The Sea Watch sota-6

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  For a moment a shimmer of colour traversed across her skin, the faintest guttering of what once had been.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if he wishes to go with you, then I will not stop him.’

  The next morning found Stenwold and the three sea-kinden in what would doubtless, at some point in the future, be the palace’s grand audience chamber. Now it consisted of two walls and a tiered dais, and an open view across sun-bright grass, and Stenwold thought that it conferred more majesty on Grief that way than ever it would once completed.

  They sat on the steps of the dais, the four visitors, with the Monarch of Princep Salmae a step higher than them, and a few servants or staff – or possibly just voyeurs – within earshot. The only other face there that Stenwold knew, apart from Aradocles himself, was the Beetle-kinden Ordley Penhold, watching with a dour and suspicious expression and folded arms as the heir of Hermatyre told them his story.

  ‘At first, when we came to the land,’ the youth explained, ‘I relied on my guards – on Santiren and Marcantor – for everything, and I waited daily for the call to return to my city, and to the sea.’ There was a faraway look in his eyes. ‘After a month had passed, I learned to trust Master Penhold here, who had taken us in, and the Mantis Cynthaen who had led us to him, but no others, and I would not talk as they talked, or do the things they did.’

  He looked from face to face: Stenwold to Phylles, Phylles to Penhold, but always flicking back to Paladrya in the end.

  ‘After three months, I was learning the land-kinden writing, and keeping stock for Master Penhold, and soon it seemed strange that I had once been a prince of Hermatyre, and lived beneath the waves. After a year, a year without speaking of it even to my two guards.. . in my dreams I remained a sea-kinden, but no more than that, it seemed. I was just Arad Oakleaves, the foundling Spider boy, Ordly Penhold’s ward.’ He spared a fond look at the frowning Beetle. ‘And then the Wasps came.’

  Stenwold nodded. The Imperial Second Army, known as the Gears, had ground its implacable way through the Felyal, killing all those that defied it, driving out the Mantis-kinden, and all the others who had lived a precarious existence at the forest’s edge by trading and logging.

  ‘The Wasps arrived, and we tried to flee for your city, Master Maker,’ Aradocles explained, ‘but the Imperial forces moved too fast and cut us off. They killed Marcantor as we fled the Felyal. North was the only road open to us: hundreds of refugees of all kinden, with nothing but what they carried. I had been a prince, and then a trader’s apprentice, and now I became a beggar.’

  Paladrya put her hand to her mouth, and he smiled at her. ‘Do not mourn for that. Good came of it, in the end. We were found by outriders of the Landsarmy. Those who could fight went to join Prince Salmae Dien for his war.’ He stood straighter, on speaking the name. ‘I fought,’ he stated simply. ‘Santiren wanted to keep me safe, but where was safe? I had to order her, in the end. I had to remind myself who I had been, and what my heritage was. I would not let others risk their lives while I remained behind.’

  ‘You fought alongside Salma?’ Stenwold wondered at the thought. I might even have set eyes on this lad, when I took Salma’s counsel. Just one more homeless Spider-kinden, I’d have thought.

  ‘I rode with him in his charge against Malkan,’ Aradocles declared, with fierce pride. ‘I rode behind him on a beast with six legs and a pincered tail, and I cast my spear. It was a very different mount from those I had ridden as a boy, but my people are cavalrymen more than most land-kinden. Santiren was killed in that charge, but I broke out of their camp again, and lived.’

  Paladrya was shaking her head, dismayed at the risks he had taken. ‘But what of your own people?’ she asked him.

  ‘I had not forgotten them. Salma reminded me,’ he replied. ‘He was a prince of his people, as I am of mine, but his people better understand what it is to rule. He was our leader not because he wanted power, but because we needed to be led. He led us to fight against the Wasps not for his own gain, but because they had to be fought. Leadership was a burden that his birthright made him shoulder, not just a privilege to abuse. My own people have not properly understood the true role of kings.’ When Paladrya started to object he shook his head. ‘It is not just Claeon. My father himself cared nothing for his people. He made sure that the Builders, the Arketoi, remained untroubled, and after that his only thought was to enjoy his authority. Small wonder that a man like my uncle coveted his throne.’

  ‘But, if you think so little of us,’ Paladrya sounded shaken, ‘then what will you do?’

