The Sea Watch sota-6

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Allanbridge shrugged. ‘Since we’d visited there, I thought I’d have a crack at the Commonweal. Hard going, but I like a challenge.’ Something dark was hiding in his face that he wasn’t revealing, but for the moment Stenwold trusted that it was just the usual round of smuggling and contraband.

  ‘This isn’t the Maiden,’ Stenwold noted, looking up at the steadily expanding balloon. He had fond memories of Allanbridge’s previous craft.

  ‘With the war and all, I raised credit to trade up. Needed bigger cargo space, mostly,’ Allanbridge replied, sounding more enthusiastic. ‘She’s named the Windlass. Nice, eh?’

  Stenwold nodded. ‘Getting ready to take her out, then?’

  ‘Just like old times, is it?’ Allanbridge gave a huge sigh. ‘Where to, Master Maker?’

  ‘Princep Salmae.’

  The destination was obviously a surprise to the aviator. ‘That close? I thought you were going to say Shon Fhor or Capitas or Solarno or somesuch. That’s all you want me for? Princep Salmae’s a two-day trip at most.’

  ‘The quicker the better, though. She can carry all of us?’

  ‘And twice as many again. Get your people aboard and we’ll leave as soon as she’s fully up.’

  Stenwold turned back to his followers: Laszlo and the sea-kinden. With the exception of the Fly, they were staring up at the growing gasbag with astounded awe. The hull itself was enough like a boat for them to recognize, and Stenwold could see that Allanbridge could make a water landing in the Windlass easily if he needed, but the balloon itself was immense, building-sized. They could never have seen anything like it before, he thought, until Paladrya murmured, ‘Medusoi of the sky.’ He looked again, and saw for a moment, in that burgeoning expanse of silk and heated gas, the bell and tendrils of Lyess’s translucent companion.

  The sea-kinden’s reaction to the flight was surprising. At first the lifting sensation completely bewildered them: they looked ill, swaying and lurching in the Windlass’s cargo hold, as Allanbridge sent the airship bobbing over the spires of Collegium. They clutched at every available support, and at each other, and their footing skidded and slipped. They were so obviously unsure of what in the world was going on, that Stenwold led them up on to the deck, and showed them the land in all its midnight glory.

  They stayed at the rail for a long time, and though he could not see their faces, Laszlo did, skipping around in the air before them, showing off shamelessly. They had looked threatened at first, he told Stenwold later, as though they could never have guessed that horizons could be so far away. Then dawn came up behind them, a few hours later, a pale radiance that their progress seemed for a while in danger of leaving behind, and then a slowly growing red, and finally the sea-kinden watched the sun come up over a landscape, for the first time.

  Fel and Phylles wanted no part of it, after that. This was more than they needed to know, it became clear: the sooner they returned to the waves, the better, as far as they were concerned. They went back below to converse, and to pretend they were just in some submersible somewhere, rather than suspended impossibly over miles and miles of distant patchwork fields, above brown hills and the beige expanses of scrubby grazing land. Wys remained, though. She stood at the stern and faced into the sunrise, regarding the land with a seemingly proprietorial air. Stenwold wondered just what she and Tomasso had cooked up together when out of his surveillance, and whether either land or sea would survive their partnership.

  Paladrya stayed close to Stenwold until well past noon, until the sun was beating down on them, when she shrouded herself in a hooded cloak to save her skin from blistering. Even Wys was driven below, by then, and Laszlo had tired of his aerobatics, so it was just the two Beetles and the Kerebroi woman left out in the open air. Only then did she approach the rail, looking down over an increasingly arid landscape. She seemed to have no fear of heights, so much so that Stenwold stayed within arm’s reach just in case she leant over too far. He supposed that she was used to depths, instead, where there was no such thing as falling.

  He took the rail beside her, resting his elbows on it. She glanced his way, her cowl hiding all expression. ‘Tell me of your war,’ she said. ‘The war that my Aradocles must have been caught up in?’

  So it was that Stenwold found himself recounting, in miniature, the story of the Wasp Empire and its invasion of the Lowlands, with particular attention to the history of Prince Minor Salme Dien, who had once been his student and had then become a warlord, a champion of the dispossessed, and had at last become a martyr, in whose name a city was being built.

