The Sea Watch

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Jaclen Courser had first come to the Migrating Home as an apprentice engineer fresh from the Great College. She had worked hard since then: from artificer’s mate to chief engineer, to navigator, to the Home’s master, taking orders only from the cartel that owned the vessel. When they were out of port, hers was the only commanding voice, or so she was used to.

  Stenwold Maker, she thought. Oh, but she remembered Maker from College, twenty years ago: a plump, idealistic youth a year younger than she, always hanging about with his mad friends: that crazy Mantis and the Spider girl everyone liked so much. The Mantis had died in the war, she had heard. Some said he had ended up killing the Wasp Emperor. What had happened to the Spider, nobody seemed to know, save that Stenwold’s ward looked mightily familiar to Jaclen, the one time she had seen the girl.

  Still, Maker had done well enough for himself, and Jaclen didn’t begrudge him. He did some fine work in the war, they say. The war was a sore point. Like most of Collegium’s merchant fleet she had been caught outside the city when the Vekken blockade came in, and had therefore not been able to lift a finger to help. Still, I’d rather Master Maker did well for himself in the world without involving me.

  She had his note in her hand now. As per instruction, as grudgingly per instruction, she had not so much as broken the seal until the Migrating Home had pulled out of harbour. She did not like being any man’s game piece, but it seemed that her fate had now been commandeered by Collegium’s War Master.

  To the Master of the Migrating Home, the note had begun. Complaints have been brought to the Assembly of increasing attacks upon the shipping of our city on its journeys east. That was Rones Failwright’s work, Jaclen well knew. The man had been agitating in the Amphiophos for an age about the pirates. Now it seemed that someone of moment had finally noticed him. Why all the secrecy, though? she asked herself. Stenwold’s note had gone on: I am arranging for a vessel, the Tidenfree under Master Tomasso, to catch up with you once you are under way. You will take on board a detachment of guards who will serve to deal with any raiders or brigands of the sea that you should meet. This is at my expense, and no demands will be made of your employers. Which was all very well, and terribly generous of the man, but Jaclen could not help wondering why they hadn’t just marched the guards on board there at the docks, with fanfare and ceremony, to let all eyes know that the Migrating Home was no longer free prey for piracy. The only logical conclusion was not a happy one, namely that Stenwold Maker was playing a game. He did not want to warn the pirates off, but instead was setting a trap for them. And I’m to be the bait, curse the man. Jaclen morosely watched the Fly-kinden corvette coming in, reefing its sails and letting its engine match speeds with the chugging Home.

  Twenty years, woman and girl, she had kept the Home afloat, and in that time she had been boarded by pirates eight times. Once, when the attackers had been some wildly overconfident raiders from Felyal, she had ordered them driven off with crossbows. The other times she had called on her crew to stand down and stand by, while the pirates removed the best of the cargo. Of those eight occasions, five had occurred over the last year and a half. If that had not been the case she would not have willingly gone along with this ploy, but matters were now growing desperate. Keeping her ear to the ground, she knew that the consortium that owned the Home was tottering, reeling from its losses. Other merchants had been broken, left penniless when their ships came back empty, or sometimes did not come back at all. Many were abandoning the sea trade for other business less fraught with difficulty.

  It had occurred to her that this venture might be piracy wearing a different hat. If Maker had gone bad, then he might be using his good name to have ships stand quietly by and be boarded. She did not quite believe that, for she had never before known pirates who worked by appointment.

  The Fly vessel, sleeker and smaller than the Home, drew close with careful steering. Jaclen ordered the engines stopped, and lines cast over to secure them. Even before the two vessels were linked a pair of Fly-kinden had hopped over, wings glittering briefly in the sunlight. One was a young man and the other old enough to be his father, with a striking bush of a black beard.

  ‘You’d be this Master Tomasso, then?’ Jaclen enquired curtly, as the Flies landed before her.

  ‘I’m none other,’ the Fly said, grinning. ‘Permission to come aboard, Skipper?’