  Stenwold reached out and took her hand, as if to steady her.

  ‘I will do what Salma would do, were he in my place,’ Aradocles explained. ‘I have a life here. I am happy here and I have friends. Yet I must go to Hermatyre and claim my throne. Because my people need me, not because I have any wish to be Edmir. If I thought Claeon the better ruler, I would abdicate for him without a thought.’

  ‘But you’ll come back?’ Paladrya pressed.

  ‘In all honour, what else can I do?’ he asked her, then smiled. ‘My old tutor, have I learned my lessons well?’

  Stenwold felt a great tension lift from the Kerebroi woman, and she sagged back against the steps, leaning into him. He had not realized that she had been so scared that the youth might refuse.

  The sea-kinden and their new-found leader departed with the Monarch’s staff but, as Stenwold moved to follow them, Grief held up one dimly luminous hand to stop him. Only the two of them were now left in the unfinished shell of the audience chamber.

  ‘So, War Master,’ she addressed him, still without warmth.

  ‘Please don’t call me War Master,’ he told her. ‘Whatever you may think, war is a business I’ve never sought. It is just that I prefer war to the enduring slavery and repression that the Empire would bring. I’d have thought you’d understand that. Salma did.’

  ‘And now you go to inflict war on Aradocles’s people. And you are just as sure of the righteousness of your cause there?’

  ‘Having been prisoner of the boy’s uncle and seen his practices, yes, but I will do what I can to minimize the harm that his return will cause. There’s more than one way to stage a revolution.’

  She stared at him for a long time, as ghosts of faint colour drifted across her skin. ‘Your story makes the plight of Arad’s city seem urgent. How will you return him to the sea?’

  ‘I had an aviator…’ Thinking of it, Stenwold cursed his luck, for it could be days before Jons Allanbridge’s return. Meanwhile, Stenwold needed him for more than merely transport back to Collegium. ‘I suppose we must wait for him.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you and yours were gone with my Arad Oakleaves, before I change my mind and decide that I wish to save him from your latest war,’ Grief suggested darkly. ‘Do you think he would go with you if I asked him to stay?’

  ‘That depends on how much he believes what he just said about duty,’ Stenwold replied levelly. ‘Are you suggesting we walk all the way to Collegium?’

  ‘I am suggesting that I have an object lesson for you, Master Maker, on the relative virtues of war and peace. I will secure the swiftest transport to your city, fear not, though you may not like the means.’

  Stenwold sighed. ‘Well, if it speeds our journey, I’ll not quibble,’ he told her.

  She inclined her head, watching him from her seat on the topmost step. ‘What is it, then?’ she asked him.

  ‘I don’t understand. What is what?’

  ‘I can see a question in your face, Master Maker – in your very mind. There is something you have wanted to ask me, but you feared to weaken your position before me. Well, now you have all you want, and more. So ask your question, Master Maker, if you dare.’

  Stenwold frowned at her, ‘There is nothing…’ he started to say, but the question rose up within him even as he spoke. ‘There is something,’ he admitted awkwardly. ‘It is to do with you… and Salma.’

  Her expressi
on did not exactly invite such a line of enquiry, but she nodded curtly.

  ‘Salma once told my niece that you had enchanted him.’ Stenwold got the words out quickly.

  Grief went very still, and the smile she conjured up was unconvincing. ‘Surely your enlightened kinden do not believe in such things.’

  ‘I have come to find that all manner of things I would once not have believed turn out to be true, nonetheless,’ he replied. ‘Salma said that you reached out to him because you were a prisoner, and had nobody else to call upon. You made him love you. You put yourself in his mind, so that he kept thinking of you…’

  ‘Is that what he said?’

  Stenwold looked evasive. ‘It is the sense of it, but is it so?’

  For a long while he thought she would just turn around and go, and he could not even guess at the thoughts in her head. At last, though, she said, ‘It is true,’ in a small voice. ‘At first, I confess I used the magic of my people on him. As you say, I was desperate. But by the time he came to find me in Tark, my spell was gone. He loved me. Truly, and with no need of magic, he loved me.’ She sounded almost defiant.