  Later still, after napping fitfully in the hold, he stood beside her to see the sun set over Lake Sideriti, staining its blue-green waters red. The city of Princep Salmae lay at the lake’s most northerly point, over to the west of Sarn. As the blood-tinted waters passed beneath them, Paladrya leant into him, not flirting, not even affectionate as such, but something comfortably comradely. He sensed her deep worry, her fear that the trail of Aradocles would dry up; that he would merely turn out to be one of the numberless and nameless who had given their lives to slow the Wasp advance.

  After all, even Salma died, in the end.

  The streets of Princep Salmae were picked out unevenly with braziers of burning coals, and Stenwold received the impression of an ordered pattern of buildings, save that most of the buildings were missing and only the pattern itself remained. He had already heard a little about the place: rather than simply start a camp or a village by the lakeside, Salma’s surrogate nation had begun with grand ideas. They had measured and paced out all the districts of their perfect city, conferred and voted on what their eventual home should contain, and how it should function. Even to Stenwold, used to Collegium’s brand of participatory government, it seemed impossible that anything functional would emerge from such a system – and yet here was Princep Salmae, in outline. Perhaps a quarter of it was built: simple wooden structures in a melange of styles. Even in the twilight, he recognized Commonweal rooftops, Collegiate Beetle designs, plain Ant-kinden dwellings, and other part-built structures that were either in some style he didn’t know or something unique to the architect’s imagination. Still, most of the city was nothing more than demarcated plots, with a host of ordered tents showing the greater part of the population still waiting patiently for permanent housing. The lake-shore was littered with dozens of small boats, and towards this sketch-city’s eastern edge there was a space set aside for an airfield, dotted with a few flying machines. Jons Allan-bridge brought the Windlass down there with scrupulous care, as Paladrya went below to rouse the other sea-kinden.

  Stenwold was first down the ladder, seeing a pair of women approach with the evident air of officials. They were white-haired, though not old, and for a moment he could not place them. Then he recognized them as Roach-kinden, a wandering breed not so often seen in the Lowlands, though commonly found in points north and east. They obviously recognized his name, when he gave it, and seemed more curious than officious.

  ‘I have an old friend at your palace, I think,’ he told them, ‘who I’d be glad to speak to on a matter of urgency.’ It seemed the simplest way of starting his hunt here. ‘Do you know Balkus the Ant-kinden? He led me to believe he was the commander of the palace guard, or some such.’

  They knew Balkus, certainly, and he was well liked, Stenwold could see.

  ‘But he is not here,’ one of them informed him.

  ‘He’s at the palace, then?’

  She shook her head. ‘He is not in Princep. He has gone to the Folly.’

  Stenwold frowned at her, aware of the sea-kinden crowding behind him now, and suddenly understood. ‘Mal-kan’s Folly?’

  ‘Even so, Master,’ the other Roach-kinden said.

  That made matters more difficult. The Folly was a fortress the Sarnesh were building on the site of the battle where General Malkan and the Imperial Seventh Army had been defeated during the war. Stenwold had heard the boasts: it was the most modern and formidable piece of fo
rtification ever seen, designed with every ounce of Sarnesh ingenuity to make it impossible for another Wasp army to march on their city. Stenwold had often planned to go and witness the construction. It was inconvenient that Balkus had meanwhile taken to the same idea.

  He asked if they knew when the Ant would be back. They did not, but said the man had only left recently.

  Stenwold waited until the two of them had gone, before hissing tiredly between his teeth. ‘In the morning we apply to the palace,’ he suggested. ‘For now, we should sleep on the Windlass. I’d rather not wander about a strange city at night looking for lodgings.’

  He was about to turn for the rope ladder when one of the other machines on the field caught his notice. He frowned, thinking Surely not, and walked slowly towards it, squinting in the dying light. It was a big, boxy vehicle, with three sets of rotors drooping from its top, and it looked remarkably familiar except that it was here, in this city that had been born as a result of the Empire’s tyrannies.

