The Sea Watch

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  There was another couch, but Tomasso sat on the floor, leaving a low table between him and his hostess. Stenwold, glad of a respite for his legs, lowered himself down beside Tomasso, while Laszlo lounged in the entrance, close enough to hear what was being said. A scrabble from above indicated that Piera had taken up a watch from somewhere around roof level.

  The Fly servant, or at least so Stenwold hoped she was, came out with a tray of small cups. There were rooms and rooms extending behind Tyresia, Stenwold saw, but only odd glimmers or shafts of light gave anything away about them. When he looked down again there were two thimble-sized receptacles before him, one steaming with something dark, the other containing something clear.

  Thanking the Spider kindly, Tomasso knocked back first one then the other, in quick succession, as did she. Trusting to his race’s noted constitution, Stenwold did the same.

  He had hoped for drinking chocolate, a Spider-kinden delicacy currently popular in Collegium, but his nose gave him the lie even before he tasted it. The hot liquid was bitter enough for him to suspect poison, then the clear one was harsh enough to clean spoons with, evaporating from his throat in a freezing mist. Just as he was about to gag, or possibly beg for a doctor, a marvellously warm and soothing aftertaste followed. He suspected that his expression must be causing some well-hidden amusement while, from his companions’ faces, they might have been drinking plain water.

  ‘How is my cards partner these days?’ Tyresia asked politely.

  ‘Getting old,’ Tomasso admitted. ‘Lady, each time I visit, another winter has passed for me, so how is it that they never touch you?’ The words were neither hurried nor sincere, but Tomasso was obviously following some prescribed code of etiquette. There then followed further careful compliments from each to each, feigned humility, enquiries after old friends. Stenwold knew enough about Spider-kinden to know that an ‘old friend’ or a ‘dance partner’ was an enemy of some sort, whereas a ‘card player’ was, if not a friend, then at least an acquaintance that the speaker was not currently at war with.

  He had not yet heard Tomasso ask a question at all, but abruptly Tyresia laughed, as free and innocent as a young girl, putting one hand to her mouth to stifle it. ‘Forgive me, my dear, forgive me. You mean the Barbarous Coast, do you not?’

  That drew a sour look from Stenwold which surely did not go without notice, but Tomasso was nodding amiably enough. ‘I have set sail there of late, it’s true.’

  ‘Oh you poor dear, how can you stand it?’ Tyresia shook her head sadly. ‘Alas, I do not make enquiries that way, these days. So little of interest ever happens there. Since I came to the Moonlight Circle I have had my eyes on wider horizons.’

  Tomasso ran his fingers through his beard. ‘Of course, one such as you is highly regarded in your profession, so your lessers must all know you.’

  ‘And I know them,’ she finished. ‘You would be wise to speak with Albinus, dear heart. He has a feeler or two still in that direction.’

  Tomasso nodded. ‘Perhaps our paths shall cross some day.’ Even as he got to his feet, though, Tyresia held a hand up. The gesture was so direct that it put Stenwold on his guard.

  ‘Because I love you, little one, know that Ebris of the Ganbrodiel is in port.’

  ‘Does he know I am?’ Tomasso had gone very still.

  ‘Not from me, dear one, but he will know your hull when he sees it. I’m surprised that you did not recognize his.’

  ‘Ah, well, last time we met, I gave him a gift of firepowder that fair burned his ship out from under him. I’d guess he has a new one now.’

  ‘He sails the Storm Locust,’ she confirmed. ‘Take care, little one. I don’t want to hear that you have come to grief.’

  The path to Albinus took them in an arc all round Kanateris, slowly closing back towards the docks. Tomasso seemed tense now, and he and his crewmates kept a constant eye on the sky. Stenwold did even not need to ask. It had become clear that there was precious little brotherhood amongst pirates.

  They ducked inside a chocolate house situated barely twenty yards above the quay, before plunging into smoke-perfumed darkness. Stenwold just let Laszlo tug him along by the sleeve, unsure whether this was their destination or whether they were merely sidestepping some danger. Abruptly they were up against a door, and it was a moment before Stenwold realized the significance. It was the first actual door that the town had presented him with. No spider had woven this.

