Laszlo, with better eyes, gave out a whoop so fierce that Stenwold at first took it for a war cry. Then the Fly was airborne, taking one great leap before descending upon an equally small figure there, clutching her in his arms and laughing madly. Only after she had fought him off did Stenwold recognize her.
‘Hammer and tongs,’ he said hoarsely, ‘it’s Despard.’ He stumbled forward a few steps, staring at the engineer of the Tidenfree as she tried to extricate herself from Laszlo’s embrace. Then Stenwold noticed the other two.
Slouching at the back, looking like a man wholly out of his depth in more ways than one, was a lean Beetle youth that Stenwold identified as Maxel Gainer, Tseitus’s former apprentice and the builder of the Tseitan, which went at least partway towards explaining how he and Despard happened to be here. Their choice of travelling companion, however, was an unexpected one.
She stood in her scale cuirass, in her gold armlets and silver headband, as arrogantly poised as she had been in the College, as she had been aboard Isseleema’s Floating Game. It was Kratia of Tsen, whose last encounter with young Master Gainer had nearly been a murderous one. Stenwold approached her falteringly, frowning.
‘I give up,’ he said, stopping a few paces away from her. ‘I just don’t understand. Why are you here?’
‘Don’t thank her!’ Despard snapped, at his elbow. ‘You want to thank anyone, thank us. When we heard that you’d gone under, someone just happened to remember what you said that time when you were asking about the Tseni and their underwater boats. Only they didn’t think to bring one with them, so we had to take your lad there’s, instead.’ She gave Laszlo a push, sending him tottering away, but there were tears glinting at the corners of her eyes. ‘We didn’t believe you were dead. Not after what she said. We had to look.’
‘“What she said”?’ Stenwold repeated. ‘What did “she” say, Kratia?’ He glanced back at Heiracles. ‘How are you even free? I’m not overly impressed by sea-kinden hospitality so far, begging your pardons, Master Nemoctes and Mistress Wys.’
Kratia gave him a level look and took out a damp-looking scroll from her belt. It was a moment before Stenwold realized what was wrong with the sight: it was the pulpy sea-kinden paper in the hands of a landswoman. The script on it, surrounded and framed by many-coloured arabesques, remained illegible to him.
‘My people had their war with the sea long ago. We have not forgotten, for all that we might like to. This names me ambassador of Tsen to the peoples of Grande Atoll and the greater seas,’ Kratia declared simply.
‘Lucky you had it with you,’ Stenwold told her hollowly.
‘War Master, if you had known what lay beneath, would you have set foot on a ship, any ship, without such credentials?’
He shivered. ‘Point taken.’ Behind him he heard some of Heiracles’s people start to shift, and he turned to them, feeling all the might of the Lowlands and beyond arrayed in just those four figures behind him. He had been a prisoner, a fugitive, a slave for a long time. His entire life as he had known it – as an Assembler, a War Master, a spymaster – had been taken from him like a stolen robe. Now he felt it across his shoulders once again, and he almost wept for it: to have power, even a little power, over his own destiny once more.
‘So, what now?’ he asked them. ‘Heiracles, Nemoctes, what now? We are not so ignorant, it would appear. Or at least there are those on land who are far less ignorant than me. There will be others back on land with an interest, too. Despard and Laszlo have a large family. What now?’
Nemoctes was smiling, but the careful immobility of Heiracles’s face showed that he had been outmanoeuvred.
‘Have you forgotten Rosander?’ he hissed, ‘and Claeon’s invasion? Do you really think your people are safe, now? Claeon will care nothing for that document, or the distant frown of Grande Atoll. That place is no more than a name to us.’
‘I have forgotten nothing,’ Stenwold replied. ‘My people are in more danger than you know. We land-kinden are quite capable of making our own lives difficult enough. But we go home, we go to the land. If my home was in flames and soldiers were waiting to put me on crossed pikes, we would go home nonetheless.’ The words caused him a stab of pain, the thought of Lyess never to be seen again, never to be touched. For a moment her presence seemed so strong that the soft light of her companion’s silver-clear flesh seemed to shine on them like the moon. No, he told himself, clinging to what he knew, what he believed in. ‘No, we go home.’ He looked up, managing a small smile for Nemoctes’s benefit. ‘Now let us talk about Aradocles.’