  ‘Oh, I believe you,’ he said, softly. ‘Tell me, though, if there was another under such a spell, could you tell? Could you look on him, and see if he were enchanted in the same way’

  Now her expression changed, as mere curiosity shouldered aside all that mystic reserve. ‘Do you consider yourself enchanted, Master Maker?’ she asked. The trace of amusement in her tone cut him.

  But I must make my confession to her, or she will not help me. ‘Since I left the sea… no, before that, since I left the presence of a certain sea-kinden, my mind has been drawn towards her. She has come to me many times in my dreams, in my waking imagination. She seems to fascinate some part of me, and yet… I felt none of that, when we travelled together. Only afterwards…’

  ‘You Lowlanders,’ she whispered, ‘you Apt, you know so little. And yet, Maker, you see so much further than your kind normally can, to even ask that question. Come here, Beetle-kinden, and kneel before the Monarch of Princep Salmae, if you seek her aid.’

  Stenwold bristled at that demand, but he did so, lowering himself to his knees with a groan – feeling all the little wounds Teornis had dealt him twinge. He looked up at Grief, and she put a hand to his forehead. Her skin was remarkably warm and, as she touched him, colours danced and glittered about her fingers and up her arm.

  ‘Hah,’ she said, almost at once, ‘I feel the shell of an old enchantment here, but it is gone, dried up and dead. It holds you no longer. When did this woman last enter your mind?’

  ‘She…’ Stenwold frowned. ‘Since I came from the sea. In Collegium certainly, but…’ It was true that he had not thought much of Lyess since then. ‘Perhaps sea-kinden workings cannot survive in the dry air?’ he suggested, hauling himself to his feet and stepping away from her.

  ‘You are blind, still,’ she told him. ‘Such enchantments die by one means only – just as the spell I set on Salma died.’

  ‘You said it died because he really did love you, as the real replaced the false,’ Stenwold objected. ‘You think I really love this woman?’

  ‘Not her,’ Grief told him, almost pityingly. ‘You have feelings for another, Master Maker, and they have defended you against this enchantment. It is the only way.’ With that she stood up, and the morning sunlight caught her and made her flash and shimmer for one brief second. When his eyes had recovered from the glare, she was walking away, pale and grey as before.

  Paladrya had done her best to bring Aradocles up to date with the current politics of Hermatyre, naming all the current powers of the sea-kinden to him: Heiracles, Rosander, Nemoctes, Mandir of the Hot Stations – and Claeon, of course. She and Phylles had introduced him to Wys, and to the convalescing Laszlo, and the five of them were in deep conference when Stenwold found them.

  Looking at Aradocles, Stenwold could help not but think, He is so young for what they will ask of him. There was a set, determined look to the Kerebroi youth’s face, though and if it reminded Stenwold of anyone, it was surely of Salma.

  He sat beside Paladrya, letting her speak, while he himself contributed little to the conversation, glancing sidelong at her occasionally. Grief’s words to him still echoed in his memory.

  Shortly after he rejoined them, Sfayot tracked them down and informed them that the Monarch wished to see them all at the airfield.

  A crowd had gathered there, a great motley of all the kinden and half-kinden that made up Princep Salmae. It was rare that their beloved Monarch walked amongst them, and Stenwold and his followers had to push and shove through them to make headway. He expected to find Grief surrounded by a ring of her Dragonfly guardsmen, but she had come with only a pair of adherents: the Beetle Ordly Penhold and the ubiquitous Sfayot. The massed citizens meanwhile maintained a respectful distance.

  ‘Ah, Master Maker,’ she addressed him, when he managed to extricate himself from the crowd. ‘Come stand with me.’

  He did so apprehensively, wondering whether she intended to show some manner of favour by this public display. This seemed unlikely, given her attitude so far, so he made his way with caution across the open space to where she stood, almost in the shadow of the flying machines. Aradocles strode at his side, seemingly entirely at ease, and the rest of the sea-kinden followed, with Laszlo jostled and cursing in their midst.

  ‘I have arranged your conveyance, Master Maker, to take you from my city,’ she informed him, ‘and your pilot also.’ She reached out as if to touch the nearest machine, although her hand stopped a few inches from its metal hull.

  Stenwold frowned, recognizing the black and gold of its painting. ‘There must be some mistake,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Indeed?’ she enquired archly. ‘Ambassador, will you come forth?’

