The Sea Watch sota-6

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  The Hot Stations were lit like a town, too. The globes and baubles of soft light were everywhere, but not as though they had grown there. They were tacked on unevenly, or bobbed at the end of lines like luminous balloons, but the intent was plain to Stenwold: street lighting just like the gaslamps of home. The seabed all around was brightly lit, and there were other little clusters of lamps visible in the darkness beyond, perhaps mining or salvage operations, weed farms or Benthist outposts, who knew? In the ambient light, Stenwold saw other chimneys, as tall and crooked as these smokers but quite dead: hollow spires of marbled stone rising above a bare skeleton of the township, which was even now being removed piecemeal to its new location. Stenwold thought he could discern more exhausted chimneys beyond that. The Hot Stations was a movable feast, it appeared.

  There was a remarkable bustle out here. Construction gangs surged between the current township and its deceased echo, bringing over everything that was worth rescuing and finding somewhere new to secure it. The workers were mostly either the diminutive Onychoi or some other kinden, big and grey and heavy-footed, who seemed to be doing most of the nailing down. The simple sight of people doing something as mundane as putting up buildings almost brought a tear to Stenwold’s eye. The waters above were not empty either, for there were plenty of swimmers, squid-riders, a half-dozen submersibles carved out of straight or spiral shells, and a broad scattering of domesticated sea life. Nothing ventured too close to the black-belching chimneys, where the water shimmered and twisted like the air above a fire. The ‘hot’ of the Hot Stations was obviously not to be taken lightly.

  There were no others like Lyess and her companion, he saw, and he sensed that she was not happy to be here. He turned and found her staring at him again. There was something desperate about her, but she did not know what she wanted, only that her way of life up till now had been punctuated, mangled by the imposition of a surly, brooding land-kinden.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to her, although he was not entirely sure what for. She said nothing in return, did not stir. He sensed that she was searching for words and finding none. That she will miss me? That she is now well rid of me? That she wishes Arkeuthys had simply eaten me, and spared her this disruption to her life?

  ‘I am here,’ she said at last, to his puzzlement, until a faint hollow voice answered her.

  ‘I shall come to you.’ Stenwold recognized Nemoctes’s vicarious tones. ‘You have done well.’

  Lyess’s face developed a new expression and, as it did Stenwold realized that she had never truly shown anything of herself in her features before now. It was not pride at having served Nemoctes well, but abject misery, unfiltered and unadulterated. It washed over her and was gone in moments, leaving her face a calm mask with those intent, all-encompassing eyes, but that racked expression would stay in Stenwold’s mind for a long time.

  Oh, they have made many sacrifices, he thought in sudden understanding, to come to an agreement with the sea monsters they live with. They can survive out in the furthest reaches of the sea, travel the darkest pits of the abyss, but they are human still, even she, and they were never meant for such privation.

  Did they take this burden on willingly? Or did we drive them to it? Is it true, this story that they tell?

  ‘Lyess,’ he said. She simply eyed him, saying nothing, so he pressed on. ‘You spoke about memory, that your beast here has no mind, but only a kind of, what, collective memory?’

  She nodded cautiously, as though regretting having mentioned it.

  ‘How far back does it go?’ he pressed her.

  ‘Far,’ she said, which was all he should have anticipated.

  ‘They tell it, in Hermatyre, that the reason you sea-kinden are down here at all is because you were thrown off the land. By my people, I suppose – my dim and distant predecessors. Does this memory reach that far back?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

  ‘Would you see…? I have to know. If it can be known at all, I must know whether it’s true.’ Surely it can’t be guilt I feel over this? Or is it indignation at being falsely accused? Is it because I was once a historian that I can’t just dismiss it just as ‘all a very long time ago’?

  ‘I can listen to the echo,’ she said. ‘I may hear what you wish to know. There are no guarantees but, if we meet again, then perhaps I shall tell you.’

  He nodded, dissatisfied but sensing he would get nothing more. Apparently ransacking the memories of the jellyfish nation would take some time.

  By then they had a companion in the waters, some kind of squid-headed snail, and a man in armour came swimming towards them effortlessly. As a hole began to form in the floor of their chamber, Lyess knelt down calmly and waited, as though Stenwold had simply ceased to be present.