  ‘Granted, I suppose.’ She then cast an eye over the Tidenfree’s deck. ‘Master Tomasso,’ she asked, her voice tightly controlled, ‘what do you intend?’ Her hand crept towards her belt and the knife she kept there. Gathered ready to board her vessel was a pack of Mantis-kinden, armed to the teeth: just the sort of sea-reavers that she had always tried to steer well clear of.

  Tomasso glanced back at his ship and gave a laugh at the sight, startlingly loud from such a small man. ‘I can see why you’d worry. Never fear, Master Courser, they’re not about to descend on you with claw and sword. These are Maker’s bodyguards, here just to make sure you get safe and sound to wherever you’re headed.’

  Jaclen put a hand to her head, feeling a pain coming on. ‘We’re bound for Everis, Tomasso: the Spider-kinden. I don’t see them being in the market for that particular cargo.’

  ‘We’ll just keep them below decks and quiet-like, once you get there,’ Tomasso replied, still grinning broadly. ‘After all, let’s hope they don’t even have to draw a blade all voyage. On the other hand, if you are overhauled by some ragbag of pirates, then who would you rather have at hand to see the villains off?’

  Jaclen shook her head. Even as she watched, the Mantids began jumping or flying aboard, scarcely a one of them deigning to walk the gangplank like civilized people. They were a rough lot: claws and rapiers, longbows and arm-spines and battle-scars. Most wore leather jerkins or greatcoats, or cuirasses of chitin scales, and a couple even had pieces of the old-style carapace armour, which sold for a fortune when it was sold at all, and which nobody even knew how to make any more, since the Felyal burned. Her own crew were meanwhile keeping a good distance, and the Mantis-kinden were soon standing on her deck as though they had already taken the ship.

  ‘Well, it’s too late to refuse you now,’ she remarked drily, and Tomasso laughed again.

  ‘I’ll be leaving my man, Laszlo, here to watch over them,’ he explained. ‘You tell him, then he’ll tell them. Maker’s orders were for our friends to heed him.’

  ‘Let’s hope they remember that,’ Jaclen said. Most of her – the solid, businesslike majority born of twenty years’ hard work – felt that this situation was a barrel of firepowder just waiting for the spark. Some small sliver of her youth had reawoken within her, though. Wasn’t this one of those dreams that she’d had: to give it all over and turn raider? To raise sail and haul oar with the Mantis-kinden as they made free with the sea and all its plunder? And now she had her own complement of Mantis marines to spring on the next whoreson of a pirate that tried to take advantage of her.

  The third time the Migrating Home had been taken, her Master at the time had tried to put up a fight. As the cargo was pillaged, the pirates had hanged the man and three of the Home’s crew from their rigging, just to make their point. It had been by random lot, and it could have been Jaclen left dangling and kicking, as easily as anyone else. A little core of steel inside her would be waiting with anticipation for the sight of a hostile sail.

  The fight with the Assembly had seemed harder even than the Vekken siege, objection after objection hurled from the seats to strike home. Had Jodry not been Speaker, then the Companies would have been dissolved, with all the consequent trouble that would bring. As it was, there had been just enough of the Assembly who were proud of the city’s recent history to ensure that Outwright, Padstock and Marteus retained their commands, under the direct authority of the Assembly itself. It was not much of a force compared with the Ant city-states or a single Imperial army, but it would give Collegium a core of trained and well-armed soldiers when they were needed, which volun
teer companies could then be formed around at need.

  Of course, news of the Beetles’ new martial standing had spread fast, especially to the various foreign embassies, leading Stenwold inexorably on to his next piece of diplomacy.

  He had chosen the room carefully: one of the College’s many odd little teaching rooms. So many of the College’s original buildings pre-dated the revolution: built to the Moths’ plan for their own inscrutable purposes, though built by Beetle hands. After the city – and the future – had changed hands, the people of the newly renamed Collegium had done their best with the spaces that the Moths had left them. However, it was not entirely the room’s dimensions that had attracted Stenwold, but its ornament. College rooms tended to inherit whatever random decoration had been bequeathed to the institution, so any blank space of wall was fair game for showing some masterwork or certificate or piece of gaudy tat that some kind benefactor had seen fit to give away. Stenwold now positioned himself beneath this room’s artistic burden and waited.