  But it was just what he had thought. Closer, he saw the dark and light stripes that sunlight would reveal as black and gold. It was an Imperial heliopter sitting open and bold on the airfield at Princep Salmae. What is the Empire doing here? What is going on?

  The mute machine gave him no answers, so eventually Stenwold retreated to the Windlass, where he would enjoy precious little sleep from worrying.

  Teornis had his Fly-kinden pilot take the orthopter once around Princep Salmae’s perimeter, his Spider-kinden eyes making out the streets and vacant lots with ease in the moonlight. He wondered if Maker had arrived already. It had taken Helmess Broiler long enough to arrange this flying machine that it was entirely possible.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ he asked Forman Sands. The halfbreed killer had been unexpectedly good company on the journey, proving well-read and well-spoken. Teornis had watched with amusement as the man’s loyalties smoothly segued from being Helmess’s man to being the Spider lord’s follower, all without a jot of conscience.

  ‘Fascinating, my lord, to see a city in potential. After they build it, it will be nothing but a slum of shacks, no doubt, but as of now…’

  Teornis nodded, pleased with the assessment. ‘Well, we must enjoy it before they ruin it by making it real.’ He had the Fly bring the machine down outside the nominal boundaries that passed for Princep’s walls, and then sent the flyer away. Once he had Aradocles in hand, if the heir was even here, then he would find his own way back to Collegium without difficulty.

  ‘How do you plan to find your man, Lord Teornis?’ Sands asked him. ‘Send your Dragonflies hunting through the streets?’

  ‘Only as a last resort,’ Teornis replied. ‘My former patron, the Edmir Claeon, has some interesting resources. The customs of his people can result in a curious manner of art. See this?’ Teornis reached into his tunic and produced the portrait Claeon had ordered drawn. It was a remarkable sketch in purple ink on their thick, spongy paper, but the artist had known Aradocles by sight and, by his skill at accreation, had been able to render the image accurately from his mind straight into the picture. ‘We shall take this likeness,’ Teornis explained, ‘and we shall make enquiries about a Spider youth. There is bound to be someone in this city whose business is tracking and finding, so we shall put them to work for us. And meanwhile we shall find our Master Maker.’

  He took the rest of the night to find a Wayhouse, a rough-hewn timber building, still new and unpainted. A generous donation of Helmess Broiler’s money ensured that he and his party would not be disturbed there. The brief walk through Princep Salmae had amused Teornis: even after dark, the place was busy just like a Spider town, and it was – also like certain places in the Spiderlands – filled with such a remarkable variety of the lower elements of society. On the road to the Wayhouse he counted a dozen different kinden, most of them not normal residents of the Lowlands, and Roach-kinden most of all. He knew of Roaches from the Spiderlands, where they were itinerant nuisances, vagabonds and charlatans. They had their uses as procurers, spies and informants perhaps, but here they were bustling about everywhere as though Princep was some kind of home for them, and as though they were fit to be considered responsible citizens. That made Teornis smile, when little else had just recently.

  Since Princep didn’t stop for dusk, there was no reason that their search should. Teornis, however, felt that he had earned some sleep, He passed the portrait to Forman Sands and Varante, and sent them off to locate anyone whose business was the hunting down of fellow human beings. Forman Sands seemed a good man to be asking questions, Teornis had decided, and Varante was a good man to keep a wary eye on Sands, just in case some residual loyalty to Helmess Broiler remained.

  With his agents thus dispatched, Teornis took the straw mattress that was all the Way Brothers could offer him, and slept easy, blessed by pleasant dreams.

  In the morning he took breakfast, sending another of his Dragonflies out with money to supplement the meagre fare the Brothers could provide. Sands was already back, but first Teornis heard the report of a couple of his men who he had sent off on another errand before even arriving at the Wayhouse.

  ‘Tell me you’ve found Maker?’ he prompted them.

  ‘He came in a flying machine to the airfield,’ one of the pair informed him. ‘He has several followers: two Flies, a Mantis, a Spider, and one other. The flying machine left this morning, in the direction of Sarn perhaps. Maker is talking to people.’