  The water beyond Lyess’s sanctum was so clenchingly heavy that Stenwold could barely draw breath. Against that, it was warm, and grew warmer as they neared the Hot Stations. Nemoctes had to drag him through two inundated chambers before they found what was obviously a makeshift hatch, comprising just a hinged round plug set off-centre in an uneven wall. When it was levered outwards and open by someone within, a great deal of water cascaded through, carrying Stenwold along with it. He ended up on the floor with water draining away on all sides, at the feet of a broad Onychoi who was wrestling the hatch into a position where the sheer pressure of water would keep it secure.

  It was baking hot, Stenwold noticed, and the Onychoi wore nothing but a loincloth. He wondered how Nemoctes could stand there dressed in his armour and not sweat himself to death. Except, of course, it’s not metal armour; it’s some weird thing they extrude, or whatever the term is. Wearily he clambered to his feet, tugging at the neck of his tunic. There were a good dozen people in immediate view, mostly attending to leaks, and they were all dressed in just enough clothing to cover their modesty, but even so Stenwold felt self-conscious. Going without shoes was bad enough. Going bare-chested would seem positively barbaric.

  Nemoctes was watching him closely. And is that all these Pelagics do? Little had been said before – Lyess’s obstinate silence having made things awkward – but Stenwold sighed wearily and asked, ‘What now?’

  ‘Come with me,’ Nemoctes instructed him.

  ‘Will that markedly improve my situation?’ Stenwold asked him acidly.

  ‘Will it see you home, you mean? I hope so, but I make no promises,’ the Pelagist replied. ‘However, I can swear it will do you another form of good.’ He turned and headed past the toiling construction workers, whereupon Stenwold, as so often recently, had little enough choice but to follow him.

  The chamber beyond was broad and long, though with a perilously low ceiling propped up by a dozen slanting pillars. It all looked rather slipshod and hastily built, and that very departure from the organically smooth perfection of sea-kinden design might have been welcome, save for the weight of water beyond. ‘I suppose you can’t persuade your Builder-kinden to come out this far,’ Stenwold observed.

  ‘One cannot get the Arketoi to go anywhere.’ Nemoctes tossed the words back over his shoulder. ‘They build where they will, and others are drawn there to live as their guests. There have always been little hand-made outposts in the depths, places at which my people gather, where the Benthists stop off to trade, where loners go who want nothing to do with any other folk. The Hot Stations are something different. New.’

  Stenwold had more questions, but they had now come out into a much grander chamber, which seemed a slum and a ghetto and a market all in one. People of many kinden had gathered here, dumped a sack of goods and a tattered bundle of possessions down, and made it their home. The place boasted a mad assortment of hastily-tacked up screens of the brightly coloured cloth the sea-kinden produced, choked with the sounds and smells of what must have been two hundred people all busy at something. There was food being prepared, mostly in the nature of raw and salted fish, and people haggling over it, and over tools and clothes, leathery paper, elaborate jewelry. A thin Kerebroi
woman was tattooing the expansive back of an Onychoi man with an abstract pattern of vibrant colours, using nothing but her bare hands. Another Onychoi, one of the small ones, sat cross-legged under a ragged awning with a pair of full bowls placed beside him. A faint tracery was taking shape within them as he practised his Art.

  Then someone was rushing at Stenwold, pushing through the crowd at waist level, and for a moment he was instinctively reaching for the sword he had not worn in many days.

  ‘Mar’Maker!’

  The Fly-kinden was grinning at him like fury, standing before Stenwold with his hands on his hips, as proud as if he was the new master of all they surveyed.

  The Beetle smiled down at him wanly. ‘I hope you’ve had a smoother journey than I did, Laszlo.’

  ‘Oh, more than that, far more than that,’ the Fly promised him, and then cast a look up at Nemoctes. ‘You go in front, shelly. Master Maker and I need to catch up.’

  Nemoctes merely looked amused at this, and obligingly led the way, several steps in advance. Stenwold leant down to catch Laszlo’s following words.

  ‘You see,’ the little man was saying. ‘You recall Wys, right? Her that sprung us from Hermatyre?’

  ‘The mercenary,’ Stenwold confirmed.