  The three Vekken ambassadors arrived on the stroke of noon. They entered the room cautiously, as they always did: three pitch-skinned Ant-kinden, almost mirror images of one another, wearing tunics and sandals and sword belts. They had never learned the lesson the Tseni seemed to have picked up, that other kinden took note of ornament and spectacle. If Stenwold had passed them in the street, he would have assumed them too poor even to be itinerant mercenaries. He now named them, in his head: Accius, Malius, Termes.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he greeted them. They stared with their usual watchfulness, two looking at him, one turning away to keep an eye on the door.

  ‘You wished to discuss the threat of Tsen,’ the one he thought was Termes declared. ‘It is past time to do so.’

  ‘And that is indeed why I asked you here,’ Stenwold assured them. They were still suspicious, wanting to know why they were here at the College and not at the Amphiophos, clearly expecting an ambush either metaphorical or literal.

  Well, I have my ambush all set out, Stenwold reflected. ‘You see the etching behind me?’ he prompted.

  Two pairs of eyes regarded it in silence before Termes said, in a remarkable display of politeness, ‘The likeness of yourself is very good.’

  Stenwold hadn’t thought so, but he suspected that Collegiate aesthetics made higher demands of representational art than would Vekken tastes, and that for Ant-kinden the face was the least part of identifying fellows. ‘Do you know what occasion this was?’ he pressed them. They fell silent again, although he could almost hear the hum of their internal dialogue. He turned to look at the piece himself, conceding that it was nothing much: a competent piece of work, acids etching on copper. The technique was slightly old-fashioned now, since machines existed to cut a much crisper image. Still, Stenwold himself was recognizable, and he could have named a few of the other faces even had he not known who they were meant to be. He remembered that day well, even at this remove: standing on the steps in front of the Amphiophos, before the crowd – a show of solidarity and triumph. There was Lineo Thadspar, who had been Speaker at the time. There was Balkus, the Sarnesh renegade, and over there was Parops, the Tarkesh exile. Also there was Teornis, of course, and Stenwold’s stomach lurched on seeing the handsome, smiling Spider-kinden, backed by his grab-bag of mercenaries and Satrapy conscripts.

  ‘I do,’ said Termes. Enough displeasure permeated his normally level tone to let Stenwold know that he did indeed understand.

  ‘I think you know me well enough to accept that I would not bring you here merely as an insult, or to offend you. I hope so, anyway.’ This was the crucial point. They would now leave and his work would be undone, or they would stay and he could continue to build his tottering bridge towards them.

  Again they were silent, hidden thoughts darting between them. He allowed them time.

  ‘Speak your piece,’ said Termes eventually. It sounded hostile but their continued presence indicated his victory.

  ‘The artist has here created a view of those left in possession of the city, after your siege was lifted,’ he said. ‘Contained in this etching is Collegium’s great secret: why we have not been conquered, by Vek, or by the Empire.’ And now the Spiderlands will try its hand, apparently. We are the pearl in everyone’s oyster, it seems.

  Their eyes were focused on the picture once again, seeking some hidden weapon amidst the background, some coded message. He let them look. The secret he mentioned was in plain view. Any College student could have named it by now, but the Vekken were not used to thinking in such a way. He was trying, against all tenets of Ant-kinden culture and nature, to wrench their collective mind around to it.

  ‘Do you see?’ he asked, eventually.

  He assumed they were going to say no. Termes was about to, he was sure, but one of the others, Accius he thought, said, ‘We see.’ There was a moment of silent disagreement between them, suggesting Termes plainly did not, but then the answer was made plain to him and he fell into step with the other two.

  ‘Collegium itself could not stand against the Vekken army,’ Accius stated. ‘The siege was relieved from without.’

  Almost, but not quite. ‘The lesson goes further than just the one engagement or just the one war,’ Stenwold replied. ‘Our strength is in our friends, in those who will give of themselves to keep us free.’ He could almost catch the thought that flew between them. ‘I know you think that walls and swords and automotives provide a surer strength, and that if you rely only on yourselves, nobody can let you down. Well, that’s true, and we’d all be fools not to strengthen ourselves as much as possible. We’d be fools to rely entirely on the grace of others. That’s Helleron’s folly, and that’s why Helleron fell so swiftly to the Empire – and will fall again.’