  ‘Of course he is,’ Teornis said absently, but he was thinking – just random people, Stenwold? No friends from the past? No special contacts? Have I eroded your advantage already, old man? ‘Keep an eye on him,’ he instructed, and the Dragonflies nodded, bowed briefly and left the room.

  Sands and Varante came in next. Helmess’s halfbreed thug wore an odd expression, one that Teornis could not immediately read.

  ‘You’ve had an eventful night, I hope?’

  ‘We found a tracker, my lord, after a while.’

  ‘Just one?’

  ‘One’s all we needed, my lord.’

  Teornis rolled his eyes. ‘Suspense is for stage actors, Master Sands. Kindly enlighten me.’

  And Forman Sands explained what he had learned, and Teornis’s eyes went first wide in surprise, and then narrow in careful consideration.

  Thirty-Eight

  The architects of Princep evidently intended raising some great edifices to overlook their airfield, but nothing was in place but their plot boundaries as yet. With dawn these became the site of an impromptu foreigners’ market, and Laszlo took Wys and her cohorts out to inspect what wares were on show. The peddlers were mostly Roach- or Fly-kinden, so Stenwold guessed that there would be nothing for sale that would have excited a Collegium merchant, but to Wys it would all be both strange and saleable, no doubt.

  While they were thus occupied, he found a little eatery with a scattering of chairs and tables, and bought for himself and Paladrya some concoction of rice and roasted mealworms to breakfast on. It took some persuasion to convince her to taste it, but it turned out to be acceptable to a marine palate.

  Jons Allanbridge was already airborne by now, heading in the direction of the Sarnesh fortifications named Mal-kan’s Folly, in the hope of intercepting Balkus and wringing some information from him. That seemed the best that Stenwold was likely to achieve, left to his own devices.

  He cast his gaze about for Laszlo and the others, saw them some distance away, looking at some poor clothier’s homespun and woollens: all wonders, no doubt, for the sea-kinden. When he glanced back, he found Paladrya staring at him, and for a moment he held her gaze.

  ‘I am waiting for the strike,’ she told him. At his frown she elaborated. ‘Some careful, camouflaged creature, waiting as its prey drifts nearer and nearer, drawn in by some lure. Aradocles is the lure, I am the prey. Where is your trap, Stenwold Maker?’

  ‘I am not the trap-laying kind,’ he told her.

  ‘Then why? You were safe back with your peop
le, so why are you now here?’

  ‘You think I mean your boy harm?’

  She studied him for some time before she said, ‘No, but I still don’t know why.’

  A new voice broke in, ‘You forget Master Maker’s essential nobility of character.’ Someone sat down briskly at their table, as naturally as if this new arrival were an old friend. Stenwold found himself looking into the face of Teornis of the Aldanrael.

  For a moment nothing was said. He had his little snap-bow concealed inside his tunic, ready loaded but not primed. His sword was at his belt. There were two of Teornis’s Dragonfly-kinden standing a respectful distance away, but their blades were to hand, slanted back over their shoulders, and Stenwold had no illusions about his own speed on the draw compared with theirs in response.

  ‘Teornis,’ he said, at last, ‘this is a… surprise.’

  ‘You might at least say a pleasant one,’ the Spider remarked, smiling amicably. He gave a nod to Paladrya. ‘My lady, outside the Edmir’s grasp you look decidedly more radiant – as do we all, I fancy.’

  ‘I knew you would somehow trick your way out of his clutches,’ Stenwold observed.

  ‘You make it sound as if that were unfair,’ Teornis said. ‘Was I unjust to cheat Claeon of his prize?’

  ‘Yes, if you did so by promising him the head of Aradocles,’ Stenwold replied flatly. He sensed Paladrya tensing.

  For a moment all humour dropped from Teornis’s face. ‘Remember your slippery friends freed you before Claeon introduced you to his pleasure chambers, Stenwold. You would have promised him a good deal more, I swear it, to be rid of his company. Ask her: I’ll wager she and I have that experience in common.’

  ‘But you are here for my Aradocles,’ Paladyra said softly. ‘I can see that much.’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ and all the good nature was back on display. Teornis smiled at her fondly. ‘But I won’t harm a hair on the lad’s head. He’s far too valuable for that.’