  ‘Skipper Tomasso of the Tidenfree, buying,’ the Fly called out, knocking. A moment later came the click of a latch. The lamplight that fell on them was not bright, but it seemed blinding after the gloom. Beyond was a little room done up in a Lowlander style, even down to the solid chairs and a desk. The guards standing by at the far wall were Bee-kinden, but of no city that Stenwold could name. Seated at the desk, Albinus himself was an Ant. He was aptly named, for his skin was ghostly in the lamplight, his hair colourless to the point of transparency. His eyes were a stark, unhealthy pink, raw as those of a man after a night’s hard drinking.

  He grinned at them without humour. ‘Skipper,’ he acknowledged with a nod towards the other seats. ‘Kind of you and your purse to come pay me a visit.’

  Tomasso remained standing, but Stenwold was not too proud to rest himself. His first thought was that Albinus, robbed of the colouring of his brothers, must be a man without a city, a renegade. It was perhaps what he was intended to think, but he had been around the Vekken for too long to believe it. He knew Ants now: it was the brotherhood inside their heads, not mere skin pigment, that made them what they were. Knowing that fact, and hearing the man’s speech, he guessed that Albinus was probably still on the payroll of the city of Kes. That island nation would have an interest in keeping an eye on the Spiderlands trade routes, and what better disguise for a patriotic spy than to pose as a freelance one?

  There was no sign of the elegant niceties that Tomasso had employed on Tyresia. ‘You’re the man to talk to about Lowlander shipping, they say?’

  ‘They’re kind to say it,’ Albinus replied. When he smiled, his deathly white face was like a skull. ‘The Tidenfree sails the Strand, does she not? Why would you want to know?’

  ‘Perhaps the Strand is a little prickly these days.’

  The Ant nodded, as if satisfied with that. ‘So ask, Skipper.’

  ‘I hear someone’s throwing their weight around against the Collegium boats.’ Tomasso’s accompanying gesture seemed to make Stenwold his co-conspirator, just some Beetle profiteer who didn’t care about harming his own kin. ‘Now, if I’m going to cut myself a slice of the Barbarous Coast, I want to know who might come looking for me. Or else maybe I’ll just offer my ship to them, if they’re recruiting.’

  ‘They’re not, Skipper. They have all the hands they need.’ Albinus’s voice remained flat, but Stenwold’s heart leapt just at the words. He was right. Failwright had the right of it. There is a conspiracy. His fingers clutched at the arms of his chair, but he made himself sit still.

  ‘Then tell me who to steer my course clear of. How much for it, Albinus?’

  The Ant calculated silently for a moment. ‘Two-thousand-yard. And don’t try haggling, little man. We Ant-kinden have no patience for it.’

  Tomasso gave no reaction, but Laszlo could not keep in a whistle of appreciation. Whatever the currency, it was clearly a great deal of money.

  ‘I have . . .’ he started, thinking of the Helleron-minted coins in his purse.

  ‘I pay him. You pay me later,’ Tomasso cut him off. ‘Just remember our agreement.’ He signalled, and Laszlo came forward and started counting out big coins, twice the size of a Helleron central and looking like solid gold. He stopped at twenty, making two neat stacks of them.

  ‘The name?’ Tomasso prompted.

  Albinus smiled his death’s-head grin. ‘The Aldanrael,’ he said.

  Ten

  Stenwold felt numb when they reached daylight again, leaving the dimly lit cavern of Albinus the spy behind
them. Aldanrael. The thought made him feel ill. For a moment he wished, he really wished, that Rones Failwright had brought his wretched papers to someone else. Anyone else.

  But, of course, I suppose Rones Failwright was killed on his orders. The Aldanrael were as well loved in Collegium as ever a Spider house had been. Were they not friends and heroes? Had they not fought against the Vekken and the Empire, to keep the city free?