There followed perfect silence. Stenwold looked from face to face, amongst Hieracles’s delegation, and for a moment he could not find her, and his heart lurched with sudden fear. Then at last he found her, in the shadow of the others. Her eyes drew him to her. She was the only one of Heiracles’s people whose expression had not grown hooded at the name of the heir.
‘Mistress Paladrya.’ The small, brave smile she managed for him provided a calming reassurance out of all proportion, focusing his mind and banishing distraction. ‘You took your boy Aradocles to the land, to be out of Claeon’s reach. Having met with the Edmir’s assassins in the Hot Stations, I now appreciate your caution. I know what the land means to your various kinden. I know also, from Mandir himself, that there are exceptions. You had reason to believe the boy would stand more chance of survival in the sun and air than anywhere beneath the waves.’
From behind Heiracles’s shoulder and penned in by the man’s servants, she nodded. Her gaze was fixed on Stenwold with a look of absolute intensity.
Stenwold took a step forward, and he felt and heard the other landsmen shift behind him, moving slightly too, as if backing him. They are not Tisamon but it is good to have friends. ‘Will you come to the land now, to see if he can be found and returned to his people?’ he asked her boldly, as though her captors were not there.
‘Yes,’ she said, simply.
‘This is not acceptable,’ Heiracles snapped. ‘The people of Hermatyre are . . . changeable. I must have something to win them over with, if we are to oust Claeon. This woman is notorious—’
‘As the killer of the young Edmir,’ Stenwold finished for him. ‘I recall it. However, she did not kill him, and he may not be dead. I have witnessed enough to know that the true heir would rally your people far more effectively than any show trial.’ He glanced at Nemoctes, then at Wys and her people. Heiracles had brought eight flunkies with him, armed with the sea-kinden’s curved knives, so Stenwold weighed numbers and the will to fight, wondering who could be relied on to take a side. ‘If Aradocles himself were here, you would support him, would you not, Heiracles?’ he asked, in tones dripping with reason.
He saw the battle on the man’s lean face, revealing the bitter ambition that the true heir’s long absence had fostered. Clearly he had lived the last five years believing the lad dead, and therefore himself the next in line if only Claeon could be removed. Paladrya and her evidence had clearly been not been welcome. Just as well he wanted her for the people to tear apart, or she would surely be dead already, Stenwold considered.
‘Heiracles,’ came Paladrya’s soft voice.
His head jerked towards her, while still keeping the land-kinden in view. ‘You have no voice in this,’ he cautioned her.
‘You cannot keep the landsmen here, not now. If you tried to do so by force, not only would you fail, but you would show yourself no better than Claeon.’
A brief fragment of expression appeared on Heiracles’s face, before he stifled it, but yet it spoke eloquently. He was a man with few illusions, and a great cynicism about others that he assumed was shared by others about him. The idea that anyone might seriously believe that there was any difference between Heiracles’s base nature and that of Claeon was obviously a new concept to him. Seeing that bitterness there, so briefly unveiled, Stenwold understood that such a difference did indeed exist, for all that it was whittled down moment to moment by the promise of power.
Paladrya took a deep breath. ‘I believe Aradocles is alive, because I cannot bear to believe anything else,’ she continued. ‘If so, he will return eventually. His heritage will compel him. Perhaps he will indeed bring a landsman army to retake his birthright. Perhaps he will have grown hard, toughened by the hostile land, so that even Rosander will fear him. Who can say what his exile will have made of him? But he will remember me, Heiracles. If he lives, however far he is grown from the boy I knew, I cannot but think that he will remember me. That being so, would you rather he returned to lead his friends against Claeon, to reclaim his throne and reward those who have been loyal to him, or would you prefer he returned later to confront whoever might have unseated his uncle, and whoever might have had his old tutor executed? What will you say to him then? And do you think you will ever sway the people’s love so greatly that you shall be safe from its retribution? You are not Claeon. Do not fashion yourself in his image.’