  ‘Very mercenary,’ agreed Laszlo. ‘And she’s got her eyes open, that one. She’s not scared of the land, and she doesn’t want to make war on it neither. Trade, Mar’Maker, that’s what she’s after, and she says she’ll pitch us up overwater just as soon as she can. Whatever happens, whatever this fellow and that slimer Heiracles and the rest settle on, you do your best to get yourself out of here on Wys’s barque.’

  ‘But will Wys go against her employers?’ Stenwold pressed, deciding this all sounded much too convenient.

  ‘Heiracles, she doesn’t like. Nemoctes she likes, a bit – and so do I, I think – but he’s not paying. She knows that if we get something going, her lot and my lot, then everyone will become very rich, and maybe she can set up some place just like this. They say the Man, the one who runs the Stations, he was just a freelance like her once.’

  They had caught up with Wys, by then, and Nemoctes was greeting her gravely. The twin shadows of Fel and Phylles were at their accustomed places, one behind either shoulder of their diminutive captain. Stenwold offered the woman a nod, and she grinned at him from a face filled with avarice. Laszlo’s words seemed to be written there in a clear script, and Stenwold felt his heart pick up, at a ray of sunny hope that had somehow found its way down here to the depths.

  But play it calmly, he told himself, and he hoped Laszlo would do the same. If the other sea-kinden became suspicious, then not even Wys would be able to make a clean break from them.

  ‘I’ve been going mad waiting for you to get here,’ Laszlo said. ‘We’ve been here, what… four days, I reckon, maybe more.’

  ‘There was some trouble.’ Stenwold’s tone did not invite question. In his mind he saw again, briefly, the blood-clouded waters where Gribbern had met his end.

  ‘Well, keep our wits about us, and trouble might be a thing of the past, or at least this kind of…’ Laszlo trailed off. ‘Ah, curse it.’

  It took Stenwold a moment to see what had gone wrong. Wys had drawn a blade, her face suddenly wiped clear of humour. Fel and Phylles were already stepping forwards, forming up in front of her. Nemoctes’s expression, as he turned back towards the landsmen, was startled.

  A hand came down on Stenwold’s shoulder, and drove him to his knees with the armoured weight of it. Abruptly, monolithic mailed Onychoi were shouldering aside the crowd, approaching from all quarters. Laszlo darted straight upwards, taking them by surprise. He had a knife out, but no way of putting it to much use. Stenwold tried to twist out from under the leaden grip but it closed hard on his shoulder, grating the bones, and hauled him upright again. He struck out at where his attacker’s head must be, best guess, and the impact on his elbow numbed his whole arm, the sand-coloured armour feeling hard as bronze.

  Nemoctes was striding forward. He held a twisted pick-like weapon in his hand, and demanded, ‘What is this? Release that man!’ At his raised voice, other people took notice, and Stenwold saw several people slip from the crowd to stand near him. They were Kerebroi, mostly, although one was a dark-skinned woman with a white-speckled scalp, who might easily have been Gribbern’s cousin.

  ‘Easy, now, easy.’ The speaker slipped out from between two of the Onychoi, pausing before Stenwold to look up at him admiringly. ‘No need to get the axe out, Nemoctes. You know all’s fair in business.’

  Nemoctes looked at the newcomer coldly: a little Onychoi man as bald as the rest of them, save for bushy eyebrows as extravagant as a moth’s antennae. He was loaded with gold, about his neck, about his hands, with a veritable belt of interwoven chains and bracers so finely shaped into minutely detailed seascapes that each one of them would probably have persuaded a Helleron magnate to part with his most profitable factory. A swatch of purple cloth, worn over one high shoulder like a half-cloak, completed the overall impression of an extremely successful self-made man.

  ‘Since when do you stand in the way of the Pelagists, Mandir?’ Nemoctes asked him quietly. ‘Are you so sick of receiving our custom?’

  ‘Don’t be angry, old wanderer.’ Mandir waved his hands dismissively. ‘You’ve not outstayed your welcome, so come and go as you please. Your prisoners, though… well, consider them now freed for the greater good.’

  Fel and Phylles stood either side of Nemoctes now, both obviously looking for an opening, but there were a good eight or nine of the giant Onychoi and they were all armoured head to foot, their gauntlets vicious with spikes.