  And now this: piracy and plunder. A secret war against our shipping. But why? He saw Teornis’s face, handsome and laughing, in his mind’s eye. Never trust a Spider, they say, but surely . . . He tried to tell himself that he was a fool to take the word of some strange washed-out Ant-kinden speaking against a man he had known for years, but something leaden inside him seemed already to know the truth.

  I cannot just accept this. I must be sure. The implications, the delicate relationship Collegium had built with the Spiderlands, the cities of the silk road, there was so much to lose.

  Almost crashing into Tomasso, he looked up.

  A dozen men and women had taken possession of the street in front of them. Most of them were Spiders, armed with long knives and rapiers, and a couple of others with bows. One man stood in the centre, prudently keeping further away from the Flies and Stenwold. He was an elegant, slender figure in a heavy greatcoat that seemed too big for him. He wore his hair long, as many Spiders did, but it was combed forward so as to cover half of his face. The burns were still visible beneath his fringe. On either side of him stood two huge Scorpion-kinden men in chain hauberks, shields and axes at the ready.

  ‘Look who we happen to have bumped into,’ the Spider-kinden leader called out. Stenwold was aware that the street was fast emptying around them, leaving only Tomasso’s small party confronting their antagonists. ‘Little Skipper,’ the Spider went on, ‘you have plotted a poor course, to bring you here.’

  ‘Ebris,’ Tomasso named him, ‘you’re looking well.’

  ‘Seas curse me when I ever want the opinion of a Fly on how I look,’ Ebris spat.

  Tomasso had his hands on both his knife-hilts, standing feet apart, smiling calmly at the Spider captain but appearing tense as a drawn bow to his own companions. ‘You should know, Ebris, you’ll now have these waters to yourself. I’m setting sail for the south. We need never meet again.’ Stenwold saw that Piera had her bowstring half drawn back, and Laszlo’s hooked blade was in his hand, the rope already loosened from his waist. Carefully, without any eye-catching movements, Stenwold unshouldered his piercer, running a quick eye over it to be sure it was still charged and loaded.

  ‘We need not meet?’ Ebris echoed. ‘Oh, Skipper, you underestimate my sentimental attachment to you. I’d not dream of letting you breeze away without a keepsake or two.’

  ‘Be careful what you dream of,’ Tomasso replied levelly.

  The Spider’s face twisted, baring the livid, shiny skin where the flames had caught him. ‘You burned my ship!’ he spat.

  ‘I hear you have a new one,’ said the Fly, still quite steady.

  ‘You burned my ship! ’

  ‘You were robbing mine at the time, Ebris,’ Tomasso snapped at last. ‘And if I happened to pop a couple of pots of firepowder and a fuse in amongst the cargo you stole, well, it was your own choice to rob your brother thieves.’

  ‘You stain my family to three generations, if you call yourself my—’ Ebris started and, even as he was speaking, Tomasso’s fingers flicked out. His hands had left his dagger hilts, and two throwing blades were in the air even as the Spider spoke. One of the Scorpions twitched his shield up before his master’s face at the last second and, on the other side of Ebris, a Spider-kinden woman’s head snapped back with the small, hiltless knife in her eye.

  Stenwold heard Piera’s bowstring twang, and Laszlo was abruptly airborne, slinging his blade in a wide arc. A couple of Ebris’s crew rushed Tomasso, but the Fly had his fighting knives out now, catching their rapier blades and turning them aside, fighting half on the ground and half in the air, his lack of height and reach becoming an irrelevancy. Ebris was meanwhile shrieking at his people to kill all of them.

  The Tidenfree crew had seized the initiative, but the numbers were against them, and Stenwold saw that, had he not been there, they would surely have taken to the skies and fled for their ship.

  Up to me to finish it, then, he said to himself.

  ‘Ho, Spider!’ he bellowed, and levelled the piercer. The two Scorpions obediently clumped before their captain, bracing their shields. It was clear that none of them had any idea what Stenwold was holding, beyond that it was a weapon.

  ‘And who are you to address me, slave?’ Ebris of the Ganbrodiel demanded.

  ‘The future,’ said Stenwold, and pulled the trigger.