And Stenwold, the veteran of a hundred speeches, found himself wishing to applaud her. Even surrounded by her jailers, she was one of the most impassioned advocates he had ever heard. The young prince had a fine tutor, he thought, and if Heiracles does not agree, then I will take her from him and free her. I will go so far, before I leave the sea, however much I loathe it.
He felt something tear asunder within him, at that silent vow, the great weight of the ocean pressing down, eager to keep him to itself, and something else perhaps, some stab of anger and loss that was not in any way his own.
‘If the heir returned,’ Heiracles pronounced carefully, ‘he would know me as his most faithful subject.’ Everything had drained from his expression but the pragmatism. Chief adviser to a young ruler was not such a poor position, that look said. The ambitions for kingship had sunk without so much as a ripple, and he had recovered his statesman’s poise with an ease that would do justice to either a Collegiate Assembler or a Spiderlands Aristos.
Stenwold’s relief at the man’s response was disproportionate. ‘Then I shall need Paladrya,’ he declared.
‘Of course.’ Heiracles moved aside with grace, and the woman stepped tentatively free, moving with steps as halting as an automaton to Stenwold’s side, as though she feared being called back at any moment. He put a hand out towards her as she reached him, and she took it gladly, anchoring herself to his party.
‘Nemoctes, for the assistance of your people, I thank you,’ Stenwold said formally. As he thought of leaving here, of returning home, he felt not clear joy, but a muddied, unsettled sense of displacement. But that is what I want. What could hold me here, and yet . . . ‘I intend to return,’ was all he said, and the Pelagist nodded, frowning at him.
‘I shall see you to your land. Perhaps there shall be others also, who will guard your journey.’
Stenwold felt something kick inside him, some irrational surge of emotion, misplaced and out of character. Stay. He fought it down. I cannot . . . I have work to do.
‘How can we know that you’ll find the boy?’ Heiracles demanded, seeing Stenwold about to leave with his prized hostage.
‘Because your own agents shall come with me, if they’re willing,’ Stenwold replied.
‘What agents?’ the Kerebroi demanded. His followers became abruptly restless behind him at the mere thought of a land voyage.
Stenwold glanced towards Laszlo, who nodded back, grinning.
‘Mistress Wys,’ the Beetle said, ‘do you dare come with me – you and your fellows?’ He watched the question sink in. Phylles’s scowl deepened, Fel was blankly hostile as usual, but Wys’s face showed every stage of a progression from surprise to fear, to rising eagerness.
‘To the shore, land-kinden?’ she said. ‘To bring back the true Edmir? Sounds like the sort of job that reputations are built on, does it not?’
‘You are mad,’ Heiracles told her flatly. ‘Mad or a Littoralist,’ which latter was clearly worse.
‘Neither, in fact, but you’ll have heard how we Small-claws are always on the lookout for the next new thing,’ she told him levelly. ‘Now, you’ll retain me as your agent?’
‘If you’re insane enough to go, woman, then go with my blessing,’ Heiracles said acidly.
‘So go now,’ Nemoctes echoed, his resonant voice breaking in. ‘I do not like to think how long Claeon’s agents will take to track down this meeting, as they did the last.’ His eyes met Stenwold’s. ‘Good luck, landsman.’
‘Your lad can come with us,’ Wys suggested.
‘This one’s going nowhere but in the Tseitan,’ Despard declared firmly, glaring at the Smallclaw woman and holding fiercely on to Laszlo’s arm.
The other Fly was already shaking his head. ‘No, you take Master Maker,’ he told her. ‘I trust Wys, here.’ He winked. ‘We have business.’
Despard stared at him as though he had lost his mind. ‘And if I have to tell Tomasso that I lost his nephew to business?’ she demanded.
‘Then he’ll understand,’ Laszlo pointed out.
‘Nemoctes is right,’ Stenwold told them all. ‘Let’s go now while the tide is good.’
