwold reminded himself bleakly that offering him this chance to withdraw amounted to their most diplomatic level of politeness.

  ‘I’m afraid I know exactly what I am about. My name is Stenwold Maker.’

  ‘What’s that to me?’ the Mantis woman demanded. There was no sign of any recognition whatsoever in her face.

  ‘You speak for all here? Do you have no name?’ Names were important, Stenwold knew, for the Inapt set great store by them.

  ‘Akkestrae, they call me,’ she told him. ‘Now take your sword and go, Stenwold Maker the Beetle. You are not welcome.’

  ‘I am here to defend Mantis honour.’ Those were words that Tisamon had once used, or so Stenwold hoped, relying on a years-old memory. They had their effect anyway. He saw a reaction – an emotion for which the Beetle-kinden had no name – lash across all their faces. He guessed that their offer to let him duck back out and leave had just been withdrawn.

  ‘Hard words for such a soft, fat man to say,’ Akkestrae rebuked him. The angle of her rapier had changed even as he spoke, from idle to ready, just a twitch away from running him through. ‘Do you think you are the first of your kind to mock us, in your ignorance? The sea lies at your back, Beetle. It can take a good many more corpses yet before it is full.’

  ‘Do not lecture me on what the sea can hold,’ snapped Stenwold, with enough fire that she blinked and frowned at him. ‘I am here to defend Mantis honour,’ he repeated. ‘For it appears nobody else will.’

  ‘And who assaults it?’ she asked him contemptuously. ‘If you know of what you speak, then you must give us a name.’

  ‘Danaen,’ Stenwold replied. ‘Come forward, Danaen, and defend yourself if you can.’

  There was quite a pause, and a murmur of Mantis voices in hissed outrage, before she stepped forward – Danaen, with her scarred face twisted in a look of arrogant disdain. It came to him, then, that the same expression had always been there whenever he met her, but he had previously chosen to interpret it as simple Mantis reserve.

  ‘I hear you are recently back from the dead, Beetle,’ she said in almost a whisper, save that the strange acoustics of the place carried it to all ears. ‘You must be eager to return there, that you call me out so.’

  ‘Call you out?’ Stenwold reproached her, keeping both hands steady on his courage. ‘I am here to right your wrong – and a wrong against all your kinden.’

  With a tiny movement, so slight he might almost have missed it, her short, slender blades were both in her hands. ‘If your life wearies you so much, then I shall cut it from you,’ she snarled, her eyes cold.

  ‘Say what you must, Beetle,’ said Akkestrae, now sounding bored. ‘Speak and then have the grace to die cleanly – if your kind even know how.’

  ‘I have had Mantis allies before,’ Stenwold informed them, ‘and when I walked in the shadow of a Mantis, I had no fear of failure or betrayal. I knew that, once his oath was given, even Tisamon’s death would hardly prevent him carrying out his word.’

  ‘Tisamon!’ someone spat derisively from amongst them, and Akkestrae said, ‘That is no name to conjure with here, for we know his failings.’

>   ‘As did he,’ Stenwold replied sombrely. ‘Yet he wore the Weaponsmaster’s badge, and he earned it. Who denies it?’

  Akkestrae watched him as though he was prey that had just offered a certain extra enjoyment in its hunting, but no voice rose to question Tisamon’s standing now. It had been Stenwold’s main concern that his dead friend’s reputation would prove too corroded to bear the reliance he must place on it.

  ‘Tisamon taught me to put faith in the Mantis-kinden.’ He addressed the whole room whilst locking eyes with Danaen. ‘In the end, whatever his failings, it was his sword that cut the throat of the Wasp Emperor – his sacrifice that took the Wasp armies from our gates. Who denies it?’

  ‘What of it?’ Danaen spat, and several voices joined hers.

  ‘So when I sought help once more against a common foe, it was to the Mantis-kinden I turned – and I was betrayed.’

  The silence that followed was the most dangerous yet, but before he could break it, Danaen herself did so.

  ‘You went to talk with the Spider-kinden scum!’ she yelled at him. ‘When you found yourself at war with them, you would not fight. Like any Beetle, you would only talk. I knew my duty.’