  The sound alone stopped the fight, sent the Spiders reeling back, virtually knocked the Flies from the air. What kept the fight stopped was what those four long metal bolts had accomplished. The Scorpions had been faithful bodyguards, but the piercer had struck through their shields, splintering the wood like kindling, ripped open their mail and torn their bodies up so that they looked as though some wild beast – a mantis or a hunting beetle – had been at them. Their last service had been in vain. Two of the bolts had retained enough force to take Ebris squarely in the chest. Now they stood proud of his body, as though waiting for someone to run a flag up them.

  For a moment, everybody just stared. Stenwold calmly put the piercer down and reached for his belt. He might be a long way from home, but he knew people – people of any kinden – and there was always one.

  A scarred Spider-kinden, older than Ebris had been, probably a loyal family retainer, yelled something wordless and went for Stenwold with his sword. Before Tomasso could get in the way, Stenwold had loosed both barrels of the little snapbow Totho had made. True, one bolt flew straight over the man’s head, but the other one caught him beneath the collarbone and stopped him in his tracks. He dropped to his knees with a disbelieving look, and keeled over onto his side.

  ‘Anyone else?’ Stenwold demanded, brandishing the weapon. The piercer was discharged, the snapbow empty, but his Inapt adversaries had no idea of that. Keep your superstitions, he found himself thinking. Leave to me the foundry and the forge, and we shall see who carries the day.

  They melted away, the remnants of Ebris’s crew. By that time Laszlo was calling for aid, and Stenwold turned to see that Piera had taken an arrow in the belly, even during that short moment of skirmish.

  They rushed her back to the Tidenfree, convulsing and weeping in Stenwold’s arms. As the ship cast off, Despard and Fernaea both tried all the tricks of modern and ancient medicine to keep some life in her, but before Kanateris had reached the horizon she was gone.

  Jodry Drillen employed three secretaries now, with standing instructions to take away and deal with anything that did not require his specific and valuable attention, yet still each morning there appeared a neat pyramid of scrolls on his desk: petitions, proposals, complaints, agendas, reports from his own people or invitations from the high-placed. Why did I want this, precisely? It seemed out of all proportion to the effective worth and influence of his new position. Locals had great difficulty persuading foreign visitors that the Speaker did not actually rule the Assembly or the city. His role was just that of a glorified bureaucrat. Collegium was ruled by the vote of the Assembly as a whole, not by the word of one man, just as the Assembly and Speaker both were selected through the casting of Lots by the citizens at large. Visitors found it an astonishing system. Jodry had seen them walking about the streets of Collegium with a nervous, expectant air, as if waiting for the howling mobs of anarchy to descend at any moment.

  So why would any sane Beetle want to be Speaker, one might ask? Oh but, of course, there were perks. The Speaker was the city’s face when it came to foreign diplomacy. The Speaker met ambassadors and hosted gatherings. The Speaker was not expected to raise motions himself before the Assembly, but he drew up the list of who spoke and when.
It was not in Jodry’s power to ban any Assembler from making a speech or putting a matter to the vote, but his whim determined whether a petitioner had the midmorning hours, when the Assemblers were sharp, or the early-morning slot when they were half-asleep, or later when their minds were on which chop house would receive them for lunch. Or else the next day, if there were enough wanting to be heard. In its own strange way the influence of the Speaker was as great as any Spider Aristos, and perhaps only the Spiders truly understood its implications.

  Still, he had perhaps underestimated the baggage entailed. Here he was, scarcely an hour into the morning – on a day when the Assembly was not even in session, yet! – and already the business was piling up.

  ‘Ambassador Aagen wants to talk with you about the next games,’ said Arvi, and the position of his finger along the scroll he read from showed that he was barely halfway through. The Fly-kinden was all immaculate perfection, giving the impression he could waste Jodry’s time all day, if he needed to.

  ‘Don’t we have a committee ruling on the games?’ Jodry complained. ‘I’d swear we gave old Nemmie Linker some money for it.’

  Arvi’s nose wrinkled. ‘Aagen’s a Wasp, Master. He’s used to a single person being in charge, and usually a man.’

  ‘Well, put him off.’