The Sea Watch (70 page)

‘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 galley, 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.’

‘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.’

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.’