  ‘Did you so?’ Stenwold asked. ‘Perhaps you refer to drawing blade against the Spider-kinden during our truce, whilst we talked peace?’

  ‘Who faults me on that?’ Danaen demanded, and it was clear that few there would.

  ‘Or perhaps you speak of your greater betrayal?’ Stenwold pressed on, and the silence was back, with reinforcements. He waited, but Danaen did not interrupt again. Her eyes had abruptly become hooded.

  ‘We met out on the water, aboard a barge towed to a precise point. Who made the arrangements? Whose idea was that? And how was it, then, that the barge was attacked, that I and my follower were dragged into the water by new enemies? A trap. It was a trap I stepped into, but none of the Spiders’ doing, for they walked into it as well. It was a trap set by those I relied on. The honour of the Mantis-kinden was turned into a trap to exploit my trust.’

  Danaen’s hands were now white-knuckled around the hilts of her blades. ‘And would your city be better off had you sold them to the Spider with your words?’ she snapped. ‘One Beetle or another, why should I take orders from any? If Maker says one thing and Broiler says another, what of it? Why should I not follow the orders that help kill more Spiders?’

  Broiler? Stenwold’s insides lurched. Helmess bloody Broiler? Was selling us to the Wasps not enough, that he has somehow become Claeon’s man now?

  ‘Broiler, you say?’

  She glowered at him, but there was something guarded in her eyes, something defensive all of a sudden, and in his mind he had beaten past her guard, his words gathered for a sudden lunge.

  ‘Do any here know what is said of Helmess Broiler?’ Stenwold demanded. To his surprise, there was a look of recognition on a few of their faces, a few dark glances, curt nods. ‘They say that Helmess Broiler would have sold this city to the Empire, if he had his way. The same Empire that drove you from your homes in the Felyal! And that is who Danaen would serve rather than me?’

  ‘Enough of this,’ Danaen snapped. ‘It is time for me to shed your blood, fat Beetle.’

  Stenwold had not entirely thought this moment through, before, but mention of the name Broiler, the man who had been a thorn in his side for so many years, had fired his blood. ‘Come on then,’ he challenged her, and levelled his shortsword.

  Danaen went for him, in a movement faster than he could follow. His parry came in far too late, of course, but the Mantis had pulled back, jerking away from him. Akkes-trae’s sword was between them.

  ‘What?’ Danaen hissed. ‘Will you let him speak so lightly of Mantis honour? You heard his words.’

  ‘I heard many words,’ the other woman replied flatly, ‘and I heard the name of honour in an unfit mouth – but it was not his. You have condemned yourself.’

  Danaen sneered at her, looking about at her fellows. ‘This is pitiful,’ she told them. ‘This is what comes of living in this soft city. It has poisoned you.’

  They regarded her solemnly, not one of them standing forward to take her part.

  ‘Against the Spider-kinden,’ she insisted. ‘Which one of you would not have struck a blow against the Spider-kinden?’

  ‘I was made a slave,’ Stenwold said, softly but with feeling. ‘Your allies made a slave of me.’ The Mantis-kinden, he knew, had strong feelings about slavers. It was one trade they loathed above all others, one fragile piece of common ground they had with Collegium.

  ‘How can you listen to him?’ Danaen shrieked at her kinsfolk, and Akkestrae said simply, ‘We need only listen to you.’

  Stenwold turned away towards the open doorway, lowering his sword. A moment later he heard a sudden flurry of blows, as swift as the rattling of chains, and then a brief cry of pain. When he turned back, Danaen lay on the ground, her body bloody and pierced in many places. Akkestrae was cleaning the long blade of her rapier in minute detail, without even looking at him.

  He gave a long sigh of relief and sheathed his sword, knowing that, waiting outside, Laszlo would note the signal. Two Mantis men took up Danaen’s body and dragged it out to the sea’s edge, while Stenwold stepped fully inside and went to sit with his back resting against a pillar, pointedly facing into the room. He had to wait a few minutes, as they tried their best to ignore him, but eventually Akkestrae came over to speak.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked him. ‘Do not assume we are your friends here, because of this.’