  From around the Imperial heliopter’s side stepped a familiar figure. He was not dressed in uniform, but was a Wasp nonetheless, and one that Stenwold was well acquainted with through recent bouts in front of the Assembly.

  ‘Ambassador Aagen,’ he identified the man.

  ‘There are some few that I shall always be glad of, Master Maker,’ Grief declared. ‘Aagen is one.’ Her tone made clear that Stenwold himself was not in that number.

  ‘So I see.’ Despite himself, Stenwold felt slighted. ‘Well, Salma told me of the history between you and Aagen. I suppose freedom is a great gift.’

  ‘Hope is a greater one,’ Grief told him. ‘He comes of a cruel kinden, and yet he is kind. Consider that.’

  Stenwold sighed, sourly. And so I come from a peaceful one and yet make war, is that it? What does the woman expect me to do? Where does she think we would all be, if we hadn’t fought the Empire?

  He looked at Aagen, who nodded to him levelly.

  ‘Aagen has sworn to me that he will take you to Collegium as fast as his machine can carry you,’ Grief explained. ‘Otherwise, Master Maker, you must rely on your feet.’

  Stenwold could feel the sea-kinden growing restless, obviously sensing an insult but not understanding the cause. Only Aradocles held himself apart from it all, and no doubt he was used to the Butterfly woman’s ways by now.

  ‘You want to see if I can trust my enemy,’ he said tiredly. ‘Well, I gladly accept the assistance of Master Aagen. I am no Mantis-kinden, to cut off my own fingers rather than clasp hands with someone opposed to my city. ‘

  It was clear that she considered this some kind of victory, and Stenwold could not help but think, And when the Empire comes again, where will all this love and tolerance get you? He derived a certain spiteful pleasure from the thought.

  ‘Master Maker,’Aagen said, without mockery, ‘shall we go?’

  They made a swift departure, after Stenwold left a message instructing Jons Allanbridge to follow on to Collegium with all speed, and after Ordly Penhold had clasped Aradocles’s shoulder and given him some almost fatherly words of advice. The sea-kinden’s reaction to being in the belly of
the flying machine, with its shuddering and clattering and the roar of its engines, was a sight to behold, and Stenwold spent most of the time with his arm about Paladrya, listening to Laszlo swearing at every jolt and lurch. Just once he went forward to where Aagen sat alone, the Imperial ambassador out flying without any staff or soldiers. The two of them exchanged a few civilized words on recent developments in artificing, and even on a play they had both watched the month before.

  By silent mutual agreement they studiously avoided talking politics of any kind.

  Forty-Two

  There was a sound from downstairs, and Helmess Broiler stirred sleepily. It must only be his servants pottering about, rising for the day to come.

  Which meant it was later than he inwardly felt it should be. He yawned and stretched. Beside him, Elytrya murmured something, and Helmess again wondered precisely how late or early it was, and whether she could be persuaded into a little exercise.

  He opened his eyes, looking for the grey of pre-dawn leaching through the east-facing shutters, but the room was near pitch-dark, and the only radiance that outlined the shutters was the faint rose of the street lighting outside.

  So why are the servants…? He frowned, and wondered, Am I being robbed? Thieves seldom dared to intrude where Collegium’s great magnates lived. The city guard was prolific and dedicated in those privileged streets, and the lighting well maintained. He listened again but heard nothing.

  Perhaps I imagined it. But an uncomfortable feeling was growing on him. Something had certainly awoken him; his imagination was not to blame. Helmess sat up and slid his feet over the side of the bed, hearing Elytrya complain wordlessly as she, in turn, was awoken. He reached for a nightshirt and dragged it on.

  Should I call the servants anyway? he wondered. If it’s nothing, after all, I’ll look a proper fool. But if it’s something… It could be Teornis and his murderous rabble of Dragonflies, back from Princep. Creeping into the place unannounced would probably seem hilarious to that Spider Aristos. The more Helmess thought about it, the more that seemed likely, rather than mere robbers. It was surely about time for Teornis to blight Helmess’s life again, and so Helmess would have to find a way to do away with the Spider and his minions, and secure Aradocles for the sea-kinden. If the heir had been found, of course. If the wretched youth wasn’t years dead already. Helmess sighed. His world had become particularly vexing recently.