  ‘You see,’ said the extravagantly dressed little man, ‘we like Pelagists here, and Pelagists like us. You got any idea how many of your Deepclaw lot have traded in their old beasts for crawlers manufactured right here? The Hot Stations are the next great wave, old wanderer. There’s nothing like us anywhere. And so long as I’m the Man of the Stations, the Stations will run according to my rules.’

  ‘And what rule is it that has resulted in this?’ Nemoctes demanded.

  Mandir pointed a lazy finger up to where Laszlo still hovered. ‘Land-kinden are considered the property of the Man, old wayfarer.’

  ‘I never heard that rule before.’

  ‘You never brought me any land-kinden before. The little one with the disregard for where the floor should be has been here a few days, now, long enough for my people to spot he was something special. Now this other fellow turns up, and I’m taking them off your hands, old wanderer. You don’t need to worry about them any more.’

  ‘I had not thought,’ Nemoctes said, his voice sick with anger, ‘that Claeon’s reach extended so far.’

  ‘Claeon?’ Mandir squawked. ‘Oh, piss on Claeon. If it’s Hermatyre you’re worried about then, trust me, I’ll keep them well out of Claeon’s grasp. They won’t be safer anywhere in all the oceans than with me. Now, how about you and Wys and the rest run along, and everybody can stay friends.’

  ‘This isn’t over,’ Nemoctes promised darkly.

  ‘Nothing ever is,’ Mandir told him cheerfully. ‘That’s what life’s about, isn’t it?’ As the Onychoi closed ranks about Stenwold, Mandir glanced up again. ‘Now you, the amazing, impossible Smallclaw, you feel like coming down?’

  ‘Feel like coming up here to get me?’ Laszlo taunted him, although Stenwold could see that he felt the strain of hanging in the air like that.

  Mandir signalled, and one of his Onychoi raised some device. It was a tube of steel – or something very like steel – with two broad grips, and Stenwold understood it immediately, even though he could not have guessed at the principles on which it worked. The simple way it was held told him all he needed. It was the first ranged weapon he had yet seen in sea-kinden hands. The aperture, at the end directed towards Laszlo, was big enough to put a fist into.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone,’ the Man of the Stations continued
reasonably, ‘but I can’t have you rushing about the place doing impossible things, and making it look untidy. So come down and join your friend before this becomes a regrettable incident.’

  Stenwold thought that Laszlo might make a go of it then, just dart off across the wide chamber, moving faster than the cumbersome weapon could follow, but instead he dropped to the ground meekly and walked into the grasp of one of the Onychoi. He managed a covert glance up towards Stenwold, though, and winked at him.

  My man on the inside, is it? Stenwold reflected, without much hope. Shame we’re now both in the same inside. Betrayed and captured when I’m scarcely inside the door. I was right, this place is just like Helleron…

  Twenty-Eight

  It was not true that Caractes was known as the most unsociable man in the sea, but that was only because he stayed out of the way of so many that few even knew of him at all. He was an ancient Polypoi, his skin turned from purple-red almost to grey-blue with age, his hair not cropped in the fashion of his kind but grown out into a long white mane and beard that twitched and curled against the current. He lived at the foot of the cliffs they called the Edge, in the shadow of a great crab shell, that was the relic of a battle of his middle-age, which he had stubbornly dragged there after a moon’s worth of travel. His only companion was his beast, which made its home atop the shell, and there sieved the current with its waving, stinging tentacles.

  Few of the sea-kinden lived so close to the Edge. It was considered a place of ill-fortune by most of them. A freak current or grand tide could wash away anyone venturing too close to the surface, perhaps casting them onto the deathly shoreline, there to die of thirst or heat, or be taken and eaten by the savage land-kinden. So the stories went, and since the beginning of recorded time the Edge had marked the limit of the sea-kinden world for all but the mad, the overly adventurous, the Littoralists, and a few select families of hunters and gatherers.

  Some of these last still remained, although their trade had declined from generation to generation, so that those who still tried their luck in the shallow waters above were few indeed. Yet, those that held to their old ways found occasional cause to visit Caractes, as did a few of the Pelagists whose yearnings for travel took them not down to the depths but up to skirt the very periphery of the land.