  He faced her levelly. ‘Oh, no. Just because I am the War Master of Collegium, and have fought our common enemies, because my city has taken you in when your home was burned, or because I have detected the Spider-kinden engaging in their hidden war on my city, and have myself been betrayed into darkness and slavery by your own people, of course I can have no claim on you.’

  Her face twisted, her hand hovering at her rapier’s hilt, but he felt on more secure ground now. ‘What do you want?’ she repeated. ‘Do you think we fear that you will expel us?’

  He saw, although perhaps she did not quite know it herself, that they did indeed fear it. The Mantis-kinden living beneath borrowed roofs in this city of the Apt, without function and without history, were waiting to outstay their welcome. They were baffled, unsure, belligerent, angry at being so useless. They see no point in themselves. They cannot understand why we keep them here. Perhaps they expect to go down in some grand final stand when we decide to throw them out.

  He sighed, trying to sympathize with them, knowing how he needed their cooperation. ‘I value the Mantis-kinden, for no man had a truer friend than Tisamon. There are dark times coming to Collegium: perhaps the Spiders shall bring them, or else the Empire again. We shall be glad of the Mantids then, I’m sure.’

  She seemed reassured, if only slightly. ‘And yet you want something of us.’

  He nodded heavily. ‘I am told that there are some from the Felyal who live close to the sea. I am told of pacts, of rituals, and I must speak with one such. It is very important.’

  The surprise was evident in her face that a mere Beetle should know anything of that. ‘It is a… strange old custom, even to us. Few there are who held to it even before the Empire arrived.’

  ‘Is there anybody…’ Stenwold started, and she interrupted, ‘But there is one.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘The Sea Watch… that kind have always walked their own path,’ Akkestrae told him. ‘But now… There is one in the city. She is bitter, and angry, and she walks that path no more. There is a pier, narrow and in need of repair, lying closest to the easternmost sea wall. Most nights you will find her there. Her name is Cynthaen.’

  The pier Akkestrae meant was old, too narrow for merchantmen, too high for smaller boats. Had Collegium’s sea trade been of more import, then no doubt it would have been torn down long ago for something better. As it was, the rickety construction had been left to rot.

>   It was past midnight now, for Stenwold had returned home to collect Paladrya, in the hope that she might help win the confidence of this Cynthaen through recounting what details she knew of Aradocles’s advent on to the land. He had collected another fistful of bolts for his cut-down snapbow too, for when he had left the waterfront tavern, Laszlo had cautioned him.

  ‘I’ve not been alone out here, Mar’Maker,’ the Fly had said in a low voice. ‘The night air’s been busy. Nothing so clumsy that I caught a proper glimpse, but… they’re out there.’

  With that warning, Stenwold had requisitioned Fel as well, and the four of them had travelled the long way back to the quays, and located Akkestrae’s pier. Paladrya kept herself shrouded in her cloak, for she had quickly understood that her kinden’s resemblance to the Spiders might cause her problems. Fel, on the other hand, went in his mail, his vest and bracers of shell over something that was leathery without being leather, and wore his helm with the swept-back crest, as though he was some exotic Mantis prizefighter. Cloaks, Stenwold soon understood, were tangling and unfamiliar to the Onychoi warrior, and he had developed a strong dislike for them.

  It would have to do, though. Stenwold had no time to argue, nor did Fel look amenable to persuasion.

  The pier was a long one, extending far out to sea on its uneven stanchions. In the waning moonlight Stenwold tried to see if there was anyone standing out there. ‘Perhaps this is one of her nights off?’ he suggested.

  ‘Someone is there,’ Paladrya declared, and the other two were nodding. Fly-kinden had sharp eyes and, of course, the sea-kinden were used to the gloom that was the best their limn-lights could make of the deep sea’s utter darkness.

  ‘Just one person?’ Stenwold asked cautiously. He saw Laszlo glance suddenly upwards, abruptly suspicious, but the two sea-kinden were again nodding.

  ‘Unless someone could be hiding behind that little structure there,’ Paladrya filled in. There was a boxy little shed towards the very end of the pier: a small storage hut, he guessed.