  ‘It did not fall. It climbed down of its own accord,’ Termes noted acidly.

  ‘Oh, I agree. I’ll not defend them.’ Stenwold sighed. ‘There was a time when swords and walls and well-trained soldiers were enough, and a city-state could stand on its own against all comers, hold the rest of the world at sword’s length.’ The time of the Ant-kinden, although I’d not be so tactless as to say it. ‘That time is gone.’

  They showed no reaction, just waited.

  ‘The Empire brought that to an end,’ Stenwold went on. ‘The Empire, which controls dozens of cities, and draws its power from them all. No single city can stand against it – Tark was not the first Ant-kinden city that fell to the Imperial armies. Any city that pursues a course of isolationism is conniving at its own destruction for, when the next great aggressor comes, whether it be the Empire again, or the Spiderlands, or even the Commonweal, that city will fall for want of friends.’

  ‘We are not blind to what you mean,’ Termes stated.

  ‘I mean more than you think,’ Stenwold warned him. ‘Yes, I am offering you Collegium’s hand of friendship, and I will break heads and twist arms in the Amphiophos until I get the city behind me. We do not want a third war with Vek. Nobody has profited from the last two. All that has happened is that both of our cities were left weaker at the end.’

  ‘That is true,’ agreed Termes. Ant voices were never expressive, but there was the slightest hint there of a degree of emotion kept otherwise submerged.

  ‘So let us talk about Tsen.’

  The sudden juxtaposition did not seem to throw them. ‘You are proposing an alliance,’ Termes observed.

  ‘Not the alliance you mean,’ Stenwold told him firmly. There was a moment of silence, and he could see their minds working on that. No hands dropped to sword hilts – they did not leap to the conclusion that Collegium would league with Tsen against them. He had brought them that far towards Collegiate thought.

  ‘I am proposing an Alliance between Vek and Tsen,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Entirely possible. Look behind me: Sarnesh and Tarkesh soldiers standing side by side.’ Stenwold realized belatedly that the etching did not show the different Ant-kinden skin
-tones, but he knew they would remember who had been ranged against them. ‘Tseni and Tarkesh soldiers fought alongside Sarn against the Imperial Seventh at Malkan’s Folly. What I am trying to tell you is that the world has changed.’

  ‘The Tseni will never accept this,’ said Termes disdainfully.

  ‘But you would?’ When the Vekken did not respond, Stenwold continued: ‘If the Tseni could be brought to it, would you? I am offering to broker a truce, at least, between your cities. Collegium will then stand with a hand out to each of you. You cannot deny that Sarn has profited well from its trade with us. We offer the same to you, and you will have to trust the Tseni just as they trust you, because if either should break faith, then the aggressor will find Collegium set against it, and perhaps Sarn as well – and even the Ancient League states, and who knows what else. I know the Ant-kinden understand the value of strong walls but, these days, walls of stone are not enough. A treaty may be only paper, but a wall of paper can be stronger than stone. If Vek continues to stand alone then one day its walls will not suffice, and it will fall. It will not fall to Collegium, because we have no armies, but inevitably the day and the enemy will come, and it will fall.’

  ‘You threaten us,’ Termes challenged him. ‘You use your peaceful nature as a club.’ For a moment Stenwold thought he had lost it all, but then he thought over the man’s words again. Humour? Without any clue evident in face or voice, it was impossible to tell, but it would not be the first time he had sensed a sardonic edge to this particular Vekken.

  ‘This city has survived on its ability to make and keep its friends,’ Stenwold said. ‘We will act as broker between Tsen and Vek, if not to forge a friendship, then at least an understanding. Your understanding is that the best way to be strong and safe is to vanquish your enemies, but if you make them your friends, you are stronger still.’

  ‘You give us much to think about, Master Maker,’ Termes told him. ‘We accept the fact that your proposal is important, and must be considered carefully. It runs contary to our way of life, but you are correct when you say that the world has changed. Malius will travel to Vek with your words. The king shall hear them.’