Thirty-Three
The interior of the Tseitan had been meant to carry two passengers without luxury. With four inside it was low and cramped and stifling, even though one of them was a Fly-kinden. Still, Stenwold’s heart soared as they put out from the little colony’s dock. It was not just that they were going home to the light and the sky, but the sculling of the Tseitan’s swimming limbs, rowing the machine through the water with swift, sure strokes, produced a rhythm that felt more natural by far than the fluid jettings of Wys’s machine or the eerie glide of Nemoctes’s beast. This was good Collegium engineering.
And you can see where you’re going, too. It had been so strange to be conveyed by Gribbern in a windowless space within the flesh of a sea-monster. Even Nemoctes’s chambers had been like an ornamented coffin. True, it was dark down here, where the sun could not reach, but the limn-lights of the colony shed a pale-blue radiance on their departure. Stenwold saw Wys’s submersible bobbing and wavering in the water before the clockwork and the pumps got under way and it surged off, impossibly buoyant, into the dark.
‘How did you even make contact,’ Stenwold asked, as the Tseitan pursued it, ‘let alone find where I would be?’ His body felt strange, as though being twisted by degrees in an invisible grip. The sea-kinden had warned him, though: it was their ‘equalization’ being reversed, some other piece of business that all the land-kinden had apparently had to go through, to reach the sea bed.
‘As for finding you, we had to rely on them to bring you to us,’ came Kratia’s clear tones. ‘I had planned to invoke the office of an envoy, but these sea-kinden of yours seem an uncivil band of rogues. The people of Grande Atoll possess some manners, at least. The local politics have played into our hands, though, I see, or we’d never have got you back.’
‘In a way,’ Stenwold admitted. ‘Or perhaps it is better to say that we have caught them at their worst, under the hand of a tyrant. They might have been smoother-mannered under their previous ruler, and I hope they will be so under the next.’
‘You intend to restore this heir to them?’ she asked him.
‘If he still lives to be restored.’ The possibility that Aradocles would be years dead, slain by the terrors of the land the moment he parted from Paladrya, had been the universal thought that nobody had voiced. Still, I will be on land and free, and that is surely the greater reward of any bargain I could strike with them. I owe the people of the sea precious little. I have my own worries, after all. I wonder what has gone awry in Collegium, that needed my hand to steady it. And on that thought: ‘You have kept this from the Vekken, I would guess. They would not understand.’
There was no immediate answer, so he craned round to catch her expression. The interior of the Tseitan boasted only one dim lantern, but it was easy to pick out the amusement on her pale face.
‘Tell me,’ he prompted.
‘We come here w
ith the Vekken’s blessing,’ she told him.
Stenwold spluttered over that, and from beside him, Maxel Gainer piped up, ‘It’s true, Master Maker. There’s been all kinds of deals being made concerning your disappearance. They’ve set up Master Tseitus as a hero, and your man, Master Drillen, has done up some treaty or other over the Tseitan, so we’re allowed to build more, and they had her and one of the Vekken ambassadors signing something, and then the two of them came to me, with that Fly girl in tow, and said we had to go hunt for you.’
‘“That Fly girl” was the start of all of this,’ Despard said acidly. ‘Without me you’d none of you be here, and don’t you forget it.’
‘You see, Master Maker, you made your point effectively, to us, and also to Vek. Collegium is rich in ways that we are not, and anyone who turned down such riches would lose place to those that did not. If either Vek or Tsen turned its back on Collegiate trade, then the other would triumph, sooner or later. It’s easy to see how Sarn was won over, those years ago. I think that, could we ensure it, either of us would rather have your city sink beneath the sea for ever, but as the best of Vek has failed to destroy you, and as we have no ready means to do it, the only remaining choice is to accept your crooked bargain. So, Collegium is rich, but it’s easy to see that the only way that either of our cities get a fair bargain from your people is through you, Maker. We trust you, whereas your fellows would swindle and cheat us. It was a very strange day when I looked into the face of a man of Vek and needed no Art to know that he and I were thinking the same thoughts.’
The Sea Watch Page 48